The Daily Minutiae

I've stumbled on something that really horrifies me this morning.

Since I moved in here at OU, I've kind of seen how impassionate about things I am, a very anyway-the-wind-blows attitude.  All these people and all these strong opinions, some things just seem so trivial.  I'm really a natural talker, but some things would just never occur to me to talk about.

It was in Spain of all places when I heard of The Motorcycle Diaries, and for three years since I've written it off as "some revolutionary flick," but because of my recent Spanish double major choice, I walked into Alden Library for the first time and checked it out.  I did it more as a matter of principle ("That would be pretty bad to have a Spanish degree and not have seen The Motorcycle Diaries.") and even as I plopped it into my computer, I sat back and really sort of facetiously said, "Ok, let's get ready to have our lives changed."

Say what you want, but there's nothing like a Latin American hero.  For those of you unlucky enough to not have seen the movie yet, it chronicles a pan-South American journey taken by Ernesto "Che" Guevara that eventually inspires him to become a leading voice in communism in South America.

The entire trek parallels the story of Buddha: an upstanding young man leaves home to find extra meaning in life and he encounters the sick, the poor, the dying and is ultimately transformed.  In a way, it's also kind of a modern day Don Quixote with Ernesto and his sidekick Alberto traveling together.  I really want to swim across the Amazon now.

What horrifies is feeling I had two hours after mocking the hype about the movie.  Only one notion penetrated my thoughts.  "Yep," I said, "This is it."  No meditations, no second-guessing: Latin America.