Moved

I've moved!  elsaineurope.tumblr.com

Ho Venti Anni

Thinking back to when I wasn’t so numb

when all feeling sent me reeling. 

When I slept so little that the days in a circular haze sent me plummeting into time spent alone at odd hours when it’s too cold. 

I first began to feel when I was fourteen and a sophomore and it was way to warm to be October.

I second began to feel when I was fifteen and lying in my bed I could still see the night starts of the unpolluted midwest sky and love was as simple has holding hands in the dark and a stolen kiss. 

I third began to feel when I realized my potential was more then just being, that the energy in my veins was as layered as classical music, when I started to see that life was bigger and more evil than anything that could be solved. 

The plummeting age of sixteen. The spiraling might of my thighs as I learned to bike quickly. The spiraling might of my mind as I removed windows, created fires, thrashed at my future. As I discovered respect and diligence and weed and splinters and secrets and stories and vodka and loosing and thinking and learning how the morning dew and sunrise over Lake Michigan are all I really need. 

And then seventeen. In school I sleep in any nook I can find as the overwhelming exhaustion of loss and planning make sure my nights are so terrifyingly long. The discovery of what it really means to feel when the days tick by until the end of the things You Think You Know. 

At eighteen I am no longer needing someone else to buy my cigarettes as I swirl through the hours of two, four, five, six, and them I’m in the small dark room listening to the gurgle of a fountain. I don’t write poetry anymore, it is written for me. 

Nineteen and I am utterly alone, cradled in sweat and curls sticking to my too hot from dancing face. Surrounded by women who now are girls who see me when I come home from a run crying. I enter deep into my mind and discover an insaitable darkness, a dark force pulling me further and further away from any semblance of hope as my thinking goes overtime. As I tumble back into the familiar grooves of summer and wonder and suddenly everything clicks as I hold onto sugary skin on an August night in the middle of Lake Michigan and know that though I thought I belonged only to myself, there are pieces in my past that are shared, places too known to be owned by just one. 

Ho venti anni and I’m watching my silouette passing the peed-on walls of a city that knows cruelty and divine inspiration.  The moon is three days waning and I’m noticing that I have been born on a sacredly loaded day, 3, and therefore I can never, ever, ever, feel complete. Not until I know il padre, il figlio, et il sancto spirito. 2, 2, 2, overlaping with 3, in a space prefectly creating just me. 

On the Road

"They danced down the streets like dingledodies, and I shambled after as I've been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles"

- Jack Kerouac

I'm reading On the Road.  Its one of those books that I think I would get more out of if I was constantly high/drunk/taking acid because the whole thing gets sort of repetitive in a somehow profound way. 

True

from www.johnnysbird.com, check it out the photography is wonderful.

MmmHmm - Flying Lotus

your music is haunting me
trailing my ears, like the last trace of the Los Angeles dusk
spinning through my head and taking me places imagined and concrete
pushing me through the moments

when I cried in bed with you on my birthday
because I was so fucked up that I could no longer play the happy girl
or
through rinsing your eye on my bathroom sink
after the black glitter had come peeling off my face
or
jazz dancing to a swing band
pretend sophistication punctuated by drugs
or
slumped in a golf cart to avoid you and stories of my spring break,
the question on everyones' lips that night
or
the Coachella rain
giving me the clarity to say what I had known
or
you lying on my lap on the fountain
as I tried desperately to be someone I could not

I dreamed of you last night, calm, serene,
until the memory of you became so volatile that I
woke up at five in the morning and wondered
when my day would really ever start.

it is easier to simply sleep on your shoulder than in a double bed
with high thread count sheets and perfect darkness and four pillows
where no one is holding my ribcage
and when my little dog trails her paw on my back
I think back to the last night we sat on a bench in north quad
and know
that its not nothing but its not something

I should have stayed. It was 3:30 in the morning and I just left you
kissing the hollow of your bicep first
partly to prove I could be cruel
but mostly
because I couldn't bear to find out what a real goodbye would look like.

now all I want is your freckly shoulders
and to run my fingers through your hair
and down to your collarbone
where I'll pay with your St. Andrews necklace until I have the courage to look into your eyes.

Eat

Weekly Motto

in the second bathroom

the hum of the fan numbs the panicked rapidity of

my chemically altered heart

as the tears tear through my waterproof eyeliner

forming ridges on my fat face. 

the halogen light is so penetrating

that the only place I can travel to is

the Getty

and CabInn in Aarhus

Coachella

it happened

the Suburbs

"It’s in the suburbs that there is vitality, deception, depression, energy, utopia, autonomy, craziness, creativity, destruction, ideas, young people, hope, fights to be fought, audaciousness, disagreements, problems, and dreams. It’s in the suburbs that today’s big issues are written on the building facades. It’s in the suburbs that today’s reality can be grasped, and it’s in the suburbs that the pulse of vitality hurts" - artist Thomas Hirschhorn

Fufillment

"What's something you do everyday that makes you feel fulfilled?"
___

I've been fairly depressed the last few days.  I have skipped out on parties (including 90's and funk music parties, two favorites), hooking up with smart and gorgeous a cappella men from Oxford University, and class because I have been feeling so low. The inside of my mouth has been chewed until it has bled, and inside of my stomach has become a garbage pit for everything I see.  I seem to be on a rampage of negativity, until a friend from high school just randomly texted me the above statement a few minutes ago.   This is the problem: I do not feel fulfilled.  But I can be.

Something I do everyday that makes me feel fulfilled:
I give thanks for good things in the day before I go to bed.

Things I do sometimes that make me feel fulfilled:
1. Go on a really long and hard run
2. Pause and drink really good coffee slowly
3. Make someone whose sense of humor I respect laugh
4. Dance to good music well and completely freely
5. Have someone respect my opinion (academically or socially)


I'm so glad she texted me, because I have been feeling completely unfulfilled this week.  I really need to focus on what makes my days fulfilled and do more of what really makes me happy.

Balloons

This amazing project from three Chicago artists really resonates. Wether silly or serious, something about deflated balloons is just so cool. 

L.A.

From L.A., Again

Flow

         I was thinking today on what being a rider has meant to me. The physical risk when horseback riding is very high.  Falling off a horse while jumping could result in broken bones, paralysis, and death, as well as a host of other more minor injuries.  Yet when horseback riding, I am extremely focused.  My entire body and mind is focused on the horse, the movement, and the jump. I am completely united with the horse, completely in sync with it’s movements. I have to be, otherwise I will not make the jump and put myself and my horse in a dangerous situation.  

Jumping is certainly high stress.  I panic almost every single time I get on the horse.  But the feeling of successfully clearing a jump, and knowing that you did it in a thrilling partnership with a 1,000 lb animal is so exciting.  The pound of the hooves as you approach the jump, the tangible excitement and release you can fell in your thighs through the horses powerful shoulders, the white noise of air whooshing through your hair, all keep you completely present in the moment. 

I would say it has definitely contributed to character growth.  When I fail, or the horse is uncooperative, it is very easy to get frustrated.  The dust in the ring is hot a heavy, I am sweating from the physical exertion, and my helmet is frying my head. The fear I experience riding must be conquered, I must retain a level head and a calm disposition, or the horse will react negatively to my vibes and nothing will be accomplished.  Therefore, in other high stress situations in life, I am never the one to freak out. I find myself frequently calming others down, as I “retain my cool” very easily. In addition, when I fall off a horse, usually I am experiencing physical pain.  But I must mentally push past it, remount, and continue practice.  On one occasion, after a particularly bad fall, I remember reaching over my shoulder and feeling blood coming through my sports bra and shirt.  But instead of letting the fear consume me, I got back on the horse, even more determined to complete the jump.  While cantering around the ring, I could not even feel my back, because I was so mentally focused on getting over the jump. If I let a bad situation (i.e. a naughty horse) get the best of me, I have given up.  The fact that I will be in great physical pain if I do not completely focus forces me to push everything out of my mind except for the act of completing the jump. The feeling of satisfaction after successfully completing a jump is worth the pain I must put out of my mind to complete it. When I am in the saddle, nothing else matters, I am completely present, working with the horse in an extraordinary activity. 

Pictured: my early days of riding, circa 2006

Different

One of my earliest memories is putting together a puzzle of a bear.  My parents thought I was ready for Jr. kindergarden when I was 3, and so I took an entry test to get into the school district a year early. I think this was the first stressful situation I had ever encountered, and that's why I remember it.  I was alone in the room with the test administrator, and though I didn't really get what was going on, I knew that there were high stakes attached to the puzzle.

So I started school early, and I believe this is the moment that propelled my individuality for the rest of my life.  I was "special." I also remember that kids thought it was cool that my parents were actors, which bled into me doing some minor commercial work   They thought my parents shot blockbusters and mingled with movie starts, not that they headed to work at 6 and didn't return until midnight, and all the host of irregular problems that accompany not having consistent work.  So I was different because I was younger than everyone, and because my parents (and I) acted.

Ten years later, when I was 12, at the crux of awkwardness in 7th grade, I had spinal surgery and was out of school for two months.  I was not allowed to do any physical activity for a year, which further isolated me from my sporty peers.  Already a wisp, I lost so much weight from the surgery that sitting for a prolonged time hurt my butt, because it was so bony. All I wanted was for my Abercrombie jeans to be tight, but even a childs size 14 slim was baggy on my poor legs. So my physicality differentiated me.

Today, I revel in the fact that I'm different.  Different from what? Everyone is so different, is there some kind of spectrum of otherness?  I was thinking about my "otherness" because I have been going out a lot alone lately, and noticing it.  I like being alone, I like dancing alone at concerts, I like eating lunch alone with a book, I like taking walks alone. I like myself more than I like other people.

Of course this has to relate to something romantic.  I have never been completely enthralled with someone because I have never found someone weird enough, someone equally odd, someone that matches me in otherness and is equally as fascinating as I find myself.  I realized this last night.  (I have felt this way towards one person, and the feeling was mutual, but our story was not meant to unfold, and maybe it's more romantic that it didn't.  True romance occurs when there is no ending, when the story continues unfulfilled and in limbo).

It is completely and utterly egotistical, I realize this. I have analyzed myself and placed myself in an "unobtainable" category, except for if someone happens to be a kook.  It's selfish.  But it's true.  I know myself very well, and have not found anyone that somehow parallels my "otherness."  So for now I will continue to enjoy my time with myself.

Too Introspective

Americans are forever searching for love in forms it never takes, in places it can never be. It must have something to do with the vanished frontier. - Kurt Vonnegut

Sexy

And This Sums Up My Weekend

Try to tell me how to do it
Only because I'm new to it
Coolness is having courage
Courage to do what is right
I'll try to remember always just to have a good time

Try to show me that you know me
Do you know what coolness really is?
Winning is what you want to
Winning what you're scared to go for
You try to remember always to have a good time

Try and have a softer inside
Shut up, boy, and be a soldier
Coolness is having courage
Courage to do what's right
And try to remember always just to have a good time

Winning is what you want to
Winning what you're scared to go for
And try to remember always to have a good time

Lazy Friday

My Italian class this morning was cancelled, so I took the opportunity to hop on over to the Santa Monica Pier, which is always a surreal experience.  I spent the rest of the day eating a massive amount of frozen yogurt and seeing Summer Twins and Native Thieves, both bands I had previously never heard of but that turned out to be pretty solid.  Cheers to the weekend!

Winter

Sometimes I'm super into the romance of winter.  Walking my dogs this morning in the gently falling snow was magical.

Weekend

I spent the weekend in Lawrence University hanging out with the nut pictured above.  I went up with my two best guy friends, and had possibly the bro-iest time ever.  I will miss (observing) games like Detonator and consistently being the butt of jokes once I return to the land of women.