when the moon fell in love with the sun

so i'm back. meaning im gone again. i flew to jordan last week, and these are some things i wrote.

disclaimer: this blog post is very, very edited. let me know if you'd like to read the confidential word document version and your wish is my command.

airports, airports, always airports.

i swear, all i do is leave. i left home to go to college, and i left college to go to DC, and i left DC to go home, and i left home to go to paris, and i left paris to go back to america, and, this morning, i’m leaving america for jordan. i never really come back, because i never go to visit. when i go somewhere, i go to live, to work or go to school, always measured in months, not days. by the time it’s time to “come back,” the place im going back to isn’t home anymore. every time i get comfortable somewhere, i leave- not forever, just long enough that when i come back, nothing is familiar, and i am an alien. what if i could just manage to stay somewhere where all my values and routines weren’t challenged and exploded every moment? i don’t know what i’d do. i guess i’m a brancher.

i am flying to jordan today. i am what? flying to jordan. well, i’m supposed to be, that is, whenever united airlines gets their shit together. i’m at gate 95 of SFO, at the bottom of the escalator, maybe 6 rows back. i’ve been scoping out this guy across from me; he’s studying an al-kitaab book. must be in my program. there’s only 3 of us going from california, funny that i spotted him.

17:47 (according to my computer, set to california time)

iron and wine - naked as we came

sweet, sweet and low, little girl. i saw you like the sun coming up from space. space. im halfway to space, halfway to the moon. and we’re flying over new york city, and no one down there can feel us, up here, flying, like a whale in the deepest part of the ocean. we might as well be jupiter, once you’re 40,000 feet up, what’s a few more stories?

jupiter, what is jupiter?

and there’s the ocean beneath us, no land in between for people to stand on. just air and water, natural deities we’ll never hope to conquer. we’ll only ever conquer nature the way men think they conquer women: blindly, greedily, and not at all.

and im not ready. i’m so not ready. but i keep remembering that of course im not ready, i never could have been ready, no one ever would have been ready, you weren’t ready the last time either. the point is not to be ready. i keep remembering, in flashes almost, that i didn’t plan to change in paris, that i didn’t plan to lose and find and recreate myself in 10000 different ways, that it just happened. and it will happen again. i’ll find friends that i love, and places i’ll always plan to go back to, and pieces of life that i never knew were anywhere. and i’ll be outraged, and angry, and heartfelt, and exhausted, and overjoyed, and never the same again. i thought it was weird the first time, going away to study in paris, embarking on a year that everyone said would change my life. i always said i’d never done anything that i knew beforehand would change me; either i had made a conscious decision to be someone different in a specific way, or it had always just happened to me. trust me, it’s even stranger now, now that i know how much bigger this will be than i’d ever imagined.

i’m going to be a giant. and i’m afraid i’ll never find any other giants who know what i mean.

be brave, eat well, write often, she says. i might cry.

i read daisy's letter again, i also read it this morning, before i left. cried. copied and pasted to the desktop so i could read it on the plane to jordan. wait, here. here. i copied and pasted it so i could read it here, where i am now.

she says wake up, it’s no use pretendin’... this is the first day of my life. i swear i was born right here in the doorway. im always in a doorway.

we’re over the ocean now, there’s nothing out the airplane window but black. cold and air and water and fish and organisms and molecules and pressure formations and clouds and currents and wind and oil spills and giant squids and sailors’ bones and silent planets and shipwrecks and all i can see is black. the window might as well be ink on a page up close. and i keep seeing that light out in the distance, about as high up as we are, and hoping it’s a friend? but really it’s just us. the only thing we find in the reflection of the black is the echo of ourselves.

maybe giant squids and silent planets and shipwrecks are all the same. maybe shipwrecks are all there is.

maybe we’ve been chasing our reflection this whole time.

19:58, according to my clock, which is still trapped in california. ironically, it’s still got a 24-hour clock setup leftover from paris. funny.

bright eyes- first day of my life.

so, that other boy- kevin, it turns out- and i are now writing arabic notes back and forth to each other. funny what 7 hours on a plane can change, haha. we’ve already written several notebook pages. pretty hot and heavy, i know.

he seems nice enough. said my handwriting was pretty. careful, laura, this is how it always starts. haha, it’s so funy that that’s true. you’ve no idea how many declarations of undying love have been the ultimate result of a compliment to my penmanship.

i need to get better hobbies. or something.

so with this person, i am exploring the familiarity phenomenon. you know, how when you’ve known someone well for a long-ish time, you remember the first time you saw them and you don’t recognize them, even in your memory? i wonder how i’ll feel about "kevin" (i know him so little that his name is still in quotes) in 4 months. hwo knows?

but i think that’s why i feel the way i do about tourism. to me, seeing something once doesn’t count. it’s the second time, the re-seeing, that is important, i think. there’s something very important to us about familiarity, and i don’t know what it is, or how it works, but it’s there. i think that’s really interesting. god, brains are amazing.

and it’s weird to me, familiarity, because i’m realizing that all the people i’m about to meet are going to have burned into their memory the first time they see me. like i remember daisy, delirious and ranting in a yellow and black dress, maybe? about how the aepp staff had woken her up like 2378569874 times to move the beds around. and snapdragon and how she didnt want to awkwardly cut in line. and ander and how he didnt talk ever. how i remember people introducing themselves and thinking totally uncalled-for things about them, right or wrong. not in a bad way, i mean im not superjudginggirl, but i mean who did i think i was to believe i could know anything about them? and im realizing that all these things im unsure of are things that people will attribute to me, to my self, they’ll see my new earring and be unable to imagine me without it, like daisy’s short hair. god i cant believe she's gonna have long hair. i secretly hope it never grows back.

should i have edited that?

but here i am, with clothes i’ve never worn and an earring i bought 4 days ago, and giant crazy-colored headphones. people are going to secretly assume i’ve looked like this for years, and not even they will know it. that’s so interesting. they’ll know the changes in me before i ever see them, and they’ll never know the difference. jesus, that’s weird.

21:35 california time

panic at the disco- when the day met the night

always golden in the sky, always golden when the day met the night.

i’m officially excited. i don’t know why it takes me until the plane flight there to be excited to go somewhere, but i am. and really, do you want to know the reason? it’s sad. i’m excited because i looked at the itinerary, and i don’t really have to do much of anything today. HA. ok by that i mean i have to arrive in amman at 12:30 jordanian time, which will be 2:30 am in california and 6billion o’clock in my brain. then i have to change $50 in US dollars to jordanian dinars (called JD’s, which i love. my currency will be a typical name for a sweethearted, misguided, 14-year-old asshole main character on some 90s nickelodeon show. could not possibly be better). then, after that (or maybe before), i have to, excuse me, buy a visa so i can actually live in jordan. i have to make it through passport check with my sketch emergency passport, hoping no one notices that MINE IS A STICKER. then i have to acquire my bags and try to meet up with my program people in the “arrival lobby”. which i will be easily able to find... somehow. BUT, that said, after that, we’re just going to our hotel and our job is to chill out until tomorrow. thus, i am excited. because i am really happy to meet people, and be in jordan, and take a nap. everything i want.

i wonder how people will feel about me in jordan. i wonder how people will react to a strawberry-blonde, green-eyed california girl with a weird ear piercing, a stuffed giraffe, and an affinity for flipping people off.

my dad suggested today that perhaps i should dye my hair? i don’t think so. i mean, if in the future i work in the middle east, and that is a necessity, i will do so. but this time, this time, i feel, needs to be a collision, between me—as i see myself—and a totally different culture. this time needs to be a crash, and an apology, and a melding, and a melting, and a nuclear explosion caused by the chemical reaction of laura with jordan—whatever those two things really are.

p.s. really good flying song is iron and wine’s cover of such great heights. god.

and im watching the people on the tv screen 2 feet from my face, and they’re screaming. they are having a crisis, i don’t know what about. but there they are, screaming at each other, and cars screeching around corners, and explosions, and guns. and all silent. i’ve been watching them, silently shrieking, for hours, and all i hear is iron and wine. it makes them sadder, i think. can we also please refer to the deaf-mutes in sitt marie rose? it’s easy to pretend pain is nothing when you can only see someone scream. it’s no wonder they danced when she died. they danced to the vibrations of the bombs, and every abstract mutilation they inferred. what made her any different? it’s no wonder.

everything looks perfect from far away, come down now. but we’ll stay.

2:16 california time. flight number to, headed to amman

the same people are having the same issues on this flight’s tv screen as the last one. it’s unfortunate that the people include shia labeouf. poor boy, i’ll never take him seriously.

and wine with lunch/ dinner/ midnight snack. no. big. deal. and i’m starting to be really excited, and really confident. i mean, i keep stressing this, but honestly? i’ve never done something like this badly. it will be awesome. i will make it awesome. i will sing songs and make people stare and laugh a lot and read in arabic. and maybe it’s the wine, or maybe it’s the 2am sunshine, but i’m really, really happy to be going to jordan.

so i just read that for the first time, and i have concluded that i am a crazy person.

turns out i didnt take a nap when i got there- oh wait HERE, we went out and smoked argila instead. i do not know how to spell argila in english. sheesha for those of you who are confused. the shia laboeuf movie was fine, i was forced to actually watch it after my computer died and the plane decided that i wanted to watch it a THIRD time. jordan is great, i love it. lovelovelove it. i promise i will upload pics when i get the internet next. which will hopefully be soon. stories will follow regarding a bedouin kidnapping, serious taxi issues, my new 2 living rooms, and the CRAZY underground nightlife in amman. but now i haveto get out of here and back to my internet-less home. i love you all and i miss you.dont forget me?

love.