It's nice to have good friends, but hard to leave them behind
This week I spent four days at Heathecote, an intentional community in northern maryland, with my awesome friend Harriet. It was amazing, definitely the most enjoyable weekend of my summer. We did a lot of gardening, sheet mulching, cooking and eating delicious organic vegetarian meals, yoga, making jam from berries we picked, swimming in the Gunpowder river, playing with goats, reading about Enneagram personality typing (all of us were 4's), tarot reading, playing board games, chatting, and lots more. But it was more than just the activities that made the trip so great; it was the people, the environment, the communing with nature, and all the positive life-affirming energy that came from all that. It had a really strong impact on my body and state of mind. I felt energetic, enthusiastic, and motivated. I felt connected to nature like I haven't been before. Plus, spending time with Harriet is always such a positive and enjoyable experience. Life in Heathecote, even the little that I experienced, is such a different reality from the life I live in now; it feels much more natural and human. Love and comaradery seemed to flow from every person (with one exception). Driving back home into the city felt very awkward and depressing...
Harriet's birthday party followed after we got home. It was a lot of fun. I met cool people, saw other positive people I'd met before. We salsa danced and made delicious vegan coconut mango icecream. Then we sat around and chatted late into the night. With the weather as scorching hot as it was, I couldn't sleep at all on that couch. I think I'll be spending a lot of my last nights in this country on people's couches, so I'd better get used to it.
I have trouble controlling my thoughts lately. They drift to things I don't want to think about, things I shouldn't be thinking about. It's not that they are wrong in any sense, it's just that they indicate complicated feelings and emotions inside me that I wish I didn't feel. Feeling lonely is starting to drag me down...
Sweden sounds like one helluva country. Welfare state, universal healthcare, egalitarianism far exceeding most of the rest of the world, free higher education, and home of most of the best Metal this world has ever composed. Oh if I could just make a career out of my music, I would devote my life to these angelic arpeggios, macabre melodies, harmonies of sweeping beauty. Bergie and I are looking at grad programs in Sweden, physics for me and linguistics for him. Graduate school would merely be in the background to my musical endeavors, however. How's that for a pipe dream, eh? There's clearly no future for our musical projects in this fuckin' city. Mecca is calling me, I feel it grow stronger every day.
I found out today that I'm going to the only male student in my study abroad program in Mexico. I don't know how to feel about that. I don't really think I do feel anything about that. All of my closest friends are female, I feel much more comfortable in a group of women than I used to. At the same time, I feel distanced from men more than I used to, as if there's some barrier that prevents me from making close connections. Maybe that's just how we're conditioned, to relate to each other as men. I just need to keep my thoughts under control and I'll be fine. A week and a half and I'm gone.
Harriet's birthday party followed after we got home. It was a lot of fun. I met cool people, saw other positive people I'd met before. We salsa danced and made delicious vegan coconut mango icecream. Then we sat around and chatted late into the night. With the weather as scorching hot as it was, I couldn't sleep at all on that couch. I think I'll be spending a lot of my last nights in this country on people's couches, so I'd better get used to it.
I have trouble controlling my thoughts lately. They drift to things I don't want to think about, things I shouldn't be thinking about. It's not that they are wrong in any sense, it's just that they indicate complicated feelings and emotions inside me that I wish I didn't feel. Feeling lonely is starting to drag me down...
Sweden sounds like one helluva country. Welfare state, universal healthcare, egalitarianism far exceeding most of the rest of the world, free higher education, and home of most of the best Metal this world has ever composed. Oh if I could just make a career out of my music, I would devote my life to these angelic arpeggios, macabre melodies, harmonies of sweeping beauty. Bergie and I are looking at grad programs in Sweden, physics for me and linguistics for him. Graduate school would merely be in the background to my musical endeavors, however. How's that for a pipe dream, eh? There's clearly no future for our musical projects in this fuckin' city. Mecca is calling me, I feel it grow stronger every day.
I found out today that I'm going to the only male student in my study abroad program in Mexico. I don't know how to feel about that. I don't really think I do feel anything about that. All of my closest friends are female, I feel much more comfortable in a group of women than I used to. At the same time, I feel distanced from men more than I used to, as if there's some barrier that prevents me from making close connections. Maybe that's just how we're conditioned, to relate to each other as men. I just need to keep my thoughts under control and I'll be fine. A week and a half and I'm gone.