University of Coimbra

Either there's some sort of shrine-adjacent religious structure in here somewhere or it's a shrine of knowledge. This tag/project will either become all-inclusive, backwards-looking, or limited to time in Japan. Does it matter?

Starting afresh is both better and worse than I expected.

On the one hand, since I do what could at best be called "a niche thing" for fun, finding the local niche group means that I immediately have a social and support group. So that's certainly helped on the mental sanity side.

On the other hand, furniture is a whole thing. In previous moves - back in college, let's say - I was able to get by on the flexibility and modularity of cardboard boxes full of heavy things that didn't have anywhere else to go. Need a chair? Cardboard box full of books. Need a table? Bigger cardboard box full of things less dense than books. And then I just picked up the first thing I saw on the street, because the only thing that mattered was "cheap, and loosely qualifies as an x." The chair I do recall wheeling across the breadth of the campus and down Telegraph. The table... I don't really remember where the table came from. Another potential eyewitnesses also claims not to recall. If anyone does remember (if anyone who might remember even reads this), let me know.

Other things were later obtained through the more accepted process of exchanging money for goods. Some of those things are reportedly still alive to this day. Bowls for nooodles. A sofa, which, realistically, should not still be alive. It was sagging in the middle by the time we were done with it; another twenty years later, I can't imagine it being a viable place to put your body. A CRT monitor which was amazing for its time yet a quarter the resolution and twenty times the weight of today's. Actually, the last reported sightings of the latter two were maybe ten years ago at this point. Maybe I should check back in on them.

Little bits and pieces of life, left behind. I'm still connected to those places because of people and memories there. I had a conversation a while back about the idea of realizing that you'll never go to a certain place again. There's plenty of those, of course, but when it's a place you spent a lot of time in... I'm not sure I have any of those yet. I still pass by old places that I used to live. Perhaps Araçatuba. That's a bit sad.

I'm going to go be a bit sad for a while. And then go look for furniture.