The scary thing about surgery, is that you don't know how long a person can last through the trauma of the procedure. You know the theory is sound; replace bad with good. But you don't know if there is a time limit. So you rush it; you push through the time spent in their unconscious state as fast as you can. You think it will stick like some kid's rolled eyes - in that face like mothers have foretold for centuries.
That's the fear in most things; time. "How slow will time pass without you; how can I alter this to get you back to me sooner?" When really we need to focus on the effectiveness of the task at hand. Not the time it takes. After all, time is merely a relative thing. A thing that we have designated with a title as if to suggest it is a constant, but time is always a variable. Always.
Everything is out there. Everything is now. And it always will be. That person will always be there. Maybe not in an action sequence following the preceding event, but as a pleasant "memory" that we can still have access to. Nothing is ever forgotten; it is only displaced. And yes; displaced not misplaced. Misplaced implies a timeline of progressing events. Displace involves a variety of moments - all equal in strength - all equal in distance from each other and shaped like a sphere so as to be equal distance from any sort of "center". This way, we know we are just as likely to "remember" something from 9 years ago as something 9 seconds ago, depending on how much magnitude we registered from the event. And that is a completely individual and subjective thing, so there are no "odds" involved. Complete crap shoot. Any moment is as likely as the next to appeal to us.
Only connect. That's the message of the universe right? Connect. But connect doesn't mean be exactly the same. It doesn't mean that we have universal principles (ie time) that behave the same across the board. It means that we need to understand our own relationship with it and take the time and effort to understand others' relationships with it so that we can communicate effectively with them.
We all experience everything. We are vast, contain multitudes, and have room to contradict ourselves. But we have to stop pretending that things like "time" are constants. It is a charade that benefits no one.
Monday, October 28, 2013
Friday, October 25, 2013
The Illusion of Completeness
This is what we all are; an illusion of completeness. Maybe not all the time, and maybe not even consciously, but I feel certain that we all have projected that image at one point in time. If you are reading this thinking, "No I have surely never done that before" I ask you to think back to your time in middle school.. ah-ha.. "Yes it would appear that I have, indeed, done that before."
I saw a quote once that went something like "We are unsatisfied with our lives because we constantly compare our 'behind-the-scenes' footage with everyone else's 'highlight reel.'" Is that not the truth? Particularly this day in age when we have all these social media networks in which people post only the pictures in which they look like models and comment only about the good things that happen in their lives, "Got an 'A' on my midterm #collegelife #thatdailygrind #killinit" and hide the bad things, "Did I mention I'm hugely in debt from student loans and failing all my other classes?"
This sort of limited exposure to others makes it easy for us to look at our own lives and think we are less appealing or boring or failing or whatever else in comparison to others, but the funny thing is: look at those people whose lives you imagine to be perfect. Do you feel close to them? Or do you feel distanced by the lack of connection? Let me give an example from my own life:
Today in class we talked about how everyone is dealt a hand in life, and how those who are dealt a poor hand have no choice but to bluff if they want to stay in the game. If the other option is to fold, then I of course would encourage people to bluff. But at the same time, why is that the only option? Why can't we just look at someone with a shitty hand and accept them anyway? What is completeness and how can we possibly ever define it since we can't possibly know everything?
When I think about this I think of our brief discussion of Dumbo. The small elephant with huge ears is given a feather and told it will enable him to fly, so he places his trust in that feather and thereby flies. In Space Jam it is a "potion" (just a drink that the team is told is a potion) that enables the team to play better. Yet when these characters go without their magical aids, they discover they were capable of accomplishing those feats all along; by being "incomplete" they found success.
The last note I want to make on this topic concerns the Magus quote, "You are still becoming. Not being" (112) and the Hillman quote Dr. Sexson mentioned in class, "The thing you can become is what you already are." We want to be complete (whatever it is that means). We want to be happy, and we want to know everything. But the fact of the matter is: we are always changing, we cannot be happy 100% of the time, and we are ignorant. And as soon as we realize and accept this, we start down the path towards "being" - that is: being what we were all along.
I saw a quote once that went something like "We are unsatisfied with our lives because we constantly compare our 'behind-the-scenes' footage with everyone else's 'highlight reel.'" Is that not the truth? Particularly this day in age when we have all these social media networks in which people post only the pictures in which they look like models and comment only about the good things that happen in their lives, "Got an 'A' on my midterm #collegelife #thatdailygrind #killinit" and hide the bad things, "Did I mention I'm hugely in debt from student loans and failing all my other classes?"
This sort of limited exposure to others makes it easy for us to look at our own lives and think we are less appealing or boring or failing or whatever else in comparison to others, but the funny thing is: look at those people whose lives you imagine to be perfect. Do you feel close to them? Or do you feel distanced by the lack of connection? Let me give an example from my own life:
I am a junior in high school and new to the rock climbing scene. I am at the gym with a friend who has been climbing his whole life, and as we take turns climbing I say things like, "Man those inverted sections are really hard for me" or "It is hard to clip in on that route since I never feel like I'm balanced enough to take a hand off the wall." His response to these is to say "Oh I think the overhanging stuff is easy" and "Really? I don't think it's that hard."In doing this, he paints himself as the complete climber and makes it difficult for me to relate to him. Of course he does not need to lie and say that he thinks those things are difficult as well, but he surely went through the process of learning and training as well at one point.
Today in class we talked about how everyone is dealt a hand in life, and how those who are dealt a poor hand have no choice but to bluff if they want to stay in the game. If the other option is to fold, then I of course would encourage people to bluff. But at the same time, why is that the only option? Why can't we just look at someone with a shitty hand and accept them anyway? What is completeness and how can we possibly ever define it since we can't possibly know everything?
When I think about this I think of our brief discussion of Dumbo. The small elephant with huge ears is given a feather and told it will enable him to fly, so he places his trust in that feather and thereby flies. In Space Jam it is a "potion" (just a drink that the team is told is a potion) that enables the team to play better. Yet when these characters go without their magical aids, they discover they were capable of accomplishing those feats all along; by being "incomplete" they found success.
The last note I want to make on this topic concerns the Magus quote, "You are still becoming. Not being" (112) and the Hillman quote Dr. Sexson mentioned in class, "The thing you can become is what you already are." We want to be complete (whatever it is that means). We want to be happy, and we want to know everything. But the fact of the matter is: we are always changing, we cannot be happy 100% of the time, and we are ignorant. And as soon as we realize and accept this, we start down the path towards "being" - that is: being what we were all along.
Tuesday, October 22, 2013
Dazed and Confused
I'm not quite sure how to start this blog. So rather than try and formulate an intro, I'm just going to stick a bunch of excerpts from the Magus up here that surprised me.
"It is not anymore what you will become. It is what you are and always will be. You are too young to know this. You are still becoming. Not being" (112)
"The human mind is more a universe than the universe itself" (134)
"That is the truth. Not the hammer and sickle. Not the stars and stripes. Not the cross. Not the sun. Not gold. Not yin and yang. But the smile" (150)
"Why everything is, including you, including me, and all the gods, is a matter of hazard. Nothing else. Pure hazard" (190)
"He wanted to be blind. It made it more likely that one day he would see" (312)
"All that is past possesses our present" (317)
"War is psychosis caused by an inability to see relationships. Our relationship with our fellowmen. Our relationship with our economic and historical situation. And above all our relationship to nothingness. To death" (420)
"That experience made me fully realize what humor is. It is a manifestation of freedom. It is because there is freedom that there is the smile. Only a totally predetermined universe could be without it" (445)
"Psychiatry is getting more and more interested in the other side of the coin -- why sane people are sane, why they won't accept delusions and fantasies as real" (484)
"Spare him till he dies. Torment him till he lives" (559)
"An answer is always a form of death" (636)
"The basic principle of life is hazard" (639)
"Freedom was making some abrupt choice and acting on it" (655)
"cras amet qui numquam amavit quique amavit cras amet" (668) -> "Tomorrow let him love, who has never loved; he who has loved, let him love tomorrow"
Honestly, I could put the entire novel up on this post. I'm so unsure of what to think of it still. People in class keep saying how they had such a strong reaction to the book. And I can't blame them; it is a dense and thought-provoking work! But I seem to be stuck in a fog. The novel shocked and frustrated me, but mostly it has left me in a sort of daze as I try to figure it out. The weird thing is: the more I think about it and the more we talk about it in class, the less sure I feel about any of it.
The main question that has been bouncing around in my mind is this: What if we are just characters in someone's play/dream? Does that make our experience any less valid?
"It is not anymore what you will become. It is what you are and always will be. You are too young to know this. You are still becoming. Not being" (112)
"The human mind is more a universe than the universe itself" (134)
"That is the truth. Not the hammer and sickle. Not the stars and stripes. Not the cross. Not the sun. Not gold. Not yin and yang. But the smile" (150)
"Why everything is, including you, including me, and all the gods, is a matter of hazard. Nothing else. Pure hazard" (190)
"He wanted to be blind. It made it more likely that one day he would see" (312)
"All that is past possesses our present" (317)
"War is psychosis caused by an inability to see relationships. Our relationship with our fellowmen. Our relationship with our economic and historical situation. And above all our relationship to nothingness. To death" (420)
"That experience made me fully realize what humor is. It is a manifestation of freedom. It is because there is freedom that there is the smile. Only a totally predetermined universe could be without it" (445)
"Psychiatry is getting more and more interested in the other side of the coin -- why sane people are sane, why they won't accept delusions and fantasies as real" (484)
"Spare him till he dies. Torment him till he lives" (559)
"An answer is always a form of death" (636)
"The basic principle of life is hazard" (639)
"Freedom was making some abrupt choice and acting on it" (655)
"cras amet qui numquam amavit quique amavit cras amet" (668) -> "Tomorrow let him love, who has never loved; he who has loved, let him love tomorrow"
Honestly, I could put the entire novel up on this post. I'm so unsure of what to think of it still. People in class keep saying how they had such a strong reaction to the book. And I can't blame them; it is a dense and thought-provoking work! But I seem to be stuck in a fog. The novel shocked and frustrated me, but mostly it has left me in a sort of daze as I try to figure it out. The weird thing is: the more I think about it and the more we talk about it in class, the less sure I feel about any of it.
The main question that has been bouncing around in my mind is this: What if we are just characters in someone's play/dream? Does that make our experience any less valid?
Sunday, October 20, 2013
Madness
I'm in my 4th reading of the essay Dr. Sexson gave me to read titled "Apocalypse." Many parts of this essay trouble me because they cause me to think "WTF" or "What could this even mean?" which, I think, is exactly what the essay intends to do.
Simultaneously I think of my Bible as Literature class wherein I just read about the prophet Ezekiel and how his book is filled with images of schizophrenia and epileptic trances; he is regarded as a psychotic prophet. Therefore the prophecies of Ezekiel are instances of holy madness.
Growing up in a strict, traditional Catholic household certainly had an impact on me. When I first read this passage I thought, "Holy madness??" and instantly felt inner turmoil. After all, I have always been encouraged to think of religion as a factual, right, truth. Something that is not to be messed with. But as I have grown past the point of accepting what my elders tell me to the point of questioning things and forming my own beliefs, I have come to believe that all religions are the same. And atheists' belief systems (though not directed towards a god) are on the same level, just facing a different direction. To sum all that up: we are all mad. We just express it in different ways.
The other day I had a talk with Joe about the questions quote ("Ever answer is a form of death") and the conclusion we came to was that we must be prepared to doubt the very foundation on which we have built ourselves and our lives; we must be prepared to "kill God" (direct quote from Joe), and "god" in this sense is whatever that foundation of our lives is. T.S. Eliot expresses a similar notion in "Dry Salvages" when he writes,
Paragraph two states, "Our real choice is between holy and unholy madness: open your eyes and look around you - madness is in the saddle anyway" which the author then explains by saying, "It is possible to be mad and to be unblest; but it is not possible to get the blessing without the madness; it is not possible to get the illuminations without the derangement."As I read this passage I am brought back to our last class wherein Matt shared his feverish dream and Sexson said fevers and epileptic trances are instances in which we are able to transcend the human state; Matt's dream was nothing less than a vision. An instance of unholy madness.
Simultaneously I think of my Bible as Literature class wherein I just read about the prophet Ezekiel and how his book is filled with images of schizophrenia and epileptic trances; he is regarded as a psychotic prophet. Therefore the prophecies of Ezekiel are instances of holy madness.
Growing up in a strict, traditional Catholic household certainly had an impact on me. When I first read this passage I thought, "Holy madness??" and instantly felt inner turmoil. After all, I have always been encouraged to think of religion as a factual, right, truth. Something that is not to be messed with. But as I have grown past the point of accepting what my elders tell me to the point of questioning things and forming my own beliefs, I have come to believe that all religions are the same. And atheists' belief systems (though not directed towards a god) are on the same level, just facing a different direction. To sum all that up: we are all mad. We just express it in different ways.
The other day I had a talk with Joe about the questions quote ("Ever answer is a form of death") and the conclusion we came to was that we must be prepared to doubt the very foundation on which we have built ourselves and our lives; we must be prepared to "kill God" (direct quote from Joe), and "god" in this sense is whatever that foundation of our lives is. T.S. Eliot expresses a similar notion in "Dry Salvages" when he writes,
"There is no end, but addition: the trailing consequence of further days and hours, While emotion takes to itself and the emotionless Years of living among the breakage Of what was believed in as the most reliable - And therefore the fittest for renunciation"All of life is possessed by madness. Whether it be holy, unholy, or the madness gained in resisting either (for as I read in the previously mentioned essay, "Resisting madness can be the maddest way of being mad"), it is how we live. And the driving force of the madness in our lives is also the foundation upon which we have built ourselves. So if we are meant to question that force, we are then meant to question our sanity, which has to be the most confusing, intense, and likely painful experience we will ever go through. I hope I have the courage to do it when I arrive at that point in my life, because I am certain that point is out there and that I will reach it eventually.
Wednesday, October 16, 2013
My Own Apocalypse
One thing that really clicked with me in class yesterday was that Nicholas (from John Fowles' The Magus) experienced an apocalypse in his interactions with Conchis. The entire charade that Conchis organized worked to unveil things so that Nicholas could see the reality of his situation in life. Sure it was exhausting and frustrating and difficult for him to go through, but was it not worth it to be brought to awareness?
Some say that "ignorance is bliss," but it seems like ignorance is really just a limiting factor; it keeps people living on the surface rather than in the depths. And it is this notion that brings me to another element of The Magus that I wish we could have discussed further: the infamous quote, "An answer is always a form of death" (Fowles 637).
I realize that answers should not be handed out. As a future educator, it is extremely important to me that people, though possibly guided, find answers on their own. This process of discovery teaches self-sufficiency, which is the most important thing for a person to have. Therefore, handing answers out kills in a very negative way. However, when we are finding answers on our own - when we are going out and experiencing things and observing things and feeling things - are we really doing anything negative? My answer: no.
To repeat what I have said in previous blogs/class discussions, death is not a bad thing. Death is a complete surrender of ourselves. Have you ever surrendered? Think for a minute of a time when you were plagued by something to which you fully surrendered (sleep, hunger, maybe a work of art you did). And now imagine doing that to life in general; giving yourself fully to whatever current moved through you and pushed you along. You may not ever know what is coming, but the movement would be easy would it not? When we search out answers on our own we are not pushing against that current and creating some unnatural motion. If answers were bad why would we have brains so quick to learn and explore? Rather, when we find answers on our own we are simply brought to another level of depth in the river that is life. Or, to refer back to my blog on valence electrons as a model of life, we move into a different "shell" or energy level.
Another thing: the world is full of questions. The world is made of questions. No one could ever possibly even begin to answer all of them. To even take one thing, let's say an acorn, and study it all your life and devote all of your time and energy to answering all the possible questions about that one thing would be impossible. And this is important because it means that we will NEVER run out of questions; we will never cease in our explorations, and at the end of all our exploring will be to arrive were we started and know the place for the first time.
I have been having apocalyptic dreams for the last few weeks. Every single night a different version of the apocalypse plays out in my head and I awake thinking, "Man that was a striking and deep and multi-faceted dream, what does it mean?" And I finally realized it. Over the last year or so I have been experiencing my own apocalypse. The world has been unveiled and I have been seeing it with new eyes; I have been finding answers which only lead to more questions - deeper, more significant questions. I have had an entire cast of "actors" (mostly teachers, but also some friends and family members) that have put me through a stage of complete disorientation and confusion (like that of Nicholas) and I have gained a new perspective because of it. If we don't question, we don't learn. Descartes spent his whole life trying to show people that; we must always question. But finding answers doesn't mean we are doing something wrong or bad for ourselves, it simply readies us for the next level of questions, which will surely be even more intense and personal.
Some say that "ignorance is bliss," but it seems like ignorance is really just a limiting factor; it keeps people living on the surface rather than in the depths. And it is this notion that brings me to another element of The Magus that I wish we could have discussed further: the infamous quote, "An answer is always a form of death" (Fowles 637).
I realize that answers should not be handed out. As a future educator, it is extremely important to me that people, though possibly guided, find answers on their own. This process of discovery teaches self-sufficiency, which is the most important thing for a person to have. Therefore, handing answers out kills in a very negative way. However, when we are finding answers on our own - when we are going out and experiencing things and observing things and feeling things - are we really doing anything negative? My answer: no.
To repeat what I have said in previous blogs/class discussions, death is not a bad thing. Death is a complete surrender of ourselves. Have you ever surrendered? Think for a minute of a time when you were plagued by something to which you fully surrendered (sleep, hunger, maybe a work of art you did). And now imagine doing that to life in general; giving yourself fully to whatever current moved through you and pushed you along. You may not ever know what is coming, but the movement would be easy would it not? When we search out answers on our own we are not pushing against that current and creating some unnatural motion. If answers were bad why would we have brains so quick to learn and explore? Rather, when we find answers on our own we are simply brought to another level of depth in the river that is life. Or, to refer back to my blog on valence electrons as a model of life, we move into a different "shell" or energy level.
Another thing: the world is full of questions. The world is made of questions. No one could ever possibly even begin to answer all of them. To even take one thing, let's say an acorn, and study it all your life and devote all of your time and energy to answering all the possible questions about that one thing would be impossible. And this is important because it means that we will NEVER run out of questions; we will never cease in our explorations, and at the end of all our exploring will be to arrive were we started and know the place for the first time.
I have been having apocalyptic dreams for the last few weeks. Every single night a different version of the apocalypse plays out in my head and I awake thinking, "Man that was a striking and deep and multi-faceted dream, what does it mean?" And I finally realized it. Over the last year or so I have been experiencing my own apocalypse. The world has been unveiled and I have been seeing it with new eyes; I have been finding answers which only lead to more questions - deeper, more significant questions. I have had an entire cast of "actors" (mostly teachers, but also some friends and family members) that have put me through a stage of complete disorientation and confusion (like that of Nicholas) and I have gained a new perspective because of it. If we don't question, we don't learn. Descartes spent his whole life trying to show people that; we must always question. But finding answers doesn't mean we are doing something wrong or bad for ourselves, it simply readies us for the next level of questions, which will surely be even more intense and personal.
Thursday, October 10, 2013
Hazard
In one of the first encounters Nicholas has with Conchis in John Fowles' The Magus, Nicholas realizes that Conchis is saying and doing things that he does not expect Nicholas to believe. He is confused by the scenario he finds himself in and tells Conchis, "I'd enjoy it all more if I knew what it meant" (189). Conchis finds this amusing and says he himself doesn't know what it means, to which Nicholas replies, "Why me?" Conchis, in turn, says, "There is only one answer to your question...Why everything is, including you, including me, and all the gods, is a matter of hazard. Nothing else. Pure hazard."
A few more quotes from the novel:
"The world began in hazard and will end in it."
"There is no plan. All is hazard. And the only thing that will preserve us is ourselves."
Let's start with the etymology of hazard, which means "chance or luck." Conchis is then saying that the world and each of us in it is entirely a matter of chance. We are nothing more than the result of atoms falling into place at random. My initial reaction to this was to say, "No- we make things happen in our lives. We sculpt who we are; we are all paintings composed of particular brush strokes and purposeful colors." But then I realized; I am wrong.
Everything I am is a result of the experiences I have had. And I have no control over what has happened to me. I remember my 9th grade speech teacher once saying, "You cannot control what happens to you, but you can control how you react." When I first heard it I did not fully understand it (although I of course thought I did). I took it to explain the big obviously-out-of-our-control things: natural disasters, deaths, etc. But when thinking of it now, in regards to Conchis' words, I realize it applies to everything: the hobbies I have, the clothes I wear, the people in my life. All of it is nothing more than a matter of chance.
I walk around thinking I have made myself into the person I am today, but really I have done nothing more than react to what has been presented to me; "There is no plan. All is hazard. And the only thing that will preserve us is ourselves." I am not responsible for the life I have, only for the perspective I have. And even then, I only hold partial ownership because I could not have formed that way of viewing things without the experiences (over which I have no control) that I have encountered. I am so very little my own.
We are not paintings composed of particular brush strokes and purposeful colors; we are the image you can almost see when you tilt your head looking into a grouping of clouds. We are a matter of hazard. And this should not be taken in a negative manner, but in quite a positive one. Being a matter of hazard allows us so much potential for change. Our limits extend beyond those that we, in all of our human futility, are restricted to and reach as far as the eye can see. Every collision between atoms provides another image for us to react to and therefore another opportunity for development.
These thoughts crawled around in my head as I was walking from campus to my car today. As per usual I had my headphones in and was listening to my iPod. The song ended and as I clicked the screen on to select a new song I thought of The Magus and how "Every answer is a form of death." In a way, my choosing to select a specific song kills the opportunity for surprise; it is an answer of sorts and since it could not bring anything new into my life, what possible motive do I have for choosing the song? I went instead to all of my songs and selected the "shuffle" option. When, seconds later, a song popped on that made me think "Wow I haven't heard this is forever, this makes me think of the angst-filled poetry I used to write years ago" I was rewarded. How long would it have taken me to think back to those angsty poems if I hadn't heard that song? Would I ever have thought of them in depth like that again?
Who knows. Maybe I would have been brought back to that memory by something else only hours later. Maybe days. Or years. No one can be sure; it is all a matter of hazard.
A few more quotes from the novel:
"The world began in hazard and will end in it."
"There is no plan. All is hazard. And the only thing that will preserve us is ourselves."
Let's start with the etymology of hazard, which means "chance or luck." Conchis is then saying that the world and each of us in it is entirely a matter of chance. We are nothing more than the result of atoms falling into place at random. My initial reaction to this was to say, "No- we make things happen in our lives. We sculpt who we are; we are all paintings composed of particular brush strokes and purposeful colors." But then I realized; I am wrong.
Everything I am is a result of the experiences I have had. And I have no control over what has happened to me. I remember my 9th grade speech teacher once saying, "You cannot control what happens to you, but you can control how you react." When I first heard it I did not fully understand it (although I of course thought I did). I took it to explain the big obviously-out-of-our-control things: natural disasters, deaths, etc. But when thinking of it now, in regards to Conchis' words, I realize it applies to everything: the hobbies I have, the clothes I wear, the people in my life. All of it is nothing more than a matter of chance.
I walk around thinking I have made myself into the person I am today, but really I have done nothing more than react to what has been presented to me; "There is no plan. All is hazard. And the only thing that will preserve us is ourselves." I am not responsible for the life I have, only for the perspective I have. And even then, I only hold partial ownership because I could not have formed that way of viewing things without the experiences (over which I have no control) that I have encountered. I am so very little my own.
We are not paintings composed of particular brush strokes and purposeful colors; we are the image you can almost see when you tilt your head looking into a grouping of clouds. We are a matter of hazard. And this should not be taken in a negative manner, but in quite a positive one. Being a matter of hazard allows us so much potential for change. Our limits extend beyond those that we, in all of our human futility, are restricted to and reach as far as the eye can see. Every collision between atoms provides another image for us to react to and therefore another opportunity for development.
These thoughts crawled around in my head as I was walking from campus to my car today. As per usual I had my headphones in and was listening to my iPod. The song ended and as I clicked the screen on to select a new song I thought of The Magus and how "Every answer is a form of death." In a way, my choosing to select a specific song kills the opportunity for surprise; it is an answer of sorts and since it could not bring anything new into my life, what possible motive do I have for choosing the song? I went instead to all of my songs and selected the "shuffle" option. When, seconds later, a song popped on that made me think "Wow I haven't heard this is forever, this makes me think of the angst-filled poetry I used to write years ago" I was rewarded. How long would it have taken me to think back to those angsty poems if I hadn't heard that song? Would I ever have thought of them in depth like that again?
Who knows. Maybe I would have been brought back to that memory by something else only hours later. Maybe days. Or years. No one can be sure; it is all a matter of hazard.
Tuesday, October 8, 2013
Fishing Line in the Oven
Largely due to our class' reading Annie Dillard's For the Time Being, the topic of death has been thrown around quite a bit lately. However, I am confident this topic would be coming up even if we were reading works that did not mention death at all, being as it is a topic of human fixation. An E.M. Foster quote referenced in Dillard's book sums up the reason for this quite nicely,
Some people approach it with faith- taking religious dogmas for fact and believing in a beautiful afterlife or reincarnation. Others say there is nothing, just a hole in the ground and that is that. But the thing both of these groups have in common is their ability to be influenced by death- whatever it may be.
I must say, I had always dreaded death. I was raised in a Catholic household and grew up believing there were three options for me once I died: heaven, purgatory, or hell. And which place I would be sent to depended on my actions in this life. I have always had a vigor for life and my "bucket list" is about 30 versts long, so I clung to the notion of an afterlife furiously. However, I recently had an experience that completely affirmed my belief; I died.
Okay, so I didn't heart-stops-beating-face-turns-blue die, but I certainly thought I did. I was at my friend's house "opening the doors in my head" when suddenly I was pulled into a vivid action sequence; I had walked into my house and flipped on the lights to see two men in front of me. They were dressed in black and looked as shocked to see me as I was to see them. Before I could take another step or form a word with my mouth, the man nearest to me raised a gun level with my head and pulled the trigger.
The first thing I saw was his eyes; they switched from shocked to determined in an instant. And in that same instant I saw the bullet spiral out of the pistol's barrel and come towards me. I felt it pierce my skull and sink into my brain tissue. I felt my body go rigid in fear and then limp as I was hit. I felt my lungs deflate and my knees give out as I slowly crumpled to the floor, and at the same time I felt myself - very much "alive" - move towards something else. Something that I had never seen before but that, upon looking directly at it, I realized had always been there: like a door I had never opened in a house I had lived in my whole life. And I moved towards that, knowing that it would be pleasant and warm and forever; the "afterlife."
Now, though this "experience" was entirely in my mind, it stuck with me. Only a few days later I was rafting, got thrown out, pulled under, and caught in a tangle of roots under the water. I struggled to swim against the strong current, but it pushed me into a web of roots that I could not escape. I thought to myself, "so this is it.. this is how I am going to die." And as I felt myself weaken, I felt that same presence as before. There was the door. Right there. And I would be okay in there; it would be painless and pleasant and warm. There was nothing to fear. And as I realized that I realized that I might as well keep living then. For what should I be afraid of in life if I know that at the end I have this place I will certainly arrive at, and it is not painful or scary at all?? The answer: nothing. Right then an arm wrapped around me and I was pulled to the surface; my friend had jumped out after me and saved me.
The conclusion I have then come to is that death is not painful. Life is. We create all these rules and boundaries and behavioral modes to follow, and we force ourselves to do things we don't want to do. We get high-stress jobs to make more money so that we can acquire things that will make us more likable to the people around us. We measure success in terms of dollar bills. We wash our clothes after each individual use. And what for? What are we saying? Or NOT saying?
What would you do if you had nothing to fear?
I've been having a lot of dreams about the end of the world lately. And in last night's version it was ending due to nuclear warfare. My family and I ran into the mountains to survive off the land. All was going well and we suddenly discovered a cabin equipped with an oven. For some reason, I had my fly rod in the kitchen and was casting while my mother made up dinner. She opened the oven door right as I released my line and it fell onto the door. I pulled it in as fast as I could, but the leader had melted entirely; my line was rendered useless. I held my worthless rod in my hands and cried; I had been using it as the main means of our survival and there was no way I could get replacement leader. It was the end. Death was imminent. And I was afraid.
I woke from this dream upset, but as I thought it over in my mind I realized how silly it was: dying because I cast my fishing line on the oven. I also realized how silly another thing was: death. It is the one thing we can be sure will happen in life, so for all of our desire for control and plans, death should be the most comforting concept of all. Tis but a tangle of melted leader.
"We move between two darknesses. The two entities who might enlighten us, the babe and the corpse, cannot do so."We are fixated on the concept of death because it is a mystery to us and therefore scary. As humans we like to pretend to be in control; we plan and organize our lives in an attempt to convince ourselves that we have the power and ability to make those things happen. When something out of our plan happens we say, "Oh well- we can't control everything" when really we accept that we cannot control anything. But death... death is the most alluding thing of all because we know so little about it that we don't even know how to pretend to control it.
Some people approach it with faith- taking religious dogmas for fact and believing in a beautiful afterlife or reincarnation. Others say there is nothing, just a hole in the ground and that is that. But the thing both of these groups have in common is their ability to be influenced by death- whatever it may be.
I must say, I had always dreaded death. I was raised in a Catholic household and grew up believing there were three options for me once I died: heaven, purgatory, or hell. And which place I would be sent to depended on my actions in this life. I have always had a vigor for life and my "bucket list" is about 30 versts long, so I clung to the notion of an afterlife furiously. However, I recently had an experience that completely affirmed my belief; I died.
Okay, so I didn't heart-stops-beating-face-turns-blue die, but I certainly thought I did. I was at my friend's house "opening the doors in my head" when suddenly I was pulled into a vivid action sequence; I had walked into my house and flipped on the lights to see two men in front of me. They were dressed in black and looked as shocked to see me as I was to see them. Before I could take another step or form a word with my mouth, the man nearest to me raised a gun level with my head and pulled the trigger.
The first thing I saw was his eyes; they switched from shocked to determined in an instant. And in that same instant I saw the bullet spiral out of the pistol's barrel and come towards me. I felt it pierce my skull and sink into my brain tissue. I felt my body go rigid in fear and then limp as I was hit. I felt my lungs deflate and my knees give out as I slowly crumpled to the floor, and at the same time I felt myself - very much "alive" - move towards something else. Something that I had never seen before but that, upon looking directly at it, I realized had always been there: like a door I had never opened in a house I had lived in my whole life. And I moved towards that, knowing that it would be pleasant and warm and forever; the "afterlife."
Now, though this "experience" was entirely in my mind, it stuck with me. Only a few days later I was rafting, got thrown out, pulled under, and caught in a tangle of roots under the water. I struggled to swim against the strong current, but it pushed me into a web of roots that I could not escape. I thought to myself, "so this is it.. this is how I am going to die." And as I felt myself weaken, I felt that same presence as before. There was the door. Right there. And I would be okay in there; it would be painless and pleasant and warm. There was nothing to fear. And as I realized that I realized that I might as well keep living then. For what should I be afraid of in life if I know that at the end I have this place I will certainly arrive at, and it is not painful or scary at all?? The answer: nothing. Right then an arm wrapped around me and I was pulled to the surface; my friend had jumped out after me and saved me.
The conclusion I have then come to is that death is not painful. Life is. We create all these rules and boundaries and behavioral modes to follow, and we force ourselves to do things we don't want to do. We get high-stress jobs to make more money so that we can acquire things that will make us more likable to the people around us. We measure success in terms of dollar bills. We wash our clothes after each individual use. And what for? What are we saying? Or NOT saying?
What would you do if you had nothing to fear?
I've been having a lot of dreams about the end of the world lately. And in last night's version it was ending due to nuclear warfare. My family and I ran into the mountains to survive off the land. All was going well and we suddenly discovered a cabin equipped with an oven. For some reason, I had my fly rod in the kitchen and was casting while my mother made up dinner. She opened the oven door right as I released my line and it fell onto the door. I pulled it in as fast as I could, but the leader had melted entirely; my line was rendered useless. I held my worthless rod in my hands and cried; I had been using it as the main means of our survival and there was no way I could get replacement leader. It was the end. Death was imminent. And I was afraid.
I woke from this dream upset, but as I thought it over in my mind I realized how silly it was: dying because I cast my fishing line on the oven. I also realized how silly another thing was: death. It is the one thing we can be sure will happen in life, so for all of our desire for control and plans, death should be the most comforting concept of all. Tis but a tangle of melted leader.
Thursday, October 3, 2013
Honesty
It startled me to read, in Northrop Frye's The Secular Scripture,
The worst thing a human can feel is helplessness. Whether it be physically (being held at gun point), mentally (suffering from anxiety, depression, etc), or abstract (not knowing what to do with one's life or the like), helplessness is debilitating and strips a person of their confidence, dependence, and pride. However, it is only by being honest with ourselves about our limitations and abilities that we can make realistic goals and thereby take realistic steps towards achieving them which keeps us from feeling helpless.
It is also honesty which brings us to have a truthful perception of ourselves. Today in class Jonah said he wondered what it would be like if we introduced ourselves to others by saying things like, "Hello my name is Jonah and I need constant words of affirmation from girls I like to boost my ego." The response from Dr. Sexson was, "And do you all remember how we introduced ourselves at the beginning of this class?" Of course we did; we introduced ourselves by saying our name and a dream we had experienced. And because our dream state is so raw and unfettered, the two methods of introduction (Jonah's and Dr. Sexson's) really are one and the same.
George Santayana states, "Sanity is madness put to good uses; waking life is a dream controlled." I felt a smile on my face the instant I heard this quote in class today. Not because of any prior connection to it, but because I agree with it so completely. To be sane we must accept that we are all a little mad; we must be honest with ourselves about our true thoughts, desires, and inclinations. We must accept that what keeps us writing the same stories about romance is that we crave the improbable and erotic and violent. And until we allow ourselves to be honest and raw, we will not wake.
"The improbable, desiring, erotic, and violent world of romance reminds us that we are not awake when we have abolished the dream world: we are awake only when we have absorbed it again" (61)When I first read this - this provocative statement Frye uses to close chapter 2 of his book - I was pulled straight from the humdrum of reading to reread it multiple times. We are awake only when we have absorbed [the dream world] again. This echos a thought I have had many times before: that our mind, when in a dream state, it at its freest and therefore most raw and honest state. This is what it boils down to: honesty.
The worst thing a human can feel is helplessness. Whether it be physically (being held at gun point), mentally (suffering from anxiety, depression, etc), or abstract (not knowing what to do with one's life or the like), helplessness is debilitating and strips a person of their confidence, dependence, and pride. However, it is only by being honest with ourselves about our limitations and abilities that we can make realistic goals and thereby take realistic steps towards achieving them which keeps us from feeling helpless.
It is also honesty which brings us to have a truthful perception of ourselves. Today in class Jonah said he wondered what it would be like if we introduced ourselves to others by saying things like, "Hello my name is Jonah and I need constant words of affirmation from girls I like to boost my ego." The response from Dr. Sexson was, "And do you all remember how we introduced ourselves at the beginning of this class?" Of course we did; we introduced ourselves by saying our name and a dream we had experienced. And because our dream state is so raw and unfettered, the two methods of introduction (Jonah's and Dr. Sexson's) really are one and the same.
George Santayana states, "Sanity is madness put to good uses; waking life is a dream controlled." I felt a smile on my face the instant I heard this quote in class today. Not because of any prior connection to it, but because I agree with it so completely. To be sane we must accept that we are all a little mad; we must be honest with ourselves about our true thoughts, desires, and inclinations. We must accept that what keeps us writing the same stories about romance is that we crave the improbable and erotic and violent. And until we allow ourselves to be honest and raw, we will not wake.
Tuesday, October 1, 2013
Connecting the Dots
Today in class, while talking once more about the idea of "quality," a question came up concerning the connecting of dots. Is a teacher good if they connect all the dots? Or do you get more out of the class if they leave it to you - the student - to find the connections. My answer to this question? Neither. Or both. Somewhere in the middle, or perhaps on a parallel plane, because it is not so much to do with how many dots are connected but rather in what manner they are connected.
Most classes are conducted in a a very narrow zone. If the lesson for the day is on Shakespeare, then the class must revolve around only that. But not only is the orbit constricted to that one planet, it is also made to stick as close to it as possible.
Most classes are conducted in a a very narrow zone. If the lesson for the day is on Shakespeare, then the class must revolve around only that. But not only is the orbit constricted to that one planet, it is also made to stick as close to it as possible.
The teacher conducting the class certainly thinks that this will give a better view of the topic/"planet." And in some ways it does; it forces the observer to see certain details and intricacies of the topic. However, this manner of looking at things is more restricting than helpful.
When we allow our minds to "wander" (a word that has become increasingly distasteful to use in the academic environment), we see more connections and gain a better understanding of the topic. Take, for example, our Tracings class. In the classroom anything is fair game. If one of our minds is brought from a discussion on Shakespeare to pizza, we let it happen and we are consistently rewarded for this practice. Our minds are so much more complex and aware than we are aware of (hence the term subconscious), and for our thoughts to suddenly turn to pizza, as in the example, we must trust that there is a reason: some thread of connection that brought us there.
This trust in our initial reactions is the key aspect to improvisational acting. When learning how to become a better improv actor, the main focus is that you learn to go with whatever first comes to your mind. You may see that first thought and think, "Hmm.. I could come up with something funnier" and try to do so, but the most successful of improv actors are consistently those who go with their initial thought. Why is this? It's because of the same reasons stated above! We may not consciously realize why we made that connection or why we would want to say those words, but if it was the first thing to come to mind there is certainly some reason why.
Humans hold the title of the most evolved of animals. However, part of our evolution has pushed us to suppress our instinctual reactions in favor of more thought out ones. We see this in the examples I stated above as well as in studies done in testing (the results show that on questions in which students do not know the answer, those who go with their first guess do much better than those who go with their second/third/etc guess for the answer) that our mind is smarter, persay, than we give it credit for. Go with your gut. Go on tangents. Get "off-topic." Because in the end, everything is connected in one way or another and therefore nothing is off-topic. Zooming out and exploring ideas that seem to have no connection with the topic at all will only lead to a better, fuller understanding of it. It's hard to see the image a puzzle makes if you are looking at it under a microscope.
When we allow our minds to "wander" (a word that has become increasingly distasteful to use in the academic environment), we see more connections and gain a better understanding of the topic. Take, for example, our Tracings class. In the classroom anything is fair game. If one of our minds is brought from a discussion on Shakespeare to pizza, we let it happen and we are consistently rewarded for this practice. Our minds are so much more complex and aware than we are aware of (hence the term subconscious), and for our thoughts to suddenly turn to pizza, as in the example, we must trust that there is a reason: some thread of connection that brought us there.
This trust in our initial reactions is the key aspect to improvisational acting. When learning how to become a better improv actor, the main focus is that you learn to go with whatever first comes to your mind. You may see that first thought and think, "Hmm.. I could come up with something funnier" and try to do so, but the most successful of improv actors are consistently those who go with their initial thought. Why is this? It's because of the same reasons stated above! We may not consciously realize why we made that connection or why we would want to say those words, but if it was the first thing to come to mind there is certainly some reason why.
Humans hold the title of the most evolved of animals. However, part of our evolution has pushed us to suppress our instinctual reactions in favor of more thought out ones. We see this in the examples I stated above as well as in studies done in testing (the results show that on questions in which students do not know the answer, those who go with their first guess do much better than those who go with their second/third/etc guess for the answer) that our mind is smarter, persay, than we give it credit for. Go with your gut. Go on tangents. Get "off-topic." Because in the end, everything is connected in one way or another and therefore nothing is off-topic. Zooming out and exploring ideas that seem to have no connection with the topic at all will only lead to a better, fuller understanding of it. It's hard to see the image a puzzle makes if you are looking at it under a microscope.
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