suddenly it occurs to me

I have 9.5 (I was born at 7 ish AM June 23, 1989) hours left of being 20. That means I have 4 years to go until 25, 9 until 30, and am 8 years from my 13th birthday. holy. effing. shit. I am old.

Instead of being thrilled that I can now get my social drink on without worried about that little thing called being underage, I am terrified to the point of complete breakdown at the fact that my "younger years" are literally flying by me and I am pretty much clinging on to a string that is about to break from the force of me trying to pretend time does not actually exist. "Time" timing is everything. There is no time. I haven't had time for anything but. Wind was blowing, time stood still. Time.

I love watches. I asked for a new, colorful, chunky one for my birthday. That is probably my biggest walking irony. I hate time but love having it on me. I can't go to bed if the time does not end in 0 or 5, nor can I wake up if it 6:46 and not 6:45, per say. Many days I sit at my work desk, checking the time every hour or so, wondering when it is time for me to leave. I learned timing is everything, and we finally got it right.

Time is not measured by minutes or seconds or hours or days or years. Time is measured by fullness, lives lived and lives touched, experiences created, adventures tried, fears conquered, tears shed, obstacles met, bliss touched, pain and emptiness and sorrow that in the end makes us who we are, love felt, connections, moments when that make you think "that just happened." I have experienced all of these things. In that respect, I love time. Give it time, time heals, without time the world be chaos.

I want to experience the chaos of the world without time. I want to fall freely down down down in a timeless, zen-like state. I want to stand on the edge and feel time crash around me till I become one with it.

My impending 21st has made me realize that Jerry Garcia was right. It is "such a long, long time to be gone and a short, short time to be there"

Be present. Embrace time. Accept the chaos that comes with moving forward. Cry or yell or scream or be silent or run all night or drive all day or stay in bed with the covers on but then move on and laugh. Live, that is all we have time for.

Enjoy the time of your life.

not much of this makes sense to me.

Confession. I have never actually made it through Jack Kerouac's "On The Road." I am an English major, so when I tell people this they usually respond with a huh? The truth is that I haven't yet been in the right mental state to read it. Sal Paradise is in a state of flux, he is after all, traveling across the open roads of Western America. He is searching for a form of humanity, an authenticity that intellectualism doesn't quite grasp. His name, however, is quite ironic because if he is called "Paradise" you would think he would be able to find it anywhere, even in a crammed apartment with his aunt in New York, but I guess not. Poor kid. Instead, he is looking for real life experiences, pretty girls, apple pie and ice cream, a reason to live. Aren't we all? So why haven't I ever made it (until today) past the first 3 chapters?

Unclear. Perhaps blame it on my inability to question situations, or not. Blame it on the fact that that is exactly what I want to do but have always had strings attached, responsibilities to fill, no money to up and leave with. Perhaps my abroad experience was my intro to Kerouac. I am now connected, cued into his mode of thinking (though getting fully into his brain would be insanely scary, thank god IBM's Watson can only answer Jeopardy clues and can't yet read minds, or maybe that is how he knows the answers. freaky). "On The Road" is the teenage boy's dream life, which is cool I guess. I am still not convinced that Kerouac is a literary genius, but maybe I'll find out in chapter 5.

Enjoy the open road, and hitchhiking.

we can listen to the dark side of the moon.

So here is the thing. Summer is awkward. It always is, because it is one giant transition of time, space, and being. I miss the people at school, but not the place itself. I love the physical beauty of VT and if my HWSers could teleport themselves here stat that would be great.

But in all actuality, the feeling of not belonging in a place I should belong in is not exactly fun. Maybe it is because I wasn't cool in high school, or maybe it is because I was too cool. Nobody knows. The point is (wait I have a point?) is that I am not ready to face the prospect of actual life, which is a nutty realization because I thought I was living in actual life for the past 20, almost 21 thank god, years. As I have probably said before, living in bubbles is a great alternative to facing reality.

So let's all pop in a CD of ambient noise, roll down our windows, and drive around aimlessly in the summer rain. The reconnection to actual life has to start somewhere.

Enjoy the blurriness of the in between.