so...a life sorted in 6 months?

i leave in 2 days. how do i see the 6 month experiment from this vantage? neat [cut into thirds], symmetrical, more lax than i would've thought and, essentially, an interpersonal failure...

neat? this relates to the interpersonal failure part. the trip featured three relationship failures: the first one with james' girlfriend, juliette [see post here], the second one with my friend, summer [which i didn't write about] and the unexpected row with the woman i was staying with in town as a result of failure number one. things do come in threes, no?

thirds? each failure marked, almost to the day, a two month milestone; slicing the six-month pie into three parts.

latest failure: as i was leaving her place for the last time, after a two-month stay of weekends, she rather passive-aggressively ran down the stairs saying, 'no, forget it...' after she dropped the bomb of how displeased she'd been with my stay there! i had to chase after her and plead for the privilege of hearing how i'd failed to read her mind about what she was expecting from me, none of which was ever discussed. i was supposed to have known that i needed to clean the house every week, take the dog out more than i had done [though i walked the dog each afternoon i was there, as agreed upon---always asking if he needed more], feed her [owner, not the dog] at least as much as she'd offered food to me, pay more than our agreed-upon price since her bills were 'really huge'! [implying that my being there on weekends had made them that way] she claimed that 'adults just know these things'...this is when i realized that i wasn't dealing with an adult...

despite being greatly disheartened by these failures [especially the last one, as, in my head, it was supposed to 'redeem' the first two] i'm still going to press ahead with the visa application. i try not to imagine this social dynamic between me and british women as being an insurmountable, universally repeatable law. though, i do wonder what i'm not seeing...what am i missing?

i've been consistently surprised during the six months about just how much american and british cultures differ. so much gets lost in translation, in both directions. however, the difference would be difficult to quantify. it would take a lifetime to understand fully...and my life is half over...

thanks to everyone for reading and commenting! i plan to post an epilogue, my landing in nj and whatever happens in my unsure, itinerant existence. then this blog will probably join the massive scrapheap of dead blogs...having served its purpose...

a punchline from the universe: james and i drove over to where i was staying in town with the woman of blowout number three in order to pick up my computer. guess who was sitting at the table with blowout number three?

blowout number two!

[no, they don't know each other]

ha ha...fuckin' ha!