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music |
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Tiger Mountain Peasant Song - Fleet Foxes |
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As much as I love globe trotting, there are few things better in the world than that first night back sleeping in your bed, with your pillow, which has still somehow held onto the shape of the back of your head perfectly. But then... you wake up and it's like you're waking up to a new city. It usually feels like so much has changed even though everyone reassures you that it was entirely boring while (though not necessarily because) you were gone. But that's never true. People who never used to talk to each other, are all of a sudden hanging out (and the opposite occurs as well). People's routines and schedules change. Certain mannerisms seem more noticeable. I don't know, it might just be me...? And I don't mean it as a bad thing - it's just... a little disorienting?
Anyhow, a lot has happened since I got home. Mainly, two more deaths near the family. One was a colleague of my mom. Another was my aunt's best friend. The first was completely out of the blue, and the second was... well, she was 82. It all seems very random. Death. And life. And opportunities, or lack thereof. It's a lot to process, there are so many questions that float around your head and you know that you won't be able to definitively answer any of them.
Also, after 3 weeks of "why didn't you call me yesterday night?! I was so worried!", I'm not on speaking terms with my dad.
Like I said, I'm quite disoriented right now.
I applied for my first job in Dublin though. I don't expect to get it, but at least I'm moving in the right direction. I need to actually look into what's required of me re: international work visa. I'm hearing discouraging things about it, so that's got me nervous. People keep insisting I should move to the U.S. If you work for a year in the U.S. and then apply to grad school, you qualify for domestic tuition rates. So, that seems like a sensible thing to do. Thing is, I'm not in a sensible frame of mind right now.
Anyways, I had a fantastic evening tonight. Went out with Karla and Ayla to Toula, a fancy restaurant (that I probably won't ever go back to, considering they charged us $15 for two bottles of water) on the 38th floor of a very fancy hotel right by the water in Toronto. It was part of Summerlicious, so it was supposed to be (relatively) cheap... and it was, considering the restaurant, and yet, it really wasn't. I'm pretty sure I couldn't actually afford that meal, given my post-vacation credit card bills. But it was nice nonetheless. Very grown up with us in fancy heels and pretty outfits waiting on 3 proper courses with a glass of (very very good) wine. Most importantly, the company was fantastic. But it felt... different. We were no longer in high school. We were quite obviously university graduates. I don't know. It's hard to describe, but it's in the way you carry yourself now and the way you enjoy nights out. Again, disorienting, but this time, in a nice way. I had quite a few moments like that on vacation, which I'll get into eventually.
Now though, I'm exhausted (in a good way), and being slowly lulled to sleep by Tiger Mountain Peasant Song. I've also got a book I'm dying to get under the covers with and finish. I'll write a proper endorsement later, but for now, I will say that I think it's amazing. It's beautifully written, and it's fiction, but it's realistic fiction. It's a love story that is turned upside down by real life, set alongside the story of one of the most weirdly engaging evil men I've ever read about. It's politics and war and conflicts of interest and human nature at it's best and worst and this gritty realism that simultaneously ruins things and makes it infinitely more effecting. I don't know how to describe it. But I'm in love with it. I found it in Vancouver for $5 and bought it only because the cover was pretty and reminded me of a Joni Mitchell album cover (and apparently, I'm currently very appreciative of random connections like that)... and, it was only $5.
It's nice to be reading again for the sheer fun of it, without an essay or midterm looming ahead.
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