thens, nows, and laters.

In a probably futile attempt to organize these jumbled things I pass off as blog posts (see also: every paper I've ever written), we're going high-concept tonight, so brace yourself, this might get hairy.

I am good with the Now right now. Now being me, in my dorm room on Boltzmangasse, far from all the idiotic hubbub of the Euro Soccer championship that has basically assaulted Vienna and made everyone into drunken noisy idiots with flags painted on their faces (and we all know how much I like facepaint), after a rainy-sunny day of unwarranted stress and an excursion down the Danube, a movie with my friends in my room because Le Roomie is out for the weekend. Now is good. And it's harder than it should be for me to say that with conviction, but it always has been - as my writing colleagues always tell me, Rachel Cannot Tell A Straight Story. Linearity is not my forte, and I keep journals and read through them too much and am usually jumping between the Past and the Future, neglecting the Now, and not always by accident. Now, though, right now, is pretty grand, and made grander by the Later (because tomorrow is Sunday and I can wake up whenever) and the Then of what was today, and what was last week, and last year, and all those everlasting other 'last's.

Because we had us some times. I don't know who you are out there reading this right now, but regardless, we have had us some times, you and I. Maybe in 12, at the Toga Party of my 20th birthday, or just watching Planet Earth stoned on a Sunday night or climbing on top of the refrigerator to graffiti the ceiling, or maybe it was my freshman year and we were on the roof of Babbitt passing out on each other and falling out of common room windows to get on to Minor Field, or maybe it was a Super Pie in the Keehn FacApt and then dancing all over the furniture.
Or maybe it was in Oklahoma, maybe we were mini-golfing and having fine dinners to judge our servers by our own standards of waitressing, maybe we were driving around doing nothing but listening to music and wondering what we should do with ourselves. Maybe we were on a porch, smoking each other's cigarettes, or we were in a pool with the dogs running laps around the perimeter, or riding on a scooter. Maybe we were in my backyard in dresses, or in coats, and the fire was lit and Penny was under our feet falling asleep. Maybe it was in a courtyard at lunchtime when we weren't yet licensed drivers. Maybe we were in New York City eating Indian food.
Regardless, there were some times, and we should be glad of them.

And today was all hills and rivers, wineries and coffeeshops, spending the day out in the countryside of Vienna, seeing Benedictine monks perform their midday prayer in a Baroque sanctuary, and it was glorious but it wasn't; because it looked so nice, so unreal and yet so ordinary, but really, I was much happier when we came back, when we acted like college students and crammed as many people onto a dorm room bed as possible to watch a movie on my laptop.

The week was rough, doing all the work I haven't done all semester while Vienna went wintry again, confusing my obligations with my responsibilities and drinking too much coffee and not sleeping well (for the record, I've decided Hell is someone listening to The Carpenter's "Close to You" on repeat for the better part of two hours while you are trying to sleep and can hear Karen Carpenter's anorexic croon from all the way across the street - seriously I was on the brink of screaming "SHUT THE FUCK UP OR AT LEAST CHANGE THE SONG" but I don't know what it is in German). And the weekend was off-kilter, drinking and eating and spending too much and then today's reaffirmation that this group of students in Vienna is absurd, myself and friends included - no sitcom writer could come up with these characters, ask me about it sometime - but it's all right now. It's all right now. All of it is right now, and it's all right, now.

And the future, flying cars be damned - I'm going to drive across the country in July. I'm going to graduate college. We're going to have a new President. And the ever-so-important Petting of Penny and Drinking With Family is only three weeks away. Three weeks after all this - doesn't seem real.

So that's my Nows and Thens and Laters, my Soons. They don't make much sense, I'm sure, and I'm sorry, but there they are - and what are yours?