[song: star blanket river child by bright black morning light]
Throughout my university career, I learned that life is a delicate, yet at times violent, push and pull between our inner selves and the outside world. Between our emotions and experiences on the one hand and the institutions and methods of communication by which we attempt to stabilize them on the other. Between what we want, and what the world wants for us.
My first philosophy class taught me of the theory of determinism, this depressing notion that we are only reacting to the world rather than creating it, a lesson which stunned me and left me in an existential crisis. Coming full circle, my last English class taught me that so far as our dreams are real, so long as WE are real, we also must take responsibility for creating the world, or at least the illusion of it... At times when the universe has seemed to spin out of control, out of our hands, it is us and only us that have the free will to take back hold. To make our own path. Maybe it's too ideal to think that everything can change, or maybe it's just seeing the big picture, the fact that nothing stays the same.
Out of the tension of self and other, inner and outer, nature and institution, we are shaped into being, at times in control and at times left to react to controlling forces. It is in this tension, this indeterminacy, in which truth lies, always fluctuating, revealing itself to us only for a moment before disappearing like a flicker of sunlight caught on a spider web in the wind.
[American Gods by Neil Gaiman]
Last summer I picked this flower and put it in my hat. When I came home from my long day at the beach, the flower had wilted, and I asked my mom if she thought it was salvageable. Looking at the sad thing she suggested I should probably just throw it away. I thought about it for a minute, and looked back at her and told her I thought it would live, that I wouldn't give up on it just yet. I put it in my water glass and lulled to sleep. In the morning I opened my eyes to gladly find my flower standing upright in the glass, its petals extended like bursting rays of sunshine. To me it represented the miracle of life, and healing, and the sheer power of belief. For if I had not believed in it my water glass would have been empty, in a physical yet deeply profound sense.
I would say that everyone else seems to be a lot happier about it than I am. After all, it really marks the end to something I loved. I even told some people I was in mourning. They took pictures of me anyway.
"Goodbyes always make my throat hurt...I need more hellos..."
-Charlie Brown, 1967
In order to cope with my loss, I decided I would find new sorts of classrooms.
For example,
I started playing the glockenspiel, I ordered one off the internet. I think the sound brings clarity to my life. I mostly improvise, but have thought of a few jingles to play over the PA of the sailing beach. Now that I'm a supervisor I can do things like that. I have made it my goal to be able to play Mozart's "The Magic Flute" to speed by the end of the summer, at which point I will treat the sailing patrons to an impromptu classical music concert, preferably on a Sunday evening when all the boats are pulled in and drinks are being poured.
When I brought my glockenspiel to Montreal for my graduation week, the staff missed playing with it so much that they sawed a park district owned kayak paddle into 5 pieces hoping to make a xylophone of sorts of their own. So we can add the xylophone to the list of trends I've started down at the beach, including drinking pirate juice, inserting sailing puns into conversations with patrons and the girls wearing skirts to work.
In order to continue my education I also started scuba diving lessons, which have me excited to explore the world. Underwater is perhaps the coolest visual field we can access; at least the most colorful. Not to mention it feels as though you're floating in zero gravity. What surprises me is that many people don't even consider what it's like in the other 2/3 of the world. When convincing me to take his class, the scuba instructor had me at "other-worldly".
I've been reflecting a lot on how college has shaped me as a person- where I was at the beginning of it and where I am now. One thing that has come full circle is my faith and interest in fiction, which I stopped reading at school in order to make time for all the dense, theoretically challenging texts I had to read for my degree. I lost myself a bit in all that, for if you would have asked me at my high school graduation what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would have said a children's book author. If you asked me now, I would say I have no fucking clue. But I suppose I learned that's what growing up means. Realizing that "knowing what you're doing" is bullshit that adults put on for other adults so that they can convince themselves that everything is "accounted for". I don't intend to fall into that trap. So I'm reading fiction again, where no one is trying to say anything empirical and we can be honest with ourselves.
If Disney on Ice doesn't work out, I figure I'll skate on a cruise ship, scuba diving off the coasts along the way. If not, I'm thinking the Netherlands, Australia, something far. Something new. My recent dream is to work at the Heineken Museum in Amsterdam. Combining my passions for beer and art for the betterment of society.
"Dr. Patrick: How can you joke--and look so serious?
Lizzie Borden: It's a gift."
-Blood Relations
But really, I'm starting to realize that this graduation thing isn't the end, but the beginning of a new chapter. The beginning of MY life, one in which I don't have to ask anyone what to do, or tell them, for that matter. I can go wherever I want, see whatever I want, go with the real flow of things. Move from country to country, paycheck by paycheck. Live with random people. Join new communities. I can take opportunities when they reveal themselves to me, and it will only be up to me, and we will see how good of judgment I really have. It sounds all cliche, it sounds like what your parents and uncles and professors tell you. But now I'm finally feeling it; I'm writing it, goddammnit, I'm bringing it into being.
(The song that goes to this post is alberto balsalm by aphex twin)
I haven't posted in awhile, ever since my computer broke and I started using my Iphone to connect to the virtual world and such. It's very strange to write a post without my images handy, but it was getting to the point it needed to be done. And, after the last post, I feel as though I should explore what words and words alone can do.
(Transition)
I seek to surround myself with other people who see meaning in the everyday, in the "small things", as they say. But these things aren't actually so small, and maybe that's what I'm trying to get at- that it's those people who see the big in the small who I care to communicate with most. It's not about the "deeper meaning" of something, for that excludes all other sorts of directions. What about higher meanings, cross-hatched meanings, upside-down meanings, and, of course, directionless meanings? Since meaning is technically nowhere, meaning is simultaneously everywhere, in seemingly insignificant gestures, in fleeting conversations, in those semi-private moments when we are moved to smile without anyone to smile to.
(Sometimes I wonder if my blog posts are all about the same thing, written in a different way)
While visiting my grandpa at a nursing home, my brother was starting to freak out about growing old. I was the best person he could have possibly been with when it happened, since I have been afraid of growing up for so long that I have taught myself what to say to myself if and when the panic begins, for the sake of living life as a socially acceptable human being in most cases. The trick is simply to not think about the future. Nor to think too long about the past, for that matter, since thinking about anything but the present is inevitably a load of stress. If it's the future, you're dealing with the unknown, the great abyss, the potential downfall of humankind!!! If you're thinking about the past, you're still dealing with the unknown, but this time you can't do anything about it. It's over. No freedom, in the past, my friends. So let us focus on being alive, sitting here in this moment, bellies satisfied, with our eyes and our minds intact enough to read this sentence, for the present is all we need to be happy.
it’s a matter of whether words limit reality or create it
I usually try not to post anything too revealing. but I need to do this for myself, so my mind can rest. here we go.
in high school- when I started this blog, actually- I believed that I could create my own reality. I figured that I could walk away from a situation either thinking about it in a positive light or in a negative light, so I might as well think about it in a positive light. taking this to the extreme, I twisted some frustrating times in my life into this upbeat, happy-go-lucky, blissfully ignorant kind of existence. my life was only what I made it out to be. it was all in my head. reality didn’t matter, only what I believed about it.
growing up in a conservative community with even more conservative parents, I couldn’t bring myself to accept the reality we all shared, the reality to which I was supposed to conform. so I lived at a distance from everyone and everything around me. when someone tried to tell me to see how things “really” were, I didn’t care. I lived in my own world, and had no desire to get out. I saw rainbows in everything and filled the air with the sound of glockenspiels. I was a sheep floating in the clouds, surrounded by imaginary butterflies. I thought it was awesome. I could fly.
I don’t know exactly how it happened, but going away to montreal kind of muted this extreme escapism in me. maybe its because the world around me was no longer so threatening to my sense of self; maybe its because I could actually accept what I saw around me, I could actually be myself for who I really was. I didn’t need to create a good situation because it was a good situation.
while at university I developed a passion for art. studying art history allowed me to confront the world we all share, to confront politics and history and crisis and pain. it was a perfect balance between seeing the world as it “really” is, and seeing the world through pretty representations, from a distance.
don’t get me wrong, I still see rainbows when I look at lights. but instead of thinking that I created the world I began to think that the world was just creating me. I attribute this to art history, actually, because the discipline arrives at the meaning of a subject by looking at its context. as art historians we’re conditioned to see the artwork as the product of its social, historical, political environment, the product of social constructions of the world rather than an individual construction of the world. it is our circumstances that shape us, not the other way around.
it’s kind of a relief to think that we’re not really responsible for creating the world around us, that who we are and what we see is just a result of our environment, the assumptions that have been so deeply ingrained in us. i understand why you’d want to think this way. in some ways, it takes the pressure off. it helps you get outside of yourself. it helps you see yourself as inseparable from other people. seeing from this perspective gave me a real, incredible sense of connection to everything and everyone around me, as if there were no barriers, as if they were me, and I were them.
art allowed me to get in touch with the world again.
but art also made me skeptical of words. I questioned the ability of words to express something so big, something so intangible, this reality that I was finally confronting. I began to feel that words were only arbitrary, that they were just imposing some sort of unnatural structure on the universe. I felt that they could never do an idea justice, words could never express everything as I saw and felt it. my words were only funneling my experience into something smaller than it was, fragmenting it. they were limiting- if something was this, it couldn’t be that. I began to feel that words were always futile, that communication was always futile. there was so much in between words, if you feel me, that art helped me see.
where did that girl go who thought that words were everything? who thought that words were powerful, that thinking happy thoughts could actually make a situation better? that it didn’t matter if they carried truth or not, that words were worthwhile… they were all she had…
I miss her. at the expense of “growing up”, I think, she decided she couldn’t live in her own little world anymore. while she was, perhaps, too far into neverland, there was something valuable about the strength of her imagination, her way of thinking. it is, in a sense, more true. after all, we’re all living in our own little worlds. none of us are understood. who is to say that one’s world is more “real” than another? what is reality anyway, or rather whose?
if we see words as limiting, then they will be. despite what politicians or the law might say, people, events, and memories have no intrinsic meanings themselves. there is no “true”, no “real” way to look at something. after all, it’s not like we can transparently access or share our deepest memories by popping them in a dvd player or downloading them on a computer. this gives us an incredible amount of freedom, an infinite number of ways to look at the same event. each and every day, we order our lives ourselves, and recreate them to other people. unable to include it all, we selectively choose which information is significant enough to resurface and which is insignificant enough to leave out. we add descriptions, too, making life more exciting than it is, building a narrative like the writers of our own stories.
if you are the author, I wonder, why not make it a great story? why not make yourself into the character you want to be? why not make the world your canvas? why not?
as I go forward in my life, my writing, my relationships, I see two different ways to address the dilemma of communication. I can either allow myself to be alienated by my inability to share exactly what I think or how I feel, to be defeated in that I can never know another person completely, or I can revel in the beauty of trying, by delighting in the joys of creating something out of nothing, pinning down the slippery world with my words. and believing in them.
like that girl in high school, I once again see that words are an opportunity- my most everlasting opportunity- to create myself, to reach an ideal. but I don’t want them to become my trap again. in a healthier place in my life, I no longer want to use words as a shield, I no longer want to live apart from everyone else.
I realize that while words are what allow me to be creative, and thus happy, they are also what keep me grounded. that’s the beauty of it. they are what keep me relevant, what give me agency. for they are the only thing that exists between me and everyone else, the best chance I have for making contact with the world outside of my own mind. to put it simply, I must use words, not magic. I must structure the world in a way that other people will understand, in a way that correlates with a shared reality. I must give up a bit of myself, sure, to make sense to everyone else. but otherwise, what difference will I make? who will I really know? who will really know me? how could I fall in love?
now more than ever I am ready for my exchange with the world. I accept that it involves some risk, some vulnerability and some compromises- but getting to know others really, truly, is the greatest exploration of life, the one journey to which there is no end. I’m beginning to think it’s a beautiful thing, that we can’t ever see exactly what another person is talking about, or know exactly what we’re talking about ourselves, because it means we have something to keep talking about. after all, is it not what makes life worth living when you can finally look someone in the eye and feel you’ve made contact? when you are finally assured, if only but for a moment, that you are not alone? that someone can actually feel the way you feel, know what you know? that your feelings are real? it is in the exchange of words that you see who you are. it is in the exchange of words that you can access something outside of, something greater than yourself. through words, we find answers. we make answers.
it is conversation and conversation alone which connects me to all of you. and, unlike high school, i want to be here with all of you. I want to be in our reality, not only mine. in making this happen, I can either see that words are never enough, or I can see that they are my only hope. this post commemorates the fact that my faith in words has been restored. it commemorates my appreciation of the structure that words provide, for it is through this stabilizing process that we have the power to make things what they are, and ultimately, to make things different. I should not, I cannot, give up on words, for words are what create the world!
I can fly! I can fly!
shout out to professor carney
today’s featured artists: max gregor and christine kim
as you may have heard me say before, I like to see humanity as a
vast sea. i think it's because i spend a lot of time just sitting and watching lake michigan, wondering what it can teach me. what i've found is that, metaphorically speaking, each person is a wave, helpless to the pushes and pulls of the water
around them. and, in the sea, nothing stays still for long.
when waves merge with other waves again and again they produce a
current much larger, more dynamic than any wave could on its own. on lake michigan it's just the beginning, an extraordinary swell; in the ocean, it's a tsunami.
according to this model, all great societal change must occur by
merging collectives of people with other collectives, waves with other waves,
until the giant crest reaches its breaking point. in other words, groups need to
be working alongside other groups in order to build a network of symbiotic relationships. it is only in this symbiosis, this boundary-crossing harmony, that we can create a successful social tsunami.
collectives with collectives, until the entire sea is stirring
Eugene Von Bruenchenhein
“I lay on the bowsprit, facing astern, with the water foaming
into spume under me, the masts with every sail white in the moonlight, towering
high above me. I became drunk with the beauty and singing rhythm of it, and for
a moment I lost myself- actually lost my life. I was set free! I dissolved into
the sea, became white sails and flying spray, became beauty and rhythm, became
moonlight and the ship and the high dim-starred sky! I belonged, without past or
future, within peace and unity and wild joy, within something greater than my
own life, or the life of Man, to Life itself!”
~Long Days Journey into
Night, Eugene O’Neill 1953
Jon Braley
There is not past, no future; everything flows in an eternal
present
~James Joyce
Kenji Hirata
“My dear friend,
I have fallen in love,
This time very seriously. With him I find a candor, a loyalty,
A tenderness which intoxicates me,
Something I believe I would never encounter anywhere.
I denied this affection, I pushed it away,
And then I surrendered. I surrendered first to friendship and then to love,
The love I did not understand for so long revealed itself to
me. For now, I am in the condition of
regeneration. This is a reunion of two beings that both revel and
delight
In that which they searched for and found,
One in the other.
Each day I attach myself more to him,
Each day I see disappear the little things in him
Which make me suffer,
Each day I see shine and radiate all the beautiful
Things in him that I admire.
Above all, he is a good child—his love is sweet.
After all, there is nothing but good on this earth.”
I recently wrote a paper in which I had to outline how two different plays (the ghost sonata and the wild duck, 19th ce.) present the theme of honesty. I patiently untangled the circular “drama” of the plays’ characters only to arrive at the idea that “honesty is an ideal imagined into being by human subjects that is thus an individual concept and an unattainable social reality.”
to tell someone the whole truth, to be completely honest with someone… where would you begin? how far back do you go? how much do you tell?
you would never get through it, even if you started now, even if you wanted to. when you think about it, the truth has neither a beginning nor an end. it stretches back infinitely into the past and lays groundwork for the future. it has no origin.
whereas certain people are aware of and bring out certain truths about you (your mother, for example, knew who you were before you had words to express it, and reminds you of it all the time), others are only there for snapshots of your life- flashing events, strange comments, flirting eyes- which build a picture of you, a unique picture of you. thus each relationship is shaped by what truths are shared and what truths remain hidden, intentionally or not. it is not to say we’re all blatant liars, but to suggest that reality is unreal, that all we can do is have faith in each other.
it is also to suggest that stabilizing truths about yourself and others is an act of creation and our only opportunity to mean anything at all.
“I saw a Colonel who was not a Colonel, I found a noble benefactor who turned out to be a crook, I saw a mummy that was not a mummy, and a maid… Where is virginity to be found? Or beauty? Only in the flowers and trees…and in my head when I am dressed in my Sunday clothes. Where are faith and honour to be found? In fairy tales and games that children play. Where can I find anything that will fulfill its promise? Only in my imagination.”
August Strindberg, The Ghost Sonata
where would you begin??
today’s featured fairy tale illustrators: warwick goble and virginia sterrett
*the theme of honesty also inspires my previous post, “an attempt to ‘fix this continuous flux’”*
“Life is a continuous flux and we seek to arrest it…
The forms in ourselves by which we seek to arrest and fix this continuous flux are the concepts and ideals which we would like to keep consistent, all the pretenses we create, the conditions, the state in which we endeavor to stabilize ourselves.
But inside ourselves, in what we call the soul, which is the center of our lives, the flux continues, indistinct, sliding under the barriers we have set up, beyond the limits we have imposed,
fashioning a consciousness and constructing a personality for us.
At certain violent moments, assailed by the flux, all our make-believe forms crumble miserably;
and even what does not slither under the barriers and beyond the limits, even what is clearly a part of us…overflows in certain moments of fullness
and throws everything into confusion.”
Excerpt from L’Umorismo (Humour) by Luigi Pirandello, 1908
in other words,
"Cogito ergo nescio certe." I think, therefore I don't know for sure.
“This world is more of a mental than a physical one” –Prof. Carney
featured artists: ray caesar, kim asendorf, mathew borrett and sculptures by benjamin shine
