It may come as a shock to anyone that has bothered to keep me as a friend on lj that I can still type after a long long hiatus. I have been reading everyone else's blogs with great intensity and fondness. 

I decided that my New Year's resolution is to be more connected. This means more blogging (oh jeez), more IMing and possibly even e-mail updates to my poor parents. Possibly considering postcard correspondence with anyone who would want some amazingly kitschy NYC/Brighton Beach postcards.

I also hope to have more of a connection with just about everything. I have been waxing poetic with Jen Yogi on her visit here and with Gregor about my brief stint on an Irish farm and have been obsessed with the pastoral landscape and agriculture culture for the past few days. I hope this isn't a sign of my inner luddite or even worse my inner "organic"-back to the soil WASP coming out. So -- I hope to become more connected to the land or in my case here at the edge of the city the sand, concrete and glass I call home -- might even pay a trip upstate to or to the outskirts of town to get my wellies on and rocks off. 

I am very excited to try to commit my new life to paper and do it justice if I can. I want to be able to read this when I am older and possibly living in yet another city and know that if only for a few months or so I was entirely connected and wrapped up...enchanted with, bewitched by... a city,  a man...by life.

Happy New Year to All.


PS for Miriam --- OMG tell me about the move and yr travels and yr loves

PS for Carmen --- OMG tell me all about Marshall and long distance and work

I got this time waster from Carmen and its wonderful!! Thanx Carmax !


Instructions: Put your music player of choice on shuffle. Write down the first line of the first twenty songs which come up, in order. The 21st line is the title.

The men were here to get your Belgian things

Ghost, ghost I know you move with in me

I’m the same as I was when I was 6 years old

You in your youth, all impulse

 I know what I know

If you don’t know the truth than you won’t go to heaven

Give this stone to my brother

What would I give for just a few moments

 Oh Alabama, the devil fools with the best laid plans

 I’m chained to the wall

 I don’t want knowledge, I want certainty

People I know, places I go make me feel tongue tied

Call me from Albermarle station if you can

Perhaps it’s the color of the sun-cut flap

Sun melts everything down

Love is like jazz

We passed upon the stairs

Don’t get me wrong if I am looking kind of dazzled

When it finally collapsed all you heard was the radio static

Never said too much

Last week there was what, by American standards, would be considered a blizzard in Tartu. It was amazing. Kids were digging tunnels and travelling via sled pulled by parents/reluctant older siblings.

On Wednesday, after epic trekking a few kilometers in the snow, I went to Bastian's birthday. Bastian is a "hi , bye" friend, one of many on the 4th floor. But I bought a bottle of cheap champagne (as is my custom here...I've bought 4 bottles of champagne for random people since I've been here and I have loved it every time). I begun the night doing Jagerbombs with Katelyn and Michelle (2 American girls) who I ran into in the hallway. I have been trying to make better friends with the Anglo-Americans for a few weeks now, but nothing really solidified. After doing 4 fauxjagerbombs (what I termed Dog-Hunters/Dream Catchers as it is made with Jagertraum and Dark Dog energy beverage). I went to Bastian's party where I proceed to be offered a shot accompanied with the phrase "DO A SHOT WITH ME" spoken in Bastian's slurred speech. Who am I to deny a small blonde German birthday gnome anything. So I did. And then again. And again. And again. When it looked like the party was running out of booze, I went to get the Jagertraum and bottle of cider (alcholic cider, delicious chick beer that I really don't like to be seen drinking). Then the Jager and cider flowed like wine. I am relatively with it, despite declaring to a room full of Polish people that I am the pope. Next thing I know I am sitting on my bed in my pjs at midnight-ish conversing with Giada (my Italian roomate) telling her how I am NOT going to Illusion tonight. Then its off to the bathroom. To be sick from drinking the third time in my life. It would continue to happen over the next 5 hours.

On Thursday, I had a full 6 hours of class. The most complex lecture of my Political Communication in Transition was part of this 6 hour-squintfest. Apparently I had been with it enough to take out my contacts the night before, but just drunk enough to forget that I took them out. SON OF A. It was really funny though. I have never had that typical a college experience of the hung-over/maybe still a bit drunk even lecture. I am glad I had it, now I can avoid doing it in the future. Also, I was beginning to feel invisible when it came to alcohol comsumption here. I managed to be elected the Iranian president in our International Relations Simulation exercise hang over or no hang over.

On Friday, I read and read. Then around 5, I went on an Erasmus ice skating trip. I hadn't been since I was a little kid and my ankles turned in and the skates hurt my feet. I wanted to try it again. Plus after a day of studying, I needed to move. I wasn't swan-like by any means, more like a duck with one clipped wing, but I still managed. After getting speed and turning ability down. I went to help a new French boy/man I hadn't seen before that day. He had never been ice skating before (and me with my recently discovered balance and turning ability) decided to teach him. Together with Pavel the Lithuanian, we taught a Frenchman and a Turk how to ice skate or at least how to have enough confidence in themselves to glide without the aid of a wall or ice walker. I managed to fall once after that and I seemed to wobble about whenever I saw A-FC (A the French Connection), who was helping the French boy/man as well. Ice skating was just what I needed. It was incredible. I can't wait to go again (maybe with Gregor in Baltimore sometime...I wonder if giants skate).

After shopping around for a while. I made it back to Raatuse in time to start getting ready to party. I was willing to get back up on that party-horse (pinata?). I had to and did. After drinking and wandering around the corridor, and being invited to 3 different places, I ended up going to Zavgood with Michelle, Janis (the Lativian boy everyone has a fauxcrush on), Sophie, Ema, Andrea (aka Luca Toni) and Nadia. I spent most of the night trying to buy various drinks for people and talking to Janis about skating vs. skiing. He had been Erasmus in Austria right at the foot of a ski resort before. I spent the last 30 minutes there pinned against a wall/leaning/half standing on chair in the main hallway. For some reason the very moment I had gotten up to get a refill on my drink all the Estonians there decided they HAD TO LEAVE ASAP. It was as close as I will get to being part of a group of soccer hooligans, it was really funny and I met a few people. The rest of my friends about 20 minutes later came over and said they were also leaving, at which point there was another crowd surge. On the way out though, from my vantage point I was able to see my first bar fight. When we got outside, Michelle and Andrea both put glasses they had stolen in my purse. They are currently washed and sitting neatly on my kitchen shelf with their other stolen comrades. All of our glassware is from Zavgood. Maybe that's one reason why I decided to go there again the next night!!

Saturday. I got up at 9:30 to go to Tallinn. I wasn't hung over at all (again the booze-invincability was almost regained). Martyana offered to drive me to the Tallinn airport so I could get my ticket home moved up a few weeks (I am now coming home June 5th at 3pm).  She was picking up our friend Sonya from the bus station who had had quite a debacle getting back to Tartu after spending Easter at home in Poland. At the airport I ended up paying 300 bucks to just change the date. I see some hi-bye friends from Raatuse as I am leaving to meet Martyana in the parking lot. I say hi-bye, as if it was not strange at all. The ride up and back with the Poles was fantastic. I worried it would be quiet and awkward, but the conversations ranged from politics to music to drugs.  At Raatuse, later that night Ema made brie and mushroom pasta for the group we went to Zavgood with the previous night. It was fantastic. After sleeping and reading, I wound up hanging out with Katelyn, Michelle and the other Anglo-Americans (Brian, James and Roy). Heavy drinking, heavy drama on their part. I felt like I was Nick in the Great Gatsby (an emotion I thought that I had gotten over). We all ended up going to Zavgood, not wanting the night to be over, drama or not. I played spy for both sides in the beginning and referee/mediator/damage control towards the end. It was certainly a good way to be brought into the Anglo-American circle fast. While over the course of the night, my innerconflict over not speaking to Gregor in a few days seemed to dissolve into every drink. I even did a jagerbomb again.

Sunday. I studied and napped on and off again. I didn't want to eat anything that day, but for some reason I invited Michelle and Katelyn to see what had happened after we parted ways and to keep the hanging out going. After walking to basically every cafe in Tartu and finding them closed, we wound up at Balkan Resteraunt (which serves Balkan food). We caught up on the drama and I they asked me how I met Gregor. I told them the short and long story, which ended up with me telling them about old Greg and the Professor and all my virgin surgeon past. They were fixated. They laughed. I was happy about getting laughs again. I was really happy to be able to gush about Gregor and having them, just like almost everyone else I have talked about Gregor with, noticed my sparkling eyes when I said his name. I may be a terrible actor/liar as my face gives me away, but it also gives away how much I love Gregor. My head knows it, my heart knows it, my whole body (esp. a certain unnamed body part) feels my love for him. After having stuffed myself with what was essentially meat on a stick, I spent the next few hours lying bed listening to music and public radio-short stories and brooding over Gregor and my relationship to my past. Was I afraid of being boring? Would life without Gregor (ie: debauchery at home and abroad) be worth telling anyone about? Why did I feel the need to continue to tell these stories of past conquests? I didn't want to end up like the character in Professor of Desire, who after being married spends most of the time pining for her past exotic life and holds it over her current husband. I didn't come up with any definate answers. I gifted Jenny Owen Youngs ' "Fuck Was I" to the American girls. And left the questions unanswered, but checked my email like a crazy person (I had sent Gregor an email that morning and was waiting for a reply or a facebook message). I lost my deep discontentment to sleep. Sleep came on the lilting of some famous actor reading David Schickler's "Wes Amerigo's Great Fear". Which was magical.

Monday. I woke up to Giaia (the quietest Italian girl I have ever met, the opposite of Giada) cleaning the flat. I was inexplicably tired. I was also told (via Giula, Giada's best Italian friend here's pressence) that something was up with Giada. It turned out GIada and her boyfriend Victtorio, her boyfreind back in Italy had broken up the previous night. We three talked about boys, and then read/studied before going to class at 12. I must have drank 3 cups of coffee and still I was completely fatigued beyond reckoning. I had a lecture about terrorism and counter-terrorism then James (a Welshman who was involved with the drama of the weekend) and I went to Pagari to get some cheap delicious potato and sausage filled pastry. Then I ended up in his room asking him about House vs. Trance vs. Regular techno. He loves music, well one type of music, electronica. I got an intro course in the different types and their histories. It was really cool because it is the one type of music that I really have no idea about. I go to the club and dance and then leave. I am not going to start listening to it, but its just nice to know, and nice to hear a boy talk passionately about music again. I miss it. I miss passionate talk of anything. I miss passion, but I found it in the blue skies and melted snow and seemingly endless cups of tea towards the end of the day today. I finished all the reading for the rest of the week and some research as well. Most importantly though, I was able to talk to Gregor, for the first time in what seemed like ages. He told me a funny story of a girl who basically wanted a threesome with him and then proceeded to tell him not to be engaged. All while wearing lingere. It turned out that this was the same girl who re-friended me on facebook yesterday. I was able to laugh about it, cause it was funny. Whether it was because I missed walking around and drinking some more with Gregor or whether it was just the story or whether it was just that we could only talk for a short time, I didn't say I love you when he had to go. I don't think he noticed. I didn't sign love with the last email I sent either. I don't know why. Maybe its the same reason I cried 2 single tears after I got off skype. 2 roll tears, then a sigh. Then tea. Lots of tea. I think I might have mono, but more likely than not I am just coming down with the drama bug. I didn't go out to Beer Colors or Pussi (the gunpowder cellar) tonight, though I was invited. I studied some more and brooded and wandered around the corridor. Now I am off to listen to some more public radio or watch illegally uploaded tv series. Tonight before I go to bed maybe I will pray to everything and nothing to make tomorrow better and to help me love him without  destroying both of us. I need to love him better. I need to love him less then I do, sometimes its all I can feel and when it leaves me temporarily I am left empty. For now I will love him too much and not as well as I should. I will love him the only way I know how and with every breath and hope that is enough. Two more months. Two more months. I will count the days, the hours, the minutes rather than sheep to help me sleep.




OH I even managed to register for classes, I will post my schedule in another post.


Here's a letter unsent from an incident that happened this morning.

A,

You saw me struggling with a door and staring at you. I wasn't struggling with the door, I was trying to kick the trashbag out of the way of the door so I could close it. It seemed to take hours under your watchful eye. I heard Bruce, your partner in conversation this morning, call to me. So I staggered down the hallway, trying to shake off the mornings unhappiness with each step. You were walking towards me. Maybe we were running through a lavender field in Provence or maybe we just were heading in opposite directions in a hallway that smelled of burnt pasta, puke and unfulfilled desires (or was that just me?). We embraced and kissed cheeks, maybe a little bit closer to the mouth then is proper. We said hi. And then parted. As we parted I said "You're awake" as an after thought, a joke left over from the night before, when you woke up at 6pm and came to our flat to eat. My timing was off, you shrugged and continued to walk away. "HAVE A GOOD DAY!" I called after you.
For the next few hours, even after Bruce's hug and a lecture on terrorism, I could not stop going over this meeting in my mind. The embarassment, the awkwardness and more importantly the fact I could not let it go. I want to say thank you. Merci. All these unsent letters to you are thank you letters. I never thought I would ever be made so embarassed by an interaction with a boy again. Thank you a thousand times over.
Merci,
The American Girl

Two lines I keep thinking of while I was on an epic quest to the Estonian immigration office :

" I HAVE A CRUSH ON EEEEEEVERY BOY" - The Ugly One - Teen Girl Squad

"being bad ain't so bad, I've known more pretty women than most men have" - Mark Kozelek's cover of "Bad Boy Boogie

Is it stupid to think that as I throw my body from place to place in a mad dash for independence and the fulfilling of my wanderlust, that my heart would not go with me? That it wouldn’t pound in my chest and press against my sternum like high heels caught in cobblestones.

That my heart would wander.

It should be no wonder.

That it has settled in the ember of a lit cigarette,

It does not beat

It flickers

Gets brighter

Darker

And then is finally tapped off onto smooth silver surfaces

Time for a change. Time for a revolution. The weather is getting warmer.

M,

I am sorry. I am sorry for cultural misunderstandings. I am sorry for dancing like an American and talking like an American. I am sorry that you cook so wonderfully and that I can't even bring myself to lust after you for that. I am sorry for not wearing my shoes. I am sorry for leaving you panting like a dog in the door of my flat, your tongue hanging out, your eyes rabid. Were you angry, humiliated, heart-broken or ego broken (or are they the same thing in Italy)? I left the whiskey bottle in your room for a reason, a bit of me to have. Something to pay for my sins. I wonder if you sipped it con tus amigos and cursed me and all women. Let your throat burn with your hate and my apology. I was scared to retrieve the bottle, it took me hours to get up the courage. It drove me to distraction. What would I say if I saw you, "I am sorry about last night" or only "Hi, I am here for the scotch, my scotch". I will never drink it though. It is my soul and it is tarnished forever.

- Your Neighbor

A,

When did this all start? Was it the way I held the glass of your nation's potion, all clumsy and sticky fingered. Who could want such a creature, awkward with newness and maybe even a bit sad, no lost...no just sad. Was it at Illusion (a more apt name for a club does not exist) where my hair was curled by the sweat of a homely Italian? Always knowing smiles and glances. I wonder what it is that you know, or what it is that I know. Do you even remember Illusion? Maybe it all started (maybe even ended?) when knowing looks turned into clever gestures and cleverness turned into so kind of unknowable longing. Hip bones, finger tips and belt loops. We don't ask each other to dance. What we have is beyond that (above or below I do not know which direction). If you want to know, it is hard being this flirty and cheeky when ever I see you. Its the want behind your glasses and tongue pressed against the back of your teeth when you smile that lets me know that it is worth it. When you said you didn't want to make a mistake and then an hour later made up your mind to make a mistake with me and invited me to the smoking room, I think I felt lighting (or maybe it was just the tequila?) strike at my stomach. Maybe it was tobacco all along. That is what I knew, what we both knew, that your eyes smiled with years of smoke rings. That I am addicted to the memory of a boy and his tobacco and the death you both want to come so soon.
Then again, maybe it is just that you are French. A LaFayette out to save an American lost in the revolution of her life.
Merci. For wanting me. Merci.

- The American girl

G,

Tonight as I listen to sad music in my room alone I wonder about the causality behind this situation. Our conversations have been short, the long ones interrupted. I go out in search of attention and those who want to dance, to talk, to fuck. You are better at all of these things and yet I can't help but say "No, I can't" and point to my ring as if it were a handcuff. I don't mean it. I don't think that. They do though. It is easier that way. They wouldn't understand the complexity (or is it even more simple), this feeling I have for you. I am sorry that singing your praises doesn't come as easy these days. That the words get caught in my throat. That that throat is usually beer-soaked, whiskey-soaked should come as no surprise. It is on these nights, that I am forced to conjure up a notion I had long since buried. Well, I have excavated it in your absence. I wonder if I was made to be an adulteress, with talents amounting to the ability to manipulate, words and flesh, to manipulate and never be satisfied. I wonder if you were made to be a cuckold. The sheer perfection of your gentleness and your life wounds not yet scars, a life, a smile painted by D.H. Lawrence. This notion is all well and good, and if I really believed it, I don't think I would be writing this. The thing is, G, this thing. You know this thing...this love. I love you. I love you long into the night, long after the clubs have closed and the drunks are sloppily climbing into their beds. I love you in the mornings, when I am recalling the horrid splendor and feeling the guilt, it is my love for you that pierces through this, that is woven through this, like the threads in the pillow where my head rests. I think I would hate myself for an eternity, if I did not love you and in turn love the me that you love. I can only ask forgiveness for our silence, for our distance. Every fiber of my being longs to be meshed with you. I can not stand, can not dance, can not exist fully without you any more, though try as I might to rebel against this (on dance floors, in bars, in kitchens) I know that it is the eternal truth, if ever there was one. The truth of my needing you, the honesty of my love. The only pure thing about me.

Love

Kelly

So last night I had the pleasure of having a meal cooked for me by an living walking cooking Italian stereotype.

I was thinking it was a party (as he said it wouldn't be ready until 9, which here in Tartu means party). I come in and hear Italian lounge music (see any Italian dining establishment for more details) and I see there are only two plates. I asked where everyone else was, he looked a bit frazzled. I was really flattered and the food was more than amazing, salmon pasta and wine. I could tell he was really trying to be smooth. Seduce even? Spending the evening giving me subtle compliments (mostly about my dancing ablity, as we had met at the club the night before). All the while Italians of various stereotypes came walking in and out and muttering things about "privacy" and I invited them to join us and to have some wine. All my invitations were turned down.

After dinner, as is the Italian style, he (the chef) brewed some espresso on the stove top. I usually take my espresso without sugar, but I was feeling like I might try it tonight just because I wanted something sweet. We sat down again and Marco puts a giant jar of sugar on the table. He spoons a lot into his and I just a bit into mine. I take a sip and give an odd look.
"Marco, are you sure that's sugar?"
"Of course it is what else would it be?" he says with true Italian cockiness at my odd American questions
He takes a sip of his and runs immediately to the sink.
Salt.

Oh salty espresso, quite possibly the only thing to counter Italian ego. Cryptonite.

I am liking it, dare I say loving it here in Tartu. Even with all of the awkward boney elbows and knooby-knees conversations that come with meeting new people, I can already tell that this place is special. That it is true magic, not simply illusions, though there are plenty of bright lights here to distract for easy slide-of-the-hand. It is hard to describe Tartu without anecdotes or having a bit of fun with stereotypes.

There is a day in Tartu, well a whole week actually, “Student week” where the mayor of Tartu hands over official control of the city to the students of the University. I feel as if this is already the status quo. This is some kind of island of lost boys, but instead of young abducted Brits, it’s the new Gen Y/X/Z of Europe and of course the token Americans. For what town would be complete without the town fools?

I have a feeling that every University town is kind of like this only the “multiculturalism” that is so prevalent here adds just a little more of an interesting edge. This and also the fact that the token character trait of the host country here is silence, this allows their country and the people whose blood runs and blends with the rivers to become the muted background, all white and gray against the brilliant tragicomedy that is the “coming of age tale” of hundreds of Anglo-mera-peans. I guess I would fondly call us the cowboys of a not so wild wild West.

I think of the shock of the pioneers seeing that the “natives” had houses and diversified agriculture. I think they were rather annoyed, felt as if a piece of adventure was taken, that it had been tamed already, but they make did with their own tales of hunting if not for buffalo, then the hunters of the buffalo. Insert “The Most Dangerous Game” reference here.

Wow. Re-reading this I make it sound more like Lord of the Flies then the young Eden that it really is. I truly feel as if these first few days of drinking and odd conversations (anything from small talk to getting into religious discussions right away). I haven’t even had my first class yet and I have already learned so much. I have learned the truth and the sometimes lie of the stereotype of the “silent Finn”. There is one boy, Thomas, in particular who stares intently at nothing in particular with is blue eyes and slicked back blonde quaff. Sometimes he lets his Nordic canine teeth show. The kind of teeth designed for tearing into reindeer, Rudolph be damned (damn delicious so I hear).

There is another Finn, Mikhail the soon to be dentist (yes another odd allusion, maybe Tartu is actually the Island of Misfit Finns). Mikhail tells me all about the strange religious sects in Finland. I tell him about the Amish and there issue with zippers.

So far I am the token American in the group that I go out with. There are a few American boys (the ones who I guess would be considered “nerdy” and one who is too hip to quit) who I had just fantastic conversations with. It just came so easy (which is more than I can say about most other things about me). The other Americans avoid my gaze. I am just too pretentious for them or I don’t know who they think I am. I am not the well-traveled, well read Euro-phile/ Eurofreak, that some people seem to think that I am. Though I think that every American is secretly or not so secretly embarrassed to be seen by their country men while abroad, especially here in Estonia (where the beer and the wine flows like wine).

I have been saying this phrase a lot lately and I think that I will say it again here “we will just have to wait and see”.