Ever wandered through a busy street and not hear a thing, but simple let the colors wash over you? And then the noise hits you, like a thousand ocean waves that beat against you; threatening to drown you with their intesnsity. And soon the colors and the sounds merge; reality is created then. But what if I could seperate them? Would the world make more sense? Would this crazy whirl-wind life around me be easier to understand?

Thats what I love about Junkanoo. Its a Bahamian thing, I guess. The colors merge together and the sound is all over the place, but thats what life is. What we think hardly ever matches with what we then do. The beautiful colors don't match with the ear-splitting sounds. Yet their differences complient each other in a way reality never seems to.

I am Lita. Gabrielita, as my abuelita called me when I was little. And I suppose in some senses I am still so little in this world. I am Lita.

Strange how school takes over our thoughts. Strange how at first we try, knowing that by the end we will have given up. I'll do my homework perfectly, in the evening, for the first few weeks. Then as the days becoming long and tedious and the work becomes a game of repetition, the boredom overwhelms me and homework ceases to happen in the evening. Instead it is hurried in the morning, right before class. On the bus or at break.

Sometimes I think thats my greatest fear. That life will imitate school. So wonderfully exotic and intoxicating at first, but quickly become a tedious chore that we no longer enjoy. And before long it had passed us by and we have missed too many sunrises that we can't make up. Will that happen to me? To you? To all those around us?

I wish to write and draw. To document what is around me, for that too will surely slip away if I wait too long. I want the colors to consume me and pour across my canvas. I want the sounds to echo in my mind and translate through my pen and spill across the immortal page. Perhaps I am not an artist or a writer. But whether God created this world or some other strange force, this world around us Was created by some brillant artist and a writer too. For He spilled so many secret tales into even the smallest flower bud and colored the world so vividly that should be stare too long we are blinded by the heavenly beauty. We stain the canvas with the smoke of factories and smudge the book's elegant writing with thoughtless words.

I will not be alive in 200 hundred years to witness what by then will be a covered world that hides the beauty till its forgotten. But I will be alive today, and today I can stand on a busy road as cars honk and swirve around me. As people hurry about and yell to each other. And for now, I can still see the beauty in the horizion no matter how tall a building tries to block it. And for today, I can give in to sleep knowing that this beauty, this mysterious life, truly exist. And so I intend to do so for as long as I can. I intend to continue looking for the vaguest hint of beauty even in a foggy day so that I might at least hope that life won't pass me by. That these colors won't fade until my body has already faded away.

Let your mind never be on a hiatus, on a break or pause. Let it never go on strike or wander away. For even if its just for a second, you could, you Will, miss something. And you'll never get that something back.

I am little in the world. A newborn babe in Earth's eyes. I am Gabrielita. Little Lita.