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Friday, March 29, 2002
6:36 PM
still recovering from wednesday night at the ministry of sound, dancing on platforms and drinking something lovely but evil (vodka, caffiene, something else, tasted like juice). it was crazy and intense and simply brilliant. heaven. plus, we managed to go on a tres cheap night.
new pics (from this europe jaunt of mine): betsy and i, and mari and i.
it's been a busy week. friends visiting while they're on spring break, even though we've got classes. have alot of work to do before my mom gets here in two weeks. but life is good...done many of the touristy things i've avoided before now. i'll be sad to see them go.
6:14 PM
(another delayed post due to blogger issues)
2:19 a.m. 25 march 2002
somewhere along the line i have developed a terribly messed up sleep schedule. i'd love to be asleep right now, like mari and emily. ben'll be calling us from heathrow in something like 6 hours. i was so tired all day, fell asleep around 10:30 without a problem, but woke up after a sleep cycle to drunk flatmates in the hallway and haven't been able to fall asleep again since.
i feel like i've lived my life without finding what i really want, what it is i need. i spent too long trying to be what different people wanted, and i got lost. two of my program mates just got nominated for phi beta kappa and rhodes scholarships. i suddenly feel like an underachiever again. i once thought those things were a given for me, but years of excelling with apathy and a so poor as to be damaging unfocused high school background, i feel like what i could have been has been affected, and it's taken far too long to realize it. i still have time to make up for it...but i have to sit down and decide things about my future which i've avoided, make the choices i've avoided in my delay of adulthood. not right now...but soon. very soon. (yeah, i know...irony.)
Wednesday, March 20, 2002
4:10 PM
so agog.net has been down for ages and it's driving me nuts, but hopefully it'll be back up tomorrow. not like i can even publish this while it's down.
spent too much money today. plane tickets to egypt, to edinburgh, and a 3 day jaunt in scotland. and we're trying to figure out ireland/cornwall/wales. so little time left in london, almost half my time in europe gone. how has it fled so fast? and all my weekends are suddenly full, and stonehenge isn't even scheduled yet.
been suffering intense insomnia again. but i promised stephen i wouldn't take sleeping pills, so i'm stuck laying in bed staring up at the ceiling or doing homework (badly) at 3 a.m. and my shoulders are forever tensed. i have no reason for stress. ugh. it should go away.
went out with a cop from the bronx yesterday -- fascinating experience. everything in life these days is a fascinating experience...
you know, it just occurred to me that both my insomnia and tension could be attributible to the world's best coffee i recently discovered. but i've only been drinking it in the mornings, so maybe not.
emily arrives sunday! yay!
Thursday, March 14, 2002
10:49 PM
went out again tonight. and now it's like 5 am and i should be in bed. contemplative and quiet and no longer intoxicated.
well, i tried absinthe at the club tonight. let me tell you, the stuff they had to do to make it legal basically just gave us another strong hard liquor. though i've heard you can still get authentic stuff in the former soviet bloc countries. but the whole hallucinogen that drives people insane thing kinda scares me, so i'm probably glad they removed it. still...it resulted in alot of great art in its time. maybe that's what i should do...find authentic absinthe, drink a lot, write a great novel, and then just go crazy. it'd be fun and dramatic and solve the what to do with my future dilemna.
Wednesday, March 13, 2002
6:29 PM
wandered through soho with mick and the girls after seeing "stones in his pockets." we've finally discovered the only coffee shop open 24 hours in london, planted firmly on the seedier edges of the area. plus we went to ed's diner for the best milkshakes we've had since arriving (milkshakes in europe don't generally involve ice cream, so it's been our quest to find american style outside of mcdonald's or tgifridays). it also appears we have dates settled for when londonCon occurs. and this weekend we're going to bath. i'm all for roman ruins.
Tuesday, March 12, 2002
6:21 PM
sunday night we determined our futures be flipping a coin while drinking wine at the troubadour. i'm either going to work for betsy in her egg-shaped bed and breakfast or go to grad school.
my mother is coming to visit in april. i am very very excited. i miss her so much and i get to see her after so long...thank goodness. got a care package from her today, and a letter from my little sister. real mail makes me so happy.
here's my first entries on a life todo list, to be updated periodically.
and lovely new quotes discovered this week:
"kisses are a better fate than wisdom" - e.e. cummings
"the only love which has lasted
is the love which has
everything.
every disappointment, every
failure,
which has accepted the fact that
in the end there is no desire
so deep
as the simple desire for
being with each other." - graham greene
6:16 PM
excerpts from my journal over spring break:
9:55 p.m. 1 march 2002
on a plane to malta, an 8:30 flight from heathrow after missing my morning flight from gatwick because i was an idiot and forgot my passport at the flat, only realizing after the gatwick express had pulled out of the station...i'm brilliant, what can i say?
...this traveling alone thing isn't so terrible...silly, isn't it? 22 years old and still a little afraid to fly alone. well, flying itself still leaves me a bit nervous, alone or not. we took off tonight and my fingers played over the surface of my st. christopher's medallion until we'd begun to level out....
5:48 p.m. 2 march 2002
we woke up this morning to the cooing of pigeons and the frenchmen next door through the walls. we have a balcony which opens onto the narrow street below, the mediterranean sun shining in. god, the sun is wonderful. i've sunburned, of course, but i don't care. it's bright and beautiful and i never want to leave...
let's not forget all the catcalls of the day while i'm thinking of it. my favorite: "good morning. you want sex?" lovely....
4:20 p.m. 3 march 2001
there is something patently hilarious about an internet cafe in the depths of a centuries old building, or a tattooist who sets up on the street. malta has both...
and a little boy tried to hit me with a stick. at least ran in my general direction and swung it at me while i walked by the water. i just raised my eyebrows and looked at him and he veered away.
4 march 2002
spent most of the day in rabat and mdina...toured the catacombs, freaked out enough to link arms and stay together. it may have been cleared of bodies but we had the shivers. mari yelled at me for saying blasphemous things and pointed out that she was named after the mother of god. she thought the christian ghosts would like to know that.
...eating lunch at a tea house on the city wall, gazing out over the countryside. we spotted a uniquely swank estate. large parking area, private pool, fountain in a garden. sicilian crime lord's hideaway is our theory...then we somehow ended up getting in the middle of a funeral procession...
went to the labyrinth in valetta, where we intended to drink, eat, and write in our journals while listening to jazz. instead we befriended the owners, a former alcoholic british expatriate who drank tea constantly and was a socialist, and a current alcoholic maltese who became progressively more intoxicated as we all stood around talking, about politics and culture and pretty much everything...the place was perfect and quirky. cafe upstairs (along with a small antiques shop), an art gallery, stage, and supper club downstairs, all in a 17th century manor house...
11:41 p.m. 5 march 2002
...the longest bus ride possible to catch the gozo ferry, more buses to victoria and then xlendi and our hotel...the village, is well on its way to tourist trapdom. few people seem to live here, and as it's the off season most of the restaurants are closed. we ate in the hotel restaurant after a brief hike on the rocky shore line. don't want to forget our waiters, whose first words to us were "hey girlies" as we stared at the menu outside.
the mediterranean is still lovely, the maltese strays still steal my heart...
around noon, 6 march 2002
on a cliff looking down at the mediterranean. the waves crashing below the way they have for millions of years. i wonder how many centuries are shown the sheer rock faces. i'm sitting on stone and fossilized shells. the sun is warm...i could stay forever here if the wind would stop.
6:44 p.m.
...there are views here utterly tolkein-esque, as if we've stepped into middle earth. stairs carved into the rock of the hillside, a bridge spanning a small inlet...planes of bare stone leading to the nearly windowless xlendi fortress...it's stone, sitting at the edge of the harbor looking out at the seemingly endless mediterranean and the tall sheer cliffs, where the sun sinks at the end of the day...we poked at the tide pools below the bridge, the sea suddenly heaving up and spitting at us with the tide.
7 march 2002
...we rented bikes. intending to make our way to victoria, then the azure window, and perhaps the inland sea. combination of bad weather (well, rainy, but still warm) and hills (oh god, the hills!) defeated us. sheer stubbornness and walking the steep stretches brought us to victoria, but no further. we wandered there, browsed the shops, ate lunch at cafe jubilee (malta's very own restaurant chain). that's where we met tricia, another expatriate. it was lunchtime, the place was packed, so we sat at the bar sipping tia maria and orange juice (credit adam for introducing me to that drink). it was 1 in the afternoon and tricia was drunk. we talked about london (its fearful unfriendliness), about her 16 year old son and the problems of raising a boy on an island nation high in machismo. she left us, insisting on us contacting her cousin in london, who's an author...
...we spent our last bit of time on the sea shore, the tide on the pebble beach tinkling the stones musically with the retreat of each wave...
5:52 p.m. 8 march 2002
i'm on a plane somewhere over france. the sun is setting on the alps outside the window...
we were in bus or ferry or waiting for their arrival from 12:30 until 4:15, bringing us to the airport a mere half hour before our flight was to take off. stressful, to say the least, especially when my passport and ticket disappeared with a manager for a few minutes and the only thing i could hear was "no seats." but i have one and i'm on my way home.
Friday, March 08, 2002
6:39 PM
home. tired. had fun. but i'm going to bed. i'll communicate later.
