The Art of the Escape

Wordpress

2010-10-19T13:00:00.002-05:00

Hello,

Please click over to my blog, now at
jessedart.wordpress.com

Cheers, and thanks for reading.

JDart

New Page

2010-04-14T10:11:00.001-05:00

Please re-direct your blog reading to

jessedart.wordpress.com

Cheers!

Hello Winter in the North

2009-12-13T22:25:00.002-06:00

As I sit here this winter evening, cold wind blowing outside, listening to the jazz program on NPR I can't help but think that I'm somewhere I'm not. My mind is drifting like the snow, but my body remains stagnant, stuck where its at, rooted here like a tree. Its hard sometimes in winter to get yourself motivated to move, to get out and brave what the cold work is offering. There are alot of reasons I like to stay inside, not the least of which include really poorly sung holiday songs. The warmth of a wine, or a nice evening coffee is much more comforting than another rendition of "White Christmas".

When I was living in Australia this time last year, that song had such a different meaning. For some reason, I was able to tolerate those pieces when it is around 90 degrees outside. It is easier to think about this "white christmas" as being far away, distant from anywhere close to you where people are suffering because of the immense cold, while you are able to spend your afternoons at the beach, getting the loveliest of Christmas tans. It is entirely different as well to have a big roast dinner on a 90 degree Christmas day. Hard to stomach, yes, but sometimes you have to plough through. The more common custom is the seafood bar-b-que, which seems more European in nature, although I think it mostly has to do with the abundance of seafood available in Australia. Sydney Fish Market is alive and well a few days before the 25th, and it becomes difficult to find parking. Certainly a tradition I can embrace. The entire winter months in the northern hemisphere are so incredibly conducive to being lazy, that my body aches to flee to the warmth of the southern. It yearns for the sun to warm and bronze my skin, for the days to be hot and the nights to be balmy. For the sea breeze and the late night sunset. The sand and surf, and the surf and turf.

I found this poem today - it has just stuck with me.

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.
- By A.E. Housman.

Travel Pictures

2009-10-27T19:32:00.001-05:00

Some of my travel pictures are now available on

jessedart.etsy.com

Times

2009-09-21T16:41:00.001-05:00

So I have a pictures on the NY Times right now. Nothing too big, and it wasn't judged, but its nice to see something you've taken and written on a site like that.

The Art of Living

2009-08-13T16:29:00.001-05:00

Paris is distracting. That was my first impression of La Ville-Lumière. It is not only distracting because of its inherent beauty, warmth and passion but also because of its intense love of, or complete devotion to living. Living is something we are all familiar with, and some are better at it than others. France is famous for several things: food, wine and cheese come to mind first and maybe the beach, mountains and Paris are coming up behind those. Of course there is the ever-lovely Euro-Disney (which operates a dedicated shuttle bus to its door from both airports) but I digress. Lets revisit those first three: food, wine and cheese because they go along with my central thesis here, which is that, the French are devoted to living.

When I talk about living, I don’t mean in the everyday sense so to speak. Living involves a few things that we all have to do. Eat, drink, sleep. These are the essential items to live and the French (apart from sleeping) seem to be quite good at the first two. Of course this could be said about several other countries, cultures and people groups, but I dare you to find a country where eating large amounts of butter, drinking copious amounts of wine, liquor and coffee as well as the almost complete absence of a Starbucks is seen as a national right.

Wine is becoming more and more accepted around the world. Still in America there is some sort of aversion to wine for the normal, fly-over states type of guys. In France, like in Australia and Italy I found, men of any background, income level and mindset drink wine. Its not a big deal, its available everywhere and is generally good. Wine is to France what the Bud Light is to America – everywhere and accessible – un-politicized and a natural drink for all those who care to have one. Its aversion in America isn’t because there is a lack of wine, but because there is a complete mindset centered around it. It feels foreign to so many people that it is seen as being expensive, or at least, un-tasty. I assure you, wine is anything but un-tasty. I don’t know if that mindset will change much in America, apart from the coasts, it is normally seen as only a drink at meals, and I dare say that many people will serve you a beer before a wine anytime. Wine in France (as in Australia and Italy) is a cultural norm. That is plain and simple. To me, I feel that you can attribute wine to my central idea that France has a love of living. Wine doesn’t only make you jolly throughout the day, but also just makes you feel nice. It gives you that mid-day uplift, much like a coffee, and it is there to enhance your meal. I enjoy with great pleasure the ability to have a glass or two with my lunch, even when I’m working as to enhance not only my meal itself but also my day. It loosens up the brain and provides me with the ability to continue throughout the afternoon (I can’t say the same though if the meal includes the aforementioned copious amounts of butter).

Cheese is a different story all together. People from around the world are completely and utterly devoted to cheese from (normally…) their home country. Don’t even think of asking someone from Wisconsin about cheese from France, its not really done. The French understanding of cheese can be attributed to, well, wine and a large array of other things such as a complete understand that things that smell or are runny are also called cheese and are delicious. The two most known types of French cheese are Brie and Camembert. They are available in most towns around the country, and I assure you that there for every brand of American cheese that is available in your local IGA, there is an equal amount of Brie and Camembert available in a French grocery. Its wonderful and it complements the idea that in order to live well, a variety of different tastes and a variety of different consistencies is necessary. Cheese in France is…I caution to use the world religion. Maybe a better word is a national right –a right to good cheese and the right for it to be available everywhere. Americans, we put cheese on anything and everything. But I dare you to find a cheese in your house right now that is a creamy and as wonderful as a Brie, or as pungent and perfect as a Camembert. Maybe you have these in your fridge…and to that I say great! If not, you should at your earliest convenience go to your local store and find one or the other. If they don’t have it, ask someone. If you ask enough, maybe they will soon carry some. If you live close enough to a Trader Joes or a Whole Foods, well, your cheese choices have greatly improved. Try a good chevre (or goats cheese) or maybe a really delightful mobay.

Food is the final component and well, apart from wine and cheese the understanding of food can bet summed up in the world enjoyment. Enjoying food is not the same as eating or the same as just ingesting things at random because you think your hungry. To be truly hungry and then to have a meal that you will remember for days, that is enjoyment. Enjoyment of food also includes not rushing through a meal – not eating in your car but actually sitting down at a table. This is of course not always that practical, even in France. But still, the understanding that having a lunch that not only tastes good but makes you feel good can really do something to your day. It makes life nice and enjoyable. For example, when I was in Paris we went to a little local brassiere for a late lunch after the mid day rush. After viewing the menu (which by the way is hardly ever written on a piece of paper they hand out to you but more likely on a wall or on a chalk board) I decided on the poulet grille (or grilled chicken). I don’t know why, but for some reason since it came with mased potatoes and a salad sounded nice. I can see you picturing what a grilled chicken would look like, as did I. But much to my amazement and utter happiness, when the said chicken came out, it was in fact a ¼ of an entire chicken, roasted, braised with carrots, peas and a simple butter sauce on top. This in fact was poulet grille, but in a way that you wouldn’t expect ever in a normal American restaurant. I devoured it and washed it down with a simple vin blanc. Perfection was achieved for me that afternoon when I promptly afterwards ordered a café and our leisurely lunch continued well into the warm afternoon. True, that day it made me feel sleepy, but honestly, nothing more relaxing was achieved that day or the next. Simply eating was the most astounding activity of the day. I realize now that I am oversimplifying the French, and that I am not really being very realistic, but to be sure, if you go to France you will undoubtedly see people at lunch, at dinner taking their time, having wine and a coffee afterwards and completely enjoying not only the activity of eating but also the activity of living – for living is not only an activity that we participate in, but also an activity that we can improve upon, simply by enjoying the simple act of taking in our daily sustenance.

Of course I can’t leave out of the equation of distraction the ubiquitous French women. Surly there is few as lovely as they. Their understanding of living is unparallel and their ability to hold your attention with a mere gaze in your general direction is deadly. Women there (again I am generalizing) are able to somehow project a complete aura of style and power with the simplest clothes. I realized walking down the streets in Paris that people (not only women) take an interest in the way they look. They might not be dressed in the latest fashions, or, have a lot of money, to be sure it is a varied society, but people there took notice of their appearance when they walk out their door. It is a wonderful sensation to observe and to experience in that, it is nice to be around people that care.

I am completely encapsulated with the women. They are able to emanate the French passion, culture and love through a single breath – by simply ordering a coffee or smoking a cigarette with so much attitude, sexuality and suggestiveness that I am unable to continue on with my normal, everyday thought process. I am overwhelmed with vice and conviction and it is one of the most amazing, and yet, overpowering physical and emotional feelings that I have experienced. Needless to say, I was greatly affected by several women, and will continue to be for what seems like my complete existence.

Simply put, to visit Paris – to visit France is to understand that you will initiate a series of events that will, with luck, change the way in which you live your life. You will begin to understand the art of living and the art of eating and enjoying. It is called the city of lights for a simple reason and that is because it is blinding in its brilliance. It entices, and pounces on your ability to understand yourself as where you came from, and forces you to look at yourself in a new light, so to speak, where undoubtedly you will be overcome with vice, conviction and a complete emotional exasperation of complete and pure living.

Just a Glimpse

2009-08-10T22:47:00.004-05:00

Europe. Is it not the epitome of all great vacation and travel destinations? Europe, I suppose, is not America light, its not on steroids and doesn’t have an identity crisis like Australia. As I’ve learned from several trips through various places you can’t group it all together as one Europe because each location, each place is completely unique. It would be like grouping Texas with Minnesota; it just wouldn’t work. They might be on the same continent, but that doesn’t necessarily make them any more similar than Florida and South Dakota. On this odyssey, I was enthralled by Trieste Italy; confused by Budapest and wooed to tears by Paris.

From Tuesday the 21 July to Sunday the 26th, I was in the old port city of Trieste, Italy. Historically, it was controlled by the Austrians, and various other groups (Among them, Americans and New Zealanders after the war). It is a strategic piece of land only a few minutes from Slovenia and Croatia. Rocco says it isn’t a very typical Italian city, and Matt and I found it to be 99% free of crowds of tourists (much to our delight and to their dismay). The city has about 75,000 inhabitants, built next to the sea and hills and boasts the Illy Coffee Factory as one of its major employers. A much overlooked Italian city and completely off the trail of pesky Asian tourists, I fell in love with its unassuming people, streets, food and especially the girls.

The elegant and pristine main square is the focal point of the town, it even it isn’t very busy. The largest square in Europe built on the sea, which is just across the road. My first taste of the Aperol Spritz and coffee. I find the shopping, the way you can walk from bar to bar in the evening having your apertives and then on to dinner. One of the nicest, most civilized ways to spend your time in the evening. Floating from place to place, drinking, eating, laughing and cavorting with the local lovelies, the young and old, we spent countless hours and nights completely beside ourselves trying not to overindulge in the gratuitous amount of liquor and food we were consuming only to be woke up at noon the next day, ready to start all over again. When people in Trieste refer to the “beach” it is actually just concrete areas with steps down into the beautiful sea – Annie says they prefer the concrete to the sand, and after an afternoon there, I looked completely past it into the warm Adriatic and let me mind slip away into the late afternoon sun.

Along with having small bars with coffee and liquor all along the waterfront, topless women abound along with all the typical men’s euro style bathers. No surprise really, but to some, this is a definite and unavoidable difference from America. Here’s to Italy!! No matter what day of the week, the seaside was always crowded. The summer is a time to rest, take a break and a lot of students were back in town.

The most amazing and rewarding part of Trieste was the empty streets, easy-going attitude and honestly, genuinely lovely people. Everyone seemed to be enjoying their day, life in general, the sun and just have a bit of a relax. None of the stress you would tend to associate with Italy in the summer was found. So the time we spent there seemed to me, so slow, as it was happening, and all of a sudden it was over. And after a nice lunch of local anchovies, oysters, and risotto, we got a lift to Ljubljana Slovenia to catch the night train to Budapest.

Slovenia is a country of contradictions. If Disney built a small European town by a river, it would look like Ljubljana. Lovely, and from what I can tell, terribly boring. The most exciting thing going on seemed to be the amazing amount of cheap kebabs you could get within a 5 minute walk of the train station. We waited for several hours at the station – bathrooms closed at 10PM, and our train left at 2am. Train stations late at night tend to encourage certain types of activity, and invite certain types of people into them, but we were left unbothered, and apart from large groups of English backpackers and a few local people, were pretty much alone on the cold platform. The only time on the trip I remember being actually cold, with pants and a jacket on. We apparently were higher up in elevation that we realized.

The EuroNight train came from Venice and on the way to Budapest, we stopped, amoung other places, Zagreb Croatia. Four border crossings later at 11.30 AM we rolled into Budapest, no worse for wear, but completely exhausted and to be frank, a bit gross feeling. We felt bad for the English chap in the compartment near ours who, at the Croatian border got taken off the train for not having a passport, and not having the right documentation to get to Budapest to get a new one. Oh well, 3 more trains for him – at least he has a story.

We were in Budapest from 27 July to the 30th. What to expect from a recent communist country in the east? How about Burger King and lots of them! No idea why. No clue at all. From Trieste to Budapest one would assume that they would be quite opposite of each other. Budapest was on the verge of a Louis Vuitton take over, but was still quite nice. Good things had moved into the country, but the whole place felt, well, just like a place, not really a destination. You knew things were happening, but it was hard to see where, why and for what reasons.

I feel that the biggest difference in Budapest compared with the rest of the places we visited was that we didn’t know any locals. We rented a small flat for the nights we were there and that could have been our downfall because if we were in a hostel, then we might have met some other travelers. Dan joined us in Hungary and we sourced a few things to do around town such as visiting the oldest coffee house (1898) and the public baths in town were fantastic and possibly the highlight of Budapest. Eleven different pools, indoor and outdoor with varying temperatures, all with a large amount of minerals and other earth goodies in them. We felt completely relieved of stress, soreness and travel fatigue.

Again, like in Slovenia, kebabs were nearly on every corner, next to all the Burger Kings. Falafel became my go to food there, and unfortunately on this trip there was no goulash to be had. The architecture is really astounding –Parliament house, castles, a citadel and lovely bridges over the Danube River. The fast moving, muddy artery divides Buda from Pest and gives the city a sort of focal point and connection. Easily, we could have taken a boat to Vienna or Bratislava and enjoyed the Austrian/Slovakian mountains – a mere 5 hours away.

At the end of the week we took a quick Easyjet flight to Paris. Oh, Paris. That is a story for another time.

Against Mediocrity

2009-08-07T13:08:00.004-05:00

For anyone who has ever questioned their existence. Mediocrity is the epitome of what it means to be unhappy, to willingly not like what it is you are doing, where you live, where your life is headed.

"All good is hard. All evil is easy. Dying, losing, cheating, and mediocrity is easy. Stay away from easy." -Scott Alexander

Easy is the word of the day. Everything we have in this world has been made for our convenience. For gods sake, it is too easy sometimes, and for this easiness we give up our freedom, we give up our ability to chose for ourselves and act as a person who has choices. We give up our ability to be creative engineers of life who are excited by living, who are engaged with the world in a way that isn't just a glossy surface, following the newest diet craze, looking at celebrities in magazines to understand that they are actually people as well, but to engage the world, our lives, in a way that motivates us to change, to serve ourselves, to be happy and healthy individuals.

Too many times I have been met with people who are angry that they never have time to travel, they never have the money to travel, they can't leave this or that. There are certain life choices that we each make, and when you make those decisions that will effect your near and distant future there are consequences that come along with that. Fair enough, you have a house, a car, a job, 2 weeks of vacation that you plan to spend at your parents house, or, doing landscaping to your house; these are not bad things. These do not make you a bad person, or, normal. They just make you who you are. You have responsibilities and commitments and that is your chosen path. That is right for you that is not necessarily right for everyone, and most of all it is not right for me.

This is my chance to ask you to realize that I live a difference existence. I have made my choices and these are right for me. I have put my priorities in line and with that comes certain consequences for me. I don't own a house, and I don't plan to own one for awhile. I don't have a car and I don't need one. I plan my life around places where I don't need one. I don't have a steady job, unless you consider traveling and being a student. These are valid things to be doing. I am not married and I have no plan to be in the near future. All of these things give me one thing that the traditional route in life doesn't -- freedom and the ability to chose for myself where I want to be. I am not tied down financially, or emotionally. I have no need for a car, for a mortgage or a dog. I am quite happy with my roundabout way of living, with my ability to change my location in life on a whim. This does not make me a looser. This does not make me a slacker, or a bum or a misfit. This makes me, me. This makes me who I am. I am doing the things that I want to do. Seeing the places I want to see. Taking a broad view to life, checking out various places in the world and making a decision to be on the road, out and about or just gone.

I don't expect you all to understand. I don't want pity and I'm tired of hearing "how do you do it", "how can you afford to travel so much". I think I've explained that. I have no permenant commitments to one location or one person. I have no car and no insurance. These are things I am ok with. I live without them just fine, and without spending all that money on those things, I'm able to satisfy my need to travel--my need to study and explore and learn. I am not judging you for your decisions. I am merely making a statement to say that this is my path, this is my route in life and it is right for me. I know it is, otherwise, I would be doing something else.

Hopefully, your path is right for you. Hopefully, we can each find out what we are meant to be, where we are meant to go and what we are meant to be doing. Whatever path you are on, make sure it is the one you want. Course correction is enevitable, but honestly, I feel so strongly that that is what directly factors into all of those mid-life crisis issues, male and female. Live now! There will never be a better time to break away from the status quo, to end mediocrity in your life and to become who you want, go where you want and do what you want.

Back at It

2009-07-12T22:22:00.002-05:00

I'm headed out again, in about a week starting in Venice. My first time to visit the lovely city and will then pop past Trieste, just about the end of Italy, and quite close to Slovenia and Croatia. My pal Rocco lives there, and we have some old times from Sydney to relive. From there my friend Matt and I will somehow make our way to Budapest, where we hope to live on the cheap, eating some of the lovely classics, sampling the (what we've heard) lovely Hungarian wine and just enjoying the eastern part of Europe. Then a cheap flight over to Paris for the last part of our little summer European quest for adventure and from there back to the US to regroup before heading back to start school.

I'm looking forward to sampling some amazing food, drink and people and will be sure to chronicle some of the antics and stories back on here when I return, unless Paris takes over my soul and, well then, you know.

Global Soul

2009-06-21T15:04:00.005-05:00

"I have been a queer mixture of the
East and West, out of place every-
where, at home nowhere...I cannot
be of the [West]. But in my own
country, also, sometimes, I have an
exile's feeling."

-Jawaharlal Nehru

This is who I am. This is me. I am this place and it is mine to have, to succumb to, lay down and curl up next to it.

I felt that way in Sydney. I felt that way in only, maybe, 2 or 3 places on this earth that I have so far visited, and those places seem to lay so far beyond the outside of reality for most people, so far from the "rest"of the world that it is hard for many people to imagine them, let alone talk to someone who never feels at home where he is meant to be, but feels isolated, alone and reclusive. Its those feelings that lead one to write more, but it is also those that feed my fire to leave, to move on and to experience places, people and those "exotic" locales that leave you wondering just where in the world is he. Its nice, and I like being a bit secretive about it, but I also realize that I should hold on to those places that make me feel truly like myself, where I don't feel like I have to be someone different just to fit in and where friends are not just friends but those people who honestly understand me, don't ask stupid questions (which is known to happen, despite the old adage that no questions are stupid, yes indeed, some are, honest) and who accept me for my misgivings, sins and pro-quos -- leaving me feeling normal, which is about all I can seem to ask for now.

These are the people I am at home with, and as much as I talk about home, think about home, describe home, it is the social aspects of home that make it for me, not necessarily where my things are at. Things can be moved, but social-isms of a place, of those friends and places can't be changed or corrected, only accepted and idealized.

I have a problem with idealization, but for the most part, I have been able to overcome that by attempting to be more realistic, although those two things do not go hand in hand, they are in fact the most opposite forces that I deal with daily. I am a romantic and I find daily happiness in those feelings, but also more alienation when I can't fully describe those thoughts to those around me. I long to have all of my friends in one place at one time, and I am increasingly less trustful, interested and happy about Facebook, digital friendships and the quarry of problems that come with those types of information sources.

So where do I feel at home now? On trains. On airplanes and those out of world locations that those means of transport tend to frequent. Airports and stations are the most freeing spots for me, where I can be who I am, or who I'm not -- and no one really considers the difference. I can blend in and fall through the cracks and I enjoy every moment of that.

Jet Lag

2009-06-16T12:10:00.000-05:00

"It is necessary not to be "myself", still ess to be "ourselves".
The city gives one the feeling of being at home.
We must take the feeling of being at home into exile.
We must be rooted in the absence of a place."
-Simone Weil

That is from the beginning of the first chapter, and it just resonates with me so easily, so completely. The whole book deals with what this notion of home is, what makes a places home when so many places are comfortable, so many transient spaces are so nice. For example, when your traveling alone, you have no history, no background, you can be completely yourself, and no one knows, cares, or notices if your "different" or "not completely who they thought you were". I enjoy that, and I feel most like myself when I'm walking around a city by myself, just doing nothing, sitting, watching, drinking, anything really. I don't have to answer to anyone, to anything and I have no plans or agenda. Thats what it was like when I was in Christchurch last month and I long for that to happen again, for me to be able to just leave things for awhile again. At the time, I hate not having a plan, and it is always nice to have a friend around to do some things with, but its also those inbetween moments of waiting, sitting in LAX waiting for a flight that inspire me to keep going and make me more aware of who I am as a person, as a traveler or as a transient.

"Philosophy is really homesickness: the wish to be everywhere at home".
-Friedrich Nietzsche

Its not only true, but also the hardest part about traveling, living abroad or just going on a short trip. You experience these places and some, not all, are just you. They fit, they click or your current experiences in life coinscide with the place your at at just the right moment.

"Yet in the modern world, which I take to be an International Empire, the sense of home is not just divided, but scattered across the planet, and in the absence of any center at all, people find themselves at sea. Our ads sing of Planet Reebok and Planet Hollywood -- even my monthly telephone bill in Japan speaks of "one World One Company" -- yet none of us necessarily feels united on a deeper level."

"A person like me can't really call himself and exile (who traditionally looked back to a home now lost), or an expatriate (who's generally posted abroad for a living); I'm not really a nomad (who's patterns are guided by the seasons and tradition); and I've never been subject to the refugee's violent disruptions: the Global Soul is best characterized by teh fact of falling between all categories."

"And what complicates the confusions of the Global Soul is that, as fast as we are moving around the world, the world is moving around us; it is not just the individual but the globe with which we're interacting that seems to be in constant flux. So even the man who never leaves home may feel that home is leaving him, as parents, children, lovers scatter around the map, taking pieces of him wherever they go. More and more of us may find ourselves in the emotional or metaphysical equivalent of that state we know from railway stations, when we're sitting in a carriage waiting to pull out and can't tell, often, whether we're moving forwards, or the train next to ours is pulling back."

As much as I love train trips, I especially enjoy the anonymity that it gives you. This is also true for plane trips, and sitting in airports. I could be anyone, from anywhere, going to a million different places around the globe.

"The man who finds his homeland sweet is still a tender beginner; he to whom every soil is as his native one is already strong; but he is perfect to whom the entire world is as a foreign land."

"And so, half-inadvertently, not knowing whether I was facing east or west, not knowing whether it was night or day, I slipped into that peculiar state of mind -- or not mind -- that belongs to the no-time, no-place of the airport, that out-of-body state in which one's not quite there, but certainly not elsewhere. My words didn't quite connect, and the world came to me through panes of soundproof glass. I felt myself in a state of suspended animation, five miles above the seas -- sleepy, light-headed, unsure of how much pressure to put on things. I had entered the stateless state of jet lag. "

I often feel as if i'm in a perpetual state of jet lag, whereas, I don't necessarily feel completely involved in the world around me, disconnected from reality, from necessity, from what is happening. I could be wondering disconnected from all of this, constantly, and not realize what has happened until one day, I'll sit down and things will suddenly come together, my mind, body and thought are completely together for that one, brief, quick and random moment, in the most unanticipated spot.

2009-06-03T16:04:00.001-05:00

Read this

http://frugaltraveler.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/03/making-vacation-last-for-months/?apage=3#comments

And more importantly, read the 3 pages of comments. It is so interesting to see how
this topic really got a great conversation going with so many people taking "offense".

2009-05-28T23:34:00.002-05:00

What is it that leaves me hanging each and every time? What is it that when I think of you, your memory fades quickly from my mind? Is it my own fault? Is it because secretly, you are the one that I am searching for and, perhaps, its not quite time for me to find you. I feel incredible and it fades with that thought, with the synapse. You will continue to elude me, make me feel for you and ache with pain each time I feel I have you and you escape. Its not common for this to happen. How do you do it? How do you ungrasp my thought - and move it from place to place, leaving me in the trail, only to carry on, not knowing if it is really you i'm searching for or if it is just the lost memory of last time.

Its true, the 80's are back.

2009-05-25T12:26:00.003-05:00

Impressions are misleading. Old adage, but useful sometimes.

Sitting here, rainy day, thinking forward and about some film's, past events, experiences and more. Thinking that, often we have thoughts about our past that seem to haunt us, or, cause us to think about regrets oftentimes leading us into some sort of depressive mindset. These types of experiences are the ones that have guided us? The ones that have changed us into what it is that we are? No, that is too simple, and easy and realistic. Most of those times have given us a clue as to what it is that we seek at a deeper level.

I need to be on a team. I need a group of people to work with towards a common goal. I need to be necessary for this group to function and I need to be appreciated. These have not been met in my past jobs, and its necessary for me to find a job, vocation or hobby like this in order to fulfill some sort of void in my life. I long for those sort of moments where you can look back and say, here is what I have done and it has led to this. I can only sight examples from t.v. and movies. 1. Lost -- a group of people working towards a common goal (although that goal is now a bit muffled and has changed, in the beginning, it was different). 2. Breakfast club -- a group brought together from different backgrounds who find that they have commonalities in the end. This is a bit "idealistic" but still, it supplies an import point of what it is I'm trying to describe. 3. Sometimes, I get this feeling from the Harry Potter movies and books. A group of people who rely on each other to get to a certain point, to defeat something, to create something or just grow closer.

I don' t want to live in a commune, this is not the point. The point is that I'm keen to work on a movie, a t.v. show, a house a project of a creative type where I can see the end, I know what I have to do, and I know that the people I work with all rely on me as I rely on them. How can I find this? I have a few idea: journalist, entertainment industry of some sort, magazine writer or even being a tour guide. I don't have any better thoughts on this, but they are all things that I've dabbled in, and have always been the times when I feel the best about what I'm doing, about what I have accomplished and the best about myself. I need to find this again, and I need to and will be proactive about it.

2009-04-13T02:27:00.002-05:00

California is not what it was
Rome too is not what it was
No more imperial cities
No more crazy societies
Where is one to go?
Berlin Vancouver Samarkand?

-Jean Baudrillard

Southern Fall

2009-04-05T04:40:00.003-05:00

Fall has more or less come to Sydney -- which is a welcome site in my book. The days are getting shorter, the nights cooler and a bit wetter. I always welcome fall and the change that it brings, but it is always hard to adjust to it happening in the opposite time that it does in the north. It is also equally as interesting to contrast it with the Easter season -- since normally everyone talks about it as a time for things to come back to life, to turn green and bring summer in. In Australia it is a time of change in the other direction -- trees are shedding leave and bark, animals are starting to forage for the winter, and the bugs are slowly going. The only similarity that I notice is that things tend to stay green for awhile (in Sydney at least) as more rain comes in the winter. Its a time to sit outside eating under heat lamps, take chilly walks along cold sand on the beach and usher in a nice evening with some wine or a nice coffee, all of which are easily found in Sydney. Most people are not fans of the winter here, but for me, it echoes in a season of work and writing, change and thought.

Floating Cities

2009-01-29T17:28:00.002-06:00

I am completely in love with boats, and last night was a big night for me. I lusted over not just one, but two lovely ships in Sydney Harbour. One, the La Masquerade out of London, is a private yacht that creates such a sense of lust and admiration that it might as well be a woman. The other the Diamond Princess is a massive piece of engineering, delicately moving its way out of the dock and out to open ocean, it so quietly that if you were not watching it, you would have no idea it was moving. A piece of elegant travel from the past -- I tend to over-romanticize ocean travel, its beauty and class. It has an air of sophstication about it -- and I long to travel by ocean liner to far off lands.

Sailing Along

2009-01-16T04:46:00.003-06:00

It's like Sydney, minus the atmosphere. Auckland has it all, but still lacks the insight into a good night out that Sydney seems to excel at. I was there for all in all about 4 nights, but still found the city to be deserted by around 7pm -- but the coffee options in Auckland bring it back to life in the a.m.

The mountains, hills and lovely views somewhat redeems this city of sails, of lights and water. I found Auckland to be very calm, peaceful and uneventful. It was a refreshing time of thought and ferry rides to even less interesting places. Maybe I'm being a bit down on the place, but you don't go to New Zealand to go to a city - you go to NZ for the natural beauty of the country, and on this particular trip, I was, for the most part, unable to achieve that. Apart from 1.) hiking a volcano and 2.) taking a really nice trip to an open conversation island, Auckland was rather boring. Sorry Auckland, I'm sure you have redeeming qualities (Such as a plethora of great Japanese food) but when compared with your natural beauty, your lovely sites on the south island, it just feel a bit short.

Terminal Space

2008-12-29T04:29:00.003-06:00

Sydney airport is a flurry of motion this early morning as I sit and wait on mum and sis to arrive. Thirty minutes late, and I realize how much I miss the energy the airport provides; travel provides. Awaiting travel and expectations of loved ones, mixed with the smell of coffee, smoke from the outside designated area and jet fuel, a brilliant combination of sensory overload.
The arrivals board reads like a good travel-logue or passport -- Tokyo, Abu Dhabi, San Francisco, Jarkata, etc. etc. So exotic and intoxicating are the words, I feel overwhelmed and excellent.

Summertime

2008-12-18T23:00:00.002-06:00

Sex, wine and the baths may ruin our bodies, but they make life worth living.
- Ancient Roman gravestone.

As the planes continue to land overhead, the breeze picks up from the south and the coolness of the evening sets in. You can smell the eucalyptus, frangi panni and the slight smell of jet fuel drift in from the coast. The cafes fill up of an evening, and the sunglasses remain on, since the sun isn't setting until about 8.30 -- these longs days of warm air, sun and dining al fesco are part of what makes this place intoxicating during these glorious days of summer.

Sydney absolutetly basks in its glory this time of year. Sydney summer is about enthuisaism, taking a break, joining friends on trips and taking time to do the things you might have been putting off all year. Outdoor cinemas pop up around the city, showing everything from old classics like Casablanca to the newest relesase -- complete with a chic bar and delightful seafood to accompany your evening. One of the best parts about summer in the south, especially in Sydney, is the picnics on the weekends. All you have to do it take a walk around any of the major parks in town, and some of the smaller ones, and you will find people lazing about the day, reading the newpaper, enjoying good drink and nibbles -- Olympic Park is especially busy this time of year, given its great location, abundant green grass, miles of dedicated bike trails and the feeling of not being in a city. Once you enter the park, you get a sense of nature as it should be in the summer. Birds chirping around you, the breeze bending the gum trees, and the smells of grass and bar-b-que's floating across the lawn.

As I was contemplating the quote at the beginning of this post, I thought about these things -- and how it gives a good impression of Sydney in the summer sun. Sex wine and baths are part of it all, although, not necessarily in the Roman way. Lets discuss:

Sex: Sydney is a very sexy city. The lights at night intice you into its lovely lanes, calling to you to enter the city and explore its streets and crevices. Sydney eschews sex -- it practically drips from the tops of the skyscrapers down into the street. The warm nights give everyone a sense of promise that seems to flow with you as you walk through the streets from pub to pub, club to club. We embrace it -- and it in turn, embraces us.

Wine: Australia is a major player in the wine industry, and it flows here like water from the taps. The availability of reasonably priced, great quality Australian wine is abundant. I love it and I fully embrace this aspect of the Austrlian culture. Different from America, we are able to embrace wine in the middle of the day. Feeling tipsy or even drunk by early afternoon feels so nice -- like a secret that you don't want to share -- the afternoon buzz is one of those summer activities that seems to be justified by the heat, the sun and the social nature of the city itself.

Baths: A stretch here -- baths always remind me of the rock pools at many of the beaches. These are pools that have been carved into the stone right on the coast, where the waves break over the side and add to the natural feeling of your swim. The beach is the Australian temple -- and the sun is its god. To embrace the beach is to embrace life here -- the coastal activities are alive and well throughout the year, but the numbers of people steadily grow throught the summer, as more people are off work, and more students are out of school. To live at the beach only means you don't have to travel far for your summer tan. Most of all, the three things: sex, wine, baths -- all help to explain what Sydney is about in the summer. It helps to explain how we feel and embrace this time of year. It is so easy to fall into the bohemian flow of sex wine and beach -- and so difficult to escape it. But Sydney in itself is an escape -- from the mundane-ness of life, from the boring points of the winter, from the soul crushing office -- Sydney will take you in, embrace your body and carry you through the summer with love and affection.
Welcome to the Southern Hemisphere.

Green Grandparents

2008-12-09T06:28:00.004-06:00

I was riding my bike around today, and was considering what to write about my grandparents for their 4oth anniversary. I realized, that they have been quite influential in my environmental education -- my appreciation of nature and the abundance it offers us. Since I was young, they have, in an indirect manner, taught me about conservation, living within our natural world and what it means to be a steward of the earth. They might now know this, or they might not completely understand what I'm talking about, but I am very grateful to them for their ability to not only be supportive, interesting, and active, but also grandparents that are completely green. From their use of land to their chopping of dead trees to use for winter heat, they are unusually green without knowing it. Its great. They are really great people, and I"m forever grateful for their influence on me and my life.

-------------------

On a completely different note, I've been lead lately to write about travel again, and feel that understanding your surroundings is a large part of knowing where your at -- of attaining knowledge of your place on this planet. I've been trying to be more observant of my surrounding lately and have discovered a vast array of newness to an area of town that I've been in for quite some time. Summer is here, and the days are long and warm. People are dining outside, having late evening coffee and walking the beach during the heat of the evening and afternoon. I find this lifestyle very encouraging and exhilarating. There was a cruise ship in port the other evening, and as I walked around the quay, the energy of these people from around the world could be visibly seen and felt. It was a very balmy late afternoon, locals were headed home from work, but the idle travelers were abundant -- having afternoon coffee, ice cream and wine -- drifting from place to place, taking pictures, and leaving the opera house steps looks like stadium seating. It was invigorating to notice, and encouraging to be a part of. We are all just looking for the same peace of mind -- leaving our homes for a place that is foreign and new, not knowing, really, what we will find, but realize why we are away when have moment of clarity, as I did that evening, knowing exactly why it is that we are away, but not being able to explain it clearly. Sydney is strange like that. People knowing that this place is just, one of the most amazing places -- sometimes though, it takes the most mundane things to make one realize it. Wherever it is we are in the world, I find it is the small point of life, of our normal day, that make it worth the effort, worth the time to be there that make it tolerable. Its the day to day activities that we miss, not the big events. The friends that make us feel whole, the places that make us feel comfortable and the things that make us feel connected are terribly necessary in an ever increasingly busy world. The moments of clarity might be far a few between, but when they happen, embrace them, prolong them and make note of that feeling of exuberance and energy that embraces your whole being -- it is then that we are able to truly be ourselves.

2008-11-23T01:30:00.001-06:00

It's time.

2008-11-04T03:57:00.001-06:00

This is a re-post from last March, but given the day of the year it happens to be, I thought it might be appropriate to post again. I hope that Tuesday is a day of change. I truly do.

I'm not even for sure how to begin such a thought, except to say that it made me angry, and sad at the same time. I watched this film called Bobby tonight, about the assissination of Bobby Kennedy in 1968 in Los Angeles, as he was about to run for president. The movie made its way into my soul, in some way that a movie hasn't in a long time. Maybe its the ways in which the political and social problems of the time reflect our own current issues at home and abroad -- or maybe it was trying to understand why someone would kill such a person. A man who attempted to bring the country together as some form of community -- to act true, whole, and just in the face of an American society that was tired, depressed and angry. He makes me understand the power of words, the power of people to work for change, to imagine that things can be better than what they are. He, this man from the past, restores my faith in America, and in some manner, makes me understand that I am, at least sometimes, ok with my nationality, my heritage. Sitting in a theatre with my friend M, from the U.S. and the rest Australians, we couldn't help but wonder what sort of feeling they left with -- not being able to fully understand the position we are in as Americans abroad, looking back home with often feelings of disdane and disgust, but also looking back home thinking that we can actually make a difference -- that we can change our society.

I don't know if we can, but I have to say that I am angry that we, as the "youth" of America and the world did not stand up for what we felt was and is wrong more. That we didn't fall behind mass protests, that we didn't unite ourselves despite our differences to show the government that we don't approve of things, that we don't understand why all this destruction and death is happening, and that unless they give us better reasons, truthful answers, then we will continue to oppose. It is not only our lives that are being affected, but those of people around the world. It is so easy to just think of ourselves, but as RFK reminded me tonight, that is where the trouble comes. That is what our problem is. We are transfixed on personal gain, goals, and wealth and our focus has turned from our neighbour to our bank account, our myspace page, our email and our t.v. shows. Our lives are running out of control with options. We've lost sight of the bigger picture, the overall scheme of things -- and our problems form within around fueling our problems throughout.

I don't know how to change these things. I don't have an answers or even clear ideas, but I do know that there are people who care and listen and understand -- who want the same changes now that Americans wanted in 1968. That our parents and grandparents are an important part in this fight, not only because they know the effects such actions abroad have on the home front, but because they have the money, the influence and mroeso, the will to help make something happen. These are decisive years my friends, and it is going to set a tone for many to come. We need to rally ourselves, band together as brothers and sister, and respect, understand and fight for something more that capitalist ideals, but those ideals that we hold closest to us as a society. Those basic needs like food, shelter, taking care of our own and learning how to be citizens of the not just the U.S. but the world in general. Our future will depend on us, now. No one is going to make us do it, no one is betting that we will, no one is going to hold our hand and tell us exactly what to do. We have to make this up as we go -- write our own history, find our own truths, and make our country and our world a place where people can afford to live -- where people are proud to live -- and where people are happy to befriend and visit. This place we call home is changing, and we can only hope it is for the better.

2008-10-26T05:45:00.000-05:00

2008-10-26T05:36:00.001-05:00

Days like this, are key to successful thinking.

Forward thinking.

2008-09-14T05:00:00.003-05:00

Well look, as for careers go, I suppose we all see or find something that seems to make us think we could do it forever. For some reason this doesn't seem like it should be things like librarian or receptionist. For me, it is somehow following the career of Anthony Bourdain, specifically on his show No Reservations on the Travel Channel. What he is able to do is successfully combine all of my interests into something that, somehow, comes out as a terribly honest and amazingly interesting show. He is part anthropologists, part traveler, and part ass hole, which seems to just fit my personae -- I long to be able to do what he does and make a living from it, and its that which I aspire to. A professional traveler is something that so many people think about doing, want to do, or attempt at some point in time, but that few are able to fully achieve, which is exactly what Anthony Bourdain has been able to do, and what I strive to achieve. My independence in life has led me to this point I feel. I'm comfortable on my own, and have created a network of great and amazing people around the globe, all of which I try to keep in some form of contact with. There are so many of us out there -- nomads of the urban landscape who long to escape to the non-urban parts of this world, the few that are left, to see and experience the "true" parts. This notion of travel, of experience is difficult to talk about without being crass, or infiltrated with passe, cliche and boring traveler talk. Its terrifying to think about tourists. It is more terrifying for me to be classified as one -- although there are some circumstances where one can't help it. To become a person who can be at home where he is; to be able to express the spirit of a place in words that are clear and smooth; to be a person of character, and most of all to enjoy the things this life gives us is all I can hope to achieve. It's clear that it will be difficult, but honestly, what good things shouldn't be. Its all I can say. Let's feel something again.

Olympics

2008-08-16T23:58:00.002-05:00

Tonight, like many people around the globe, I too witnessed history. To repeat what ever news agency in the world is now reporting, he did win the 8 gold medals he set out to win, beating not only the odds, but any other Olympian ever. The Olympics are interesting. Some people asked me if they make me feel lazy, or that I've "passed my prime" -- I don't think so. Lazy, perhaps slightly. If anything, I have a new found interest in a couple of sports (rowing and cycling) and plan to invest some time investigating those now.

I guess to be cheesy about it all, it just shows you what dedication and striving can do for a person. How you can change the world in some way, by giving all of yourself to a particular thing, be it sports, or something else. These people are such great representatives of not only each country, but of people in general. People who are working in teams, and as single athletes, showing that the mind has so much power. I find it so invigorating to watch these games -- any sport -- and I really get such a huge sense of pride swelling inside me. For the first time in awhile, being an American seems to be pretty damn good -- I feel patriotic and I want my fellow countrymen and women to succeed. Its strange how you can look at one part of this place we live and absolutely despise it -- and then watch these Olympic games and just fall head over heals for our beautiful country. I guess what I'm trying to express is that the Olympics brings out the best in me for some reason -- it makes me competitive and long to feel the energy from a crowd, cheering me on. I watched tonight as a 38 year old woman from Romania came in first in the marathon -- so much ahead of the rest of the runners. I felt so much joy for her! The feeling of being the first to enter that amazing stadium -- the crowd cheering like thunder -- and the intense emotion filling her up, knowing that she just completed the most important event in her life, and that that event will encourage and influence others in her home country. Its amazing to watch these people do things that you just don't think should be possible -- and yet, you know they are possible.

I am proud of my American background. I might not always profess it, or agree with everything that is happening, but because of some amazing athletes, my sense of happiness and joy about my country has returned.

Vanishing

2008-07-26T13:27:00.001-05:00

This was an editorial from the Saturday London Times. I just thought it was a nice article for some reason. Maybe because I like escaping. It was written by Janice Turner. Thanks to her.

Nobody can simply vanish in this day and age,” said the internet surfer who happened upon the picture of Anne and John Darwin grinning in a Panama property office. Certainly would-be identity fraudsters must now think beyond the propagation of a Rowan Williams-alike beard. The techno-challenged middle-aged, frowning over their sat-nav instruction booklets, might as well just face their debtors. Only someone over 40 would have posed so blithely: the Darwins' sons assumed at first that the picture was a Photoshop fake, an online gag. The corollary to “how could our parents be so wicked..?” must surely have been “...or so dumb?”

Phone messages, an erotic e-mail trail, a colour-coded spreadsheet all but labelled “John and Anne's dastardly secret masterplan”. The Bourne Trilogy has clearly taught these people nothing.

But the canoe case does reveal that you can no longer shed your life by leaving your shoes at the shore. The imagination wilts to learn what it might actually entail: mastery of international banking protocol, eternal mindfulness of CCTV cameras, buying an unflattering hat... It might be less of a faff to remain in one's tiresome old existence.

Doesn't everyone dream of leaving? Buying a ticket to the farthest station, boarding a ferry heedless of the final destination, driving on and on until dawn. In his novel The Gum Thief, Douglas Coupland submits that this fantasy begins at the age of 34, when life no longer feels light and free, fertile with possibilities, but overladen, decided, eternally nailed down.

There are far worse fates than being a Co Durham prison warder, living in a seaside villa with expansive views of the chemical plant. But some are incapable of contentment. Aspiration, that engine of economic progress, can be a self-destructive trait. I don't excuse him, but I think that I understand.

What is pathetic is how Darwin's assumed identity - at least until he began drawing up blueprints for Panamanian haciendas with room for two maids - was as dreary as his former self. As “John Jones” he faked a limp, mooched about the library and wrote letters to the council grumbling about parking.

By contrast Radovan Karadizic's transformation was magnificent: the epic assumed name, Dragan Dabic, the Gandalfian beard and nutball topknot. How much of a contrivance was his new persona as homoeopath, and New Age saint? Does he really believe, as he wrote in a health magazine, that the number 11 has “extrasensory powers”? It certainly confirms my life-long suspicion that hippies are evil. Perhaps genocidal warlord doesn't provide a good work-life balance and he wanted to retrain all along, like those scary corporate lawyer ladies, who post-kids, pitch up practising reiki.

About 210,000 people disappear in Britain every year. Most are young men - under 30, drug-addicted, mentally ill - but the next biggest group is middle-aged men. Looking at a missing persons website, you scan endless Keiths and Raymonds, Ians and Malcolms. Grey or balding heads, affable, married, 50-something faces with Sunday barbecue smiles. Just gone, no trace, “last seen”. Most will have fallen into financial mires, lost their jobs or - like Darwin - over-extended until the thread of solvency snaps and, lacking the emotional wherewithal to seek solace and scared of losing face, they climb into their cars with two plans in mind - to drive away or feed a hosepipe into the exhaust.

Women dream of leaving too, but seldom go. The matrix of love and dependency, the fear that without us the domestic world would implode keeps us teeth gritted, resentful, at home. Anne Tyler's novel The Ladder of Years was compelling for having a heroine who during a family holiday - what else! - keeps walking down the beach into a low-paid job; a modest life, but one in which she is not battered by others' constant, mercurial demands, and can restore her lost self.

A friend enduring a nasty divorce, would fantasise about walking out: the flat she would buy, the colour schemes and furnishings, uncluttered space. Calm. She never left but this vision outside the chaos and falling masonry sustained her as she took a ball and chain to her marriage.

It seems that Anne Darwin had more to gain from the scam than her husband: besides the money, a renegotiation of her relationship. From being a raven-haired beauty queen when she met him, she had faded into cheated-on victim, patronised and put-down. The plot returned her power, from drudge to active partner. Her husband needed her more “dead” than alive. She held his secret. The subterfuge made her feel sexual, desired: she e-mails him “in the nudie”. A dead marriage turned into an erotic pact, more binding than maternal ties.

Court reporters have remarked that as John shrank in the dock, Anne grew stronger. When six years is up, I bet that she is the one better fixed to invent, finally, that longed-for new life.

Even when his bicycle is stolen, David Cameron grows in political stature. That he was shopping in Tesco Metro, had popped in on his way home for a bit of salad for tea, was a victim of street crime, all heighten his everyman appeal, casting him as a fellow citizen and modern husband.

It is not Gordon Brown's fault that for the past decade bigger concerns have kept him from perusing the supermarket aisles. Just as it is not surprising that a man who rides in official cars talks - as Cameron crowed - of barrels of oil, not litres of unleaded. But it counts against Gordon nonetheless, allowing an Etonian married to an heiress to play the commoner card.

Yet as a fellow cyclist, I'm aghast that Dave fastened his bike to a 2ft-high bollard, allowing the pesky hoodies to lift it clean off and ride away. Schoolboy error! Lamppost or railing at least. Really, can we trust this man with our nation's defence?

2008-07-15T23:34:00.003-05:00

I never really know exactly what to write anymore. Today, a very good friend called me nomadic. Sure. I'll go with that. But today I started thinking about that word a bit more, and how it has come to define me in a way. I'm not nomadic in the sense that I wonder around the world following my food sources or the seasons, but in some ways, I am nomadic to where chance and my thoughts take me. It is the look in someones eye at the shop that reminds me of a place I love in Sydney, or maybe it is a smell here in the hot of summer that makes me think of Mozambique. Or maybe it is that I consume everything there is to see, read, watch and listen to about adventure. About taking a chance and a risk about being somewhere else other than where you at. There is the saying of "be where your at", but in my book it has become, go where your not. A mountain? Or perhaps a city sitting in the middle of it and having coffee with new and old friends. Its not about taking a chance for me -- because I know I will like it. It is making choices that I fear, that I hate doing for fear of seeing something better I could have chosen. My new excitment in life is to make choices and just course correct along the way.

Am I not comfortable where I am? Or is change just a force of the world that drives me? This mountain feels lonely.

I think in my past life I might have been an antelope. Yes, laugh, but I have an affinity for trees, as well as open savannah or field. And i've been known to jump and leap at times during a frisbee game. I suppose that means I have moved up in this circular life struggle -- sometime I think the antelope of my past had it better. He had less choice and more freedom.

Someone wise told me that I will be fine. That, as time goes on, more and more people will find that mountain, and make it to the top.

p.s.

2008-06-20T22:53:00.002-05:00

i always fall in love at the most un-opportune times , this is normally about once a day.

i have to stop making eye contact.

2008-06-20T22:49:00.002-05:00

i know your there,
you,
you,
the one that i will continue to search
for
the only one that will have anything to do with me.
the
one that will.

Time to Go

2008-06-03T16:18:00.003-05:00

Nothing makes me feel more like myself that doing exactly what I want, when I want to do it. This might a bit obvious, or conceited, but true. Deal. I'm quite happy to be leaving my current job where one always get the feeling that you are being followed, watched and if you don't do certain things or do certain things then you will be docked a level in life. This, as one soon discovers, sucks the life out of most anyone. And people wonder why airline employees are so angry.

So look, here I go again, taking a chance and going someplace new. Leaving behind things that are normal and a routine in order to find something better to do with my time. At this point, that would be almost anything. I now know that Phoenix is not a place I would like to live for an extended period of time. Thanks to the Gods for sending me here, but I'm still not for sure what I was being punished for. I'm sure that day will come.

2008-01-22T19:17:00.000-06:00

Looking for a bigger picture?

Most of us seem to be.

Direction

2007-12-26T20:56:00.000-06:00

There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.

-Douglas Adams

So strange. People are so strange. For some of you, I have been working at the airport for awhile. It is driving me mad I think. People are so strange. I'm really indifference at times when dealing with people who can't really understand why things happen. I suppose though, that all of us have at one point or another wondered why something happens to them -- but then for some reason I tend to find a meaning or a purpose in getting delayed on my trip, meeting a certain person on a bus or waiting in line, and finding that magazine article that seems to give you direction for the next week in your life. At least that has been my experience at the airport.

I never really thought I would work for an airline, and I hope to not be for much longer. My initial thoughts were that it would allow me to enjoy one of the things I like most in this world, a bit easier, which is traveling. Instead, it has taken one of the things that defines me as a person and has belittled it, morphed it and made it somehow less romantic that I tended to make it before. Traveling to me is what I am here for. To be anywhere but where I am at. My friend B always has this quote "Be where your at" but for me, that is one of the most difficult things to accept. I keep moving around -- changing the pace of my life and the surroundings I am in. To me, it is the only real way to live -- understand and learn about not only myself, but this place and that.

There are certain places where I have felt really at home though. Sydney was one of them, and Adelaide another. I also feel really comfortable in a few U.S. cities like Portland and San Diego, but for some reason they just never really feel new, real or unique. Places are a mystery and living in one too long just does me in -- especially one that is tiring in its attitude towards the world (a perfect example of this is my current city, Phoenix, a deathtrap for those of upward mobility and world mobility). I long for some time in Paris, Singapore, Cape Town and maybe even London. I drool over living on a boat, sailing constantly around the world and wondering the shores, all the while keeping a notebook of my favourite spots, haunts and inspirational places. I make fanciful plans to travel to Iceland, Norway and Dubai (only one has came through so far) and long for the days when I can lounge my way around the equator.

A change in direction is in the works, drifting through my head and my surroundings. Lately, horiscopes have mentioned things like "a change of pace is coming" or "look out for a new career move" and even "your life is going to take a new direction". I keep waiting on these to come round, and yet, I ponder what those changes will bring in my life in way of new friends, places and ideas. I feel this year will be one of total discovery and challenge, as well as deep humility and change.

this is it.

2007-11-24T01:19:00.000-06:00

aujourd'hui j'ai éprouvé quelque chose qui dans l'espoir de quelques jours i de comprendre.

j'espère que je pourrai vous rendre visite dans un proche avenir et nous pouvons penser de nouveau au jour que nous avons dépensé la marche au sujet de la ville, écouter chaque autres français et anglais terribles et penser à la façon dont glorieux il devrait fixer et observer la lune et tenons le premier rôle le mouvement après pendant que l'air de nuit refroidissait nos corps chauds.

meine andere Hälfte.

2007-11-04T00:01:00.000-05:00

I used to think that time was meant to be spent as one sees fit, my time, my energy. It takes a lot of thinking – of self knowing to understand what it is that motivates a person to excuse yourself and understand that the time that is allotted to each of us is not only ours to spend how we wish, but also for us to share. Maybe it is nice to see films, read books and listen to the way things might or should be, but only on a surface level are things ever as clear as they actually are. I like to think about my personal ideas and my plans during the weekends, when I have a chance to catch up; to think clearly and not have to worry about being at work. I understand that the ways in which I grew up have come around to affect the ways in which I live. The Midwest has some strange way of turning what you used to think was terribly boring and mundane into what is now, maybe, seen as being exactly what it is that you will look for in 10 or 15 years. I see myself having a problem with this. On the one side, I will long ever so hard for routine, seasons, and the passing of time using my knowledge to understand where I’m at in the world and what brought me here. And then the other side is where I want to be gone from any place I am at, for want of a better place, or possibly, just new scenery. Routine is boring and life should move at a pace of leisure, expanding yourself in various locations, pulling from all corners of the globe, and finally meeting somewhere in the middle. I think I must have been separated at birth from another person sitting out there, thinking and writing the same things as I write; thinking the same things as I think and longing for the same things I long for. Maybe that is what we find in a mate. I feel it goes deeper than that, as if in a past life I met myself in this life. I understand things to be easier than they should be. I am in a constant state of déjà vu. I do believe I met an earlier version of myself the other evening while waiting for the bus. I was about 63 years old and had traveled the world, seen the sights and understood where that put me. I understood where my experiences had brought me, and why that was important to not only remember, but to talk about. How strange that on one night, I would get stuck at just the exact location that my earlier self was sitting, waiting for nothing in particular, just living. I think I will be happy as I get older. I think I will understand why and how.

buona sera voi.

2007-11-03T23:41:00.000-05:00

“So far”.

such a thing so as to feel yourself become something different. transcending your earthly plane into a world of feeling and warmth. feeling your body move as you brethe.
you don't hear yourself, heart beating and all. i don't move in a world of men but live in a world of human connections and love. where if you try, if you honestly attempt to join with reality, you can make it to the top, to the apex of human emotion and matter. it hurts in a way that makes you crave for more, for that feeling ever single day of your life. and evey time you can't reach it, it is just out of your reach, you understand that maybe you just need to see your breathe on the cold windown and realize that we are alive, living, breathing and longing for love and warmth.

This next part is from Thoreau. Sometimes, it helps me to think about it. Sometimes, it just confuses me.

“…shams and delusions are esteemed for soundest truths, while reality is fabulous. If men would steadily observe realities only, and not allow themselves to be deluded, life, to compare it with such things as we know, would be like a fairy tale and the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments…children who play life, discern its true law and relations more clearly than men, who fail to live it worthily, but who think that they are wiser by experience, that is, by failure…”

Maybe this will help with what I was trying to explain to you the other night.

I have always had a bit of a problem connecting with reality. I am never too sure of how to explain it in terms that are rational, but I have several writings from when I’ve felt that disconnectedness the most that, well, don’t exactly make the most sense—but in a way make all the sense in the world. I don’t really know what triggers this intense feeling of needing to get away, to connect somehow with what is happening—what I’m experiencing or what others are experiencing. I think that escaping is always my answer to my issues and for a while I thought that was not a good way to deal, but as I’ve seen, it is one of the only ways I can re-connect myself with something that is real, something that is tangible. I might just need to take a walk or a hike or ride my bike or drive across town—sometimes I might need to go further from home, someplace new, maybe I need to take a journey to prove to myself that I can do it—that I’m in control of me—of my actions and my thoughts—proving something to yourself is sometimes the most difficult thing in the world. Especially when you have to prove something like reality or something like self-determination.

A little poem called “Embrace”.

it is just at the beginning
that we realize that it might
be the end.

at least we can come to the
realization that what we are
is not what we understand
ourselves to be
but always something greater
always something beyond
what it is that we see.

Another poem, called “Moment”.

understand that we have so much ahead of us,
so incredibly much and so little behind us,
so very, very little.

Entitled “I’ve lost my mind”.

When I consider Thy heavens, the work of Thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which Thou hast ordained;
What is Man, that Thou art mindful of him? and the son of Man, that Thou visitest him?
For Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honor.
Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of Thy hands; Thou hast put all things under his feet:
All sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field;
The fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea, and whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas. [Psalm 8]

it seems that it is hard to deny that man is a most unusual species of being. many others are better adapted to their environment, faster, stronger, etc. what is it then that separates us from all others? some suggest that our most extraordinary characteristic is our capacity to conceptualize the world and to communicate those conceptions symbolically.

i think that it is the idea that we have no understanding of what we are. at the best level, we can attempt to explain things, but when you get down to it, we have no clue what is happening. we are so complex. we are so unique.

i don't know what to think anymore. it's amazing.

Just something.

love, ever unsatisfied, lives always in the
moment that is about to come.

Paris à la lune

2007-11-03T23:28:00.000-05:00

I just finished Paris to the Moon, I took my time, trying to savour all of it -- keep it in my head. I think he lived the life that I would want to live in Paris, if marriage and a family come my way. The life of a writer, or an academic can not be beat in this world, I am convinced of that. And with that in mind, I keep my head above the water, looking for a better opportunity to continue my education, or expand my worldview by moving abroad, once again. I think my time here at the airport and in Phoenix has been important, if nothing else, to help bring me back down to some sort of reality about the world. But, after a couple of months here, I realize that it is this reality that I am constantly trying to escape, always looking over my shoulder at the other part of this world that I am so inclined to inhabit.

2007-10-18T00:05:00.000-05:00

"There are two kinds of travelers. There is the kind who goes to see what there is to see and sees it, and the kind who has an image in his head and goes out to accomplish it. The first visitor has an easier time, but I think the second visitor sees more. He is constantly comparing what he sees to what he wants, so he see with his mind, and maybe even with his heart, or tries to. If his peripheral vision gets diminished -- so that he quite literally sometimes can't see what's coming at him from the suburbs of the place he looks at -- his struggle to adjust the country he looks at to the country he has inside him at least keeps him looking. It sometimes blurs, and sometimes sharpens, his eye. my head was filled with pictures of Paris, mostly black and white, and I wanted to be in them." Adam Gopnick in Paris to the Moon

I struggle to find a place in this strange place called Phoenix, and this book has not helped my need to live again overseas. Paris is calling me in some way, tugging at my mind every time I see something that reminds me of anything French. I can literally think myself to tears sometimes thinking about being somewhere else, with a lovely lady on my arm. I have such an over romanticised idea about life, but it is my life, and I can direct and form and shape it into one that isn't mundane and lifeless, but filled with places and things I love -- people in places I love. I look forward to the day I live in Paris. It might be a month, or it might be a year, but I know it is in my path.

Afr-ica

2007-09-30T14:03:00.000-05:00

"Poor Africa, the happy hunting ground of the mythomaniac, the rock star buffing up his or her image, the missionary with a faith to sell, the child buyer, the retailer of dirty drugs or toxic cigarettes, the editor in search of a scoop, the empire builder, the aid worker, the tycoon wishing to rid himself of his millions, the school builder with a bucket of patronage, the experimenting economist, the diamond merchant, the oil executive, the explorer, the slave trader, the eco-tourist, the adventure traveler, the bird watcher, the travel writer, the escapee, the colonial and his crapulosities, the banker, the busybody, the Mandela-sniffer, the political fantasist, the buccaneer and your cousin the Peace Corps Volunteer. Oh, and the atoner, of whom Thoreau observed in a skeptical essay: “Now, if anything ail a man so that he does not perform his functions ... if he has committed some heinous sin and partially repents, what does he do? He sets about reforming the world.” Thoreau, who had Africa specifically in mind, added, “Do you hear it, ye Wolofs?”

To Ponder

2007-08-28T23:43:00.000-05:00

I went out to buy transcendence
and came back with a telephone.
Anthony Weir

I am twenty-two years old and will wait no longer.
Scott Valentine

We are inclined to think of hunters and gatherers as poor
because they don't have anything; perhaps better to think of
them for that reason as free.
Marshall Sahlins

Once Known.

2007-08-17T23:35:00.000-05:00

It became clear to me that I was privileged to be living in an African world that had not been written about. This was not the Africa of Conrad, or Karen Blixen, or Hemingway, or Even Laurens van der Post. No one had written about this particular Africa. That, I think, was my good luck. It was for me to describe this unknown time and place. There was a colonial hangover, and Africans were now being uncomfortably accommodated in the white clubs. But I was not a member of any clubs; I did not go on safari. I came to be fascinated by this Africa of hilarious dance halls and village feasts and bush schools. Crazed politicians ranted all over the countryside, and yet there was a power vacuum in which most Africans, rather enjoying the anarchy, felt free. In a cheerful, scribbling, self-deluded frame of mind, in this in-between period after colonialism and before politicians and soldiers tightened their screws, I felt safe.

Dorset

2007-08-09T22:48:00.001-05:00

When I left the tropics after working for almost nine years in hot countries, I went to England and experienced a great shock. It seemed to me to be one of the strangest places I had ever been (and I had lived in Uganda and traveled the Congo and in upper Burma). This was Dorset. I was just about to write, "Hardy does not prepare you for Dorset." But of course he does. His work is very truthful to that county. I found the place dark and deeply rural, extremely beautiful, and often inexplicable. People did not seem so much to live there as to be holed up there. There was an uncertainty and a tribal mistrust of outsiders. And "outsider" did not necessarily mean an American. It might be someone from Yeovil or Salisbury. Everything I had expected to find in Africa I found on the edge of Marshwood Vale. I was fascinated, but also a little frightened. These are the emotions that produce fiction.

Look Thy Last on all things Lovely

2007-08-02T22:54:00.000-05:00

After a time we moved from Dorset to London, but I never lost the feeling that I was a castaway. As a foreigner, I was determined not to die in Britain and be buried in a gloomy churchyard under a blackish dripping yew tree. One day I would sail away. I never guessed that I would leave alone, feeling as portable and insignificant as when I arrived. I landed in Britain on November 4, 1971 and left on January 19, 1990. The years that these dates enclosed were among the happiest as well as teh saddest I have ever known: joy bordering on rapture, misery at the very edge of despair.

Target.

2007-08-01T21:39:00.000-05:00

I developed internal ways of stimulating my memory. It is possible for a writer to think creatively only if he or she manages to inhabit a mood in which imagination can operate. My need for external stimuli inspired in me a desire to travel – and travel, which is nearly always seen as an attempt to escape from the ego, is for me the opposite: nothing induces concentration or stimulates memory like an alien landscape or a foreign culture. It is simply not possible (as romantics think) to lose yourself in an exotic place. More likely you will experience intense nostalgia, a harking back to an earlier stage of your life. This does not happen to the exclusion of the exotic present, however in fact, what makes the whole experience thrilling is the juxtaposition of present and past – Medford dreamed in Mandalay.

I aspire, where material possessions are concerned, to the Buddhist condition of non-attachment. That is my ideal. I am not so acquisitive that I am possessed by these objects, though I do feel dependent on them at times. I think one must practice ridding onself of them, but that requires concentration and great mental poise – I was to learn how to give them away; it must be my confident decision. I don’t want them torn out of my hands. Obviously, the happiest person is that Buddhist who truly sees that such objects are illusion, and who owns nothing – all these possessions are in his or her memory.

In the most common situation, the threat comes from more than one person – rarely is it one-on-one. The group of people in the car or speedboat, the phalanx of jet skiers, are nearly always male. Their response appears to be a reflex of violent envy directed against an isolated and vulnerable person – the skimpily clothes jogger, the madly balancing paddler, the panting cyclist. It is like an objection to the assertive freedom and health implicit in these pastimes, and it might be bound up with the suspicion – in a minority of cases a well-founded suspicion—that someone who exercises this way so publicly is showing off.

Hold on to what you know I suppose. It is clearly not ok to keep moving about so much is it? It is so not the norm, but maybe, I’m just making my own way through a world of weirdness and wonder. Just sailing along, sometimes alone, and sometimes joined by others.

Fresh air Fiend {friend}.

2007-07-31T22:24:00.000-05:00

[Portions of this are from the Paul Theroux book entitled “Fresh Air Fiend”. Many of his writing seem to resonate with me personally, on a level that I can’t quite understand fully yet. Anyway, what he says in parts of this book especially seem to help me think about my journeys around the world and also coming back to the U.S. where, frankly, I’ve felt a little alien.]

For long periods of my life, living in places where I did not belong, I have been a perfect stranger. I asked myself whether my sense of otherness was the human condition. It certainly was my condition. As with most people, my outer life did not in the least resemble my inner life, but exotic places and circumstance intensified this difference. Sometimes my being a stranger was like the evocation of a dream state, at other times like a form of madness, and now and then it was just inconvenient. I might have gone home, except that a return home would have made me feel like a failure. I was not only far away, I was also out of touch. It sounds as though I am describing a metaphysical problem to which there was no solution – but no, all of this was a form of salvation….when I mentioned this notion of being a stranger to my friend Oliver Sacks, he said, “In the Kabala the first act in the creation of the universe is exile.” That makes sense to me.

The English writer V.S. Pritchett spoke about this condition of otherness in his autobiography, how it was not until he began to travel far from his home in south London that he began to understand himself and his literary vocation. He said that he found distant places so congenial that he became an outsider at home. Travel had transformed him into a stranger. He wrote, “I became a foreigner. For myself, that is what a writer is – a man living on the other side of a frontier.”

For various reasons, it is now not so easy to be a foreigner (I am using the word in a general sense). Yet it was very easy for me less than forty years ago, when I was an impressionable teenager and amateur emigrant. Then, a person could simply disappear by traveling; even a trip to Europe involved a sort of obscurity. A trip to Africa or South America could be a vanishing into silence and darkness.

“Connected” is the triumphant cry these days. Connection has made people arrogant, impatient, hasty and presumptuous. I am old enough to have witnessed the rise of the telephone, the apotheosis of TV and the videocassette, the cellular phone, the pager, the fax machine, and e-mail. I don’t doubt that instant communication has been good for business, even for the publishing business, but it has done nothing for literature, and might even have harmed it. In many ways connection has been disastrous. We have confused information (of which there is too much) with ideas (of which there are too few). I found out much more about the world and myself be being unconnected.
And what does connection really mean? What can the archivist – relishing detail, boasting of the information age – possibly do about all those private phone calls, e-mails, and electronic messages. Lost! A president is impeached, and in spite of all the phone calls and all the investigations, almost the only evidence that exists of his assignations are a few cheap gifts, a signed photograph, and obscure stains. So much for the age of information. My detractors may say, “You can print e-mails,” but who commits that yackety-yak to paper?

One of the paradoxes of otherness is that in travel, each conceives the other to be a foreigner. But even the most distant and exotic place has its parallel in ordinary life. Every day we meet new people and are insulted or misunderstood; we are thrown upon our own resources. In the coming and going of daily life we rehearse a modified version of the dramatic event known as first contact. In a wish to experience otherness to its limit, to explores all its nuances, I became a traveler. I was as full of preconceived notions as Columbus or Crusoe – you can’t help it, but you can alter such thoughts. Non-travelers often warn the traveler of dangers, and the traveler dismisses such fears, but the presumption of hospitality is just as odd as the presumption of danger. You have to find out for yourself. Take the leap. Go as far as you can. Try staying out of touch. Become a stranger in a strange land. Acquire humility. Learn the language. Listen to what people are saying.

[Too many times I find myself re-reading these words, as well as a nice little book called “The Art of Travel” and too many times I find myself seeking out other people that have a passion for being away, like I do. It is difficult to find these kinds of people, but when I do, it is as if my entire life has been leading up to that exact moment where I can share the most mundane story about some place in the world, and it seems to be exactly the thing the other person needed to hear – our stories interconnect and it is with that connection we begin to build our next adventure, our next trek and find the next person in line.]

reading.

2007-05-15T08:35:00.000-05:00

15 May 2007

You know, there is something new out there happening. Every now and then it comes around – blows in with the wind or rides in on the tide. It’s a change or a movement of some sort that allows us to say something we mean, to do something that we wouldn’t normally do or maybe it just allows us the ability to think without the overpowering effects of the world laying down on us. There is no good reason for why this happens, but it does and it is accepted. I find myself in this world where sometimes, I don’t necessarily feel like I’m living in. There are moments of complete transcendence beyond this plane of life that is here and now to a place that once was perhaps. I think the past has a lot to offer us – I mean there is no way to deny what has happened and there is no way to necessarily change what has happened, but yet, there are dwellings on the past that are the types of dwellings that people are able to use to write, to think to process and proceed in life with some sort of idea of what is happening or what is supposed to happen, even when that “thing” doesn’t happen. We can blame the present and maybe worry about the future, but the past is one thing in life that is certain and unfailing. It pushes us steadily along our way, drifting through the river of despair, love, happiness and whatever else luck seems to throw our way. What do we do with those thoughts that are hidden deep inside our mind from all others? Those ideas and wants that we dare not share with the closest of friend, the most trustworthy of companions? Is that what life is truly made of? Not the actuality of it all, but the hidden aspects of reality? Its possible. The future of our lives are, some might say, shaped by our actions now, which is mostly true, but then there are also those times that are just random, mysterious things that happen without no real reason for them coming to life. Its these times that we realize where our true selves are, where are beings are hiding, running through the underbrush of the forest while the other part of us is casually walking towards them. It’s the underbelly of life that presents us with the most possibilities – with the most problems and deficits – with the greatest chance to adapt and form a thought around it – to move through it while hurting and crying out for it to go back where it came from. Everyone knows but no one dares speaks of it. It is allusive and yet, always near. A warning from within what we have is always subject to change and disappointment. The best we can do is try and achieve a level of knowledge or cleverness that will enable us to recognize when these aspects of our personality are about to surface in full form – giving us the ability to use it to help us grow and learn from it – to force it to the surface and trust it, look at it and ourselves and be critical but also understanding. It is in those most sincere and honest moments where we can truly and fully recognize our true selves in the person that we have become. We can see the person we will become and the person that we will suppress – the person others know and the person others think they know. It will hurt – we will cry – but slowly begin to acknowledge that it was worth the pain – that we will continue on with this life in one form or another and it is up to us to decide for ourselves what that form will be, what form we will take. Difficult, sure, but what part of this isn’t?

short.

2007-04-15T06:43:00.000-05:00

I often pray, though I’m not really sure Anyone’s listening; and
I phrase it carefully, just in case He’s literary.

Mignon McLaughlin

movement.

2007-03-10T07:17:00.000-06:00

I'm not even for sure how to begin such a thought, except to say that it made me angry, and sad at the same time. I watched this film called Bobby tonight, about the assissination of Bobby Kennedy in 1968 in Los Angeles, as he was about to run for president. The movie made its way into my soul, in some way that a movie hasn't in a long time. Maybe its the ways in which the political and social problems of the time reflect our own current issues at home and abroad -- or maybe it was trying to understand why someone would kill such a person. A man who attempted to bring the country together as some form of community -- to act true, whole, and just in the face of an American society that was tired, depressed and angry. He makes me understand the power of words, the power of people to work for change, to imagine that things can be better than what they are. He, this man from the past, restores my faith in America, and in some manner, makes me understand that I am, at least sometimes, ok with my nationality, my heritage. Sitting in a theatre with my friend M, from the U.S. and the rest Australians, we couldn't help but wonder what sort of feeling they left with -- not being able to fully understand the position we are in as Americans abroad, looking back home with often feelings of disdane and disgust, but also looking back home thinking that we can actually make a difference -- that we can change our society.

I don't know if we can, but I have to say that I am angry that we, as the "youth" of America and the world did not stand up for what we felt was and is wrong more. That we didn't fall behind mass protests, that we didn't unite ourselves despite our differences to show the government that we don't approve of things, that we don't understand why all this destruction and death is happening, and that unless they give us better reasons, truthful answers, then we will continue to oppose. It is not only our lives that are being affected, but those of people around the world. It is so easy to just think of ourselves, but as RFK reminded me tonight, that is where the trouble comes. That is what our problem is. We are transfixed on personal gain, goals, and wealth and our focus has turned from our neighbour to our bank account, our myspace page, our email and our t.v. shows. Our lives are running out of control with options. We've lost sight of the bigger picture, the overall scheme of things -- and our problems form within around fueling our problems throughout.

I don't know how to change these things. I don't have an answers or even clear ideas, but I do know that there are people who care and listen and understand -- who want the same changes now that Americans wanted in 1968. That our parents and grandparents are an important part in this fight, not only because they know the effects such actions abroad have on the home front, but because they have the money, the influence and mroeso, the will to help make something happen. These are decisive years my friends, and it is going to set a tone for many to come. We need to rally ourselves, band together as brothers and sister, and respect, understand and fight for something more that capitalist ideals, but those ideals that we hold closest to us as a society. Those basic needs like food, shelter, taking care of our own and learning how to be citizens of the not just the U.S. but the world in general. Our future will depend on us, now. No one is going to make us do it, no one is betting that we will, no one is going to hold our hand and tell us exactly what to do. We have to make this up as we go -- write our own history, find our own truths, and make our country and our world a place where people can afford to live -- where people are proud to live -- and where people are happy to befriend and visit. This place we call home is changing, and we can only hope it is for the better.

passion. or something like that.

2007-02-26T04:46:00.000-06:00

Every year I sit and watch these awards, and every year, god help me, I still want to be there; be in the know and in the crowd with such classy and distinguished people. Watching everyone tonight I realize how Hollywood is still and will always be the American dream, but is not only just the classic American dream of “go west” but the dreams of people around the world trying just to get to America. I think one of the few things I took away from my first stint in L.A. is that you have to make yourself ok with money, with spending money on movies and al that comes with that. Someone has to provide the entertainment for the masses, and I feel, somehow, that many of the films and actors nominated this year transcend the entertainment/art boundary. That is always the challenge, to make films that are just as beautiful as they are entertaining.

[pause.]

I feel evermore as if my life is just getting started. As if, somehow, I will fin a way to bridge, mesh, include all of my passions of film and people, society and culture. For what are the best films made but ones that are able to reach the soul, the very depths of a being. To help escape the world we live in, but also promote change, ideas and understanding. So many of my thoughts as of late, come from recently seeing Babel, where I was reminded of how easy our lives have become, how over the years we want more convenience, less stress, more freedom, and fail to think about those in the world who struggle each day emotionally, physically, mentally and are constantly overwhelmed with life in general. It’s thoughts and ideas like this that constantly inspire – to push for my life to make a difference of some sort on this world. I suppose it’s what anyone would want in their life, except that it takes something new, different and burning inside a person’s body and mind to achieve the change we hope for. It’s always my hope to become who I am supposed to become & to use what I’ve got. So cliché to follow your dreams, I suppose I’m just going to make them up as I go along.

[end.]

too much thought.

2007-02-25T02:08:00.001-06:00

if i were to loose sight of you
or of what we are
trying to do
would you still be there
in the end?

At My Window Sad and Lonely

2007-01-25T00:20:00.000-06:00

At my window, sad and lonely
Oft times do I think of thee
Sad and lonely and I wonder
Do you ever think of me

Every day is sad and lonely
And every night is sad and blue
Do you ever think of me my darling
As you sail that ocean blue

At my window, sad and lonely
I stand and look across the sea
And I sad and lonely wonder
Do you ever think of me

Will you find another sweetheart
In some far and distant land
Sad and lonely now I wonder
If our boat will ever land

Ships may ply the stormy ocean
And planes may fly the stormy sky
I'm sad and lonely but remember
Oh I'll love you
Till I die

--Woody Guthrie

Characteristic Form of Life.

2007-01-18T22:14:00.000-06:00

Today I learned this little piece of information:

"Land is developing seven times faster than the population is increasing, and by 2050 it is thought that 307 million Americans will live in 8 supercities."

Now, I'm not for sure if this is a startling fact or not, given that in 2050 I will be about 69. Yeah, I'm not really looking forward to that, but what did strike me is that a majority of the people will be living in cities, and who's to say, but maybe the people still living in the rural or what is left of the rural areas will be the ones with power. Maybe they will be the ones that are keeping the place running by planting food and trees and keeping the rest of the population alive because of their "sacrifice" of living in the "bush". I don't know, it just all seems so strange to hear people projecting what is going to happen in years to come when we really have no idea what-so-ever what is going to happen this year. I'm tired of hear things like "if current trends..." or "today in Iraq".

Apparently, there are about 10 million vegetarians in the U.S. today. That number seems small, when you think about all 300 million of us. Gross. That's a lot of beef, pork and chicken being consumed. I don't eat meat, and as one of the 10 million people, I suppose I am always looking for a reason why that I can use to explain to people why. I have yet to come up with anything that seems to hit the mark, and today I also read this little piece of information that didn't seem to help my case:

" The notion of granting rights to animals may lift us up from the brutal, amoral world of eater and eaten -- of predation -- but along the way it will entail the sacrifice, or sublimation, of part of our identity -- of our own animality. (This is one of the odder ironies of animal rights: it asks us to acknowledge all we share with animals, and then to act toward them in a most unanimalistic way.) Not that the sacrifice of our animality is necessarily regrettable; no one regrets our giving up raping and pillaging, also part of our inheritance. But we should at least acknowledge that the human desire to eat meat is not, as the animal rightists would have it, a trivial matter, a mere gastronomic preference. By the same token we might call sex -- also now technically unnecessary for reproduction -- a mere recreational preference. Rather, our meat eating is something very deep indeed."

So, I ask myself, "am i not eating animals for a moral reason?" I don't know. I can't deny the evolutionary changes our bodies have went through, and the purposes of certain sets of teeth, etc. The ways in which people crave meat and sweets (also evolutionary because sugar = energy.) I kept reading and found this:

" Morality is an artifact of human culture devised to help humans negotiate human social relations. It's very good at that. But just as we recognize that nature doesn't provide a very good guide for human social conduct, isn't it anthropocentric of us to assume that our moral system offers an adequate guide for what should happen in nature? Is the individual the crucial moral entity in nature as we've decided it should be in human society?"

I say no. I say that maybe human are adapting, evolving to eat less meat because people now recognize that with a more leisurely life style, eating lots of red meat is not that great for us. As we become more dependent on machines, our bodies might become more dependent on plants. Just a thought.

I think it was Descartes that said something like "animals can't feel pain because they have no soul." Well, I'm not sure we can prove that or not, given that the soul is kind of hard to define in humans, let alone in animals, which we can't communicate with. Its interesting to think about the ways in which we have given in to so many things in society, in life that might just not be so. The way in which we give in to shopping centres, food, etc. might actually be killing us all slowly.

Ok, let me get to my point. We all seem to have some kind of focus in life. Something, someone, some place that we can't not have. We need it to live. We don't just need food and water, but apparently, these other things as well. Those things are killing us instead of helping us live. They are driving us to places we don't want to go and making us do things we don't want to do. They are forcing our minds to give into our bodies, and I always think it should be the other way around. We are humans, and yes, we are adapting as I write this, but we also have to realize what it is that we are adapting to. Is it something that we can go on living with, or is it something that we need to stop, stand back and take a look at? Maybe both. Maybe it is sustainable, maybe it will turn out, in the end to be good, or maybe not. Who's to say. Again, predicting the future out of current trends is dangerous I feel, but then again, so are a lot of things in life.

In the end, I want to say it all comes down to love. But then again, that would be kind of anthropocentric of me, wouldn't it.

its always something.

2007-01-15T23:04:00.000-06:00

such a thing so as to feel yourself become something different. transcending your earthly plane into a world of feeling and warmth. feeling your body move as you brethe.
you don't hear yourself, heart beating and all. i don't move in a world of men but live in a world of human connections and love. where if you try, if you honestly attempt to join with reality, you can make it to the top, to the apex of human emotion and matter. it hurts in a way that makes you crave for more, for that feeling ever single day of your life. and evey time you can't reach it, it is just out of your reach, you understand that maybe you just need to see your breathe on the cold windown and realize that we are alive, living, breathing and longing for love and warmth.

condições de tempo

2007-01-11T22:17:00.000-06:00

eu estou receoso das coisas às vezes. e frequentemente, eu não me acredito. eu quero saber, se minha vida trabalhar para fora em uma maneira que esteja cabendo ao universo, os deuses, fate. eu escuto o vento mudanças. diz-me que alguns estão vindo logo. a lua é tonight subtle, esperando o alvorecer para quebrá-lo e introduzir afastado no oeste.

all of my thoughts

2006-12-17T20:41:00.000-06:00

apparantly, i've identified the culprit.
it has something to do with feeling your heart
beat, even though the distance between us is vast.

your never far.

lately

2006-12-11T22:25:00.000-06:00

i can't stop thinking. my sleep stumbles in and out
as i get rapped in my pillows and blankets; my thoughts
turning around and around in my head.
you keep me awake. its the bottom line and it won't change.
it is a constant and unchanging feeling.

it's not a coinscidence.

there we were.

2006-12-08T23:18:00.000-06:00

there was a moment when i saw that it meant so much to you
and we kept drinking and laughing and feeling and understanding
until we were weary and longing for bed, feeling more like
ourselves than we had in so long. it might have taken 2 years
to part the stars that seperated us but when they align
they are perfect and subtle.

i've been waiting on you for so long.

2006-11-30T05:32:00.000-06:00

are we all trying as hard as we can? or are we just sitting and waiting on something better to come around? how long will we wait? will we ever stop waiting? it's like constant anticipation -- looking to the horizon for the next best thing or that perfect someone to walk through the door. i think we can do better. i think we can stop waiting and start acting -- we can start doing something about it. don't you think? sine when did we become so complacent? since always, but it doesn't have to last.

Bibliophile

2006-10-26T01:21:00.000-05:00

I'm normally not one to put up a political cartoon, but this one just got me for some reason.

it makes us what we are.

2006-10-19T08:01:00.000-05:00

It isn't the things that happen to us in our lives that cause us to suffer, it's how we relate to the things that happen to us that causes us to suffer."
-- Pema Chödrön

Chapter 1

2006-09-25T07:03:00.000-05:00

He left her. I tried to stop him, but it was too late. No, I don’t know where he went. I mean, I guess i could try and find him, he might have just went to one of his usual places, but this is different. I’ve never seen him so upset, what did you say?

Jesus, what?! Why? What did he do to you? Why did he just, god, I don’t know anymore. I don’t even want to be here. Leave me alone. Just leave me alone!!

I’m tired. This has taken so much out of me. God, I can’t even go to sleep and its all I want to do. I just can’t keep going on like this. He left, your angry as hell and I’m caught in the middle with no where to turn, I have no options left. I don’t even know who knows about this. We can’t let it get out. No way. There is no way you can tell her. It will be all over then. Jesus, that would be the end, the complete end of all of this. I’d be forced to leave and I have no idea what he would do or where she would go. No, I don’t want to talk about it anymore, just leave me alone, I just need space. Space. Space to just see what I can come up with. I’m just out of possibilities.

Where are you going? I didn’t mean it like that…stay if you want. I just don’t know what to do or say anymore. I’m sorry I didn’t mean, no, I mean, stop, you can leave me – your all I have right now, your all that is keeping me sane, alive. No, please stop! God, fuck! You can’t! I have…what…no, I didn’t mean to hurt you too. God, its like no matter what I say I hurt someone, I can’t sleep, I haven’t eaten in what seems like days, I’m tired and mad and damn I it I just want things to go back to the way they were.

I don’t want to get anyone in trouble any more. I’m done lying to you and everyone else. I’m done. I can’t do it any more, I just can’t take it. It’s killing me. It is draining me. I have nothing left to offer, I am finished. No, its not that easy. I just cant go back there and tell her…no, I can’t, it’s too soon don’t you think? Its too soon. I just want to sit back and let things mellow out for awhile. I want it to blow over – we need space right not. Time to think. I know it sounds cheap but honestly, what more can I do? What can I say that I already haven’t said? What can I do that I haven’t already done? I think we just have to face that facts man, that this is done, over. Bad things do happen to good people. It’s complete shit, I know, but damn, why does it have to be so hard? Why do I have to be the one that had to say it, why did it have to be so difficult – why did it have to hurt so bad, so completely bad.

I hate this. I hate the situation and I hate her. I can’t stand her and let this go on. It’s so cheap, so degrading. I just want it to end. I just want it to end. Please, don’t leave me.

Hope in the pages.

2006-09-18T07:40:00.000-05:00

Perhaps it is the lingering romanticism attached to urban emptiness that invigorates a crowd; the full city and the empty city are ultimately both unnatural states. But it is the empty city that continues to lurk in our culture, a place for the imagination, and more beside, to run wild.

common no more

2006-08-28T00:25:00.000-05:00

Missing: One Wednesday in Late July

2006-07-28T06:36:00.000-05:00

It is always strange to think about missing a complete day in one’s life. Nothing happens at all, it just drifts past like lazy summer afternoon. I realized that as I was 38,000 feet above the Pacific, that my Wednesday is all of a sudden a Thursday, and that the Tuesday I left L.A. on is now just a mere memory of a day that once was. All of the things that happened that day will no longer exist as things to do, but things once done. If we think about all of the things that happen throughout ones day, the things we eat, consume, waking up, brushing our teeth, saying hello to our significant other, walking or driving to work, those possibilities of getting ahead on the job, making through the day a little fast, a little happier, a little better, all of those chance encounters that could happen at lunch, on smoke breaks outside, or during the commute home, are all suddenly all thrown out the window. All of the new things one might learn are all just left floating about in the air somewhere, waiting for someone else to grad a hold of them and use them. All of the ideas that are needing found are lost forevermore and we are left without one of the days in our life where the one great thing that we are always waiting for just might happen. The lottery will be won, but not by you; the girl you’ve been asking out for a month will accept, but with another suitor; the big contract at work will be won, and the celebrating will include all of your department but you will be missing and get no credit. We might have cried that day, we might have rejoiced, found God, achieved enlightenment or figured out that our lives are a mere coincidence after all. If you think about it, and add up one day for each person on that 747, it adds up to over a years worth of days. Not just Wednesdays, but a complete year of time that goes unaccounted for. It is in those days that people will think about those they left at home, those they are returning to from far away. The loved, the hated, the once forgotten and the chosen forgotten will fly through our minds as we fly through the mushy clouds over Fiji, and the flight attendant brings around breakfast as we think about where we will be in about 2 hours when we land on a different continent. Sitting, staring into some type of space that leaves us unfulfilled and aching, I recline the seat, put on my headphones, and try not to think about the day I just gave up, but the day that I will gain when I return. Each life will be returned its lost day in the end, but it is the feeling of losing something so precious that will continually haunt our conscious.

faith and the state of unicorns.

2006-07-02T23:51:00.000-05:00

It’s hard to prove that a unicorn doesn’t exist, especially hard to prove that God doesn’t exist, because God just by definition is outside of space and time.

does this not sum up so many of the thoughts that i've been having the past few months? it does indeed, and i can't help but think that if there were other people in the world that would just think about this statement, they would understand so many of the isssues that are fucking things up. take care my friends with your faith. space and time are not areas that are easily explored.

A silver platter.

2006-06-17T09:06:00.000-05:00

What we seek, at the deepest level, is inwardly to resemble, rather than physically to possess, the objects and places that touch us through their beauty.

what does exist?

2006-05-29T08:05:00.000-05:00

I don’t think you can start wanting something until you know it exists.
Can we not want anything? What is it that is driving intense need for things? For shit, essentially? Shit that we don’t need -- just want. What is the problem with all of this? Why does it still make you feel so empty? It makes me think that there is something to “the others”. Those that live without wants because of their not knowing they exist. This must have been what it was like in the past, what it was like in the time when all people were seeking out was life fulfillment through finding food and having a family, wondering the earth for something more meaningful didn’t seem to concern them. It didn’t seem to make it to the top of their list of things to do for the day. We are all seeking out something, yearning for something. Love? Money? Success? Fame? Good grades? Or just the next meal for our table, the next glass of clean water for out glass. It has nothing to do with a spiritual world, and everything to do with a physical world. A world where perhaps, people should put their faith in each other, in things you can see and touch and feel and move and laugh with, cry with, hold and change. At some point, physical needs surpass other needs of a person. True, holistically, we need a balance, but at some point we have to give into what it is that our body truly desires. Are we all just wondering around like lost sheep in a pasture? Merely content with the grass that is given us? Satisfied with its constant taste, color and shape? Content with only that? One thing in a world of countless options? Why should we settle for one when we can have many. Why should we settle for many when we can have all. Why should we settle at all? Why not go on with what we have been given to use instead of wasting our time looking around for the next best thing, the better option. Maybe its because we don’t realize that it exists. Maybe we don’t really want options at all. Maybe we have just been told that we want options. Maybe we can be content with nature’s grass that has been given to us. Maybe it is there because it is all we need to live on -- all that we need to survive. Why should we challenge it? Because we can? Or because we are made to. Don’t give up. Give up. I am finished.

Just for kicks.

2006-05-23T20:11:00.000-05:00

From Harpers.org

Posted on Thursday, September 9, 2004. The following items were among those found in the last two years during California’s Coastal Cleanup Day, an annual event in which volunteers remove debris from the state’s shorelines. Since the program began in 1985, 8.5 million pounds of garbage have been removed. Originally from Harper's Magazine, June 2004.

4-foot-long stuffed toy salmon
horse’s head
urinal drain
cat’s headstone stating “Your soul is safe now! The spirit is home. Rest in God’s Peace.”
baby bird in a jar
2 phone booths
styrofoam Tiki god
home pregnancy test
Barbie doll with a nail through its hand
pit bull chained to a tree
Scooby Doo underwear
10 dead leopard sharks
plastic eyeball
wooden duck
“Just Married” sign
half a bowling ball
Led Zeppelin album
preserved jalapeños
fuzzy dice
check written to Taco Bell for $8.78
Dracula teeth
crutch
foam foot advertising a fungus cream
half a turtle shell with leg attached
bird burial box stating “My beloved Chico is dead in this box. He died of old age.”
porcupine bones
divorce papers
dead goats in a bag

shut down

2006-05-14T06:23:00.000-05:00

don't throw stones.

2006-05-03T08:28:00.000-05:00

well, if you ask me, there is nothing that seems to compare to living.

there is something bigger

2006-04-12T20:16:00.000-05:00

there is something bigger out there don't you think? there is this almost looming feeling going around now that something might not be quite right. there there is something questioning and thinking and almost blooming. waiting for something specific to happen before it fully becomes what it is supposed to be.

is it a great mystery of just something that we've made into a mystery? i think we do understand it. i think we choose not to because it makes it more interesting -- because we are all searching for something and if we didn't have that search, then we would have nothing.

this search is part of life. it is part of looking for love and acceptance and peace. it is part of seeking truth in our lives and the lives of others. in the community we are a part of and live in. we are wonderers in this game. the game should be called "Sorry" but that name is already taken.

We are sleeping on the saviour. We sleep on it every day and night. It is just that we have to wake up to it -- feel it -- and it will accept us as we are.

end of the line

2006-03-19T20:15:00.000-06:00

i sometimes think thoughts are like planes, flying overhead, waiting for someone to pick them out of the air and i always think of the line from the invitation for communion "lift up your hearts, we lift them to the lord" and imagining people lifting their hearts into the air while a 747 flies over.

perfect.

2006-03-15T04:25:00.000-06:00

today i experienced something, that in a few days i hope to understand.

almost invisible

2006-02-14T23:56:00.000-06:00

something is happening
things have suddenly changed
and then we lose something in
the awkwardness that is
the change. the third degree
runs around us as we walk along
the waterfront

and as you move to the
sound of the wind in the
trees i think about me
you us them and then
try and move a mountain
because you asked me to

you ask me to do a lot
of things and i always
reply with a yes because
i don't mind doing the things
you ask of me because i like
to make you happy -- happy

i'm making a mistake
and you are there to witness it
and don't understand that it is
for you, it is always for you
leaving me to wonder if your
mad at me for doing it

i can make myself believe
almost anything and when
i try to tell my self that
isn't true, i believe that
too.

maybe i'll just run away,
if only for a night.

doing fine

2006-02-02T21:39:00.000-06:00

I'm looking for a dare to be great situation.

-lloyd dobler
Say Anything

why are we here...

2006-01-21T17:22:00.000-06:00

to mystery

2006-01-04T16:14:00.000-06:00

mexico is for mystery
or so they tell me
when we drink a
couple of coronas
and toast to it.

mexico is for mystery
as that sort of thing
goes. coffee is needed,
sleep is needed, peace is
upon us, but time is our
enemy.

think-ing

2005-12-20T23:04:00.000-06:00

i know that you understand
all that i am,
all that i think,
and all that i do

but do you understand the
power of your words?
the strength that you hold?
the energy that you bring
forth in the form of a
breath, a sigh, a whisper?

it pushes all thoughts
away from my head
and into a void
that you continue to fill.

blue green morning night

2005-12-15T14:03:00.000-06:00

moment

2005-12-14T01:44:00.000-06:00

understand that we have so much ahead of us,
so incredibly much and so little behind us,
so very, very little.

echo

2005-12-13T01:06:00.000-06:00

i'm sorry you saw that
and i apologize for the
pain? i apologize for the
truth that it exposed.
have you ever known me?

i've lost my "mind".

2005-12-08T00:12:00.000-06:00

When I consider Thy heavens, the work of Thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which Thou hast ordained;
What is Man, that Thou art mindful of him? and the son of Man, that Thou visitest him?
For Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honor.
Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of Thy hands; Thou hast put all things under his feet:
All sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field;
The fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea, and whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas. [Psalm 8]

it seems that it is hard to deny that man is a most unusual species of being. many others are better adapted to their environment, faster, stronger, etc. what is it then that seperates us from all others? some suggest that our most extraordinary characteristic is our capacity to conceptualize the world and to communicate those conceptions symbolically.

i think that it is the idea that we have no udnerstanding of what we are. at the best level, we can attempt to explain things, but when you get down to it, we have no clue what is happening. we are so complex. we are so unique.

i don't know what to think anymore. it's amazing.

not an accident

2005-12-04T00:42:00.000-06:00

love, ever unsatisfied, lives always in the
moment that is about to come.

embrace

2005-11-28T00:33:00.000-06:00

it is just at the beginning
that we realize that it might
be the end.

at least we can come to the
realization that what we are
is not what we understand
ourselves to be
but always something greater
always something beyond
what it is that we see.

inside-out hoodie.

2005-11-16T08:53:00.001-06:00

“The breathing, sensing body draws its sustenance and its very substance from the soils, plants, and elements that surround it; it continually contributes itself, in turn, to the air, to the composting earth, to the nourishment of insects and oak trees and squirrels, ceaselessly spreading out of itself as well as breathing the world into itself, so that it is very difficult to discern, at any moment, precisely where this living body begins and where it ends.”

Sometimes, I don’t understand where I begin and where I end. This, as I have learned in the past, leads to confusion. I think that over the past few weeks I’ve come to understand what confusion means. How mis-communication can put so many things into motion that one never intended to. How it takes not just two sides for a story to be complete, but all sides of a story. I’ve discovered how so incredibly interconnected we all are, on some level or another, groups of friends have so many intricate inner workings that it leaves me in amazement of the human ability to form friendships in the first place. We are constantly trying to understand each other, when sometimes all we need to do is understand ourselves. We want to escape that sort of self-realization that comes with introspective thought in order to think about other situations that are happening. We take ourselves for granted, pretending to know what we are all about, how we will react, when really, each new experience is making an impact us in ways that we don’t fully understand or see when they are happening. Only when we look at the situation from a different perspective, step away from it, can we start to see ourselves as being changed—as growing new branches to reach out to new parts of us—parts we knew were there, but parts we didn’t really [want to] understand.

I’ve felt very connected to people in new ways over the past month or so. Like I said before, I think I’ve gotten to know myself a bit better. But new connections are always a little bit like getting into a hot bath. At first, it is startling, but as you sink into it, it gets better and better. That’s how things have been progressing. Slow at first, but amazingly wonderful as it has moved along. It is a great feeling to really be able to understand—to have a connection that seems to transcend normal understanding. To not only learn about your relationships, but yourself in return, because of those people.

As I get ready to leave in a few months, I’m constantly reminded about how little time I have left here in the States, at least for awhile, and about how little time we seem to have in general. How to squander it is to let ourselves be somehow tricked. I’m feeling very much in the mind set now of “tell everyone everything you want to tell them” don’t let anything pass through your mind that you don’t act on. No thoughts about love. No thoughts about hurt or pain. Not thoughts about fear. Engaging those thoughts in life is what it is all about. Taking charge when it is difficult to do so. Not trying to escape from them, not trying to run away from them or denying them, but acting on them. Talking. Loving. Crying. We’re all in it together.

a direct experience.

2005-11-10T13:14:00.000-06:00

scramble

2005-11-08T19:31:00.000-06:00

But to tear down a factory or to revolt against a government or to avoid repair of a motorcycle because it is a system is to attack effects rather than causes; and as long as the attack is upon effects only, no change is possible. The true system, the real system, is our present construction of systematic thought itself, rationality itself, and if a factory is torn down but the rationality which produced it is left standing, then that rationality will simply produce another factory. If a revolution destroys a systematic government, but the systematic patterns of thought that produced that government are left intact, then those patterns will repeat themselves in the succeding government. There's so mch talk about the system. And so little understanding.

-Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Robert M. Pirsig

Among other things from the book so far, this stuck out to me today as I read it on my break at work.

7,8,9,

2005-11-06T23:10:00.000-06:00

so many thoughts running through my head.
running out of breath. understanding that you
are the one that understands what is going on.
i am the one that is going on. my breath
is silent as i wait for you to come around
again and find what it is that you are longing
for. i know it is here. i know you feel it too.
i know. i know. you know. we know.
i, you, we, me, us,

not running away. not running past. not escaping
but letting it overtake.

x marks the spot.

What we love, we are.

2005-11-03T19:08:00.000-06:00

“A classical understanding sees the world primarily as underlying form itself. A romantic understanding sees it primarily in terms of immediate appearance. The romantic mode is primarily inspirational, imaginative, creative, intuitive. Feelings rather than facts predominate. Art as opposed to science.”
--Phaedrus

I tend to have mostly “romantic” friends. It is difficult when they are always making passes. It took me awhile to come to understand what romantic means in terms that are not related, necessarily, to love. To continue on a direction of my previous post, I think that being a romantic is somehow related to nature. But, in contrast, I also think that being classical in thought, is also related to nature. Both areas of thought have different aspects of how they understand nature and the world. The romantic sees the world as beauty, they look at the trees, see the wind, hear the birds, and then they go and write, paint, photograph, talk, discuss, etc. about all of these things. They like to play in the dirt. The classical understanding of nature, from my perspective, tends to be more of an understanding of how nature works, and why it works. Instead of seeing it from the outside, they understand it from the inside. Romantics are not necessarily concerned with the way things work, only that they work. From my understanding though, if we didn’t have the classical people to help the romantics understand life, then the world would just be overrun with people that have a lot of emotional energy and no way to understand it all—there would be SO much art produced that no one would care because everyone would be doing it.

That might be stretching it a little.

When we are young, we are trying to understand the world in terms of being “classical” only we don’t know that’s what we are doing. We want to know how everything works. What it’s made of, how it got there, where it is going etc. But then at some point in our lives our ideas change. Instead of what it’s made of, we ask why it looks the way it does. We talk about our thoughts instead of our toys. Our ideas slowly turn from Ninja Turtles to the color of the turtles and their belts. As I’m writing this I am trying to think of when in my life I came to this understanding of ideas, of feelings and emotions instead of actions and physical things, and for the life of my I can’t remember or think of a time when I had my first “romantic” idea, moment, thought, experience. Shouldn’t that be a turning point in our lives? Shouldn’t that be remembered? When we start to not only understand the world around us, but we start to understand the world around us that we can’t see. Each person’s experience is obviously going to be different. Some early on, some late. Some parents guide their kids towards romanticism early, some still haven’t had their own romantic experiences.

All this to say that romantic and classical people co-exist and without each, it would get to be just a bit too much to bear.

1,2,3,

2005-11-01T00:09:00.000-06:00

And confusion
sets in....

evey time i see you my heart breaks because i know that when that moment is over, all i will have is the memory. all i want is the moment.

Therefore...

2005-10-29T13:22:00.000-05:00

Disconnection from the natural world is something I think is inevitable when one lives in a city—or even when one lives in a city not. I’ve been reading a book called “The Te of Piglet” which is the 2nd book by Benjamin Hoff, his first being “The Tao of Pooh”. One part of the book in particular struck me as going along with a lot of different aspects of my thoughts and life, currently.

“In other words, modern man’s difficulties, dangerous beliefs, and feelings of loneliness, spiritual emptiness, and personal weakness are caused by his illusions about, and separation from, the natural world. Well, the Taoists told us this sort of mess would happen, and they told us what we could do about it.”

To put it in easy terms, the solution to being separated from nature is reality appreciation. One of the best examples of this is with the non-official Taoist writer Henry David Thoreau:

“…shams and delusions are esteemed for soundest truths, while reality is fabulous. If men would steadily observe realities only, and not allow themselves to be deluded, life, to compare it with such things as we know, would be like a fairy tale and the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments…children who play life, discern its true law and relations more clearly than men, who fail to live it worthily, but who think that they are wiser by experience, that is, by failure…”

I have always had a bit of a problem connecting with reality. I am never too sure of how to explain it in terms that are rational, but I have several writings from when I’ve felt that disconnectedness the most that, well, don’t exactly make the most sense—but in a way make all the sense in the world. I don’t really know what triggers this intense feeling of needing to get away, to connect somehow with what is happening—what I’m experiencing or what others are experiencing. I think that escaping is always my answer to my issues and for a while I thought that was not a good way to deal, but as I’ve seen, it is one of the only ways I can re-connect myself with something that is real, something that is tangible. I might just need to take a walk or a hike or ride my bike or drive across town—sometimes I might need to go further from home, someplace new, maybe I need to take a journey to prove to myself that I can do it—that I’m in control of me—of my actions and my thoughts—proving something to yourself is sometimes the most difficult thing in the world. Especially when you have to prove something like reality or something like self-determination.

Now, I’m not for sure if I can follow myself here, but I just watched the film “Lord of the Flies” from 1962, (Criterion Collection—black and white) an amazing tribute to not only film but also to the human condition, the separation of man from nature and then what happens to man when he is returned to nature, by chance, not by choice. Granted that all of the characters in the story are boys, I don’t think that is a great excuse—just a means to show that even the innocent can prove to be real in some form. If you haven’t read the story, pick up the book first, it is an easy read, but one that has great depth into man, the savage and man the humanitarian. A large group of boys get stranded on a deserted island in the middle of the Pacific and have to use their own instincts to take care of themselves. As the story starts the boys are intent on being true to their English nature, leaving their ties and shirts on until they just can’t take it any more. Slowly their bodies become battered, their clothes become ragged, their nature becomes more and more animalistic, and their minds tend to desert them as slowly they become their “true” selves. One of the characters referred to as Piggy says at one point “I bet it’s gone past tea time” and we are reminded that they are indeed products of their society, products of their schooling, and how ingrained that is, in not only them, but also in us. Drop us onto a deserted island and I’m sure that our true actions and thoughts would soon start to develop, albeit slowly. Isolation is not what this is about, don’t start thinking “Castaway” the Tom Hanks film from a few years back, this is about group dynamics, power, faith and sacrifice. Sacrifices are constantly made by a couple of the characters in particular—if you get the chance to watch the film, watch the progression of two specific characters, Simon and Ralph—both of which show the greatest consistency in their actions—but slowly even they succumb to the wildness that is their home.

I’m not for sure if I have the understanding of myself enough to understand how all this is coming together for me now—how conversations seem to come at just the right time—how thoughts and actions and conversations can all pull themselves together for one sort of thought or idea. All I know is that maybe sometimes what we all think is so “natural” is completely not—maybe we all need to be dropped onto a deserted island, with no idea of when our rescue will arrive just to see ourselves as maybe we should be seen. I hate using a computer, I hate using cell phones and I hate seeing people go so completely crazy over money. Buildings are not really that great, highways cause more stress than the jobs people use them to get to. It is almost too much—just too much to take—and that is where the struggle with reality seems to begin.

So, when thinking about if we are products of our society I lean towards yes—yes we should be more connected with our surroundings that are not concrete and steel—we should attempt to make a connection with ourselves, with our friends—to have true relationships with not only each other but with nature—I don’t like living in the city but I like living near it. I do like having a large park close at hand though, and if you ride deep enough into it you might not realize that you’re in a city, you might just realize that the city is in the park.

Food for thought?

2005-10-27T12:13:00.001-05:00

There are somewhere around 10 billion insects for every square kilometer of land surface. Think about all those lives, all those murderers and egg raiders, cooperators and queens. Here’s a hypothetical: If a pair of houseflies and all their descendants were allowed to reproduce, without attrition, for a single summer, their offspring would, according to entomologist Gilbert Waldbauer, “cover the Earth to a depth of 47 feet.

Te of Piglet

2005-10-20T14:49:00.000-05:00

"It is hard to be brave," said Piglet, sniffing slightly, "when you're only a Very Small Animal."
Rabbit, who had begun to write very busily, looked up and said:
"It is because you are a very small animal that you will be useful in the adventure before us."

I don't believe. I realize.

2005-10-19T11:29:00.000-05:00

As I sit and sip my coffee eagerly on this fall day, some things become more apparent to me. When I start to think about goals, short term goals, long term goals, social goals and even economic goals, things start to overwhelm me and my senses, and that is where the problem begins.

My friend C has been talking a lot about goals lately. His goals for the next year are not all the most realistic but he understand that. He knows his limits but he also knows that life is subject to change at any given moment. Talking about goals is a scary thing for me, mostly because I don't know what I want out of life right now. I don't' seem to be content with living in the city I live in, or with the job that I happen to have, but I do seem to be content to be poor and read a lot. I'm not for sure what that means.

I think that for everyone, setting goals is an important part of processing what is happening around us. We each have goals that we set for the day, such as, I need to get to the grocery store, or I need to do my laundry. If those goals are met, then well, life goes on and things don't change much. I guess overall if we don't reach our goals things don't change much, unless it is a goal that our employer has set for us. That is that is the dangerous goal, when we feel pressured to obtain something that won't actually benefit us.

I think that goals should not only have personal ramifications, but also goals should reflect the sort of lives that we wish to lead. Our goals should be not only to provide for ourselves and those we love but also those around us that are needy as well. Those around us that are caught in a world that doesn't provide them with what they need. Since we live in a world that seems to have everything planned out for us--everything is taken care of and we generally have our basic needs met, maybe some of our goals should engage ourselves to try and provide for those that don't have their basic needs met.

I'm not for sure where it is that I'm going with this, but it is prompted by a homily I heard the other day. It was on being alone and challenging ourselves to be quiet, to take time out to just be quite and alone, and through that we will be able to discover more about ourselves and more about our relationships with each other and more so, with a God. At one point in the homily, he mentioned that to serve the poor from the point of being rich, is not the way things were intended. In fact blessed are the poor. In some way I feel like I need to validate my life right now, and part of that is in not having money. I don't have money to squander on things like clothes and new books. I have the occasional cup of coffee and the occasional dinner out and that is about it. I'm not saying that my "goal" for my life right now is serving the poor directly--I'm not trying to validate laziness...even though I think that sometimes is the idea that people get when I tell them what I'm doing, how I'm feeling. Maybe the people I'm trying to reach are my friends--my family--my relationships. Maybe those people are the ones that I've been deemed to be with--to help and to somehow, help validate their existence now. For awhile I've said I just want a job that will pay me to hang out with the friends I currently have. Well, maybe a job isn't what I'm supposed to have. Maybe I'm just supposed to be with them--listen to them--treat them like an equal and understand their situation and their lives. I love it. Maybe I'm supposed to learn reliance on a community that loves me for who I am--and for me to understand that is the hardest part. To learn to accept what others give to me is so difficult for me to understand. Whether it is a conversation over coffee or a place to sleep and eat, my friends are giving me validation for my life now. They are understanding, loving, giving, and graceful. To get to the point, sometimes to be a giving person doesn't mean going out and feeding the homeless, sometimes being a giving and caring person means sitting and listening to your friend, buying them a cup of coffee, making dinner for someone, or simply giving someone an opportunity to escape.

Thanks to you who allow me to escape. I'm trying to accept your grace.

I am not real.

2005-10-17T01:49:00.000-05:00

It is intense sometimes the feeling that one can get just from being around another person. To sit and listen to them talk about their life and their struggles—to see the pain in their eyes and hear the pain in their voice. It’s hard. It is hard not to get angry at life in general sometimes because it makes you feel like shit.

I’ve recently learned that it is difficult to live vicariously through others. To be able to have this alternate reality happening—one that is not quite as good as it could be if you were actually living it, but I guess that is just a fact of life. We all have regrets about this that we have done or things we have left undone, but at the end of the day it is these things that make us who we are. That push us to be better people, to make the effort to listen more and to understand what is happening, even though we have no idea what is happening to ourselves. It’s not easy, it’s not simple, and it’s not fun. I used to say that I never have regrets, but now as I sit and think about that more, with things that are happening around me now, I realize more and more that I probably do have a few regrets. There are some things I would have liked to done. There are some things that I wish I had thought about more before doing them. Oh well I guess, but it’s not that easy sometimes. I think that when we feel like we have wasted our time or missed out on something, we tend to think about all of the negative aspects that has brought to our life. But when we think about the things that those decisions put into motion, some of those things would not have happened. Many of those things would not have made it out—they would still be trapped inside, just waiting for the right moment that might not ever come. It hurts me to think about these things. Probably for good reason, but maybe because they are so real. They are amazingly real, and that is scary.

Intense feelings seem to be flowing from my heart. Intense for so many things. Feelings of love, hurt, joy, pain. I’ve been angry and I don’t like it. I don’t like to be mad because I feel like it is rarely prompted. It is rarely needed. To be truly mad. I don’t normally get angry with people, I get angry with myself and that is when I bottom out. I get so worked up inside about something and don’t feel like I have any way to get it out of me. I want to say the thoughts I have to the people I have them about. I want to be honest with myself and with my community. I want to not think about things too much, which I seem to be doing lately. Give it a rest man, I need to mellow out my mind for a while because it is in overload mode and it is making it hard to give the attention to my friends. I’m distracted by my thoughts. They take over. I want to be me, more.

Sometimes desperation is the only thing that gives me hope for something better.

Waiting to be seen. (not my best post)

2005-10-14T12:43:00.000-05:00

I’ve been considering a lot lately about relationships. What they mean. How they form, and how they sometimes deteriorate into something that we never intended—or on the opposite how they end up as something we never even thought possible. I’m currently in one of those moments in life where strange thoughts form and odd words flow from people about odd things. It is fall, which is not an excuse, but it is a strange time of year. When things are dying all around us and all we look forward to is warm cider and a fire, but yet all we can seem to muster sometimes is a glass of water and a match.

Friendships seem to drift in this third realm for awhile. A realm of limbo, where they aren’t dead but they aren’t very much alive at all. Then, once some event happens, some gathering, some trip to some place happens, suddenly the friendship is brought out of limbo and into this world again. It takes odd moments of life for certain relationships to be brought back to life. I think this is called being dis-connected, and usually happens when one moves away and leaves their community.

But, what happens when one has friends that are involved in their lives currently. They are around a lot, do things together and have common friends. Then at some point in that short amount of time, something changes and things become different, awkward even. What happens? What is happening? What has changed? Inside information? Definitely not a fight—but maybe something just didn’t click? I’m not for sure. I’m know that we have all experienced this sort of mysticism in friends. One moment certain, the next un.

There is another type of relationship that also happens on a quick and different level, such as the one I mentioned above. The friend that suddenly comes into one’s life and makes a dramatic impact on your thinking, thoughts, feelings and life that you can’t remember a time when that person wasn’t part of your community. This also happened to me recently, as did the above situation. This one is interesting though because I never expected this person to become such a good friend, and I never thought they would have so many similar thoughts and ideas. It is a great thing when something like this happens. When you feel like after a few months you can be completely natural and upfront. You can talk openly and freely and know that they understand what your saying. You listen more and more and realize how much they are like you. People tell you how much you remind them of this person. It’s crazy.

This person doesn’t judge you. They don’t hold you captive based on their assumptions. They let you go, let you be yourself.

One of my goals is to start listening to my friends more. To totally try to understand them, listen to what they are saying, comprehend their words. It’s hard. It is hard to keep myself accountable with something like this, mostly because I have some sort of need to be talking, to get my ideas out there, my thoughts known. I’m trying to keep more to myself, to pay attention. Pay attention.

I guess I’ll have to start trying harder…I’m not for sure if I’m accomplishing my goal.

Since the house is on fire, let us warm ourselves.

2005-10-10T18:25:00.000-05:00

A few thoughts on a book my friend J. got me for my birthday. It is called “Status Anxiety” and is by Alain de Botton, a great philosopher from England who wrote one of my favorite books “The Art of Travel”.

There are 5 main causes for status anxiety, and they are: lovelessness, expectation, meritocracy, snobbery and dependence. The 5 solutions that he proposes for status anxiety are: philosophy, art, politics, religion and bohemia.

Our sense of identity is held captive by the judgments of those we live among.

The price we have paid for expecting to be so much more than our ancestors is a perpetual anxiety that we are far from being all we might be.

What is art good for?

Wealth has become the conventional basis of esteem.

The ruling ideas of every age are always the ideas of the ruling class.

Such destitution was, for a bohemian, vastly to be preferred to the horror of wasting his life on a job he despised. charles Baudelaire declared that all occupation were soul-destroying, save for writing poetry and –even less plausibly—being a warrior. When Marcel Duchamp visited New York in 1915, he described Greenwich Village as a “true bohemia” because the place was, he said “full of people doing nothing”.

A mature solution to status anxiety may be said to begin with the recognition that status is available from, and awarded by, a variety of different audiences—industrialists, bohemians, families, philosophers—and that our choice among them may be free and willed.

Dependence

2005-10-04T13:08:00.000-05:00

Several things have recently been on my mind, as I wondered about the state of Illinois this past weekend. I was able to go to Chicago with my friend and former professor R, who was gracious enough to let me tromp to the windy city with about 40 college sophomores. That in itself is proof of a tiring weekend, but throw in a trip to a Catholic Cathedral, an Orthodox Church a Synagogue, a Mosque, an Episcopal cathedral and a Mennonite commune and you have a glimpse of my weekend of questions and reflection.
Going on this trip for the 3rd time, it provided me a great awareness of my own personal change and progression in my religious thought over the past few years. Moving from what one might call a modern view to a more and ever increasing postmodern view of Christianity and religion as a whole. One of the ideas that stands out to me the most from this past weekend is the easiness with which I was able, in my mind, to accept each of the different views on God, worship, and salvation. I was able to understand, on a better level than before, what each was trying to achieve and how the faith they practice helps them reach for their oneness with God. It was great to be able to see the three major monotheistic religions in a new light: Christianity (Catholic, Episcopal, Mennonite, Orthodox), Judaism and Islam. Three from one is what I like to think, and as I mentioned before, it was much easier this time for me to understand. I learned that there are just as many different Islamic groups as there are Christian. I learned that Islam grants women more rights than other religions and that it is through cultural differences in various countries that we get our distorted view of the oppression of women, not from Islam itself. An idea that was reinforced was that there will be radicals in every religion. Radicalism can be positive and negative. It can force us to think about the status quo or it can force us further into a negative conception of what it represents. Overall, grace and respect is what drives each of the religious leaders that we met with. Respect for not only other religions, other faith and practices, but for integration and dialogue between themselves. Respect for the person that rejects and for the person that accepts and for all in between. Grace and respect lead them to peace, which in my view, is what we all seek in this walk.

Lost.

2005-10-03T16:51:00.000-05:00