Wow. I am totally and completely discombobulated. Yesterday the only three things I wanted to do were reading the novel, graduating, and finishing my final assignment for Philosophy.

Now, I thought I would not miss my school at all --after all, I will see pretty much everyone almost every day, so it's not like I can miss people I shall have around for my whole life-- No, something far different. I wish there were words for that, but it is as if the was a huge black stain in the middle of a Chagall, out of place, reckless, and ruining everything. I can't be nostalgic! But I am. But I can't.

My last English class was yesterday -an AP class, English Literature and Composition-, just after the last Poetry in English class. I felt so sad. In such a small school as mine is, teachers are carefully chosen from thousands, and most of them are wonderful people, but my English teacher was not only wonderful, but one of the wisest persons ever. I have had classes with him for the last three years, and like most of the Senior class (we're but 40, in total), I've developed a relatively close relationship with him. Now that I think about him, I just realised I have about 10 of his books I'd better give him back before he goes to the US for the Summer. Anyway. I just realised I'll miss his classes a lot. And my Literature classes in Spanish: the last class I took, Latin American Literature was so good! I'll miss classes, and yeah, that is nerdy. That happens when your biggest class has 9 persons, and you feel crowded.

I was reading this novel, that I borrowed from someone expecting an easy to read page-turner, Bel Canto. Ok, it was a page-turner, indeed, but it was so sad, and so beautiful! A must read for anyone who appreciates a little insight into the human soul, a beautiful little insight into the soul. It is not the most delicate novel ever, it could never be totally delicate or totally indelicate, but as Forster taught the world, not everything that is delicate is beautiful.

Finals next week, and I am not stressed at all, except for the very long Philosophy work I have to hand in Monday. Nevertheless, I have been listening to all my Opera CDs a lot: they sooth me, and there is nothing more perfect than an Opera. Try to understand Madama Butterfly, get a translation or something to read along with the Opera, and if you are not crying by the end I swear you have homicidal tendencies.

I wish my life was more exciting. It is not that I want life to turn into an endless series of quick and intense moments: I am not made for that. But I would love, indeed, to find a little more equilibrium between the idleness I love, the way I can always predict what will happen, how it will happen, and how much time will I have to read more novels and hear more records. Right now, after so many years, I appreciate my idle time a lot, but sometimes, after so many years of the same life, I wish something, anything, sincerely exciting happened. Not a big event, but something intense. Perhaps a prospect would also work, prospects are also good.

I wish my crush would come out or something. I swear I have seen him looking at me while I stare at him (he caught me with my defences down one day, and I stared right into his eyes for about five seconds before looking away)... but it could always be that my secret wishes are making me see signals were there is nothing. It wouldn't be the first time.

Writing this, I fear, is merely therapeutic, but I am enjoying myself a lot. I would like to use 'I' and 'me' less while writing, I am feeling egocentric.

When was the last time you stopped to think about beauty?

Not beauty as in pleasant to the eyes --although that is, also, beauty--, but beauty as something inherent to the arts, to love, to the good moments of life. The world, it seems to me, is too pragmatical, too damned pragmatical. Well, there is something wrong with pragmatism, and it is that there is no space for the beauty of the useless things in it. Stop and think right now: when was the last time you did something so utterly useless, yet so essentially beautiful, that you were happy for hours, if not days after?
Art, for example, seems to be able to survive pragmatism, as it did with the Communists and Kitsch, but although it is beautiful, giving art a fixed purpose kills something in its core. Back to Chagall, or Klimt, or Kandinsky, or Picasso, or Dali, or Kahlo, or whoever you like: do you think their best paintings were created out of a set purpose, or out of the sheer pleasure and the metaphysical fulfilment of making something beautiful? I sincerely hope you agree with me, and take the latter. Do the same with books, music, your life. Perhaps you should learn a language that won't be useful at all in your future, or introducing yourself to a new kind of experience (by the by, let me recommend Opera) with no expectations whatsoever different to enjoyment.

I can not really believe that school is really over. I am halfway between ecstatic and nostalgic. Such a bitter-sweet feeling seems to be perfect for such a situation. What if life gets better? What if it gets worse? What if what I really want is a hiatus -a hiatus out of this world and its worries, somewhere where beauty and thinking are the top priorities, a hiatus somewhere that is so magnificent in its details, so pure in its conception and so clean in its core that people can't do anything but become noble, magnificent, pure and clean themselves?- I want beauty.