from your lips she drew the hallelujah

OH MY GOD now emma cruse is engaged. i'm 22, my friends aren't supposed to be getting married yet.

i feel so old.

yet despite all of my emo rants as of late about the lack of (romantic) love in my life, my self-esteem has actually never been higher. i feel more beautiful than i have in a long time--my skin hasn't been this clear since i was on the pill, i'm walking all the time and even though my daily allotment of gelato has ensured i haven't lost weight i still feel great, my hair is longer than it's been in years and i love it... it probably also doesn't hurt that most every man i pass by on the streets of italy lets me know that i'm beautiful. shallow, yes, but it does make me feel good.

still, this recent spate of engagements/weddings of the people around me is starting to weird me out.

since i've been in paris 2 men have spent over €100 on new clothes for me. i also have not spent any money on food and most of my metro tickets have been paid for. it happened like this;

about a month ago i started thinking about how much i hate the clothes i brought with me. most of them were brought with the intention of using them at the farms, since originally i hadn't been planning on buying a eurail pass, so they're not necessarily items i feel cute in. and i was thinking how wonderful it would be if once i got back to paris i bought a whole new wardrobe. unfortunately that is not within my budget. so then i thought about how great it'd be if someone else bought me a new wardrobe. and it struck me as the type of ad one would find on craigslist, so i decided to post one.

in the ad i made it clear that i wasn't offering anything in return--i just needed new clothes. i really didn't expect anything to come of it since it seemed unlikely that any guy would want to take me shopping without any reciprocation but i got a total of 8 responses. most of those didn't come to fruition, but 2 of them did. in the end i came away with;

3 dresses
a pair of pants
a pair of sandals
3 tops
a scarf

and i had a really lovely time with both of them.

WEIRD HUH.

i finally caved and bought a pair of ray-ban knock-offs. my old sunglasses kept falling off my face and i found these for 3 euro at a flea market, so i couldn't resist. now i look like this all the time



i refuse to apologize for the fact that i'd rather spend 10 euro on a vintage felt dress than on admission to the louvre. everybody needs priorities.

i like paris but i'm not as in love with it as i expected to be. i have very quite possibly found a roommate for the month of may for 325 euro but i'm not sure that i want to stay here for that long. especially because i don't know if i'll be able to practice much french that way and i'm afraid i'll just get bored.

decisions decisions.

i am ridiculously overwhelmingly happy. i absolutely love the farm im at and im having an amazing time. i wish i could stay longer.

i'minfrancei'minfrancei'minfrancei'minfrance.

i kind of can't believe it since i've been wanting to do it for so long. nice is absolutely gorgeous and it's kind of heavenly to hear french spoken all around me. i was able to order dinner and buy groceries without a hitch, so my speaking skills must be passable at least.

it just feels so surreal.

The fact that I'm going to miss spring and summer at home makes my heart ache a bit. It's funny because i often don't enjoy the weather during the day in the summertime but at night it's so evocative. especially when it rains. and the freedom from school has always tinged the summertime with a certain feeling that i can't articulate but is incredibly nostalgic.but then i think about it and remember that for the most part life at home is fairly boring and i'm rarely content but in retrospect even the boring parts are illuminated with a certain sense of comforting beauty. or maybe beautiful comfort. today everything is evocative--the open window in the hostel is letting in air that feels like a soggy spring new york night. a woman's perfume on the street smelled just like christmas (even though it wasn't even vaguely spicy or treeish). a voice carrying through the hallways sounds just like my sister, though maybe that's just wishful thinking. i suppose my life is characterised by yearning; to return somewhere resembling home, perhaps. and it's easy to get caught up in that yearning since i'm thousands of miles from home but then i remember that even when i am at home i still have this gnawing sense of sadness, the feeling that i want to return somewhere i can't quite put my finger on, that probably doesn't exist anyway and maybe never did. even when i am at home a dusky april breeze can flood me with memories that bring me to my knees so this feeling really isn't anything new. calling it homesickness isn't quite right although i guess in a grand sense it kind of is. just not the way people usually use it.

i hadn't thought about how hard it would be to travel alone. not so much because of the solitude--i'm more than happy to explore places alone and spend time on my own--but moreso because you make friends so quickly and then just as quickly they're gone. or you're gone. i suppose the appeal of a trip like this is the instability; i like being able to live life on a whim and meet lots of people and never know what i'm doing next. but sometimes it leaves me feeling a little wobbly and that's when i wish i had someone to share it with, someone stable that i could count on. come to think of it that could probably be extended to describe my life in general. i've never been good at admitting that i want company.

i'm learning to be healthily selfish. if i am unhappy with a situation then i do something about it, even if it entails being slightly mean. i think sometimes my niceness is a liability so i'm trying to be better about figuring out what i need, completely divorced from what i think others might want and need. i think i'm doing a pretty good job without becoming a total bitch.

i just finished reading "a complicated kindness" and it made me think too much.

i am in love with life.

between updating my blog and responding to emails and comments i haven't had much time to use livejournal to elaborate on my emotional state.

all i know is that i am incredibly lucky to be here and i am constantly consumed by an overwhelming sense of gratitude. i like that feeling.

i've been looking into farms in france and it got me thinking about what types of skills i'd like to acquire. there are so many different opportunities that the only way to narrow it down is by thinking about what type of environment i want to be in and what i want to learn. this got me thinking more generally about what types of things i want to know how to do. so i made a list of things i want to learn, want to learn to do better, or things i know how to do but need to buy supplies so i can practice.

this is what i came up with;

make resin jewelry
screenprint
make cheese (especially chevre)
garden
draw
use a real (ie non-digital) camera
take care of animals (especially horses and goats)
build things
write poetry

and then to make myself feel good i decided to make a list of some pretty cool things i already know how to do;

knit
crochet
sew
brew kombucha
play lots of instruments
cook
write songs
read music
cut hair
bake bread


what do you want to learn? what are you already good at?