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Friday, May 6, 2011

Columbia

Ok, so I’m sitting here, on the steps my potential new life, or at least should I say one of the options in front of me now.

Trying to take a deep breath and just feel, just kinda let it happen, let the fairy tale enchant me and figure out if it should be. But that’s bullshit, I am a subject of my own choices, I tell myself and decide to take another look. These are just regular people, with regular lives, and probably a shit ton of money. Then I hear Hebrew from behind me. Wow, Hebrew has been such a privilege for the past year and suddenly its just everywhere. I strike a conversation with them, they’re students here too. Apparently there are a lot of Israelis studying here, and I have mixed feelings about it. It makes me feel at home but it’s also so disorienting. I ask myself again what did I come here to do? What was the initial purpose of coming to the US and how its changed in the last year, how much I have changed. Walking around this city feels just like hearing Hebrew in the street – confusing and overwhelming and yet soothing in a way that is almost elusive. What brings all these people together? People in suits and plain old hippies, a barefoot Japanese and a Hassidic Jew, so much effort being put into seeming effortless, a confident nonchalance in the air. As if nothing really matters, except the underline truth that everything means something to someone, they’re all hoping to communicate their selves to an unknown mass of people that they don’t really care about. Do I really one to be one of these people? I smile to myself “Well, I kinda do.”

I look at the screen and understand what is so overwhelming and what has changed. My semi coherent thoughts are actually a struggle within myself, my old and new self. The old criticizing self that hates how presumptuous the society we live in is, but the new (or should I maybe say potentially new) self has accepted that being by myself and not part of something bigger, also means accepting the world as it is, and not trying to fight the system through criticism that I have no alternative to. Is this a change that I chose? Am I really a subject of my own choices, or is that just bullshit that I’m selling to myself to feel sane, when the actual truth is that I am more susceptible to the society I live than I thought I was. Well, apparently I am. But that’s ok. Do not ask for transformation if you don’t know what you want to transfer into…

Alice: Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?
The Cat: That depends a good deal on where you want to get to
Alice: I don't much care where.
The Cat: Then it doesn't much matter which way you go.
Alice: …so long as I get somewhere.
The Cat: Oh, you're sure to do that, if only you walk long enough.