Never underestimate the world's ability to adapt. We react radically, but then, we change. Because in the end, its change, or die. We can't even imagine how far the depth of this ability goes... eventually, there is almost nothing that we can't accommodate in our lives. Eventually we consider it normal, part of the everyday routine, we accept it and incorporate it in. And then, we forget that it ever was unusual, or a change. Sometimes, I think we even convince ourselves that our adaptation is part of the way we *have* to be, the way we *have* to live. Or that it's part of us. And sometimes, we let it become a part of us.
But when presented with a stark contrast of how we could be or who we were, with who we have become, or what we have accepted ourselves becoming, we realize how we have adapted. Perhaps, what we have compromised, or what we have let go, or how we go about our lives, day to day.
And sometimes when things are presented to us in a different light or a different package, we realize how very strange it is, all these things we have forgotten, all these things that just blend in to the day to day... we realize how strange it is that we have forgotten how much we have changed.
A few links:
love this photo series...
The world of animals, evidence not only of how much life adapts, but how strange it is that we are so blind to how much things change. Us, animals... not so different.
except the norwhale (narwhale?). he's just weird.
-----------------------
I'm sitting down to consider
God doesn't exist.
He is my one and only
unanswered question, if you ignore
wars, death and UFOs. and girls.
Dear heavenly justice, did you
come in on the big bang bus;
are you leaving with it? or did you
really drive that double-decker
layered into above-firmament
and below-firmament?
Simic arrives dripping a trail of black
blasphemous ink. I close my eyes
my ears. he is a biased man.
I am not. Dear Charles,
your talent is proof
that the zookeeper exists.
and the angels
that your mind refuses to let
go of. and the love of the lovers
who crowd your poetry, and the sun
and birds and pigs, and the hell
where weddings sometimes take place.
that hell is the proof of heaven.
-- Tolu Ogunlesi, "On Reading 'A Wedding in Hell' by Charles Simic"
----------------------
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFl7QlHdjPU&eurl=http://mieka.com/
she is so... i don't know. just great, really.
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Sunday, October 19, 2008
god knows you put your life into its hands, and its both cradled you and crushed.
.
The first time I ever saw Starry Night, I was on my first real date ... there's a whole background story to it. There's a reason why, even though its his best loved painting, his most well-known, and of course, such a cliche to admire it best, that I stood in front of Starry Night for 45 minutes. I hadn't ever been to the Museum of Modern Art without my family. I had rarely loved anything someone hadn't told me to love. I was stretching my wings, trying to find out what it was like to define myself internally by the external things that moved me.
We do this, as we get older -- we morph from a product of our parents, our nurturing, our past, to something new. Something we are constantly discovering, changing, trying to understand. We consider whether what we think we know about ourselves is due to what someone told us to know. We examine our own hands for signs of what truly lies in our hearts. We surprise ourselves, when we are really young, when we discover we are drawn to something which we have never been told to be drawn to. Sometimes we surprise ourselves, when we are older, by being drawn to something we didn't think we liked. Little things -- mushrooms, running, dissecting bugs, billy joel, whatever. Big things too, like what kind of a person we think we are, who we want to be, what we believe our personalities to be like... what we want to do with our lives... who we want to be with. Sometime what we stumble upon goes right up against the illusion we hold of what we solidly know. Our solid definition of ourselves we have decided upon -- sometimes we learn things which fall out of those boundaries; the type of person we think we are, what we think we should love, who we believe ourselves to be.
It's scary enough when its just a little thing... surprising and exciting too, of course. But it gets a little scarier when its a big thing. Something we never knew we never knew. Because then the whole planet we live on tips, and suddenly everything we thought we were sure of, may not be true. The story we've written for ourselves has a big chunk of the plot changed, and now the characters don't know if everything else is going to suddenly shift and fuck the whole story up. What if illusion of everything you think you know about yourself, and everyone, and everything -- those ideas and stories you hold to be solidly fact -- what if they were based on pillars of sand? What happens when one grain of sand shifts? Everything you know starts to slide.
And everything we know... everything has a story behind it.
Even things you think you already know, has a story behind it that you don't.
Maybe you think you know it. Maybe you don't. And maybe you've been living by the plot of one story for so long, that you can't see how everything has changed. You wear the story like a blindfold, while the world you think you still know slowly changes, has changed, has new stories written that you don't even know about.
Its a slippery slope. Letting those stories change how we see something. Maybe we see everything through them, like a fine mesh screen, altering everything. Maybe the stories are so opaque we see nothing at all.
Once we know the truth, the real stories behind all those things we think we know... they make the planet shift once we find them out. Once we know the real story, everything changes.
Starry Night and me. There's a whole relationship, there's a whole life of things that wrap around how I see that painting. But as long and as close as I've looked at it, for as much as I think I've known and seen, there's a whole story behind it that I don't know. I thought I knew, but I didn't.
Things we think are innocuous, or funny, or silly, have darker stories behind them too. Like corn, a product we all believe to be so wholesome and innocent, and commercials that the average person would have no background to judge objectively...
The story behind the new corn commercials.
Or the story behind politicians' claims. Via Mad Organica, a blogger who I read and have serious respect for -- a breakdown of what taxes you'd pay under Obama and McCain, via the Tax Policy Center.
How much do we actually know about what we say, about what we think we know? How many blindfolds are we wearing. How many stories have built themselves behind everything we think we already see.
The first time I ever saw Starry Night, I was on my first real date ... there's a whole background story to it. There's a reason why, even though its his best loved painting, his most well-known, and of course, such a cliche to admire it best, that I stood in front of Starry Night for 45 minutes. I hadn't ever been to the Museum of Modern Art without my family. I had rarely loved anything someone hadn't told me to love. I was stretching my wings, trying to find out what it was like to define myself internally by the external things that moved me.
We do this, as we get older -- we morph from a product of our parents, our nurturing, our past, to something new. Something we are constantly discovering, changing, trying to understand. We consider whether what we think we know about ourselves is due to what someone told us to know. We examine our own hands for signs of what truly lies in our hearts. We surprise ourselves, when we are really young, when we discover we are drawn to something which we have never been told to be drawn to. Sometimes we surprise ourselves, when we are older, by being drawn to something we didn't think we liked. Little things -- mushrooms, running, dissecting bugs, billy joel, whatever. Big things too, like what kind of a person we think we are, who we want to be, what we believe our personalities to be like... what we want to do with our lives... who we want to be with. Sometime what we stumble upon goes right up against the illusion we hold of what we solidly know. Our solid definition of ourselves we have decided upon -- sometimes we learn things which fall out of those boundaries; the type of person we think we are, what we think we should love, who we believe ourselves to be.
It's scary enough when its just a little thing... surprising and exciting too, of course. But it gets a little scarier when its a big thing. Something we never knew we never knew. Because then the whole planet we live on tips, and suddenly everything we thought we were sure of, may not be true. The story we've written for ourselves has a big chunk of the plot changed, and now the characters don't know if everything else is going to suddenly shift and fuck the whole story up. What if illusion of everything you think you know about yourself, and everyone, and everything -- those ideas and stories you hold to be solidly fact -- what if they were based on pillars of sand? What happens when one grain of sand shifts? Everything you know starts to slide.
And everything we know... everything has a story behind it.
Even things you think you already know, has a story behind it that you don't.
Maybe you think you know it. Maybe you don't. And maybe you've been living by the plot of one story for so long, that you can't see how everything has changed. You wear the story like a blindfold, while the world you think you still know slowly changes, has changed, has new stories written that you don't even know about.
Its a slippery slope. Letting those stories change how we see something. Maybe we see everything through them, like a fine mesh screen, altering everything. Maybe the stories are so opaque we see nothing at all.
Once we know the truth, the real stories behind all those things we think we know... they make the planet shift once we find them out. Once we know the real story, everything changes.
Starry Night and me. There's a whole relationship, there's a whole life of things that wrap around how I see that painting. But as long and as close as I've looked at it, for as much as I think I've known and seen, there's a whole story behind it that I don't know. I thought I knew, but I didn't.
Things we think are innocuous, or funny, or silly, have darker stories behind them too. Like corn, a product we all believe to be so wholesome and innocent, and commercials that the average person would have no background to judge objectively...
The story behind the new corn commercials.
Or the story behind politicians' claims. Via Mad Organica, a blogger who I read and have serious respect for -- a breakdown of what taxes you'd pay under Obama and McCain, via the Tax Policy Center.
How much do we actually know about what we say, about what we think we know? How many blindfolds are we wearing. How many stories have built themselves behind everything we think we already see.
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