out of the silence, sound.

After a summer of wonder and growth and discovery, and the coming of a glorious autumn, I am back. I did not intend to be silent for so long: I simply needed some time to myself, in the real world, in which I was not thinking about the virtual world, but really, truly, being present. Not an easy task to accomplish: a daily struggle, in fact, but a beautiful one. And so, I am here, speaking once again, in a voice that is not new but perhaps whose timbre has shifted a little.

There is much that I would like to share from my summer, and will in a series of upcoming posts. Suffice it to say right now that I flew across the pond, to a new land and a new language, in search of a new me. I didn't find her, but somehow, little by little, became her. And she wasn't who I had been expecting. Mentally, I landed clad in black and white: over the course of the coming months I learned to appreciate many shades of grey, whose richness I had thought myself incapable of seeing. I was drawn to surprising things, things which previously might not have even warranted a second glance: now I was chasing them down.

I look forward to sharing my adventures with you... stay tuned! :)

xo
Stella

the final push.

In ten days I will have completed my first year in graduate school; one presentation and four papers stand between me and summer, but I can practically taste it. Here in the northeast summer seems to have arrived early. The past few days have been sunny, humid, and upwards of 80 degrees– my summer skirts have finally been released from their dusty prison in the back of my closet! Last night I walked home after a milonga– an evening of tango dancing– without a jacket. Delicious!!

The past month has been a whirlwind of activity, mostly consisting of long days and late nights at the library, and resulting in the some wonderful feedback from my peers. I've been living off of this complement from a third-year graduate student (one of my role models!) for weeks now:

"Tremendous presentation today. You are such a polished and articulate - and SMART scholar. Wow. What fun."

Ahh!!! I don't think I have ever considered myself a scholar, per se, but I suppose I ought to try it on as it appears to fit! I can do this after all. It is going to be a tough push to the end– but I am going to make it! And then: a new European adventure begins. I booked my flight yesterday; my plans are no longer amorphous, but are rather becoming palpable. Soon I will be on the other side of the ocean once again, living in a new land, speaking a new language, becoming a new me... thank you, universe.

wanderlust and wonder.

"We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next, to find ourselves. We travel to open our hearts and eyes and learn more about the world… And we travel, in essence, to become young fools again—to slow time down and get taken in, and fall in love once more."

-Pico Iyer

http://www.salon.com/travel/feature/2000/03/18/why/

I am yearning to travel again, to pack the lightest suitcase in my closet and buy a plane ticket... there is so much that I love about traveling, particularly traveling alone, and not just about going to new (or well-loved) places, but about the actual process of transportation. To the surprise of many I adore airports: there so many lives converge in a singular moment in time, arriving from cities across the globe and then dispersing, on to the next adventure or business venture. The man in the seat beside me on the airplane may be returning to his hometown for the first time in years; the girl sitting across the aisle may be crossing the ocean for the first time in her life. So many different stories, emotions, desires, possibilities.

When I travel, I feel a great sense of freedom, as if I can inhabit any one of myriad states of consciousness. I can be whoever I decide to be. In this day and age, we cannot travel under an alias, and yet we can adopt a certain persona when we travel. We are surrounded by strangers, and all is unfamiliar. Gone are the bonds that remind us of who we, and others, think we must be. Travel is revivifying, exhilarating, liberating. I will admit it: at times, when boarding a Virgin Atlantic flight, I have adopted a British accent; on an Alitalia flight, I speak to the flight attendants in Italian. And what a thrill! I long to experience this again, and soon!