Perhaps it isn't a good thing that three years after reading Harry Potter, I can remember that quote, but I'm not clear on the facets of the new industrial space of the BMSI, despite having read about it yesterday several times. In any case, I'm done my Economics final and no longer care about rereading what feels like millions of Newspeak acronyms. I'm not an economics person, but I'm glad I took the course. It managed to broaden my horizons in terms of what exactly goes on in the world and why I believe some of the things I do. I think we tend to assume that we all have deep and valid reasons for certain courses of actions, but I was thinking about it lately, and some things have become a knee-jerk reaction for me. "Buy local! Stop buying clothes! Everything "non-mainstream" is automatically better than mass consumption! MNCs are evil! The corporate world is evil! Modern society is screwed up!" I try not to articulate these TOO much to avoid sounding like a self-righteous hippie, but they're - correctly or not - a part of my subconscious. I adopted a lot of these opinions at around the age of twelve, and they stuck with me, but truth be told I didn't really know much about how the world really works - things like WTO, subsidies, environmental bypasses and NGOs were all somewhat new to me. I still don't know much about how the world really works, but it feels simultaneously like a bit of the puzzle fell into place and like I have some sort of basis for reexamining my views on certain things. Hey-ho university disillusionment!
I must say, I've been better. It's a combination of stress, too much time on the computer, not enough time outside, and too much thinking and doubting. Nonetheless the past few weeks have included a trip to the Vermont mountains, a welcome visit from parents, traumatizing my younger brother, a psychoanalysis for which I got fifteen dollars, and my first 2k erg test. I'm going to get through these next few weeks, and then I'm going to go home and run twice a day and read books just because I want to and build fires and abandon the internet and go skiing and climb until my arms fall off and take baths and eat clam chowder and real food and visit trader joes and live in Jenkintown library and learn basic bike maintenance and go drink tea with my friend Brian and see the people I went to high school with and read Pushkin and write for once in my life and play instruments and bake christmas cookies and do household chores while listening to Leonard Cohen and Vangelis and Beethoven and sleep in my own room and trim the Christmas tree and go to winter concerts and speak Czech all the time.
It's going to be great.
My friend, descending from the highs of the Vermont mountains down to the civilized world below. Don't hesitate to climb
up just because you have to go back down.
