Jun 17, 2010
Jun 15, 2010
peace be with you
Hello everyone, and welcome to this blog.
The purpose of this page is to ask each of you to consider the ways in which you feel God or a higher power in your life - how do you know he's listening? In this collaborative space, I hope that you will feel comfortable sharing your experiences, so that we all might have an opportunity to examine and grow in our own faith.
Each of our relationships with God or our higher power is unique. What I would like to create here is a place to learn about how others see the light of God in their lives. I am asking you to share the moments in which you have felt the glory of God or the movement of a higher power. These may be little things, like finding a dollar on the ground, or life-changing events you might be inclined to call miracles.
My hope is that in considering our own blessings and those of others, we will be reminded of how beautiful the world is. Wherever and however you find God, please use this space to share it with others. There is wonder to be found in everything.
If you'd like to share something, look at the bottom of this entry for the link that says Comment. Once you click it, you can type your comment and choose to post it either anonymously or with your name.
The purpose of this page is to ask each of you to consider the ways in which you feel God or a higher power in your life - how do you know he's listening? In this collaborative space, I hope that you will feel comfortable sharing your experiences, so that we all might have an opportunity to examine and grow in our own faith.
Each of our relationships with God or our higher power is unique. What I would like to create here is a place to learn about how others see the light of God in their lives. I am asking you to share the moments in which you have felt the glory of God or the movement of a higher power. These may be little things, like finding a dollar on the ground, or life-changing events you might be inclined to call miracles.
My hope is that in considering our own blessings and those of others, we will be reminded of how beautiful the world is. Wherever and however you find God, please use this space to share it with others. There is wonder to be found in everything.
If you'd like to share something, look at the bottom of this entry for the link that says Comment. Once you click it, you can type your comment and choose to post it either anonymously or with your name.
Glory to God whose power, working in us, can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine.
Ephesians 3:20
for now
The story I am about to tell focuses on the past five years, but truly begins much earlier. In class, after we had drawn our circles, I made an admission to Randy that I had never made to anyone else before. When I was younger, maybe four or five, I remember standing in our church, Christ Church Cranbrook, and staring up at the hundred or so foot ceilings. With my head tilted back and my eyes wide open, I gazed upon the light fixtures above me, and saw two small balls of gold circling around them. It happened every time I looked up, and I thought they were angels. Maybe there were.
I have tried to look for the angels again, but since I have grown, they have been elusive. Despite their absence, there still is, and always has been, a certain gravity within the walls of the church. The air feels thicker and more charged, as if it is simply fuller than the air outside. It is hard for me to say whether it is loaded with the prayers of others or just a lingering holiness. When I leave, I wonder if it clings to my skin and clothes.
Because I have been at my particular church for the entirety of my life, it feels like a second home. It may even be the location I know second best; from an early age, I have actively explored its every crevice and chosen my favorite spots. These spaces unconsciously and automatically induce a reverence within me that is seen little elsewhere in my interactions with the world. When I am in them, it is almost as if my heartbeat and breathing become superfluous.
When I tell the story of my spiritual development, it seems as though I had a period of years when I didn’t believe in anything, but the aforementioned spaces always held their mysterious sway over me. We will get to that later. This is a story about getting lost and being found. This is a story about the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world I had no idea was coming.
I did not realize I was lost until I was found. The veils I had placed over my own eyes were so ingrained in whom I had made myself to be that I became unable to distinguish who I really was. It would be dishonest for me to say that I do not struggle with the same issue today; I have tried to write this story before, and I have always been held back by an inner unwillingness to abandon the troublesome parts of myself. Even when I have complained about my unhappiness and desire to change, there has been a lingering desire to heap suffering upon myself.
Someone once told that humans are not happy because they do not allow themselves to be. It sounds so absurd because of course everyone claims to want to be happy, but I know it holds truth because I have lived it. I think part of the problem is that we rarely really, truly know which routes will manifest lasting happiness, and so we spend a lot of time metaphorically flailing around.
Contentment is difficult to wholly experience, let alone sustain. What I find fascinating is that by definition, to be content is to be in a state of peaceful happiness and not wanting more, but when used as a verb, to content oneself with, becomes accepting something as adequate despite wanting more. The diametrical nature of this word’s various significances is apt for the way that I have experienced it in my life. A change of state, a change of tense can mean everything, it seems.
Despite attempting at times to feign contentment for the sake of appearances, I have quite honestly spent a majority of the past five years contenting myself with its utter absence from my life. It is not hard to lie to others, but I have never been able to deceive myself into accepting contrived happiness. There is always that moment when the fake smile drops and suddenly I am alone with myself and the rawness of my discontent.
Perhaps we hold individual laws of gravity within ourselves. In my internal field, I feel definite shifts when things become real, sometimes inescapably so.
Right after I got to Red Rock, I was IQ tested. Someone made the mistake of telling me my score, which fell in a percentile that marked me as having very superior intelligence. Once I had concrete evidence to support my pervasive belief that I was smarter than most everyone I encountered, I was in trouble. Two hours of testing and the three digits resulting from its analysis had justified my inner intellectual bully.
In a session about a week ago, I speculated to my therapist that “I probably wouldn’t be as much of an asshole if I wasn’t so tall.” We both laughed, mostly because I was serious. At five foot eleven and one half inches and age twenty, I am above the ninety-seventh height percentile for females, and have been nearly my entire life. Given both my younger sibling’s recent growth spurts, I am now the shrimp of all six grandchildren. Even my sixteen-year old sister stands an inch above me.
Obviously my stature gives me an esoteric experience of the world, and I cannot imagine what it would be like to be shorter. At a rally, my similarly tall friend Dan and I held up our significantly shorter friend so that she was at our height. She was amazed at how different everything looked from six inches higher. I have always said that I would rather be remarkably tall than remarkably short; I can see things and I can reach things. There is something else, though, that is less practical and less explicable.
If I was asked to describe myself in five words, I might choose “whip smart and freak tall.” My siblings and I have received the abundant genetic blessings of height, intelligence, and attractiveness. Each of us has responded completely differently to these qualities. My particular reaction has been inarguably the most exploitative, oftentimes dangerously so.
Although I have never been the type of girl to bat my eyelashes, somewhere along the line, I realized how easily I could manipulate people.
My interactions with the world and its occupants are driven by rationality. This is to say that my critical thinking skills are acutely developed and largely automatic. When I encounter a situation, whether a math problem or a discussion with a friend, I quickly and clearly see my options and the corresponding outcomes. In my head, nearly everything is linear, neat, and binary; there is a sort of internal intrinsic organization that directly corresponds with external action.
I sometimes become frustrated with others for seeming not to function similarly. It is never a question of what they were thinking, but why they were thinking in that particular way. At my worst here, I can be unforgiving and judgmental, placing myself as superior to the other person and taking that to my advantage. In predicting what I deem to be illogical behavior, I have been able to successfully manipulate any number of situations, which is a bragging right my intellectual bully relishes.
All of this is just perpetuating my claim that I am an asshole. The truth is, I am not an asshole, but I can act like one.
Nearly five years ago, when I was sixteen, I underwent drastic personal changes. I went from being a sweet, loving honors student to a cigarette smoking, alcohol drinking, cocaine sniffing asshole. Although it seems an objective statement, I can only make it with the powers of hindsight. At the time, the phase did not seem like a phase, and its effects have continued to linger.
In this paper, when I talk about spirituality, I am largely speaking about God as far as the Episcopalian faith is concerned. From my viewpoint, other aspects of spirituality can be reconciled within this realm, which is to say I see no problem with seeming like I’m visiting the lunch line of a spiritual cafeteria. I take what I like and leave what I don’t, all while grounding myself in Christianity.
this is not a blog post.
Let's play a game. I'll warn you, this will get complicated, but bear with me.
What do you see here? If you answered "a kitten," what led you to this conclusion? Was it the fur? The whiskers? The ears?
Or maybe you answered that it was a picture of a kitten. How did you decide this?
It's possible you even answered that it was a group of pixels organized to form an image of a kitten. You might have gone a step further and answered that it was a collection of variously sized light waves hitting your retina.
Now, you might think I'm reading too deeply into this and setting you up to answer a seemingly easy question incorrectly. The point I'm trying to make is that all of your potential answers are correct, but that they are all borne from different ideas.
The human existence is one of perception and deduction. Each individual constructs beliefs about his or her environment differently, but inarguably, we are constantly influencing each other. Rather, we rely on previously constructed concepts to make sense of the complexities of the world.
Let's go back to the cat, whose name happens to be Buster. Here, Buster is existing on a number of planes. Perhaps most simply, he serves as an example of the human capacity for abstraction, the use of symbols to represent an object. Buster only works as an abstract because you've seen a cat before and can transfer your understanding of what constitutes a cat onto him. Additionally, you can perceive the photograph as a representation of the actual cat, or rather, that it is only one instance of him.
Believing the photograph to be a representation of an actual cat is actually a show of good faith in another concept. Although it was probably unconscious, because you understand the basic mechanics of photography, you were able to discern that Buster is real because a camera can only capture that which can be placed in the viewfinder. He's photographed, therefore he is, right?
But, what if you interpreted that image as the lightwaves activating the rods and cones in your retina? This is the wall that I've been trying to scale for the past few weeks. What I've come to believe is that while we inarguably live a sensory existence, we have an enormous capacity for perception. Simply put, we function within a number of symbol systems, largely by making automatic connections to previously accumulated experiences.
Think of it this way. Even if you'd like to argue that the image is its light waves, I'd challenge you on the basis that you still immediately knew it was a cat. You most likely did not even have to think about what you saw, rather, it happened automatically and unconsciously. As your retinas absorbed those light rays, your brain immediately processed their configuration and brought up "cat" from your memory. If you choose to look at it again, years later, you will still see cat.
Although this sort of process seems restrictive to a truly unique experience of the world, it is more or less what keeps the world in order. The gift of being human may be our ability to think, but if we didn't function with the automaticity we do, the sheer number of stimuli in any given moment would be overwhelming.
I'm going out on a limb here, but just come along for the ride. Of our six symbol systems, only the genetic code and spoken language are attributed to biological evolution (these traits are exhibited by many other species). So how do we account for the other four: written language, arabic numerals, musical notation, and locatation, referring to all forms of movement?
The fact that the human capacity for sensation is enormous is apparent. We exist in an umvelt chock full of stimuli, but so do other species. The difference, I'm arguing, is in the evolution of our brains. I'd go as far as to say that our additional symbol systems are proof of a general human tendency; in my opinion, humans are terrified of the unknown. A more optimistic view is that we are scientists by nature, constantly seeking logic and meaning in all our movement.
Because making sense of all we encounter could be quite a challenge, we've made it into a group project. From that sense, each of us represents everyone before us. Not only has the gene pool continued to evolve, but so have our means of experiencing the world. Each interaction, whether between two individuals or an individual and the environment, has an effect on our understanding.
We owe a lot to our forefathers and mothers, as well as to everyone and everything we've ever encountered. So if we're constantly moving through life using knowledge that we've borrowed and adapted for our own purposes, what is an individual? What can we deem original or real or true or pure?
To briefly explain how I got to this philosophical dilemma is to use the means I've been trying to shake. The futility lies in the fact that I need to use abstraction and references and hypotheticals in order to communicate the issue I'm having with them. Bear with me.
A few weeks ago, I decided that I was going to create a new way of organizing sounds. Optimistically, I sat down with a large drawing pad and my car keys in front of me. The jangle of the keys seemed to be a good first sound to dissect in order to create some kind of rubric for each sound. Dutifully, I began compiling a list of the sound's characteristics, including mental associations with it. As the list grew longer and longer and I tried to compare it to another sound, I realized that I had a fundamental problem: I couldn't shake the ties I had to every sound.
Rather, I knew that I was incapable of constructing an empirical rubric because my associations were automatic. I couldn't hear a sound as a sound, just as you couldn't see that picture as just a picture. The sound had become a symptom or a signal for some larger concept, a referent resistant to distillation; sensation was altered by perception. Thus began my journey to try and understand this phenomenon.
My question is nowhere near being answered, but I'm finding some interesting possibilities, and have a plan for an experiment that I'd like everyone to take part in. We'll see how well the symbol systems will serve me in explaining what I find.
sensation and perception
Although our bodies are inherently designed for sensation and perception, it is language that mediates our experience of the world. For example, we use the word red to signify the color perceived between the wavelengths of 630-740 nanometers. The complexity lays in the esoteric nature of this sensation - the color red cannot be explained to someone who has never seen it, rather it must be experienced to enable full comprehension. But, even without knowing the word, humans are innately capable of distinguishing it within the spectrum of light. And yet, even when attempting to referencered to another individual, we are limited by the mechanics and boundaries of the connection of language.
If I were to use the numeric representation (630-740), my conveyance likely wouldn't be clear despite the technical accuracy of the values. Despite the vast pool of connotations the word red may support, many of them exist on a largely subconscious level.
Rather, our potential, in its complexity, for sensation may have physical and biological limitations (as naturally evolved systems) but due to the nature of its birth, our system of language and expression is nearly limitless.
Courtesian Theory of Fallacy: A statement can be simultaneously true and false because of its contradictory nature. The statement is true in its fallacy.
If I were to use the numeric representation (630-740), my conveyance likely wouldn't be clear despite the technical accuracy of the values. Despite the vast pool of connotations the word red may support, many of them exist on a largely subconscious level.
Rather, our potential, in its complexity, for sensation may have physical and biological limitations (as naturally evolved systems) but due to the nature of its birth, our system of language and expression is nearly limitless.
Courtesian Theory of Fallacy: A statement can be simultaneously true and false because of its contradictory nature. The statement is true in its fallacy.
are we laptops or typewriters?
are we laptops or typewriters?
(http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AaxAzGo3CISTZGZnZDJtbjhfMmNua2NyZmN6&hl=en)
(http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AaxAzGo3CISTZGZnZDJtbjhfMmNua2NyZmN6&hl=en)
11-2525-4-1306
location as an intersection of time, physicality, compilation of concepts, mood, heart rate, perception (mine and others of me), social position, memory, demographic categorization, geographic coordinates (the map is not the territory?), etc, etc, etc
meaning as a conceptual structure with types that form the predicates of the code in which mental representations are constructed, processed, validated, and developed
six human sign systems as fibers of mediation: genetic code, spoken word, written word, arabic numerals, musical notation, labanotation
progress as a cultural construct derived from inherited beliefs
meaning as a conceptual structure with types that form the predicates of the code in which mental representations are constructed, processed, validated, and developed
six human sign systems as fibers of mediation: genetic code, spoken word, written word, arabic numerals, musical notation, labanotation
progress as a cultural construct derived from inherited beliefs
the quantum physics of pilgrimage
pilgrim: one who undertakes a pilgrimage; literally, "far afield". while religious pilgrims usually travel towards a specific destination, a particular physical location is not necessary.
pilgrimage: what happens between departure and arrival. the goal is to come "home".
the three stages of a pilgrimage1. getting the self (act) together by returning [the unsteady self] to a
status quo (any particular home, ie christianity)2. changing the self (creating a new self) with a new
status quo (home) by designing a new self, simulating a new self, and changing the self to meet the new status quo. reality testing the new self, colliding or fusing the new status quo with an alternate status quo by: experiencing realness, identity, and freedom
astasy: unstable state of selfescendant ecstasy: if and when a state of self is completely relinquished rather than merely changed. achieved when the pilgrim eliminates self-as-state in order to experience boundess sameness (ONE) with the absolute.
enstasy: virtually stable state of self; an astasy that has achieved ONENESS and functions as a relative BEC.
Bose-Einstein Condensate: a solution in which all wave functions overlap each other. bosons: subatomic particles which act as force carriers; when the energy is equivalent, two can occupy the same place in space. wave function is unaffected by substitutions elementary bosons: photons (electromagnetic field), W and Z bosons (weak nuclear force), Gluons (strong nuclear force, gravitrons (gravity) composite bosons: hadrons, nuclei, atoms
This is where things get interesting. Composite bosons exhibit exceptional qualities when expressed in superfluids, which exhibit zero viscosity (the ability to flow without dissipating energy), zero entropy (lack of order or predictability; gradual decline into disorder), and infinite thermal capacity (He-4 has the highest known thermal conductivity of any material).
Superfluidity: a phase of matter (heat capacity) reached when liquids (particularly Helium-4) overcome friction by surface interaction if at a stage (lambda) at which the liquid's viscosity becomes zero.
What's especially noteworthy about superfluids is that, due to their unique characteristics, the introduction of heat results in second sound, where heat transfer results in unusual wave-like movement similar to that of the propagation of sound in air. This quality facilitates the thermomechanical effect; if a capillary tube is placed into superfluid He-4 and heated, even if only by shining a light on it, the liquid helium will flow up the tube and out the top. Additionally, liquid He-4 can form a layer, 30nm thick, up the side of any container in which it is place.
The coolest feature of superfluids, though, has basis in their highly specific quantized vortexes. The manner in which these vortexes facilitate circulation is such that if placed in a rotating container, the superfluid will only rotate if its critical velocity (the speed of sound in superfluid) is reached; otherwise the superfluid will remain motionless while the container continues to spin.
I promise there's a reason that I inflicted all that science on you; I didn't expect to find any of that while researching something something so seemingly simple as pilgrimage. As it turns out, the concepts behind these sorts of journeys are quite complex. But, the question always remains as to whether temporal knowledge is necessary for a successful spiritual journey.
To ask if something must be known must be known may very well be a form of circular logic, and this sort of conflict is pervasive in almost any pursuit for understanding. Nonetheless, inspecting the underlying forces (no pun intended) of the concept of pilgrimage illustrates the interconnectivity of secular and spiritual.
The final goal of a pilgrimage is to come home, which is essentially the pilgrim's self as defined by the identity or difference of his or her at rest state (a particular order of ONE, ie nirvana).
One sort of home is enstasy, an astasy that has achieved ONENESS. This is the type of home that functions within the realm of the above description of BEC. In this stable state, a pilgrim exists in identifiable, maximum anti-entropy. Upon reaching this home, the pilgrim can only attain real ecstasy through collision of his or her virtual enstasy with an alternate virtual enstasy. The result is escendent ecstasy, a location of boundless ONENESS with the absolute, reached through completely relinquishing self-as-state. Because the idea of self is energy, once eliminated, the resulting difference of pressure creates a relative vacuum. A pilgrimage can end in other ways.
The alternate type of home is that of transcendentalists such as Buddha. In its absolute ground order of ONE, it is non-relative and at maximum entropy. Here, self is constantly dissolving
pilgrimage: what happens between departure and arrival. the goal is to come "home".
the three stages of a pilgrimage1. getting the self (act) together by returning [the unsteady self] to a
status quo (any particular home, ie christianity)2. changing the self (creating a new self) with a new
status quo (home) by designing a new self, simulating a new self, and changing the self to meet the new status quo. reality testing the new self, colliding or fusing the new status quo with an alternate status quo by: experiencing realness, identity, and freedom
astasy: unstable state of selfescendant ecstasy: if and when a state of self is completely relinquished rather than merely changed. achieved when the pilgrim eliminates self-as-state in order to experience boundess sameness (ONE) with the absolute.
enstasy: virtually stable state of self; an astasy that has achieved ONENESS and functions as a relative BEC.
Bose-Einstein Condensate: a solution in which all wave functions overlap each other. bosons: subatomic particles which act as force carriers; when the energy is equivalent, two can occupy the same place in space. wave function is unaffected by substitutions elementary bosons: photons (electromagnetic field), W and Z bosons (weak nuclear force), Gluons (strong nuclear force, gravitrons (gravity) composite bosons: hadrons, nuclei, atoms
This is where things get interesting. Composite bosons exhibit exceptional qualities when expressed in superfluids, which exhibit zero viscosity (the ability to flow without dissipating energy), zero entropy (lack of order or predictability; gradual decline into disorder), and infinite thermal capacity (He-4 has the highest known thermal conductivity of any material).
Superfluidity: a phase of matter (heat capacity) reached when liquids (particularly Helium-4) overcome friction by surface interaction if at a stage (lambda) at which the liquid's viscosity becomes zero.
What's especially noteworthy about superfluids is that, due to their unique characteristics, the introduction of heat results in second sound, where heat transfer results in unusual wave-like movement similar to that of the propagation of sound in air. This quality facilitates the thermomechanical effect; if a capillary tube is placed into superfluid He-4 and heated, even if only by shining a light on it, the liquid helium will flow up the tube and out the top. Additionally, liquid He-4 can form a layer, 30nm thick, up the side of any container in which it is place.
The coolest feature of superfluids, though, has basis in their highly specific quantized vortexes. The manner in which these vortexes facilitate circulation is such that if placed in a rotating container, the superfluid will only rotate if its critical velocity (the speed of sound in superfluid) is reached; otherwise the superfluid will remain motionless while the container continues to spin.
I promise there's a reason that I inflicted all that science on you; I didn't expect to find any of that while researching something something so seemingly simple as pilgrimage. As it turns out, the concepts behind these sorts of journeys are quite complex. But, the question always remains as to whether temporal knowledge is necessary for a successful spiritual journey.
To ask if something must be known must be known may very well be a form of circular logic, and this sort of conflict is pervasive in almost any pursuit for understanding. Nonetheless, inspecting the underlying forces (no pun intended) of the concept of pilgrimage illustrates the interconnectivity of secular and spiritual.
The final goal of a pilgrimage is to come home, which is essentially the pilgrim's self as defined by the identity or difference of his or her at rest state (a particular order of ONE, ie nirvana).
One sort of home is enstasy, an astasy that has achieved ONENESS. This is the type of home that functions within the realm of the above description of BEC. In this stable state, a pilgrim exists in identifiable, maximum anti-entropy. Upon reaching this home, the pilgrim can only attain real ecstasy through collision of his or her virtual enstasy with an alternate virtual enstasy. The result is escendent ecstasy, a location of boundless ONENESS with the absolute, reached through completely relinquishing self-as-state. Because the idea of self is energy, once eliminated, the resulting difference of pressure creates a relative vacuum. A pilgrimage can end in other ways.
The alternate type of home is that of transcendentalists such as Buddha. In its absolute ground order of ONE, it is non-relative and at maximum entropy. Here, self is constantly dissolving
in the multi-planar sphere, all functions are simultaneously one and zero
ast night, i had a dream about quantum physics.
when we lived in mexico, someone told me that you knew you knew a language when you dreamed in it. in mine, at the bottom circular drive at valle escondido, (if you chuckled, even a little, the other part of the neighborhood is hacienda valle escondido) monica was there, but her hair was still long so she didn't have cancer yet. it was easter.
my cousin goes through food in phases. they are always gross things, such as cheez-whiz and that yogurt that comes with a capful of little oreo pieces and is definitely not a healthy snack. well, neither is cheez-whiz, i suppose. you have to be careful with cheeze in strange states of matter, and make sure that when you look at the label it doesn't say "cheese food" or "cheese product". i think innovations in the field of cheese food are the reason we can buy a five dollar hot and ready.
it all started last thursday, when i decided to go listen to a guy called Christopher Payne talk about his book, Asylum. the premise of his lecture, as paraphrased by me, was that he was an architect who got bored and decided (thanks to an idle suggestion by a friend) that his new creative project would be photographing mental institutions/abandoned buildings. how original. before he opened his mouth, it seemed as if it would be at least slightly intriguing, but, unfortunately, not only was he irritating and slightly offensive at times, it was apparent that he was not really interested in what he was doing.
i stepped out for a drink of water and didn't go back in, partly because it was hot in there and we were standing awkwardly in the back of the auditorium and partly because i was busy thinking about what i had heard before leaving. Payne apparently spent a bit of time at the Pilgrim Psychiatric Hospital in West Brentwood, New York. he gave some historical background on the place, noting the thousand acres of farmland purchased by the state of New York in 1930 that would less than one year later open as the largest hospital of any type in the world (a size yet to be surpassed). bizarre sidenote: the largest haunted house in the world is abandoned-mental-institution-themed. it is in japan somewhere.
later that night, i decided to look into Pilgrim a bit more, largely because i'd spent an hour fuming about the guy's inaccurate portrayal of the historic trends of psychiatric care with a friend of mine (as an architect, she was particularly aggravated with his use of the word 'picture' rather than 'photograph', and postulated that he most likely had a trust fund, what an ass). as it turns out, the place was a spectacle in and of itself, without even considering its actual purpose.
essentially, it was a self-contained city, complete with police and fire departments, courts, post office, Long Island Railroad Station, power plant, swinery, potter's field, cemetery, and staff housing. at its peak in post-WWII 1954, Pilgrim had 13,875 patients and over 4,000 employees.
unfortunately, the 1960s brought about a shift in attitude in the field of psychiatry; institutionalization was losing its footing as the predominant form of psychiatric treatment as pharmaceutical interventions gained momentum (it's always about money), and the hospital was forced to downsize, even selling off some of the land to Suffolk County Community College.
what does quantum physics have to do with this hospital? maybe nothing, maybe everything. i got a little curious and decided to look into the concept of being a pilgrim as well as that of engaging in a pilgrimage. that story is worth holding out for.
when we lived in mexico, someone told me that you knew you knew a language when you dreamed in it. in mine, at the bottom circular drive at valle escondido, (if you chuckled, even a little, the other part of the neighborhood is hacienda valle escondido) monica was there, but her hair was still long so she didn't have cancer yet. it was easter.
my cousin goes through food in phases. they are always gross things, such as cheez-whiz and that yogurt that comes with a capful of little oreo pieces and is definitely not a healthy snack. well, neither is cheez-whiz, i suppose. you have to be careful with cheeze in strange states of matter, and make sure that when you look at the label it doesn't say "cheese food" or "cheese product". i think innovations in the field of cheese food are the reason we can buy a five dollar hot and ready.
it all started last thursday, when i decided to go listen to a guy called Christopher Payne talk about his book, Asylum. the premise of his lecture, as paraphrased by me, was that he was an architect who got bored and decided (thanks to an idle suggestion by a friend) that his new creative project would be photographing mental institutions/abandoned buildings. how original. before he opened his mouth, it seemed as if it would be at least slightly intriguing, but, unfortunately, not only was he irritating and slightly offensive at times, it was apparent that he was not really interested in what he was doing.
i stepped out for a drink of water and didn't go back in, partly because it was hot in there and we were standing awkwardly in the back of the auditorium and partly because i was busy thinking about what i had heard before leaving. Payne apparently spent a bit of time at the Pilgrim Psychiatric Hospital in West Brentwood, New York. he gave some historical background on the place, noting the thousand acres of farmland purchased by the state of New York in 1930 that would less than one year later open as the largest hospital of any type in the world (a size yet to be surpassed). bizarre sidenote: the largest haunted house in the world is abandoned-mental-institution-themed. it is in japan somewhere.
later that night, i decided to look into Pilgrim a bit more, largely because i'd spent an hour fuming about the guy's inaccurate portrayal of the historic trends of psychiatric care with a friend of mine (as an architect, she was particularly aggravated with his use of the word 'picture' rather than 'photograph', and postulated that he most likely had a trust fund, what an ass). as it turns out, the place was a spectacle in and of itself, without even considering its actual purpose.
essentially, it was a self-contained city, complete with police and fire departments, courts, post office, Long Island Railroad Station, power plant, swinery, potter's field, cemetery, and staff housing. at its peak in post-WWII 1954, Pilgrim had 13,875 patients and over 4,000 employees.
unfortunately, the 1960s brought about a shift in attitude in the field of psychiatry; institutionalization was losing its footing as the predominant form of psychiatric treatment as pharmaceutical interventions gained momentum (it's always about money), and the hospital was forced to downsize, even selling off some of the land to Suffolk County Community College.
what does quantum physics have to do with this hospital? maybe nothing, maybe everything. i got a little curious and decided to look into the concept of being a pilgrim as well as that of engaging in a pilgrimage. that story is worth holding out for.
kinfolk
my grandfather finds equality in new configurations.
the renaissance humanistic movement of the early fifteenth century centered around the words of Leon Battista Alberti, who held that "a man can do all things if he will." within this theoretical framework, individuals who strove to excel in disciplines of intellectual, social, artistic, and athletic concern were held as gifted or genius. today, we use the term renaissance man as a means of describing individuals who embody the innate and infinite capacity for learning described by early humanists.
I revisited the term in an attempt to provide a fitting description of Mark’s brief, but accomplished, life, though I still remember the first time I heard it. we were in baldy’s second hour class (at Greengates in Mexico), and he was talking about leonardo davinci, calling him the prime example of a reh-nay-sonce man. when I looked down at the backwards cursive blueprints printed in my textbook, I didn’t think of beards or walking on water, but instead of my grandfather’s broad, square hands.
my grandfather, hulki aldikacti (all-duh-kahtch-tee), has lived a life that would make any renaissance humanist proud. he was born into a wealthy family in 1934 in Istanbul, Turkey; in his early life, not only did he excel in school, but was also an accomplished gymnast and had already constructed his first motor boat by scratch at the age of twelve.
by the time he was eighteen or nineteen, my grandfather had finished university in turkey, and decided to move to the united states to study engineering here at the university of michigan. the picture of him leaning against the car was actually taken somewhere on campus sometime in the early 1950’s. my grandfather’s drive to produce work that represented nothing less than his absolute best effort led to his employment at general motors (no pun intended).
http://www.nytimes.com/1983/02/08/science/detroit-innovation-in-bold-stroke-produces-car-with-shell-of-plastic.html?sec=health
in 1983, the above new york times article was published. the Pontiac fiero represented my grandfather’s constant search for efficiency and innovation. its design was unlike that of any previous produced automobile; rather than using steel body plates which were expensive to repair and produce, the fiero relied upon dozens of plastic plates that could be replaced easily and cheaply. with its sporty look, energy efficient engine, and low sticker price, the fiero was chosen by car and driver in 1984 as one of the ten best cars in the year, and was also chosen to be the indy 500 pacecar that same year. my grandmother was excited because she got to spend the weekend with that year’s indy 500 celebrity sponsor, paul newman.
alongside his successful career, my grandfather had always pursued his interests in art and design. when he decides he wants to do something, he follows through; his garage is full of tools and machines to do everything from delicate woodwork to carving marble sculptures. sometimes we laugh at him, because he goes through phases, for example, the arctic tundra, and we all get a marble polar bear or a painted wooden penguin. his work is beautiful, though, always beautiful.
I was at their house three summers ago, when all of a sudden a UPS truck pulled into the driveway with the biggest box I had ever seen. as the ups guy, my grandfather, and I struggled the box into the garage, he told me he had decided to build a boat. when he said boat, he wasn’t talking about a little rowboat, but rather a twenty four foot long mahogany bottom old-style chris-craft. a year later when it was finished, he took us for a ride. my grandfather was not a good driver; my father’s imitation of a little girl being towed on a tube in front of us involves shrieking “daddy, don’t stop!! go faster!!”
our house is full of the things he has created. if you were to visit for dinner, you would first encounter him in the intricate, hand-carved mahogany front door, and if you were served hors d’oeuvres, you might notice the coffee table he made for my mother’s sixteenth birthday, and when your plate was set in front of you, if you looked down, you’d see a garden in the wood beneath the glass.
when he turned seventy-five, he told us he wasn’t taking any shit from anyone. it was funny, not because he said shit (one of his favorite words), but because he couldn’t take shit from anyone if he tried. my grandfather does not tolerate anything less than honesty and as such, despite his strange tendencies and fox news habit, moves through life with fairness. everything he does has a purpose, and for that, among other things, I am proud to be his granddaughter.
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