From the Present:

Today the world seems open and infinitely possible. For five days I have been back in the United States and won’t return to what’s been home of four years, (Antigua, Guatemala), until early 2012. I flew to Washington, DC to both do some promotion of my music and poetry book and to get some support for the anti-human trafficking organization I represent. I’m on a bus right now, connected to the Internet, watching the barren, post-Fall forrest wiz by us on the highway. I’m headed to NYC where a friend has set up a few book readings and musical performances to do something that I usually hesitant to do, promote my poetry book. The advice of most writers is to be relentless in promotional work, and do things like set upa personal page to promote my writings, but when I was looking into doing that, I decided not to. I feel disingenuous about the whole business, so I’ll just go as far as I feel confortable and trust in my craft as going as far as it deserves to.

I know what century we are living in, am aware of what possibilities technology has yielded us, but some days it still blows my mind. There’s WIFI on this bus, and this blog post is being written via that. I’m chatting with friends in Guatemala while on this bus, updating my Facebook status, feeling good about my visit to DC, happy to have reunited with a high-school friend and her husband, seen a Spanish friend I met in Chile who now lives in DC, an American friend I met in Guatemala and a friend from my home town who now works for my home state’s congressman. It’s strange to think how adult all our lives have become, yet humblingly wonderful to know that our lives can still intersect in intrepid ways. Life is this strange game of always holding onto the past while reaching to the future. That’s why we have two hands–one to hold on to things behind us, another to reach for things in front of us.

From the Past: 

February 26, 1998 – Age 12

Today I got up and went to Mass. The seventh and eighth graders were there. After mass I did some school. KFYR (the radio station my dad worked for) could have been sold, but it was not (it later was). Ryan, Josh, Jason and and Joe will sleep over tomorrow. 

From the Present: 

There are few things as potentially awesome when you are a kid then sleepovers. Always looming over fun is the fact that your friend’s mom and dad will come to pick them up and whatever youthful fun you’ve cooked up will come to an end. But sleepovers guarantee that the fun will last till the morning, a time so far removed from young imaginations, it mine as well not exist.

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