threeplusfire | how did it come to this

I realized the other night that it has been just over two years since I started my livejournal, bored and restless in my office late in the final days of dotcom excess. This is the longest single span in my life that I have kept a journal of any kind, and I think much of that has to do with the ease of typing and the pleasure of formatting it nicely into html pages. The fascination in reading other journals may also contribute.

I am twenty two years old, though sometimes I forget and have to count backwards. I have a degree in Czech, and a half dozen pairs of shoes, and still no job. I have seen The Two Towers four times so far, and I'm certainly going again at least once of twice before the year falls past. I can not count the number of times I have seen Fellowship of the Ring, but I find myself caught each and every time. It's been a good year for movies, The Piano Teacher being a notable exception.

The year is winding down, and I have a love-hate relationship with this part of the year. It is my darkest and brightest hour, because while the days are often short, winter in Texas is more often than not a bittersweet affair, days of endless sky and chill sunshine on the grass. It is this season that imprints itseslf most clearly on my mind, because I always seemed to fall in love in the wintertime, or to realize I was in love.

In this year, I fell in love, and it was such a liberating thing to realize I could be in love without having to give up myself. Or even to do anything really.

I think I fell for him walking in the streets of Prague, but it was not until we were having lunch together and drinking coffee and buying wine late at night in the grocery store that I knew for certain. He's quite possibly one of the most intelligent people on this planet. The mix of darkness and light in a person creates a shifting blend of color, and in Gene it's something like the way the sun looks at seven in the morning on an empty Prague street, sharp and clear and sliding over old stone. I don't think I will ever meet anyone else quite like this, like recognizing something from a dream.

There was another, as well. I have a friend who has grown from an acquaintance and email address to one of the few people I feel the desire to be utterly honest with about the words in my head. She makes me want, and dream, and I wish she would hurry and become King of the World so I can be her general and command armies to drive those who would stand against us into the sea. Because we should live in worlds that cross over into this one, and a thousand lives would not be enough. Reive is luminous, and I don't think I know anyone else so brave and foolish as to put caps on her cats' nails.

So many lives intersect here, and I have grown to know many of you here much better in the past year. These friendships I am glad to have, even if I have never touched your hand, or seen you only briefly during my travels.

I find it darkly amusing to know I had to fly thousands of miles this summer to realize how much I loved the people close to me.

My degree should arrive anyday in the mail, this piece of paper that says I know something. My entire life, from those earliest days of reading and wonder, has been aimed at this single desire, and now that I have it I am somewhat at a loss. I do not know what I want now. Or rather, I want so much that I can not see my path.

That is something I struggle with every day, and has only grow clearer in recent years. I want far more than one person is allowed, I want a hundred lives to live over and through, all the choices and permuatations of the soul to be mine to explore. The stories in the back of my mind take their own lives and drift in my dreaming, everything I have been and could be.

In the past year, I have seen so many things. I make more of an effort now to focus on the joys, great and small. The night we bought a grill and made steaks at midnight, drinking wine and listening to music until we fell asleep on my bed at six in the morning. Driving to Houston in the dark with the windows rolled down, talking and singing into the night. Hours in a dim coffee shop where all my loves have passed through, playing cards and writing unsent letters in notebooks, a hundred cigarettes balanced on my fingers. The beauty of the Czech country, tall trees and stone, and cathedrals soaring up from centuries. That moment in the airport when I knew I was home. The smile on my professor's face, the relief when that damned play ended and the curtains closed on us. Visiting the Little House and sitting in the hot tub talking and feeling like growing up might not be so bad after all. Walking blocks and blocks, sitting on the steps of the Met in New York City, and marveling at the fact that I was sitting in the Richard Rogers watching a play. The taste of ice cream in different cities, the smiles of friends old and new, airplanes and cars and just being alive.

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"There were times when it appeared to Dorian Gray, that the whole of history was merely a record of his own life, not as he had lived it in act and circumstance, but as his imagination had created it for him, as it had been in his brain and in his passions. He felt that he had known them all, those strange, terrible figures that had passed along the stage of life and had made sin so marvelous and evil so full of subtlety. It seemed, that in some mysterious way, their lives had been his own."

I've always loved that passage, and indeed it is exactly what the moment asks for.

(I do get to be the General, yes? I mean, who else do you know with an obsession with weapons and a mean hand at Risk?)

You get to be the general.

And that passage in particular is delivered so brilliantly in VG. Just made me see it in a whole new way.

You are very cool.I would gladly put you in my army,if I had one.(See the green guy in my icon?HE'S going to have an army.)And I'm glad to see there's someone who likes The Two Towers more than me (I loved it.)
I had a discussion with some other guy on lj who saw it...he was just like,"it was boring,it sucked,it was just a bunch of stupid special effects."Of course,taste is subjective,but it is my opinion that anyone who feels this way after seeing it is evil and has no heart.
By the way,you seem a lot older than 22.I mean that in a GOOD way,you just seem more mature and thoughtful than most people would be at 22.

Thank you. It's why I honestly forget sometimes how old I am, because I was never really treated as being a child or my age, and I started college at 17 and people just assumed I was much older. My grandmother would just say it's because I have manners. Heh.

And honestly, I don't see how anyone could not love that movie. It's such a simple story, retold in such a beautiful way.

How wonderful and moving this post was. I'm so glad to have found you, dear, and I look forward to the new year with you in my life.

Thank you. It is good to know people who work so hard with their words. I hope this next year brings you more stability and that your plans come to glorious ends.

ahh, reading your journal has always been such a treat. i'm so glad to have 'met' you!

Thank you muchly. I have enjoyed your cards. :)

Yes yes, more!

And FIRE! Mwuhahaha.

My great-grand parents were from the Ukranian and immigrated
to the United States at the turn of the next to last century.
My grandparents on my mother side grew up in this country
so I never got to hear stories when I was little of the Ukran-
ian because my great-grandparents had already passed away.
Would love to get the chance to travel through Russia, and
see Moscow one day. Your life sounds like an epic novel.

You know, I frequently joke that my life is one unending Twilight Zone episode. I think if it were a novel the reviewers at the NY Times would say "What is she thinking, this is nuts!" ;) But thank you for the compliment.

I do hope you get a chance to see the place you were from one day. I think that kind of thing is important.

how did it come to this

this in inadequate, but apt, and will do for now

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Russia

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