addendum

"On the night you left I came over
And we peeled the freckles from our shoulders
Our brand new coats so flushed and pink
And I knew your heart I couldn't win
Cause the seasons change was a conduit
And we left our love in our summer skin"

"sometimes, you just gotta listen to the music"

this'll be fifteen posts in one:

speechless again.

the overwhelming combination

of the highest highs and the

lowest lows

all jumbled, twisted, wrapped

around into one vivid color:

beautiful in its intensity because it's

hard.

being in sewanee for the past two weeks is one long blur. so much of my life these days is so unstable, changing every day, with plans shattering in morning and new ones forming hours later. dreams dashed, and new ones appearing in their place, prolly 'cuz i'm a dreamer, all underneath the summer sun in my summer skin that has always seemed to soak up everything so much more than the dull gray of winter's constant ache. i see new freckles appearing every day, as if each represents another thought.idea.person.confused piece of my life.

summer skin, don't come out of the summer sun, even if you get sunburned sometimes. 'cuz even in all this confusion, and jumbled time of life, we've got to keep soaking everything in deep, because this vivid life is as good as it gets right now, here, on this side of eternity.

color of the day: stripes. the brightest yellow and the brightest deepest blue, which should be the colors of some girl's swimsuit somewhere, strolling along the sand of ocean blue, holding a white coverup blowing in the wind from the sea, whistling to a summer tune. she's only happy in the sun.

so much music in the last three days. adventures everywhere, from the waterfall at fiery gizzard, to warm nights spent laying down on rocky beds staring up at stained glass, to days spent laughing underneath blue sky and white clouds, to lightning storms from greens view, to firetower sunrise. laughs and tears and thoughts and frisbee. you know, rippin' cigs and doin' the math. joke.

and pradip summed everything up in one of his moments of tipsy wisdom: "will, you know how to love in the abstract, in a way that is difficult for many, but this is what i will tell you... in this year, more than anything else, no matter where you are or what you do, i want you to learn how to love a single person right in front of you."

love one at a time. seems to be a common theme lately. "if it's lonely where you are, come back down, and i won't tell 'em your name." i gotta come back down, learn to love again in this summer skin, and be at peace with the present.

sorry about the random musings.

love wins.

as if we could

"yeah, we can't think we're going to save the world, but we have to be crazy enough to act as if we could."

thank you, paul dixon.

potential is different from reality, and should therefore not create expectation, but maybe it is true that a change in perceptions can change reality. einstein thought it could, he thought we have the ability to reimagine the future.

so we must step forward--default toward action--as if the world can change, and the destructive systems that are destroying humanity and our world don't have to win. that we can change them, and turn them into beautiful, creative systems, with the potential to allow creation again and again. creation of new life.

crazy enough to act as if we could.

but how do you help make that potential for the creation of new life a reality? what's the best way?

i know it has to do with throwing off the chains that bind us into our current systems. but this question has been prevalent in much of my thought lately, because that's what i want to do--that's what i want to be--someone who is a part of the fight against that oppression seeking to bring freedom in unfree places. i know that is where my liberation will be found in some way, for our liberty is truly collective.

but about that question regarding the best way:

later in our conversation, paul said, "i think if we enter a community with an intention to change the world, it can corrupt our love for those around us. but if we love those around us, and change the world because of it... that's what i want. we don't have all the answers. it is arrogant to assume that what we are doing will ever be noticed or that we are even doing the right thing at all, but we have to act as if every second could be the difference in life or death for one of our loved ones."

the motivation must be love, and the way must be filled with it.

"When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. Think of it: Always."

-Gandhi

love wins.

and another random thought (this is one of those songs that puts words to my thoughts):

i feel like i've been living in a city with no children in it
a garden left for ruin by a millionaire inside a private prison
you never trust a millionaire quoting the sermon on the mount.
i used to think i was not like them, but i'm starting to have my doubts.
when you're hiding underground, the rain can't get you wet."

-the arcade fire in "city with no children"

The way of love.

"When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. Think of it: Always."

-Gandhi

not through my complicity

“At its birth, violence acts openly and even takes pride in itself.


But as soon as it is reinforced and its position is strengthened, 
it begins to sense the rarefied atmosphere around it,


and it can go further only when fogged about with lies,


cloaked in honeyed hypocritical words.

It does not always nor invariably choke its victims;


more often it demands of them only the oath of the lie,


only participation in the lie.

Simple is the ordinary courageous human being’s act
 of not participating in the lie,


of not supporting false actions!


What his stand says is: So be it that this takes place in the world—


that it even reigns in the world—
but

let it not be with my complicity.”

-from Beauty Will Save the World: The Nobel Lecture on Literature
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, 1972

from justine:

"on you will go, onward up many a frightening creek, though your [legs] may get sore and your sneakers may leak."

-dr. seuss

http://fallingwhistlesretour2010.wordpress.com

tomorrow

My dear friend Justine sent me this today, and it reminded me of why I am here and why I am on this journey with these four other young men. Why we push the same pedals on the same sore butts on the same bumpy and hilly roads in the same heat every single day to tell the same story over and over again. Why we share and why we give of ourselves time and time again. It is because we are committed to transformation and because we have hope that the combination of many small acts of whistleblowing and love will create movements that will grow larger and larger in exponential ways. A pebble can start an avalanche, and this world needs a big one. I need a big one. In my heart and in my mind.

And so we ride. There will be many tomorrows. Ride for them.


She started by saying, "This is why we tour..."

"Once when I was in college," I told him at last, "I wrote a paper for a philosophy class. I don't remember exactly what the assignment was -- something to do with epistemology. Here's what i said in the paper, roughly: Guess what? The nazis didn't lose the war after all. They won it and flourished. They took over the world and wiped out every last Jew, every last Gypsy, black, East Indian, and American Indian. Then, when they were finished with that, they wiped out the Russians and the Poles and the Bohemians and the Moravians and the Bulgarians and the Serbians and the Croatians -- all the Slavs. Then they started in on the Polynesians and the Koreans and the Chinese and the Japanese - all the peoples of Asia. This took a long, long time, but when it was all over, everyone in the world was one hundred percent Aryan, and they were all very, very happy."

"Naturally the textbooks used in the schools no longer mentioned any race but the Aryan or any language but German or any religion but Hitlerism or any political system but National Socialism. There would have been no point. After a few generations of that, no one could have put anything different into the textbooks even if they'd wanted to, because they didn't know anything different."

"But one day two young students were conversing at the University of New Heidelberg in Tokyo. Both were handsome in the usual Aryan way, but one of them looked vaguely worried and unhappy. That was Kurt. His friend said, 'What's wrong, Kurt? Why are you always moping around like this?' Kurt said, 'I'll tell you, Hans. There is something that's troubling me -- and troubling me deeply.' His friend asked what it was. 'It's this,' Kurt said. 'I can't shake the crazy feeling that there is some small thing that we're being lied to about.'

"And that's how the paper ended."

Ishmael nodded and thoughtfully. "And what did your teacher think of that?"

"He wanted to know if I had the same crazy feeling as Kurt. When I said I did, he wanted to know what I thought we were being lied to about. I said, 'How could I know? I'm no better off than Kurt.' Of course, he didn't think I was being serious. He assumed it was just an exercise in epistemology.

"And do you still wonder if you've been lied to?"

"Yes, but not as desperately as I did then."

"Not as desperately? Why is that?"

"Because I've found out that, as a practical matter, it doesn't make any difference. Whether we're being lied to or not, we still have to get up and go to work and pay the bills and all the rest."

"Unless, of course, you all began to suspect you were being lied to -- and all found out what the lie was."

"What do you mean?"

"If you alone found out what the lie was, then you're probably right -- it would make no great difference. but if you all found out what the lie was, it might conceivably make a very great difference indeed."

"True."

"Then that is what we must hope for."

I started to ask him what he meant by that, but he held up a leathery black hand and told me: "Tomorrow."