No Pause

Most people do (and I have) started a blog at the beginning of a journey: new job, grad school, going abroad, or some sudden turnstile in their lives that necessitates public relief. I am starting this at the end of a series of journeys, one being college, another being school in general, a third being childhood because I feel the need to be dramatic and look nostalgically at my childhood not yet gone and maybe I'll just let all those children in the rye tumble headlong over that cliff. I saw Pan's Labyrinth last night, which is certainly about the end of innocence and is probably the darkest movie I've ever seen. When I said that, all my friend's said, "Well, have you seen Schindler's List? Have you seen The Pianist?" Yes, I've seen those movies, and although the Holocaust is definitely, and dare I say obviously, dark, there's something about uncharterd territory that makes the impression deeper. Not to say that I've become inerred to the Holocaust. But maybe I have. But I'm not interested in the subject anyway right now. Watching the movie (which is in Spanish, Spain's Spanish) made me come home and pick up Love in the Time of Cholera in Spanish and try to read it for the five minutes before I fell deeply asleep and I was surprised to realize how much I remember. German does not enter my brain in that way at all. Subtle resistance.

I've started listening to Joanna Newsom a lot again and I'm reminded of one of the first times I remember coming across her on my iPod and gratefully pressing repeat over and over. I was in Riga, Latvia on a weekend trip from Berlin with the European Union class and I got up early to finish looking at the occupation museum and the market in the east part of the city that fit into five airplane hangars, one for dairy, one for meat, one for baked goods, one for produce and one for sundries. Five whole airplane hangars. And then I walked along the river and I was somewhere between incredibly happy and incredibly sad--like my whole body was just my eyes, looking on. "Some mornings the sky looks like a rose." That night I saw the prettiest sunset I've ever seen behind an iron bridge on the river, I still swear the whole thing was purple, and I thought they got prettier closer to the equator.

One of the biggest bummers of college is you can't take baths. My friend lives in her own room in a professor's house now and I think that would be the best use of an hour one of these days.