so it is my intention to write a little about the book War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy which i just finished a week or so ago, but first i want to give an update on the last post.
first of all, i must say that i am a bit disappointed with the fact that i got only one response. i figured with the scandalous topic i brought up, and the fact that about half the people i alert about this blog about are in what would be considered 'adult' age range, i would get alot more controvercy. perhaps people done know about the 'comment' feature at the end of each post. if so, its not to late to put in your two sense (or is it two cents?). i am just shocked that not a single person objected to what i said. is it that everyone wholly agrees with me, or that they dont think im worth the trouble to convince me otherwise (how dramatic)? i suspect that mostly it was from a sort of apathy. perhaps you were thinking: 'there goes that crazy kid again, i hope he gets his head screwed on strait at some point', or 'at this rate, hes a lost cause' (very dramatic, i know). but yea, i would greatly appreciate if you could take them time to say something about it, and i really think that just about all of you must have something to say.
so anyway, its been like 10 days since the festival, my sister has come and gone, and i must say that i have been experiencing what i would consider a high-hangover. its a week after the equinox, and the sun is already setting at 830 at night, the weather is fantastic and i just dont seem to have the motivation to do 'unpleasant' things as much as i have all year. ive just been getting the urge to go out and enjoy the sunsets, smoke a joint, and just tune in (or tune out some might say) to the 'zone'. i have smoked 5 days or the 10 since the trip, and while that pales in comaprison to my earlier 'habbit', it certainly is alot for my most recent state of mind. ive just been wanting to sit back and smell the roses, and havnt had much appreciation for the self discipline that i was so proud of before. today is in fact an effort in getting shit done, i have my to do list action packed and time stamped. i am not giving myself any time for zoneing, although i may go watch the sunset, its just so perrty. i find it funny how quickly the nice weather and all can do away with notions of hard work and sacrifice. it pains me to admit this defeat of sorts, but i guess i would by lying to you, but mostly to myself if i did not admit it, and its always best to do this kind of thing publicly. so there it is.
and now for the War and Peace bit which i have been putting off for a while because of my recent spurt of chilling.
first off let me say taht this book is fantastic, secondly let me say that it is MADDDDD long. ive been reading this book for a good 2 months (ive read a bonch of othors in between) and after page 30 there wasnt a dull moment in it. i think that what makes this book so special is that it has it ALL. the characters encompass the bredth of the human soul (although perhaps it is very presumptuous and naive for me to say that). there is a complete abcense of black and white, there are no ultimatley good or bad characters, it is just a bunch of people swimming around in the chaos of life, each living in their own little world, trying to live out their hopes and dreams, mostly obliviious of how they fit into the grand scheme of things. i think that this has been tolstoys triumph, the novel is epic without being epic, there are no superheroes and supervillains, no orcs and elves, just normal people, trying to do what they can to be fulfill themselves and between them is laced the web of history. epic events happening completely out of the control of all of those who participate in them (despite what they may think) molding the fate of peoples and nations. tolstoy says a great deal about this, the novel is interlaced with essays regarding his theories of history.
he thinks taht history is basically what happens while we are busy making other plans. that despite all the hopes and intentions that we may have, what happens only correlates with the few wishes that happen to coincide with events. that despite the will and decrees of monarchs and generals, war and peace follows in a way taht can only be understood as the product of all the the wills or all the people that participate in any given event. he looks back at history and does not ascribe it to any particular thing, but rather states that it is the only thing that could have possibly happened, that it is impossible to think of how it could have turned out differently. i particularly agree with this notion, although as i am presenting it it seems a bit simple, but i think that there is alot of wisdom to it. it is impossible to speculate about what would be different if any particular event were to change. i like to think of it like this: you dont know how many times you have dodged death thus far, you dont know how many times you havnt beeen in a car accident. you dont know how many times that an event that you percieved (and may still percieve) as negative actually saved your life. your parents grounding you and not letting you go out where u may have been killed by a drunk driver. my example may seem a bit extreme, but the fact that it is a perfectly plausable possibility, and that there are in fact an infinite amount of them, from getting hit by a meteorite to contracting west nile virus, to winning the lottery, make it impossible, and pointless to speculate about what if. because the answer will always be, who knows u could be dead. and i dont say this in a morbid and fatalistic way, but simply acknowledging the inherant unpredictableness of life. so in this point i agree with tolstoy. whenever we look back on our life we are able to see how the events that we did not understand or were not able to put into the jigsaw puzzle were essential to our being here today. and it is this understanding that gives us the power to accept all the things that we do not understand, to accept all the 'bad' things that happen to us, because it is what happened, and it could not have turned out any other way. and if we can understand this, when we can accept all the cards we were dealt and how they played out, then i think that we are much closer to true happiness (or suicide if the inevitable present is unbearable).
another point of tolstoys is that people who appear to be in power have no real control over how things play out. that they have their intentions and those have their place in the web of fate, but that they have no more influence than anyone else. i am more inclined to disagree with him hear, or perhaps i have misinterpreted him here. i think that people who have 'power' (and the definition of power would make for another blog entry in itself) have more influence than those who dont. i think that he would say despite what truman might have wanted, the atomib bomb would have inevitably been dropped, but i dont think that you can deny that he made a decision to drop it. i think that it is unfair to humanity to rid them of the power to bring things into existence. heres what i mean, everything we see seems to be a product of another cause, it is an effect world we live in, as everything has a cause external to it. i think that the exception to this is our thoughts. i think that most of the time even our minds are governed by the laws of cause and effect, but we have the possibility to insert our own creations into that (i may be wrong, and perhaps what i see as original creations are in fact nothing more than a more complex effect, but i htink that the fact that a child essentially comes in with no causes working on his mind, despite what may be added on afterwards, there is still hope for originality.
connected with this is tolstoys notion that history as we learn it and know it is completely unrelated to the truth of events. history is written by the winners and they also make it alot more epic than it was at the time. events can only be epic in hindsight, when they happen they are just a blur, that we can neither see nor comprehend. yet when we read history, events are always portrayed as if they were directly intended to lead to those that followed, when in reality it is an inexaustable stream of intentions mixing together and giving rise to what happens.
the beauty of this book is how it is able to illustrate all of these theories/realities/aspects of life, while making a story about real people in real places and real time. there is the epic large scale 'war' aspects of life, and interwoven in them is the moment to moment 'peace' aspects that make it all up. and when we look at these together, the little things building on one another making up the lives of people and nations, we have the reality of life as we know it. and this is captured oh so beautifully by leo (yes were on first name basis).
perhaps we can see this in our own lives, i am certain we can if we really try. we are constantly hoping for things to happen, and sometimes they work out like we planned, somtimes partially, and somtimes completely different, so how much did our intentions have to do with it? we can always look back and see a complete life (relatively complete, depending on how old you are) and everything that has happened fits perfectly into that, but i dont think anyone could have predicted that theyed be where they are. perhaps you have the job you always thought u would, or u married the girl u grew up with next door, but there is now way that you could have seen the inside of your brain as it is now, you could not have predicted your reaction to unforseeen circumstances and how that makes you who u are today. this seems to be a feature of our existence, so it seems to me that it is best not to fall in love with our hopes and dreams, or at least leave them open to adjustment and adaptation to reality, or better yet, it is best to wish for what we already have, that is a foolproof method to have everything we want.
i think that the main characters in the novel are worth mentioning as they are so important to the development of the moral of the story. i think that they all epitimize some aspect of our selves, yet it is quite remarkable how human they all are, there is no 'hero' or villain. no one does things that are out of character (painfully frustrating at times). there is none of that otherworldy good or evil present in them, they are simply living, loving, and trying to be happy, jsut like the rest of us:
DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVE NOT AND INTEND ON READING THIS BOOK AS THERE MAY BE SOME PLOT SPOILERS. IT WOULD BE A SHAME TO READ THAT BEHEMOTH OF A BOOK ONLY TO ALREADY KNOW WHAT HAPPENS
Pierre Bezuhov- this is what i suppose would be considered the main character of the story, although it is hard to tell when there are hundreds and hudreds of pages where he does not appear at all, but nonetheless his life is central to the message that tolstoy conveys. pierre is the ilegitimate son of a count who inherits a fortune when his father dies. pierre is constantly plagued by a sense of hollowness, that his life is pointless. he is trying to find his way through temptation. he suffers the fate of trying to be a good person, tries do be as perfect as he can, in a tragically imperfect world. i think that this character would most closely resemble tolstoy himself, from what i know of him. a person who happens to be extremely wealthy, and understands that he is not special in any way, but taht he has inexplicably befallen his fate. he joins the masons in an attempt to find help in fulfilling his ideals, only to be let down when he realizes that most of the people are there for the high class connection and dont particularly beleive in the ideals of the brotherhood. he has a high regard for humanity, in a rather naive way. he thinks that people are fundamentally altruistic and he is often seen as a good hearted bafoon. in the end he is able to 'let go' in a way that i cannot describe, but tolstoy conveys to perfection. he is finally able to be the man he has always dreamed and it is by letting go of all his illusions of grandeur. i must say that i quite identify with pierre in many ways. he is a dreamer and an idealist, who has trouble turning thoughts into actions and manifesting the things that dwell inside him.
Prince Andrey- he is Pierre's best friend and he serves as a foil to him. he is much more sceptical about people and life in general, but he has much more ease in acting in a way that is consistent with his beliefs. all the things that pierre talks and dreams about doing andrey is able to do without much fuss. if pierre is a thinker, then andrey is much more of a doer. i think that he is somewhat similar to my sister in this regard. andrey is able to see into the heart of many issues without much trouble. he is not so naive as to beleive that men are so good, although he does the best he can. he does not expect much from other people and as with any good self fulfilling prophecy he is seldom disapointed. i would characterize him as a bit of a 'cold' person who has not seen much of the sweetness of life. his one hope for happiness, his engagement to natasha, blows up in his face when she breaks it off. this leads to a profound disdain for love and he gives up hopes for personal happiness. it is only on his deathbed that he is finally able to find peace, when is able to let himself love natasha again.
Natasha Rostov- natasha is the main female character in the story. for most of the book the was the epitome of youth and impulsiveness. she is an extremely passionate person who goes all out into whatever catches her attention. she is completely at the mercy of these impulses and one of them, the decision to break off her engament with andrey in order to mary anatole, who proposed to her practically as a joke, essentially leaves her on the verge of death and takes the passion out of her. she is finally able to find happiness by marrying pierre, settleing down, and starting a family. finding something larger than herself to take up her time allowed her the peace of mind she needed.
Elena Kuragin- helene is pierres first wife. he is seduced by her and compelled by her father to marry her, much to his regret. elena epitomizes sex appeal. she is considered one of the smartest and most charming women in russia despite the fact taht she is not especially intelligent. her presense is the most desired, her parties the most prestigious. she dominates russian 'society' mostly on account of her looks and seductive power over men.
Anatole Kuragin- Elenas brother. if there were any villains in the story it would be him, followed by his sister. despite taht they are not bad people, they are simply quite egotistical. anatole is the personification of hedonism and egoism run amok. he spends his time seducing women (ideally married women) and living off other people. he is portrayed as a fool, but extremely confident and his confidence (along with his good looks) go a long way in impressing people. he has no notion for how his actions affect other people, or even himself in the long run. hey, at least hes living in the moment. hes most impactful action is when he quickly seduces and proposes to natasha under the pretense that he is in love with her (despite the fact taht he has a secret wife in poland) while she was engaged to prince andrey. they are discovered and she is nearly ruined, although he still considers it a victory to have gotten her to ascent.
Nikolay Rostov- Natashas older brother. he is a man of honor, and he decides to join the army in the low ranks rather than use his noble birth to obtain a high status, low risk, position. throughout the story he is constantly torn between marrying his cousin sonya who he truly loves, or marrying a wealthy heiress in order to save his familys ruined fortunes. he considers it to be truly cowardly, although in the end he is able to find a wealthy heiress and truly fall in love with her and save his family in the process. he is the opposite of his father, who squandered the family fortune by being overly generous and not keeping an eye on finances.
Sonya- Nikolays beloved. she was orphaned at a young age and grew up almost as a sister to natasha in the rostov household. she feels an extreme debt to her benefactors and she is in a difficult position because the countess wants nikolay to marry a wealty heiress despite the fact taht they love eachother. she finds meaning in her life through sacrifice, mostly for the rostovs. she has a secret motive however, through her sacrifice she maintains a secret hope of making herself more and more worthy of nikolays love. when she is asked to sacrifice his engagement to her it is almost impossible for her to do, although in the end she is able to rise above.
Princess Marya- Prince Andreys sister. she has lives with her father until he dies. she is constantly psychologically and emotionally abused by him. she finds the meaning of her life in this suffering. she is able to ennoble it and glorify it. she revolves her whole life around sufferig and the notion of her being happy totally scares her, and she feels she is very undeserving. she is a genuinly good woman, who finally finds happiness in her marriage to Nikolay.
i hope that you enjoyed this, and that it wasnt too boring for those of you that read the whole thing. i hope that you all find a few months in your life to read this book. its not considered one of the best books in history for nothing.
peace
E
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
Revelation
so here i am my friends, writing for the first time in a little while, and moreso, this will not just be another entry about the pimping things ive been doing (only a little). there will be some constructive thoughts i hope.
so first of all, my sister has come to visit again, she arrived the 12 and she leaves in a few days. it has been great as always to have her around. her visit has coincided with a vacation in my arabic classes so we have been able to hang out alot while she was here. she came to visit with a few friends and my friend owen was supposed to come visit, but my man didnt check his passport till the checked his bags, only to find out it had expired. i can tell you dont travel much OG, common. so yea, my sister was here with her friends and weve been doing tha do. tomorrow we are going to go to the beach, although its going to be COLD, but it should be madd fun. were going to do some hammock camping.
on the ithaca front, it seems that me nate and shane have found a house, i wont elaborate too much, since we have not signed a lease yet, although we do have a verbal agreement. it is a nice, WELL MAINTAINED house overlooking the lake, on a nice piece of property, yet still close enough to get to and from school.
so the now that the chit chat is out of the way, i will get to the heart of my story. this last weekend there was a festival, it is called El Festival del Dragon. originally it was started in the 70's by a few english families as a celebration of the coming of spring. it has evolved alot from its early beginings, now it consists of a 3 week festival in the mountains outside granada. the beauty of this festival is that it is completely guerrilla, there is not charge to get it, very little central organization, and no one really making any money off it. people bring their tents and set up little food stands, music tents, a few concerts, etc. you just walk around and there are tents everywhere, and people just chilling out without any method to the mayhem. it is quite remarkable when i compare this to the Grassroots Festival in Ithaca this summer, where it costs like $75 to go in for the weekend and you had an assigned plot and food was madd expensive. compare that to the dragon where everyone was just throwing up their tents where ever they could (for some reason people were pitching them strait up on rocks). the food was remarkably cheap considering where we were. there were people selling jewlery in stands, beer out of buckets of ice, people just waving around huge nuggets of marijuana, it was the ill spring festival. on the other hand, the festival does have its negative aspects, i feel bad for the people who live in the area who have to listen to hardcore drum and bass from like 9pm to 9am for at least 2 weeks, it can be heard a good distance away. there is also the matter of garbage and feces littering the area. part of the lack of organization is the lack of appropriate waste facilities, there were very few trash cans, and they were FULL in no time, and there were a few latrines, but in general it was just a free for all. from what i understand, the organizers pay the govt to clean up afterwards, presumably from their profits from concessions, but the river definetly looked a little mangy afterwords.
so anyway, this has all been a bit of a long wind up for me to tell you about my own experience with my sister and her two friends (although we met up with some other cats while we were there).
the main night of the whole festival when everyone comes and it is just crazy was friday night. this is the night that we planned on attending. we arrived on saturday afternoon at around 6 and walked around the grounds, saw the sights and got our bearings, as it is quite unlikely that we would be able to see anything at night. so from the moment we arrived people just started piling into it. by like 9 it was a complete grid lock as the whole festival grounds only had one enterance, and at a certain point the max capacity was reached but cars kept piling in, it was quite satisfying to be there and parked and chilling.
so let me cut to the chase. the thing that makes this festival most remarkable is that you will never be in a place with so many people doing so many drugs at the same time. it is insane, i think that 100% were doing drugs of some sort including alchohol and marijuana, but furthermore, at least 95% were doing 'harder' drugs. you could literally see a food stand that said: WINE 1 euro, BEER 1 euro, SHOTS 2 euros, ACID 10 euros, SPEED 20 euros, etc. me and cas and one of her friends decided that we were going to do some MDMA, the active ingredient in exstacy, although i felt it was safer as it didnt have all the other things they throw in it, and we got it from a friend.
so i realize at this point im going out there, i am well aware of all the people i send this blog to, and i am even more aware of the impressions that they may be making of me as they read this. i would beg you all to read with an open mind and not judge too hastily as there is much more to this than the recreational use of drugs (which i think has some merit in its own right, when not abused, as with all things).
so basically we started taking it around 9 pm and started feeling it at like 10, we spent the next 7-8 hours dancing like maniacs to the heartbeat of drum and bass. this is both the first time that i have done MDMA and the first time that i have consumed 'hard' drugs in a rave setting. how can i describe the feeling that you get when you are packed into a room just being swayed back and forth by the DJ. you can feel the energy in the room swaying back and forth, like an entity of its own. acording to Aldous Huxley, the primary function of the mind is to reduce the amount of sensory input we recieve down to what is necessary to our survival as an animal. a reducing valve, he calls it, functioning as a survival mechanism. so essentially the brain is capable of recieving a great deal more input, which is mostly useless for our survival as a species. so when we take drugs, the brain is no longer functioning as a reducing valve and is opened to new sensorum. in other words, i think that the sensations/halucinations/connections we feel while we are on drugs, are not made up in our mind, we simply cannot percieve them in our normal state of conciousness. its not so much that we are imagining things is that we are percieving other sensory mediums. like in the crowd, you could feel yourself connected to everyone else. this is similar to the experience of sitting in a drum circle (without drugs) when you start to feel the rhythm and everyone is syncing and you just stop thinking and feel the connection. i think that religious ceremonies (if the people are true beleivers) are able to generate this collective thing that everyone plugs their mind into. in a book i read about witches it refered to this as everyones aura vibrating at the same frequency, and what better to do this than music. in fact i think that it is the most effective unifier of minds. i used to think that when all the druggies would get together and just listen to crazy techno music on madd drugs that it was no good, but now i can see the reason that they do it. and while, there were many people there who i think were over doing it on the drug consumption because they were REALLY out of it, it was amazing to feel that connection with such a large number of souls. you could almost feel it breathe in and out. you could feel the crowd waiting as if on the edge of a precipice for the climax in the music. quite remarkable and enlightening really.
so i spent the whole night mostly with my sister and her friends and we were having a jolly good time. for those of you who know me well, you know that my sister is my best friend and that we are extremely close. i cannot tell you the joy of taking drugs with her. i always felt so remarkably close to her. when we would come in contact it was crazy, it was like i could feel madd quantities of electricity passing through us. i am quite certain that this was a manifestation of love that we cannot percieve in our everyday state. i felt so safe. oh how limited these silly words are in all of this. if there were more degrees of love i would say i was definetly feeling level 10 love (out of 10). this is not the only time i have been on level 10 (and the others have not been on drugs). the difference that feeling these other manifestations of love, it was just so much more gratifying to feel love.
at some point, maybe like 4, the one of my sisters friends who did not trip with us went back to the car to get a few hours of shut eye.
the rest of us kept dancing and dancing and dancing (and eating clementines) until the sun began to rise around 7.
at this point i went to the assigne meeting place to see if my sisters friend had come for any reason. on the walk there i started reflecting on the night and how good it was to be here with my sister and all the other people sharing this remarkable experience. i was out in the middle of the woods having the craziest tribal experience of my life. i could feel the love gushing out of my veins and i was oh so happy to be alive. ::u may think: isnt it bad to need drugs to have all of this, it surely will lead to addiction.:: well i suppose that that is a good point, but i think that i am well aware of the fact that drugs only offer you a glimpse of what is available through hard work and dedication. i think that all of the extatic sensations i was having can be had in a longer and more permanent way through meditation and spiritual practice, but here lies the power and benefit of drugs. thy can offer you a glimpse at what is available. they can give you the temporary insight you need to move foward with ur life. let us take my opinion as an assumption for the sake of argument: that through drugs you can take a small look at God, the infinite, enlightenment, whatever you want to call it, etc. i think that it is definetly worth looking than not looking, while keeping the perspective clear. i know, believe me i know there are dangers in taking drugs, the most imminent being addiction. BUT, but if they are done carfully, in the proper state of mind, with the right people, than they can offer a momentary glimpse of what the universe is really like. and honestly, i think that for most people, those few glimpses throughout their lives would be enough. i think that most people spend alot of their lives lacking the humility and perspective that is gained by an awe inspiring encounter with the infinite, but i will continue this latter, let me get back to my story.
so im walking to the meeting spot, overwhelmed by love and a feeling of understanding, and i got the notion to go all the way to the car, which was a little ways away, to wake her up if she wasnt at the meeting spot. the sun was about to come out and we were going to go down to the river and enjoy the day after the night, and i didnt think she would want to miss that. so i was feeling lots of love for my sister, and lots of love for her friend, and i was happily strolling towards her. AND THEN
like a flash it hit me, a moment of inspiration, a revelation of sorts. i attribute it to being in an enlightened/loving (they are one and the same as far as i can tell) state of mind, where the mind is at its most powerful, and the future and the past become apparant. and so i got a flash into the future and i saw my life play out in front of me. for some time i have been unclear as to the direction that my life will take. i have been in debate about wheter i want to be a scholar or a wanderer or god knows what. i love school, but i also love freedom. i dont know, it was a hot mess in my brain. and then the flash hit and it was clear as to what i am going to do. i have decided to go to graduate school in egypt when i finish up ithaca. i will study islamic studies or somehting of that nature, and i will be able to master my arabic, which is the one thing that i was sure of. i want to lead the life of a scholar and family man. my head has always been happy when buried in a book, and i am now clear that it would be foolish to abandon this path. espially when i seem so well suited for it. i know this may not seem like a surprise to some of you, but it certainly was to me: i saw myself at the center of a large family of my own, completee with wife children nieces nephews godsons and god daughers. i saw myself not unlike my father, happily sitting at the head of a long table with all my beloved people. there is certainly a relativly long span of time between now and then, but it is good to know where you are goin.
so anyway i continued towards the car and woke up the poor girl from her unconfortable nap. despite her grogginess i started chattering away at her the thing i had discovered. we talked and talked and talked and talked until we finally ran into the rest of the gang, at which point we found a quiet spot in the woods by the river where we spent the whole day just talking and chilling and smoking joints.
so i would like to continue the discusion on the power and use of drugs. i was just saying that i think that getting a few glimpses of the divine throughout ones life is enough to generate the humility and submission that i find to be essential to a happy life. (let me just say here on a side note, that in my limited experience i find that not all drugs serve this purpose. in cigarets for example i have found no trancendant value. it seems that psychadelics/halucinogens are the best for the purpose of opening the reducing valve). i think that we all have the desire to transecend our ordinary existance, which is why religion has been the center our lives up until the very recent past. we all want some sort of indication that this isnt it, that there is something more to the ordinary ups and downs of life. this is the reason taht we use drugs, and im not talking about 'hard' drugs, im talking about alcohol, and ganga, and hashish, and mushrooms, and peyotes and everything else. we just want, even for just one night to be in a different state of mind, to be rid of the triffles that hold us down. one of the problems, id say, is taht we are usually unaware of our own desire to transcend so that we do not do it properly. we smoke every day, or we drink ourselves into oblivion, or we do so many drugs that we dont know what hit us. it is impossible to reach the ultimate enlightenment through drugs, only to to open small windowns temporarily, and if we abuse them, the windows get smaller and smaller until eventually they dont even open up and we are left with only frustration. another problem with drugs, is that they have a negative effect on our mind as a survival mechanism, the mechanism basically doesnt work for a while. it is hard to imagine looking for food and shelter in the state of mind i was in, in fact it seemed the only thing possible was blissful contemplation of the beauty of life. this is great once in a while, but if done regularly, it is easy to see why drug addicts have such a low life expectancy.
there is really so much more that i could say about this matter, but that is the subject of books, not blogs, i think, although i am expecting some responses. this is certainly a subject that everyone must have some sort of opinion on, one way or the other. so i look foward to hearing from you. and i just want to reassure you that i have a sound head on my shoulders and that i dont forsee myself slipping into any of the pitfalls of drugs anytime soon.
many of you might be asking why i would write something like this, as it can only make people think less of me. first of all you may not be thiknking that at all, but if you are i would like to tell you my reasons. first of all i wanted to lay it all on the line so to speak, to share my thoughts and experiences with the people i love. i am neither ashamed of myself, nor do i think i have done anything wrong. secondly i would like to present another image of drugs. i wish that we could get over the whole D.A.R.E. attitude about drugs and have some real discussions. for example, i cannot remember the last (or first) time that an authority type figure had a conversation with me explaining the positive aspects of drugs. i cant remember the last time that sombody talked to me about the fact that people have been using drugs for religious and ceremonial purposes since the begining of time. nobody ever told me that drugs arnt bad, but abusing them is. i can find an analagous situation with the consumption of alcohol in the USA as compared to europe. in the US drinking is super taboo and its really not ok to drink if ur under 21, and as a concequence everyone drinks themselves retarded, from a very young age. being so taboo, drinking itself becomes an event. in europe on the contrary, drinking is very acceptable even from a young age. the drinking age is technically 18, but in reality there is very little regulation, i can send my 13 year old brother to buy beer for me (not that i would EVER do that ;), or would i?) children learn to drink in their homes and as a concequence when they drink socially it is much more under control and less extreme. drinking is just something you do while socializing, its not the whole point of a night. so perhaps if we educated our youngsters about the real nature of drugs, instead of painting a comically simplified and highly distorted picture of it, we would not have people using drugs in such reckless manners. perhaps we could ever learn to use them in a more profitable way, generating love, happiness and community. i know that i will certainly be one to try in that envisioned time when i got some childrens of my own.
finally i would like to recomend two essays by Aldous Huxley on the relationships between drugs, spirituality, and other such things. they usually come together, they are called The Doors of Perception & Heavan and Hell.
peace and love
emi
so first of all, my sister has come to visit again, she arrived the 12 and she leaves in a few days. it has been great as always to have her around. her visit has coincided with a vacation in my arabic classes so we have been able to hang out alot while she was here. she came to visit with a few friends and my friend owen was supposed to come visit, but my man didnt check his passport till the checked his bags, only to find out it had expired. i can tell you dont travel much OG, common. so yea, my sister was here with her friends and weve been doing tha do. tomorrow we are going to go to the beach, although its going to be COLD, but it should be madd fun. were going to do some hammock camping.
on the ithaca front, it seems that me nate and shane have found a house, i wont elaborate too much, since we have not signed a lease yet, although we do have a verbal agreement. it is a nice, WELL MAINTAINED house overlooking the lake, on a nice piece of property, yet still close enough to get to and from school.
so the now that the chit chat is out of the way, i will get to the heart of my story. this last weekend there was a festival, it is called El Festival del Dragon. originally it was started in the 70's by a few english families as a celebration of the coming of spring. it has evolved alot from its early beginings, now it consists of a 3 week festival in the mountains outside granada. the beauty of this festival is that it is completely guerrilla, there is not charge to get it, very little central organization, and no one really making any money off it. people bring their tents and set up little food stands, music tents, a few concerts, etc. you just walk around and there are tents everywhere, and people just chilling out without any method to the mayhem. it is quite remarkable when i compare this to the Grassroots Festival in Ithaca this summer, where it costs like $75 to go in for the weekend and you had an assigned plot and food was madd expensive. compare that to the dragon where everyone was just throwing up their tents where ever they could (for some reason people were pitching them strait up on rocks). the food was remarkably cheap considering where we were. there were people selling jewlery in stands, beer out of buckets of ice, people just waving around huge nuggets of marijuana, it was the ill spring festival. on the other hand, the festival does have its negative aspects, i feel bad for the people who live in the area who have to listen to hardcore drum and bass from like 9pm to 9am for at least 2 weeks, it can be heard a good distance away. there is also the matter of garbage and feces littering the area. part of the lack of organization is the lack of appropriate waste facilities, there were very few trash cans, and they were FULL in no time, and there were a few latrines, but in general it was just a free for all. from what i understand, the organizers pay the govt to clean up afterwards, presumably from their profits from concessions, but the river definetly looked a little mangy afterwords.
so anyway, this has all been a bit of a long wind up for me to tell you about my own experience with my sister and her two friends (although we met up with some other cats while we were there).
the main night of the whole festival when everyone comes and it is just crazy was friday night. this is the night that we planned on attending. we arrived on saturday afternoon at around 6 and walked around the grounds, saw the sights and got our bearings, as it is quite unlikely that we would be able to see anything at night. so from the moment we arrived people just started piling into it. by like 9 it was a complete grid lock as the whole festival grounds only had one enterance, and at a certain point the max capacity was reached but cars kept piling in, it was quite satisfying to be there and parked and chilling.so let me cut to the chase. the thing that makes this festival most remarkable is that you will never be in a place with so many people doing so many drugs at the same time. it is insane, i think that 100% were doing drugs of some sort including alchohol and marijuana, but furthermore, at least 95% were doing 'harder' drugs. you could literally see a food stand that said: WINE 1 euro, BEER 1 euro, SHOTS 2 euros, ACID 10 euros, SPEED 20 euros, etc. me and cas and one of her friends decided that we were going to do some MDMA, the active ingredient in exstacy, although i felt it was safer as it didnt have all the other things they throw in it, and we got it from a friend.
so i realize at this point im going out there, i am well aware of all the people i send this blog to, and i am even more aware of the impressions that they may be making of me as they read this. i would beg you all to read with an open mind and not judge too hastily as there is much more to this than the recreational use of drugs (which i think has some merit in its own right, when not abused, as with all things).
so basically we started taking it around 9 pm and started feeling it at like 10, we spent the next 7-8 hours dancing like maniacs to the heartbeat of drum and bass. this is both the first time that i have done MDMA and the first time that i have consumed 'hard' drugs in a rave setting. how can i describe the feeling that you get when you are packed into a room just being swayed back and forth by the DJ. you can feel the energy in the room swaying back and forth, like an entity of its own. acording to Aldous Huxley, the primary function of the mind is to reduce the amount of sensory input we recieve down to what is necessary to our survival as an animal. a reducing valve, he calls it, functioning as a survival mechanism. so essentially the brain is capable of recieving a great deal more input, which is mostly useless for our survival as a species. so when we take drugs, the brain is no longer functioning as a reducing valve and is opened to new sensorum. in other words, i think that the sensations/halucinations/connections we feel while we are on drugs, are not made up in our mind, we simply cannot percieve them in our normal state of conciousness. its not so much that we are imagining things is that we are percieving other sensory mediums. like in the crowd, you could feel yourself connected to everyone else. this is similar to the experience of sitting in a drum circle (without drugs) when you start to feel the rhythm and everyone is syncing and you just stop thinking and feel the connection. i think that religious ceremonies (if the people are true beleivers) are able to generate this collective thing that everyone plugs their mind into. in a book i read about witches it refered to this as everyones aura vibrating at the same frequency, and what better to do this than music. in fact i think that it is the most effective unifier of minds. i used to think that when all the druggies would get together and just listen to crazy techno music on madd drugs that it was no good, but now i can see the reason that they do it. and while, there were many people there who i think were over doing it on the drug consumption because they were REALLY out of it, it was amazing to feel that connection with such a large number of souls. you could almost feel it breathe in and out. you could feel the crowd waiting as if on the edge of a precipice for the climax in the music. quite remarkable and enlightening really.
so i spent the whole night mostly with my sister and her friends and we were having a jolly good time. for those of you who know me well, you know that my sister is my best friend and that we are extremely close. i cannot tell you the joy of taking drugs with her. i always felt so remarkably close to her. when we would come in contact it was crazy, it was like i could feel madd quantities of electricity passing through us. i am quite certain that this was a manifestation of love that we cannot percieve in our everyday state. i felt so safe. oh how limited these silly words are in all of this. if there were more degrees of love i would say i was definetly feeling level 10 love (out of 10). this is not the only time i have been on level 10 (and the others have not been on drugs). the difference that feeling these other manifestations of love, it was just so much more gratifying to feel love.at some point, maybe like 4, the one of my sisters friends who did not trip with us went back to the car to get a few hours of shut eye.
the rest of us kept dancing and dancing and dancing (and eating clementines) until the sun began to rise around 7.
at this point i went to the assigne meeting place to see if my sisters friend had come for any reason. on the walk there i started reflecting on the night and how good it was to be here with my sister and all the other people sharing this remarkable experience. i was out in the middle of the woods having the craziest tribal experience of my life. i could feel the love gushing out of my veins and i was oh so happy to be alive. ::u may think: isnt it bad to need drugs to have all of this, it surely will lead to addiction.:: well i suppose that that is a good point, but i think that i am well aware of the fact that drugs only offer you a glimpse of what is available through hard work and dedication. i think that all of the extatic sensations i was having can be had in a longer and more permanent way through meditation and spiritual practice, but here lies the power and benefit of drugs. thy can offer you a glimpse at what is available. they can give you the temporary insight you need to move foward with ur life. let us take my opinion as an assumption for the sake of argument: that through drugs you can take a small look at God, the infinite, enlightenment, whatever you want to call it, etc. i think that it is definetly worth looking than not looking, while keeping the perspective clear. i know, believe me i know there are dangers in taking drugs, the most imminent being addiction. BUT, but if they are done carfully, in the proper state of mind, with the right people, than they can offer a momentary glimpse of what the universe is really like. and honestly, i think that for most people, those few glimpses throughout their lives would be enough. i think that most people spend alot of their lives lacking the humility and perspective that is gained by an awe inspiring encounter with the infinite, but i will continue this latter, let me get back to my story.
so im walking to the meeting spot, overwhelmed by love and a feeling of understanding, and i got the notion to go all the way to the car, which was a little ways away, to wake her up if she wasnt at the meeting spot. the sun was about to come out and we were going to go down to the river and enjoy the day after the night, and i didnt think she would want to miss that. so i was feeling lots of love for my sister, and lots of love for her friend, and i was happily strolling towards her. AND THEN
like a flash it hit me, a moment of inspiration, a revelation of sorts. i attribute it to being in an enlightened/loving (they are one and the same as far as i can tell) state of mind, where the mind is at its most powerful, and the future and the past become apparant. and so i got a flash into the future and i saw my life play out in front of me. for some time i have been unclear as to the direction that my life will take. i have been in debate about wheter i want to be a scholar or a wanderer or god knows what. i love school, but i also love freedom. i dont know, it was a hot mess in my brain. and then the flash hit and it was clear as to what i am going to do. i have decided to go to graduate school in egypt when i finish up ithaca. i will study islamic studies or somehting of that nature, and i will be able to master my arabic, which is the one thing that i was sure of. i want to lead the life of a scholar and family man. my head has always been happy when buried in a book, and i am now clear that it would be foolish to abandon this path. espially when i seem so well suited for it. i know this may not seem like a surprise to some of you, but it certainly was to me: i saw myself at the center of a large family of my own, completee with wife children nieces nephews godsons and god daughers. i saw myself not unlike my father, happily sitting at the head of a long table with all my beloved people. there is certainly a relativly long span of time between now and then, but it is good to know where you are goin.
so anyway i continued towards the car and woke up the poor girl from her unconfortable nap. despite her grogginess i started chattering away at her the thing i had discovered. we talked and talked and talked and talked until we finally ran into the rest of the gang, at which point we found a quiet spot in the woods by the river where we spent the whole day just talking and chilling and smoking joints.
so i would like to continue the discusion on the power and use of drugs. i was just saying that i think that getting a few glimpses of the divine throughout ones life is enough to generate the humility and submission that i find to be essential to a happy life. (let me just say here on a side note, that in my limited experience i find that not all drugs serve this purpose. in cigarets for example i have found no trancendant value. it seems that psychadelics/halucinogens are the best for the purpose of opening the reducing valve). i think that we all have the desire to transecend our ordinary existance, which is why religion has been the center our lives up until the very recent past. we all want some sort of indication that this isnt it, that there is something more to the ordinary ups and downs of life. this is the reason taht we use drugs, and im not talking about 'hard' drugs, im talking about alcohol, and ganga, and hashish, and mushrooms, and peyotes and everything else. we just want, even for just one night to be in a different state of mind, to be rid of the triffles that hold us down. one of the problems, id say, is taht we are usually unaware of our own desire to transcend so that we do not do it properly. we smoke every day, or we drink ourselves into oblivion, or we do so many drugs that we dont know what hit us. it is impossible to reach the ultimate enlightenment through drugs, only to to open small windowns temporarily, and if we abuse them, the windows get smaller and smaller until eventually they dont even open up and we are left with only frustration. another problem with drugs, is that they have a negative effect on our mind as a survival mechanism, the mechanism basically doesnt work for a while. it is hard to imagine looking for food and shelter in the state of mind i was in, in fact it seemed the only thing possible was blissful contemplation of the beauty of life. this is great once in a while, but if done regularly, it is easy to see why drug addicts have such a low life expectancy.
there is really so much more that i could say about this matter, but that is the subject of books, not blogs, i think, although i am expecting some responses. this is certainly a subject that everyone must have some sort of opinion on, one way or the other. so i look foward to hearing from you. and i just want to reassure you that i have a sound head on my shoulders and that i dont forsee myself slipping into any of the pitfalls of drugs anytime soon.
many of you might be asking why i would write something like this, as it can only make people think less of me. first of all you may not be thiknking that at all, but if you are i would like to tell you my reasons. first of all i wanted to lay it all on the line so to speak, to share my thoughts and experiences with the people i love. i am neither ashamed of myself, nor do i think i have done anything wrong. secondly i would like to present another image of drugs. i wish that we could get over the whole D.A.R.E. attitude about drugs and have some real discussions. for example, i cannot remember the last (or first) time that an authority type figure had a conversation with me explaining the positive aspects of drugs. i cant remember the last time that sombody talked to me about the fact that people have been using drugs for religious and ceremonial purposes since the begining of time. nobody ever told me that drugs arnt bad, but abusing them is. i can find an analagous situation with the consumption of alcohol in the USA as compared to europe. in the US drinking is super taboo and its really not ok to drink if ur under 21, and as a concequence everyone drinks themselves retarded, from a very young age. being so taboo, drinking itself becomes an event. in europe on the contrary, drinking is very acceptable even from a young age. the drinking age is technically 18, but in reality there is very little regulation, i can send my 13 year old brother to buy beer for me (not that i would EVER do that ;), or would i?) children learn to drink in their homes and as a concequence when they drink socially it is much more under control and less extreme. drinking is just something you do while socializing, its not the whole point of a night. so perhaps if we educated our youngsters about the real nature of drugs, instead of painting a comically simplified and highly distorted picture of it, we would not have people using drugs in such reckless manners. perhaps we could ever learn to use them in a more profitable way, generating love, happiness and community. i know that i will certainly be one to try in that envisioned time when i got some childrens of my own.
finally i would like to recomend two essays by Aldous Huxley on the relationships between drugs, spirituality, and other such things. they usually come together, they are called The Doors of Perception & Heavan and Hell.
peace and love
emi
Thursday, March 15, 2007
Morroco
so me and antonio took a quick weekend trip to morroco. when i first came to spain i was looking foward to visiting morroco a great many times to work on my arabic. as things have panned out, my arabic is going a little slower than i anticipated so i have not been able to take advantage of it as i would have liked to. plus it seemed like everyone where we went spoke spanish anyway. we went to a town called chawen. this is a picturesc little town tucked under a large rocky mountain. i wish i had some pictures to show you, but the whole town is painted light blue. the streets, the walls, the inside of peoples houses, everything, which givees it the effect of being in a cloud or something. the town is a bit of a tourist attraction because of its many skilled craftsmen, its beautiful appearance reminicint of the good ol days, the natural beauty of the surrounding areas. this is most directly felt by every single male, aged 12 and above asks you if you want to be hash. and i mean every male, its quite absurd, i dont know how they all make a living doing so because first they are trying to rip you off, and even if they riped off every tourist, they would only get ripped off once, and i dont know what the other 500 'vendors' would do.
the natural beauty of this place is breathtaking, i really wish i had some pictures. as i said, the town is on the skirts of a mountain, and the surrounding areas are filled with the farms and pastureland, etc, required to maintain thee town. there is a natrual spring ocming out of the mountain so the water there is extremely pure. there is also a crystal lake in the mountains. it is a relatively short walk to get there and it is an enlivening sight.
we spent the weekend hanging out in town and living the good life so to speak. 3 fat meals a day, plenty of sleep and no real partying makes chawen a great place to go to rcuperate ones strength. i bought a bunch of stuff for my house in ithaca next year, a few rugs and tapestries and such.
sorry its so brief, but i got to run
more to come
peace
the natural beauty of this place is breathtaking, i really wish i had some pictures. as i said, the town is on the skirts of a mountain, and the surrounding areas are filled with the farms and pastureland, etc, required to maintain thee town. there is a natrual spring ocming out of the mountain so the water there is extremely pure. there is also a crystal lake in the mountains. it is a relatively short walk to get there and it is an enlivening sight.
we spent the weekend hanging out in town and living the good life so to speak. 3 fat meals a day, plenty of sleep and no real partying makes chawen a great place to go to rcuperate ones strength. i bought a bunch of stuff for my house in ithaca next year, a few rugs and tapestries and such.
sorry its so brief, but i got to run
more to come
peace
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