A Post!!!

Once I went to Barcelona and walked among tall buildings on lonely streets that saw only the sun reflected from the sky but never felt its real caress. In this place I walked by closed stores and open stores and wondered why the hell are there so many of these? In Barcelona I saw a man painted all brown--his skin and his clothes, even his army general glasses the same mud brown--he sat on a rock on Las Ramblas, painted and motionless like that with a lit cigar in his mouth, an army phone in his hand and a hat on the ground to receive whatever people were willing to put into it. I wondered how long he'd been sitting there and where he went at nights when he walked home, but I didn't want to break his concentration, so I kept on moving.

Earlier, in Morocco, I walked in a city all blue and white with 14 old doors that they used to close at night, locking themselves up in the safety of the cool night and keeping out the invading Spaniards. That was when invasion was still cool. This place, which goes by the name of Chefchaouen, prides itself on its wool, its hashish, and its mountain water. I tried all of them and I approve. I felt myself growing in the town of blue and white and sand. That charming and very strange town full of people who don't want to sell you anything but just want you to take a look, friend, amigo; where you are greeted on the street in three languages, but almost never in arabic or berber. Hello, hi. Hola, bonjour. Or that time when we found ourselves far from the center in a strange garage with a man named Mohammad, another fatter one he called his brother and a black garbage bag full of substance and the words "600 durham is the minimum" and feeling suddenly very small and noticing that voice in my head speaking very quickly. In Morocco, I learned how to listen to that voice.
Or there was that other time when, seeing a mountain, I decided to climb it. And on approaching the mountain I was myself approached by one who would be a multilingual 18-year-old Moroccan named Ílias who may be the only person who actually didn't want to sell us anything in Morocco. So we three (Andrew, Ílias and I) fell up the mountain pell-mell (I’ll put pictures up soonish) where Ílias rapped 50 Cent and some of his own material for us on top of Mount Sayta. We thumped our chests, clapped our hands and made sounds to accompany our hand-made Moroccan beat. We laughed, three guys from different worlds (Morocco, a place with lots of states, united, and Brazil). We did this on the top of a mountain where you could see the sun shining and shading different parts of the rolling landscape and all of the old walls that used to protect a city under siege but now stand as markers of old and new--Old Medina and new city.
In Morocco I learned how to deal with hash dealers and scammers, heard of aphrodisiac fireproof blankets and drugs that take you to another world, but I also learned how much a look from a stranger can mean, or a wave from a woman inside an autobus when you're traveling in a strange country and sitting in the parking lot excited and waiting for yours to come. It was silly really, but that forbidden wave sent us both laughing and I don't know about her but what I felt was an embrace. In Morocco, the contact you have with women is minimal, but when it happens, the intimacy is startling.

My how the times they’re a-changing! I’ve moved from my old jail and have a new room with new people, friends, a kitchen, a bike, a bed to share, liberty! It’s exactly what I’ve been lacking and I feel so alive! I’m taking advantage of all of those things.

There’s this thing about getting older, about feeling like I’ve wasted so much, of letting myself down, of sometimes feeling powerless to make it better, of getting better at ignoring that self-negation and defeatism, of taking control, of being a little bit afraid sometimes because I’m not too sure what to do with the control I have. There’s a newly acknowledged, intense fear of commitments of all kinds and the thought, "This explains some things." The bigger realization (which isn’t so much a realization as a thought from a now older-person’s perspective) that there’s so much shit I still can’t explain. I can’t forget about the excitement that I feel some days when I wake up, like today, with a fresh feeling and a thought of squeezing the day for all it's worth, of preparing for what’s coming, whatever that is. There’s compromising, forgetting to do things, getting used to failure and mistakes, refusing to believe that mistakes are a bad thing but still not being a fan of failure.
I’ve noticed a pattern lately, where I find myself sitting in the sun or maybe walking and being transported to those days when I had five years or seven years and sunshine hair and nothing but love and a life full of potential ahead of me…before I new what potential meant. Before I knew expectations and the only things I feared were monsters, losing my parents, and bad guys. That was before I knew that often the “good guys” are bad guys, that gray is a color of many shades, that monsters really do exist, and that losing yourself is just as scary and likely a possibility as losing the people you love. That was when I said I would never leave home because home had everything I needed. That was when I thought I knew what I needed and almost always knew what I wanted. When rain meant indoor recess. When weekends meant rollerblading and Free Time. That was when I thought that free time existed, and to the extent that it did, found it boring. That was before I knew the thrill of a crush and what it means to really want something (do I even now know what it means to really want something?) Before heartbreak. Before being in love and lust. Before starting over, before nostalgia and forgetting. That was when the world was so damn big and I was not a small boy but a big boy. That was when I used to go to Big Boy with dad to eat Slim Jim’s and try to color inside the lines. That was when I was a golden-eyed, sun-haired child and it was easy to impress people. When it was enough just to be a little boy or a tree or a flying ninja with special armor, and people let you do that, just be. But now it’s not all like that. Something’s changed, and I’m not sure when or how all of that happened, but I think with each day, I’m somehow becoming more okay with that fact, with the newness and learning of this adventure, where you’re not allowed restarts and have to think on your feet. Where there really aren’t answers and where, eventually, you realize that the answers aren’t the point, and so you take a deep breath, pick up your backpack, say bye to the people at work and walk to class. And like always, you look up at the sky while you're walking and smile, laughing silently at yourself and the world.