ready for rentrer

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I have this week to take care of business in Michigan.  I have two dentist appts this week and have been rifling through the garage to see what I can scavenge for the 1041 Logan.  I have been discussing things with Leah and am very excited to create my an dour space.  I have even planned out and created a game plan for a garden in the back.  A HOUSE!

I am simply taking care of business here in Mount Pleasant at the moment.  But in a slow, I don;t care about anything sort of pace. Not too productive.  Am I still able to kick it into high gear (when I get back to UT)? I think SO! Will it be like riding a bike.  I think NOT.  But oh well, yo Sam, A change is gonna come and I am ready and willing. I'm feeling a little bit like this today.  And I would really love if I could hang out with polar bears.  I mean, not as a pet - just a companion.

But here in MI I have actually been doing a lot.  In a loose sense of the term.  Little Thises and Thats whom I perceive as needing to be done.  Meh.  I think something I'm really starting to discover beyond my acknowledgment of its existence - is my adaptability.  But furthermore, I am not only adaptable, but malleable. I can take some shape, spread some mud on my face, walk a certain way and could come very close to teh word conform to my surroundings.  Except I never quite give in.  But in addition, it isn't about the place and stereotypes or physical manifestations.  I seem to be able to read and feel and live the mindsets of places.  Which is why when I get somewhere I cannot climb (or fall) to that particular level, I feel restless, useless and utterly confused. But no more.  I think I shall carry a bit of mind from a couple of places where I've felt right in step and they will keep the boots on.

Things to do, seeds to buy, beds to move, clothes to dry and another beginning of sorts.
xxx
Claire

A Southern FlavoUr

A forever memory

How I will miss Aix en Provence, Josh's weed patch, our beautiful poppies, the backyard park, to defenestrate things, Monday cleanings, and Josh's ever-present pleading to cook in his kitchen.  All things Cuques.

Someday I will return and Olivier will say to me "I've watched over it all, throughout the years.  I've seen Beau d'Erik grow old and have little vélo babies.  I've felt countless Poppy Massacres occur.  I've heard trance/house music go in and out and in and back out of style - while never differentiating between songs.  I've been here, thank you Josh."

And then Olivier will sing a small song in provençal that will be stolen by the tri-powered days of the greedy mistral wind out to the sea.

xxx
Foncée

Falling Back Into Step

Pit stop SLC. Coming right up.

I went home to SLC for a few days before heading over, and this is completely bittersweet. I am here and my world is welcoming me back with ease and I'm falling into it's comfortable embrace. But it is hard because I know it is so short lived. I've seen only very close friends but it is so nice and easy to just feel my place is being held. I'm not left behind or forgotten, and that gives me the courage for the next few months.

AND, by falling into step I mean a plethora of things. My god I had forgotten how looonnnnngggg and obnoxious the financial aid and scholarship line can be. I'm thinking after having to work and deal with all the government agencies and the government itself I'd be immune to long lines and attitude. hmmmm, I guess university financial offices are in a sphere all of their own. My God.

But along with the running all over campus and feeling like a pinball between the Union, the SSB , and OSH I finally got to go be with my friends. I can't say more or explain anything better than simply saying...No I can't even explain it. The connections made, the memories had, the feeling of timelessness that accompanies friends who will be there forever because they are always next to you. Actually physically being next to them, it's more than comfort ability, it is love. Simply friendship in its truest and purest form.

Leah commented that I came back and we fell into being our 5th grade selves, 8th grade selves, and every other point in our lives. She said it just feels like sunshine after rain, animals being born in the Spring, just the most natural thing ever.



I leave on Sunday Morning, early. I can't believe it. I'm living the life I dreamed of having all my life. It's happening now, in SLC, will happen in Barcelona, and in Aix. This is it.

Claire Winter Gorton
P.S. I miss The Mitchell Group

Song:"Making Flippy Floppy" Talking Heads
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llYLhAE9qds

9,000 words

Basically I am freaking out about packing (done to leave DC) because I realize HOW THE HELL AM I GOING TO FIT MY LIFE INTO 2 SUITCASES.

Therefore I am updating you on my concert and Beach trip, but to save time, only in pictures. Enjoy and create your own captions.

They're each worth 1,000 words right?


Ahhhhhh.....

Claire
Song:"Hang Me Up To Dry" Cold War Kids
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2PlhHVsdzo

le matin, tout le matin

This is what I see every morning. The sunrise, out my window. It's rays fall upon my face in the simplest, oldest, most beautiful way of saying "wake up, the day begins, welcome to it".

I'm beginning to feel that ache in my being that accompanies change and the exciting unknown. I also feel the pull of my current life and place tug against the ever-stronger pull of what is to become. We all know the future wins, always, but the past/present put up a good fight and induce the idea of remembrance. I think about everything a little clearer, each second has been cleaned with windex and gleams in my personal crystal shadow box.

I wish I could capture this feeling in a bottle, a scent, a picture or anything that transfers through a medium to others. But alas, writing is all that is possible, and I don't do it justice.

Yours,
Claire

Song: "Annie's Song" by John Denver
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C21G2OkHEYo

Excuse me miss, you dropped your banana

Seriously?
So lately I've been eating a bigger breakfast than I usually do/should. I have excessive amounts of oatmeal (who can resist ten lbs of oatmeal for 6 dollars...I can't) so I have been trying to eat it up before I leave (still 6 lbs to go...) and the result is the making of big bowls of oatmeal in the morning. This really isn't that good form me. Not a lot of protein in it, unless I melt peanut butter over it, it just isn't a practice that puts points on my healthy meter.

In trying to break this bad habit, I decided to grab a banana and eat it at work when I started to feel hungry. Thus reducing the amount I'm eating and eating only when hungry. Sounds good, eh?

So I ride the metro, walk a bit, unlock the door, log in, typical morning routine. Well it comes to be about 10:15 and I'm thinking, yeah I think now sounds like a good time for the banana. I open my purse and nothing. Nothing! It's gone. I check the refrigerator upstairs just in case I put it in there with my lunch. Nope. C'est impossible! Ou est ma banane? so I start to search around. Honestly, where the H-E double hockey sticks is my banana! So i get to thinking, well it could have fallen out on my morning commute. Yes, of course that's a possibility. It was quite crowded this morning on the red line (yeah, surprise! right...) Then my mind starts to grasp that my banana was lost on the metro. So why on EARTH did no one inform me that I dropped my banana!

I'm sorry, but if I saw someone drop anything, a receipt, a glove, a banana, a kumquat, I would let. them. know. Hello!? Am I that off-base here. What did these people think? I suddenly didn't want my banana anymore and decided to let it fall out of my purse nonchalantly just like Andy Dufresne dropping his wall bit by bit in The yard? Or do people think I'm simply the type to have bananas falling out of my purse often and just let it go. Ok, Banana, you win this time, enjoy your life.

So, this is all well and good for the banana on the lam, but my stomach doesn't see the irony. It is still just lonely for some banana. Calling Eric....finding out where the nearest banana market is and 7-11, CVS, Starbucks, apparently bananas are popular and in demand in the U Street area. Fine by me. Go to the purse...and I Had forgotten how poor I am.

40 cents.

I scrounge and come up with 40 cents. 7 Euro...which is amazingly ironic because that's about 12 dollars and think of all the European bananas that could buy me. But alas I am not a month in the future and still need to use American currency. Blast.

Whatever banana populace, whatever metro riders, whatever stomach, whatever bank account. You can't deter me because I have 7 lbs of oatmeal and 3 lbs of rice at home. and 7 Euro.

Blast.

Yours disgruntledly,
Claire W. G.
Song: "Mattinata" Leoncavalla
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmUNkbw31O8

Falling behind to catch you up!

Good Morning to all, it is morning for me, if not for you, just imagine it's morning. And if you don't like mornings, imagine some coffee too.

So to catch some of you up, I met this lady at the French Embassy event. We've basically changed each other's lives. Bottom line, end of discussion. She and I wanted to hang out and ended up playing some softball on the Mall with her work. Which is the campaign for Tobacco free kids. During one inning I was just standing there (ok during all the innings I was just standing there, it IS baseball) and had a thought. I looked around and to my left was the Washington Monument and to my right was the capital. The sun was setting and left an unreal, picturesque glow to the air. I sighed and Kate smiled back at me, I was happy. I was in a moment. Can you imagine, I was playing baseball on the mall. Between the Sculpture garden and the American Indian Museum. It was a moment, and remember it I will.

That was Tuesday. Wednesday Kate and hella gloire had an event with cupcakes and bubbly. I walked there in the rain through Georgetown to Betsey Johnson. Even though it was raining, I felt liberated and alive. I met AJ there and we had these DIVINE cupcakes and after a few clicks, we headed home. In the rain. Still magical as ever. I enjoy her company and will miss her when I jump ship from our nation. Thursday I went and played soccer with Eric, and had a funny run-in with a Mormon fellow. All of a sudden he was asking me these question and i had no idea what he was talking about. Some Listserv and chesterfield one or two. I was staring quite blankly into his face when Eric jumped in and said, she's with me. He asked, nonplussed,

guy:"are you LDS?"
cwg:"oh, god, no. NO, I'm not"
guy:"oh"

Later when we got in the car car remarked on the fellow's friendly attitude towards me throughout the evening. That's all well and good, but he was speaking in a different language, I informed Eric. yeah, he said, yeah.

Friday night I came promptly home from work and immediately fell asleep. I was supposed to hang out with heather and when I woke up around 9:15 I called her. She didn't answer but texted me 10 minutes later informing me that she to had fallen asleep. Oh the joys of youth...being able to sleep forever. Nothing about energy in the manual. But then we decided to get some popcorn for me to make as we both had not eaten dinner. And in case you don't know, popcorn substitutes quite well for meals, vegetable. starch. salt. That's basically everything right? But by time we got out on the street after talking to Femi (our front desk main man!) and etc, CVS and Giant had closed. BUT as we walked to Giant we heard a LARGE rustling in this trash can. My lord it sounded like a raccoon on 'roids was hungry. I wasn't so keen on sticking my head over the opening (neither was heather) and so I took a picture. Flighty little buddy hid, so we don't know his face. But he's out there, ransacking garbages across the Eastern Seaboard...

So we started walking. And talking. And continued walking. Then all of a sudden we're going on this beautiful cobble stoned sidewalk and BAM! Heather says" Holy! That's a Maryland sign!" Yes, we somehow found our way to Maryland. We didn't really know where we were either. And we didn't even know the time, but checking it was now 1 am! Yikes, we had been walking and talking for a while. then, BAM a bamboo forest is on our right. oh-k. Am I in the Twilight Zone or just China? Maryland is close to China right? Alaska/Russia? Maryland/China? Every state has it's foreign counterpart...no? Damn. Well anyway, I see a police station and we walk in. Ask the nice lady behind the counter where the nearest metro stop is and head on our way. As I drifted off to sleep I realized how much fun it was. Spending time with quality people just the simple pleasure of companionship. Heather, although we differ in so many ways, we have so much fun. And I will miss you. But we can get married when I get back. I promise.

Saturday I got up and went to the Holocaust Museum. I went on my own and got there as it opened. A very interesting temporary visit was there on Nazi Propaganda. Man, they really new how to do it. They had so many people wrapped up into their ideas and mindset. The genocide of the Jewish people was a catastrophe to put it lightly, as well as the prosecution of many other minorities. But to step back from the situation and to look at Hitler. Really look at him, it is amazing. To think what he could have done with his rhetoric and power if he had been working for good and the advancement of our world. We will never know.

I then went to a BBQ with AJ for her work. Morgan and Heather and Ashley were there as well. I went with a huge feeling of, well. I felt the weight of what I had just seen, but I was so thankful to be alive that it wasn't sad that I was feeling. I just felt very weighed into the world I saw things in a new light that showed the shadows as well as the bright colors. Balance.

That night, AJ and I went for a stroll a soir through our monuments. I hadn't been to the Jefferson or Lincoln at night and wanted to experience before I left. It was beautiful. Although Lincoln was still crowded as hell, but Roosevelt and Jefferson we had all to ourselves. Stunning.

OH Lincoln, to see you stand up.

The night glow on all these monuments made me feel I should be in a postcard, or a movie. Or the Real World DC.NOT. I heard they went to the Hawk and Dove, which is a famous intern bar. You're NOT interns, don't go there. Stay in your mansion and do drugs and hook up. That's what you do.
Jefferson, in your 19 feet of height, you inspire me. And kinda make me tired, maybe you adn Lincoln could trade-off every once in a while. Eh?
From the end of my time in the District, fondly,
Claire
Song: "Cavalleria rusticana " Pietro Mascagni
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OvsVSWB4TI
P.S. Happy Birthday Barack Obama!