First Yikes But Not Really, Then A Revisit of Things Previously Mentioned

It's Friday the 13th.

I just realized that just now.

There actually isn't much significance in this for me, just felt like mentioning it.

SO, during my lunch break just now, as I ate Spaghetti and Schnitzel at the Casino (our cafeteria here at Burda), good ole' Stephen King was addressing things in his book, The Stand, that I was JUST talking about. It kinda freaked me out. BUT that brings me around to make another point. I have been reading this book, hmmm for maybe on the heavier side of 2 months, and I am JUST NOW about to finish it. Granted, it is 1150 pages, but 2 months??? What is wrong with me? And I REALLY like this book so I am just baffled at how long it is taking me to finish reading it... Hmmm... might have something to do with MY COMPUTER.

Dah.

But, this is what I was reading at lunch and I was so awestruck that I muttered a loud "Huh!" (Like I always do when stumbling upon something I find interesting in a book), and quite a few people in the cafeteria turned to look at me. Red-faced now, I just held the book higher up so I could disappear behind it. Worked pretty well. Anyway, it is a part of the book (hmmm crap I really don't want to reveal too much for people who haven't yet but might read it), well let's just say there is a group of people who are making quite a long journey somewhere, without materials of any kind, and they begin discussing, in a sense, what the purpose of this journey is. King writes, and I quote:

"You think (we were sent) out here to have visions?" Ralph asked. (Didn't want to mention a name there.)
"Maybe to gain strength and holiness by a purging process," Glen said. "The casting away of things is symbolic, you know. Talismanic. When you cast away things, you're also casting away the self-related others that are symbolically related to those things. You start a cleaning-out process. You begin to empty the vessel."
Larry shook his head slowly. "I don't follow that."
"Well, take an intelligent pre-plague man. Break his TV, and what does he do at night?"
"Reads a book," Ralph said.
"Goes to see his friends," Stu said.
"Plays the stereo," Larry said, grinning.
"Sure, all those things," Glen said. "But he's also missing that TV. There's a hole in his life where that TV used to be. In the back of his mind he's still thinking, At nine o'clock I'm going to pull a few beers and watch the Sox on the tube. And when he goes in there and sees that empty cabinet, he feels as disappointed as hell. A part of his accustomed life has been poured out, is it not so?"
"Yeah," Ralph said. "Our TV went on the fritz once for two weeks and I didn't feel right until it was back."
"It makes a bigger hole in his life if he watched a lot of TV, a smaller hole if he only used it a little bit. But something is gone. Now take away all his books, all his friends, and his stereo. Also remove all sustenance except what he can glean along the way. It's an emptying-out process and also a diminishing of the ego. Your selves, gentlemen-they are turning into a window-glass. Or better yet, empty tumblers...
"When you empty out the vessel, you also empty out all the crap floating around in there," Glen said. "The additives. The impurities. Sure it feels good. It's a whole-body, whole-mind enema."

Ok, now. Isn't that INSANE that I read that RIGHT after I had written my last entry??? Wow it boggles the mind. That's what I am talking about!!!!!!! It's not necessarily the fact that I watch American television shows over here, that is a (sad) staple of the American society, or that I read books, or listen to music, or hang out with friends; it's the fact that I almost ALWAYS have this feeling that I am not doing things right, that I am not living the way I am meant to, that I am missing something. It's REALLY hard to explain, even to myself. It's like I am seriously mad at myself but can't remember what I am fighting about. Sometimes I feel like in coming to Munich—and this year abroad—was going to help me find myself, find out what it is I really want. And, I hate to say it, but sometimes I feel like the me I know and I love, is drifting further and further away. And the harder I try and stop it, the smaller it becomes, appearing like a dot on the vast oceanic surface of my innerself.

Honestly I have no clue what kind of answer—if there even is one—I am searching for. And if I do, I don't know how to find it.

I think it's going to take something big (I pray to God that it's nothing near a government-created biological plague that wipes out most of mankind) to shake me out of this weirdness and instill the change I am craving.

I'm confused.