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The sky was so gorgeous yesterday

I knew from the first time

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Amber leaves in a gentle dance, as autumn whispers its fleeting romance.

the first week of the summer semester

my new life

after the guests had departed, j. collapsed in relief saying “dear god, i survived it!”. this poor old man had accommodated those two incredibly messy fifty something year olds,

one of which was his son who came to visit from barcelona, the other his son’s best friend visiting from london. they knew each other from university in london, from when they studied computer science. both of them extreme nerds. neither of them had their own children, neither of them a girlfriend or wife. j.’s son has a horrible lisp and just a very weird character, he seems pretty much of an idiot, but today i learned that apparently he’s extremely good in maths. well, with the chap from london i get along rather well. he had hosted me for a few days in his house in south wimbledon in winter of 2022. he’s all into all kinds of conspiracies and very much of a modern hermit. well, many of my own views on society are somewhat against the mainstream i’d say and i certainly feel somewhat of an urge to become a (real) hermit myself one day. unlike that bloke i do want to rely on science and stay rational in order to understand society, that’s why in the end i decided to study social sciences (and law). however though, he has a good sense for absurdism and sarcasm, which makes him fun to engage with to me. anyway. i managed to limit my interactions with our guests to the very least. and i cannot complain, i got invited for very good dinners three times the past week. 

the first time was just after rowing class. my technique had gotten much better already, unfortunately though the people i was rowing with were rather bad, which was kind of frustrating. a funny thing that happened that evening before dinner was how i had met my boss from the theatre on the way to rowing class, then just 1 minute later i had met another person i knew: a guy i used to live with in that big communal house, a very much of a hipster architect guy. and then when we were rowing on the canal one lady walking her dog laughed at us and shouted at our cox “yeah, you gotta know how to handle your people”... she was very drunk. and she was also somebody i know: a woman that had worked at the theatre but just recently been fired and completely banned from it. but mpre about dinner: we had it with j., two of his sons, his other son was coming to visit from munich but was staying with his mother (who just lives a few streets away from j.), that british guy, j.’s wife (and mother of his other son) and their friend who shares the same name with j. wife. the person i got along most with from this group is definitely j. son with his other wife. that boy is in his early thirties, is doing his phd and is just very funny and silly. there is always an interesting tension between us. weirdly enough allegedly he has never had a girlfriend so some people think he’s gay, just j. seems not to realise that. i think the best proof for him being gay really was when for christmas 2022 one of his male friends joined us. it basically was like introducing him to the family. b. and me were invited for that dinner and it was just so funny. anyway, i just find this tension between me and him so interesting, because it does not at all feel like he’d really be gay. i find him to be rather attractive and cute and could very much imagine being with him (and him liking that even (which is the point)). well, i was also the first real girlfriend of b. when he was 34 so who knows apparently i just do something to the guys, lol. dinner that evening was fun though, we were in a lebanese restaurant.

and then, friday j.’s other, older son and the british guy invited me to an indian restaurant, which was ever so entertaining. they acted like two nerdy boys, discussing wildly what they wanted to order for half an hour. i suspect that both of them certainly are very much neurodiverse in one way or another. i didn’t care about their weird behaviour though. i was getting invited and that was all that counted. afterwards we went to an old irish pub, a very fancy establishment really. the british guy wanted to get me drunk i realised that. i drank two guinness. and i enjoyed being drunk with them. especially with the british guy. i know, i am sick. throughout the evening we talked about modern times regarding artificial intelligence, social media, influencers, tracking and surveillance. they asked me how i perceived all of that, me being their representative of all of the “gen z”. 

and then there was yesterday’s dinner. i had first gone to work my first real little shift at the bar i am working at nowadays. it was for a cocktail course for a bachelorettes party. about 20 drunk women in their early thirties. very fun. normally i’d somehow be put off by their annoying noises and hysterical laughter. but that was past me. i realised how much i adored their dynamics. i saw girlhood. It was sweet and most of them seemed to really be enjoying themselves. But it was certainly testing my extraversion. People tend to think i am very extrovert, but this is not the case at all. I get bubbly when i am with one person i really like and i can put on a mask for limited social interactions in public. But when it comes to staying all out going in an environment like that… its just so incredibly draining and uncomfortable. I will really have to train myself to have a “work personality” there that i can use, because the only other way to endure this in the long run would be to drink alcohol myself. But that would make me an addict real quick. But i know that i will manage. That job will really make me a cool and relaxed young woman. I will be so happy to meet plenty of edgy hipster kinda people working there, have some flirts, get some tips and be physically exhausted in the end (with i really like to be and am not too often). Of course this is more than just a slight romantisation of the job, but i realised it really is about how you approach things like that. Working in the bakery or working at the horse’s stable was also not easy at all, but if you got the right attitude towards those things, you can always have a good time, which i always had. Plus i get paid!.. Ok, so i arrived j.’s place, which from now on i will just call home, because it is just that for me at the moment. J., his youngest son and the british guy were sitting in “my room”, the living room. It was 7.30, the other son was in the kitchen preparing the dinner on his own, he was a good chef. Sitting down with them in the living room was a pleasure. They were talking about “birding” (a new hobby of j.’s son describing bird watching and recognizing competitively) and the new smoking rules in england. I realised how both the young man and the middle aged man were just so into me, observing me a lot. I liked that. When i had mentioned my new job, the younger son asked for where exactly i was working. Turns out he had been at the opening party of that bar 8 years ago, conforming how nice of a bar it is… It’s a pity i don’t see j.’s younger son too much. I had only seen him that christmas before. I think we could be great friends. He seems rather cool, relaxed but yet fairly intellectual. Well, his wonderful parents, both having been professors, made it possible for him to go to one of the prestigious english schools. What i don’t like about him though is that he just acts so snobby and it’s obvious that he likes being a snob. Which is… rather ignorant. It’s also a pity he didn't join us for dinner, because unfortunately he is very vegetarian, just as his mother and the lamb we were eating was very much not vegetarian. I did not get to say bye to him today as well. But i know i left a lasting impression. I had changed since last christmas and also now am proving myself being a good help for his father. 

Dinner was ready shortly after eight. The other seventy something year old friend that had joined dinner on thursday had now joined again. We were sitting at the big dining table in j.’s hallway. The new lilies i had bought for j. I had placed on the table. This week, they were blossoming beautifully. The scent made you drunk. I sat next to j. and opposite to us the two men and the lady. i realised throughout the dinner that she was just so into the british fellow. Though she herself was married to a frenchman. Throughout the evening she struggled keeping up with our conversations. Her english is not too bad but the accents and slangs of all those three guys can be somewhat hard to understand if you are not a native or just not very used to hearing brits talk. Living with j. I feel more like living in england than in my own country. Which is ever so nice. The food yesterday was also very splendid. Lamb, some veggies and plenty of red wine and later bourbon. The visiting brit again tried subtletly to make me drunk. Perhaps it appeared i was drunk, since at some point i spilled my glass of wine onto my pants. But i wasn’t much, that was just me being really clumsy as always unfortunately. After dinner the people were sitting together for quite some time, discussing about family issues, basically bullshitting and perhaps having fun. I was eventually getting bored and decided to withdraw. At some point during dinner i had chatted with b. He said how blessed i was, how my peers would not get to have such nice interactions. And well, i have to agree dinner parties like that are rather exclusive and nice, but the people were not too interesting to interact with in general. Except j. Of course. He is the most interesting, intellectually stimulating and wise person i know. I wish i knew more people like that but that will eventually happen if i keep surrounding myself with good and rather intellectual (or let’s say bourgeois) circles like that.

I think my new hobby of rowing will open some doors for me in this regard eventually. Prospectively i would like to one day pick up on tennis again, which i used to play very well when i was very young. Those habits of playing certain sports or knowing your culture really open doors here! If i dress bougie, which i do naturally, i appear just to be one of them easily. And it can be just so helpful. Of course, all of this might come off as incredibly shallow, but i don’t really think it is. All of those things i do, i’d do also if i wouldn’t want to get to know more people like them. Rowing is just so nice, tennis i also very much enjoyed and i long to indulge myself into the arts anyways. I am not doing those things just for the sake of seeming interesting or as a networking possibility. But that might just be a pleasant side effect. 

What i know is that i cannot just live like my parents do nowadays. Both of them have never travelled as much in their lives as i have already. Of course i have to be grateful being able to do so, partly just because of them. Though what i critise is their rather “limited mind” or mindset. They are not interested in culture or anything that’s going on really. They stamp those things as being bougie and pretentious. But did it ever cross their minds that people express their ordinary and very human emotions and experiences through the arts. Why is that bougie?! Well, what i know is that j. Has been living such an incredibly cosmopolitan and intellectual life that made him as wise and humble as he know is. And that’s what i want for myself. It is refreshing to spend time with people like that, because they give me hope that i can also achieve that one day. Instead of living a life that is rather very limited and in my eyes extremely boring. i am really not trying to seem ungrateful. I just know that i am made for more than just that and i want to believe that i have influence in where i end up in life, at least to a certain degree. Learning languages, reading books, seeing movies, putting effort into studying, being informed, working hard, travelling, getting into therapy and somehow expressing myself and my thoughts are the things that i can really do, will do and in fact, am doing already. 

And with my new partner (i think it is appropriate to call him that already) it seems i made another great step into being on the right path of what i want in life. He is just such a pure and gentle man. Seemingly hungry for consuming the arts and striving for something bigger in his life. Though he is not sure what exactly that will be, I believe in him. He is charming, talented, intelligent and strong. I don’t think there is anything he couldn’t do. His brother proved that this family is capable of greatness. He is almost forty and a neuroscientist, who went to harvard, being part of the society of fellows. he and his wife seemingly have a good life, recently bought a house, keeping a few little ugly but funny dogs. his wife seems interesting to me, since she also grew up an equestrian like me. But she was even more serious about it, having been a national american athlete at some point. It’d be cool to get to know them at some point. And even more of a pleasure to build a similarly cool life with the brother of them that i got to have the pleasure of calling my partner. 

As most of all the times my conclusion is: i am on a good track. I just have to work hard now. Limit the meaningless distractions to the least. Thats why i deinstalled tumblr from my phone and that i want to live unbothered by other people and be disciplined and humble. When i do all of those things and manage to stay kind and cool, i will be able to be really satisfied with what i do. The past two weeks i improved in all of those aspects notably already. I am happy about that. From now on, university really gets serious. The next weeks will be very challenging my discipline. I have spent the afternoon of friday of establishing daily routines that i want to stick to. I just love that. And i also love my personal organisation and the fact that notion, the program i use to organise my studies and other big parts of my life, has recently been updated to have an own calendar. What a dream!. the pattern of my new life is the picture i attached on the left. of course it's very much idealised, and i will not stick to most of it (basically the very light parts) all the time. Still, it’s nice to have an overall orientation. 

On another note, js. Met his father in nyc yesterday. He hadn’t seen him in 4 years. He wanted to meet him before visiting me. I am very proud of him for taking courage. His father doesn’t work, a neurological disorder has been discovered in him, so he is receiving grants regarding that. In the past he had been abusing drugs a lot. He's always been an artist and about 15 years ago he even had somewhat of a successful career. Just before he moved to the city. Js. mother thinks that he lost his courage then… js. And him first went to a diner and then went to the movies. He was keeping me up to date all the time. 

it is less than a month that we will be reunited. today i officially signed my new work contract. i am in the library now, it's 2pm and my day has not been ideal yet. but i will read and write for uni and make the most of it.

nowadays: staying inside, studying :)

a collage i made for my older sister.

be prepared to see more "cottagecore" collages. i stumbled upon a certain side of pinterest with a cottagecore vibe to it, but not all of them felt the exact same. some images gave off a vintage vibe, while others gave off an adventurous vibe