places and experiences dont die and end, they live on forever in us. with every moment and experience we change somewhat. the atoms of our bodies change through time. we are never fixed, never static. always in flux, always carrying particles from places, times, people.

right now i cant help but live in the past. mentally, i am still in brazil. i am still lying in a hammock on our boat, reading a copy of Citizens, Experts, and the Environment. i am still excited about capacity building, about popular epidemiology, about analogies of the social world to biological terms, about social movements and cultural autonomy, about participatory research, about the city as an ecosystem, about public health, about powerful writing that moves, about ghosh/calvino/murakami, about jujitsu, about friends who understand me. i am still alone in my host family house in paruapebas, palmares II, feeling uncomfortable, playing soduko. i am still standing at 3 am on the balcony of the apartment in Belem, breathing in the fresh air, listening to the music of far away clubs ringing through the soundscape. i am still catching tucunare with Leo.

i do need to move on and away, and when i get to a place where that passion and excitement can manifest itself again, i will. easily. when i went to powershift i felt teleported back to it all, or forward, or who i want to be, or whatever you might call it. i have total confidence that being at CHEJ this summer will afford me the same chance. it just so happens that i dont have that atmosphere here at bard. where time is randomly split between class and the world. between theory and practice. between active discussion and engagement to everything else. to where new york city attitude transports to a small rural middle of nowhere. and people say that places dont move...

right now, i am waiting. i find books here and there, moments in class that grab me. in ecology & evolution we get to go outside, collect data, find some meaningful or useless statistical analysis. in GIS we use real data from projects to make maps and find patterns, clusters. maybe im finding out that in reality, i am more of a go out and do it kind of guy, and all this theory and abstraction of reality is getting to me. im glad i was on the geography search comittee. the guy we picked was all about hands on stuff, community projects in NYC with urban ecology. im sure ill have a great time if i take one of his classes next year. it makes me wonder if i picked the wrong major, which is ironic, because in practice anthropology is so incredibly hands on. but of course, at bard, we dont do hands on. we do theoretics, with hands on sprinkled in.

in the end of the day, the best thing to do is just let your thoughts go on paper. ive been trying to write more in my free time. by no means am i happy here, but thats a product of where i am right now. if i hadnt gone to brazil, im sure id be having a great semester right now. id be very excited about the material. so in a way, not being happy shows me that i still care about the things that make me come alive. it comes in fragments, but it is there. and as soon as i start doing hands on things again, it will be there. passion doesnt leave, doesnt remove itself.

the hard part is come the end of the day, and who do you talk about it all to? i end up talking to my professors, knowing that they might actually get it, but more so, want to listen. in the end we just all want somebody to listen, but more importantly, to acknowledge that we are there and alive. some call it respect, curiosity for others, and interest in engagement.

and thats whats missing here at bard, what i know i need the most.