Good Morning.

The morning is an odd mistress. She's lovely when the sun rises and serene as we trudge through whatever kind of weather we're experiencing at the moment, and she disregards our bitching like any boss would.

Why exactly I'm ranting like a feminist rapper, I can't answer. The reason I can't answer is cause I don't fucking know. Lay off. Its 7 am and I'm 18.

The point of this blog post as less about being hostile and more learning to love the morning, however.

This is my second cup of coffee, and the caffeine is barely beginning to rile my system, but in this strange, half-lucid state I've figured out something vitally important to a high number of the adult population: mornings don't suck. We suck.

The morning don't give a shit if you woke up at five today, or of daylight savings fucked you up. What I'd the morning but the earth turning, giving the illusion the sun rose?

Breakfast? Showers? Changing clothes? Leaving your warm and fluffy bed?

The last part is the hardest and I promise the morning won't bite after you've done it. We've just gotta stop complaining about the morning for the morning to run smoothly.

Today will be fine.

Promise.

With love,
Nick Strange.

People are Strange

The second day of remedial math during my stay in Community College this semester was a day that I missed. Stomach pains screwed me over. Badly.

And unfortunately, because of that pain, I missed a very important conflict: an elderly woman (the lines on her face suggested eighties) got into a fight with a younger woman over who would sit in the front seat.

Hilariously enough, the elderly woman did the same on the next class meeting with another woman in class in the first row. A whole new row was made to accommodate the senior citizen student.

Because of that first encounter, most people began to shrug her off as senile and ridiculous, laughing at her out calls, belittling her involvement, and downright questioning her participation in the classroom.

Until she started solving advanced logarithms in her head without need of a calculator.

We later found out she was taking classes like anatomy and chemistry along with our humble elementary algebra class.

And, strangely enough, this woman did not make a large uproar or ruckus for this gift she managed to learn. In fact, plenty still laugh off her knowledge and their lack of knowledge in that subject.

It's all in a community college: people consumed with their lives-- unintentional bitches trying to get ahead, wishy-washy geniuses dodging the bullets of adulthood, mobster administrators and the plethora of masterful, mindful teachers. 32 people attend this math class and all 32 of them see different things in it.

It sometimes feels like a good TV show.

And here I am, engrossed and fascinating and beginning to understand ideas outside of my own, really, for the first time.

And like my friends always seem to prove to me in our conversations, people and relationships are fragmented and imperfect; they are real and powerful. They mirror the bonds between atoms which make everything we know exists.

Today, I feel like I've grown.

With Love
Nikola Strange

Tonight

Tonight, my best friend turned 18.

She's the second youngest of our group of friends, and tonight she joined the ranks of the legal adults!

Only, of course, we're not actually adults. Not in behavior, anyway. Not in maturity.

We ran to one another as though it had been a million years, spoke loudly and chortled in our laughter.

Essentially, we were the annoying kids at the back of the restaurant (I am deeply ashamed).

Somewhere between catching up and emotional Disney sing-alongs, the funeral I had just went to the week before came to mind:

I saw my cousins for the first time since I was born--all fine men and women between 25-35, perpetually frozen as scrappy teenagers in the stories I heard from my parents.

Despite trying to stay on my best behavior and converse like a grown-up, they were very understanding of my childish Facebook name, slouched posture, and goofy grins.

One cousin even reminded me of all the times her and my older sister drove around for food and to check out boys! I'm not sure how she felt about my going to cons, but she didn't judge.

Juxtaposing those girl my cousin spoke of--the ones who waisted gas on "mensada y media"--to the girls and boys at the restaurant tonight, I couldn't help but laugh to myself.

Both sets were barely gaining the ability to think complexly, and we believed ourselves so mature but a year ago!

Half-serious, we joked about our de-maturing before a wiser, more honest friend laughed out "No, we just pretended to be more mature!"

When asking my mom about how normal that was, she just shook her head, saying this was the most mature thing in the world. That we're growing up just fine.

Maybe letting go is first step to really growing up.