Midnight at the mental oasis.
Thanks for all the wonderful things people have said and sent me about Kerry.
Notre Dame has its own Wind Up Bird. Its whistle reminds me of a corkscrew. Not of the act of uncorking a bottle, mind you, but of the shape of the screw. It is curved, sinuous in chrome, and comes to an altogether shocking point. The bird carries this tune for several minutes while I contemplate its song. Scanning the pines and few surviving elms (a wave of Dutch Elm Disease whipped through campus two decades ago, and the elm population has never recovered), I spot the most likely culprit, a cardinal, red feathers brilliant amid the leafless branches of the tree (a sycamore) where he is perched. He is calling for a mate, early in the season as those things go, but in Indiana even the animals seem to operate on the theory of breed early and often. The spring-driven cardinal, mainspring winding down, slows to a halt in this particular tune and changes to a telegraph-like sound. This tune seems much more to be a pop-standard amongst cardinals, and can be heard from March until October (provided the weather is right), and after a minute or two of whistling, the avian tenor wings northward across the quad, landing in the knot of trees that screens the Golden Dome and Basilica from the rest of campus.
I have been reading more of late, but not as much as I should be (and not, honestly, what I should be--I'm still reading for enjoyment as opposed to edification and (most importantly) education.)--all the same, it is nice to feel something close to literate after so long in the woods of unliteracy (different, you understand, from illiteracy--worse in a way that the former is a choice rather than something the reader (or potential reader) has no control over.). Six Walks in Fictional Woods (by Eco) is one of those books I need to track down and devour in the way that I do with everything that brilliant Italian semiotician's writes. Just a thought, there, attached to nothing in particular. The main reading room is slowly filling with students to the clack of the keys on my keyboard. The more I type, write, create, the more students arrive--making me feel like the sorcerer's apprentice in a modern day setting. One student, the best looking of the male students, is chatting up his opposite number in the sunlit alcove that the rest of the room spins around in a half-axis, off center and yet, in its own bizarre way, still the axis-mundi of the library. They are both looking down and away from one another at points, smiling all the while--it seems almost voyeuristic of me to describe their conversation and slow verbal dance--she is playing nervously with her hair, tying it into a tight ponytail as if to tether herself to the couch, and he is talking with his hands, crafting worlds in the spaces between his palms and fingertips. They are both amazingly well dressed in that casual manner of students, her outfit costing more than what I spend in a year on clothes (though to be fair, as she can pull off the outfit, it is money well spent), and his pants shrieking of sweatshop labor that those eight-fingered six year olds should be proud of. Maybe not, though, maybe he is like other members of our generation (I must, after all, remember both my age and his), and buys clothes only from places that pay their workers adequately. They pay their workers, yes, but do they pay the cotton growers enough? How about the transporters and haulers? These are the people everyone seems to forget about who make modern commerce (all commerce, really) possible. I wonder. They stop their elegant word-dance, both, it seems, through gazes, wanting much more than words--from across the room her eyes, mixed with sunlight, are impossible deep cenotes, pools of umber. Perhaps she is Italian, from the Levant, or maybe Iberia. Her skin is that olive color that speaks of no need to really tan and yet a love of doing so. His eyes shine equally with a brilliant blue that speaks of ancestors from more northern climes: the Celtic portion of the world, perhaps, or even Denmark. He has returned to the red leather chair that will serve as his throne after smiling and nodding for what must seem like an eternity to both of them, his work sits idle on his lap as he continues to stare at her. Watching him watching her watching the world. He returns to his work, shaking his head slightly in that way males do from time to time (I think this is an exclusively male pastime) as if to clear thoughts from his brain. She gets up to talk with another student, walking towards the entrance to the reading room, away from our male subject and myself. He watches her, pen clutched in his right hand, gripped both vise-like and utterly forgotten. Her clothing betrays deliberate intention, far different from the casualness of his jeans, sneakers (Adidas), and Hensley shirt. Her boots, though, are more a nod to the weather than one often expects of students (law and otherwise), who seem to think that as long as it is sunny, one can wear sandals. It was twenty five degrees this morning, and the lined (perhaps faux-shearling, perhaps real) black leather (suede, of course) boots recall this. Both of them (the pair, recalling 'The Lovers' of tarot arcana and any number of myths) make good subjects, perhaps because their actions are predictable--we know that he will gaze longingly at her, distracted from work, and that she will pretend to ignore him for a while. Eventually, if things play out as they often do, their designer clothes will be shed and high-thread count sheets (only used when company is expected, of course) cast rumpled to the floor. That, however, is the province of writers getting paid to write about such tawdry things, not, I should say, one such as myself. Whatever their origins, intentions, and endings, the two of them provide interesting subjects. The girl who has spent the morning sleeping on the loveseat nearest me, facing the western window at my back, soaking up the sunlight at the same time her arm shields her eyes from it, has awoken from slumber and is now reading over some text or another. There is a quilted winter coat draped over her, providing a shield from the slightly cool air and random draughts that cut through the main reading room, reminders of chill morning that surrounds this island of warmth and central heating. Why students come in to sleep remains a mystery--sleeping between classes is understandable, and in fact supportable--but why one would leave the warmth and comfort of a bed for the cramped space of a loveseat is one of those things I've pondered long into the later parts of the morning. People, as always, remain eternal question marks in many of the things they do. Our heroine, leaving our hero watching, has exited the room. Our hero returns to work after shaking his head a final time, smiling in that way that one must when one forces oneself from pleasant thoughts. Two girls in equally hideous and probably quite expensive outfits gossip in the corner of the room. Our heroine returns, our hero getting up to discuss some Great Matter with her, perching on a small ledge near her. I'm certain they are discussing matters of the greatest academic importance, and smiling at the complexities of Civil Procedure. Our hero pulls a white sweater from his backpack, dons it, and, smiling once more to our heroine, walks towards the main entrance, grinning to light the room. Our heroine gathers up her books a few minutes later and exits. They are oblivious to the theatre they have created for me, a sort of private play or opera, perhaps a ballet or shadow-play, moves and tropes known down through generations, remembered in the ancestral corners of the brain--locations changing from fields and forests to villages and gradually advancing to cities knitted together with roads and wires, communication and romance possible at faster speeds and yet remaining exactly the same. Everything remains the same. Everything changes. Change is constant, change is beautiful. Everything is dynamic, yet, moves at the same rate, and so appears static. We are wonderfully charged with so much energy, static and kinetic, potentiality waiting inches below the surface. The birdsong of the morning provides background music, a screen of what should be green noise rather than white noise. White noise reminds me of the inventions of mankind, the products of Marconi and Theremin. An endless series of rumbling, squeaking buses and trolleys provide bass counterpoints to the feathered choir. A few delivery trucks serve as baritones, filling in the scale of noise. The bells provide occasional reminders that they too have things to say, things they have been saying for millennia, reminders to work and pray, to make appointments in town, to set up and close down the market in the village square, and to celebrate. Bells have rung for countless centuries in celebration of everything from birth to marriage to victories at sea. We will know that Western Civilization has fallen as soon as the last bell falls silent. That will be a sad day, and I hope that I am long gone, and pity any descendants I leave behind who live to see it. I wonder about rising sea levels, and what offspring of this generation, Generations X and Y (though X has already started breeding, and Y still sees breeding as an ironic and pointless act with all the suffering in the world--perhaps not realizing that the world has always been a place mixed with darkness and light, stillness and motion, and that breeding is just one of those things that must be done to carry on the great work of civilization) will think about when they think of the Eastern seaboard, will the beaches be the same, will the cities of New York and Boston depend on grand canals rather than grid-pattern streets? The future, I suppose, is for the future. The subtle vibration of my phone reminds me that there is a world outside the law library, and it is with amazing glee that I send a text back across the formless void to my lover, taking a break from my recording of everything that crosses my mind.
I dreamed many things last night, and perhaps these dreams should go before my previous statements and rambles, but I choose to place them here, only remembering that I should record them now.
My first dream was set right next to the main circle of Notre Dame, outside this very window, in fact--except, instead of the green and rolling expanse of quad, there was an archaeological dig, and at this dig we discovered evidence that the (Egyptian) Old Kingdom had in fact wiped out traces of a previous Caucasian kingdom existing in the area, replacing the Classical Greco-Roman images with those of Osiris, Isis, and Ra. The discoveries led to a book the excavation crew was in trying to find support for. I was barefoot in the dream, and this led to many discussions on the nature and point of shoes.
The second dream started in a post apocalyptic world where comets, spreading radiation and death in their paths to those not in shelter, ruled over a series of small kingdoms desperately holding on and hiding out in a series of castles--and into this world Steven Archer, Donna Lynch, several members of the Cruxshadows, and myself were sent to find a heroine who could defeat the comets and save one of the various kingdoms from defeat. The comets, as we found on our sojourn through the blasted wasteland, were actually alien spacecraft, and we had to hide from them on several occasions--with Mr. Archer, acting as the leader of our stalwart band, finding a way to defeat the probes that the alien-comets sent down to enslave mankind. All in all it was an awesome dream, as most dreams about Ego Likeness are. It should be mentioned that Steven Archer was riding a lion for half the trip, while the rest of us rode on horses and yaks. If I had the money, I'd commission a work of art (from Archer) based on the dream, but as it is rather difficult to describe ['Dear Steven Archer...please paint a picture featuring yourself riding on a lion, defeating comet-using aliens, while the Cruxshadows (sans Rogue), Donna Lynch, and myself look on from the shelter provided by various pieces of furniture in a post apocalyptic world. Also, throw in a few castles here and there, and maybe give yourself a breastplate and an axe.]--yeah, that would go over well. All the same, when I have money (see, I'm being positive there and saying 'when' instead of the more honest 'if'), I will try to commission said painting.
There were also other dreams, baser and more standard, but those...are to be expected, lovely as they are, describing them is rather difficult.
It is eleven thirty three, and I realize that I have not heard the eleven thirty bell. Perhaps I am going mad, perhaps I am simply wrapped up in writing--writing about dreams of Ego Likeness defeating aliens (robot aliens, of course) and riding lions is pretty awesome. Maybe I'll scratch the idea of a painting and just commission a mural or piece that would take up an entire ceiling. I think I am going to shift seats, over to one in the sunlight. It seems like a nice place to sit, and the change of viewpoint--although the chair faces the same way, it is about seven feet to my right, by the south facing windows that overlook the arch under the commons area of the law school. The arch is wide enough for six tuba players to walk abreast when the band and Irish Guard process into the stadium on game days.
This new seat deprives me of a view of the main circle--I'm not sure how I feel about that--but allows me to watch the students outside with much greater ease. Writing about those students, though, is more difficult than observing the students within the law school, as the latter group is closer to my cloth-padded observation post, and often lingers near enough to it (as with our hero and heroine) that I can write about them at my leisure. And all I have, while I am here, is my leisure. The sunlight feels nice, but the glare on my glasses (I am forcing myself to wear glasses as not to strain my eyes when I stare into that middle distance so often filled with students who unknowingly become subjects) is slightly distracting. I liked my previous seat better, but if loveseat-sleeping (now studying) girl notices me moving about too much, I imagine she will start to wonder (if she hasn't already). The flow of students in sweatshirts blazoned with the University logo (I actually wish I owned such a sweatshirt, as there are times when I simply want to blend, and my wardrobe prohibits me from doing so), North Face jackets, jeans, trousers, sneakers, flip-flops, and Uggs goes from a river of humanity to a slow and steady drip in the course of a few minutes--all those going to class are in class, all those free of class are elsewhere, aside from the few students going from place to place--maybe running late, maybe running down the clock until their next class begins, maybe simply running from themselves. I watch as the sidewalks below and to the right of me are free of students for ten seconds. Lacking a watch, I count the seconds in my head, noticing a squirrel, the boldest creature in the campus bestiary that includes rabbits, chipmunks, cats, ducks, dogs, crows, hawks, and deer when the weather is right. Finding deer tracks in the snow always gives me a certain glee that stems from mornings spent in the woods with my father and Sadie, the Old English Sheepdog with whom I learned to walk by clutching her fur. I still refer to such dogs, in my head, anyway, as Sadie-dogs. The dog was a four-legged Chewbacca, and I cannot think of her without smiling. If I write any more about dogs, I will start sobbing openly. And while I have no problem doing this, it might disturb some of the students, so I will move to the activity of describing those students instead. One student, definitely trying both to be a hipster and a law student, walks through in flannel, jeans, horn-rimmed glasses, and sporting beard which is trimmed in such a way to give it that uncared for look--cultivating a look of disinterest always requires more work than actual disinterest. This seat is heated unpleasantly by the sun, and as such I am going to return to the seat where my viewing station (observation post, ivory tower, whatever) normally is. First, however, I'm going to go off in search of fresh water--keeping to the 'Hydrate or Die' maxim from my days and nights hiking with the Boy Scouts in New Mexico. More on that in a minute.
I return with fresh water, ultimately from the aquifer beneath campus. I need to start bringing in a metal water bottle rather than relying constantly on the stream of amazingly wasteful plastic bottles that I have used for the greater part of my time working in the library. I have moved to my standard seat, and turned it into an island of me in a massive sea of not-me. The girl on the loveseat seems like a most unlikely law student. I suppose everyone is most unlikely simply by existence. I'm butchering a quote by someone quite famous when I say that. I want to say Wilde, but it might be someone a few centuries before or after that great Irish genius. The flow of students to and from the main commons area makes me think of the scone from Starbucks I have waiting in my bag for lunch. Deb materialized with it at ten minutes to nine this morning--and even though such purchases help support an evil empire, they are quite delicious. The bells must be silent for some reason today, as I have not heard them ring once (despite mentioning them earlier--I simply assumed I was not paying attention to them--noon and half past noon have gone by and they have remained unrung)--perhaps because it is Lent. As a pagan with Buddhist and Sufi tendencies, I forget the religious seasons which I don't actively participate or believe in. Hipster student is back, clutching his Mac laptop in one hand (open, running something or other while he walks, foolish) and a vitamin water (mostly sugar and dye, little in the way of vitamins according to the FDA) in the other. The urge to punch him in the face is rather strong, just like the urge to punch aggressive straight-edgers. Tights, despite what college fashion says, are not pants. That this needs to be mentioned at all should say something about the state of decay in which Western society finds itself. Western Civilization has always been uncivil in the strangest of ways. All civilizations have been, I should not single out the West--it is simply the one which I have studied for the longest period of time and thus feel the least uncomfortable writing about. There is a point, in the study of anything, when you realize just how little you know about the subject you are studying. There are two things you can do: panic or keep studying, now aware of your ignorance, but also knowing that it is vincible ignorance, and can be overcome, in part, by more studying.
More students fill the edges of the room, occupying the red and tan chairs and producing laptops of their own on which to study, read, create, and otherwise fashion what I can only imagine are all sorts of ideas. People, if you haven't guessed already, fascinate me, and I think I am going to start people watching at the Chicory again now that it is relatively warm out and the winter snows have hopefully had their last attempt to blanket the world in ice and cold. A couple, both in skinny jeans, walks through the room, the long red hair of the girl catching my eye and reminding me of the Little Mermaid--it is hilariously Little Mermaid hair. I scan the room for a talking crab with a Jamaican accent. All the same, I am actually excited about going down to the Chicory this Friday to write for an hour or two before the standard lunch and game of theoretical chess that takes up a bit of the afternoon. It is twelve fifty, and I am going to break for lunch.
Tah for the moment.
It is one twenty. Ariel and her white sweatering wearing crab substitute flutter back through the library. Another tights-as-pants girl walks through the library--having the audacity to wear these non-pants with white uggs (the uggs and her hideous sweater match in a strange way). I spent my break eating delicious bread from the Irish Cafe and enjoying the literary talent of Robert Wright's Nonzero, a study of cultural evolution that manages to be both sweeping, pointed, and amazingly readable. Usually books only manage one or two of those things, and to net all three--in the worlds of academic writing, the big three--is quite the accomplishment. Walking to lunch, I noticed two girls sitting in chairs on either side of a table--that in and of itself is not something very strange, however, that they were each texting and laughing (rather than conversing, as you'd think two people seated facing one another with about three feet of distance in between them might do) stood out. I'd use that as a jumping off point for a rant about the decline of communication in society, but what I should say is not that communicaiton declines, but that it changes. Oral history, great epics, were a part of human life for what can only be described as countless thousands of years. Now, however, much of that is lost--people don't, as I've heard someone say, talk like they used to. People still talk, and always will, but languages are wiped out every day, and with those languages, culture is lost, a way of life is lost--a way of speaking, of expression. Think about that for a moment. Think about all the songs you know. Now think about the day when no one will remember them, when no one will sing them because they cannot understand the way they are preserved, or perhaps because someone, somewhere along the line, has simply forgotten to preserve them. Kind of terrifying, isn't it? Linguistic extinction is something that needs to be dealt with--there are languages in the Andam Islands, languages that might be as close as we have to an Ur-Language, a proto-tongue, that are being ground under by bureaucracies, ignorance, and habitat destruction. These things need to be stopped, and need to be stopped rigt now. How do you stop what some call progress? When you find an answer, do let me know.
There is a chocolate chip cookie sitting on the table in front of me, and it has been staring at me since I pulled it out of my bag a few minutes ago. I imagine it will stop staring at me soon enough, or if it will stare, I will not be able to see it. The human body is one of those things (along with, I suppose, everything) that absolutely fascinates me. The wonderful complexity, and the realization that every living thing around us is this complex is simply amazing, really fucking amazing. And that they now have all sorts of chemicals and creations that can alter the way that body functions, make it 'better' in ways that generations before us would have thought possible only after drinking the water at some holy well (some of those wells, it has been proven, contain lithium, something that makes you feel totally awesome and improves your mood substantially) is almost beyond belief. Science is only magic that we have put a name to. Then again, magic is, in some sense, a science of itself, often focused with using the true name of everything. Finding and controlling the true name of a thing gives you power over that things. We know the name of the atom, and we have harnessed its power to do great and terrible things in our name. We have become Death, Destroyer of Worlds. And yet we are wonderful, and yet we are beautiful.
That is all for now.
Tah.
I found these links, and thought you (yes, you) should see them.
http://jezebel.com/#!5786233/farmer-claims-sheep-gave-birth-to-a-dog
http://www.visualnews.com/2011/01/24/the-sound-of-awkward-album-covers-of-regret/
http://ghiblicon.blogspot.com/2008/03/mononoke-hime-1980-original-miyazaki.html
--
Notre Dame has its own Wind Up Bird. Its whistle reminds me of a corkscrew. Not of the act of uncorking a bottle, mind you, but of the shape of the screw. It is curved, sinuous in chrome, and comes to an altogether shocking point. The bird carries this tune for several minutes while I contemplate its song. Scanning the pines and few surviving elms (a wave of Dutch Elm Disease whipped through campus two decades ago, and the elm population has never recovered), I spot the most likely culprit, a cardinal, red feathers brilliant amid the leafless branches of the tree (a sycamore) where he is perched. He is calling for a mate, early in the season as those things go, but in Indiana even the animals seem to operate on the theory of breed early and often. The spring-driven cardinal, mainspring winding down, slows to a halt in this particular tune and changes to a telegraph-like sound. This tune seems much more to be a pop-standard amongst cardinals, and can be heard from March until October (provided the weather is right), and after a minute or two of whistling, the avian tenor wings northward across the quad, landing in the knot of trees that screens the Golden Dome and Basilica from the rest of campus.
I have been reading more of late, but not as much as I should be (and not, honestly, what I should be--I'm still reading for enjoyment as opposed to edification and (most importantly) education.)--all the same, it is nice to feel something close to literate after so long in the woods of unliteracy (different, you understand, from illiteracy--worse in a way that the former is a choice rather than something the reader (or potential reader) has no control over.). Six Walks in Fictional Woods (by Eco) is one of those books I need to track down and devour in the way that I do with everything that brilliant Italian semiotician's writes. Just a thought, there, attached to nothing in particular. The main reading room is slowly filling with students to the clack of the keys on my keyboard. The more I type, write, create, the more students arrive--making me feel like the sorcerer's apprentice in a modern day setting. One student, the best looking of the male students, is chatting up his opposite number in the sunlit alcove that the rest of the room spins around in a half-axis, off center and yet, in its own bizarre way, still the axis-mundi of the library. They are both looking down and away from one another at points, smiling all the while--it seems almost voyeuristic of me to describe their conversation and slow verbal dance--she is playing nervously with her hair, tying it into a tight ponytail as if to tether herself to the couch, and he is talking with his hands, crafting worlds in the spaces between his palms and fingertips. They are both amazingly well dressed in that casual manner of students, her outfit costing more than what I spend in a year on clothes (though to be fair, as she can pull off the outfit, it is money well spent), and his pants shrieking of sweatshop labor that those eight-fingered six year olds should be proud of. Maybe not, though, maybe he is like other members of our generation (I must, after all, remember both my age and his), and buys clothes only from places that pay their workers adequately. They pay their workers, yes, but do they pay the cotton growers enough? How about the transporters and haulers? These are the people everyone seems to forget about who make modern commerce (all commerce, really) possible. I wonder. They stop their elegant word-dance, both, it seems, through gazes, wanting much more than words--from across the room her eyes, mixed with sunlight, are impossible deep cenotes, pools of umber. Perhaps she is Italian, from the Levant, or maybe Iberia. Her skin is that olive color that speaks of no need to really tan and yet a love of doing so. His eyes shine equally with a brilliant blue that speaks of ancestors from more northern climes: the Celtic portion of the world, perhaps, or even Denmark. He has returned to the red leather chair that will serve as his throne after smiling and nodding for what must seem like an eternity to both of them, his work sits idle on his lap as he continues to stare at her. Watching him watching her watching the world. He returns to his work, shaking his head slightly in that way males do from time to time (I think this is an exclusively male pastime) as if to clear thoughts from his brain. She gets up to talk with another student, walking towards the entrance to the reading room, away from our male subject and myself. He watches her, pen clutched in his right hand, gripped both vise-like and utterly forgotten. Her clothing betrays deliberate intention, far different from the casualness of his jeans, sneakers (Adidas), and Hensley shirt. Her boots, though, are more a nod to the weather than one often expects of students (law and otherwise), who seem to think that as long as it is sunny, one can wear sandals. It was twenty five degrees this morning, and the lined (perhaps faux-shearling, perhaps real) black leather (suede, of course) boots recall this. Both of them (the pair, recalling 'The Lovers' of tarot arcana and any number of myths) make good subjects, perhaps because their actions are predictable--we know that he will gaze longingly at her, distracted from work, and that she will pretend to ignore him for a while. Eventually, if things play out as they often do, their designer clothes will be shed and high-thread count sheets (only used when company is expected, of course) cast rumpled to the floor. That, however, is the province of writers getting paid to write about such tawdry things, not, I should say, one such as myself. Whatever their origins, intentions, and endings, the two of them provide interesting subjects. The girl who has spent the morning sleeping on the loveseat nearest me, facing the western window at my back, soaking up the sunlight at the same time her arm shields her eyes from it, has awoken from slumber and is now reading over some text or another. There is a quilted winter coat draped over her, providing a shield from the slightly cool air and random draughts that cut through the main reading room, reminders of chill morning that surrounds this island of warmth and central heating. Why students come in to sleep remains a mystery--sleeping between classes is understandable, and in fact supportable--but why one would leave the warmth and comfort of a bed for the cramped space of a loveseat is one of those things I've pondered long into the later parts of the morning. People, as always, remain eternal question marks in many of the things they do. Our heroine, leaving our hero watching, has exited the room. Our hero returns to work after shaking his head a final time, smiling in that way that one must when one forces oneself from pleasant thoughts. Two girls in equally hideous and probably quite expensive outfits gossip in the corner of the room. Our heroine returns, our hero getting up to discuss some Great Matter with her, perching on a small ledge near her. I'm certain they are discussing matters of the greatest academic importance, and smiling at the complexities of Civil Procedure. Our hero pulls a white sweater from his backpack, dons it, and, smiling once more to our heroine, walks towards the main entrance, grinning to light the room. Our heroine gathers up her books a few minutes later and exits. They are oblivious to the theatre they have created for me, a sort of private play or opera, perhaps a ballet or shadow-play, moves and tropes known down through generations, remembered in the ancestral corners of the brain--locations changing from fields and forests to villages and gradually advancing to cities knitted together with roads and wires, communication and romance possible at faster speeds and yet remaining exactly the same. Everything remains the same. Everything changes. Change is constant, change is beautiful. Everything is dynamic, yet, moves at the same rate, and so appears static. We are wonderfully charged with so much energy, static and kinetic, potentiality waiting inches below the surface. The birdsong of the morning provides background music, a screen of what should be green noise rather than white noise. White noise reminds me of the inventions of mankind, the products of Marconi and Theremin. An endless series of rumbling, squeaking buses and trolleys provide bass counterpoints to the feathered choir. A few delivery trucks serve as baritones, filling in the scale of noise. The bells provide occasional reminders that they too have things to say, things they have been saying for millennia, reminders to work and pray, to make appointments in town, to set up and close down the market in the village square, and to celebrate. Bells have rung for countless centuries in celebration of everything from birth to marriage to victories at sea. We will know that Western Civilization has fallen as soon as the last bell falls silent. That will be a sad day, and I hope that I am long gone, and pity any descendants I leave behind who live to see it. I wonder about rising sea levels, and what offspring of this generation, Generations X and Y (though X has already started breeding, and Y still sees breeding as an ironic and pointless act with all the suffering in the world--perhaps not realizing that the world has always been a place mixed with darkness and light, stillness and motion, and that breeding is just one of those things that must be done to carry on the great work of civilization) will think about when they think of the Eastern seaboard, will the beaches be the same, will the cities of New York and Boston depend on grand canals rather than grid-pattern streets? The future, I suppose, is for the future. The subtle vibration of my phone reminds me that there is a world outside the law library, and it is with amazing glee that I send a text back across the formless void to my lover, taking a break from my recording of everything that crosses my mind.
I dreamed many things last night, and perhaps these dreams should go before my previous statements and rambles, but I choose to place them here, only remembering that I should record them now.
My first dream was set right next to the main circle of Notre Dame, outside this very window, in fact--except, instead of the green and rolling expanse of quad, there was an archaeological dig, and at this dig we discovered evidence that the (Egyptian) Old Kingdom had in fact wiped out traces of a previous Caucasian kingdom existing in the area, replacing the Classical Greco-Roman images with those of Osiris, Isis, and Ra. The discoveries led to a book the excavation crew was in trying to find support for. I was barefoot in the dream, and this led to many discussions on the nature and point of shoes.
The second dream started in a post apocalyptic world where comets, spreading radiation and death in their paths to those not in shelter, ruled over a series of small kingdoms desperately holding on and hiding out in a series of castles--and into this world Steven Archer, Donna Lynch, several members of the Cruxshadows, and myself were sent to find a heroine who could defeat the comets and save one of the various kingdoms from defeat. The comets, as we found on our sojourn through the blasted wasteland, were actually alien spacecraft, and we had to hide from them on several occasions--with Mr. Archer, acting as the leader of our stalwart band, finding a way to defeat the probes that the alien-comets sent down to enslave mankind. All in all it was an awesome dream, as most dreams about Ego Likeness are. It should be mentioned that Steven Archer was riding a lion for half the trip, while the rest of us rode on horses and yaks. If I had the money, I'd commission a work of art (from Archer) based on the dream, but as it is rather difficult to describe ['Dear Steven Archer...please paint a picture featuring yourself riding on a lion, defeating comet-using aliens, while the Cruxshadows (sans Rogue), Donna Lynch, and myself look on from the shelter provided by various pieces of furniture in a post apocalyptic world. Also, throw in a few castles here and there, and maybe give yourself a breastplate and an axe.]--yeah, that would go over well. All the same, when I have money (see, I'm being positive there and saying 'when' instead of the more honest 'if'), I will try to commission said painting.
There were also other dreams, baser and more standard, but those...are to be expected, lovely as they are, describing them is rather difficult.
It is eleven thirty three, and I realize that I have not heard the eleven thirty bell. Perhaps I am going mad, perhaps I am simply wrapped up in writing--writing about dreams of Ego Likeness defeating aliens (robot aliens, of course) and riding lions is pretty awesome. Maybe I'll scratch the idea of a painting and just commission a mural or piece that would take up an entire ceiling. I think I am going to shift seats, over to one in the sunlight. It seems like a nice place to sit, and the change of viewpoint--although the chair faces the same way, it is about seven feet to my right, by the south facing windows that overlook the arch under the commons area of the law school. The arch is wide enough for six tuba players to walk abreast when the band and Irish Guard process into the stadium on game days.
This new seat deprives me of a view of the main circle--I'm not sure how I feel about that--but allows me to watch the students outside with much greater ease. Writing about those students, though, is more difficult than observing the students within the law school, as the latter group is closer to my cloth-padded observation post, and often lingers near enough to it (as with our hero and heroine) that I can write about them at my leisure. And all I have, while I am here, is my leisure. The sunlight feels nice, but the glare on my glasses (I am forcing myself to wear glasses as not to strain my eyes when I stare into that middle distance so often filled with students who unknowingly become subjects) is slightly distracting. I liked my previous seat better, but if loveseat-sleeping (now studying) girl notices me moving about too much, I imagine she will start to wonder (if she hasn't already). The flow of students in sweatshirts blazoned with the University logo (I actually wish I owned such a sweatshirt, as there are times when I simply want to blend, and my wardrobe prohibits me from doing so), North Face jackets, jeans, trousers, sneakers, flip-flops, and Uggs goes from a river of humanity to a slow and steady drip in the course of a few minutes--all those going to class are in class, all those free of class are elsewhere, aside from the few students going from place to place--maybe running late, maybe running down the clock until their next class begins, maybe simply running from themselves. I watch as the sidewalks below and to the right of me are free of students for ten seconds. Lacking a watch, I count the seconds in my head, noticing a squirrel, the boldest creature in the campus bestiary that includes rabbits, chipmunks, cats, ducks, dogs, crows, hawks, and deer when the weather is right. Finding deer tracks in the snow always gives me a certain glee that stems from mornings spent in the woods with my father and Sadie, the Old English Sheepdog with whom I learned to walk by clutching her fur. I still refer to such dogs, in my head, anyway, as Sadie-dogs. The dog was a four-legged Chewbacca, and I cannot think of her without smiling. If I write any more about dogs, I will start sobbing openly. And while I have no problem doing this, it might disturb some of the students, so I will move to the activity of describing those students instead. One student, definitely trying both to be a hipster and a law student, walks through in flannel, jeans, horn-rimmed glasses, and sporting beard which is trimmed in such a way to give it that uncared for look--cultivating a look of disinterest always requires more work than actual disinterest. This seat is heated unpleasantly by the sun, and as such I am going to return to the seat where my viewing station (observation post, ivory tower, whatever) normally is. First, however, I'm going to go off in search of fresh water--keeping to the 'Hydrate or Die' maxim from my days and nights hiking with the Boy Scouts in New Mexico. More on that in a minute.
I return with fresh water, ultimately from the aquifer beneath campus. I need to start bringing in a metal water bottle rather than relying constantly on the stream of amazingly wasteful plastic bottles that I have used for the greater part of my time working in the library. I have moved to my standard seat, and turned it into an island of me in a massive sea of not-me. The girl on the loveseat seems like a most unlikely law student. I suppose everyone is most unlikely simply by existence. I'm butchering a quote by someone quite famous when I say that. I want to say Wilde, but it might be someone a few centuries before or after that great Irish genius. The flow of students to and from the main commons area makes me think of the scone from Starbucks I have waiting in my bag for lunch. Deb materialized with it at ten minutes to nine this morning--and even though such purchases help support an evil empire, they are quite delicious. The bells must be silent for some reason today, as I have not heard them ring once (despite mentioning them earlier--I simply assumed I was not paying attention to them--noon and half past noon have gone by and they have remained unrung)--perhaps because it is Lent. As a pagan with Buddhist and Sufi tendencies, I forget the religious seasons which I don't actively participate or believe in. Hipster student is back, clutching his Mac laptop in one hand (open, running something or other while he walks, foolish) and a vitamin water (mostly sugar and dye, little in the way of vitamins according to the FDA) in the other. The urge to punch him in the face is rather strong, just like the urge to punch aggressive straight-edgers. Tights, despite what college fashion says, are not pants. That this needs to be mentioned at all should say something about the state of decay in which Western society finds itself. Western Civilization has always been uncivil in the strangest of ways. All civilizations have been, I should not single out the West--it is simply the one which I have studied for the longest period of time and thus feel the least uncomfortable writing about. There is a point, in the study of anything, when you realize just how little you know about the subject you are studying. There are two things you can do: panic or keep studying, now aware of your ignorance, but also knowing that it is vincible ignorance, and can be overcome, in part, by more studying.
More students fill the edges of the room, occupying the red and tan chairs and producing laptops of their own on which to study, read, create, and otherwise fashion what I can only imagine are all sorts of ideas. People, if you haven't guessed already, fascinate me, and I think I am going to start people watching at the Chicory again now that it is relatively warm out and the winter snows have hopefully had their last attempt to blanket the world in ice and cold. A couple, both in skinny jeans, walks through the room, the long red hair of the girl catching my eye and reminding me of the Little Mermaid--it is hilariously Little Mermaid hair. I scan the room for a talking crab with a Jamaican accent. All the same, I am actually excited about going down to the Chicory this Friday to write for an hour or two before the standard lunch and game of theoretical chess that takes up a bit of the afternoon. It is twelve fifty, and I am going to break for lunch.
Tah for the moment.
It is one twenty. Ariel and her white sweatering wearing crab substitute flutter back through the library. Another tights-as-pants girl walks through the library--having the audacity to wear these non-pants with white uggs (the uggs and her hideous sweater match in a strange way). I spent my break eating delicious bread from the Irish Cafe and enjoying the literary talent of Robert Wright's Nonzero, a study of cultural evolution that manages to be both sweeping, pointed, and amazingly readable. Usually books only manage one or two of those things, and to net all three--in the worlds of academic writing, the big three--is quite the accomplishment. Walking to lunch, I noticed two girls sitting in chairs on either side of a table--that in and of itself is not something very strange, however, that they were each texting and laughing (rather than conversing, as you'd think two people seated facing one another with about three feet of distance in between them might do) stood out. I'd use that as a jumping off point for a rant about the decline of communication in society, but what I should say is not that communicaiton declines, but that it changes. Oral history, great epics, were a part of human life for what can only be described as countless thousands of years. Now, however, much of that is lost--people don't, as I've heard someone say, talk like they used to. People still talk, and always will, but languages are wiped out every day, and with those languages, culture is lost, a way of life is lost--a way of speaking, of expression. Think about that for a moment. Think about all the songs you know. Now think about the day when no one will remember them, when no one will sing them because they cannot understand the way they are preserved, or perhaps because someone, somewhere along the line, has simply forgotten to preserve them. Kind of terrifying, isn't it? Linguistic extinction is something that needs to be dealt with--there are languages in the Andam Islands, languages that might be as close as we have to an Ur-Language, a proto-tongue, that are being ground under by bureaucracies, ignorance, and habitat destruction. These things need to be stopped, and need to be stopped rigt now. How do you stop what some call progress? When you find an answer, do let me know.
There is a chocolate chip cookie sitting on the table in front of me, and it has been staring at me since I pulled it out of my bag a few minutes ago. I imagine it will stop staring at me soon enough, or if it will stare, I will not be able to see it. The human body is one of those things (along with, I suppose, everything) that absolutely fascinates me. The wonderful complexity, and the realization that every living thing around us is this complex is simply amazing, really fucking amazing. And that they now have all sorts of chemicals and creations that can alter the way that body functions, make it 'better' in ways that generations before us would have thought possible only after drinking the water at some holy well (some of those wells, it has been proven, contain lithium, something that makes you feel totally awesome and improves your mood substantially) is almost beyond belief. Science is only magic that we have put a name to. Then again, magic is, in some sense, a science of itself, often focused with using the true name of everything. Finding and controlling the true name of a thing gives you power over that things. We know the name of the atom, and we have harnessed its power to do great and terrible things in our name. We have become Death, Destroyer of Worlds. And yet we are wonderful, and yet we are beautiful.
That is all for now.
Tah.
I found these links, and thought you (yes, you) should see them.
http://jezebel.com/#!5786233/farmer-claims-sheep-gave-birth-to-a-dog
http://www.visualnews.com/2011/01/24/the-sound-of-awkward-album-covers-of-regret/
http://ghiblicon.blogspot.com/2008/03/mononoke-hime-1980-original-miyazaki.html
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