first things first...

CAKE LADY [Fabiola] HAS A FUCKING FACEBOOK! YES!!! Oh gosh I miss you, Pisco, even more now. Talking about it today with people just made me so excited to have found it. So, maybe I won't end up detailing all I have to say, but I'm kinda in a typing mood. And away we go.

Tonight, I begrudgingly went to this sort of impromptu local music show at The Nursery where many people from high school were going to be performing. I sorta anticipated a high-school reunion type feel, and wasn't looking forward to that, but Dana invited me and since I was dying to see her (hadn't since March) I knew I needed to go. But I also knew Tony was going to be there, and I can't deny that it still makes me nervous to see him. Mainly, I was bothered because I have been so happy and Tony was there during (and was the cause of) much of my unhappiness. The last time I had seen him was last November over Thanksgiving Break which on top of being the worst period of my life I proceeded to have one of the most painful interactions with him of our very long, ever-more sparse, but always intensely emotional relationship. So sitting there waiting, I was almost anticipating that his re-appearance into my life would shatter all these things in myself that have allowed me to feel so much better.
I mean, in recent years we have texted each other on occasion, generally when he needed consoling or advice, or when I felt like reminding him that he is always loved and thought of, and those interactions are always good. And we had one phone convo on the car ride from Georgia to WV (when he was in NY) which was probably one of the most relaxed I've been with him, or with anything associated to his name, since I was 16. So I had the memory of that conversation to keep my heart-rate down while the first bands played. I had Dana too and it was great to see her. She didn't seem quite as excited to see me, but I figured she was just nervous for her performance. I hung out with her and Noelle (who looks great now) and a couple people I never really got to know from high school. Minority Child played. This is a very unique grungy band made up of 2 guys from my graduating class (Bryan and Dylan) and then a guy who I think is the guitarist's younger brother. Dylan is incredible on guitar and all of their music captivates you because it almost never repeats itself. Its sorta like they just get up there and jam.

Tony showed. We gave each other a great hug and so I stopped worrying so much. He played. A couple OCMS songs and one other. Maybe I can just read him better than most people, or maybe it was blatantly obvious, but he was super nervous. He did well though. I mean, he used to sing me songs in Spanish and I remember he had a very nice voice. But even though I knew, I swear, if I wasn't looking straight at him I wouldn't have believed it was him. He was dang good. Just nervous. And I was thinking about him as I watched him, knowing his dreams, to be an artist... to be a musician and just hoping so hard that somehow he gets out of this valley and does it for himself. He could be so great. He already is great... he just doesn't know what to do with it... how to project it. Almost like he is afraid of his potential.

After his set he disappeared for a while but then came and found me and sat next to me on the bench. It was nice that he sorta just gave all his attention to talking to me. I mean, he did most of the talking, but its just cool that even though all his friends were there he still made time to catch up. We talked about Peru, his family, his job, his plans for college, and his nerves on stage. He said he was really antsy, and he thought he didn't do his best, and he wished he felt comfortable enough to sing loudly like he does with his friends...

It's hard for me to not say anything... to not tell him that I know he is good enough... to belt it out... to do whatever it is he wants to do.

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Anyway I watched some more people perform while the sun went down behind us, and dark and cold crept in around us. The stage was dimly lit, tiki torches were set ablaze, string lights brightened the potluck area. I felt settled, calm, and happy that I had come. During one of the sets I talked to Christi who I only know through Tony's sister. She had really grown up and we had a great conversation about her desire to become a horticulturalist.

Then Dana played with some friends, and holy fuck... I too easily forget how talented people are. She blew my mind with her voice and songwriting. I loved hearing her perform.

After that some older people played. I listened some but decided to wander over to the refreshment table where I said hi to Bryan, and then saw Sean Byrnes. This is someone who I love to death and who I really wish was in my life more than he is. He goes to Fairhaven (as did his brother) and is loving it. While I was talking to him I looked over and saw a guy wearing an Evergreen shirt. Couldn't place him at first but then I realized it was Alex Hazelmann (Alex Olson's ex) who is going to be in my program next year. So we all talked about Fairhaven and Evergreen. Sean and I talked about our respective travels abroad (he to Costa Rica), and how much we each are loving our unconventional educations. Haze got super excited hearing us talk about it, and Bryan said that he was saving up to go to EG too.

Dominic (who I really didn't know in high school) started playing as we talked. We went over to enjoy. At one point he played a song about a girl that he loved drowning. It took me about halfway through to realize it was probably about Tess. Then I remembered very vague images of him on stage in the auditorium trying to speak through tears during her memorial service. As he played, I sat back from the stage and after a while my eyes kept being drawn to a particularly bright spot at the top of Mount Si. It kept getting brighter as he played and finally peaked over the mountain once Dom's set was over, and it was time for Dana to drive me home.

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My initial nerves and apprehension about the night came out of habit. There is a pattern (much less prevalent now) I have always lived by, in mind and action. The simplest way to put it is self-consciousness. Probably everyone deals with it, but to the degree I've let it control me and hurt me? I haven't been able to figure out if it is normal or not; if other people just have stronger methods of coping with it, hiding it, or ignoring it. I don't know how to say this, but I think in shedding the shadows that held me so far under for so long, I found a new layer of myself. I guess you could call this one confidence. I feel good about the person I am. I don't want to hide it anymore. I don't really even feel like there's much of anything to hide.

One of the singers tonight, an older one, said "I wrote this song back in the angry part of life." Everyone laughed. "You know? Back when you were feisty and and always fighting something?"

I guess he comment helped me organize some of the thoughts I'd been having. First I thought about my "angry part of life" and remembered how I believed it would last forever. That the only way to escape it was death. I believed I knew too much injustice and shit about the world to be a happy person. I guessed I could temporarily escape it by using drinking or smoking to ignore it, and to punish myself (the health of my body) because I was a part of the injustice. It scares me to think about what would have happened if I ended up going down that road. Suicide probably; I was already so close to that edge. I had seen people go to these substances to escape, and I had seen them get better for a bit, and then just crash, and continuously spiral even lower. I knew I wasn't going to be happy, but I also knew I didn't want to go there. I guess my strong will I can thank for that. I was spiraling, but I was doing it in my mind, and not physically. (Well... I can't say that... There was a physical aspect. Multiples, maybe. I can't explain why the one I chose was okay with me, while I have always seen drugs and alcohol as out of the question. In my mind, the intention is the same. Maybe not. I do not have the mind of an alcoholic, nor even a person who desires to drink. I have only had the impulse on a few occasions, and I know what I felt, but I obviously cannot speak for everyone. Anyway, I supposed I did what I did because my mind had been conditioned by me and my surroundings to reject the more obvious methods of escape/self-harm.) Anyway, I could only try to explain what happened that changed things for me. And again, maybe I am too quick to refer to it this way... as though now things are different for me. They are, but indefinitely because I can't pretend I fully understand my mind or the depression that found host in it, but I can confidently say that I feel immensely better now.

The second thing I thought of (after the performer made that comment) was that maybe most people go through that anger and guilt; they rebel against the rules and the norms and the injustices on themselves and the things that piss them off. And then they grow up, get out of the valley, escape the drama, find independence, do whatever, and become content. They anger is placated by the relative calm/norm of their lives. For me, that is what scared me so much about happiness: complacency. I never wanted to be a person who was okay with the way things were, because so much of the way things are is NOT okay. Even if everything is dandy in my life, the majority of other people are suffering, or at least struggling. I didn't want to be ignorant of that.

But I remembered something Vladi had said during his lecture about finding the right balance of exuberance and humility. The exuberance part first:

The new layer, the happiness that lightens every thing about every day, and the anger and hate that built in me daily for years... they both have the same result. This desire to make the world better. The anger drove me to fight, but the joy I have found in the beauty of people and places and the world also drives me to fight. I want to protect it, spread it, share it, feel it. As angry as I was about the terror, I am exuberant about finding ways to rectify it.

It continues to be a process to even accept the possibility of me being a happy person. I was in such an opposing state for so long. But Vladi's idea helped a lot. Humility suggests awareness. Awareness in my mind has always equated to unhappiness. Perhaps that affiliation can change now. In the face of the horrific, if there is a balance of awareness (which is often heavy) and exuberance (which is energy to do what needs to be done to make the heavy lighter) then maybe inner peace can still exist.


Perhaps this metaphor of shedding a layer is wrong. Maybe instead I grew a new layer, over the old. As liberating as it is to get rid of something, I don't like to think of it as gone because it isn't totally gone. I wouldn't be able to feel the depth of joy that I do without having felt that depth of pain, so it is with me still. Not necessarily that it is hidden or suppressed, but more that it is a huge part of my make up and identity; one of the biggest parts so far. I will never forget it, and I hope no one else who knows me does either.

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After having said all this, there is an entry in my journal that I would like to put here. It is very long and I don't have the brain capacity to write it all out now, at 3 am. But I will type it up sometime. It says almost everything I said in this post. A little more, a little less. But it was from my flight home (the last leg of my long journey) and to me it demonstrates that going on the trip, doing what I did, seeing what I saw, is what made the change in me. My thing tonight is that these changes were demonstrated when I entered this situation at The Nursery where I know I would have been miserable had it occurred before I left for Peru.

So Matt started this blog site to share architecture work between students and invited me to be a part of if. Wrote my first post today. Click HERE to see it.

better to be really focused on architecture next quarter (and my work in the writing center)?

or to continue my work in learning Spanish, on TOP of tutoring and D.G.F?

Since I have gotten home from my travels I have been trying to be even more conscious of my lifestyle. My head and heart have felt much lighter and I hope to stay in this state rather than fall back to darkness I inhabited almost constantly for over 7 years of my life. In order to do this for one, I must remove areas of guilt from my life. I know there is no way to completely be rid of many of the feelings I harbor for humanity and this world, but if I can find a way to live that allows me to be mostly separate from it, and hopefully motivate others to do the same, and maybe even help change the paradigm of human necessity then perhaps I can maintain a sense of bliss, without ignorance. This is a huge process and an enormous idea and I am glossing over it a ton right now because I am tired and I just wanna get all my ideas out before they fall away, but this is a start. Here is goes:

I am slowly removing more and more meat from my diet with the hope that eventually I can perpetuate a steady vegetarian (and perhaps even vegan) lifestyle. This has became more important to me having lived in a town -Pisco- where in going to the local market the smell of dead chicken/pig/various-other-animal became the most pervasive detail of your shopping trip. Going with Simon to buy the meat for meals at PSF pretty much solidified the fact that I will probably never be able to cook meat from such a raw form. Weak stomach, weak eyes, weak nose. Additionally, I can't help but find it immoral to kill animals the way humans do. We have tools that have allowed us to prevail over any species we want to, and kill it to extinction if we aren't careful or if we so desire. We have tools that animals do not, and we abuse this fact to a most terrible degree. Factories and slaughterhouses are obviously the worst example of this, and in learning more about them and the mainstream meat industry in the US I had slowly been converted to believing that hunting one's own meat is a good thing, and even with guns (which I hate) rather than bows and arrows (since gun would allow the animal a shorter period of suffering). However, no matter how hard I try to believe in hunting it is, again, something I don't believe I could ever take on myself. And so my belief is thus: if I myself can't shoot it, skin it, clean it, cook it, then I don't deserve to eat it. What about responsible, organic, grass-fed, cage-free ect ect farming? It still doesn't sit well with me that a living, breathing creature is being raised just to be killed and eaten. I can't call that moral no matter how much more responsible the practice is compared to the extreme farms/factories/slaughterhouses that output the majority of "meat" in this country. And if I ignore it, this gut instinct that this is wrong, if I ignore it and continue to support the industry then surely I will not be able to maintain the happiness I have fought so hard to find. I will feel guilty AND angry, and rightly so.

So that is the main thing, and also the hardest. The rest aren't so drastic or difficult, but still very important.

Sugar. I am reducing my intake greatly. Sugar is difficult for the human body to process and so it ages your organs more rapidly. And you can just forget about high fructose corn syrup. Slows down your metabolism and doesn't give anything positive to the body. The idea of this causes mental stress for me. Putting things in my body that are so negative physically probably contributed much my mental anxiety.

Despite having the worst sinus problems of my life with this recent bought of illness, I have used about 3 tissues and instead have relied almost solely on a couple handkerchiefs. I think I will never need tissues again in my life. Yes. I am boycotting tissues. What a fucking waste of paper.

And I have started using toothpaste that has natural ingredients. unfortunately I don't feel I can give up fluoride just yet since I still have a major teeth-grinding problem at night and I don't know that my mouth guard protects them all too much. I would like to keep my teeth as strong as possible, but eventually I would like to give up fluoride too because I think its irresponsible to keep pumping it into our water system.
Oh, that and birth control. I couldn't possibly do that thing so many girls do where they regulate their periods and acne with birth control. Granted, some girls probably "need" it more than me since so many suffer much more menstruation than I. But even then, I couldn't bear with the guilt of it. Its chemicals meant to create infertility and we are putting them through our bodies and then dumping them out into our world (which must be fertile if we hope to perpetuate life). This has been a really personal issue for me, and I don't expect everyone to live by it, but I hope that other people at least think about it.

On to other topics...

At school (though I can't be too much more picky about the place I am going to live) I would like to find a place with a yard because I want to dry all my clothes by hanging them out rather than using a machine dryer. I could get a rack for indoors if I had a proper space to do it. Boycotting dryers. It would also be ideal to have a space for gardening and growing one if not more of the foods I will be relying on. If I don't have a space for this at my house/apartment then I think I will get a plot at the organic farm. Oh, also, I am boycotting the Greenery and hopefully eating mostly from the Farmer's Market, the co-op, and The Flaming Eggplant. Supporting local economy and eating food without pesticides and that hasnt been shipped across the world and back, or pumped full of ingredients I dont understand the half of? Yup. Much better.

I also want to boycott dishwashers and toasters. Pointless things. Dishwashers use far too much water and they use energy which just isn't necessary to use for a task that could be done else-wise. And toasters are just wanna-be ovens which create nothing that an oven can't, except perhaps in a more time-efficient manner. I can see the utility in this for people constantly in a hurry and on the go. But that too is an issue in itself and something I also want to work on for myself. Slowing down.

Also, I want most of my transportation to be on foot, on bike, on bus, on train. Carpools are okay. But in any case, I hate cars. They scare me almost as much as planes (too much hubris). And they are yet another commodity that everyone seems to believe are absolutely necessary for a happy life. Who doesnt have a car? Who NEVER owns a car in their life? Hopefully me. Yes, obviously I appreciate them because they allow everyone to get where they want when they want and I am also a person who enjoy such luxury, but the idea that EVERYONE should have their own personal death machine (I mean.. vehicle) is ludicrous. I am very grateful for the people who drive me around all the time (especially when I am too sick to exert myself physically), and I think that is the way to do it. Share. I have been thinking more and more about getting my license even if it means I have to pay insurance (even if I only drive on very very rare occasions), just for that purpose --to share vehicles. I know that many people believe I should get a car in addition to my license, but I don't agree. Firstly, while I have great self-control and focus with most things, the few times I have driven any considerable distance I have found myself falling asleep at the wheel because watching the road pretty much forces my eyes shut and my brain off. Also, I would like to help break the paradigm of the necessity for an individual transportation mechanism of such over-embellishment (especially one that contributes significantly to our "necessity for oil," and essentially fuels the war for fuel). Public transit need to be developed, alternative fuel sources, ect. Anything that will help us break from these "necessities." Oh, but solar-powered motorcycles are pretty cool. I'm suddenly a motorbike convert too, which I think for many people would be more efficient because the majority of people travel in 4-7person gas-guzzling vehicles by themselves, every day to work and back. FUCK THAT.

I have been getting rid of clothes and possessions as fast as my heart will let go of emotional or memorial attachment to them. I am finding that it is easy to become less and less inclined to obtain new things. I hope that my discarded goods will bring as much happiness to the people who obtain them as they do for me to be rid of them and feel a bit lighter and freer.


Oh, I thought of some other things I want to boycott. Tampons/pads. Male advisory for the next paragraph. This might get graphic. Made from cotton which likely has been bathed in pesticides and you are sticking it in your soft-tissued vagina. Secondly, it's such a waste to manufacture these specially designed absorbent materials and then throw them away after a couple hours of use. So I want to invest in a diva cup and a luna pad and see if I can make those work for me. Also, one of the clubs at Evergreen has held an at-least-annual workshop for how to make your own less polluted, less pollutive feminine hygiene products. So I want to go to that too.

I shower less frequently and have only shaved once in the past 5 months. Less water, less manufactured plastic for razors. Plus a shower is so much more appreciated after a couple extra days without.

Maybe this only makes sense to me, but I feel better in all of this. I probably wouldn't sound so weird except I spent much of today reading Kokoro and when I read I often pick up on the author's style and tone and mimic it, if unwillingly. Not to mention the main character in the book is somewhat like-minded as me. I suppose Zach knew I would relate to it when he gave it to me. Perhaps not. Either way... the book is good company.

I have more to say but it is late and I will sleep.

Dad posted this on facebook. It's a description of our incredible Orca encounter on our San Juans sailing trip this week. It was one of the most beautiful things I've ever witnessed.

"Just home from a week sailing the San Juan Islands in Dauphine, our 31 foot sloop. It was a great trip, with Alex and her friend Tyler joining us for the final 3 days. Great sailing and spectacular sunsets. But, without a doubt, the events of Tuesday were once in a lifetime. As we rounded the west coast of San Juan Island and just passed False Bay, we found ourselves in the midst of many pods of Orcas. Boats are not supposed to approach close to Orcas, and we were under sail with the motor off, and we kept an appropriate distance, with enough wind to be able to position the boat as well as the commercial whale watchers were in the several commercial power boats around. At one point I had brought us to a dead stop by back winding the sails to heave to. We watched the whales swim away. But then another pod came straight towards us. We could not move away, so we sat in place as they swam past. After some time all the power boats left, we sailed on a bit and then headed out across the Straight of Juan De Fuca in a brisk wind. But soon the wind died, and we found ourselves drifting calmly with 1 knot of wind just enough wind to point the bow into the wind. Pulling out my home made hydrophone amid a few short lived chuckles, I lowered it into the water and turned it on. A lone haunting whale whistle was followed by a chorus of clear and beautiful songs. We saw pods of Orcas to port, to starboard and astern, all swimming closer and closer. All we could do was sit and watch, listen and take pictures as they swam to and past us, then came back. One pod came straight at us from abeam starboard, with their 4 to 5 foot tall fins and huge torsos breaking the surface, their tips rising as high as our decks above the water. It was like watching 5 Poseidon submarines coming at us, with their shallow shallow dives, followed by the sound of their surfacing and blowing in pairs. As they reached the boat, they split and two dove directly under the boat, two crossed the bow only feet from us and one crossed astern. Their songs were magnificent and loud in the hydrophone. After passing, they paused, and one bobbed up, nose straight up looking back at us, then slipping back down as they swam off to the north. We will never forget those few hours during which we must have seen 30 or 40 separate animals. There are no words, recordings or pictures that can capture it. I will post some photos as soon as I edit them, and my next project will be to hook a recorder to the hydrophone......"

Oh, today was my first day of my annual week at Summer Winds Day Camp. One of the campers that I had last year told me he remembered me. He said it as an after thought because I earlier I had told him that I remembered him and asked if he remembered me and he feinted the question. So later when he comes up to me and says "I do remember you from last year" I wondered what it took for him to remember. He continued by saying "You were a lot more shallow last year." I kinda gaped at that statement, only because it was coming from a 6 year-old and I wondered if the word had the same meaning in his mind as it does in mine. "Shallow?" I asked. He responded with a face of extreme exhaustion and sadness. "You're much perkier now."

I thought it was crazy that my change in demeanor was so apparent to someone who had only known me for a week a year ago, and who had not even seen me for a day since then before commenting on it.

Maybe I was just a bit less energetic, and burnt out on kids last summer, but the comment was really interesting to me all the same. Especially since the week I worked at SW last summer was one of the most optimistic weeks of my life up to that point (having just spent an amazing 9 weeks at Killoqua).

Speaking of Killoqua, I got a call from the office today and the message was Daisy saying they needed some help for the last week of camp, next week. Timing never fails to amaze me. Its either go spend a week at a camp that I completely adore with but will possibly never spend another full summer at again --now that I've found NYSC--
OR go sailing all over the San Juan Islands with my parents. Decisions, decisions.

And dinner.

two nights in a row of scary dreams.

last night was far more intense. it began post-apocalyptic. a typical setting from a movie: the ground nothing but lose soil that was kicked up in the stale air, and most buildings were useless. the only person i could find was my brother. I told him this was how i always thought the apocalypse would be. he asked "zombie-infested?" and suddenly a hoard of zombies appeared sprinting toward us. i turned calmly to him and said "no...everyone would just be crazed and fucked up from the radiation." and, as the zombies disappeared, so it was. we took shelter in our parents house.

I couldn't tell you if the rest was a different storyline or not. Nathan and I were alone in our house (he was set up in the room James is living in). Nathan came into my room and sat at the chair by my computer. I was laying in my bed. We talked for a bit, and were both a bit on edge. He decided to go to bed. I knew I wasn't in a state to sleep so I stayed on my bed until I heard someone messaging me on the computer. I got up and saw it was Nathan. We started continuing our previous convo but gradually the things he was saying were no longer reassuring or brotherly. He was really creeping me out, almost threatening me at some points. I told him I wasn't going to play his games anymore. Even after I had gone back to my bed he continued to write things to me. The text was so large I could still read it and what he was saying started getting even worse than before. After a bit of this I realized that there were two screennames submitting input to the convo. It was my screen name responding from my computer, only no one was sitting at my computer. All I could think was "ghost." I decided the safest thing to do was to go get Nathan. I finally worked up the courage to walk down the hall to his room. When I opened the door his laptop was on the bed, but he was nowhere to be found. The conversation was still going on the computers. I walked back to my room and found my brother sitting on my bed. He was just staring and he looked really violent. I realized he had done that wireless computer control thing and had somehow set his laptop up to type on a timer too. As I saw him sitting there, something in me said "run" so I bolted to the nearest door that locked. I knew it was easy to undo the lock on the bathroom door, and I wanted to get to a phone so I decided to climb out the window and climb across to the roof under Becca's window. I broke her screen and ran from her room to my parents. Nathan was on my tail as soon as I passed his room but I made it to the master bedroom safely, locked the door, and grabbed the phone. Nathan was yelling (but with a calm tone) about how I should know better, and that this door wasn't going to hold forever. I called my parents phone but there was no answer. I went into their bathroom and locked that door behind me too. Once I was in there I realized there was nothing to move in front of the door and I decided to redo one of my decisions. So I was back in the original bathroom and after climbing to my sister's window I decided to go back into my room instead. Once inside, Immediately I shoved my bed and futon in front of the door trying to use them together with the opposing wall to wedge it shut permanently. Still freaking out I also went in my closet, shut the door and the the same thing with that door and my shelves. Don't know what my plan after that was but that was all I really remember.


The night before last my dream was about a combination of camps: Killoqua and NYSC. Essentially I had a group of girls and I was supposed to be getting them ready for things. At first they were cooperative, just a little slow. Then one by one throughout the week they would become defiant and completely ignore everything I had to say. One day, after they had all "changed" they left during a movie we were watching at a museum in DC. When I tried to get them they started threatening me. Nothing I said had any sway over their decision to leave. I secretly followed them upstairs. They went into the bathroom (which was similar to the one at NYSC) and while they put on clothes that were far from camp-appropriate and talked about meeting up with guys to go screw in the woods, they also plotted how to get passed me, and eventually began deciding how they would murder me. I had to run away at some point, but I don't remember the details.


the dreams disturbed me deeply, but i don't think i could fully portray why they were so upsetting.



going to sleep last night I was pretty sure I was going to have a bad dream because i was being haunted by that story mom had told me the other day. it was about a woman who had been first to jump in the water to do scuba research in antarctica and who was immediately attacked and dragged down to the depths by a leopard seal. i kept imagine the thoughts that must have gone through her head and what the last thing she saw must have been. totally unrelated to my dreams, so still have no idea how this crazy mind actually comes up with these things.

it irks me when people try to give me the answers.

advice is good

but answering unanswerable questions...



yes, the attempt to find truth is noble and important; it is perhaps our greatest gift (and curse) to have the consciousness and will to seek the micro-intricacies of our daily macrocosm.
but i think we must also realize the partial futility of such an action in light of the general relativity of truth, and we must be humbled and contented by the perpetuation of questions that will stimulate the generation of new resolves, overthrowing the answers that we had once prescribed as absolute.


and also, this rule --as a rule-- is not a rule ultimately or indefinitely. maybe nothing is permanent or absolute. but form can be closely mimicked "infinitely" to create patterns that may suggest "truth"; repetition can sometimes forward this connotation. perhaps this is part of the basis for our individual sense of morality.

now my mind is just tangent-ing when the rest of my body wants to be sleeping...
goodnight now.

held so much.


It's very late but I could stay up and write. I have nothing I need to do tomorrow. Though I do have work Monday morning, and should probably not destroy my sleeping patterns too much more than I have these past 3 nights.

I just don't want to miss any of the emotion of the day, though I should realize by now that I could never express it all in words.

I had forgotten, already. I hadn't lost it completely but I had definitely forgotten. I had known something was missing for a while (the short time I've been home has seemed to last), but I couldn't place it until I got your letter today.

Has the tattoo been absorbed into me, or was it simply washed away? I regret that I can't look at it everyday, though I suppose that it is only one lesson, and there are more lessons to learn than room on my body for ink to remind myself of them.


But how will I remember who I am? I had forgotten, so soon.


So easily we... I... get caught up in patterns. And even if I am cognizant of them, and making the action towards living "better", I often lose track of the meaning of my other actions.

I've just been losing things to myself a lot lately.

And perhaps I have not really been a writer until now, when I have not written.

I hope someday soon, I will feel once again in necessity of exploring thoughts aloud (and by that I mean on paper).

I am starving. Please, take no offense, but the people I have been spending my time with have been leaving me hungry and cold. Everything is type one. Action and reaction without genuine thought or feeling. I see myself trying to patch the holes in flimsy fabric, praying that these will clothe me until once again I can feel the warmth of what I believe I need to wear for good. How can I pretend to know what that would look like? Or that I would even want to know. And then, again, I know better who I am when there are no mirrors to look at anyway. But reflection is necessary for me. And I will never look back, or forward, or at, or through, and see the same thing. Consistency is not my strong suit when it comes to human interaction or relation... or...
This is all well enough, since what I see in the mirror will also never be the same.

I know the truth, but I am afraid of it --we all fear the unknown. The truth as far as I know it is that I don't know it. Truth is circumstantial. So why this constant search for something constant? Especially when to relax and enjoy the change in lightness can prove to be so much more.

Perhaps fulfilled and happy cannot sustain anymore than empty and broken, nor can they exist under the same circumstances. Nor can the same circumstances ever exist at the same time. Nor can time ever allow any one circumstance to endure.

Maybe there is no remembering who I am, because "I am" doesn't ever exist in the same combination or agglomeration of being. And perhaps this is why I suddenly had a sense of infinity within me during Vladi's lecture... Maybe "I" as a whole do not exist, and therefore "I" will not exist any less once this body and mind decay. It will be another change in composition and order...one I will [probably] not be aware of, and one that out-does every change I have been or will be aware of (at least, with this particular state-of-mind --being "human").


And... it seems I have again found the urge to delve into these things, but at this moment my attention is being called elsewhere (namely making dinner with my parents. All three of us together). So hopefully I can return with this enthusiasm in the near future, though perhaps not tonight as James also wants to spend some time together tonight, and tomorrow is Alpine Days where I will hopefully be able to see old friends and enjoy the time (which requires actually sleeping tonight).

More later.

my head is so empty lately.
i thought for a while it was actually brimming with ideas that i just couldn't grasp...

well, i don't know whats going on in there right now.

i don't really feel like writing here anymore, so... my apologies if there's not much else after this.


-----------------------


sorry Nyg if I don't get back to you for a while...
being around phones and computers all the time again is kinda making me sick.

deadmau5 ticket



fuck that's tempting.

8-midnight
Oct. 13th.
its a Wednesday. meaning I would miss class (cause I have Spanish on Wednesday nights?)


wait a tick...
just found:
ticket for $60 fees and all


its gonna be such an amazing show/dance party (plus... dancing is kinda like cross training for the half marathon, which is 10 days later)


ok.
to do
tomorrow

-hike with Heidi
-continue search for housing at Evergreen
-possibly buy deadmau5 tickets (10/13/10; $60)
-register for Lake Sammamish Half Marathon (10/23/10; $40)
-set up Paypal to PSF for money (potentially) raised from Half Marathon (don't really know what paypal is, but will figure that out too)
-figure out when WoodRiver Annual garage sale is (selling clothes=money for dancing and running. important things because dancing means personal sanity and staying happy and motivated, and running means money to send to Pisco!)





Well. Now that I have successfully turned my shitty mood into a good mood I think its about time for sleeping.

So leaving Pisco Sin Fronteras after only 3 weeks turned out to be extremely heart-wrenching. As right as it was to go (for the time in my life I was at) I felt like I was leaving something unfinished. I am working hard to find a point in time that I can return to the organization, bringing to it something more than I brought before. Hopefully this will entail skills in building and Spanish, knowledge about building codes and techniques, and focus surrounding a particular project I want to lead from start to finish. In the meantime, I will be at Evergreen taking classes, and probably elsewhere making money and/or gaining skills. Even though I believe that PSF will be around long enough for me to return to it, I think that right now it needs some of my support (and I think part of me needs the motivation that offering such supporting will allow me to have). I want to run a half marathon and I want to raise money for PSF, and I am hoping to do both simultaneously. Ben Steiner came up with the idea, and hopefully he is still interested.

Now I need to figure out which marathon to do, and how to structure the donation process in order to raise the most money for PSF.

"cada momenta, cada aliento es una empieza nueva"