Global Village: my third home

Today marks my second day in a week that I've not been able to sleep at all. It's somewhat horrible, but in some ways marvelous.

Because of not sleeping, I can say I've done a few things that I've never done before:

• Been the second customer of the day at Global Village. I was beat by just a few seconds. I've got first dibs on the corner seat, and now I can look at everything that's going on outside. Some people might call that strange; I prefer the term "involved."
  
• Walked up Hillsborough Street in the very, very early morning. It's strikingly lovely, really, when no one else is around. The campus, I mean -- not the street, though it is strange-looking. 
  
• I was one of the only people in Tompkins this morning. I bet you didn't know it smells like Pine-sol, floor wax and old vacuum cleaners at 7:04 a.m. 
  

A woman just walked in wearing a fedora. North Carolina is wonderful.

YES. They're playing Elvis Costello. I want to break out into song but that would be taking it beyond strange.

What is so funny about peace, love and understanding? Lord, the man can sing.

I'm supposed to be meeting Saja here so we can work on our paper things. However, this was decided at about 2:30 a.m. and I've already finished my paper. When you don't sleep, you have a surprising amount of time to devote to things you should have done earlier. At any rate, I decided I didn't have anything better to do, might as well head to gvill and wake up -- is that the right terminology? Let's go with "stay awake."

I've decided I'm becoming a philosopher. The lists will read like the following:

Aristotle

Rene Descartes 

Thomas Aquinas

Friedrich Nietzsche

Albert Camus

Soren Kierkegaard

Alison Harman

Seems a perfectly logical sequence. I mean, all these guys probably started thinking, writing, because they were freaked out by something. Whatever it was -- religion, economics, existence, thought -- it freaked the hell out of them. They sat down, thought a bit, and started writing. 

Oh!!!!!! A Greyhound bus just passed heading to New York. That is completely amazing. I want to drop everything, buy a ticket and leave right now. Not because I don't like it here... just because I think it would be a wonderful experience. 

This must be a Scottish mix. It's now on that song about Bonnie lass. 

I'm doing this. I've started my rantings. When I talk about my fears to others, most look at me like I'm mad. But hello, I'm sure they looked at Nietzsche like he was a mad man. Hell, he probably was. 

I wonder if blogs will be the post-humus text publishers will print once we're dead. Instead of some hidden manuscript, it'll be online copy.

Earlier this week, I learned I'm not the only one who is perpetually living in fear of an imagined world. The philosophy is actually called true idealism. Just think (for really, isn't that the only thing you know you're doing?): we have no proof we're living, walking, breathing in the world we think we are. I could be {in} a world (not necessarily a world; more like a state of... being?) totally opposite from what someone else is in. I don't know how to aptly explain it.

Imagine you lose all your senses. You've got no physical sense of being. It's just you (though what is that?) and your mind. You're free to imagine the world around you, to create societies and colors and conversations, to conjure up interactions between people. It would be a real world, except it would all be ideal; what you see you're not really seeing, what you're touching is not tangible. You think it is, but what else do you have? You've got a brain and nothing else. It'd be easy to fool yourself into believing you're living in a world you've created.

My biggest fear is that this is true. 

Now all that's left for me to do is come up with proofs that the world we ALL know exists; proofs that we're all living in the same world, that it's not one person 'dreamliving' in a world and another person doing the same in something totally different. I'll work on it.

Although, I have learned one thing from Kierkegaard: truth is subjective (which goes along, scarily, with my theory). It's not what you know, but how you know it -- how you believe, your inward reflection. Not knowing gives us faith, for if we knew everything we wouldn't have to believe; we'd just have to know. And that would suck.

So perhaps I just have to have faith that this world is real, that I'm not living solely in my mind. Maybe that's the answer.

I kind of doubt it's that simple.

I'm wide awake, it's morning

"Friedmann was fascinated by Einstein's theory and threw himself into studying it with his usual intensity. 'I am an ignoramus,' he used to say. 'I don't know anything. I have to sleep less and not allow myself any distractions, because all this so-called 'life' is a complete waste of time.'"

This quote epitomizes one half of my feelings on life. It's completely absurd -- we can contribute to our given society, sure, but if society weren't here to begin with the world would be just as well off. You're thrown into needs, desires, oxygen and water. You're not given a reason. You have about 80 years, if you're lucky, to "do something" with your life. Might as well work like hell, eh?

But another part of me wants to block out the "haves" and "needs" and focus on what feels right in the moment. Or at least embrace society's chokehold and twirl it around in a waltz. I want to be carefree and superexciting. I always think of two people when contemplating this type of life: Carrie (from Sex & the City) and M.I.A. Laugh all you want, but they wear great clothes, lead great lives and, generally, are just really great.

So I could sit in the middle of these paradigms. Seems like an easy solution, and one I think most follow. However, the middle of drastically driven and drastically carefree is averagely normal, and we're back to where we started.

I could probably contemplate life for my whole lifetime. I wonder what that could contribute.

But maybe we're all going about this wrong. Maybe we're not here to make contributions. The universe is millions upon fucking millions upon millions of years old. I can't fathom it. Surely there have been societies before our known society, and in places other than Earth. They've been destroyed, recreated, reinvented, reached their peaks, destroyed. Maybe we're just here for the ride. No reason, no necessity -- just to be here.

There are some really smart old men sitting at the other table. They're throwing out Mark Twain and "arbeit mach frei," Jane Austen, the Wall Street Journal and cooling off with a nice baseball talk.

The second table in Global Village is a wonderful place to people watch.

It's also a nice place to down double espressos like it's your job, and then chase them with chai.

It's a nicer place, still, to contemplate life and blog about it.

More about Ms. Eaglin

As I lie in bed, trying to go to sleep, obviously the first thing that pops into my head is how to decline the verb "I am" -- in Latin.

"Sum, es, est, sumus, estis, sunt -- come on, Kiser, block that punt!"

That is how we learned the declension. Kiser was my middle school/jail.

Also, at the Latin conventions, instead of teaching us the lame song about Latin, she told us to mouth "watermelon," which apparently will blend itself in to any song you sing.

Before all the football games, she would hand out green M&M's (our school color was green) and say "fac bene" to the players who passed by. "Fac bene" means "do well" in Latin, but of course it sounds like "fuck Benny" in English.

And she knew it, too. I think that's probably 97% why she did it.

"I called to tell you I got one of my teeth pulled today," my grandfather said, "and I wanted to tell you so you would feel sorry for me."
"Aww."
"OK, that's enough."

Precious: 1994-2008

7:45 a.m.-- "Hey, Precious isn't doing well. I think we're going to have to take her..."

7:50 a.m. -- What do you wear to put your dog to sleep? Do you wear something bright and cheerful, for her, or something dark, to show your grief? There I was, staring at the pile of clothes on my bed for a good five minutes. 

It started snowing as we were walking into the vet's. She really loves snow. It stopped once we were inside, which seems fitting.

It was so hard to sit with her while they did it, while she was staring at us, needing us. And when her heart stopped beating I couldn't help but think she was going to stand up, walk out with us, jump in the car, be youthful again.

I just wish there was something we could have done. I don't understand death. How do you just -- stop? How are you just not there anymore? I don't understand the soul, nor the brain, nor the brain/soul. I wish they could just take whatever it is that makes you you and implant it in another, healthy, body. I suppose that's what ghosts are, essentially. Or, you know, ethereally. 

There was a beautiful, white Persian cat on the mat when we walked out of that room. I like to think he was an angel cat. Although I don't really believe in angels or anything, I do believe in signs and symbolism.

One time, my mom took her to Hanging Rock. Precious ran alongside my mom while she rode her bike. Apparently, she rode a good five miles and forgot Precie was running with her. When they came home, Precious hopped up on the couch and there she stayed for a good three days.

Also, one time they were hiking and she came upon a bee hive. She soon discovered her mouth wasn't the best place for a bee hive, and ran all the way back to the car.

She always hopped in the bath tub when it was thundering.

When I was little, I would give her a bit of my laundry to carry back to the washer. She'd hold it in her mouth, and I think she probably thought she'd get to bury it outside. I'd wrench it from her mouth and we'd go back for another load. 

God. That dog has been my best friend for 14 years. I don't know what I'll do the next time I come home and she's not sitting at the door, looking outside. 

Sometimes planes they smash up in the sky, and sometimes lonely hearts they just get lonlier

By the numbers

1 -- percent of deep ocean we've explored

4 - 15 -- times the mass of the Sun that a massive black hole is

10 -- billion times the mass of the Sun that a super-massive black hole is

300 - 500 -- wrecks within the Bermuda Triangle

infinite -- number of black holes within the Milky Way

I love the History Channel. 

Every galaxy, including the Milky Way, has sitting in its center a massive black hole. And though it's inactive, its size correlates with the speed at which objects around it -- including our solar system as a whole -- orbit. 

"In deep space, when stars reach the end of their lives, the remaining particles collapse in on themselves and create a dense mass -- one so strong that nothing nearby can escape its gravitational pull. Even light, traveling at 186,000 miles a second, is sucked into the vortex."

I love the History Channel. Thanks for explaining black holes in a way that doesn't make my head want to explode.

 

Now they've sent scientists out into the Bermuda Triangle in an attempt to detect an in terra/mare black hole? Oh God, that would be, at the same time, marvelous and dread-inducing.

P.S. I'm a space nerd. I readily admit it.

8:30 a.m. is a wonderful time to think about the purpose of life

Yesterday in existentialism professor Marina Byovka passed around a sheet on 

which we were to sign up for a topic and date for a presentation we have to do.

Luckily I had decided to sit in the second row, close to the windows, since the

50-odd class freaks me out a little when I'm sitting in the back. The light

streaming in from the windows means, at least, there is some kind of escape.

She'd talked a bit about the presentations earlier, and had mentioned a bit

about Dostoyevsky's Brothers Karamazov being one of the options. So as the

sheet was going around -- there were about 10 people ahead of me -- I could

not stop worrying someone would steal my presentation spot. It was pure dread.

Anguish. Two more people came in to class late, one of whom sat behind me,

and I vowed to kill him if he stole my topic.

Then it dawned on me: no one is going to steal that. Only very strange people

have an obsession with the Russian authors.

'I'm safe,' I thought.

And I was. Thank goodness for strange obsessions.

Here is an excerpt from my notes. Camus, I love you. You've solved my problems,

for although you didn't give me one bit of information that would help me better

understand life, you've made me realize that I can't.

In addition, I'm loving Latin. Expect the dangling participles to return!

Here are a few videos Abby and I found. I'm slightly encharmed.

No one else thought this was funny. Everyone kind of thought I was a freak for

laughing at this kid's loinal pain.

Can anyone tell me why I decided, ever so smartly, to undertake Latin again?

Scenario # 1: Embarrassment

"And the next person [me], can you tell me what the verb is?"

"Um. Um. Pendentem?"

"No, that's a participle. La la la. It's adiuvistis."

"Oh."

"Can you give me the number and order?"

"Um. Um. Well, it's obviously singular. And, um..."

"No, it's actually plural. La la la, genitives tis, la la la."

"Oh."

"Can you translate it for me?"

"No, I can't."

A+ for effort, don't you think? I should have gone with my first instinct, which was that it meant 'to help' [which it did]. Oh well. It's no wonder the language died; it's utterly incomprehensible. The rules only apply half the time, the verb is at the end of the sentence and you don't translate the first part of the sentence first, you use the verb and then find the object and then find the participle and then find the subject and then find the subject modifier and by the time you're done translating a sentence you're 80 years old and eating mushy peas.

Which brings me to two points: one, Latin royally screwed my writing for two years. I'd end up putting clauses and clauses into my sentences, putting the verb in the middle, and then continuing on. I got great grades in my English 12 class because, I think, my teacher thought my writing was so complex it was over her head. In fact, it was just wrong and confusing. Anyway, my American lit professor last year called me out on it, so it doesn't even work with everyone.

And two: Latin teachers are crazy. You have to be to dedicate your time not only to a dead language, but to one that doesn't make any sense whatsoever.

Example: Ms. Eaglin, my sixth and seventh grade Latin teacher. She had deranged white hair and this lopsided smile. She promised to teach us "Latin swear words" when we got to eighth grade [she left the year before, so we never got to learn them] and had this shirt with a map of the Mediterranean on it.

"You can remember where Rome and Greece are because Rome is on the left nipple and Greece is on the right."

She'd stand on her desk and tell us stories about her childhood. I think one day she was changing on the desk, the type of changing where you slip on your clothes under your clothes -- and she fell. This was in another class. Anyway, they had to use the speaker things to call someone to help. Because she was changing on a desk. Ms. Eaglin was the most wonderful teacher in the world.

Then there was Ms. Perry-Hill, who I think was a bit more sane than Ms. Eaglin. But that's not saying much. All I remember from her class is watching The Princess Bride because it's an epic, and fighting with light-sabers with my classmates. So let's move on to high school.

Ms. Eller was fantastic. She was off the wall and completely tangential. If we hadn't done our homework we would get her talking about her kid or her ex-husband, with whom she was in this massive custody battle. He was dating some 20-year-old or something named Kitty, or Barbie, or something like that. She would get so emotional, but she was really very sweet and we offered to egg her ex's house. We learned Catullus and Ovid and Virgil, who I loathed and still do.

Catullus is wonderful. If you ever get a chance to read his poems, please do. He was a nutter.

A few favorites

2

3

8

9

11

This one, in which someone stole his napkin

This one, in which Romans are very explicit

This one, in which Catullus is extremely lustful

All the Romans were bisexual

This one, in which the English use English phrases in Latin poems

In other news, Existentialism is creeping me out. My very Russian professor -- who pronounces her v's like w's and is masculine and scary, but nice -- told us existentialists believe in the freedom to define themselves. We have unlimited freedom to act, wish and think as we want. Wizard. We've been taught, since childhood, that we can't do this, or that, and we must do this. While they also realize there are consequences for our actions, what she said freaked me out. Obviously, I know we have freedom. But literally -- we're free. There is nothing stopping us from doing anything; we are not bound, we are not forced. Yes yes, morality, yes, religion, yes, money. It's not so much what we can do that scares me; it's that we can do it. Maybe I was just very closed-minded until now, but I am genuinely... afraid.

Additionally, she posed this question: what is the purpose of living when we're only working toward death?

In some respects, I prefer simplicity and ignorance. I can't handle this.