July 15h, 2010

T Minus 1 day.

I would like to tell you that I'm perfectly calm, and I'd be halfway truthful (whatever the hell that means).

I slept in this morning, making it a good eleven hours of sleep last night or something ridiculous. I did the dishes, showered, and once more, got on the consulate website and once more, checked the requirements for a student long stay visa against the documents I have prepared. I walked to the copy shop in the Grove Arcade -- walked, not biked, seeing as I can hardly move after a lot of biking and a ballet class last night -- and got the remaining copies made, then spent a bit of time at Malaprops, chilling out and reading "Heroes of the Valley" by Jonathan Stroud, who in addition to being a great writer, also writes some damn good stories. They are young adult books but I promise you will like them. So there.

In any case, since then I've just been home, packing, reading, and in a bit I'll go roll around on a tennis ball in an attempt to unknot the disaster that is my back. I'm at last somewhat confident that I have everything required for the consulate; the next step is to get there, on time and ready to go, and end up with the visa. I just want it to be over by this point; though I am, I admit, still a little stressed. Less so than before (progress!!).

Oh, and by the way, Raj can come with me. So while we're at it, we're going to stay in Atlanta and chill until Sunday. Celebrate my birthday on Saturday in grand fashion, as grand as can be considering I'm only turning 20. So that should be fun. After Friday I'm just along for the ride.

It hit me a few days ago when I pulled out my cell phone calendar and counted, that I'm only in Asheville for six more weeks. Only six -- and I've been here about seven and a half. The thought is exciting -- but scary -- and a little saddening. I've become amazingly settled here -- I do have a way of doing that with places, especially if I know that there's no real other option to be anywhere except exactly where I am, and that was the case with Asheville. Having no other option, I just sit down and sink in my roots, and I always find it hard to yank them back out. It's just that it seems like all I can remember is here, and seven weeks is such an impossibly short time, but I've already done so much, lived so many moments. I've made friends, found a guy, and though we're hardly around at the same time, learned again to live with my sister. We've always been best friends, but we do have to get used to being in the same space, and now that we are, it will be so STRANGE to not be. It's just comforting to know she's around, and I know she feels the same way. But we'll just have to get used to it how it is, move our separate directions and live. We've always been good at that.

In any case, it is a little startling, even though it means that life is, as it always does, moving on. Now is only right now and forever means very little -- if there is one truth about life, it is that it's never (ever) static. Although it always seems like where you are is where you have always been, because each moment, each day, for heaven's sake, could be it's own lifetime, but they all add up in little increments and moments and consecutive nows to bring us to this exact second of being. And so always we grow, change, and learn. It's how it should be.

I have often wondered how much of life people miss, caught in the throes of guilt or what if or living in the past or the future, and I have to ask, yet again -- you'll get tired of hearing this question -- if anyone has ever truly lived?

In the mean time it's been a great week -- lots of baseball (including TWO walk off wins by the Tourists) -- and I've somehow managed to meet all sorts of interesting people, which is always fantastic. Also, why does it seem like half the people I meet here are from New York or have lived there at some point? Quite bizarre.

In any case, we should be heading out here pretty soon, so I'm going to sign off. I'll update you soon. :)