Two and a half months ago I sat in this spot with God knows what ahead of me. In about twelve hours I start my long journey home. I say long, long in terms of modern aviation, but not actually long. And so I come to reflect, as one does, on all that I've done, those I've met and every piece of fleeting imagination I keep alive in memory. I feel I've reached conclusions about myself, my opinions and perceptions of things have certainly evolved since I've bee out here. I find myself thinking I've gotta be careful when I get back; make sure I don't slip back into old habits that had been broken. But then I catch myself. Senseless worrying about that, senseless thinking like that; as long as I'm aware of myself then things should just be left to play out.
By the time you read this I'll be home and I may well have already seen and caught up with you, whoever you maybe, so what else is there left to say?
I guess it's common place for people in my situation to call these trips life changing, travelling, constantly seeing new things, meeting new people. The core of it I imagine is being away from home, family out on your own more then ever before. I think for a lot of people, and I don't discount myself from this, that certainly constitutes the label of life changing, however melodramatic that may sound. Lets be real; everything we do is life changing. Every action, word, thought, is life changing. If I hadn't chosen to sit here and write this I may have gone for a walk, been hit by and been hit by a car. Or I may have eaten a strawberry, got red on the white shirt I'm wearing and subsequently devote twenty minutes to cleaning it off, twenty minutes that could have been spent writing, could been spent in thought, could have lead to some deep revelation which would go on to change my life. So in a sense the whole life changing thing, kind of a moot point.
Now there's one stream of thought that occurred to me early on out here and has been mentioned by me fairly persistently throughout these ramblings. The idea of my own ignorance and the need to realise how stupid I actually am. I've talked about this a lot, or at least it feels like I have, so I won't discuss the idea itself here. I have tried to constantly bear this line of thought in mind when entering discussions and conversations out here. When I feel I've successfully kept it in mind I've become open and perceptive to those I'm talking to and feel I've truly advance my knowledge after discussion as a result.
The real test for this attitude of opennes, come with every discussion I had with a wonderful friend of mine. A guy I spent around seven to ten days with in San Francisco, not in that way, someone who was really the perfect conversational partner for me. He was of a similar political persuasion and was always willing to enter into debate about a subject. I truly feel that one the greatest things I got out here were the conversations we had. So we would debate and he would never fail to shoot me down if he disagreed with me, which at first kind of shocked me. It would always lead to brilliant exchanges of information and various perspectives. One time we entered debate on a particular subject and I got extremely riled up as it was something I have rarely been truly challenged on and was thus fairly well convinced of. I got almost angry from the fact he was stumping me with his arguments but after about ten minutes I forced myself to relax, breathe and be fully open to the arguments he was presenting. Looking back on that subject now, I'm not as convinced as I once was but beyond that I've gained an entirely new perspective, something of truly great value.
This guy was four of five years my senior, a fact he was surprised to learn, but speaking with him, someone who is so well read and knowledgeable yet still very humble in his opinions was incredibly humbling for me. Being able to share the time we did together and the conversations we had, conversations where you really felt your ideas and perceptions changing and evolving as you learn from each other was truly phenomenal. From on perspective it's almost like having that idea at the beginning of the trip, I slowly implemented it throughout my travels and dealings with people until it culminated in being able to have these amazing invaluable conversations.
One last point I wanted to make on the whole knowledge/debating issue is about sitting on the fence. Now of course they will be an inherent bias, me being the annoying opinionated fucker that I am, but hey.
So in light of this concept of being aware of ignorance how can we ever pick a side if we don't feel we know all we can about the subject or indeed will every know all we can. I think as human beings who are endowed with logic and rationality it is our duty to use these abilities in search of truth. (Worth noting that this theory doesn't stand if you believe human beings are fundamentally irrational.) In doing this we take all the knowledge we have and make a judgement based upon it. The key to this exercise being valid is having an openness and a willing to admit when we're wrong and thereby being constantly able to reassess and re - examine our judgement in the presence of new information and perspectives. It is this openness that is the hardest part as we are made to feel that being wrong is a bad thing. When in face being wrong, really is marvelous as it allows us to be more knowledgeable and closer to truth then we ever before. (It's also worth noting that this theory also relies on truth being a priority, which I do believe we naturally allude to.) It's not about whats right, it's about what's true. Oh and of course I'm aware of the potential impossibility of the notion of truth. Yet I think in spite of this being the case I think aiming for it and striving towards it is still the only way to go.
Saturday, 28 May 2011
Sunday, 15 May 2011
San Francisco - "You can't see California without Marlon Brando's eyes"
There seems to be memories that either run in slow motion, or else they don't run at all. People talk about the terror of a scream, the horror of the raw, spontaneous excursion of fear through the vocal chords. Now maybe I've listened to too much heavy metal music and thus find in a scream a sort of melody and not so much fear. A long, sustained, scream doesn't scare me. It's the cracking in that pitch that does it, it's the vocal desecration of that melody. That's what's scary. Not when a grown man is forced to scream, but when a grown man struggles to scream. When all that can escape between the giant panic breathes and audible sobs of "I'm sorry, I love you, I'm so sorry" is that high pitched panic yelp, akin to a little girl running from the worm in the garden, that noise that knocks on the door of the sound barrier. When a grown man is fighting for air, professing love and apology as if standing at the feet of a wrathful God ready to exact judgement, it's then the voice gets loud and gets volatile and cracks and breaks like a banshee being drowned, like a dog being tortured, like a little girl being raped. That's when a scream is scary. When it stops being a scream; it's terrifying.
In slow motion every action however innocuous takes on renewed significance. The head turns on the pillow, the arm follows, body rolls and then that non - scream hits. With a sudden defiance you open your eyes wide as if commanding the dream to stop, you regain control and in the split second where you peel back your eye lids you say to yourself "Silence! I am awake, I am in control, hush now." In the seconds that proceed lifetimes pass, the pounding in your chest quickens as you realise that the euphoric relief you expected upon the opening of your eyes is trapped underneath the eyelids. Although you would never admit it there's the part of you that still thinks this isn't real, this part of you needs confirmation and relentlessly the eyes that failed to bring you release once already try again to save your mind. It's then that you meet the eye of the girl in your dorm, her bed adjacent to yours and you see from her wide eyes that they too failed to stop the screaming. It's real.
Over the course of the next hour your eyes relinquish control to your ears. Three realities can he heard outside your door. The broken scream writhing on the floor. The drunken brother trying to calm him. The police and fireman trying to keep this grounded in some rational protocol. very so often the three entities blur into glorious chaos as the volume explodes then vanishes and those following logical procedure are forced to abandon it for their own safety.
"Adam stop it!" - "Get off me! It hurts!" - "I know it hurts Adam, I know it hurts," - "Give him the shot!" - "..." - "Just give him the goddamn shot, knock him out!"
Distinguishing the different characters becomes a task of deduction that uses the dialogue spoken as all voices become on in the dense fog of confusion.
And so it plays out like a soap opera about domestic abuse interwoven with grind house sound bites. so ugly you can't stop looking, so harrowing you can't stop listening. Once you open yourself to the scene you need closure. Closure finally comes when all the breathing is of the same volume and at that resting rate of seventy beats per minute. The hardest thing though is that you never really left that dream state. It's still dark with only the vague flicker of street light pushing against the window and ultimately you were never really awake, almost as if that wide eyed pop earlier failed to you to consciousness at all.
So the rest of the night you're rolling it round in your head. Stuck in Neverland (that places between asleep and awake) persistently reliving the hour in various speeds of slow motion.
In slow motion every action however innocuous takes on renewed significance. The head turns on the pillow, the arm follows, body rolls and then that non - scream hits. With a sudden defiance you open your eyes wide as if commanding the dream to stop, you regain control and in the split second where you peel back your eye lids you say to yourself "Silence! I am awake, I am in control, hush now." In the seconds that proceed lifetimes pass, the pounding in your chest quickens as you realise that the euphoric relief you expected upon the opening of your eyes is trapped underneath the eyelids. Although you would never admit it there's the part of you that still thinks this isn't real, this part of you needs confirmation and relentlessly the eyes that failed to bring you release once already try again to save your mind. It's then that you meet the eye of the girl in your dorm, her bed adjacent to yours and you see from her wide eyes that they too failed to stop the screaming. It's real.
Over the course of the next hour your eyes relinquish control to your ears. Three realities can he heard outside your door. The broken scream writhing on the floor. The drunken brother trying to calm him. The police and fireman trying to keep this grounded in some rational protocol. very so often the three entities blur into glorious chaos as the volume explodes then vanishes and those following logical procedure are forced to abandon it for their own safety.
"Adam stop it!" - "Get off me! It hurts!" - "I know it hurts Adam, I know it hurts," - "Give him the shot!" - "..." - "Just give him the goddamn shot, knock him out!"
Distinguishing the different characters becomes a task of deduction that uses the dialogue spoken as all voices become on in the dense fog of confusion.
And so it plays out like a soap opera about domestic abuse interwoven with grind house sound bites. so ugly you can't stop looking, so harrowing you can't stop listening. Once you open yourself to the scene you need closure. Closure finally comes when all the breathing is of the same volume and at that resting rate of seventy beats per minute. The hardest thing though is that you never really left that dream state. It's still dark with only the vague flicker of street light pushing against the window and ultimately you were never really awake, almost as if that wide eyed pop earlier failed to you to consciousness at all.
So the rest of the night you're rolling it round in your head. Stuck in Neverland (that places between asleep and awake) persistently reliving the hour in various speeds of slow motion.
Friday, 13 May 2011
San Francisco - "Burn it down gwenevieve and take a shower in it's ashes"
Feel like I haven't written in forever so here's a random stream of consciousness on whatever comes to mind.
Never fails to stagger me how much of a profound effect my dreams have on my mood. This happened to me this morning when I woke up, allow me to elaborate. I was having a very intense emotional dream, in which there was much passionate revelation a subsequent sobbing of a large proportion, think Shakespearean tragedy, performed in Shakespeare's time. So some seriously over - hyped shit. So in the dream I'm sharing a good intense cry with someone, I think this is when I woke up, that or the dream ended and I can't remember what followed it.
As I went about my morning this feeling, a knot in the pit of my stomach - more comparable to despair then anything else, was apparent. Quickly I ignored this and proceeded to lose myself in Middle Earth, (reading the Fellowship Of The Ring for the first time) and disregard this strange emotion. Continued my morning bullshit and went for a run. Whilst running I thought over this strange feeling hard and went over the dream that had caused it, in doing so the emotion swelled inside me and took a greater grasp on me then it had done in the previous hours. I felt physically choked up and felt my chest weigh upon me as it does before one yields to tears. Forcing myself to combat this with harsh swallows and conscious efforts to disregard what I was thinking about, I completed my run without shedding a tear.
Now maybe this experience is just me and of course there is a whole wealth of deductions and speculations that can be made with regard to the direct events that took place in the dream, which I don't care to divulge right now and the context of my life as it is right now. But this isn't the first time this strange emotional transcendence from dream to waking reality has happened to me. I suppose the core point on which I'm falling is the questioning of the real how something like emotion and experience can transcend the boundary from sleep to wake and thus real to unreal.
Never fails to stagger me how much of a profound effect my dreams have on my mood. This happened to me this morning when I woke up, allow me to elaborate. I was having a very intense emotional dream, in which there was much passionate revelation a subsequent sobbing of a large proportion, think Shakespearean tragedy, performed in Shakespeare's time. So some seriously over - hyped shit. So in the dream I'm sharing a good intense cry with someone, I think this is when I woke up, that or the dream ended and I can't remember what followed it.
As I went about my morning this feeling, a knot in the pit of my stomach - more comparable to despair then anything else, was apparent. Quickly I ignored this and proceeded to lose myself in Middle Earth, (reading the Fellowship Of The Ring for the first time) and disregard this strange emotion. Continued my morning bullshit and went for a run. Whilst running I thought over this strange feeling hard and went over the dream that had caused it, in doing so the emotion swelled inside me and took a greater grasp on me then it had done in the previous hours. I felt physically choked up and felt my chest weigh upon me as it does before one yields to tears. Forcing myself to combat this with harsh swallows and conscious efforts to disregard what I was thinking about, I completed my run without shedding a tear.
Now maybe this experience is just me and of course there is a whole wealth of deductions and speculations that can be made with regard to the direct events that took place in the dream, which I don't care to divulge right now and the context of my life as it is right now. But this isn't the first time this strange emotional transcendence from dream to waking reality has happened to me. I suppose the core point on which I'm falling is the questioning of the real how something like emotion and experience can transcend the boundary from sleep to wake and thus real to unreal.
Wednesday, 4 May 2011
Little Italy, San Francisco - "You're not dead, you're no where near it"
What is to follow will probably read as both obvious and cliche, but it's going to be truthful,it's honesty should be seen as the main goal of the following entry above any main goal of discussion or meditation.
I'm reaching the end of my time here, less then three weeks until I return home and among everything I've discovered out here, whether about myself or the world in general, it is the simple notion of "home" that I feel to be the greatest self discovery. Don't get me wrong, I'm not going to come back spouting notions of how ridiculous the IS is whilst waving a union jack, sipping on some earl grey and watching Royal Wedding highlights. When I say home, I mean it detached from geography and all that said geography would imply.
The notion of home has reared it's head because of that which I took for granted, the things so small and everyday they fall out of the regular field of consciousness. Things like food, having meals cooked for me and slowly realising how precious that is! Things like family, by this I don't just mean relatives but my friends as well, those who I frequently refer to as my brothers and sisters. I miss them in the direct sense of being with them, but I also miss the assurance that they're only a train ride away. There was a strange comfort about being in a place, a town for so long. Sure sometimes it would get monotonous but it's nice to be able to go out and without fail see people you know. Nice to be able to know exactly how and where to go to get something done, nice to go to your local cafe for lunch, where they always charge you a little bit less for the quarter pounder with cheese and chips.
So it is that as I grow more accustomed to this travelling thing that I draw closer to it's end. I think I look forward to returning so, because I won't have the need to be as constrained financially as before leaving, where I was saving for travel, and will thus be able to do all that I wished to do before but couldn't. It's gonna be fantastic to see all the scholars who'll be home over summer. And when I'm settled back in and boredom ensues as summer dwindles into the past I'll be heading off to uni myself, a whole new adventure as it were.
When I get home I intend to try and sustain this new frame of reference as best I can, this new appreciation for all the I'm truly lucky to have; an incredible family, both relatives and friends, and a summer full of potential for friends, music, road trips, hanging out in Brighton and hanging out wrestling with my little bro. Don't worry I'm sure this strange positivity and optimism won't last too long, though best to write it down whilst it gripped me.
See you all soon,
Tom
I'm reaching the end of my time here, less then three weeks until I return home and among everything I've discovered out here, whether about myself or the world in general, it is the simple notion of "home" that I feel to be the greatest self discovery. Don't get me wrong, I'm not going to come back spouting notions of how ridiculous the IS is whilst waving a union jack, sipping on some earl grey and watching Royal Wedding highlights. When I say home, I mean it detached from geography and all that said geography would imply.
The notion of home has reared it's head because of that which I took for granted, the things so small and everyday they fall out of the regular field of consciousness. Things like food, having meals cooked for me and slowly realising how precious that is! Things like family, by this I don't just mean relatives but my friends as well, those who I frequently refer to as my brothers and sisters. I miss them in the direct sense of being with them, but I also miss the assurance that they're only a train ride away. There was a strange comfort about being in a place, a town for so long. Sure sometimes it would get monotonous but it's nice to be able to go out and without fail see people you know. Nice to be able to know exactly how and where to go to get something done, nice to go to your local cafe for lunch, where they always charge you a little bit less for the quarter pounder with cheese and chips.
So it is that as I grow more accustomed to this travelling thing that I draw closer to it's end. I think I look forward to returning so, because I won't have the need to be as constrained financially as before leaving, where I was saving for travel, and will thus be able to do all that I wished to do before but couldn't. It's gonna be fantastic to see all the scholars who'll be home over summer. And when I'm settled back in and boredom ensues as summer dwindles into the past I'll be heading off to uni myself, a whole new adventure as it were.
When I get home I intend to try and sustain this new frame of reference as best I can, this new appreciation for all the I'm truly lucky to have; an incredible family, both relatives and friends, and a summer full of potential for friends, music, road trips, hanging out in Brighton and hanging out wrestling with my little bro. Don't worry I'm sure this strange positivity and optimism won't last too long, though best to write it down whilst it gripped me.
See you all soon,
Tom
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