Moonshadow

'Did it take long to find me?' I asked the faithful light.
'Did it take long to find me?  And, are you gonna stay tonight?'

Thank you.
And, to the other little lights as well.


Is this part of what he (and Campbell) had mentioned?  That we are creating our own mythology?
Either way, I'll choose to appreciate the times when, after sending my request into the earth, the universe meets me in a way that I can recognize.

Today, my favorite lyrics are from "Moonshadow" by Cat Stevens.  It just occurred to me today that maybe 老子 would have also been amused.

the breathing is worth the work

To my 5-years-ago-self:

Thank you for your work,
the first good lungfuls are already worth it.
I know you remember this song in your struggles - it is now one of emerging -
keep going - there is sight of land - and we can almost stand again...



I'm not sure if you can hear me or not,
but thank you.
The drowning has seemed awfully easy at times.
Thank you from the future. You did well. We're going to make it.
briney, tangled in seaweed, and all...
Don't let up...

Message from Future Self

"Don't worry, there's no rush. Take good care of yourself and keep your head up. Have faith - it will be ok."

Dear Rossy,

I think it's safe to tell you that the light is back in my eyes and the smile is back on my face.

I don't know what's going to happen next,
but it'll be good.


Thank you for your hope and your note all this time.

Lifted

Reading through an old journal today,
I discovered this message to myself.



**
I already know what's important. We all do.

Our lives depend on remembering.
**


I think I hope it's true.
And I hope that I can act on it.

Dear Curious Psychiatrist,

Sometimes I write to help my present or future self
sometimes I write in the hope that others might benefit
sometimes I write because I hope that a curious psychiatrist will someday find my written ramblings and piece myself together from a more objective vantage point.

The more I understand though,
the more I realize that I must be that psychiatrist.

La carta nunca recibí

Yesterday,
despite checking my email periodically,
I never received this.




Subject: Hey!

There you are! I've been looking for you for so long. I'm sorry none
of my other emails got through. Turns out I was spelling your name
without the last e. I didn't remember how it should be spelled.
That's funny cuz usually ppul don't know how it's pronounced, eh?

Anyway, I'm sorry I didn't say goodbye before I left. I'm currently
in Cork, India. It's been snowing a lot, but the bikes are still good
and the kittens haven't gotten rusty. I wish I could show you this
peach I've been sculpting.

The potatoes are all sprouting and they can't see very well yet.
There are no sad robots here. We are all nicely oiled humming
machines. I have not broken any teeth and most of the time we drink
red tea with lunch.

I do not miss our old home. I've just arrived but I feel like I'm
constantly arriving. It's not so bad you know, to forget. I
remembered you. I thought maybe you'd want to come. Oh, do tell me
how things are going there! I did not leave anything behind. I
didn't have anything to leave. It would be nice to see people again
though.

You can write in Chinese here, but no one remembers how to speak it.
A couple of the old men say they remember and they have meetings twice
a month. Nobody would mind. Beneath the grass, I think the ground
is made of sponges.

I do hope you can visit. You should make sure first that you don't
leave anything behind. And the old men would probably like to see
your Chinese book (Josh told me you're taking Chinese now). I miss
you and I hope I can still make you laugh. There are many things I
think you'd enjoy. Why don't you write more often? I would like to
read some of your stories.

Please meet me above Eliot circle at 9:10pm Thursday morning. Just
get on board the train. 98 Zephyr makes the trip a couple of times
every month. I'll be in the 48th passenger car, so don't train hop,
come find me! I'll probably bring my friend the Yeti. You should
bring your guitar. We'll it need to sing Wagon Wheel.
We're going home.


I don't know who will sign it. Maybe I'll just know. Maybe the poets
can tell me. Maybe it's whomever I was in the tavern with when this
drunkenness began.

Mad World

Dear Everyone,
I have an announcement:

We're all going mad in our own little worlds

I think it's the distance, discreteness, that makes us mad
we collide and bounce off and wonder
what is happening and whether
we are allowed to steer
and whether
we would even be able to steer so

since we're all going mad anyway,

can we just do it together?



They won't be able to lock us up one by one then.

Dear Friends,

We are each the Atlas of our own world,

but with you around me,
what else can I do but stand?

Thankyou,
we hold up each others' worlds,
and it is a beautiful work.

Maybe Sisyphus could've gotten that rock to the top with a little help.

Dear God,

I will sing of your mercy
you bring me through valleys of sorrow

to rivers of joy



yeah.

Dear World, P.P.S.

I'm sorry. I was being justifiably angry

I've been thinking of tulips and a documentary called One.

I don't really hate you.
(Mostly because I will not accomplish anything with hatred.
There is greater strength and power in joy than in anger.)

I find you detestable and your methods destructive and senseless.

But I keep seeing the World you could've been,
and the World you can still be.
You can be beautiful.
Even now, you are. Admit it, but take care for your broken places. Show some decency.

What do you want to be when you grow up?
You have a responsibility to work on that.

Please grow up, World, so we have somewhere to live with each other.
You will probably laugh at me, but sometimes my dream for humanity
is for us to be like puppies in the Garden of Eden.

Be a World where we can play outside in the sun without being burned.

Dear World, P.S.

I still hate you.

You cause so much pain, even for those who care about you.


One of my friends told me of psychology experiment she had done in school in which a pair of voles were separated for 14 days and given access to alcohol. Voles mate for life and are normally separated from their partner for only minutes at a time.
14 days must have been an eternity. The experiment was to see how the voles would respond to their isolated situation and the availability of alcohol.
They took it.

After 14 days when they were reunited,
they were individually scrambled and completely dysfunctional together.
I don't know what was gained from the experiment.

World,
what horrible experiment are you conducting with us,
... are we conducting on ourselves?



This drunkenness began in another tavern

I want out of this box.







How are we supposed to help each other when we are isolated voles?


I am sorry.
I have learned to live well in confinement.
I thought it was the best way to live. I practiced.
It is good, but it is not all.
It will be hard to learn otherwise, but I don't want to stay dysfunctional.
I have made much progress.
Help me break out of this prison for drunks.

...screamed the dust speck

Edited from 3.07.07, Notebook 2.12.07
Abridged and Censored version

Some thoughts considered
and transcribed immediately after returning to my dorm from listening to some of a presentation about nonviolent protest in Palestine.


I was just thinking about how I have spent a large amount of my life waking up into a world in which I've lost my best friend, and feel helpless to regain them. I can only wait and do my best, but there are no guarantees and sometimes my best is not good enough.

I hate it.

This is nothing new, nothing different,
nothing worse than anyone else in the world has experienced.

My friends have never been killed in wars...

Some people spend each day wondering whether the family that leaves home in the morning will ever return,

and when they don't return, wondering if they're alive and if there is anything to be done.

Some peoples' friends are really dead. Many are more alone than I.
but I still hate it. I hate it.

I stay here because I refuse to give up on the world.
My suffering has been insignificantly small in comparison,
but even it is too much for my idea of how this world could be.

Even here
where there is not war
there is too much loss
How can we live like this?

My consideration of how much of my life this has gone on for
...becomes a quiet rage.

I will fight this.
Oh, but how?

How can I love?
That's not the question. I do.
How
do I love in a way that can be understood? In a way that unites?


World,

I hate you for taking my friends every day for years.

I hate you for doing worse to others.


Others,

I love you for your endurance. Ours is the same fight.
We are all alone together, but that is not enough.

World, I hate this. I hate your systems and my helplessness.
I will fight this all my life.
By my loss, I am your enemy.

Dear World,

For much of my life, you have raised me to believe that the noble deeds required by society of me based on my abilities and background are very much related to going to school, getting a 'good education,' and moving into a career. PhD's, scientists, researchers... are very much exalted as those vanguards and explorers of our vast intellectual reserve. To set me on that trail, you have baited myself and other students with fascinating intellectual toys.

But World,
you didn't tell me about the others that you drew to this place,
or that there are places where children cannot have such things as you promise to my future. Even when we read about those places, you did not tell us what it was like to be there, or to know the people as friends and family. You said it like it was another intellectual bauble.

I have followed your bait to the cage, but World,
you will not keep me here.

We are finding out, slowly. And we will find the way out by comparing our stories.

World, your plan seemed so amazing, but
You didn't tell me
that starving people have no use for abstract algebra
that articles are not enough to keep warm by
that categorizing the proteome does not preempt hatred
that reading about religion tells us nothing about God
and research papers do not stop my friends from waking up alone and screaming
Physics might know whether the cat is alive or dead, but nothing about life or death.

I have heard about the days when philosophy ran wild outdoors in search of the source and stuff of living.
This too, you have brought indoors, domesticated until, pale and shriveled, it falls upon itself for sustenance, forgetting it's beginnings and wondering what it has become.


World,
your offer is enticing, and you have already trained me well to fulfill it in many ways.
But, until there is a greater need for libraries than for bread,
for theorems than for companionship,

until you address the needs of those beyond this cage,
I will find a way out.
I shall deprive you of the research papers you have invested in me to write,
because even as you trained me here, you have deprived my brothers and sisters of things far more essential.

How can I add to your fat libraries
or concentrate on filling my mind
when my friends are starving in so many different ways?

My primary responsibilities are elsewhere.


Sincerely,

-me

Re: Postcard

I got your postcard in the mail today.

I wish I could tell you how nice it feels. I tell myself by inventing melodies on the piano, but I cannot tell you since I have no adequate way to send you music.

But, I can tell you that I think today I was pleasantly suprised with one of the more beautiful impromptu concerts I've ever heard from myself.

On to his Next Chapter

Not sure how he feels about having his name listed in media such as this, so I'll leave it out but if you know him, you'll know who I'm talking about.

Recently, the head of our Outdoors Program resigned to move on to discovering the next part of his life. He was the organizing energy for the eventual development of a smooth, solid, effective outdoors program which excells both in quality and quantity of outdoors experience and training. But, he won't take that much credit for it, so we've been calling him the catalyst. And yes, to be fair, there are a large number of other people both students and staff involved and contributing to furthering the program. And, continuing to be fair, many probably wouldn't be there without him and the opportunities that he helped bring about.

We had a goodbye/send-off party of sorts for him. In all honesty, I think he is one of the more thorough human beings I have ever met. It's hard to describe. He's one of those people.. One of those people that you hope to become if you have enough experience, wisdom, insight, and genuine involvement in the world around you. One of those people that you forget exists these days because you don't expect people to be that real and to actually believe things about what is good in people and what is valuable in nature and what is worth it in life. It seems so natural in him. That's what I mean by 'thorough'.


But of course, I can never say these things out loud.
so I write them down into goodbye letters
with the recipient's name in calligraphy -
colored caligraphy, in attempt to let them know that their name is worth special attention.
And I attach little folded cranes because I wish I could be more direct in expressing - but I need a messenger to speak for me. Cranes are weighty with connotations, so they seem like appropriate messengers. Cranes are songs that can't find words.

I used to be able to imitate just about any bird call - except for cranes. It only strikes me now that this seems more interesting given the associations that I just made concrete in the previous paragraph.

I almost wish I'd taken a picture of the crane and letter I made for him, but I intentionally didn't. It's all for him.

But the words are also mine, and I cling to my words like a staff.

This is roughly what I gave him.
And I'm putting it here because I don't want this to be forgotten.





This is not the greatest letter ever written, nor the neatest folded crane. Honestly, I made both right before I came, because I'd forgotten the time. But here is what I could do with what I had. And, that's what you said time was for, right? (I paraphrase:) To limit us into choosing those things which are important.

I haven't taken many of your classes, but I've been around enough to know that you're a great teacher and incredible person - would that there were more of you - and it would be selfish of us to demand you spend all of your precious interval of time here. Thank you for all you've given us, and I hope we can continue in sharing the gift.

Best of everything for the future.