Does coffee have more effect on you, or a lunar eclipse? Coffee, he said, but this endless bureaucratic mess around citizenship keeps me more sleepless than the moon or coffee ever could. The lady said wait another year or two and get a proper job and pay taxes. Sometimes everything kills me. I feel like a failure… It happened that I was writing around a big hole, and I kept replicating the process with as many new variants. I know that I cannot even apply for the MFA program at Brown, as I planned to, and this is truly my hell. I have to focus on applying for something, something, because my means of existence depend on being a perpetual student. How often I wish my passport held more value than it ever has for me in the West. How would it feel If I didn’t have to think about it! If I don’t get a master’s admission,… well, my visa runs out. It’s exciting, really. Im always on my toes. Why didn’t I become a ballerina? And one fringe fun fact is that I love stealing hotel room pens. Who doesn’t? In fact, the one I’m writing with now is from Sofitel, and it’s from Marseille. And I remember everything about it. I know I’m in an incredible pain right now, physically, mentally, emotionally, … somewhat sexually too, but I will find my way through this mess, through the thick fog that has been enveloping my windows for weeks. And I will be able to see, and I will be able to write against all the odds.