gohst of christmas past

Well it was a productive first day in town. I saw a lot people who i wanted to. Still a few to go but i'm optomistic after today. My peers never cease to amaze me. There exists in them so much raw energy and potential to do anything they set there minds to. But on the other end of the spectrum there are those who will never leave this town.

It's strange saying that like it's a bad thing. For the most part i don't respect people who stay in there home towns and do the 9-5 thing, house, wife,(husband whatever), kids, retire, die. But on the other hand it is just the right thing for some people to do and i am envious of someone who can have that awareness of there lives that early on and be comfortable with it. There are just so many factors to consider. Sometimes i wish i could be one of those small town lifers, but then i look at some of my classmates and what they're doing, where they're going and i know that i never want to sit back and watch that. I want to be there. I want to do that.

It seems like a life time since graduation. Three years this spring. I can't even imagine what another seven years will do to everyone. 10 years. It's strange that me of all people am looking forward to our reunion. I have so few fond memories of high school. I haven't forgiven anything, quite the opposite, i've stopped pulling punches.But there are still those few blazing stars who make me smile.

I wonder if it is this way in all small towns. A large majority of mostly unambitious automaton workers a handful of half ambitious people and then another of truly driven people. The creators and the innovators. The courageous ones and the ambitious ones. Where do these people come from. These hero's who make the world go round.

My relaxation reading over christmas is Atlas Shrugged, i read Fountainhead earlier this semester ( i think i'm repeating myself but no time to check) and i'm blown away by how applicable her archtype hero is to many other philosophies. Be it Nietzsche or Hobbes or Moore or Keikegaard. This idea of a better person. Hehe...Stephan Colbert's "heros" But the divide that fasinates me is that of people like Rand and Neitzsche where only a few of these people exist and this kind of thinking leads itself to class divisions, tendencies to eugenics, the idea of soverign, etc. And on the other side the more aspirational type of idea. Every one can be a Howrad Roark or a Socrates.

I still have my communist leanings so i like to think it's the later but evidence seems to be mounting that that i where i went wrong in the formation of my foundations. Can you still value all people and strive to go beyond them? Can the (i don't want to pick on anyone in particular so...) joe-redneck-wifebeater-i-gotz-my-truck asshole some how see the light and become this (again for lack of a better word) higher being? Or is it up to those few gems from the graduating clas of '06 that i marvel at everytime i'm home?

It's hard to go back on what you thought you believed, but if i am going to have faith in some of these peopel i need to know that they have what it takes, that maybe they are special. And don't ask me how someone is supposed to know if they are destined for something higher or how you can identify it in someone else. I'm still not sure that it isn't in everyone. But if it is there...there is no question. Thats the one thing that i've really liked about Dagny in Atlas Shrugged so far. That she just knows things, there is no question. She can't explain why she is going to succed but she is.

And that gives me hope. There are those around me who will succed. Don't ask me how i know. Don't ask them if they know. It's not a thought so much as a feeling. But to drop in a cliche music quote..."more then a feeling."

So as i remince about highschool i can't help but be excited for the future. Some people who i have been privaliged enough in my life to know...they're gonna make it.

The kids are all right.

Some of them anyways.