It seems as though everyone I know is yearning for something that is just out of reach. Our bodily experiences have nothing to do with what our minds crave… And loneliness is born.

What does it mean for someone to feel differently about their lives depending on their location? I couldn’t tell you how Edinburgh felt, exactly – it’s just different. Lately I miss Edinburgh and Liverpool.
When I go out to a bar or club or some limb of either, now – I expect to see certain faces that are not there. The weight of drink swirls inside my belly and evaporates to my head. Five months out and this disconnect is still completely palpable.

So, what does it mean to survive now?
My greatest fantasy has long been giving up my possessive ties over people and belongings. I want to be entirely untethered and poor and happy. That takes a certain amount of stupid, blind courage, which I lack. My ideas about being completely desolate and dependent on the kindness of strangers of course, is glamorized. I’m lower middle class, but I’m still middle class.
But the conditions under which my heart and soul seem to thrive and survive seem more impossible since my return to Maine.

They tell you to go and pour yourself into every experience when you are abroad. And of course no one knows how to handle the devastation of the return. And no one can tell you how to, because no one ever knows how to.

Dear Keele and England,

Could you stop for one moment to consider that I’ve still got a life here in Maine? I realize you feel the need for me to include you in my dreams every night. It’s also become clear that amidst my good things here, you will steal my attention with hunger pangs and phantom limb feelings; so I break concentration and daydream my time away, thinking of when I’ll see your pretty woods and prettier faces again. Well that’s just not fair! I’m in Maine now, that’s just how it’s going to be. You’re making moving on extremely hard and I have a lot of things that require my full attention here, like coursework and a job and more fun things. Maybe not as fun as you… but… I… See what you’ve done to me, Keele? England? Own up to this! Someone! Anything?

Dear Portland,

Well, we’ve got a history don’t we? Not all of it good – but we saw each other through. Your summer fogs and storms were among the most sensual of weather; your sunny warm days and ocean smells are unparalleled. Remember that time we watched a man in a gorilla suit chase girls down Exchange St? I laughed and you just flickered your lights joyfully. You’ve fed me and clothed me. You’ve seen me fight and fall and I still feel like it’s a homecoming each time I return to you. It’s you I sleep with tonight. And no, maybe not entirely by choice… But we can build from our history. While Keele has caused a certain amount of devastation, you can repair it.

With Love -

Caroline

This has a tendency to happen, and I try to not be too hard on myself about it – because who can control the flux of creativity anyway?- but I have nearly ceased postings again.

In one week, I will have moved to Maine and started a full class schedule and a new job, so don’t expect the pattern in my posting to change.

I suppose that part of what this stall in writing means, is that I’ve been quite busy. My vacancy here doesn’t represent a lack of color or wealth elsewhere; it’s quite opposite. I’m one fortunate bird these days. This summer has been strange for sure and I’m still not adjusted to life here, but I’m beginning to understand that that’s not something I should even begin to expect. It should have seemed obvious all along: things can’t ever return to how they were, once they have changed. You can only expect to be thrown through loop after loop after loop – and I really do tend to like that sort of thing.

For now, it’s still a case of Wherever You Are/ Be Somewhere Else*, which is engraved  on a timepiece, that usually sits dead center on my chest, which opened – reveals that I’m still in another time zone.

*Scroll down. It’s worth the fancy finger work.

There is nothing wrong with complete madness for a period of time

This one time, I drank so much I  thought I was going to die. It was a particularly mischievous night and I was kicked out of the student union. The above picture personifies the revelry of a single night at Keele.

I am twenty three years old this morning.

This one time, we went to London. It was the weekend of my birthday. My friends woke up really early to blow up tons of balloons and put them in my bed while I was sleeping. Laura had baked me a cake and it traveled with her all the way from Stoke-on-Trent to London!

"Here's to just doing this thing!"

This one time, we all went out to the Keele student union with glow bracelets on. We made a promise to give away all our bracelets to attractive members of the opposite sex. It was the Anti-Valentine’s Day bash. My friends gave them away I think, but I simply lost most of mine.

The current issue of Poetry Magazine is unbearably good. Just what I need. It’s currently doubling as my journal as well. The poems by Tony Hoagland stand out in my mind:

One poem will make you bigger.
The other poem will make you smaller.
Drink and/or eat them.

Strange creatures in a garden. Also known as peacocks.

(For those who don’t know, one of the really fun and positive things about my trip to England was the development of a relationship with a lovely Frenchman. Now add an oceans worth of distance and a six hour time difference…)

It’s simply amazing what inanimate, obscure things come to life right before your eyes once they become relevant to you. Two semesters ago, in a poetry course I took, we discussed what it meant to be hailed. The act of being flagged down, being tagged and marked by your influences… Or I suppose, by what you let influence you.

Garrison Keillor is a bit of a champion to my English major heart; I’ve always looked forward to the old timey Americana anecdotes and music on his radio show. In celebration of Bastille Day, the kind and humorous folks at A Prairie Home Companion put together a show called “Vive La France.” This aired as I was driving home from work this evening. I was okay with it.  Until a sad and sweet song in that flighty tongue came on. I was in that moment, truly appreciating my near total ignorance of the French language until Keillor chimed in at the end:

“That song was for all the expatriates who, upon returning home can no longer find at home what they had when they were abroad.”

The more I believe the universe to point and laugh at me, the more I want to rise above. So keep it coming:

In the video store ten minutes after Mr.Keillor’s hailing, my mother pointed me in the direction of a movie called The Fox and the Child. The story of an unlikely friendship between a girl and a fox (!)! It’s exactly the kind of thing I would love to see, but upon further inspection, I realized it was a French movie. Oh, ha ha ha, universe. You think you’re clever?

I no longer take every little obscure coincidence as a “sign” of some kind I suppose, but damn if that wasn’t a silly and ironic hour in my day.

We used to have a dog that looked like Garrison Keillor...

Do not ask the ice lolly man for directions.

This one time in Liverpool, Magdalaina asked the ice lolly truck driver for directions to our hostel. He talked for a long time and ended up leading us down an alley. This was before we knew about Magdalaina and her somehow endearing ability to misinterpret directions.

Laura and Magdalaina show you where it's at.

This one time in Liverpool, we trekked all over the suburbs looking for the Beatles sites. We started at Penny Lane and got lost around Sefton Park. It was cold, wet and nearly impossible to catch a cab, but once we did, our cabbie took us to Strawberry Field and told us about how Paul McCartney rode in his cab twenty years before!

Liverpool Cathedral

Dirty RAT!

This one time in Liverpool, we found a Banksy piece by accident in Chinatown! We also saw a lot of stained glass and neon at Liverpool Cathedral. The Cathedral is so massive, it really makes you consider the influence of Catholicism at the time. Did you know the architect who designed the cathedral also desined those charming red phone boxes all over England? Now you know!

Disintegration

i live in a square.
one night i ate it
with my nose and thought this:
you’re a pillar.
my friend, who is also a demanding
lover looked me dead in the eye
and said:
this is wrong. and then a sudden turbulence
over the district.
i broke a neck for you – let
the juices run down like
i was wringing my hands.
i went back home
i didn’t want to talk about it.

The trend in recent years has become to record events almost in the instant they unfold. Facebook status, “away” message, blog-spots and word-presses, photographs from the night before viewed by all the morning after. When did we all become so afraid of our own memories? Do we really not trust ourselves enough to remember these occasions so momentous?

I personally am afraid I will be entirely forgotten. Rubbed off the map somehow, or simply replaced.

But what I know is that people don’t ever really forget. They carry things around with them until the day they die, even if they never reflect on a time or a person or place ever again. Things happened to you, things shaped you. ..But still, why the manic immediacy? So much raw material and information can damage. Things are overlooked and warped by your present bias. I’m guilty of looking for answers for situations present, that don’t have answers. They probably have an answer that goes something like this: C’est la vie.

I want to tell perfectly true stories, woven with fantastical details. The fantastical details are the truest parts of any really good story, and often mistaken for the mundane: what you thought about when you woke up, your friend walking round with their shirt inside-out, the way the music felt in your stomach or the disputed color of your loved ones eyes.