"Long before. It begins." 

The song hovered thick above the grayish canals, the array of trees that always lined the cobblestone streets now taking on a somewhat murky and lonesome persona with their foggy coating.

A man strolled down the nearly deserted street, continuing his haunting hymn. 

"Make me thrill as only you know how."

The words bouncing off the water, creating a chilling echo that accentuated the smoothness of his baritone voice. 

"Sway me smooth."

From the distance he could hear the gasping laughter of two girls in vivid conversation. He could almost make out the shadowy outlines of their figures through the fog. They bounced into each other as they walked, half bent over in laughter. 

"Sway me now."

As they approached, their outlines became more vivid. He wore his top hat and five piece suit that served as his uniform. Every Friday evening he sang in a hotel lobby before a crowd of elegant upper-class businessmen and their manicured escorts. 

From the fog, the voices called. The sound was not something he could pin-point. All strangely compelling, none quite human. He could no longer see the the girls, their laughter dissipated as if eaten by the cloud. 

He raised his eyebrows. 

No fun, he thought, following the obscure sound. But what was it? Thick, rolling fog tumbled out of the approaching side street as if pumped out by an unseen midst machine.

"A performance of sorts, undoubtedly." he thought aloud. 

Screeching metal blared, piercing his ears.

"Well, damn! Is that really necessary?" 

His voice echoed down the empty alley. 

In a furious curiosity he marched towards the source of the noise, the strange and irritating screech groaning, growing louder as he approached. Now he was mad. There was no particular reason, he realized, for him to be mad, but somehow he even felt offended. 

In truth, he wasn't going to do kind things to those girls that were approaching. In fact, they're probably better off in the fog. Perhaps the fury came from the deprivation of his ability to execute those unmentionable horrors. He weighed this in his head as he followed the sounds down the street. 

It appeared that there was nothing in the alleyway. The fog seemed to have thinned out in front of him and he could make out the doors and bricks of the buildings lining the street. Perplexed, he nudged his head back and turned on his heel. 

Before he realized it, he was consumed by the noise. Darkness filled up around him as if the fog had shifted its color to black. He could not see his hands or feel his face, only hear that grinding, screeching noise. The noise bleared through his mind, so unlike any machine, or animal, or phenomenon he had ever heard or could possibly imagine. 

It was as if a large mass of water containing multiple shards of glass were being passed through a very small metal pipe under high pressure while an electric saw cut metal in competitive loudness. 

And it consumed him. He wanted to cover his ears or to walk away but he couldn't. There was no up or down, just noise. Unescapable noise.

As panic began to build up within him he felt the cool press of metal on his skin. Until that moment his body seemed like something distant, something beyond his control. In a way it was, for he was unable to move on his own or connect to his extremities, yet this sensation he could feel. 

Silence suddenly filled the air. The only noise now was the two girls gasping laughter rising in the air.  

"Girls!" he called out. 

"Yes?" they laughed back. 

It was mind June in a hotel in Bali. S. and I swam in the pool in my hotel, talking about men, about life, about how to become better people, where we want to go, what we want to become, things we've seen or done. It was with her that I felt less alone.

I had missed that feeling. The feeling of identity. Something so simple as a conversation, one single conversation, could turn the whole heart over, bringing in new light, allowing for new seeds to grow.

I'd wondered when I'd lost it. That feeling of togetherness. Not just togetherness with another person, but togetherness with the world, with myself, as myself with another person. That's what felt so incredible. Being myself together with someone else.

I remember sitting on W.'s couch with my S., the male S., my love. Did I love him because I was lonely? Was love something I'd made up to cure the loneliness? When I think about it now, it didn't feel as it felt with S. in the pool. When my S. and I would sit and watch a movie or cuddle, it didn't feel like I was being myself together with someone else, it was just being with someone else. These are the times, times of meaningless connections, that I've felt the most alone. Alone with someone else.

There is no set cure for loneliness, I don't think. Because no one thing can make you feel yourself. But I think you, or I am the key; to be ones self together with someone else.

To be quite honest, I cry all the time. I cry because I'm happy. I'm happy and sometimes I feel bad about that. Sometimes I feel bad that I'm happy and I still spend time thinking about the past. The past before I left. California. Where I had a job, and friends, and a man. A job I love, friends that I love, and a man that I love. A man that I can connect with, that I still can't find anything wrong with, that I want to be with me, either there or here. Here, where things are rustic and charming, where it rains more than it's sunny, where everything is an experience because it's so different than it is there. There, where things are familiar, where things felt real, where reality felt better than a dream even at its most mundane.

And so I cry, my tears dissolving into the lake water, contributing to its salty composition, getting lost in the cacophony of crashing waves, settling to the bottom of the silty water where they are lost in the overwhelming power of Mother Earth.

My name is Julianna Smolenski. I'm a 24 year old au pair living in Veldhoven, Netherlands. I grew up in a suburb of New York City on Long Island, took care of a grandmother with dementia from age 16-20, lived off the grid for a year, and planted seeds in sunny California before making my move to Europe. It's difficult to say how these moves have impacted me, if it's something about me that had caused me to move or if it's something about moving that had made me a certain way.

For as long as I can remember I felt estranged from the rest of the world. As if everything I did was always different, in a negative way, from everything everyone else did. I was right, although it's really not a negative thing. It is, however, exhausting... Constantly explaining myself to every curious passerby.

It doesn't matter what independence means to me, or anyone really. The mindset that we need something to make us free or more able to do something is a scam.

The longing for independence feeds into our inhibitions, giving reason for our doubts. It's the need for independence, the strife to earn it, the illusion of gaining it, that holds us back.

Like a dog chasing a bone on a string above its head, we work hard and chase after this “independence” with the pathetic hope that receiving it will lead us to greater things, things we can do if we stop thinking about how we must achieve “independence” and instead focus on doing... Whatever it is we want to do.

I might be the only American many of these people have met in real life. I live in the south of the Netherlands, Holland for the unfamiliar, or the country where Amsterdam is, for the less... culturally explorative.

While America has a huge presence from fast food chains to music and movies, shopping, you name it, a lot of the people in my town haven't been further than Belgium, if at that, which is the equivalent of a New Yorker having only been as far as New Jersey, a Californian having only been as far as Nevada, a Hoosier having only been as far as Illinois.

So yes, almost every day I am asked something about America and usually it's "Don't Americans usually just eat a lot of fast food?"

I can't help but laugh, because I really am not most Americans. Sometimes I tell them, in all honesty, I've eaten more fried food in my month in Holland than I had in my -just under- 25 years in the U.S. of A. Other times I go into a full repartee of my years as a vegetarian, vegan, or raw vegan, the six months I spent living off the grid, or the time I worked on a self sustained organic farm.

I've debated asking them if the Dutch really do keep boxes of flaked skin to save for later, as one of the Austin Powers movies implies, but I don't think I have quite the audacity to be that blatantly rude.

One would hope that having ones dreams come true would be enough to ease ones spirits.

One would also hope that 8753 kilometers, however many miles that may be, would be enough distance for even the most distant of lovers.

Just as one would hope that a month without contact would, as they say, make the heart grow fonder. Or that a new One would make an easy replacement for the old One.

But, as life would have it, that simply can't be so. That is, life can never be simple.

There's a certain illusion to living in a foreign country.

The illusion is that the uniqueness of culture encompasses everyday life and makes it less ordinary.

That despite the hours turning into days, then weeks, months, and so on..., the culture remains infinitely alluring, transforming each mundane experience into a flavorful exuberance of fascinating culture.

Yet the hermit never quite does stop needing its shell.

Though it may travel from shore to shore, changing its appearance as it must, as is necessary, it could never be more than what it has always been- what it's intended to be.

As it is, however, one carries with them their entire life story; struggle unceasing to change with the atmosphere around it.

After much evaluation, it becomes clear that dreams come true are never as good as the dreams themselves.

That perhaps dreams are better kept untouched, reserved for special occasion, like fine wine in a dusty bottle, neatly lined on a shelf amongst others of similar voraciousness and rarity.

A dream made ordinary is just a happy life, nothing more, certainly nothing to answer each and every problem or to assure pleasure with every step of the foot.

In a similar way one finds that the feet carry on in much of the same way as they would 8753 kilometers, that is 5438 miles, away.

Perhaps they walk greater distances or pedal harder on the bicycle. Perhaps the name of the location and style of the design of the places they walk to are different, yet the purposes of these places are the same as the purposes of the familiar ones.

The music may be different, the pace of dance may change, but the feeling of a large hand on a small waist remains the same.

While the hand may be exotic and smooth, it cannot guarantee that it is the one that you want to hold. This hand, this exotic and smooth hand, may not be able to connect you to stimulating company or drawn out conversations.

The wine it holds within fine crystal may contain different, old flavor, flavor with a history behind it. Yet the pourer may be more colorless than ordinary.

The promises of foreign lands do not exist. They make no promise to be exceptional to anyone, the expectation is all our own.

For as it is, the clock will continue to click, the weather will move on as it will, life will fall into place accordingly; everything will always change, yet through it all one still manages to remain the same.