Archive for the 'briSite' Category

Yes. Back. Alive. Well. Upbeat. Breathing.

I have five minutes before I have to get to my class, and there are a lot of thoughts just bubbling up inside me. Rather than get them all down on paper/blog, I thought I’d just list off to you the things I’m going to be writing about in the next week or so:

• Just one shining moment from my trek, back in India. It was exhilarating and spiritual and I never really wrote about it.
• How Clancy came and left our lives, and how it feels different without him.
• I went to Kansas between Christmas and New Years and had an amazing time. My cousins rock. You shall soon know how much.
• New Years Resolutions. I’m actually keeping them this year, doing pretty well, for the first time… ever. I’ve lost about 9 pounds in 3 weeks. This is a good thing.
• Richard Clarke is an amazing human being. Mini-book review of “Against All Enemies.”
• Dave Eggers is close to being added to my list of idols, just following JFK and Bono. Mini-book review of “How We Are Hungry.”
• My classes are great this semester, as well as very managable. Thank God. Updates and descriptions of each one to follow.
• Solitude does wonders for concentration: My life in the Rock.
• Politics, politics. The Republicans can’t even spell shame anymore, let alone have enough decency to remember what it actually is. A quick rant on ethics, policy, and how we need someone (Governor Warner, perhaps?) who just knows how to govern. The place is falling apart. Also, how George W. Bush is killing old people, and Newt Gingrich may actually have the right idea about healthcare reform and UN Reform.

That’s it for now. Stay Tuned. I’ve got all this damn energy now, all these thoughts buzzing around, and it’s your collective responsibilty to help me process them and figure out how to move us forward or better appreciate where we are right now.

Here’s to the Clean Slate.

Still on Blogger, but check out the new digs. This is the 3.0. The thrizzy, as some would say. The first version was my (now mostly broken but still legible) geocities site. Version 2.0 was this site, mcguirk.blogspot.com, in its original form. 3.0 is new and improved, utilizing some of the features of the Great Blogger Relaunch™ like commenting and better behind-the-scenes stuff that you don’t know about.

So here’s the deal: I’m off to New Delhi, India this Monday, June 14th, the year of our lord 2004. I’ll be studying at St. Stephen’s College, Delhi from July 17th till December 23rd (the first month in India is an intensive Hindi course up in the mountains). This site is a digital notebook to try and record and analyze the probable numerous experiences I’m going to have there.

I think I probably summed it up best back when I was leaving for Australia in December of 2001:

Joyce left Dublin to write Ulysses. Hemingway left Spain to write The Sun Also Rises. They had to. Distance generates perspective and understanding.
Thus the McGuirk World Tour: I’ve been given a year in which to work, study, travel, see the world, write, take pictures, and, most importantly, gain perspective and understanding.

Life, the tour, and the exploration of all things continue…