Start: 20080504 [18:7|125] 2115 UTC
End: 20080504 [18:7|125] 2256 UTC
Location: Traversa Giulio Cesare, 80125, Napoli, Campania, Italia
Timezone: UTC+2

Adios, Europa.

I’m sitting here and I have to go soon. It’s now 2316 and I have a train to catch at 0433. I have to go back up to Bologna. I have two more lessons to attend, and then I’m done. I still have my exams to go through. But the end is approaching to my stay in Bologna.

Things have ended with KJB.

I have tickets to fly to Stockholm on 20080509. I don’t know if I will. I will call Ryanair to see if they can shift the tickets to another place– Malta, Barcelona, Paris. If they can, I might go. If they can’t, I might go anyway, but go to Oslo or something. If they can or can’t, I might just not go at all, and just head back south towards Napoli. I was going up to be a stay-at-home boyfriend, studying hard for exams. I can’t really travel. We’ll see.

I have my ECCO exams in a couple of weeks. Then 20080523 I have tickets up again. It’s more probable I’ll actually travel that time. If Ryanair can shift me somewhere else, great. I don’t really want to go back to Stockholm. I’ve already been a bit too saturated by that world and culture. I’ve also lost my main attraction to it. If they can’t, I’ll probably go. Then head North. Maybe Oslo. Maybe just North. Above the Arctic Circle maybe. I don’t even really want to see Arlanda, to be honest. I don’t need any nostalgia. Time will tell.

May has come and it has come beautifully. The weather here has been fantastic the past few days. It hit me as a shock this year. I don’t know where Spring went. It was just very cold and then suddenly very hot. Maybe shifting around so much– Stockholm, New York– has done that. Maybe I just don’t get out enough anymore, these days. I need a PDA again, so I can be on the computer (read: extended brain) and be out at the same time. Anyway I feel like the sun is back and it’s a surprise rather than a gradual shift. May is here and my experience in Bologna is coming to an end.
I stay in Europe until 20080719. Then I am gone and I won’t be back for a long time. The thought scares me. Where’s home? Where am I ever going to settle down? This sickness comes up, feeling like I ought to be in Shanghai, Napoli, New York all at the same time. I wish the world was still Pangea.

About all I know is, I sort of miss everybody I told about. Even old Stradlater and Ackley, for instance. I think I even miss that goddamn Maurice. It’s funny. Don’t ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.
(J.D Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye)

When I was here, I wanted to be there; when I was there, all I could think of was getting back into the jungle.
(Apocalypse Now)

Instead this. Missing New York and Shanghai when I am in Italy. Missing family. Missing regularity, things working. And yet I know that when I will be there, all I’ll be able to think of is missing it here. Until it gets cheaper and faster to travel the world, all it is is heartbreak always.

I’ll be in New York. Then China. Then back in New York. Then back at Wesleyan. Things here have been so crazy, so good and so bad, and back in the States it will be so much simpler again (haha?). I didn’t really think this was all going to turn out to be such an adventure. It’ll have been a crazy 10 months by the time I finish it. Bologna, hanging out with the ECCO kids, Oktoberfest, Torino, Paris, Napoli… Roma in 200712, KJB, New York, Stockholm, Roma, New York, Stockholm, Napoli, KJB, Bologna, academics, traveling with Simon, TMB-WHR.

I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those … moments will be lost in time, like tears…in rain.
(Blade Runner)

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; a time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; a time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.
(Ecclesiastes 3:1-8)

Nostalgia. Loss. Coming to terms with what has happened. Perspective. Relationships have a bad tendency to pull me very much into life, and limit thinking and perspective. I can believe from personal experience that so many thinkers were by necessity also solitaries. It is very hard to not give up reflection when in the midst of love or other such strong feelings. When they end it always feels like one has just woken up from a dream. Maybe that is just how it is at the start. Maybe the reflection comes back. It wasn’t that with MST, though. Although this time with KJB the thinking did not go away. It was just different. I thought but with more of a hurry, and also more practically.

Hmm. I remember writing somewhere that “nothing gives the illusion of telos more than love for another”. Something along those lines. Perhaps because love does that many will stop thinking for it. The answer is there, it seems. And maybe it is, until one loses it.

Anyway, I’m thinking about my experience here. Evaluating it. Judging it. It went alright. It’s been strange. I cannot shy away from the feeling of failure though. I had several objectives when coming to Italia. To spend more time with family, to understand Italy and Europe more, to travel. I achieved all, sure, but nowhere to the levels I wanted to. The reasons all those objectives failed was because of me. I am at fault for them. I did not plan enough and I did not have enough clear ideas or commitment. But one other thing got in the way. I had another objective that had nothing to do with Italy except that it came to me at the same time. The objective was to get into another relationship and to grow. I spent my first semester trying things out, and while I met some nice people, I also realized even more how hard it is for someone like me to find a partner. Then KJB happened, and it was great but rough, very rough. And now KJB is over. Frankly, if I could have walked away with this one objective, everything would have been sweet. It was very close to being so. But here, this objective has been totally failed.

Yet here the fault is only partially mine. I am fully to blame for many things, but I step back from saying, like I did in my journal entry from 20080423– that it was mostly my fault, and that I am the cause for my own misery. Time and thought has shown that this is not the case at all. Here it was not I that failed. I’m not perfect, and I’ve got a lot of things to work on. To extend this to saying it is the cause of the objective failing is idiocy. The circumstances tell half the tale. As for the rest, I chose the wrong person.

Do I go back empty handed? Far from it. A wealth of experience, a bounty of lessons learned. I’ve pillaged wisdom from Europa. But I went out to capture something and I didn’t. Haven’t, I mean.

I feel like the reflections of a German soldier from War World II. In the distance, the spires of Moscow. So close they seemed. An illusion– they would never get there, and it was a stupid illusion that they ever thought it possible. But to them it seemed so.

KJB was from the start something I did not expect to work. But desire put away and shut up my fears, and I made a leap of faith. Not all the way. But having been left twice and put on hold and played with for over a year and a half, it was not possible for me to leap all the way. When things started to not work, in fact, my faith was so great that I pointed the finger at myself first of all. The little lack of faith I had pointed the finger elsewhere– and I luckily gave it reason, too (this was a case where doubts and fears were true). But mostly the faith blamed me. I thought so until the end, though things began to fade. Now I am awake (still in bed– still under many illusions, I am sure– but awake) and I see things the way I did just before I began to dream. I see things now the way I did at the end of 200712 and at the beginning of 200801– things would not work because this person was incapable of commitment, a quitter, not serious. Perhaps that is too harsh. KJB was capable of commitment– but to a boyfriend, not to what I wanted– a friend, a companion, a comrade, a partner. There can be no blame. She is 25. It is I that am, like in so many other things, before my time. I’m thinking things as if I was 30. As a 30 year old who spends most of his time on his own or with the company of the speaking dead and who is very busy with his projects and missions but realizes that if he wants a family and certain things in his life he better get moving. Frankly if I could pay a woman to father my children and pay another to raise them with me– I would not be so worried at all. Probably best if I get off this digression.

I am too demanding, for most. Probably. I am very demanding on life in general. On myself. Aut Caesar, aut Nihil. That is what I drink to. I need to find others that do too.

Ah, dealing with loss. In the last two weeks I have not just lost a person I loved. I have lost, maybe, two plane tickets. I have lost a team mate for a major project, major mess now trying to adapt to this. I’ve lost a girl to be with in the Alps, in China, through my senior year. A perspective. Many things. “The promise of happiness”, isn’t that what Stendhal said of beauty?

I can’t help but think, though, that by being too demanding, I have lost something great. To that, I tell myself, what was lacking would have made problems and revealed itself at some point later if not now. But what if I tolerated it and then it grew? If, if, if. No. There’s not much more thinking to be done on this aspect. I wanted to continue and I believed it true. The other did not and I cannot lie to myself and say that it seems as nothing else but a mistake. Of course, I will do what I have to do now and move on. Without a doubt. I will still reflect much on this though.

I will have to be more clear with the next person. I will not allow this to happen again to me. Treated this way, not taken seriously and responsibly. Otherwise, it will be only masochism. Maybe that’s what it was, for me to get back with KJB. I have only been disappointed in the same way as always with her. I guess it is good that this silly little game is over. Enough is enough.

So, it has been “Adios, KJB” and soon it will be “Adios, Europa”. Then the ocean and time will get in between both, and things that were operational will become archival. Both will hurt and fuck with my head for a while. Then it will pass.

So if the Bull is Life and I am the Matador, I have just been gored. It happens. To the bad or inexperienced Matadors but also to the Courageous ones– and especially those who are both, like me. The wound will heal, the scar will stay, and in time I’ll be back in the ring.

Now I am off to pack. Tonight will be another night of sleeping little on the train. *sigh* Another night with a broken heart and tears that still won’t come out.

Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth; and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and walk in the ways of thine heart, and in the sight of thine eyes… therefore remove sorrow from thy heart, and put away evil from thy flesh: for childhood and youth are vanity.
(Ecclesiastes 11:9-10)