Ruminations on Balance

There is nothing much to report, unfortunately, and yet I'm desiring an update here anyway. Such are the pitfalls of egocentrism (oooo, what a word). I found myself, after a terrifying night out two days ago, needing a little rest and comfort. I settled in to catch up on some American television and eat some Doritos. As I write that, I cringe a little, and yet it was satisfying and wonderful and oddly fulfilling. I spent the first half or so worrying that I was somehow doing myself a disservice(sp?). I imagined all else that I could be doing, should be doing, would be doing if I had a more refined taste for adventure. How little I've seen. What little I've done. These were the thoughts racing through my mind. So I gave myself a small pep-talk. I told myself to relax. I told myself not to overthink things too much. It was like trying to trick my brain into slowing down. But it worked, in a fashion. The thought was not gone, only sequestered. And I kept a kind of bank of justifications up there in case it made a resurgence. And I relaxed.

There is this notion that I'm trying to fight or rationalize that everything I'm doing now has to be important. As I plan my various trips (Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Paris, Rome), I create this virtual map and imagine all that I'm going to experience, or might, should it fall within my range. This expectation fills me both with anticipation and regret. For Norwich, however interesting (and I really haven't been out enough in the city to say) cannot hold a candle to the imagined ideal of all of these different places. So I exist here almost as a spectre, convinced that experience will hand me something new and fantastic tomorrow. I don't know if this directly affects my behavior exactly. I believe I'm a rather standoffish person to begin with, but it definitely affects my perception. All around, as I'm surrounded by freshman here, I see people indulging in every whim. I remember that feeling. I remember that excitement. I can't be bothered to muster it again, though. And so I at once feel as though I am missing out on something and feel that I am somehow past it. And fuck if my mind doesn't whir at the prospect of such conflicting emotions, grinding them out till they're empty and dry. I liked my night in. I needed it. It was soothing. But is it a result of a passed judgment of this place, or of a desire to be removed from it in some way? I'm unsure.

I talk in circles. I make little sense. I apologize. I think, only, that I need to strike up some kind of balance. I need to both find roots here and not lose the magic of the notion of being a "lone traveller." This proves itself difficult, a challenge for me.

Anyway, I'll leave you with the first paragraph of "The Drifter," so far. I don't know about it, whether it seems too obvious or even too clunky, but it opens up a lot of possibility:

This had been a long time coming.
As the man sat in the small, blue floral kitchen and the smoke from his first cigarette in eight months curled lifelessly in indistinct spirals above him, the room appeared to him, suddenly, without doors or windows. He looked across to the far corner where he was sure there had been an entry to the living room only moments ago, but the lilacs of the wallpaper stretched, with apparent life and ill-intention, over a full block of wall. Above the sink, where once there had been windows, still more of these flowers bunched in on one another, first lightly and then with distinct violence. All around, the flowers seemed to carelessly expand and multiply, their pale green stems grappling with one another, as thin spindly arms, struggling to retain what little space they held. The walls moaned and bent under the apparent weight of the growing blue mass. As the lilacs blotted out the remaining inches of the paper’s dull yellow background, a pall of silence fell on the scene. Even the man’s own sharp, nervous gasps were left voiceless in his throat. There was a palpable tension, an anticipation of what was to come now that the lilacs had won their war with the walls, stretching them to the bursting point of a helium-filled balloon. Only when this tension was fully exhausted, could a small pop be heard as a single lilac sprouted and bloomed forth from the center point of the straining wall opposite him.