Good byes

To say that I hate saying “Good-bye” would be to oversimplify and obfuscate the whole thing. I like my social relationships clear. If we were randomly paired to be partners on some project, I want that to be out in the open. If we are merely co-workers, I hope we both realize it. If we are friends, I need to know, so I have an idea of what is appropriate and what is not. Can I give you a call out of the blue, for no purpose? The nature of our relationship needs to be clear otherwise something as simple as this drives me insane.

In the same way, I want the same clearness to be present in my time with others. I need to know when we are saying “Hey” just in passing and when it is meant to lead to further discussion or whatever (which is where my hatred for the phrase “What’s up?” comes from). The same goes for “Good-bye.” When one says “Good-bye,” they are released from the other person or group. The conversation and time together is over. Most of the time, this really is not a big deal, like when you see the person frequently, but it can get so much more difficult when it is a big deal “Good-bye.” These are not the “I’ll see you soon” “Good –byes,” these are the “I’ll see you in a few months” “Good-byes.” The kind you say before taking off for college or before going on summer break. When you say one of those, you are prepared to not see the person again for a long bleeding time. If I deliver one of those and then see the person again before one of us takes off, it just puts me into a tizzy. What am I supposed to say? Did not we just say everything that needed to be said a little while ago? So, more-often-than-not, I end up not saying “Good-bye” until I am literally walking to the car, plane, train, whatever, and I inevitably miss people in the process. Bummer and sorry to everyone who has ever been slighted by me like this.

It’s not that I hate “Good-bye.” “Good-bye” merely signifies a change, be it good or be it bad. It’s just complicated.

Geez, I stress a lot over something that ought to be so much more simple.

The End of Freshman Year

My grandparents came to pick me up from college a few days ago. Awfully decent of them when you consider that they made the 1500 mile trip in 20 hours of driving over two days. When they finally made it to campus on Monday afternoon, I was all over them as soon they got out of their car, hugging them, glad to see them. My parents had called two days earlier and suggested rather strongly that I take them walking all over the place, so they could stretch out a little and release their cramps. I was more than happy to comply. The first night, I gave them the walking tour of campus and took them to the off-campus gym where I practice kendo. The second night, we went downtown to eat and checked out the waterfall from all angles at multiple points along its path.

When I wasn’t with them or enjoying my last nights with my friends, I was thinking, reflecting. My first year of college was coming to an end. It was finals week and my grandparents weren’t there to hang out but to take me back to my hometown. Except for a few brief stretches, mostly around the time of Ann’s death, if you had asked me how I was enjoying college, as more than a few people did, I would answer that I was ‘mildly euphoric.’ In no way did I regret my choice in colleges. The people, the classes, the area; I enjoyed them all. Playing “Madden” and later “Fight Night” with my suitemates, roof hopping in winter, conversations that went until two in the morning, asking a girl out for the first time; there are so many memories that I never want to slip away.

Sure, there are things I wish hadn’t happened and things I’m disappointed didn’t happen, but I can still live with myself and know that I am capable of feeling feelings that I thought I had killed off.

Were I motivated solely by self-interest, I don’t see how my year at college could be seen as less than a success. I am a better person now than I was coming into it all. I am more comfortable in social situations and have learned to think better as I came against viewpoints that weren’t my own. I have been pushed like I ne’er was before in my classes and feel that, if I didn’t succeed, I certainly didn’t fall apart. At the beginning of the year, I was worried about how I’d deal with being away from my parents and their influence, but I think that I proved to myself that I can do better than muddle through without them. College has been a developmental time too.

Something else to consider too. My grandparents arriving on campus mark an intrusion of sorts, an intrusion into my college life. Not that is was such a big intrusion. They weren’t on campus long and didn’t have the opportunity to speak much with my friends. To a certain point, I expect most people experience this duality of lives between college and family. In my case, it’s a bit more clear, something that arises when you choose to go to a college so far from where you were raised. My friends at college and my friends from high school do not know each other. Except for a single instant messenger conversation, no one in one of these groups knows the members of the other. If I talk about my experiences with one to the other, they have to depend entirely on me. They lack the interaction to add their own thoughts in at all. My hometown and college lives are entirely separate. I don’t think I’m different in them, but the problem remains that they don’t connect. It kind of depresses me. It was my decision, though, and I’ll have to deal with it.

But it’s over now. I’m with my grandparents, driving back. People would ask me if I’m sad to be going back to my hometown. I answer, “It’s what happens. There are things I’m looking forward to and things I’ll miss.” The important thing it seems to me as I sit here is that I never let my experiences go. They happened to me and have meaning. They must never be lost.

Two days of driving

This is what happens when you spend over twenty hours in the backseat of your grandparents’ Jetta on the way back home after college gets out for the summer. Mounds and pounds and loads and piles and bunches of writing. Expect, for the next few days, nothing but posts composed during the long drive back.

Swearing, Cursing, Cussing, Naughty Words

You know what? On LiveJournal, my friends write their thoughts on the end of our first year at college. Events they never want to forget, how they have grown and matured and become better people. Whatever. Here, on Blogger, I write my thoughts on swearing. Actually, I'll undoubtedly end up posting my on reflection. I just need to sort out my ideas a little more first. On to swearing!

Just like drinking, I don't swear. Even in the fifth and sixth grades, when swearing and cursing were acts of petty rebellion, I never used certain words, or I did until I learned that they were curses. Then I stopped saying them. Back then, it was like littering to me. I simply could not force myself to say a number of four-letter words. Perhaps it was the result of being terribly afraid of what my parents would do if they heard me swear, though I heard them do so on more than one occasion. For whatever reason though, the point remains that I didn't swear. Instead, I picked up a number of proxies. Among them were such gems as 'darn,' 'heck,' 'geez' and 'freak.' After watching Monty Python and the Holy Grail, 'bugger' and 'bloody' were added to my repetoire, even after being informed that they were considered curses by our friends across the pond. They just sounded funny to me.

Even now, in college, I still don't swear, though this statement requires a bit of clarification as my own understanding and perception of language has changed. First of all, when you read the classics like Dante's Inferno and Milton Paradise Lost, you learn to say certain words, mostly 'damn' and 'hell,' if you do not want to be thought of as the greatest prude ever. Great, so there are now I few words commonly considered curses that I can now say. The story gets better.

Well, I happen to have a passing interest in linguistics and communications and came across this whole theory of semiotics and the whole separation of things into 'signifier' and 'signified' and the primacy of context in understanding most anything at some point.' This caused me to reconsider my views on swearing. Why are 'damn' and 'hell' considered curses? Because they are, respectively, the worst thing thing we could wish upon a person and the worst place in existence. Do you really wish these things when you use them towards friends? No, their use towards people you are close to typically is sarcasm and exaggeration. As long as everyone is clear on the intent and use, there is no harm. On the other hand, when we are in a passion and sincerely wish these things upon a person, even if we use some proxy word, our intent is radically different. How can 'darn' in the context of a yelling match not be considered a curse when the intent is there?

Just my thoughts, though I still refrain from using most curses. I figure my intent will be very clear when I end up using them in earnest.

Project Gutenberg

Everyone get up out of their seats and applaud for the latest addition to 'must see,' Project Gutenberg. It is an awesome site that provides classic works whose copyrights have run out for free, as in no fee for downloading. It's beautiful. Scoff at those chain bookstores that try and get you to pay for your copy of The Communist Manifesto. Fight capitalism! If you happen to disagree with me on this point and believe that buying into our current economic system is a good idea, you can still appreciate the stellar variety of titles and authors on Project Gutenberg. Just checking the Top 100 EBooks Yesterday, and I'm finding everything from Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice to the Kamasutra to Les Miserables. All of this and the site is very easy to navigate, lacking the hordes of advertisements that so many other sites that offer free things prefer.

As with all seemingly beautiful things, there are negative aspects present as well. First of all, you'll likely have to do more than a little formatting yourself. Many texts are available solely in plain text format which is a pain to look at. I guess this could turn into a positive though as you can make the text size and font perfectly suited for your own predilections. Just takes a little effort. Also, as much as I'm a fan of not paying for things, it's still hard to read things on a computer screen. Where's the romance in cuddling up on your sofa on a winter weekend with your computer? Also, the collection is far from complete and some foreign texts lack an English translation so this is not something to put your complete faith in if you are some struggling college student. There are enough heavy hitters, though, to satisfy anyone looking to prove how erudite they are on a shoestring.

Check it out and enjoy.

Favorite films

Tell me, how do you reconcile it when your two favorite movies are The Princess Bride and Fight Club? On the one hand, I have "Not just your basic, average, everyday, ordinary, run-of-the-mill, ho-hum fairy tale" and in the other am maintaining a firm grip on "Mischief. Mayhem. Soap." a wonderful family movie and a movie that contains two of the most disturbing, intense scenes in cinematic history. Sounds like a challenge, to figure out what can make me appreciate them both at the same time. Also, I would like to point out that for a long time, I considered The Girl Next Door my third favorite movie. After considering for a while, I have come to the decision that, though it is a fine movie, a great deal of my appreciation for it comes from the fact I had about zero hope that I would like it. Thus, it is further down on my list of all-time great and no longer deserves to be considered against these other movies. Would have made the mix all the more interesting though.

As far as common threads go, I can only see two. The frequent use of humor, darker, of course, in Fight Club, and the self-awareness these movies demonstrate. Over and over again, they blatantly demonstrate that they know that they are movies, The Princess Bride through the grandson's interruptions and in a multitude of ways in Fight Club, the 'cigarette burns,' the porn splices and the 'flashback humor' line among others. At all times, these movies hold their viewers at arm's length, constantly reminding them that these are movies, the stories of a few people, not the world. If you find the values they extol worthy, adopt them as your own. Otherwise, do not.

As I think about it more, I think I find a third thread, one that appeals to my sense of idealism. The characters in these movies, as cool as they are, are cariactures, exaggerations. They are ideals. The most beautiful woman, the greatest swordsman, the strongest man, an insane, successful revolutionary group. It is impossible for us to achieve these levels, but trying, even though failure is almost a given, to become them makes me happy all over. These are not movies about life. They are movies about the way life could be.

There it is then. Once and for all, I have resolved how I can hold both of these movies in such high esteem at the same time.

Protests

In high school, I guess I could be considered pretty liberal. It's not that I really did anything different like follow Buddhism or become a vegetarian, but I guess my ideas were fairly out there for small town Minnesota. I didn't really care about getting my driver's license and didn't go hunting and supported communism for the longest time. Anyway, I developed some sort of complex as a result of all this, one that made me reject most all ideas that I saw mainstream. I wanted to go around protesting, if I could have found anyone to come with me or if I could think of anything worth protesting. Vive la revolution. That was me, in thought if not in action.

Then I go to college and things change. Things resembling protests and civil disobedience go on around me, and I don't participate. I'm sure there are other reasons I don't join in (things I'd rather do and such), but I've thought about protests more now that they're actually present. This is the philosophy that has arisen from my contemplation. There is an essential problem with protests. You are admitting that you have no power to affect a change yourself and are asking others to do it. Screw that. If you want to make a change, you take responsibility and do it yourself. You don't ask for permission first. If that particular action is illegal, you get yourself into a position to make it legal.

Like most all of my philosophies, this one has problems. What if you want to stop something that is wrong and occurs outside of your being? Say racism or sweatshop labor? Fine, you can respect your fellows based on their virtue and treat everyone who works for you fairly, but that is not helping in other situations. What do you do then? The best I can come up with is use reason and engage in dialogue. Hopefully those who engage in these practices will come to understand what is wrong and stop of their own accord.

Family and lineage

My family sent me a number of e-mails today, all about family; deceased relatives being a certain age today and the recent internment of a great aunt. They asked me to post about them, so here it goes. I guess some context is required here. The only relatives I regularly visit are my paternal grandparents, who maybe seven miles from my home in Baudette. Otherwise, I have family in California, Ohio, North Carolina and just across the border from New York. I have aunts and uncles who I can count the number of times I can remember having visited in the single digits. Still, meeting family is something I look forward to, not something I regard with disgust. Anyway...

A few winters back, my mom's project was a needlepoint family tree. A cousin of hers sent her information and everything and she made it out to something like four generations back. For a while there, she wanted my sister and me to memorize them all. Neither us of did. I'm not really sure why, but I suspect it is because I saw no point to it. I knew nothing about most of these people, and, when your culture's obsessed with stories about heirs-to-the-throne trying to escape their inherited destiny and Romeo and Juliet where family is the cause of tragedy, you tend to treat things beyond your control with more than a little caution. We are urged to find ourselves outside of those things we are a part of. I guess I use to ascribe to this fierce individualism, but the truth is we and our identities are not formed in a vacuum. We become according to what we identify with and what we are set against. Family and lineage is another one of those things. If we see things to be proud of in our heritage, we adopt them into our being. If the things we see are not so great, we avoid them.

More important though, family is a community, one of the strongest that exists because it is the first and the one that cannot be escaped from. No matter what we do, we will always be a Heinrich or Rodriguez or whatever. Before we are an American or member of the NRA, we learn about responsibility and obligation from our families. It is the family that allows us to form greater communities, and, as we consider it, so we consider all other communities.

Besides, thinking back on that family tree, for which my mom won the grand prize at the county fair, now, it is more than a bit awe inspiring to think that I am the result of all these relationships. If they did nothing else, which I doubt rather strongly, they participated in the creation of me, and I ought to commemorate that by being the best person I can.

My LiveJournal post

So I compared the Blogger and LiveJournal that existed in my mind a few posts back. Well now I am thowing myself fully into one of those stereotypical LiveJournal posts that so irritate me. Expect emo and such. Perhaps it's one of those cries for attention. Please don't hate me for this.

Do you ever feel as though you are the only person in the world who is the least bit content or happy with their life? There are times that I feel that way as though the pieces of my life are falling into place. Then, I find out about problems my friends are dealing with and then I think about the problems of people I hear about on in the news, sweatshop laborers and refugees. Am I wrong to be happy while others suffer? Do I shelter myself from what's going on around me to protect my own happiness? I tell myself and believe that I should be willing to subordinate my own pleasure for that of others, but then I see myself now and know that either that philosophy is wrong or that I am failing at it. Neither is that pleasing to consider. One, the way I want to live my life is impossible. The other, I am not good enough.

A second problem arises from this, though. I want people to be happy and content, but what am I willing to sacrifice for that? I am not even talking about myself here but my ideals. If it made a person happy to cut themselves, would I do nothing? Would I not have the strength to make them stop and just hope that someone better than me would come along to fix things? If a person were to do something I thought wrong, to the very core of my being, would I not step in because of endangering whatever relationship we had? I worry.

Language

As many of my friends can tell you, I have some problems with verbal English or, at least, the direction its moving in. Particular favorite sources of hate are unnecessary acronyms, RBF for rootbeer flota and WTF are particularly vexing in that they aren't even shorter than the words which they're shortening, WTF actually having more syllables than the phrase it replaces, and using business names as general nouns and verbs, Kleenex and Google spring to mind in these occasions. In the case of acronyms, I believe the source of my rage is clear though not everyone may agree with it. I simply dislike unnecessary things. Strip life and language down to the essentials. Remove the clutter. As far as business names becoming a part of the vernacular my problem lies in seeing business become such a large part of our culture that begins to permeate our everyday speech. Mostly a knee jerk reaction against business I guess. Not that there's much I can do about it on a broad scale. Language is simply too large an element of culture for a single person to change it. George Bernard Shaw tried and failed, and I think he had more than a few things going for him that I don't.

I realize this isn't that great of a post seeing as how it lacks any deep insights or decisive philosophies, but I do hope that it causes you to think and be a bit more aware of something we engage in everyday, speech. Life and all its elements must not be taken for granted.

Blogger vs. LiveJournal (a fight for the aeon!)

Recently, some friends of mine, users of LiveJournal, have petitioned me to open an account with their blogging/ journaling site of choice and begin posting there. Personally, I have no compelling technical reason to leave Blogger or join LiveJournal. Though Blogger does undergo a fair amount of maintenance and lost one of my posts, an earlier version of 'Posting to 'Spice of Life'' actually, it continues to serve my needs without irritating me too much. I guess I could do a lot more with design and everything, if I wanted to, but I do not and I do not believe I would suddenly become inspired if I were to move to Live Journal. In favor of moving to LiveJournal is the ability to view the limited access sites of my friends who do not want to make their thougths and feelings too public.

There's other stuff going on too with my decision, mostly the connotations associated with each. As I see it, blogging is much more mature and respectable. Blogs and their writers get book contracts and paying jobs. When a person writes to a blog, it is well thought out and fascinating to all. My perception of LiveJournal, on the other hand, is that it is a chance for people to throw their emotions out to the masses. People do not think when they make LiveJournal posts, they simply record their emotions. People who use LiveJournal are high schoolers looking for sympathy. I think this webcomic is pretty much the source of all these uncharitable thoughts on LiveJournal.

Before anyone jumps all over me for attacking their favorite form of communication, I would like to point out that I often treat my blog like a LiveJournal and my friends use LiveJournal like I want 'Spice of Life' to turn out. It really comes down to the user.

Perhaps I'll open a LiveJournal and simply post reviews of movies and music and literature there. I'll have to think about it some more.

Posting to 'Spice of Life'

I am starting to get worried about posting to 'Spice of Life.' This feeling arose around the time I posted, 'Art and Life.' In that post, I called the opportunity to freely express my feelings 'cathartic,' but, like I opened this post, I am starting to experience a little angst about all of this. I started this blog for a number of reasons; to actually get me writing regularly, to offer an opportunity to organize and develop the thoughts that run through my mind on a daily basis. Catharsis was certainly amongst the reasons, though I do not believe I was familiar with the term last May, but now I am reconsidering that.

To a large extent, I find catharsis healthy. I find the expression of one's deep feelings and complexes a good thing, to the extent that it allows one to get on with their life and stop obsessing over them. My problem is that I do not believe that 'Spice of Life' is the healthiest place for this to take place. That's not to deny there are benefits, there are simply supremely better methods. Communication is stilted when one comments upon the blog. The passion one felt at the time of posting may have gone when a pertinent comment comes up, and nothing comes from it.

Coming back to the source of my problem, the 'Art and Life' post symbolizes it more than anything else. In it, I expressed my distaste for my former professor's choice to save a picture of a cat over a living cat. At most, I should have used that post to organize my thoughts before bringing them before my former professor. Instead, I just let the matter die . Short of her being a reader here, which I find bleeding unlikely, nothing will come of it. As Erich Fromm, one of my new favorite people, discusses in The Art of Being, we must distinguish between those things in our lives that are lively, inspire action within ourselves, and those that are dead and do nothing to make us better people. I enjoy writing here, but I must become more careful with what I do here and be aware of the ends I seek to attain. So, please, if something I post on gets your blood up, do not stop at a comment, bring it up to me in person. Let us make something of it.

Posting on my Blog

Concerns relating to my posts on this blog have arisen, particularly after my 'Art and Life' post. In it, I called the opportunity to express my disagreement in regard to the professor's decision to take the picture over the cat cathartic. The problem is that I have never brought these beliefs before the professor. There are some decent reason for this, I not being sure of her office hours and finding little free time, but, short of her being a reader of this blog, which I do not find bleeding likely, no dialogue or discussion, the two greatest results, will never take place. This distresses me a great deal. Could 'Spice of Life' become a dead end?

Originally, I intended, among others, for my blog to be an opportunity to organize my thoughts. To take the time to put down and organize whatever was going through my mind, so I could better discuss them with others. The 'Art and Life' post, though, causes consternation in that it was the end. It was static and uncreative and led no further than 'Spice of Life.' I cannot allow that to happen, my blog must be a means.

Thus, I recommit myself to opening discussion and invite others to do the same. First up, my professor.

Why I Don't Drink

It was bound to come up sooner or later. I am attending university now, and I am very aware that more than a few of my classmates in high school drank regularly. Alcohol has long permeated the cultures which I live in. Still, it is something I do not partake in, though I have wondered what I would be like were I drunk. I always assumed that I would end up depressed in some corner. Tonight, I feel like putting those reasons down.

Pre-eminently, I do not enjoy the taste. My grandfather brews his own beer, and I am fairly certain that he was offering me drinks of his latest batch before I was in kindergarten. I guess beer has one of those acquired tastes, and, as a child, I never had any desire to acquire it. As I have grown older, I have tried his beer on multiple occasions, I have tasted schnaps and had some wine and champagne, and none of their tastes appeal to me.

I do believe that this is something I could overcome were it not for the second reason. I am deathly afraid of giving up my self-control, something I have heard that alcohol mitigates. This particular fear goes back to elementary school. I did stupid, cruel, unnecessary things then. I freely admit that I do not so much like the person I was, so I changed. I cultivated a will that would hold these impulses that I was ashamed of in check. That is something I am simply unwilling to throw away.

Concerning self-control and will power, it is a theory of mine (take as much heed of it as you want to seeing as intoxication is something that has never happened to me) that people drink to give up responsibility. They want an excuse to do certain things, and alcohol provides that excuse, a way to deal with otherwise inconvenient inhibitions. Personally, I believe that inhibitions are normally in place for a good reason, and, if not, then it is far healthier in the long run to deal with them in sobriety than to get drunk.

There you have it then. The preaching of some jerk college student.

A Crude Life Philosophy

I was planning on opening this post with a little theorizing on the necessity of a life philosophy, then I realized that there was enough in that idea to merit a post devoted to it alone. So, I start instead with a disclaimer of sorts. What follows is just a little idea of mine. If it deserves modification, please provide. If it requires anhilation, inform me so. To live by an incorrect philosophy is something terrible, and, if someone believes this to be wrong, tell me so. Now, to follow all that, like my title says, this is a very crude philosophy. I know it needs to be refined. This is the beginning.

I don't know when it was that I started to believe this, maybe two years ago, but it's a philosophy that, though not in my mind at all moments, is one I come back to again and again. I figured it was time to actually lay it out and develop it.

Life is a game. There are rules, which we know through biology, economics and such, that exist and that you cannot refute. They simply are. Animals obey them. They seek to maximize their own utility and insure the survival of their genetic material, the closest they can get to immortality. Life, pursued in this manner, is far from ideal. It is lonely and selfish. Humans, though, are far more than mere animals. They have imagination and can envision a better world. Even more than that, humans have the ability to make this better world a reality. They can choose to deny their own pleasure and security in the interests of others. Humans can make this a life of compassion.

One of many critical questions at this point (but it is the only one I believe I have an answer for at this point) is 'Why do we need to break these rules? What is so wrong about them?' My answer, humans are complementary creatures. They need one another merely to survive. Besides the fact that humanity does not reproduce asexually, they are not great enough to survive on their own, much less create. Take a newborn baby and toss it into the woods. See how long it survives. That is hyperbolic, but, still, take a young, healthy human specimen and outfit them with all the greatest survival training and equipment, which already requires the direct involvement of other humans. Toss them out into the woods and see how long they live. I don't doubt that they will survive, but what of their lives, when every moment is spent simply trying to live longer. What type of life is that, one spent completely upon oneself and that leaves no legacy? That is why we must live for each other.

Life is simply one long struggle in order to break the rules that govern the lives of animals.

Are there problems with this philosophy? Goodness, yes! There is no good reason for this whole philosophy to have arisen, and I imagine that it is very possible to argue that this entire philosophy is an extension of the will to survive and increase personal utility. Even if the foundations of this thing turn out to be solid, the specifics of the philosophy itself need help. The rules that govern animal life are hinted at only in the vaguest terms, and there is no explanation for when we will know we have reached the end. I harbor no doubts that I have not touched on all of this philosophy's weaknesses.

Still, it is a start.

Kendo

So, I've been taking classes in kendo, Japanese fencing (if you wish to learn more, I suggest checking out the Wikipedia entry on it here or Kendo America's description here) for three months now. I think it's about time I put down my thoughts on my experience on it. I must confess that this post was further inspired by seeing the newest groups of kendo students arrive and struggle with the simple footwork and also by a conversation I had with a friend over lunch on just how practical this particular martial art is.

Personally, I'm a fan. It's the first martial art I've ever practiced, so the high levels of formality and all have been more than I expected. Kendo is not simply about hitting your opponent but doing it the right way and showing the other person the proper respect. Like I said, it's been three months now, and we've only just begun partner practice, as in, partner practice consists of one person holding out their sword to receive hits or kata where every movement is planned out in advance so there is little resemblance to actual combat though the principles are integral to competition our sensei says.

When you're taking a martial art, it seems like the inevitable question becomes, "Do you think you could beat me up?" or "How do you think you'd do against a mugger?" Well, first I suggest visiting Truck Driver Divorce because my friend Zach gives a respectable take on that question in one of his earlier posts. My answer is a bit different. Before I go any further, you must understand that we don't use real swords in kendo. There's the wooden bokken and the bamboo shinai, and both are blunted. Anyway, assuming that I was carrying these around in the street or grabbed one before picking a fight with someone, (I'd take the bokken. It's shorter but heavier with a higher potential for injury to my opponent.) I would win on the grounds that I was carrying around a one meter stick. Weapons do tend to give one an advantage in combat. So for the sake of an argument, we have to say that my assailant is well versed enough in the martial arts to defend themselves against me. My training has been and will continue to be strictly oriented towards competitive, regulated kendo. I sincerely doubt that the sensei will ever so, "Okay here's what you do if someone pulls a knife on you," so I will lack any training that would directly aid me in a random fight. Some the basic concepts like the en garde positions and attack points remain valid in all fights though, so I don't believe my training would be completely useless. It still will probably never come up though.

Oh yeah. Taking kendo actually gives me a reason to go to the fitness center. Otherwise I would have nothing to train for and my workouts would undoubtedly lose their appeal to me.

Unfortunately, due to time restraints and financial concerns, I probably won't be able to continue in kendo this fall. I sincerely hope things work out, but I doubt they will. Oh well, I'll just have to drown my depression with intensive Tai Chi, which I'll actually be receiving credit for.

Art and life

Last Monday, my Literature professor from last semester related a dialogue that occurred between two characters on the tv series Northern Exposure. Apparently, the characters were discussing art and one asked the other, "If a building were on fire and you only had time enough to save a cat or a picture of a cat, which would you choose?" The character responded the picture because it is only through art that we are able to know what a cat truly is.

This is so cathartic to write because I hold this woman in high regard and have wanted to say she's wrong about something for quite a while, so here I go. I think taking the picture is the worst possible choice here. I'm talking those publishers who passed on Harry Potter wrong. Think of how wrong Grand Moff Tarkin was to disregard the destructive capabilities of a group of Rebels in X-Wings, and you'll get an idea of how wrong this idea is. Can I put this in stronger terms?

Okay, a disclaimer is required here. Rather irritating as they break up the rhythm of my writing, assuming there was such a thing before. I don't know if she subscribes to this belief, but the circumstances in which she related this story do suggest to me that she would take the picture herself.

If you take the picture, you're assuming that the artist was right, that they captured the essence of the cat perfectly. First of all, I don't think this is possible, and what of the rest of the world? You're placing the perspective of the artist above all others. To take the picture is to deny everyone else the possibility of knowing the cat's essence for themselves, to demean the validity of their perception.

Hm. Seems like a lot of build up for not much thought. Oh well, I still think I got this one right.

The Big Time

I know I've hit the big time now. Two weeks ago, the school newspaper ran an editorial of mine that harped on an article from the week ago in which the virtues of Fair Trade, a surprisingly popular issue on campus, the subject of some opinion at least once every other issue of our weekly paper, were extolled and we were all urged to drink it.

Before going further, to sum up my position on Fair Trade, I'm not against it. I simply believe that consuming is a bad method to demonstrate charity. One ought to do something more meaningful than buy coffee.

Anyway, the next week, I was referenced twice by name in other editorials. One guy wrote an article that directly went after mine and a second editorial, written by a frequent, supremely sarcastic contributor refernced me by suggesting that the person whose article he was attacking could 'end genocide in Africa' as I had suggested in my piece. It doesn't end there though. My name showed up in the editorial pages again this week as someone attacked the sarcastic guy and chided him for me.

It's not much, I know, getting your name mentioned in a few editorials, but it's something. Kind of an interesting feeling to realize that other people could be so incensced by your opinion that they would take the time to write a reply. Can't quite describe the feeling, but it's there.

Oh yeah, I received my first piece of fanmail after my boo on Fair Trade piece ran. Just a message through Facebook, the greatest of social networking tools in college, but still cool.

Fasting

We're out of Lent, neck deep in Easter Triduum now. Does this matter to you? I don't know, but it does to me as a practicing Roman Catholic. Today being Good Friday, the second fast day I know of in the Church calendar, the first being Ash Wednesday, the topic of fasting is on my mind, if you couldn't tell from the title of this post. Here we go then, my thoughts on one of the central aspects of Lent.

There are three practices, I as a Catholic, are expected to uphold during Lent: prayer (my relation with God), almsgiving (my relation with my fellow humans) and fasting (my relation with myself). I must say that I'm a great fan of fasting, denying yourself of certain things, in this case copious amounts of food, in order to center your attention on what is truly important and appreciate what you do have. It occurred to me this Lent though that Catholic fasting is pretty weak. We do it twice a year, abstain from meat (not counting fish amongst this group) and limit ourselves to small meals and no snacks. On Fridays, it's simple abstinence from meat. That's really not a big deal. If the cafeteria isn't serving anything good, I can easily match those criteria. That and the whole Friday only thing. This is likely me taking things too literally, but what's stopping me from staying up till early Saturday morning and gorging then? Nothing, except an understanding of what fasting is about. Besides, midnight is such an arbitrary disctinction.

Lately then, I've been thinking that Muslims do fasting right with Ramadan though it's a bit extreme. No food or drink at all while the sun is up. When it's down, you can eat. It's a meaningful denial and the limits on what it starts and ends aren't so arbitrary. I think I'm going to switch over to this method next Lent for the holy days and Fridays, but I'll drink water. Not doing so crosses the line from self-denial to straight-up unhealthy for me. I'm fairly certain that Jews follow this same style of fasting at some point, but I'm not willing to check.

I guess this disclaimer comes a little late, but it's very possible I'm wrong on how one is meant to properly fast. All of this is to the best of my knowledge, which is not as great as I would hope. So, yeah, mistakes and misinterpretations are very feasible.

Memories and grief

I'm feeling the urge to post again. Have a number of post ideas running through my mind, but there's something I need to take care of first. Last Friday, my friend Ann Komadina died. She was a good person, kinder and more generous to me than I deserved. We did more than a few projects together, and I found it very easy to speak with her. For those who frequently visit my blog, she often posted comments. In fact, I'm fairly certain it was her early comments me with the impetus necessary to making posting more regularly. I'm glad to have known and am saddened that others no longer have the opportunity to.

Here I am now, a week later. It gets better, but I still don't think I'm over her death. I don't know if I feel better about writing these things, but, at the very least, I think they could help someone else. Feeling as though you're the only one who feels your grief in the way you do and that noone can understand your feelings is a terrbile way to go. Hopefully, if someone experiences a death the same way I did and feels the same way about it, they will read this and not feel so alone.

I've never read a book on the stages of grief, but I've picked up a little about them. Denial, negotiation, I've heard of them. Didn't really experience them though. When I heard Ann had died, I sat down and stared. I never questioned them. There was no denial. I realized that I couldn't do anything to help her now either, so neither was there any negotiation. For a while, I really hated myself, for not being better to her, but that passes as I try to act and make sure no person ever dies that I regret how I treated, though that makes my failures sting all the more.

No, the strongest and longest lasting emotion that has arisen from is anger. Not some general feeling. No, this anger is directed at those really bleeding good people that I posted about earlier. Seeing them go about comforting people, myself among them, and being decent makes me all the more uncomfortable and angry. "Why can't I be at their level?" I ask myself. "Why can't I be as good as them?" I wanted them to stop and still do to the extent that they're so kind. But I can't express myself to them. I don't want to add to their problems, and they've been overwhelmingly good to those who need it, never showing me less than pure kindness. So I choke on my anger, and it turns to self loathing as I realize how terrible it is to feel this way.

It bothers me that I can't cry when others are around. That first night I went off by myself and cried, but, whenever someone came to comfort me, I stopped. It wasn't a some machoism or a conscious decision, I just couldn't do it. I was still sad, still wanted to cry but nothing would come. Add on to that the fact that I surrounded myself with my friends for most of the weekend, and it disturbed me to see tears stream down their faces when none graced mine. Like I said, it bothers me, like I'm not sad enough that Ann's dead or something.