April 29, 2008

wood-panelled Van, Go!

in the moment:
reading a book called 'dear theo'; it is the biography of Van Gogh, as laid out in a liquid series of letters that he wrote his brother, quite frequently. this cat can think, and express. well, obviously that latter....but he is also verbally profound and conceptually inspired. matches wonders how different the world would appear everyday, if we placed enough effort and focus into expressing ourselves through something as simple and deviously complex as the shapes and strings of our words. things would be quite different. he knows this much....people living on different regions of the globe have distinct thought processes to call all their own, and the dynamics there erupt out of the different lingual structures that they have been brought up with. russians legitimately think differently than americans, in many ways both subtly and celestially. have you ever studied a text in another language? with a teacher whom has read the verse or what have you, in the original form? the word on the street is that it is dazzlingly different, and that tremendous amounts of information in multiple contexts are lost to the translation process. when he studied faust, the professor would constantly be reminding the fuzzily-massed 9AM attention span before him that such and such passage appeared quite differently when he was reading it in german, and would (beneficially and frustratingly for us) be incisive as to how there was no proper translation in english for a certain or other german word. he would meander all over our adjectives, like leaping between stones on a path, never quite able to alight upon a solid footing and so maintaining the momentum of intellectual pursuit (much to his fancy). m gleamed the general impression that germans possess some concepts which he was not raised in attunement with; that certain states of mind slipped from his grasp, tantalizingly, like sand through the swift curve of an hourglass.

so how is it that we can come to expect a thought to arise in another person? 'knowing' a person is not possible in the complete sense, and yet we become put off when they rub us the wrong way. everyone has their own priorities....their own pursuits. it makes matches wonder a lot about what 'trust' is, about how it is something bigger than one's self. it expands the boundaries of the mind; it plays in spaces beyond the normal reach of the usual mental faculties. it is a bridge; a synchronization. it creates compassion and caring, understanding and freedom. trust, as a conductor of freedom, is a concept he will enjoy pondering...he can tell already. this idea of 'knowing' something about another person (or set of people) also makes mattress wonder about the possibility of a global political movement. how can there be unification if our fundamental drives and perceptions differ drastically enough to hinder communication? if our ideas of morality and freedom are different than one another? if (most importantly) our priorities, our designs for ourselves and our thoughts, our passions, our entire lives, are walled off from one another? it seems to him that the nations need to come to nothing more and certainly nothing less than an understanding, a mutual respect for the prospects of life and the infinite possibilities of the human mind in whatever quantity it chooses to be grouped within.

easily said, he knows.

m should have started writing earlier. now he must vamoose to take care of other things, leaving points unstated. expect a tomorrow, he supposes~

the beginning of 'carousel' by iron & wine just came on, and certainly it is reminiscent of pink floyd. 'night.

1 comment:

Panda said...

One of my favorite posts! Thanx bro :)