redheaded dreams

heavy foot in front of the other
little redheads are always mermaids
five with a world on your shoulders
and sirens sing lullabies to a watery grave

i tasted salt on the shells my nana gave me
i tasted salt on my skin in new york city
in shadows of towers
that are neither earth
nor sky
learned young not to jump
because girls can not fly
so windows were paintings
and my brushes were dry
slept dreams where the oceans
and forests collide

and i of the city
full of irrational dreams
believed not in a land where the woods kissed the sea
or in climbing red caves with my hands and barefeet

i quieted my heart and fell for years into sleep
where epics are tall tales
on a blank screen for dreams

a mermaid loses the salty lustre of her skin
after she has forgotten the ocean
and the dream of returning to the currents

the seagulls dont recognize her
the siren songs fade
shells grind themselves into sand

singing bird in an open cage

i am home

oceans separate continents
people say good bye
people die
we are made of glass

been so long

and if my country no longer loves me
ill come back to you

im leaving the continent of europe in a day and a half. what surreal adventures. so many things. such love. such a loving way to live.

but i have come to realize that traveling constantly is not a way to live for a long period of time. for the meanwhile i will be rooted. adventures always, but roots are important. the only way i could ever justify this again would be
a. another pilgrimage (can i call this a pilgrimage? yes i think)

b. traveling for music or whatever it is that i can bring

it has been so beautiful and so necessary. i am so sad to leave em but i feel so good about this next little phase. i will be in amherst next weekend too. shocking. going straight for the woods. this might be my last european post.

nothing climactic

just open arms and full heart

ps double

i keep forgetting things

we just saw a man in the center of portici holding a basket on a string from his second floor balcony, and lowering to a guy on the street who put a thing of bread in it. i stopped to watch and giggle and they got very excited by this.

I LOVE ITALY

maybe i should just accidentally miss my flight?
NO SARUH! there is time!

herculaneum

now called ercolano. if you are poor you can only look at the ruins, you can't hang out in them, which is fine by me i guess. hot damn

lots of buildings that you can no longer sleep in. lots of shit that is no longer shit. is this a good detailed account?

im in love with italy tho, and quite pleased that i will one day inherit an italian villa quite close by. the italian people are a mixture of absolute friendly openness and brute force honesty. luigi, the man we are staying with is 58 and so specific with the way he lives his life so sometimes we do things opposite to the way he wants and he gets his panties in a twist. but in a funny italian way that my nana does so it is ok.

we walked around the crazy streets of napoli. napoli is about five times more intense than time square. easily. no traffic lights and people driving crazily in and out of pedestrians, quite fast i might add. people talking, buying christmas items on the street. in and out in and out. all over the place. i feel like the best way to describe napolitians is filthy elegance. always

coming home in 5 days. gabby died last year today. and no matter how rainy italy is, we are still eating FABULOUS homecooked food with luigi, lounging on his grande terrace with the view of the mediterranean, and laughing. always.

no words to describe this happiness.
maybe just the song GOING TO CALIFORNIA. thats an accurate account of this feeling.

is anyone alive? is anyone still reading this? is anyone out there?

i was just kidding about the volcano

ps. we hitch hiked western europe

oh also

happy december

farewell dear world

there are thousands of birds that fly over napoli's central station EVERYDAY. they do a beautiful dance. big birds small birds. faraway close up
shit on my hand
on luigi's head
umbrellas without rain

luigi is in his fifties or sixties and he lives alone in a house that is a mixture between a mad scientist, an artist, and a pharmacist. his living room doors open up to a gigantic terrace that looks out over the mediterranean sea, the entirety of napoli, and mount vesuvius

if we dont die from the pot that we cooked our lunch out of that is poisonous, we will probably die of the volcano errupting

i would like to take this time to say my farewells.

thank you for being such an avid fan base. don't worry, if there is anyway for me to die, it is by volcano in italy on the mediterranean. besides, i hear that in pompei and ecolano, people were frozen in place because the lava got to them so fast and now there are rocks shaped like them. dogs too. if you miss me, all you have to do is come to italy. i will be doing a secret hand signal but you will definitely recognize it. also, i'll probably be holding teddo...easily recognizable.

this may be my last post before the volcano

tell my parents i love them and thank you for the support despite all the angst over the years.

to my friends, i appreciate you listening to my endless processes...or me singing the littlest birds over and over again

and lastly, to my dogs...

i hereby sign everything i own over to muldoon and tutti for the purpose of cuddling and chewing. enjoy

if there is anything that anybody wants that is mine, you will have to take it up with them


alright...if you dont hear from me again, know that i loved you.

sugar daddy

gots ourselves a sugar daddy in rome.

couchsurfed three weeks ago to stay with this guy in rome for two days and confirmed that we would stay with him. we sent him another message the other day to let him know when exactly we would be arriving to which he responded that he had invited another person over but that perhaps it could work out. he told us to call him when we arrived in rome.

big trip day. hostel. alright, we are going to meet R (that's what we will call him here) at the bologna post office. alright we are waiting. alright, he is half an hour late. alright i thought the umbrella guy was him. alright...it isn't and thats a little racist, saruh.

he finally shows up and the sun came out! but that is not necessarily indicative of his presence which is strange and somewhat unfriendly. we walk toward his house since we spent ALL OF OUR MONEY ON A HOSTEL due to him ditching us last minute. halfway there he tells us that his university dorm mates dont know about his couchsurfing account, so we should tell them that we are friends. then he says that we will be sharing a room. but on his profile it explicitly says that guests will have their own room. so it started feeling a little shady. lil bit

he said to me 'you didnt read the page completely?' to which i replied that YES, YES i did, and it said that we would have our own space.

he asked how much our hostel had cost and then offered to pay for us to sleep another night there. long story short, and one shady interaction later, we are accepting 30 euros from this guy getting out of a bank.

and now we are leaving for napoli tomorrow after a beautiful night walk through rome to the coloseum and fontane trevi. che bella.

in the words of emilie 'we saw a lot of shit that used to be shit but now isnt shit'

and the hostel guy told me that he wanted to bite me and wanted to pick the spot on my body where he could bite me.

alright

we aren't homeless
and we dont need to sleep in a church, thank you evan