Please click the photo to see em.
Sunday, June 24, 2007
FRESH PHOTOS!
Well, those last three months of traveling kinda got pretty busy and I didn't get to post any photos. I'm starting to post them on Flickr slowly over the next month or so. The first batch are from my first few days in Thailand.
Please click the photo to see em.
Please click the photo to see em.
Friday, June 8, 2007
FEELING TIME
I have been greatly concerned with time lately. Since returning home I have had the overwhelming feeling of it passing too quickly and without enough effect, like trying to drink water from my cupped hands except I'm epileptic and standing on the back of a fast-moving truck. The whole business reminded me of an encounter I had at a party five or six years ago:
* * * * *
I was nineteen at the time and was attempting to rip it up at a large house party full twenty-something acting students - a typically cold demographic if you don't happen to be casting director. Ice breaking was difficult, so to avoid the dreaded, "you what have you been in?" question, to which I had no response (I'm not an actor was a guaranteed deal breaker) I began asking people about their greatest fear. After several unsatisfactory minutes I met an actor friend of a friend who had recently "made it" with a Tim Horton's commercial. He had no specific answer but turned the question on me. What was my greatest fear?
I told him I supposed it would be waking up an old man and wondering "what had happened." People often complained of time moving faster as they grow older, and I had begun to feel it happening to me. Life was full and busy, but the end of a semester at University seemed to pass with the speed of a fifteen minute recesses in first grade.
"There's a simple answer to that," he had said. "It has nothing to do with age however, but our relationship with the world and with time."
"Tell me," I had said as the rest of the party faded away.
He leaned forward. "This is truth," he said, "and this is fact: a person only experences the sensation of time passing when they are engaged in the world. When people are in their heads thinking about the past or the present they are not engaged in the world before them and thus do not feel or experience the passing of time. Generally, as people age they become burdened with thoughts, with responsibilities, plans and regrets that pull them from the present moment."
"Ok." I said, he had an intensity that made you unable to look away from his eyes.
"So," he said, taking a drink from a water bottle, "do you remember how you got here? Do you remember the route you drove, what colour cars were in front of you when you made different turns? Probably not. We become good at repetitive tasts which allows out minds to drift off into the timeless world of thoughts. When you learned to walk it required your whole mind, now its nothing, its like breathing. So we spend more and more time in our heads, and because we only spend a fraction of our waking lives engaged in the world, time appears not to exist. Its not that there's less of it, you see, time doesn't exists, but our perception of time is lessened because we spent so much of our life experience, thinking."
"So what do you do?" I had asked him, as my mind thought about all the different situations where I had been lost in thought. It made sense.
"Well, right there," he said. "You lost it right there, didn't you? You where off in thoughts instead of listening to me."
"Yeah. I was."
"Okay, well you just have to catch yourself doing it and remain focused here and now. It takes work, but its like working out a muscle, the more you use it, the stronger it gets. If you try and approach the world like a child does, and spend your time engaged in the world you'll find there's no reason to ever be bored or confused, life is nothing, but what's right in front of you."
Upon returning from traveling I have found myself wound up in the make believe world of thought: part of me remembering details and adventures from my trip, with the rest of my time taken up with planning for the future. I must remember to follow the advice of my friend's friend who made it big in the Timmy Ho commercial: remain in the moment, absorbing details, and always strive to experience the subtle changes of life. Practice the art of feeling time.
Incidentally, and I did ask, his greatest fear was discovering hair in his food.
MJPH
* * * * *
I was nineteen at the time and was attempting to rip it up at a large house party full twenty-something acting students - a typically cold demographic if you don't happen to be casting director. Ice breaking was difficult, so to avoid the dreaded, "you what have you been in?" question, to which I had no response (I'm not an actor was a guaranteed deal breaker) I began asking people about their greatest fear. After several unsatisfactory minutes I met an actor friend of a friend who had recently "made it" with a Tim Horton's commercial. He had no specific answer but turned the question on me. What was my greatest fear?
I told him I supposed it would be waking up an old man and wondering "what had happened." People often complained of time moving faster as they grow older, and I had begun to feel it happening to me. Life was full and busy, but the end of a semester at University seemed to pass with the speed of a fifteen minute recesses in first grade.
"There's a simple answer to that," he had said. "It has nothing to do with age however, but our relationship with the world and with time."
"Tell me," I had said as the rest of the party faded away.
He leaned forward. "This is truth," he said, "and this is fact: a person only experences the sensation of time passing when they are engaged in the world. When people are in their heads thinking about the past or the present they are not engaged in the world before them and thus do not feel or experience the passing of time. Generally, as people age they become burdened with thoughts, with responsibilities, plans and regrets that pull them from the present moment."
"Ok." I said, he had an intensity that made you unable to look away from his eyes.
"So," he said, taking a drink from a water bottle, "do you remember how you got here? Do you remember the route you drove, what colour cars were in front of you when you made different turns? Probably not. We become good at repetitive tasts which allows out minds to drift off into the timeless world of thoughts. When you learned to walk it required your whole mind, now its nothing, its like breathing. So we spend more and more time in our heads, and because we only spend a fraction of our waking lives engaged in the world, time appears not to exist. Its not that there's less of it, you see, time doesn't exists, but our perception of time is lessened because we spent so much of our life experience, thinking."
"So what do you do?" I had asked him, as my mind thought about all the different situations where I had been lost in thought. It made sense.
"Well, right there," he said. "You lost it right there, didn't you? You where off in thoughts instead of listening to me."
"Yeah. I was."
"Okay, well you just have to catch yourself doing it and remain focused here and now. It takes work, but its like working out a muscle, the more you use it, the stronger it gets. If you try and approach the world like a child does, and spend your time engaged in the world you'll find there's no reason to ever be bored or confused, life is nothing, but what's right in front of you."
Upon returning from traveling I have found myself wound up in the make believe world of thought: part of me remembering details and adventures from my trip, with the rest of my time taken up with planning for the future. I must remember to follow the advice of my friend's friend who made it big in the Timmy Ho commercial: remain in the moment, absorbing details, and always strive to experience the subtle changes of life. Practice the art of feeling time.
Incidentally, and I did ask, his greatest fear was discovering hair in his food.
MJPH
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