Sitting here I am reminded for the one millionth time in my life so far how ignorant I am. Here, in this place there are sounds of friendship and sociality, laughter and conversation. I’m sure they are telling their stories, the stories of their days, their jobs, their lives to each other but I will never know for sure. I don’t understand a single word they are saying because I sit over coffee ten thousand miles and 17 hours away from my home in a country where they speak a completely different language than my own. Of this new language, I know what seems like less than 1% of the most common phrases so you see I’m really quite useless and I might as well be deaf. Though as soon as I consider how much that would help me to concentrate on the book I was reading before all these crazy thoughts about my ignorance came into my head, I notice the music playing softly underneath and in between all the foreign sounds and I feel a twinge of gratitude for my good ears which though they cannot decipher a single noun from all the conversations going on around me can at least lend me some comfort in the soothing sounds of a flute and violin.

If it were just me in this chair with this coffee and the music in the background without all the gibberish that echoes between my perfectly good hearing though ignorant ears, I might be able to close my eyes and pretend I am ten thousand miles and seventeen hours away back home at ease with myself, unaware of my state of ignorance and the discomfort of life’s great contradictions. Contradictions? Did I write that? Once again my hand teaches the rest of me what my mind is thinking. Contradictions, I guess. Life’s great contradictions. So perplexing that they interrupt my coffee. Take for instance winter when the best time to be outside is when it is snowing but at the exact same time it is snowing is when outside is it’s coldest and I only last a few minutes before my fingers are numb, completely useless and about to fall off.

This makes me think of books, all the contradictions in books like the Bible for instance of which I was required to memorize great quantities of as a child and all during college to make me a better person because it is the greatest book of all though not really a book more of a collection of little books some of which contradict each other at times. One says one thing while the next one says something different but together they make one Truth, I was taught, so I’ve come to realize Truth is a contradictory thing like winter and the Bible and people in general. This is like famous actors in famous movies who cry on screen about how desolate their lives are and how alone and poor and unwanted by society they are but I have a hard time buying it when in real life they are famous actors who are almost never alone are anything but poor and by definition are the most desired members of society.

All my life I’ve known people. Most of you have. And people are funniest of all because usually the ones everybody loves are the pretty ones but I’ve known so many pretty people in my life who weren’t really so lovable and some of the most lovable people I’ve known weren’t really so pretty but never seemed to have as much as the pretty people because pretty people seem to have it all. Appearances. Now there’s a contradictory thing. Here I sit, all Casper white, light hair, light eyes and I stick out like a half frozen finger in this place ten thousand miles and seventeen hours from home when all I really want to do is blend in and hide. Maybe its to disguise my state of ignorance but mostly its because I just want to watch instead of be watched, to learn and listen with understanding to all these foreign things happening on top of and in between the soothing sounds of a flute and violin.

All kinds of people have tried to tell us what life is but to me life is more a collection of little lives some of which contradict each other at times. It’s one big period of time made up of hundreds of little periods of time that together make up a person’s Truth. Did I not sit over coffee ten thousand miles and seventeen hours away wishing and dreaming of this place only to sit here and do the same in reverse?

No longer a young child memorizing scripture, I am a slightly older child not memorizing anything at all anymore except less than 1% of the most common phrases. Back then I thirsted for attention while here and now I would gladly give it all up just to blend so I could really watch everything here happen just as it happened a million times long before I ever traveled all those miles and all those hours. And so what if all I ever observe in life is contradiction because life is contradiction and doesn’t learning something new like that make me a somewhat better person?

I came to get a hot cup of coffee and look, I’ve let it go cold beside me.

Sillygirl324@hotmail.com

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