some things on the mind...

I feel like for the past month or so I've had so many things, of various topics, racking my brain and, frankly, wearing me out. When I try to stop and think, I can't. When I try to stop thinking, I can't. It's an odd mental state. I'm trying to touch on some of these things, break them down, and reach some conclusions. And I'm using this as part of the process.

Simply, I've still got a lot of unpacking to do. I'm only home for a few more days and then I head to Montreat. So I guess minor responsibilities are part of my mental clutter. I also want to see lots of people while I'm home. Which has made me think a lot today about friendships and the different types. During the last few weeks of school, the topic of "best friend" came up. I realized that I use that term a lot more loosely than a lot of folks do. Some refer to only one person as a best friend. I refer to all of the people I regularly hang out with as my best friends. Because they are. They're the best ones cause they're the ones I call when I'm bored, or hungry. They're the ones whose apartments I go to on the weekends. And I know in my heart that one or two folks in that group are truly the best of my best friends. And I know I have very best friends outside of these circles for certain. Friends in many different places. And those very best friends don't, at least haven't, really changed and I certainly don't want them to. And I gain new ones as my days pass. But as far as "circles" of best friends go, those change. At Cannon, I had my group of best friends. At PC, I had my group of best friends. I left Cannon, and that group is great without me. I think about them periodically and they me (at least I think and hope) But they're not the ones I call with my problems. Just the few very best friends of those best friends. The group at PC will lose some - seniors mostly and me transferring. But it sure as hell still exists. I imagine, and hope, I'll become a part of another circle at Warren Wilson. I just think it's interesting, and in a way beautiful while still sad, that these circles still stick and exist as people come and go. Especially in communities like school. I've enjoyed going to small schools where these groups of friends aren't limited by grade level or age. I've also enjoyed being in a group of friends where I was the only freshman. It made me feel cool and totally went to my head. I had other friends, but that group fell cause it was full of bitches. Anyway, people come and go, but that group, that bond, still exists just in other people. There's a connectedness that doesn't go away. Sometimes certain people lose connection, but that need for a connection happens with others, in the same phsyical location, and also where those people go. We're designed to be united. Even just in small groups of friends. But also in the world, but that's more thought I can't articulate well. Seniors leave, freshman come in. And that group is still there. I feel connected to people that I've never met in my life, because they went to PC and were friends with people I am now friends with. I hear about them and know exactly who they are, and some of their quirky qualities, I have eventually met a couple of them. I'm connected to people I don't know. Everything's connected.
Along a similar, and more humorous note, I've been watching a lot of The L Word lately. On the show, Alice keeps track of the infamous "Chart" in her living room. It connects women to each other through all the other women they've had sex with. People are connected to each other in bizarre ways. Some of these sexual encounters are merely that, and some are short or long term relationships. I can be connected to a complete stranger by someone else's love. Or their drunken horniness!
Ralph Paquin gave me some CDs to listen to after looking at my altered books and saying "You've got a weird head...I want you to listen to some stuff." It's about 10 days worth of shit to listen to, so I'm taking it very slowly. But I've listened to a little bit of Dr. Wayne Dyer's Power of Intention and it's made me think about connection as well. It's too much for me to fairly and respectfully articulate here. And I haven't drawn any conclusion about his words yet. Except that I like it. I believe he states some things I've been drawing to formulate in my mind, and more obviously. He talks about having self respect. Now, it's not some cheesy "love yourself" self-help bullshit. Self respect so that we can connect to the God within us and the Creator of the universe. Not only are we connected to each other through friendship or sex (or both) but we are connected to God. He is in us and we are He. Just be you, and love you, because not only did God make you, He is freaking in you. I guess it's kinda the love the temple thing so don't put funky shit in your body, but I don't like thinking about that part. It's about loving yourself and doing what you love and connected to God to recognize what you love. We're here for a reason and we're supposed to live with a purpose. We have one, we just have to discern it. And we do that by being so connected with the Creator.
It's so simple, yet it's so hard...
When listening to Dyer I had thoughts about how he was right and it seemed new to me. Now that I'm writing about it I'm realizing I've been taught this all my life in church. I have moments like that a lot. Where I recognize something I've already known. I think no matter how much we are told over and over in Church, it doesn't matter until we experience it ourselves. Our faith is personal, and we know it when we know it. Not when Ms. Smith reads it out of the Sunday School planner one morning.


Everything was quiet except for the birds. And all God's creation said, "Poo-tee-weet."