Twenty~Five

It's 9:14 pm and I'm sitting in a run-down laundromat listening to change clatter and old dryers whir. My body is exhausted, my mind even more exhausted. We stayed out late last night to enjoy a last hoorah on Fremont before moving to a different part of town. I had a weird spiritual revelation last night while walking back at 2 am through the streets, perpetually fluorescent and bubbling with life. I thought about souls and how I think they are more connected than I allow myself to believe. How there is this feeling that comes over me every now and than assures me life is more than just coincidence. Roy was talking to me about how he feels like I only put my faith into the things I can see. It's true, I like science and concreteness and practicality. It scares me to put my hopes into what is not guaranteed, why not just appreciate what I can see, what's right in front of me? Slowly I think this view is starting to change, and I'm realizing there is far more out...

It's a bit difficult trying to pick up where I left this blog, it seems impossible to sum everything up. I've been meaning to write but haven't been able to bring myself to, not sure why. I'm in a bit of a lull. But here I am, trying, that's what counts right? Work is definitely slower than it was in Florida, and it seems like we've been doing everything under the sun and nothing at the same time. These past few days, it's been freezing for Vegas and we've worked at the Mayor's Cup Soccer Tournament, picking up trash from 11 am til 8 pm. People keep thinking we're in trouble with the law because of what we're doing, so we made up ex-convict alter egos. My name is Viker, Jasmine is Jailee, keeley is KeKe and Alexis is now Rexi. We've been laughing a lot and for now, life is simple. We're moving out of the Veteran's village soon. The bed bugs and cockroaches are still very present despite the endless bombings of our rooms by the l...

The suns light painted over the mountains at the end of day, picking and choosing where to place its last rays. I see a man, standing in front of these mountains with his arms wide open as his girlfriend takes a picture of him. He's smiling, as if he is seeing the expansiveness of the universe and is holding it in his hands. You would think holding this, the entire universe, in your hands, would get heavy. If that were true, god would be very tired all the time and perhaps that man wouldn't be smiling. Maybe a better word for holding in this context is embracing, you never really get tired of embracing. Usually, embraces are mutual and loving and make you lighter. I feel like that smiling man feels today, or at least like I imagine him feeling as he embraces the world. I felt the sun on my face and the coffee on my tongue. I saw time with no constraints and no ceilings and no floors or endings. I'm not afraid that the sun is disappearing behind the mountains and soon I ...

We've been in Vegas over two weeks already, somehow. It is both a great time and simultaneously an incredibly weird time. I haven't written in too long, and I can feel it. I don't know which words to place where. The flow of language isn't coming naturally. Las Vegas is a sketchy place. We've had several run-ins with very creepy men, one of which had to get kicked out of the Veteran's village for his behavior towards us. This clearly isn't ideal, but we've been dealing with it. We never walk anywhere alone, ever. In other news, our room has been ridden with bed bugs. The bugs have been furiously attacking Keeley and Jasmine, leaving them with over 50 bites each. Somehow, I haven't had any type of reaction to the bugs, or they just haven't been biting me by some miracle. I don't know how I somehow got out of that one, but I feel terrible about what Keeley and Jasmine have been going through. The maintenence people have come in multiple ti...

We made it to Vegas yesterday at around noon and I've loved every moment since. The veteran's village we're staying in is modest, to say the least, but beats living on cots by a landslide. We have beds and doors that lock and laundry in our building. Jasmine, Keeley and I are sharing a room with two beds, that we spent most of the day yesterday decorating/unpacking/making feel like a home.  Being able to actually unpack all my things without fear of having to move in a day is a wonderful feeling. I don't have to live out of my red bag anymore, I can actually settle in somewhere and make it comfortable, and this small sense of stability brings me great comfort. Jasmine covered our fridge in pictures of our adventures and we filled our shelves with books. There was a minor setback later on in the day, when I rolled around on the floor and stretched for a while and got bitten by bed bugs... but this issue was semi-addressed.... As in Rohan and I killed the ones we saw on t...

I'e  been experiencing a weird wave of anxiety/depression since I've gotten back to campus. My toxic thoughts have been off the charts and I've just been trying to stay afloat and keep them at bay to get through the day. They warned us that coming back from disaster relief could send us into this state and that it could take a while to adjust to it. I always thought myself to be somewhat resilient towards changing circumstances. I always think my "positive" mood is infallible. That is, until I start to feel bad, then I can barely stand it and my entire sense of self gets thrown off. Currently, there are things and people on my mind that I can't let go of, that I have to let go of, there's a present moment to pay attention to that I haven't been paying enough attention to. I'm learning there are always more things to learn about myself. The most important thing is that I must be patient. This morning I feel very good. Like I'm starting to retu...

A new year is upon us. As you may know, I'm nearly incapable of handling the passage of time, though I have to. So another year is gone and I'll keep it locked in my heart. 2017 was one of the best years I've yet to have. I am at a loss of words at the sheer beauty it brought me. And the knowledge, and the pain. I screwed up more times than I can count this year, I really did. It seems there were millions of times I was telling myself I would learn from my mistakes, then I went and made them again. I had to apologize to others a few more times than I would have liked to. But I guess the point of life is to make mistakes, and through them I have learned about forgiveness and how incredible of a thing it is. I could dwell on the mistakes, as I have a thousand times, but what's done is done and we're all human. At the end of the day maybe it's not about our mistakes but rather our triumphs. 2017 was a year of tiny triumphs. 2017 started out with a terrible hair...