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euspbadoggy
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Name: Nate
Country: United States
State: Pennsylvania
Metro: Perkacity
Birthday: 11/22/1987
Gender: Male
Interests: Drumming, whining, singing, playing video games, being lazy
Expertise: All of the above, and that's a KILT, not a skirt, so don't even start
Occupation: Student
Industry: Other
Message: message meEmail: email me
Website: visit my website
AIM:  NMW23 87
Member Since:
11/7/2003
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| So...I'm 20.
I've been having a tough time with this birthday, not because of the year I'm entering, but the decade. In the next 10 years, I may do all of the following: Get my doctorate (Dr. Widelitz, DMA), buy a house, buy a car, get married, file taxes, and/or become a full-time employee. It's a scary thing; this is my first decade of true adulthood. No, not scary. Terrifying.
I always remember nights, in my very much younger years, where it would get cold in the house and I would go to bed with freezing feet. I'm getting that sensation now - it's not warm here in Redondo Beach, California; in fact, it's downright chilly. I would always wait a few minutes and then my feet would warm up, and I could then drift off to sleep. I have a feeling I may do that tonight, just as I did when I was 8, and the thought gives me comfort.
I had a very important discussion on age with my dad last night (technically 2 nights ago as it's now 1 AM), as the last few hours of my teenage life were ticking to a close. We went over the usual things: My fears, my hopes, my anxieties, my apprehensions. He talked about what age does to people, and then what it doesn't necessarily do. He described looking in a mirror one day and seeing his father staring back at him - and it terrified him. Not because my grandfather is a bad man, but because he realized he had made some of the mistakes his father had made, and that is not desirable. I wonder if one day, I'll do the same thing. My father is not a bad man; on the contrary, he is one of the most honorable and decent men alive, but I don't want his life or to make his mistakes.
Age doesn't necessarily mean growing up. It means growing older by the count of a clock. It means moving towards the end of your life and away from your birth. It means going through all the steps society says you should go through. But you can get older and never grow up, and this is one thing I fear. My grandpa has done that for 81 years. My father has done the opposite - he has the soul of someone much, much older. I don't want either.
In a lot of ways I haven't moved much past the age of 16, and this is a character flaw. I'm not yet ready to take a lot of responsibility, I have a certain light manner when I think about things that deserve some serious consideration, and my emotional subconscious has a lot of trouble getting engaged. In a lot of ways, though, I've moved well past the age of 20. I have the great big worldview, the anxieties of one with the weight of the world on his shoulders, and a certain drive towards specific things. What I need now is to get the two sides to match: I need to be not 16 and not 30, but 20, through and through.
Today is Thansgiving, and there are truly a lot of things I'm thankful for. I'm thankful for simply making it to this day. I'm thankful for the wonderful friends and family who flooded my phone and facebook with birthday wishes. I'm thankful I have a passion and that I've been given the capacity to follow it to the ends of wherever it takes me. I'm thankful for the distant roar of the ocean and the stillness of the night in this sleepy, suburban California near-paradise.
Of course I can't go an entire post without making some reference to Rent (sorry, I hate it too). But it struck me as I was having the chat with my dad last night that the words are close, but not quite correct. The lyrics, for your benefit, go,
"There's only us
There's only this...
Forget regret
Or life is yours to miss."
But this is not really right. The better choice of words, I think, would be forget FEAR. Despite what I may have thought, the sun rose this morning, I got out of bed, and I proceeded to read the barrage of wall posts. As my dad said, age is just a number.
I guess the basis of my fear is that there are so many older people I don't want to turn into. It's not that I view younger people like me as somehow more idealized, because we certainly lack a certain maturity in handling situations, but I suppose my fear is of becoming a jaded, unloving, lifeless adult. I looked around the restaurant and tried making split-second assumptions about the people I saw, and what I saw frightened me. This not only says something about growing up, it also says something about the way I view others - that I assume the worst when I just don't know. That's one of the huge things I have to work on. There are really a lot of them.
My dad also told I don't have to do any of these things if I make the choice not to. I don't have to turn into my father or grandfather. I don't have to turn into the man sitting at the next table chatting with a client on his cell phone while his wife sits eating, completely ignored. I don't have to turn into the old retired man eating alone. I don't have to turn into the 30-something guy with a pissed-off looking girlfriend and a screaming child.
I've been looking at this birthday the wrong way. I've been viewing it, as is my nature, as closing the door on one era of my life to open up another. But I'm not really doing that. I'm opening up another chapter of my life, but I'm not closing the door to the previous one. I'm BUILDING on it, and that makes all the difference. I made a lot of progress in living my life during my teenage years and it's translating into progress in living my life as a true young adult. But the mistake I've been making is that of waiting for my life to start. I've lived my life with a sense of waiting for something, but I'm done with that. I'm living right now, and this is what I've been waiting for. So I am going to start living my life. My real life. My only life. My wonderful life.
So much has changed. So much. It really is true: The only thing constant in this world IS change. You can't stop it, you can only adapt to it. I have a lot of changes ahead of me, and this is at the heart of all my fears. But instead of sitting here, fearful of those changes, I am going to look forward to them, because change in the past has enriched my life and made it full of good things, and I have every reason to expect that they will continue to do so in the future.
I open this decade of my life by saying: I will pursue my dreams with love, I will face the unknown with joy, and I will live my life as it is at each and every moment.
Do not fear the future. Embrace it. In the past 24 hours, I've learned that life is a great big opportunity. You just need to grab it.
Good night. Look to the east, and there you will find tomorrow.
#404
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| So my bags are packed, my goodbyes are said, and I'm leaving for the airport in 6 hours.
I don't have an awful lot to say, except that it's raining right now and has been on and off for a couple of days. I got back from Wildwood today with Marcella and her roommate Lyndsey (hot North Carolina accent). Tonight, as I was saying those goodbyes, I was just reflecting that the rain probably carries some symbolism right now, given the circumstances, but I'm too exhausted to think about what it could mean. It's been a long day of traveling, packing, and tying up loose ends.
I feel like it's been a very momentous summer. I don't think I've ever experienced as much personal growth in such a short time as I have since May. A lot of things have come along that have forced me to change, one after the other...The talks I had with Courtney, my relationship with Lizzi, my dad's invalidity, reading Harry Potter (yes, this really did change me), my trips to Israel and Italy, my up-and-down experience with Alyssa, and finally, stumbling onto a situation with Marcella that I never could have dreamed possible.
Last night, for the first ever, really, I called my dad and asked him for advice on a very serious level. I'm glad, because I never, for whatever reason, felt like I could talk to my parents about very serious stuff. Perhaps that's part of my personal change. It's a healthy thing.
But even with everything that's happened this summer, I wish I could have another month, because I feel like I never took the time to relax, so as a consequence, I didn't have the reinvigorating time to just talk deep into the night with true friends like I did last summer. It may take its toll; we'll see. I also don't feel like I've accomplished enough, even though I know I've accomplished a great deal. Maybe it's just the sense that I haven't had the deceleration time, I'm just making a direct transition from productive summer to a productive school year.
Be that as it may, I am very excited for this year. I'm excited to get back to friends and all the things that I've grown to love and value over the past year. I look forward to a sophomore year full of good stuff. I also look forward to more personal change. I want to continue the march. If it sounds like I'm brimming with optimism right now, it's because I am. This has all the makings of another fantastic year.
And with that, I'm off into the sunrise. Again.
"I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I–
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference." - Robert Frost, The Road Less Traveled
#403
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| So I'm back from Italy + 2 weeks.
First off, Italia. We (that is, Jason and I) flew into Rome, managing, by some extraordinary stroke of cosmic luck, to arrive at the same time as the entire rest of our family, who were flying in from 4 worldwide origins. We boarded the bus we would be taking and set off to Tuscany. After a long ride for most of which I was asleep, we arrived at Villa la Collina, an 18th century castle that once belonged to the Italian branch of the Bourbon family. The villa was simply breathtaking, as we had an almost unimpeded 360-degree view of the surrounding countryside, including the rolling Tuscan hills. It came complete with a pool, outdoor toilet...and all the creepy radness of a most definitely haunted castle.
In our travels, we visited San Gimagnano, a 10th century walled city between Florence and Pisa, Florence, Pisa, Siena, and the local town of Poggibonsi. While a very quiet lifestyle out in the country, it was pretty cool. Also worth mentioning is the wine tour we took to several wineries in the Chianti region. In Florence, we walked through the open-air market and saw the old sites on the river. We did the same in Siena, and in Pisa, although with the notable exception that we also visited the most touristy site in the world, the Leaning Tower.
The visit to Pisa, incidentally, fell on the last day of our trip, which we had decided should play host to a culminating party. Before we sat down to the sumptuous feast, though, we had a house concert put on (outdoors) by a group of string students from the Zurich Conservatory in Switzerland. I was blown away by the level of playing, and quite frankly, the concert, with its backdrop of the sun setting over the Tuscan hills, was the highlight of the trip. Afterwards, we gorged ourselves on exquisite, authentic Italian cuisine prepared by two Italian women, a mother and her very comely daughter. Spurred on by several glasses of wine and my family's prodding, I serenaded the younger with a Renaissance love song...and forgot half the words, so I made up gibberish Italian on the spot. It was pathetic and ballin' at the same time, I have to say. After dinner, we celebrated my uncle Howard's birthday, since he'll be in England when it rolls around.
So the trip was quite lovely. I got to spend a week with the whole family (minus my dad) in the gorgeous Italian outback. I got to eat the best food in the world and visit some of the Renaissance's most important sites. I got to reflect on how quickly all my cousins have grown, and how weird my family really is. Being with my cousin Jason, as a by-product, turned me on to cars. I mean REALLY on to cars, which brings me around to after the trip...
After we got back, I noticed an '88 Celica All Trac Turbo for sale down on Walnut St. Now having my new hobby, I inquired, and I may buy it. It seems the owner, wanting to improve upon the stock 190 HP, swapped out the stock turbo for a Supra Turbo. And made other modifications. If I buy it, my goal is to hit 300 Break Horsepower, then take it...rallying. Details coming in the following days.
So...to my present situation. My dad had surgery for his break today at Einstein. I'm actually at my aunt and uncle's house right now, which is 10 minutes from the hospital. Everything went well, and assuming everything continues in the fashion tomorrow, he'll come home. I've essentially spent the last two weeks taking care of him, trying to get things together for school, and hanging out with people I haven't seen in a while. And spending a lot of time with Marcella. Oh, and finishing Harry Potter.
Oh, and I swallowed a bottle cap at a party the night after I got home, went to the emergency room at Grandview where they botched the endoscopy, got transferred to Lehigh, and finally had it extracted from my stomach. Fun.
That's my deal for right now. One more entry to follow before I go back, my annual end-of-summer recap. Happy hunting.
"[Here's the set-up: We're driving to Pisa, and we're lost. Grampa has spent the whole trip trying to communicate with the natives in Italian, despite the minor detail that he doesn't know any. We finally get there and park 2 blocks from the Tower. In one final, desparate attempt, he accosts a passing gentleman to ask where it is, though we can see it. Grampa:] Uh, scusi, signore, dov'e il..."
Gentleman: "Oh, sorry, I only speak English."
The end.
#402
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| So here I could be typing into the wee hours of the morning because I have so much to say...so here goes.
The last 3 (Edit: By the time I got around to actually finishing up this entry, 6) weeks have been incredibly life-changing. I'll start with Israel.
- Day 1 - Get to JFK after sleeping about 3 hours the night before. I barely make it through the terminal and onto the plane, but somehow I can't sleep. The thought that I'm going to get off the plane in Eretz Yisrael makes me almost giddy. I manage to catch a couple hours over the North Atlantic and down into France, but not too much.
- Day 2 - We land in Tel Aviv at 7 AM, and I step off into the land of Israel. I'm sleep-deprived and not really awake enough to fully appreciate the momentum of this occasion. We board the bus for a tour of Tel Aviv and meet our tour guide, Yair. We hit Rabin Square (the sight of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's assassination) and walk through the original town of Yafo (Jaffa), and come out at Independence Hall, the sight of the Declaration of the State of Israel. We leave Tel Aviv and head toward Tiverya (Tiberius). I fall asleep somewhere short of Nazareth and wake up as we run up to the Kinneret (Sea of Galilee). Here the land dives down into itself to create a breathtaking landscape that I took 60 or so pictures of. We check into the hotel and do essentially nothing except catch up on sleep.
- Day 3 - The first of our 6:30 AM wake-ups. We go for a hike on Mt. Meron, about 7 miles from the Lebanese
border, where brown patches are still visible from the war last summer
(where rockets landed on the north faces of the surrounding
mountains). Once again, a breathtaking view. I take the first of many
panoramic shots looking into Lebanon. We then drive to a nearby Druze village and visit a soap factory and have lunch in a traditional Druze house. We return to Tiberius and eat at a Kosher McDonalds (complete with McFalafel and no cheeseburgers), then have a dance party on a boat out on the Kinneret Sea.
- Day 4 - Early wake-up once again, and we drive to the Golan Heights, conquered during the 6-Day War in 1967, in the northeast corner of Israel. First we come to Tel Dan, a surviving place of worship 2700 years old, and we stand on the altar of Boaz, where actual sacrifices took place during the Unified Kingdom Period. A 3000-year-old wall still stands there, and I feel the weight of history coming down on me. After a long climb by bus, we come to the Mitzpe Gadot lookout, just south of Mt. Hermon, the highest point in Israel. Perhaps the most breathtaking view of all, it is a stone's throw from Syria, which we can see into from there. After descending, we come to Beit Hillel, where we go kayaking on the Jordan River. Then it's time to return to Tiberius, and we all crash.
- Day 5 - It's time to Leave Tiberius, but before we do, we paint a mural at a local high school (or, more precisely, paint each other, and the mural secondarily). Then it's time to meet the Israelis - 8 of them, all serving their mandatory service in the IDF. After visiting the Kinneret Cemetery for our first activity together, we head to Bet She'an, a Roman city that is mostly intact, 2000 years later. We visit the amphitheater and gaze out over the still-standing columns and buildings, and I feel even more history pressing down on me. After eating, we have a long bus ride to get acquainted with the Israelis, as we're off to Jerusalem. I fall asleep, exhausted, but I wake up as we begin our ascent into Jerusalem. Yair puts on the song "Yerushalayim shel Zahav" (Jerusalem of Gold, a marvelously beautiful song) as we drive into a tunnel, and as we hit the chorus, we emerge on the other side in the holiest city in the world. Everything is glinting in a rather stunning way in the late afternoon sun, demonstrating for us the title of the song. The Dome of the Rock and the Temple Mount are visible just to the south. We drive up Mt. Scopus, the highest point in the city, to recite the Shehechiyanu, and then we are (or at least I am) so full of joy at reaching the Holy City, we start dancing. As I'm dancing, I'm reflecting on the fact that I actually made it, that I made it to the center of the Western World's focus for the last several millenia, and it's having a hard time sinking in. All in all, it's one of the most joyous occasions of my life, and it's strange because usually joyful experiences are tempered or mixed with other emotions, but this is joy, pure and unadulterated. It feels really good. After leaving Mt. Scopus, we check into the Shalom Hotel. We nap and get cleaned up, then it's time to go out on the town, or more precisely, to Ben Yehuda St., a very American bastion of culture in the middle of Jerusalem. After dinner at an overpriced but kind of delicious Italian bistro, we go exploring the Old City and climb the 500-year-old walls built when the city was under Ottoman control. After that, it's finally time to go to bed and put an end to a momentous day.
- Day 6 - 6:30 wake-up again, and the food is beginning to get a little old. Nevertheless, it's time for a tour of the Jewish Quarter of the Old City. We visit markets, the Cardo, and come within a couple hundred feet of th Temple Mount, but it's not quite time for that. We then walk through the City of David and admire the original Israelite section of the city, then we walk through Hezekiah's tunnel, an underground passage dug to divert a spring during the Assyrian Siege, and completely devoid of light. We emerge and jog up the hills to the sound of the theme from Rocky and catch quite a few stares from the local residents. We have lunch and shop a little more, then we prepare to visit the Kotel. We get a history lesson, go through security, and stop in the courtyard surrounding the Wall to meditate and reflect before we actually approach it. I take the time to write down my prayer to stick in between the 3000-year-old bocks - May we ALL find peace, both within and without; may we ALL find love, both within and without; and may they lead us ALL to find happiness, both within and without. Then, with much trepidation, wearing tefillin supplied to me by Orthodox camped out there in the courtyard, I approach the Wall and say the Shema. I then go up to it and spend about 15 minutes just running my hands over it, and the moment comes when I totally break down. It feels like I'm home, after a 2 millenium absence, and it feels like I've done my own small part to end the Diaspora. It just feels like, for the first time in my life, I'm connected to my forebears, and I imagine that they once stood in the exact spot, millenia before me. It's incredibly moving. After everyone has had their chance at revery, we board the bus to go back to the hotel and have Shabbat, then it's back to our rooms to party.
- Day 7 - Shabbat, and I sleep til noon. And it feels good. It's a beautiful, if hot, day outside, so we all go swimming. Today is when I first notice my camera's gone missing. I later conclude that the housekeeping guy who cleaned my room stole it, and that's that, so I'm without pictures for the entire trip. Anyway, we conclude Shabbat that night with Havdallah and go back to Ben Yehuda St. to party. We go to the Triple Dance Bar, where they waive the cover charge and give us a free shot with every drink we buy, so we all get pretty tipsy, then dance. By the time we go back to the hotel, Sara is smashed, and prompts everyone to, "Listen-uh...bitches-uh..." Eliran talks about ice cubes from the sky and getting hyphy in Haifa, and I get the feeling that the night's usefulness has run its course.
- Day 8 - It's back to early wake-up to go visit Mt. Herzl, burial place of most of Israel's important figures. We pass the graves of Yitzhak Rabin, Golda Meir, and many others before culminating at the grave of Theodore Herzl himself. We gather around and sing HaTikvah (The Hope, Israel's national anthem) before we leave. Then it's time to go on an archaeological dig at Bet Guvrin, a small Roman settlement that was ransacked when the Maccabees reconquered it. This left some quite intact pieces of pottery, and my team (with Jackie and Adam) digs up some pretty sweet stuff. After that, we head back to a mall in Jerusalem where we find Toosikim, quite possibly the greatest piece of literature ever written. Then it's back to the hotel for the night.
- Day 9 - Today we visit Yad Vashem, the central Holocaust museum to the whole world. I've seen this tuff so many times, though, that it doesn't really register anymore. Some people have their moments here, but not me. We get some lunch afterwards, and then we say goodbye to the Israelis, much the better for their company. A long ride to the Mamshit Camel Ranch down in the Negev follows, for most of which I sleep. We arrive at the ranch and go for some camel rides, then sit down for a great Bedouin-style supper preceeded by a demonstration of their greeting customs relating to fellow Bedouins. Most astonishingly, the guy who gives the presentation is Jewish. After dinner, we sip tea and then disperse into the desert for 10 minutes, again to reflect, and looking up into the sky, a billion stars splashed out around me, I understand the verse "I shall make your people as numerous as the stars in heaven." It's a truly incredible sight, and a couple of us decide to climb up to the top of the neighboring mountain to look at the stars. Quite satiated with the beauty of it all, I fall asleep for 3 hours.
- Day 10 - 3 AM wake-up to drive to Masada. We get there at 5:30, just before the sun rises, and quickly make our way to the top. As if I hadnd't had my fill of breathtaking landscapes, this one might just take the cake. Masada, an ancient fortress sitting atop a mountain which peaks at sea level, believe it or not, overlooks the Dead Sea and the only piece of land that connects Israel to Jordan. It is utterly impenetrable as it is a sheer 1800-foot drop on all sides (that's right, the Dead Sea lies that far below sea level), and we watch the sun crest the mountains in the east. We then have a naming ceremony for those of us without Hebrew names, all before 9 AM, and we talk about the significance and symbolism of Masada, and all take the vow never to let it fall again. We descend and go to the Ein Gedi spa. Afte rubbing ourselves up with the therepeutic mud, we wade into the Dead Sea and, Surprise!, float. It's a very surreal experience, especially running on so little sleep. After leaving the spa, we take a short drive to the nature preserve where we see ibexes butting heads. We play around and take Playboy-style shots under the very picturesque waterfall, and then return to the hotel in Jerusalem, our trip essentially over. We still have a discussion to get through, of which I can't help but fall asleep right in the middle. I stumble back to my room and fall asleep before I hit the pillow, and the next thing I know, I've slept with my clothes on.
- Day 11 - I find this out, of course, when I'm awoken at 5:30 the next morning. We hurriedly pack up and drive to the airport on the 40th anniversary of the 6-Day War, Israel's greatest military victory ever. I'm in a daze as we go through customs, security, and board the plane. 11 hours later, we're back in New York, and 2 hours after that, I'm home.
So I finally realized my dream of going to Israel, and it was every bit as life-changing as I thought it would be. I gained a newfound appreciation for the land, the state, and for my heritage in being Jewish. It's really impossible to describe how much of a new person it made me feel like, but suffice it to say, I am now an unabashed Jew with a home to look toward, now and forever. That's what it felt like most: It felt like like coming home.
So 2 days after I got back was Sr. Prom '07, which played host to much fun and fornication. After that, the next month was basically a blur. I've been practicing with Decimus V, Pennridge's hottest new barbersop...quintet, working on the barn, hanging out with the old crew (well, the modified old crew), and keeping up a relationship with Lizzi.
Everything came crashing down, quite literally, last week, though. My dad and I were working in the barn and he was working on the ceiling, so he was crawling around up on some crossties. The problem is, while the crossties are sturdy, the pine boards that constitue the ceiling aren't. He took a wrong step, ironically after telling me to watch where I was stepping up there, and fell 10 feet through the ceiling and to the floor below. I had to rush him to the emergency room, and after a week of running around to doctors and CT specialists, we got the diagnosis and the prognosis: He broke his calcanian bone (on the heel), and is off his feet for the next 15 weeks. He's scheduled for surgery the first week in August, so he's out of work until October. With no disability or worker's comp (he's self-employed), things are going to be a little lean for a while, but we should be fine, or at least I'm hoping so.
A couple days after that, Lizzi and I, sensing that things weren't working out, decided to break up, but it's for the best. I think we're going to make better friends than anything else, anyway.
Now I'm leaving for Italy, and I'm rushing out the door, so I'll call it quits right here. See you in 9 days.
"Why, why, why, this is why, why why..." - Yair
"Listen-uh...bitches-uh..." - Sara
"Yalla bye." - Bus 616
"Let's get hyphy in Haifa." - Eliran
#401
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| What a fantastic start to the summer...
Mom's harp book is done (cha-ching, although it nearly cost me my sanity), I've seen most of the people I wanted to see, been to a few gatherings to share stories about going away for a year. And...got someone new in my life.
Now, I'm off to the land of Israel for 10 days. You can expect a long entry about it when I come home on the 6th of June. If you want to reach me while I'm there, you can call 011972502024093 and I might pick up. Just remember, I'm 7 hours ahead of the East Coast.
So...bon voyage to me.
"You owe me a Slurpee."
#400
Wow, is this really my 400th entry? Amazing.
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