the Nonsense in Between

but i'm not.

The weirdest thing happened after i turned in my last term paper and i havent been able to shake it. I should feel relieved and elated that the pressures of school have finally lifted, but i dont. I think i didnt deal with a lot of things the way i should have. i pushed things into the back of my mind so that i could push forward and when i finally had a minute all these feelings started tearing me up inside. i guess now i should just let them run their course and hope the course is a short one.

They are clouds without rain, blown along by the wind;
autumn trees without fruit and uprooted — twice dead.
(Jude :12)

I've been back on this side of the border for a few days now but my thoughts have been too scattered to create a coherent post, but now I think I've taken enough time to sort through my thoughts and get settled back in (by "settled in" I mean "prepare for a 1,000 mile move").

The first day I was back I thought I couldn't wait to relax in front of the boob tube and make up for all the mass media I had missed out on. So I sat down and as usual there "wasn't anything on" but that didn't stop me from flipping through EVERY SINGLE CHANNEL. Finally, I decided to stop on my regular go-to channel: Home and Garden t.v., and I nearly had a panic attack! They were remodeling some wealthy white couple's bathroom and talking about marble tiles like there was nothing going on in the world around us. My head spun and I got dizzy with thoughts of the people I'd interviewed in Mexico about sanitation. I remembered the conversation I had with a widow whose makeshift toilet is collapsing. And another family with no toilet at all. I remembered everyone talking about the nicest toilet in the village -- the one that is made of dissolving adobe bricks -- and HGTV is talking about marble tiles?!

I changed the channel.

Something less depressing, like Comedy Central, would take the edge off, right? Nope. The crude humor and racial jokes of whatever idiot stand up was on only made my blood boil more.

I turned the tv off.

I looked around my house and remembered the insides of the people's homes I saw in Mexico. They were simple. Suddenly I felt so blessed and cursed by the things that fill this tiny space. Walk-in closets filled to the brim. Cabinets full of stuff. Junk drawers full of... junk. I was overwhelmed by all the useless crap in my house.

I sorted out my closet.

There were things I had worn once and some that I don't think I've ever worn. What a waste of money and space! What's worse is that most of my clothes were probably manufactured by some poor child in a some horrible sweatshop so that I could fill my walk-in closet with useless symbols of consumerism. I filled bag after bag with Goodwill donations.

It felt good.

I wondered how long it will last. How long will I remember the stories from the villages? How long will it take before I start feel the emptiness of my closet begging to be filled?

Today, I realized I'm American to the bone. And I'm ashamed.