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| "He thought each memory recalled must do
some violence to it's origins. As in a party game. Say the
word and pass it on. So be sparing. What you alter in the
remembering has yet a reality, known or not."
This small portion form Cormac McCarthy's "The Road" feels so familiar to me, it resonates something I've been feeling for quite some time. I just finished reading this book a few days ago. I got it from a good friend for my birthday and it got misplaced in a move but was found again just hours before I left for California and I highly recommend it. It's funny though that I should read that book while I'm here. Let me explain, The Road is a story about a man and his son fighting to stay alive in a post-nuclear fallout world while trying to find other "good guys" like themselves. Throughout the entire book you never know either characters name, they are just the man or papa and the boy. And here I am, in California, staying in a house with someone I do not know, spending my weekdays at home going over organic chemistry practice problems and memorizing muscle names, origins, insertions, innervations and actions. Most days I feel like the boy, quiet and unsure. His story seems to parallel my own in some weird way if you get what I'm saying. Having to fully trust my Father, and yet sometimes/most times questioning, being fearful, not fully understanding why He's leading me in the direction He is. And when I screw up again, He's waiting for me, waiting to tell me it's okay.
This foray into California hasn't been exactly like I thought it would be, but that's okay. It's given me time to be introspective, something I haven't done a lot of before. But the one thing that has remained is my desire to go to school here in January. I know it will be hard for me to leave, but I can't stay, I can't negate on this and not because I'm being stubborn but because this is what I want to do, what I'm supposed to do. If one thing has become more clear to me, it is that. | | |
| It's amazing how moving 20 minutes west can change so much. There's a battle between hanging out with my friends or getting enough sleep for work the next morning. So far this week it's Sleep 3, Friends 1. It's nice being close to work, but work's just what I do, not who I am. I hate being stuck in this permanently temporary housing situation. How unpacked and settled do I get? Is there even a point? Who knows, we could be here 6 weeks, or 6 months. Nothing is definitive. On the plus side my room is shaping up to be a sweet lounge area, all I need are people to fill the abundance of chairs now have. | | |
| Twenty-three I am no more
Today I turn twenty-four
So it goes. | | |
| Last night at the "meeting" for the Atangard community housing development I shared a little bit about myself, something people have been doing during the second half of the meeting for a few months now. And no, I'm not going to write out here everything I said, just two excerpts from my journal. The first is what I opened with, with the intent to give some context to what I was going to talk about, and just in general how I've been feeling over the past several months, perhaps longer than that.
"For the first time in a long time
I feel like I belong.
I belong where I am,
what I'm doing,
and most importantly I belong with the people I am with.
Despite this I still struggle to commit, to live in the moment.
I'm living as if I'm leaving tomorrow.
Benefitting from others vulnerability but not reciprocating.
Twelve months is a long way off.
I need to forget that in time I will be leaving this place,
these people, perhaps never to return.
But even if I do,
this place will have changed.
It will only be a shadow of what it is now.
I don't want to be forgotten and yet I'm doing nothing to be remembered.
I need to commit to being transparent,
and if not transparent, less opaque than I currently am.
I must share myself if I want to be remembered,
leave pieces of myself behind so that when I return
those pieces that I have left in good hands will be reunited and make me whole again.
What course of action do I follow?
To become vulnerable is to risk exposing myself,
to bear my flaws and my fears
I NEED to do something.
Inaction yields nothing."
The other excerpt I wrote awhile ago, I'm not sure when, but here it is,
"I was so confident and quite awhile,
but now, I have no clue.
Clarity is Fleeting.
Grip it firmly when it's within reach.
Hold on to it while you can.
Remember what it feels like so that
when it comes again you'll know what it is,
and appreciate it for however long it lasts"
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| Most Wednesdays I head over to a friends place for "The Meeting". This is what we meet to talk about week after week. And though I don't plan on living here because I have other goals I am pursuing that will soon take me away from here, I love my friends and so I want to see them achieve their goals and dreams as well, and so I help in whatever way I'm needed. | | |
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