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September 27, 2004

Fontainbleau: Select Writings

I'm in Fontainbleau, where I've been since Friday. I will be heading back to Paris in a couple hours. Hopefully I'll see Le Louvre tomorrow, then fly to Barcelona on Wednesday. I've spent a good deal of time writing while here and transcribing what I'd written in my journal. I promised to post more so I'm going to post some select writings from my trip. None of these represent entire journal entries, just parts of them.

Click below to read on.

Dublin

...
[Down 8]
We stood out front, close, but not holding. Shoulder to shoulder. I was
drunk and wanted to hold her... to be held, but my heart did not feel
free. It wasn't mine to give yet. I tried, I tried not trying. My heart
bashed inside to no avail. Whatever chains held it were still too strong.
My shy, reserved nature could not be overtaken by fools love. It
couldn't get in. I didn't let it in. 4am came. The cab came. Dennis was
nowhere. The cabby asked me if it was for me and I said, no, lying. The
cabby went inside. Moments later I saw Dennis, stumbling down the side
walk, hugging Liz. I ran to them and told them the cab was there. We ran
to the hostel, collected our bages from hindind the hostel and went out
front. Liz and Dennis locked lips in unrestrained passion. Holding each
other closely, it was obvious nothing mattered by the devine touch. Maria
and I looked at each other, shrugged, hugged, and that was it.
...
I consoled myself that my rollercoaster of emotions was good and
necessary. It was like an etch a sketch that was left in the sun too long
with the same pattern. It would not be enough to give it a gentle shake,
it needed a good thrashing. As my emotions, image of self, image of world
are thrashed around violently, I am left with a clean slate, or will be.
Like the birth of a star or a nation, it is through turmoil and violence
that we are cleansed so we can really start over. The death of cnation
made me start tearing down walls. This is forcing the whole castle down
to the foundation. I'll rebuild. It won't happen quickly, it can't be
rushed. Block by block, painstakingly, each block on top of the other,
with no forethought as to what the abode will look like. It will be
beautiful. We are beautiful. I will be beautiful. Life is beautiful.

---------------------------
Amsterdam 9-16-04
...
"I never find myself trying harder than when I forget to check!"

Maybe I have to forget to check? How can I remember to forget? Maybe
there are things its important to forget.
Time to 'fade' away.


...
"What is the worst situation you've ever been in?" she asked me in her
Cornwall accent. I thought. I knew. "I don't know you well enough to
tell you," I told her. She persisted. I knew she had an answer as well,
so I decided to answer to get her to answer. "I'm sure mine is worse, "
she said. Given her age, I doubted it. "I got divorced," I lamented.
"How old were you?"
"See, " I said, "there are too many follow up questions. 28."
"This year!"
"So what's yours? Is it worse?"
"Its different." She seemed reluctant, like I had been.
"When I was younger...." she began. She turned away to wisper something
to Rose as she had been doing the entire night. Without looking back,
they both got up and walked away. I'd never know what happened to
Lauren. I never saw her again.
I sat back, closed my eyes and listened to the music, trying to
comprehend what had just happened.

---------------------
Brussels
...
Our Now is too short.
Most of the pressure I feel NOW is summarized in the question, "why am I
not THERE, NOW? Where is THERE? Its a career, diploma, settled down.
First of all, you are not able to get lost if you do not have a
destination. Likewise, you are never in the wrong place if you don't know
where to go.

It seems like so long ago I was lying in the office of my house, which
was doubling as my bedroom. What was I thinking? "Anything but this.
Anytime but now, anywhere but here." Too scared to cry, for fear that
the mere displacement of molecules by my tears might break what fragile
hope remained. How do you get rid of hope? We are told that hope is
good, but what about when it isn't? What about when it is destructive or
futile?
....
If I could choose a lasting monument to be left to my distant ancestors
it would be that my generation, against all odds, said "No more!" and
stopped what now appears to be an inescapable, ever increasing race
towards our destruction. My children's children's children to the 100th
generation would remember us for that and be forever grateful to us for
the air they breath and water they drink. Our decisions will be felt by
my great granddaughter as she cares lovingly for her child, whom she only
wants to provide a better life than she had, as her parents before. You
can still drive on the cobblestone roads built half a millennium ago.
Our roads, smooth and quiet, require constant repair and replacement.
You could pave over the cobblestone and in another century you'd have
good cobblestone roads again.
...
It is not possible to be lost if you do not have a destination. It is
possible to feel lost. Often times it is not the feeling that we are
going in the wrong direction that makes us turn around, but merely the
feeling that we have no direction. This is brought on by a lack of
destination. We'll head down one path and quickly change directions,
over and over coming back to where we started and heading in a new
direction. Sometimes we need to stay on course heading wherever we're
going at least long enough to KNOW it is the wrong direction. If we fail
to do this we will find ourselves on the same path, on a later date,
wondering what was a little further down the line.
"A hasty man eats soup with a fork." thats an old chinese proverb. I
take it to mean, a hasty man can quickly go through the motions, but a
lot is missed as it falls through the cracks.
...
She sat in the large windowsill, silhouetted in the lights of Brussels.
I sat on the bed, leaning in to her with all my might. Our legs barely
touching. Almost too much, but not nearly enough. We listened to Built to
Spill blasting as loud as could be through the ipod headphones sitting on
the sill. Like the music in the backs of our consciousness, only
perceptible, discernible if you knew the song. You could fill in the
audible gaps.

She told me about her family and her life. Crying at one point. I
wanted to hug her. I wanted to be hugged. Alive in some ones arms. I
said little. I felt joyous, joyous and sad. It wasn't as clear to me.
The only thing I said, "There are things you believe... you believe are
true. As all else changes and fails, you still have those constants to
hold on to, but what happens when those things fail? I don't believe in
those things anymore. I don't believe in tomorrow. Only right now.
Right now is all I can really believe in. " I stared into the
cobblestone night.

--------------
Fontainbleau 9-25-04

Its a function of nature to calm us, slow us and make us put things in
perspective. I thought this as I hung my clothes out to dry at Henry's
Mom's house. Their courtyard was something out of a romantic novel.
Bleached white stone statues created by his mother dotted the whole yard.
Full of lively flowers which only accented the deep greens that fanned out
to the periphery in every direction. A little stone pond where a fountain
may have been with a modernistic sculpture nearby. A painter must have
created such a scene because only in paintings had I seen such as this.
I smiled as I thought about how I had never hung my clothes out to dry
before. I'm sure it would seem like a chore in my past life. Why hang
them when you can run the dryer? They didn't even have a dryer. Clothes
hung to dry end up more rinkly anyway. Not too mention the time it takes
to meticulously hang your clothes. Of course you can only hang them when
its not raining and there is always the chance it won't dry quickly due to
lack of sun. What if you needed those pants for tonight, what would you
do? How would these little clothes hangers hold up my heavy water soaked
pants I thought as I marveled at the engineering prowess that created the
clothespin in the first place. It just works, not sure why. Something
about the downward pull of the pants that made the pin hold tighter.
Funny the clothespin hasn't been improved in so long. I guess it didn't
need to be.
What is it about these beautiful spaces that emits joy, forcing itself
under your skin, no matter how thick. You can't compare it to a place
joyous because of joyous people. If you lack joy and enter a place where
people are joyful or full of love, you often feel resentment. What gives
them the right? Why weren't you blessed with a life that permitted such
joy, you wonder as the whole scene mocks your very being. Nature seems
different, its joy less pretentious so that you can't take affront to it,
only accept or ignore it.
...
When I began this journey I went to find myself in another place. When I
got there I found a wrapped box. I carefully unwrapped the box thinking
surely I would find the answer in there. But I only found a box. This I
opened thinking surely I would find the answers inside. But I only found
a bag. I opened the bag sure my fortitude had finally paid off, but I
only found a wrapped ball. Unwrapping the ball I became suspicious that
perhaps inside I would not find what I wanted and sure enough, inside, I
found an onion. But this onion was the size of a planet, whose horizons
were too far to even see and each layer would take many lifetimes to peel.
It was then that I realized I had been wrong by many orders of magnitude
on the scope of my project. When I had thought I was close, I was really
very far. When I believed I had gotten much closer, I had only
imperceptibly moved. This process would not be as I imagined. As fast
as I could go, it would still happen to slow to be perceived. When change
was perceived, this too would be an illusion, soon to be exposed. I
would run for miles and look back to see my shadow right where I had left
it, I was in the same place as before. It is only by accepting the
process that I wold make progress. Accepting that the process is about
taking understanding and accepting it is misplaced. That which we believe
we understand we know the least about. I am peeling the onion. I do not
hope to even finish a single layer in this lifetime. I will find the
truth when I realize the world can not be understood as truth, but only in
beauty and mystery. For in our attempts to understand the mystery, we
lose the mystery. And in the end, it is only in this mystery we find joy.

Posted by wonko at September 27, 2004 05:55 AM

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Comments

I agree the beauty is in the question,but you can also find beauty in answers.

Posted by: simonsays at September 27, 2004 03:01 PM

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