Don’t expect anything
Don’t expect anything. Not even the best.
I realise that I am starting to repeat myself topic wise… but somehow I can’t talk about anything else but change. Not just because my life seems to go through a whole phase of changes one after the other, but because so many people around me seem to be affected by change or by… non-change.
I am faced with a particularly difficult task at the moment. Not only do I need to balance a number of things at various moment, be it work with 100 different dossiers dropping at the same time, personal life, friends, emotions, a pregnancy… but was also asked to start my philosophical engines and contribute in that particular field of Paleoanthropologie/Paleopathology in a meaningful way.
(big silence)
Exactly.
It’s not that I don’t feel inspired by the completely new setting that I am spending my days in now. From mummified mammoth babies, histological cell pictures to ancient DNA extraction protocolls, to orthopedic pathologies in Aegyptian Mumies, I come into contact with a lot of things that are simply breathtaking. (And that is just my working group. Let’s not even start with the space group that is working with NASA on the effects of zero gravity on human cell structure, degradation and other weird stuff that involves sending mice on a parabolic flight in the south of France…)
But for someone who never thought that she had enough stamina, chutzpe or intelligence (according to the time of day) to ever be any good at practical philosophy, this is a true dare.
And indeed, the last couple of weeks have been filled with the bording side of my profession: literature research and delving into a certain number of articles on the ideal way to deal with human remains in research, on the ethics of archeology and exhibit ehtics.
And what can I say? The spark has taken. This terribly theoretical philosopher now is truly inspired to bend her mind to the difficult and necessary task to find ways to think about mummies and historical human remains and their relation to top level modern medical research.
Who would have thought?
I certainly wouldn’t have. And that brings me to the main idea that I needed to share: we never know where we end up. And we’re back to the scary parts of life. The parts that we cannot possibly control. And while we sometimes may think that abandoning one way for another one that seems more comfortable and more secure, that might just be the path that takes us all the way to where we really need to be.
Think about that while you walk home tonight or stand on your balcony, or garden for a moment.
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Fight the stalemate
I find it hard to imagine anything scarier in real life (as opposed to zombies or other imaginary, otherworldly horrors such as clowns) than taking your own advice. Particularly when said advice comes from rational thought and ideals of the philosophical mind rather than experience. As with anything what we think is best in general is rarely what we end up doing. If we did, maybe things in this world would look a bit differently.
I did take my own advice. The one from the very last post in this blog. It explains the long silence between articles. I’ve made the change and it’s been quite the ride so far. And no, I haven’t had any regrets. And I truly doubt that they might still come.
I’ve accepted a new job, in a new town, and with that chose two things completely out of my comfort zone: we moved to Zürich, and I chose to work in a field I only have marginal knowledge of.
While for some that may be a step down from the career that I have built for myself, for me it’s a time out. A much needed moment of fresh air, new acquaintances, new things to learn, old things to see from a completely new perspective and finally a new level of knowledge about myself and waht I am actually able to achieve.
Changing life, be it radically or a little less drastic, isn’t something that can be achieved in a single decisions. Most of the times we are dependent on other people’s choices around us and on all these small things that make up set tapestry of life. But like the unravelling of your favourite winter sweater or the famous saying about the wings of a butterfly, all it takes is action at the right spot. Funnily enough, the writers of the Expanded Universe of Star Wars call the theory behind such a technique “shatter point”. And that’s just what it is. Every change is destructive in its very own way and not every consequence might have been anticipiated. Just as we hadn’t planned for a pregnancy to happen (probably) the same week I was offered my new job.
Stalemate in any situation, is the worst thing that can happen to us as human beings. While I wouldn’t disagree on the fact that we all need stability and a certain kind of constant organisation to be productive and all that goes with it, I would argue that this is not a stalemate. Not being able to progress towards the person you want to be or the life you want to have, because you don’t have the job that would allow for certain changes, not being able to change said job because you’ve chosen to be good in a field that is transformed into a desert of austerity… amounts to stalemate. A vicious circle where the increasing level of cynism and emotional stress is the only sign to mark the next level on your very own path to personal hell.
Or not being able to do the changes you wish, because you can’t find either this guy, that girl or the right flat, the right car or once more the right job. Not because you don’t know what you want, but because ultimately you have no clue about the things you actually need.
Change in that respect becomes a question of life or death. Literally. Let the person you are die in that situation to become someone else that is changed by the situation or take charge of your needs and start shaping your life around them as opposed to the other way around.
Sure, one always gets by and there is no animal more gifted in finding creative ways to avoid making the hard choices and face change than humans. And even if we are quick to admit that we do live in a desert and that truly we should do things differently, we persist. We find excuses. We take our fears for granted.
And yet, all it takes is the first step.
Courage to you all to find the strength and the infantile curiousness to take a single step. My prayers and thoughts are with you.
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A real brain warper: Every-wer
Persons with a background in German language are at an advantage with this one:
wenn i every-wer wär,
wär i everywhere wer.
wer wie i everywhere wer wär,
wär everywhere every-wer,
wherever i wär.
wer wie i wär,
wär very i,
…ever
Text on my birthday card 2010. Thank you Inge and Ringo.
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A Building Silence
There is a silence that destroys you. That annihilates everything you stand for, everything you fought for, all the pains you’ve endured and that made you. This kind of silence is a rejection of everything that you are and you’ve been. It’s a weird thing that silence which is the absence of something – namely talk, speech, exchange, connection etc. – can take on such violent forms. But there are situations in life where the things unsaid reveal much more about ourselves than the ones that we actually dare or care to voice.
In this kind of silence there is no peace, there’s only conjecture, construction, frustration and ultimately loss. Without word, there can be no understanding.
But then there are those other kinds of silences and one in particular can build things so much greater than words or explanation ever could. Sometimes, the “denial of words”-silence might mutate – without any real interference – into this latter kind, we could call it new silence.
It might take years or just a few hours. But ultimately that silence, that breaking of connection might spawn a new understanding. Thankfully enough as humans, we are able to forget and even the greatest horrors in life may lose their burning pain. They certainly leave their marks and they shape as much as anything else who we are and what we dream of, but with time, they’re shifted into the backgrounds of that huge scene of our consciousness. And one day we’ll wake up and our first thought isn’t that memory that broke our hearts, or that anger that made us forget all those important lessons of charity, forgiveness and love. We simply get over it. Over and beyond. Over and past it.
That’s the precise moment where the destructive silence can take on another twist and force and turn into forgiveness. Slowly. But once we’ve achieved that, whatever deserved explanation or laying out suddenly doesn’t need anymore clarification and things just become what they are, what they were more precisely.
Sometimes, a silence is a chance. And usually, as with anything, it takes two. One to be silent and the other to accept it.
I myself have just overcome such a silence of several years where no words could overcome what needed to be processed. Where projected ideas about past and future were blocking the way and view of the truth and the facts. I’ve fought that silence, have hated it, have loathed the person subjecting me to it, because of their inability to see me, hear me and accept me. And that silence has broken my heart on many occasions because I was forced into it. Because there was no ear, no possibility, no heart to listen.
And then one day, I just moved on. Laid it down at the altar of all sacrifices and got on with life. Not truly thinking that such things could indeed be overcome. Not for me. Redemption was for others. Or rather I didn’t trust myself to really get over it. I thought that something would always remain of that unspeakable pain.
Experiences and prayers later, suddenly there it was again, that thought that maybe, just maybe … or not? For years, it went on like that. Until one final day, the silence was no more. Without force or willing, but with a gentle turn of fates, suddenly the words flowed and whatever we thought needed saying suddenly had no power over us anymore.
Sometimes, a silence builds new things without us even noticing, without us even consciously working on doing it. Sometimes, those silences are bought with the pain of years past and sometimes what they build is a new house for our soul to live in.
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Make you Sing: Eastmountainsouth
It’s time for another instalment of this series. Hope you like this one, because it’s a precious little pearl.
Eastmountainsouth will for me always be associated with my time in Paris. Forever will I see the snow storms and be reminded of the cold moments I spent in the city of millions, of the pain, but also of the exhilarating tension through which I lived there.
Their version of Hard Times (an old classic that goes back to the Civil War Time, or so it is rumoured) is such an uplifting song that even my solitude of the time couldn’t resist it’s charm.
Unfortunately there’s only a small bit of their version online to be found on Last.fm.
Founded in 1999, the group joined together the vocally astonishing Kat Maslich and the equally amazing Peter Adams. Both singers and writers had Southern backgrounds which can be clearly heard at some points in their album.
They only ever produced on album together under the name of their ‘band’ and which only came out in 2003, years after they had met and started working together. It remains to this day a perfect piece of music that unfortunately didn’t find any succession either by them continuing to work together or by either Adams or Maslich apart.
Unfortunately, there aren’t a lot of videos that I could link here online, but you can listen to them on Last.fm or Pandora, their yahoo music site gives all the info you need. But if you trust me a little bit, then you’ll just go and buy the album. it’s worth it.
Not only are their texts of a particular clarity and a touching emotional expression, but their music has something timeless in it’s depths. Something that just can’t leave you cold. Something that can hardly be described other than that certain longing for completeness while valuing your own incompleteness.
I’ll leave you with one of the most amazing songs ever written: So are you to me.
Update:
Meanwhile, someone has put their version of Hard Times on Youtube: Enjoy.
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The last test (Pingpress.fm Plugin)
This is the last test, before I dump this plugin for good…
Addedum: For everyone that has had problems getting the last version of the Pingpress.fm plugin to work (2.2.7), here’s the work around that I’ve found.
The main problem I had was that I couldn’t add any triggers and posts were not pinged to Ping.fm Judging from the Getsatisfaction page of the plugin author I wasn’t the only one with that problem in that particular version either. So I took an older version (2.2.6) from the plugin repository of WordPress and installed that one. Which DID work, however the html tags clearly were all over the place. Next step: take the new version 2.2.7 and just overinstall that in your FTP program, replacing what needs, leaving what doesn’t et voilà: it works. Either by fluke or chance, doesn’t matter: I can add custom triggers and they get activated. Hope this helps someone else too.
For everyone else: this ends the technical chatter.
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