I can’t believe the year is coming to a close. Where has this entire decade gone, seriously?
These photos are 1999 vs. 2009. Someone posted that old photo of me tonight, a scan of a picture taken exactly 10 years ago (you can tell from the crooked teeth). I was living in the Netherlands and was about to return to Boston; a Dutch friend dyed my hair bright red the night before, and a few hours after it was taken I walked down to a field and said goodbye to the neighbor’s horses, sobbing. The summer before I left for Holland, I worked with this girl who fancied herself psychic. I don’t believe in psychics, but she “predicted” that I was going to be happier than I’d ever been during my time in Europe. At the time I thought she was nuts, as I was terribly sad to leave Boston. But in hindsight, I have to admit she was right (not that it’s difficult to be happy when you’re 21 and traveling throughout the EU for four months). But really, that’s part of my motivation to get back there as soon as I finish MIT: I want fresh cheese again. I want bicycles and old people. I want to feel the same way I felt back then. I want to see horses.
Anyway, I’ve decided to subjectively summarize 2009 a few different ways:
2009 in food (no particular order).
chocolate loaf cake. beef heart. brown bread. baguettes. foreign butter, lightly salted. bagels and cream cheese. M&M’s. apples. pasta. mixed nuts. Saratoga sparkling water. tea. cider. cider donuts. cookies. broccoli. fresh orange juice. white fish. trucha. manjarblanco. yuca. causa. maracuya. pineapples.
2009 according to my ipod.
Bon Iver. Rogue Wave. Beyonce. Owl City. The Cure. Radiohead. Beirut. Blitzen Trapper. Santogold. Regina Spektor. Myslovitz. Jawbreaker.
2009 favorite personal moments.
Billions of stars, from the window of a Suzuki SUV in the Peruvian central Amazon. Billions of stars, from the natural hot springs at the top of a mountain in Idaho at midnight. MIT in general. Overcoming a number of physical challenges. Playing Carcassonne in Lima. Recording “Getting lost” with DD. Doing all the living room monologues. Singing karaoke, online and off. My birthday, picking up a smooth white stone on the beach at night and touching the thick black Pacific, then walking back up the cliffs with P. & N. Walking around Beacon Hill with DD, every few weeks, like it was the 90s all over again. Sniffing my academic director’s cashmere sweater when he went to the bathroom in an effort to identify his cologne.
2009 as chemical fragrance.
Issey Miyake L’eau de Issey (Night Scent) — still my favorite. Issey Miyake ‘Reflections in a Drop’. L’Occitane Bergamot Tea. Zegna Intenso. Armani Code. A few indiscernibles.
2009 favorite poem.
GIFT – by Czeslaw Milosz
A day so happy.
Fog lifted early, I worked in the garden.
Hummingbirds were stopping over honeysuckle flowers.
There was no thing on earth I wanted to possess.
I knew no one worth my envying him.
Whatever evil I had suffered, I forgot.
To think that once I was the same man did not embarrass me.
In my body I felt no pain.
When straightening up, I saw the blue sea and sails.
