On Wednesday I explored Amsterdam-Noord. It was nice out. We went to a restaurant called Cafe Noorderlicht (northern lights) that the website called “an industrial picnic.” I ate some brown bread and hummus. Then we found an abandoned shipyard with some of the most interesting graffiti I’ve ever seen in Amsterdam. There were four or five kids with cans of spray-paint. If I was ten I would’ve had a crush on all of them. 

Wednesday night I saw Wavves and Peaches. Peaches poured champagne on my head. Then somehow Nicky, Mallory and I ended up walking (see also running, jumping) around Vondelpark until 6 in the morning with the guitarist from Wavves. When I got home the sun had long since been up. So surreal. Yesterday I went to the zoo for the last field trip of my sexuality class. Amsterdam’s week of great weather had finally ended, and it was cold and drizzly outside. The field trip was a tour of the sexual habits of zoo animals. Also surreal. I learned that same-sex flamingo couples not only mate for life as opposed to the temporary, opposite-sex flamingo partnerships, but provide better resources for their babies. “Two male flamingoes build bigger nests,” said our tour guide.  

After the zoo I went to the lomography store to get my film developed. Apparently they send the film to Austria, and by the time it gets back, I’ll be gone. So I don’t know how I’m gonna get my hands on those pictures. Then I ate Indonesian food out of a to-go container and walked through Central with Zack. We went to a coffeeshop we’d never been to before and sat next to an open window on the second floor, people-watching the busy street below. Zack said “This is my favorite kind of weather” and opened his palm to the rain. He said it’s a reminder that you’re alive. I was preoccupied anticipating my wet bike seat.

Later Mallory and I met our art teacher for drinks at OT301. Even though our semester is over and we’ve already said goodbye, we still wanted to hang out with him because we both think he is….. very nice. After two beers he left and Mallory and I sat looking at each other across the table. We acknowledged how great this week is.

I’m cutting ties, whatever that means. It’s something I feel very little control over, but still know I am doing on purpose. I’m writing the end of this chapter by making all the main characters fly away on hot-air balloons. Or maybe it’s the opposite. Maybe they’re still the same and it’s me who’s erased into nonexistence. I’m some kind of small wild mammal digging a hole in wet summer dirt. Bye everybody!, i’m saying. See you again in a very different time!

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tongueprotest:

Taken with instagram

Reflections on my Semester Abroad

Much of my critical thinking and self-analysis for the past four months have been while on a bike. It’s made it so my physical movements - leg circling, light hand squeezing, shifting of my body weight, occasionally moving-backward of my seat - have become reflexial. I am navigating through a city that feels big and small at the same time, and when I’m on a bike it’s the same familiar dream. 

It hurts to leave Amsterdam. I find that a reason that I’m sad feels so petty; I don’t want the city to carry on as it was before I lived here. Is it selfish that I wish I affected it as much as it affected me? Two days ago I came home from a week-long vacation in Spain and found that all the trees had bloomed in my absence. Now everything looks so picturesque and I just marvel at everything I see and I don’t know what to do about it. I’m making lists and writing blog posts and getting my film camera that I haven’t used since high school fixed. I’m trying to fit this experience into something I can take home and it just doesn’t work, everything coming back to the States with me has to fit into a hiking backpack and a big red suitcase. 

But I hope I will remember these feelings I have about myself. I’m moving to New York - a place that has always seemed like perfection to me despite hurting my feelings and my self-esteem in the past. Maybe this summer I will perfect the habits that Amsterdam taught me - to find things on my own, to talk to strangers, to spend time outside, to see the world as it truly is, to relax, to stop being hard on myself, to write, to draw, to know that ultimately I am often going to be alone and independent and even though I find love wherever I go, I have to like myself before that happens. 

High-Minded

A tracksuit and a pile of dead lighters. Maybe one or two drag queens. A computer with a chain over it. This place calls itself a disco? This place feels so big when the sun goes down, and everyone is drunk and loves you, and everyone knows how to ride a bike, and the lawn is full of dandelions, and your roommate and her friend are tripping acid, and your neighbor is getting really frisky with you and you like it, and you are hired to walk two basset hounds, and you lose someone else’s keys

and there is vodka in the carpet and it makes you sick to think about your sister

and your mom is there, and she gives you a makeover and you like it, and it feels like the world is ending but no one is moving on, and there is a really beautiful horse with a lot of human traits, and your neighbor wasn’t attractive until he tattooed his arms, and your neigbor is wrapping himself around the back of you, and your

mouth is full of a laugh. And you can’t hide because there is no place to hide, and the horse is the only one who will admit the apocalypse already happened, and he is starving himself, and he wants to die and it is very beautiful and sad, and you have sex with your neighbor and he tells you that you smell like coriander, and the tennis court is ruined in the rain, and a blow-up whale deflates in the ocean, and a volcano erupts and everyone drowns, and this is the first time you meant something and you want to scream “This is like being born,” and the bike seat is wet but you sit on it anyways, and you ride to the market to see everyone you know          and to show them all your coping skills          and your clean blue raincoat.  

Me on a Houseboat

I’m anxious and impatient. My feathers rumpled. This is me living buoyant. They made me sink a ship. They made me bend a razor in a fun, youthful shape. Have you seen my luck? Have you seen a laser with a kitten bouncing around it? The way you love me with your head on my chest. The way your chest cavity dips. A dive into your ocean. 

Subject: Official Email

Please notice to turn your music off and lower your voices when opening these windows.

The neighbors are hearing every word of your conversations.

Because of this, they cannot sleep or read their newspapers.

And the noise distresses their babies.

And their pet animals.

Seriously.

Happpy anniversary to me! One year of not shaving my legs.

(Source: fuck-shaving)

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My friend Parker made this. I think it’s poetry.

(slang) thank you, thanks

It’s 3 a.m. and we’re in Paris trying to hail a taxi. It’s way harder than expected. When we finally succeed, I spend about five straight minutes trying to explain to the driver where we need to go, and it has to do more with my lack of directional skills than with my lack of French-speaking skills. Finally we’re driving. He asks me, in French, where are you from? I say the United States. He says Oh! the United States! You must like this! He turns up his radio dial and this song becomes audible. Wow, really? It had to be that one? It was a surreal night.

Museum Tour

This is your windmill it’s a computer this is your iPod it’s a computer this is your baby it’s a computer. It’s like when you think you’re going to the carnival and you end up going to the skeezy carnival. This is a fingernail prier. This is a flax seed production mechanism. This is a story about a brother and sister who were living in a cabin in the woods and they were having a lot of fun and it was a really nice cabin and then they looked outside the window and saw a policeman sodomizing a dog. Once I start a lie I can’t just have it be a short lie. I never know what to do with my arms.