Fantasías

Mi sueño
(my dream)

Corazón coraza

Porque te tengo y no
porque te pienso
porque la noche está de ojos abiertos
porque la noche pasa y digo amor
porque has venido a recoger tu imagen
y eres mejor que todas tus imágenes
porque eres linda desde el pie hasta el alma
porque eres buena desde el alma a mí
porque te escondes dulce en el orgullo
pequeña y dulce
corazón coraza

porque eres mía
porque no eres mía
porque te miro y muero
y peor que muero
si no te miro amor
si no te miro

porque tú siempre existes dondequiera
pero existes mejor donde te quiero
porque tu boca es sangre
y tienes frío
tengo que amarte amor
tengo que amarte
aunque esta herida duela como dos
aunque te busque y no te encuentre
y aunque
la noche pase y yo te tenga
y no.

- Mario Benedetti

Backpacking

Since this was supposed to be travel blog en el principio, here's my latest adventure!
Over mid-semester break I went backpacking in Southern Indiana on the Knobstone Trail, which equals hills, hills, and more hills. We went at the perfect time too: leaves that made a painting in the canopy, gently flowing creeks, chilly but not intolerable weather.
This was my first backpacking trip, and as Aunt Gretchen and mom promised me, I'm now hooked. We primitive camped (only using tarps over our heads as tents) for 4 nights and 5 days. When I returned to Earlham I was afraid of my computer and buildings.
This trip reminded me how much I need to be outside, immersed in nature, to keep grounded. I'm still slowly getting back to using computers 24/7, which sometimes I feel like I'm doing in college. Anyway, here are some pictures of my adventure in the woods, hopefully to be repeated in the near future.

No Headphones Required

I don't really want this to turn into a music blog, but I feel like I should put a plug in for John's album, "No Headphones Required." If you're into trance/electronic music I strongly suggest you buy this album. Check out the video to the third track "Silence."
I would attempt to give a review of the music, but I have no background in trance/electronic music. But from what I'm hearing right now it's phenomenal. Of course I'm a bit biased....
For a full review click here.

Música

¡Música nueva (o viejo)!

Now, for a bit of culture....


First off, Sondre Lerche, a Norwegian singer/song writer that is influenced by 60's pop and Bossa Nova. He's not well known in the States, but he tries his hand at singing in English. The lyrics leaves something to be desired, but the sound is what I'm listening to anyway.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kG9ZhCcaS9I



Next- Feist. Canadian, cutsie, indie rock, and brilliant. She happens to be friends with Peaches, but that had little influence over her music.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X28j4baLy-A


And finally, a classic: Edith Piaf. I can't give her an adequate description, so just find out for yourself.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4b8985k-4Q

Soy Borges

"Writing, which would seem to crystallize language, is precisely what alters it. It changes not the words but the spirit, substituting exactitude for expressiveness." ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau "On the Origin of Language

"Cerré los ojos, los abrí. Entonces vi el Aleph.
Arribo, ahora, al inefable centro de mi relato, empieza aquí, mi desesperación de escritor. Todo lenguaje es un alfabeto de símbolos cuyo ejercicio presupone un pasado que los interlocutores comparten; ¿cómo transmitir a los otros el infinito Aleph, que mi temerosa memoria apenas abarca?" ~ Jorge Luis Borges "El Aleph"

To be a person who strives to express, to communicate, to draw a picture in another's mind of what she is feeling, is to be a writer. To be a person who sits and stares at the page, a page full of black marks, full of meaning, but seeing emptiness, seeing something that sits incomplete, quiet, is to be a writer. Beautiful images clouds her head, stacking up until an explosion of words come out the tips of her fingers. Then something painful hits her; it is the realization that what she is trying to say gets lost between the lines. It's never quite right. How to explain love? How to explain joy? How to explain anger, hate, pity, compassion?
Every once in awhile something happens, and her words are just right, they are exactly what they mean. This is when her muse visits.
After reading "El Aleph" by Borges in Hispanic Short Story and having weeks of Philosophy of Language jammed into my head, my creative explosion took the form of a song. Here is my muse.

"The Muse"
She walks around in a haze,
falls in love for just a few days.
In her heart there's everything to see,
but for the world her mask in complete.

She only visits in your lonesome dreams
leaves some words for you to keep
gives you tastes of perfect clarity,
shows you all that it can be.

"Quiet" she says as she touchs your eyes.
"I'll give you images that'll let you live"
She shows you all the points of the universe
then leaves you with that simple curse.

I closed and opened my eyes
and all I could see was pure life.
The beauty it brought tears to my eyes
and in that moment there were no lies.

"Quiet" she says as she touchs your lips.
"I'll give you words that'll let you live"
She tells you all the points of the universe
then leaves you with that simple curse.

In moments of ecstasy
where everything is exactly what it means
she will be right there with me
translating everything.

"Sing loud" she says as she lifts me up
"Now you see what you can give.
You found your voice in the universe
and are now free from that simple curse."

Graffiti

These painted walls could hold the truth to something.
In an attempt to define everything, I once again find myself with nothing. Lately, instead of the world getting in my way, I get in its way. Analyze, analyze, think, think....live?

Live without questioning? Without that puncuation mark that must follow this sentence to stay grammatically correct?
Rubbish. Question I must, accept I must not. This is the curse that I have been given, one that I am looking for a cure. Crucifixes, silver bullets, garlic, all vague superstitions, objects to distract from the pure reality that things must be fought face to face. Bare. Naked.

Words hold me in, words let me out. This is my graffiti.

How do you fight ignorance, bigotry? Is "fight" even the right word? How do you work within a situation when all you want to do is get out of it, but that route is impossible? Can you take it when you know what it feels like to have everything you thought you "stood for" tested?




I don't know. But I'm finding out.

Musings of a Wayward Traveler

And as you lay there fast asleep
I wrapped my soul inside your arms.
I left it there for you to keep.

I stood in the middle of nothing,
no black, no white,
nothing.

I fell down and cried,
"Why me, why now?
This journey has gone too long."

A voice inside me
yelled in reply
"Just walk out the door."

Grabbing ahold of the shiny doorknob
I pushed my way out,
stood blinking the sun out of my eyes
and turned around to see you.

I strode over as you opened your arms
and then I was whole.

"What a journey." I said as I stared
at the clouds and laid down my head.

¿Acceptance?

Sitting at the ever famous Mean Bean with Lee, our conversation moved to a book I had just finished, "Something Wicked This Way Comes" by Ray Bradbury. Of course, we instantly focused on Death. In Bradbury's novel he pits good and evil against each other. One character asks whether or not the evil was death. Bradbury’s answer was:

"But I think it uses Death as a threat. Death doesn't exist. It never did, it never will. But we've drawn so many pictures of it, so many years, trying to pin it down, comprehend it, we've got to thinking of it as an entity, strangely alive and greedy. All it is, however, is a stopped watch, a loss, an end, a darkness. Nothing. And the carnival wisely knows we're more afraid of Nothing than we are of Something. You can fight Something. But...Nothing? Where do you hit it? Has it a heart, soul, butt-behind, brain? No, no. So the carnival just shakes a great croupier's cupful of Nothing at us, and reaps us as we tumble back head-over-heals in fright." (204)

I agree with the idea that Death is truly Nothing. The fact that we make it into to something, or try, only embellishes the fear of death itself. As we discussed this in the Mean Bean, Lee brought up an interesting example that I agreed with. Religion is a manifestation of the fear of the imaginary, or what we don't know or understand. It puts words, pictures, and thoughts in place of Nothing. Once our belief of the world is built upon the imaginary, then everything in our lives becomes imaginary, therefore leaving us in an unreal world. We deny ourselves the ability to truly live, to act without thought, to take chances, because within us is built a set of guidelines that our imaginary world created for us.

"So, minute by minute, hour by hour, a lifetime, it never ends, never stops,
you got the choice this second, now this next, and the next after that, be good, be bad, that's what the clock ticks, that's what it says in the ticks. Run swim, or stay hot, run eat or lie hungry. So you stay, but once stayed, Will, you know the secret, don't you? Don't think of the river again. Or the cake. Because if you do, you'll go crazy. Add up all the rivers never swum in, cakes never eaten, and by the time you get my age, Will, it's a lot missed on. But then you console yourself, thinking, the more time in, the more time possibly drowned, or choked on lemon frosting. But then, through plain dumb cowardice, I guess,
maybe you hold off from too much, wait, play it safe." (135)

This hesitancy comes from the imaginary, the simulacra that was created to label and constrict. We've built this up around us to give us comfort, give us Something rather than live in Nothing. We fear what we don't know, so we fill the holes with our imagination and then choose to believe so fervently that we forget that we created its existence ourselves. Maybe in a backward way we are only believing in ourselves, but, now that I've said that I disagree with myself. We create things so we don't have to believe in ourselves. We put labels and imaginary tales on things so we don't have to see them for what they really are and they reflect upon ourself. So what to do with this dilemma of living within the imagination? How to fight Death? How to fight Nothing?
Bradbury combated it with laughter and love. Yes, I do think this is typical and cheesy, but Bradbury did something more with this. He added acceptance of life, which then allowed the laughter and love.

"All because he had accepted everything at last, accepted the carnival,
the hills beyond, the people in the hills, Jim,
Will, and above all himself and all of life." (258)

Is this the right road to take? Acceptance? Perhaps. To accept that Death exists, in all it's Nothingness, gives a person the ability to break from the imaginary world built around them. It allows them to live, to forget about age, decorum, societal presumptions on the correct path. Life. Perhaps. But I guess humanity was made to wonder and never really know.

Tracks

Perhaps it's because I was denied my adventure, or that I cannot find a sufficient one at home, but either way I feel trapped, useless.  Is this all that I'm built for? Work? Sitting around, thinking about things like this?  This is the time when I should be out, exploring, maybe not just the world, but preferably some place outside of my town.  Sure, I could spend my time being introspective, but one can only do that for so long.

I search for something beyond where the railroad tracks can take me.

Mexico

Well, the reason for me starting this blog was to keep the world updated on my travels, particularly when I went to Mexico in May.  If you all haven't heard of the swine flu, look it up (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8021958.stm).  It is because of this that the Mexico May term is cancelled.  Therefore there is an excellent chance I'll be stuck in the USA instead of stretching my boundaries and throwing myself into something completely different (the lark).

There is a (slight) chance that I will be going to Bolivia with my friend Charlotte Anne. Her parents are both professors and they are doing research in Sucre.  There is a language school nearby where they are and they have an extra room in their house.  Hopefully this works out; it'd still be one hell of an experience.

Needless to say I'm bummed out about all of this.

España

¡Voy a ir a España en el proximo semestre primavera!  ¡Por 15 semanas estudiaré en Valencia, totalmente en la cultura y la vida de España y la lengua!  

Translation:

I'M GOING TO VALENCIA, SPAIN FOR 15 WEEKS NEXT SPRING SEMESTER!  

Gender Bender

So, there's this tradition at Earlham.  At the end of Pride Week (LGBTQI) there's the Gender Bender dance.  The whole point is to dilute gender lines and of course, dress in drag.  The evening consisted of the men stuffing themselves with socks, going through the pains of putting on panty hose, getting make-up put on, and realizing why women have great quad muscles.  For us ladies, we put on some huge pants, got facial hair, and stuffed out hair up in hats.  It was fascinating watching how differently everyone interacted.  They were more comfortable expressing themselves and acting crazy because they were under the influence of stereotype different from their own personal norm.  It gave us a chance to unleash the wild side and opened the door to understanding (a little) better the opposite gender.  O yes, social experiments gone wild.

Change

I've been looking ahead to the future, thinking about the past, and trying to live in the present all at once. I've discovered I can't split my mind into 3 facets. So I've resorted to allowing my mind to go into a great big mess of all three, spinning around at 100mph.

At the end of every year one goes through introspection. For the student the end of the year isn't December, but rather May. I'm coming up on the end of my first year of college, which in itself is different to think about. In this year I have changed and grew more than I thought I ever could. There I was at the beginning, naively thinking I had done all my growing up. How wrong I was. I am finding who I really am. You can't learn that in high school. There are too many crutches, too many things you can fall back on, to lean on. In college you are on your own. I fell many a times this year, but never failed to look back and learn from it all. I have found my niche, my rhythm, my needs, and my true independence. I have always been independent, but here it was tested. I would like to think I got an "A" in that course.

The end of the year makes me realize how fluid life is. My friends that are seniors are entering the work world, a new stage of independence and growth, which reminds me how close behind I am to them. Now comes a new process for me: keeping these friendships, and thinking more about what the hell I'm going to do when I get out of Earlham.

Change. Nothing is stagnant.

"When your deepest thoughts are broken/
keep on dreaming boy/
because when you stop dreaming/
you know it's time to die."
-"Change" Blind Melon

Thoughts on the Midwest

Spring has finally arrived in the Midwest.  For weeks I've been enjoying the warming weather with a typical Midwestener attitude- don't get too excited.  The thing about the Midwest is it likes to play tricks on you.  I guess our region could be called the comedian of the US with horrible punch lines.  The temperature always fluxuates, giving the illusion of the changing of the seasons, and then it snows 3 inches.  Maybe the Midwest would better be described as a tease.  It dangles sun and warmth infront of us and then covers it up with a blanket.  How rude.  Today it was sunny enough that I have the beginnings of a sun burn.  If it starts to get colder again I might scream.  DON'T PLAY WITH MY HEART LIKE THAT!

I was reading this magazine about different regions of the US, and it described the Midwest perfectly: "It's inbetween where you are and where you are going."  And it has the best rest stops on the highway. Which is totally true. Think about it, have you ever seen nicer restrooms than those in Ohio? Or Indiana? Or West Virginia?  The answer is no.  Venture out of the Midwest and you hit dirty pit stops, no toilet paper, and faded paint. Yes ladies and gentlemen, we understand you're just passing by.  We have no attractions except for Cedar Point, and that's at the edge.

Now, don't get me wrong, I love the Midwest, I grew up here.  Acres and acres of corn fields and pig smell are signs of home for me.  But one has to grow up here to like it, I feel.  Whatever, spring is finally here!

The Breakthrough

You shaped me

with wrinkled hands

aged with experience

of moldings of years before.

Too bad I broke out.

Too bad I ruined your workshop.

Too bad my picture sits in a box

you shelve with dissapointments.

Why the Novel Matters

DH Lawrence wrote this fantastic essay on why the novel matters, so here are my favorite passages in it. I highly suggest you all look it up and read it, it's worth it.

"Now I absolutely flatly deny that I am a soul, or a body, or a mind, or an intelligence, or a brain, or a nervous system, or a bunch of glands, or any of the rest of these bits of me.  The whole is greater than the part.  And therefore, I, who am man alive, am greater than my soul, or spirit, or body, or mind, or consciousness, or anything else that is merely a part of me. 

 I am a man, and alive.  I am man alive, and as long as I can, I intend to go on being man alive."

"But the novel as a tremulation can make the whole man alive tremble."

"I don't want to grow into any one direction any more.  And, if I can help it, I don't want to stimulate anybody else into some particular direction.  A particular direction ends in a cul-de-sac.  We're in a cul-de-sac at present."

"Me, man alive, I am a very curious assembly of incongruous parts.  My yea! of today is oddly different from my yea! of yesterday.  My tears of to

morrow will have nothing to do with my tears of a year ago.  If the one I love remains unchanged and unchanging, I shall cease to love her.  It is only because she changes and startles me into change and defies my inertia, and is herself staggered in her inertia by my changing, that I can continue to love her.  If she stayed put, I might as well love the pepper-pot."

"In all this change, I maintain a certain integrity. But woe betide me if I try to put my finger on it.  If I say of myself, I am this, I am that!-- then, if I stick to it, I turn into a stupid fized thing like a lamp-post.  I shall never know wherein lies my integrity, my individuality, my me.  I can never know it.  It is useless to talk about my ego.  That only means that I have made up an idea of myself, and that I am trying to cut myself out to pattern.  Which is no good.  You can cut your cloth to fit your coat, but you can't cut bits off your living body, to trim it down to your idea.  True, you can put yourself into ideal corsets.  But even in ideal corsets, fashions change."

Intro, Part 1

Here I begin.

I thought I might put my thoughts out there.  And because I'm going on a trip, so this is a way for all you family members and friends to keep tabs on me.  And maybe I can keep tabs on myself.

I'm well into my second semester at Earlham, and having the time of my life.  My classes are finally stimulating, and I've gotten lost in it all.  I'm leaving for Mexico for four weeks in May and I can't wait to go.  So, as far as intros go, this one seems a bit lacking, but it'll get better.