[tuesday afternoon thoughts.]

the combination of heat, humidity, and the air’s absolutely stillness have made it painfully difficult to concentrate. my brain is buzzing with summer and is wildly distracted.

I haven’t had a meaningful in-person conversation with anyone my age since mid-may. the closest I’ve come is a few skype conversations, but that just reminds me of an experiment that demonstrated that young children learn language better when their teacher is in the room than when they watch the exact same lesson on a tv or computer screen. human contact.

human contact.

I love it here, and there are moments when I wish I could stay forever. the smell of grass mixed with rain, the sound of birds in the morning, the colorful sunsets.

oh but I’m so excited to move back to the city.

I love running through the woods.

but I can’t wait to run through the city streets.

I haven’t worn make up or straightened my hair or worried that there’s something wrong with my clothes since mid-may. it’s really such an interesting and unique experience. I wonder if, when I arrive back in the real world, I’ll worry about those things again.

instead of worrying, I hope I simply accept that it’s a different look. there’s something gorgeous about darkened eyes and reddened lips, but there’s something fresh about freckles and curls. I want to remember that.

it’s so much fun to dress up on occasion, but I’ve been resisting. I would die to put on some eye-liner and pull my straightened hair into some style other than a messy, curly ponytail, but I feel a lot like doing that here would be selling out. isn’t that the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever heard?

I miss dating and falling in love and the chase like crazy. I tend to fall in love all the time with just about everyone. it can sometimes be overwhelming and exhausting, but it’s also incredible and thrilling and perfect. and of course it almost never works out (otherwise I’d no longer be chasing, right?), but oh my it’s just so much fun.

just before moving here, I spent the last moment I’ll ever spend with a boy with whom I’d been entangled at various points throughout the past three years. the timing was never right until those last hours, and then suddenly it was perfect and fleeting and exactly the way I’d like us to remember one another. we were uncomplicated, honest, sincere. and we held onto each second, acknowledging that we were at the end. we looked back over our shoulders as we moved away from one another and into that 4am darkness.

I love last moments so much. I love meeting and being and walking away. I cherish those experiences. I wish for last moments. I collect them. there may be nothing more perfect than a connection that grows swiftly and ends abruptly and everything we’re left with is authentic and simple and we’re happy. I want us to be happy.

a few weeks before moving here, I spent another last moment with another boy with whom I’d been entangled. for years we hid behind we have lots of time, but with a few months until never again we gave everything we had to the other. we never asked questions or considered the future, because there was no future. we didn’t know it when we finally arrived at our last moment. it passed unacknowledged. we didn’t savor or cling, we were simply present and entirely exposed. we stayed awake until nearly dawn, we danced and laughed and existed together until we were exhausted. the following morning we stayed in bed until we’d broken enough promises to others and ourselves to demonstrate the something between us. we made plans that were later postponed and finally extinguished, because it wasn’t until we walked away that I decided this would be our last moment. it was too perfect to not be.

I’m moving again in exactly ten days.

[ithaca has]

so. many. bugs. so many that I can’t possibly let them bother me, because if I did, I’d spend all day and night panicking about bugs.

• between dusk and whenever I go to bed, there are maybe one hundred hanging around my lamp.
• it’s quite common for bees to come and chill for a while in the afternoon.
• a few days ago I noticed this hornet-like creature flying into my bedroom through the patio door, across the room, and behind a painting on the opposite wall. it came out a minute or two later and flew away. this happened maybe three times before I looked more closely and saw that it was carrying a green worm out of the hole. then it dropped the worm and did the whole thing again. AND AGAIN. bugs.

animals everywhere.

• especially cats. it seems like every single house has a cat. when you walk down the street, they all walk off their front porches toward the sidewalk, looking for some love. I once saw one on the roof of a three-story building.
• lots of deer that aren’t spooked easily. you can get pretty close to them before they run off.
• I once saw three skunks while running hills on cornell’s campus. three skunks. when I saw the first one, my initial instinct was to become enraged that someone let their dog off its leash (it was dark and difficult to see). while standing three or so feet away, I looked around for its owner. then I looked back down and noticed the white stripe.
• I’ve been swimming in the area where the waterfalls make a pool at the bottom, and I swear I felt something touch my legs. a while later I saw a dead snake and dead crayfish along the edge of the water a bit farther downstream. needless to say, I immediately called my grandmother, with whom I definitely spent many childhood summers running barefoot in similarly nature-y areas, and she reassured me that nothing in the water will kill me. boom.

hills. ohmygod hills.

• I live in town, which is surrounded by hills. cornell’s campus is to the east, and it’s just one big hill. think san francisco, but instead of up and down, it’s just up and then up some more. and then continue going up. when you feel like you may die because you weren’t expecting to climb a small mountain in a summer dress and sandals while carrying fifteen pounds of books, you’re almost to the top.

ohmygod just so many creepy men.

• in an otherwise pretty empty coffee shop, a man sat at a table across from and maybe three feet away from mine, turned his chair so his eyes were directly facing my eyes, then proceeded to stare at me for a solid twenty minutes. every time I looked up from my computer, his eyes were looking directly at my eyes. I finally just burst out laughing, pretended I read something funny on my phone, then packed up and left.
• a married man stopped me on a trail during my run to ask if I would get a drink with him and, after declining three times, I finally agreed out of pity. toward the end of our drink (I ordered chamomile tea — I wanted to send a message), he asked if I was “matrimonially attached” (i.e., married), said he thought we should have a fling, asked if I would join his open relationship, then told me (as I was rushing out to escape this likely serial killer) that I should be honored that I was the first person he asked. good luck with that, dude.
• I joined a meet-up website and indicated that I was looking to meet someone (anyone) who would like to explore the area a little, as I know zero people, am here for six more weeks, and have only my feet and the bus system as modes of transportation. I received this message in response: “as chance may have it, I am in ithaca till july end, and in mood for exploring as well. canoeing and berry-picking were on my to-do — might be entertaining to try. do wear your shades, lest my being endlessly lost in your olive green eyes — by far the prettiest I have seen all day.” what. the. crap. and then I closed my account and decided I’ll probably just settle for never meeting anyone ever again.