wherever you go, there you are

This Christmas was pretty fun.
I went to Midland and met with Sarah and we drank tea after doing a run/jump/spin hug in the middle of barnes&noble. She got her hair straightened by a hot Italian guy named Fabrizio, and I held a chameleon for the first time. I spent time with my family, saw Sarah Ayer's baby, met Eden at the Deli, played Tomb Raider, dug a snow tunnel, rode on a sled tied to a snowmobile, and then on Christmas Day, drove 6 hours and had a great time doing it. I didn't have to stop to rest or anything! When I came into my apartment, it seemed huge--like somehow I was a fish that was put into a smaller bowl so I shrunk and then I went back to the bigger bowl. Everything was even more beautiful than I remembered it.

Stephanie is gone and that is sad and strange. But I'll just have to make due because that's all there is and at least we have what we had.

My favorite book of all time (which is neck and neck with Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass) is On The Road by Jack Kerouac. And as I was driving home from my parents house, I was listening to Matt Dillon narrate the book on a CD which I borrowed from Brianna. Things kept popping up that completely described how I felt, and although it would be my fifth time reading/listening to it, I was realizing these things for the first time. They would pass through the north and peer through the falling snow like a monk peering into the papery ancient scriptures. They'd go to Florida, where my family is now. And then Sal Paradise said:

"What is that feeling when you're driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? --it's the too-huge world vaulting us, and it's good-bye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies."

It's truth and it is unchanging and we're all helpless. But that is what's beautiful. We're all on the road and we're traveling and in every single moment we're leaving something and heading toward something and there's nothing we can do about it because all we have is now.

Do You Realize
that everyone you know
Someday will die

And instead of saying all of your goodbyes
let them know you realize
that life goes fast
It's hard to make the good things last
You realize the sun doesn't go down
It's just an illusion caused by the world spinning round.

I am home again at my parent's house in Pinconning and it's really nice to see everyone and not have to work or worry about homework or anything like that. That work/homework thing has been dominating my life and making me stay up until 4 am and then get up at 7. This morning I slept in until 10 and that is probably a new record for me.
Plans are made for my days and weeks and I'm catching up on a life that I have sort of missed out on for a while. But that's what happens. You miss out on one part of your life because you move onto another. I am really and truly excited for the adventures yet to come and am really grateful for the ones that have already happened. It is like I want to be doing something every second while still having time to relax and work on my reading list that I have made for this christmas break, but that is just not possible.
This is really stream-of-consciousness and it probably won't make sense to anyone but me.
However, whenever I do come home I always feel some kind of separation from everything. I feel separated from this place because I have been away for so long and have not been here for all of the tiny little changes that occur unnoticed, and I feel separated from my life in Marquette because I am literally separated from my life in Marquette. It is kind of strange. Not unpleasant, just strange.