APW: The School of More

If you have trouble identifying with a school of thought, religion, or ideology, perhaps you can find your home here:

Do you belong to the school of more, the never enough?  The school of why can’t the best aspects of the sunlight and shade, fruit and root development, comfort and stimulation, past and future exist all at once, in prime persistent perpetual perfection.  The yearning for this enduring state of mind is what drives us and tortures us simultaneously, excites our stagnant souls from the bedroom.  

The school of more is boundless, shapeless, formless.  Though it may go dormant in the dullest of days, it awaits around the corner, like Hawking’s sleepless nights before black hole revelations, like Kerouac’s jaunt to mosquito filled Mexico, like your future self beckoning your presence at the table of forgotten dreams.

More marks your moves like an inescapable shadow.  Try defying the rhythm, settling for a daily routine, creating an inconsequential secondhand sculpted life, and you’ll find More’s oncoming waves deliver striking blows rather than a soothing caress.  More circulates blood around the body, connects the soil to your sustenance, the crunching leafs to the planet’s axis, the weight of a feather to the speed of sound.

It is more that has followed and pushed me from suburban sprawl, to the tropics, to farms, to the ocean, to the mountains, to the forest, to school, to philosophy and film, to out of school, to the east, to discover love, to science and history, to religion and the brain, to today.  It is more that ties this all together, and more that pushes me away from the present into the realm of the obligatory ‘not here.’  

More has moved me back into the land of seasons, into academia and a garden of overlapping distractions, all en route to decomposition.  And now, more has driven me to wanting less.  To shrink into smallness, to avoid mistakes, to be at mercy of the hands of fate.  More has shut me up and contradicted me, and whispers and taunts.  More muddles distractions into reflections, observations into interactions and intentions into fruition.  

Though it is more that keeps us going, I find that it is in less that we begin to feel whole..

—

"You cannot control your laughter.
You cannot control your love.
You know not to hit the brakes on ice
but do anyway. You bend the nail
but keep hammering because
hammering makes the world.” 

APW: What I didn’t know I was grateful for

All of my camping gear that I’ve collected and traveled over the last 5 years was stolen earlier this week.  Along with my laptop that stored all of my school work, research and writing.  This event brings me to a cross roads and I consider these contrasting points (of view):

1) This happened while I was volunteering at LEAF Festival, a gathering of “building community” and “connecting culture.”  Taking someone else’s belongings is an interesting expression of this, though I prefer to imagine that they need the gear more than I do ,hoping the legacy of my gear will continue on many treks in places I would not have gone.

2) I haven’t experienced anything physically taken from me in a long time.  I have taken things from myself, but that was in my control, though this notion is often difficult to accept.  Not the last few years in Hawai’i, or in my travels around Asia.  This makes me wonder what is in the mentality and ethics of my thief?  Is there consideration for the person’s relationship with the stuff being taken, either sentimentally or economically?   Is it an act of desperation, or is someone being opportunistic at another's expense?  Do most decisions boil down to this more abstractly?

3) I am trying to cultivate a mind without attachments to things.   There are distinctions to be made in the words things and attachments, but I will not turn this into an essay on Buddhism.  That being said, there are few “personal belongings” that I care about.  If I were prompted to make a list, camp gear and my writing would make the top 3. 

4)  I relate to the inherent value of a backpack in its ability to store essentials.  But I identify more with what it represents.  I feel safe with a backpack and my gear, as it allows the ability to go outside at any time in the year for an extended period, and find a space without expectation or obstinate definition.  To be immersed in the ever changing, non-projecting, growing balanced landscape filled with other responsive living organisms.  Strapping on a backpack is a little like a ceremony for me.  And I usually have a small backpack on my person at all times.  Having one taken is akin to missing an essential piece of clothing.

5) I do not have much to show for myself tangibly throughout my life.  I have a lot of relationships that I am grateful for, and of all the people I have known, my aunt is the only person within a 10 hour drive who I have known for more than 2 months.   I am grateful for her for many reasons, among them she has provided a roof over my head this week when I was hoping my former tent would be sufficient.  I also have my writing, or what is left of it.   Though this feeling of starting over is familiar, and as I get older, I wish to experience it less.

6) And on the road to getting elements of my external self back, I have the internet to be grateful for.  Thanks to the internet, the iCloud, this shared network space beyond a local hard drive, I have some of my writing, research and schoolwork stored and saved.

7)  It took years to put together my pack, both realizing what I need and acquiring the gear.  Though in the last 3 days, through visiting second hand stores, used book stores, camping stores, eBay, Craiglist and Amazon, I have been able to compile most of my old pack.  Each item now has a new story and a shorter history, unless the gear is used and then I am continuing the journey of a story already started.

Which is essentially what I am doing or how I am trying to look at this.  I am continuing my own story.  I am not as sad as I expected myself to be from when this first occurred to now.  It is important to go through the emotions of such events, but I have viewed these happenings as chapter breaks rather than writing a whole new book.  I will have to start some things from scratch, but that happens regardless of whether or not someone else takes something from you.  Some time periods of our lives force this process upon us, and others nurture it.

I am often not promoting our cultural dependence on technology.  I observe an interference with learning basic skills and utilizing proper tools around us.  A click of the button to order clothes sewn in a factory across the world, or shopping in our low risk, low cost grocery stores do not accurately represent how food is grown.  Technology has the ability to hide the externalities (hidden consequences) of our choices.  Today though, I am grateful for this convenience, and being back in camping action in under two weeks.   Or am I?

A Closing thought:  Perhaps it would be better to pick up the gear in pieces, create new stories, and grieve for the relationship I had cultivated with my old gear.  Our culture is driven toward forward progress and momentum.  Major emotional events in our lives now may take the shape of speed bumps.  I remain confused, conflicted and have difficulty slowing down.  I am grateful for all the reminders.  Maybe a camping trip will help.

APW: Returning to School

Why did I Resume My Education at Warren Wilson?

The fact that I have difficulty initially trying to answer this question draws me to a state of skepticism. I am not distracted into thinking of where else I could be, but while flipping through the pages of my mind, I stop to consider if this was the right decision to return back to school? 

I write this after completing my first day of classes for Fall Semester 2014.  To elaborate further, it is my first day in a classroom setting since my study abroad semester in Fall 2008 at the U. Melbourne in Australia, though technically there it was Spring.  I had then made the decision, after going on a hike in Tasmania during finals week in November 2008, to seek an alternative lifestyle to traditional education, and pursue a path where I would work the land and travel and learn from the world as my classroom without walls.

I had not the intention to return, but I could not predict any of the events that followed after I broke away from the well paved trail. Flash forward to orientation, where I quickly learned that I was not alone in my prolonged absence from school.  Each of us, on our multifarious paths, discovered something special in WWC.  Something that attracted us towards it like a faint and intriguing light, an interesting scent and an unusually rhythmic sound away from the main event.  We are here, to begin or restart a stage in our lives. 

Even a short semester away from school, an internship or work-study over the summer, has the strong ability to lend some perspective on the world at large, and reflect on this decision to choose to return to Warren Wilson College.  Which, after a week of being here, I have only scratched the surface of understanding this campus functioning as a socio-economic ecosystem with intense microclimates.  I have enjoyed all walks to and fro classes and down to the river, forest and the pasture lands, nestled in Blue Ridge Mountains of Swannanoa, Western North Carolina.

After some Day 1 panicking relating to words and concepts like syllabus, lecture, lab, buying or renting books, assignments due, quizzes, etc. I paused, breathed, and recognized more manifestly that this is what I had signed up for.  I expected such moments to arise, regained composure and brought my attention back to the professor.  After the exploding balloons and conductive pickle in General Chemistry, and seeing the setting sun filter light through the Tulip Poplar across from the bridge to create an artsy and reflective aesthetic, I began to reflect more clearly on why I arrived here.

So why did I come back… here?  I returned for the interdisciplinary integration of the Triad.   For the challenge of the nearly-forgotten academia, for the stimulation of the culture and the forced discipline of the classes.  For the extraordinary biodiversity of this region and the breathtaking views of the Blue Ridge Mountains.  To return to a place in EST (Eastern Standard Time) where I could more actively engage with the culture and not just the subculture.  To keep my mind and my body physically committed to goals that can only be achieved with persistence.  To become more aptly equipped  to contribute to a more consciously socio-ecologically designed future.

After 6 years of working, traveling and developing roots and relationships in places I hope to return to one day, I’m back in the classroom, hoping to be empowered with knowledge that will help me engage with work on campus, and other service and learning projects.  I hope to be an asset, I hope to be helpful, I hope to find meaning in my walk between classes and to assist others on their path and to not be overly passive in asking help from all the brilliant minds and able hands around.

We’ve all got a story already told.  Some of us have experienced similar events from different perspectives and others different experiences from similar perspectives.  Now we’ve got a new story beginning together and an ever-changing world that will be awaiting us when we are ready to more actively engage with it.   

Good luck to the entire incoming Freshman, transfers, returning students and Seniors in their final years.  Try to enjoy this part of the process.  Cherish your place as a new or returning student, as you only live this part of your life’s education once.