someone several rows up evidently didn’t want the prepackaged cinnamon roll that must have come with the in-flight meal i didn’t order, so i snagged that baby, left alone in her seat, on my way out, free calories YEAH and on that note you guys it’s possible that i’m about to lose a lot of weight without wanting to per se
My lovely Danish cat lady host and bike-lender is pushing a healthy Danish six feet tall, so the first thing I did today was ride the borrowed bike directly to the coffee shop out of which my friend the proprietor also rents out bikes and ask him to take a wrench to its seat height for me. Then I hung around a while, getting rowdy on a latte—I guess now commences a slide back into caffeine, as everywhere there is no other choice—and advice on how to live. He told me to seek out Jewish painters and/or musicians in Berlin, that they will anchor the energy I’m out here after. He said, Danish people are like fucking ice.
I am in the apartment eating carrots because thatʼs all I have so far
Although probably I will rectify that soon
I am going to put something familiar and safe on my computer and try to, I donʼt know what, send some messages in hopes of making things happen for myself
She said,
What are you wanting to happen?
I said,
My listening project
And
Iʼd like to start cementing plans for what will be after Berlin
I want to not feel afraid all the time, but that seems like something I need to go inside for, not outside
She said,
What are you most afraid of?
I said,
Of everything in the whole world?
Prolapse.
She said,
Of your current endeavor
I said,
That I will have to go back to New York and just pick up where I left off
That this wonʼt take me somewhere
She said,
Well it will definitely take you somewhere it just might not be where you thought
Are you seeing people? Organizing your room? Sitting in a cafe? Sending emails? Exploring? Eating vegan currywurst?
I said,
I just got back to the apartment after fucking around in constructive, aid-while-abroad-seeking ways on Facebook for most of the day over two cappuccini and a salad and a piece the vegan bananenbrod with some kind of peanut butter frosting which was EXCELLENT btw at the yes same one not-really-vegan cafe
Trying to make plans for either tonight or tomorrow with the guy who works there, but he is I think Syrian under his German and so his English is pretty confusing
Nursing some confusion about What I Should Be Doing Instead
Feeling almost breathless with loneliness or some other kind of emotional vertigo
In going through my Facebook friends to see whom else I should tag in my latest plea post, I discovered that this guy I had a mad crush on over my years in Boston with whom things never really got off the ground died in a bike accident four years ago
When I think about it I get cold all over
I included him on my get out the vote for Clinton email in November 2016
He’d already been dead for two years
I just redownloaded Tinder, although Iʼm not sure if thatʼs a bad idea or a self-forgiving one
My voice is falling into disuse
She said,
What a swarm of things you must be feeling
I said,
How can you tell?
A guy who was my immediate bestie on our freshman orientation backpacking trip sixteen years ago just wrote back being like Oh yeah I got sick of New York so a friend and I started an investment bank in Bucharest and for sure you can come stay on my pull-out for a couple of weeks let me look at the calendar
And Pavel just messaged that he found me a place to stay on Île d’Oléron, which is evidently an island off the Atlantic coast of France, so now this is thoroughly a fairy tale I am unready for
This is very exciting if I can just figure out how to be scared only a non-crippling amount of the time
I need to go to bed so I can get up and keep trying to move forward in some way even if itʼs not in the BEST way
She said,
Get up and do 10 push-ups first thing
I said,
Okay I will
First I will put on a bra because how I look is the most important thing about me
And then I will do ten pushups
Eleven, even
Itʼs weird how I waited for this for so long and then all of a sudden it happened
MARY WEʼRE ALIVE AND ITʼS SO TERRIBLE BUT THERE IS NO OTHER CHOICE
