Pause

Today, on this meteorologically erratic, rainy-sunny-delugeal-sun-setting-over-peacefully-parting-clouds day, I will make soup with the matzah remaining from Passover, call home, listen to the Phillies game, and take a breath.

It has been a disjointed week. I'm caught in the limbo of the middle ground between trying to finish the fieldwork component of my research, a quick trip to Munich and Vienna, and a trip home to the States on Friday. The week past, and the one coming, are no-man's-land, flexible time whose use I have not yet determined, yet ganz wertvoll; I feel the time I have left in this place, and thus, the time to fulfill my purpose here, inexorably slipping away, grain by grain.

This past week, and this next one, are planless - with much to be done, full of specific tasks to be accomplished, but utterly lacking those sine quibus non of all constructive progress: definitive order, clear organization, engaged motivation to use them to their fullest.

This is what it is to drift.

I could write about the weather which greeted me upon my return to Sofia on Friday, about how the rainy season is here in full force, evidenced by sometimes-torrential downpours and intermittent hailstorms mixed thereinto. I could write about going out for pizza and beer last night with some friends to celebrate the end of Passover and the subsequent reintroduction of leavened breads and wheat products to my diet. I could write about later being swept into a beautiful Easter vigil at an Orthodox church, being given candles, witnessing the entirety of the musical ceremony, congregating with hundreds of other churchgoers as the crucifix was paraded around the church, being subsumed into the thrice-completed procession around the church, and walking home at 1 AM, accompanied on the streets by hundreds of Sofians, all bearing lit candles, keeping them lit the entire way back to their homes.

I could write about my excitement at my impending excursion back to the States to witness my brother get married, see old friends, and be able to enjoy the pleasures of home without the hindrance of a stressful purpose for being there, in contrast to my last trip home. I could write about my anxiousness to finish my research and start writing my thesis, my soon-to-be-frenzied drive to move towards that final step in my work here, the completion of that process being the golden key that will unlock the gateway to what promises to be the best summer of my life. I could write about all the fun things, still prospective, that lie on the horizon, waiting first to be planned, and then realized, over the course of my final two months here.

But today, and for this I sincerely apologize, I simply and utterly lack the inclination to do so. Today I would much rather simply check in with you, my magnanimous readership, tell you that I'm surviving, drop hints about all the exciting things that lie ahead, and call it a day. The internal battle to procure a high-quality, detailed account of this particular episode in my life is one from which I will have to accept a moral victory, in the fact of the realization of this post, alone.

Just know that things are the same as they never were, and that I will see you very soon. Good night.

Bleib bei uns, denn es will Abend werden, und der Tag hat sich geneiget.