Revelation, Part 1 (Updated)

"So in the drama, somebody has to be the villain, and the hero plays against him. If you go to the theater for a good cry, then you let the villain win and you call it a tragedy. If you go for a thrill then you let the hero win. If you go for a laugh then you call it a comedy. There are different arrangements between the hero and the villain, but in all cases when the curtain goes down at the end of the drama, the hero and the villain step out hand and hand and the audience applaud both. They don't boo the villain at the end of the play, they applaud him for acting the part of the villain so well, and they applaud the hero for acting the part of the hero so well, because they know the villain role and the hero role are only masks. And you see behind the stage there is the green room, where after the play is over and before it begins the mask is taken off. So the Hindus feel behind the scene, that is to say in reality, under the surface, you are all the actor marvelously skilled at playing many parts, and getting lost in the mazes in your own minds and the entanglements of your own affairs as if this was the most urgent thing going on, but behind the scenes, in the green room, you might say in the back of your mind in the very depths of your soul, you always have a very tiny sneaking suspicion that you might not be the you you think you are." - Alan Watts

Yesterday I was laying in bed. The sun was peaking through the blanket I have hung over the window. Frankly it sucked. I was comfortable, and my eyes were all merrily shut, and generally I was happy doing nothing. I didn't want to move. The pillow was perfectly placed under my head, the blankets, oh my God, it was perfect. I didn't want to get up, and I especially didn't feel like getting in the shower. But the day beckoned, so I got in the shower, and that was nice so I didn't want to leave the shower. I didn't want to go to class, but then I went, but I was comfortable, and I had a lot of homework that night so I didn't want to leave class. Later that night I didn't want to go to bed because I wasn't tired, but I did anyway. Then I realized it was all some stupid circle spinning around everyday, and I was forgetting why I was even doing all this. Then I remembered: it's for a career and money and prestige, but mostly for my own mental stability, because I don't know what I would be doing but this. I had a revelation, an unveiling, a seeing through the "vanity" moment, an Apocalyptic moment, a moment where I realized that I was thinking about thinking.

I would now like to reexamine the Genesis creation myth. The gospel of John tells us, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God, and the Word was God" (John 1:1). God speaks the world into existence. He divides lightness from darkness, "God separated the light from the darkness" (Genesis 1:4), He creates the sky by separating waters, "And God said, 'Let there be a dome in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters'" (Genesis 1:6), He creates land, and from the land plants, and He separates the day from the night by creating lights in the heavens, "God said, 'Let there be lights in the dome of the sky to separates the day from the night" (Genesis 1:14), He creates animals of all kinds, water creatures, birds, and creatures, and finally He creates dude and dudette in his own image. From the Priestly account, God divides up the universe (divvies it up for the peeps if you want) from nothing to something. He takes an axe and chops up matter, making darkness and lightness (which are one and the same), He makes the universe perceivable to a human mind, and therefore blinds us. Because we see sections of what He created and not the whole picture of what he created, every single one of us tends to get lost in the tinier pieces. We tend to focus too much on the light without focusing on the dark, too much on the ups and not the downs. We look too much on the front side and not on the backside, too much on the uphill and not on the downhill. The world is a series of distractions, because we lose sight of the bigger pictures, and this is ultimately a result of God separating the universe.

And I say to mankind, Be not curious about God,
For I who am curious about each am not curious about God,
(No array of terms can say how much I am at peace about God and
about death.)

I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not in the least,
Nor do I understand who there can be more wonderful than myself.

Why should I wish to see God better than this day?
I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four, and each moment then,
In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass,
I find letters from God dropt in the street, and every one is sign'd
by God's name,
And I leave them where they are, for I know that wheresoe'er I go,
Others will punctually come for ever and ever.

Walt Whitman, Song of Myself, Part 48

If one is to understand the greatness of God, one must understand that God is not only the good and the beautiful, but also the bad and the wretched. "I form the light, and create darkness; I make peace, and create evil:I the Lord do all these things" (Isaiah 45:7). The tree of knowledge was the beginning of man's awareness of the division. When man (and woman) ate of the tree they received a revelation. They became aware of themselves and forgot about the "wholeness". They forgot that they were "one". Man and woman realized they were naked and had to clothe themselves. They were banished from the garden and man had to work and die, and woman had to bare the pain of childbirth and die. In this sense the Garden of Eden was not an actual place, but instead a state of mind. After the garden was only distractions ("vanity") which were needed to ease the pain and provide some essence of purpose. In these distractions man and woman forgot who they were. They forgot they were divine themselves.

There are many ways to interpret the Garden of Eden and the fall of man story. One way is to look at it as a metaphor for man's loss of nature as he moved from the Paleolithic to the Neolithic world. Instead of roaming the forest and the fields in search of food, he and she were now shoved inside cities or planted crops. He and she were leaving this "oneness" with nature behind. It reminds me of what Treebeard laments in the Lord of the Rings, "Nobody cares for the woods anymore." Instead, we destroy the nature around us. I will link this back to an ancient epic near the end. Another way to see the fall of man is a metaphor for a man growing out of childhood. Where once the world was innocent--he was protected, he could run naked with out a care, he saw and named things for the first time--now he is corrupted. He is aware of himself and his appearance, he has to work for a living, he realizes that some day he will die. And why does this happen? Because of women, of course! Women force him to grow up and make something of himself. The longing for nature and childhood is the same as longing for innocence and solitude, but it is also another way of longing to die. How is this so?

Everyone longs to die, to return to a non-chaotic state. We can find this in many of the writings of Robert Frost: The man lingers in nature not wanting to return , or the boy tries to climb out to space on the top of a birch tree. I often have a similar feeling, not to die, but to return to a place with as few distractions as possible. Go by myself to some lonely part of the world and sit and just feel the universe sink into me. I read an article recently that said low income families are less likely to be depressed if they have a window that look out on greenery. Another article that explores similar healing properties of nature is this one. The researchers discovered that people, "who watched the nature images scored significantly lower on extrinsic life aspirations, and significantly higher on intrinsic life aspirations, [...] like deep and enduring relationships, or working toward the betterment of society." Any sort of natural setting seems to help stressed minds. Why is this? It is nature's ability to remind us that we can just exist, that some day we will leave this chaotic condition, that we we were once in the Garden of Eden, that we were once whole. It is much easier to be a rock than a human.

Walt Whitman described his affection for animals in his opus, The Song of Myself:

I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and
self-contain'd,
I stand and look at them long and long.

They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of
owning things,
Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of
years ago,
Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.

Walt Whitman, Song of Myself, Part 32

Last year when I read The Epic of Gilgamesh, I was surprised how the origin story of Enkidu related to the tale of Eden. Enkidu was a wild boy, he ran with the animals in nature, he ran quick and briskly, he was peaceful and whole and had long hair. Enkidu is the animal that Walt Whitman described. He was happy and blissful. But then Gilgamesh orders him civilized by sending in a prostitute to sleep with him. The prostitute, much like Eve to Adam, corrupts him, and he slows down and no longer wants to be with the animals and nature. Later on, Enkidu kills a Forest Spirit with Gilgamesh without thinking. What has happened to Enkidu? He no longer cares for nature and kills it. He is just as bad as the rash Gilgamesh.

Enkidu has forgotten.

Alan Watts describes myth as stories that try to describe this dilemma.

"Myth doesn't mean something untrue, but it means an image. In terms of which make sense of life and the world. Supposing for example you don't understand the technicalities of electricity, and somebody wants to explain them to you, he wants to explain about the flow of currents, well to do that he compares electricity to water, and because you understand water you get some idea about the behavior of electricity. Or if an astronomer wants to explain to you what he means by expanding space, he'll use the metaphor of a balloon, a black balloon with white spots on it. The white spots represent the galaxies, and if you blow up the balloon they all get further away from each other at the same speed as the balloon blows up. In neither case are we saying that electricity is water or that the universe is a balloon with white spots on it, we are saying it's something like it. So in the same way the human being has always used images to represent his deepest of ideas about how the universe works and what man's place in it is." - Alan Watts

I know this doesn't seem to relate, but it does. The tale of Adam and Eve and Enkidu tell us something deeper than they appear to at first. They tell us that we have forgotten something important. We have eaten from the tree of knowledge and lost something in the process.

Richard Dawkins is lame

edit - Most of this post comes from a conversation (if you want to call it that) in the youtube comments. Sorry for the very Staccato sentence structure.

I was confronted with a terrible Richard Dawkins video the other day. It makes me sick looking at him. His face is vile like a reptile, and his teeth are yellow hiding what surely is a flickering lizard tongue. He spews hate, venom, and all the things he claims to stand against. He is most importantly a hypocrite, showering the world with black and white images. It's pathetic and the product of a shallow mind. The bible was written thousands of years of go. It's a primitive text, of course there is going to be bizarre stuff in there. But there is also beautiful stories, yes stories. The bible is not a history book, no matter how much you want it to be. Would anybody call Gilgamesh disgusting? No. Gilgamesh and much of the Old Testament comes from a similar time period. Many of the stories in the bible are similar to the Epic of Gilgamesh. And yes, the gods try to wipe out man with a flood. Women are generally marginalized. Gilgamesh is a terrible king. Gilgamesh and Enkidu kill an old forest spirit. And the Gods are all around mean, evil things. The bible is a story book laying out law for an ancient people. Yes, you can find echoes of today in there, but read it to gain knowledge, not to mock it for its primitiveness. Almost all of our great artists were inspired by the power of the bible's words. Is Richard Dawkins the one too primitive, too backward to understand it? Yes. Grow up, and get out of your black and white fantasy world. For me, it's not about the truth of the history, it's about the truth of the story. The truth will set you free. Do I believe that Jesus lived? Does it matter? Sure, history is against whether it even happened, but is it insane to find solace in the bible's words? Is it insane to say everybody who is a Christian is "silly"? Yes. I'll say that. It is foolish to call the bible disgusting. It is as bad as right wing evangelicals.

The bible is disgusting in the sense of Deliverance, the Saw movies maybe, Hostel, Jaws, like all horror stories, um... what ever gruesome things you can think of. Yeah, it's gross, there's definitely some weird stuff in there. It's also almost three thousand years old. But it's a story. Look at as a story, a literary critic, not as if God wrote it. Yeah, that's silly, I agree with that. But you cannot say their isn't also beautiful stuff in it. That's plain idiotic. There is some absolutely disgusting things in the bible, and children should maybe be sheltered from certain sections. However, my overall point is that the bible in itself is not evil. Some of the people who follow it are crazy people, but the book itself is old, old, old. Judge it, I guess, research it, it's an artifact from the past with some amazing words, and some terrible words. It would be stupid to follow it's words to a 'T' for most modern people. Mostly it just makes me angry to see so many ignoramuses on the youtube comments being black and white and agreeing with everything your God Richard Dawkins says, and not thinking for yourself. There is hardly anything black and white in this world. No group of people are completely evil. The bible should not be judged as evil, it's old, and sections are quite beautiful. It's just plain old tiring to see all these idiots stuck in some fantasy world. I used to be like them, most adults will grow out of it.

I agree that there is many that blindly follow the bible. Blindly following anything is wrong. However, people who openly say the bible is disgusting and taunt the material inside are just baiting their Christian adversaries. Yes, some terrible things came from the bible, some terrible things came from a lot of books. And people have been openly criticizing the bible for centuries before Richard Dawkins. It's not a new phenomenon. The book of Job criticizes God, and it's in the bible! Same with the Book of Ecclesiastes (and if you want an atheist rallying cry, look no further than this book in the bible!) And if you really think questioning God is a recent thing you aren't very familiar with literature or philosophy. Just look at your friend "God is Dead" Nietzsche. Dawkins just pisses me off. Let him be an atheist and stop making books called the God Delusion. He's just as bad as the people he hates.

And how would Christians ever tell their kids what Dawkins' wants? You really think it's in their best interest to bend little Billy or Sally on their knee and tell them God is evil. That's laughable. How bout you bend your little kid on your knee and tell them the evil of American and Nazi eugenics in the name of Social Darwinism or about justified racism proven by "science"? That would be a laugh. Many characterize all Christians as planned parenthood bombers. How would you like it if I characterized all evolutionists (which I count myself as one) as eugenicists? Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, was indeed both a eugenicist and a racist. She founded Planned Parenthood as a way to get rid of undesirable races. If you don't believe me, look it up. Forced sterilizations weren't that uncommon in early 1900's America either. And Hitler, can't forget about him. One of my favorite episodes of South Park is the two parter Go God Go. The episode perfectly spells out what I feel about Richard Dawkins. After religion was annihilated by Dawkins and Garrison, the future is just as bleak. Now humanity just rages war over what they should call themselves. Humans do bad things with or without religion. And Bob's your uncle, that's it.

freethinking

Asking a person to read a book is a very cruel thing. Tragic story after tragic story, despair, humiliation, disaster after disaster, disease, suffering, I have to carry poor Jacob and Wanda around with me for the rest of my life! And one could argue that by reading The Slave you are making the characters real. Yes, those sad people are now stuck in at least 20 more people's heads. And they never get to die and rest in peace either, no, they will be alive for... wait, the Apocalypse is just around the corner right? Who cares then. But seriously? You do know the world will end in 2012? The Mayan calendar will end, the nephilim will return to earth, the reptoids will make themselves visible, the antichrist will be strolling around, and the stargates will be opened up. Oh yes, enjoy what little time you have left.

But, cough, all serious aside, cough, cough, cough, I have been getting a kick out of reading Tom Horn's Apollyon Rising 2012. If you want a real zany look at end of times, 2012, and America as the new Atlantis, look no further. What he writes is completely off the wall, but who doesn't love that? Giants, aliens, crop circles, free masons, sign me up! I don't pretend to be completely above the material, I do love complaining about the banking elite as much as the next conspiracy theorist, but read for laugh, hate, analysis, all of it.

I haven't really thought about what I want to do with my paper. Hate, hate, hate, comparing two texts together. It's exhausting, opposite of fun, and I suppose that's why teachers like it. I can already picture myself scanning through text I read a month ago trying to find something that's related to the bible. It's all over the place, that's a given, but I hate over-analysis of anything. It ruins it for me. Take a great movie like Zombieland. You know what would kill it? Analysis. Enjoy it, don't spend hours thinking about why it was great or not, if something meant this or that, because honestly the author probably didn't know when he or she wrote it. So, might do the second option. How I am going to stretch that into a full paper... God knows. Seriously, He does in a biblical lit class. Most classes He doesn't care about.

I have learned a lot, but nothing I could conceivably write a paper on, in less you like hearing about how much I liked David. I could do a paper comparing Samson with Brock Samson, or the South Park Job episode, or any other inane thing about the bible. I could write about how much I piss off my religious roommate now (I memorized the first part of psalm 23, and I can tell it makes him angry that an unbeliever would just enjoy the bible for the stories). Sounds like a lot of fun, but somewhat lacking in a concept. I could tell how much I despise politicians (well, most) with their idiotic reverence for the holy scripture without having read it (among many other things). I could tell you how much I hate men like Richard Dawkins. I could tell you what I feel about God now. I went from a self-imposed unbeliever (in a Walt Whitman, Alan Watts-sense), a heretic, a gentile, to a believer in the power of God's Word. A believer in how stories can shape our world for the better, and the power of faith can have on a man. If I was going to relate The Slave with the bible, I would stay on that topic. The power of Jacob's faith and how faith can affect us. That is all for now.

A Magician Named GOB

Now to ramble on about something. I finally finished Job, which really shouldn't be done in one sitting. It's really a drag to read straight through. One guy is bitching about this and that, and all the three other dudes can do is look at each other and shrug. "Hey, this guy just might be right". They're the Larry, Curly, and Moe from the biblical world. In fact, this whole event was probably just an interlude from throwing pies at each other and hyucking. When the three defuses do get the cojones to speak, all they can really say is, "You're wrong, God is good, you're lame Job, what do you know anyway?"

Finally God answers Job, saying he can't understand how awesome He is. Don't even try silly mortal, you are nothing to me! Job replies he has seen the errors of his ways, hallelujah, amen. Then to top this rather large boring cake with more nonsense, God says Job was right all along and gives him his stuff back.

I know that last paragraph is basically nonsense, but I'm tired.

I also finished The Slave this weekend. It's a pretty great book. I can't conjure up any real analysis right now. Maybe tomorrow.

Now for the real Gob:

The Gospel of John

Having just finished the Gospel of John, I am left in what some would call a loss for words. John's account is packed with miracles, lots of I am the Lord and He is me talk, torture, traitors, Peter denouncing Jesus, and crazy resurrections. Today in American Lit II we discussed a poem by T.S. Eliot called The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. It reads, "...To roll it towards some overwhelming question, To say: 'I am Lazarus, come from the dead, Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all'--If one, settling a pillow by her head, Should say; 'That is not what I meant at all. That is not it, at all.'" T.S. Eliot seems to have a God-complex here (which I admittedly might have myself). However, when the name Lazarus popped up again in the Gospel of John I was amused. I didn't pick up on the Biblical connections simply because I didn't know who Lazarus was. I suppose this is just one more example of reading the Bible makes me, gasp, a better reader? The horror.

At first glance, the Gospel of John does appear to have a lot of jew bashing. "They" not only renounce Jesus at every chance, they also throw stones at him on many occasions. Afterward Jesus reminds us that by not believing in his divenhood you do not believe in God, and you are therefore the child of Satan. It only gets worse for the jews reputation after that. Pontius Pilate is shown in a kind light. He tries to save Jesus over and over again (who doesn't want to be saved), but the jews don't want none of that noise, they want Jesus killed. (Gruesomely, I might add. But what death wasn't gruesome in those days?) "They" mock Jesus by trying to change what was written on his cross from "Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews," to "Jesus of Nazareth, this man said, I am the King of the Jews." It's easy to find a hint of antisemitism in this Gospel, but I think Dr. Sexson is right in reminding us that Jesus is in fact a jew (though other jews might not have thought him that at the end), Jesus' followers were jews, Jesus' mother and father were jews, everyone Jesus knew were jews. They are certainly not to blame in a world that is filled with sin. In fact, by dying, Jesus was saving the jews from their own sin. Besides that fact, there is another important lesson to get across: we are all capable of hanging Jesus on that cross. The band, Brand New, lyrics also speak to this. From their song, Jesus Christ, the lead singer, Jesse Lacey, fears death, but more than that, fears what he might do to Jesus if he sees him in person:

Well Jesus Christ, I'm not scared to die,
I'm a little bit scared of what comes after
Do I get the gold chariot?
Do I float through the ceiling?

Do I divide and fall apart?
Cause my pride is too sly to hold back all my dark
And the ship went down in sight of land
And at the gates does Thomas ask to see my hands

I know you'll come in the night like a thief
But I've had some time alone to hold my lies inside me
I know you think that I'm someone you can trust
But I'm scared I'll get scared and I swear I'll try to nail you back up

So do you think that we could work out a sign
So I'll know it's you and that it's over so I won't even try

I know you'll come for the people like me
But we all got wood and nails
Tongue tied to a hating factory

But we all got wood and nails
Your tortured (and hanging) factory
Yeah, we all got wood and nails
Your tortured (and hanging) factory
Yeah, we all got wood and nails
And we sleep inside of this machine

The Meaning of Life (according to me)

The Book of Ecclesiastes is deeply troubling. Of course, everyone has a moment, where they sit, eyes troubled, and think, "What is the point?" As my depressing suite-mate likes to put it, "No hope". And I like to put it, while shaking my head at the astrocities of life, "Disaster". You're just going to die some day, and no one is going to remember you, and who cares? I've thought about the meaning of life alot (who hasn't?) and came to several conclusions: 1. Life is what you make it out to be. 2. Life isn't about getting somewhere, it's about the journey. Both points are terribly important. What is the point of life without goals? It's up to you to create some worthy ones for yourself. Good, now that you have one, stop worrying about the end, but enjoy the chase. If you live like that, you probably will be happy. The Buddha said suffering comes from longing, but what the hell are you if don't have desires? You might as well not exist at all, cover yourself in a tarp and pretend you're a rock. I wrote a paper last year on this subject that worked around the movie, "Fight Club" and a short story about Chris McCandless. But I believe I covered it much more elegantly in another blog I wrote:

This year has been full of stories about great men. People journeying off into the wilderness, trying to find themselves, either inside others or in themselves. I am in love with Chris McCandless' story. About a man who tried to find his place in the world by rejecting all the rules. Throwing himself into the wild, blue yonder. Ultimately paying for it in death. The real question: what is the relationship between chaos and order? Order is just an illusion; just like our world is built on top of quantum randomness. Chris was trying to find meaning out of chaos. 9/11 was just another random event, meaningless, little ants scurrying around on a rocky sphere. Earth is covered in marbles bashing in to each other and making noise. What is utterly fascinating is how -- we, as humans -- deal with it. Try to bring some order from chaos, try to make sense of all the meaningless stuff that happens all around us. That's what Chris was trying to do, by becoming it, rejecting order, finding the meaning by living it.

And what are dreams but chaos? Random images from the day splashing around in our skulls, bright spattering of paint hitting the walls, people's faces zooming by, big show tune melodies blaring in the background. In a word: chaos. What brought about this newly acquired spat of awakening? It's really been a mixture between recent readings and recent dreams. I'll delve into both more deeply, and I'll start with my night time hauntings. Thanksgiving night was fraught with nightmares like I have never experienced before. In my head, increasingly bizarre Satanists were speaking fast, heretics, things I couldn't stand to hear. Finally, the devil emerged on the scene, and I couldn't take it anymore. Realizing I was dreaming, I kept on trying to get out of it, wake up and stop. So terrified, my body suddenly became warm and I couldn't move. Inside my mind, a constantly repeating phrase: "I am the devil. I am the devil. I am the devil." Tearing my eyes open, a man stood over my bed, arm stretched before him, pointing at me. He flung himself back, disappearing into the darkness. As you can imagine, I was terrified, shivering, I raced up stairs and got a drink of water. I could barely get myself to go back to bed. At the time, though, I still recognized it for what it was, A sleep paralysis dream, more affectionately called, "An old hag dream". My mind is capable of some pretty amazing leaps, but to have dreams appear in reality is something I had not been expecting.

The dreams surrounding that one the previous days were vivid as well. I particular remember freaking out in one because I had signed up for classes but had forgot to go to them. Stupid me couldn't drop them because it was past the date, and my weekly schedule didn't show them because they were after 4 O'clock. In another, everyone I knew was leaving on a boat to go to different parts of the world. However, I was just going to Wisconsin. Oddly enough, the dream morphed into a musical on top of a glacier. And just last night I had another, reminding me of bad moments in my past that still make my heart beat fast. So what is the point of telling you this? The real question on the back of my head is this: what is the relationship between dreams and what we see in waking? The question is this: what if someone didn't know whether they were dreaming or awake? What kind of powers would they yield? Here is a section, a boy named Morgan being tempted by Jacob:

"The Big Thing is everything, Morgan. It is the universe. You, me, your family, my family, everyone we know, every piece of sand on a beach, every tree in the forest, every flittering butterfly, every flower blooming in the prairie, rabbit, dog, cat, mouse, demon, berserker, and decaying body. And like the great Alan Watts said, 'the clammy foreign-feeling world of the ocean’s depths, the wastes of ice, the reptiles of the swamp, the spiders and scorpions, the deserts of lifeless planets... Our feelings about the crawling world of the wasps’ nest and the snake pit are feelings about hidden aspects of our own bodies and brains, and all of their potentialities for unfamiliar creeps and shivers, for unsightly diseases, and unimaginable pains.' Everything is one Morgan, the good and the bad, black and white, death and life, woman and man, light and dark, happy and sad. You are not a soul encaged inside a flesh prison. You weren't thrown into an alien world. An alien universe. You are part of this universe. You are this universe. Look around you Morgan, everything, everything in this room, it all came from earth, from you, the sun, the galaxy, the universe. Stars, black holes, nebula clouds, exploding super novas and dying white dwarves, all you. All you. You didn't spring from no where. No. You are materials made of this planet. We all are. And that's what makes you special, Morgan. Your ability to influence it."

In my English class this year we have been reading up on different men. How they tried to change the world, how to make themselves happy. The first example was, of course, Chris McCandless. There were others, Ted Kaczynski, the 9/11 high jackers, Descartes, among others, but the other major one was Paul Farmer in Tracy Kidder's book, Mountains Beyond Mountains. He is the polar opposite of McCandless except in one crucial way: his extremeness in what he is doing, the way he seams to be the only human in his world that he is equal to, to set out on his own to accomplish his desires. Paul Farmer is a doctor who went to Haiti to help the poor, the sick, the diseased. But the man I really want to talk about is Tim Treadwell.



Upon returning to the dorms yesterday, one of the first things I did was watch the documentary, Grizzly Man, by Werner Herzog. It's about another man who wandered into the Alaska wilderness in search of himself, and also lost his life. This man is Timothy Treadwell, someone I find deeply disturbing, but at the same time fascinating. A creepy dude, he was obsessed with bears which he rambunctiously nicknamed Rowdy, Mr. Chocolate, among other names. In early fall 2003, he and his girlfriend, were attacked and devoured by a grizzly bear. Timothy was flamboyant, the Steve Irwin of Grizzly Bears but not as cool. He claimed to be in love with the bears, picking up their shit as if it was holy, saying "I love you, I love you, I love you". His footage was amazing, and bears are fucking terrifying, but at the same time awesomely beautiful. But I think Timothy was just exploiting the bears, making his documentary in several different bandanas, constantly playing with his blond hair. He didn't have the animal’s best interest at heart at all, he had his own selfish needs to be a celebrity. Timothy Treadwell was using them.



A reply by "cupwithhandles" said it perfectly: "He was warned and was well aware that if bears harmed him, bears would be killed, and that is exactly what happened. I think its safe to assume the guy was just opportunistic and that he exploited bears for fame, ego, money - who knows? In the end he was directly responsible for bears getting whacked. It is correct and good to laugh at such people and their reckless, selfish actions. The bears were hungry and it was their right to eat him." Timothy and his girlfriend were the first people ever killed by the bears in the park. His life was for nothing. When he died, the camera was still going. The lens protector was still on or perhaps it was in a duffle bag, but you can hear his death screams.
The Anchorage Daily News said this about the footage: "In this case, Wilkinson said, troopers are confident a bear was also responsible for killing the Malibu couple. Troopers are also convinced, he added, that the bear seen feeding on their bodies was the bear killed by Park Service rangers. There is no way, however, of knowing whether that bear or another shot by troopers at the scene did the actual killing.
The tape full of screams and rustling sounds details the attack, Wilkinson said, but adds little to explain exactly what happened or why. The tape, he said, lasts about three minutes. Scratching and dragging noises on it have led troopers to believe Treadwell might have been wearing a body mike when the attack began.
After Treadwell calls for help, Wilkinson said, Huguenard can be heard shouting "play dead.'' That is the recommended response to being grabbed by a brown or grizzly bear, but authorities stress the idea of playing dead should be abandoned if the bear continues to press the attack.
On the tape, shortly after the warning to "play dead,'' Wilkinson said, "Huguenard is heard to scream "fight back.'' Treadwell later yells "hit him with a pan,'' Wilkinson said."
You can hear the audio on youtube, and it one of the most disturbing things I have ever heard in my life. I won't post it hear to keep a little bit of decency, but the simple fact that is out there will haunt me. The man is truly insane; it's hard to get him out of my head. What is life meaning? Did Timothy's death mean anything? No. We are all trying to make sense of the universe, but the universe just doesn't make sense. At least not like that. The world is a scary, scary place, and you never know when you are going to die, get hurt, who your friends are going to be. There is so little comfort; you have to find it yourself. Sometimes it feels useless, hopeless, like nothing makes sense. But that's when you got to hold on your tightest, and really find out who the hell you are. You have to make you own meaning.

Job and September 11

The last blog I wrote had to do with music. I talked about how everything was a vibration and everything was a song. I listed off countless, ad nauseum, examples about happy butterflies and skipping Keebler elves. Then I really started thinking. I really started thinking, really, really, really started thinking. Everything I listed was happy, merry, dreadfully cheery with a big ol' fat grin on its stupid face. But what about Job? What terrible song would his life echo? This great tragedy of a life. House destroyed, family dead, and a sad old Job, saying, "Why me?"


"Why me?" (Book of Job) by Einar Hákonarson

I can only imagine out of tune keys, a hunchback slamming on the piano, a violinist destroying his instrument on the asphalt. Everyone has had or will have something terrible happen. Everyone has out of tune keys, ugly pianos, and smashed violins in their lives.

Story. God seems to like these stories, no matter how terrible they are. If there ever was a tale of Job, it would be September 11, when our nation had a collective Job experience. Passions, hatred, sorrow, denial, it all came together that day. And we as a people either were led closer to God, or farther away from him. It makes you question Him. Does He exist? If He does exist, why does He let these terrible things happen? Why did so many people have to die (in the name of God, no less)? We shouted out collectively, like Job, "Why me?" One video I ran into is a perfect example of what most of us felt. The shock, the denial, the hate. It ends with, "Does God's Light Guide or Blind Us?" written in Arabic and English. You can feel the music in this, the tribal murmurings, the seething rage, the finishing serenade. Be aware, it's definitely not for the weak of heart.



This clip is from the Mexican director Alejandro Gonzalez Iñarritu. He is known in America for directing another movie, Babel.