So, change of plans. I want to be that cool earthy girl who wants to teach English in South America, but I'm not. So France it is. Fewer parasites, better food.
My parents and I just finished a lovely discussion concerning their role as my personal financial backers. We had a few hiccups at the beginning as he began what I will refer to as "lawyering". I kindly reminded him we were in the family living room and not in the middle of a heated business deal transaction. He gruffled (yes, I realize this is made up) at me, but then slowly changed his ways. I picture the word gruffle as being defined as the grumbling noise made when someone gets his or her feathers in a ruffle. Gruffling. Although, admittedly this word could also be a creature of the Harry Potter collection. But, really now I'm just thinking those Griffin thingys that are half lion, half falcon. Fions really. I bet there are Fion statues somewhere in France. They seem like the sort of thing the French would fancy.
It was also brought to my attention by my favorite lawyer, that I don't speak French. I retorted that I speak Spanish. He retorted, my point exactly, let me repeat, you don't speak French. Lucky for me, I had picked up a beginners French sing-along CD just a few months ago and I was able to end this discussion of my linguistic competency with an "Un, du, twah. Bonjour. Madmoiselle".
Clearly, I would be fine.
Adious, Buenos Aires. Bonjour, France.
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
An attempt to explain an unidentifiable, sneaky emotion
So naturally its been a month since I found the desire to post again. Well, here it is. I want to move to Buenos Aires. To teach. English. People who know me might laugh aloud at this statement do to my overall clumsiness at life and particularly unimposing character which doesn't make me a very authoritative sort of being. People who really know me, think I will do fine. Which I will. But, I'm still nervous as all heck.
There seems to be a fine line between thinking you should do something because its the sort of thing a person like you should, or really, would want to do and doing something because you really want to. I find this intriguing because there is always a divide between who you currently are. What you currently think you should be. And what you must do to get there. And then the you that gets there and is still yearning to be another you. Sort of makes you wonder which you is really you. Which you counts. Which you should raise it's hand if the authority of the natural world was demanding a role call.
If its one thing I find interesting about the current teachings of the college of metaphysics, which I have caught bits and pieces through my mother (and undoubtedly filtered them thus), its the idea to try and step outside of your emotion as you are experiencing it. Try to say out loud all of your thoughts to explain why you are feeling the way you are. Why you are feeling some sort of unpleasant, yet difficult to identify sort of emotion.
By doing so, I think I have gotten closer to understanding why I have been feeling the way I have been feeling. Its this overwhelming feeling that floods into me at the strangest of moments. For instance, in savasana the other day. Sticky place to feel the need to break down, seeing as its deathly silent and you are trapped in a dark yoga studio room with twenty nostril breathing strangers . Or, for example, tonight on my drive home from Buffalo Wild Wings. More private, but its still just as disconcerting when that sneaky emotional response comes pouring out at odd moments. Apparently, ranch can have dangerous emotional side effects.
Anyway, back to my analysis of why I am having these emotions. It goes something like this. I'm twenty two working at what is for me a transitional job in retail (although lululemon, is to be fair much more than retail, but I just don't see myself as a manager or really a business person at all). So, when I am safely locked in transition, working at the mall, living with my parents, driving the car my parents bought, flashing the health insurance with my father's name as the primary, and sleeping in my childhood bed, it feels like all possibility is still open. I am still an infinite, undecided potentiality. I am always in a state of becoming and it seems if I never follow through with a single action towards permanency, then life remains infinite. I am very much alive and the idea of only one life to live with less than one hundred years to breath and just one life partner to share it with appears as a distant, harmless, formless figure on a horizon of which I am headed too but will never reach. Taking definitive action on a career path, feels like I am closing down every other door and I am made very aware that as a human being, I only get one shot. One life to live. I don't really mean any of this to have a spiritual connotation. I mean it in a very literal and scary way. Its because as soon as I really dig deep into what I want to do, I see my whole life slowly lining up before me and suddenly I am a certain "career" with a certain"husband" living in a certain "place" with certain "kids" in a certain "school district" and thats that. I mean, I might like, or love every certain thing in my life. It's just that it means its decided. Its done. Ok its not that bleak, but then suddenly I am 57 years old wondering what the hell happened. It's no wonder people go through mid-life crises. To get back to a state of flippant youth, where life is suddenly infinite potential again and you can start anew, no nagging, decided strings attached. If at 22 your identity awaits you, at 57 it haunts you. So again, if I can just stay here, hiding in Lakewood without making decisions which give me some sort of lasting identity, well then death seems much farther away.
Let me stress here, its not so much the actuality of dying or what that feels like or what comes after. Its just the looming sense of you only get to be one you. Not different "you's". Its similar to that trapped feeling when you want to run far into the woods where no one can find you. Or chunk your cell phone out the window. People talk about the "sublime" or the breathlessness that occurs when you find youself face to face with nature. With something without a consciousness, something that can't care if you are there or not. I don't mean this either in a vague or overly used sort of way. Like how nature reminds of how small we really are. People say phrases like this in passing or at times when its just the time to say that sort of thing. I mean this in a real sense. A lump in your throat. An overwhelming feeling of being at a loss. That little you standing in some untouched national park standing at the base of a mountain that just doesn't particularly give a fuck. Its a plunging sensation. Like diving into cold water. Or what one imagines jumping off a cliff would feel like. (and no, I don't mean this in a suicidal sense, just a physical comparison to the emotional response) Perhaps, bun-gee jumping is a safer, more PC comparison.
Time to step back. I should say here, I obviously don't feel this continually. And its not a sort of "depressed" feeling per se.
I suppose its just an awareness that you only get one life. And I am nervous because as soon as I actually begin that life, I can see straight through to the end, and this clarity makes it a mute point. A why bother now? Maybe thats what people really mean when they say you have to grow up. You have to accept that you will have a singular identity and you only have so much time, so get moving. Be responsible. Get a plan.
And I think they are right. This is a sort of coming to terms. And oddly enough, I think for some people there is a safety in this. A comforting feeling that I don't have. I think some would say I am only NOT comforted because I haven't found what makes me passionate. And maybe they are right. But I think this goes deeper than that. Its an issue of developing any type of identity. And yes we change and we grow and we develop. But our four year old self is still considered our eighty year old self. And you don't get to start again at eighty.
So hell, maybe it is really a fear of death. Sounds sort of cliche and typical, but it seems to be the final final cause. The uncaused cause. So apparently it seems, Buenos Aires is located directionally opposite of where ever my version of death calls his home. Again, ironic that I find a sense of death in finding my true identity.
Tried to read Neitzche. It's interesting for sure. But, I think it would be more interesting if I felt like I was grasping even 35% of what he is saying.
Begs the question. Am I just the type of person who wants to be the type of person who reads Neitzsche in their spare time? Or am I actually the person who reads Neitszche in their spare time? Well, I guess I can say one thing for sure, I am the person who most likely isn't spelling his name right.
But who honestly needs the Germans anyway?
Buenos Aires, here I come.
There seems to be a fine line between thinking you should do something because its the sort of thing a person like you should, or really, would want to do and doing something because you really want to. I find this intriguing because there is always a divide between who you currently are. What you currently think you should be. And what you must do to get there. And then the you that gets there and is still yearning to be another you. Sort of makes you wonder which you is really you. Which you counts. Which you should raise it's hand if the authority of the natural world was demanding a role call.
If its one thing I find interesting about the current teachings of the college of metaphysics, which I have caught bits and pieces through my mother (and undoubtedly filtered them thus), its the idea to try and step outside of your emotion as you are experiencing it. Try to say out loud all of your thoughts to explain why you are feeling the way you are. Why you are feeling some sort of unpleasant, yet difficult to identify sort of emotion.
By doing so, I think I have gotten closer to understanding why I have been feeling the way I have been feeling. Its this overwhelming feeling that floods into me at the strangest of moments. For instance, in savasana the other day. Sticky place to feel the need to break down, seeing as its deathly silent and you are trapped in a dark yoga studio room with twenty nostril breathing strangers . Or, for example, tonight on my drive home from Buffalo Wild Wings. More private, but its still just as disconcerting when that sneaky emotional response comes pouring out at odd moments. Apparently, ranch can have dangerous emotional side effects.
Anyway, back to my analysis of why I am having these emotions. It goes something like this. I'm twenty two working at what is for me a transitional job in retail (although lululemon, is to be fair much more than retail, but I just don't see myself as a manager or really a business person at all). So, when I am safely locked in transition, working at the mall, living with my parents, driving the car my parents bought, flashing the health insurance with my father's name as the primary, and sleeping in my childhood bed, it feels like all possibility is still open. I am still an infinite, undecided potentiality. I am always in a state of becoming and it seems if I never follow through with a single action towards permanency, then life remains infinite. I am very much alive and the idea of only one life to live with less than one hundred years to breath and just one life partner to share it with appears as a distant, harmless, formless figure on a horizon of which I am headed too but will never reach. Taking definitive action on a career path, feels like I am closing down every other door and I am made very aware that as a human being, I only get one shot. One life to live. I don't really mean any of this to have a spiritual connotation. I mean it in a very literal and scary way. Its because as soon as I really dig deep into what I want to do, I see my whole life slowly lining up before me and suddenly I am a certain "career" with a certain"husband" living in a certain "place" with certain "kids" in a certain "school district" and thats that. I mean, I might like, or love every certain thing in my life. It's just that it means its decided. Its done. Ok its not that bleak, but then suddenly I am 57 years old wondering what the hell happened. It's no wonder people go through mid-life crises. To get back to a state of flippant youth, where life is suddenly infinite potential again and you can start anew, no nagging, decided strings attached. If at 22 your identity awaits you, at 57 it haunts you. So again, if I can just stay here, hiding in Lakewood without making decisions which give me some sort of lasting identity, well then death seems much farther away.
Let me stress here, its not so much the actuality of dying or what that feels like or what comes after. Its just the looming sense of you only get to be one you. Not different "you's". Its similar to that trapped feeling when you want to run far into the woods where no one can find you. Or chunk your cell phone out the window. People talk about the "sublime" or the breathlessness that occurs when you find youself face to face with nature. With something without a consciousness, something that can't care if you are there or not. I don't mean this either in a vague or overly used sort of way. Like how nature reminds of how small we really are. People say phrases like this in passing or at times when its just the time to say that sort of thing. I mean this in a real sense. A lump in your throat. An overwhelming feeling of being at a loss. That little you standing in some untouched national park standing at the base of a mountain that just doesn't particularly give a fuck. Its a plunging sensation. Like diving into cold water. Or what one imagines jumping off a cliff would feel like. (and no, I don't mean this in a suicidal sense, just a physical comparison to the emotional response) Perhaps, bun-gee jumping is a safer, more PC comparison.
Time to step back. I should say here, I obviously don't feel this continually. And its not a sort of "depressed" feeling per se.
I suppose its just an awareness that you only get one life. And I am nervous because as soon as I actually begin that life, I can see straight through to the end, and this clarity makes it a mute point. A why bother now? Maybe thats what people really mean when they say you have to grow up. You have to accept that you will have a singular identity and you only have so much time, so get moving. Be responsible. Get a plan.
And I think they are right. This is a sort of coming to terms. And oddly enough, I think for some people there is a safety in this. A comforting feeling that I don't have. I think some would say I am only NOT comforted because I haven't found what makes me passionate. And maybe they are right. But I think this goes deeper than that. Its an issue of developing any type of identity. And yes we change and we grow and we develop. But our four year old self is still considered our eighty year old self. And you don't get to start again at eighty.
So hell, maybe it is really a fear of death. Sounds sort of cliche and typical, but it seems to be the final final cause. The uncaused cause. So apparently it seems, Buenos Aires is located directionally opposite of where ever my version of death calls his home. Again, ironic that I find a sense of death in finding my true identity.
Tried to read Neitzche. It's interesting for sure. But, I think it would be more interesting if I felt like I was grasping even 35% of what he is saying.
Begs the question. Am I just the type of person who wants to be the type of person who reads Neitzsche in their spare time? Or am I actually the person who reads Neitszche in their spare time? Well, I guess I can say one thing for sure, I am the person who most likely isn't spelling his name right.
But who honestly needs the Germans anyway?
Buenos Aires, here I come.
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