what would you do if you had no fear

brace yourself for a little sappy new age feel good thought experiment...so i am reading this book "what would you do if you had no fear" and i thought this is an interesting idea to think through idealistic or not. the first step then is to think of the things you fear. these fears if you think about them will gurantee that you what you fear will come true. the idea then is if you air your fears, somehow rid yourself of their power then there will be more space for positive thoughts, aspiration and action. as i spend far too much time worrying and fearing i think i should start to air them, whether you find them here on this blog or not is inconsequential, the point is i let them out of my mind. so here goes what will be very long and continually updated list..at some point ill move on to what i would do if i had fear for now some fears....
I FEAR
-not seeing all of the gorgeous places i dream of seeing
-not finding satisfaction in my work
-i will spend so much time making decsions that i wont have any time left to live the decsions
-i will miss my little brother grow up
-i won't see my siblings as much as i want to
-i will lose the people i love and they will die not knowing how much they meant to me
-my own potential. it stares at me, demands of me and yet i wonder if i can answer it
-what will happen when i truly commit myself to something (among other things this PhD)
-being stuck
-that i will be bored when i figure it all out
-the very stability i crave
-that i will die without having lived every day i have been blessed with
-that i will never be content with any decsion i make
-being content
-being alone
-the safety of school

slowing it down

a new book out there has been reccommended to me, i have not picked it up yet, but it is called In Praise of Slow and talks about the merits of slowing things down in a world that is obsessed with speeding things up.

check out the blog: http://www.inpraiseofslow.com/slow/blog.php

and here is a quote

"Half our life is spent trying to find something to do with the time we have rushed through life trying to save."

what is retirement then if we rushed all of our decisions to get there, taking jobs we dislike, working extra hours to build 401 k's and neglecting ourselves in the hope that when we arrive at the magical age our "self" will still be there and will have all the time in the world to do all the things we want, except that we have lost our passion, creativity and dreams to life in pursuit of retirement.

how do you recall experience without images to remind you of an instant

finding one's way back

its late. i need to sleep but i also want to think about a recent quote I saw and think through it, so ill put the quote out now and think through it later...."philosophical problems have their beginnings in the feeling of being lost in an unfamiliar place, and philosophical answers are in the nature of finding one's way back." (From Veena Das' reading of Wittgenstein). In finding our way back, we also seem to be finding our way forward. Sorting through the past, interrogating it, making sense of it, understanding it, misunderstanding it, constructing, deconstructing. Maybe it is only once we have found our way back that we can move forward. It seems the past allows us to formulate the very philosophical answers that will guide our present. This relationship to the unfamiliar is also interesting. The unfamiliar distresses, challenges and yet shapes and forms that which we will become.

past reflections surfacing in present emotions

While I want this blog to be many things I feel it often fixates on the loss of my mom. I don't intend to end that strand with this post, but feel maybe speaking my thoughts to an unknown audience may be just what I need. Perhaps I in writing to an unknown reader I am only making sense of this world for myself. Or maybe someone else will read this random accumulation of memories and see a theme/strand or insight I did not anyway...

Today I had a random memory of a conversation I had with my mom. 2 weeks before she passed way she called me to tell me that one of my aunts had died. While not unexpected no one thought she would go so fast. My mom I remember requested I send a card to my cousin consoling her on the loss of her mom. I remember telling my mom how weird it seemed to send a card to console some one, and that it all just didn't seem real. I don't really remember the exact conversation but I know my mom focused on just sending the card to let my cousin know I was thinking of her, whether it made "sense" or not. Truth is I don't remember if I sent the card or not, nor did I think 2 weeks later I would lose my own mom. I never thought much of the conversation until just recently and how weird the timing was. I guess you never know whats just right around the corner. The thought of losing my mom seemed so distant in that conversation about my cousin's loss. I'm sure in speaking with my mom I envisioned having her around for many years, and the loss of a parent was not anything I thought would affect me for a very long time. Life's twists and turns are odd, especially when reflected on. I guess as one fairly infamous boxer so aptly put it "everyone has a plan till they get punched in the face." I guess you never know how your plans and the punches life throws at your plans will match up...maybe we just have to be happy we are still in the ring to take another hit and enjoy those brief moments we are not getting hit.

some random christmas pics

1-me and matt

2-me, matt, gramps, uncle neil

3- the cousins

leaving NY

Tearful farewells
A return to normalcy?
The sinking sensation
That it is always farewell
And never normal

journey

"We do not receive wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness, which no one else can make for us, which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world." -Proust

and what if there is no epiphany....does that count? does realizing there will be no great "sense" made of it all count as an epiphany? to be honest i never really knew what I was looking for, so I can't really claim to have "found" anything. and for that matter what is found now may just be a glimpse of what I have yet to discover. what if my understanding at this very moment is not the great understanding I had hoped for but instead merely a beginning of understandings yet to come? and all of this brought on by what? This feeling I am trying to capture with words is elusive. It strikes me but when I try to hold it, to put it down to own it suddenly it is once again beyond my grasp. Mostly though its thoughts of Mom. Over 2 years ago and I have just begun to enter what could count as contemplation. The battle of grief fought, arrangements made, shock subsided and the cold realization that 2 years has both felt like an eternity and mere seconds. With the grieving past, there is now just a deep pain I feel some need to make sense of. This whole time I have been waiting to "see" my true calling, to turn this tragedy into something I could call positive by taking something from this loss. But lately it has felt more and more like hoping for an epiphany is what is dragging me down. Maybe there is no great realization other than that despite our best knowledge that life is short, brief and beyond our grasp we deny this very fact every day. Death has nothing to teach us except what we already know, but deep down resent knowing. I KNOW that at any moment life as I currently define it could end. With one phone call, a voice could deliver the news of another loss. The accidental holds a special place in the mind. We know it lurks in the recesses of every action, latent potential for tragedy. But we must pretend that this space does not have power over us. We wake and assume that the world will remain unchanged. That tragedy is a word spoken by others about their own misfortune, never a word used by us for somehow we are exempt. If we allowed the space of the accident to occupy our mind we would go mad, every ring of the phone, every step down the stairs we would anticipate the tragic, our living paralyzed by the mere thought of death. So instead we must wake up and pretend, our lives a beautiful work of fiction. Close the gaps, mind the borders, keeping the tragic out, denying the extreme fragility of this instant we call the present. And somehow we cant escape it. I guess I thought after 2 years I could live my life according to some higher calling, to locate a passion and let it burn my soul as I seized each and every moment that passed after 910 AM on December 9th 2005. Instead though my hope for sucking the marrow out of every minute afforded to me has turned into contemplating how best to seize the moment. If there is anything that is disgraceful to tragedy, it is inaction/ contemplation. The one thing that I hoped to draw from my loss was a sense of seizing the moment. Burning the instant. Running down every second of life. But now I have finally started to understand there may be no moment of instant transformation. Instead some moments Ill just have to live knowing that my contemplation is wasting fragile pieces of lived experience. Ill have to smile at the small victories. The moments where it all seems right, where it all fits together. Those moments burned deep in my memory of pure exhilaration, of pure life will need to carry me through the times when there is no clarity nor sense to any of it at all. My history will serve as the anchor which lets not the ship of absurdity take sail. Ill look back on the smiles with fondness, knowing there will be more. Theres been alot of moments that have been pure bliss, and I must not forget these. I will not let the tragedy steal from me the moments of pure life, of moments well lived. The accident may always be lurking, tragedy may await around the next corner but what it can not have is the past, the smiles, the laughter the happiness. While future memories were prevented by the accident, there were many lived moments before December 9th 2005 that can never be taken away. These moments I will forever hold and are my solace ...moms laughter igniting the room....moms goofy bedtime stories...moms home cooked breakfast...moms hug...moms understanding...moms compassion..moms unconditional acceptance...moms very humble passing-just another day like any other, heading to work with thoughts of tomorrow, hopes for the future and simply going about the daily routine....things left unsaid, deeds left undone, aspirations not yet attained, a mind filled with to-do's and must do's not knowing that in an instant all those undones, unsaids, and unattaineds would forever remain that way. And so it goes for us all as we step into a new day. Preparing for lands we may never see, mapping routes we may never sail, but nonetheless living, and in the end that's all we can do.

writing letters

why dont we write more letters? I think my New Years resolution will be to make an effort to write more letters seems like a good idea no?

your smile will forever remain...

for lack of my own words some reflections...

"We are imperfect mortal beings, aware of that mortality even as we push it away, failed by our very own complication, so wired that when we mourn our losses we also mourn, for better or for worse, ourselves . As we were. As we are no longer. As we will one day not be at all"- Joan Didion

Life changes in an instant, the ordinary instant... -Joan Didion