Word Stack or A Pile of Thoughts

I’m beginning to REALLY want to just get out of the house now.  Good thing too, what with graduation coming around soon. Then, maybe it’s off to Singapore.  And grad school and who knows what else.  Nothing we plan ever comes out to be what we expect it.

"Duh! Isn’t that supposed to be obvious?"

That’s a remark I get when I give my two-cents of my attempt to translate Kant’s ideas of how something sublimely a priori becomes part of common a posteriori knowledge.  With a few words, the aggravatingly mind-numbing and esoteric epistemology of the German philosopher whose work has influenced so many thinkers in our time, is reduced to something "obvious". 

In the past, I felt this to be problematic.  Aren’t complicated ideas supposed to reveal profound revalations and help us understand life a bit more?  Why else would we enshrine names like Descartes or Kant or Hegel or Foucault?  But when you come to understand their work, it basically boils down to really simple ideas, ideas that I’ve thought about while taking a shower in the morning, or a friend of mine says she’s been thinking about "for years".  Wow, we must be philosophers.

But truth to tell, the ideas are supposed to be simple.  What makes it complicated and transcendant to normal thought is that the famous dead guys I previously mentioned were able to tell us how a particular simple idea is arrived at.  They tell us why an idea is the way it is.  They tell us that what we think is so obvious is actually part of a deeper consciousness and realities that affect our normal experiences of eating a pizza or flipping the channel from Hardtalk to Adult Swim. 

The beauty of philosophy is the way that it problematizes the simple, the way that it tries to dissect the thoughts that come so obviously to mind.  And this isn’t so esoteric when you consider that we all live our lives in our minds.  We might feel the pangs of love in our guts, but all that emotion is actually in the electric signals firing up our brains.  We think.  We consider.  We sense.  It’s all in the mind.  What we experience is experienced in the mind.  When I hear, "It’s alright to be redneck," that’s an idea.  It’s an assesment.  To be geeky about it, it’s a qualification that stems from an analysis of the idea "redneck".  Our decisions begin in our minds.  And philosophy talks about the processes by which our minds do what they do.

And that idea, i think, should be pretty obvious.

You stare, you wonder what it would be like, you wait for life to begin, you watch a sunset, and listen to a cool song on a guitar.  You anticipate the next episode of "Heroes".  You roll a dice and a moment filled with possible meaning passes, like so many blank faces blurred into a single mass on a rushing MRT.  You talk about poetry and graphic novels.  You hold your breath.  You fall asleep because there’s nothing else left to do, and you want to rush the day. 

Time is a much more tolerable thing when you’re alseep.

Pardon the cheesy title, i just sat down to write this and i didn’t really know what would come out.  Cheers.

"Believe me, things could be worse," Kai said, looking around the chamber for a way out.  She lived by the idea that there was always a way out, one simply had to look hard enough.  Her companion, though, probably didn’t think so.  Kai couldn’t blame him; it was her fault he was in this mess.  Her heart beat rapidly.  Only one way to go.

"They’re coming!" rasped Fiddle, the fear coloring on his voice.  The pair stood in a circular chamber of ancient stone.  There was only one way out, and that was the hallway beginning to flicker with torchlight and the sound of baying hounds.  "There’s no way out," Fiddle whimpered, as the first soldiers came in.  He didn’t see Kai draw her daggers.

"Oh yes there is."

Kai leapt over Fiddle, turning in a somersault, coming down right behind the first two soldiers.  She twisted and stabbed, her blades going deep.  A soldier coming in swung his sword in a wide arc.  Kai snickered and ducked beneath it, a dagger coming up into the man’s arm.  He screamed…or he tried to, because then his throat was gone, and he fell to the stone floor.  But she knew that there were more coming in.  Instead of savoring her last kill, Kai spun on the floor, her legs coming out in a whirling spin.  The soldier coming up behind her tripped in surprise.  She put a dagger through his skull for the trouble.  Then, on an instinct honed by countless battles, she rolled to the side, as an axe came down, sparks against the stone.  On her feet, Kai took stock of her adversary, a well-armored soldier carrying a battleaxe.  The man stood easily, carrying the weapon with confidence.  We’ll see about that, Kai thought, as she took a step forward.

The axeman never saw the attack.  One moment, the slender woman was in front of him, then all he saw was a blur and a rush of wind.  Behind! It screamed in his mind, and he turned.

Much too slow for Kai.  As the man turned, Kai brought her daggers in a quick double stab.  The blade in her right hand slipped between the armor, homing into a lung.  The second blade cut through the bundle of nerves beneath the man’s left arm, and Kai smiled as she felt the arm go limp around the steel dagger. 

The axeman stumbled backwards, his weapon clattering to the ground, one arm useless, the other clutching his chest as blood began to fill his collapsed lung. 

The whole battle had lasted about fifteen seconds.  Fiddle looked at Kai, and thought he saw a fire blazing in her eyes.

"There’s always a way out, Fiddle.  Let’s go, before more of these get here."

Don’t think Kai is the only character who knows how to use a blade in this story.

*                                                  *                                        *

It’s been seven years since my exile.

Razael pulled his cowl closer to his face as the guards ran past him.  Looks like fun, he thought to himself as he slipped through the shadowed marketplace, pacing himself with the quickly moving guards.  The streets were filled with shadows and flickering fires.  The experienced hunter moved easily. 

Soon it was apparent that the soldiers were making their way towards the ruined temple in the center of the city.  The soldiers entered and split into a couple of groups.  Razael, curious, followed the one with a large axeman.

He watched as the soldiers were decimated by the woman.  He would have been amused, if he hadn’t recognized the way she handled the pair of blades she carried.  He remained hidden, as the woman pulled a rather shaken young man out the room.

*                                           *                                        *

Kai stepped over the bodies and into the hallway.  Everything was clear.

"Nice."

The daggers appeared in her hands as she pushed Fiddle to the side.  A man stepped out of the shadows, his face hidden by a cowl, his figure framed by a tattered cloak.

Kai smiled and rushed forward, using the same technique she had used on the axeman.  Whoever this man was, it was clear he didn’t know who he was deal…

Razael rolled out of the way, pulling his own knife out. 

Kai frowned.  This wasn’t going to be as quick as she had thought.  The man stood apart from her, breathing easily, a large knife in his right hand.  She still couldn’t see his face, but the cold stare coming from his eyes was easy enough to sense.

Razael’s mind was shut off.  The only thing that consumed him was the fight, the adversary, the movement.  He waited.

She waited.

They moved into each other like mirrored shadows.  It wasn’t the flash of wide swings and powerful attacks that were the mark of the usual swordfight.  In the tight space of a narrow corridor, two combantants twisted and spun, their hands a blur as they wove intricate angles around each other, every blinking moment a dice roll to gain the upper hand.  She was as heartless as the blackest night, her twin daggers whirling dangerously close.  He was a survivor of countless battles, his single knife an extension of his heart.

They could have gone on, but the corridor began to once again fill with the sounds of boots and wild calls. 

"Enough," she said, and broke off the fight, breathing heavily.  There wasn’t a single mark on her body, and she grinned.  But that grin was short lived when she saw her adversary, standing easily to the side, his dagger flipped behind his wrist. 

He nodded at her, before he melted back into the shadows.

Kai frowned, and picked Fiddle up. "Let’s go."

"Who was that?" he asked.

"Someone I haven’t seen the last of."

The hour was late when I finally left Madame Danielle’s home on St. Jame’s Avenue.  The streets were empty, and all was quiet, cold and damp after an evening rain.  Most of my friends have cautioned me against my habit of taking late night strolls, but I don’t find that to be too much of a bother; carrying a stout walking stick– a cudgel, if you like– is deterrant enough.  After all, I have always found walking back to my flat in the small hours to be a most refreshing excercise, clearing my mind after a long bout of whist, philosophy and wine (each in moderation, as befits a gentleman of course).  It’s as if this stroll along the quiet streets, beneath sleeping windows and the hundreds of points of light coming out after the night clouds have moved on, is the slow transition from heated thought to the coolness of sleep. 

But this wouldn’t be much of a story, dear reader, if that was as far as what had happened on that damp night.  Stories are about remarkable things, strange things, things that aren’t quite what we expect them to be. 

The turn came in the form of a man, standing beneath the light of a gas lamp on the corner of St. James and White. As I approached him, it became apparent to me that this man was a remarkable specimen indeed.  He was…crooked, I believe is the word.  Yes, crooked.  He walked with a strange gait, as if one leg was too short and the other too long.  His hat, a bowler by the look of it, lay cocked to one side, as if his very skull was misshapen.  On that night, faced with this unlikely creature, I felt a slight prick of apprehension and I gripped my walking stick for reassurance.

"Good evening, sir," the bent creature growled at me as I walked up to him.  I held myself stiff, and refused eye contact.  Not that it would have done much good even if I had wanted to, for I had noticed that his eyes were hidden beneath the shadows of his hat, as well as the lank strands of hair framing his face.

I gave a polite nod.  No constable around should something happen.

"You wouldn’t happen to know a Mr. Charles Donahue, would you?"

That this man would know my name was surely disturbing, but fortunately, I wasn’t too far into my night reverie to have slowed down my mind. 

"He is a good friend of mine, sir, and I believe it is odd business that you would be asking such a question of a stranger at this hour." I spoke quickly to conceal the lie.  My words sounded a bit off in my mind. 

"Then you could possibly give him a message, then?" the crooked man said. 

I hesitated, and the man caught on.

"Ah, you say it’s odd, and I know it is.  But you see, sir, I’ve been waiting all evening around these," he said, gesturing the quiet neighborhood, "and I haven’t not but spotted a single soul till you, bless me.  I am running late upon my errand, and I truly must deliver this message, so you see the bit of a fix I’ve found myself in."

I cleared my throat.  Certainly odd, I thought as I digested the man’s speech.  But nonetheless, my apprehension had given way to curiousity.

"Well, I could deliver him your message," I said.

"Would you now? I’d be much obliged," the man said, reaching into the folds of his coat, and pulling out a singular roll of what appeared to be leather, tied with a simple string.  In the lamplight, he held it out to me with a gnarled hand. I reached down and took the roll. 

"Thank you sir, my employer will be most pleased to hear of the message’s delivery," he said it with an air of satisfied finality.  "Have a good night, sir."

And with that, the crooked man hobbled off into the night, leaving me to ponder what this roll of leather could possibly mean.  A wet drop fell upon my hand, and it started to rain again. 

"I felt like something was a bit…what was the word," her eyebrows furrowed as she stared at her glass of Nestea, "awry." She drew out the end with flourish, using something new to her usual vocabulary.  It was a quarter to twelve, and our electric fan was waging a losing battle against one of the hottest nights in my memory.  I looked up from my book. "What do you mean, awry?" I drew out the end too. 

"Well, it’s just that Raffy never really talked that way before." She took another sip.

"Um, how long have you known Raf?" I looked back at my book, Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo Devo by Sean B. Carroll.  Sometimes, it’s nice to take a break from the ramblings of French post-modernists and return to the easily understood, down-to-earth, systematic epistemology of science. 

"Not long.  Two weeks."

"Exactly." I didn’t miss a heartbeat,"Did you know that the fruit-fly exhibits the same genetic structure and dynamics as a human being?"

"But he seemed depressed, Don, he seemed depressed."

"And what could he possibly have been depressed about? Could you pour me one of those?" I nodded towards the pitcher of Nestea resting on the monobloc table. 

"He said something about his friend at the university."

I put the book down.  "You know what?  I’ve known Raffy since we first got brains, and if he’s got problems, especially relationship problems, it’s best not to get involved."

She pouted at me as she handed me the pitcher.

"Look, if he needs help, he’ll let us know."

Her phone vibrated. "Bet you that’s Raffy."

"Bet you that isn’t." I turned back to my book.

I heard her fingers pressing the buttons.  She turned to me, her face lit.

"Don! There’s trouble downtown! They want us to get there right away!"

I breathed out a sigh of exasperation.  She’s always looking for the next big piece of action.  I made sure I picked up my bo staff on the way out, as well as Mikey’s nun-chucks.  I swear, sometimes, my brother’s can be a handful.   

He would always remember how cold it was that evening, the chill that wrapped itself around his spine and laid its grip upon his heart.  Yes, it had been snowing.  Yes, the ice crunched beneath his feet as he walked into the white field, beneath a bright moon.  But the cold was not the cold of the world around him.  No, what was remembered was the grip of frost from within that had fled all warmth from his lungs, all heat from his being.  He was alone.

Kneeling, he felt the sting, the rush of pain stabbing his legs.  No tears, no frozen drops to decorate his twisted visage.  There was sarcasm in his smile as he stared at the moon, at the lie behind its beauty.  Such insincerity, such falsehood!  He almost laughed, but his frozen lungs only managed a wheeze.  Something so beautiful, rising up from the mantle of starlight, was nothing but mask of light, a trick and an illusion.  His heart had been spent chasing a dream that was never meant to be his.  Again, the pain struck, doubling him over, as he howled…

…into the emptiness of a room, the silence and the darkness choking his light. How could he escape?  How could he fly free, when she had sapped his strength with her empty promises and taken away his wings with deceit? Betrayal, the word echoed in his mind as he slammed his fists against the walls.  She had thrown him into her cage without a word.  He could leave, but only once she had had her fill of his torment. 

            I lay awake in my apartment, listening to the sounds outside my window.  At 3 a.m., even the City lay silent.  Ever since I’d started staying up late—the result of papers and assigned reading at the university—my mind had labelled this hour, this single hour, as the Hour of Morpheus.  The city of a million, in this moment, lay asleep, dreaming its collective dreams.  There were times when I would imagine this hour to be the window into a world of strange things, the weird creatures the lurked in the shadows of the city’s psyche.  But right now, the monsters and wild things had been melted away from my thoughts.  I rolled over in my bed, a sudden fear rising up and then fleeing.  I’ve been feeling this lately.  And I realize that, as much as I want them to be, these feelings are not dreams. 

Something moved the darkness of my room.  I saw her smile at me before she spoke. “The funny thing—or not so funny thing, whatever you’re doing to look at it—about loving someone is the way that they consume you, that strange manifestation of meaning that they take upon, like a shopper donning a new coat.”

“What are you doing here?” I turned away, frowning at the moonlight. 

“You called.”  I didn’t look at her, but out of the corner of my eye, a red Jansport plopped down on the floor.

“Jansport’s are made in sweatshops, you know,” I said quietly.  A white feather rested on a dusty book on the table next to my bed. 

“This one’s a fake, don’t worry.  Made in Quiapo.”

“You mean ‘bought’ in Quiapo,” I replied.  I kept staring out my window, not wanting to face her.  She stood there, quietly, in the shadows.

“Look, I didn’t call you,” I almost heard her eyebrow go up at that one, “Well, I did, but what I mean is…”

She remained silent.

“I don’t want you coming around anymore.” I took the feather, its familiar warmth, and I felt a flood of memories return, all turning to a fleeting moment on a dark street and a rainy night on

when an angel had given me her calling card.  “Take it back.”

Wordlessly, she held out her hand.  I handed her back her feather, and she melted back into the shadows.  And that was it.

He would always remember how cold it was that evening, the chill that wrapped itself around his spine and laid its grip upon his heart.  Yes, it had been snowing.  Yes, the ice crunched beneath his feet as he walked into the white field, beneath a bright moon.  But the cold was not the cold of the world around him.  No, what was remembered was the grip of frost from within that had fled all warmth from his lungs, all heat from his being. 

He was alone.

The movie "300" gives a highly stylized account of the battle of Thermopylae fought in 480 BC by three hundred Spartans under the leadership of King Leonidas.  I don’t need to go into the details of the battle itself, or even the description of the movie; what I want to focus on is the sort of message the movie sends.  Throughout the film, there are constant reminders of the value of freedom.

"It is not a question of what a husband, or a Spartan, or a king should do.  Instead ask yourself, my dearest love, what would a free man do?"

"We are with you sire! For freedom! For Sparta!"

"When this battle is over, the world will know that few stood against many, that free men stood against a tyrant, and that even a god-king can bleed."

"This is the dawning of a new age, an age of freedom.  And all will know that three hundred Spartans gave their last breath to defend it."

Freedom and fighting against tyranny (in various forms: mysticism, subjugation, corruption) is the basic idea behind the film.  While I have always believed in personal freedom, I also believe in honesty.  And here is where "300" begins to tread on dangerous ground.  Your average movie-goer may not understand that the whole point of why Spartans made a culture out of warfare was because of the vast slave population that drove their economy (the Helots, as their were called in Sparta).  The city-state of Sparta was fed by slave labour, slaves who were fellow Greeks.  It’s ironic to think that Spartans would be fighting for the idea of freedom, when they themselves were the most active slavers in ancient Greece.

One can argue that the point of the film isn’t really about being historically accurate, but presenting something entertaining.  But I think this is beside the point.  In the culture of today’s generation, film is a powerful medium for expressing information; its persuasive power makes it very political (the idea is Foucauldian), and its even more dangerous because it isn’t overtly political, but it masquerades as "mere entertainment".  As a student of communication, I’ve come to the realization that nothing on the media channels is mere entertainment. 

The falsehood of Spartan ideals in the film "300" is further reinforced when the film presents the Persians as the ultimate slavers, worshipping a megalomaniac god-king, bound by superstition, and completely opposed to the values of freedom, democracy and equality.  This isn’t a misrepresentation per se, because the Persian Empire wasn’t really known for free elections or participative governance; but to use it as a contrast to a western culture that is made out of be one based on "reason" and "justice" is highly misleading.  If anything, the ancient Greeks were just as unreasonable and unjust as the ancient Persians. 

Today, we still have that outdated and ancient mode of thought that dictates our identity along geopolitical borders: East vs. West.  A lot of the discourse on religion, governance, economies, and philosophies are divided and opposed along these geographical demarcations.  This idea of a divided world is part of the problem of terrorism, neo-imperialism, and the sort of close-mindedness that has hindered development and conflict-resolution.  What a film like "300" does, with its packaging and message reinforcement, is to catapult a discourse of division into the minds of the audiences.  What makes it especially eye-brow raising is that we celebrate this movie as a valuable contribution to our culture.   

Well, I’m back on friendster, just one of the many side-effects of beign in Manila.  For the rest of April, i’ll be using my account to document my progress with my work here; part of the requirements of my COM-88R class.  Right now, I’m too pissed at Internet Explorer to really devote much time to scrawling anything down.  This damn machine doesn’t have mozilla.

cheers,

Rj