Nuestro vino

"Crear es la palabra de pase de esta generación. El vino, de plátano; y si sale agrio, ¡es nuestro vino!" -José Martí

'Create' is the password of this generation. The wine, made of plantains; even if it turns bitter, it is our wine!

I know these words were written about Cuban nationalism at the end of the 19th century, but I read them and they resonate with me, even though I am not a cubano, much less a revolutionary.

I think every generation has their own struggles and thus, their own solutions. People who look back on the past as an ideal are fooling themselves. All those hippies and student protesters at Berkeley in the 60s and 70s, making speeches about throwing themselves upon the gears of the machine, they great up and became middle managers and investment bankers and live in the suburbs. What do their struggles mean to us anyway? They aren't ours; we have our own. We have our own problems, our own music, our own fashion, nuestro propio vino.

I realized this my freshman year of college, when I thought about Fight Club, and suddenly realized I was over that message, or more accurately, I had never gotten the message to begin with. You can't live your life ruled by someone else's ideas; they are not you. Tyler Durden doesn't speak for me, and he probably doesn't speak for you. I don't want to blow up the banks and start at zero. I like having banks and money. My priorities lie elsewhere.

What's important is not that I disregard everyone else's opinion, but that I recognize that it can be valid without organizing my whole cosmos around it.Create your own ideas, your own message, tu propio vino*.

What will your wine taste like?

*Okay, I'll stop with the vino thing.

Perspective

Perspective, originally uploaded by sappycoldplaywhore.

I love looking at the ground from a plane. It makes me appreciate everything that's amazing about this world just a little bit more.

So this is how the summer ends

Not with a bang, but with a fruit salad. Or, I should say a fruit fortress. The peaches are soldiers peaking out over the watermelon battlements. The strawberries and kiwis are women and children. And the baby grapes are babies.

It's not a perfect metaphor.


We had a lovely get-together today and ate way too much delicious food. It was really relaxing and is now only serving as a reminder how very un-relaxing this semester is going to be.

Class Scheduling 101

So y'all, I have a really embarrassing story about my first day of class, which was on Thursday.

Just some background before I begin: I always make myself a pretty, colored schedule on Excel instead of just using the one on Tele-BEARS, our registration system. So the classrooms I have printed on that schedule are the ones I go to.

I go to my last class of the day: History of Germany from Bismark to WWI. I sit in the room while a bunch of freshmen natter away, excitedly introducing themselves because this whole thing is still novel to them (awwww, adorable!). I just sit there, quietly*, because I kinda don't want to be there, as it's already 3:30 and this class won't end until 5.

Finally, the professor walks in. She sets her stuff down on the podium, and opens a window.

"Welcome to Intro to Feminist Theory."

Oh. Shit.


*Hahahha, quietly. I know, right?

School's out for never

School has started. I haven't died. Yet.


But looking at my schedule, it's only a matter of time.

Don't panic

School starts Thursday (Thursday?! What happened to the remaining days of summer?!) and I am totally running around like a chicken with its head cut off right now. I have to pack because for my three days home right now, because I'm going straight to the airport after my all-day, day 2 of my leadership retreat tomorrow. And I'm not flying back until the last flight on Wednesday night, basically cutting it as close as possible to make my life super easy.

But you know what? Laura just texted me, and were going to the beach on Tuesday. How lovely. It's the little things, after all.

Are you sure it's plugged in?

Keep Calm and Turn It Off and On Again, originally uploaded by adambowie.

I'm really addicted to The IT Crowd right now.