The song "Yesterday" by the Beatles has always hit some nerve or heart string, but the lyrics have always meant something different. Today when it came on shuffle I heard a similar song to the favorite that has marked so many moments of my life and time. It has made me cry before, and it has made me feel full or empty. I don't think I've ever seen it as foreboding or serious. In fact, it has always given me a perspective of calm acceptance.
Everyone lives in trying times. I'm not sure when it will happen, but one day I will take a serious look at my life and decide something important. Until then love will never be an easy game to play.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
On Greener European Travels
(originally written May 30th, 2009)
Weeks days and hours spent in European country sides and I find my thoughts refined and my being transformed. My studies, though ever directionless, have once again been derailed and search for more bearing than ever. I still have much to think about yet.
I'll start with cheap wine, it was a constant presence throughout Freiberg to Frankfurt and all of the convoluted paths in between.
In Switzerland I sat next to a monastery with a hunk of bread, a slab of cheese, and a bottle of 4 euro rose wine. As I sipped politely and awkwardly, I reveled in my European present. It was then that I realized my American heritage, my obsession with the future and my inability to focus on the present. Europe persuaded me to forget all in that usurping moment. I never felt more present. In that park I might have existed.
Afterward, I resolved to live a fuller life, one filled with similar blissful moments concocted in the eternal present instead of the always distant future.
In Copenhagen I drank another bottle, this time a Bordeaux. I cycled alone through a city that simultaneously thrilled me while vying for my empty wallet. I soared into Christiana and knew I was on the right path. The freedom of thought and existence resided on those spray-painted streets. They were living! They were fighting! I was jealous, and in my vibrating essence I was lost in the things I vowed to return to the United States with. So I missed the raves when I chose sleep over spending more money. The next morning I knew I had failed.
So when we arrived on Samsø, I knew I had something to prove. As I sipped too heavily on a 25 kröner bottle, I discovered glass-eyed that the bottle was empty. I gulped one last gulp as I sat surrounded by sober-minded peers whom prepared for tomorrow's free-day. I assured myself and the others that no lingering state of sickness could prevent my soul from biking 50 km on sore legs the next morning. And the next morning I wearily got on my bike in calm ecstasy; I was prepared to live and then return as exhausted and sore as possible.
And as we biked through chameleon-like, never waiting weather, there were suddenly only four of us crazy cyclers who desired all the island had to offer and more. The rest had turned back and we four admired roadside cows and proposed the next adventure.
At the locked gate of the world's largest garden maze we debated the risks and glory of climbing the easy fence. With the mysterious raves of Copenhagen still leaving some empty part in my being, I fought through a churning stomach to swing my legs over to fall into the unexpected barbed wire. We decided to flee to the ocean.
I think it was there that I became mad, mad to fight a burdening complacency. I wanted some demonstration of carelessness, something to hallmark my bitterness towards my uneventful vacation and life that was always thinking towards the next place, next year, next town.
And we pulled our shirts off and we ran blindly into the frigid water that we decided was pleasant and habitable even though it was unpleasant and uninhabitable. I suppose it was fulfilling, especially when we shivered and reflected forty seconds later.
When I collapsed that night, profoundly spent and absolutely sure my day was one I could have done no better in living through, I felt relieved. I felt embodied in my actions. I was alive.
In Frankfurt, I found myself full of Bordeaux and blunts. As I stood outside the club messed up I stared at the mechanics of bouncers, stamps, and flashlights, the procession of youth, hipsters, and friends of the scene. I searched for all the reasons not to enter the club that did not pertain to my tiredness, empty wallet, or my stupor's penchant for embarrassment.
Whether or not I found any, I stumbled back to my hotel as life passed me by again. I was more concerned with tomorrow's chores and joys to remember my extravagant circumstances.
I want to devour life but I don't know how. Or at least I simply did not care that night.
No matter the definition I found in Europe, I felt my studies unravel. Ultimately I saw culture that was similar if not identical to the slightly more west America. The culture I thought responsible for America's inaction was only guilty for the problem, not the lack of solution. Europe's perceived problems were the same, their proposed solutions no different. The only difference was their visible action.
What is most strange is that in Europe's concern I felt an essence that was capable of appreciating the present. Their perseverance to preserve their future is what separates the two continents. Perhaps America is too mired in its past of individual ideals and concepts to be able to find a communal future, the type of future sustainability begs.
As for me, I'm to mired in the future. I'm paralyzed, in my studies and in my life. Europe and its cheap wine represented that too, too well.
Weeks days and hours spent in European country sides and I find my thoughts refined and my being transformed. My studies, though ever directionless, have once again been derailed and search for more bearing than ever. I still have much to think about yet.
I'll start with cheap wine, it was a constant presence throughout Freiberg to Frankfurt and all of the convoluted paths in between.
In Switzerland I sat next to a monastery with a hunk of bread, a slab of cheese, and a bottle of 4 euro rose wine. As I sipped politely and awkwardly, I reveled in my European present. It was then that I realized my American heritage, my obsession with the future and my inability to focus on the present. Europe persuaded me to forget all in that usurping moment. I never felt more present. In that park I might have existed.
Afterward, I resolved to live a fuller life, one filled with similar blissful moments concocted in the eternal present instead of the always distant future.
In Copenhagen I drank another bottle, this time a Bordeaux. I cycled alone through a city that simultaneously thrilled me while vying for my empty wallet. I soared into Christiana and knew I was on the right path. The freedom of thought and existence resided on those spray-painted streets. They were living! They were fighting! I was jealous, and in my vibrating essence I was lost in the things I vowed to return to the United States with. So I missed the raves when I chose sleep over spending more money. The next morning I knew I had failed.
So when we arrived on Samsø, I knew I had something to prove. As I sipped too heavily on a 25 kröner bottle, I discovered glass-eyed that the bottle was empty. I gulped one last gulp as I sat surrounded by sober-minded peers whom prepared for tomorrow's free-day. I assured myself and the others that no lingering state of sickness could prevent my soul from biking 50 km on sore legs the next morning. And the next morning I wearily got on my bike in calm ecstasy; I was prepared to live and then return as exhausted and sore as possible.
And as we biked through chameleon-like, never waiting weather, there were suddenly only four of us crazy cyclers who desired all the island had to offer and more. The rest had turned back and we four admired roadside cows and proposed the next adventure.
At the locked gate of the world's largest garden maze we debated the risks and glory of climbing the easy fence. With the mysterious raves of Copenhagen still leaving some empty part in my being, I fought through a churning stomach to swing my legs over to fall into the unexpected barbed wire. We decided to flee to the ocean.
I think it was there that I became mad, mad to fight a burdening complacency. I wanted some demonstration of carelessness, something to hallmark my bitterness towards my uneventful vacation and life that was always thinking towards the next place, next year, next town.
And we pulled our shirts off and we ran blindly into the frigid water that we decided was pleasant and habitable even though it was unpleasant and uninhabitable. I suppose it was fulfilling, especially when we shivered and reflected forty seconds later.
When I collapsed that night, profoundly spent and absolutely sure my day was one I could have done no better in living through, I felt relieved. I felt embodied in my actions. I was alive.
In Frankfurt, I found myself full of Bordeaux and blunts. As I stood outside the club messed up I stared at the mechanics of bouncers, stamps, and flashlights, the procession of youth, hipsters, and friends of the scene. I searched for all the reasons not to enter the club that did not pertain to my tiredness, empty wallet, or my stupor's penchant for embarrassment.
Whether or not I found any, I stumbled back to my hotel as life passed me by again. I was more concerned with tomorrow's chores and joys to remember my extravagant circumstances.
I want to devour life but I don't know how. Or at least I simply did not care that night.
No matter the definition I found in Europe, I felt my studies unravel. Ultimately I saw culture that was similar if not identical to the slightly more west America. The culture I thought responsible for America's inaction was only guilty for the problem, not the lack of solution. Europe's perceived problems were the same, their proposed solutions no different. The only difference was their visible action.
What is most strange is that in Europe's concern I felt an essence that was capable of appreciating the present. Their perseverance to preserve their future is what separates the two continents. Perhaps America is too mired in its past of individual ideals and concepts to be able to find a communal future, the type of future sustainability begs.
As for me, I'm to mired in the future. I'm paralyzed, in my studies and in my life. Europe and its cheap wine represented that too, too well.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Swirling
I guess I feel like I need to put something here.
When I decided I didn't understand time, distance, or family I was on a beach somewhere far away. Since then I haven't had many moments to dwell on the things that eluded my thoughts' tendrils last week.
Well, I guess that leaves family. I don't know how to tell someone I love that something is going to kill them. And what's worse is if they decided not to listen.
I am no longer scared of most things, but my fear is impermeable and now compartmentalized. Just like the rest of my thoughts, ideals, life, love, and etcetera. Everything I am is separated and organized into maintainable blobs of understandability.
Is that okay? Or should I doubt that bit of normalcy too?
When I decided I didn't understand time, distance, or family I was on a beach somewhere far away. Since then I haven't had many moments to dwell on the things that eluded my thoughts' tendrils last week.
Well, I guess that leaves family. I don't know how to tell someone I love that something is going to kill them. And what's worse is if they decided not to listen.
I am no longer scared of most things, but my fear is impermeable and now compartmentalized. Just like the rest of my thoughts, ideals, life, love, and etcetera. Everything I am is separated and organized into maintainable blobs of understandability.
Is that okay? Or should I doubt that bit of normalcy too?
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