God bless the Queen and save America

Last week was my one year anniversary of arriving home from England. I tried to make it commemorative. I wore my English gear, shared a pint of cider with a friend, and had a cup of tea while watching a British movie. I also ended up going through my photobucket page, skimming through all my pictures. It did make me miss England, but life is good.

The day I came back from England was also the day that my parents handed me my letter from Michigan. It was a pretty emotional moment, even though we all knew what it probably said. It demanded a decision of me, when all I had to do previously was hypothesize. Sometimes I feel like my time in England was a pause button in my life. I was leaving one school and going to a different one, trading one life in for the other, and while I was in England I was making those decisions about what I wanted my new life to be.

My life has been a little disjointed, at least geographically, and it makes it easy to look back and see how things have changed. Sometimes I think people don't stop and reflect back enough. So much has happened in the past year. My life is so vastly different from what it was or from what I thought I wanted it to be. You lose things and gain new things. You lose contact with old friends and make new ones. You buy new clothes, get new haircuts, get new names. You struggle with different things, and you grow in new ways. I wish people would stop and take more time to recognize these things, to look back and see how they've changed and evaluate where they are, if they are living the life they want, if they are where they want to be.

This is not where I thought I would be. It's not all that bad. : )

I'll Slice Your Life

It's weird the way your first impressions change - or don't.

I've had the privilege of making "home" a place where I had previously had only a handful of isolated memories. When I first moved here, most places were associated with my previous memories of them. But things change, and I can remember how I used to view certain aspects of campus - I even remember things that were gone before I made this campus home, like the tree stump with the brick wall in it they tore out to make room for the museum addition - and sometimes it makes me smile, how different my perspective was. Campus used to see so big and intricate - and it still is, but now it's familiar too. It's funny the way memories are retained and yet perspective can change, almost like there are two versions of a place, and the way sometimes you can see both of them at once. Some places don't change, though. Places I don't visit frequently, even a couple I do, still have the exact same impression on me as they did three years ago. I don't mind, necessarily. With a memory as bad as mine, it's nice to have some strong memories. It's just weird and interesting, at least to me, the way people's perspectives can shift and change.

Sounds like a great theme to build a story on to me. : P

Comeback Tours

Today my roommate from sophomore year is getting married. I luckily am getting to go to her wedding, which is halfway across the country, and visit Old School Land for the first time in a year.

I don't know how many people get to revisit their pasts a lot. It sorta happens a lot for me. Ever since I came back from England, every single place I have lived/visited has been an important place for me in my past. Sometimes it's hard because I don't feel like I'm making any progress forward. Sometimes it's hard because I realize that I have. It was a little ironic, because I flew back to campus on the same day that I got into England exactly a year ago.

I was on the plane Thursday, and I almost started crying a couple times. I was so excited to finally be going back to what had been my home for two years to see some of my closest friends, but I was also a little sad. I have no regrets in the way I've lived my life the past year. But at the same time, I thought of everything I had missed at my old school for the past year, what my life could have been like if I stayed. Now that I'm here, it doesn't feel like I've been gone for a year. Except when I'm hanging out with people.

One of my writing buddies for Script Frenzy has a plot that involves someone coming back to a place after being gone for a while. And as soon as I get home, I'm going to start typing out a whole bunch of notes for him about what that's like. Because, when you stop to think about it, it's crazy the cyclical nature my life has taken. But if that's really what my life is like, if I'm going around in circles, it's more like a spiral that's expanding outwards. We're at the same place again, only we're enjoying those memories as we pass by. I'm here again, but I'm not the same person I was then.

And sometimes moving forward is going back.

But for now I have a ridiculously cute dress that I have been patiently waiting to wear and lunch with one of my best friends in Old School Land ahead of me. Can life get any better? I submit that it cannot!

Sunny Days and Rain

Today was definitely an umbrella and galoshes day, a fact I was oblivious to until I was standing on the corner of where I work in the coldest shower I've had in months, waiting for the five minute long light to change to let me catch my bus. It's definitely one of those days where you are more likely to giggle about it than freak out. However, it rained so much on me that my jeans turned a completely different color.

Music is surprisingly important in my life considering I'm not that musical or involved in musical things anymore. Music is my memory. I'm the kind of person who instantly loves a song and plays it over and over again and completely makes it my own. So instead of smelling baking cookies and being instantly transported back to my Christmas time or something, I hear a song and can practically enter an exact memory of my life at the time. When I hear certain DC Talk or Newboys songs (old school, right), I go back to summers in our house in Leonia with the window open and the smells and sounds of summer coming in, the checked curtains, the breeze, and whatever nerdy things I did when I was fourteen (I'll never tell...). Love Don't Let Me Go or Put Your Hands Up for Detroit is instantaneous transportation to going out with my girls in England. Star Mile reminds me of quiet nights in my room in England. Over and Over Again was always playing on the radio in the bathroom freshman year. Breathe goes back to the smell and feel of Rice Hall last summer when I was an au pair. Any Coldplay song, the last three or four years of my life. Ben Folds, the Fray, and Regina Spektor are these seasons memory makers. I have an actual playlist on iTunes called Songs of my Life.

When Jeremiah was up here last week (yay AU!), he introduced me to Regina Spektor. One of her songs has been on repeat a lot on my iPod and computer, and today I realized that it would be the perfect closing song to one of my shorts that I'm working on. I don't know what it's like to get rights to a song for a student short, but if I end up making this before I graduate, which I'm going to try, I'm also going to try to get the rights. Or maybe I'll just use it without permission. : ) These are the lyrics to the song, but I also put up the link to the youTube video, because I think if you just read the lyrics, you might get a completely wrong impression of the song. It's a HAPPY song. It's like the Fray's Cable Car or Ben Folds Still Fighting It, where it *looks* sorta depressing, but in a strange way, it makes you feel better. I don't know; I've created a new genre for music called Happy Sad songs. Because that's what they are. And I love them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wigqKfLWjvM

"Fidelity" by Regina Spektor

(Shake it up)

I never loved nobody fully
Always one foot on the ground
And by protecting my heart truly
I got lost in the sounds
I hear in my mind
All these voices
I hear in my mind all these words
I hear in my mind all this music

And it breaks my heart
And it breaks my heart
And it breaks my heart
It breaks my heart

And suppose I never met you
Suppose we never fell in love
Suppose I never ever let you kiss me so sweet and so soft
Suppose I never ever saw you
Suppose we never ever called
Suppose I kept on singing love songs just to break my own fall
Just to break my fall
Just to break my fall
Break my fall
Break my fall

All my friends say that of course its gonna get better
Gonna get better
Better better better better
Better better better

I never love nobody fully
Always one foot on the ground
And by protecting by heart truly
I got lost
In the sounds
I hear in my mind
All these voices
I hear in my mind all these words
I hear in my mind
All this music
And it breaks my heart
It breaks my heart
Breaks my
Heart
Breaks my heart

What's your boogeyman? Mine's been following me around for a few days...

Wow. wow wow wow wow.

I never thought that looking into the past would help with my future. Don't they say you're not supposed to look back? Did they ever try?

I'm understanding things again. Things are falling into place. I'm nervous; this... "feeling" I have is faint, I'm almost afraid to label it. It's almost too underdeveloped to understand yet. Is it hope again, after I tried so hard to kill it? Is it happiness, that I thought was too unattainable? Is it just simply joy, a choice that with its determination is irreverent to pain?

I don't know, but I like it!