Arizona thoughts

There are only so many things that a human needs to survive. Ya know, like water and food. That kind of stuff. When those things are everywhere, there isn't much thought about them. They are just a walk to the kitchen away. I personally have wasted tons of food just because I didn't eat them in due time, and they spoiled. The refrigerator was so full that certain things got pushed to the back and went bad. Water is thrown around. We use water to wash our cars, take long hot showers, water grass.

If people don't know who are reading this, I went out to Arizona to the Black Mesa region. We went out to the Native American reservation because there was a call for people to come out. I almost didn't go, not because it wasn't a good cause, but I wasn't sure if it was my fight.

When we were in Arizona, we did chores that we pay people to do. We work our shitty jobs so we can afford to survive. We work so we can buy food that we could produce on our own.

We stayed with a man named Keri Bigay. His mother's name was Alice, father Keeze (?spelling), and his son, which I didn't ever fully catch his name, since he was at school all day and we hardly saw him. Keri was a very strange man, and I think it would take years to fully understand him. From their house we could see Peabody's coal company, which he hated. He had Peabody's signs all over his yard that he had stolen from them. Keri had gone to school to be an electrician, but had never finished. He had wired his whole house to run on solar power, and had digital television. It was crazy, this house in the middle of nowhere, closest town like an hour away, and we are sitting in this guys house watching Animal Planet.

I gained from my trip to Arizona, but maybe not in the way that I had hoped. One thing great about being out there was the sky at night. One thing I miss about living in the country is that there were stars. There are no stars in large cities. I grew up on playing with worms, riding bikes, and night skies.

Panic Attacks

So I've been having panic attacks in class lately. All I can think about is how I need to leave right then. I don't like the fact that I am forced to sit in class.

Home

So I went home this weekend, mainly because my sister has been staying with my dad for a few weeks, getting shit done that should have been done for the past two years that my mother is incapable of doing. I always hate going home because of how good my stepmother is at making me feel weird and uncomfortable. The entire time she makes comments about how good I look now that I am skinny and just making a big deal about my appearance, like it matters.

She woke me up this morning by informing me that she and my father were going to take me to get my hair all done up, and buy me some shit. I shouldn't get mad about this because I expect it whenever I go home. If they didn't buy me shit, I wouldn't come home. But being here this time, and realizing that all my parents talked about was what thing they were going to buy in the next week, or where they were going on vacation made me really depressed. Anything brought up in conversation is either small town gossip or what their plans were to spend money.

So today in the car my stepmother was talking about how she met this woman at bingo who was waiting for a kidney transplant, and she had to get dialysis all the time. The woman had said that she had A positive blood, and thats what my stepmom had. Then she went on that she went to say that she would never give her kidney to someone that she had just met, and maybe she would to save the life of a family member. '

Later she went on to talk about how they were going camping this weekend and that she wanted to make some chili. Their original plan was to make a large pot of chili for everyone that was going camping, like thirty people (everyone chipping in), but she decided that she just wanted to do it alone. I think it would be really fun to an entire family to gather around and making chili together.

Things that they got me today: a new haircut I didn't really want, about 5 shirts, a drink from Starbucks, an expensive lunch, like 9 pairs of new socks, and probably more to come.

So just a second ago I went into the kitchen for a break from this, and my stepmother was like "Amanda, come look at this" and it was a picture of a whales tail sticking out of water. She said that on her cruise that they are going to take, she wanted to see that in their natural habitat. I wanted to say " That is stupid, you are destroying their natural habitat, and you should just die so they can be in peace, and go to their breeding habitats without being ogled at by stupid humans who think it is pretty fun to invade whales space to fulfill some stupid urge to look at things that they believe to be cool", but I didn't. They go on cruises at least once a year.

There was a girl that I knew during my first year in college that decided that she was going to write a paper about how cruises were good. One of her reasons was that the flow of tourists were good for island economies, and that the indigenous people of the island selling crap to asshole tourists was a good idea. Why are people sssssssssooooooooooo stupid?



So I got in a fight with a friend, and said some things that wouldn't have been said if I hadn't have been fired up and exhasted at the same time. It is really hard to talk to people when there are so many emotions going on and you don't fully understand what the other person is thinking.

.

What was your face before your parents were born?

What is true isn't really.

There are always people who get things right, but are attacked because what they are saying will disrupt the order of things. The ones in power control what we believe to be true. Fuck.

Think, for yourself.

uncertainty

So here I am. This is what I am doing right now.

Over the summer I had decided that I wasn't going back to school, but then on the first day of classes I decided that I wanted to go back. I signed up for classes, and went and had a talk with one of my favorite professors who made me feel good about my decision.

Part of the reason that I wasn't going back was because I was paying for something that I didn't really care about, and was failing. I had decided that university level education was not worth the time and effort that I was putting into it. Most people who go to college don't know what they are getting themselves into, and are just doing it becuase thats what they do to get a job.

The reason that I decided to go back is because there is much to learn from the people I am working with, and I feel that I am benefiting from my education with the people that I am learning from. I know that having a better understanding of social problems, and discussing them with people who are being proactive as well is beneficial. This is not all that is important. I can't just sit in a classroom and discuss problems in the outside world, without truly understanding what is going on. It is important for me that individual people are aware and active.

I am in the Women's and Gender Studies department, and I think that was one of the best decisions I could have made in my higher education career. Every class that I go to, there is at least two people who truly learn new things and make dramatic changes to their lives because of what they learn from the amazing women teaching the class, as well as the women and men in the class. There is something spectacular to know that women are taking charge of their own lives, and realizing that they actually have a brain and aren't the objects they once saw themselves as.

This world is fucked up, and I am trying to do what I want to in the best way possible. The anarchist culture usually frowns upon people who stay in the system and get in a bunch of debt, but I didn't know what else to do. I want to learn. I want to be surronded by people who are capable of teaching me about myself, and about all sorts of things. I need to learn languages to communicate with people.

I am not attending the University to get a good job. I am attending to gain knowledge, to be able to do things more productively, and make a greater impact. Its not like I am stressing to much about buying a house, or starting the perfect family. I am going to school for the completely opposite reason that most of the population does. I am actually going to school to learn.