I have this folder in my bookmarks list marked 'Grad School,' full of schools in Pennsylvania, full of political theory programs. Not so long ago, but almost a whole person ago.

I've been very conscious today - for a while - of all the things I want to do, to know, to see, to experience, which I will not. This is why I will never be satisfied. I want unrealistically.

And I want transiently. But there are some things I will never forget.

It pains me - as the violin pains Josh, after watching The Red Violin - to have worked at 6 Flags, and now to be taking zoology, and to have my professor (however jokingly) note my affinity and true enthusiasm... and to know that is no longer a viable path for me. I want to continue collecting dragonflies. I want to take crazy trips to the tip of South America to see penguins. But I can never be a zoologist. Not that I want, out of everything, to be a zoologist - it's just the finality. I can't.

On the other hand, it does me good to have a political discussion over bean buritos and chips. All cynicism aside, I am as passionate about politics as I was as a freshman and doubly mature in my ideology. I feel less like I'm wasting my time to discover anew that I am interested in my major and I have retained most of what I've learned. In theory - political theory - my major still has the capacity to thrill me. Nevertheless, it is another road I have chosen to forsake.

I wanted to write about everything, the life we're having and the lives we might have had. I wanted to write about all the ways we might die.

Yes, and that's only a part of it...

The possibility out there that will never be fulfilled, because I want too much and I do too little.

But I'm so hopeful. The more hope I have, the more hopeless I become. Somehow it's the only way.

i still need the beauty of words sung ad spoken. i live with the fear that my spirit will be broken. and that's the way i thought it would be. that's the way i always wanted it to be.
dar williams