Return

This is a total coincidence, but I've just worked out that it was a year ago today that I left the United States. I remember that I arrived home on the coldest possible day. In keeping with that tradition, the past couple of weeks have been almost offensively bad.

I'm returning to this blog briefly to extract inspiration for my application to one of the creative writing courses at my university. I have two of them due on Friday, as well as another eight essays to mark; oh, dear, it's another one of those weeks. This year has been largely made up of those weeks, recently broken by debaucherous weekends, which make the weeks simultaneously easier and more difficult.

But last night was the first night that I have chosen to stay at home, not because of schoolwork, but just because. I was tired and it was cold. But also, the more I socialise, the more I feel like I don't have a self; my identity, my truth, exists in the way I present myself to others. I start to exist in the space between my body and the other person, rather than inside my head.

Finality

In the backyard this evening, I could hear two different musics playing; the sound of a Saturday getting warmed up. We’ve just had two of the nicest days of weather and I’ve been in here, staring at my computer, willing the thoughts to somehow get themselves from my head into the screen and organize themselves logically. All of my flatmates have finished; I went to see the opera singer perform her final recital, and to see the fashion student’s work displayed in the final exhibition. I’ve got this one essay and this one exam, and an application for a writing course, and it’ll all be over by Tuesday. Come on, Tuesday.

My mother has returned from Europe, abandoning my sister to whatever havoc she can wreck in London. I’m going to have a potluck to celebrate the great American holiday of Thanksgiving. Next time there’s a sunny day, I want to go to the beach and eat gelato. Once this essay is finished I want to leave this room and I don’t want to look at this computer for a very long time.

Ten months of two thousand and nine

Spring has a temper this year. It seems to have rained once a day for the last two weeks, with plenty of windy gusts and small doses of sunshine. I almost expect a tornado.

This month I have turned twenty-two. I like this age, it sounds pleasantly alliterative and has given me a nice enough week so far. It will soon be time for exams, but I am trying to ignore that for as long as I can. I made my own pasta a couple of days ago (it made me sore-backed and bleary-eyed) and am working on some creative writing for the application I have due in November.

I have also been watching a lot of Gossip Girl. I am trying to use it as material for my writing but really it is just addictive, a beautifully made and shameless soap opera. I now know how to download things off the internet. This makes the internet a lot more exciting than it was before.

I would like to release a zine at ZineFest in November. It will be different to the ones I have done previously. I am sort of hoping that if it gets a bit of momentum then it will be a good epicentre for future creative work. Not that I'll have a lot of time for that next year! I'm doing summer school, followed by Honours and completing my psyc major, followed by finishing my thesis next summer. Wow. Then it will be time for a holiday.

A moment's rest

It's wearing down to the end of the year in Wellington. There is a very familiar feeling that comes with this. It's the start-of-exams, beginning-of-warm-weather, getting-close-to-Christmas feeling, but it's not here quite yet. This could be because the weather has not sufficiently warmed up, and insists on providing us with regular doses of rain and wind (not that that's unusual).

The holiday won't be as long for me. I've made the decision to do summer school at Victoria, one philosophy class that will finish off my major and one creative writing course that should be great if I get into it. This burst of studiousness paves the way for me to do honours in philosophy next year. This will officially make me a post-graduate student. Indeed one of the main reasons I am doing it is for the feeling of superiority over the measly undergraduates (a feeling I have always had but until now never been able to justify). Other benefits include the philosophy camp, having drinks with the staff, occasional free pizza and being able to talk about philosophy with other people without sounding like a weirdo.

In other news, my sister and mother have fled the country. I wish they'd taken me with them. I saw them off on the bus at 7am. They hadn't had much practice carrying their backpacks and I felt like a clucky mother seeing her children clamber up the steps of the schoolbus with packs about twice their size. Word on the street is that they're either in Denmark or Berlin. My sister evidently finds squirrels quite engaging. I spent a week at the house up in Brooklyn looking after the dog. I told her that Mum and Steph were going on a very long walk.

Friday night at the check-out

All times are strange, but some days of the week are stranger than others. All of Sunday is strange, both the morning, the blank afternoon and the evening. I think that Sundays feel like the end of the world. Fridays, there's another weird day. Right from the beginning, the little kick: ooh, it's Friday today. The afternoon lags a bit but everybody is cheerful. Exceptions are made, because it's a Friday and everybody wants to go home. Then the late afternoons/early evenings, when it seems that time stretches on forever. I love those late afternoons.

But now it is ten to seven. The play that I wanted to see was booked out. None of my flatmates are home, none of the ones I want to talk to at least. I have some movies on my hard drive, and some rhubarb in the fridge. I could make crumble. I could go to the supermarket and get some wine and something from the video shop (it's half-price on TV shows today). I guess I could go downtown and celebrate Friday in true style. Or I could do something more productive, work on some of the things I've been planning that never seem to happen. Nothing happened at all in the holidays. Four seasons of Doctor Who happened instead.

Is this how the world is lost?

When I fit back in

When you fall asleep in a room you love, a twinkling tower room, safe and buried beneath a feather duvet; when you see the city light up the harbour, reflected in 3am; when you find that big and small are the same thing, you are fitting back in. There are worse cities, worse small towns to be stuck in than Wellington. And this is my town now. Again, these streets belong to me.

School is getting busier but I am still enjoying it. I may try and fit Honours in next year, if they'll let me, and that will require being at school over the summer. Work has disappeared which I'm not too sad about, although it makes me poor. At least I can catch all the buses I want with my Gold Pass. I am getting very unfit now that I am not walking up the hill every day.

I am playing more music, or rather I am playing more music in front of other people, or rather one person, my flatmate Rose. This is the first step to playing it to many people at once. She says she will give me singing lessons. We go out together on the weekends and drink a lot. This is novel but makes Sundays a bit unpleasant.

I have ceased being depressed about the state of music in Wellington and am starting to see it as the culmination of a natural process, and also my duty to fix. We are having band practice on Sunday at Kate's house. She lives in a room full of keyboards and even has a fold-up fold-down organ. My flatmates (I still have to resist calling them roommates) and I may form a terrible-pop-song covers band. This was a 1am idea. I would like to cover some of the songs I was forced to listen to on repeat in the buses of Central America.

I am going to night classes for Spanish every Wednesday. I think I am retaining what I know, maybe even getting a bit better. I may attempt to use some on the nice Argentinian boy who works at the bar downtown where I go with both my parents, separately. It is mid-term break in one more week. We will have a party at my house. I will clean out the fridge. I may sleep in. We might have one of those semi-summers that we sometimes get in September. I like this term best, because when it is time to study for my finals it will be sunny outside.

More than a month now

I'm no longer able to say the exact number of weeks that I've been back off the top of my head. The organism is adjusting to its environment once more. I noticed this in Santa Barbara, when I started whitening my teeth and rolling up my denim shorts. Now I am putting up my collar, carrying a leather bag, wearing a red beret to protect my ears from the cold, and complaining about the state of the Wellington music scene.

So far I have been through the stages of interest in my surroundings because everything seems new; alienation and disconnection because some things have changed, if subtly; and plain irritation at my own culture, because I know it so well, and it is mine, and I have the right to do that. I miss the States, often and suddenly, and I don't know why or what it is that I miss exactly. I find myself daydreaming about moving to Scotland, or getting wistful when I send parcels overseas at work. Greece, Japan, Kuwait, oh to be there, somewhere that isn't here, that I don't know so well.

But then other times I get this feeling of comfort that I haven't felt for a long time. It's what I longed for in those cities in Central America, just to know where things are and how to get them, the closest place to buy ice cream, the bus stop, the post office. And other times I get a feeling of homefulness, the kind of feeling induced by sitting next to a heater with a cup of tea and a crossword while rain comes down the windows.

Things that have struck me about New Zealand now that I am back. How small everything is, especially the roads. When I went to radio camp last weekend it just seemed so odd that State Highway 1 between Wellington and Auckland is only one lane each way. Also I have realised how reserved the people are, how little they hug or talk in public. But I am happy to be back to the food, to have healthy food actually be affordable and not to have additives in cream (oh, and no instructions on the side for how to whip it).

I have been at work for most of the past six weeks. I guess it has been good to have something to fall back into that is productive in some way but it has also tired me out, and I feel like I haven't had a chance to do a lot of the things I wanted to do before school started. And now it's here! So I will be super busy. I did move out of home, and though I will miss having money to spend, I think it was the right choice. I just wish I had more time to spend in my room with its wood floor and huge window, and the sloping backyard with an apple tree at the bottom.