Since you've been away every day's a phone call, it's an exit sign

To live in the ghetto was to learn that the human animal can adapt to terrible, unimaginable conditions. The experience was insidious, because the horror manifested itself in slow increments. It took time, until death and dying in the streets became a normal, almost acceptable event. People walked past and directed their gaze elsewhere. Don't look. Don't see. We survived. They were dead.
- Yossel: April 19, 1943 - Joe Kubert

Death takes many forms, even while alive.
- Plankeye - Goodbye

A few years back, I read Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago. In it he tells the story of an author who visited a Russian imprisonment camp. The author scheduled his visit so he could disprove the tarnishing (and truthful) claims that the camps were an institution of death. Prior to the author's visit, all the inmates were given fresh haircuts, were bathed for the first time in months, and fed fattening meals to bring color back into their flesh. New outfits were distributed and everyone was ordered, under penalty of death, to lie about their hopeless situation. The day of the author's visit arrived and his boat drifted into the harbor. A handful of prisoners were in the middle of a field and had failed to change out of their rags. Knowing that the fate of the camp depended on the illusion being complete, the solider in charge of the prisoners threw a tarp over the men and said, "If any of you move or make a noise, all be executed without hesitation." For the duration of the author's visit, the prisoners remained silent and motionless, a group of grown men cowering under canvas and the watchful eye of their guard. The author left, impressed by the rehabilitation taking place in Russia's working camps and wrote numerous articles defending the system.

One voice raised in protest could have unmasked this great evil. All were silent.

For weeks after reading this I couldn't understand why it happened. Sure, if one of them had yelled out, they would have died. Even their compatriots would have died. In fact, their families probably would have died as well. But the camps would have ended. Thousands upon thousands of lives would have been spared. Then I realized, in their own hearts they were already dead. While their bodies moved on, step after step, hope had disappeared.

Do our lives tell the same story?


Denison Witmer - Are You Lonely

And we do this to ourselves

If at the end of a path I look upon it and find every stride brought me closer to tears, should I regret it?

Twice in life I've run away. The first time was four years ago and my steps are still feeble. The second time wasn't even two months ago.

I'm not so good at starting over.


Sherwood - We do this to ourselves

An introduction

For quite a while, I’ve desired to write what is true – to express those conditions of life that actually are, that more than taking the time to develop a complex system of thought I could pull back a door and find reality behind it and then share that doorway with others. I haven’t done that though… because I’m afraid.

I’m afraid that if I find what’s true it will unravel me. I’m afraid that I run away from truth and escape to flippant writing because the reality is I’m lazy, undedicated, and for all the shit I give traditional academia I can’t seem to construct anything new without fleeing back to the familiar. I don’t want to be a revolutionary, I only want to live and for my life to give to others so that somehow we can move forward in this convoluted splendor of… well, whatever it is.

And whatever they say, your soul's unbreakable

Question - Michael, why don't you ever write anything of substance?

Answer - Because my laptop died and I don't have music.

Honestly, that might be the main reason. Other reasons include: lack of motivation, lack of warmth, being distracted by... woah, what is that?!

Right, so a lot of changes have taken place over the last few months and I've hardly said anything about them. Most of you know my situation from various emails, chats, phone conversations, rumors and the like but I figured I'd write it all out again, partially for myself and partially for those of you who I don't talk to often.

I moved to Scotland with a bit of hesitancy. My year in Buffalo was lonely and moving out to the unknown seemed like it would follow in the same fashion; even those precious phone calls which made Buffalo better would become a thing of the past. Additionally, I worried that academia wasn't for me. When I arrived back at Sterling for my last year I never settled back down. Losing Mark as a professor and Camden were two contributing factors. Later, my application to St Andrews was a shot in the dark and a whim (goodness, there are a lot of sets of two in this post) which I never figured would pan out. When I got accepted I reacted with a, "Well, I guess I should go." About two months before I left, I started having serious doubts as to whether or not I belonged. Four years earlier I would have loved getting a masters degree in the UK, but after so much life and so much change I wasn't so sure.

After two months of classes I had my answer. The person who dreamed of being a professor and the British aesthetic, the person who harbored so much bitterness towards his past was laid to rest.

I left my program because I love to learn. What I was receiving was lifeless. I could have jumped through the hoops necessary to earn a degree; I could have forsaken the necessity of full personhood in philosophy for an analytic approach that treats philosophy as scientific method. But why?

So now, tonight, I'm sitting by myself in a cold room with no certain future. I have a job at a cheese shop and it's wonderful... when I'm working. During the holiday season, I had a fair number of hours but now that business has slowed there are too many workers and not enough work. I'm looking for other jobs but nothing has turned up. For a while I considered not getting a job. How great would it be to explore the country? Hell, forget the country. How great would it be to explore Europe? And then I remembered that I had responsibilities (read: loans).

Since coming here, my heart has softened in a lot of ways. A few years back, one of my dear friends gave me words to live by (probably by accident), "Love people." Finally I'm starting to get it. Although I still don't create as many opportunities as I want to and fail to respond with love on many occasions, I can tell that my character is shifting.

----

What does the future hold? My first response is exploration. I want to experience and see all the beauty the world has to offer. From the group of angry old men who meet for coffee every morning in local diners to the silent lakes hidden in backwood, mountain trails, from the mixture of children laughing and screaming at a playground to dark, piss ridden alleys where the homeless find a home, from never ending strips of yellow lines on American highways to the rusted out, dilapidated skeletons of ancient farm equipment resting in a long forgotten field... I want to feel it, to taste it, to touch it. I may not actually want to taste the alley... or the old men for that matter. Actually, I probably only want to taste the lake.

What else does the future hold? I want to find and create something that I can call home. I'm looking for a community, for a people that I can give myself to. I want to be there for someone. And really, secretly, I'd like for someone to be there for me.

I'm longing to be, but I already am. I've tasted being and I'll continue to follow it. I don't know where that will take me.

Muse - Invincible