Identity crisis

I kind of wanted to write something like this in verse, but because a) I'm not writing poetry right now, and b) don't want your eyes to bleed (They might anyway, but to a lesser degree), it's instead a piece of prose. Well, I'm not sure it could really be called prose, but it's a lot closer to prose than poetry. And now, ladies and gentlemen, for the entry ...

I can be a rather absentminded person. I regularly forget where I parked, and am forced to wander through the garage looking desperately for the telltale electric blue stripe on a silver car. Thoughts fly out of my head literally seconds after they first pop in. I lost my glasses about four months ago; I've looked everywhere, and still haven't the slightest idea what became of them. Even before losing them, though, I had lost the most valuable thing imaginable: myself.

The whole thing is rather mysterious. As with most of my losses, I can't recall the circumstances. All I know is that one night, as I lay in bed pondering, I began to sense that something was amiss. I looked around; everything seemed to be in order. There was my wall collage -- pictures torn from magazines, maps of favorite countries, New Yorker cartoons, random objects -- still complete in all its idiosyncratic glory. My books sat patiently on my shelves as always. The radio was still on; my roommate was typically frustrated at her attempts to concentrate on her homework. Still, I felt uneasy, and I didn't get much sleep that night. By then, though, I was already used to a lack of sleep, so I didn't find that particularly unusual.

These feelings persisted for an unusually long time, though, and so I gradually and cautiously began to investigate. As fate would have it, the first place I looked solved the mystery for me. My heart sank as I read through my journal. Each new entry made it clearer -- I had walked away from myself. It seems to have been a gradual process that started about a year ago. Pieces of me were left in lots of places. In fact, strangely enough, I think there must be disconnected bits of me floating around in this room with me even as I write this. Part of myself is fishing by the lakeshores of Alabama, casually casting and reeling at will. I left part of myself in my hometown. I think most of myself, though, is in Colorado right now. It is there that I was swept into nature's wild arms, intoxicated by all of the wildflowers and aspens and pines and elk. It is there, too, that I tried the hardest to drown myself in books, and made a clear distinction between myself and others. Apparently, I decided to stay there, and I often imagine myself there, lying with a restful mind upon the easeless boulders.

It came as quite a shock to realize that none of myself remains with me. For months now, I have been walking around literally hollow and alone. This explains the visions of blackness that appeared so often when I tried to examine myself. It explains everything, really. If I have no self, it makes sense that I sometimes feel like I've disappeared.

This is a rather unsatisfying, frustrating, and miserable way to live, though, and so I've recently started searching for myself. I took the first step, which was pretty painful, on Saturday night. I suspect that the rest of the journey will hurt just as much, though, so I'm going to do my best to suck it up and keep going without complaining. It will be strange to wander the vacuum that remains, trying to determine from the wounds how many pieces I am now in. It will be even more bizarre to return to the places I've been, summoning and collecting myself. Ultimately, though, I know it will be worth it. I do want an identity; I do want to see what's going on around me. More than anything, though, I want to be able to look inside myself and see brilliant color for once. I know it's vain and self-centered, but I don't believe I can be of any use to anyone until I have some sort of a life of my own.

Student similes

These made me laugh like a 10-year-old being tickled by a malevolent older sibling. One warning: whoever put these online didn't know his figurative language. All of them are similes, not metaphors.

The Motorcycle Diaries

I just finished watching The Motorcycle Diaries and am now sitting in my room with a furrowed brow. The movie is based on diaries written by Ernesto "Che" Guevara as he took his first journey through South America. I'm sure most of you are familiar with Guevara, who was a key figure in the Cuban revolution. I've also recently seen pictures of him splashed across T-shirts, backpacks, and all sorts of things, and been slightly disgusted because I knew what he helped bring about -- a dictatorship. However, this movie shows a different perspective of Guevara. Looking at the man presented here, it's not hard to see why teenagers wear his face. He is a bright, joyful, thoughtful, youthful and impassioned medical student taking some time to see, as it says in the movie, "a land he has only known in books." With his friend Alberto Granado, he travels from Argentina to Venezuela on an old motorcycle nicknamed "the Mighty One" who "pees oil." They start out so naive, utterly unaware of what they'll encounter; they suffer their trials early, and are exposed to so much on the trip. You can see both of them, but especially Guevara, losing their ability to be carefree as they see what the poor people of South America are put through. The strange thing, though, is that you see no sign of militancy in Guevara, with the exception of one line. When Guevara and Granado are in Macchu Picchu, Granado tells Guevara of a "plan" to marry an Inca descendant, encourage the other Inca descendants and indigenous people to vote, and start a revolution that way. Guevara's reply: "A revolution without guns, Mial? It would never work." It sounds chilling typed like that, but it's not in the movie, I promise. Guevara is portrayed as a man who wants to shed labels and help people, no matter what class they may belong to. This portrayal raises all sorts of thoughts and questions for me. Is it okay to show just this one side of a man who later became a militant? Won't it make people idealize him a bit? What happened to make Guevara, shown as so loving and passionate about helping people, become what he did? What would he think about what Castro is doing in Cuba now? I don't know much about Guevara or the Cuban revolution (other than it started to overthrow a dictatorship), and so these are all questions that must brew in my mind for a long time. However, I took more than questions away from this movie. I was reminded of the dangers of judging others. After all, I had this pretty nasty picture of Guevara in my head before I saw this, and now I've been exposed to a positive portrayal as well. It made me question the status quo, which is always a good thing. The depictions in this film were moving, though sometimes they seemed a bit melodramatic. I still saw, though, why Guevara wanted the political system in South and Latin America to change. The system he helped create failed to help people, but in some ways, ours has too. Middle- and upper-class people here are probably better off than those in Cuba, but are the poor? I doubt it. And, you know, that's really sad. What's even sadder is that I honestly don't think that can change. We've seen communism and socialism don't erradicate it, nor does capitalism or any other political system I can think of. I suppose the best we can do is keep trying, but how do we ensure that we don't make things worse?

Talk

Oh brother I can't, I can't get through
I've been trying hard to reach you, cause I don't know what to
do
Oh brother I can't believe it's true
I'm so scared about the future and I wanna talk to you
Oh I wanna talk to you
You can take a picture of something you see
In the future where will I be?
You can climb a ladder up to the sun
Or write a song nobody has sung
Or do something that's never been done

Are you lost or incomplete?
Do you feel like a puzzle, you can't find your missing piece?
Tell me how do you feel?
Well I feel like they're talking in a language I don't speak
And they're talking it to me

So you take a picture of something you see
In the future where will I be?
You can climb a ladder up to the sun
Or a write a song nobody has sung
Or do something that's never been done
Do something that's never been done

So you don't know were you're going, and you wanna talk
And you feel like you're going where you've been before
You tell anyone who'll listen but you feel ignored
Nothing's really making any sense at all
Let's talk, let's ta-a-alk
Let's talk, let's ta-a-alk

I love Coldplay. Their songs are so relatable and they still have musical integrity. Chris Martin is brilliant; I'm so jealous of Gwyneth Paltrow.

Computer junkie

I'm starting to realize that it was a good thing I didn't have a computer in my room before now. It's proving to be more of a distraction than I expected. I spend most of the time that I should be studying searching the Internet. This will not be good for my grades. So if you suspect that I've visited your blog more than once in a day or my entries seem too frequent, yell at me. Leave a nasty comment or send me a venomous e-mail. Thank you in advance for aiding my concentration on my studies.

Sometimes I forget how young and naive I am. I've always been quiet, serious, introspective, melancholy, etc, which are traits that I've always associated with wisdom, or with people who understand how the world works. That's why I was never bothered by those characteristics: I thought, "Well, there are a lot of things I still don't understand, but if I just stay this way, I will eventually." However, my contemplative nature does allow me to be blindsided (blindsighted?) by some things. As I said, I tend to introspection, and, even if I don't admit to it often, it can be hard for me to look outside myself. I think my troubles are my own, and am caught completely off guard when it comes to light that someone else is feeling the same things as me. I'm even more bewildered when it's someone who is not the same age as me, which is even stupider than thinking I'm the only one who feels something. Why should human nature be limited me? The things I'm feeling, struggling with, and delighting in are the same things that people have experienced for milennia. It is not surprising that I'm not the only person who is feeling isolated, who is confused about what she wants, who cannot seem to overcome her fears, or who is frustrated at her inability to express herself adequately.

This universality blows my mind. Even though I've said all this, I definitely still can't grasp the concept that people might actually be able to understand me or relate to my experiences. How does it make sense that Cindy and Meg, among others, are questioning their desires at the same time as me, or that Scott is realizing the drawbacks of unintentionally (maybe unintentionally, anyway) staying away from people? Right now there are so many emotions and thoughts and feelings that include everything above, and so much more that it feels like they're going to bubble out of my brain and make my head explode. I wonder if I'm overcomplicating things, or is this a mindboggling concept to everyone?

(There's Got to Be)More to Life by Stacie Orrico is probably not the best song ever, but the lyrics are sort of relevant.

I've got it all, but I feel so deprived
I go up, I come down and I'm emptier inside
Tell me what is this thing that I feel like I'm missing
And why can't I let go

[Chorus]
There's gotta be more to life...
Than chasing down every temporary high to satisfy me
Cause the more that I'm...
Tripping out thinking there must be more to life
Well it's life, but I'm sure... there's gotta be more
Than wanting more

I've got the time and I'm wasting it slowly
Here in this moment I'm half way out the door
Onto the next thing, I'm searching for something that's missing

[repeat chorus]

Than waiting on something other than this
Why am I feelin' like there's something I missed.....

Herdin' cats

This is probably old, but I haven't seen it and thought it was pretty funny.

Meeting the future

A lot of questions have been raised about the quality of the generations that will be controlling the world within a few decades. I have to say that I agree, for the most part. I know a lot of really dumb teenagers. On the other hand, I know a lot of dumb people my mom's age, too. Are generations really getting stupider as the years go by, or is it just our perceptions? I don't know, actually, but I wanted to encourage those who read this about some of the people who belong to this generation. They're not all dumb; some are brilliant. I have to brag about a few of my friends from high school; two are graduating this year, and another will be graduating next year. The one graduating next year isn't sure what she wants to do yet, but, knowing her, it doesn't matter. She's quite brilliant. I think she'll be graduating as valedictorian or salutatorian. Of course, titles don't matter much, I suppose. My genius friend who's graduating this year won't be valedictorian. It's always those stupid weighted classes in high school... Anyway, he is undoubtedly, like I said, a genius. He's already been accepted to loads of colleges, including UMR and MIT(!!!!!), and is applying to an engineering school that pays for tuition and board because it's incredibly selective. I am so proud of him. I can't wait to see what innovations he'll make in the computer field. And to imagine, we were in many of the same activities when I was in high school. I always knew... Another friend of mine is going to UMR to study nanotechnology (as far as I know). I suspect he'll be brilliant there, too. Of course, all three of them are gifted, so they're in the minority. Nonetheless, all hope is not lost.