Saturday hit me like a ton of bricks. Keep reading keep listening. Keep learning. Keep thinking. Someday it will all come out, and it will make sense. The question is when will that someday be? When you feel it you will know it. I've thought I've felt it many a times, but in reality I know I haven't felt it. When you feel it you feel it. It honestly is the strangest thing, but you know it. Be elusive. Running solo and running fast.

I want to shoot in black and white.

Let's get out of this country.

contempt-content

Why do I travel? Why do we travel? What is it that draws me to pick up and leave; to go some place new, or just some place different so quickly? For one I don’t think it is that I dislike my current physical setting much. I do enjoy it here, but there is something, some feeling you get while on the road, while in the air.
Traveling reminds us that we are capable of doing what we want. Our parents, the older generations- they left here to go to war; they were in Europe to drop bombs and to shoot men. Now, we go to Europe to understand exactly what happened there. We travel and we understand that in that country, there too exist people, much like ourselves, that all are grappling with how to get on in a world such as ours. When we travel, ideas of money and life become clear. We see in all other countries the struggle for life that we are all subjected to, beginning at the moment we are born. When we go to a new country, we think we will come back enlightened of a new culture and our lives will change accordingly. What I see when traveling is the different ways in which we bear the chains that we are all shackled by. There exists a great connection between all of humanity in this. We are all in this world, trying to figure out how to live in this world. We travel far far across the sea and find that beautiful humanity exists on all corners of this globe, wherever we want to go. Once again I will bring up our older generation. The myths of other countries and the peoples that live in them separate our parents from humanity. Mexico is not full of thugs and robbers. Paris is no full of artists and cigarette smokers. Do not get me wrong, these people exist, but these people exist everywhere. You too have your own prejudices against people from other countries. You don’t even know it.
The biggest thing that separates us from each other is the basic notion of countries and nationalities. For us to leave our own country we need to apply for a passport, we get searched, questioned, x-rayed, patted down. We must fill out papers saying what we are doing, why we are doing it, how long we are doing it for, how much money we will spend while doing it. We tell them what we bought and what we are bringing back with us. It is quite an ordeal. They do this for security, yes? Yes. But what feeling does this give us? We are American and America is where we belong. Theodore Roosevelt in 1907 gave a very harsh speech on immigration and the American peoples business in other countries. Although I do not have this speech directly in front of me at the moment, I can paraphrase from memory for you. For us.
Roosevelt says that immigrants coming into the United States are more than welcome, but they are expected to drop all the traditions of their homeland and their past life, and to become American. There is only one language to be spoken here, and that is English. He continues with Americans going abroad. He talks about how if an American spends too much time in other countries, he ceases to be American. That a true American is one who loves his country and nothing else.
This frightens me. This idea basically speaks to the idea of “us, and no one else”. When the border patrol begins to question me, I feel as if they are accusing me of being “un-american”. The questioning makes me want to make a big brother reference here, but I prefer not to consider America my brother. America is not a brother. Argentina, Italy and England are no ones brothers. These countries, these names are all joined in one, successfully fooling their respective inhabitants into thinking that they are so fundamentally different from one another. This illusion goes much further that a geographic setting, and although this idea is worth thinking about, it does not fit here.
When we get off the plan, we feel as if we were cast into a new world in the way we throw a life-preserver into the sea. We instantly take note of the adverts on the wall in this new (well, new for us) language. We can’t read them. They mean nothing to us. We look around. Everyone is shorter than you, or maybe they were taller than you. Their skin is lighter or their skin is darker. It is only after we get over these visual changes that we can understand what truly exists in this new land. Some people can never get past this first hump though. They constantly feel the need to refer how everything is different than the way it is at home, and they spend their entire time comparing. Comparisons are good and constructive, but when all you notice is the way things are different here, you do not gather anything new from the experience. You are constantly thinking of home, and the way home is and when you finally get there (home, that is) all you have to tell your family and friends of your travels are comparisons. “They don’t serve you water the moment you sit down at a restaurant!” Useless. In our new country we are hindered by language, mannerisms, physical appearance, physical distance, diseases... the list goes on. But these afore mentioned barriers are not what makes up the human identity, and this is what must be understood. We must understand that when we travel thousands and thousands of miles across the land and over the sea that the conventions that try so hard to split us and keep us apart are exactly the fibers that will string us together. When we can finally realize that “hola” and “hello” are one in the same, and it’s not the word itself that is important, but the ideas that we use words to conjure up, we will be able to see the breadth of humanity that exists.

The Spree in December.

When I take a picture, I think in my head “I want this”. Maybe we take pictures so that we can keep something forever. It can be a building or a person or a field or anything really. Once we have a photo of it we own it. I think I don't like to let things go and maybe photography is my way of holding on.

Writers Block

For me writing is usually directly influenced by how much I've been reading and how much I've been dreaming. And I mean dreams in their literal sense, you know, like the ones while you are sleeping. To be honest, I have been reading much more than usual recently. And it has been some seriously amazing stuff at that. But I have not had a dream in quite some time. Last night I woke up every ten minutes from 4 AM to 9:30 AM, or, in other words, the ENTIRE time I was asleep. Dreams become almost impossible with this.

But sometimes something else happens.

You sleep through most of the night, let us say a good seven hours (this is assuming that you get eight hours of sleep a night, like four out of five doctors recommend for a healthy lifestyle) but you wake up. Maybe you had to piss, or a drink of water was you wanted. Yes, a drink of water was exactly what you wanted. You gorge and back to sleep you fall, quenched and satisfied. But now, when you re-enter that strange state of sleep you begin to dream. Not only do you begin to dream, but you have some outlandish, vivid and emotional dream. Now you are saying "I know! That's so crazy! Wow!". Yes, my ability to connect to many different peoples is truly extraordinary. But that is off topic here. We really can't talk about this certain ability of mine for too long, for that is not the purpose of this essay, or conversation. Yes, now we can consider this a conversation. You have spoken back haven't you? The conversation simply is the idea where two beings communicate. Although, it is not always between two beings, for the state of being, even in a human being is quite controversial. Let us take the example of "stupid" people, whatever that means. Are happy stupid people really living, or being? "Yes, of course" you say. "How un-humanistic you are being with this assertion!" Fine fine, you obviously don't buy this idea. Well, how about those who resist suffering. Those who resist it so much that they hardly know what it is. Now before you attack me once again saying that I don't know what suffering is let me say another thing or two. Yes, there is suffering of great proportions in the third world, while I type this to you on my nice little computer. This is not suffering. At this moment, I am not suffering. But anything can be suffering once you have dedicated enough thought to it, where this idea you had literaly pains your stomach. When you throw your fists in the air at nothing in particular because you are suffering from this something, this is suffering. You can fool yourself into suffering. You can fool yourself into believing that what is quite insignificant actually is very important. "What about true physical suffering?" Yes, yes, I've pondered this as well. Don't think that you are really one step ahead of me. Really you must be contemptious of me by now. Leave if you wish. I am not keeping you here. As a matter of a fact I would have no indication that you gave up on me, or that you were not following, or that you just got bored. This is in the same vein that I will not know if anyone should actually read this. But don't think that I am writing this just for you. I am writing this for us. But, if that us doesn't exist and it is only me who exists in this realm, so be it.

Yet our conversation continues. True suffering is quite a romantic notion. When we are in a state that I will call "normal" for the time being, we can enjoy its presence. The presence of normality, that is. But, sometimes we pass by a couple on the street. They are yelling at each other, or maybe they are crying. Maybe you notice a couple walking in the same path as you everyday on your way to the market and then, today, you noticed just the man. Sans-girlfriend. And he was crying. Boy was he crying! How amazing! How simply awesome it is that we as human beings can experience emotion to such heightened levels that our physical state changes. We can be so shook with tears that we drop our plate of toast onto the floor. The plate cracks and scatters its small porcelain bits across the kitchen floor. You will clean up what you can, but you know that hidden behind the oven and under the sink, there still to this day exist those miniscule bits that you will never find or see again. Plus, on top of all of this, the toast landed jam side-down. What an incredible notion! Do you also sometimes wish that you were the crying man on the street? Sometimes, just sometimes don't you wish that you were feeling and living as much as this man? When you sit there, all content and satisfied with the current state of things, with your current state of being, in your normality little secluded happy daily scheduale of balanced sleeping working recreational and learning. When you go through the motions of your day like you have one-thousand times before- so much that you needn't even open you eyes to see where you are going, because you know where you are going by sound by feel by taste by smell by know-how don't you sometimes, just sometimes stop for one moment. One moment is all I ask of you. Just sometimes...I take that back. Sometime. Tomorrow will be that sometime. Sometime won't you think that maybe just for one moment you want to really live.