on the balcony

Kind of laid back.

Thursday, January 18, 2007

Time Goes By. So Slowly...

Well, slowly but not like an old lady crossing the street. Slowly like the days feel like years but a year feels like no more than three months. Time only truely passes with action, when it can be looked back upon and remembered. Otherwise it is a void with monotany as the vacuum and the dark matter as those things that were accomplished but without any other purpose but obligation and necessity.
I finally finished my bachelor's. I am know a Bachelor of the Arts in Psychology. For some reason or another, though, I feel as if I have come out with less than when I arrived. I have definately matured and had a variety of life changing experiences, but something is now missing that was raging before. My theory is that this place, a place I will be escaping soon hopefully for the rest of eternity, has leeched some of that lust for life I had before I came here. This place takes far more than it gives. I got an education here, but I am now have a huge debt hanging over my head. Of course, I wouldn't be who I am today without Eugene, but do I really like who I am at the moment? Not really.
I have no motivation here. It used to be a lot easier to get into the party scene, get high, get out and walk through the beautiful scapes that surround this place, but now I know that there is so much more to this place I have called home for the past couple years. If you take a step back and look around you here, this is what you'll see: Poverty. Street kids, homeless, disabled people that look like they have no one in the world taking care of them, elderly people walking the streets when it is down near freezing who look like there is no one in the world caring for them, huge trucks, SUVs, cars, cars, cars, overpriced goods, drunken kids in bars and on the streets who don't seem to know who they are or what they want, who hide from themselves like the plague. Even when you climb up a butte or walk through the forest or out onto a frozen lake, the distant rumbling of cars, the highway, leafblowers, what have you, lurks in the valley like it is the troposphere itself. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I feel that this place, in it's own unique way, lacks peace. Not in a traditional sense or in any way related to noise or violence in a tangible sense, but in the way it sits with the soul. My life is no Ritz, and I would say that 80-85% of the people I see here every day have far less than I do. Not necessarily materialistically, but I think these people, from the ones pushing shopping carts in the grocery store to those pushing them down alleyways and filling them with empty cans, I think this place is lost. Even if you have something here, a nice house, car, condo, whatever, you are surrounded, I think, by spectrum of desperation that reaches from one horizon to the other.
That is why I'm getting the hell out. Once I finish my business with Eugene, it's ciao bella, may you rest in peace. The first step may be Portland, but it looks more and more everyday that I will be booking myself a flight to the Old World and leaving the homeland behind. I'm shooting for Berlin but perhaps Frankfurt or Cologne. It won't be easy, mein deutsch ist nicht so gut, but I know I can make it. This is not, contrary to what one may assume, a grass is greener on the other side scenario. I have been to the other side and to me it is much more worth my time to explore than these shores at the moment. I don't share the American dream. America is too small. Literally, maybe not, but our culture revolves around itself and we are isolated in a world that any enlightened person with and ethical soul must resist in order to feel that they will make it through the gates in the end. Our American world is so diluted by the media, by pop politics and vanity and a horribly mindnumbing list of priorities that, though I consider myself a strong willed person on many levels, I simply can no longer accept or be among so many that do. I must succumb to the fact that this is not a level I can tolerate for much longer without falling into the grips of somehting rediculous like nihilism. So for me, it's got to be Get Out or Bust.
My boyfriend Simon has been here for almost three months looking for a job and thanks to the inadequacy of our system, he will be flying back to Germany on the 29th of this month. He had some hopeful chances, but only through family friends and one a couple of interviews with a connection made through Monster.com. The frustrating part of this situation was that the failure was seemingly due to (1) the flakyness of American organizations (companies, universities, and various other institutions) and (2) the utterly incorrigable American Immigration and Visa system.
There are 45,000 work visas for the US issued every year during the month of October. Companies that wish to acquire them must get them at this time. The larger companies gernerally buy them all up and they are ALL GONE within 2-3 days. There is a high demand for them and not only that, the process to hire a foriegn national will cost a company roundabouts of $500-$600 for EACH VISA. We have 300,000,000 people and we only issue 45,000 visas. Germany has 82,000,000 people and they issue upwards of 200,000 visas which can be acquired at any time with something as simple as a letter of intent. What are we doing? What image does this send to the world. What do we really have that other countries don't that is so desirable? The freedom to drive out fucking trucks on beautiful beaches? The freedom to take basketweaving and study hall and still get credit for an education? The freedom to distribute horribly racist, borderline propaganda on tv shows that are cut with 30 second clip after 30 second clip of jingles and colors and lies that let us know no one will every be complete? The ability to not have a say in who runs our country or how they run it? The ability to work 70 hours a week on two jobs and still not have health coverage and enough money to buy your kids school clothes at anywhere besides Goodwill, Ross or Tjmaxx? The freedom to let Walmart be our downtown? I could go on but there is a point where I will get too bitter and then I am in a bad mood for the rest of the evening.
Tonight Bill O'Reily will be on the Colbert Report and I can't wait to see how it unfolds. He is a man that contributes to all that is ugly and degenerate in this world. He should be thrown in jail for hate crimes and crimes against humanity. I really hope that Stephen rips him a new one like he did will the Dub. I guess we'll see.
Alright, well this post has been going on for long enough so I hope that I have caught at least something up here about my life, where it's been since last time and where it's going. I will be posting a lot of new pictures on my other site Catholic Guilt and Grenadine, you should check them out if you want. Until next time, take care and thanks for stopping by.