the last night & being home.

i have been home about 10 days. the trip has undergone the inevitable metamorphosis from an immediate experience to a nascent memory. here's a few shots from our last night in stockholm. 

 dinner was at a cafe in a little park, sandwiched between trees and incomprehensibly upscale shops. we had lobster soup that my grandmother declared the best meal of the trip. i felt like i was in a movie.

 we passed this tgi fridays quite frequently &, when i realized it was the last time i'd see it, i had to document it. whereas in america they are populated by cliches of suburban stagnation, in stockholm, the young and well dressed bob their heads approvingly to 90s american pop gems while smoking cigarettes and avoiding the bemused glances of this american tourist.

 our room, where we shared a bed. initially this horrified me, with all my sleep related neuroses, but i was always so exhausted i passed out without any trouble.

 the view out our window.

 the window seat, a favored writing perch.

the last glance of stockholm, from the train to the airport.

i examine the trip now like an artifact. it is a treasured precious thing whose final shape is to be determined as i continue to turn over the memories: their colors, sensations, associations....

i have been home for long enough now to feel my own leaden weight, the press of dissatisfaction and the restlessness of ambition. i mention this in the same breath as the trip because through experiencing newness, feeling wonder and seeing the smallest sliver of the world's enormity, i will not be in my small  space here much longer. the shape of what is next is still indeterminate, forming as i wrestle with abstract questions, attempting to reshape them into practical ones with solutions. i know very very little. but i do know time is relentless and being alive is brief, and i want to fill my time with as much experience as possible. and i want to transmute every second of it into words.

this trip renewed my conviction that i am a writer, in my soul, in my bones, in my cells. what i must do now, following the weeks i spent enthralled with a new place, un-self consciously pulling out my notebook with minimal provocation and gleefully photographing my surroundings, is to manifest those habits and enchantment here, in my current place, shape, space, and time. 

i look eagerly towards my next destination.