Front seat to avoid puking.

Three cars with ribbons indicating unity and togetherness. A small part of a larger procession that will soon be forgotten.

The French countryside is a muck with twisting and turning roads that require constant gear shifting. 4th to 3rd to 2nd and back again.

I swear we passed at least a million trees. Maybe more.

Eyes tired. Restless. Sleepless. 4am return. 11am check out. Two croissants consumed.

Irony: declaring that you don't want nor ever will get married and then catching a bride's bouquet a few hour later. (And then insisting that you only caught it because you calculated the trajectory, all very mathematic and scientific, a simple accident of athleticism, a fluke.)

Ribbons don't flow in the wind, they cut and rage,it's a concentrated madness.

Concentrated madness: a small, often uncontainable or uncontrollable, burst of "crazy" or "insane" (1) behavior, (2) movement, or (3) speech pattern. Ex: "marriage is a good idea" is an example of concentrated madness (3).

Applause. The show begins.

We lost our procession for two minutes due to the toll.

The Alps are in our sights. We're going around them to get back home.

The French-Italian Alps.

The mountains are truly wonderful, their beauty incomparable.

----
A stop.

Ripped the heads off shrimp. Broke a glass. Consumed a large pile of fries.

My head is spinning. My stomach is similar.

----
A stop.

A natural fountain with ice cold water from the Alps. Crisp. Refreshing. Possibly contained electrolytes. Research later.

The mountains seem endless. The road is infinite and there are no destinations. The trees are ancient and intimidating. One wrong turn and the road could end for you.

----
Through one tunnel, out of France and back in Italy. It's that simple. A twenty second drive through a tunnel built into the mountains. Crazy.

The autostrada is the fastest way to get back.

----
Thoughts:
(1) Is love necessary?
(2) So I need to do Laundry?
(3) I swear pairs of my underwear were stolen at that hotel in France, but I might just be forgetful about my packing and paranoid.

It's dark, but I can see the outline of cypress trees in the early morning mist. It's 5:30am, and we're on the road: twisting and turning our way through Italy. It's been hours since we last stopped to rest, and I'm feeling restless. The thoughts of a gruesome death in a vehicular accident won't leave my mind. Being crushed, enveloped in a burst of flames, and slowly bleeding out play like a film in my mind every time we take a sharp turn. Morbid, I know, but I think if you're not worrying about such things that you aren't really living. Stress and worry are a part of human nature, the need to flight or flight to survive, as well as questioning if you're really on this road, and are you sure it's not all a dream, or if this reality is real or not.
​
Note to self: don't watch videos about philosophical topics while on the road, too much time to contemplate like Descartes and question Socrates' cave theory. Just enjoy the sunrise.

Enjoy the cypress trees common to Tuscany, enjoy the hues of blue and orange and yellow and try not to overthink. No thoughts of gruesome deaths, or philosophy, or how your eyebrows were ruined yesterday and how you want to choke the waxer to death. Listen to popular music that you can't help but enjoy even if it is mainstream, it's a science after all, they know how to get you with their catchy beats and repetitive chorus. Scam artists.

Enjoy the detour through Florence, the sights, the rising sun. The clouds are voluminous and awash with pinks and yellows. It's lovely in the early hours of the day, a sign of good things to come.

Self awareness is the worst part of being an artist.

This road is familiar. The trees. The turns. The tunnels. It's like remembering a dream. Or deja vu. But you know you've been here physically as well as a mentally. You've seen these signs, these houses, these street lights. You've seen the sunlight seeping into the tunnel of iron rods, the mountains in the distance, the ocean before you. Seeing it once more is better than any lasting memory. It's real. It's tangible. You're here. Breathing the air, feeling the sunshine on your skin, hearing the traffic; it's constant like decay.

----

Here you are, alone, stuck. This bus ride seems as though it will never end. Good thing there is ac and a USB port to keep your tech juiced.

----

You see the houses and the churches in the hills and wonder how they're inhabitable. How in the world do those people get around? Repelling? Rock climbing with their groceries tied to their necks? Is there an intricate system of tunnels built into the mountains? Maybe you'll never find out. You'll be left wondering, waiting, wishing for answers.

----

We passed sunflower fields and abandoned villas. There was even the remains of an aqueduct. The houses were multicolored and the roofs were red like clay. Tuscany was as beautiful as we remembered. Mountains in the distance, fields and fields of cultivated land, years and years of lives lived, blood shed, sweat dripping into the earth. It's lovely. It's stunning. The greens and the golds. The life. The decay.

We rode passed cities and towns older than our great grandparents, and trees just as aged. We drove through rows of cypress trees and passed grassy knolls.

----

6 hours in. What's there to do? Listening to the conversations of strangers of course. This is when one learns the most about human nature and character traits. We can poke and prod and dissect a person's character by listening in, invading their hearts and placing our own desires into their minds. Warning: writers writing, hide your hearts, hide your best lines. Writers are the best cons; we listen in and absorb and steal and twist your lives into other worlds and place you in other times. Your minds are putty in our demented childlike hands.

                                                                                (This piece was written last summer.  Title: "my day")

     I don’t know if it’s the sound of multiple planes flying overhead or the plastic cat heads that bobble back and forth in the sun light, but I miss you. The birds still sing at 7pm, did you know that? Maybe it’s a summer thing. It’s cloudy, but bright, and all I hear are birds, and plastic cat heads, and a plane every five minutes.

     I can’t get up, and I can’t function. I won’t sleep, and I won’t start my homework. All I do is think of you, and meander through your Facebook notes. They’re weird like you. The good kind of weird. I think of your favorite fruits, and imagine feeding them to you. Don’t ever ask me why, I don’t even know the answer myself. I enjoy our conversations.

     I’m just a teenage dirtbag baby, like you. Wheetus makes my giggle. Will you dream of me too? I don’t know anything, I have no idea what I’m doing, or what I will do later. I suppose not knowing is fun, but it’s painful too. I just write my thoughts and I realize they are so scattered. I don’t know what’s going on in my head half the time. I feel like you could understand my mess, but then again maybe not. No one ever really knows someone do they?

       This song is distracting me now, and I can no longer hear the birds. I think I miss the silence. I wonder what I’m missing like Noel, but now the song is over so I don’t have to linger on these thoughts. My bird died today. Well he wasn’t really mine, but I tried to save him. Poor guy fell out of his nest three times. You know that nest above my balcony? I climbed up and placed him back in like the internet told me, but no luck, he just kept falling. Maybe he was being pushed out. I tried really hard to save him. The third fall left him with a cut on his little featherless neck. I came home and he was stiff. Dead. The little guy was like a metaphor for my life. Someone will come home one day and find me dead too. I guess that’s life.

     I tried writing on the train today, but all the Black Hawks fans were hovering over me. 77 years since a Stanley Cup win at home. Woo Freaking Hoo… they made my train ride slower than I would have liked. Annoying. Annoying. Annoying. Saw this kid I went to high school with on the train too, but I didn’t acknowledge his presence even when he sat next to me half way through the ride toward home. Never talked to him then, why start now? Nothing meaningful will come out of it. Plus I already have this idea in my head that I’m better than him, so that will never work.

      There were no packages waiting when I got home. There was no one waiting for me either. I suppose I like my lonesomeness. I like the quiet, but I hate the thoughts that come with the silence. Too many thoughts, and too little strength to deal with them.

     I like your writing. Today I asked you to write me a sonnet. How selfish right? I guess I just desire to be written about. I’m vain aren’t I? It makes me laugh dryly just to think about. I know lots of facts about sonnets too, but I know no one cares about the differences between a Petrarchan sonnet and a Shakespearean one. I care about the lamest things. I care about nothing at all. Lie. I lie to myself a lot. I care about many things. Trivial things. Trifles really. I care too much about too many things and too little people care about me. Lie. I’m sure lots of people care about me, but I have to act as though that’s not true because being sad and lonely is so my aesthetic.

      I love being that girl. I feed off the souls of those who pity me. It’s absolutely fun. My foot has fallen asleep now. I look up at my push pin board and wonder why I have so many post-it notes. One says “write essay, write your essay,” in all caps. Funny how I ignored that and turned in that essay 4 days late. I couldn’t think for days. Another note says “Alone, I am,” I guess that one is still relevant. My favorite is from Cleo. It says “Kill yo self - Cleo” I love that girl. I don’t want to go into detail, but I’ve made her promises I’m not sure I can keep. Or want to keep. I’d have to give up on my own dreams to help her, and I said I would, but I don’t know anymore. I can’t say anything else about it now.

​    The birds are still singing their songs, the cars are still passing by, and I, well I sit here, waiting for something. Maybe you. Maybe nothing. I’m not sure what I wanted to write about today, but this is all that I could produce. Enjoy.