What the FUCK

am I doing here?

Mixed emotions, good new habits, and bad old habits are the name of the game these past 7 days. If this last week isn't testament to the duality inherent of reality, I don't know what is.
Fairfield is a beautiful little town and with little Iowa towns comes that little Iowa silence. No more sirens and parties carried on the wind, just that unmistakable screech of semis on asphalt and trains ripping through the middle of town.
The weather has been far from anything worth complaining about: mid-80's all week with low humidity and sunny skies. And about 40% of the kids around here are of the amiable type, more than willing to partake in small talk and enter into that form of acquaintanceship that warrants a sincere "how's it going?" when you walk past them on campus or in town. The nights dip down into the 70's and feel great as long as you planned ahead and put on an extra layer before venturing out. They sell 40 oz's in Fairfield, and I've been making up for many missed opportunities to drink 40's in this past week. There's one making its way through my liver right now in fact.

But the night-time is also when I start to doubt my ability to live here for 4 years. From what I can tell the only people active in this town after 9 p.m. are the home-brahs of Fairfield and the Ethiopian kids that smoke cigarettes en masse in the parking lot and cast glares that make me feel like dying every time I walk past them. Ya, the 40% of kids are awesome and easy to coexist with, but the other 60% of the students and probably 90% of the townies in Fairfield have such a propensity for that death glare that I have to debate whether or not reaffirming my social pariah status is worth a cup of coffee before I venture out into town.
Being a smoker in Fairfield is kind of like being an untouchable in old Hindu caste system so far as I can tell. Lighting a cigarette in town and you are assured a ten foot circle of uninhabited space with you as the center. Try to find greens and you'll (at least at this point) end up paying forty dollars for a quarter...of shwag. Go ahead and re-read that last sentence, I thought I'd heard it wrong the first time too. $40 for one quarter of an ounce of disgusting months old bricked up greens (browns may be a better term).

BUT
On the upside, the teachers as M.U.M. know their shit and they want you to learn it. They're not just here to teach it; they want you to learn it!
My first day of Transcendental Meditation training was yesterday and I, after a year of failed attempts to integrate meditation into my life, find myself looking forward to tomorrow morning so I can dive into it again. Take it from a skeptic who's never been able to get into meditation before: TM works. After a 20 minute session you feel like you've just woken up from a good nap, had a shot of espresso, taken a bong rip, and smoked a cigarette.

Not to mention that in September, as part of my Base Camp class, I'll be camping, canoing, hiking, and caving in the Ozarks for a week. And a few months after that I'll be learning physics from none other than John Hagelin, most widely known for his contributions to the documentary "What the Bleep Do We Know!?"!

So yep, I probably left out quite a few points about the ups and downs of this week but drinking a forty will do that to you. Before I finish though I will add, although I think it goes without saying, that I miss Kansas City and everyone it entails to me like hell and can't wait to make it back for a weekend.