feeling better than I have in a long time
Monday, Dec. 01, 2003 at 11:49 p.m.


Hello, friends!!

I had a fantastic Thanksgiving vacation that I was desperate for and now that it's over I think that I'm even happier to be home. Not that the vacation wasn't everything I'd hoped for; I was just ready for it to be done.

I visited my parents and we had Thanksgiving dinner at my Aunt and Uncle's with my two cousins and my Aunt's mother. On Friday me and my parents went down to the Jersey shore with their friend Nancy to stay a few days at her beach house in Ocean City. The house is incredible: the top floor of a duplex, a few blocks away from a ruined pier that separates our half of the beech from the more populated end and, in the other direction, only three houses and then a bird sanctuary that stretches to the end of the point. The only people on the beach were occasional fishermen and although most of the days it was too windy to brave a walk, today was beautiful.

I walked along, hair blowing everywhere, internally playing and replaying the Rohan theme from Two Towers since I had just finished The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien (two weeks for the entire trilogy plus appendices). I picked up a shell and two small pieces of driftwood on the way back from the point, deciding that driftwood is probably one of my favorite natural objects and that I'd like to have a collection of it one day. Both pieces were small enough to fit in my suitcase, but one broke apart when I tried to wash off the sand back at the house.

It's hard to describe the way that the sky looked but I can remember it all. Stunning blue with layers of high clouds and, if I looked north to Atlantic City, the edge of a front blowing slowly across the landscape. The dry sand was blowing across the ground where the wind was stronger at the point, leaving patches that were smooth and white in the sun. Where the sand was wetter, each bit of shell or sea plant sheltered its own little crest of sand pointing at the ocean while everything else around it was eroded away by the wind.

It was beautiful, peaceful, and fulfilling on a level that I think I've been ignoring within myself lately. It felt great to get reacquainted with the sea, and now it's time to get reacquainted with my life. I'm ready, and I'm excited.

I'm moving to a point where I really will be living differently than before, and better, due to a confluence of circumstances and desire. I'll be taking a fiction writing class next semester, working at the Linguistics department, and looking for a second job. My funds are low so I'll have to start watching my money but I actually feel good about that. I won't have to live up to anything for a while, just be and write and live my life. Working to eat, working to live, and not looking ahead.

And I cannot wait.


I'm listening to Belle and Sebastian -- The Boy with the Arab Strap
I'm reading nothing currently, give me a few days
I want to find a good second job, once I start looking

Previous:
- - Thursday, Oct. 27, 2005
back yet again - Thursday, Aug. 04, 2005
Batman - Friday, Jun. 17, 2005
Just fucking around today - Sunday, May. 22, 2005
pre-birthday - Saturday, Apr. 30, 2005