the line crossed that no one knew was drawn

so I sit in class, last semester of my senior year, and listen to Eastern philosophy being taught to me.  I feel this unforgiving sense of a lack of reality...
-This World
-This Body
-with These Senses and These Experiences

I find myself reverting back to a childlike state of delusion where my imagination constitutes my whole reality.  It's as if I'm stuck in a lower level metaphysics class- daydreaming about hallucinogens and any experience that doesn't feel like This. 

"Awaken to the true nature of the self,"  the professor says...

Somehow this quote penetrates my dream, whirling about in the air in front of me and then sinking deep into the crevasses of my subconscious.  In any case, I assure myself that I am always the creator and the discoverer of my life.  The existence of my Being pours out in front of me like a set of watercolors overly saturated with water onto a clean white piece of paper.  I dissolve into internal dissolution.  I am not 'here' or 'there' but when I walk in the streets I still stop at red lights as to not get run over.

I look in the mirror but I don't see myself, rather, I imagine myself as a blob of being- amorphous, defined by a language that I often have a hard time relating to. 

I'm back in my class, the teacher has continued talking without ever noticing my mental distance.  I immediately begin to scribble down a 'To-Do' list of things I should do but probably won't.  I see my hand write but don't recognize the handwriting. It's ok though.  This kind of disconnect is almost refreshing.  I felt as though I drew a line in the scope of reality and then crossed it, leaving behind any sort of intentionality. 

In the end I was still in class, sitting in the same chair, next to the same people, with a notebook full of bizarre drawings. 

We are all small in the ocean.

I will try to keep this short and sweet, but in all honesty, who really cares?

Not to sound so nihilistic (although this overtone does seem hard to avoid at this point), but what does it matter anyway?  I know that most people out there on the internet and even most of the people (if any) that actually take the time to sit down and read this don't actually care at all about what I have to say.  And just to point it out (because now seems like a better time than ever I suppose), I have gathered from a specific comment regarding my first post that not only do some people just not care what I have to say, they downright despise it to the point where they feel I have corrupted their daughter.  Sorry Mrs. Eickholt but it is hard for me to have sympathy for you and your concern that Kirstie and I are going to hell when I don't even believe in 'Hell' in the first place.  Anyways, the funny thing about it is, I also don't care what anyone thinks about any of this.  I guess that is why I have not written anything on here in so long.  I was sitting around waiting for something witty, profound, or at least substantial enough to pop into my head before just typing up some senseless blurb as I have done in the past...

exhibit A:  The last thing I wrote on my old blog, Metaphorical Muse, before deciding to kill it;

"So, weird. lately ive been really worried about time. everything, lists. i feel that if i make lists-maybe then i will do alll the things on them and i can scratch them off one at a -time-. how can i maximize my -time-? minimize? what is the wisest way to spend it-ration it off? crazy time

met these kids name darwin, and dan the man. keep running into them. weird how that happens. same thing happens with words. i hear a word for the first time and then within a week i hear it atleast 8 more times--thinking, why did i never hear this word before? is there a fashionable use of words? now we're thinking about language. probably a good pace to end-what else could be said?"

 

What the fuck, right?

 

Anyways, where was I...oh yes-waiting.  Waiting for something worth posting.  Until just now when I came to the overwhelming realization that I could give a rat's ass. (I don't know exactly what that means, my mom used to say it all the time.  I think you can catch my drift though.)  I don't even know who it was I was trying to impress.  So now I have this brand new, quite liberating intention for this whole blog thing.  I've decided that blogs can be likened to a tattoo.  I love tattoos.  Some people hate tattoos.  Either way, it doesn't really matter.  You don't (or at least you probably shouldn't) get a tattoo to please someone else, unless you are stupid enough to put your current love interest's name on your body permanently.   On the contrary, you get a tattoo because you want it.  It is a unique creation, completely individualized.  It is a personal creative outlet for self expression and it should never matter what other people think about it.  This is precisely how I now view blogging, my blog in particular.  It is a creative outlet that allows me to collect my thoughts in a unique and personal way and if you don't like it then don't read it, or leave a comment saying you don't like it because as I have already postulated, I could give a fuck.  Viewing it in this new light no longer sounds so nihilistic, instead it is quite liberating. 

 

However, taking this perspective still does not make it any easier to always write positive and uplifting things.  Collecting your thoughts in this manner can prove to be mentally draining, and often leads me to a downward spiral of negativity and criticism.  Collecting your thoughts in general is typically a hard thing to do.  At times it is almost like herding cats.  Your mind can be so displaced that it will fight off any attempt you make at reigning it back in.  Creating a positive collection of thoughts is especially hard when your world is full of "pompous retard ass-dicks" (Thanks Jack).  We often allow the tentacles of our mind to run a muck in search of meaning, attempting to posit meaningfulness to anything that swings our way. 

So the goal now is to write love not hate.  It is for your own good, I think.  The easiest way to do this is to just list things you love, or use the word 'lovely' excessively.  But these means of writing love are empty and meaningless (and hokey).  You have to find love in life, positivity in simplicity, and meaning in the mundane.  The heart of life lies not in the anger but in the love and connection we have with each other and with everything around us.  The daily life we manifest for ourselves is a microcosm of the infinite and ever expanding macrocosm we are immersed in.  Thinking this way about things will put everything into a more positive and liberating perspective.  This is exactly how I will attempt to collect my thoughts from now on- from the standpoint of floating in the middle of the ocean.  There you begin to realize how petty and insignificant your problems are.  

 

So quick recap for those of you that just skimmed through this, consider this your sparknotes version:

1. Some people suck

2. Who cares

3. Mrs. Eickholt, you can suck it-but thanks for the concern

4. Collecting thoughts is hard

5. Sometimes being positive is hard

6. We are all small in the ocean

piece of mind vs. peace of mind

wow.  Quite a beautiful day in Charleston!  The weather couldn't have made it any more difficult to concentrate on school work.

All day I was reflecting on a conversation I had with my friend Yusuf yesterday about the future and how absolutely bazar it feels to be a senior in college.  I was telling him how I always had this preconceived notion of what life was "like" after high school.  "I will go to college, major in something, graduate, get a job doing something related to my major, support myself, get married, have a family, work."-That is pretty much how I thought things would go, in a nutshell.  FALSE.  I was horribly mistaken.  Life is not so predictable.  It is almost as if my presence right at this moment, right as I am typing this, is of a state of happenstance.  I did not know this is where I would be, I had no idea what it would be like to be me at this point in time.  Our conscious awareness of ourselves/embodiment is constantly evolving resulting in an almost unpredictably morphing perspective of the world in which we live and are free.  This state of existence upon realization is both liberating and overwhelming.  I think that Yusuf characterized this state beautifully in saying that we are "actively drifting" through life.  This expression feels so organic and tranquil, while still bearing an air of intentionality and desire.  My constant reflection of this perspective has made it difficult for me to prioritize lately-or at least this is how it feels.  Maybe it is just my evolving nature of being that is causing me to rethink my previous notion of priority.


I am sure of one thing-Charleston is lovely in the spring...

"There's only one instant, and it's right now. And it's eternity"

"As the pattern gets more intricate and subtle, being swept along is no longer enough."

"whatever you do, don't be bored, this is absolutely the most exciting time we could have possibly hoped to be alive. And things are just starting"

"The trick is to combine your waking rational abilities with the infinite possibilities of your dreams. Because, if you can do that, you can do anything."

"Life is a matter of a miracle that is collected over time by moments flabbergasted to be in each others presence."

*all quotes courtesy of the film Waking Life

**all photographs taken by me

side affects may include...

Just to put it out there-I am almost positive that I am a sufferer of S.A.D.  For those of you who are unfamiliar with this catchy acronym it stands for Seasonal Affective Disorder.  And guess what else...you probably have it too!  In fact, we all probably naturally feel a change in our daily emotions in correlation with the weather.  Why wouldn't we?  We are always completely affected by our surroundings and our environment.  Our Being is inherently embedded in our environment in a way that is almost ineffable.  Our environment and the stimuli and experiences provided by our environment shape our Being and our personal identity.  The relation is that of a reflective nature.  So, to reiterate the point I was making before-it  seems completely comprehensible and natural that we are all affected emotionally by the changing of the seasons.
The past couple of days in Charleston have, thankfully, been absolutely beautiful!  The other day I was almost squealing with joy to my friends Matt and Jack, as we were on our way to D'Allesandro's* to get some amazing pizza, about how amazing the weather was and how happy it made me.  This is when I proclaimed that I had S.A.D.  But admitting this, for me, was only coming to a clearer understanding of my relationship to my environment.  Unfortunately, the pharmaceutical companies have capitalized on my, rather quaint, realization.  In fact, they even came up with an obviously implicative acronym for such an 'illness'.  All so they can sell me a prescription of some kind that will 'fix it'.
I don't understand the necessity of such a drug.  Sure, it sucks sometimes in the winter when it is cold and rainy for days on end and you begin to feel like a crazy hermit.  This is a completely natural human reaction to the season.  In fact, it is a necessary reaction.  Without the dreary days of rain or cold, how could you come to appreciate the blooming and beautiful days of warmth and sunshine?  Like the Yin and Yang, we need this balance.  It is inherent in the nature of appreciation.  It does us no good to drown out the sorrows of rainy day blues with prescriptions drugs.
I suggest that we all, instead, try to understand this relation of Being and environment so that we can be more at ease rather than attempting to diagnose ourselves compulsively.

On a lighter note...BIG shout to whoever was playing the music at D'Al's on monday-great radiohead playlist at the perfect volume!  Really set the mood for an enjoyable afternoon pizza and $2 glass of Guinness.  Made my day!


"For myself...I could only be grateful for an experience which had shown me, more clearly than I had ever seen it before, the true nature of the challenge and the completely liberating response."

-Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception

Jack's choice: 'In Bianco' + basil and pineapple

It was scrumtrulescent!  

april showers bring march flowers...

It was a rainy day in Charleston yesterday.  Flowers are starting to bloom!

The petals were just as pretty on the ground.

This beautiful tree is in front of my friends house.  

a green philosophy.

I, Caitlin Nicholson, have decided to start a blog.


That sounds really official, right?  Well everyone (maybe no one depending on who decides to read this), this blog will probably be anything but official.  Don't expect to find any well written, catchy, classy, or politically correct information on this blog.  I mean come on, who wants to read about that boring shit anyways?  I guess now would also be a good time for a disclaimer: there will probably be profanity all throughout this blog.  Sorry.  I personally don't see anything wrong with using 'harsh' words to get a specific point across, and since this is my blog I also don't feel any need to refrain.


So, you may be asking yourself now, "What the hell is she going to be writing about?"


Good question.  


In general, I will be writing about any kind of everyday things I've decided are interesting enough to note.  After all, this is basically a way of cataloging my thoughts in order to reflect on them later, which in a way, could be considered experience error by a phenomenologists standards (but there will be much more on that later).


More specifically, the things that interest me enough to note here will typically be philosophical contemplations (often stemming from the courses I'm currently taking, and casual conversations with like-minded folk) and interesting things pertaining to gardening.  While I am, on the one hand, obsessed with philosophy, I am also (almost equally) obsessed with the 'go green' movement of this generation.  I think that it is extremely important to support any movement that promotes environmentally friendly actions and sustainability.  My specific point of interest is with locally grown/raised organic food.  Gardening is an ancient act of humanity.  Our species was able to evolve and grow so quickly due, in part, to our ability to reap and sow the earth-to cultivate and sustain ourselves through agriculture.  Such a practice is sacred and distinctive to our species.  Sadly, in recent years, due to our exponentially excessive nature, the food industry has turned something so wholesome as a fresh fruit or vegetable into an antibiotic/hormone filled, chemically coated, unnaturally large freak of nature. 
 It is time that we get back to our roots.  Thankfully, people are starting to see that this is not the way to nourish our bodies.  


Luckily, Charleston South Carolina has a great man to lead the way in the local green movement- Mayor Joe Riley.  He, along with many other supportive and dedicated individuals, started the Charleston Green Committee which has made great progress in improving the sustainability of the city.  People have also been starting community gardens left and right!  These are not only a great way to deliver fresh/organic food to the low country, but also to raise awareness of the importance of shopping locally and growing your own food.  I will be trying to post about all the community gardens' progress throughout the season and post progressive pictures.  A good place to look to find out what's going on and how to get involved is Lowcountry community gardens blog.  




So, you may now be asking yourself another question, "What the hell does any of this 'green' shit have to do with philosophy?"


Another good question.  You are really on top of your game aren't you...


Well, to answer your question I would have to say- it has everything to do with philosophy.  I personally have adopted the philosophy of the 'embodied mind'.  This is an idea that is central to phenomenology.  Basically, it is a theory against Cartesian dualism.  Descartes coined the term dualism to refer to the idea that the mind and the body are two separate entities.  Phenomenology rejects this theory and instead insists that our mind is inherently embodied.  In other words, we live and experience the world through our bodies.  Also, we are necessarily embedded in the world.  As put, beautifully by Maurice Merleau-Ponty,

 "The world is... the natural setting of, and field for, all my thoughts and all my explicit perceptions. Truth does not inhabit only the inner man, or more accurately, there is no inner man, man is in the world, and only in the world does he know himself." 

If one is to adopt this theory, then it becomes obvious how infinitely important it is that we: 1. care for and properly nourish our bodies, and 2. be conscious of our impact on the world.  For we are nothing without our bodies and the human race is nothing without the resources and energy of the world.