11/8

I have a drug addiction — perhaps it does not seem like it on the outside to those unknowing onlookers, but what I desire most is an end to the seizures (the spells, the episodes, the visions).

Drugs make that happen, at least for awhile — hard drugs, not by traditional standards, but enough of them to be measured in grams per day, intense enough to keep me in a perpetual, paradoxical high, a great slowdown of the mind.

My waking, striking eyes are always in struggle against the tremendous forces of the anti-epileptics; yet, I feel when my body revolts, when it speaks to me and says for me to rest. I do not lest, for as the busy world goes, each day closer to strangling itself in the global chains and wires of its norms and infrastructure, about to keel into cardiac arrest, so too do I follow and drift in a drug-laden stupor, hallucinating dim images of future success and liberating peace among this catastrophe.

Sleep is never enough to shake off the effects, no matter six, ten, or twelve hours — it is a waking coma that I am in, unable to fight the burden from my consciousness.

10/19

Watching my ticking pocket-watch.

It’s going too slow, I’m going mad. Not quite eight yet, can’t take my drugs and bask in their effects. Drinking Captain Eli’s, reading Jane Eyre, wishing I had a real beer, that I knew what the French ladies were saying — that’d be true gorgeousness.

Impossibilities, I’m crippled under hundreds of pages of text — for what reason? What’s the expectation anyway? My hands are trembling, my jaw is jerking, I want to scream confessions into the open air and onto deaf ears. I pretend play that I’m in a cafe snapping my fingers to the heartbeat of expression — no more apprehension, depression, or falling behind the imaginary pack.

Cliff Bar, too much sweet in my mouth. Just swallow the pills.

A Little Audacity

I am sleeping lightly upon a leather loveseat covered in blankets. In my dream, I am laying awake looking at my cellphone as it vibrates and rings in its little melody. Suddenly, I irk awake and look to my phone. Nothing. Seconds later, it rings. In the passage of one afternoon, this happens three times.

It is a few days earlier. As I cross the mighty Androscoggin river, I look to my left and wonder about the fate of the old Cowlan mill building. Contracts have fallen through and that historic landmark, now gutted, silent, and looming simply exists to uphold its own history — an icon of sorts for all the memories of the textile past. I know that it will not make it. Today, an inferno raged inside of the building and within the span of two hours destroyed all that was left. Floors caved in, walls collapsed into the river, the entire place came thundering down. Over 150 years of history was enveloped in fire, each year screaming as it died, sending fireballs and cinders from the building all over downtown Lewiston.

I pick up my pen, put it to the page, and then it falls over, leaving a sploch of black ink on the page. I am drugged with hopes of my condition improving, yet I have vomited almost everyday, and even water makes my stomach churn. I sit back, weakened by persistent fatigue, and imagine off into another place while my muscles lose their tone, while my body softens and my strength is undermined. I sit with a patch over one eye, too dizzy even to stand.

It is audacity that gets me through this. Boldness shielding an inner determination that strengthens my core, enlivens my willpower, envokes a sort of rage against all that is holding me back. My soul infuses with the whole of my body and I can conquer any obstacles that are presented. A little audacity is what keeps me alive through times when even reading is a challenge.

Each breath. Stronger.

Hrafn

http://tylernoyes.wordpress.com/

Food and Vegetable Politics, oh my!

Following my experiment in consumption earlier in the week and the proceeding discussion of food politics on Facebook, I decided to continue my exploration of taste and desire by comparing and contrasting the high-fat, highly-industrial burger meal by spending three days eating well-balanced, nutritious vegetarian meals. The difference is tremendous.

In my average, daily diet here at college I do not consume a great deal of meat to begin with. My only meat comes from either the pepperoni pizza I eat occasionally or turkey or fish in a sandwich. To go three days without this food was not too much of a challenge. Instead of getting the chicken and chicken gravy in the shepherds pie, for instance, I opted out of both of those and replaced it with a delicious potato and leek soup.

The following two days, I satisfied my cravings for something heavy and dense in my stomach — such as a burger or some other sort of flesh, per se — with a lot of complex carbohydrates from grains or whole grain bread. Beyond this, milk was an adequate source of protein and nourishment. One evening, I had egg salad. Some vegetarians would dispute that eating an egg is non-vegetarian and carnivorous; my response is that I am an experimenter and in no way a purist.

To summarize my diet of the past several days, I enjoyed big bowls of fresh spinach leaves and other greens and colored vegetables that I ate raw and, generally, with my hands. No dressing is required to bring out the full, bold and earthy flavor of spinach. On my brown rice I used olive oil and added a few veggies. This was completely satisfying, easy on the stomach, and incredibly healthy. I did not miss meat in the least.

Last night I broke my three day journey into the vegetable life when I encountered ham salad at our deli bar here on campus. This is a rarity. When I was little my mom would made ham salad quite often for my lunches to be spread on sandwiches. I really enjoy the combination of mayo, ham, and relish. Unable to resist, I had it on my sandwich. My enjoyment of the meat came only in the value of nostalgia; I could remember the times in the past and the fond feelings towards my mother, her cooking, and being a kid. The ham by itself was sub par.

Another one of my favorite foods as a kid was bacon. One morning while coming back from a few days lodging in Bar Harbor, my family stopped at a breakfast buffet. I was so overwhelmed with the options that I loaded more than a pound of bacon into my bowl and went back to our table, intent on eating it all. Not only did I feel dehydrated a little ways into the meal, I was sick to my stomach and not even the combined appetite of the four of us could finish it off. I felt terribly wasteful. I’ve cleaned my plate and taken only what I can knowingly eat ever since.

Remembering this, I tried some bacon this morning and ate it slowly, thoughtfully, and inquisitively. Nothing. As my friend commented: “translucent” flesh and fat. Salt. There was almost nothing worthwhile in it. While bacon is not as pervasive as McDonald’s, for instance, there is a similar hype about it. That savory feeling in the mouth comes when images of bacon are on television or in print. Even just discussing the smell of bacon is sure to make one hungry.

To finish off my survey of food qualities, before writing this I ate a bag of Lay’s kettle cooked chips, the Jalapeno variety. Kettle chips are one of my weaknesses. I prefer brands other than Lay’s, but I figured that these would do. On the back of the bag, I noted the presence of MSG (Monosodium Glutamate) in the flavor powder coating the chips. MSG embodies the fifth flavor picked up by the human tongue, called Umami or “Savory”. It took me about fifteen minutes of intermittent snacking to finish off the bag. As I neared the end, my mouth felt otherworldly; my salivary glands were in high gear. All of my mouth was tingling and my gums felt inflamed. The savory flavor so embodied by MSG had overtaken my taste receptors and the flavor of every other ingredient to create a wild explosion of saliva and confusion.

The Findings: I am going to permanently reconsider my choices as I am dining. While I have been interested in nutrition for the past year or two, learned myself in some basics of organics, health foods, food additives, and other key components relevant to our modern diet, it just isn’t enough.

I will not align myself with any restrictive food ideology beyond my own, be it vegetarian, vegan, or any of the multitude of diet plans being sold on the market. I can feel clearly that burgers and a bowl of spinach affect me in distinctly different ways, and will use this instinct to eat as much as I can, rather than buying into the consumer market.

My hard earned money and yours ought not to support corporate giants who use food as a means of control and domination. A dangerous loss of culture, health, and liberty all result from buying into the lifestyle of soda, fast-food, and Western convenience. While I cannot escape the system, by being knowledgeable and open-minded in my choices, I can combat it, do my little part and be healthy within it until the day when we can all farm our own food.

Drowsing Out Poetry

As of late, shifting among new medications and environments, the sudden workload of returning to college after a month off, the in and outs of the hospital hustle and bustle in a cognitively and physically excrutiating rush to get my symptoms under control, I have had much time to reflect and imagine. I might sleep for eight, ten, or eleven hours; none of it is enough to supercede the exhausting battle against epilepsy or the tranquilizing effects of medications. There is hope even here, in the place between drowsing and waking where reality doesn’t seem real, and my dream-consciousness is more awake than my own, and it is in the spirit of life. This poem is one of the many products my artistic drive has captured.

Untitled Verses While Waiting In the Hospital

My life is almost like in
those for-television-dramas:
the little boy is bald and
hairless and cancerous and
fighting for his life
in a medical ward in
some fictional hospital.
He draws with colored pencils
and speaks weakly to the
nurses and all their aides.
His smile is full of life but he
fears the condition that ails him
might be terminal; the concern in
everyone’s eyes might be
subliminal, but it’s there –
the raucous fear that flashes
inside of him like lightning,
takes his breath away,
stifles his spirit when
he most needs it.
Somehow, I’m different;
life is mostly merry and
the days are growing and good –
I, the patient, am still sitting here
wondering, wandering through
my thoughts like a human machine
transfixed on the organic world outside
my window. Flesh is an
anachronism here, a place of healing
where wires and blood converge.
My brain is no longer like the perfect vacuum
of outer space where theories and mysteries can
formulate, permeate, remain undiscovered when
the doctor shines his pen light into my eyes;
I’m plugged into the wall, a trendy
electric car, charging my batteries.
My sensuality is connected to electrodes,
connected to cybernetic nerves that pinpoint
and glimpse at every thought process
and heart-stopping, seizing suspicion of something
wicked yet to come, all fixed up among
my anxiety in the harmony colored electrical cables
that, in its empty inanity, looks almost like the stars.

Agency vs. Apathy

“The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

Barely half-way through the grand Election Day 2008 for the United States of America, I’ve heard and participated in countless arguments about voting. A close friend of mind was going to skip voting today for one excuse or another, but we dragged him down to the polls (this is not metaphorical), made sure he registered, and then sent him in to cast his vote for whatever candidates he supported. Not minutes ago, two librarians here at the University of Maine Farmington were in a yelling match about a woman who refused to vote. “If it doesn’t affect my life, I don’t care. Her apathy affects my life!” one of them said sternly. This brings me to an interesting thought.

Voting is a form of Agency. No, not something like the Central Intelligence Agency, but more or less our ability to cause change. Jeffrey Nealon and Susan Searles Giroux in their excellent book “The Theory Toolbox”, explain agency by quoting the American Heritage Dictionary and then saying:

” ‘We cannot ignore human agency in history’. We cannot ignore, in other words, the fact that people create history by doing things; history is made rather than found. Subjects have agency — the ability to respond to their historical contexts and, with any luck at all, change them in the process” (p. 193).

We are all Subjects in the grand scheme of things, at the mercy of the classic forces of “Nature” and “Nurture”, e.g. genetic dispositions and our environment, social atmosphere, and learnings. If you live in Western society, or now even almost any industrialized area in the world, you are also forced into the role of “consumer” — something that may even define your entire identity. Politics on television and the main source of our knowledge of the rest of the world coming from this medium, as well, has in my opinion changed things drastically. While we have always been subjects, for my entire life at least, I always thought everything I saw on TV would always stay that way. Even though I was fascinated by watching documentaries about other parts of the world, or listening to politicians speak, the “Real” world I was shown by TV was there and nowhere else. As of recently, I met two famous politicians — Howard Dean and Tom Allen — and the world that I was growing suspicious of shattered. I realized, utterly consciously, that they were real people. I realized that even though it was just a few words, a shake of the hand and a photo, I influenced their life.

Thus we get to the importance of Agency. Some scientists, on the far end of “nature”, think that a great deal of our behavior, even emotional and seeming unique personal expressions, are based entirely on genes. And everyone knows that if people important to you are all buying a certain product, you’re likely going to be the next one to buy it. If being a Subject and Subjectivity seems overwhelming, as if there is no way you can influence the world and take a stand, assert your willpower, that is where Agency comes in.

Voting is a form of Agency. There might be 300 million citizens in American, but each and every one of those citizens has a say in what happens. There may be cynics who reference that corporations and lobbyists have bought out our government, that the power is out of the hands of the people; but listening to them is losing your power and nulling your agency. Voting is a right in America, and a democratic system as functional as ours isn’t too common any other place in the world. To refuse to vote for some excuse or laziness is losing your precious say in the government. It ought to be a proud thing to do, considering that the institutions that we are most subjected to have also given us a say in their existence. This is one of those surefire chances to assert your will and hold up the shield of Agency. No one that refuses to vote will ever make history; if they do, it will be because they were swept up by the people who took action.

This boils down to a few things. Thinking that your vote doesn’t matter won’t cut it. If just a thousand people nationally think that “What can one vote do?”, then they have all handed over their power and become victims with no say in things. The less people that vote, the less the system works. If only 50% of the voting-age citizens vote, than policies and changes affecting the entire country are being decided on by only half of the country. This is unfair. By not voting, a person is letting his or herself be subjugated by forces that are wrongly believed to be larger and more powerful than him or her. The librarian has a lot of sense in the words, “Her apathy affects my life!”. A noble political cause will go nowhere if no one takes action to vote for it, and it creates a quasi-feudal sort of system in that the citizens (serfs) are subjected to a government (ruling class/lords and nobles) that can easily and immediately become unjust and unruly. In this case, however, it’s not as though the Serf hasn’t the right to rebel, to vote for change and speak up against the ruling class — it’s that the Serf, so disconnected from reality and made helpless through nonaction, decides that it’s not worth the ten minutes of his or her time to vote and free himself from subjugation because someone else will do it for him or her, or because the Serf is just wholly apathetic. This is a type of thinking that doesn’t support life and the ubiquitous value of “freedom”. Someone not voting because of laziness damn well affects me: my power is limited by their apathy and the ultimate power over the nation is held in the hands of the few.

We have seen how this plays out in the merging of corporations and the explosion of capitalism. It ought not happen with control over our very livelihoods: we have the agency to change!

Ísland eða Geðveiki!

As my first semester of college continues on, I can confidently say that it hasn’t been quite what I expected. I’m enrolled in exciting and engaging courses that have kept me on my toes and taught me so much so quickly. The social life here is great. As time goes on though, I’ve felt as though the rug is being pulled out from under my feet more and more. It might not be long until I fall flat on my face.

It’s not that I haven’t been doing everything I promised myself, it’s not that I’m falling into the old habits that I left behind when I moved to Farmington. It is that this semester is the last semester for a German program at the University. Even when looking into our study abroad programs here (and they are excellent for a public college) I didn’t see anything that I felt too passionate about. As an English Major, I am now essentially being forced to choose a language that is offered here and like it enough so that I can pass and graduate. With French, Russian and Chinese being the only options that I’ll even consider, I’m have been a bit disheartened.

Earlier today I was caught in the traffic jam of the Study Abroad fair at lunch. Naturally, I am interested in studying somewhere else for a semester, even if it’s not my ideal location. Wanting to get to lunch, I pushed through and ignored the Studied Abroad counselor, the sign-in sheets, and just about all the booths. Just before I reached “The Beach” (the hangout in front of our dining hall) I nearly fell head over heels into a table that had a big sign with the word “ICELAND” written on it.

Immediately I looked around for the representatives of the program and drilled them for every bit of information I could, affirming with them several times that there seriously was an study abroad in Iceland program. A long-absent acquaintance on a mailing list I frequent recently posted the story of his amazing and quite sojourn trip to Iceland. I felt more than inspired to visit the country that has been calling to me for a long time, but it still seemed unrealistic until at least a few years after college or even graduate school. After meeting and thanking these CELL study abroad program reps, however, I was shaking, jittering, and almost in tears with excitement.

CELL is short for the Center for Ecological Living and Learning. They run two study abroad programs, one in Iceland and one that covers several South American nations. In the Iceland program, it is a semester living and working in a completely sustainable Icelandic village called Sólheimar. Not only is there the opportunity to learn the Icelandic language, work alongside villagers and get involved with community projects, but there are also trips around Iceland to, apparently, Reykjavik, hot springs, glaciers, museums, and more. This program is worth 15 credits through five classes studying Iceland, the environment, critical thinking and sustainability. I can’t think of a program that is more up my alley. Tomorrow I plan on calling up the person who runs the program to find out more information and when I can apply. The cost actually seems within my price range.

Whether the Gods have set this up (Odin does look out for us, after all) or it is some sort of coincidence, it looks like I have come across a great deal of luck. I am still in shock and awe that I’ve found a program that is realistic. The idea that I might be spending next September, October and November in Iceland (or the year after) is just about the happiest, most inspiring thing I’ve ever heard. The Norns have to be doing some serious weaving right now. If this program is all that it seems, I am going to do absolutely everything in my capacity to enroll. I’ll scream it loud and clear: To Iceland or Bust! (or in my poor Icelandic, to Iceland or Insanity — Ísland eða Geðveiki!)