Monday, March 20, 2006

I had never been on the metro before. The escalators taking us down deep into the earth were long and steep. We slowly descended in a tunnel of whiteness, all the people coming up watching all the people going down. The faces were blank and staring and it made me think of The Silver Chair, with all the little underworldlings with misshapen noses milling about emotionless under the ground in the dark, carrying spears and shovels through the murkey grayness. As we approached the bottom, which we could not see from the top, all the people spilled off the escalator and continued on to catch a subway, to continue on with their individual lives.

I was in awe at the cathederals we saw. In awe of their vastness. In awe of how old the structures are. Back home we don't have oldness like they do here. At home, if something is a few hundred years old, that's old. This weekend I stood inside buildings that were constructed in the 11th century. And I was in awe. In awe of the thought of how many generations of people had stood in these buildings before me. In awe of the beauty surrounding me. And I couldn't wrap my mind around it all.

Friday, March 03, 2006

A couple weeks ago it got mild and rained a lot, creating a lot of mud. It also caused large bodies of water to form in inconvenient places. There doesn't apear to be a very effective drainage system. However, I guess winter's not quited finished yet - today it's been snowing all day. It's a mild sticky sort of snow that blows around in horizontal sheets, plastering vertical objects, like walls and tree trunks. This morning the flakes were large, but now the stuff that's coming down is a lot smaller. There's a lot of it though, and it apears as a fine mist.

The other day, as we were driving to the internat in the morning and I was staring out the purple tinted windows of the blue Volkswagon van, I was thinking about what I will do when I return home. These kind of thoughts have been finding their way into line of vision often lately, and I don't like it. It's something that I know I should be thinking about, but I don't want to think about it, because I don't know. I feel like I did three years ago when I was finishing up highschool, and the big questions Where to? and What next? were large preoccupations for me. The couple years after highschool were leading up to this year away. I worked and saved some money. But after this year is over, then what? I need to find something else to work towards. I've thought (though not very seriously), about maybe going to school. But that's not a very appealing thought for me. I still don't know what I'd go to school for, and it seems pointless to me to go with no direction in mind. And I guess the whole academic world is a little intimidating to me, best avoided - or so I tell myself. But I don't want to end up working at another "dead end" job like Tim Hortons again. So I don't know what I will do, so I try not to think about it.

The slightly balding man at the computer beside me is picking at the keyboard with his two middle fingers and muttering to himself. Lined up beside the monitor are four empty green bottles, and one more which will also soon be empty. I wonder how long he has been here, who he is chatting to, and where he will go when he leaves here.