haven't i passed the quarter mark in my life already?

seriously. i'm not going to live to be 100 so in theory 25 shouldn't be my quarter life crisis. i figure i'll live to be 80-ish so i should've had my quarter life crisis somewhere between the ages of 20 and 22.

yay!

ok so i'm not having a quarter life crisis but i am thinking a lot lately. about a lot of stuff. and not just little stuff but the BIGGIES...

1. the FUTURE.

what a fucking scary word. future. it's weighed down by so much: all of our individual experiences and hopes, other people's hopes for us, access to the infrastructure required to achieve our 'potential', who we surround ourselves with, etc. the variables are endless and truthfully i just want to narrow them all down to 'stuff' and just let that be the end of it.

so MY future is looking...cloudy. but cloudy in a way i can deal with. there are a lot of things on the horizon and a lot of choices that will soon have to be made. school? and if so, where and what will i study...where will i live? with whom shall i live? will i stay in edmonton? so much to think about.

2. POLITICS

for a long time i was pretty convinced of where i saw myself on the whole political spectrum but the more i talk the more i realise that things are not as clear cut as i'd once imagined. it's not as if i am going to jump on the neo-conservative bandwagon, marry a u.s. military officer and vote bush as soon as i'm a citizen; hell, i'm still not even going to vote liberal but i just need to figure out where i stand, or if i am ok standing on shakey ground and just not knowing sometimes. the most radical answer can't always be the right one for me...right?

3. SEX

aside from the fact that i think about sex pretty much all the time i've recently been forced (forced?) to think about sexual relationships and how they exist outside the actual act of sex. the lovely landon said to me last night, 'y'know michelle. i don't think it's possible to never get attached to the people you've had sex with-even when you think you aren't' and in a lot of ways i agree. if nothing else they cross your mind from time to time-perhaps even in connection with other partners. i look back on all the people that i have had sex with (which isn't that many) and i realise that some part of me was attached to all of them. even the most anonymous of the bunch means something to me-i can't help but think of him in connection with george w. bush...tee hee. yeah, so connection. i dunno. it's a weird thing to give your body to someone and ask for nothing in return. i suppose they do the same thing so that's what you get in return. no expectation is the gift. or something...i dunno. i guess i've never had truly anonymous sex so who knows...

4. RELIGION

the other night at about 2:00am i was sitting wide awake watching northern exposure* and there was this scene when joel had to say a Kaddish for his uncle and he needed nine other jews in order to do it. 10 jews were brought in from all over alaska but joel said no because he didn't know them and his uncle's death meant nothing to them. so anyways, he said the Kaddish with the members of his community, none of them jewish but all of them important to him. i wept.

so this little moment from television circa 1993 and now in my DVD player has got me thinking about God and god and religion and spirituality and what my relationship to the whole thing is. i was baptized catholic and grew up going to church and getting communion and all that jazz until high school. i some point i stopped believing. i'm not sure if i ever stopped believing in God, because i'm not sure if i ever believed in God. especially not the God that they taught us about in church and in school.

so i went on happily agnostic for the last what...7 years until the other night when i find myself weeping at a 'fake' display of faith and community and i starting wondering what i believed. it knocked me hard on my ass and i have absolutely no answers. i answer something for myself and in its place pops up 7 more.

i know this. the whole 'accepting jesus as my personal lord and saviour thing' does NOTHING for me. i think jesus is a nice story but that's about it. a parable at best...

i think i'm going to do some investigating about religion. see if anything catched my fancy.
here's something funny: when i was 10 (or thereabouts) i puked all over the back of a pew during mass.

gah...

i just don't know. i guess this is the stuff you're suppose to think about.

discuss friends. discuss.

xo michelle.

*northern exposure is pretty much the greatest show ever made thus i continue my love affair with all things early/mid nineties. ;)