straddling many spheres

my mind is on overload, but for once it is externally and not internally motivated. there is so much to write about...because there is so much to explore. not in a tangible way, necessarily. so many thoughts germinated in chile, but I never had the time or privacy to allow those thoughts to maturate.

And so right now I am torn between two opposing spheres--I want to sit down in a quiet, private haven for hours on end to write....write about chile, photography, aspirations, evolving dreams and emotions...try to put my finger around the chilean culture and the chilean people and my experience with that. and then the other side of me wants to soak up everything that is happening right now. I want to revel in the privacy and familiarity of my room, albeit "mine" for only three days. i want to feel the sweat on my body from lifting boxes on end up the stairs. I want to feel the childish anticipation that is concomitant with opening a box and wondering what the hell is inside. and oh how i crave reality and normalcy. flirting online, facebooking, reading the da vinci code and watching movies. things i couldn't really do in chile...things i couldn't fully do in college. it's not so much the 'actions' that are giving me a thrill right now...it's more the place where they're being done. HOME. my new north carolina home. strange how it slowly became home over the course of nine months.

oh, and how badly i want to photograph everything that is happening under my nose! today, for example, grandma was laying on her back on the couch with her legs crossed and bouncing up and down. she was talking on the phone and smiling broadly...it was just a picture perfect moment. i think about photographing the rooms in this house,composing portraits of my grandparents, documenting the feel of life here...which transcends more than the 'happy' moments. like the look of nostalgia on grandpa's face when he gazes outside from the screened in porch. i wonder what he is thinking about...there is such a sense of longing, or restlessness. i feel like this is singular and momentous time that i am experiencing right now...and i want so badly to document it. if only i had a camera....or could find my gosh darn charger for my dinky little point and shoot. (reminds herself: it's not the equipment, it's not the equipment. good photographers don't need fancy tools.)

coming back from a foreign country is such a singular feeling. for me, at least, it's sort of a surreal, in limbo state. the two spheres return: on the one hand, I am ecstatic to be back to familiarity, normalcy, and comfort. eating what i like, knowing the rules of decorum and common courtesy, being able to shut myself in my room for a couple of hours to read, watch a movie, or use the internet at my leisure. on the other hand, i miss many aspects of chile. not the country itself, but the sensation of being immersed in another culture. actually, i mostly miss the journalism culture...which is indeed a culture in and of itself. photography, photoshp, webdesign, audiostories, photostories, content gathering, the arduous work and meticulous attention...all of the aspects are foreign to family and friends. such is life...not everyone can understand what you do and why you like it and what it entails. and while i suppose many people are dumbfounded as to how i could be so unhappy while in chile...so gloomy with regards to my relationship to photography, to journalism, and to my colleagues...and then how my demeanor could so drastically change here to optimistic. i suppose part of it is my romanticist tendencies...i can pick and choose what i want to remember from chile. yet another part is that i'm so ecstatic to be settled, at a home, and at MY home, that i can look back on the turn of events with optimism and ocntendness. and then the rest of it remains as such: though chile wasn't always fun, it wasn't supposed to be all smiles 24-7. it was a learning lab and a learning experience...and perhaps the longing and homesickness God placed within me was meant to prepare me for north carolina and these present circumstances.

i will end this entry here, for brevity's sake.
buenas noches and goodnight.