adrift_etc

It's been three weeks since I've come to the Mainland and started galloping thoroughbreds. It's gone fast (duh). This is a completely different kind of riding than I'm used to, and I keep falling down. Every day we start around 7.15, and finish up by 14.00ish, at which point I hasten myself to the dog park and then go immediately to bed. I have 0 hobbies.

Actually, I've been reading poetry in the bath. Not a hobby? Drat.

I've been wrestling with this sort of existential discontent or this feeling like the disturbed dust of life is about to settle, and it's time now to decide where. I have three permanent job offers as a professional in the industry, one an unpaid internship type deal (like what I've done since graduating Highschool), another paid back in Germany, and then continuing with this that I've started doing now, with the fast horses, which pays tremendously. I think if I go to Germany again I will stay there, maybe forever. I think if I ride the fast horses, I will not have many opportunities in the slow horse world again. I think if I take an unpaid position again I'll be broke and 25. Being broke and 24 is enough, thanks.

I thought I'd have a million things to say but I don't.

I've been drinking about 8 cups of coffee a day, usually right away in the morning. I like the routine of making coffee, putting the almond milk in, dipping a bit of dark chocolate in so it melts and sucking lewdly on it.. It's nice to have a bit of time where I know I'll be doing exactly nothing for as long as it takes me to drain the entire pot.



Right so here's some rubbish bubble tea I had in Vancouver. For some reason I was transported on this morning by the quality of the light, the loveliness of going to a diner with friends. I wanted a picture so I'd remember that it was a very good morning. That's all.



Banff Springs. Did not stay at the hotel, did spend a lot of time there. Probably to the detriment of all the guests. They set up a lot of neat rooms with Christmas trees and knicknacks and random beds to lay on while drinking white wine from the bottle all around in the castle. Oh, and avocado toast is 17 dollars at the cafe here??? I have taken a liking to avocado toast, but only when it's free. Why is it so expensive to buy avocado toast?

I've been making a lot of bread. Foccaccia and French bread. Making bread transports me to a 15th century farmhouse, where I am but a lowly peasant girl, delighting in simple human comforts. It's so Good to bake.



Went to this emo drag show with my good mate. It was very very good. I would definitely to go to one of their shows again. We spent a lively night, popped into a fancy bar afterwards for a spot of champagne, and roamed joyfully in the street for a while, dressed like our Middle School Selves. I felt like I'd never grown up at all. ]

I have a new job starting very soon, now, which I'm extremely excited for. I may have burnt out, but now I've taken a long rest and I'm thoroughly BORED. I feel unproductive in my days, and am eager to fill them again. Not that I'm not enjoying my laziness in many ways, but I've been sedentary too long. Unfortunately the weather has turned, and we can't start until the snow clears up. I also will have to live in my car. But! For the first time in my wee pro-rider life, I will be on salary! I imagine that after a little while I'll be able to afford an apartment, but I'm actually excited to convert a van (swapping my car hopefully soon, for more space and sense of adventure) and save as much as I can. I feel like I've caught a good glimpse of what the future will be, and it looks nice.

Need to keep up with writing. I really want to submit to publishers again this year.

oh! Reading comics a lot. Comics are fun.

I want to be busy and change my scenery often. I would like to re-style my house and throw away everything I own.



Here is Chinatown in San Fran. I don't want to spell out the whole world 'Fran - ' because I don't trust myself to spell it. There was a wonderful noodle shop around here somewhere. Otherwise I mostly ate peanut butter from Walgreens and drank wine from a can to sustain my journey. America has some odd energy drinks and a lot of cheap Ferrero Rocher, as well, bless 'em. 


Here are some old puppets that were in the arcade museum. I liked the arcade museum and the bread museum, which was next to it - both were free. 

I bought a new plant because it came on sale with a wee pot. I love a free pot. I did this knowing full well that I have nowhere to put any plants and that some of the ones I already own are sitting forlorn on the floor. Meanwhile my new kitten tries to kill every fern he gets his teeth on. That's retail therapy, baby! 

The end for now. 

I've read some books since coming home and I'm all moved into my flat. Furniture count: 1 couch. Lots of empty carpet space to roll around on. I tried to work my way through A  False Prince on a recommendation, but couldn't stomach it for whatever reason. Did finish The Name of the Wind despite the very Perfect protagonist (so all knowing! Wise! Gifted!) because it was a bit entertaining and I'm very motivated by library due dates. I also read a free book I found in a box in the street in South London called Getting Hurt, which was actually sort-of delightful in a trashy adult romance way, and a bit poetic, and exactly the type of thing I wanted to be reading while I was lounging poolside in my silk robe (thrift shop) with watered down iced wine and a molasses creep of poverty induced anxiety. Now I'm reading Do Not Say We Have Nothing, and that is the best novel I've picked up since Lolita.



I adopted a dog, too. He's the light in my life, Teddy Roosevelt style.

Anyway that's it.

I've moved on from France, after some fun napping in a car park and crying over a croissant in an electronics dealer. The details aren't important.

I've been in London for a good couple of days, looking at all the free museums and spending quality time with the Underground.


My new addiction to showing up to public facebook events has been treating me very well here. I've landed at a BBQ, a great punk show where I discovered some really good bands and met some very good people, and a poetry workshop that was followed by a trip to the pub. I'm a big fan of London busy-ness, the convenience of the tube, and 1£ microwaveable vegetables.


I'm leaving London tomorrow morning, following another punk show tonight. A scout at the last one advised me to see all the shows I could before I leave, because American punk is rubbish (his words), but there aren't very many on Sundays or Mondays, and I think I'm lucky to have found one on a Tuesday.

I'm in a hotel.

Yesterday afternoon, I bid a tearful goodbye to the Germany family and painstakingly dragged my broken suitcase to France. The bus ride was only sometimes boring, impossible to sleep through, and ended in sorrow because my host didn't show up at the bus stop and then stopped answering my texts, leaving me stranded.

At about 21:30 - after like 6 hours of waiting - I caved and got a hotel room, because I feared for my things sleeping on a bench. If only I didn't have all my worldly possessions and loose changes on my person and no bank! but alas, I live another, poorer day.



Anyway, I'm glad this is at least happening in a country that speaks my language. I'm deciding what to do with myself in the morning: try to convince the airlines I've already booked with to shift me ahead so I can leave early, settle for the extent of my planned stay in the cheapest hostel I can find and eat uncooked spaghetti, or howl and drink cheap wine. I suspect I can find some sort of workable compromise.

What I like most about France is definitely the people. The land's quite flat and weirdly sandy.

I have spent more hours listening to podcasts than I have spent sleeping, I reckon. I've also slugged through 20k Leagues Under the Sea, quite enjoyed A Moveable Feast, read a few Tamora Pierce novels and a good chunk of the Young Wizards series, ... I've been consuming media, is what I'm saying.



I had a temporary co-worker from France, and we went on a very quick tour of some nearby sights. This cathedral was behind a plywood door. We also found a lovely gelato place by the river, where Mama forced us to stand in line twice because we both ordered one-scoop on our first pass - completely unacceptable, in the opinion of a grandmother. Next, we took too many free samples from a chocolate shop, and then broke into the garden of a fancy house which we mistook for the courtyard of a historic castle being unfairly hidden from tourist-y eyes. To be fair, the wall had little holes for shooting arrows out of, so they were likely expecting the occasional visitor to come crawling over the top.



Here is the Italian market in downtown Munchen. I had a lot of fun getting lost in Munchen on this day.

 The Iliad and  The Odyssey are both pretty fun. Achilles' devotion to his boyfriend is an inspiring tale of love and tragedy perfect for Valentine's Day. And people think Roméo and Juliette is romantic. 

I went to a market in a small town nearby which was very delightful, albeit arschkalt. I shouldn't have worn converse. I have perfectly good winter boots with fur linings but noooo! Poor circulation or some other such thing has blessed me with hands and feet so frail and easily frozen they may as well not be connected to my central body heat at all for all the good it does. 

So, yeah, the market had frischkäse mit nuß which is something I'd never seen before and it was fantastic. It's soft sweet cheese that I think is related to cream cheese. They also had a nice Gorgonzola, which doubles as a word I learnt recently and a thing I like now. I only ever ate cheese by accident before coming to Germany, but now I sometimes actually want to eat it on purpose, and these are the two kinds of cheeses I want to have on purposest. 

My roomie has gone back to Mexico and I turned 21. 

Anyway, here's a cat on a roof: 


Readings lately:
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer - Adopting Huckleberry Finn has been added to my bucket list. 

Ender's Game: Adopting Ender has been added to my bucket list. (Seriously: I loved the world building, the ending was ganz richtig cool, the dialogue was seriously lacking, some of the concepts weren't satisfactorily fleshed out. I wanted to know more about the 12y/o taking control of political rhetoric via the internet! And then suddenly the aliens can communicate with us through dreams and everything on Earth is *redacted because who fucking cares?*. Hint: I kinda did. So many philosophical questions, so few answers or narrative explorations of those questions.) 

The Idiot: The Prince is probably smarter than me and we've broken the same number of vases.

First, some quick photos from daily life here in Bavaria -

A nice snowman spotted at the restaurant where we went for drinks after a meeting with the buschreiten club. He looks ready to sweep a floor, so we have some things in common.

One of many cathedrals/churches we've visited while touring christkindmarkts around Germany and Austria.

I've started listening to podcasts and audiobooks while I work, which has been just lovely. The University of France offers mini-courses about 4 hours long (mostly on history and religion), and I've been enjoying those along with some CBC programmes. But the best has been getting through some books!

I. The Golden Compass: an exciting, interesting read which I missed as a child, but enjoyed very much now as an adult. I liked the language, the 'found family' aspect, as Lyra's parents turned out to be rather awful, and the complex characters. Best of all, I liked the descriptions of play. Lyra's battles around the college with the other children were important fun that triggered no small amount of nostalgia. ... I love children's stories.

II. The Da Vinci Code: I was less impressed by this one. The solutions were obvious, the conclusion was rushed, the characters weren't brilliant. I hated that Sophie was the smartest of the lot, but got shafted more and more as the book went on. It wasn't enough that the Old Boys were proven wrong when they assumed she couldn't help read the language on the note left by her grandfather in British Man's castle. The first description of Main Man was clunky. He's handsome! He's brilliant! He's sort of old but in a handsome brilliant way! He has claustrophobia but it effects nothing for him and never matters to the story at all! Ill admit it got me interested in reading more about the history of religion, but I felt like it was always trying to hold my hand. This book and I had very little chemistry.