| Short conversation recorded at a dinner. |
[03 Jul 2009|10:15pm] |
SOMETIME in May...
"Will we ever learn to love our fellow man?" The old gospel player had been put on repeat. With the fleshy pita wraps it was like for a second we embodied the fact of what was eating us up on the inside. Matt turned and looked at me, and said-"Hmm mmm, it's good."
SHE said: "It feels like a really long trip today.
"You know, since we went to church earlier. My mind has been a lot of places."
I could hear the domestic stain of dishes smacking themselves against the wash basin as she recounted for me the weird existential crises of her day.
"I just have a hard time coming back," she said. "I need to find some middle ground between here and reality, between reality and that other place where I go."
She had more to say to me but I was off in the other place again.
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[28 Jun 2009|06:22pm] |
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In the Oxford English Dictionary one of the definitions for the word 'whitewash' is "to make clear."
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| British Columbia Treeplanting and Foreign Education |
[10 Jun 2009|09:58am] |
Living in the bush this time around has been a different experience. It's interesting being at a new (smaller) camp where people talk about the psychology of the lifestyle so openly. I'm proud of myself for being strong enough to be support for people who need it. I myself am mentally preparing for a much longer trip to finish my MA degree in Sweden - the European school year runs 10 months - I have to be in Lund, SE on August 24th and return to Canada in late June. My lay-over is in Rejkavic (sp?), Iceland which is super exciting. Wish me luck!
Love always,
Drew
P.S. Text poems and anecdotes to 514 266 0679.
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| Using Wilson's cloud chambers to re-invent the 'metaphor' |
[29 May 2009|11:04pm] |
I've recently become interested in the scientific observational device known as the 'wilson chamber' or 'cloud chamber,' developed by Charles Thomas Rees Wilson in 1911. The cloud chamber is a self-contained unit sealed with supersaturated supercooled alcohol vapour used to track the movement of subatomic particles in small doses of radioactive decay (or, with increased sensitivity, ordinary atmospheric or cosmic radiation) where visual displays of ionization chains of particles will appear zooping and zooming across the self-contained space as cloudlike formations. Inherently, different subatomic particles will show differing formations and deflection patterns. This rapid ionization occurs as supercooled water particles instantly condense around the energized atmosphere of radioactive isotopes - the visual trail is actually made present by the condensation patterns of the supercooled alcohol solution.
Instructions for building your own: http://www.bizarrelabs.com/cloud.htm
A University of Berkeley Cloud Chamber:
My reaction to this experiment recalls to mind my first encounters with light interference patterns used on Canadian satellite telescopes to measure distance, or in mirrored tunnels and and their effect on human eye frame rates; what we have here is another example of a very simple scientific technique that registers our invisible metaphysical framework beyond the usual conceptual capacity of what the senses will allow - a case of the 'metaphor' doubly doing the work of the factual and the symbolic. And I believe it is by embracing this dichotomy that we can push beyond the boundaries of normative paradigmatic thought which rests upon its black and white and categorical forms of nominative identity. Yes, the universe does seem to behave as a rule-bound organic entity; that is to say when we drop something it falls, and we can accurately call this gravity. However, we do err in our thinking because of the overstretching of these boundaries of paradigmatic structures and categorical constructions of thought - what happens when the idea of scientific hypothesis (a kind of educated 'metaphor') is proved to be both entirely symbolic and factual at the same time? We see the bombardments of cosmic energy and can trace the movements of subatomic particles and patterns of ionization, but this reality is not seperable from its manifestation as supercooled alcohol condensations; meaning, what we're really seeing is not particles at all but condensation and the influence of condensation on subatomic metaphysical energies AND likewise: the influence of subatomic radiation on alcohol condesation because these clouds are not normally occuring patterns. What we have here is a fundatmental synthesis between the knowable and unknowable - a healthy balance for conducting research from our finite and human paradigm...
To quote many a Descartes' enthusiast: we can't really know that the sun will rise tomorrow but we must always act as if it will. And with a little bit of careful self introspection I believe we will all realize that no human thought is actually categorical but behaves equally surprisingly as the incredible precise but random display of particle energies in self-contained space. There is an element of the mystical in the analysis of all objects and subjects and it is precisely this mysticism which makes life both achievable and sustainable.
If life had tautological certainty there would be no variables and all life would be object oriented and the universe would neither expand, live, nor decay, there simply would be the existence of values without minds to interpret them. It would be a life of trees falling in vaccuums and the forest ranger, who is called '42', if he reacts at all, would behave in harmony with the domino chain of values set in motion by the movement of force within a vaccuum. Of course we reach here a problem - the analogy breaks down because it is difficult for me to perceive the existence of force in a dead and inorganic system. Actually NOTHING would move or even EXIST in such a system. Whether or not existence depends on a perceiver (Berkely: "To be is to be perceived.") hardly effects the fact that movement and force are unpredictable values and pertain solely to alegebraic variables.
So, will we ever learn any fundamental truths of existence? What is the important of even asking these questions? Well, from my non-categorical embrace of physical and non-physical identities I make no difference between symbolic and factual forces WHEN they are interacting. We don't need to, nor is it desirable, to solve these questions with certainty - like the cloud chambers - what we actually seek is VISIBILITY of the mysticism. Isn't seeing the magic fireworks so much more exciting than having them so rigorously explained?
I also acknowledge that paradigms are always going in and out of fashion and maybe there is always someone trying to reject the institution of paradigmatic thought - but at the end of the day we do need words and decisions and choice. I just don't want these choices to rule our lives mang because once you're set in your ways it can be a hard thing to change!
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| Drew: My name is in the past tense of drawing the world together with my eyes. |
[19 May 2009|04:39pm] |
I have and shall live a pure life. turning by the light of day, facing west with my burnt back brazen to the sun, exposing the husk of my body to be rejuvenated by the conceptual sex of the earth. this is life.
everything is freedom
personality is disguise
everyone is precious
siting underneath the skies
i feel so alive it hurts me.
but maybe i should stop staring so hard into the sun for a while?
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| believer |
[08 May 2009|04:39am] |
I believe that particles and waves are the same thing
That gravity, magnetism, and electricity are all related
I believe infinity can be calculated in math but it can't be understood in minds
That if the world stopped spinning on its axis we'd be about 15 degrees colder
I don't understand how people syncronize their clocks - how is the measurement of 1 second on my watch exactly the same as on yours; aren't they by very nature the two distinct measurements?
So many mysteries at war with their human given nominals!
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| food for plot |
[29 Apr 2009|12:51pm] |
i learned, yesterday, the literal translation of the word 'karama' is action. according to buddhist author Brad Warner it was early zen buddhist interpolations, not hindu, which began strictly translating it as reactions; the spiralling-out, from the centre, effect of energy.
the hindu karmic balance, in meditation practices, involved an activated harmonizing of energy within the present tense of life - energy, as synthesized between the past, present, and future, in pujic practices. this sanskrit word gradually became recontextualized by its religious application to the after life - the hindu cycle of reincarnation; it really starts to mean 'you'll get what's coming.' but the word karma first appeared in the ancient Rig Veda, where it simply meant religious action, especially in animal sacrifice. there is some hint of the later meaning of karma in the Brahmanas, but it is not until the Upanishads that karma is expressed as a principle of cause and effect based on actions. One example is in Brhadaranyaka Upanishad 4.4.5.
i had to work till 1am last night and unfortunately missed Brad Warner speaking at Casa Del Popolo, but in any event my interest was peaked while driving around town listening to his intereview on CBC Radio 1. mostly, my problem with a lot of new age or contemporary ideology is its typical irelevance: either it operates according to an old paradigm for religious practice - i don't live in a mountain top monastary in the wilderness YET - or else it's being pre-packaged, simplified and sold back to the consumer as product. Get your enlightenment TODAY! in only 3 Easy installments of $99.99; and though i try not to be too hard on Opera Winfrey endorsed 'The Secret' or 'What the Bleep Do We Know?" - i likewise have to acknowledge i have my own path to follow and anything which requires loads of money or claims to have quick access to the answers, probably isn't for me.
i am however super interested in Brad Warner's books, especially for shattering traditional stereotypes of the cloistered monk. monks can be cool. monks can play bass guitar in a punk rock band. monks can become video editors for japanese monster films. it's not as if buddhist practice were ideologically opposed to popular culture, it's more opposed to the ownership and lust for materials within the consumer paradigm. try to erase where you came from and you can't, it's a mistake to engender this typological casting off the old life, like skin, in place of monkhood and robes - treating spirituality in this way is the same defect as material culture. whatever you do you're still you and you're still beautiful!
Brad Warner's websites:
http://homepage.mac.com/doubtboy/
http://www.myspace.com/bradwarner_hardcorezen
photo below is thieved from myspace.
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| credo to remember for tomorrow |
[21 Feb 2009|04:26pm] |
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sometimes you'll be 27 years old, in the town of Jaco, Costa Rica, and you turn down the wrong street because the river looks nice and find the wrong people waiting for you at the end you'll have to give them your camera or some money (but you didn't have any) and you'll be lucky for them to have let you go, and go buy some sunscreen you bum!
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| central america i'm coming back |
[11 Feb 2009|09:03am] |
sold most of my instruments for february rent. leaving next thursday for 20 days of surfing in Costa Rica - missing one week of school and one week of work. my car is still stuck at the police impound and is costing me $600 to get it out next week. i've almost scraped together the money.
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| Science is a monster, and I don't have the internet folks |
[18 Jan 2009|09:39am] |
An update in the name of not having an internet connection, is as follows:
I am working full time as a science educator in anglophone and bilingual elementary schools here in Montréal. You may have heard of the company, it's called Mad Science (des Sciences en Folie) and is available internationally in 32 countries across the world. See http://www.madscience.org for info.
The job itself is wonderful. I conduct experiments, like building a flashlight from chemicals (5 mg luminol + 10 mg sodium tetraborate + 1 / 10 bleach dilluted in 250 mL of water) for elementary school children grades 1 - 6 (grades 7-8 go to a separate, or pre-cegep school in Québec, I believe?). Furthermore, all instructors have nicknames, mine is 'Dr. Drew' or 'the Doc', and well when people are calling you the Doctor it's pretty sweet for your ego.
I am becoming more and more interested in what Douglas Coupland called 'analoges' in Hey Nostradamus!. The idea being that there is a very static set of geno and phenotypes that is traceable and manifest in all aspects genetic endowment. You're walking in, say, Prague and you think you see someone from back home, what you may have seen is a person with analagous physical traits, mostly carried by a vague correspondence of porportions in a given person's facial features and body type.
Instructing at 6 elementary schools, I swear I have seen the same student in each. I keep seeing her. In every classroom. Small. Dark features. And long mousey hair. She is shy and polite in her mannerisms (I have often founnd genetic analogues to also posses a strange emotional-behavioural analagousism), and I innately gravitate towards either helping her at risk of ignoring other students, or else failing to notice her completely because she is so small and helpless and rarely asks for help. Not that she doesn't want it, more that classrooms are loud and she refuses to struggle against the chaos. Her muted hand is tired, and she is patient without reason.
This child is haunting me. She is everywhere. I am dreaming of her and I realize I perhaps may be obsessed. I wish I could open her frail eyes and scream into them. "LEAVE ME ALONE CHILD." But it would be to no avail. It would only intrigue and gravitate me toward her again. Each day. Each new clasroom. Beautiful soul. Kelly, Amber, Marie-Pier, Alyssa. Thank you.
In other news, I am applying to do an exchange next year at a prominent University in Sweeden: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lund_university
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[25 Dec 2008|06:01pm] |
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[05 Dec 2008|07:06pm] |
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sorry i'm not home right now, i'm walking into spiderwebs. leave a msg and i'll call you back.
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| die journal dot com |
[06 Nov 2008|04:26pm] |
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wow. i just loaded my journal without logging in and it was covered with pop-up spams. in my 4 or so years of having this journal i have never seen that happen. that is some lame shit.
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| Travel Story (Revised) |
[06 Nov 2008|04:18pm] |
Now earlier that week I had met a local Belizean medicine man named Don Umberto. Don Umberto, amongst other plant related inquiries, had once fixed me with a gaze lamenting there would be no person to pass on the `burden` of his knowledge to. “Yes, these and other ways shall pass from existence. Even now my medicine trail is mostly second growth rainforest.” He extended his hand to the landscape, “This too shall pass when my spirit is not here to protect it.”
I thought Don Umberto indeed sad to be breaking down to us white kids. But he looked you straight in the eye, and his smile somehow poked out the back of your head. It was not until I was touched by the magic of reality, I finally understood what Don Umberto and his stories meant. Some of his stories were harsh warnings, Don Umberto did not want me messing around with magical powers I could not handle. I could barely escape them with one hair on my chin, as he always said. Well! let me tell you one such story about escaping with one hair on your chin. It happened just one week after I had left Don Umberto and his strange teachings behind me.
Having just returned from Guatemala, I had found myself in San Ignacio, Belize. I was hanging around the hostel one afternoon when I met four travellers, Tanya, Reif, Bart all from Holland, and Aaron the American, who would change my life considerably. We decided to go dancing. Baila Punta. Then: at the local Punta bar, with the song Murderrrr She wrote... blaring into the background. Some police official was intermittently showing me his government status card, and laughing and pointing, at his drunk wife passed out on the bar railing.
“And it was a like a really like those ones…” behind me Bart was gesticulating wildly with his hands, moving them at twice the speed of his English. He always talked this way, his hands were butterflies! I laughed, the word he was searching for was ‘sunglasses.’ Who are these people? I would sometimes ask in moments of feeling very alone. But tonight, after a minor breakdown of homesickness earlier that day, in Placencia Village, I was feeling solid, lost in Punta infused hyper-dances with new friends. Aaron’s story was first told to me, in this way, as we hummed with rhythmic vibration in our stools.
“She was just a really cool girl,” Aaron began cooly. “From Switzerland, but she spoke French, and Swiss, and Spanish. Her name was Andréa.”
Aaron took a pause. Suddenly ‘Johnny-Boy’ had come back to harass us.
“I’m hot faya!” he screamed at point-blank distance from my face.
“You’re Johnny-P” I said flatly. I wasn’t being cynical, merely administrative because I generally don`t like people changing their nicknames more than three times in a conversation.
Johnny-P was busy convincing Aaron to go along to a night club in Santa-Elena. He had a girl for him, apparently. “My friend likes you baby, you can’t lose!” He asserted his realness by pointing to his chest with both thumbs and smiling.
Right then I looked at Reif dancing with Elis’ sister. Reif was hairless and muscular European, wearing Diesel jeans and a very Euro looking sleeveless shirt. Right then, his lady friend, who must have weighed about 500 pounds, had turned around and was backing up her caboose like a steam engine to mount his crotch. Reif, however, had outflanked her. Before she could reach her final destination, he crept up real close and unexpectedly rammed her in the bum with a great pelvic thrusting motion. She came down hard on the dance floor. For a second I thought she might cry, but Reif had executed the gesture with so much European crass, there was nothing any of us could do but laugh, she laughed too. Reif’s Deutsch voice was just like his physical features, everything circular. His laughter was bubbles, there was nothing but love and kindness behind any of his attacks.
“He’s a real character.” Aaron leaned over and said to me before resuming the weird tale that held a cold fire in his eye.
He told me how once Andréa had been their glue. She had fused them together as travelling co-op, forever making sure they had their stuff packed on time. After two weeks in San Cristóbal they traveled through southern Chiapas and Tapachula near the Guatemalan border. After Tapachula, they were heading east across the Yucatan to Tulum but they’d made a pact to break up after Tulum. Reif and Tanya were heading west together across more Mexico, Aaron would continue south through Gautemala, and Bart, probably using his hands wildly, was very slowly-slowly deciding what to do. Andréa was the only person going south to Belize, through the Chetumal border.
Later that night, on the hostel balcony, Aaron and I were asking Reif and Tanya why the song `Pass the Dutchie on the left-hand side` is sung by a small group of ethnically diverse children. We wanted to know the philosophical ramifications. Reif said he refused the question on ‘grounds of nationalistic pride,’ and simply began singing the "Pass the Dutchie on the left-hand side" refrain over-and-over-and-over. “Bent u een lesbienne?” [Deutsch: Are you a lesbian?] all of us were shouting at one another! and rolling on the balcony trying to give Charlie-horses. Bart and Reif would raise their voices in Deutsch and slap each other’s thighs in violent camaraderie. I told them about `ham-boning`, but was misinterpreted, each with a cocked eyebrow that seemed, ironically, to give nod to my Canadian status—both affectionately and mocking I suppose, so they resumed accusing me of being a ‘lesbienne.’ Everyone was brought together in this strange closeness, almost alarmingly comfortable. Then how something strange happened!
For a while Tanya, Reif and Bart were all speaking Deutsch and I didn’t know what was happening. But soon, over a very spiritual silence, Bart said in slow English, “At the end of the day we’re all still traveling alone.”
I didn’t know at that time if Bart knew Aaron had told me their story.
“There was once a day,” Aaron had said, “when a light mist rung out over the desert chaparral. And slowly the designs unfurled themselves in the current... ”
The gang, Andréa was the glue, had hiked 2 miles from their bus stop to reach the falls: a mile long stretch of the Río Chiapa cut its way before them, it was the only discernible feature of the desert. Twinned sprockets of shattered glass waterfalls, each with tiny pools at the foot, like small terraces. Twenty waterfalls in total, as if someone had uncorked a bottle of champagne right there in the desert. They worked against it, upstream like spawning fish, climbing on the wet rock-face. Atop it they would jump and land in the calm of the pools, but one person stayed behind to direct the jumper where to land. The pools were shallow and you had to aim for just the right spot to avoid scraping your feet against rocks. Team Aaron and Andréa lagged behind.
Dipping an arched foot, Andréa pulled out a chunk of water in the space between her foot and ankle. The sound went phmuck! When they submerged their bodies it was so warm, it felt almost solid or heavy. She imagined swimming across a volcano or inside of a bamboo chute and shivered with delight. Aaron, who swam first, far up ahead, suddenly disappeared from her sight. Before she knew what was happening she felt the current pulling down on her too. It was like dead bodies attaching themselves to her toes. Down, down, down in tiny spirals.
Children! Hadn`t their calm blue dream always been a monster? The whirlpool was created underneath the surface of seemingly calm waters. It was sucking them under and spitting them in random locations. Aaron had told me it was like seeing the world through a series of sped up projectors that eat and burn up the film. A rapid succession of day and night, darkness and light, fought for their attention. Andréa tried to time her breathing with the points of light, but instead took down a big gulp of salty water. Hot syrup, a melting face, from the way she was being smacked against the rocks.
Meanwhile, Aaron was getting mad because Andréa was so far ahead of him. I mean, he had a right to be. It was his idea so he’d gone first, now he was stuck in the whirlpool’s eye. Finally, he feels rock with his left knee and manages to grab hold with both his splattered hands. His feet are being jerked away in the skittering tide. For some reason, as he looks at them, he remembers summers with his Dad on Goguac Lake, Michigan, skipping flat stones. Once Aaron had crawled to land, it would be the last any of the travellers would see of Andréa for three whole days.
But back on our porchment, Reif turns and makes a tiny ‘C’ by curling his thumb and forefinger. The gesture reminds me of a song we used to sing in elementary school—I like to oop-ooop-ooop ooples and banoo-noos. At the chorus we rolled up our hands into tight donuts and placed them over our eyes to make a parody of wearing glasses then sing the part that goes: my spectacles, my specs!
“My face was so swollen.” As he spoke Reif kept ballooning his cheeks like blowing a bubblegum.
“My esophagus shrank to size of small straw,” he raised his ‘C’ gesture again for all to see just how small.
“I couldn’t leave the trailer, I was in middle of Outback with two Canadians, ya! I like you people ‘lot.” For a moment his nostrils became inhumanely huge and quivered as he deflated.
“I could only drink, not eat, because of swelling. I took pot to numb pain but smoking just made the sore worse, ow!
As the cigarettes unwound, the streets of Belize grew quiet.
“You’re handling it better than anyone.” Bart said, and placed a hand on Aaron’s Volcom t-shirt. Aaron looked at his feet.
I quizzed Aaron about the moment he had looked at his feet and remembered his Dad skipping stones. A look of distress pressed his face all flat, but then he softened. He said, “I now know what it`s like to have your life flash before your eyes before you die, it`s not quite at all what you`d expect!” He laughed with nervous joy. “It was as if no moment outweighed any other, everything was equal. I was overwhelmed with the sensation that my feet, life, my Father`s stones, were of exactly the same origin and place in time. Nothing mattered anymore because everything was beautiful.”
I thought this poetic and recorded it for word in my journal. I realize now, in my rush to document, I`d missed some of the real meaning of what he`d said. When I lifted my head I caught only the trace of a mad-sad gleam in his eye. I wondered if Aaron had been in love with Andréa, a fact which he confirmed later saying “Yeah, I fell for her hard,” his American accent giving the words a subtle twang.
It took three days for Andréa`s body to surface somewhere far away down river. Her parents took the news surprisingly well. They didn’t know or blame any of the travellers involved in their daughter’s death. When Aaron called they answered in French. I remember this specifically because Aaron and I sometimes spoke French to each other.
I asked him if he’d thought about going home after it happened, he looked at me quixotically.
“Well, we came to Belize. This is for her, we’re doing her trip now… I think we’re all too scared to leave each other because we don’t know what will happen when we’re alone. I wanted to go home, really I did, but it was my idea to swim that channel, it was my fault in a sense, but the group was still all together, it’s honouring her memory that keeps me going.”
I didn’t pry, but I believe he meant by doing what he now called `her trip`, I shudder now to think of the alternate interpretation.
Aaron sighed. He seemed to pause as if something inside of him were changing gears. His face contorted beautifully so it hurt to look at him but it was impossible to look away.
“Drew, Can you imagine making her funeral arrangements? Which casket should we buy? Who`s paying? Is it still okay to bargain with the locals over a few hundred pesos? When we buried her body we helped dig the grave. That’s how they do it in these small Mexican communities, everybody chips in and does equal share of the work. In place of her family it was the four of us and two workers from the cemetery. After it was over we were so caked in red mud and clay, we were exhausted. We were too tired to even clean ourselves. Besides, water had suddenly become like this evil force in our lives. We collapsed on a hotel bed and held each other, just feeling numb. We were too tired to even cry anymore. Everybody was asking, “What’s next?” but there was no Andréa to bind together our plans.”
Now I have heard of men in Corozal district of Belize who drink poison from the Mahogany logging camps. “If your wife leaves you and takes away your children you drink poison. If you die you just die, but if you live on, a new life and blessings are bestowed upon you because it is customary to pass to the other world by doing what you have made your livelihood; otherwise, what was your life worth?” Don Umberto says, “The Gods will smile upon your death only if your life had true value. The woods were all they’d known, so they drank poison used to clean their logging blades.”
I could tell that for Tanya, Bart, Reif, and Aaron, it was not so easy. They carried Andréa’s ghost wherever they went; the toilsome question of, “What’s next?” had become their life. Every minute, every hour, had become a massive gestalt of "What's next?" I believe that Don Umberto would have told these people they had stepped on a pin. In Belizean folkore, there is a character, Bra Anansi, who goes out onto the street and steps on a pin at the end of each journey; then, as the saying goes, ‘If the pin neva gon’ bend, the story neva gon’ end’. If the pin does not bend this is a very bad thing! The characters become trapped in the past and can find no escape or rest. And me too, in my small way, I am also unable to leave Andréa’s memory behind me, so I’ve passed it through what I’ve made own livelihood, through writing. I drank the poison. But sometimes, I still hear Bart’s slow English, ringing in the silences, “At the end of the day we’re all still traveling alone.”
THE END.
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