m.i.a.

*My thoughts are racing and I'm using this as a pressure valve. So chances are it won't make any sense and is just a bunch of mental vomit*

Almost everybody I know is out of town or going out of town this weekend. My sister is going out of town to visit grandparents and enjoy a practically free mini-vacation in Vegas. My friend Jen and several other people are at Burning Man near Reno...so basically Nevada is the place to be and everybody I want to be with is there, so a big middle finger to Nevada. I'm really curious about this Burning Man thing. The whole point is to escape the hustle of our "real" lives. I'm fairly certain cell phones don't work, I'm sure there isn't much call for television viewing, I seriously doubt that there's wi-fi or that The New York Times delivers...so do the attendees know what's going on out here? Do they know about the devastation from the hurricane? Are people finding out what's happening?
When I was in basic training, we weren't allowed to read newspapers, watch television, or listen to the radio. The outside world ceased to exist and the world that did exist was something designed to constantly keep us off balance. We didn't know anything unless they (the drill sergeants, the Army, the government) decided that we needed to know something, unless you were lucky enough to have people writing you letters regularly. One day during one of our classes, a drill sergeant came in and told us Iraq attacked us again (this was in 1994) and we were going to war. Then he showed us a body bag and said that at least some of us would end up in it. I remember not being afraid, no questions to ask, just resigned to my fate because at that point there was nothing I could do to change anything. When they told us they were lying, I was astounded. I actually thought that if I were willing to relinquish control of myself over to them, they wouldn't deceive me. And yeah, to this day, I am still THAT naive. Now that lie is somebody else's truth and I'm sitting here wondering if it's better to know nothing than to know too much. Knowing nothing makes life easier to accept.