three years ago i was obsessed with a little known dictator named fidel castro. his autobiography, if you could call it that, is sitting on my night stand to be read after only attempting the first five pages. there is a book i found in england that i cannot get in north america about him and it is collecting dust on my bookshelf. the point is, what happened to my youthful, albeit slightly naive, approaches to world leaders? have i gone pacifist? (well i suppose i always was.) am i just a scholar now who reads and does not debate as heartily as before? i hope not!
i feel my priorities shifting, as they should when you grow older, but not in the ways that i thought them to. i always thought i would have this running joke of my life with fidel, whether or not he is still alive (or not), and collect all i can about him to know him, not the communist way of life he leads. my collection of communists on the wall beside my bed seems like a joke now; it's as if i am putting up the picture with fidel and pope john paul II for the first time as a joke and not as a person i found historically, and contemporarily, fascinating.
now i read about admissions and courses from other schools for programs that are a year away. i think about utilities and including them with my imaginary rent and what kind of apartment i want to live in downtown since campus will be so close, so painfully close, to forever21. i think about business times and sugalumps and laugh as loudly as marie on a good day and it all shifts. kids my age have gone through the moving out and growing up process already but i haven't and it's a big deal. it's an even bigger deal because i stayed at home for so long, even though, really, it hasn't been.
i should read marlowe's dido, queen of carthage before indulging in more frivolous television before working out and, subsequently, sleep. i should do the things i need to in order to actually get to that goal which is waiting so patiently a year from now.
see, i told you. give me a year from now and everything is crystal clear. give me tomorrow and i am shaking in my beautiful grey or black or moccasin-like boots about whatever is to come and what hasn't yet. it's the yet that will always get you in the end.
