A Word from this Author

Everybody at SIT was given an award, most of them silly. I was given the award "Most Likely to Write a Book about Study Abroad." This, in my estimation, was a thinly veiled award for "Most Unfortunate Person, Generally Speaking." Why, you ask, do I say this? Because it is so, and more than that I cannot go into at this time, not with the powers that be and homeland security breathing down my neck and my grades for this semester still looming in the not-too-distant future. Mmmmmm. So, after my presentation had gone on for about an hour longer than it should've, I ended with this journal. I wrote it. It would've been more effective, I feel, had it followed a brilliantly stunning and mind-blowing performance of intellectual and artistic genius. Oh well. Things sometimes turn out a little more bumpy than we had expected.

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Maybe we depict because it soothes, softens, pets, calms, cools. Grrr, hush now, child. Say what's on your mind, spew it in angry sparks and scorch everything within spitting distance. We won't hold the burn marks against you. Vomit it all over, in the most messy, smelly, awkward, acid, unapologetically vile way you know how. Breathe it out, in a chilly whisper, covering the leaves with icy diamonds, frosty fairies jumping down the collars of unsuspecting strollers, tickling their spines and causing those who are walking in pairs to draw unconsciously towards their companions for heat and something like closeness. Send it out in a jet of hard air, shooting far above our heads and finally dispersing into the atmosphere when it runs out of the energy to shoot, rustling the feathers of lackadaisically-winging birds. Say it straight, let it fall with a thud. Or crawl its way through the black tunnels of our pupils, resting finally just behind our eyes. We won't mind.

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Of all the ways we can say, things we can say, colors and textures and FahrenheitCelsius degrees we can say, I can only think of one thing that is true. Find your inspiration; in that, lies your perfect life. Go find it. You've no time to wait. Because you know boredom, and you know amazement, and there's more. Oh so much more! Imperfect magic can be seen, reflected in the eyes of those gazing up at the explosions of color- you can see itthemwhat too. Just look in their eyes. It's there, just a bit and all at once too.

Trust yourself. You're the only one you have, the best one, the one that carries you from peak to peak, whose hands in a generation look a generation older, a generation of being with you, keeping you, company and safe, tiny crinkles which make skin look like old paper wrinkled and smoothed a thousand times; they attest to its presence, your presence:

I was there, that you says. I was there for all of it, and I will be there. I promise.