Notes from Underground

"I will go quietly on about the people with strong nerves, who don't understand certain refinements of pleasure. These gentlemen, although they roar full-throatedly like bulls, and I suppose it does them the greatest credit, will on some occasions, as i have already said, calm down at once when they are faced with an impossibility. Impossibility is a stone wall. What do I mean by a stone wall? Well, of course, the laws of nature or the conclusions of the natural sciences or of mathematics. When it is proved, for example, that you are descended from an ape, it's no use scowling about it -- accept it as a fact. Or if it is demonstrated that half an ounce of your own fat ought essentially to be dearer to you than a hundred thousand of your fellow-creatures, and that this demonstration finally disposes of all so-called good deeds, duties, and other lunacies and prejudices, simply accept it; there's nothing to be done about it, because twice two is mathematics. Just try to argue!

'Excuse me,' they cry, 'you can't fight it; twice two is four! Nature doesn't ask you about it; she's not concerned with your wishes or with whether you like her laws or not. You must take her as she is, and consequently all her results as well. I mean to say, a wall is a wall,' etc., etc. But good God! what have the laws of nature and arithmetic to do with me, when for some reason  I don't like those laws or twice two? Naturally I shan't break through the wall with my head, if I'm really not strong enough, but I won't be reconciled to it simply because it's a stone wall and I haven't enough strength to break it down.

 As if a stone wall really was a soothing influence and really did carry a message of peace, simply because it is twice two! That's utterly absurd! The point is to understand everything, to realize everything, every impossibility, every stone wall; not to reconcile yourself to a single one of the impossibilities and stone walls if the thought of reconciliation sickens you; to arrive by way of the strictest logical syllogisms at the most repulsive conclusions on the eternal theme of how you are somehow to blame for the stone wall itself, even though once again it is abundantly clear that you are not to blame at all, and in consequence of all this to sink voluptuously into inertia, silently and impotently gnashing your teeth and reflecting that there isn't even anybody for you to be angry with, that an object for your anger can't even be found, and perhaps never will be, that  this is all a fake, a conjuring trick, a piece of sharp practice, and there is nothing there but a morass; nobody knows what, nobody knows who, but in spite of all the mysteries and illusions, you ache with it all, and the more mysterious it is, the more you ache."

-Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground

Weather Machines, Time-Consciousness, and Basketball

Now for a smaller update...

It's snowing.

This is odd because just 7 days ago, Edinburgh was graced with one of the warmest Marches on record -- day after day of 70 degree weather, sunshine, and the faintest wind-setting Scotland's weather machine knows. Now we have an arctic weather system wreaking havoc in the form of snow, hail, high winds, and temperatures dipping to -5C. It feels like it's December again. This weather is as fickle as I am.

I attended my last lecture of my MSc yesterday. I'm done with all classes for my masters degree, save the assessments. That feels pretty weird to say. I have two weeks to finish up four essays, which isn't going to be fun, but at least I've given myself much more breathing room than I did last semester.

My dissertation topic was approved by my advisor yesterday as well, which is very exciting. I've decided to write about the phenomenology of time and the cultural differences of historical-consciousness. This means basically that I'll be looking at how different cultures feel the passing of time and how they feel connected to history. There's still a lot of literature I need to read to generate ideas, but I think I'll try to focus on comparing two or three cases, possibly the Navajo Indian's concept of cyclical time, the European conception of historical consciousness pre-1400, and possibly an African oral tradition as well. I haven't yet nailed down what my argument will be, but I'm interested in exploring how materiality impacts our cosmology, how the things we surround ourselves with shapes how we feel the most basic and overlooked aspects of human consciousness. Europeans didn't have an idea of where they fit into historical time before the Gutenberg Press and widespread literacy emerged after 1436; it was common in the 12th century to believe the death of Jesus Christ may have taken place just a few years before one's birth. In the same vein, our modern material reminders of the past such as memorials, monuments, books, even natural preservations and national parks simultaneously freezes history in the present and draws our consciousness into the matrix of time. The old log house off of State Street in Boise gives us a timeline on how long people have lived in the area; the Roman Colosseum reminds us of past empires and cultural lineage; even the Palouse reminds us of geological time, formed by ice ages before mankind's migration into North America. All of these are particular ways that we impact our historical cosmology and force a consciousness of the past. Oral societies without these material reminders feel time and history very differently. That's the very rough beginning; it will no doubt go through many revisions before the finished product emerges. I have to write up a formal proposal within the next two weeks to get started.

I have a hefty load of work to do in the next few weeks, but that hasn't stopped me from having some fun.  I participated in an NCAA March Madness bracket competition through blazersedge.com, a Portland Trail Blazer blog and I actually did really well. It was set up on Yahoo.com's bracket system, and I actually finished in second place out of 500 participants. I was shocked, not having watched an actual college basketball game in recent memory. I got pretty lucky, I had a perfect East division bracket and guessed 3 of the 4 finalists, and the NCAA champion. The guy that beat me had all four finalists correct. Darn, I just barely missed out on some first place reward. I also finished ranked in the top 10,000 out of all 3.5 million Yahoo brackets for this season. That's in the 99th percentile. Hey I guess that makes me a natural genius of bracketology. My bracket was titled Potato Fight and can be viewed here, the blazersedge.com competition rankings can be viewed here.

I've also been closely following the Portland Trail Blazers. I can stream their games online, though at 3am. My sleep schedule the past few months has been a little odd as a result. I'm not sure it's been worth it, because they're terrible. They've held off no-good rotten bad luck unreasonably well the past few years, but this season finally broke the camel's back. This is the season: Twenty-seven year old Superstar Brandon Roy retires out of the blue. Prolific big man Greg Oden, selected with the #1 lottery pick in 2007, cut from the team after yet another season ending injury. Exciting fan-favorite rookie Elliott Williams goes down with season ending shoulder injury. Raymond Felton, the younger, quicker, flashier point guard that replaced hardened veteran Andre Miller turns out to be an absolute disaster and is nicknamed "Total Feltdown" and "Ray Turnover." Head coach Nate McMillian, Mr. Sonic himself and one of the longest tenured head coaches in the NBA, fired after a horrible string of road losses. Marcus Camby and Gerald Wallace traded for nothing but a lottery pick and some cheap bench warmers after the front office decides to throw up their hands in defeat. The team now consists of an interim-GM, an interim-head coach, a decimated starting 5, and a sinking feeling of regret and confusion as to where it all went so wrong. Failure, however, brings with it the hope of starting over with a solid Felton-less core. With a deep draft coming this summer, it's not a bad time for the wheels to finally fall off.

Also, in food related news, I ate grilled halloumi for the first time yesterday. My eyes almost popped out of my head from the deliciousness. I've been lucky with food recently.

That's all for now. I'll leave you with my newfound study-bro, Chopin. He helps my essays write themselves.

Chopin's "Raindrops"

Backlog: Holiday edition

Will checking in. It's been quite a while since my last post. I was brewing one for the holidays back in the day, but it slipped through the cracks and was never published. Too bad. Let's turn back the clocks and I'll show you what the past three and a half months were like. Holidays first.

Note: this has nothing to do with April Fools Day. Maybe in an ironical I-never-update-except-on-the-day-that's-for-jokes-and-pranks way, but it wasn't intentional. Mostly just procrastination.

Christmas 2011

Although this was probably the quietest and most relaxing Christmas I've ever had, it was also pretty lonely. Anyone that knows me at all knows I prefer to stay away from large social gatherings as they make me feel incredibly uncomfortable. For me growing up, social gatherings and discomfort became synonymous with Christmas. Yes, I missed all of you individually, but escaping the giant family Christmas party two years in a row is something that I'm not exactly depressed about. That said, there were some depressing moments feeling far away from home, like when I explored the Christmas Market only to see families enjoying each other's company and couples holding hands. Yep, I missed you all and I felt a little homesick.

Many of my friends had gone home for the holidays, but a few were still in town. We tried our best to make our own fun on Christmas Day, resulting in the purchase of several batches of mulled wine. On Christmas Eve, I attended a service at St Gile's Cathedral on the Royal Mile, mostly as a symbolic Christmas-y gesture, also partly because Anthropology has made me see religion very differently. It was fascinating to see these rituals as an anthropologist, studying the carefully crafted version of Christian world history and seeing all of the material reminders religion uses to evoke experience. I also heard some cool Christmas carols.

After the St Gile's Cathedral Christmas Service

Princess Street Christmas Market

December rain

Rain on the Royal Mile

New Years Eve 2012

This holiday was a little more eventful than Christmas, as Edinburgh is world renown for their New Years Eve party. Hogmany is the name, it's a 3 day celebration beginning with a torchlight parade, including a massive midnight party, and ending with a jump into the ice cold Firth of Forth. I attended the amazing torchlight parade, led by 100 pipers and drummers and followed by possibly 2,000 marchers holding torches, all making their way throughout the city in an enormous march. It was very impressive; you could hear the pipers in any section of the city and see the torches lined up for a mile. Aaand of course, although I brought my camera, I forgot to load it with a memory card, so I failed to capture the most amazing imagery I've seen in this city since I arrived. Good job, Will. 

The next night, New Years Eve, almost made up for it with more amazing visuals -- an incredible firework show showering the city in light. The midnight party was great, jam packed full of travelers and Scots alike, surrounded by music venues playing every genre of music imaginable. At midnight, fireworks lit up the city from two different points, surrounding the crowd with explosions of color. It's something I'm not going to forget about anytime soon.

January Highland Trip

With three weeks of winter break still to go, I decided to mosey up north to get a better look at the Highlands and explore the north coast of Scotland. I first took a train to Inverness, enjoying the beautiful sights of Scotland's white wilderness and snowcapped mountains. The city of Inverness turned out to be a bit of a sleepy town without much to do other than see Loch Ness, which I decided not to do because of the hokey feel and expensive fees. Yes, I'm a poor excuse of a tourist. I explored the town and made myself comfortable in cafes and pubs, reading a used Hemingway novel I picked up at a very old bookstore in the downtown square. I also made friends an Australian traveler staying at my hostel by the name of Tim who had been traveling in Europe from hostel to hostel for the past six months -- from Istanbul to Rome to Marrakech to Amsterdam and then to Scotland. When we had both had enough with Inverness, he decided to follow me up north to the town of Thurso, the northernmost city on UK's mainland. I ended up being very glad for this. Who would have thought, a tiny town on the northernmost tip of Scotland would be absolutely dead in mid-January? It was a ghost town. There was only one other person staying in the hostel -- another young guy from Aberdeen, who is absolutely crazy. He was staying in Thurso to surf the north coast. By himself. In January. Insane. He was actually a pretty cool guy; we all hung out and had a few beers, went to their pub and shot some pool. Side note: this pub apparently is well known for breaking out in weekend fist-fights as the locals, who sometimes travel 100 miles from all across Caithness to hear live music and have a pint on Saturdays, fight over the local girls. I guess scarcity of a resource always results in violence.

Anyway, Tim and I took a bus along the coastline, admiring the rocky coast, beautiful rolling hills of grass, lonely stone cottages, and an eery lack of population. We hopped off at the town of John O'Groats, which isn't actually much of a town at all. It's on the eastern-most tip of the north coast, a long ways away from anything. Thurso must be a metropolis to the people living around this area.

Tim and I had heard about a hike to some interesting rock formations along the cliffs, so we wandered off along the coast without having much of a clue as to where exactly we were going or what to expect. We had been incredibly fortunate in that for the first time in weeks, Caithness saw sunlight. The sun, the sea, and the trail were an amazing and enjoyable site. We gained elevation and the cliffs grew taller and taller beneath our feet. Soon we came upon what we were searching for -- Duncansby Stacks -- and it was absolutely beautiful. I'll let the photos below speak for themselves. Soon after our discovery, our good fortune ran out. Black clouds materialized out of nowhere and bellowed hail and high winds. We attempted to wait out the storm, but it was not stopping; in the meantime, we both became soaking wet and felt the wind's cold bite. We decided to turn back, but instead of returning along the trail, we cut across fields, jumping fences and dodging barbed wire, determined to find shelter from the storm as quickly as possible. Upon returning to John O'Groats, we discovered a single business open -- a small gift shop cafe -- why a gift shop cafe was open in that town is beyond understanding, but I'm thankful for it nonetheless. We grabbed a hot drink, tried to dry off, and waited in the gift shop for a few hours until the next Thurso-bound bus arrived. Tim and I both agreed it was a hell of an adventure. We soon parted ways; he continued on his journey, making his way to Northern Ireland, and I headed back to the comfort and warmth of my flat in Edinburgh.

Intercity bus to John O'Groats

This is what the geography of Caithness looks like

I think this is the right way...

Those are some lucky sheep

Scotland's lil' lighthouse

Northern sunlight

Duncansby Stacks sighted

Ducansby Stacks

Getting closer

Storm's a-comin'

Hail

Still pretty

It's not letting up, is it...

Turning back

This is 50% of John O'Groats... I don't understand this town.

On the train back to Edinburgh

Today

Well that gets us through the middle of January. There's still an entire semester to write about, as I'm just weeks away from finishing up Semester 2. Very soon all of my essays will be complete, the proposal for my dissertation will be finalized, and I'll be heading off to Italy and London for a while, but I'll write more about that later. One step at a time. 

I'll leave you with my morning breakfast. It was so tasty.

That would be an egg-bacon-avocado-spinach-jalapeño breakfast sammich on a wholemeal bun with sriracha hot sauce. Easily in the top 5 most delicious things I've ever made.