thinking.

It's that time of evening when I turn into a thinking, writing, perturbed paintbrush.

not sure what I said really.

It's the two-year anniversary of imagination. Julie would understand. Although her November was the pits. Mine...that was when I bought a new journal. That was when I would peruse books at Borders and drink coffee in the evening. That was the month of East of Eden and All the Kings Men. It was a month of tights and falling in love. It was a month of emo British lyrics and rearranging my bedroom. And I haven't thought about it in awhile.

Granted, there were lots of screwed up things then. And I was pretty absorbed in myself and teenage ennui and things of that nature. But there was something there. Something lovely though I'm not sure how real it was. Though it felt real.

I'm too serious in college. I think too much about what the future holds. I worry. Conversations revolve around schoolwork and scheduling and next semester...that's just the way things roll. Campus organizations and endless paths of brick...it's like a plastic organism.

I'm complaining, I know. I'm trying to reclaim something I lost upon coming to college...even though I've gained so much more. Youth is fleeting, beauty if fleeting, success is fleeting. I wish I could see things through the eyes of a centenarian.

In the meantime, I will wear tights. I will look outside of the library window at the flaming orange leaves and wait for them to fall. And I will pray...pray that God will help me reconcile this longing for shomething differnet with contentment in the here and now. My thoughts aren't the most glorifying at this moment, and it makes me wonder if this blog post has any purpose whatsoever. I don't think I've said anything.

Oh well. Who really does?

I need to just go pray.

on and on and on and on and on and on and on...

I can remember that time in my life where all I could do, all I could feel, all I could think about was the writing that was inside me, welling up until I just had to spit it out on paper. Not on a computer, but in my leather-bound journal, my cuaderno cafecito. Spanish thoughts and impressions, Spanish words and ideas, Spanish longings and dissatsifaction with the white American complacency. I would sit at the kitchen table and let the summer light pour through the windows as I poured over blank pages and watched them fill themselves...magically, naturally. Cinco, seis, diez paginas de ideas, de pensar y crear y sentirme.

I miss that time.

Something wonderful happens to you when you return from a foreign country. Something wonderful and unbearble. Unbearable because you can't stand anything that you used to like...you can't enjoy television or music, you can't stand the studying or the saturday football games. You can't stand the toilet paper and the low-fat salad dressing. You can't even stand the air-conditioning. Your thoughts are absorbed by the way things were in that other land that now feels more like home than this foreign place. You miss the Spanish and the frijoles con arroz or the tortilla de patatas. You miss the walking, the heat, the tiredness, because those feel more real than this. But it's wonderful, coming back, not because you can cherish all those American things again and started consuming, but because you realize the ephimeral nature of things. That what you needed before wasn't really necessary, that the world you had erected and that society had deemed "normal" for you really could be questioned, challenged, destroyed. That you hide yourself in structure, that you hide yourself in the television channels, that you hide yourself in the english language, that you hide yourself in the american dream. Go to high school, graduate with honors, go to college, get a degree, get married, have kids, be successful. Is that order necessary? These things are gifts from God, yes, but there is a whole other side to life and living.

I hate that I never chose to go to college. It was just assumed. I hate that I feel compelled to study, that I feel compelled to go to class. It's like a neurosis. I am itching to get out. I would like for those things to be a conscious choice...I would like to have a firmer idea of why I'm here...some clarity. I'm just here because I'm not sure how to get to the other places I'd like to be. Peru, Chile, Mexico, Costa Rica. And I want to be thankful for this, for college...so many people out there don't get this opportunity. But right now...I just want out. Granted, I want to come back, but I want to see what it's like for the majority of humanity...out there working, in poverty, in broken governments, but in family and community. I don't want to observe from the academic standpoint; I want to experience it first-hand. I want to not have a plan. I'm sick of plans.

Basta ya! Basta ya, el facebook y los celulares y el internet. basta ya, todo que uso en mi vida diaria.

to eschew technology, to eschew that net of safety that hides human rationality and morality. C Wright Mills highlights it...

"In our time, must we not face the possibility that the human mind as a social fact might be deteriorating in quality and cultural level, and yet not many would notice it because of the overwheming accumulation of technological gadgets? Is not that one meanning of human alientation? Of the absence of any free role for reason in human affairs? The accumulation of gadgets hides these meanings: Those who use these devices do not understand them; those who invent thme do not understand much else."

Stream-of-conscious days of shadows and highlights, of highlights and highlighters, of running away into the trees and consuming too much sugar, of wanting more but settling for too little and losing myself to that fake world of safe structure and structured safety. And I don't know where I'm going, and I don't know where I'm going...