One-Way

It seems that many more people have been updating their Xangas as of late. I know this not because I still keep up with Xanga - for I gave up that particular indulgence long ago - but because I've recently used my Hotmail account to qualify for a free blockbuster online trial and it just so happens that's the particular inbox that all of my Xanga subscriptions are sent to. With that said, during the heydays of Xanga, I was as avid a blogger as the most post-happy Xangans. On certain lazy, goalless summer days, I could be easily counted on for two if not three posts within a 16 hour period. I had all the punctuality of the morning, afternoon, and evening post without any of the property-damaging delivery by thirteen year-olds on Huffys. And even though in this day and age, the delivery of our paper news source no longer fits into the triple time slot, I have no doubt that my blog could have gone toe-to-toe with any of them 20 years ago. After all, how could anyone with any sense of taste in culinary art not find fascinating the fact that the cherry tomato in my lunch salad looked exactly like an incredibly sunburned Snoopy? (Or perchance Snoopy's distant Scottish cousin "McSnoopy"? - yet another testament to the brilliance of my blog.) Those were the good times, when material flowed from freely from my fingertips and I allowed my prejudices to fly uninhibited throughout the blogosphere. Hell, back then people didn't even use the word blogosphere, and knowing me, I'd probably have made a post dedicated to the pure inanity of the trendy cyber-term in a cynical-sarcastic tone not very unlike this one. The world was mine to suspect through jaded green lenses, thick and sure, like the suddy well of a Heiniken, and whatever I chose to miss was immediately deemed trivial. But alas, those golden days of say-anything and bash-everyone have passed me by, or rather, I hope to have moved on. The waxing and waning of the temporal tides have imparted me with a crusty layer of broken shells inscribed of half-truths and gray rules, and things one-sided have taken on the tragic burdens of a new dimension (Self-proclamation of enlightenment was never a pretty side of me). By all means, Xanga wasn't just a blog, it was the mark of an era of freedom and irresponsibility, albeit a very personal one.

Coming Back

It's been over a week since I've gotten back to the states and life has wasted no time in getting its wheels right back onto the familiar track of my American existence. The roads are just as wide as I remember - a fitting complement to the similarly proportioned posteriors of those who travel them - the skies just as blue, and the sunsets still give the sky that beautiful hue of pink and purple, the single saving grace of life in an over-polluted city.

Transitions should be difficult, should they not? This feels too easy. It's as if I were waking from a dream and today is merely a continuation of that day six months ago. It's as if I had never gone to the airport that morning and never turned off the lights to my room, never threw the bag over my right shoulder and tucked my passport into my back pocket, never said goodbye to a place I hadn't been away from since I was old enough to dream of going away.

But some things are hard to get back into - this, for example. The things we do in life can be largely separated into two categories: the hard stuff, and the soft stuff. The hard stuff is the very basics of who we are, such as the way we speak a certain language or the manner with which we drive a car. They're hardwired into us so that we will always find an inexplicable familiarity in the grip of a steering wheel or the structure of a spontaneously formed sentence. They resist the erosion of time. The soft stuff, on the other hand, is like clay, malleable but impermanent. It includes things such as changes to our day-to-day lifestyle. It can be said that the nature of the hard stuff is core-based while the soft is environment-based. The former are tools while the latter give the former a reason for existence. A screwdriver can never change its composition, but it can be used on a great variety of desks.

A part of me questions whether I'm really home. Sometimes, every place I arrive at feels like just another state of temporary residence. But I suppose that's an awfully depressing way of looking at things, not to mention I'm sure that the mere idea falls within the confines of some logical fallacy - the specific name of which I've long forgotten since college.