live via: morningside heights, nyc

and so i have found that regardless of the coast that i am on, i still find myself up as the night melts into itself. weary as i may be, it seems that the more i travel, the less i get used to the time shifts...i feel like the last couple of trips have hit me with the most intense jetlags of my life!

but regardless of the massive amount of meetings, waiting for trains, hopping around with our bulky luggage, all i can think about lately is writing it all down. i suppose it's a good thing, especially since it was only a few weeks ago that i was in my ridiculously long slump, unable to belch even a sentence onto paper that could do justice for what i had on my mind. it's a tireless struggle, really, to find the balance in which you're setting aside enough time and energy to write about your life, but also living enough life to have something to write about. for the past month or so i've been writing my ass off, but now in the big city, constantly surrounded by people, i've realized that my little seclusion has left me incredibly awkward around people.

flashbacks of middle school. when i was antisocial and glancing at the bench of popular kids, how conversation shot so wetly from their sure lips, while my attempts for any type of social interaction ran rampant in abrupt comments that didn't sound like what i meant, or horrible social experiments with words and lingo surrounded by stutters.

this trip has hurled me back into the public, wide-eyed and gawking at just how arduous of a task it is to be slick, witty, charming, personable and interesting during live personal conversation, all while making sure to not work up a disgusting reserve of foam at my lips, which i tend to do when nervousness leaves me cottonmouthed. since the beginning of the year i've found a comfortable existence as a homebody, breaking bread with familiar folks, content with the lack of new face to face interactions. there's a lot less pressure in coming up with something smart to say when you get to double, triple-read your passages before you send them off into the universe. not like contrived interaction, fishing for topics of discussion, being self-conscious about maybe talking about yourself too much, words being misinterpreted because of their placement in sentences, lack of context, and folks just not understanding, yadidai?

i really hope i'm not (d)evolving into one of those weird writers. you know, those writers you hear about whose social networks are limited to the confines of the characters they create, the scenes they set. retreated to the back corner of a musty office with a wastebasket of crumpled balls of sentences that didn't work, metaphors that didn't connect. shudder at sunlight, screaming for intruders to leave with a fervor fit only for dictators and divas. please god don't let me become one of them, so caught up in their way with words that human interactions become nothing but potential writing prompts.

please don't let it be. there are too many beautiful people that i have yet to meet, cherish, learn, love, find understanding of my self in. frustrations with juggling third tongue still run supple as i shuffle through all my past conversations where i wish i did what i didn't and didn't what i did. at times, i just have to heave it from my lungs, as an "oh well what happened happened" sort of thing. meanwhile, snippets of nina simone continue to ring true. oh lord, please don't let me be misunderstood...