yoga!

Hey! I found my yoga blog that I forgot existed.... what a pleasant surprise!!

http://yogaofmysoul.blogspot.com

Decisions

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/devdutt_pattanaik.html


How do people make decisions? Why does your sun rise? What are the stories that you have been told that make you act the way you do, that have led you this far and continue to direct the course of your life? What is your reason for being?

Two lovers sat on a park bench with their bodies touching each other, holding hands in the moonlight.

There was silence between them. So profound was their love for each other, they needed no words to express it. And so they sat in silence, on a park bench, with their bodies touching, holding hands in the moonlight.

Finally she spoke. “Do you love me, John ?” she asked. “You know I love you, darling.” he replied. “I love you more than tongue can tell. You are the light of my life. My sun. Moon and stars. You are my everything. Without you I have no reason for being.”

Again there was silence as the two lovers sat on a park bench, their bodies touching, holding hands in the moonlight. Once more she spoke. “How much do you love me, John ?” she asked. He answered : “How much do I love you ? Count the stars in the sky. Measure the waters of the oceans with a teaspoon. Number the grains of sand on the sea shore. Impossible, you say.”

Comfort

I just want to be comfortable. and never anxious. Eliminate the unneccessary. Now how do I make that happen?

Nihilsm, Narcissism, Nostalgia, Curiosity, Contemplation, Creativity

A man said to the universe, "Sir, I exist."

"However," the universe replied. "The fact has not inspired in me a sense of obligation."

-Stephan Crane

When writing first emerged, Socrates voiced concerns that this new way of cataloguing thoughts was “taking the soul out of an exchange." Likewise, media critics today argue that Google (as emblematic of the Internet) is killing memory. The present resonates with the past no matter how badly postmodernism tries to transcend its claims to absolute Truths and grand meta-narratives about culture and society like history has routinely done. Because “truth” has been proven to be contextual and impermanent, a key lesson that postmodernity has learned from history's fluctuations is discontinuity. Postmodernity, in its suspicious approach to virtually all forms and practices, has taken to constructing the progression of human existence as a series of discontinuous events in order to justify its lack of allegiance to any one paradigm. What does this mean for the way we approach the past, the present, and the future? According to Thomas Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, the paradigms that both shape our world and allow us to acquire knowledge about and within it fluctuate according to their capacity to meet our needs at any given point in historical time. Each new idea, both scientific and cultural, must be looked at in light of its location in historical time rather than for its ability to explain the world we live in today. “What must the world be like in order that man may know it?" is the question that not only drives scientific truth, but also sociocultural reality. Postmodernism must then be situated and sought to be understood in relation to the paradigms that have preceded it both historically and adjacently along the line of historical time. The paradox of postmodernism lies in the juxtaposition between its desire to transcend this outmoded reliance on a grand meta-narrative or underlying condition in order that we might “know” our world and the reality that it does, in fact, rely on an underlying condition, namely the “continuity of the condition of fragmentation, ephemerality, discontinuity, and chaotic change."

Progress, it seems, has been fetishized. Because we have been endowed with brains that can think, hands that can labor, and souls that can feel, we must, as we’ve been taught, harness complete control of and seek to constantly ‘better’ our faculties. Because we’ve seen the evolution from cave painting to the Internet, we are inspired to invent ever further, despite the ramifications this has on things like the environment and human rights. Human beings are notorious for discontentment and, thus, because we can, we usually always do simply because we feel we need to do something. Our fetishization of progress has inspired postmodernism to not only reject modernism’s forms, but also to reject that it is a mere historical moment in the grand spectrum of time. Because it is pretentious, we are pretentious. Because it has annihilated history, we are nihilistic. Because it assumes its own prestige, we are narcissistic. And because it selectively uses the past (ie. art, music, performance, principles, practices, stories) to produce the present, because “it is the real, and not the map, whose vestiges persist here and there in the deserts that are no longer those of the Empire, but ours… The desert of the real itself," we become nostalgic for reality itself and look to the past, to the same place that the simulacrum has looked in forming itself as the lining of our lived existence, in hopes of finding it. These are the lessons that postmodernity has taught us. How, then, can we help but literally personify these very lessons in our own lives?

If the symptoms of postmodernism are narcissism, nihilism, and nostalgia, then I’d like to pose what I'll call a “Three C” approach as a remedy. This is a three step approach to making like meaningful or, at the very least, bearable, that many of us, especially academics who thrive off of inquiry, already use sporadically. Yet here it is; consolidated, alliterated, and spelled out in the very words it seeks to overcome. Curiosity, contemplation, creativity. It is being offered as a proactive way to approach the “problem” of postmodernism, as it has been fashionably construed through the simply act of living consciously instead of blinding accepting the forms, principles, and practices that the world throws our way. Above all, these three steps involve consciousness or a heightened awareness and healthy skepticism about the world around us. Curiosity tame the wiles of egotism because, in approaching our new postmodern world through the eyes of a child, we are already assuming that we have something to learn. Contemplation involves taking what our senses have allowed us to be curious about and engage in the all-important acts of thinking, questioning, and inquiring. Creativity is the natural spring of both of these things. It will allow us to fashion a way of being that is not prescribed to us by any institution or historical conceptualization of how we should act.

The Three C approach may help thwart the magnetic gravitations towards nihilism, narcissism and nostalgia that are the natural outgrowths of a society that is going through massive changes. Individualism, nationalism, totalizing grand narratives, religious fundamentalism, the family as the locus of society, confidence in the nation-state, the dominion of the signified over the signifier, our capacity to distinguish the simulacrum from reality, our ability to distinguish between high and pop culture, mass culture/marketing, one-way communication, dichotomies, boundaries (ie. in art, technology, music), social hierarchies, clear sexual categories; these are all quickly becoming the residues of modernity, artifacts of an age that is quickly being superseded by an erosion of these constructs into hybridized, intertextual, boundary-less, cyborgian-like versions of each of them. The postmodern condition is characterized by a marked ambivalence about the world we live in. It is not merely an outgrowth of modernism, although its emergence and defining moments do rely on the extinction of modernism’s forms. “Postmodernism swims, even wallows, in the fragmentary and the chaotic currents of as if that is all there is." Postmodernism is a period that has tried to negate its ties to history because it has come to determine that the construction of history and the forms, technologies, theories, and knowledge bases that have historically resonated within the chambers of each other’s are only valid according to how far, or rather, in what direction, society, globalization, gendered/sexual identities, political regimes, social structures, religious thought and scientific recapitulations have come. Depending on where the sociocultural pendulum is located, so the “revolutions” that have historically allowed us to weigh the constructs that appear to us against a larger ‘condition' come to be. Such cultural constructs are now weighted against that enigmatic construct known as postmodernism which

sees itself... as a willful and rather chaotic movement to overcome all the supposed ills of modernism. But in this regard postmodernists [may] exaggerate when they depict the modern as grossly as they do... There were, after all, many cross-currents within modernism, and postmodernists echo some of them quite explicitly."

Again, we catch passing traces of the past in the present. Although it advocates change and discontinuity as emblematic of an ahistorical periodization of time-space, these characteristics come to be the very underlying condition that enables historical “moments” to be rendered comparable.

It goes without saying that the value of trends lies in their capacity to point to reoccurring instances of conscious and subconscious articulation. Along with every new technology or paradigm shifting ‘revolution’ comes a fear about it. What we fear appears to be not so much the new, but the renunciation of the old. The pervasiveness of nostalgia films and other cultural products that invoke imaginings of a distant past when ‘times where better’ clearly point to this. According to Buck-Morse’s description of wish-images, “the old never sets itself off sharply from the new; rather, the latter, striving to set itself apart from the recently outmoded, renews archaic, ur-temporal elements." How is that young adults born in the 1980s can long for the lifestyle of the 1950s? The 1960s? The Middle Ages? What we long for is the real. What we have is a world filled with pastiches. The old thus get constructed as the archetypical golden past simply because it supposedly embodied originality instead of hybridized products, principles, and people. What we long for is the authentic and we are willing to even go so far as to construct an imaginary "golden past" in order to legitimate our longings. Should we use the Three C's, we might begin to see that the present can be just as authentic as the imaginary golden pasts that we construct.

"Miscommunication is the scandal that motivates the concept of communication." The eerily reminiscent resonance that this postmodern moment has points to a Nietzschian positioning of disillusionment as the backdrop against which the frightening realization that “we can never grasp the true meaning of things – the uncanniness of the things we take for granted” took form. The 1920s birthed cultural artifacts like Munch’s “Scream,” Eliot’s “Wasteland,” Schoenberg’s chaotic musical scores, and Picasso’s 4D art. These were all responses to telepathy's failure, to a mass realization that one consciousness could not be transmitted intact to another, that you can never wholly understand me. Today, we see a frighteningly similar trend occurring with the rise of the Internet. We have birthed a medium and imbued it with all of the capabilities that we think should warrant its hoped for telepathic capacity. This affinity with the past suggests that maybe we are not as far removed from history as we’d like to imagine ourselves as being. “To the degree that it does not try to legitimate itself by reference to the past…postmodernism typically harks back to that wing of thought, Nietzsche in particular, that emphasizes the deep chaos of modern life and its intractability before rational thought." In the 1920s solipsism-inspired artistic expressions of man’s realization that the mind is a private space, the artists dealt with the impossibility of communication through abstract expressionism that acknowledged the chaotic space of the impenetrable mental divide. Today, we are alleviating a recognition of this reality by consuming, entertaining, and literally seeking salvation in the very world that has failed us.

Solipsism and telepathy are two sides of the same coin. When we realize that our dreams of telepathy cannot possibly come true, nihilism, narcissism, and nostalgia set in. This may birth a nation or, worse yet, a world, of apathetic individuals who retreat inside their own self-absorbed minds and inhibit their ability to live meaningful lives. This is dangerous – for politics, for law, for culture, for the climate, for our sanity, for human rights, and for love. If “anything goes” and “nobody cares” then what stops another human being from turning to his left and shooting his neighbor? If we live in fear then we cannot possibly live in love – the one thing to which we all must strive if we seek things like equality and the innate value of a human life. Life then becomes a mere game of survival wherein we turn to drugs or sex or consumerism and a million other “therapeutic” ways to try and derive some pleasure out of it. And then, before we know it, we are, as the founder of NYU Steinhardt warned, “amusing ourselves to death.”

Today, we must look to the city of Las Vegas, Nevada as a metaphor of our national character and aspiration, its symbol a thirty-foot high cardboard picture of a slot machine and a chorus girl. For Las Vegas is a city entirely devoted to the idea of entertainment, and as such proclaims the spirit of a culture in which all public discourse increasingly takes the form of entertainment.

When we realize that all of these things are finite, that we cant take drugs or have sex or buy products forever, then we ironically become numb because we seek so strongly to feel. We turn to anti-depressants or other self-depreciating behaviors because we long so deeply for something that has been promised to us by mass society, yet, in reality, is no where to be found there. Horkeheimer and Adorno spoke warned us about the pervasive ‘culture industry.’ Walter Benjamin was worried about mechanical reproduction and its effects on society. Humdog wrote about the commodification of human beings on the web. These pessimistic notions of media/cultural theorists who assume little to no human agency in their qualms about the media’s effects on society are true to the degree that we blindly accept the world as it is offered to us and allow sanctioned ignorance and apathy to undermine our capacity to act proactively.

The nature of communication is constantly changing. The radio rendered communication one-way and enabled mass messages to be dispersed without any feedback. The telephone birthed two-way communication, a built in response system that allowed messages to be sent back and forth. The Internet has reinvented the way communication works, yet again. It has compressed time/space and, in many ways, has made our lives easier. But in many other ways, it has started us on the same downward spiral that Plato philosophized about when he spoke of the value of dialectics and the debasement of writing; nihilism, narcissism, and nostalgia. Social networking has globalized the public sphere and made audible all sorts of different voices. There are an innumerable amount of communicative devices with which we can send messages, get quick responses, read news, create virtual identities, share information, respond to information, learn about the world at large, and enter into new worlds at the click of a mouse or the touch of a screen. With so many different ways to communicate with each other and shape ourselves digitally, we seem to be becoming ever more removed from each other. We become nihilistic about life and view life as meaningless because all the promises of technology and the digital world have done exactly the opposite of what they claimed they would; they have turned our worlds upside down and enabled us to be in the same physical space, yet enter into completely different virtual worlds. Or we become narcissistic because our worlds have been rendered subjective by virtue of the sheer amount of information that the virtual world enables to circulate. And then we become nostalgic about the days when life seemed more authentic and less mediated, our thoughts communicable, our worlds more intimate. This is solipsism magnified. In Charlemagne's court, music was sentenced to written notation so that cacophony might be reduced and voices standardized. Ironically, this enabled music to be manipulated because it had been ‘made to matter.’ This same phenomenon has occurred with the rise of Internet and our obsession with commodifing our thoughts - and it is slowly driving us further and further apart. Marx talked about the “mystical quality of commodities,” or the nature of commodities to act as if they had magically appeared for consumers who pay no attention to the human labor that went into their creation. Ironically, this is the same phenomenon tha happens when thoughts are ‘made to matter.’ When we type out a thought and send it out into the virtual world via one online stream or another, the thought takes on a life of its own, a mystical quality wherein in stands for something greater than itself. It becomes lost in a sea of thoughts. It not only says “this is what my creator is thinking,” but also “this is how my creator views technology,” “this is what my creator’s relationship with technology is like,” and “this is how technology is being used.” In essence, our thoughts have taken on the same mystical quality that Marx attributed to commodities, which doesn’t seem so farfetched in light of the fact that thoughts rendered digital become commodities.

The Three Cs may help to halt our gradual cyborgic circumscription by these increasingly anthropomorphized machines. It is the construction of technology as an instrumental object to be imbued by us as subject instead of its status as an “articulation of us that provides an understanding of being and shapes the way we come to perceive the world” (Heiddeger) that makes it enfeebling rather than enabling. If we look at technology curiously rather than as a taken-for-granted part of society as we know it, then what we see is a vastly different animal. We might see technology as a product of mankind, made of parts that are collected in uncolonized nations by migrant workers who have no clue as to why they are collecting shards of glass or metal from the Earth. We might then be inspired to contemplate issues such as human rights and the digital divide and question the taken-for-grantedness of the technoscape and its impact on our lives and the lives around us. Lastly, in light of these contemplations, we might then be driven to create; to create ways to use technology without allowing ourselves to be consumed by it, to create new constructs and paradigms that proactively inform the way we think instead of incarcerating our psyches in technological prisons that limit our capacity to act authentically, uniquely, and in ways that inspire us to resituate ourselves as active agents who are consciously aware of how the world is affecting us and how we are affecting it.

The irony behind the internet’s aspirations towards a Platonic model of communication (my ideas transmit to your consciousness) via social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Google Wave that collect and disperse thoughts is that we have become more disillusioned and mediated than ever before. Our thoughts are now made to matter, in both senses of the term. Consolidating our identities online has enabled the very environment that Manovich cited as being constitutive of a society undergoing computerization; numerical representation, modularity, automation, variability, and transcoding which means that we are in danger of becoming what humdog identified as “a community of signs, nicely boxed, categorized and inventoried, ready for consumption” instead of real human beings revealing real uncommodified memoirs of the mind. The lively world of Facebook birthed Twitter, which extracted status updates and harnessed our obsession with materializing our private deliberations. Recently, Google Wave has consolidated virtually every aspect of our virtual existences into one format, much like the IPhone enables us to carry music, the Internet, gaming, and telephonic capabilities in one tiny plastic box that fits right into the palm of our hands. The irony of it all is that while we have reimagined technology to be the world so that we might imagine ourselves as holding it in the palm of our hands, what we’ve really done is become so accustomed to technology that we are threatened to be consumed by and subservient to it. We’ve become so accustomed to technology as “standing in reserve," as available at the snap of our fingers, that the miracle of technology itself has been effaced. "Technology [in its everyday sense] is not equivalent to the essence of technology." It is this essence that we must discover and to which we must defer our awe if we are to begin to understand the power of and effects that technology has on our very being.

"They were the best of times, they were the worst of times" (A Tale of Two Cities). This quote, though written in regard to the French Revolution, can be applied to any historical moment. Today is both a horribly frightening moment of economic instability, cultural/moral relativism, environmental decay, information overload, and overall uncertainty coupled with the exciting revelation that life is one glorious adventure, a hotbed of experiences, events, and people that we can use to create, interpret, and imagine a life that is ours for the making. Postmodernism has negated the grand narratives that have characterized

each of the generations that have preceded us. It has reimagined the way we write history and the way we tell the stories of yesteryear. What effects will this have on the value that has been traditionally placed on antiquity? Will great minds of bygone times like Shakespeare, Beethoven, and Nietzsche continue to inform the way we think? Will the Schoenburgs, Eliots, and Picassos of old be held in such high regard? Should Beethoven and Jay-Z be comparable? Or are all these figures and their creations only valuable if they can be rendered into some sort of postmodern pastiche? Will the lessons of the past be eclipsed by the novel, by subjectivity-obsessed netizens who claim transcendence via wormholes through the now? If Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revelations is correct, than this current postmodern moment is merely a phase in the great story of mankind’s existence as a thinking, feeling, being subject on this planet. What lies ahead is yet to be

told. By approaching postmodernism itself with an air of marked curiosity, we can contemplate its existence and situatedness in historical time and develop ways to create the next great historical movement. While we

think ourselves unique and nonconformist when we adopt paradigms like nihilism and narcissism or become nostalgic about an imaginary golden past, what we are really displaying is the archetypical postmodern mass subject rendered in a pseudo-differentiated manner by individuals the world over who have taken to imagining that the world owes them a favor. And who can blame us? This is what digital technology has taught us. Nihilism, narcissism, and nostalgia are trendy. Curiosity, contemplation, and creativity are not. The former three will lead us to apathy, the latter three to one more C; consciousness. "Two paths diverged in the forest, I took the one less traveled and it made all the difference" (Frost).

The Technoscape; Where Thoughts are Made to Matter

We are fundamentally ambivalent about technology. That's what I think. We are fundamentally ambivalent about social networking sites and how, exactly, to deal with this new power that previously silenced individuals now have.

This is what I think about technology and social networking... I think that social network sites like Facebook, twitter, and Google Wave, although I don't actually know much about GW, are making us more impatient. They are informing the way we think, act, feel, and approach the events/situations in our lives. Now, it seems, that experiences are not weighted as heavily if they cannot somehow be captured and exploited on the internet. It doesn't so much matter how we are feeling, sensing, being, becoming if we cannot share it with others. These social networking sites are also making us take ourselves to seriously. You have a thought, you put it online without even thinking about what you are saying most of the time, and then, before you know it, it is out there in the world and others are giving it weight, responding to it, allowing it to shape the way they view you and, correspondingly, the way you view yourself. We become interpolated by our own thoughts because now our thoughts have a material quality about them. The internet allows us to make our thoughts real. Karl MArx wrote about "the mystical quality of commodities"... about commodity fetishism and how commodities always stand for something larger than themselves. Now our thoughts have been commodified by virtue of the internet. One of the most important things that a yoga instructor taught me was to "let thoughts pass by like clouds." Don't get bogged down in your thoughts. This is EXACTLY the REVERSE of what the internet causes us to do. We can't help but attach substance, life, meaning, and longevity to our thoughts because they are written down in words; because we can remember what we were thinking at any given point in time via tweetz, status updates, and blogs. We become nostalgic or bitter or in awe of our former selves and often compare what we used to be to what we are now via this new way of remembering.

We are depressed, sad, sick, lonely, and afflicted in a million other ways because WE ATTACH SO MUCH WEIGHT TO OUR THOUGHTS. We think every little thought matters, but really very few of them do.  and the internet intensifies our capacity to attach weight and relevance to our stupid little thoughts.  Here's an example: recently, I was frusterated, so I wrote something online to someone I love that was completely insensitive but it was only becuase I took that one little frustration and threw the weight of the world on its back and forced it to matter, to be real, and now it's out there in the world, on the internet, referential, and it came from my head and out of my fingertips and now it defines a part of me. And, ironically, that moment was such a rare moment. But THAT'S the one I chose to put out into the world?!?!?!
what the F Leila?
The reality of all this is, however, that OUR THOUGHTS ARE FLEETING AND BARELY MATTER. I remember another good friend of mine called me up once because he/she was having suicidal thoughts. I gave them the same advice that my yoga teacher had given me; let thoughts pass by like clouds. But that sometimes seems so hard to do when you are caught up in a depressing, weighty, lonely moment... AND because we are living in the digital age where thoughts are made to matter (...hey..that's punny.. and awesome..I'm going to make it my blog title.. I LOVE THIS BLOG!.. sometimes stuff just materializes and i'm like whoaaa where did that come from and it's totally groovy and i can go off on tangents or use run on sentences and mispspell words becuase i have no one to impress and i can follow streams of thought and see where they lead without even stopping my fingers as if they had minds of their own and then either read or not read what i've written and either clarify or not clarify my intentions or jsut scirbble and scribbl;e and scribble and scribble ).

Speaking of creativity and tangents...
something else that is so fascinating to me is creativity, how human beings have historically approached it, and how it is changing in the age of mechanical reproduction and digital media. IE. when great creative artists of old like Beethoven created works they were only legitimate if the source of their creativity came from somewhere out there.. from somewhere divine.. was something that transcended themselves. And apparently African music is not copyrighted because it comes from "the Gods" etc.etc.etc.

This is what a renowned artist whose work I deeply love had to say about creativity...
"I feel intuitively that this work inhabits the same space as my painting "Causeway" but from the other side of the ocean, so to speak.
When I felt the vision [sorry to put it that way, but that's how it seems to me] i just sensed that I had to paint it, not question it. In such experiences the action of creation becomes a matter of faith or trust, not will. i approach it from the mindset of being a channel and interpreter rather than that of a "creator". Does that make any sense? It then falls upon me to do the best I can to realize the vision, not question it. Sort of like being a midwife instead of being an artist." (MW)



How cool is that? So I sent him some of my own thoughts about creativity and a TED talk video by Elizabeth Gilbert  in which she speaks of the weighty expectations we place on artists and the idea that "instead of the rare person "being" a genius, all of us "have" a genius."

And his response...
"I know what she means about "losing it". I feel that when a creative idea or vision comes along, it's like as gift, not meant to be squandered. You gotta catch 'em as they fly by! That's why I always have a little sketchpad in my back pocket, a pen and paper on my bedside table!"
I love this.. life is a gift not to be squandered!! so how does that relate to digital media? If we are so caught up in attaching significance to every one of our thoughts then (maybe) we cannot distinguish the truly world-shattering, mind-altering, great ones from the mundane, worldly ones. If we are so caught up in experiencing life in order to project it online or use technology to capture it or manipulate it then don't have time to "catch" these creativity revelations. Technology is loud, and creativity feeds off of silence.

I'm presently creating something and the advice that my "mentor" has given me the most is "Let go. Just let go." Let go Let go Let go Let go Let go. of our thoughts, of hatred, bitterness, the past, imaginary ideas about the future, constructions of other people that we form in our own small minds and then project onto them, expectations, ideas of ourselves, of how we should be, of who we are, of what we are, of who we are, of who we are.  I'll write more about this particular statement/topic after Christmas. 

I remember one of my business professors at Fordham used to constantly stress the value of reflection. He taught us to act and then once we were done and had achieved results to go back and reflect on our actions. He taught us this idea as if it were common sense, as if reflection were an undeniable force by which to maximize efficiency and strengthen future results. I remember trying to argue with him about the value of reflection as an undeniably positive step, but he brushed my attempt off as if it were nonsense. But he was coming out of an age that didn't have the internet as a tool. He was so out of touch because he didn't account for the fact that the internet enables perpetual reflection. So I think win that one, 10 points.

Another grad school professor posed the question: "is Google destroying memory?" Maybe. I think what it is destroying is our capacity to appreciate life for what it is, a life for life's sake sort of approach. This is what the internet is diminishing.I've been trained not to reduce the study of life/humanity/technology to a hypodermic needle type model wherein a single acting force automatically "injects" effects into an object/subject, but I think that technology is a BIG cause of depression, sickness, lack of love, human suffering, and unequal human rights. What I'm suggesting is more than just a medium as message type deal. Human beings have feared new forms of media ever since the dawn of time. what does this tell us about human beings in general? Probably that we fear big changes. I know I do! In this respect, living through this time period will probably make us stronger, more flexible, and able to deal with change better than our parents or maybe future generations who are being born into the digital age and weren't around for its birth and subsequent integration into society.

In another discussion about music, my professor told us that he had attended a talk given by a bunch of big recording executives and attended by a bunch of talented Steinhardt musicians. The musicians were being classically trained, were struggling with their instruments, with perfecting their craft, sitting for hours in practice rooms, aspiring to be someone in the music world. Eagerly, they asked the executives what it would take to become someone who mattered, if they had to put in more hours, perfect themselves as musicians, etc. etc. and the executives' response was: learn how to use technology. Learn how to work music programs on the computer and manipulate sounds online.

That sort of makes me sad that the internet now even has the power to supersede struggle, practice, and patience. Actually, I think that when I get older and the world begins to come into its own and we come up with an acceptable technological infrastructure then I'll look back on these years, on my days in college, on my days on the web, on my forays into technology and remember them as depressing, scary, and characterized by marked ambivalence. These are things I love about life: silence, yoga, nature, changing seasons, when people I love use their talents to create gifts rather than buy things for me/others, love, family, macrobiotics. But I only love these things because technology is so pervasive, because I've seen both sides, I've been to heaven and back. But heaven is everywhere, so maybe giving in to the digital landscape instead of shunning it because the things I truly love about life are no where to be found in it is the answer.

When I embarked on this grad program I did so because I was fascinated by human beings and the ways in which they created themselves/forged their own identities. I was fascinated by neuroscience, by sociology, by language, by the many isms that comprise our world. The last things I wanted to do was study technology. Why? Probably because I've convinced myself that it is SOOOOO not "me." I'm a movement girl. I don't even really like words and talking. I'd rather dance. But maybe I've reduced myself, restricted myself, imprisoned myself in this false prism of Leilaness that inhibits me from truly appreciating/loving things like technology, the internet, movies, news, people who are heavily mediated, the media in general. But it is soooo much a part of our lives. Our lives are sooo heavily mediated that we can't help but be shaped by our surroundings.

So maybe loving people means loving the media, technology, the internet too. Afterall, it came from people. A part of me will probably always be partial to things that are REAL (ie. not mediated or manipulated by technology).. but maybe things of this sort don't exist anymore? Afterall, if people are so heavily mediated and it is people who we engage with, who we fall in love with, who teach us things and help us grow and make life meaningful (???) then there is truly nothing that is not mediated.???


As always, I DON'T KNOW! ertj9034tj340kgdrger There are ups and down and highs and lows ans trends that this blog goes through, but a few things have remained constant for me thus far; that learning is perpetual and life is constantly in flux and that Love is the answer.

A part of me feels like this segment of blog should be the end of this blog in its entirety since it is so important, and so truly, truthfully, deeply and honestly how I feel about life...

On another note, fear and love are opposite sides of the same coin and I have been excessively afraid lately. But this is not really who I am, it is just something temporary. Anything that comes out of my mouth (or anyone's for that matter) that is written in letters or blogs or spoken or acted out that is not all-encompassing, unconditional love is fear - fear of transitioning, of relinquishing the past, of newness, of being on my own, things of this sort. Any words, thoughts, actions or creations that I manifest and bring into the world or thrust upon you/anyone that are not aligned with this ultimate goal of seeing the beauty in all things, of truly saying Fuck you to everything that is not unadulterated, unconditional love are not really me- they are just some ulterior me, some ego-bound me speaking or acting or thinking on some worldly whim. 

And this, I think, (what do I know?) is where the logical fallacy of life and love occurs - in the space between the real and the false - in assuming that one is the other, that my very essence is validated by what I say, do, act out, or create.... even though these manifestations of "me" might be motivated by fear - a transitory state of being. And this is why we tire of love, why we move on from a person or get anxious about the circumstances that we are in. But, ironically, it is these material manifestations that draw people to each other... so how now brown cow? hahaha... I just felt like saying that..... but really, people come to love each other for their idiosyncrasies so... I guess how now brown cow is a good way to end that thought.... hahahaha.  

I'm blessed to be forgiven.
I'd like to run away
From you,
But if you didn't come
And find me...
I would die.

Music, Dance, Love

"All art constantly aspires to the condition of music."


The logic behind this quote is that music is the closest we can get to embodying and touching the human soul. It is something that transcends words, and, although words often accompany it, they are nothing compared to the language that music itself speaks. Music consumes us. It envelopes us. And sound, unlike sight, which many (all?) of the other arts rely on, is nondirectional. It takes us to places, unlike, say, a painting, which gives us something to look at rather than something to be consumed by.

Movement, likewise, can have that enveloping quality about it. I say this from the perspective of someone who has experienced moments of transcendence via yoga/gymnastics/dance/movement that are outside of myself. In the act of doing, it is transcendent. And maybe because I have experienced that, the act of seeing, for me at least, is transcendent because I can project this experience unto the dancer. Music has the capacity to change our mood in an instant. Dance is a gateway to discovery.

Music, Dance, Love.. they are really all the same thing. They are about transcendence.. about experiencing a yourself that is not yourself, and, thus, when I hear beautiful music, I am in love and when I dance beautiful dances, I am in love.

When I dance.. and I'm talking very specifically about dancing that transcends (the electric slide can and cannot be this depending on how we approach it), I am outside of myself, something greater than myself, something that escapes the confines of words or identification. I am moving, feeling, being, becoming.

And being in love and love are truly not the same thing. Being in love is sort of unidentifiable, although I do think that the act of loving can be offer us a path towards being in love.... you can't make yourself fall in love, but you can find a way to get to a place where it may or may not happen. No expectations! Just witnessing the progression through stages... which is why I do not believe in love at first sight.. no struggle involved, no love involved, just pure "falling in love?" Doesn't seem possible. Maybe you can meet someone and "just know" that that person may or may not be the person that you aspire to fall in love with and then wait an see if it happens?

Play beautiful music and dance beautiful dances, not because you know how to, but because love is all there is. Everything else is false, socially constructed - just a way to survive, to get by from day to day. And so music and dance are all there is. And music and dance are love. AND LOVE IS ALL THERE IS!

Feelin' Poetic

Max the Number

The hypnotic charms of theory wax and wane as "Max,"
(your baptismal name,
you amorphous mass, starring in the theater of ersatz eccentricity, 

because you deserve a name, now that you have been morphed into form,

how can we contemplate something formless? impossible, honey.

so you can have that)

is pulled hither to and thither to,

predictable in your celebrated shammery,

A map before the territory.

creating the conditions for your own malleability, 

ignorant  about your consensual reduction to 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9,

"chooses." 

Modulation, automation, variation,

subject to algorithmic manipulation.

Deletable, repeatable, discreteable,

Intoxicated with regeneration.

Too drunk to care. 

Please sign and seal the necessary information so we can begin to schedule your own sporadic incarceration.

Max, dear, you live in a Cartesian world and you are a material girl.

And, still, the hypnotic charms of theory, which spellbinders,

who, according to which hither to or thither to Max migrates,

resurrect, are made to infinitely circulate; enchantresses of interpellation.     

Giving Brooms a Voice

hi broom.

wutchu' you doin' fallin' on that floor?

gettin' all  worked up over an accidental push

accelerating on the short drop down. BOOM.

reverberating in my hallway, as your bristles marry my vacuumed rug. 

not even a "thank you for stopping my fall?"

No respectus for gravitas. Betcha' don't even know Latin. Pitiful.

No tears, no bruises, no pain, no sensations. Pathetic. 

you.... inanimate object you!  That's right, the ultimate insult. Dehumanization.

To be human, is to be better, and, broom, you, quite frankly, are not.

you....broom you. 

Forgive me for saying so, but because of your uni-dimensional composition, you, my friend, (dare I call you that for fear that They might deem me insane?) are just a broom and nothing more. Thoughts that I have thought before. Just a broom and nothing more. Lying still there on the floor.

Just a broom and nothing more.

The perpetual object of subjecthood, inescapably inanimate.......

....... until we animate you, give you a microphone, let your bristles speak sweeping tales of gravitas and sensations in tongues we cannot understand until we listen with ears other than ours.

wutchu' doin' broom?

Just Passing By

My fish died. I did not know him very well or for very long and cannot identify any idiosyncratic characteristics about him. He lived in a small glass vase with some plants and he was a Beta that we named Theo. He died a week after we got him. I thought that flushing him and moving on seemed too normal or insensitive or something and that his death especially because he was just a fish and because I barely knew him, was symbolic. I don't know why, but his passing seemed so revolutionary. So I drew him and themed his existence in my life "...Just Passing By" because that seems a lot like what life and our periodic confrontations with death, relationships, experiences, etc. are like.

How is it that we can have all of these different relationships in our lives, some of them short, some of them long, some of them lasting only a day or shorter,  but that their length often seems inconsequential to their impact on us. I might have interpreted Theo's existence in my life as completely inconsequential, as just another insignificant experience that came and went. But, if it is true that particulars have the power to point to universals, then Theo's coming and going may be the archetypal example of the fleetingness of life, of our short-lived existence on this planet. So what are we going to do with it? I could have let Theo go without a second thought and my life would have probably moved on at a steady pace, but if we keep letting little things pass by like this, if the fleeting relationships or seemingly meaningless people/animals/things who we encounter are all interpreted as meaningless than life becomes meaningless and only the big people with the grand ideas, who do "important things" become the only ones who matter. Not that they don't matter. It is just that they often cause us to create hierarchies of people/ideas/systems and then value some over others... like valuing people who are smarter than others over people who have a greater capacity to love selflessly over others or valuing someone who is more well-spoken or well-endowed or more fill-in-the-blank than someone else when, in reality, we all factor into someone's construction of more-than and less-than. 

Creativity and imagination are the forces that drive life forward in a meaningful way. They will allow us to imagine a life that is not prescribed to us by external forces like the culture industry or capitalism or mass society, a life that is filled with a love that is not comprised of mere romantic notions of how it should be lived. So thank you Theo, for coming into my life and allowing me to be immortalize your passing in a creative way that brings intentional, deliberate, positive meaning to my life. Now I can look at this picture and see life as fresh and new and exciting and **potentially** meaningful.

Renunciation

8:04, 32:13, 33:39, 43:20, 49:18, 51:07, 53:10, 56:37, 57:35

There are a lot of ways this can be read. Overlooking the fact that the narrator seemed to go into the study already anticipating its trajectory and outcome (oh, humanity), I like it because it both acknowledges our human-ness and alludes to the lessons that ascetics and different cultures the world over have to offer us about living/loving. In general, it speaks about renunciation through exoticism/mysticism. This is one methodology, a cool one, but also potentially problematic for those who use it as proof that God/Love/Truth is to be found in some esoteric cave in some far off land or through some mystical religion with chants and instruments and candles. While these things are cool, God/Love/Truth can be found anywhere and you don't have to go searching the world over to get at it. Ironically, though, mysticism/exoticism is often used as a tool to prove universal points and put things in perspective and can be useful in this respect.

Halloween......

....pretty much solidified the underlying suspicion that I need to get a PhD in sociology/anthropology/cultural studies and possibly be an ethnographer. Everything that I am interested in involves living life on the margins, watching, noticing, observing, learning via empiricism, being a sort of perpetual ethnographer.. even towards myself. I feel like maybe this is what I am prepping myself for with all of this fascination with identity, with emptying myself, with unconditionally loving everyone, with being a person who can navigate multiple terrains, who is impartial to any one lifestyle (sort of, not really??). Halloween in the city was extremely enjoyable this year because I approached it from this standpoint. I went to the city intending to watch, to notice trends, to watch society in action, the tick, tock, tick, tock of people in motion, of time moving forward, of life happening at this weird intersection of identity and pseudo-identity in the amorphous city of a thousand faces, with no preconceived notions of what the night might have in store, with no real plan of action. It was cool, too, just to watch. Unlike last year, when I consciously created a costume with a different intent (to embody a paradigm - namely One man's trash is another man's treasure), this year I basically closed my eyes and threw on whatever expressive, colorful, weird shards of clothe first migrated to the surface of my closet (since my entire wardrobe is basically a halloween costume this was not hard) not so that others might look at me, but more so that I might look at others. So that I might fit into the schema of Halloween, enter this terrain in an authentic way, catch a glimpse from inside, much like an ethnographer in say, the Middle East, might sport a Hijab in order to enter into the cultural space of Muslim women. It was like, a practice session for me. Sort of like when I go to Arizona I bring western clothes with me and conceive of myself as a cowgirl or when I went to Bonnaroo and wore shards of clothing and conceived of myself as a hippie or when my mom gives me advice like "if you want to be a dancer then you have to dress the part" and in the back of my mind I know she is pretty much right, or when I wore a yankees hat to a sports bar this week and drank beer and ate chicken wings watched the yankees lose the first game of the series. Life is about playing and looking the part.

I loooooooooove theater! I love the theater of life! Who needs to be trained in acting when life is a giant opera house full of multiple stages on which to receive your training? Being an ethnographer will, I think, allow me to be an actress, to wear different hats in a way that is not self-serving, but rather mind-opening. To explore rituals and traditions and partake in different lifestyles and seek to understand, to explain through observing and experiencing, to, above all else, love.

I have a friend who doesn't wear name-brand clothes. He rocks.

Along the same grain of thought, I've been contemplating cyberspace recently (this includes the internet, text messaging, .. uhh.. I guess that's it.. basically ways of communicating that are highly mediated). Here's a hypothetical situation: Imagine if all of the pictures and status updates that I posted online were angry, full of hatred, malicious, spiteful, speaking of horrific things like death and self-destruction. And my pictures were all of the "why, why, cruel world!" sort. And now imagine if all of the people I encountered in the "real world" were my facebook friends and had access this "image" of myself that I was projecting online. And now imagine, still, if I were actually an extremely happy person in real life, and was only using the internet as an outlet for my anger and not for my happiness. How would the people who had access to the one-dimensional aspect of my manifold nature react upon encountering me in real life?? Would they already enter into communication with me with preconceived notions about me as a person. Would they communicate with me as if I were an angry person and would I be thus interpellated into being one?

in cyberspace, identity can be an artform....but this also has ramifications in the real world.

Facebook has a "like" button that I've never used, ever. I think this falls under the category of the culture industry offering me things and me not wanting to be herded into communion with the masses or something like that. My relationship with facebook is so multifaceted that it almost drives me insane. There are people on it with whom I always communicate genuinely, others to whom I serve as a role model (cousins, gymnasts, theater peeps, younger people in general, church peeps), others.. omg just so many different kinds of relationships. Sometimes it serves as a business portal, a social portal, an advertising portal, etc. etc. etc. It is so strange to think of the many purposes it serves...

The internet is weird. The fact that a thought on a facebook status can linger long after the thought or emotion has passed is weird.  I hope that once I am situated into a way of life with another person someday that my online identity becomes entirely separate from my real-life identity.

On another note, my brother has been pestering me for a virtual shout out so here it is. 
HI NICK! 
I guess this is a good opportunity to meditate on reasons why I love my brother, my best friend. #1 reason: because he is so, so driven and does such great things, yet is probably the most humble, grounded person I know (after T-O-M). And also because he let me hang his underwear out the bathroom window when his friends came over when we were younger hahahahahahaha.  

Creations of Meaningful Existence

Now, slowly; Breath in, Breath out. This is a sacred space. A place of reflection and self-inquiry. Buried in Mother Earth with care and intent. Please respect it as such. Leave Something. Or leave Nothing, But, please, leave it deliberatly.

Process

We are here to do;   
and through doing to learn;    
and through learning to know;
and through knowing to experience wonder; 
and through wonder to attain wisdom;   
and through wisdom to find simplicity;  
and through simplicity to give attention; 
and through attention to see what needs to be done.

Thank You

Everyone is an opportunity. Everyone is an experience. You, in the abstract, have been brought into my life for a reason, as a testament to my capacity to love, to be understanding, to be patient, to be kind, to be selfless, to be a servant. This seems to involve reconfiguring the roles that the people in my life at this juncture in time play and reimagining how I might continue to grow in love. Ironically, this "relationship" is making me extremely empathetic towards my last, in which I was the one who picked and choosed when to call, when to be involved, how much (little) of my time I was willing to sacrifice from week to week, if/when I was going to be there when you needed me. And I see why it drove you crazy - the uncertainty, the selfishness, the lopsidedness. But I could only hear you speak those things and try to empathsize/understand because I was inside of it/that. It is always in retrospect that these types of things are brought into the light and that we begin to experience a version of ourselves that we couldn't see from inside the shadows of that former self. I guess that is what might be called wisdom, which can only be gained over time, through experience, over experience, through time. It sort of sucks that people are often the outlets through which these less than extraordinary versions of ourselves are discovered, but it is what it is and this is why forgiveness is so important - because everyone needs to go through the fire, be bad, be ordinary in order to be extraordinary. And in the process we often hurt each other or use each other to unwrap/create/discover ourselves. If only we could be born with wisdom!

It's 5 in the morning. I can't sleep partially because I watched the Shining, partially because I had a good amount of sugar, partially because I am trying to remind myself that you don't call me because you are busy.

It's 5 in the morning and I am crying. I just had a deep coversation with a friend who told me that she was raped... more than once. My advice to her was to thank him/them. I think that, as harsh as this sounds, it is good advice (pats self on back.. hehehe...just kidding..I am simply reiterating lessons I've been taught and ones I've adopted from others..an On the Shoulders of Giants approach to education and living in general as it has so aptly been named). Thank him/them. For the opportunity he has given you - the potential for you to empathize with other people who have experienced similar things is now there. It is a blessing in disguise to be able to enter this new terrain, to speak of horrific things and spread love and awareness from a new, enlightened vantage point. We all have particular sufferings. I sort of wish I had a harder life - weird huh? - it's been pretty awesome... I guess what I am particularly empathetic towards is loneliness.... Anyway, the fact that my friend was raped not once, but twice, the reaccuring nature of this experience, might be interpretated as a suggestion that she is meant for a greater purpose. She is a vessel for something bigger than herself. 
I think that gratitude is more proactive than forgiveness. It's like... a branch of forgiveness, but an extremely important one because it enables us to use our experiences, our sufferings for good, to make the world a better place, not to create expressions (via writing songs, creating social networks, other acts of revenge etc.) that simply keep the cyclic wheel of human suffering in motion. We had a Harvard professor speak at our yoga teacher training and she told us that "no one gets out of childhood unscarred" (Why did I feel the need to cite the fact that she was a Harvard professor in order to make that mundane statement seem more weighty.. new blog? haha) We are all scapegoats at one point or another for other's misfortunes. I remember reading about greek theater when I was an undergrad. I forget who said it, but someone was concerned that the spectacles involved in greek theater were serving merely cathartic functions. That they were a way for the audience to purge themselves of their sufferings by watching others suffer. This is a practice that is manfested in new, yet similar ways today. We do all this stuff to make us feel good. We take medication to numb our suffering or have sex and drink and get high or get lost in the media or..jeez virtually everything.... as a way to distract ourselves, numb ourselves...wow that could be a long tangent...

this is why I like laughing.. because my thoughts are deep... and laughter reminds me that life is not that serious..but it is, sort of not really. It's seriously funny! ha. ha. ha...

......................Is Nothing Sacred?
©SFS

this is a weird memory that is coming into my head right now... I remember being in Brooklyn once sitting my living room. There were 2 other girls and the conversation turned to sex. They started talking about sex and boys and pleasure and how they expected their men to do these crazy things to them and make them feel good and reciprocate favors and whatnot. I remember thinking "Wow. I think I might puke." Not because of the topic... I'm all for talking about sex, baby! But because of their interpretation of this very sacred activity. I guess I'm thinking about this now because it falls under the category of selfishness, which is how I feel when I think things like "why don't you call?" "why don't you care?" which is how I began this blog. So it all relates, I swear!

This blog rocks... it always transforms me in some way, shape, or form. Tonight, the transformation occured outside, in another virtual realm, while I was in the process of sorting out my thoughts. Here I am worried about myself while my friend is out there experiencing this enormous physical/emotional pain. Or is all pain similar? Sort of like.. when you are in love, little things become big deals.. like how the grass feels on your bare feet or your personal experience in an awkward social situation..  love makes these things matter, resensitizes you. Similar to personal sufferings? 
And now I am simply grateful. Thank you people in my life, no matter what you do, who you are.

 To have never suffered would be to have never been blessed.

Life Formatted Visually?

In the business of love. Unwrapping it, finding new ways to do it, growing in it. Growing in it above all things. I've been thinking about a way to create something that serves as a visual representation of the way I feel about life, as a way to regain my perspective when I start to lose it. I want this picture to be the foundation of it.. the mind/body/spirit triad. As a way to remember that I am a mind; a thinking thing, a (sometimes) intelligent being who can rationalize and construct and create and understand. But that is just one part of me. As a way to remember that I am a body; a walking and talking and breathing thing - I experience life from within this thing with skin and limbs and bones that restricts me from lots of stuff, but also enables me to experience the world, life - it is my house, my temple, my vessel. But that is just one part of me, too. I am also a spirit with a soul that feels and loves and hurts and is connected to all things, something matterless, something that for the cultivation of virtues. But that is just another part of me. I am all of this together - ultimately something divine.

I also want to create a visual representation of Love. A heart just doesn't seem to cut it anymore. It's nice as a quick, socialized, commercialized way of transmitting a message because people all speak the language of hearts, but I want something more me.  I'll have to define that concept more.. personally I guess before I do that though. This is a pretty solid defintion that seems to have worked for me my whole life. The most attractive thing about it is the way it deals with resilience.

Love
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love

 

I've been writing for a while now, but after studying language and culture and people and especially Phaedrus and works like it and doing lots of stuff involving silence, I've come to acknowledge that words are just too inadequate. They are useful, just not all-encompassing. Neither are visuals obviously, but maybe they come closer to embodying emotions, feelings, and truths because they are simultaneously (not to generalize) objective and subjective. How can you write about Love or God or the Human Condition and expect that the mere 26 letters that you have to work with will do the job? When I write, I always feel like I have to follow up one thought with another, like I have to explain myself. There are always "buts" and assumptions to be made and tangents to go off on and one idea always flows into another. Not that I have anyone to whom I am writing or explaining myself, but when I look back on my catalogue of meanderings I want to be clear about they way I felt about life and its frictions.

A picture is worth a thousand words? Maybe? Why, though... because it says something without saying anything? Maybe? I like that, though, so, yes.

Pondering the Absurd

 I feel a slight paradigm shift coming on that will hopefully alleviate the paranoia that unfailingly sets in when I encounter certain manifestations of the absurd. It resulted from a conversation I had with a friend whose thoughts, opinions, and overall approach to living I deeply respect.

I am in love with strangeness for its own sake, which is to me the truest representation of the divine. 

 Word. so cool - a more abstract notion of the divine. I've historically (in the history of Leila) been petrified of absurdity and strangeness - of things that are contrary to what they appear to be (the mayor in the nightmare before Christmas is the archetypal example of the sort of thing I am referring to). To me, things of this sort have always been untruths, depictions of the way things are not, manipulations of reality as we know it, dishonest. I think this is the natural outgrowth of a childhood composed of sports, church, and family. I was pretty grounded. My head was not in the clouds. Ironically this is what happens in life: we either grow to fear things that are unfamiliar to us or we swing the other way and distance ourselves from the lives we have been brought up in. Sometimes it seems like we do this not because we truly believe that the lives we have been brought up in are false, but because we want to create something that is our own. In this way, the creative imperative ironically obscures our pursuit of truth. Or because we come to learn that life itself is false and we project this onto the practices, rituals, and ways of being that our parents have adopted for us. Anyway, as strange as this sounds, I didn't really encounter art or music or abstract manifestations of creative imaginings until I was almost in college. Well, I guess I encountered them, but I never thought twice about them, never let them touch me. Then, when I did, and when I started experimenting and becoming enthralled by things of absurd natures, I was scared. "OMG life is not what I think it is! I have been prepping myself to live and thrive in a system that could malfunction at any given moment!" I guess I did not want to come to the ultimate realization that life IS absurd. Anyway, this idea is really cool because it means that I don't have to be scared anymore. I don't have to be scared of things that are unfamiliar or dichotomous or contradictory because they may be the truest representations of the divine, of that which cannot be identified, of the unknown.  They may be the ultimate way to come to terms with the fact that as hard as we try to become gods ourselves, to manipulate nature or create social structures that dominate the way we think and act or prescribe commerical values to material things, all our attempts are in vain.

I still have to think about the -est at the end of tru.

http://www.stanford.edu/class/history34q/readings/textualizingscience/babelshort.html
Maybe this mode of thought is outdated. After all, isn't that what art in the 1920s was all about? Art that was evacuated of figure - a movement that reflected the predominate mode of thought of that period, that there was nothing to figure. Yes and no? Solipsism and all its correspondingly despondent reproductions didn't provide a solution, a new way of looking at the world, just a conclusive argument that private experience can never completely be shared. I've already come to terms with all of this stuff about the world being created and blah blah blah....what I am proposing is something more proactive. something that allows us to use our creative powers for good!

The other cool thing about this idea is that it soooooooo nicely correlates with the direction I want to move in. I love God first and foremost, yes. I love art and theater and writing and music and abstract thought too and sometimes the ideology that religion espouses (not so much the actual doctrines themselves, but I guess the social aspect of it, the lifestyle) makes no room for creativity. But here is a way to embrace everything that I loveeeeeeee, or, rather, to find new reasons to loveeeeeeeeeeeeeee the worlddddddd... always a good thing =D


The simulacrum is not what hides the truth, it is truth that hides the fact that there is none.

Along the same lines, I'm thinking about linearity and how pervasive it is. I'm thinking in terms of geometry and architecture and how the construction of our world into boxes (ie. when you look out the window of a plane everything is square - also..square shaped fields, rectangular buildings, rooms that are square and the furniture that is created with sharp edges and angles in order to fit them, technology - ipods, computers, etc.- books, newspapers, etc.) informs the way we think. The way we think is in a linear, boxy fashion. We categorize things and draw rigid lines around them and view life as a calculated, step-by-step processes from birth until death, at least in the West. I guess to bring up reincarnation or cyclical agricultural cycles or other "circle of life" type dealioz would be a long tangent. Our illnesses or non-physical sicknesses are pinned down to one or a few variables. We love, we live, we think in a linear fashion and I am wondering if this is a product of the way we have visually structured our world. I realize that in order for capitalism to work efficiently it must adhere to this process - from production of whatever is being produced to consumption of that same thing - the process is linear - however, it seems as if this linear mode of thought preceded capitalism. the way our whole world is structured seems to adhere to this principle of linearity. Even the way I have reduced the way I am today to being the product of certain events and circumstances from my past is linear.

What I think is that linearity allows us to be held unaccountable for the destructive behaviors that we constantly allow to shape our lives - it always us to live under the illusion that what we do to ourselves doesn't effect other people, the planet, future generations. And this is reflected in the physical, visual, geometrical way we shape and literally make the globe conform to us.

Anyway...yay I wasn't a hopelessly emotional romantic in this blog!! Which doesn't mean that I am not. I am still steeping with love love love love love love love love, but it is nice to write about other philosophical meanderings, too. It's cool that I am starting to come up with my own philosophy on life, taking into account the lives, the philosophies, the day-to-day interactions and contemporary movements that are real to me and shaping them into some way of living that works for me. The creative imperative drives life forward!

externalizing

I can't sleep. i feel too full. of so many things. I am so happy I want to cry. too much passion and no way to get it out. everything is so fucking beautiful i don't even know how to express it. i want to create, express, dance, hug inanimate objects, say i love you a trillion times, roll around in the leaves, literally jump for joy. i feel like i have to hold so much back though. i can't even breath! wetw43t43tqwr.

Fall

Fall. Changing seasons and something else. Transience. Reminders of what it is to be alive. As it encroaches, there is a newness, always an energetic something, indescribable, dynamic, kinetic, spirited, and strangely always exactly the same and exactly different. Breathing color into life. Where did it come from? It always happens overnight. Time? Moving, changing, accumulating. Wisdom? Moving, changing, accumulating. Love? Moving, changing, accumulating. Stepping into something brand new and blindingly beautiful. My thoughts are fragmented, whirling, not to be bound by words, of which there are none. None. What? How? Yet every one chosen with care. No borders, and yet I’m standing at the margins. How? Falling into something incommunicable. My eyes into yours, seems the only way to say it. Or a country road, private, bursting with color, no end in sight. Fall. Brace yourself? Or just Fall.

Fuck You.

I like rock music. I liked it before I got into any other music, before I realized how powerful music could be or how different rhythms moved me. To be more precise, I like rock ideology. I always find that after I listen to something really passionate or something weird or something moving or something that tugs at my heartstrings, I retreat back to rock music. After I started questioning things and trying out different beliefs and different lifestyles, rock music was always a sort of constant - something refreshing, relaxing, unemotional. Weird that these are not qualities that are typically associated with rock music, but this is how this genre made me feel.   This is sort of strange since rock music seems to be the antithesis of everything that I really deeply love about life (love, truth, yoga, silence, natural beauty...things of this sort). However, in pondering why I love the things/people/experiences/ect. that I love, I've come to conclude that they all have that "Fuck You" quality about them. I love yoga (as a metaphor for a particular kind of lifestyle) for the same reason I love Rock music. I think it is encapsulated in this poem, which, ironically, also has that "Fuck You" quality about it...

People are unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered.
Love them anyway.

If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.
Be kind anyway.

If you are successful, you will win some false friends and true enemies.
Succeed anyway.

The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.
Be good anyway.

Honesty and frankness will make you vulnerable.
Be honest and frank anyway.

What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.
Build anyway.

People need help, but may attack you if you try to help them.
Help them anyway.

In the final analysis, it is between you and God.
It was never between you and them anyway.

- Mother Theresa

Grad school is showing me exactly what I thought that it might, except in new,  interesting, and more esoteric ways - that the world is socially constructed and reality is never what it seems to be. This is cool because once we realize the latent paradigms that underlie the way that things function, we can create or choose our way - like the autistic child did in The Curious Case of the Dog at Night.. not that he could help it, but still (another book of "Fuck You" quality). So, fuck who? Fuck you socially constructed, ideologically perpetuating "reality" and all of the standardized products, services and creations that you propose to be true. I love you, but fuck you.

This blog sounds harsh. I really hate the F word, but it seems appropriate and not interchangeable hahaha.

On another note, fear and love are opposite sides of the same coin and I have been excessively afraid lately. But this is not really who I am, it is just something temporary. Anything that comes out of my mouth (or anyone's for that matter) that is written in letters or blogs or spoken or acted out that is not all-encompassing, unconditional love is fear - fear of transitioning, of relinquishing the past, of newness, of being on my own, things of this sort. Any words, thoughts, actions or creations that I manifest and bring into the world or thrust upon you/anyone that are not aligned with this ultimate goal of seeing the beauty in all things, of truly saying Fuck you to everything that is not unadulterated, unconditional love are not really me- they are just some ulterior me, some ego-bound me speaking or acting or thinking on some worldly whim. 

And this, I think, (what do I know?) is where the logical fallacy of life and love occurs - in the space between the real and the false - in assuming that one is the other, that my very essence is validated by what I say, do, act out, or create.... even though these manifestations of "me" might be motivated by fear - a transitory state of being. And this is why we tire of love, why we move on from a person or get anxious about the circumstances that we are in. But, ironically, it is these material manifestations that draw people to each other... so how now brown cow? hahaha... I just felt like saying that..... but really, people come to love each other for their idiosyncrasies so... I guess how now brown cow is a good way to end that thought.... hahahaha.  


again, what do I know?.

I like you a lot because I think that you realize these things -and because you also seem to have that fuck you-ness about you.

And I like myself a lot because I know I realize this. In this way I am so, so small, yet can be so large.