Late Night Thoughts

We will disappear from this Earth
I don't know where we'll go
But we will be gone.
In the meantime - 
I'll get angry, sad, ludicrously happy,
And I'll share all this with you.
I'll share this with you because
I'm realizing that I love you,
Yeah, I do, 
because there's something beyond greed
beyond selfishness
in all this,
All this nothing

- F

Running

- F

Completely

I want to empty you.
I want to drain you.
I want you to look at me
with vacant eyes - 
knowing - 
that I'll just fill them again.

- F

Play ~

Hi,

- F

To Shatter, To Crash, To Cry

To shatter is a sudden breaking, a violent severance of a whole, a unification, into many pieces with sharp edges: what once was a thing to hold singularly in the hand, close to the body, becomes weaponized, each individual part now gleaming, showing off its knife-like sharpness, letting you know that it can now cut. When something shatters, it usually happens by accident, a small moment to save the thing already falling while the mind is still in shock as to how to grasp it before it hits. Yet the eyes are too mesmerized and slows down all other activity, until consciousness only snaps back to real time when the crash occurs. 

• 
  

To crash is when, no holds barred, you're reeling too fast and wanting to stop, but you are being hurled into a moment... after moment after moment, each too hot to process, repeating error after error, fuses burning up. A crash is a feverish ache everywhere with no source, stirring from some core that has been inert, until now, this very now, amplifying itself unmusically, creating curves like the ocean, and the tears fall, slowly, dripping, then all at once, a true rupture, unceasing. 

• 
  

To cry is not a weeping. To cry means to stop everything. Crying is stopping everything while it goes on - the crying - whether or not you want it to stop. Eyes get wet and you don't have any say in it. To cry is to instantaneously accept a revelation with no chance at having forethought. That revelation is hurt, a laceration that wishes, at all costs, not to be seen. Crying lets all the shattered pieces come together, swiftly, just to let it all go. 

• 
  

- F 

:)

I cannot tell you how happy I am to have my long hair again... two from last night. 

...

- F

An English Honeymoon: Day III, Part III

To conclude our third day in England, we ate at a pub: The Walrus & the Carpenter, located in downtown London. It's a place mostly for "suits" (businessmen) but we decided to go anyway, mostly because of the name. I looked for oysters on the menu, and wasn't surprised they weren't any... ;) 

The place was fairly full. We got our food. Steak for both of us, if I remember correctly. And it was really good! (BUT I know. I'm trying to not eat red meat. Really.) I drank some G&Ts, and we relaxed into the end of the day. Dan was a little uptight about being there at first, due to some insecurity (maybe for not being a big, important businessman himself), but I got him to calm down and just be there with me. 

I found this on the wall. I really appreciate signage like this, it's everywhere in England. Signage in England is a big thing. I love how on their sewers THAMES WATER is clearly embossed, so as to ward people off from throwing cigarette butts inside. 

It'd be really cool if spaces in the South Loop of Chicago were completely honest too, to read: THIS PLACE USED TO BE STRIPPERS ROW. You know, but classy like, framed like this, in history, to show how far the city's come. But people aren't ready for it in the U.S., and it's a shame. 

We tiredly took the tube back to our cozy hotel. There, while Dan was watching some British TV, I started to read "In the Land of Giants" by Max Adams, a really fabulous book (I've since finished it). Here's an IG post I shared with my friends that night:

We turned in early. Things were starting to settle in. I started to feel very, very good; a state of calm quite distinct from every other "vacation" I've taken. After all, this was our honeymoon. 

- F

A Hinterland of Islands (now edited for clarity)

The word hinterland has two definitions. The first: "the remote areas of a country away from the coast or the banks of major rivers / the area around or beyond a major town or port." The second definition is: "an area lying beyond what is visible or known". 

I'm traveling, in a way, to both, but it is the second hinterland that I am interested in. 

Next year in February of 2020, Dan and I will be meeting my mom in Manila, where she will have already been for a week prior to our arrival for a reunion, and from there we will be making rounds to visit my family. My family is spread out across the world but much of my family, aunts and uncles, cousins, still live in the Philippines in various areas, and I'm looking forward to visiting all of them. After this whirlwind of visitations - I've done this four times in my life already and there's no other way to describe it - my cousin Nadine, my cousin Mariz, Dan, me, and my mom will be taking a little plane over the Pacific to fly outside of the mainland to a cluster of four remote islands where an eco-friendly resort has been built. I chose the place, after looking various other attractions in the Philippines, and this place seems to be the closest to a hinterland that is feasible for a trip of this sort. That is to say, I think it's one of the most affordable and remote resorts in PI. We won't have much time there, a little more than a few days. And this visit, I think, may very well be the last of its kind for me, so I chose somewhere I thought plaintive, serene, and blissful too. 

My cousin Nadine wanted to check out the place before our trip (she's the kind of person that would do this, to make sure everything is safe in every conceivable manner and aspect). She went to visit this past week and has been posting pictures on Instagram. I've seen the resorts' social media pages and their marketing team tends to avoid pictures like the ones Nadine took. Hers capture the beautiful of the islands dressed in a sparkling grey (contrary to advertisements that show huge splashes of color). Both sides: the grey whiteness as well as those sharp blues and greens, are needed to really appreciate these islands. 

Islands, as we know from literature, can sometimes be ominous, places that hold a violent potential; a brutality, not just a pretty escape from the urban market (I'm thinking specifically now of Heart of Darkness and Lord of the Flies). This ominousness, however, need not be malevolent. It merely should be addressed...

I wanted to share these photos with you, and I wanted you to know that though our pilot will be scoping out this place from above, s/he does so only so that we can enter the landscape on the ground, onto the sands and through the rough rocks, the tangles of green... to peer out and into figures that have yet to be defined and named. 

- F

Some Strange Vanity

Over the weekend I took some selfies and Dan took some photos of me as well. They surprised me! People say I'm pretty or beautiful, sometimes gorgeous. I think otherwise, always wary of vanity. Also because I truly think I'm average, which I'm actually happy with! But there are some photos that I actually really approve of, in terms of aesthetic. I think it is a kind of vanity that has very little to do with looks... but more with... recognition. Perhaps acceptance too...

Wanted to share. First three are filtered, just a bit. Last three are not. 

- F

Thoughts on Sonja Boon's Lecture: Serendipity, Tactility, and Community: Library Research As A Practice Of Wonder"

An amazing colleague of mine suggested that I subscribe to Library Link Of The Day which hooks up to your email account and sends over a link (just one) to a news item, video, etc. pertaining to libraries every single day. There's no format as to what you get, so for the subscribed not affiliated with the group that runs it, it's fairly random. I signed up for it and found this lecture:  "Serendipity, Tactility, and Community: Library Research As A Practice Of Wonder" by Sonja Boon that really attracted my attention. In the first few minutes of previewing the lecture on youtube (link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=24&v=3j7DMXEXHBo ) I was roused by the idea of making room for wonder, magic, dreams, longing, desires, and space itself. I had to put listening and watching to this lecture on hold for the majority of the weekend due to previous commitments but I'm very glad I was able to finish it this afternoon.

One idea that struck me towards the end is that, for me, a lot of the project that Sonja Boon seems interested in has to do with a particular kind of object and a particular kind of activity. The object being books themselves, and the activity being the act of reading itself. Her focus on serendipity, tactility, and community is an important one, though I feel that these themes are available in copious amounts particularly in the West, to the point that we, as individuals, are in a position of stasis: our senses are attacked, there are too many points of entry into what should already be inherent within our daily lives. Playgrounds, Montessori Schools, Botanic Gardens, Forest Preserves, National Parks... painting workshops, pottery workshops, knitting organizations, zoos, petting farms, you name it - are readily available to us. The problem we should really be focusing on is how to bring the serendipitous, the tactile, and the community back home. I may expand on this later. My point, first, is that many of us feel robbed by the opportunities (advertised to us endlessly) and lack the ability to put these very important concepts into practice day to night, night to day.

Boon states a similar sentiment in her introduction: that she feels restricted by the idea of efficiency. Intellectual labor, manual labor, and every kind of economy asks us to be efficient, hardly giving us room to figure out how to play. In that vein, we might reach a cornerstone at the library. As a hub known mostly for its archival objects and books, how might the place of the library become a place of  a different kind of worldly interaction? How might the library become a kind of "playroom" for us to think, and conversely, to connect our thinking to our bodies? We are truly living in disembodied times, especially with the advent of the virtual.

Public libraries, and I stress the world public, tap into community very directly. All kinds of people across the entire spectrum are welcomed in. The public library holds the key to information directly pertaining to the community via its very resources (online databases, archives, collections, other materials like computers and printers) and, as should be more pertinent, the knowledge of the librarians themselves whose disciplines traverse academia and layman alike. But who is coming into the public library? Who is interested in it? Who, in one question, is the public? I won't and cannot answer that question here (though it is worth researching), but it is safe to say that one of the most persistent patron groups of the public library (the free public library, not the subscription libraries of England beginning in the 18th and 19th centuries) are the lower to middle classes and the homeless. We see this beginning with Andrew Carnegie, the industrial giant, business magnate, and finally the great library philanthropist who opened up his personal home to the young boys in his neighborhood  in need of a place to study. He also provided the books (obviously).

The public library is first and foremost a place that encourages the idea that one has control over the ideas, concepts, materials that they find. It is a place that allows a reflection of the outside world that is not all chaos, but instead, organized; which is in fact a way of helping people see and/or find out what they need (need based as in Maslow's Hierarchy).

But nevertheless, the public library has its own stigma, or stereotype if you wish, that it is a building full of books. With that in mind, the patron base becomes more abstract, inviting in book lovers (and art lovers), the loners, outcasts, weirdos, intellectuals, and so on from every class, bottom on up. I think this is a real opening, reaching out towards what Boon is striving for: a serendipity. Not just of the information you find, but of the people you find who are alongside you in the same place. No words need to be exchanged, no greetings are required, just presence. It is here where you find people wandering into library without a call number in hand, who are coming in to browse. Libraries in general, but particularly public libraries, pay very close attention to what gets checked out, what doesn't, what patrons are looking for, what isn't being looked for... so there is a record (nameless) of popularity and also what gaps need to be filled in the collection to allow for new discoveries - to fill in community blind spots - in hopes to provide a wealth of accessibility shared by all. This truly is magic: the placement of a particular space in the social sphere whose potential never lets up, taxes aside.

Boon talks about this fascinating mode of practice by saying habits are not always the best way to move forward. Habits become ritualized, they lose meaning over time, they might become boring, they lose their sense of pleasure. But practicing happens a lot in the library and it is a retention of meaning and pleasure, because, like Boon suggests, it allows for accidents to happen. Not just the same mindless kind of consumption we get used to in our already heavily scheduled lives, which is  designed to prevent accidents. What kind of practicing happens in the library? Sitting, thinking, reading, looking, interacting (with people and/or objects), sharing, helping, exploring, questioning... and what is honed on is sensory and intuitive (words taken from Boon), primarily because the rules are so diffuse. Librarians try to increase this through many tactics: eye-catching book or art displays in various corners or front and center is a fundamental tactic. Another is by leaving tools (creative tools) to be used. Crayons and various toys for the children and for adults, there are games (Scrabble, puzzles, etc) that are ready to be played with. Or not. The fact is they are there. Exhibits, in newer, more progressive libraries are becoming more common. For all of these, the public library is fairly unpredictable. One display changes to another, the games the change, so on and so forth. The books themselves are updated, newer editions found, older ones discovered.

As you can tell, I'm really satisfied with the library's approach to handling (pun intended, wait for it)  Community and Serendipity. But tactility is a bit harder... to... well... grasp. I love Boon's idea of making copies or, faux archival materials for patrons to touch and feel. I especially think this should be better included in grade school curriculum: STEM is huge, but young students never really view books as a tactile object to be studied itself, the book is always something from which information is only extracted mentally. If books were to be studied as objects in themselves (as archivists surely know much about - I don't. I'm not an archivist), I would think it would be a fascinating exploration into book binding, handwriting, paper (how it's made, the companies behind it, it's history...)... I could go on - but on the subject of tactility -

Experiential learning labs are now a huge marketing scheme for 21st century libraries: the main ingredient usually begs for a super expensive 3D printing machine and the rest has to do with CAD. I've never been interested in that stuff. I'm guilty of that, but I understand the phenomenon and why it is important. Rather, I believe libraries give people that 3rd space, away from home and work (either school or the office) to get away from it "all" and slow down their minds and think. To be able to do something tactile, you need to think. I'm sorry for saying this, but I'm a traditionalist in this respect: the quiet libraries offer since time immemorial is a necessary part of a functioning, healthy library that I don't want to see disappear. That is not to say meetings cannot be held, or spaces available or loud dance parties or movie viewing (things that libraries do that I think awesome!) but there is need to be that peace and quiet in the building for true tactility to become an option. Libraries that have the wherewithall and funds for it have practice rooms with a piano or other instruments that further facilitate tactility, giving people room to play with things they might not have at home or to try something different. Even richer libraries have recording studios.

Some notes in remark to discarded books: many of the books are filthy, and need to be thrown out for hygienic purposes if they cannot be saved. Other books, which have not seen use for some time (years and years), are collected and sent out to special organizations who send them the world over to places they see fit to use them. Vandalized books, if heavily vandalized, are usually discarded... but I do think it's a brilliant idea to save those for discussion in classrooms or wherever. For the most part, however, libraries like to keep their collections "clean" (which usually has nothing to do with age) so as to let readers come as close to the original text as possible without distraction. But, I will admit, part of the fun of going into library collections which are not "weeded" regularly is finding those vandalized books and thinking about them, which indeed does give us new ways of thinking about the text itself. Public libraries themselves are places of vandalization, whether it is a junkie's leftover needle, racist slander drawn in permanent marker on the shelf, a pee stain on the carpet, a torn out page. It is only in our imagination that we can find a place without rules. The fact is, those deeds are done at the public library: I doubt other places would be as forgiving.

One of Boon's most intriguing topics in her lecture is that of the specular economy. Sight distances, she says. We see things that look similar and note what is us and what is not us. Touch, Boon says, brings us together. The self and the other become connected. I'd like to say this: but seeing is touching too. As is sound. It enters the mind and stays, filling the body with emotion, with any feeling, with something. And there lies the magic, the enchantment, the spellbinding power of reading. To truly read something is to let it enter your consciousness, mingle with its chemicals and streams of thought, reside there until it gets tucked away in the recesses of memory or else stays alert and awake asking to be understood.

An English Honeymoon: Day III (Part II)

After our tour of Shakespeare's Globe Theater, we walked back the way we came, through hordes of English citizens, tourists, magicians who set up their get-up - for whatever reasoning - smack dab in the middle of the walking lanes, little dogs, thieves, business men and women and whoever else. Dan wanted to pull me through the crowd with him, but I tend to walk fast or else stray, captivated by the people yet at the same time longing to get away. We made it out together though, and at the end of our journeying through the crowds we headed towards the Tower Bridge. Dan really wanted to explore the Tower of London. 

I didn't. For one, I had been there before, the summer after my Sophomore or Junior year of high school. I was selected as an Illinois Ambassador of Music and travelled with a group of others to perform in seven countries in Europe (England, Italy, France, Switzerland, Austria, Germany, and Lichtenstein). I didn't want to go through the Tower of London because I remember it being a gross tourist attraction of happy kids and happy adults smiling their way through this historical place known for its beheadings and slaves. Also, the whole trip (which I loved and I remember, very explicitly, crying with gratefulness after my mom picked me up back home, crying because it was, I remember thinking, a "profound" experience) was unnerving to me because how the hell was I supposed to understand any of these places without knowing, moreover, without understanding, its history or context. I barely understood my place in the U.S. Europe, as fascinating and as wondrous as it was, made little sense. Still, the crying when it was over. 

I digress! So Dan convinces me to check it out again with him, and I do. It's the same deal, with all the tourists, etc. 

When we walk in, the really nice guard who was checking purses and bags took a look at mine and had the courtesy to tell me, "Miss, may I suggest not to keep anything in this pocket?" - said pocket being one attached to the outside of my purse, just like a pocket, without a zipper or button or clutch, and a bit loose at that. I ask "Why?" "It's not safe," he says curtly. "OK" I say. But I don't do anything about it, because the entire trip I've been taking tons of pictures and it's just been easy access for when I wanted to get an image. Dan becomes flustered with me. He's been telling me the whole trip not to keep my phone there - then this guard tells me the same - and little unaffected me does nothing to prevent the inevitable (which I'll write about later, since it happens the next week of our trip).

We enter the Tower of London. I enjoy walking there much more than I believed I would. We've got another bright, sunshiny day, blue skies, hardly any clouds. 

We see the gate below us, the gate where centuries ago traitors were brought in to be imprisoned or hanged. We see the streets where Jews were made to cut coins, many of them taking the extra bits and when found out, punished for what would have just been made waste rather than money. We see the king's quarters, with its medieval tapestry, we see the big ravens (the curse is that six ravens must live there or else the tower will fall), we see arches and arches and everything is made of old stone, built stone by stone. We see where the royalty kept its exotic animals, presented as gifts. Imagine, an elephant in a room just large enough for it. Cruelty. We see through gated windows, we read about the revolts, the breaking into the Tower, the failure of that revolution. 

I realize I enjoy this space much the same way I've enjoyed other spaces we've visited in England because it is a bit like a hiding place. Where people could hide from violence and terror. Where people could stay, to sit, to think, to eat in peace. But then there are so many problems. The idiots inside, perhaps, the true intellect without. How does this happen? A hoarding of goods, rather than the sharing for the common good. I've become very interested in and curious about Anne Boleyn. I'm determined to read all about her and all the Henrys. English history is a bloody mess. But this is why I love it. I won't pretend to know anything, yet. I know a bit about the Roman Empire that invaded the island and the little Britons. More on that later. 

Dan and I like the ravens. We stand and watch them from the bridge for a long time. One finds it way to an entrance and sits waiting and watching people. It's fed enough, so we don't think it's there to ask for food.

Something horrid in me is suddenly proud of this Tower of London, this dark symbol of civilization. I can tell Dan is enjoying every moment learning about this place, too. We don't question this right then, but we seize the opportunity to accept this rare feeling. We are mostly quiet. 

In the prison, we see the mythological and astrological symbols and charts scratched into the rock by the prisoners, still not quitting the very thing they were imprisoned for. 

We walk some more. I don't forget to look up.

On our way out, we pass an incredible display of black weaponry (I don't recall what it looked like otherwise I'd describe it to you) with this caption: Arma Pacis Fulcra. Arms are the balance of peace. Or, Armed strength for peace. From Latin. 

Kind of like how some U.S. soldiers say, and a lot of our people: 

Freedom isn't free.

I'm not sure what to make of any of this. 

Dan and I sip hot coffee, right next to the exit, and eat some ice cream. We play with starlings, then leave.

- F