More With the Eyes

"I spend all my time trying to capture the moment.  And when I do, I'll interrogate it an torture it."
Jarod Kintz

Just a few of the lovely friends I made abroad.

Well, well, well.  It is has been a while.  Almost a year, to be specific.  I've missed this, I have, but upcoming controversial opinion: sometimes you need to step away from the documentation and just live your life.  So yes, I've studied abroad in Europe, but no I did not blog a single thing.  Do I regret this? Not at all.  I was busy from the wee hours of the morning until right before the sun came up the next day exploring new things.  I don't regret it at all.  As cliche as it is, I think sometimes people are too focused on finding the perfect filter for their newest Instagram post of mountaintop view or ethnic dish to truly appreciate what they are doing.  Instead, soak it in, take mental screenshots and revel in the glory of the moment.  Take a few overview pictures, but don't waste your time finding the perfect lighting for some flower on a cliff in San Sebastian.  In a few years, even a few months, you probably won't even remember what city that flower was in, which one of the countless hiking trails you found it on, or why you even thought to take the picture in the first place.  Hell, you might not even remember which country it was in.  You're not going to look at a picture of a flower and have memories flood back to adventurous times.  It's a five second glance picture at best.  However, that shitty picture in the uni bar taken by a Scottish stranger of you and your friends crowded around a booth with ciders and beers littering the table?   That's a keeper.

You're going to look at that one and think of each specific person and the memories you share intimately with them, as well as the memories you all as a group share. You're going to remember how that was the last day of finals month and this was one of the last times most of you would be together.  You are going to remember how fucking filled the bar at GUU would be because of everyone celebrating the end of finals.  You will remember you all dispersed after this picture to get ready to go to the club for a foam party.  You will remember that you ended up not going to the foam party and just got trashed at Kelvinhaugh instead, and then walked over to a divey pub, only to realize your debit card was being a sonofabitch again and wouldn't give you cash from the ATM.  You will remember how your friends were nice enough to chip in a few pounds so you could take a taxi home, because QM is a forty-five minute walk and it's 2am and your friends sure as hell will not let you walk home.

You are going to remember all this, but that flower picture is not going to make a dent in your memory bank.