Babylon.

Third year into the mix and time is flying by quicker than ever. One crisis has followed another since the start of the term, but this weekend it would seem that things are looking up. I'll knee-deep in a million things at the moment- huge projects, pending visits, hospital calls and a possible move within the next few weeks. It would truly seem now that life keeps charging forward, whether I'm ready for the ride and can manage to keep up or not. Yet somehow, from one day to the next, the shades in which I observe it all flush dramatically from drab grays to brilliant hues of pink and red and purple.

I had a moment yesterday on the trip home from a friend's house where I'd spent the night before. The sun was shining, the city buzzing, and I felt as though I was standing still for just a moment and watching it all transpire around me. The music in the streets and leaves dancing on the wind made it all seem like a musical, in which I had no role except that of a silent observer, an audience of one in a spectacle that only I could see. I rode the wave of euphoria that washed over me all afternoon, then finished off the day with a tour of the city by night to take pictures of all the beautiful places that I see every day but have somehow ceased to fully see the beauty of. Camera in hands, Quintijn at my side, we scoured the city for good angles, perfect lighting, priceless moments unfolding to catch and store on film. At one point, while crawling around on our hands and knees through the fallen leaves scattered across the cobblestoned walkways, I felt a fit of silent laugher rise to my lips, the spontaneity and casual beauty of it all making me realize, somehow, that my thoughts of places far and moments past are trite and unnecessary. Because despite it all, when I stop to think about it, to let the essence of the place I call home truly sink in, that I love it here and that I actually always have.

Sometimes there's nothing that can make you realize how much you love a person, a place, a laugh or a smile until you almost lose it, the feeling of that which you hold so dear slipping slowly from your fingers as you clench your fist around it, not willing to let it go. This is where I am now, holding on with everything that I have, determined not to lose what I have fought so hard to create. Yet it's comforting to know that I don't stand clinging to these things alone. In the moments when I feel my weakest, when the strength in my fingers is draining, that there are other hands to take the burden from me, hands to hold me steady through my darkest of hours, hands that soothe and heal and let me know that at the end of the day, I have managed to make it home.