I am probably a terrible person for laughing at this but conceptually it’s really funny.

~Tal

Grey ain’t so hot, its either humid or cold.  Depends on the season.  It’s kind of bleak.

I passed swim conditioning on a grey day.  Initially it felt good but now I have some finality in my college career.  It’s time to move on and I can’t get my head around that.

I am looking for a job but really I’d like to start my own business.  I have an idea for something that could work; a scenester/hipster hangout called the mixtape coffeehouse that would play a lot of mix tapes.  Like cool style mix tapes with the person introing songs like John Cusack in High Fidelity.  Maybe one day this will come true like my arthouse cinema that I would love to own or maybe like me doing the peace corps or teaching english in a foreign country.  They’re all possible but I need to find a catalyst to move me in the right direction.

Right now my current direction is grey, in every sense of the word.  My shining light; How I Met Your mother, a TV show that reminds me that not only am I not good at love, much less dating.  A little negative, I know, but please forgive me for that.

I also want to get started on this band thing.  I probably never will but I do want to get something off the ground.  I have good ideas and songs.  Maybe I can get that off the ground.

I can get it off the ground.  I just need to push myself; that’s always been my problem.

I’m headed up to Baltimore tonight and it should be good times tonight, I hope.

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I’ll leave you with a story that defines myself more than others, something thing that I’d wish I’d done.  It’s a risk I wish I’d taken but we all know that I’m afraid of taking risks.

It’s either September or October of this year and Sarah had been over at my place to watch a film.  I don’t remember what it was; maybe it was Tell No One though I don’t think that it was.

I drove her home and it was 1 am.  I leave to head back to my apartment and out of the woods on Wilkins, it seems, comes a woman, dressed in a going out dress with heels in her hands.  She’s about 40 years old.

She crossed to the middle of the street to flag a car down.  I’m the only one who stops.  She knocked on my window.

“Where are you headed?”, She asked.

“home”. is the only response I could muster.

With the most desparate tone I’ve ever heard in my life, she asked, “can I get in the car?”.

I paused.

“I don’t feel comfortable with that, and I live in this neighborhood to the left”.

“Can you at least give me a ride til you turn off this road?”

“I don’t feel comfortable doing that”.

“Where’s the city?”, she finally asked — I pointed straight ahead.

I got home and called 911 (I’d forgotten my phone at home).

I don’t know what happened to her.  Maybe some braver soul took her to where she needed to go.  Maybe someone took advantage of her.

Maybe whomever she was running from, she looked scared, caught up with her.  If that’s the case, I can’t forgive myself.

My friends told me she was probably just a prostitute looking for a John.  I’d like to think this wasn’t the case.  She didn’t play the part and I certainly wasn’t playing the part of a John.  I should have given her the ride.  It bothers me that I didn’t.

The worst thing, in my mind, that could have happened would have beeen her carjacking me.  My car is great, but it isn’t worth that much.

A worst case scenario would have been myself getting murdered.  Though I don’t think that this would have been the case.  I don’t want to die, but it’s worth the risk if it involves helping someone.

I really wonder what happened to her and I’m bitter that I didn’t do anything effective.  My phone call to the cops was probably too late, and who knows if they could even help.

Finally on a grammatical note, I hope I don’t offend anyone for my switching between the past and present tenses.  I probably have other errors in my writing/grammar…

I gave them all away except for one.  A dolphin we’ll call cool disco dan.  Twas a solid day overall.

Sometime in the past two days I watched a movie where Vietnam was featured (the top gear vietnam special for those interested), and I fell in love with that country.  This always seems to happen to me.  I watched the motorcycle diaries a few years back and fell in love with South America.  I went and it was wonderful.  I always seem to have these whims and never really act on them…

Maybe one day I will actually walk across North America.  It’s something I’ve wanted to do for a long time, but I haven’t even contemplated starting yet…

I told someone about Vietnam and they told me that I should try to go to Italy.  I don’t want to go somewhere safe.  It just seems that I’ll be able to travel to europe later in life; who knows…

It was an ok year.  Not my best not my worst.  I made resolutions last year and didn’t follow through, or if I did, they never worked out the way that I wanted them too.  This year, I’m trying a new tact; no resolutions.  It just seems that if I set goals on new years they turn out in different ways than I imagine them turning out.  I’m done with college now, of course that depends on swim conditioning.

One day I’ll write a good blog post.  Right now, all I’m doing is rambling.  It says something about me, non?

I am unsure what to write about but I’ll start with my current surroundings.

I’m sitting, nay… laying on a slightly deflated airmatress in a small room in Philadelphia.  “Why Philadelphia?”, they ask in unison, of course.  I think that ‘they’ will be my embodiment of the reader in this blog.  If they get too annoyed with this, they should write their displeasure in in the blog comments below.

To answer their question, I’m in Philly visiting my friend John.  It’s been a good trip, oddly relaxing.  We played board games and hung out last night.  Philly is a nice city, but I don’t know if I would want to live here.

I will write that I have commenced on the job hunt and have found something on the discovery corporation website that looks interesting.  Now I must put myself to work compiling a resume, I’ve got a rudimentary copy that needs some work and probably a cover letter.  It seems that all the really interesting jobs in the world have the title of VP… or Producer… or Manager… or even CEO… so I’ve resigned myself to find something slightly lower on the totem pole.  There is a job at Oprah Women’s Network (thats in Burbank, California) which could be pretty cool.

At this point this blog post has devolved into something more boring than I had intended it to.  So I’ll leave you with the following (after the jump of course).  A letter I wrote while in Buenos Aires…

From Buenos Aires… One night I saw this and wrote it the same night.  Things like this bug me and I’ve got another more recent one to share and If i continue writing I’ll share it in a later blog post.

The most haunting thing about it is that she makes no sound at all; not while she jumps out of the store with the alarm that is quietly wailing, not when she runs down the street, away from the police who are chasing her, and definitely not while she is being wrestled down by the two policemen who are trying to arrest her, and later, definitely not while the heavy cabdriver who stops to assist joins the struggle to get her down and in bracelets.  The force that she has, for a girl who probably isn’t 18 yet, is fearsome.

She runs quickly and when she fights the police, they cant contain her.  It takes minutes to get the first bracelet on and minutes more to slap the second on her. Even after this, they strugle to get her in the car.  She wont be defeated.

She kicks the door of the car with great force and the car trembles, no, shakes about her.

The crowd that has gathered is a mixture of those people that are still out and about at 1:15 in the morning and the cartoneros who plead with the police to let their friend go, or at least this is what I think that I hear.  Some move on, others, however, stay paused watching the spectacle.  A couple asks me what has happened and I tell them as we walk away from this scene.

They are missionaries from Venezuela.  They like Chavez.  They say he has done much for the poor.  I tell them I have seen such things in the states.  In one sense, I have, but never anything like this.

Its the unwillingness to give in that haunts me too.  Everyone else that I have seen get arrested has given up so easily, but she continued to fight.  It makes me want to root for her, but she is the one who was stealing from the store, and this isnt a sport.  I wonder what it is that she fears so much.  What it is that gives her the strength to fight three grown, and built men and gie them difficulty in arresting her.  Is it fear or just strong character?  Can you blame someone who has nothing for stealing?

You cant encourage it.  You cant hate the police, who were being tossed around on the pagement while she fought with all her might, for doing their job.

Its haunting.  There were no sounds from her.  Maybe she was mute.  But this probably was true.  Yelling would use up energy.  I saw her eyes, just for a second, full of anger.  Full of venom.  Full of desperation.  What makes some one so young, so lost in this world.

This is a rich neighborhood in a rich country.  What will happen when I see true poverty.  Maybe this is it.  The bag she dropped had a pair of pants or two.  She didn’t even rob an expensive store.  50 pesos or 100 pesos worth of goods at most.  I’m sure shes not a bad person.  She still makes no sounds.  I don’t know why that bothers me so much.  Its just different perhaps.  She may have spit.  I think she did but I don’t know.

She was just trying to get away.