Note: No. I am not in Paris yet. I'm just working on getting in the habit of blogging, and the diary this summer is mostly for my own benefit. But if you are curious as to how I'm spending my summer, knock yourself out and keep checking in.
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I reek of insect repellent. It must be sinking into my pores by now. I wonder if my blood tastes like it…but I thought it necessary upon discovering a bite on my ass. It heartily disturbs me to think of a bug crawling around under my shorts without my knowledge, and as such I made sure to rub a thick coat of that disgusting stuff around the edge of the cloth to dissuade any other creepy crawler from getting ideas and sneaking up my pants. Very immodest of the thing, I tell you.
I couldn’t sleep last night. Hilary and I finished talking about 12:15, and I was still wide awake when I checked my cell phone at 1:36. Or maybe it was 1:38. I can’t remember which, but I expect two minutes doesn’t make a difference in the long run, unless we’re talking about the end of the world. In any case, I was lying in this beautiful little green room in a twin bed in a creaking old house, looking at the light of the full moon stream through the shades I’d pulled to guard against the morning sun. I like light in my room at night; even now I’m terrified of the dark (though to be honest I can’t remember being afraid of it as a child. I must have grown into it.)
My mind was going about a million miles a minute, thinking about this new strange place called Asheville that life has set me in for the summer, accompanying my sister (who also happens to be my best friend) as she starts a life here. Asheville is good for her; it is quiet, calm, and peaceful. Things happen, don’t get me wrong, but there is a pace of life that belongs firmly in the South.
It is so strange for me to think about: So much about this place charms me: the porch swing on the deck of the woman’s house we’re staying at while waiting for the apartment to be emptied so we can move in (she is my high school physics teacher’s sister), the houses, the gardens, and the fireflies – Hilary says I’ve seen fireflies before, when we lived in Ohio, but I can’t remember since we left when I was seven, so their little lighted behinds are such a wonder to me. It’s charming, yes, and I have to wonder if I could live here, maybe; there’s dance, there’s theater –
But I don’t think so, and I can’t figure out why. I miss New York City terribly. Everyone tells me that I won’t miss it next year, when I’m in Paris, and that’s probably true, but I don’t know how to tell them that I miss it right now. I miss the skyscrapers, the subways, the beat of the city. As strange as it is, I miss the business. How crowded it is, all the time ----Hell, even the thunder charms me ---though that seems to be such a strange thing to miss. But I do.
Still. Why not here? People are busy, and happy. They ride their bikes, they kayak, they go contra-dancing (three people in the span of two days have introduced me to the phenomenon, and I expect once we’re settled I will have to check it out). I could, I think, live here. I shouldn’t say never.
But I don’t love it in that strange, visceral way I love New York. The way it looks from forty floors up. If you know me, you’ll know how I feel about being up above the city like that.
For a second I thought an entrepreneuring mosquito bit me on the butterfly tattooed on my back. I would have been very angry indeed; my butterfly is not for chomping.
Microsoft Word doesn’t recognize the word “entrepreneuring”. I tried to ask Hilary if it was actually a word, but her headphones are firmly in. I don’t understand how she does that. I like to know what’s going on around me, and whenever the headphones go in, I either have a paper due or I’ve had a bad day.)
I’ve spent most of the day sitting on the porch swing or the bowl chair on the porch, reading. Sometimes with tea and scone, sometimes with water. Look Homeward, Angel is the book, and I find it remarkably dark and gothic, as though it is trying to be terribly mysterious. But written so well, and so I will keep after it. I imagine it gets better. It was given to me on the last day of my internship this past semester – at an off-Broadway theater company, as I like to say so people think I’m more important that I really am – by my boss, a very dear gay man who became my friend over the ten weeks we worked in the same office, not just a supervisor.
(Janet – the woman we are staying with – just came in with three fresh raspberries apiece for Hilary and I. I would die happy eating raspberries).
On the inside of the front cover is written, For my Gillian, and a wish for luck and happiness as I venture through the South. I don’t need to read the rest; the first three words are enough to make me smile.
I suppose it’s no wonder I couldn’t sleep; I’ve been restless for several days now. I hate this waiting game; waiting to move in, waiting to hear back about jobs, waiting for whatever else it is. (There is someone in a truck outside, who periodically blows his horn. I can’t figure out what he’s waiting for). I don’t like to be doing nothing. It looks bad on me, like an ill-fitting outfit. I need to have things to do to be happy.
But I keep getting told – by my parents and sister – that this is my time to rest, and after a year during which I took a total of 44 credits and performed in four shows, you’d think I need it. But my body just moves at the pace of the city --- though I must learn to go slowly now, for the three months I’m here.
I was thinking about jobs, about this new place – and about the man – young man – I met two weekends ago and the ensuing weekend, a little bubble of – I don’t know what it was, but it was good – that has separated from the little pink wand and has floated away, a perfectly self-sufficient eternity that now has very little to do with my present. It wasn’t planned – are these things ever? – and I’m fine with how it happened and the fact that it’s over – but apparently, when I can’t sleep, I think about it. I miss him right now, so now I sound all sentimental and sappy, but I would hope to quickly dissuade you of the notion. I just ended up liking him a little more than I thought I would, which was kind of annoying, apt to make me abruptly melancholy, but I believe has passed for the moment.
And not to mention that I’m sick, which makes everything seem far more melancholy. I could hardly breathe last night and woke up at nine – after which my body refused to allow me to return to sleep, so I have spent the day in somewhat of a pathetic, snotty haze. I just made some Emergen-C (with enhanced zinc, so says the label), and will try to be in bed early tonight, in order to kick this thing quickly.
I did manage to get out and try the new road bike that I may buy from Janet -- $50, as opposed to a used (!) $250 job I’d get from the bike store in downtown. (Oh God, it smells like rain – even my poor beleaguered nose can smell that –and I love, love the smell of rain.) It’s very strange after riding mountain bikes my whole life – so light, and a little unwieldy. You can’t really brake unless you hold on the drop downs, which is an adventure in itself, and seeing as it’s an old bike, the gear shifts are on the bike frame itself, not on the handlebars, so – while pedaling, or going uphill, or various other tricky maneuvers – you have to reach down and pull the little handle just so to change only one gear, at peril of pulling it too far and having the bike suddenly clunk down three gears, a somewhat alarming thing to have happen. Also, it goes very fast. This is good in some ways and somewhat terrifying in others. I think I’ll get used to it. The one thing that worries me is that there are toe clamps, the kind you insert your foot in, whatever they are actually called. Getting the first one in is fine, it’s just the second one that’s a little scary; the bike has a nasty tendency to wander while I’m futzing with it, which could be frightening not only for me but whoever has the misfortune to be in a car behind me during this whole process.
Ah well, by the end of the summer I’ll be a pro.
The internet here works, but can be a little spotty; I find myself banging repeatedly on the same icons until it randomly goes, at which point the next page loads extremely fast. It’s apparently just jumping the gaps in hyperspace that confuses the thing.
Janet is making dinner; we were planning to cook for ourselves, but she says at least tonight we can eat together. She has been impossibly kind, and we’ll have to think of something to get her in thanks. I think maybe the ‘nothing’ won’t bother me so much in this house; just sitting on the porch swing has an inherent ‘something’ in it for me; maybe it’s the constant motion.
(I’m sorry for abusing semi-colons, I like them).
I think I am going to end this entry here. I’m sure there is more to be said – there’s always more to be said, that’s why I hate blogging – but such is life, and if I think about it I’ll update again sometime this summer. Journaling has never been my strong suit, but I have to get in the practice because I’ve promised at least a dozen people that I’ll be chronicling my year in Paris.
Until then.
