just weeks

not going to lie i'm pretty nervousexcited about the trip, not excitednervous. nervous a little more than excited, but both feelings are strongly present. i am going to LA thursday which will be a good escape from all the things i should be doing, but those things of course remain patiently waiting for me when i return. but it is all doable. my main goal is to spend quality time with everybody i love, but not be stretched. my grandma is my biggest priority. and my parents of course.

i'm so thankful to have found comfortable in portland. i could come back and know i'd be taken care of by my friends and family. i feel confident that this is a place to always call home. but wander i must and there is no telling when the wonder of it all will subside. but comfort i have found when i'm ready. i hope it is here to embrace my weary traveled soul in its water heavy clouds and spring shooting grass. thank you thank you this place.

blazers videos

i felt like posting these because they make me happy.

feeling at home

so it is now less than a month. i will be in bangkok awaiting my flight to nepal. woo! so crazy. i am checking things off my lists of things to do. kind of. at least i'm getting some of the important things completed but i have goals of painting, cleaning out my room, reconnecting with people and i fear some of those may suffer as the days sneak by.

however, i feel at peace. really at home here in portland now. you'd think that would make it hard to leave. and i guess on some level it is tough but at the same time i'm gaining confidence. this is my home. it will always be my home, whether i come back here right away, later in life, or even never. but i suspect i will be back. it is already calling back at the same instant the whirling world calls me to go forth into its turbulent cloudy expanses.

i feel teeter-tottering on the edge. maybe on the edges. the edge of adulthood. the edge between the past and the future. ecstasy and reservation. ignorance and enlightenment. haha, well maybe not on the edge of enlightenment. but somewhere closer to some approximation of truth. my own truth, not the world truth. for nothing universal i am searching. i search selfishly for that inner guidance i hope to find in the greater lost world; to find the compass directing me buried in the directionless wanderings of human lives. maybe there is a path we all take, wandering here or there, that is somehow determined by something else. by something.

ben harper says:
Life is a blurry-eyed, heavy-hearted whirlwind of a storm
Some things just hurt too much to cry
Memories are like shadows the light won't make disappear
I still see you smiling with your eyes

Did you go back from where you came?
If I get there, will they have my name?
If they don't, I'll only have myself to blame
For all these things, true happiness is having wings

i say the blazers are the real deal. i found two of my dad's old t-shirts. i knew he had these shirts. i distinctly remember them from my childhood. i found them just in time.

First

Well now. My stomach is telling me something big is coming up. Or it could be the fudge and cheese I ate for dinner. Either way, something big is coming up. In about a month I will be boarding a plane headed WEST. But somehow I'll end up in the EAST. What is direction anyway? Up, down, mean little when one is ungrounded. I all I know is that I'm going. There is nothing in my way, says the title of the Keane song I'm listening to now. And really for the last few years there has been nothing in my way, except myself. Now that my trip to Nepal is so quickly rushing upon me, there are visa requirements, hours of plane rides, language barriers, and thousands of miles in my way. But still it is nothing. This freedom I feel within myself is unparalleled. Maybe a bit like flying, guided only by the rising and falling of the feathering air currents. The air itself is both part of me and a force beyond my control. A freedom I know I am privileged to experience. So many dream of embarking on some life adventure but it remains a wispy phantom mist. Others can never even conjure up a ghostly imagined world different from the stony reality carved by the eyes of hopelessness. But my world blooms for me. I intend to spread the rich seeds cultivating within as my own petals embrace life's sunlit arms.