I bought a T-shirt today... it has the tour d'eiffel (uh... Eiffel Tower) on the front and it says "I see London, I see in France". You know your brain has completely rotted away if you buy yourself such a thing, when you're alone, in Target, surrounded by strangers.

So people voiced that we should blog our trip. Our first stop is Dublin... I have no idea why I so adamantly want to visit there. Ever since I read Leon Uris, W.B. Yeats, Joyce... I've had this overwhelming desire to see the River Shannon. How odd the things that strike our fancy, the imagination that compells us to act, the dreams that fuel what we are to do and become. In this vein of thought I'd like to promote following your dreams :).

We are so often told to "grow up" or my favourite "be realisitc". What is the definition of reality? What creates your reality? In the words of the great American poet Robert Frost "now I know for future hence,/ I took the road not taken and that has made all the difference". This is not about defining your 'indviduality' asserting your 'youth', what's the common lingo... to me [shoulder shrug.] it's simply about being You. And if that means singing on the top of your lungs as you fly down the 101 in San Francisco, surprising friends in Hawaii or eating peanut butter on carrot sticks, or drinking espresso in Copenhagen. Go for it. Follow it. Do it. Life can be no more fulfilling than you will it to be.

So many young people I meet (on campus, on the street, on the phone, online) are frustrated. Tired, angry, bitter, baseless emotions that account and metamorphosize into nothing. Regrets are pointless, they are simply the past crippling you in the present. Mistakes are as fundamental to learning as winning. Mistakes, erros and failures are insturmental to the creation and formulation of the Self. How many people out there fear looking honestly in the mirror? Engage in the introspection as a means of crippling torture and not personal growth? Why are any of us on this earth to wallow in pain and sorrow? Tragedy is often a matter of perspective (as my Mom often says "comedy is tragedy plus time") merely the precursor to a deeper joy. Do not fear the mirrors. It's important to know "thy self" to understand how you operate, how you feel. Do not throw it all away for white sugar and shoe sales...and to all of you out there that get lost in your midnight moon ballads and your crushing grief of the ills of the world- laugh a little and for G-d's sake- go buy yourself a vanilla ice cream cone... (i'll sponsor :)

We can embrace life, swallow it in great flavourful gulps despite its issues.

Are we ultimately entropies? Is our magic merely a measure of the disorderness or randomness in the closed system? Can we truly be, as all matter and energy in the universe, simply evolving into an inert state of uniformity? Suppose that's the rebell's great fear- that his rebelling is simple a conformity of rebellion. Falacious reasoning but true I am afraid. Precisely why this is not about 'rebelling' or 'dismissing convention' but finding a personal niche, and intimate artistic engagement in reality, a reality constructed piece by piece by your own hands.

namastei :) .

hindia.arie.