Elke

I have a new roommate. She used to model. I took advantage... Here's the result. 

Bitterweet Surrealism and a bit of Cynic.

My thesis is finished. It's not very good, but at least it's good enough. For a little while it looked like I might not be able to start my Master this September, which would have meant a whole year of financial, emotional and scholarly stress. Thankfully, I had the choice between mediocre thesis/start in September and taking an extention/awesome thesis/possibly no Master at all due to financial stress. It wasn't a hard choice for me really, the idea that I finsih my Bachelor with a great grade but then never get the opportunity to start the Master was just inconceivable to me. It was a risk I wasn't willing to take. I am happy with the choice, but it's very bittersweet, and I am not particularly proud it has to come to this.


I have started reading my first required book for the Master program before bed, mostly because I'm not sleeping well. It's a good thing I am getting a fresh early start at the literature, but it would be nice if it wasn't because of stress. Two of my close friends were both left by their partners of 8 and 4 years and both were married. Now I get to spend my weekends and even most weeknights with htme, talking about life, being miserable, and forgetting the world for a minute or two, but I wish it was under different circumstances. I wish i could give them their lives back and make it all go away, but I can't.


The same goes for my best friend Heather who now lives in Canada. I never get to see her, and I rarely get to speak to her, so I love any opportunity to speak with her and remind her how much I love her. I just wish it wasn't at 3am because she's not sleeping over the fact that her grandfather was just admitted to the same hospice her mom died at just a year ago and its causing so much stress that she and her dad are fighting all the time. I wish I could give her her life back, her family back, and take it all away. But I can't. 


My best friend has a girlfriend. I'm so happy for him, I hope all goed well. But I don't think she likes me very much and  I'm afraid I'm going to slowly lose touch with him and never see him again in the near future. I wish him all the happiness in the world, I just wish it wasn't so likely to come with miserable times for myself. 


So where do you draw the line? Where do you take care of others, and where do you start thinking of yourself? When does it become selfish? When does it become foolish and unhealthy? And how can you tell? 


I guess life is like money. It's overcomplicated and always has two sides. Mostly made up out of promises and   representations rather than the real deal. It's time to start living again. For real. Not this routine we've become accustomed to, but life as it was designed. Tomorrow, I am doing something spontaneous. This week, I'm taking a walk in the woods, even if it's raining. Thursday I'm baking an enormous birthday cake for Yvette. I'm going to enjoy the now, instead of prepare for tomorrow. Who's coming with me?

Photos from Lago di Garda and Other Places Within Reasonable Travel Limits

 A Statue man in Peschiera del Garda 

during the very busy, very touristic (and therefore rather dissapointing) Monday Market. 

One of the entrance stairways to the Arena theatre in Verona 

which is still in very good shape and still operational. 

*Phantom of the Opera soundtrack stuck in my brain for weeks*

 A very cute wine-bar we accidentally stumbled upon and had lunch at.

Welcome to "Julia's House", Verona. Covered in declarations of undying love 

and appropriately finished with the ever so famous balcony 

that was cleverly added in 1930 to attract tourists. 

Ah, the splendors of non-authentic culture. 

 Swans and Boaters in the Garda Lake, 

backed by the famous contrasting peaks of the Monte Baldo.

 Too cliche not to photograph:
A vespa parked by an archway adorned with the Italian flag.
Appropriately edited to make the flags colours stand out just that little bit extra. 

 Pigeons collecting on a lamppost on San Marco square in Venice.
I waited patiently for this one... sitting pigeons just don't have the desired effect.

The new church in Brescia.

The rediculously enormous Duomo in Milano.
Everything in Milano seems to be just that much bigger than anywhere else. 

Home, Birthdays, Lightroom and ultimately, Photos

Got home yesterday and didn't get much rest because I headed straight to a birthday party that I had not expected to be home in time for. Happy 24th birthday once again Liz ;) It's a funny thing celebrating your 30th (I mean, 24th, of course) birthday when you have friends that have babies, as well as friends that are quite single. The result of a sunday afternoon get-together is a large table of young people, 3 babies and 2 entirely separated conversationsl one surrounding general parenating and goo-goo-ga-ga like subjects, and the other discussing pretty much anything BUT that. 

I guess the times when we start reaching our thirties (and I use " we" loosely, as I have only just turned 24 today myself) are the time we start seeing that shift from young to old. Your first wedding of someone actually close to you, the first babies, the first mortgages. It's a time of firsts all around you while you stare blankly at the growing amount of candles on the cake and wonder "what did I accomplish in my 20s?" and realise the single, childless, renting, soul-searching types are starting to become the minorty. 

Spent most of today having lunch at the same restaurant, this time not in the presence of my friends' babies, but with my dad and brother in celebration of my very own 24th birthday. Tried to shop a bit but ultimately failed, and spent the evening surprised by some friends who showed up for coffee and cake; secretively supplied by Nemo, who more than adequately hid the plans from me and managed to make me feel alone and forgotten for a minute as I started to think everyone already had plans and I would be spending my 24th birthday as an old lonely spinster, just without cats. As the people with real jobs left, I gravitated towards my PC and loaded my Italy photos into lightroom. I LOVE lightroom, and I should mention , that as the kind of photographer that takes 36GB worth of photos in 2 weeks, I promote buying far too many extra SD cards to avoid needing to slow down your trigger-finger and become mroe selective as you go, and even contemplating switching to JPG instead of RAW as your last SD card is getting full and the little display on the camera starts telling you you only have room for 40 more images as you sit down for lunch in Milano, with a few hundred more sights to go. 

Anyway, the result is here, and I will gladly share with you a small selection of images taken in Italy. (also, I added a photo to my previous post Sirmione that i wrote in Italy before I could access my photos. Remind me to save up for a new laptop that I can install lightroom on.)

Muses

We all have muses. Italy has been truly inspirational, and I will be posting the first photos tonight, but first I would like to post a tribute to my first and most inspirational muse of all. 

Eline, I love and miss you every day.