Feathers on the Bed

Living in the moment

Is something that I simply fail to do. I don’t know why but my mind is always running faster and farther away from the present time. For example, I am on the verge of going to Paris for one year. Yes, 12 whole months in my beautiful city. What am I thinking about right now? The Canal St. Martin? Le Pont Neuf? The Pub Shop? Créteil? Bercy? Clément? Romain?

None of those.

I’m thinking about when I return and what I want to do.

I don’t know if it’s necessarily a bad thing, I truly don’t. To be honest, this is how I’ve always lived and it’s gotten me to where I need to be now.

However, I do have those random moments, like I am now, when everything is peaceful. When the lightest breeze would sound like the sound barrier being broken. I have them occasionally, usually when I am alone—in my room, my dark room. (I don’t like lights and I usually hang out with either just a candle lit or the screen in front of my lighting the way)

I think this is what living in the moment means—being able to hear silence, to feel absence, to see nothing. This is what it means to live in the moment

And if that’s what it is, well, I’m a champion at it.

Moment Mori

A New Beginning

Every time I think about writing on this blog, I have a very romantic vision of a lengthy post filled with perfect grammar, flowery sentences, and direct sentences. I envision poetry in prose, and writing that one would deem “exceptional.” However, the moment I hit that “sign in” button on Tumblr’s front page, it’s like my mind melts.

So, I decided to revamp everything.

A new name = Feathers on the Bed

I guess I needed to revamp everything to catch up with my current position. I just graduated from a college in the Northeast where the majority of the student body comes from NE or the Tri-State region. I’ve been home for 6 days and I am so lonely it’s unbearable. I continuously see people talking about seeing one another SO SOON LIKE OMG because they are practically neighbors. Don’t get me wrong, I love Ohio and I love Cleveland, but graduation was so much more emotional than I could have ever imagined. I shouldn’t even be complaining because I’m, for the first time, announcing this news on this blog:

I’m going back to Paris to work for the next year. But, I began thinking about this next year and how extraordinarily transitional and difficult it will be. How many of my friends will forget about me? I say that because the first time I spent a year in Paris, I lost a significant amount of friends who were just “too busy” to send me an email once every two weeks. While my job will be working with American study abroad students, I will be living alone in a foreign country. As much as I claim to have “homies” in Paris and how Paris is my true city, there still exists an enormous amount of loneliness for any student abroad. I NEED to find something to occupy my time while being there. I need to take advantage of everything. The more that I do, the less time I’ll have to sulk and be a little negative nancy. Yet, I know struggle is so important in my life. It’s defined who I am.

I’ve been so sick of seeing these kids from my college getting these “amazing” jobs through pure nepotism. I really really dislike the thought of people less intelligent than me being more “successful” because they have more connections. Obviously, “success” is a relative term and for the moment, I’m talking about money. I know, I know, money is not everything—-but If I had more of it, I surely would have a little less stress. I could easily pay off my loans, my car, and every other bill I have. That would be nice.

I’m sorry. I’m just complaining alot. Oh, not to mention I quit smoking this week.

It’s just been a tough first week home. A very tough one. And I don’t EVER like to wish time away, but part of me really wants for this summer to pass quicker than normal. Ugh, I feel sick even typing that line. I really don’t want to think that or say that, but it always creeps into mind.

Voilà, the introduction to the new chapter of this blog. Here’s a quick list and timeline of what’s to come:

June:
work work work
go to Chicago to get my visa
Jennifer (my girlfriend) comes to visit Cleveland!!!

July:
Go to Topsail Island
Work Work Work

August:
Go to Long Island and spend time with Jennifer
Leave for France on the 23rd.

France:
August 2012 - Summer of 2013

It’s going to be another crazy year, I can just feel it.

I hope to be more diligent with this blog, to post more pictures, and to put myself out there a little bit more. I’m too conservative sometimes, and how are all y’all supposed to trust me if I don’t give a little more?

I should also warn every one that I’m sure there will be lots of French posts on this or a lot of French in general. I’m sorry. Sometimes the English Language fails me.

Let’s do this journey together? Side by side?

Sincèrement,

Me.

Into the air, into the air oh oh.

It’s like someone is giving me CPR every time I think about being in Paris next year.  So many visions and revisions fill my mind:

the canal

république

Créteil

Beirut

le café dans le 2ième 

le pont des arts

Bercy

la ligne 3, 11, et 8

Endless metro rides

Streets that TRULY make me feel brand new

the Marais

Bastille

Seine

the left bank?

Allinallinallinall I am just so terribly excited everytime I think about my next year.  It’s reassuring, it’s fruitful, it’s daring, it’s exciting, it’s terrifying.  I want to spend as much time with my friends as possible.  I want to capitalize on every opportunity I get.  I want to skate with my friends, I want to sit at la place de la mairie à Créteil at night with my friends.  I want to climb the hills of Montmartre.  I want to explore the Left Bank even more.  I want to enter the Shakespeare and Co. poetry contest.  I want to have a drink at the Pub Shop, I want to drink cheap wine.  I want to climb endless flights of stairs to a studio on the 6th floor, which will be my paradise.  I want to meet new people.  I want to take risks.  

Sorry.  Can’t write more.  Must continue working on Milton…..scratch the comments I made before, I kind of like this mec.

Oh

It sure has been awhile since I have even considered writing something of some sort, somewhere, maybe here.  

Paris l’année prochaine.  J’y serai avec tous mes homies.  J’y serai, j’y serai j’y serai.

I looked at my last post and I didn’t even remember writing it.  Maybe that is why there are some grammatical errors in it.  Oh well, what’s done is done and it’s DONNE.

Boy do I miss him.  Milton just simply cannot do it for me like JD does.  Maybe that will change.

No one even noticed, what does that mean?

So often

I have dared to write a post.  Imagine a house with a beautiful exterior and on the inside is only ash and the faint scent of a gas burner, left on by a careless person who then ignited the flame for the interior to explode, yet protected the exterior in vain.

There are moments in the day where I become short of breath, where I tremble.  I don’t know what these are.  I feel as if I am on the threshold of an idea, of a fall, of a tumble.  Yet the moment passes just as quickly as it came.

J’arrive pas à parler en anglais car je sais que vous pourriez lire toutes mes idées et ça me fait peur.  J’aime bien me déguiser par une autre langue.  J’ai envie d’être ailleurs.  J’aime bien me déguiser.  J’aime bien me déguiser.

Comme ca, vous ne comprendriez jamais ce que je veux dire.

Cache cache.

Donc

jepenseàParisjepenseàParismemanquenormémentut’ensouviensmoi,ouijem’ensouviens

ça me manque

Il faut que je sois à Paris.  J’arrive pas à habiter là, à Skidmore.  Malgré le fait que j’aie mes amis là, surtout Nick, j’arrive pas.  Je suis censé faire quoi alors?  J’avais déjà essayé.  Dieu, t’en es où?  

Tout le bruit, tout le bruit, ça me frappe.  ça me tue.  

Sauve moi stp.  Sauve moi.

and now, outside, you see the waves in her eyes.

Let us go then, you and I

It has been two months and nine days since I have returned from my year in Paris.  I have specifically refused to write anything until this very moment, less than 24 hours before my return to Skidmore College.  Although I have no idea what I intend to say in the next few sentences, I am going to try and give some idea as to what I have taken away from this year long journey.  

Finding yourself is the greatest feeling of all time.  I found myself in Paris.  Paris is my second home and I intend to go back after college.  More often than not, kids who get the opportunity to do what i want to do are either wealthy, or they have mad connections.  If I could describe how many hoops I jumped through and ladders I climbed this summer to simply find ONE person willing to help me, well, I would.  However, I think I want this more than others.  Every morning, I wake up and think about Paris.  If any of you recall one of my earlier posts about my John Donne research paper, you will remember that I surrounded myself in paper.  As in, I literally sat down and placed paper all around me.  Well, I’ve kind of done the same thing with my Paris memories.  Throughout my day, I come across little scraps of paper, little keychains, and other assorted memorabilia from my time there and I am consistently reminded of everything.  

However, my best memory is my worst memory.  When I got to Paris, I fell in love with a song by Beirut, called “My Night with the Prostitute from Marseille.”  Every single morning until about November, I would wake up and either play this song or put on my headphones and walk to school listening to this song several times.  Basically, my body remembers this.  Whenever I listen to the song, I can smell Paris in the fall.  I can see la place de la république, I can even sense that little batter in my heart that is part excitement and part nervousness.  

Coming full circle to finding yourself.

Obviously, I had posted pictures throughout the time in gay Pareeeee of me.  However, I was never comfortable with my outer appearance after I had changed so much.  For those of you who don’t know, when I got home, I cut off all of my hair and I couldn’t be happier.  Finally, after 21 years, I am confident with my inner self and I feel that my outer self reflects this.  

This is the part where the Paris chapter is not closed, but simply pigeon holed.  I will be back there.  I will live there again.  I will stroll the Canal St. Martin  once again.  I will see Créteil.  I will fall in love all over again.

And we, believed her then.

I know

I haven’t written all summer.  I’ve done that on purpose.  Don’t lose faith.  I will write shortly before I leave Ohio, again. 

kissbiselove.

Even

Even if you finish that bottle tonight and you feel happy,

the sorrow will come back tomorrow….

Je pense à créteil.  Je pense à Roxane.  Je pense à mes homies.

Je vous aime.  Vous me manquez.

C’est trop difficile dans ce moment.

S’il vous plait, venez me voir.  

A la prochaine.

<3