Sugar-Coated Spam and Words I'm Thinking

So I celebrated my Christmas morning with a hearty heap of sugar-coated spam on rice. What an excellent breakfast. I got up without a cloud of responsibility to hide my sunny skies. I craved, and I acted on it. Indulgences are an interesting creature. What does it say when the very essence of you desires something and yet you must scutinize it? Because of diet, or principal or money or some other thing that will inevitably get between you and your happiness. Funny. The very paradox of humanity.

I was thinking about these last couple of months today. Houston was quite the trip. A thousand gratitudes to B for that trip on many different levels; I couldn’t possibly begin express how surreal, entertaining, relaxing, and alleviating that trip was for me. Plus I got to spend it with one of my favorite people. Just an absoluietly great time. My final projects and the week before the end of the semester was interesting. One class had a two-part final project that I worked the hardest on. Another class had a project I used my graphic novel to finish the coursework for. The final project for yet another didn’t start until the night before it was due, I wrote three essays simultaneously to finish my independent study AND THEN started the final essay while I contemplated the final painting for my last class, which I didn’t finish until AFTER it was due…on Friday of finals week. I got A’s. And an A-. Game. Set. Match. I win. Despite the exhausting run for this semester and being at the helm for PSFA, I managed (I think) to come out on top, more or less. PSFA has been my saving grace. And that is all I need to say about that for now. In the midst of finals week, however, I had to begin considering saying goodbye to good friends Gerard, Ana and Jos (as well as Steve and Eljay) and as I said in my final speech for the former, it is never an easy thing to say goodbye, but the nature of college dictates that we get used to a turnover that forces some to leave and more to take their place. Its harsh and crazy. And that is that. The one thing that forces me to believe that something emotionally genuine takes place within these relationships that build and that keeps me from becoming jaded and unaffected each time we do this is the unyielding feeling of tears creeping into your words when you think or speak about these people. And the unsettling excitement of the premise of it being my turn…at last. Very soon.

This Christmas, as any of our recent ones, turned out to be pretty uneventful. We naturally have not participated in the traditional American Christmas what with the midnight mass, the candles, the typical yet beautiful notion of the large families getting on each other’s last nerves and enjoying every minute of it, due to our busy lives and the workaholics that are our parents [note: we did not have Christmas dinner at home, rather at the business]. And events like this seem to make me wonder what will bookend this chapter of my life before the next one begins. The allure and uncertainty of the future is a much stronger force than the convictions of my past and I don’t really want to fight it. Greener pastures are much more south and west of here, for me anyway. We’ve talked about it. They’ve questioned it. I’ve questioned it. I’ve cried about it. Mom probably has too. I’ve thought about what colors I want for my room, what I will have to eat every Wednesday, how my golf game will be better now that I’ll have time to swing the club (probably a set time at that). I’ve thought about the nights when home will feel worlds away and that the support I so desperately clung to for eighteen years here in State college will feel foreign and distant. I’ve considered impending Christmas’s without the herald of snow. And the quiet. And how faint the mountain breeze will seem. And then I thought…this is the world I will create. And it will be mine. The concept is so beautiful, so simple and so seductive. To leave this place and go into the breeze and make the work that I do count and make each moment of relaxation be a true release and retreat from each day that demands truth and conviction from what I do. I bring the bread to the table and I can be proud of something that matters. Nothing could be more divine than to feel a part of the world at last.

I watched seven movies so far in the past day. A good range of pathos and subject matter. All of the production design was great. A lot of the writing was not. I did this while I cleaned my room, and I mean REALLY cleaned my room. I tore open every container and folded all the clothes and put things in boxes and plastic bags to be sold or given away or put into the attic or thrown away. I’ve picked up a lot of things through the years. A packrat I am, I’m afraid. Of all of those things, many ended up in my pocket; and of those, many made it into my room and into piles and boxes to be considered important and priceless then, but now can only be reduced to a question mark in my mind: what made this little thing so important? How has my life changed because of it? And due to the lack of coffee all night long, a second thought was never given to each of these items, and so much of my past has been put away, thrown away. The junk and garbage came and went. I tried on my high school cap and gown. I found my old….old…OLD drawings. I looked through my sophomore yearbook. I read old postcards from all the ends of the earth from friends who have long forgotten me or unfortunately, the other way around. I found pictures of people who’s names I no longer knew and objects whose origins shrouded in mystery. So much in my life I considered so important. At one time. I guess you can call me as overly sentimental.

And that is why this is going to be hard. And bright, and cruel and harsh. And exciting, and breathtaking, and enlightening.

So much of what makes me sad about leaving is what this place, State College, has been for me and the friends and family it has given me. And how we all celebrate each other's victories…and share in painful demise...and despite the little experience I’ve had in this world of worlds, I’d lay down my life to wager you can't find this in many places...but you have to work to make for yourself…

...a home...

Merry Christmas & A Happy New Year

Earth-Shattering Revelation #20: “If you want it, go get it. Period.”