As I was reading a spot of Eliade today, I came across this line on page 43 in reference to creation myths and Paradise and so forth: "The savages, for their own part, were also aware of having lost a primitive Paradise." This, coupled with the discussions we've been having in class, got me thinking (as if that's unusual). Which came first? Did the entirety of humanity just assume that things must have been better at some point, and so made up stories to support this idea, or were things actually better at some point, but all we have now is mythologies? I don't pretend to have the answer to this. I was just turning it over in my head and wondered what you all thought.
And now for something completely different.
I was reading Matt Schwager's blog about dreams, which also sort of had to do with Eliade, and realized that I actually had a really weird dream last night too. Basically, something really bad had happened for some reason--I think it was like Indiana Jones, and someone in my family found a talisman (or whatever) and somebody else wanted it because I don't know why and they were nasty people so they started chasing my family around. It wasn't the nice sort of game chase, like a lot of people apparently have in dreams, and it wasn't monsters, either, not in the strict sense of the term. It was just people, which I think are in many ways the most horrible monsters ever created. Anyway, it somehow fell to me to keep my family safe, but I didn't have weapons or anything, and I barely knew who was following us. All I could do was move them to different places, like chess. Somehow we ended up in a refugee camp (at least I think that's what it was), and the people found us, and I'd failed. Unfortunately, it wasn't one of those dreams in which you wake up just when something bad is about to happen. Nope, I got to see everything, but I don't think I quite remember that section.
The weird thing about that dream isn't its content; that's about par for the course for me, though I usually wake up part of the way through the chasing bits. There are actually two things about it: first (which is really kind of two things), that I was physically there, insofar as I can be in a dream, and ended up failing; and second, more importantly, that I remember it. Perhaps it's significant, though I doubt it. It's probably just indicative of the severely messed-up state of my subconscious mind. (Freud would have a ball snooping through my head.) Incidentally, I was, like Matt, sick yesterday, so I'm sure that's another contributing factor. It just seemed really coincidental to me that I would have that dream last night and then today read about Matt's weird dream and also about losing Paradise. The paradise of my own dreams is lost to me, apparently. Regardless, I'm keeping my eyes peeled for shamans now, per Matt's blog.
Anyway, for what it's worth, there you go. Overshare? Probably. Also, I think I've labeled almost every post I've made so far in this class as "weird."
Showing posts with label weird. Show all posts
Showing posts with label weird. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 15, 2013
Friday, October 11, 2013
Oh look, there exists a human nuttier than I am
Whoever made this would fit super well in our class. Just a little tidbit I stumbled across during my lunchtime perusal of the interweb.
Tuesday, October 1, 2013
Sense and Incomprehensibility
I have to preface this. I have a really strange mind and I swear everything will sort of make sense by the end of this post. Possibly. At least, that's the idea.
So, to get down to brass tacks, when Gerritt said "fuck it" in class today, it got my brain going in Arabic. One of the weirder aspects of my mind is that I always have at least two languages going simultaneously in my head. That's why I sometimes mix up words--well, that and I usually talk too fast. The word for "only" in Arabic is فقط, which is transliterated as "faqaT." It sounds similar-ish so whenever I hear that phrase, my brain tends to go "oh, Arabic" and then it translates back to English because reasons and from "fuck it" I magically get "only." It makes about as much sense to me as I'm sure it does to you all.
Which then sort of but not really leads me to the next place my brain went: what is "it?" And then I realized, since my brain was still thinking in Arabic parallel to English, that there is no word for "it" in Arabic. That is, there are no gender-neutral pronouns in Arabic. In non-linguistics-ese, everything is either a he or a she. There are, for all intents and purposes, no its. For example, a bird is masculine (طائر/TA'ir) but a plane is feminine (طائرة/TA'ira). The words are exactly the same except for the last letter (the circle with the two dots over it, or the lack thereof), which is a feminine marker. So I guess all female birds are actually airplanes. Yeah, I don't know either, and neither do any of the Arabic professors I've ever had. They always just gave me the "are you seriously asking that" look and basically said they don't know so stop asking weird questions. But that's not the point. The point, which I seem to lose track of quickly when it's (!) close to midnight, is that "it" changes from culture to culture. In English, we have an understood antecedent that most people don't generally think about. In Arabic, there's no "it"--just a he or a she, which is functionally the same, but is still philosophically a little different.
And so you can now see my mind's descent into the realm of stuff about 0.2% of the world's population actually cares at all about. Speaking of descents, it occurred to me that the working title of the novel I'm very slowly writing on is Descend, so referential mania is again having a heyday in connection with "Signs and Symbols" and the Frye chapter on ascending/descending and my own writing. So it goes.
That's all. Hopefully it made a little sense, perhaps in a rather abstract way. We shall see in the morning, or in class, or something.
So, to get down to brass tacks, when Gerritt said "fuck it" in class today, it got my brain going in Arabic. One of the weirder aspects of my mind is that I always have at least two languages going simultaneously in my head. That's why I sometimes mix up words--well, that and I usually talk too fast. The word for "only" in Arabic is فقط, which is transliterated as "faqaT." It sounds similar-ish so whenever I hear that phrase, my brain tends to go "oh, Arabic" and then it translates back to English because reasons and from "fuck it" I magically get "only." It makes about as much sense to me as I'm sure it does to you all.
Which then sort of but not really leads me to the next place my brain went: what is "it?" And then I realized, since my brain was still thinking in Arabic parallel to English, that there is no word for "it" in Arabic. That is, there are no gender-neutral pronouns in Arabic. In non-linguistics-ese, everything is either a he or a she. There are, for all intents and purposes, no its. For example, a bird is masculine (طائر/TA'ir) but a plane is feminine (طائرة/TA'ira). The words are exactly the same except for the last letter (the circle with the two dots over it, or the lack thereof), which is a feminine marker. So I guess all female birds are actually airplanes. Yeah, I don't know either, and neither do any of the Arabic professors I've ever had. They always just gave me the "are you seriously asking that" look and basically said they don't know so stop asking weird questions. But that's not the point. The point, which I seem to lose track of quickly when it's (!) close to midnight, is that "it" changes from culture to culture. In English, we have an understood antecedent that most people don't generally think about. In Arabic, there's no "it"--just a he or a she, which is functionally the same, but is still philosophically a little different.
And so you can now see my mind's descent into the realm of stuff about 0.2% of the world's population actually cares at all about. Speaking of descents, it occurred to me that the working title of the novel I'm very slowly writing on is Descend, so referential mania is again having a heyday in connection with "Signs and Symbols" and the Frye chapter on ascending/descending and my own writing. So it goes.
That's all. Hopefully it made a little sense, perhaps in a rather abstract way. We shall see in the morning, or in class, or something.
Thursday, September 19, 2013
The Cherry Tree
Wernersville is not a large town by any stretch of the imagination. It is about ten miles west of Reading, which is in turn about 65 miles northwest of Philadelphia. In the modern era, its sole and somewhat dubious claim to fame is the Gosselin family.
It also houses an inpatient drug rehabilitation clinic, and it was at this clinic that Pearl was staying. She was on a scholarship; there was no way her family ever could have afforded to send her to the clinic, even if they had wanted to. They had seven boys to feed at home, so they spared little thought for the reprobate eldest daughter. No, some rich benefactor had specifically chosen her to be cleansed, and she had no idea why. The rich had been a pain in her ass the whole rest of her life. Why would someone suddenly decide to be nice to her, of all people? She, who had corrupted one of those rich white kids--well, he was Italian--and pulled him down into an addiction. Surely they must all hate her. Hell, she hated herself. She thought she deserved what she got, even though she knew other people's choices weren't her fault.
The problem was this: she had been an addict since she was twelve—no thanks to her parents. Her father had all but given her over to the stuff. In a way, it was predestined; she had been conceived because of drugs. In her father’s permanently addled--but enviably drug-free--mind, it was only fitting that she be given over to the horror that had snared her mother and supposedly created Pearl herself. In spite of the fact that none of it was her fault, her father blamed her for the work he’d done to supply her mother with drugs. Thus, she had leaped almost happily into the shadow-realm of addiction, and had regretted it ever since.
A man walked up behind her. She was sitting in a lawn chair underneath a cherry tree in one of the coed sections of the campus.
“Pearl?”
The voice had changed with time, but she knew it well. It belonged to Mickey. Mickey the rich kid who had somehow managed to notice a poor kid.
Years ago now, they had gone to the same high school. Pearl had never understood how it was that a rich Italian kid, the heir to an international business empire, would go to the same school as a poor black kid, but that was how it was. Every time she saw him, though, poverty seemed to enclose her a little more and a little more.
And then—and then there was that one day. The day when he looked at her and smiled. It was just a half a smile, but it recognized her existence and didn’t discount her just because she was poor and looked slightly different than Mickey. It was a smile without censure, and it melted Pearl’s icy heart bit by bit.
He talked to her after that, too, but not in the way boys usually did. He was respectful and kind--he treated Pearl like a human being, not just a pair of tits and an ass. She was grateful for it, though she had been trodden on for so long that she almost couldn’t believe she deserved to be treated with respect. Mickey started to make her believe it, against her better judgment.
Yet she was still poor. She never met Mickey’s family; he lived with his mother, who ruled the business empire and who irrationally hated anyone who was not as wealthy or as "talented" as she. Mickey said he wanted to protect Pearl from his mother, but Pearl wondered if he were really ashamed of her poverty. He was with her at school, though.
There was also the addiction. She tried to hide it from him, but he found out quickly. Or perhaps it was the addiction that found out about him because it wanted to suck him in, too. Maybe it had a malevolent consciousness of its own. Pearl thought it might. Regardless, Mickey's mother forced him to go to a fancy, expensive college after graduation, just after she learned of his slide into addiction. Pearl had not seen him since. Even as she walked alone through the barren wastes of several unsuccessful detoxes, she heard nothing from him. She had gotten wind of rumors that he had dropped out of college because of some fight or other and was down-and-out somewhere in Philadelphia, but that was all. No letters, no phone calls, nothing. Not even a measly text message. She wondered if he had forgotten about her, and she had tried so hard to forget about him.
But now, here he was, standing behind her chair. She turned to look at him. He was thinner than he had been, and he looked much older than--how old was he? Twenty? Twenty-two? She couldn’t remember.
“I found you,” he whispered. “It took me four years, but I found you.”
With a shock, she realized that he was leaning on a cane. Something was wrong with his legs. She stood up quickly, suddenly conscious of the wholeness of her own body.
“How did you find me? What are you doing here?” she asked. Mickey wobbled a little, and she slipped an arm under his shoulder to steady him. He smiled down at her.
“Never mind that. I found myself and then I found you. Everything is as it should be now.”
Not quite, Pearl thought. Your legs. What happened to your legs?
“Your mother,” she said instead. “What happened to her? Did she make you come here?”
Mickey shifted his weight awkwardly and started walking slowly toward the large, gray stone building that housed a solarium.
“No… not quite. But also yes. She…” He laughed self-consciously. “She’s changed. A lot. I think it’s been good for her--everything that’s happened to me, all the stupid stuff I’ve done. She understands now. People are people. It doesn’t matter if they’re rich or poor or young or old or big or little or light or dark. We’re all the same inside--national heritage doesn't matter. We all want to be loved. She sees that now. She, uh, she actually sponsored you. I mean… that was tactless.” He fell silent. Pearl stared at him in disbelief.
“Your world-class-bitch of a mother paid for me to come here?” she demanded, not sure if she should be happy or angry. Mickey looked away and nodded.
“She gets it now. Us. You know. She… when we get out of here, she wants us to come live with her.” Pearl raised her eyebrows and shook her head.
“Are you sure you’re not still on crack?”
Mickey laughed. The sound was warm and real.
“Damn sure.”
They had arrived at the solarium. Pearl helped Mickey sit down in a chair. His face twisted into a rictus of pain, but he managed to sit down. He must have seen the question in Pearl’s eyes.
“Some wounds may never heal,” he said cryptically. Pearl sighed. If he didn’t want to tell her, he didn’t want to tell her, and that was that. He was here now, and all would be well. The smell of cherry blossoms wafted through the solarium. Yes, all would be quite well.
It also houses an inpatient drug rehabilitation clinic, and it was at this clinic that Pearl was staying. She was on a scholarship; there was no way her family ever could have afforded to send her to the clinic, even if they had wanted to. They had seven boys to feed at home, so they spared little thought for the reprobate eldest daughter. No, some rich benefactor had specifically chosen her to be cleansed, and she had no idea why. The rich had been a pain in her ass the whole rest of her life. Why would someone suddenly decide to be nice to her, of all people? She, who had corrupted one of those rich white kids--well, he was Italian--and pulled him down into an addiction. Surely they must all hate her. Hell, she hated herself. She thought she deserved what she got, even though she knew other people's choices weren't her fault.
The problem was this: she had been an addict since she was twelve—no thanks to her parents. Her father had all but given her over to the stuff. In a way, it was predestined; she had been conceived because of drugs. In her father’s permanently addled--but enviably drug-free--mind, it was only fitting that she be given over to the horror that had snared her mother and supposedly created Pearl herself. In spite of the fact that none of it was her fault, her father blamed her for the work he’d done to supply her mother with drugs. Thus, she had leaped almost happily into the shadow-realm of addiction, and had regretted it ever since.
A man walked up behind her. She was sitting in a lawn chair underneath a cherry tree in one of the coed sections of the campus.
“Pearl?”
The voice had changed with time, but she knew it well. It belonged to Mickey. Mickey the rich kid who had somehow managed to notice a poor kid.
Years ago now, they had gone to the same high school. Pearl had never understood how it was that a rich Italian kid, the heir to an international business empire, would go to the same school as a poor black kid, but that was how it was. Every time she saw him, though, poverty seemed to enclose her a little more and a little more.
And then—and then there was that one day. The day when he looked at her and smiled. It was just a half a smile, but it recognized her existence and didn’t discount her just because she was poor and looked slightly different than Mickey. It was a smile without censure, and it melted Pearl’s icy heart bit by bit.
He talked to her after that, too, but not in the way boys usually did. He was respectful and kind--he treated Pearl like a human being, not just a pair of tits and an ass. She was grateful for it, though she had been trodden on for so long that she almost couldn’t believe she deserved to be treated with respect. Mickey started to make her believe it, against her better judgment.
Yet she was still poor. She never met Mickey’s family; he lived with his mother, who ruled the business empire and who irrationally hated anyone who was not as wealthy or as "talented" as she. Mickey said he wanted to protect Pearl from his mother, but Pearl wondered if he were really ashamed of her poverty. He was with her at school, though.
There was also the addiction. She tried to hide it from him, but he found out quickly. Or perhaps it was the addiction that found out about him because it wanted to suck him in, too. Maybe it had a malevolent consciousness of its own. Pearl thought it might. Regardless, Mickey's mother forced him to go to a fancy, expensive college after graduation, just after she learned of his slide into addiction. Pearl had not seen him since. Even as she walked alone through the barren wastes of several unsuccessful detoxes, she heard nothing from him. She had gotten wind of rumors that he had dropped out of college because of some fight or other and was down-and-out somewhere in Philadelphia, but that was all. No letters, no phone calls, nothing. Not even a measly text message. She wondered if he had forgotten about her, and she had tried so hard to forget about him.
But now, here he was, standing behind her chair. She turned to look at him. He was thinner than he had been, and he looked much older than--how old was he? Twenty? Twenty-two? She couldn’t remember.
“I found you,” he whispered. “It took me four years, but I found you.”
With a shock, she realized that he was leaning on a cane. Something was wrong with his legs. She stood up quickly, suddenly conscious of the wholeness of her own body.
“How did you find me? What are you doing here?” she asked. Mickey wobbled a little, and she slipped an arm under his shoulder to steady him. He smiled down at her.
“Never mind that. I found myself and then I found you. Everything is as it should be now.”
Not quite, Pearl thought. Your legs. What happened to your legs?
“Your mother,” she said instead. “What happened to her? Did she make you come here?”
Mickey shifted his weight awkwardly and started walking slowly toward the large, gray stone building that housed a solarium.
“No… not quite. But also yes. She…” He laughed self-consciously. “She’s changed. A lot. I think it’s been good for her--everything that’s happened to me, all the stupid stuff I’ve done. She understands now. People are people. It doesn’t matter if they’re rich or poor or young or old or big or little or light or dark. We’re all the same inside--national heritage doesn't matter. We all want to be loved. She sees that now. She, uh, she actually sponsored you. I mean… that was tactless.” He fell silent. Pearl stared at him in disbelief.
“Your world-class-bitch of a mother paid for me to come here?” she demanded, not sure if she should be happy or angry. Mickey looked away and nodded.
“She gets it now. Us. You know. She… when we get out of here, she wants us to come live with her.” Pearl raised her eyebrows and shook her head.
“Are you sure you’re not still on crack?”
Mickey laughed. The sound was warm and real.
“Damn sure.”
They had arrived at the solarium. Pearl helped Mickey sit down in a chair. His face twisted into a rictus of pain, but he managed to sit down. He must have seen the question in Pearl’s eyes.
“Some wounds may never heal,” he said cryptically. Pearl sighed. If he didn’t want to tell her, he didn’t want to tell her, and that was that. He was here now, and all would be well. The smell of cherry blossoms wafted through the solarium. Yes, all would be quite well.
Tuesday, September 17, 2013
A Certifiable Fruitcake
In class tonight, I had this thought right in the middle but didn't want to give voice to it because I hadn't refined it enough yet. What if the way forward and back, up and down, is the same because there is no way? What if we are stationary bits of cipher in the midst of an infinite and incomprehensible Reality that whirls around us, adding to and taking away from our little nothings? Then there's only one direction to go--nowhere, because everywhere and everything and everytime are coming at us all at once.
In an apparently unrelated turn of events, I had my iPod on shuffle on my way home tonight. The second song that came on was this song by Foo Fighters. I actually hadn't thought about this song as being particularly deeply philosophical before, since I always thought it was about either rioting or some backstabbing/fickle friend/lover. Now I can't figure out if it's that or solipsist or inspired by Finnegans Wake. "I'm finished making sense / Done pleading ignorance." WHAT. I thought about it for a while and then I realized I was still driving so I should probably think about that.
And then, about three songs later--possibly more because I skipped some stuff in between--this other song by Seether came on (warning: PG-13 content, just saying). I feel like it's significant but I don't totally know why yet. Maybe it has to do with reality spinning all around and nobody feels like they belong so we're all faking. That's really cynical. "Who's to know if your soul will fade at all / The one you sold to fool the world / You lost your self esteem along the way, yeah / Good God, you're coming up with reasons / Good God, you're dragging it out / Good God, it's the changing of the seasons..." If anyone has other ideas about why that's of great import, please tell me. Or perhaps it's merely referential mania kicking in; thus in part the title of this post.
AND THEN. This song came on immediately after (another warning: semi-chauvinistic innuendo in two languages). There are two things about it that struck me. First is one of the lyrics: "...back like a crawfish in the name of progress." Bit of a stretch, but I almost backed my car into my garage door when I heard it, mostly because I'm now fairly certain I'm getting a Nabokov-worthy case of referential mania. Second was the fact that it's in English and Hebrew. I speak Arabic, which is a cousin of Hebrew, so every time I hear this song, I hear all these cognate Arabic/Hebrew words amid an ocean of kshhkkki kvisi faelsdlguasdgj that makes zero sense to me. It's again a little like Finnegans Wake--the same sense of "I should know what's going on" coupled with "hey that sounds really cool and I don't necessarily care that I don't know what's going on."
(Yes, I do have very weird taste in music. Fun factoid: via those songs, you just went to at least three different countries. You're welcome for the cultural experience.)
Last thing, I promise. This is more of an epistle than I thought it would be, though hopefully I haven't pulled too many comma-ridden Saint Paul sentences on you all yet. Anyway, as I was settling myself in for a nice, relaxing, popcorn-for-the-brain read in the form of a Clive Cussler novel (don't judge), I came to the last part of the novel. Part V: Ashes, Ashes, All Fall Down. Again, WHAT. I nearly threw the book. Incidentally, that part of the book is about flushing Hitler's ashes down the White House toilet, but as far as I'm concerned, such niggling details are immaterial. We had just finished discussing Ring Around the Rosy and then I find a reference to it in a completely unrelated, semi-lowbrow book. I don't even know.
It's at this point that I realize I will go certifiably insane if I keep thinking about this because Reality is trying to knock a hole in my brain and I can't handle it. So I guess I'll just leave this here and you all can kick it around if you like.
In an apparently unrelated turn of events, I had my iPod on shuffle on my way home tonight. The second song that came on was this song by Foo Fighters. I actually hadn't thought about this song as being particularly deeply philosophical before, since I always thought it was about either rioting or some backstabbing/fickle friend/lover. Now I can't figure out if it's that or solipsist or inspired by Finnegans Wake. "I'm finished making sense / Done pleading ignorance." WHAT. I thought about it for a while and then I realized I was still driving so I should probably think about that.
And then, about three songs later--possibly more because I skipped some stuff in between--this other song by Seether came on (warning: PG-13 content, just saying). I feel like it's significant but I don't totally know why yet. Maybe it has to do with reality spinning all around and nobody feels like they belong so we're all faking. That's really cynical. "Who's to know if your soul will fade at all / The one you sold to fool the world / You lost your self esteem along the way, yeah / Good God, you're coming up with reasons / Good God, you're dragging it out / Good God, it's the changing of the seasons..." If anyone has other ideas about why that's of great import, please tell me. Or perhaps it's merely referential mania kicking in; thus in part the title of this post.
AND THEN. This song came on immediately after (another warning: semi-chauvinistic innuendo in two languages). There are two things about it that struck me. First is one of the lyrics: "...back like a crawfish in the name of progress." Bit of a stretch, but I almost backed my car into my garage door when I heard it, mostly because I'm now fairly certain I'm getting a Nabokov-worthy case of referential mania. Second was the fact that it's in English and Hebrew. I speak Arabic, which is a cousin of Hebrew, so every time I hear this song, I hear all these cognate Arabic/Hebrew words amid an ocean of kshhkkki kvisi faelsdlguasdgj that makes zero sense to me. It's again a little like Finnegans Wake--the same sense of "I should know what's going on" coupled with "hey that sounds really cool and I don't necessarily care that I don't know what's going on."
(Yes, I do have very weird taste in music. Fun factoid: via those songs, you just went to at least three different countries. You're welcome for the cultural experience.)
Last thing, I promise. This is more of an epistle than I thought it would be, though hopefully I haven't pulled too many comma-ridden Saint Paul sentences on you all yet. Anyway, as I was settling myself in for a nice, relaxing, popcorn-for-the-brain read in the form of a Clive Cussler novel (don't judge), I came to the last part of the novel. Part V: Ashes, Ashes, All Fall Down. Again, WHAT. I nearly threw the book. Incidentally, that part of the book is about flushing Hitler's ashes down the White House toilet, but as far as I'm concerned, such niggling details are immaterial. We had just finished discussing Ring Around the Rosy and then I find a reference to it in a completely unrelated, semi-lowbrow book. I don't even know.
It's at this point that I realize I will go certifiably insane if I keep thinking about this because Reality is trying to knock a hole in my brain and I can't handle it. So I guess I'll just leave this here and you all can kick it around if you like.
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