Krona In Time

It is cold, rainy, and windy, and I have found it impossible to fall asleep. Too much mid-afternoon coffee, perhaps, or more likely the heavy clip I got my mind working at this evening, combined with the immodestly late hour at which I got out of bed this morning. I finished Bryson's "Neither Here Nor There", a vapid exercise that I undertook to compare Europe twenty years ago with my experience earlier this year. The book, for its part, attempts to compare Europe forty years ago and twenty years ago, and be something of a travelogue. Mostly, Bryson exercises his ability to wrestle a certain kind of exaggerated, inelegant sarcasm out of every situation. In this narrow enterprise, I suppose he has succeeded.

I have been spending a lot of time lately thinking about Europe. Living there for five months, however, might have less to do with it than my state lately, which could be described as the intersection of intent and malaise, in most everything that I devote my time to. I have tried forcing myself to construct process and means of success - in school, music, investing, even making friends. But a consistent drive I can only find for investing, which I easily overload on, blowing a fuse and short-circuiting my hunger for learning for a few days at a time.

Perhaps I am drifting away from rationality. I have been taking out student loans, and the Europe trip erased any urgency I had to get back to 'business as usual' by finding a second-rate job after my first-rate prospects fell through. Cost of capital is low, investing bargains abound, it is easy to dream of returns on invested capital that can make up for a lack of primary income. The very thought of this occurring, at my age, is quite absurd, frankly.

I had a dream last night that I was at Club Opera in Stockholm (I never went there, but we talked about it enough to paint a vivid portrait), and was quite lost. The room was full of the people I... well, I believe the sense was that it was the people that I went to school with there (in the dream). Even in the dream there was a sort of cognitive dissonance going on, and the feeling of satisfaction combined with an insistent feeling that I was supposed to be somewhere else. I felt like I had spent quite enough time where I was and should be purposefully moving on to another bar (although the feeling was quite real, too, that another bar was akin to another city; this was firmly counter to my conscious feelings; I miss Stockholm more than any place in Europe). Anyway, this whole big charade was a rather obvious metaphor that I am ready to be done with Omaha, and even the feeling in the dream that I am going to the next bar to meet other friends seems a brusque way of my subconscious to reassure me that I will meet new people again. I am 1) least surprised to see my subconscious use bars as a metaphor for stages of my life; and 2) most offended to see Omaha be represented by a classy club that I probably could never afford.

We did go to some bars in Stockholm that were very cool, most notably Spy Bar late one night. I would learn later about the reputation it has: a place people go to do 'celebrity spotting', with the supposedly most difficult club doors to get inside in the city. I recall a group of several underage girls from our hostel having no trouble, whatsoever; I don't even recall that the bouncer felt a need to check their ID's; however, the seemed convinced for some time that my friend and I were actually not at the head of the line that started fourteen inches in front of him with me.

Once we were inside, it was like the world's best house party, in an 18th century mansion with a DJ who had my own music collection. I didn't know that there were nightclubs in the world that actually played Hercules and Love Affair, and D.A.N.C.E., and Cut Copy. Also, the superexpensive drinks actually seemed to enhance the experience somehow, as if it gave some validity to having this fantastic time.

Lady Patricia - a club on a boat in the lake - became something archetypal, as we tried and failed to reach it night after night. A forgotten ID or denial due to public intoxication seemed only one extraneously expensive cab ride away, a problem exacerbated when you have a whole group of irresponsible people that are committed to not splitting up.

Not splitting up proved its worth when we were in Stockholm, if even through failure. The one night that I attempted to walk anywhere alone (home from Spy Bar in the middle of the night, incidentally), a car pulled up to the curb, and four guys got out, identifying themselves as police and asking me for identification. When I wouldn't show them, they told me to get in their car. I was lucky that other people were walking by whose attention I could divert to the situation occurring around me. I was so shaken by the situation that I walked around the city for three hours lost, looking for our hostel.

The next day, walking through a particularly classy urban section of town, I saw the words "Spy Bar". I had a flashback. Wait a minute, I thought, I remember that name. I pulled the tourist info pamphlet from my back pocket. "Yep, here it is, Spy Bar. The one with the celebrities." I suggested to my friends that we go there that night. One of them then, without pride or ridicule, informed me that we had already been there.

Finally, Stockholm, to the best of my recollection, is the only place where I've ever been denied entry to a bar because I was too drunk. This is a special memory that I can savor vividly, thanks to the fact that I was sober.

I feel a heaviness of eyelids coming on. Wish me luck.

My Two Favorite Books

I'll contradict myself immediately, to set the bar low. The idea of a 'favorite' book is counterproductive; it is unnecessarily reductionist when there are uncountable charms to uncountable books.

My second-favorite book right now is House of Leaves. As I will soon explain in a more complicated way, this is not necessarily a literary comment. In the way it makes its artistic statements, House of Leaves is the proverbial sledgehammer used to open an aspirin bottle. Trapped inside the bloated text is a stunningly immersive and compelling novel that has been partially strangled of impact by unnecessary complexity, some unnecessary formalistic elements, and an obsession with creating a mythology that rewards people willing to play a glorified version of connect-the-dots to research obscure references and vague clues. All of these limits also reinforce the book for me, though, because I am obsessed with personal and private mythologies. I also tend to give some leeway to ambitious works of art when they partially fail.

The central story in House of Leaves (the one you really care about) is surreal, terrifying, and ambitious to a degree that I have almost never encountered. It is also very fundamentally original, which is a trait that gets more rare each year. There is a passage where the protagonist finds a copy of the book itself and begins reading, and we see that the multiple levels of narrative in the book have begun performing the same effect that occurs when two mirrors slowly line up on opposite sides of our self. Symbolism is supposed to be handled in an elegant and subtle manner in literature, and here the book breaks that rule severely. It is necessary, though; there is no way to go about making this statement subtly, and I thought the effect was worth it.

I have read reviews online that describe House of Leaves as a commentary on the discipline of literary criticism. I think that is missing the point. The irrationality of the terror that the protagonist discovers is most effectively brought into relief through the use of an overly rational approach. I will put myself out there and say that I do not think that House of Leaves is a horror story. It is a Borgesian world, rational in itself but twisted from our world. We approach this world objectively and see that the subject of the story, incidentally, is the nature of horror itself.

My favorite book, in most every way that I know how to judge a book, is Fugitive Pieces. Michaels has a great and unique command of the language, and the the pace and flow make it obvious that she was a poet first. The first ten pages will tell anyone whether this book is for them or not.

The story does justice to the style. There are so many moments that have stuck with me since I first read it. For a person who did not grow up with a sister, I felt closer to understanding when reading this book than at any other time in my life. It also taught me a lot about the nature and dynamics of the places where we find emotional safety. Maybe more than anything, it reminded me that everything happens exactly once; foremost, our lives.

The way the story shifts perspective two-thirds of the way through disappointed me the first time I read it, because I was so absorbed and in love with the story I was already reading. After reading the book a couple times, I started to see the ways that the counterpoint of the second story improved the book as a whole. The immense gravity of the first story is brought into perspective only when we see that the first story's truths extend to us all, and furthermore, when we see how ready so many of us are to ignore them.

My favorite books have changed over the years so many times that I see little point in even sorting them in such a way, except that it helps me to identify what I like so well about them. With many books I read, I never stop long enough to do this; for me, it is quite a task to unwind such a tangle of thread. I believe I fear making mistakes in such a process - the task of understanding concepts, styles, themes, hidden and overt messages is daunting in such a liquid medium.

Brain Dump #001

Mystical thought can best be described as a system of focusing the meaning of some unexplainable portion of the world onto the process of its experience, in lieu of a explanation for its cause.

I am equally excited to turn Only Son's 'Sleepyface' and Fleet Foxes' 'Tiger Mountain Peasant Song' into sparse, cold guitar torch songs.

I believe that I have fully assimilated the concept of capital allocation into my asset decisions, but I am afraid to apply it to lesser consumption decisions for fear of emptying the enjoyment completely from the process of consuming. (i.e. the moment that I attempt to calculate whether the extra $1.50 I spend for a 6-pack of a certain microbrew is proportionately more enjoyable as a percent of the total cost, can I really enjoy it at all?)

Based on the songs and parts of songs that I most like, Jonny more closely approximates my love for Radiohead's melodic presence than Thom. Although, not by much. (See: Wolf at the Door, The Tourist, evidence from 'There Will Be Blood')

The most important quality for the people I will surround myself with in the coming years to possess is a systematic (or at least rational) approach to self-improvement in the innermost sense.

I need to reverse my slide away from regular exercise.

I am getting too old for 'this shit.'

Heavy Surf - 2/20/09

I reminded myself a number of years ago to always pay attention to the essence of the day; as much as the blinders of our routine can make the sequence seem uniform, it is an illusion... What we experience is neither a repetition nor rewindable. It is hard when we move quickly through life, and the days seem to lose sequence altogether; easier when we retain enough touchstones that we can see our relationships to all things twist and reshape. Home, I feel now, is all the places where the twisting has changed us. Natural, maybe, that so much of it will happen in a house; in houses; aging is an anesthesia but it is also the slowest, most inevitably certain agent of change. Sit in an empty room, and you will not remain the same; every day for a hundred years you will change - expand or contract, opening yourself to the inexorable peace of universal wisdom. At the end (the end of wisdom, not existence...), having a 'personality' is merely the story of how you attained such wisdom and when...

In perception, the trust in the constancy of memory is much like the trust in the constancy of time before Einstein's General Theory of Relativity proved light to be the universe's true constant; and memory's true constant, ironically enough, is time... While we believe that any moment, person, or idea can remain in us any length of time unchanged, all we can truly rely on is that they cannot; or rather, that the entropy of all things in time will make this impossible.

Thoughts Upon Returning Home

I have arrived home from Europe and begun the process of re-establishing a life here. It is strange to look back on a process that I attempted to gain such a grip in planning; I felt the roads through Germany and the sound of church bells in the old city squares, and the heat of the Southern Portugal sun on my skin long before I left Finland, and now those desires are informed with the [wildly differing] reality of my travels. How long does it take for the two to become one? I have infinite patience to discover the answer.

I finished reading "The Winter Vault", which I had really looked forward to. It can't even approach the uniqueness of Michaels' earlier novel, "Fugitive Pieces" (how many books can?), but it is still very strong. I am a little annoyed with some of Michaels' repeated literary and grammatical effects, but the story and themes are all well-drawn. I was left thinking about authenticity of place, and authenticity of purpose even more... And I can't help but think this is important for me right now...

On a separate note, it was amazing to read a novel where the most poignant imagery took place in a location I recently visited - Warsaw. The history of the city during World War II is both horrific as well as unique in a terrifying sense. Certainly the fact that the city was rebuilt to look identical to its pre-war state is fascinating from the standpoint of authenticity. Michaels asks, is such an act meant to heal the living, or the dead?

In Warsaw, there is a memorial garden to the uprising that contains lots of large, high-resolution pictures of the city taken from planes during the destruction of the city. The stories these pictures tell are fascinating, and the later pictures, where the city stands almost completely destroyed (not a roof remaining on any building) are stunning. I can't even begin to imagine the way these people were affected.

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Before I left for my exchange trip, I attended a pre-exchange meeting at school where we were warned that a sense of depression is quite rare on departure, and quite common on return. It has taken no more than one week of living at home to play out this thesis. Despite efforts towards regaining employment and arranging school plans, I feel listless. None of my pre-exchange occupations of time feel worthwhile or enjoyable. I am more idealistic in my goals and no better equipped to attain them. If anything, I have moved backwards.

Where does such a series of events end? I believe I must explore new avenues and meet new people, two things that have always been difficult for me.

Politics of Surprise and Delusion

Spring Break has come and gone, and my time to leave Finland is thus approaching in a way that feels terminal now... I am already letting go because I know it will be hard. In a way, I think I started letting go when my friends began to leave. By some no doubt ill-defined metrics, my time here has worked in reverse to what might be considered normal - I felt at home here almost immediately, and have spent a great deal of time loosening the grip the place and myself have on each other. So, what is the point of it all? Maybe nothing. Or maybe I want the feelings and mindset that I have borne here to survive the detachment?

Who was it that said, (and I paraphrase...) that hatred for others comes from seeing things in them we don't like about ourselves? I have always agreed with that statement, but now I realize it may be part of something bigger. Maybe all emotions are elicited through this mirror - the one that reflects what the actions of others and external events mean to ourselves, not what they are in and of themselves... Or is it just this to me? As evidence I can only offer my own experiences, which necessarily limits the conclusions I can draw, but let me try regardless. Recently, good friends of mine here left, and to be forthright, I was not sad for this. I will miss them, but that to me is peripheral. Perhaps the most important question in making my point is this: What could I do about it? Nothing, of course. However, a few days later, when I realized I had lost a gift they had given me that reminded me of them very much, I was so upset that I actually cried. This was MY failing, the effect of my actions. And for all my pondering, I cannot so much as figure out how my friends even fit into the emotion, except that I feel that my failure somehow takes away from my bond with them.

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The idea of living in one place for a limited amount of time is appealing for any number of reasons that I have spent long amounts of time thinking about and reinforcing in my mind. And so, in the spirit of the new, these reasons are of no further interest to me. What preoccupies my mind today is the drawbacks, which have come into greater focus as I have experienced them more closely. It started before Finland - I became involved with someone where circumstance necessarily dictated the limits of our relationship. I have never had particular fortune finding people that I felt I had a real 'connection' with, so these facts were hard for me to accept. Now, the desires and reality of my current situation weigh on everything that happens, every opportunity that is presented. And I have become no better at accepting the constraints of reality, as I have begun to feel much more attached to someone than I should allow myself to be to someone that I will soon be saying good-bye to.

This reminds me that sometime ago, I changed my favorite quote on Facebook from several quotes that define how I wish I was (a silly notion), to one that describes very well how my mind actually works:

"Illusion is the first of all pleasures" - O. Wilde

I won't dwell on the fact that I have come to quote one of the most readily quotable figures of modern times. (Borges was both correct and notes the relevant fact when he pointed out that time proves Wilde to be almost always right) More importantly, I have allowed myself to draw grandiose enough illusions of pleasure that it has become a daunting (and secondary) exercise for me to determine what pleasures are actually worth reaching for. I am more apt to merely accept (or pursue) the pleasures that present themselves in front of me.

How many people joked about me finding a wife while I was over here? I suppose the idea in and of itself is not crazy, given what different dynamics exist and how easy it would be to fall into a spell upon finding something so different, perhaps something that easily steps past the usual (and thus frustrating) limitations but possesses other limitations I have yet to experience... Still, I am surprised at myself that I have actually entertained some thought about the possibility. Even more surprising, perhaps? I only mention any of this because I thought about it again today. I suppose, significantly, that this is not rational but is instead the effect of an addiction to the pleasure of illusion.

The Joys of Predestination

I should probably apologize for the last post; during times of gravity, I tend to grab and smear too much of it. In any case, it's a good song with true words; maybe I should just feign ignorance that the post was meant as anything more than admiration for a song.

Next Friday, I will depart for Norway. We're planning a week there that focuses more on nature than our previous journeys; this is not arbitrary. Finally, we will be somewhere that is experiencing something that can be considered 'Spring-like'. To me, this couldn't be better, as I believe it safe to say that amongst the Scandinavian countries, the natural sights get better the further west you go. (This becomes even truer if you consider Iceland to be a Scandinavian state...)

Three days ago, while I was sitting down to lunch with my roommate, we saw the first flying insect of the year. Likewise, even on cold days the last week or two, puddles of water are formed at the street intersections as we walk. Ultimately, as the dormancy of Winter turns into a light Spring, my experiences and subsequent thoughts themselves are undergoing a metamorphosis of sorts, and I suspect that by the time I'm watching the sun set as I lay on the beach in Lisbon in late May, the view backwards that led me from this place, slowly to the south and west over these months, will seem not only natural, but inevitable.