I'm feeling a bit intimidated by writing this week. Even sitting on a totally empty Pacific beach, next to the ocean I've so been craving like a drug these past couple of months. I kind of feel like I have nothing to say. Or worse, that I don't have the powers to say the things that need to be said. I know I can already feel my pulse slowing down just sitting here, and my mind quickening with the possibility of all the big and wonderful things in my heart. I love the way my breath sort of subconsciously matches the ebb and flow of waves breaking with the halfway joyful primordial recognition that I have been here before. My next life must have water in it, and more than the misbegotten half memory of past millenia.
Things I am realizing this adventure, again or for the very first time are so many. That I miss adventuring. That I am just a little bit lonely. That I crave intellectual stimulation. That I embarrass far too quickly. That I really miss riding buses and trains and other such sundry things like getting harassed by homeless people on city streets that wreak of piss which reminds me of Russia. That I walk way more than the average person. That I am avoiding my dream of working with refugees abroad by convincing myself that its not feasible. That I am really scared of grad school and in particular going back to the NW because of the chances it will make me again perpetually gloomy and forlorn. That I'm secretly really intrigued by the UW Seattle program combining Peace Corps, Social Work, and International Public Health. That thinking seriously about a career in mental health freaks me out given how much even just Open Sky is affecting me emotionally. That I am still feeling so torn between the parts of me that need to be outdoors like I need air to breath and the ones that need language and culture and conversation. In that sense I'm no further than I was a year ago.
If it comes down to a choice between Seattle and the world or New Hampshire and the wilderness I may just choose complacency and say neither and fuck another hard decision.
The percolating plan--for the sake of calming my fiery mind--work another year for Open Sky, at least another winter and fulfill my commitment. Start applying for Peace Corps, searching for grad schools, applying this winter for fall 2010. Do year one for MSW/MPH (maybe more, depending on MPH application). Start Peace Corps service in South America fall 2011 through 2013. Complete grad school 2015ish with MSW and Master of Public Health. HOLY SHIT I'd be 29. Craziness. That's so intense to even imagine the rest of my life in that manner. It kind of makes me feel better though, even just thinking about those intentions. I want to travel more, but more than that I want to be abroad again in a more meaningful way. I cant in good conscience be a dirt bag till I'm 30, the lack of purpose will begin to make my heart heavy. But I also can't be trapped inside again like I was through much of the last five years. I will suffocate like a bug.
"I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night, who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz..."
About Me
- Me, I'm holding out hope for a zombie attack
- “What are you, life? A silent theater of Chinese shadows, a chain of dreams, a charlatan’s store? Or a gift of unrequited love---that’s all that is intended for me? What about happiness? Ingrate, you’re alive, you weep love strive fall and that’s not enough? What?...Not enough? Oh, is that so? There isn’t anything else.”--Tatyana Tolstaya
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