I'm absolutely in love with the smell of wet tomato plants. That's sounds odd, but when you water them, they release the most lovely fragrance, one that take me back to my father's garden of my childhood. They're now in the 18 inch range, but have yet to bear fruit. My jalapenos, on the other hand, have begun to bloom.
Gardening puts food in perspective for me. If I had to grow everything I consume, I think I'd eat a lot less. Not necessarily because it would require more work, but because you get such a new respect for something that you care for as you watch it slowly grow out of the earth.
A pair of blue jays have made their home in the oak in my lawn, and have made it a personal battle against a particular young squirrel that also believes the oak is his home. They provide the perfect distraction from what I should be doing. What I will do, however, is take an hour to eat and meditate before I return to studying. There is simply too much to do and too much chaos surrounding me.
Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished. We are not that way anymore.
Playlist: Ageless Beauty by Stars; What Makes a Man? by City and Colour
He's the kind of person that catches you when you don't want to be caught. He's the kind you should hate. The kind that you would imagine should drink blood or eat babies or something. But he's not. He's passionate, courageous, and earnest. He preaches compassion, tolerance, and discipline. He looks monsters in the face, and tells them how it is. And he's wrong.
One of my professors, Eric Pianka, is infamous. Known as "Dr. Doom," he was famed for "advocating" the elimination of 90% of the population through an airborne strain of the Ebola virus. He was misquoted--Pianka's not stupid, you see. He was making a point about sustainability, about living in excess. The world can't support us all, not living the way we Americans do. Over the years, he's recieved death threats from angry Creationists and much agony over his lessons which slam religion. He's a bit of a misanthropist, and snaps at the students in his grouchy 70-year-old style. And then, suddenly, his Grinch mask comes off and it becomes apparent that all he wants is to be remembered. Despite his pleas for rationality, I still believe that there's a god out there, but I know I won't forget him soon. As we all sat in his class this semester and listened to his stories of Australia, I think at least a few of us saw ourselves in him. He's ten times smarter than me, ten times sadder. Once you get to know him, you can see his brilliance and good intentions. And even if he's wrong, he's worth listening to.
Playlist: Challenge by The New Pornographers, You Found Me by The Fray
It comes and hits you in the face when you least expect it. It's not like we lived through a war zone, but we did do something very few people ever do, and we did it alone and at a very early age. Sometimes you'll get a dream in Castellano, or blurt out a phrase in Guarani; I still use Paraguayan hand gestures on a daily basis--a quirk Bon's had to adjust to. It seeps into your subconsciencous.
I got a call this morning from Belgium. One of the girls I had met, who had also been a foreign exchange student through AFS, had decided to see how things were going in the States. We sat around like old men telling war stories, stories you can't share with anyone else because it would be gibberish to them. Sometimes, it seems like gibberish to us, as we move on.
Those long (and short) twelve months I lived in Paraguay are one of those things that you have to leave to God to remember. We all faced danger, we all broke the law, we all fell in love, and we all paid for it. If you start thinking about it too much, you go crazy...wanderlust takes over your heart, and you begin to realize all the chains that bind you to this concrete world.
Thing is...sure, I like to reminisce. But I'd truly rather not. The people I cared for so much back then I still care for--in the way that they are my family, and forever will be. It's not a personal thing. It's just... I'd rather be writing another story, than thinking about an old one.
My father, who was drafted during Vietnam, said that Paraguay would be the equivalent for me, the highlight of my young life. I'm sure I replied with something along the lines of "I'd rather get cancer and die." After a while though, you have to start writing a new story, because we can only live in the present.
I enjoyed the call, but it came at an inappropriate time. I'm busy preparing out how this next tale will go. Even if Belize is just a hop, skip and jump away, I'll be spending three weeks after my fieldwork is done backpacking along the coast, out through the islands, and back into the jungle. I once backpacked across about a hundred miles of South American soil with a group of Communist hippies, and I've backpacked along the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, Glacier International, essentially the entire states of Colorado and New Mexico, and Olympic National Park in Washington state...but this will be another story, and far less easy. I can't wait.
Wanderlust is quite possibly the worst thing to catch when you ought to be studying for finals.
