Altered

Nelson Mandela once said, "There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered." This seems so simple and yet it says whay I have been grasping for in the dark since my return from England. I could see and feel the changes in me but they scared me because they arrived suddenly and without visible cause. But the changes were not so instant as they seemed. They happened slowly, as most changes do, and it was only the change in location and the return to something unchanged that made my changes apparent. And so I worry about how my unchanged home will accept the new me and I long for the friends that changed with me and so do accept me. But I also understand that longing better for understanding the change.

I guess I atribute many of the changes that seem most apparent to those friends. I am still an odd mix of practical and dreamer but I find myself more and more in conflict with my practical decisions. For those of you who also read the smokezone you will have shared in my discovery of the intensly cruel nature of the word impractical and how it applies to the mediocrety I view my current life with. Out of nearly a dozen pages of journal entries that have piled up since Monday night I find myself sharing this realization with the world. Sharing my fear of mediocrity and it's penetration of my life and even a bit of pathetic poetry that spilled from my brain as I waited for my plane home.

I am scared of the changes
I am scared by the disipation
All that I know no longer knows me
And all that I love is impractical
It is fleeting, it is fleeing
And I do not know the path it travels

And so I write fearful of the empty void ahead. Of the lack of planned commitment to being near each other again. And I think back to Mandelas quote and the scene that flashed through my head as we drove. The quote in white on a black screen flashed before the audience like in a silent film as Damien Rice's song delicate plays in the background. Cut to a rainy gray scene, I am unsure whether it is London or Portland, the future or the past. It is raining but just enough to obscure the tears on my face and as it fades out you notice a slightly sad smile playing at the edge of my lips.

I am changed and I must deal with it. I am sad at the mediocrety of our associations for at least the short run. I am emotional, constantly probing myself and my feelings. I will continue and I will survive. And no matter how much mediocrity, pain or discomfort must be dealt with now I do not wish to be the same. I am more alive because I am more emotional, I am stronger because I am weaker and I am reawakened from the zombie stupor I had allowed myself to fall into. I would not be this way without Newbold and Newbold would not have been that way with out you smkrs.

You come across some extraordinary people in life. More often than not they find you through such an odd set of events that their presence is either complete chance or a direct Godsend. I like to believe it is the latter.