Paradox

One of the most interesting quotes I have ever heard is from this book called "Looking for Alaska," it says: "Imagining the future is a kind of nostalgia." I did not understand it. Until I had my dream last night. I dreamed that I was two people both me and Buffy and our lives were very much the same. I also dreamed that we were sent back in time to live our lives over again. I thought about my education and the better schools I could have gone to and how I would make sure that I attended Pepperdine just in time to link up with the time traveler and prevent that paradox, but that otherwise I would completely remake my life.

That is how I came to understand that quote. Because I was intimately aware of the unintended consequences of my choices and I could now avoid them to reach a better outcome. That is why the future is a kind of nostalgia because we assume that what we know about our past has some bearing on what those choices will be in our future. Which is not necessarily true. In fact a lifetime of empirical examples has taught us that this is not true. But we see our future without the problems of our past because we think that what we know has prepared us to avoid those pitfalls.

The future is de facto just as full of flaws and problems as our past-the difference is such mistakes are yet unmade and so we feel as if with the right steps we can avoid them all. That is not true, but we can avoid some.

The future is nostalgia

Falling

Last night I dreamed that I was falling without a parachute, and you where falling beside me with one. In this scenario I spread my body out wide and flat to slow down, but I knew what would happen no matter how slowly I fell. You were smiling and falling, laughing at this great adventure. It felt so real the wind speeding past howling and whistling in my ear and as I saw the Earth growing from a marble to a vast blue ocean near a tiny island I knew that even if I survived the fall I would never be found for no matter how close I aimed I would be miles from shore. I remembered my cliff diving experiences and kept my legs straight and my elbows tucked to hit the water that I knew would feel like concrete. It was only after my fall and I felt like my legs shattered and the icy hard water encompassed me that I wondered would I be food for sharks first or drowning since I was mere miles away from shore. But it might as well have been days. I thought about how to swim while expelling the least energy and risk of hypothermia. I saw the water lap around my face and then-I woke up. I then thought about how I could have asked you for help, fearlessly falling on a great skydiving adventure while I plunged to my doom. We were both falling but one in joy and the other terror. One protected by a strong thin nylon bag that would slow your fall and keep you safe. I thought about how one of us should have wrapped her arms around the other and held on. But no one did. Sometimes I wonder not if someone can save me, but if we will. If someone is to proud to ask for help and the other to happy to notice the person falling right beside them.

Picture

The picture is of "Big Ben" the large clock that is a Tower on the palace of were Parliament meets. It was and remains a Royal palace ruled by a strange set of traditions of monarchy and democracy. It is one the most iconic images of London. It is seen in Peter Pan, Sherlock Homes and pretty much every other movie you see set in London features this image.

Cottages

When I was much younger I used to think about what it meant to be me. What it felt like to control this body, to have for all intents and purposes to contain everything that made me who I was sat in my skull.

When I look back on my life most of my first memories are at school. Kindergarten. I remember sitting in Ms. Wurtzels class thinking about what it meant to be someone other than myself. The way I associated with myself up until that time was simple I was "me" it did not get much deeper than that. But as I thought about what it felt like to be or to live as a completely different person. Since that time I sometimes like to imagine what it would be like to be or live as someone else. Somewhere else.

Imagine living in this tiny little cottage in the middle of Hyde Park in London. With the green trees and steep pitched roof. It would be so small and quiet. So peaceful. It is a place where you would eat tea and muffins at three and sit tiny stuffed arm chair in a tiny little corner library. It is a place with white sheets and bluebell dishes.

This is a place of sunny afternoons and creamy cheese. With olives and sundried tomatoes with fresh fish. This is the country of blue and white. Where people sit for long evenings and afternoons and hand roll cigarettes. Where I lay on my white and blue striped bed and with loose scarves and tan sandals. I feel the ocean breeze and dive beneath the waves with my air tank on my back. I feel the water like a perfect-cool second skin.

So as we go into finals sometimes it is nice to take that thought vacation.

Costumes.

In my all time favorite play Twelfth Night Viola, the main character, spends most of her time in the play disguised as a man. This would not be such a problem if she did not fall in love with her boss and the woman her boss is in love with falls in love with her. The play considers questions about identity. Viola when she is in her disguise is the best character. She is clever, brave, charming, and loyal. In her disguise she finds this freedom to create a new identity and she does a great job of it. So when she such a great man that she wins the love of the women that every single man was wooing. After she discovers this "love" she says one of my favorite lines in the whole play:

"Disguise, I see thou art a wickedness
Wherein the pregnant enemy does much.
How easy is it for the proper false."

Just look at all our disguises. The way we dress may not always indicate who we are-but sometimes it does. A suit shows our work self. A ratty pair of running shoes shows our physical self.

Art

I love art. I feel like art is an expression of humanity in a unique and wonderful way. If one subscribes to the idea of a hierarchy of needs humans will focus on different things depending on what the more immediate needs. This is why there are no great massive sculptures amongst the hunter gatherer societies b/c the living is solely subsistence living.
These are photos of some of my favorite pieces from the Louvre in Paris. I love art it is a reflection of what we consider to be most important in our society. Art can recreate reality like the early portraits did before we had photography. Art can also teach us like the stain glass in churches tells us stories from the scripture or painting of myths and battle teach us about history conflict and pain. Art is also about passion and love and what we dream of. The most interesting thing about art is that is completely unnecessary. I am not bashing on the purpose and beauty that art has in our individual development. Rather art is not something that we can eat, shelter or protect us. Art is designed to make our life better simply by making it more beautiful. This speaks I think to man’s natural inclination to beauty.



Anyway you will likely notice that these are all sculptures. One is ancient the Venus de Milo, the others are by Davinci for the slave bound in ropes a project designed for the tomb of Pope Juliues that the was cancelled. The slave is supposed to be like us bound by our sins. As for the piece with the woman with a vail I just love the way her features are still clear under the guise of stone fabric, I am not sure who the artist is.


But my favorite is Cupid and Pysch. This sculpture tells the love story between the Greek god and the mortal Physch. He is supposed to punish this lovely girl who had offended Hera by being too lovely, he was supposed to make her fall in love with a beast. But instead he sees her and is himself love struck. In this tale he whisks her away form Hera and her father but he will only visit her at night. The reason for this usually that he feared that she would not love him for himself if she knew he was a god. But she grows impatient and begins to believe him a monster so one night she hides a lamp and looks at him. She is so shocked to discover that he is the god of love that she spills some hot oil on him. He then flees and she seeks him out at Hera’s. She then goes on a quest to earn her godhood and they live happily ever after

Love Locks

I get lost. I got lost in Colorado when I had lived there for 17 years. So when I travel in a foreign country with the signs all in Czech or French or German that did not help. So while I was lost in Prague trying to find "Charles Bridge," a very lovely sight, I found these locks on a bridge. These locks are made by couples who then lock them and throw away the key.
I think about all the loving couples with the fingers interlaced throwing the keys into the river below. Some with custom locks leaving them all over the world. Other locks purchased at hardware store with the couple's name scraped into the paint. I think about the love and secrets that the couple felt when they walked away from the bridge. They leave this tiny bread crumb of their lives. Love locks may at first blush seem a romantic and silly gesture but I think they mean something more. Love lock are a simply symptom of the idea of how temporary our lives are. We live and love often completely anonymity. Thousands living and dying and loving completely isolated from great chunks of the world.
So when man has died and truly died and all those who loved him are gone then what evidence do we have of their existence? That these people lived and loved and whole lives were shaped and there is nothing left. Others may have loved and locked and lost. Others may have lost the blooming flower of love they felt to the storms of life. But we may never know. For while I see these tiny locks and think about their stories never told. I see these blurred images in my mind of couples, and lovers with no faces. Nothing but blurred and empty features.

That is why we leave locks because while we can not picture a world without us.
Even though it contradicts that which at our core-we know-that the world will live beyond us.