4.27.05

after returning from a weekend with butler on the isle of skye (sprawling, erupting landscape [grey and alien, no sense of scale], embarrassing american students in every physical space i tried to be [breaking windows, flirting with the sophistication of junior high but with the promise of actual sex], coping with a hostel [dirty bedding, gasping cold shower], painfully loud scottish folk music on the bus for seven hours a day [over land and sea]; utterly unable to appreciate where i was), i returned home to an exacerbated version of last thursday's wasp infestation.

despite the intensity of the skye experience, it has been overshadowed by living with wasps in my bedroom for three days. i hear buzzing everywhere; i flinch at the brush of the string attached to my keys. i can't sleep. yesterday, they drove me out of my bed at 5.34 in the morning. i sat in my hall, reading, for seven hours until someone woke up. it was a surprisingly meditative experience that i hope to never repeat, but likely will.

i have tinfoil up over every hole they can possibly come through. i hope. emily brought me a hemp lollipop from amsterdam and stayed with me til the exterminator came on tuesday afternoon. i was, mostly, a wreck, and am just now coming back to myself. just fourteen more days i have to live here.

i've been noticing that my outlook is growing increasingly negative. since it became clear that jon wasn't well enough to come to scotland, i have expected every event, large and small, to turn out as badly as it possibly can. i have had very few experiences in scotland that have encouraged me to do otherwise. my perspective is skewed. it doesn't feel right, but i don't have the energy to throw at changing it now. i will wait until i'm out of the country and shift it from maine.

i expect the power of simple existence at home to be all i need to change it.

the pieces are in place for this summer to be a good thing: jon is well on the road to recovery, i have a flexible, well-paying job that i may even get the hang of before august, sarah will be living in brunswick, and i'll be at home. i'll be living in my house with my parents and little buddy and tea and plants and hammocks and driving and afternoon radio and pesto.

from here, sitting in this lab in the south side of edinburgh, i still expect the summer to go catastrophically wrong. i would like to be proven wrong.