The Gal to Portugal

Hola Tios. Just to let you know, I'm heading out for Portugal on Friday. My friend Elizabeth and I will be gone for a week, with a possible weekend at the end in Madrid. Stoked! We are starting in the south in Lagos, making it out to Sagres, what used to be considered the Western-most point in the world which is now this sweet spot with cliffs just jutting out in the ocean, crashing turquiose waves and whatnot. Then its up to Lisbon with a day trip to Sintra and eventually further north to Porto and maybe a national Park. Lots of beaches and all time couchsurfing. Can't say I'm not excited. Looking foward to Vino Verde, good food, finally adventures!!, beaches, new flavour of life, waifness.

You'll hear all about it upon my return! Ciao!

Balance

Balance is very nice, and good, and a plus. I have to stop telling myself that Balance makes you lame and stagnant, because it DOESNT!! Balance is just balance..some stability to add into the mix.

Night. Light.

The Light from the window is too beautiful tonight. Close the curtain so it won't be distracting.

A Lisbon Couchsurfer's Wisdom

"If you are going to try, go all the way.
Otherwise don't even start.
This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives, jobs. And Maybe your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery, isolation. Isolation is the gift. All others are a test of your endurance. Of how much you really want to do it. And you'll do it, despite rejection in the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine.
If you're going to try, go all the way.
There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods. And the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter.
It's the only good fight there is."

i want to live.
the 9 to 5, wife two kids and a family car has very little to do with being alive. neither does oprah, religion or the monetary system. i mean really live. be free. have an impact on someone. wake someone up. build a life on impulsive and random decisions. i want to see more of our dying planet and be inspired by a few of its people. i will learn from them and hopefully i'll be able to teach something back before our rotten civilization is done. and if i find anything meaningful along the way, i'll let it seep through my skin and rest in a little memory box i call my head.

that's plan A.

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Umm, all I'm saying is I REALLY hope we can couch surf with him. Also, I think the only way this can be legal and fair is if I credit him. Thanks, Joao Esteves from Lisbon, Portugal! I hope we will be meeting from march 29-31st!!

AHA!

Need More

Uggh, Spain. Is this really all you've got. Oh, wait. It is. !

and

I am
so tired
of being in my head

Best day in Spain to date

Today the weather is literally unbelievable. Renders me unable to believe that life can truly be this beautiful and that we can be deprived of this intoxication EVER. But, then, the truth hits us that, of course, the sweet just aint sweet without the sour. To know happiness, we must know what it is to be without this feeling. All things are defined by the other (identity of negation). Guess those (literally) 3 months of nearly straight rain paid off. What do I mean by literally unbelievable weather and why does this make LIFE so great? Today, I was unable to sleep in the car during commute (this has its bad effects, see nearly nauseous [but not quite!]) because life was so beautiful and I was too fucking excited to be conscious. I rolled the windows down the entire way and didn't give a shit about the not-so-subtle annoyed grunts the male passengers were making. Screw people who don't appreciate the beauty of existence. [Also, today in the car I more or less decided that I just might hold a very serious personal bias against people who actually LIKE air-conditioning. If you fall into this category and we are on particularly good terms, please refrain from informing me and evaluate your habits/life. love!] Immediately upon my return the city, I am out on my terrace. Sylvia and Andrea, both inspired by the weather, are playing instruments and have conjured up lentil-burgers with a red-pepper sauce, creativity inspired by an exhilaration(<--see SUN). I brew a mean batch of chai, ice it, accompany by food with a salad, head out onto the porch in a sports bra and underwear, poetry, a notebook & paper. I write. With the glass jar that I have decided to use as a liquid holder, I am immediately swept back to childhood: drinking out of jankey jars, hot hot St. Louis summer days, lemonade stands with Devon in front of Zeizo, popsicle, the simple happiness and contentment that you need (you need very little to feel this) in the midst of the summer. When things are that grave, as grave as life gets in the humidity of the midwest, in, say, July, with a batch of fresh lemonade, a friend, and a good city, life is so sweet.

In my world, responsibilities would literally STOP when the weather was nice, and all we would do is make art, be outside, enjoy each other, love each other, create, be inspired, feel things and be happy. There would be lots of body paint.

Today

Give completely.

Receive completely.

The Paradox of Choice - Modernity and Travel

http://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_choice.html

First, watch this TED talk.

I think this condition is what is ailing so many of the people my age, coupled with the recent opening expanse of freedom that gets thrown into our hands during a breif, and surreal formality of May (sometimes June...some even January!). The TED talk was reccomended to me by a new friend, and then the day after I watched it, Barry actually came onto The Colbert Report as I was watching it, too! This stuff is just being drilled into my head. I mean, literally, as he expounded on the Colbert floor, I was mouthing right along with him. It's true, though, this idea that more choice, more freedom, isn't necessarily always better, and that sometimes people flounder in and/or are overwhelmed by the seeming infinity availible to them. It takes forever to make a decision. You have a much more likely chance of being unsatisfied, because there are 3498 things you didn't do; there are 892 options you didn't take. So your choice could have been THAT much better, or you could have experienced 6262 more things.

Soph recently send me breif thoughts on the infinite freedom of travel and the happiness or at least the feeling of unfulfillment that it sometimes brings along with it, is THIS (above). And then those that I DO see fully, 100% engaged and ecstatic, content in the transient existence, potent, breif, then fleeting moments, are those who have been disallusioned prior and are therefore happy to be escaping, starting over, finding themselves (disallusioned both politically, and personally), do a lot of drugs (ill let u interpret THEIR 'happiness' on ur own terms), are happi[er] than they would be where they came from (bitterness).

Sometimes I wonder if Happiness is only entirely relative. Maybe JOY is something more than the sum of us, reaching up and beyond. Happiness refers back. Does it always get it's meaning by comparing, through negation? Look: "I'm happy, sitting here in this big leather chair, sipping lemonade a.k.a. I'm happy because I'm NOT mowing the lawn and Alex is doing it instead".

I'll be thinking about this rather intensely. I must. This is one of my fatal flaws: that I want nearly EVERYTHING, and so I dip into everything, but I don't get it all. I never can get it all if I want the WORLD, instead of educational reform, for example.
Yet it leaves me with a little bit of a million things, and a LOT of fire, which I guess is what makes me me. But I am insane.

Would you like some CATCH UP on that burger??

Life has exploded in the Busy sense. I have taken on a lot of new things in my PRESENT life:
-started an english theater troop at my school
-4 private tutor sessions weekly
-physical therapy daily
-frequent foot doc visits
-weekly writer's workshop
-new friends

-thinking about starting to begin the lit and vis arts mag process here
-planning a trip to Portgual and Barcelona/bona'
-looking into the FUTURE! (just when the present kicks in and i realize i am actually LIVING here, the future peeks its little head out)

Speaking of health, look: phys ther daily + 2400mg anti-inflammatories daily + no intense, or even slightly intense exercize + AMAZING new 95 euro custom-made shoe inserts which are feeling AMAZING and already immediatly the pain has dissappeared (crazy!) = the healing of the knee. I also am pretty sure I have tendinitis in my left elbow from waitressing (I always tend to hold trays and stacks of plates on my left hand, and my hips are ridiculously loose right now--they click cONstantly when I even just rotate my leg. These are the next two health projects I will embark upon whilst insured(!!!!!), along with a reduced price dentist visit. Oh the insanity of the American healthcare system. I'm like frantically treating every ailment I have because I'm racing the clock before I head back to the land of the uninsured. I'm not gonna say I haven't thought about sticking around Europe for health reasons. Don't hate me cuz I'm wise and cuz my Spanish private health insurance lasts until 2019. Gasp!

If you ask me what I'm doing after my job, when I'm coming back to the States and if I will make it to Paul and Billy's wedding in May, I will say "I don't know, I don't know, unfortunately not--don't remind me. I just got the officially invitation today :(". I am looking into the possiblity of volunteering at a lit festival in Paris, and interning at a lit and arts festival in Wales. Both in June. Now it is looking as if my friend Daniel Waxler, Emanuel, and I might try to meet up. Because D is looking for a vacay, and Eman, him and I are a fantastic bunch. That one would actually be in May, though. Any my friend Max from Oxy, who is studying in Amsterdam at the moment, will hopefully be coming down here around the 2nd weekend in April. Should be good. Also, Will in Spain?? Teaching English?? Naguine and her mom might be coming to France around July, and I remember Celeste saying something about Italy... Anyone else!?