*Good for Nothing Cry Baby*

"Once you get into the desert, there's no going back," said the camel driver. "And, when you can't go back, you have to worry only about the best way of moving forward..."

Very few movies have ever yanked one of my tears from its ducts. The last one, well I can't really recal, (I'm not counting Kill Bill vol1, when the doctor was soliciting a comatose bride out to a dirt bag for some good ol' raunchy love because those were mostly self pitying tears for not being able to control my laughter) but on the list are Braveheart, Forest Gump, and The Last Samuri (maybe Hero too but like I said, I don't remember). Movies aside, it's almost a safe bet that though a good book might leave me close to the edge of joyful lashwetting, as the creative process is something I value and when it is excellently executed I can't help but elicit my emotions in ways not normally expressed, it usually won't leave me balling. No, not even the newly crowned king of my "best read" list, Tony Vigorito's JUST A COUPLE OF DAYS, with all its clever novelty, could squeeze even a drop of my joy into physical existence. It came as a great surprise to me that a small, neglected novel which my mother had given for christmas brewed a storm of happiness in me so rapturous that it couldn't be contained. The book is simply written, a continuous allegory about a boy giving himself up to his destiny in order to discover a treasure. At 167 pages is it a relatively short read but boy what a ride. The mystic parallels are evident from the start when a young shepard is tending to his sheep and has to be weary as one likes to wonder off. The rest of the book continues to develop his outlooks on life and puts him through many tests and trials through which the boy meets an assortment of different travellers and begins to understand the Language of the Universe in the process. It almost had an aliCe in Wonderland feel in both its simplicity and ability to compress so much symbolism into a simple easy read that has the potential to appeal to both a wild minded 4th grader and well studied desk hogging intellectual. From the start i knew it was something special, and my subconscious new it too as several long dormant sensations were slowly awakening. It built and it built and it built until those sensations became overpowering and had to find they're way out. I'll spare you the gory details but lets just say that page 156 was completely wet by the time I was done with it. That's not to say that what occured in page 156 was the climax of anything, in fact it was not. The real magic didn't even happen in 155, it was in fact a few pages earlier. 156, though, that's when it all wanted to come out and I let it smack in the middle of the library sitting in "my hole" across from Jeff Hassler, the smartest kid in my section, who has all the inner workings of the law memorized. It's funny how me and him hardly ever speak yet we always sit in the same "booths" right across from each other and share curious glances as to our whereabouts. But unlike him I rarely study law at the library. I go there for escape, to indulge in those pleasures I regret every day from neglecting myself since the start of my formal education. I guess its because when I'm told/forced to do something my mind automatically shuns away from it. School wasn't an adventure in knowldge but a forced responsability which i would always grudgingly attack with a lack of enthusiasm. Now, when my responsabilities have shifted is when I yearn to capture what i lost. No worries, better now than never. Anyways I can't help but always think that despite the fact that Jeff and I wholeheartedly dedicate our time to two completely opposite things (him: the law, me: the deiscovery of language) it is the same faculties that drive us, the same will, the same commitment to something which our minds yearn to explore. It's led me to believe that our outward appearance are just different manifestations of the same collective energy. Boy was that a tangent or what. Back to me being a fucking cry baby. Something about that tale, Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist, was so moving that I polished it off in 3 days time. It made me wet all over and as a result I made it wet all over (pg 156). That's how things work around here. The book shook me so much out of my static state of being that I was tempted at the instant to just run out the door with my pack, leave a copy of the Alchemist on my apartment floor with a message reading : "Thanks Mom" (for it isn't often that we thank our mothers for their gifts) and go searching for the seat of my soul. But, I'm a fool. I haven't the heart. I think too much of the possible outcomes. Still, there is the possibility that I am on the right path. After all only one school out of ten that I applied to accepted me and since being here I've developed a relationship with myself unequal to that which has come from past experiences. Maybe I am living out my dream and just fail to see it in its entirety. Besides, do i really have to go anywhere to polish my writing, to tune in to the transit of stars, to learn the language of existence? NO! The only thing that needs to change is internall, my attitude, and that comes from within. Nurturing you capacity to JUST LIVE shouldn't influenced by your surroundings, because then you aren't truly living, you are living dependant of an external stimulus, one which could change as quick as the snap of two fingers. Geez, thank god its laundry day, my clothes are all snotty and nasty (I didn't come prepared for the alchemist's magic). Ah Chris, be happy with the way things are turning out. You know the things you have to work on, start ironing those wrinkles, releasing those attachments which seem soo comforting at the moment but do nothing more than lead you astray from who you are. Release yourself to the cosmic spirit, release yourself to unconditional love, to intangible treasure, to the destiny of the wind. Nothing here comes easy (unless you're a fucking trust fund baby, then you have money, but gotta work harder in finding a fucking soul), but without a lil work nothing will come at all. Ah, enough with the rambles. On a different note, I just farted. Sad, I know. But its great because my nose is so clogged I can't smell a damn thing. I feel sorry for Jeff though.