Word Stack or A Pile of Thoughts

The term "limnal time" is a bit misleading, because it actually is supposed to refer to time outside of time, which isn’t time at all.  Accordingly, it is in the dimension of timelessness that all that is divine exists; in the teachings of Eckenkar, it’s the astral plane; in Buddhism and Hinduism, it’s a realm of inner peace and enlightenment; for Christianity, it is peace of Christ which "transcends all understanding".  Believers are, from time to time, called to journey to this outer existence and return with new ideas, and a renewed sense of self.

It brings to mind Joseph Campbell’s Hero with a Thousand Faces.  The archetype hero, according to Campbell, is a social deviant, who takes on a journey away from the home, the familiar, and the comfortable, to resolve a conflict; often this conflict is seen as an articulation of a contradiction faced in the human experience.  Every hero has some sort of journey: Luke Skywalker, Frodo Baggins, Achilles, Lam-Ang, Sir Gawain, Kenshin Himura.

But why do I refer to these two similar, yet opposing concepts?  Both are journeys, and yet one is of peace while the other is of conflict.  I’m looking at my life, right now, on the day after my graduation from university, as the confluence of both.  On one hand, it feels like there are so many possibilities, that I can finally be satisfied and study what I would like to study, read the books I want to read, write the papers I want to write, go to the places I want to go.  I feel like the obligation of education has been fulfilled, and now the real learning can start. 

On the other hand, there is a sense of dread of what comes next, the sharper turns and deeper ravines ahead.  I would be lying if I said I wasn’t afraid of what comes next; as the All-American Rejects sing, "The future freaks me out."  In my imagination, there are adventures and quests, people and places.  But even as I want to see these things come through, hope is tempered by the sense that in my experience, imagination is a dangerous thing.  Icarus fell into the ocean. 

More than hope, the fundamental fear is the one that comes with the realization of self.  The more pronounced the Self becomes, the clearer the absence of the Other.  Doesn’t it suck to be human sometimes?  The more aware it is of its identity and place, the more alone it feels.  My track record for having a partner to dance with isn’t very good. 

So, even though empty pages are filled with possibilities, it’s a double-edged experience.

I have achieved what I set out to do four years ago, when I left my job and my life in Fredericksburg.  Back then, I was blogging about adventures in the forests in Virginia, exploring the Boracay nightlife, hanging out around old Confederate graveyards, teaching people how to build bamboo rafts. 

Obviously, a person can’t go through four years of experience and emerge unchanged.  But…

"It’s not the years, honey; it’s the mileage."

So correct.  Time wasn’t the factor here; it was the places and people that changed things.  It was that hotel room in UP Diliman; it was a bus ride to Sablan; a conversation about post-structuralism; a purple patch and a goat; an Indian named Sallah who hated Singapore; a roller-coaster and a kiss;a Vietnamese girl sitting on the top of a building; eavesdropping on a museum tour in Hong Kong; it was every seven minute high.  It was all the crazy little things that somehow add-up to become the me that is me. 

But all this, all these things, wouldn’t have been what they are if there was one person who didn’t get the ball rolling, who– although it didn’t seem that way at the beginning– became the cause for my coming here and finding all this.  The last email she sent me before I left for the Philippines four years ago:

Well, thanks Kelli.

To sail up (which, in Egypt, means south) the Nile to the ancient ruins of Thebes, and strike out on foot to the Valley of the Kings.

To learn about the comparison between Angkor Wat and Borobudur, and maybe figure something out about Srivijayan/Sri-Visayan culture.

Do a project involving a collection of stories from Native American tribes.

To write a paper about the information landscape of medieval European culture, and how this was expressed in terms of 12th religion, politics, art, and economics.

To experience the meaning of geography being a locus of time and place– a moment of history somewhere in the world.

To live the lesson of language being the key to understanding a culture.

To drive an Italian sport’s car from Milan to Naples.

To drink vodka in a bar near the Red Square.

To hike up to a Shinto shrine in Hokkaido.

Bury an acorn beneath an oak tree in Ireland on a full-moon (with luck, an oak tree near a river bend)

These and about a million other things.  On the next page of a story, ANYTHING can happen.  Some of things I’ve wanted to do were things I’ve been thinking about for quite some time; others, I’ve picked up along the way.  Whatever the case, it’s dreams like this that keep me grinding away.  Hopefully, life won’t be too short.

In the summer we used to wrap detonation cords
Around a tree
Yellow bands twisting around the trunk
We’d use nails, bite them deep
right into the wood to keep the explosives in place
We also liked the thought
of nails mixed with splinters and sap

It would be a bright day, with sunlight and birds
the works
and a tree wrapped
root to crown
In high explosive PETN
Eight thousand and four hundred meters per second of gas rate expansion

It was the crack of lightning on a clear day
We’d grab each other in a violent kiss
And a tree would turn into a million splinters

I like to remember
the things we did.

It isn’t so much about dreaming as it is having the courage
to dream of anything at all

Heroes are accidents; kryptonite is whatever we let become our weakness. 

(CUE RANT:)
I can sit here, enjoying a quiet night with my iTunes playing, and just writing about nothing.  There’s a nice pile of books next to my hand, capped by Amartya Sen’s Development as Freedom, and a pack of Dentyne Ice chewing gum on one of the open pages… evidence of a day spent mainly just writing final papers.  This is my last week in university.  That’s the fourth time I’ve said that to myself since Monday started.  Its quiet, and I wish every night could be like this, without little things out there or in there getting to me.  It’s not a feeling of boredom, just gladness for nothing to do.  I have more to write tomorrow, but I’m not stressing about it; writing is something I enjoy anyway, and I have something that I want to say, which is a better reason to write than the threat of a deadline.  Just watched the new Indiana Jones trailer for the umptieth time, and nothing feels better than the lines "You’re a teacher?" "Part-time." 

I was awake the other night, after the senior ball, while the rain was coming down and the power went out when the lightning hit a tree near Silliman farm, thinking about if the answer to the questions of cosmological scale where to be found in explanations of quantum phenomenon.  Probably.  String theory isn’t exactly scientific yet. 

Religion evolves artificially, modified and adapted according to the needs and preferences of people.  Even rise in youth-driven evangelical ministry, for example, is a reworking of the social relevance/activist doctrine of the 1970s and 80s.  Its not too far off from the comparison made by Daniel Dennet, where the modern domestic cow was artificially selected into a specific animal quite different from its origins as a wild herd creature, the Aurex.  But which changes first? Society or religion?  In what cases did one happen before the other?  At what points did religion drive social change?  And at what points did social changes cause changes in religion?  How are religious beliefs manifested in cultural artifacts, such as architecture, literature, laws, urban spatial organization etc.?  How much of religion is actually a response to geophysical realities of a society?

When you’re dreaming with a broken heart
Waking up is the hardest part
You roll out of bed
and on to your knees

Hrm, yep, John Mayer seems to know what he’s talking about.  By the way, what makes a rose interesting isn’t the beauty of the petals, but the thorns on the stem.

Okay, time to go back to writing serious stuff…

Deep in the woods, she had found a place that had been forgotten.  She knew, from the books she had read at the library, that her town hadn’t always been a place of parking lots and department stores.  She knew that long ago, her town had been the camping ground of an army, and that a Danish knight and his six companions had built a fortress, and defended it against raiding tribes of Picts in the name of King Alaric of Northcumberland.  She knew that the ruins, overgrown with ivy and home to a flock of rooks, were all that remained of this knight.

She would take her books there, in a leather bag hanging over her shoulder.  She spoke words to the faeries(people told her that this was rubbish, but like most things people told her, she knew they didn’t know what they were talking about.) In her books were stories, stories of a time that had long ago disappeared, stories of deeds and omens, of steel, of flame, of sacrifice.  She believed that if she read these stories among the very stones that had witnessed them in those lost ages, her voice would reach into that past, and the heroes of that time would know their valor would never be forgotten. 

She grew up, and the world changed like it always does.  She moved to an apartment, which she decorated with lightly-hued linens and comfortable furniture.  She listened to music, and sometimes remembered talking to faeries.  And she would glance at the books on the shelf, and imagine she knew what it was to be a child, imagine she knew what it was to believe.

It was on the eve of winter’s solstice when she returned to the ruins of the knight’s fortress, her mind distracted by the words of someone she thought she loved.  Her feet carried her, without thought, down the familiar paths, past the faerie circles she had once revered, up the hill to the stones of the outer wall.  The ruins lay cloaked in snow, the world silent.  She sat, her breath forming the steam of Yngir, the first of the frost giants.  She smiled at the thought, and remembered the names of knight and his six companions, the deeds they had carved on the stones with the force of their courage.  She remembered the truths of her heart, etched upon memories of her past.

The favor had been returned.

Ever since I was three, I wanted to grow up to be Dr. Indiana Jones.  I know, it sounds a little stupid now that I’m 22 and graduating– not with a degree in archeology, but in communication– but that’s really all that I’ve got.  In some ways, this re-discovery of adventure comes because of 1) the new Jones movie coming out in May and 2) graduation.  Because now, more than ever, I feel like I’m standing at the edge of something.  Now, more than ever, it feels like the big adventure that I started eight years ago is coming of its own.

People say the world has gotten smaller, and I’d agree, as long as the world we’re talking about is the world of computers and office spaces and 9-5 and Starbuck’s; but, with the trips I’ve made, in the world of temples and artifacts, of elephants and monasteries, villages, ruins and rivers, in places where a nine-headed cobra looms over a city square, where an orange linen is wrapped around a headless statue of Buddha, where a moonlit night is spent wandering around a strange city… the world is as big and exciting a place as ever. 

The plan to a life spent in THAT world isn’t easy, because it involves the 9-5 thing as well.  Granted.  However, as long as I keep my heart set on what I’m living for, the grind won’t get me down.  And now, it’s not just wandering; there’s an idea that needs to come of its own, an idea about the world, about people, about culture, about what people believe, why they believe, and what makes one belief different from the next and how belief shapes the environment they live in.  I’m not going to settle for an answer someone else will give me, in a book or in a classroom.  I want to see it for myself, and that’s what learning is all about after all. 

Gimme my hat, slingbag and jacket.  Never mind the whip.

The following is a song by Loreena Mckennit. Although it is meant to be a prayer to God, I’d also like to think of it as a prayer to dear friend.

When the dark wood fell before me
And all the paths were overgrown
When the priests of pride say there is no other way
I tilled the sorrows of stone

I did not believe because I could not see
Though you came to me in the night
When the dawn seemed forever lost
You showed me your love in the light of the stars

Cast your eyes on the ocean
Cast your soul to the sea
When the dark night seems endless
Please remember me

Then the mountain rose before me
By the deep well of desire
From the fountain of forgiveness
Beyond the ice and the fire

Cast your eyes on the ocean
Cast your soul to the sea
When the dark night seems endless
Please remember me

Though we share this humble path, alone
How fragile is the heart
Oh give these clay feet wings to fly
To touch the face of the stars

Breathe life into this feeble heart
Lift this mortal veil of fear
Take these crumbled hopes, etched with tears
We’ll rise above these earthly cares

Cast your eyes on the ocean
Cast your soul to the sea
When the dark night seems endless
Please remember me…

Is it possible to fill up the internet with so much garbage to the point that search engines will get bogged down with the sheer vastness of useless information left behind over the years?  The current understanding of cyberspace is that it’s limitless.  But there was a time when we thought the same thing about our physical reality.  We thought the world was such a huge place that there was no way that we could possibly fill it all up or exhaust it’s natural resources.  That sort of short-sightedness brought us to the all the problems we face today. 

Is it possible and by what means is it possible that we could be making a flawed assumption about the capacity of virtual reality to sustain our information activities?

As I write this, Lozada is pwning the Arroyo administration with the help of the Philippine Senate.  My friend just won the Valentine’s Song Writing Competition for the second time in a row, with a piece that could very well have been written for an Andrew Lloyd Webberish musical.  The lecture on non-violence completely wiped all my depression over lacking something interesting to poke.  In the US, Obama is sweeping the Democrat caucus, and Hillary just fired her campaign manager.  It seems like this week some severe pwnage is being wreaked in my world. 

But that comes with the temperature dropping to a frigid 34 degrees F, and that’s not cool (haha).

Driving around the city tonight, listening to some Satriani pieces, I passed by a few places where I made memories, and it got me thinking about stuff about Dumaguete that I’ll be nostalgic about sooner than later. 

- The breakwater along the Hayahay-Looc front, where I used to bike while listening to a minidisc player I lifted from my sister.

- Sitting at the edge of the docks, watching people fish, thinking about stowing away on the ships (this was after reading a book by Jimmy Buffet Margueritaville).

- Sneaking to the top of the AS building at night to stargaze.

It seems like the most fun I had was in those first two years of being in Silliman.  Of course, with my father taking the position, a lot of my activities were curtailed.  But more than that, I had obligations to fulfill for the family, as well as the influence of my father to reach for more in my college experience.  I remember telling myself at the beginning of my first year, that I was here only to earn a degree, so I could get a nice job.  I wasn’t overly concerned about the level of education I was getting; I just wanted to experience life.  There weren’t as many frustrations.  A lot changed when my dad became the university president, and I don’t know if that was good for my Self (capitalized in the philosophical sense of the subject…Foucault, whatever).  But the later half of my college seems to have done for me something that I know that laid some serious foundations for my approach to learning.  My love for living life, getting lost in the moment, having fun– that’s all something that really won’t leave.  As long as I keep my sense of freedom, that fun won’t be far from reach when I want it or need it.  However, it was only through my father’s guidance, as well as a handful of other teachers, who made me think about things that really made my experience in Silliman a lot different from my classmates and peers.  The whole landscape of wanting to study in LSE and/or Cal starts here.  The whole idea of finding my big idea starts here.  And along the way, I’ll play-out my own adventures– hat, jacket, slingbag, knife and boots.

But I’ll miss what I leave behind; not in the deep, longing sort of missing, but rather in the nostalgic introspective sort of missing, the kind you get when you catch sight of something familiar, or hear a phrase or a taste something just barely there, and it triggers a memory of a place and a phase of life.

What next?