Queries, Quercus, and Curiosity

Got a pixie cut. Now I’m listening to St. Vincent and packing my bags for Wales. I kind of feel hip or something.

thegreatpariah:

This is how I feel.

I can say the same thing in a thousand different ways

The semester is almost over and I am more than ready to be done with this school and move on. Whenever summer comes around I always joke that now that school is done I will have time to really learn. I feel that this semester more than ever. Normally, my schedule is nothing less than insane, but I still make time to write and reflect on my life. Some semesters I even have time to read and study what I wish to. This semester-not so much.

With the warm weather and sunshine, I still make time to bike or roller blade or go on night jogs. They have been shorter than normal, but still there. I went on a jog tonight to destress before I finish a Buddhism paper. I decided to run through campus to have time to myself to say goodbye to the school. I realize whenever I am about to leave a place that I need solitude. I sat down by the murky pond and watched the geese settle down with the new goslings for the evening. The waxing gibbous moon was shadowed by wispy clouds. Heat lightning temporarily lit up the sky as trucks pulling floats rumbled down the street. I might miss this place.

Places shape and mold us, whether we want them to or not. We are constantly being re-formed by the elements that surround us. My time at this school may not have been the most exciting or enjoyable, but it has in part made me who I am. I can’t never let go of that. I was able to impact this campus in ways I never expected. I never made a huge group of friends, but towards the end of this semester, I have been fortunate to find a few people who do care. It might be getting pulled aside on may way back to my house to help another student present to Student Senate for funds for a project, or it might be joining another friend to see sustainable features in a professor’s house. Either way, it is those small gestures that make you realize, in some way, that you matter that make the time worthwhile.

Now my summer will be spent hopping from place to place, different countries, different states, different towns. I know that this summer will provide a wealth of experience that I will take with me through the rest of my life. Yet I can’t forget the importance of reflection. I seem to jump from one thing to the next, never taking time to internalize the lessons I have learned. Busyness keeps me from looking inside.

I am afraid of myself, and in some ways I abhor myself. We all do in some respect, I suppose, and we all have different ways of dealing with it. I have to learn to not use my need for “adventure” to keep me from dwelling on the deeper things of life. I may never fit in with Western standards of beauty or femininity or complacency or whatever. Those things aren’t me, and that’s fine. I can’t let the experience of new things be my path to continue to run away from myself.

I also can’t let my experience of new things keep me away from experiencing people. My greatest memories aren’t of places I visited or things I did. It’s about who I was with and how we shared the bond of a new place. In my mind I like to think that I supersede the supposed banality of human interaction. Yet, in all actuality, humanity is what drives me. We are flawed, horrid, spiteful, beautiful, giving, patient, kind. We are a spectrum, and that ties us together. Creating bonds with people, finding new ways to communicate and relate, will bring one far more satisfaction than viewing the world through the eyes of an observer. So maybe I need to take time out for the people that are close to me, find new adventures in discovering others.

To quote Russell from Up,”That might sound boring, but I think the boring stuff is the stuff I remember the most.”

Adventure is out there!

I am trying really hard to study, but there is a squirrel in the tree above me and he keeps getting closer and making scary squirrel noises. Do squirrels attack? Damn you, squirrel, this is the only place with shade so I can see my computer screen.