She Is

Her foot stops just off the footpath, as she feels her soul expanding, beyond her arms and chest and face and ears, beyond the face of her childhood, and the hands of her future frailty. It grows out of and around her, taking in the road, the cars, the boy throwing his toy cars over the fence, a dog barking at a falling leaf, a couple arguing just out of sight of the neighbours, a rosebush covered in aphids, a stubborn drop of dew hidden from the morning sun.

She can taste everything that this earth once was, she can fell all it will become. She sees the scars and the beauty, hears the fire, the pain, the peace.

In this stasis, this smallest unit of time, she builds a home, she build eternity.

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Soundtrack: "Loud Places" - Jamie XX feat. Romy

    This blue I could take a spoon to
I cast myself into it
Feeling myself thrown and turned
    This thrill I could build my life on
        The ocean calmly places a hand over your mouth
        And whispers hymns older than the stones
        You dissolve into her like sand
    This joy I could give in to
I return to the land
As my ancestors long ago
I return to the sky
As my brethren before me
And I remain in the sea
    This home I could find freedom

This monument to souls long since dust
Of wars swept clean by rain and rust
A place of rest now for us, worn yet alive
The rosemary-tinged air no longer thick with memories of loss
A sole poppy, a stubborn red tear
A flush of green and white, steadfast mourners and a reminder of continued life
This cocoon, a quiet spot
The world is at peace, at least in this small nest.

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Photo of Ithaca War Memorial, where this was written (September 16 2015).

Lisbon

"It is possible to die."

These words are never far from my mind. And while it is unavoidable (necessary, even, should we believe in some greater cosmic order), that is it possible, that we may have some say in the matter, provides me with more comfort than God ever did.

These words are particularly resonant in this city, where life and death so freely and frequently mingle. Every street is full of broken, burnt, and decaying houses, pressed between their still-functioning contemporaries. Why did this house fall to disrepair while its neighbour continued on to house further generations of families, future decades of laughter and fights? Why was this door boarded up while its fellow remains, to greet guests, to welcome home, to be slammed in rage and sadness?

One cannot help but be reminded of ghost towns, where the situation was so bad people left without selling their homes, without their possessions, just their families and their lives; a midnight flight from a life whose abuses could no longer be tolerated.

We, the house proud, would never understand.

It is possible to die, yes. It is possible to run, to rot, to hide, to go up in a blaze and be reduced to dust and ash, or to slowly fall apart until all that is left are rubble and the hint of a memory.

And it is possible to live.

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Soundtrack: "Now You Know" - Arca

"It is possible to die" from "The Hours" - Michael Cunningham

Photo of Lisbon from Castelo de São Jorge, where this was written (August 7 2015).

Beyond Essentialism: Embodied Identity And The Self (A Working Idea)

So I started re-reading Lakoff & Johnson's "Philosophy In The Flesh" over the last few weeks and it's all been wandering through my brain and I think I've finally reached a bit of an understand. This may not make a lot of sense but it's still a work in progress and, really, I think it makes a lot of sense.
THE CRUX of the issue is that a large portion of philosophy (at least existential philosophy) is the question of essentialism: what are the necessary and sufficient qualities of something that define IT and, for humans, WHO and WHAT am I. The greatest problem that this results in is that most people end up in a reductive essentialism where they want to find their one true self, the one part of themselves that is them and no one else.

The fact is THERE IS NO ONE TRUE SELF, which is why people spend their lives in vain searching for it (those who bother with the quest). We are all the result of slightly different programming on similar hardware; we are the physiological consequence of an embodied experience but, importantly, our own UNIQUE embodied experiences. Indeed, there are some universals (or near universals) because we exist in the same physical space with similar physical experiences and limitation, but from that first movement in the womb, our experience is fundamentally individual, for it occurs in a new space and a new time that has never existed before and can never exist again.

There is not one essential James The Linguist, or James The Cook, or James The Man, or James The Anything. We exist at the intersection of this myriad, a collage of our experiences and identities. Life does not bring use deeper into understanding ourselves; it ADDS to us, and we grow and evolve and change, just as our experiences will grow and evolve and change. Underneath these masks there is not one self; together the masks are the self, and to call them masks is to deny their importance to who and what we are BECAUSE THEY ARE ALL THAT WE ARE.

The strangest part of all of this is that this has some similarities with some nihilistic standpoints on life, but I find it oddly... hopefully. The journey to find ourselves is over, because it is pointless. We needn't find ourselves because we already are ourselves. The journey into life continues as it always does but we go into it knowing that are not digging deeper into ourselves but instead adding to the rich tapestry of our identity.