Amsterdam is dark now. I am sitting in my balcony, which overlooks the still-green huddled canopies of towering birch trees, and through the thin cracks of my wooded railings, I see the shimmering glow of the full September moon reflected upon the river’s murky water. Tomorrow, I begin my second year of university. I ponder often nowadays the fact that, had things turned out differently for me some two years ago, this school year would have been my last. But to dwell on this is irrelevant, because my predicament does not dispirit me.

And so, I have been in this country for over a year now. I consider myself a year ago, then consider myself now, but this task is giving me some trouble. Not because I have undergone a grand transformation, after all, a year is not a very long time at all, and yet, change has been known to thrive on even less. It is true, though, that it is difficult to reconcile with the girl from my memories.

A young mind does not require much to alter itself. Or is it that young people simply believe themselves the pillars of a sort of blooming, burning metanoia that the ancient Greeks so rightly coined? It is perhaps not that we as humans reach a time when change ceases to grasp us, but rather that its touch is more easily felt by a mind that tethers the edge of ripeness; still green and wonderous, so filled to the brim with inquiry that the spirit can hardly keep up. Even now, I cannot help but peruse such complexities, when all I sought out to do was write about this tranquil autumn night.

Tomorrow it will rain, and the joyous months of break will have officially ended, even if summer still hangs on by the equinox. The days have been purposeless, though I suppose school will bring its own sort of monotony, yet perhaps that is not entirely a bad thing.

Something will begin tomorrow, and I, as I am now, will merely become a memory blending with countless others so they can forge yet another period of my life; the summer of twenty-five. Tomorrow, this process will begin anew, and when I close my eyes to sleep tonight, the echoes of my current self will slowly peel away, like the molting skin of a reptile.

The Moon Seen Through Leaves (Hagoshi no Tsuki), from the series “Twenty-eight Views of the Moon (Tsuki nijuhakkei no uchi)” Date: c. 1832 Artist: Utagawa Hiroshige 歌川 広重 Japanese, 1797-1858