Color

At Sephora — that’s a makeup store, for the uninitiated and the male — I always end up lingering over the Urban Decay display. It’s all wild colors, purple and emerald liner and black shadow littered with sparks. I used to wear this stuff in college, always a little self-conscious, never applying it perfectly. These days I wear muted browns and tans, light enough for the employee helping my friend to ask me if I ever wear makeup. I’ve come a long way from the days of cat eyes and electric greens.

I tease glitter liner over the base of my lashes and blend royal blue and sea-green on the bottom. The look reminds me of lit class freshman year. It also reminds me of an unfortunate episode (read: year) in late middle school when I made a Mimi-from-Drew-Carey-blue eye pencil the mainstay of my “look.” I didn’t touch the stuff for years after that, and then I fell in love with it, devouring Kevyn Aucoin books and stocking up on expensive brushes.

I smile at my reflection. I think it’s time to put some color back into my life.

Debating the future from the backseat of a cab

The taxi slows in front of my apartment building. Abdul and I have been having a meaningful conversation about U.S. attitudes toward immigrants that progressed to the likelihood of a North Korean nuclear strike against (a) the U.S. or (b) South Korea. It’s a topic that’s become close to my heart of late, but that’s a story for another time.

I tip Abdul from Sierra Leone three times as much as I should. If you ask me tomorrow, I’ll probably say that I was just that appreciative of the quick trip home, or maybe that the evening went to my head. The truth is, I like throwing money around. “I really appreciate it,” he says, with so much sincerity that I feel sick. I’m going to be a perfect American when I go abroad next, full of self-importance and scattered change.

Whatever I’ve been going for, I’m missing it.

The mind as camera obscura

I was halfway through my bus layover when the first fat drops of rain splashed on my Kindle. I’ve had the device for a few weeks now, but I don’t think I’ll ever stop checking other “pages” to see if the rain soaked through. Little wounds opened up on the pavement, dark and wet, closing the space between themselves until the whole sidewalk bled black beneath my feet. I jaywalked like a professional and swiped my card moments before the bus took off.

Rivulets cut paths down the glass window like tears down the makeup of a jilted bride. The evening was growing gray behind them, punched up by the taillights of post-rush-hour traffic. Inside the bus, we could make out the scattering pedestrians, some walking quickly and some jogging as respectably as possible toward the shelter of the occasional overhang, and some broken down into a slow amble by the knowledge that run as they might, they’d still get soaked.

I’m not giving away any secrets when I say that rain — any precipitation, really — wreaks havoc on the D.C. streets. Silver Spring’s a little better. Of course we had a few dull stretches of slick slow-moving tires barely digging into the puddling water, but as we moved away from downtown, I saw a Dodge Neon cavorting with the speed limit, sending a parabolic spray of water up from its left wheels, like a hose turned up to the sky on a sunny day.

By the time we approached the turn onto the street connecting my faux-home with the main road, the dying rivulets were dripping slowly down the glass. The deluge had opened just before I stepped on my bus, and it closed just before I stepped off. Thom Yorke was lying to me: And it rained all night, he said as the sky cleared.

I write because I’ve divorced my camera, losing my chance to record in any other way. The Nikon slumbers like the dead in its bag by my open suitcase. Staring at the raindrops shattering themselves against my window, a million birds flying into a screen, I missed it like a limb.

The dark side of drifting

In the beginning, having no fixed address was a fun game. I was fascinated by my brush with unconventionality because I’d always done things textbook-right — textbook-mediocre? Against my backdrop of good grades and workplace kudos, being a drifter was liberating, my first step out of the good-girl mold I poured myself into when I came home from kindergarten with As. This, I thought proudly, struggling beneath the weight of the bags I was hauling from Apartment A to Apartment B, this is not something a smart person would do.

On nights like these, lying on a narrow couch instead of a bed, the neighbors’ subwoofer rattling my spine, the clock ticking by minutes I’d be spending somewhere else if I had my own key to get back in, I remember that throwing off the shackles of good decisions is a two-edged sword.

I have a lot to be thankful for. I am tremendously lucky to have the kind of friends who put up with a confused girl napping on their furniture every night, and I’m incredibly grateful for M and S and B and other friends who’ve offered up their places up for future efforts of the Habitat for Kat project.

But mostly, I want a bed. When I moved out of my last apartment, I gave my mattress and box spring to S since packing it up in my parents’ already-stuffed van was simply not an option. Now when I turn off the lights in the living room, I know it’s only a wall away, taunting me like a bitter boyfriend. “Hah, look what you gave up! Too late now; we’ll never sleep together again.” It’s not the only reminder. I used to love living out of suitcases; now it’s been two months and I want to hang something up. I want to lay out my clothes without cluttering someone else’s floor.

Something’s gotta give, but damned if I know what. There’s a reason why I'm doing this; the time I need to decide things is worth more to me than a home. But on nights like these, when the couch is too narrow and the neighbors too loud, that lease starts looking good.

Breaking the ice with a meta post, because I’ve spent the past few days trying to come up with something witty and there’s been too much pressure and this is exactly why I have to get back into the habit before I forget how to update a blog.

It’s been a while since I could consider myself a blogger. In fact it’s been a while since I could consider myself much of anything, except a mooch.

Okay, I know I focus on that, but when you’ve been sleeping on a couch for a month with no plans to stop, it’s tough not to talk about it; there’s such a sense of disconnection with your friends, your coworkers, and the rest of functional American society that you want to destigmatize it by talking about it as much as possible.

If you’re wondering, this doesn’t actually work.

Coming off that parenthetical tangent: I’ve divorced my creativity since I came back from Europe. I haven’t blogged more than a couple entries, taken photos, developed photos from my trip, tweeted enough to speak of (admittedly, I take Twitter more seriously than I probably should), or done anything else with my personal time that requires more thought than Rock Band. I’ve given up on my photo-a-day and story-a-week resolutions, which were providing the only spark of creative impetus I had.

While breaks don’t have to be bad, this one has become negative because I don’t feel liberated; I feel stagnant. I’m not sure how to fix it, though. The blogosphere is littered with well-meaning posts that promise to write more but sit forever at the top of their long-forgotten sites anyway. The “I’ll be better, I promise” post is the kiss of death.

Instead of writing that post (to the extent that I haven’t written it already),I’d rather ask for inspiration. I’m on the hunt for good blogs and good photographers — even if I’m not writing or taking photos these days, I’m willing to live vicariously through people who are.

If you’ve got some favorites — or if you’ve got an awesome blog yourself — please share!