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.

This post is all about the beauty in ordinary things and even in ugly and ironic things. My favorite is the car that is covered in plants. I can totally image the argument between the husband and the wife living there.
"Honey, would you move that totally worthless piece of junk out of the driveway."-wife.
Husband does not respond.
Wife covers the car in flowers.

The next image is a completely deserted beach in Gulway.

The remaining images are those of headstones in various ancient and new cemeteries. I have always loved cemeteries. They are quiet and peaceful. I think of the way that we chose to honor our dead.

I was waiting to put up this photo. This a photo I took in Germany at the first Nazi prison camps. It opened within a month of Hilter’s assent to power. It was the model for all the other prison camps. Thousand perished in this camp-and it was not a death camp-no gas chambers used. They died of starvation, disease, many were beaten to death, or executed by the guard. It was a place of such tragedy and pain. That is why I have waited two days to put this photo up. It was such a moving experience for me to visit this place and it was so very dark. The images are of the famous sign outside the prison camp, translated to “work sets you free.” It was the idea that you would be freed for enough labor. This camp released a few people but ultimately the sign came to mean that the only freedom would be from this pain was to be worked to death.
The next image was off the wooden block that people would be beaten for punishment. Offenses like to much dust on the floor, or a bed with wrinkles. They party being beaten was required to count to twenty in German. But every mistake made would cause the party to start over. Many Russian, and Polish people died on the block. Perhaps the most chilling of the story is that these types of punishments were administered by other prisoners.
Finally, the image is of a piece of art made by one of the survivors.

Two photos in one day!!

I saw this little girl on the streets of Athens, in Greece. She was so cute. It just broke my heart the way that she played her accordian to an almost deserted street. When you read the guidebooks they worn you that children make some of the best thieves because they are dexterious and non-threatening, and I can see why it would be so hard to suspect such a child. I personally love children; I love their faces; and the wisdom and the innocence in her eyes.

Walls. We build so many structures that we don't even think about what is that a wall actually does and what it can mean. Walls protect us, they divide us from wind, weather, and each other. So one thing I noticed when I was in Israel was how important there walls are. The first photo is of a woman crying at the Western wall. It is also called the wailing wall. There is a very good reason for this: people while praying and sobbing to the wall. It is strange that the place that is considered the most sacred sight in all of the Jewish Faith, but it so public outside surrounded by tourist. That is how they pray. They go to the Platform of what was once Solomon's Temple and they pray, in most Jewish person can not go to the Temple mount. Because that is where the Dome of the Rock in and also because they don't want to be stepping were the "holy of holies" was. On top of this temple platform yards away from the most sacred sight in the Jewish belief is the 3rd most sacred sight in the Muslim community. So they stay at the wall.



The next photo shows the wall between Palenstine and Israel it is a stark contrast to the first wall. This is a photo of the wall that at one level stops war. Since it's construction suicide bombing have completely dropped away.

Fear

The tiny gray dot in this photo is me. Last January, I guess January of 2010. I faced one of my absolute biggest fears is heights. I am petrified, if you could see my face you could see the fear in my eyes. But in the end I survived, the tiny thin piece of canvas supported our combined weight. So this photo is about living your life in spite of your fears and that is why I like it.

Day 2-photo challenge

A friend of mine. She has been posting photos one everyday for a month. I have really enjoyed it. So I am going to try and do the same. So this is my day 2. This photo is of me atop a rock formation at the Garden of the Gods in Colorado. Which is this extremely beautiful free park in Colorado Springs that is nestled right at the base of Pike's Peak. It is one of the few places that gives me a tremendous sense of peace. Garden of the Gods is where I go to walk and listen to music or run along the cement paths or scramble with friend up past the signs prohibiting our climbing. It is a place that I love and it reminds me of why I love that great state of Colorado.

This specific photo was taken by a friend of mine. Who is now serving his mission in California. He took this great photo of me. In my mind I was thinking about eating the sun/sky. I know that does not make a whole lot of sense, but one of my favorite lines in the movie "It is a Wonderful Life" is when he offers Mary, his love, interest the moon. Now obviously he is being metaphorical, but the best part is when she asks what she will do with the moon. He tells her to swallow it. That it would shoot out her fingernails and the tips of her hair. It is I think one of the most romantic movie lines ever. It is literally an offering of a world-a planet. Anyway it got me thinking about the sun.

The sun is this giant ball of plasma that is responsible for all life on earth in some way or another. Many ancient cultures worshipped the sun. In fact human, and animals have been sacrificed to worship the sun. To keep it alive. So when I perched a top that rock on a perfect Colorado day I threw back my head to try and draw some of the power in. Here it is me swallowing the sun:

I have been thinking

I thought long and hard about whether or not I want to continue this blog. See I have now moved back into the states. I live in a flat in Santa Monica. I am no longer traveling that grand adventure is over and I felt that I should perhaps also allow this blog to conclude with it. But I have been thinking about my trip and I have come to realize something. Since I was a little girl it had always been a dream of mine to travel. When we would be on road trips or in the car for so long it was my daydream. Well that and a handsome prince, but we can't win them all.
Anyway now that I had seen a fruition of this dream 2 things have happened. One I realize how much and how gorgeous the world is and how much I love seeing it. The second thing I realized is that my life and adventures have not ceased simply because I achieved a childhood dream at 24. Instead I have come to understand that life is a long serious of trips. That traveling is about choices as well as personality. Europe is wonderful because it is so ancient and so diverse. It has a history that spans hundreds of years, when in the US most of houses are around 30 years old. The US is young and we don't really understand ancient at least not in the same way. Our towns were built for cars and our country has a lot of elbow room. But what the truly amazing thing about this entire conglomeration of experience over the last year is that I am constantly struck by how universal people are. I have lived in all these places and we all are very much the same. We feel fear, pain, emptiness, and we seek joy, love and safety. So any followers or readers who have managed to survive the substantial droughts in my writing: here we go again:

A Eulogy of Sorts

I move a lot. As any of you who know or may have known me I move a lot. It is very adult, and very scary. As a kid we look forward to the future excited to see who we may become. But as I grow closer to being an adult I realize that the future is always glistening on the horizon but our present just never seems to get there. When I was a child, I dreamed of one day traveling the world. Now as I spend my final night in my apartment with bags that are going to be supremely overweight and really wrack up the fees. I find that my great adventure is coming to an end. I have lived abroad for six months and sadly left behind a few great souvenirs that would not fit into the strained seams of my baggage.

It seems that at every transition in our lives there is a time for self-evaluation. Moving is one such transition. I am student so I am self-reflective at least twice a year. I am sentimental and I often associate memories with certain items. This is a type of hoarding. Since I no longer keep a dairy as often as I should I rely on objects and my memory to remind me of those moments that I would otherwise forget. But then I remember that this is foolish and I purge, or try to purge all the possession that I no longer need. So moving depresses me, as I throw out all my belongings collecting all my pens and the brick brack in the bottom of drawers and behind the dresser.

I think of London. London is kitschy. I once taught one of my friends that word and he used it so often it made me rue the day I did. Every outfit was “kitsch” whether it is a black evening gown or jeans a t-shirt. Every room was “kitsch” whether it was the décor of a modern sleek P.F. Changs restaurant or country kitchen style French restaurant Café Marmalade. Kitsch is a design term it means the collection of things that are unique and unusual that don’t seem to go together but somehow they do. It is the only way that the open air market of Camden Lock with its millions of food stalls, vintage and steam punk dress shops mixed with the shoe sellers can be in the same country as the elegant British Museum. The contrast is seen in the Houses of Parliament where the powerless House of Lords has entire hallways completely gilded in millions of pounds in gold while the House of Commons the lawmaking body is covered in only brass.

London has a flavor and a style all its own, and while I am eternally grateful to be a citizen of the US of A I sometimes wonder if we are the younger niece to a odd and stately Aunt England steeped in tradition, pomp and a little bit of humor. It was an empire that thanks to military and sea-faring advantages harvested and conquered and ruled the world. The tiny island, conquered vast tracks abroad, and they hold proud to that tradition. The UK is steeped in tradition and London just bleeds history. One of the most iconic moments of my young legal career was arguing in the Royal Courts of Justice beyond the bar in the “well” or “pit” were the real barristers stood and argued before the appellate court. Or at the Winter Ball in the ancient Inn at Middle Temple where the entire wooden interior was demolished in the Blitz. While the music roared and students and facility danced, some very warm and loose from the wine sold at the bar. People brought drinks with them onto the floor and shimmed while the sticky liquor sloshed onto the floor. The glasses shatter and sprinkled on the dance floor is still in the soles of my shoes. But this does not ruin the mood. Jovial and free spirited while I danced the night away with a guy 5 years my junior, I feel as if the whole place is pumping with joy and the whole city is rejoicing.

London is a city that has scars. The great gashes in the stone on sides of the Victoria and Albert Museum are proudly left unrepaired. A brass plaque on the wall of the building explains the marred stones. These are left from when the building withstood the bombings of Hitler’s planes. The city is accented everywhere in shiny black paint. It is piled on railings, doors and street lamps, thickly over the layer beneath giving everything an aged and broken look. The Churchill rooms remain a stalwart reminder that war was not so far behind us. But it also shows how much has changed.

Over a half a century ago, I could not have traveled from Germany to London with a mere stamp in my passports, but it is with Germany that also began my journey.

My trip began, dear reader, just months ago with another trans-Atlantic flight into Munchen. Where I would take a train into Augsburg and then take a cab to my new flat. Me and my luggage. It was fairly easy wheeling the two large bags into the courtyard of my new flat. I would then go for a long walk in search of a grocery store and my university. My time in Germany flew by there were so many trips and so much sun. When I think of Augsburg I don’t think of rain. I think of sundrenched streets that are completely cobbled. The Strassbaun is 70 Euros for the season. On that train we ride to the University were we sit in lectures two days a week. But after we don our swimsuits and head to the lake. Lake Cuzi has clear water and grassy beaches. Munich is a stately and grand city the glitter star of Bavaria with its massive gothic and neo-gothic building-Augsburg is my European Colorado Springs. A town that is practically perfect in every way. The city is small. For most a car is unnecessary, it is easy to walk. The people are kind. The best Italian food is right at my doorstep. But living there was like having a great quilt of pressed against my mouth. I speak no German and the Germans speak limited English, my witty quips and clever passes fall on ears struggling to understand. So the language muffles beyond the most basic communication.

A few weeks into the term another train would take me to Dachau. Dachau was a Nazi Prison camp. Thousands of Germans died here. This is where Hitler put all his political enemies. The temporary buildings of the camp stood for years after the prison camp became a prison for those who had committed the atrocities. Then it was a home for other refugees in the war torn country. Finally the buildings where torn down to get people to move out of the building and they were never rebuilt. The camp is silent, somber with the quiet echoes of the torture and death that was brutally and efficiently exercised. It reminds me that war is not so far away. It reminds me-that man is capable of great cruelty.

Squeezed right in the middle of my travels there was were the victims of the Holocaust were. Israel. I went to Jerusalem. Were the signs were in Hebrew and Arabic and the flags wave the blue and white Star of David. The state was formed while the wounds of World War II were still fresh. Israel is heat, razor wire, glass set in cement and history. The streets are narrow and small, the shook is busy and I am hot. Always hot. I really begin to wonder about the level of faith one should have to wear all those layers of clothing. The excavations in Israel reveal stones and cities from past generations like the city of David just outside the Damascus gate of the old city walls. You descend with virtually no light into a tunnel carved into pure rock with spring water lapping gently at your ankles and then calves and then your thighs as you all but crawl hunched through those tunnels. Those are the moments when you feel like your touching history. And when you look at the Garden of Gethsemane with the twisted olive trees and the church of all nations-you feel the peace and the pain. You feel your soul burn with such power that this mortal coil seems scarcely able to hold it. At the Garden Tomb the tomb at the foot of Golgotha you feel truth. It reminds me that man is offered redemption.

London felt like coming home. I could have a house and normal classes and hear English again. I could understand announcements, tell jokes, and follow directions. I see plays-Merry Wives of Windsor at the Globe theater, see Les Miserables, Wicked, Phatom of the Opera, Chicago, We Will Rock and Mama Mia. I take a train to the temple and perform baptisms. I head to Oxford and see the colleges and the inns that remind me of Harry Potter. I make friends at church and we go dancing. I shop at Camden market. I find new favorites the best ice cream made of liquid nitrogen, the best sausage Italian pasta, the best Pad Thai. I study and I pray for patience and displine and I enjoy London. But this tiny Island was expensive, a blinding blur of shops and rent and deposits drained my strained student finances, and yet I survived I return home poor as a church mouse but full of memories and souvenirs. Ready to take my heavy load home.

It was also another adventure in idioms. In the UK when you greet some one you say “allright?” One word. It is like saying “hello, how are you?” The acceptable reply is “Yeah.” Allright?” A duffle bag is a “holdall” also one word. The British love shorting words. Maybe it is them being on an island they don’t have room for extra letters.
So as I walk through the airport and hear the staff smile and say-“Allright” my heart patters a little and I walk through the gate.