Fonder or Forgetful?

No one makes me happy like he does. Or so miserable, arguably. If some younger girl asked you "what is love like?" Would you be the French actress from Coco Before Channel and say "ça fait mal," or the mother from that cheesy Casa Nova movie and say "It's like good weather every day, even when it's not."

How can something eventually develop to this level of value and preciousness in your life with not also brining with it a stinging fear of losing it? The Dali Lama said in some pocket size gift book somewhere: 

On a plane ride I had the pleasure of tasting a particularly delicious and special chocolate. It was the most wonderful and luxurious sweet I had ever tasted, and I will not forget the pleasure of eating it. However, should I never have the opportunity to taste it again, I will remain content; having had the good fortune of tasting it the one time. 

Doctor Seuss actually said the same thing with "don't be sad that it's over, be glad that it happened."

All this wisdom and I still don't see how anyone can go on blithely with so much to lose.

My beloved went back to France two weeks ago after 5 with me and my family here in Hawaii. We could have had better weather and he seemed to have been allergic to my parent's house, but all in all things went well and I relished having him home, in my arms on sandy beaches and in my bed in the cold mountain nights. I'm not going back until October, staying in the islands for my brother's wedding. Two months of wondering how much time and distance a relationship can take. Any advice on staying happy in long distance situations? Is the hen in Robbin Hood right when she says "Absence makes the heart grow fonder!" -or Maid Marian when she says forlornly out the window, "or forgetful!" 

A Chance for Escape

The new blogger layout is actually discouraging me from posting. Very unpleasant. 

The news of the month is that I am returning to my island paradise on the 4th of July and I'm taking the best part of France with me. That's right, thanks to my favorite student travel website, I'm finally living the dream and am taking TMI home with me to meet the parents and the tropical lieu of my naissance. 18 hours of flight time, but who's counting when your lover is there with you, right? 

On the downside, after the chimerical wonder of having my mate in my homeland has expired,I'm faced with the usual "where in the world am I supposed to be?" dilema. France is expensive, lonely, and lets face it, impractical for someone with roots on the opposite side of the globe. Not to mention unhealthy. I can't seem to stop gaining weight here and my boredom and loneliness are heavier each passing day. The signs all point to a more normal settling ground, which, thanks to my online studies could be just about anywhere, but the human I'm in love with happens to live here, in Dijn, France. Rats. 

Seriously about the getting fat, btw, I was 104 when I left the US a year and a 3 months ago, now I think I'm pushing about 112, roughly a pound a month in this butter cream haven. When I lived in Hawaii or on the West coast it was easy to be a vegetarian, and freedom of mobility as well an employment and same-denomination currency made gym memberships easily attainable. 

But still, I'm thrilled for the coming adventure. Between then and now I have 6 more weeks of Dijon, 3 of which TMI has an internship in the South, so I may get to spend some weekends away. meeeeeh.

Doin' it Distance

I am in love. I mean, crazily deeply in love. I can be jumping and undulating in the gym's "body-jam" class and still, he's the predominant thing on my mind. But like usual, my opening lines aren't what I actually want to talk about.

Yesterday I was trying to have the ever helpful but very frustrating savior of many long distance relationships, Skype-sex. The challenge in this is that my childhood bed is situated squarely under a picture window which also happens to be at the top of the stairs to my family's porch. So the first vision anyone has, human, alien, serial killer, etc, when coming to the house is my helpless form on the bed.

So there I was. Strewn naked below this dangerous window and in the throws of distance love-making when my parents decide to have a lawn-ornament-themed argument on the deck. TMI and I were both trying to bring it on home, so to speak, and I had to suddenly dash under the blankets as either parent stomped by the window 4 or 5 times and bickered in the yard. I got the impression dad was heading up to the garage so I got up to make sure my bedroom door was closed... but he's coming back down! I hit the dirt and slither under my bed until I hear that he has passed. I assume the position with my computer. Mom bursts in and I snatch the covers over my naked body. (Pink and purple tie-dye dildo left uncovered on the edge of the bed.) "Will you hurry up so I can talk to you?!" She yells.

..I think I've had just about enough of visiting the family. Oh private French apartment.. oh weekends spent naked in noisy passionate sex-a-thons.. Did I know how good I had it? Why did I leave again??

p.s: if you haven't all ready, please remember to Fight for the Phoque, and send a message to the Canadian prime minister.

Choose Your Classes Wisely

I may only be home for three weeks, but I've made it my business to shave off the extra five pounds of cheese, croissants, bread butter and bacon I put on it France while I'm here. This means: exercise classes with my mom! Zumba! Body Jam! Spin Class! And several other mildly entertaining and vastly embarrassing endeavors in which you shake and shimmy surrounded by 60 something year old saggy women in hot pink sports bras. This was suiting me all right, actually, and combined with lunch at the health food store buffet every day, I've all ready lost two of the five.

Yesterday, however, I got the afternoon schedule wrong and ended up in body combat: Surrounded by scary, screaming, jumping, flying and kicking muscly sweaty Hawaiian guys. The instructor was the muscly-ist and loudest of all; the sweat was fountaining off him as he instructed us to kill imaginary pirates and ninjas with elbow jabs, back kicks, and the most common, knee-to-face plants. I lasted 45 minutes of the hour class before I felt like I'd burst an artery in my brain. Today I feel like I've been hit by a bus. But now I have ROCK HARD PIRATE KILLING ABS YYYEEEEAAAHHHH!!!!

You Ain't Nevah Had Sushi..

..Until you've had Hawaiian sushi. Teri chicken, water cress, and avocado roll. Article 1 of important things to do while home is now completed.

Acclimating

6am and I'm wide awake, which means that I'm critically jet-lagged. I've been a 10am and beyond sleeper all my life, so this up before the dawn business is nothing to sneeze at.

How bizarre it is to be back in paradise. The re-entry especially. When I paced through Honolulu Airport in my red French ankle boots I don't think I could have looked (or felt) any less like a local. Just the sight of the colorful tropical foliage in the airport courtyards stirred a sharp, nostalgic sensation all throughout me, but it was an uncomfortable, kind of unfriendly one; though it was tugging at memories of my childhood playing around in the Hawaiian underbrush.

Yesterday was my first naked Skype session. Oh glorious technology. TMI and I, despite the better part of the globe between us, had the leisure to lie around naked in bed together for 2 hours this tropical morning and last French night. We even tried Skype sex, but let's face it, the technology isn't quiite where it needs to be for that to be particularly fulfilling. All the same, I walked with a new lightness in my step that's been vacant since I left French soil. God I never knew that I could love so deeply. -And that's saying something because I'm a dramatic wacko.

We Hope You Have a Pleasant Flight

Welp. I've booked my flight back to Hawaii. But I'm determined to be back in France by the beginning of April, at the latest.

So here's the what kind of suffering I just paid several months of rent for: 6 am wake up in the dark cold. 30 min WALK in the dark dragging 50 pounds of luggage to train station over cobblestone, followed by 2 hour train ride to airport in Paris, then 1 1/2 hour plane to London, followed by an 11 hour flight with "student-fare seat." AKA, between two enormous farting fat people with babies. Then? My kitties? My Hawaii homeland? Um, no: a weeklong road trip with my dad on the West Coast. Then, and only then, may I embark on the 6 hour flight over the Pacific Ocean to get me home. The missing flights and dashing around frantically lost in airport nightmares started yesterday morning.

so close, yet so far away! ..actually, just really far away.

The One's Shelf Life

The work visa fell like a stone giant and crushed beneath it lay the quivering remains of my hope for coming back to France. Last night I had to look at TMI and know that we had a finite number of kisses between us; a dwindling number of times I would open my eyes to his in the morning.

Of course, I cried like life was a lost cause long into the night and again this morning. It doesn't help that I'm visiting with TMI's family in the South, wanting to be well liked but sitting silent at each meal with a trembling lip.

Hurled yet again into post-graduate-obscurity. I hate not having a path, and for a few horrific moments I didn't even know what hemisphere I was going to commence my life as a hopeless hobo in.

Fortunately, this afternoon, TMI took a determined eye to the internet and found me some Masters programs I could pursue here in France, assuming that my French were good enough and that I could find the money. There are none in the city of Dijon, so we would only see one another on the weekends, and I wouldn't be starting until September of next year; meaning 9 months of separation.

Does love, realistically, have that sort of endurance? I mean everything has a shelf life, right? This is the one you guys; this is the one I want to make babies with and wake up to every morning. The one and only one I want to kiss before brushing teeth or feel smooshed against me when I'm falling asleep. This is a scary time and I want to know: can I put the One on the shelf, and does it have to hurt this much?

Past Cats and Passed Family Members

Honeybees depend not only on physical contact with the colony, but also require its social companionship and support. Isolate a honeybee and she will soon die.

- The Queen Must Die: And Other Affairs of Bees and Men.

Typing in the cafe where I work, I can see three French girls sitting together outside on the terrace. Each holding a white tea cup and sharing a large pot of tea with honey, I can see them chattering: moving their hands expressively, laughing, leaning a chin on their palm while they listen to one another's stories.

Last night I was overcome with such intense nostalgia that I couldn't sleep. I lay there dissecting memories of childhood, school, past Christmases and beach camp-outs, ice cream cones with girl friends after school and granola in the morning with my dad. I thought about past cats and passed family members, old infatuations and home-town landmarks. In my mind I drove my little car along the main road in my tiny mountain town, trying to recall every roadside detail that once outlined my every day.

I've been gone from all of that for a long time. I haven't had a proper girlfriend since coming to France and I scarcely talk to my closest friends from Hawaii. Yes, I am in love with both my boyfriend and with France, but it's time to face the music: I am homesick.

I finally found sleep cozied against TMI who, I might add, totally pissed me off by stealing the blankets in the night and then sort of.. sleep yelling when I tried to steal them back.. but all the same when in complete consciousness he made his best effort to ensure I was cozy. I'm only 23 and all ready regularly body slammed by nostalgia. Does it get worse? Or do we eventually figure out how to embrace Dr. Seuss and not be "sad because it's over, but happy because it happened?"

Dreams After Breakfast

It's in those moments when, tossing in bed at 5am because of a fever or menstrual cramps or nightmares or headaches or any other self-pity inducing symptoms, and your significant other, even though they too are trying to sleep and probably bothered by your restlessness, rolls over and pulls you close to their body, coos sympathetically and kisses your nose, that any doubt melts like the memory of your dreams after breakfast.

Is it normal to doubt when the words "I love you" are flying out of your mouth 100 times a day? I seem to be irreversibly prone to wonder if really I'm not being deluded by insecurity, good looks, soft skin, etc, and I worry that I shouldn't dare make any sacrifices for what my young brain thinks is love.

And yet, last night, feeling totally sorry for myself since I'm on some pretty heavy antibiotics to fight my endless onslaught of urinary tract infections (awesome!) which make my skin rosy red as I roll around with fever all night; plus my boobs are hurting like crazy because of my contraceptives, while expecting TMI to be totally pissed off with my tossing and turning, he comforted me so effectively that I experienced a moment of complete doubtless bliss. And I'll be honest, its been happening a lot.

So what's with the second guessing?

I'm considering staying here with TMI's family for Christmas this year to put off our dreaded separation and give me more time to move out of my little apartment. But, it would be my first Christmas away from my family in the Hawaiian islands, and let me tell you, I am a serious family girl. And while all young adults face that first Christmas without their immediate family, my parents are older than most, and, my Robert-Redford-sailing-legend of a father had a difficult year with skin cancer. My family Christmases no longer seem like a forever given.

I said it in the post before last and I'll say it again: how much is love really worth these days? There are sacrifices on both ends of my plane ride and at present I don't know which is worth being more panicked about.

After some restless hours of light sleep in the morning, I awoke in a sweat, totally terrified. Nightmares. ..But by the time I sat up I'd forgotten them.

The Ink Well (and everything to do with forever)

Nothing good lasts forever, or, so they say. For this reason, love is sometimes described as a flower which blooms, wilts, and, if you're going to get really poetic about it and you happen to be a believer in lasting love, you may also allude to the ability to press them and keep them long after they've died.

What I was thinking today, however, is that maybe the myth of eternal love is more like an ink pen. In the beginning you have to give it a push by dragging it around to get it going, then suddenly you have a nice, satisfying black flow that can carry you along silky smooth for months; maybe longer if you're lucky. But, in the end, it doesn't matter how much you "work at it" or promise pen fidelity, because when the line starts getting dry, you can bet your buttons you'll be reaching for the newer model and the one in your hand has its days numbered.

These stubbornly pessimistic thoughts have a habit of ruining otherwise perfectly good evenings with TMI. We've been discussing efforts to get me back to France after Christmas in Hawaii and getting an apartment together. ..An incredibly elating thought, and yet the sacrifice would be my friends and my family. Placing myself scquarely opposite on the globe from my nearest and dearest which have nothing to to with sex or ink and everything to do with forever.

But, on the other hand, friends fall in love and become less available as their significant other becomes more significant. The temptation to remain forever single could leave me lonely surrounded by friends in love.

I know the obvious solution simile: if you really like the pen, you can buy more ink. But what's the real life equivalent of the inkwell? Could something so idealistic possibly exist? And for something so uncertain, how can I ever really know if it's worth the sacrifice?

Matters of the Pu'uwai

I desperately need to give TMI about TMI but I can't help but be censored. I'm getting the impression that things are getting too serious too fast and thus too dangerous. If only I could write in some indeciperable language that ni google translate ni a meticulous English level 2 student could decipher. Any ideas? I'm tempted to do a phrase or two in Hawaiian/pidgin. ...ok, why not.

The hana ma'i stay totally kolohe, spooning is like try sleep wit your okole in one cactus patch cuz he cut da hulu around his uli, and even worse, he start ah-redeh come supah clingy-kine. Bra, I not redeh start one supah serious pilina but I no want break the haole's pu'uwai. .. You guys following me here? Now if only there was Hawaiian slang sufficient to complain about foreskin and the need to keep it clean. (aww no she di'int! groooossss!!!)

Right so the art of literature I mentioned a few posts back: turning in its grave.

But all jokes aside, I just had my heart broken: it hurts, and I'm not leaping at the thought to do it to someone else. I wan't to be careful. I suppose it's possible that I just need some down time to lick my Harry induced wounds. Love can really pack a punch, and frankly it's starting to look like I'm down for the count.

Tomorrow, were I still comfortably the Hermione in the H and J threesome, aka, team Olympia in the tri-person cycling olympics, I should be going to Harry's final violin exam, followed by a goodbye night-on-the-town. These last 30 minutes I've been rolling around in bed and subduing cries of agony and frustration into my pillow because I don't know if I should attend either.

I'm embarrassed, anguished, and ashamed. Last time we went out Harry rubbed my heart against a cheese grater. Worse yet, when and if I see him, I don't even know how to say hello: Bise? Awkward handshake? Even more awkward none of the above??? oouuchhh.. seriously! Ouch!

Hit or Miss, and Delicate All Around

There is of course a part of me that sometimes feels sharply like giving up. Today, Sunday, I marched alone through town, up the main road, and ventured into the modern part of the city. The part that looks much less like romantic old France than where I live and so rarely leave. I actually continued out into the rolling fields and took myself to the olympic swimming pool, (yes oddly located,) and went for a lonely impromptu swim. After that I took myself to a lonelier lunch, and then to a lonelier still movie. [[Pirates of the Caribbean dubbed in French. Jack Sparrow has a certain charm rambling in the language of love but still I felt I was being a bit jipped on the real deal.]]

Truth is I've been here 4 months and don't have a job; and I promised my family that were that the case after only two months I would return defeated with "my tail between my legs."

Not that I'm not nostalgic for beaches and ocean and grass and trees and Hawaii green and my Hawaii girls, but I hate to regress into living with my family in the middle of the Pacific. I want to be living my twenties to the fullest, and, quitting the France dream would be pointedly painful. This is a scary time for me, a time that feels dangerously hit and miss and delicate all around. I don't want to end up a starving artist, or a mooch off my family; do I go back to school for my Masters? Where? How do I afford it? What can I do with the degree that I have? Do I go back to the islands and look for work there? Do I stay in France, or do I leave and risk putting it back on the unreachable, seemingly phantasmal side of the Earth where it has been all of my life till now?

The Last Egg

So Hawaii's not too much worse for the wear. My home town's a little flooded, a few people have their houses floating in Kealakekua bay, there were some sea creature casualties, but all are fine and aloha spirit stubbornly remains.

boat house.

Ali'i drive.

I chickened out and cancelled my train ticket to Paris because I was having trouble finding a place to stay. I'm authentically terrified of how my sensitive and irrational self will handle a birthday friendless and moneyless, so I let images of me weeping solitarily in a Parisian hotel room the night of the 16th scare me into cancelling the trip. For now.

I'm also sorely aware that staying here with that wretched stinking creature who lies on the couch ALL DAY and watches tv, (rising every 30 min to don his coat and smoke in the stairwell) is no good for me either. It's so depressing. How does a person like that live with themselves? Why does a person like that even have a name?? In my fury he shall be an "it" for this and potentially the next few posts.

In other negative news I'm turning 23. No longer with the sexy dangerous ring of 22. How I love the number 22. As I'm explaining/complaining to a Greek friend over facebook chat this very moment:

"Aging is much easier on men. You guys are fertile all your lives; aka: women find you sexy all your lives. Women loose it along with the last egg, condemned to a life of non-sexyness."

yes I waste time on worries comme ca.

And last but not least, I transferred some money to K tonight. I talked to him over the phone and he had given his "last dollar to a guy on the street." He drawled on about wanting to die and kill all who worked at insurance companies and banks.

It reminds me of Obi-Wan when he had to fight Anakin and sever his heart strings for his young apprentice because he had gone to the dark side. Obi-Wan still loved Anakin, but he had to accept the the fun loving person he cared about was gone.

I haven't seen the side of K that's the spiritual creative and cuddly man I fell in love with when I was 18 in a year.

"The boy you trained.. gone he is! Consumed by the dark side, young Skywalker has become!"

Tsunamis at Home, Stairs in France

On my toes here in France as I wait to hear word from my Hawaiian homeland. Trouble in Asia usually means trouble in the island chain, but the last few tsunami scares blew over with only several inches of raised sea levels, so you never can tell. Heres a video from a friend and fellow Hawaii dweller, Alex:

In other, not nearly so exciting or life threatening news, I went to my first dance class yesterday. And, an hour before the class, I fell down the stairs of the monk tower.

Let's face it, it was way overdue, but having happened only moments before my great hurtle into having a life abroad felt a little cruel and unnecessary. The result was growing a welt the size of second butt (or third boob) on my lover hip, the crimson color of what B called a "raw steak." See image below.

Of course I'm obligated to say it's much worse in reality. And this pic was taken yesterday- today it's like a big black rock. I'm both proud and worried for my internal bleeding.

Despite the pain and fear, I walked to my dance class all the same. I was so shy I stood outside the door for ten minutes until someone else came along and I entered with her. In spite of the throbbing, I jette'd and plee'd with all the vigor I could muster.

This morning, not surprisingly, I could barely walk. B took me to the pharmacy where I showed my third boob and was given all sorts of medication and salves.

Now to convalesce. In the mean time keep your fingers crossed for the ohana, the aina, and of course the Hawaiian phoque.