Dear Simone–
Wow. I guess that I never exactly promised to be consistent, but wow. Months have gone by since my last post. And a couple more months. I hope that this blog's updates are still being communicated to you, because I actually have no way of contacting you at present due to a phone fiasco over the summer. By the way, you should call me or something just so I can have your phone number again. While we're at it, I wouldn't object to getting your email as well. ;) Cheers, babe.
Summer has been a blur of travel: after spending some weeks up wandering everywhere between Seattle, WA and Portland, OR, I returned home for a few days before the bulk of my nomadic summer began. I think that the longest I stayed in any place was about a week, but it was Asheville one day, the National Seashore the next, and so on. Some of the best days were spent with my dear friend Ben, exploring the Haw River in the central part of NC. I visited rope swings. I mastered the art of baking pie. I learned to play DDR pretty well. I remodeled a room. I swam naked under the stars. I went out into the rough ocean in a 15-foot motorboat and I drifted for hours in the mild current just beyond where the waves break onto shore. I even kissed a boy or two. It was warm, it was moving, it was well-spent. The lack of planning was stressful in the context of other people, but on a personal level it was incredibly fulfilling, incredibly calm. I'll tell you more of my specific adventures some time, okay?
And now I'm back at Chapel Hill. It feels so good to be home. I have a corner room to myself (two windows! that actually have really gorgeous views) and it is full of space and light. At night the street lights come in through the windows and everything is sliced into a grid of orange panels, the constant order upset only by the occasional passing swipe of a car's headlights across the walls.
My classes are amazing, and the majority of them are not taught in English. It's French lit, French conversation, Farsi, history of Iran, and poetry writing. I am particularly enamoured of that last one–having a creative outlet is something that I didn't even realize that I'd missed until I suddenly had one again.
Men are stress. In one day I had two people offer to date me, one a boy with whom I've barely exchanged two words and the other a very dear friend of mine to whom I almost could have said yes (and, given a slight shift in certain circumstances, I would have said yes to). I remain free.
There have been a lot of little pleasures in being back at school: going to the Haw River rope swing with a few friends after classes one afternoon, walking to the store in Carrboro to get the first groceries of the semester, running several laps around my favorite one-mile loop after a summer's absence, climbing to the most beautiful nighttime haunt that exists on campus, spending the night in rooms that are not mine at will, waking up in the morning to drink tea as the sunlight pours in on the faces of my sill-sitting houseplants, knowing that I am where I wanted to be a little more than a year ago.
I ought to get to some studying, but I will write again sometime in the near future. I think I used to overdo it with the links, but here is one for today.
Your friend,
Blue
