Leben jetzt und hier- This is Living

It was July 2008. We were young and wild. We stayed past the semester end of our study abroad in Prague to travel the Adriatic coast.

All we had was eternity. The world our oyster.

We debated a tattoo to consecrate the summer that was slipping away. We wandered down the river in Vienna one evening and, quite literally, stumbled into an open-air music festival.

“Leben jetzt und hier, featuring Paul Van Dyke!” the festival signs read.

Leben jetzt und hier: This is living.

It felt like a manifesto. “This IS living,” we joked to ourselves as we listened to MGMT in the back row of an overnight bus later that month, traveling from Bosnia to Montenegro.

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It was July 2022 and they griped and moaned the entire way to the rose garden. Kicking the back of my car seat, asserting they’d “wait in the car the whole time!”

They jumped out and stared at a sea of floral, starting to smell each flower. “Mom! This one!” “Mom, This one!” They decided to smell each and every one they walked past before realizing that doing so would take eternity.

All we had was eternity. The world our oyster.

This is living. A manifesto. We stopped and smelled the roses and I wondered how we’d consecrate this summer that was slipping away.

If you ever find yourself in Portland, OR I highly recommend a visit to the International Rose Test Garden. It is really quite unlike any other public garden I’ve ever seen.

If you ever find yourself in Vienna, Austria I highly recommend you find yourself at a Paul Van Dyke music festival, but that seems less likely.

This, my dear ones, this is living.