12 Hour Sleeps

Went to Messiah to hang out with Blake, my roommate from last semester. Slept 12 hours in his room. Felt so good....

Until I was on my way to Jeremy's house to drop off some music things. A stoplight was out and (even with my glasses on), I could make out a cop in the intersection up ahead pointing at me waving me through. Well of course, when I got to the intersection he jumped out at me yelling at me to pull over. The first thing that crossed my mind was, "Great, just what I need, a ticket before I leave the country." I was in a mental panic not understanding what I did wrong. He came up to my window and angrily yelled "What do you think you are doing?" Truth be told, I had no idea. I said I thought he waved me through the intersection so I responded as anyone might and proceeded to drive through the intersection. He said that he was in fact motioning for me to stop. As I was apologizing, he just looked at me with a mad expression and barked, "Get goin!" So I drove off.

The whole scenario really made me mad. I was trying to do the whole turn the other cheek thing, but it was all forced and not working out too well. I was even too mad to cuss out loud. Through the rest of my drive home, I noticed how mad people on the road were as well. You switch lanes and you get a death glare, you go less than ten miles an hour over the speed limit and you get high-beamed or tailgated. If you don't rush through the yellow light, you here a horn honking. Basically, you're no good if you follow the rules and therefor make another person one minute late to where they are going. Everybody's got tense shoulders behind the wheel because the thirty seconds they could save by cutting you off is more important than their courtesy to another driver.

There's a temptation to say, "I can't wait to get away from this place." That's not what leaving the country is about though. In reality, traffic is way more threatening where I am going. People, even in laid back cultures, are more aggressive on the roads. Maybe that's because there is not enough incentive to be careful. Here, we may not care about the lives of happiness of others, but we care about not being ticketed and not getting our personal license revoked.

I spent some of the afternoon packing, some of it working on lyrics for the new band, some of it talking to Lux and watching the sun set, some of it watching the lightning storm. I'm trying to get all I can out of the home-cooked meals here before leaving on Monday. I have sleep, a full stomach, and the only thing I have left to pack are the last minute things and my clothes. Tomorrow Abigail and I are getting together at Sonic and then going to see some live music (another thing I don't know what I'll do without for four months - As cynical as I often am about the western world, I cannot deny the beauty of it music and the accessibility we have to it). I'm hoping to also have time to shoot some footage of my littlest two sisters for a music video to an ambient song I wrote awhile ago called "The Judas in Me" found at this website. It's been awhile since I've been able to experiment more in the artistic field of cinematography.

I'm hoping that when I wake up I don't forget to start taking my malaria medication before eating breakfast.