The Earth According to Mark.

I don't believe in much to be honest. I try sometimes late at night. When I'm kneeling in pews with folded hands. On long car drives to Southern California. But the only voice that speaks to me is my ceiling fan, the echo of a clergy man, and rubber rolling on asphalt. That's why sometimes I feel the only omnipresent verbalizations I should listen to are the ones inside myself. Too often there's this drive to beat the shit out of the outside when really we had it in ourselves all along.

I had to write this personal statement. It asked what made me a better candidate in the time between when I last applied and now. It was like asking me what I had accomplished over this past year. So I went through my mental list: donating blood, taking a class, sparsely doing volunteer work, judging speech competitions, and the list goes on [for just a tiny bit]. But there is one accomplishment which I feel cannot be recorded: I always lacked this self-efficacy, but if this year taught me anything, it's to really go out and paint the world red; to be the conquerer not the conquered. I'm reading this book The Tao of Pooh, and the book pushes these 'chill' ideals like "Effortless Effort" and "Uncarved Block." I think three years ago these ideas would've made sense, but after living in Bakersfield for this long, I can honestly say that inaction and passivity are the reasons this world is so lacking in hope. We want change but aren't willing to purport with our own being?

I know I said that from age 22 to 23 was a blank - a void of unemployment, but I see it for more than that. It was the calm that caused the storm. I can't live the way I am anymore. I need something more than what I have and what I'm doing. I need to tear down the four walls around me and blow the roof off. I need to sink my hands in to the soil and breath embers through my nose. I want to say it was my fault that I couldn't get a job, but in realizing Bakersfield's 20% unemployment rate, it's because I never took the chance to branch out - as in, branch out of Bakersfield. I kept my ambitions confined. But no more.

Because life is supposed to be about the mistakes we've made, and the only mistake I've made in the past year was not making any. The worst decision I've made is the one I didn't make. And the list goes on. I'd rather be an active failure than an inactive loser. I'd rather be chasing the what-can't-be-had than settling for the what-is.

Because life should be about adventure and romance. And not every adventure involves an excursion into the darkness of the night or being chased by police or any variation of the aforementioned. But rather adventure entails doing that which you are insanely scared of. Adventure asks the adventurer to take a risk, to neglect the past [or learn from the past], and to go forth. And romance should be essential for me, the troubadour of the unrequited whose denialist attitudes towards poetry are only purported by a love of said-poetry. Words, words, words.

This week I send off my papers, and it's probably the only time I'll ever really pray for something. Because it's a future that I feel is the most plausible. And I don't feel like I'm settling on this future. I feel like it's a different path, a different road, a different state of mind. And sometimes change is good.

I don't know why I wrote this in this blog.