I'm sitting at an antique wood dining table, leaves neatly tucked under, audibly entertained with NYC radio and my uncle's 1960s speaker system. I've left the apartment once today - a brief stint outside to get some food - and have spent the rest of the day numbly watching stale American sitcoms. It's been great.

My plan was to walk over to the river, scrounge up an inviting bench, and pass away the hours re-reading Life of Pi. I read Yann Martel's book back during the summer I spent taking classes at FIU, the summer I had my brush with radio fame on the Diane Rheme show (I'm the last question of the show! Though Diane said I was from Michigan instead of FL).

The book quickly moved onto my Top 5 list, but as time passed my ability to recall the magical feelings the story invoked has disintegrated and I wanted to renew them; with each page turn now, it's like brushing off the comfortable dust of time that rests gently on a friendship. With the progression of the story I'm rediscovering the intellectual spark that drew me to each paragraph the first time, in much the same way a good conversation creates the same intellectual spark that draws me to certain people. I feel the book testing my boundaries in ways it didn't before, what I'm going to be suckered into believing this time, which allegory I'm going to fall for this time. Pi quickly ingratiates himself: Is he really a boy learning to train a tiger in a liferaft drifting through the Pacific? Or is he a boy driven to murder for sustenance? I so desperately want to believe in the fantasy of the story - that's what good fiction can do, remind me of the fantasy in my own life to believe in - but in the back of my mind I see the symbology of the tiger representing the personal dynamic between Pi and the other survivors on the boat, realism swaddled in fantastical imagery.

The past three weeks have been wonderously freeing, letting me succumb to the vagabond I've always dreamed of being, triangulating my travels between friends' houses, home, and adventure. Traveling has served as my life's mirror, relfecting who I am most clearly when I am outside the comfortable confines of regularity and life's routine. I can feel myself further refining with each trip what I enjoy, what makes me happy, what I'm still searching for, and what I've found. I'm reminded over and over how very lucky I am to be where I am, physically, figuratively, and mentally. There's nothing better than meeting new people, having new conversations, to highlight who you are.

As always, I jotted notes down on post-it notes along the way. My most recent (disjointed) revelations:

• There are people who give you a glimpse of how others see you - the best possible way others see you. A confirmation of the way you'd always hoped to be seen - sweet.funny.enchanting. Isn't that what everyone wants - for someone else to see them smart and beautiful? I have this newfound confidence around people who see me how I desperately want to be seen, who both eke out and engage the parts of my personality I like best. That's what any relationship should do, though, right?


• I can't see his face as clearly anymore; time has pixelated it in my mind and photos don't show the clarity of his lips my mind did. With time everything falls away into bits, scraps of a life's memories blown about in the dark alleys and caverns of our minds, reminisces of the people and moments we'd said we'd never forget.


• I'm overwhelmed by my country's excess. Everytime I come back after an extended period of time away I experience the cultural shock of AMERICA jammed in your face - the dirt, the consummerism and consumption, the massive amounts of wasted space, the demand to count worth in dollars. But the chip on my shoulder for the country that I do, somewhere inside, hold a dear fondness for quickly brushes off because this place is also just so easy. We're all spoon fed entertainment and thought by the mass media and the ever-glowing bright lights everywhere. I frustrate myself. I don't want the main reason I want to live abroad so desperately to be because I crave a new challenge, an adventure I stubbornly, blindly, think can't be here, because I'm running away from my fears of settling in a place alone or stagnating for too long and losing my drive or curiosity.

Class was fun, Rome was the most beautiful city I've ever been too, and Groningen is on my list of potential future residences.

Next is the fun of Kingston, NY with an amazing family I want to be adopted into, then patriotism in Boston for the 4th, then back to the beautiful sunsets of the middle of the Gulf.

Ahh, it feels good to write and get this all out. I think it's time to release my internet tether and venture outside.