Wooooooooooooeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
These last few days have been crazy, I tell you. So much adventure just since we got off the Ferry this morning. I've been writing and taking bullet points to remember everything - I've got about a hundred so far and each one is a story on its own. It'll probably be a while before you see them up as I'm just in some internet cafe right now paying by the minute but I just thought I'd get online and post something to let you know I'm still alive and well. This is shaping up to be quite the adventure though and I'm really enjoying it so I look forward to finding some time, maybe in the not-so-distant future to share some new stories on here.
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Here's how it breaks down right now...
THE KNOWNS
- I have one remaining exam at 8 AM tomorrow morning
- Dylan and I are supposed to be at the train station at noon
- Our ticket takes us to Mbeya
- Someone in Lilongwe will let us couch surf at her place
- I start my internship on March 15th in Arusha
THE PLANS
- We want to get to Malawi
- We want to visit Iringa on the way back to Dar
THE OPTIONS
- We might take a ferry in Lake Nyasa (Lake Malawi)
- We may try to cross into Mozambique (though we don't speak Portuguese) or Zambia
- We have time to kill, who knows
THE UNKNOWNS
- The guidebook describes TAZARA (the rail line we're taking) as one of the most unreliable things in the country... and that's saying something considering the context of this country
- Dates of return or going anywhere
- We've heard that there is no visa fee to get into Malawi - this is mostly why we're going there
- The status of my residence permit will probably technically be illegal next term and I'm not sure what to do about all this
- How often we get internet access
- Countless other things...
So I've got an idea of what comes next and all signs point to adventure. I've never done anything like this before so we'll see what the outcome is. I won't have my computer with me, but I'll be journaling by hand for a while and taking photos throughout.
Cheers.
- I have one remaining exam at 8 AM tomorrow morning
- Dylan and I are supposed to be at the train station at noon
- Our ticket takes us to Mbeya
- Someone in Lilongwe will let us couch surf at her place
- I start my internship on March 15th in Arusha
THE PLANS
- We want to get to Malawi
- We want to visit Iringa on the way back to Dar
THE OPTIONS
- We might take a ferry in Lake Nyasa (Lake Malawi)
- We may try to cross into Mozambique (though we don't speak Portuguese) or Zambia
- We have time to kill, who knows
THE UNKNOWNS
- The guidebook describes TAZARA (the rail line we're taking) as one of the most unreliable things in the country... and that's saying something considering the context of this country
- Dates of return or going anywhere
- We've heard that there is no visa fee to get into Malawi - this is mostly why we're going there
- The status of my residence permit will probably technically be illegal next term and I'm not sure what to do about all this
- How often we get internet access
- Countless other things...
So I've got an idea of what comes next and all signs point to adventure. I've never done anything like this before so we'll see what the outcome is. I won't have my computer with me, but I'll be journaling by hand for a while and taking photos throughout.
Cheers.
Saturday, February 13, 2010
My Days are Numbered
Counting down here now. I've got my train tickets leaving on Friday - more details to follow.
They say "live everyday like it's your last" well the truth of the matter is that we're there now. This is my last Saturday in Dar (at least as a student at UDSM) and everyday since yesterday will be the same in that respect.
Expect change.
Change is coming.
Greet change.
Welcome change.
They say "live everyday like it's your last" well the truth of the matter is that we're there now. This is my last Saturday in Dar (at least as a student at UDSM) and everyday since yesterday will be the same in that respect.
Expect change.
Change is coming.
Greet change.
Welcome change.
Monday, February 8, 2010
Full Circle?
Monday, February 08, 2010 11:48 PM
I’ve come a long way to wind up in a familiar situation…
I sit here, at my desk during a time of study, in what seems like a late night (the standards have changed) on the same computer, screwing around the same way like there’s nothing better to do, and listening to the same music.
I’ve been here before so many times. Alone in the relative silence of the night. Alone, sad, confused, thinking, and listening to Jose Gonzalez. It’s first year in UBC all over again. In so many ways, it’s the same, but it’s the differences that tell me just how far I’ve really come.
First of all, I’m not really sad. I’ve got a much better grasp on my mental health lately though I still have lapses from time to time. Even if I was sad, it would be much different than it was this time two years ago. My concerns are not even close to the same that they were before. The things that trouble me are no longer just completely related to myself but now I find that I think about someone else just as much as I think about myself. I’ve found something that I’m actually passionate about and matters more than anything else to me. Something that motivates me and consumes me unlike anything else there ever was. It isn’t poverty or injustice or anything like I expected and kind of hoped for but it’s still something and it’s something that I’d like to do something constructive with though I haven’t yet found the outlet or the means to do this. I’m sure it could spin into a positive thing.
Typing up a blog when I should be studying. Denying myself some sleep but that’s just the nature of things. If you read my blog back from my first year in university, you would find a lot of “this may be all for now because I’ve got a lot of papers and exams…” and then you would also find a lot of lengthy posts in that short time where I promised there would be none. I often find myself not studying when I ought to but rather having the deep conversations with my peers or thinking and evaluating life which to me will always be a much more meaningful exercise and is indeed what I remember much more than the content of any course I’ve ever taken.
Yes, the parallels between this time now and parts of my life from two years ago are remarkable though the differences are really the best part. I haven’t really been able to dig my mind out of the timeframe of the last year until recently so I haven’t really put this into the context of my life considering who I was at UBC or in high school. Now that I’m able to start to see this and evaluate it, I’m actually much more proud of who I am now, what I’ve done/been doing, and the growth or change that occurred is much easier to see. This is a place I’ve been working on coming to for a long time and I had forgotten just what it was like to be in the planning or pre-planning process where I couldn’t even honestly imagine myself here or what life here…
I pause because there’s some sort of uproar going on… I thought I heard a car crash a minute ago but now everyone in the dorms is just shouting and running around making noise. I can’t explain this and it’s extremely strange. I have no idea what’s going on so I think I’ll try to investigate a little bit… No idea. I’ll find out in the morning.
Where was I? Oh yeah. Just remembering that first year of university. Many nights spent alone in my room, wasting time on my computer, listening to music and just thinking about life. I feel like if I could talk to myself back then, he’d be proud of what I’m doing now but I don’t know yet if that’s just because people may have a glorified conception of what I’m doing here or maybe it’s just that I haven’t come to understand the significance of this yet. I’ve been talking with Dylan a lot lately and just trying to make sense of things here and understand or process what we’ve experienced here. I can’t remember what my exact expectations were before coming here but neither he nor I feel fully satisfied now at the conclusion of our time here. Neither of us really feel like we’ve accomplished something and I don’t know if this is just because we haven’t gone back yet and seen this in retrospect or what it is exactly, but it might be because they tell you that study abroad is supposed to just be some major transformative experience that changes you and makes you all badass but it seems like the last four months have just been defined by frustration and confusion.
…the voices come crashing back in towards the dorms. They seem jolly or something, maybe they just need some relief from studying and can only thing that shouted conversations are the way to do it. My current theory is that it was just some car crash nearby and it’s just their culture to rush and go check it out. I’ll find out in the morning…
Off track again. Maybe a sign I should head to bed as I’m less than 8 hours away from my final exam in the morning. I really thought I was onto something here but I’ve been a bit distracted and the same feeling that inspired me to start writing this post is gone. Unfortunately that’s often the case and my indecision to just start writing or my struggles with phrasing and formatting slows me down and the white light fades before I can articulate it.
I think the point I was trying to make was just that I don’t feel like some awesome world traveler or some weathered voyager to Africa like everyone you ever meet who comes back from far off destinations seems to portray themselves as. That’s something I referenced very early on in this blog and I don’t know if I’ve changed into that guy that I never really liked being around who seems to be so enlightened, almost to the point of being condescending, because they’ve been able to travel extensively. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again though: if I do come across as that guy, call me out on it because that just isn’t right. Maybe that comes next as I’m about to do some cool traveling stuff in the upcoming break, unlike I’ve ever done before. Maybe that is what does it and inspires the traveling bug. Who knows? One main point I wanted to make is that I do feel like I’ve changed since I got here and I acknowledge this, it just hasn’t really been in any way that I had expected and I’m still not sure the extent to which it occurred. I’m sure I won’t know until I get back either and I can evaluate what’s different from before but I’m still not even really halfway through my time here so there’s no reason to jump ahead and skip that huge unknown that’s coming up.
What I do know is this: I can easily see myself still in Vancouver at this time. The olympics are about to start and I am severely disconnected from those people I used to be in contact with so easily, even as recently as last year when I would stalk that old life I used to live and imagine what could have been. It’s different this time because if I was there, I would be imagining myself here so I think it’s right that I’m not so concerned or heartbroken about not being back at UBC as I used to be. This is a place that I worked hard to get to and have been trying to get to for some time. I’m glad to be here and I can see the significance of it a little more each day. It’s very different than those other alternatives that I would be living out right now but I think this is what I’m supposed to be doing. I think that by the end of this, I’ll be more glad that I did it than I was expecting to as recently as a month and a half ago.
It’s too bad that it took me so long to figure a lot of things out and I know I still don’t have all of the answers but I thank God that I’ve got the chance to extend my time here and spend some more months here now that I’m actually understanding things better. There is tremendous potential to make this next phase very powerful and I’m getting closer to being prepared for this. I don’t want to have to write on this blog with bad news. I’ve realized that I’m where I only imagined before and I think I owe it to the old me to do this right. I don’t want to disappoint you and I don’t want to disappoint myself. I’m sorry if my grades don’t turn out flawless after these upcoming exams but so long as I don’t fail my classes, I’m going to be satisfied with learning the more important life lessons and having the thoughtful conversations that will always mean more to me than proving my ability to regurgitate information in an “organized” form so that people can assign points to it.
I’ve come a long way to wind up in a familiar situation…
I sit here, at my desk during a time of study, in what seems like a late night (the standards have changed) on the same computer, screwing around the same way like there’s nothing better to do, and listening to the same music.
I’ve been here before so many times. Alone in the relative silence of the night. Alone, sad, confused, thinking, and listening to Jose Gonzalez. It’s first year in UBC all over again. In so many ways, it’s the same, but it’s the differences that tell me just how far I’ve really come.
First of all, I’m not really sad. I’ve got a much better grasp on my mental health lately though I still have lapses from time to time. Even if I was sad, it would be much different than it was this time two years ago. My concerns are not even close to the same that they were before. The things that trouble me are no longer just completely related to myself but now I find that I think about someone else just as much as I think about myself. I’ve found something that I’m actually passionate about and matters more than anything else to me. Something that motivates me and consumes me unlike anything else there ever was. It isn’t poverty or injustice or anything like I expected and kind of hoped for but it’s still something and it’s something that I’d like to do something constructive with though I haven’t yet found the outlet or the means to do this. I’m sure it could spin into a positive thing.
Typing up a blog when I should be studying. Denying myself some sleep but that’s just the nature of things. If you read my blog back from my first year in university, you would find a lot of “this may be all for now because I’ve got a lot of papers and exams…” and then you would also find a lot of lengthy posts in that short time where I promised there would be none. I often find myself not studying when I ought to but rather having the deep conversations with my peers or thinking and evaluating life which to me will always be a much more meaningful exercise and is indeed what I remember much more than the content of any course I’ve ever taken.
Yes, the parallels between this time now and parts of my life from two years ago are remarkable though the differences are really the best part. I haven’t really been able to dig my mind out of the timeframe of the last year until recently so I haven’t really put this into the context of my life considering who I was at UBC or in high school. Now that I’m able to start to see this and evaluate it, I’m actually much more proud of who I am now, what I’ve done/been doing, and the growth or change that occurred is much easier to see. This is a place I’ve been working on coming to for a long time and I had forgotten just what it was like to be in the planning or pre-planning process where I couldn’t even honestly imagine myself here or what life here…
I pause because there’s some sort of uproar going on… I thought I heard a car crash a minute ago but now everyone in the dorms is just shouting and running around making noise. I can’t explain this and it’s extremely strange. I have no idea what’s going on so I think I’ll try to investigate a little bit… No idea. I’ll find out in the morning.
Where was I? Oh yeah. Just remembering that first year of university. Many nights spent alone in my room, wasting time on my computer, listening to music and just thinking about life. I feel like if I could talk to myself back then, he’d be proud of what I’m doing now but I don’t know yet if that’s just because people may have a glorified conception of what I’m doing here or maybe it’s just that I haven’t come to understand the significance of this yet. I’ve been talking with Dylan a lot lately and just trying to make sense of things here and understand or process what we’ve experienced here. I can’t remember what my exact expectations were before coming here but neither he nor I feel fully satisfied now at the conclusion of our time here. Neither of us really feel like we’ve accomplished something and I don’t know if this is just because we haven’t gone back yet and seen this in retrospect or what it is exactly, but it might be because they tell you that study abroad is supposed to just be some major transformative experience that changes you and makes you all badass but it seems like the last four months have just been defined by frustration and confusion.
…the voices come crashing back in towards the dorms. They seem jolly or something, maybe they just need some relief from studying and can only thing that shouted conversations are the way to do it. My current theory is that it was just some car crash nearby and it’s just their culture to rush and go check it out. I’ll find out in the morning…
Off track again. Maybe a sign I should head to bed as I’m less than 8 hours away from my final exam in the morning. I really thought I was onto something here but I’ve been a bit distracted and the same feeling that inspired me to start writing this post is gone. Unfortunately that’s often the case and my indecision to just start writing or my struggles with phrasing and formatting slows me down and the white light fades before I can articulate it.
I think the point I was trying to make was just that I don’t feel like some awesome world traveler or some weathered voyager to Africa like everyone you ever meet who comes back from far off destinations seems to portray themselves as. That’s something I referenced very early on in this blog and I don’t know if I’ve changed into that guy that I never really liked being around who seems to be so enlightened, almost to the point of being condescending, because they’ve been able to travel extensively. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again though: if I do come across as that guy, call me out on it because that just isn’t right. Maybe that comes next as I’m about to do some cool traveling stuff in the upcoming break, unlike I’ve ever done before. Maybe that is what does it and inspires the traveling bug. Who knows? One main point I wanted to make is that I do feel like I’ve changed since I got here and I acknowledge this, it just hasn’t really been in any way that I had expected and I’m still not sure the extent to which it occurred. I’m sure I won’t know until I get back either and I can evaluate what’s different from before but I’m still not even really halfway through my time here so there’s no reason to jump ahead and skip that huge unknown that’s coming up.
What I do know is this: I can easily see myself still in Vancouver at this time. The olympics are about to start and I am severely disconnected from those people I used to be in contact with so easily, even as recently as last year when I would stalk that old life I used to live and imagine what could have been. It’s different this time because if I was there, I would be imagining myself here so I think it’s right that I’m not so concerned or heartbroken about not being back at UBC as I used to be. This is a place that I worked hard to get to and have been trying to get to for some time. I’m glad to be here and I can see the significance of it a little more each day. It’s very different than those other alternatives that I would be living out right now but I think this is what I’m supposed to be doing. I think that by the end of this, I’ll be more glad that I did it than I was expecting to as recently as a month and a half ago.
It’s too bad that it took me so long to figure a lot of things out and I know I still don’t have all of the answers but I thank God that I’ve got the chance to extend my time here and spend some more months here now that I’m actually understanding things better. There is tremendous potential to make this next phase very powerful and I’m getting closer to being prepared for this. I don’t want to have to write on this blog with bad news. I’ve realized that I’m where I only imagined before and I think I owe it to the old me to do this right. I don’t want to disappoint you and I don’t want to disappoint myself. I’m sorry if my grades don’t turn out flawless after these upcoming exams but so long as I don’t fail my classes, I’m going to be satisfied with learning the more important life lessons and having the thoughtful conversations that will always mean more to me than proving my ability to regurgitate information in an “organized” form so that people can assign points to it.
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Livin' on a Prayer
Thursday, February 04, 2010 10:55 AM
Whoaaaaaaaaa yeah I’m halfway there. I’ve gotten the official dates of my internship so I now know it will run for 12 weeks starting March 15th and ending on June 4th, as in four months from today. Do the math and you see that tomorrow marks four months that I’ve been here so that puts me squat in the middle. I am planning on staying for a couple weeks or so perhaps after I finish to do some traveling or something so if you’d like to join me and come climb Kilimanjaro, go on safari in the Serengeti (one of the wonders of the world) or enjoy some of the finest beaches in the world that are located on Zanzibar then start booking your tickets now – you have the dates. Or, if you want to maybe see some of the real, non-touristy parts of Tanzania
On to other business… I did find out my official dates, yes, as you can see. I also found out that I won’t be living with a homestay but rather in the VIA group house or something like that which I think is basically just where they put all of their volunteers who may all be Americans or may come from all over the world, I’m not exactly sure. I’m also still not sure what work they’ll have me doing there and they haven’t really responded to my email yet asking what it is specifically they’ll have me doing, but the reality is that I’m locked into this thing and I’ll do what they need me to do so me knowing doesn’t really change much though it would make explaining everything via blog much easier. In the meantime, they continue to find a new batch of paperwork for me to print out, sign, scan and send home every time I think I’m done. It’s been easier and easier to lose sight of the actual internship as I get buried in all of this bureaucracy but I’m taking care of business so hopefully I can finish with this one day and then actually focus on the real task at hand.
Right now, the task at hand is final examinations. As of yesterday afternoon, I have officially completed all of my coursework here at the university and by 3 PM today I will have finished with all of my lectures. That means nothing but five more final exams and then my time here as a student at UDSM is complete. Yikes. I actually finished one course already when I took my final exam for my Kiswahili class on Monday which turned out to be significantly more difficult than we had anticipated. I do have a confession to make though and that is that the grading scale here is actually very different from that of UBC or UO or probably anywhere else you can think of. To get an A, you only need 70% or above. B+ ranges from 60-69% and just B goes from 50-59%. Don’t get me wrong though, you still get the same grade you deserve and you earn it. Even at UBC where A- started at 80%, I still got the grades I deserved based on my knowledge of the course and the effort I put in here. What I’ve learned basically is that the letters are just about universal though the standards change. University of Oregon plays the letter game where you get an A if you work for it but if we’re being honest, an A effort is not the same as a perfect paper and scoring 20 out of 20 on an assignment is something that just shouldn’t happen. Here, it doesn’t except in maybe our CIEE class which is sticking to the standard American grading scale. The teachers have high expectations, ask challenging questions, and unfortunately all time their assignments and tests for the same time so even though you may only need like 40% to pass a class, the workload can be overwhelming and not all students succeed. These are serious students here though and they are first and foremost students before they are anything else. Class matters and the number one activity of most students I’ve met here is studying, not working or drinking or playing music or anything else. I’m at an advantage because English is my first language and I can’t imagine the challenge for the other students (even the other international students) but it’s been really interesting to be in a place where school is taken so seriously (even if many of the foreign students think it’s a bit of joke).
Five more university examinations and then I’m done here… Unfortunately, three of them are worth 60% of my grade and one of the other ones is worth 50% so it’s not like I can be completely saved by the rest of my coursework grades but I’ll just do what I gotta do. It’s so weird to be in the last month and it feels so sudden though. I’ll probably be done with exams by the 20th which is hardly any time away at all. If I looked back and read some of my old posts, it would look like time was crawling but now that we’re here in the final month – and it’s not even a full month – things are getting real pretty fast. We lost one of our own last Friday when our good pal Kelly had to go home. She had to leave early because her term at home started this Tuesday and it’s her last semester before she graduates so she can’t really miss it. Still, it just happened so suddenly and was kind of hard to believe. It made me realize quite a few things and I couldn’t help putting myself in her shoes, thinking about what it would be like to just be leaving this place. Even though I’m only halfway done, I still couldn’t help thinking this and I realized that I’m just plain not ready to go yet. There are still too many unanswered questions and I’m just now finally really starting to like, appreciate, and be comfortable with my surroundings. I welcome the change that’s coming though now I’m not just running away from something because I do actually like it here. We miss you though, Kelly, and Dad, that was an inappropriate use of the “like” button on facebook. (For details, see my status from last week. Also, I posted some new photos so check them out.)
In other news, I saw the movie “Invictus” last week which should explain why I posted that poem a couple days ago. I think it might be a few months old, but hey, it’s still amazing that I was able to see the damn thing given the realities of the circumstances we’re living under here. It was a pretty good movie in some respects and it was directed by Clint Eastwood which I didn’t know until the end credits but I liked it so props to him. The real reason I liked it though is just because I’m a big Mandela fan and I always have been. Even if it was Hollywood-ized, Mandela really is a man who is one of my heroes and I have the utmost respect for. The movie really inspired me mostly just because of this one otherwise unremarkable part in it where one of his bodyguards slips up and asks how his family is. As you know, Nelson Mandela spent more than 30 years in prison away from his family and even though he is such a model human being and so amazingly stoic, it was incredibly tough for him to be away from his family and his children grew up resenting him for his political involvement and inability to be there for them. When the guy asks him about his family, he just becomes depressed and decides he would rather just go back and sit down to think or something rather than go walking like they were supposed to. It shows that even though he is an extraordinary man, he is still a man and he still has problems, things that bother him and emotions too. If it weren’t for this, he just wouldn’t be human but because he is, that means that we are all capable of living like him to some extent. It got me thinking a lot about just what our potential is as individuals and as a society as a whole and I’ve been feeling a lot more positive about things since I saw that movie. Sometimes a little inspiration goes a long ways.
I think about my own problems and bothers in my own life which in some ways are so trivial because they only really matter to me, but to me they matter a lot. Lord knows I’m an optimist, an idealist and a dreamer. Don’t get me wrong, I’m pretty critical too about a lot of things, but whether you could tell or not, I’ve always been optimistic about things. The conflict for me know is that I’m trying to keep that idealistic state of mind and remain hopeful about the future but I’m also trying to be realistic about some other things too so it’s a conflict of values. I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t seriously hope and dream that everything works out the way I wish it would in the end though this is something that is more than just me so I need to deal with some realities of the situation. I still want to remain optimistic and try to live ideally to change the world and solve some problems because that’s just the way I think we all should do things but it’s a little contradictory to try and do things one way for part of my life and the opposite way for another part. The truth is that if you live this way, full of high expectations and hoping everyone and everything realizes their full potential, you get disappointed often and a lot. I’ve been able to shrug off a lot of disappointment in my life but some things are just harder than others to take and move on from. Still, we do what we do. Everyday we go out, try to do our best and hope that others do the same. We go to bed every night knowing we may not have accomplished everything that we could have or wanted to, but thinking about how tomorrow is a new day with new opportunities. We take solace in the fact that we have done well but we can do even better and will do even better. There is always more that we can do and we appreciate what we are doing, but we’re optimistic that there is always room for improvement.
…Halfway through…
I’ve already came such a long way. I know I’m not done but is there really twice as much ahead of me? I look back on October and November and wonder who that guy living in my skin even was. Things were so tough back then and I could have performed better, been stronger and just lived differently than I did. I’m so glad to have a second chance here to do things right and see what else is out there. I won’t take that for granted. The best part about living is that we don’t have to make the same mistakes again and again. We learn from them, move on, and do better. My problems here have not been the shortages, the food, even the dorm which is actually a major source of stress in my life. I’ve scapegoated too many things and made too many excuses. The reality is that every one of these things could change but that wouldn’t fix my problems. My biggest enemy has and continues to be my own mind. I can live with everything else and I even have been enjoying those challenges lately but the hardest thing to conquer is in my own head. It’s been with me everywhere and I can’t run away from it. It terrorizes me as I sleep and is the first thing that greets me every morning. How do you fight an enemy inside you? For those of you who are able, I commend you, but sometimes my mind is just too strong to carry on. It’s gotten the best of me more times than I can even count and harasses me daily, nightly, weekly, etc. It’s caused others to lose patience with me and made me into someone I’m not. Even when it wins and I lose, nobody really wins. This blog has seen highs and lows, but I think if you look back you would see this struggle has been the defining feature.
I’m winning right now though! That’s something worth celebrating. I’m trying to keep in mind things like my resolutions or trying to keep up inspiration. I’m trying to find ways to keep smiling and view life from different perspectives that make everything as beautiful as it really is. I’m trying to remember the things in my past that made me who I was and lead me here to begin with. I’m trying to remember the purpose I had, the drive, and what I was working towards. What’s good is that I’m better at this than I was and I’m doing significantly better at living like this without trying to fight so hard to live this way. I’m not done yet though. There’s still too many unanswered questions and too many unknowns. So many things just haven’t been addressed yet and I don’t know if it’s going to take four more months, but I’m fortunate to have that opportunity. I guess this is my reflection; the one I wanted to work on a while ago but never got the time to or lost the motivation before I got to the computer. “Livin’ on a Prayer” really has nothing to do with it… I just think it’s a cool song. “Rock the Boat” would have been just as appropriate.
Here I am again though. I’ve said what I can think to say and now I don’t know what comes next. This is good though. I’m happy now, legitimately (giletimately). I’m sorry I’m not going to be coming home sooner and I’m glad my friends and family are such respectful and patient people to be alright with me running away like this on my own and will still be there when I get back. I appreciate that. I found some time to get this all typed out though and put some new thoughts down though this only really shrinks my looming to-do list by one task. Time to move on though and try to be better. Peace.
Monday, February 1, 2010
"Invictus"
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
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