Feel it all

"And your own life while it's happening to you never has any atmosphere until it's a memory."
-Andy Warhol

Say what you will about Andy Warhol, the man had his moments. We never think about the atmosphere of an experience until we find ourselves momentarily transported back to it. It's that way that a smell or a song can return you to a time in your life in a way that transcends the singular stimulation of one of your senses. Why does hearing Time to Pretend always make me feel a little bit less than sober? Andy nailed it. Atmosphere.
I have often tried to take note of these details, attempted to bottle that feeling up so I could recreate the moment again and again. These efforts have failed.
As I finalize my work schedule, buy books for my last semester of college, and happily return to beer of a normal alcohol percentage my head is still back in Park City. I could not capture the feeling of Sundance: of coming out of a midnight movie to a soft sparkly snow, of delirious sleep-deprived laughter and the electricity of thousands of people feeding on the creativity and passion of each other. I could not hold on to it and so instead I wait for it to find me. I wait for all the detail of a memory.


*Photo by me, through the hotel window in Park City

New Beginnings

"You get a strange feeling when you're about to leave a place, I told him, like you'll not only miss the people you love but you'll miss the person you are now at this time and this place, because you'll never be this way ever again"
-Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azir Nafisi

It's been a year since I have posted. At the risk of sounding like melodramatic, I thought I'd left the author of this blog behind in Italy. Another layer of life has settled over my soul and I will never again be that girl.
Studying abroad was the manifestation of every fantasy I'd ever had. The romance of it made me brave. The excitment of it inspired me. For the first time in my life, I believed that what I had to say might be interesting. Despite my four suitcases, I'd left all my baggage back in America. So I wrote. I read. I had lunch by myself and didn't feel like a loser. I did optional work for my classes because I wanted to. I didn't feel guilty for eating whatever I wanted. I achieved a kind of satisfaction with my life that was unprecedented for me.
When I came back from Europe, I thought I'd lost that. I stopped writing. I didn't think anything more wonderful or exciting then a semester abroad could happen to me. But then it did.
I fell in love.
I used to write things and fear that people would notice I didn’t know what I was talking about. And then one day I realized, I did

I think it's time to start writing again.