oceanchild
|
::
2008 1 September :: 5.56pm
:: Music: I've Got a Golden Ticket
Home at last
Today is the anniversary of my arrival in Berlin. I have been home in California for about two weeks now, and I love it more every day. My fair California.
Exciting things are in the works. In September I move back to Santa Cruz for my fourth and final year at the UC. I'll be in a studio apartment right across the street from the beach, which is everything I was hoping for.
I might also be taking a horse, which is my current project. My sister was given a pony for Christmas last year, and she keeps it at a stable that's run by a member of the Bureau of Land Management. He often has wild mustangs at the stable which he then adopts out to people. Last week he got a new one, a two-year-old, which Sadie told him I was interested in as a cover for getting some mustang adoption brochures.
I met that horse today. It's a bay, one white foot, and not at all shy which is rare for those mustangs. It will already let me touch its nose and feed it carrots and alfalfa cubes. And so it turns out that I am interested, just like Sadie said. He's twenty-five dollars total. Can't really go wrong with that.
Of course it will be a sizable project -- he's completely untrained, and hasn't even really gotten used to humans yet. But it's a prospect I find thrilling, raising this baby mustang myself, training it myself, and someday having a well-trained, good-natured horse that I can proudly point to as the result of my hard work.
I'm trying to find a place for him to stay in Santa Cruz, and inquiring after some help with boarding fees from my horse-crazy aunt, and if those things work out then I'm going to do it. What an interesting conclusion to my lifetime of wanting a horse -- buying a mustang fairly spur-of-the-moment for twenty-five dollars.
Laugh for me.
|
oceanchild
|
::
2008 20 July :: 10.13am
:: Music: Music from "Rurouni Kenshin"
Have I really not updated since April? For shame.
Things are better now than they apparently were then. I've almost finished my last semester in Berlin -- classes have stopped meeting but I still have two final papers to write and grades to collect before my academic obligations are taken care of for good. It's starting to dawn on me how little time I really have left in Germany, and it's somewhat bittersweet. On the one hand I'm looking forward to getting home -- I've never been this far or away this long before. On the other hand, my friends are already starting to dissipate and scatter, and while I hope that I'll see them again, given their far-flung origins and the weakness of the US dollar, there's really no guarantee. A couple of them sound interested in someday coming to California, which makes me happy.
Speaking of California, I discovered yesterday that it was on my birthday in 1848 that Mexico sold California (among a few other desert states) to the USA. What an auspicious day of birth I have.
Laugh for me.
|
oceanchild
|
::
2008 2 April :: 6.52pm
Because everyone loves these.
Amelia started it!
Read more..
Laugh for me.
|
oceanchild
|
::
2008 2 April :: 5.45pm
Back in Göttingen with Nathan after an extended tour of Greece with the aforementioned and his parents. Feeling a little melancholy and homesick, though whether for California or Berlin I can't say.
I've just begun to feel unimportant, which is probably in part because I've been the fourth wheel for the past nine days in Nathan's three-person family. Understandably Otho and Bonnie are more focused on Nathan than me or anyone else -- he's their son. I'm not saying that I'm jealous or spiteful or that I think it should be any other way. I do understand. But it's all starting to weigh a little heavily, and I miss being helpful and important to people too.
I'm also a little depressed to be back in Germany, because when I'm away I'm not intimately acquainted with the fact that I'm still woefully unable to speak the official language.
Laugh for me.
|
impersonality
|
::
2008 19 March :: 7.41pm
:: Mood: down
ahh Woohu... how's life been without me?!?! Probably not much different, I'm sure X__>
Laugh for me.
|
oceanchild
|
::
2008 17 March :: 11.54am
I just realized that it's St. Patrick's Day and I'm not wearing any green! Oh the horror! I have to go home and change.
Laugh for me.
|
oceanchild
|
::
2008 13 March :: 7.17pm
Shopping trip
Today on our IKEA adventure I scored a couple of lamps, a big blue rug for my floor, and four squre mirrors that I put in a line on my wall to make them full-length. I think I may get a bunch of pillows from the euro store and just throw them on the rug to make a little nestlike hangout on the floor, since I'm lacking chairs or sofa.
Going to try and make pie with Nathan either this evening or the next. Never made pie before. Should prove interesting.
Laugh for me.
|
oceanchild
|
::
2008 23 February :: 11.15pm
So, life. What's to say? Sometimes it's brilliant. Other times, more often, it's less brilliant. I'm trying to live for the moments when the former is the case.
I found Dria's new blog yesterday after stumbling across some pictures of her and getting caught in a fit of nostalgia and self-destructive, self-proclaimedly stupid curiosity. I shouldn't have gone looking and I regretted it. The situation is pretty much unrectifiable, and thinking about it only makes me crazy.
I move out of Schlachtensee this coming Saturday and I still haven't found a new place to live yet. David and I have made steps on finding several places but none of the prospects are even looking likely at this point. May end up homeless for a while, but not roofless, which is the real thing to worry about. If that happens I'll be storing my unessential things my exchange program director's office and living either in a hostel or with Nathan in Göttingen until we find a place.
Berlin has a forest in it, the Grunewald, and a few days ago when Nathan was here we went for a walk there. I had to leave early that morning to go to the university so I left Nathan sleeping. On my way home I bought some food for a picnic, packed it up as a surprise, and then suggested we go for a hike. We ended up eating in a wooden tower we found in the woods with a bench and some open slats in the walls. We hypothesize that it's used for hunting.
We also saw some wild pigs, heavily furry, a brown adult with several black and white spotted babies, which were startled from their hang-out near the trail by our approach. To tell you the truth it scared me nigh shitless. I've heard horror stories about wild pigs. Nathan was rattled as well. He picked up a big rock "just in case" and didn't drop it again until the pigs were far out of sight.
I'm feeling pretty directionless of late. I just don't know if the things I'm doing are the right things, or if the goals I'm working toward are what I actually want. I suppose one's never really sure of these things. It's interesting, though, that when I imagine what (all concerns of reality aside) I'd really like to do for a career, the things I think of are all things I've been doing since I was...well, since before I can remember. I'd like to be a concert musician with an orchestra, for instance. Or a Grand Prix show jumper, or a member of the Olympic equestrian team. Flying planes is euphoric but it's hard and it's alien even after all the time dedicated to it these past three years. It's still something that I don't think I really believe will ever happen. It's just not something that someone like me does. It takes precision and confidence and a kind of intelligence that I can't command. If I force myself to do this, if becoming a commercial pilot is actually something that I force, will it ever pan out? Maybe it requires more dedication than I have. I don't know. I always start to doubt my love for flying once I've been out of a cockpit for a while, though, and at this point it's been nearly six months.
In conclusion, and switching gears completely, a mantra has been running through my head today. "There is no nobility in sadness. There is only an occasional sadness in nobility." I think I would do well to remember this.
Laugh for me.
|
oceanchild
|
::
2007 23 November :: 2.08pm
Today I went to see a doctor for the first time since coming to Germany because I was peeing blood and in quite a lot of pain. The doctor was very friendly and spoke English to me, but trying to speak to the secretaries in German made me feel like ten kinds of a fool.
This story has a happy ending however in the form of antibiotics and my great gratitude for health insurance.
1 audible grin |
Laugh for me.
|
impersonality
|
::
2007 18 November :: 12.16am
:: Mood: blah
No kidding here, I'm starting to think I have IBS triggered by my morning coffee, which would explain why I get stomach aches and always have to go after I drink it. I'm quite sure I'm not exaggerating this, either (it would explain the occasional stomach aches I get from other things as well)
4 audible grins |
Laugh for me.
|
oceanchild
|
::
2007 8 November :: 6.31pm
I've decided that there's no reason why my journal should remain friends only. Futher entries will be available to the general public.
1 audible grin |
Laugh for me.
|
impersonality
|
::
2007 3 November :: 7.22pm
:: Mood: listless
:: Music: [SOFT BALLET] + [KO-KA-GE-NI]
Don't get inspired, get spiteful!
I feel like I'm trapped in a limbo of sorts. I can't seem to get motivated. Instead of being inspired, I get spiteful. If I actually invested as much energy into productivity as I do in contempt I wouldn't have this problem. So, I'm going to try to make some changes and stop poisoning my spirit with envy and resent. Good luck?
2 audible grins |
Laugh for me.
|
impersonality
|
::
2007 23 October :: 7.08pm
:: Mood: indifferent
More often than not, giving up doesn't seem so bad.
Laugh for me.
|
impersonality
|
::
2007 18 October :: 7.12pm
:: Mood: anxious
I think I had the worst, most vile dream I've ever had in my entire life last night. And because today is my birthday, it can't be preluding to anything good. I'll tell you about the dream, but it's really gross.
I was vomiting. I could taste it. I could feel the debris in my mouth, and I can remember the shapes of it. It was just piling and piling in my mouth and spilling out, and at the same time equaling unappealing bodily functions were happening elsewhere. Filling and filling the toilet.
I woke up gasping and disturbed, and poured myself a tall glass of water.
I was already kind not feeling to good about things lately, and this could have just been a dramatic manifestation of it. The only other interpretation I came up with is possibly a massive purge of something is coming. Or I'm going to get sick (although the sickness in the dream was in incredible, completely unrealistic amounts, and why I was sick in the first place was never revealed.) In any case, it was vile.
Laugh for me.
|
impersonality
|
::
2007 12 October :: 8.23pm
:: Mood: sad
what a horrible strange beautiful thing-- it hurts
Laugh for me.
|
|