i don't know what it is, i really don't, but as of late all these softy feelings and memories frequently visit me. i've been holding up my new tough self pretty well over the past several months, but i'm starting to weaken slightly.
while reading through the first several 'rosary beads' of Eat, Pray, Love earlier tonight, i began to think back on the summer i spent in Beijing. some of you hardcore xanga fans may remember my extensive photoblogs from that summer. though i was only there for a month, it seems like i spent several months there. i can vividly remember so many instances from those four weeks, and i wonder just how accurate these memories are.
so many memories i can't even begin to describe them all in words... if only i was blessed with written talent. i remember the anxiety that struck me when i arrived in Beijing by my lonesome... i turned on adriel's mobile phone and instantly received several calls from the driver he sent to pick me up. i couldn't get myself to answer his calls because i didn't know a lick of mandarin and was afraid to approach my first language barrier over the phone. the cab ride to adey's dorm room on the Beida campus was slow and magical. i remember seeing the flashing blue lights on the side of the freeway as we left the airport and wondered what purpose those served. i remember trying to play it cool, like i belonged in that dorm, while dragging my suitcase up to adey's room. the room was small, the bathroom was yellow, but it felt cozy. i was afraid to leave his dorm room and was perfectly fine confining myself there until he arrived the next day.
several other memories... the first "bread car" ride to the wudaokou intersection, buying a bicycle, straddling the back of the little gray bike because i couldn't get the hang of riding sideways, drawing portraits of each other on the roof of a Houhai cafe, walking through the hutongs and stopping in random cafes for eats, coffee, and chats, taking cabs everywhere and constantly being amazed at how cheap the fares were (yet after living in Shanghai, the fares no longer seem so thrifty...), sharing ice cream treats in the oppressive heat (milk and 'grape'), trying to find new places for dinner after lunch heh, reading and studying and everything else at Sculpting in Time, walking through the Beida campus at night, my first experience at the chaotic electronics mall, the really big puddle between the electronics mall/carrefour and campus, my first yellow can of red bull from one of the little stalls outside the "nan mer", watching dvds in the room on our lazy nights, listening to music and playing along on the guitar, creating the octopus with permanent marker, going photo crazy, my first Haagen Dazs store experience at Wangfujing, riding on the rickety wooden floored bus and getting lost, eventually finding the local market shopping building after that, constantly drinking cheap purple and green grape and acerola bottle beverages, noodle lunches and dinners at that little noodle place on campus, breakfasts at McDonalds (taro pie before it hit Hawaii) or Yong He Da Wang before mandarin class, using the disgusting squatters in the mandarin class building, having afternoon class in an abandoned classroom behind the railway, and so on and so forth...
the thing i miss most about all those memories is the companionship. i miss being able to do anything and everything with the person i cared about quite a bit. i'm now quite used to being single and doing the solo thing (which for me means hanging out with friends who aren't a significant other while trying to find solo time too) but i do miss being close with someone. bleeeeh... off to read more and to try and get my mind off this. i could say stuff like, i miss being in love, i miss sharing a bed with someone, i miss falling asleep next to someone who cares, i miss waking up and preparing breakfast and coffee for someone i care about, i miss comfortably lying next to someone without the awkwardness, but in reality i don't really miss it all that much. in fact, i don't miss it at all... i just sometimes wish i could experience those things again every so often. 
ooh, i believe the old cat is rearing her ugly worrysome head again 
)
seriously? 
at the moment, and that's what matters most right now.
. think i'll crawl into bed with a book now and take yet another nap... talk about an early night. 
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