fornetti

hungary? you ask.
i can hear the doubt in your voice. the questioning.
but guess what, i love it.
and here's why.
the city i live in possesses a sort of charm that grows on you.
and then there's fornetti.
what's fornetti? you ask.
it is just the best thing on this planet.
fornetti is an eastern european company that makes the most delicious, savory pastries.
i could eat them everyday.
i do eat them everyday.
as a result, i have to run for at least two hours. everyday.
but its worth it, every bite.

what i've come to know

This past year has been a challenge, to say the least. I've had what seems like an eternity of silence to think. 
Silence, in large doses, is both a blessing and a curse. It evokes emotions and thoughts that we once thought were absent from our being. There are portals of our soul that we are forced to enter, forgotten parts that we are made to extract and make known. It opens us to our own judgment, which is, and rightfully so, the harshest form of evaluation. 
Up until last year, the better part of which I spent in bed, immobilized by my own doing, I hadn't taken the time to evaluate. Self-evaluation at crucial points in our lives is vital, for without it we are prone to slip into a state of existence that is noxious to the human spirit. I desire lifestyles and not transient states of being. Lifestyles require commitment, an obsessive passion, a furious loyalty. What better way to live than with a purpose to which we are thoroughly committed?
Alan has always had his goals in front of him, easy in reach; not because they are easily attainable, but because he has an unmatched sense of direction and posseses a rarely seen form of passion. Some people are born with a bold character; the kind that happily exploits every available resource. Others slip into the gaps and the passes, waiting and hoping, for a time that will be their own. For eighteen months, I lived passively, blindly, without purpose. I am now coming to terms with the knowledge that the perfect time and the perfect tide are the stuff of fairytales. Life requires of us an aggresive nature, if we are to expand. 
I take pride in the changes that I've made in my life. I see myself evolving into a person who loves to learn, simply for the preservation and expansion of knowledge. While I can look at my current predicament as a stripping away of my rights, I can also look at it as an unparalleled opportunity. It may not be what I want right now, but to see each and every setback as room for growth is a much better approach. 
Eighteen turbulent months. And now, they are over. I've been to hell and back, but I have emerged, stronger and more resilient. Along with sorrow and heartbreak, I was gifted shreds of sage-like wisdom. And, the greatest lesson yet? That happiness isn't contingent on circumstance; it's a state of mind, of attitude, of personal endeavor. I have found happiness, and it is sublime. 

the road has always led west

i miss the mountains.

the valleys.

the rivers snaking through.

brilliant white teeth.

and tough beef jerky.

driving through idaho,

idaho potato.

endless roads, 

and endless views, 

a sleepy darkness.

a moonlight dance.

and where, after all,

the sky meets the dust. 

we'll meet again, won't we?

the beautiful and the damned.

Revolutionary Road is the story of the Wheelers, a couple floundering in the mediocrity that is mid-level suburbia. Their desperation for change is painfully evident, but their dreams are balanced on a wavering stack of inability, fear, and as more of a side note, infidelity. 


The Wheelers make an impetuous decision to move to Paris, but as the story progresses, Alice Wheeler finds that she's pregnant. Well, bitter arguments ensue, and she ends up struggling to accept that she won't be going anywhere. As though Paris doesn't have hospitals! As though children can't be raised in Europe! 


I think we all have an inherent capacity for excuses, but it takes a certain strength to dream and to fulfill. To begin and then to end. 
Sometimes what we really need is a dramatic, upending change to begin the process of living, to realize that there is a difference between living and merely existing. 


Well, there's more to the story and I hope I'm not giving away too much as I write this. 
And for the record, I stand by my word. It deserved an Oscar!

Now, I'm only halfway through, but why didn't Revolutionary Road win an Oscar?
more on this later

pitter patter. the rumbling of a truck. skipping rocks. vibrant green. fish vendors. bamboo fishing poles. cold samosas. desire. breathlessness. the sunset.

what i love

the streetlights

rainy, overcast days

open windows 

establishing order

water with lemon

the possiblities in a new sketchbook

the middle road

where the paddy fields meet the horizon

monsoon thunderstorms

picking up a new classic- it's thrilling and daunting at the same time

the mountains

simple beauty- it is everywhere

solitude

feeling beautiful 

creativity -it feeds the soul

self-reliance

anthropology class

july 4, 2010

the ghost of dirty dick is still in search of little nell.

i want

to quit college and move to the mountains
to study philosophy and art, history and literature
to be able to sleep for more than two hours straight
to read and re-read
to immerse myself in what i love


to leave this place. 
to be in a different place doing different things.


what i don't want is what my parents want for me. i don't want to drive an expensive car or live in a big house. i could do without. we all could. but how do i tell them?

Put yo thinkin' caps on!

I'll admit, my interest in the Kennedy assassinations is verging on obsession. In the past two days, I've watched multiple documentaries on the subject and I'm currently re-reading Bobby Kennedy's biography.
I don't pretend to be an expert on the subject; I've only scraped at the surface of the conspiratorial mystery surrounding the assassinations. But, what I have come to realize, is that the government is intent on wiping out free thought; they would rather have us blindly follow the Warren Commission's assessment of the crime, than piece together a much more logical explanation. I find it a brutal insult to my intelligence. 
What I believe is more important than having "knowledge", or more fittingly, an illusion of knowledge, is continually seeking after it. We are more inclined to believe what we hear from the mass media and from our peers, than challenge what we're told. Challenging our belief system not only takes a considerable amount of effort, but it removes us completely from our sense of false security.
The fundamental problem is that many of us have lost the ability to think for ourselves. When was the last time you questioned what someone told you, that you did what you wanted to do, not what others would have you do? Our minds are the only resource we have left, and when we yield to greater or lesser powers, we have lost everything.

Bobby

I watched Bobby for the second time, tonight. 
I've posted the transcript of Robert Kennedy's final speech. There's such potent inspiration in his words. 
I hope you enjoy!  


"This is a time of shame and sorrow. It is not a day for politics. I have saved this one opportunity, my only event of today, to speak briefly to you about the mindless menace of violence in America which again stains our land and every one of our lives. 
It is not the concern of any one race. The victims of the violence are black and white, rich and poor, young and old, famous and unknown. They are, most important of all, human beings whom other human beings loved and needed. No one - no matter where he lives or what he does - can be certain who will suffer from some senseless act of bloodshed. And yet it goes on and on and on in this country of ours. 
Why? What has violence ever accomplished? What has it ever created? No martyr's cause has ever been stilled by an assassin's bullet.
No wrongs have ever been righted by riots and civil disorders. A sniper is only a coward, not a hero; and an uncontrolled, uncontrollable mob is only the voice of madness, not the voice of reason.
Whenever any American's life is taken by another American unnecessarily - whether it is done in the name of the law or in the defiance of the law, by one man or a gang, in cold blood or in passion, in an attack of violence or in response to violence - whenever we tear at the fabric of the life which another man has painfully and clumsily woven for himself and his children, the whole nation is degraded.
"Among free men," said Abraham Lincoln, "there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet; and those who take such appeal are sure to lose their cause and pay the costs." 
Yet we seemingly tolerate a rising level of violence that ignores our common humanity and our claims to civilization alike. We calmly accept newspaper reports of civilian slaughter in far-off lands. We glorify killing on movie and television screens and call it entertainment. We make it easy for men of all shades of sanity to acquire whatever weapons and ammunition they desire.
Too often we honor swagger and bluster and wielders of force; too often we excuse those who are willing to build their own lives on the shattered dreams of others. Some Americans who preach non-violence abroad fail to practice it here at home. Some who accuse others of inciting riots have by their own conduct invited them. 
Some look for scapegoats, others look for conspiracies, but this much is clear: violence breeds violence, repression brings retaliation, and only a cleansing of our whole society can remove this sickness from our soul. 
For there is another kind of violence, slower but just as deadly destructive as the shot or the bomb in the night. This is the violence of institutions; indifference and inaction and slow decay. This is the violence that afflicts the poor, that poisons relations between men because their skin has different colors. This is the slow destruction of a child by hunger, and schools without books and homes without heat in the winter. 
This is the breaking of a man's spirit by denying him the chance to stand as a father and as a man among other men. And this too afflicts us all. 
I have not come here to propose a set of specific remedies nor is there a single set. For a broad and adequate outline we know what must be done. When you teach a man to hate and fear his brother, when you teach that he is a lesser man because of his color or his beliefs or the policies he pursues, when you teach that those who differ from you threaten your freedom or your job or your family, then you also learn to confront others not as fellow citizens but as enemies, to be met not with cooperation but with conquest; to be subjugated and mastered. 
We learn, at the last, to look at our brothers as aliens, men with whom we share a city, but not a community; men bound to us in common dwelling, but not in common effort. We learn to share only a common fear, only a common desire to retreat from each other, only a common impulse to meet disagreement with force. For all this, there are no final answers. 
Yet we know what we must do. It is to achieve true justice among our fellow citizens. The question is not what programs we should seek to enact. The question is whether we can find in our own midst and in our own hearts that leadership of humane purpose that will recognize the terrible truths of our existence. 
We must admit the vanity of our false distinctions among men and learn to find our own advancement in the search for the advancement of others. We must admit in ourselves that our own children's future cannot be built on the misfortunes of others. We must recognize that this short life can neither be ennobled or enriched by hatred or revenge. 
Our lives on this planet are too short and the work to be done too great to let this spirit flourish any longer in our land. Of course we cannot vanquish it with a program, nor with a resolution.
But we can perhaps remember, if only for a time, that those who live with us are our brothers, that they share with us the same short moment of life; that they seek, as do we, nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and in happiness, winning what satisfaction and fulfillment they can. 
Surely, this bond of common faith, this bond of common goal, can begin to teach us something. Surely, we can learn, at least, to look at those around us as fellow men, and surely we can begin to work a little harder to bind up the wounds among us and to become in our own hearts brothers and countrymen once again."