That Year

It's hard for me to believe that just a year ago, I was in Scotland right now (I include the above song because I heard it in a clothing store in Glasgow. Every time I hear this cover, I think of that city). And now, here I am, sitting on my parent's deck, having weird sensations of déjà vu, drinking a gin and tonic, worrying about things (as always), and watching postings come up on Tumblr about the BAFTAS (because, sadly, they are not live-streamed).

I just can't believe it was a year ago.

I've changed so much since then. I've gained and lost so much since then.

Yet some days it feels like it was just yesterday.

And now I miss it more than ever.

Which is why, shortly before the end of the school year, I decided that when I graduate I'm moving to the UK. Unless something un-forseen happens, I plan on finding a flat in London for next September, a city I haven't been to since I was sixteen and have missed ever since. I miss these places, in all honesty, more than I miss some of my friends. I feel like a stranger in my own hometown and, if song lyrics are to be regarded as philosophy, perhaps that means it's time to leave.

I guess I finally decided to post this today, thought I've been meaning to for weeks, because I've hit some sort of resolution. Some of my friends are no longer my friends. Bad things happen, whether you're here or there. It's your life and you should do what you want. And I want to go to London.

Although, goddammit, New York is trying rather hard to seduce me too. :)

The thing is, in one year I'll be leaving Minneapolis.  I love this amazing, brilliant city, but my heart is being called elsewhere. Somewhere I can easily take a cab, where there are so many opportunities to do things I never dreamed of, where I can have good reason to feel like a somebody and a nobody all at once. Minneapolis will always be my first real home, but I'm the sort of person that has more than one. And while I love New York, I feel my heart drawn across the pond for reasons I can't really describe. I just want to experience, long term, what it feels like to be a foreigner. I want to know what it's like to find oneself in a country you weren't born in. I want to make mistakes and sound funny and dream of improbable things. I want to have one of the largest cities in the world become everyday to me and yet never lose its magic.

I want to do something people didn't expect of me. Because I am more than one person's expectations. Maybe I'll be back in Minneapolis after a year or two, maybe I won't. Maybe I'll settle down in London, maybe I won't. Maybe I'll publish a book before I graduate and settle down in Chelsea and live in a posh little flat with a view of the Thames. Maybe I'll be broke and living in Kelvingrove Park in Glasgow. Who knows?

But let's find out, shall we? :D

Extremely Loud and Too Close

Have you ever had one of those friends you wonder how exactly you end up hanging out with them because you don't really like them and yet you enjoy hanging out with them because they're totally insane?

This is essentially how my acquaintanceship/ friendship with [slightly pansexual, mostly annoying] works. He awkwards me out, he makes an average situation suddenly far more complicated than it needs to be, and you can't walk down the street without him talking to random passerbys. However, he has fantastic stories about drunkenly driving golf carts into ponds and getting multiple DWIs. I'm not saying he's a good, safe person to be around. But he is... interesting.

A few weeks before school got out, I went to an Eric Hutchinson concert at First Avenue with [save the panzer], his brother, another friend, and [slightly pansexual, mostly annoying]. After the phenomenal show, they decided to get food at a nearby Rainbow store. One of the automatic doors wasn't working and [slightly pansexual, mostly annoying] ran into it. He confusedly followed us into through the exit. He then loudly shouted to the store employees whether the store was open, since the entrance doors were locked. They responded that they were in fact open (which was assumable, as we were standing in the store now) and we slowly gathered our food items.

Now, apparently upon entering the store, one of my classmates was at the checkout and I must have looked right at her. I didn't see her, as I was trying not to die of embarrassment. A week or two later, she asked me if I'd been at that Rainbow lately. At first I was confused and realized what she must have been talking about. "Wait, was I with a really loud guy?" I asked. "Yeah," she replied, "he seemed really drunk." "Oh, he wasn't drunk. He hadn't even had anything to drink yet. You should see him when he's drunk," I assured her astonished expression.

And trust me, I have seen him drunk. This guy is the sort who makes vodka and juice concoctions with so much more vodka than juice the ice cubes go glassy and clear. He was pretty wasted on [save the panzer]'s birthday. So much so that he started humping a vace-shaped sculpture on Nicollet Mall. So, sorry, people of Minneapolis, if this man has been responsible for making your average night strange and uncomfortable. I am not responsible - he is a fully grown man who is entirely capable of following his own guidance. And it is a free country. Why he continues to hang out with younger people, I don't know. I actually don't know how old he is; he jokingly told the cab driver on [save the panzer]'s birthday that he was 45. His age and/or birth year are not on Facebook so doing the math to figure it out is no good. Doesn't matter. He could be from the 51st century for all I know.

That would be rather awkward.

Much like this photo.

Yeah, that pretty much says it all. Me laughing and crying at the same time. Accurate.

Catching Up

I've been away from here for quite a while, with the end of the semester and moving into a new apartment. I've got a series of half-finished posts but I just haven't gotten around to finishing them. They will get finished, but until then, here's an earworm I can't get out of my head:

Henri

[Львица] just discovered these videos and, as we were just discussing existentialism in one of my classes today, I felt the need to share them. Brilliant... they are brilliant.

Sci-Fi/Fantasy

I have a confession to make. I am a total sci-fi fan.

Most of you probably already knew this. Or maybe you didn't. I did, I just never fully realized this until we watched Star Trek and Firefly in my television class. And I saw Thor with my parents (Oh. My. God. That movie was fantastic. Considering that Thor is the Avenger I know the least about, I was totally pleased and ecstatic about it).

http://www.comingsoon.net/

I think part of my lack of realization about this interest is that I was never really good at paying attention to genre. Did I care if there were spaceships and aliens intermingling with an interesting plot line? No, but it was certainly a nice perk. It has recently occurred to me that not everyone grew up watching Star Trek with their father and discussing how it capitulates the deeper philosophies of life. Not all kids read Tuck Everlasting 20 times in elementary school (this book is sci-fi/fantasy. A family that can live forever? Of course it is!) And a lot of people probably didn't read The Hobbit at age 10 and think it was fantastic but not actually understand what was going on until much later. Yes, I know that book is written more for children. Yes, I know that it shouldn't be that hard to understand. But I was terribly distracted by trying to fathom what a hobbit was because I'd never heard of them before. I was also ten and just because I had a good vocabulary didn't mean I was good at understanding plots (much to my dismay, my friend [X] read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings ridiculously young and knows a ridiculous amount about anything Tolkein. I don't know how she know is all... probably because she read The Silmarillion ages ago and I'm just now getting to it. Regardless, it's a little hard to talk about it with her because it ends up sort of insulting to intelligence. Just because I've been a bit slow on the uptake).

http://www.startrek.com/

I admit that I'm not familiar with sci-fi/fantasy that isn't pretty mainstream. I haven't read Dune, I haven't read Mercedes Lackey (like my "real" fantasy literature-reading friends). I also fail to clearly articulate the differences between science fiction and graphic novels, as expressed by my inclusion of Thor in this discussion. But it came to my attention during discussions of sci-fi shows in my television class that some people don't even like the mainstream stuff. Aliens weird some people out. Hurtling through space and time makes them uncomfortable. Discussion of faeries interwoven into modern day city-life gets looks of confusion. For some reason, I know way too much about pookas. And then I begin to realize that I did not learn this stuff in school, I didn't even learn it on TV. I learned it from reading a very particular sub-genre of books. One not everyone encounters.

My initial reaction was this:

(Oh, no; I just had this great and terrible vision of the rest of my life being comprised of nothing but lines of dialogue from Sherlock.)

But then it struck me why so many people might shy away from sci-fi/fantasy. To be honest, sometimes I do as well. And that's because of the Sy Fy channel and B movies. They have a lot of badly made, awkward sci-fi. If all you know about science fiction was that, you'd shy away from it too. Fortunately for me, I never saw Sy Fy channel until I was a teenager, so I was saved the trauma of having that as my first experiences with the genre.

I can understand why sci-fi may not be everyone's cup of tea; it takes some suspension of belief and an acceptance that weird shit may and can happen. After reading Phillip K. Dick, I accept that I like this. That fact that I was enjoying Radio Free Albemuth and not totally confused out of my mind I think shows that I've just developed a different taste for things that other people may not necessarily have. On that note, I'm going to go geek out about the new Star Trek movie and enjoy reading people's bets on who the villain will be.

Welcome new follower!

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I don't know why I used a Mean Girls gif. Don't question it.