words

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The last couple days of writing from my journal. I’ve been having a crazy time, waking up before 9 for classes, and spending the day reading, writing, meeting people, and hanging off the railing watching the ocean. It is definitely a lot of fun, but I am seriously missing you guys. More than I even anticipated. Its starting to get to me. Thank you for the comments and messages, the love from a quarter of the way around the world is much needed and even more appreciated. anyway, here it is...

Les McCabe, our executive dean, spoke to the “school” yesterday. He talked about ubuntu, a concept introduced to him by the Archbishop Desmund Tutu. The word, translated as humanity, comes from the Bantu language of the Zulu people of South Africa. The concept emphasizes compassion and unity, essentially signifying that we are only people through our interactions with other people. “I am because we are”. He then had us look out the windows over the vast sea to the shimmering horizon, and reflect for a moment upon the magnitude of the journey we had just begun to make. Similarly, our country was embarking on a profound journey as well, and hundreds of us crammed into the Union and watched as Barack Obama took oath and was sworn into office. Our ship rocked and swayed with the waves and we cheered from somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean along with millions of others on the steps of the Capital and beyond.

We’ve got quiet a variety of characters on the ship. A large percentage of those who laid over in Nassau the night before embarkation apparently spent an inordinate amount of time getting a bit too well acquainted with the Bahamian porcelain in their suites. This is the crowd that includes people with the noble aspirations to attain righteous intoxication in each of the 15 ports we’ll be visiting (presumably Jack Daniel’s has the same effect in Morocco as it does in Thailand as it does at home, though admittedly the bar interiors may differ marginally), and the girl who asked me if I thought the opportunity for her to try opium would arise in southeast Asia. At the same time, people are remarkably friendly, and it’s been easy to start conversations here, a place where a perfectly normal way to introduce yourself to someone is by crashing into them when the ship bucks and sends you hurtling across the room. I also had the delightful experience the other day of bonding with someone who witnessed me making the unfortunate discovery that dreadlocks and lifejacket Velcro are evidently made of the same material.

This place is beyond beautiful. In fact, it is relatively pointless for me to attempt to keep this blog or really write anything whatsoever. One passing glance through an opening door and I am gripped by something for which adequately descriptive words cannot hope to exist. They say that language creates the framework for how people make sense of the world. We understand our experiences by fitting the generally inexplicable sights, sounds, and moments into words. But though they can sometimes be quite powerful when wielded skillfully, words are utterly useless when it comes to expressing most of the things in life that are actually worthy of being communicated. Wrenching nostalgia, body-consuming emotion, spiritual awakening, the beauty of an Atlantic sunset; I can use words to label these experiences, yet even the greatest poets of time will never be able to adequately convey the truth of these phenomena. In a sense, I feel like I am almost unable to fully comprehend the depth of what I am going through. Lacking the language to describe the experience, I lack the fundamental framework to make sense of such inexpressible beauty. So why do I continue to write? I have given up on trying to make sense of anything. Instead, my hope is that I will be able to use spattered morphemes and syntax merely as stepping stones and guideposts, pointing my rereading self towards the fleetingly transcendent moments in which I forget language and allow myself to unconditionally surrender.

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Comments

[Mako]

I love you
Dude I had the exact same thoughts about the inadequacy of words in describing a situation. I feel they are similar to photographs in that they can only capture maybe one or two of the senses, giving a glimpse of the experience. But at the same time I feel they can also serve as a way to open that doorway to the feelings. Words, when presented properly (profoundly), serve as the spark that ignites that wick of the memory until finally your mind explodes, flooding every part of your soul with the same thing the author (in this case the one and only dave korn) was feeling as the ink stained the pages. The way you spun the words made me able to connect, in exactly the way words should. They didn't give me your exact experience instead they spark the memories of a similar mental state I feel every time I'm in Bonaire. It's an indescribable feeling.......To sum everything up I have but one thing to say........Preach brother......preach