Tales and Journeys

Of the world’s many layers, it is the colors, the relative interpretations that we can never agree upon, that speak to me the clearest. Though I have sought knowledge about the logics and connections between the Earth and the Heavens, and though I understand it well, it has come to mean nothing to me, for I have found that the source of meaning lies elsewhere. Meaning lies in the yearning of the heart, in the longing of the soul, and in the wonder of the mind; and it is as real as can be within itself, in its own domain, the domain of colors.

My greatest joy lies in the pursuit of colors, the collection of sensations. I gather seperate universes and marvel at their exclusiveness. The sense of awe I recollect from experiencing vast changes of perspective, tells me clearly of the sheer size of the world of colors. Whereas all of the physical world, which could once fit inside a marble, can be overwhelmed by a daring imagination about a greater infinity, there is no trick of the mind that can envelope the world of colors. Whereas the passive forces of the tangible universe can be harvested by science, the exploration of art has never been able to bring the greater worlds of color to heel. Whether it be that we have been gifted poorly, or that the colors are truly unruly, the result is a humbling yet fantastic wilderness that ever allows new journeys, never taking hurt from the traffic.

Nobuo Uematsu – A New Origin

What does the world really feel like, and what is the most true way to feel? In the next paragraphs, I conclude that this difference in feeling, this paradox of the human soul, disappears when we realize what is really going on.

Not so rarely, I find myself engulfed in some specific emotional landscape. It can be the set of emotions found in a specific book, the strings pulled by a certain album, or even the emotions brought forth by the nature around me. While in this landscape, the similar emotions within me stand out more clearly and are easier to access. I all but settle down in the surroundings and become a part of the experience.

Like all works of art, emotional landscapes have an array of emotions, some more present than others, and put together in a unique way. So while no landscape relates to one single emotion, different landscapes can take up wholly different sections of the great continent of emotions. Also, just as a musical piece can be complete in and of itself, so can a landscape feel complete and un-lacking. In effect, two completely seperate landscapes can both feel like the “most real” one.

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Having seen the lack of magic in science, I round up my investigation by looking at the tragic application of science where it should have no power: humanity. Scientism appears as a minimum, a reduced world that nobody can dispute. But how can you live your life believing that you hardly even exist?

(Follow-up to The Infancy of Science.)

Some people chase extraordinary meaning in the world around them, just to end up lost and come back disappointed. Meanwhile, those who consider themselves down-to-earth sit contently and preach about the lack of inherent value in the world. We simply need to acknowledge this lack, to stop looking and be happy with what is, and all will be better.

So what is? Who can tell us; what instance has the authority to set the standards for what we can allow ourselves to believe in? Well, if we have been let down by spirituality and religion, is seems only fit to turn to science as the supreme authority of answer-providing. I don’t know about you, but I have a problem with this solution. A big problem.

When running from a liar, is it more fitting to move in with a psychopath?

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In this entry and the next, I look at the relationship between science, magic… and what we think they are. First, I reveal the ignorance of science as it does not care about first-hand knowledge and emotional experience, but only theory and description. Are not our very emotions a result of these processes which we treat with such logical indifference?

Different humans can have very different perspectives on things. In many conflicts, it’s never enough to just point out the facts and agree upon them. That’s not what those conflicts are about, and yet some people just won’t understand that. Why?

Well… fact, or information, is power. This has — naturally — given much power to information. And what is information all about? I’ll tell you. It’s about 0 and 1. Black and white. North and south. Jedi and Sith. All information is either valid or invalid. Information, the great power of our time, doesn’t care about anything else.

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The pass is blocked, a new valley lies before me. What will I seek there, and how?

In the year that was, I succeeded in getting better acquainted with my soul. I shall uphold that bond, but this year, I will try to access my heart, too. Too long have I hidden it, shrouded it and unsuccessfully tried to shield it from the outside world. This year, I shall muster up courage and faith and face my fears and anxieties. Somehow I believe those come from the heart, whom I have so mistreated.

It is also time for me to shake off some more apathy. These past years by myself have faced me with many challenges and new situations, many of whom I have avoided altogether. Now I am more experienced, and I can apply my abilities of problem solving to set things right. I’ll build, I’ll fix, and I’ll create my own life. I will take responsibility for myself. I’d be a joke for a man if I could never muster the wits to see this necessity.

And in the midst of all this, I want to do creative works. I have already begun to brainstorm, with snippets of music, writings and photography. The idiocy of my neglecting side would have me sit and whine while these abilities rust.

In short, I will recover all the lost and more.

I have one emotion that I hold in high regard as the one I bring with me into this new year. It is an emotion I have not felt in a long time, which I now feel in a rather peculiar and, you might say, imaginary fashion. It is a feeling of being in love, but it stems from music and from a most fictitious story. I am merely observing this emotion.

So. A track for the newborn year: Rebecca Kneubuhl – Guide You Home

This is the inconvenient truth  that sometimes, bad things happen, and if you don’t realize it, it will only get worse. Sometimes we even have to save ourselves from ourselves. That is when we must stand up to our own feelings and relieve ourselves of involuntary torments. That, or live our lives in fear and distress.

Throughout life, people bond. Not only with eachother, but perhaps even more so with all they experience. We bond with memories, with emotions, habits, norms and with ourselves.

Bonds form, and bonds break. Many break because they were weak, and they make space for greater bonds, and we do not even notice. Meanwhile, some bonds are much stronger, and will become a background for our life for a long time to come. New bonds will be made on top of these strong bonds, and rely on them to hold.

They do not always hold. Even strong bonds can break; and whether they connected us to other people, to a daily life we used to have, to our place of birth or even to a scent or a color — the feeling is much the same. The difference lies only in the nature of the bond and what we can do about it. Naturally, the death of someone we know is hardest because we have the strongest bonds with them, and nothing can bring them back.

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The modern opinion is cynical towards the world, expecting to recieve no compassion or meaning — because after all, the universe is a faceless machine, its gears the cold logic of physics and probability. I battle this opinion under its own terms, showing that emotions like love cannot merely be explained by their apparent purposes, but must have been present since the conception of this world.

Humanity. We live and we persist because it is inevitable. In this world of change and peril, only that which persists, lives.

Our highly developed consciousness, our imagination, made us persist. Our hope in better days, in great wonder, made us persist. Because of them, we still exist to this day.

And because they made us persist, these parts have persisted in us. That is the only reason we have them. If the world had challenged us in different ways, we would have developed different abilities. In another world, we might be unable to learn to swim, climb trees… or feel happy.

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Looking beyond the world of information, I discover that there rules a relativism in the world of feelings. This post sees the art in our unique perspectives on all that happens around us.

Look at an object close to you. Pick it up, examine it. What do you see?

And what more do you see?

What does the object mean to you, beyond its mere shape and surface? Our heads don’t know the world when we are born. We gradually learn how to understand it, how to chop it into pieces our psyche can comprehend. So how is it you really interpret the object; what tools are used, and what is the object decoded into, in your head? And your heart?

Okay, so it’s not always that easy to know. But you do have a special decoding process. It’s unique to you, and it’s been fine-tuned throughout your whole life. And it’s in no way limited to individual objects. We all live in the same physical world, but to each of us, everything means something else than to everyone else. So when we think of what the world is, the decoded version is all we know, and that’s what we think the world is. That is not a correct image of what the physical world truly is, but it’s not fiction either, so what is it exactly?

It’s your world.

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Every time I go outside, I sense a different unique mood in the world, the nature, around me. And every time the weather changes, this mood also changes radically. The variety is so remarkable that I couldn’t possibly predict how it’s like before I go out.

Today it’s been windy with a few scattered showers, otherwise sunny. Wind of these proportions are rare here in Oslo. Any wind at all is rare here. It felt reminiscent of home in many ways. And when I finally went out to get some groceries, countless old feelings rushed through my head. The sound of the wind, the humid smell and feel of the air, the changing light from small clouds blocking the sun and countless other impressions pulled strings in my brain that led way back, and all sorts of related feelings and half-memories popped up. I felt feelings I’d felt during similar weather back in my childhood, and I could picture it, but all pictures were general and possibly even generated in my head, and not specific memories.

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It was time to return to the forest, so I jumped on my bike and sped off north. This time I decided to take the other way around the small nearby lake, which turned out to be an interesting change, as was the fact that this was two hours earlier than last week, so the lighting was different. After biking past plains and forests and quite a few people, I eventually found the place I sat last time; a rock some five paces from the road, with a view down to the lake above a diagonal sea of green. Sitting there again reminded me of the endless variations in nature, and in our minds. It was not the same as last time (not that I expected it to be), but no less pleasing. It was way hotter now, but that just confirmed my belief that I prefer warmth over cold. I sat there relaxing and absorbing the sunlight until the ants got to me, then I decided to go find other kind of settings and other kind of moods in the forest.

After just a few more minutes on my bike, I stopped by a side road in the forest, by a small bowl-shaped miniature valley around a small stream, all covered in pine trees and clovers, yet sparse enough to let through some sunlight here and there. And incidentally, two squirrels went up one of the pine trunks just that moment. They glared at me and tried to look scary, but somehow, perhaps due to their fluffy tails, that attempt failed quite miserably. At that moment I realized I really need to get a digital camera. When I realized I might be scaring them, I walked further down the hill to look for four-left clovers for a while, but then I decided that this section of the forest was too dark to be staying in at such an hour.

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