schon eine Weile her...

Sorry this blog has never been really light-hearted or full of pictures and stories of my adventures, like...
when a friend and I got stuck in a tiny town, bought 70 cent beer fom the train station, and laughed as the sun set.
Or when Austin and I sat in the Berlin Hauptbahnhof until 2 in the morning, watching the partiers and drag queens and hobos and lesbians and business people travelling late, talking about life and love and home.
Or when I travelled to Munich alone, took a free city tour, went to the Dachau concentraion camp, got mediterranien food with people I had never met before, played guitar and spent two nights in a dirty student house up on a snow-covered hill.
Or simply, how many times I played Uno with the kids, washed dishes, vacuumed, went on walks with the dog (through fields in summer, fall, and winter), cooked spaghetti, and took bubble baths.

We do the best with what we have. We do the best we can in the moment. We could have done better, but really, we couldn't. Because we didn't. We are who we are and we react how we're going to react.
Sorry this is vague.
I am terrified of growth and change. As much as I need it, prophesize its necessity, supposedly revel in it...I am terrified of real change. Real growth. This requires strength of character and the ability to remove ones self from the needs of the moment. To make the conscious decision to take a step forward, to leave behind the parts of the old self that are destructive and un-helpful. But I get comfortable. I get comfortable in a broken cycle, in a self that rings untrue, but I don't have the confidence to change. I am finally taking that step. I am tired of being miserable and always looking for an escape.

This is turning more into a coming out letter than I realized. I like boys, y'all. It is such a silly thing...I know this will catch almost all of you (whoever happens to read this post) by surprise. But there's no reason to be anything other than one's self. And, I cannot be my full self without recognizing this part of myself. It feels like, after all these years, admitting this preference is a kind of character betrayal, a dirty little secret, a fact that states "I am less than".
Which is of course completely ridiculous. But we let ourselves think this way, when we hold up and image for so long.
But. Yes. It is not that I am heterosexual, I would actually identify more as pansexual - which generally boils down to being able to be attracted to any gender or non-gender. But I am not a lesbian. I'm just a human. We're all just human. We do the best we can.

I have had fun here.
I have had life here.
How do I keep doing that?
This is difficult.

I really like being in Germany and having cross-cultural experiences and meeting new people.
It's the host family part that has always been an issue and continues to be.
I mean, they have done and do so much for me (give me a place to stay, feed me, include me in their family vacation, pay for a month-long german program, shell out 200€ spending money every month)...And what do I do? I was just going to complain about the family, but really, what do I do? I play with the kids. I cook food sometimes. I do light housework.
But we don't really click, and the language is hard, and I'm just a pretty lazy, childish person anyway...I feel really bad now. I've been so wrapped up in my own "emotional turmoil" that I haven't been able to even look at the situation clearly.

I should be happy to be here. I am so lucky to be here, and I should be so grateful. But I have just been whining to anyone who would listen, and holing up in my room with the computer.
I need to start accounting for myself and appreciating what other people are doing for me. I feel like what I do goes unnoticed, but what about everything they are doing for me that I don't take into account? I've been selfish and single-minded.

I feel like my German doesn't really get better when I talk to them, though. And that is one of the main issues in our relationships - me being able to understand them, and communicate what I am thinking/feeling to them. It's hard, because I can understand the basic gyst of what is usually being said (or at least the topic), but the specific details of what they are communicating is usually lost on me. And I don't speak enough (because they are the main people I am around lately and before that, I hung out with a bunch of foreigners who spoke better english than german), so my accent is horrible and getting sentences out right is a chore.

So, yeah. I need to keep keeping other people in mind. Oh, I don't know. You know. Whatever. Learning experiences, etc.

I miss being sure of things.
Things like reality, who I am, what is worthwhile,
The last time I was sure of things, I liked The X-Files and feminist/queer music I was too young to understand and chinese food from Safeway and reading books I was too young to understand and intense female friendships and school and black clothing and trying to understand my sister's life and the internet (which I usually had to sneak onto, as I was often grounded).

That's not actually true. That was the second to last time I was sure of things. The last time I was sure of things, I liked musical theatre and vegetarianism and Kimya Dawson and text messages and painting on my bedroom walls and intense female friendships and silly faces (and noises) and the smell of the Southridge theatre department.

Is this how we are happy? By finding things to be sure of?
I think right now I do not have things or people I am sure of, I have the idea that where I am is where I am and so I am sure of it.
But also I went to Berlin this weekend and hung out with people I like and started to feel like I could have some things to be sure of. Like having actual conversations in German and being completely open to people as who they are in the moment and going where you want to go and beer and wine and love and asian noodles and a cold Autumn breeze.

I'm not a huge fan of my host family but I feel like we've finally reached a spot where we are okay with it being what it is. I need time to be a 19 year old kid, and this experience has been totally...interesting and obviously life changing and a little odd. But it is positive. I am excited to go "home" and move out and start being (duh) independent.

I am starting on my second year out of high school. Time. Moves. So. Fast. It is kind of terrifying.
But I also cannot imagine living another 10 years and still being relatively young.
10 years ago I was 9.
How do we even know ourselves?

I'm not sure if this makes any sense to anyone (even myself) but I like writing it and I think that's what matters.



Someday I'll be able to account for all parts of myself all at once.

I like music.
Here's some stuff from my past (prone to nostalgia. This really isn't for anyone but me.)




(Gonna keep going.)

Today was a video kind of day.


The second video wasn't originally for my blog...I kind of have a habit of video taping myself playing guitar. Haha. But it turned into a sort of musical blog, so I thought it'd be fun to show rather than a written post.

Wow today.
I mean really.
Are you trying to tell me something?
I know, I get it, I need to buy a bus pass. 50€ later, I understand. Germans don't mess around.
But really? Did I really have to essentially break my host mom's car?
Was that really neccessary?

What have I done, day? What did I do that was so wholly offensive for you to thrust these two things upon me within the span of two hours?
Not cool.
Not cool at all.

In other news, if you want to know what my classmates and I do when we drink alcohol,
we sit in dorm kitchens and eat chips and get each other to say silly things in our mother-languages.
and we play this song on the guitar and I'm really really good at doing Kim's harmonizing vocals.
It's always a hit.

I really really love The Pixies.

Other reasons:




There was this post on Genderfork:
"I identify with music more than I ever did with masculinity and femininity. I wonder how many weird looks people would give me if I started telling people my gender was “punk rock.”"
I love this. This is how the pixies make me feel.
And jazz, and soft acoustic guitar, and dance music, and jam bands, and...

"Bin wieder da!"

Okay. The thing about this blog thing is that you have to decide what kind of emotion or idea you want to put across - I tend to write about what's going on in my life (not just here, but in journals etc) when I'm dissatisfied or frustrated.
So I could just write a long thing about why I'm frustrated right now and it would sound like I'm having a bad time but I'm really not.

But also, what am I doing?

Birte is visiting us for the weekend. And Hans-Peter is back from his business trip. This means I am going to get pissed off a lot. I do not really like either of these people.
But anyway.

I don't know what to do and I kind of wish I was back home because then I would be able to find a job and a place with other young folks to live - I would like to do that here, but I am an "alien" and it would be a pain in the ass to even start anything like that.
Basically I just need money. And a car.
These things should be easy to come by!
I have run out of my monthly earnings (well, I have 5 Euros left) and don't get paid again until the 21st. Which is actually pretty soon. But we're going to Hamburg tomorrow and people want to stay the night and go out and I want to too but I don't have any money to do that and when I told Anette that today she just said like "übernacht?" and went "hmmm" and then somebody said something else and the topic changed.

So. Yeah. And some folks from my class are going out in about an hour and I don't want to deal with all the transportation issues that come with going into Kiel. But I also don't want to spend the night in my room. But I also don't want to sit downstairs and listen to Birte and Hans-Peter talk.

This is totally pointless. You don't need to read this. Haha. And of course it sounds like I'm not having a good time. Which is true and not true.


Money and a car.



But the world is beautiful and that is okay. There are trees and prickly bushes and clouds and snails and hedgehogs and music like Leonard Cohen and Camera Obscura and Beirut.
And that's pretty freaking good.

There are a lot of snails out lately because it's been raining so much and they're all over the trails where people ride bikes and every few hundred yards or so there's a snail that's been popped like a tube of toothpaste by a bike wheel. It's disgusting and totally fascinating.

"Präpositionen"

Just got back from having dinner with some friends from my German course. The Italians (Pietro and Giuliana) decided to cook dinner for whoever wanted to come tonight, so we met in one of the student Wohnung kitchens and they cooked yummy pasta (actual Italian food is very similar to what we eat in America - not really Olive Garden, but the smaller, more tomato-sauce focused restaurants). Behshad, from Iran, brought his guitar along and played some sexy Spanish music, and then great Iranian guitar stuff. I love when people you don't expect have these hidden talents.
I got up the courage to play a song I wrote a while back called "Dreams About People You Didn't Think You Cared About Anymore". It was the first time I'd played something I wrote for a large group of people, and it was exhilarating. It reminded me how satisfying that song is, and how much it is good and right and what I need it to be. So often I write songs and they're okay, but they're not what I'm trying to say. This song says exactly what I'm trying to say. And I could tell they got it. I didn't look at any of them the whole time I was playing it, and when I was done, I looked up, and they were all looking at me - not expectantly, not asking anything or trying to make me laugh - they were looking at me like they got me in that moment. And that's all I needed. That's all I ever need. Is for people to get it, whatever it is.
That there's more. That there's parts of us we don't allow ourselves access to enough. That there's such a base level of beauty in all of us, that all we need to do is express to each other our own beauty.
Hahaha oh man anyway. Whatever "beauty" is. It's all relative. Just that I like to feel nice and you like to feel nice and everything is so big and everything is so small and it's okay. At the end of everything, (even though there is undoubtedly no end to anything) it's all okay. Because how can it not be?
I'm not sure if this song actually says that. But it's says something honest and that's what's important.
I think this song says what I was talking about:



When I was 15 or 16, Gloria showed her to me, and I said I didn't like her because her music was like floating through space and time. And now, after listening to her again for the first time in years, I said the exact same thing, but describing why I love her.

Should I keep writing? If you give me enough time and the feeling that my thoughts are being appreciated in any way, I'll keep writing. Forever and ever and ever.

I'm 19. I can't comprehend all the different meanings that has. So I don't think about it.
Every day I'm here, the more at home and the more distant I feel. Which each passing moment, I create memories and grow roots here. And at the same time, I learn more and more that this is not Portland. That I am not home.
But I am home too.
I love that quote, "Wherever you go, there you are."
Which can be loosely translated to: "Don't worry, be happy."

I talked to my host mom today. I was feeling stressed like I haven't been doing enough as an Aupair and I don't know exactly what they want from me and she explained everything much more clearly and now I realize that I've been doing it right the whole time, I've just been stressing because that's the only thing I know how to do.
And now I'm feeling stressed because I'm talking about stress.

ANYWAY. This is far too long. And thus I send it into the ethos for strangers and people I used to know and people I know and people I may meet in the future to read.
Good night, it is 00:08 on Dienstag, 14. September 2010.
Und jetzt muss ich schlafen.