not so changed

i think before i came to college i had this notion that everything about me would change. i'd discover who i really was and it would freak me out and i'd go with it into the dark corners of my thoughts and desires and hopes and fears and sort it all out. like where i grew up didn't count because i wasn't on my own, or because my dad was a pastor so i grew up going to church... that ever since growing up i was sort of the effect of this environment around me, so once i go so far across the country, by myself, without anyone who knows me, all that stuff that brought me here would slowly vanish and be replaced with new thoughts, new beliefs, a new Jodi McLaren.

I'm sitting here doing some research about buddhism for a potential paper topic about freedom as defined in buddhism (and christianity, if i can fit both). it's a philosophy class so we're trying look at how different situations/groups define freedom. i found it interesting in the book sidhartha that he gets frustrated with this whole doctrine of escaping from yourself, and rejecting yourself in order to obtain this higher knowledge that is above you and your desires. this whole idea of escapism and getting away from yourself is really interesting, why would we be teaching this in our religions? why do we want to escape from ourselves? doesn't who we are count for anything?

i was in poetry class today and we read through this cheesy poem my teacher found on the internet using the metaphor of a merry-go-round being like life. and how everything is spinning around and life is so busy, but when you pray to God, you feel relief and thing's are still the same way as they were but you feel better... and then we read another poem by Tilke titled merry-go-round that described this carousel scene and just tried to illuminate it's nature... and one thing my teacher said that hit me was a word of advice: "let the object be itself first" before you develop some type of symbolism. I guess the feeling was that the first poem sort of USED this merry-go-round to convey an already developed message. whereas the other poem was able to have a message through it's description of the object itself.

i mean... if you think about your impressions of other people as your own personal poetry, it's interesting then too, to let people be themselves before you try to develop a message. there seems to already be a message somewhere in the complexities of our world.

i'm still the same person out here. i still get stuck thinking about these big ideas and i still struggle, and i still think struggling is so important. and i still love to laugh, and i still love to write music. and i'm really thankful for my upbringing, i wouldn't change a thing. how could i dare hope to change my past when this present moment holds so much fullness? it doesn't really make sense to me to want anything to go differently than it already has. it's nice to read a lot and listen a lot right now, i'm just taking it all in.


with love to those of you who thought to check back at this abandoned blog,

jo