say something

yep. im tackling the big ones today, and not just out of a sense of duty after not having posted for half of the month.

when we read a work by someone, i can’t remember who or what, in victorian lit, they spent a whole lot of time talking about how time and space being our primary barriers was only man made, that we didnt have to accept them as being defined and so on. kind of crazy. i was thinking today though, in that time periodthose were considered in philosophical thought as basic barriers to living and what we want to achieve. today in our time we have overcome them to some extent with technology. we didn’t find time travel or some way to make time not keep moving on, but we made everything faster so we have more of it free, yet we waste it, just doing more of the same kind of things. we didn’t conquer space where i can reach out and touch the moon, but we have airplanes, and trains, and cars and even more significant–phones and the internet. we can essentially be anywhere we want to be within hours or even seconds, but we have become home cosmopologists in the worst way, we are no longer happy with being still, we are no longer at home at home. i feel the fleetingness of life just as much as the next person. i am happy for tools that help us to do things faster so that i can free up time to be with my family and friends, but at what cost? i say at the expense of our enjoying that time, our savoring it.

in the play Our Town the final act is about death. the living people don’t realize how fast time is passing and don’t really savor the moments as they should. the dead encourage eachother to not envy the living because they are foolish and only half live. i feel as if the author is saying that the dead are better off. but, he also shows all the reasons that i believe they aren’t. when discussing her brothers death, she doesn’t have any emotion at all. and she’s so selfish that it never enters her mind that the man she loved when she was alive is raising their two boys alone with memories of her everyday in their faces and knowing they’ll never know their mother. obviously being dead is not the answer after all, but what is?

maybe this is where my battle with technology takes on a face. i’ll be the last one to push my views on other people. i can’t say that i’m right to hate all artificial creations when everyone else thinks they are a good thing. i use the internet plenty myself. even for communicating to friends i wouldn’t see otherwise, but i think i’m missing out on something better. maybe it’s just that it’s too easy to say hello. our minds are so good at telling us that if we don’t have to work or pay for it that it’s not worth much. the same as not buying philosophies sold at a steal, or not giving a gift that didn’t cost me anything.

this wasn’t supposed to be a call to throw your computer out the window or cancel your cell phone. i have more questions than answers, i just wonder if we were ever supposed to live like this at all. i think life was supposed to be hard, because then it is worth so much more. just please don’t free up so much time that you waste it all, and pleeease don’t get so used to ease of travel that you forget to live where you are. that’s all.

-josephine

i finally figured out what’s missing here. i’ve been dancing around it for weeks, hungering for something i could only vaguely define, and this morning the little thing just popped it’s head up and mockingly said “duh.”

i come from a home school family, where my mom work at home, and my dad is also self employed and travels, so we spend a lot of time sitting around in our pajamas just wasting time together. i always think it’s so dumb that we watch all of these dumb TV shows that none of us really like because that’s what’s on, and my boyfriend makes fun of how many movies we watch, but i’m starting to realize that there is a kind of family achieved only in those comfortable relaxed still moments.

i’ve been growing increasingly frustrated at not being able to hang out with my friends in my room, how we have to go find a place and a million other obnoxious people are there, and we have to have something planned. i’ve told everyone how ready i am to have a couch in my place of living and an eating space that’s not across the street.

so this weekend i went home with my boyfriend rj for his sister’s wedding, and i was just adopted. i ame from this weekend feeling if the whole world was like that, it would be a better place. it was like home, we sat around and talked, or didn’t. the guys all played video games. we had meals together without everyone walking in and out all of the time, and passing the food down the table. it was such a luxury. i felt like i was being spoiled.

so this morning i woke up and realized–THAT’S WHAT’S MISSING!!–we have no comfortable community of bonding because our homes and lives are superficially constructed. we need a common life again. it’s funny because i’ve been saying that that is the best way to live all along and i just suddenly ealized why, and what it meant. you don’t have to do things with people to live life with them. if you are always doing something, there is a level of relationship you miss out on. maybe that’s what we find at st john’s in a small way.