talking 'bout my generation (circa september 2006)

It feels like this should be a pivotal, epiphanic time in my life, but the more I learn, the more I feel myself freezing, shuddering in wary anticipation of a lifetime of drudgery and meaningless toil. We are the hollow men, it is said, devoid of spirituality and conviction, and I'm afraid I'm starting to believe it. It's an apathetic generational pandemic, as the world shrinks and wars become more and more abstract. Far from the shock value of Vietnam's novel projection in North America, we are so bombarded with imagery of horror and loss that they lose their meaning, blurring together in a concentrated effort at subduing the will for revolution. Knowledge is a handicap, and one's greatest asset. The more perfect it becomes, the further one is from understanding. It's like the curved line in graphing whose theoretical implications I always failed to grasp in 11th grade: it never reaches zero. We float in our indecision, caught up by the whitherto's and whyfores as we deplete resources and abandon faith in an alternate state. Without education, one cannot begin to fully understand their projected role in society and in life, but the more education they receive, the more futility is brought home.

This in a world that has conceived of butterflies and orgasms, waterfalls and chocolate mousse. This, in a world whose star is essential and whose creatures coexist in a Darwinian Utopia, surviving. There is oxygen, and water, and baby laughter. There are rainbows and bengal tigers and orchids. Fairytales peacefully nestle in purely scientific ink, paper and voice. The brain, electromagnetic and chemical processes firing, conceives of unicorns and Nirvana and quantum physics, while regulating the corporeal essentials - breath, cognisance, digestion, desire. Desire. Humanity dreams, together and one by one. We have kissed the moon ("One small step") and gone home to dance with the Sandman. Frogs marry ducklings and grow to be princes and swans. Kittens grow whiskers. The smell of freshly baked bread wafts, intermingling with a warm glow of sunset. On one side of the world, people rise to the same rhythmic pulses that tell those opposite them to lay down and close their eyes. Shakespeare, Keats, Beethoven, Einstein, Ghandi, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr., Chaucer, John Lennon, Mother Theresa, Dr. Suess, Tolkien, Atticus Finch, Callahan, Ender Wiggin, Kris Kringle, Nikola Tesla, Hobbes...

Despite spiritual stagnation and cutural assimilation, globalization is no excuse for apathy. We are willfully ignorant. (Not by nature, by decision.) May this millenial generation find their muse...

solipsist educational dilemma

Did I Miss Anything (by Tom Wayman)

Question frequently asked by
students after missing a class

Nothing. When we realized you weren't here
we sat with our hands folded on our desks
in silence, for the full two hours

Everything. I gave an exam worth
40 per cent of the grade for this term
and assigned some reading due today
on which I'm about to hand out a quiz
worth 50 per cent

Nothing. None of the content of this course
has value or meaning
Take as many days off as you like:
any activities we undertake as a class
I assure you will not matter either to you or me
and are without purpose

Everything. A few minutes after we began last time
a shaft of light descended and an angel
or other heavenly being appeared
and revealed to us what each woman or man must do
to attain divine wisdom in this life and
the hereafter
This is the last time the class will meet
before we disperse to bring this good news to all people
on earth

Nothing. When you are not present
how could something significant occur?

Everything. Contained in this classroom
is a microcosm of human existence
assembled for you to query and examine and ponder
This is not the only place such an opportunity has been
gathered

but it was one place

And you weren't here

and so it begins...

Before sunrise, before shadow, before tyranny and war, before love, and peace, and truths, before deceit, and life, and death, before time itself, there was a Tone. It was low, static, empty; it crept through the fabric of sullen void, waiting. Mæto, silent, ponderous, still, crouched at the edge of the abyss, peering down into the shallows and depths of heavy solitude. The Tone, flat, lay as if weighted by bricks of lead, writhing against its clutching bonds.

For a moment, an hour, an eternity, Mæto stared blindly into the teeming masses of empty space, searching. A solitary tear welled, slowly, slowly, or in an instant, and fell into the abyss, fell endless leagues, and an echo began. The Tone, awakened, became a thin hum. Trapped in the limitless confines of potential, it grew, as yet unaware of endings, focused only on beginnings. It grew, building and building until it began to reverberate against itself. It climbed, swelling, until a second Tone emerged, higher and faster than the first. They continued together, for an instant and an eternity, until finally (or right away), they clashed and clashed and clashed with each other, and there was endings. Each echoed off of the other, warring for space in the infinitely dark abyss. Thus, there was Dissonance.

With Dissonance, came Shadow, welling and pooling, caressing the viscous borders of Dissonance; and with Shadow came Light, flighty, elusive, magnetic; and the Light waged war with the Shadow, an epic battle, the epic battle, pulsing, pushing, struggling, shattering it into millions of fragments. Light bled through the fragments, dripping slowly past the Dissonance, until it had soaked through, leaving Shadow tainted and murky. They fell from the shaking of sound, faster than the tear, and caught it, writhed in its splendour for a fraction of an eternity, then bounced back up through the tumult of sound. The Light, and Shadow, and Sound rushed outward, and collided against the walls of the abyss, becoming Notes and Colours.

As they collided from the walls and rushed back inward, they began to encounter each other, sometimes splintering, sometimes merging, and Mæto heard a swelling Melody that danced on the surface of the Tone. The elusive Melody continued to kiss, and wrestle, and play; the colours to merge, and throb, and dissipate; and each pushed and pulled on the other until they mounted a Crescendo.

Mæto clapped, once, as a gong ringing through an empty stadium, and shattered the cresting wave. It tumbled over itself, a riot of startled colours and sounds, and collapsed into stillness and dark.

The silence was heavy, rich, strained; it tasted, to Mæto, of the as yet unimagined scent of sodden leaves in the waning of winter, when the snows have corroded and eroded the earth and rot is ripe in the air. Then there was Loneliness, and Mæto shuddered pathetically, for the taste was of chill and solitude; the heaving gasps of one about to drown and leave behind gaping absence.

Struggling, reaching, Mæto croaked, then cried out, then moaned. The Melody shook, then lay still. Mæto, in despair, hurled curses down into the darkness, and thus was Evil created in the hollow depths; the Melody’s sharp outcry of pain mingled with the curses, curling in an embrace of terrible passion. Overcome by repentance, Mæto sat, still, quiet, absorbing the shock waves of the curses that left Evil slinking below and around the Melody. Finally, conquered by tragedy, and longing, Mæto sang a mournful haunting to the crumpled Melody, subduing the curses with weeping. At first it seemed that nothing happened, but then Mæto began to hear a faint, distant pulse. It gradually grew, until the Melody feebly began to stir again, alternately whimpering weakly and self-soothing. It rose, slowly, gradually, rebuilding itself from the inside; and while the higher, clashing Tone still pushed lightly against the first, making it tremble slightly, the Melody was now twined in the steady branches of Mæto’s song, and its sinews could no longer be shattered, scattered, and lost.

So began the Hive, which pulsed with flickering white light, heady red glows, and sinuous rills of blue and green. Stained with droplets of violet, it echoed the song of Mæto, weakly at first, obediently. But as it pulsed into strength, light airy thrills began to flicker on the edges of the Melody. These were soon followed by reedy whispers and a deep, alto pulse, lapping gently through the core. The flickerings began as idle improvisations, trilling and skipping across the entire range of sound, distracting from the Song. Then, each flicker found a pattern, to complement the sinewy heart of the Melody. These patterns became stronger, and louder, as more of the flickerings joined each other, expanding the sounds. Thus was Harmony recreated, rediscovered, reimagined, and thus was Cacophony resolved.

But the memory remained of the echoing Clap, and the simple freedom that had preceded it, and a dissonance arose from the heart of the Hive.