(writen in the Spring of 2009)Reaction Paper
The Sounds of Love: Others and Myself
About 3 years I moved to Long Beach, CA to escape from where I was brought up, in hopes of experiencing anything new, anything that would open up new possibilities to my world (Private Christian School) that felt so small, so censored as to what was taught to me about life; I knew that there were things out there that I wanted to know and that I was certainly capable of handling. As soon as I arrived I wrote “Home Sweet Home”:
'Home Sweet Home'
I am home but not home sweet home.
This is where I belong, yet not where I will end.
I am this way because of people who have exited my life, although this is not my complete story.
This air has rejuvenated me yet has not rescued me. Maybe it will one day.
but for now I must keep myself sane for a better day.
I’m not sure where I will end my journey, yet I know it will be with someone truly amazing.
Amazing enough that they are indescribable.
So for now this is my story. Read it but don't judge a book by its cover.
Read every last word. Close your eyes and make sure you leave a mark.
I went down there on terms with my parents that I went to school. So, I signed up for my first philosophy class, not knowing quite what the concept of the class was and by only reading the two sentence description in the class catalog all the while trying to find something that would keep me interested long enough to actually finish a class to get credits towards my AA degree, I signed up for an Existentialism class at LBCC. I don’t know how else to describe that experience other than for me it was like being a little kid in elementary school watching all the high school kids, and imaging what will be like when I am that age. You stare and think and come up with ideas, all the while having being told their experiences of day-to-day life and being completely star-struck yet absolutely incapable of understanding what they are talking about. As for the existentialism class, I was capable of sitting in class and going over all the many great philosophers and yet not being able to grasp what they meant; yet it was like a drug, I was also incapable of shutting it out, of ignoring what I was hearing even though I wasn’t yet capable of their concepts of life, love, friendship, conscience, and definitions of god.
All the while this was taking place in my life, I like any other 19 year old girl I developed quite a liking for this guy two years older than I, and to sum up my experience of his place in my life I wrote “Moment Between”:
“Moment Between”
Nervous thoughts with uncontrollable heartbeats.
Unsure movements while playing the games.
Off guard, but impressing actions.
Censured decisions, for future hopes.
Steps of courage, or risk full jumps.
Unsure self-esteem, yet confident wall.
Exciting presence filled with moments of vulnerability.
Remembrance of passing days, my walls reinforced.
Girlish confusion, comfort produced.
The Guru emanates courage resurrected.
Day to day heart beats, thoughts run, uncommon actions, courage recharged.
All for that one moment.
After all the games, and flirting, I was left to be alone to question yet again why I had not found love, to question what had not worked between us, to question everything. So, I turned to music because that seems to be the only thing that keeps me from reverting back to a depressive state.
In music I find it extremely hard to listen to the lyrics of songs, probably because I have enough thoughts and questions going on in my head and I do not want or need anyone else’s words making clutter due to the fact that most of the songs now a days are useless sentences stung together to make money instead of helping a person to achieve a state of themselves they never new possible. I have found, of course not on my own because every disciple needs a mater teacher, that if you listen and meditate on the beats and rhythms of the songs, or songs entirely without lyrics, they are so much more meaningful on a spiritual level because it is a way of listening to the world that has been long forgotten. “It is a way of getting in touch with something stronger and more powerful than who you are in this world” (Coelho: The Witch of Portobello).
Recently one song in particular was capable of putting a rhythm, that allowed me to relax my body from the pain of my heart of my most recent love which took me two years to allow myself to be that vulnerable again; and lyrics that allowed me to focus my thoughts inward and regain myself:
Kings of Leon
“Use Somebody”
I've been roaming around
always looking down at all I see
painted faces fill the places I can't reach
you know that I could use somebody
you know that I could use somebody
someone like you
and all you know
and how you speak
countless lovers undercover of the street
you know that I could use somebody
you know that I could use somebody
someone like you
off in the night,
while you live it up, I’m off to sleep
waging war to shake the poet and the beat
I hope it's gonna make you notice
I hope it's gonna make you notice
someone like me
someone like me
someone like me
go and let it out
someone like you
somebody
someone like you
somebody
someone like you
somebody
I’ve been roaming around
always looking down at all I see
For me the meaning of this song is to use somebody in a way not to humiliate them or bring them down but to use “who they are” as a person to better yourself, to learn or become conscious of yourself, become conscious of what path to choose when things of good or of bad happen to you.
I first heard the idea of becoming conscious from “Existentialism” by R.C. Solomon regarding Nietzsche: what does your conscience say? “You should become the person you are”. By becoming who you are, you already have to be somebody, you will have to question and let things go to embrace whom you are and not let yourself be stagnant.
Taking from the text of Coelho’s book Brida regarding learning from someone else’s personal story: “An anonymous text from the Tradition (Tradition of the Moon), says that each person can take one of two attitudes: to build or to plant. The builders might take years over their tasks, but one day, they finish what they’re doing. Then they find they’re hemmed in by their own walls. Life loses its meaning when the building stops. Then there are those who plant. They endure storms and all the many vicissitudes of the seasons, and they rarely rest. But, unlike a building, a garden never stops growing. And while it requires the gardener’s constant attention, it also allows life for the gardener to be a great adventure. Gardeners always recognize one another, because they know that in the history of each plant lies the growth of the whole world”.
It is only I who can choose whether or not I let myself become who I already am, who I used to be but has forgotten, to become everything that I am capable of that allows me to live my life to the fullest potential.
I have only recently become accustomed to this concept in the past year, and being able to apply it to my life now. I have always wanted to know why things happen the way they do, why things happen to me to cause such heart ache, why I can’t find someone with whom might know the answers or at the very least know where to look for such answers to all my many questions. I have only become aware to look for all the possible roads that may guide me towards my path, my Personal Legend, the “meaning of my life”; roads that will keep me conscious of who I already am, roads that will show me that I can live fulfilled even if I never get a reason why things happen the way they happen.
From Coelho’s book Brida “Will we ever know the ultimate reasons for our existence?” “Only the brave and those who understand the Traditions of the Sun and the Moon are aware that the only possible answers to the ultimate question is I DON’T KNOW”.
I can start to rationalize the possibility of actually never finding answers to ALL of my questions. The questions that I still have not found answers to all tend to relate to love. All kinds of love. From philos, where your best friend, the one person in your life that could not possibly fathom doing you any wrong, that is always by your side, never judging, always there to help you pick yourself back up. Yet if that unconditional friend completely breaks trust, and it sends you into a state of turmoil, spinning round and round and round, where all you want is for someone to stop it, to tell you why this incomprehensible thing just shook your world; where do you find it in yourself to remember that they are just as imperfect as you are, they are going through war within themselves just at I am. Yet I do find something inside myself that allows me to remember the good in that person over weighs the bad. Most people call that thing “time”. I only call it time because I have not yet found what it is that I already know. What is it, that when I look deep down inside myself, I find answers? Where are these things coming from? Did I already know these answers and I just forgot them?
To Eros, the kind of love that is completely unconditional. Not the kind that you are told about in fairytales that tells you how a prince will come and rescue you from the big bad evil that is keeping you captive in that tower, but the kind of love the consumes your thoughts, makes your heart warm, makes your stomach drop and your head spin, the kind of love that makes you want to be around that person every possible moment, where you even miss them when you loose sight of them for a moment, the kind of love that makes you feel the worst possible low and yet all at the same moment in time brings you to a high you can barely explain to anyone let alone yourself.
Blue foundation
“Eyes on fire”
I'll seek you out,
Flay you alive
One more word and you won't survive
And I'm not scared of your stolen power
I see right through you any hour
I won't soothe your pain
I won't ease your strain
You'll be waiting in vain
I got nothing for you to gain
I'm taking it slow
Feeding my flame
Shuffling the cards of your game
And just in time
In the right place
Suddenly I will play my ace
I won't soothe your pain
I won't ease your strain
You'll be waiting in vain
I got nothing for you to gain
Eyes on fire
Your spine is ablaze
Felling any foe with my gaze
And just in time
In the right place
Steadily emerging with grace
Felling any foe with my gaze
Steadily emerging with grace
Felling any foe with my gaze
Steadily emerging with grace
MOTION CITY SOUNDTRACK LYRICS
"It Had To Be you”
I'll get lost, messed up and bored when I'm alone too long
I can't sleep, function or eat when I'm not with someone
Late last fall, she ended it all and moved to who-knows-where
Just like that, she vanished and packed and never even called
Do you feel a certain sense of synergy between yourself and me?
A kind of macabre and somber Wondertwin type of harmony
What if it was you?
You that I needed all along
I felt like a fool,
Kicking and screaming and pretending we were wrong
Let's get wrecked on pop tarts and sex and see the Taj Mahal
Let's save birds from Prince William Sound and skateboard through the mall
Let's fight crime with mangoes and limes and join the PGA
Let's win big with every spin but hurry, I can't wait
Do you spend a fortune on those late night prepaid television scams
In search of the perfect blender, steak knife and non-stick frying pan?
What if it was you?
You that I needed all along
I felt like a fool
Thinking we were completely wrong
It seemed like a dream
A beautiful scream
That echoed forever
And made us not afraid to feel a thing
And after it ends
We'll try to be friends
They say that what doesn't kill us makes us who we are
All this time and everything's changed but I still feel the same
All good things eventually end and get washed down the drain
What a disaster it would be if you discovered that I cared
A little too much for friends but not enough to share
What if it was you?
You that I needed all along
I felt like a fool
Now that I'm sure that I was wrong
It had to be you.
It had to be you.
It had to be you.
I knew it was you.
So I do not know who I am. I do not know what the meaning of my life is, nor do I know the answers to the questions of my life. What I do know is that I am starting to become capable of finding the path or paths that I need to follow in order to allow myself to live with questions that I will never know answers to. I know I will be at a constant battle within myself to become the very best of who I am meant to be. There are reasons why I am a person who cannot stand to be alone in a room, yet when I am around people I do not what to be the center of attention; why I constantly put my lover, friends, or family wants or needs before my own. Even though I strongly believe, and constantly forget, that you have to love who you are before anyone else can love who you are, thus the tattoo on my wrist of “123”: it is not wrong to be selfish sometimes because if you are the last person on earth and you don’t love who you are then what is the point of your life. Why I would much rather play a sport that deals with team cooperation than with a sport that involves just my abilities and myself.
The best way to summarize how philosophy can produce my personal happiness is by explaining my analogy of the sandbox.
People (Christians) live in this world called the sandbox. They know nothing other than the rules of how to play inside the sandbox. I was born inside this sandbox along with my father while my mother was born outside. Something deep down inside of myself was telling me to go play on the edges of the sandbox; you could describe it as not fitting in with the other kids and having them throw sand at you or not letting you play with certain toys. I slowly found myself closer and closer to the edge. I started to see things and hear of things that I could not comprehend. I realized there was this amazing would outside of this sandbox.
Once you are outside this sandbox you are free to come and go as you please. You cannot bring anything inside the box as proof of this outside world, but you can show the people inside that there are doors that lead to this world if they so choose to go through them. I chose to go explore these doors. I have been able to see over the walls of the sandbox and learn about this world. A world that allows me to analyze who I am, a world that can teach me things beyond the views of the Christian religion, a world that will not always judge me for thinking differently. I have found that philosophy had prepared me to be capable of opening these doors that lead outside, yet I remain living inside the sandbox. I know that I am close to finding the courage to step through the door and leave the sandbox but not today. I feel I am so close to becoming something that will put part of my soul at ease, even for a short time.
Will I like this world once I step through the door? I do not have that answer. Will I want to come back into the sandbox and play again with the kids I grew up with? Most likely, due to the fact I know I am only where I am today because of some of the people who still and will always live inside the sandbox. Will I find a man to accompany me along my many adventures, that will encourage me to keep becoming the women I already am, that will love me no matter where we are on the earth? Yes, because everyone has a soul mate, everyone eventually meets him or her; yet it is up to me to realize that moment and not let it pass me by. Will I have those life long friends? Yes, because they never judge me, they accept any choices I make even if they do not agree with them, they keep me grounded and remind me of how far I have grown and they encourage me to become everything I can imagine myself becoming.
NOTE: I typed out the lyrics of the songs for quick reading, yet they do not hold the same impact unless listened to.
