inspiration

inspiration can bring out the best and the worst in people, i think. we usually think of inspiration as something uplifting, something that drives you to strive for something greater, to look beyond a point to which you might have limited yourself before. but what if all of this vision goes in the wrong direction? i mean, i guess it's a matter of perspective, but generally a direction that hurts, destroys, and pillages...no bueno.

tonight, as i reread some of my blog posts from when i was in brazil, i was struck by how not only the place itself awoke inspiration in me, but also social situations, personal relationships, and the perceptions of those around me - sometimes i was angry, sometimes exhilarated beyond words, sometimes frustrated beyond tears - and all in the span of 3 months. i learned more about myself in that 3 months than i probably learned about myself in all of 2006, which is incredible. but it was also a little frightening. looking back, the very situations that drove me to tears, irrepressible laughter, and the simultaneous feeling of belonging and feeling like an outsider came out in so many different ways through my writing and inspired me to experience so many different feelings. amazing, incredible, ridiculous...and after all of this, i'm still me.

this past weekend was incredible. i got to hang out with people from all different circles of friends, some at the same time, all in unfamiliar environments. it feels new but always familiar, kinda like how it felt to return to the u.s. after being in brazil for 3 months...so short of a time, yet so long. i met one of these people last summer in france. he stayed in germany for a year after that, and we're just now getting the hang of chillin in the U.S. together...but even after a year, he's still the same, well to me anyway. did 11 months in germany not change him? or am i not looking hard enough? and if i hadn't told him would he even know i ever went to brazil based on how i act? sometimes i feel that my perceptions of my actions and the ways in which others perceive my actions are not the same...so really, all this changing that i thought i did in brazil, and the revelations i expressed through this very blog, are they only in my mind?

i'd like to think that something more happened than a bunch of stuff in my head. but as time passes here more brazilian mannerisms, perceptions, and portuguese words slip through my brain, no matter how much i try to stop them. i don't want this to just be a string of distant memories and a folder of photos on my computer. i want to keep this real, i want to feel all of those ways that i felt again. and that won't happen here. que pena...

once a nomad, it seems, always a nomad.
you never go back...well, not willingly anyway :)