Docking at the Cape of Good Return.

I guess I have to be a good host to anyone who takes the time to read this, so here it goes: Welcome to my little sanctuary of sanity! My previous ledger of thoughts, my trusty moleskin notebook, has been relieved of its duties to take on the more presitgious role of keeping track of all the books I have on loan. Plus it has been too long since I have written in there, and it carries some rotten memories that I neither have the stomach to return to or have the heart to clear out. That's what happens when you leave things far in the back of the fridge, I guess.

I introduce myself: I am an 18 year-old living in central California. I feel as if I was born out of my proper generation, and should have grown up with Generation X, the Baby Boomers, or some other glamorous granfalloon that would be much easier to assimilate in. A week ago I realized that there are people competing in American Idol that are younger than me. Three days ago I realized that in two years I will be twenty, in twelve thirty. Yesterday I realized that ten years ago I liked pokemon, a number that felt so impossibly big eight (shit) years ago. This is probably the first of a long series of reality checks that will make me feel the gravity of age.

I really should not feel that old, I supposed. I have my whole life ahead of me, so I am told by older and envious folks. And to a large extent that is true. The bite comes from realizing that I am not a kid anymore, the tree forts and GI Joes were sold at garage sales a long time ago. Now I am mature, a fresh young individual about to extinguish my identity within the work force, the Western World's Atman. High School has left me no vocational trade however, not even any clerk experience. All the jobs I have collected were mascot gigs and assistant instructor parts at theatre workshops.

I was born into a conservative Catholic Mexican family. My mother married an atheist, however, so I was always behind my cousins in learning the mysteries of our Church. During one particularly memorable funeral service in which I uttered out loud a question several decibles too loudly ("Mom, who's the guy on the stick!?"), my grandmother resolved to take my faith into her own hands and save my cursed soul. I was baptized and sent off to catechism. I remember not minding it too much, I enjoyed trying to learn all the prayers and was eager to learn exactly what I was supposed to believe in. My very own philosophy handed to me with no work involved whatsoever!

Things went sour when my parents enrolled me into a samll private school, one that catered to Reform Jews. The beliefs I was being taught during the week began to conflict with the teachings I was being handed on Sundays. Mormons moved in next to us as well, and we were visited early. Now in addition to being told that Jesus was a charlatan and that there was no trinity, I was being told that he teleported to North America after his crucifixion, and that I can marry several women. Fairly early I began to realize that perhaps truth is harder to obtain than just by nodding your head. Maybe truth can't be found. Maybe there is none.

So yeah.

After I left my Jewish School I went into the public system, getting a well-rounded secular education right up until high school. Now things come full circle, and here I am in Catholicism again.

Good ole Catholicism.

I work hard to receive good grades, because people say I will get into a good college that way. My counselor tells me that. My parents tell me that. My friends tell me that. Everyone else says I do not stand a chance, though. And the nay-sayers always seem to be more intelligent, more in-the-know.

Despite what everyone says, I do not think getting into a "prestigious" college will land me happiness, especially when it gives me so much stress right now. And nothing I do ever seems to be enough. The carrot gets dangled farther and farther and farther. If university prestige makes you happy, why isn't everybody at Harvard Buddhist? Or smiling?

Applications. Scholarships. Homework. Theater. Metaphysical Daydreams and Tangents. Walking in the middle of suburban streets. Mowing mowhawks on my front lawn. Friends. Running to bus stops. Getting allergies in used book stores. Thinking that night will never come. Hoping that night will never come. Getting T.S. Eliot stuck in your head. Getting Elliot Smith stuck in your head. Bouncing mercurially between thinking life is predetermined and irreconcilably absurd.

These are my best years. Will I want to remember these memories? Will I rewind the tapes to hear these greatest hits?

Off we go again.

(Note to self: Stop quoting Samuel Beckett so much.)