Tag Archives: soliloquy

2811, 2017

A walk through the valley of shadow of death and back again

debs/ November 28, 2017

The process of mountain hiking is conducive to becoming a metaphor of journey, spirituality, and life. I mean, it literally has a rising action, a climax, and falling action. For the duration of the hike, I can self-indulge and romanticize myself (or my party) as a main character(s) in some heroic journey. Hiking is a celebration of life as a process rather than a destination; and that’s a much needed for a soul that’s trapped in a “destination”-oriented mind like mine.

While hiking, I need to be hyper-aware of time and space for mundane things like daylight, my own safety, and such. Yet for the same reason, the fact that a hike occurs within the time span of a really long conversation, puts the mind in a space where internal dialogues can fester and run (read:walk) their course. Given that long internal ~~dialogues~~ monologues are prone to recursive thinking (…at least mine are?), it follows that the activity of hiking is conducive to forming nested micro-metaphors within the broader “hiking metaphor” as a whole.

But–and forgive me for being trite–isn’t the phenomenon that hiking is fertile with nested metaphors, itself a metaphor for life? After all, any metaphor about life is just a subset of life that is modular enough for the human mind to appreciate the parallel. Every metaphor about life is nested in life. So it really shouldn’t be a surprise that a powerful metaphor of life, like hiking, is a Russian doll of nested-metaphors.

I’m convinced that the hike on this day is somehow a metaphor for all my other days. This is my absolute favourite “story” to tell about my trip because the things that happen in a certain sequence within a certain time. On a deeper note, I love telling it because I feel like the story hasn’t ended yet. I feel like this day had more subtle metaphors I haven’t fully teased out, and perhaps symbolism that I don’t yet know the meaning of.

2710, 2017

Quiet

debs/ October 27, 2017

“The words of the wise heard in quiet are better than the shouting of a ruler among fools.” – Ecclesiastes 9:17

“Even a fool who keeps silent is considered wise; when he closes his lips, he is deemed intelligent.” – Proverbs 17:28

Both insecurity and dignity manifest themselves as quietness.

Quiet confidence is more attractive than loud confidence.
Quietness without confidence is self-interested, self-conscious.
Confidence without quietness is self-interested, self-promoting.
One with quiet confidence has the capacity to consider another:
security in One’s identity yields mental capacity to consider another;
silence yields physical capacity to hear The Other.

Activism is most admirable complemented with quiet activism.
The loudest activism is paramount when One advocates for another,
thereafter, One ought to assume quiet activism as a way of life.
Quiet activism is living with integrity.
Quiet activism is living in the world as if the world is already as it ought to be:
not locking your bike because the world ought not to need locks at all.
Quiet activism is turning the other cheek.

Back in the day, I desired to replace my awkwardness with charisma.
These days, I desire to transform my awkward silence to comfortable silence.

1810, 2017

Salutations!

debs/ October 18, 2017

“Regard it as just as desirable to build a chicken house as to build a cathedral.” – Frank Lloyd Wright

If the internet is dark and damp room, then this website is a little nest I’ve made in the back-rightmost corner of that room.

I’ve made this nest at an interesting time. See, I am in a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation. Long long ago, when chickens had teeth, I was under the impression that work is mostly neutral, generally apolitical, and probably minimally oppressive. And so I spent my life up until now studying to find work I love doing. Two diplomas later, I’ve learned that nothing is neutral, nothing is apolitical, and that work I thought I would love doing is, by default, complicit in systems of oppression. Too bad it took putting all my eggs in the wrong basket to come to this conclusion.

Being neither trained nor competent to do work that might actually be worth doing, is it still possible to scratch out a living doing something that isn’t detrimental to the earth or the life on it? Or will I just chicken out and help some rich guy get richer? For now, I am incubating this little piece of the web and hoping that by brooding over it (read: flailing like a headless chicken) an idea will hatch… one that my bird brain hasn’t the imagination to dream of on its own. This, I pray.

Oh, why hello there, dear Reader. Why do you look as though you are walking on eggshells? Feel free to eavesdrop, snoop around, and make yourselves at home, but please take off your shoes before you come in. Afterall, the little segments of coloured yarn and meticulously placed twigs that form this nest were lovingly salvaged; only the softest and colourfullest yarn, only the twigs that most resemble dragons’ whiskers (well, to me at least) were selected. Welcome.