I really miss Yeller. He's gone for six months to the States, just to wander around. He's got a few places that he knows he wants to go to, but other than that he's just following his nose through various punk communities. It sounds completely awesome, but I do miss him a lot. When he was here we would talk on average 3-4 times a week. Now, if we manage to pull off one Skype convo in a week and a half that's good.

When we Skyped the other day he told me that he was thinking of cutting his trip short. This didn't come as a huge surprise to me because a couple of years ago when he was doing the same sort of trip in Europe I got the same sort of phone call. He loves what he's experiencing and the people he's meeting, but he misses having a social community around him. He loves traveling but at the same time feels "traveled out". This time he said that he's been thinking about his future and realized that he needs to make long-term plans (specifically about re-entering some academic framework), and in order to make those plans he needs to come back.

God knows I can identify. We're both introverts and deeply nerdy- like him, it's hard for me to make friends, and we both get comfort from books. I don't take my friendships- the real ones- for granted. They've been around for years and the people I have them with are extraordinary. With all due respect to the romance of being a citizen of the world, it's hard just packing up and starting fresh, building those relationships- that safety net- up again from scratch. It's lonely thinking of most if not all of your relaitonships as here till they're gone. I want to do a second degree, and I know that the single greatest obstacle is going to be the fear of being in a new city by myself. I've traveled a great deal, I'm good at picking up languages and understanding social cues (at least enough to not fuck up too badly)- but it's still very hard.

It's kind of depressing, all in all. We're both deeply ambivalent about this place we're in, which is a very polite way of saying that we feel ill on a daily basis at what goes on here. He's much more active politically than I am, and even he's ready to cut and run at this point. But he keeps coming back, and I never leave. It's getting to be kind of a joke at this point- I go on and on about all the different things I hate about being here, and eventually the person I'm talking to says, "Well, go then! Nothing's keeping you here!" And nothing really is, in the sense of school/army service etc. Financially, it probably wouldn't be that difficult to leave. But it's not that simple, and the thought of actually being stuck here just from the inertia of having stayed is..unsettling, to say the least.

I miss him so much. I know that he's having a ball and I wish him all the best in the world, but even so I wish he was back here in this horrible place, so we could watch zombie movies together and gossip. Skype's just not the same.

Yeller and I seem to have passed through the phase of being attracted to each other and moved directly into AwkwardLand. We keep making bad jokes in slightly-too-loud tones of voice at each other and are avoiding physical contact entirely. It's weird, but I'm pretty sure it'll pass. We're good friends, we'll figure it out.

I am at work, and on so few hours of sleep that every few minutes my eyes just gently drift shut. And I'm running on tired-logic: when you tell yourself that it makes sense to keep your eyes shut unless you hear the clacking of heels in the hallway. This is the kind of logic that ends up with me not impressing my boss. I am wondering if I can get away with sneaking out early and going to nap for a few hours before meeting Hill to work on that paper together. Probably not.

There is something really satisfying about skinning your knee at my age. "I was wrestling with Yeller on the roof and skinned my knee on some asphalt". I seem to have accumulated quite a few scrapes and cuts, more than usual even for me. Burned my arm on the iron. Cut on my thigh, also from the iron. Blisters on my ankle (sandals and sweat) and a bruised wrist (also from wrestling). And my red, weepy puffy eye: perfect for grossing people out.

What I'd really like to do is shave my head and wear hiking boots forever.