Anywhere but here

There's this picture in my folders on my computer, and its been haunting me all day. It's a picture of gray clouds and a telephone wire. And on those wires are these black birds just sitting there and chilling. There's writing on the top that says "I always wonder why birds choose to stay in the same place when they can fly anywhere on the earth." And at the bottom it states "then I ask myself the same question."

I  was sitting in my car earlier today in the Arby's parking lot sipping on my Jamocha shake with my mom and my little sister. We were waiting for dad to finish looking at the flowers across the street. My mother and she asked me if I had told Tigger that I want to live in Mankato and St. Peter after school. And I just looked at her and shrugged and continued to watch the rain drops roll down the front windshield. "No." I answered. "Everything's up in the air I don't know what I want to do." I looked back over at her and said. "You know I have this picture and it says something like why do birds stay in the same place when they can fly anywhere they want, and then I turn to myself and ask the same thing." 

Silence settled in the car, and my eight year old sister in all her infinite wisdom answered "Because it's comfy." 

My mother and I cracked up and I just shook my head. "Well we know she'll be sticking around." And my mother just nodded in agreement and then the air settled again. "Rachel is not going to be like me. She's fine staying in one place, but I want to travel, I want to see the world. I want to go live in Europe, go to New Orleans, live in a city preferably west coast since I've never been there. Maybe Portland, Seattle, LA, San Francisco, visit New York, go to Asia, Australia, South America, hey maybe I'll end up a Canadian and live in Toranto."

My mother answered, "Well then vacation." As if the answer would be as simple as just to vacation. But it's not. 

 I'm nomadic. Sure eventually I'll settle down and be happy but I'm not expecting that till I'm thirty. I noticed something about me. I dislike commitment, even when the commitment is somewhere that I live. I get restless. The idea to leave Gustavus just to experience a different campus and place has crossed my mind, but I'd hate it wherever I went because I love it here. I spent all of elementary school and middle school crossing my fingers that my parents would have this random idea to pack up and leave so I could move somewhere. By the time highschool rolled around I gave up that hope and instead crossed my fingers and hoped to get out of that school in three years, which I did. 

Maybe it's all just a dream though, the idea that ever city is different and new and exciting. And sure it is new and exciting the first year but after that it becomes routine. I'm probably just fooling myself. The next town will probably be like the last, but at least I gave it a chance. I've never been out of the US, the closest thing to traveling and vacationing I've been on is to NYC and that's staying in one place because first of all I was twelve, and second we were visiting family or the Jersey shore, which I love with a passion but will no longer see since we moved my great aunt to MN. I'm just restless, and the idea of going back to Monticello just for three months for the summer is making me even more restless. I just want to hop into my car, fill up the gas tank and drive. Drive, and drive, and drive until the gas and money run out just to say I've done that. Just to have the experience of going somewhere instead of staying in the same old place. Here. 

Doll House

In the corner of a child's room is a doll house closed shut with a bow on top. A present for a young girl who comes home to find the welcomed gift. The child walks around the house, not noticing much of the details, other than the fact that it's a new toy. Her grubby little fingers find the latch and she opens it up. Three little dolls tumble out, there's a mommy, a daddy, and a baby. The child squeals with delight and claps her hands together. Wrapping her fingers around the dolls she brings them to her mouth to chew on the top of their heads, her drool staining their hand-sown clothes.

The child has grown and now is able to make a family structure. She makes the mom talk to the father as they discuss things like how their days are going and what's for dinner in the bottom left room which is designated as the kitchen. Each empty room is given a purpose. The bottom left has now collected a little fridge, a stove, and a table with two chairs and a baby's seat. The bottom right half has a long couch with little square throw pillows. A lamp hides in the corner and a miniature tv set sits in front of the couch. The window has collected a sticker to show the sun and the green grass outside. The middle half of the house has two rooms on each side. One is the bathroom with a little toilet and bathtub along with a sink. The other is a guest room with a bed that sometimes gets slept on when the barbies decide  to visit the family. One room is the for the baby who never seems to age. A crib with a favorite blanket and one of those mobiles that go round and around. A box with toys lines one end of the room and a rug covers the floor to soften it so the baby can crawl on the ground. The lats room is the parents room where they sleep together in a large bed. A desk also occupies the room so the father can work when he needs too. The top of the house is an attic on both sides. Nothing resides in the attic but dust and old memories that are only known to the dolls.

Time has taken its toll on the house. The bright pink has now faded and holds a brown tint from all the dirt and dust it has collected. The sticker is starting to peel off the window and certain furniture has been lost with time. The baby is still in the crib while the mom and dad still sit in the kitchen eternally discussing the weather. But new things have collected in the house. A lost sock hides in the living room corner. A ribbon for academic success rests on the roof.  A tennis ball that rolled in one day and never rolled back out. A G.I. Joe that took a rest from his hard battles in the guest bedroom. A dog's chew toy from when the dog had came into the room and was quickly ushered out. A love note from some forgotten admirer. A key hides under the baby's rug from the lock diary that has always stayed locked. Darkness settles over the house as a discarded sweatshirt lands over the house and they stay in darkness for awhile.

The house is jostled as it is moved from its sacred resting space. It's going to live in a new place and the owners of the house are happy for the change of scenery until they realize how dark and musty it is. They had been lonely for awhile, no one had played with them for years and the child was long gone, but they realized it was just as lonely up here as it was down there. Rays of light would sometimes trickle into the house but nothing could brighten up the mood.

The click of a door while footsteps pound up those stairs. A child's giggle, something the house hadn't heard for years. The child stopped in front front of the house and his little fingers fumbled with the latch. The house creaked as it opened revealing eight empty rooms. The dolls had long been lost and all that was left was the empty shell of the house. "Adam, where are you?" More footsteps and a women entered staring at the house with wide eyes. She reached out and gently touched the walls of the house. The house brighten with memories of it was loved and played with by those hands. Times when it's paint wasn't chipped and it was occupied by scores of toys. The house was closed and locked up once again, but this time it was happy. Happy to be moved out of the dark place and back with its loving original owner.

Missing Muse

My Muse has left the building.
It's gone on vacation and left no calling card.

My muse likes to do this to me, come and go as it pleases. I find it extremely annoying. I enjoy writing, it's my pastime, it's even more than that to me. It's my escape, my escape from reality. Not that I need to escape from reality anymore, other than the fact that it starts to become mundane and boring recently. Studying, homework, work, meetings, school. That's a lot less interesting then dramatic life changing problems, angels, demons, swords, and magick. During the summer I immerse myself in my writing only surfacing when my mother calls me because it's dinner or she's tired of me sitting on the computer all day typing away. Not that she'd understand what it's like to lose yourself in a story, character, and plot line where you can be anyone you want to be and do whatever you want. During the school year I don't write as often, though I keep one or two online stories (otherwise known as rps) with some friends of mine.

During Easter break I had found my muse, she had once again came to visit me. I started many rps and a story of my own. I was able to sit on the couch for hours on end and just type away letting words fill the page. But since I've came back I've noticed a decline in my writing and now my muse has left. She's gone on vacation again probably Jamaica this time. I just wish I had some warning, a mental mind note would be nice. "Hey I'm leaving. Coming back whenever I feel like" Though I doubt that'd be very helpful. Mainly I want my muse back because I want to write again to relieve my stress from finals, but maybe it's a good thing it's gone otherwise I'd get distracted.

Well this post was mainly to get the wheels in my head churning. Hopefully I will find my muse again or she'll come back.

Highschool Memories

Today while walking around the campus center I saw the school newspaper, The Weekly, out. Every week I read the newspaper...well more like skim it for things I find interesting and the calender in the back (Which I was disappointed to find that it was not in the paper this week). And in the middle of the paper was this article called Hipster Bingo and I was just laughing as I walked to my beginning acting class. Checking off every box in my mind that I had in common with the bingo sheet, though I am far from classifying myself as a hipster. But as I did this I thought about the difference between Highschool and College. I remember in highschool to "conform" to being unique and an individual you were emo/scene and that's still something raging in highschools today. And then you come to college and it seems to shift from emo/scene to hipster.

And this thought process made my think back on my middle school and highschool years and how I used to dress. In middle school I wore black all the time. Then right before highschool my friends went shopping with me and every time I picked up something black they'd take it from me and place it back on the shelf. So that is how I ended up with color in my wardrobe my freshmen year. During my freshmen year of highschool I wore my black with neon color, picked up skinny jeans, adopted converse, wore two to three belts none of them used to hold up my pants, wore gloves, had my arm covered with bracelets, and wore at least three necklaces every day with my chocker. I mixed up my shirts and would layer them, sometimes pulled out the knee high socks (with skirts/shorts), dyed my hair and teased it every morning, had the scarves and bandannas, and the thick eyeliner that went out in wings. To say the least I was sorta a fashion disaster some days. For a point of reference here is me in either my late sophmore year or junior year.

Hilarious isn't it? 

Though to be perfectly honest I haven't changed much style wise. True in the last two years I've toned it down a lot. I've dropped some things, like the gloves mainly. But when I think about it I still dress like that. True this year I've only had three times when I actually had time to care about my appearance and I didn't just roll out of my bed look at my cell phone and realize I have 10-15 minutes to get to class. But if you still go through my clothes I still mainly only wear skinny jeans (the only reason I have normal jeans is cause my mom made me buy them this summer). I own eight pairs of converse, I have all the black clothes still, some of them still from 9th or 8th grade. I still own all the jewelery that I use to wear and when I have the chance to put Kandi all up my arm I'm extremely happy. I dye my hair constantly and if I had the time I'd tease it up, and I still wear thick eyeliner. So I guess a lot hasn't changed. Probably because I adore the style. The thing is I didn't change the way I dressed to fit in with some sort of group or stereotype (trust me in my school all the other emo/scene/outcasts hated me) I dressed the way I did because I enjoyed it.

Today, May 3 2011. Today

Today has been a beautiful day, a lot of deep dialogue has happened and now I'm just sitting here in the library chewing over everything that has been spoken today. Already bits and pieces of it are slipping from my mind being pressed forward by the pressing issue of school. But I wanted to write it down before all my thoughts have evaporated into thin air. These are the topics that were discussed today in no particular order.

Parents
Remember when you were young and you idolized your parents? That no matter what they do they were perfect in your eyes. You looked up to them for everything. Any praise they gave you, you clung to tightly storing it in your mind. That whenever you disappoint them you feel like your world has changed. So when do these people you idolize become just like everyone else? When you begin to realize that they are  human just like you. That they have faults, and problems, and don't make the best decisions.

One of my closest friends is dealing with this issue. And I remember telling him that you grow up and you begin to see the world differently and you begin to see the faults in your parents. You remember them as being the person you looked up to, that was perfect in your eyes and now you don't see them like that anymore and your brain is trying to connect the dots but it can't. Your parents change over time, we like to believe that people stay the same but they don't and we need to understand that. And while your parents have changed you have to understand you have changed also.

I suppose when I began to see my parents differently was in middle school. When that naivee little world I lived in came crashing down all around me. And the view of the world changed for me and I had to grow up. But I wanted to protect my parents. I spent my whole middleschool and highschool life trying to protect my parents in my own way. Trying to protect them from the truth that their little girl was growing up and that she was going through a hard time. That she was facing challenges on her own and forming her own beliefs. Even now I find myself trying to protect them from who I am. Because what I want them to remember is the little girl who believed that the world was perfect. Who had no worries, who believed everything she was told. Who had no problems other then the ones she created in her imaginary world with her beanie babies. And I think my parents tried to do the same thing in their own way. I can't be naivee and say that they never noticed, because they noticed and that's why we fought all the time. I can't actually say what my parents were trying to do. I want to say they wanted to live in their delusion that everything was fine, but that wasn't it. I want to say that they wanted to understand and try to talk to me, but I'm not sure that is completely correct. But I do know they wanted to protect me and I wanted to protect them and because we never communicated we lost a lot.

Same-sex marriage
Today I read the most interesting article on same-sex marriage. It was about how same-sex marriage would affect the views of people in same-sex romantic relationships. Now that marriage is becoming an option for LGBT people it is becoming an important issue in LGBT communities. First off it'd make it more real to both people who are in the relationship and people who know the couple. Now that marriage is an option a lot of couples are feeling a sense of more (as they described) "realness" in their relationships. It's beginning to reach a new level of a deeper commitment. Not only that but people, friends, family, bosses, and the government, are going to have to take them far more seriously because they are legally husband and husband or wife and wife. Second of all when looking for a romantic partner now what they're looking for is changing. Those who want to settle down and get married are now dating people thinking would this person make a good spouse or a good parent. Those who don't want to get married now have less of a pool to choose from. And then those who are in a committed relationship and who plan to get married are having issues with gender roles. For example there is a lesbian couple who wants to get married but the proposal is the problem. They both want to be the "girl" in the relationship and want the other person to propose spontaneously. A gay couple both want to have a traditional Jewish wedding but are having issues with the gender roles and who should do them with breaking the glass and traditional the bride would walk around the husband seven times, but who is the bride in this case since they are both male?

This article is interesting to me, and I never thought of it like that. To me I always wanted to settle down with someone I suppose I figured same-sex marriage would be allowed by then or that a commitment ceremony would suffice. But I never got in a relationship that seriously to have to worry about that. And now that I'm in a relationship with a male, if it ever got that far down in the line, I wouldn't have to worry about any of that. In this heterosexual norm society we grew up in we already know to look for a spouse in the other person when we begin to date someone seriously. We don't ever notice the gender roles that take place in weddings because there is a man and a women and that's something we don't have to question or worry about. This article just made me think about a lot of things.

Feminism
If anyone hasn't noticed already, I'm a bit (A LOT) of a feminist. And today I was talking about it with my boyfriend. He gets uncomfortable when the topic comes up, not because he doesn't support it because he does fully, but he feels that there is anger directed at him because he is male. Plus he has this girl at his school who makes a big deal out of it and tries to fight him all the time saying men are the evil of the world blah blah blah. So I told him that next time she tries to fight with him just say I'm a feminist. And interesting enough he said he would but he was very unsure about it. I eventually got him to talk about it and he didn't want to say that because then that would identify him as a girl, which shocked me a little bit. But it's so true. We have this view of feminist that first off they have to be girls. They have to be angry all the time. They have to be outspoken. And they have to hate men. And none of these things are true at all.

 First off feminists don't have to be girls they can be men. As long as you believe that women should be treated as equals to men, and should be respected by men you have became a feminist in my book. We need men to start saying that they are feminists and to bring awareness because no one listens to a women who says they are a feminist instead they force these labels on her and ignore her. This kinda ties into the idea of privilege (look below). Men have more privilege then women and they have to recognize that so they can use their privilege and help us fight for our privilege and equal rights. No one listens to a group of women talking about women rights, but if it was a group of men then maybe someone would listen.

 Second of all feminists shouldn't be always angry. Yes, it's okay to be angry and to say your point of view. But if you're always fighting and always defensive no one is going to listen to you. Instead you should  say what you have to say and walk away if the other person gets defensive because you've given them something to chew on and that's enough. If you fight them no one is going to benefit.

 Third of all, feminists should not hate men. Hate is just an ugly idea to me and no one should hate anyone.

Privilege and Oppression
An interesting thing talked about for awhile has been privilege, I didn't go to the white privilege conference but I've heard a lot about it and sorta just chewed on it. And someone once said you need to understand the privilege you have and identify the privilege you don't have to start to understand the problem. And if you have a higher privilege then someone you should use your privilege to help them. Such as in my feminist example, we need who have the privilege to help women get their privilege. We need the rich to help the poor. We need the heterosexuals to fight for same-sex marriage. Etc.

Not only that but then there's oppression and how oppression today isn't talked about in an outward fashion but is secretive. Like we say there is no racism, but then why did different ethnicities stick together? Why do we have a ghetto? And why when we see someone's skin color we make assumptions and stereotypes without meaning to? Because racism still exists.

What I think is most interesting is when our privilege becomes our oppression. My boyfriend tonight said he hated it. He hated being white and being a male because everyone blames him even though he didn't do anything. He is blamed for everything the Europeans and Americans have done before even though he's never done those things. And because he's male people tell him he treats girls like crap or blame him for all of male's superiority when that's not him at all. I just find it so fascinating. While it's totally okay to think like that and I believe it makes for good dialogue the next step. Is too accept your privilege because fighting it isn't helping yourself or anybody else, and to understand that you have it and use it to help other people.

Abortion
I am pro-choice. That does not mean that I am all for abortion. I think it's interesting that people hear those words and jump straight to that conclusion. Abortion is the last thing I'd tell someone to do. I would never ever think about having an abortion. And if someone was thinking about having an abortion I'd try to talk them out of it and talk them into adoption. But I do believe that there should be a choice. That women shouldn't have to jump through all these legal loops that make it almost impossible to have an abortion and that when they can't do it legally they do it in a way that is dangerous to themselves.

Women's sexuality
And in an odd way abortion makes a connection to women's sexuality. Mainly that the law is trying to make all these laws and regulations on women's bodies without talking about the man issue. Women and Sex. My friend brought up this point today and I thought it was brilliant. It's so true. If women are getting pregnant obviously they are having sex and they should learn how to do it safely and with protection. Not only that but women are sexual being also, we don't call a man who sleeps around a whore but we call a women one. That is not right. First off what you do in your bedroom is your business and your business alone. If you feel inclined to tell someone then you should be able to do so without judgement. Women, sex, and masturbation should be talked about more freely. More interesting is the fact that most women have no idea about their own anatomy. Where is the article in cosmo that talks about how to please a women instead of how to please a man? I didn't have the sex talk with my parents I had to figure out everything for myself, and even though it would have been soooo awkward, I should have had someone to tell me about my own anatomy. Not only that but why is men masturbating something no one bats an eye at but the moment a women does and admits people get awkward. I think it is something we should talk more openly about and should be more comfortable with.

Culture
Never before this year have I thought about my culture. My father is Costa Rican so I'm half Hispanic, but my mother isn't and we never spoke Spanish in my house. We didn't grow up in that culture. I just use to check off the box that said Hispanic when asked what my ethnicity is. But I never really thought about it or lived it. When it came to family reunions on my dad side everyone was speaking Spanish and I'd just go downstairs and hide until it was done. I rejected a lot of Hispanic culture now that I look back on it and it makes me sad. Now that I'm here at Gustavus I'm meeting people who actually speak Spanish go to all the cultural events and it makes me wish that I had learned when I was younger. I'm finally feeling this cultural disconnect. The other day someone told me I should just identify with white and I just wanted to say, but I'm not white! I'm Hispanic! But do I have a right to claim that? It's something a lot of bi-racial people have to deal with and I'm finally feeling the affect of it. Next year I'm going to Costa Rica for J-term ((hopefully *crosses fingers*)) and the majority of the reason is because I want to feel some cultural connection. I want to see the place where my dad is from. I want to learn Spanish now and be able to speak to my grandparents in Spanish. It's not fair that they have to speak English to me when they're older. I'm younger I'm the one who is suppose to bridge that gap not them.

Today, May 3 2011, has been a day of deep thought and life. And I loved it. Here is a beautiful picture to leave you with for the night.