On a scale from one to ten, how much do you love to ramble?
I finally slept last night. More than the last three nights combined. I had magical dreams of home and of friends and of family and future opportunity and I thought to myself upon waking up this morning:
Wow. You've had it pretty good this year.
I don't know what it is about being unsure of the future in all its entirety. I mean heck, I don't know what I'm doing for Christmas yet everyone else here has made plans to visit European cities or head home to their loved ones. But for once I feel completely cool about playing it by ear. Every movement, every inch, I am forging memories here and it matters not where I go, but that I go.
- Go to the bakery in the early morning and pick up a Croissant on the long walk into the city in the sneaking rays of morning winter sunshine through the long, stretching boulevards in the city of love.
- Go to university and giggle with the girls about guys and how stupid men and women can be when it comes to each other whilst prodding unknowingly at our 3 euro lunch in the cafeteria.
-Go out on a Thursday night to the 5eme and hang out in one of the lads' rooms drinking a bottle of wine to myself and mumbling haikus at 3 am in the morning in the cobbled road of Rue Mouffetard.
-Go and enjoy a game of cards and a pint after a hell-oath boring class on economics with a new friend. Say nothing but complete nonsense and otherwise remain silent.
-Go shopping in the local Monoprix, being howled at by an old senile French woman about the price of avocados and tell her in french that you don't care because avocados are delicious.
-Go for a metro ride purely for the ride and watch two strangers play paper scissors rock for the last seat because neither feels comfortable enough to take it from the other.
I just like to get going.
But sometimes, like today, I like to let the going get going, and rest. Meander to the pile of washing and the sink and ponder the idea of actually not neglecting it any longer and giving that pot and cereal bowl with porridge stuck dry to its sides a good, hard scrub.
Or maybe, chuck on some Nat & Dean Christmas classics and pace from one side of the shoebox of an apartment to the other, talking to yourself about trade unions and international employment law standards in an attempt to memorise something you don't understand.
I like to do things that make no real sense ensemble but for me just work. I like time alone. Time to live a day sans pants and sans bra and sans brushed hair and sans the hassle of opening the front door and realising I didn't wear warm enough clothes and now have to go back upstairs and chuck on another sweater under my coat. Because let's be honest: a day sans hassles is a day well spent.
"And I hope that one day we can all live sans pants and sans responsibilities."
(Me, duh.)
