The tempest is the teacup
I arrived in Baguio yesterday. The air is certainly cooler than it is in Manila, although daytime can make you sweat now. Went to have a brief dinner with two friends, with whom I also spent today, while sporadically working at scribie. I talked to them about my plans to leave, and I cannot help but feel that the more I talk about it, meaning the less I keep it inside me, the more real it is becoming, gaining shape in a real world that I no longer have a care for. I feel that I will confront the implications and reasoning behind that soon enough.
After dinner last night, I went home, and watched Zetsuen no Tempest until 6:30 AM.
It was an interesting enough anime, apparently, interweaving alien powers (that weren't so obvious in that no aliens appeared), magic (that was very obvious, since there were mages of different powers - some speculated, some very actual), mythology (Nordic, Catholic, Eastern), literature (with very explicit references to The Tempest, Hamlet, and Othello - although I learned that from the anime; my Shakespeare continues to be nonexistent), and philosophy (the whole thing might be argued as a study in morals, metaphysics, ontology, and the tragicomic character of life, logic, choice, and fate). Particularly striking were the lines, "There are no convenient miracles, and there is a logic that should be inviolable," and something like "The irony of it is that reason cannot be logical."
The two protagonists were crafted very well, with differences subtle enough to be catastrophic. It was an intricate piece, no less because it was heavily Shakespearean. Even their relationship is Hamletesque - a brother and a lover fighting over each other and each other's grief over the sister / lover's death. Their minds, however, work very differently; one is bent on revenge (saving the world is collateral result), and the other knowing that grieving will bring no dead to life, while having secreted this relationship from the brother, who is his also best friend (as a result of fortuitous circumstances). There is of course resolution and a kind of identity at the end, where both of these characters realize that on some level they are the same, and the only reason they have gotten this far is that unbeknownst and according to each other, having each other is the reason, while simultaneously realizing that there is something bigger that they share, along with the rest of time: if, doubly paradoxically, a frozen time does not end, then nothing can begin. If the frozen time of a broken heart does not end (i.e., if it cannot see anything bigger than itself), then it will stay broken. I did say that it is philosophical.
Again, it's a very tightly woven piece, ultimately questioning the value of a tyrannical utopia which might be understood as perfect fate (though its design is alien, where science is magic) over its antithesis (change, or what amounts to the same thing, freedom and choice). At this point in the increasing complexity of the entire thing, it makes sense that these two antithetical things are represented as trees, aptly named the Trees of Genesis and Exodus (which have their own mages), which, again, at this point makes sense, were made to supposedly resemble the Oroboros and dragons and whatnot from mythology. If anything, this level of interdisciplinary references speak of a mind fascinated with the classical Western mind, and deftly surpasses Code Geass in that respect. It somewhat reminds me of Good Omens, but only somewhat, in terms of the author's almost unflinching gaze at what ineffability means within reason and logic using a mortal mind that cannot move out of its own temporal, human, and ultimately, fluid, prison.
For that reason alone I cannot regret the possible wreck my mind is in right now, having had four hours of sleep after almost 24 hours of being awake, 10 of those hours hungover, and two of those 10 teaching while the rest was spent on getting and being here. This is why I cannot yet stare at the reason why I feel like the more I talk about leaving the more real and the less real it becomes. If anything, my mind is still inundated with the anime, which has the cliché, "Everything happens for a reason." In the anime, everything that happens to some of its characters are due to having a script written for them (like the mage of Exodus, whose nature is to be what it is, and whose fate is determined into a closed loop by the time-travelling mage of Genesis). I cannot accept this line, I will not accept the reasoning that everything happens for a reason, for I am human. I will not have the abyss stare back at me this way; I refuse to grant the name fate for this ineffability. Not because I am afraid of (or / and therefore that there is) destiny in the trivial sense (although I am that, certainly), but because I cannot also help but feel that leaving as it appears in my head will just be in my head. Being awake for this long is the anteroom to hysteria, I now know, and in this anteroom my god complex and apathy, which are the only things that sustain me, do not work very well. I am, after all, starting to give substance to the fact that I only watched this anime because I saw a .gif of one of its climaxes in 9gag, and that, made it bad taste. And so to counter this I am making this piece longer than is justifiable, by also giving substance to the ways by which we begin time, by letting time be time - but is that not also part of ineffability? When you change what you think is your fate by exercising what you think is your choice, when you burn the script - or no, more correctly, if you deny that a script altogether exists - is that not part of a script written more largely?
But the more important point in that question, I feel, is that the "more largely" only makes sense when you have already believed in the script anyway, and therefore not prone to discredit it, no matter how you try. It is black or white, in what appears to be the final accounting: either you believe in fate all the way, or you do not, all the way.
I have been teaching the problem of objective, mind-independent reality for nearly a month to my students now, and now this. In this increasingly oscillating hysteria I will leave the thought: There are some things that we do not need to know, and then we need to know that we do not need to know them, for us to (have already) moved forward. Genesis and Exodus. The beginning and the journey, which are actually the same, if you understand your humanity that way, and if your metaphysics denies unanchored essences. Or, what is the same thing, the process is the result. Reason cannot be logical: this is what that means.
After dinner last night, I went home, and watched Zetsuen no Tempest until 6:30 AM.
The two protagonists were crafted very well, with differences subtle enough to be catastrophic. It was an intricate piece, no less because it was heavily Shakespearean. Even their relationship is Hamletesque - a brother and a lover fighting over each other and each other's grief over the sister / lover's death. Their minds, however, work very differently; one is bent on revenge (saving the world is collateral result), and the other knowing that grieving will bring no dead to life, while having secreted this relationship from the brother, who is his also best friend (as a result of fortuitous circumstances). There is of course resolution and a kind of identity at the end, where both of these characters realize that on some level they are the same, and the only reason they have gotten this far is that unbeknownst and according to each other, having each other is the reason, while simultaneously realizing that there is something bigger that they share, along with the rest of time: if, doubly paradoxically, a frozen time does not end, then nothing can begin. If the frozen time of a broken heart does not end (i.e., if it cannot see anything bigger than itself), then it will stay broken. I did say that it is philosophical.
Again, it's a very tightly woven piece, ultimately questioning the value of a tyrannical utopia which might be understood as perfect fate (though its design is alien, where science is magic) over its antithesis (change, or what amounts to the same thing, freedom and choice). At this point in the increasing complexity of the entire thing, it makes sense that these two antithetical things are represented as trees, aptly named the Trees of Genesis and Exodus (which have their own mages), which, again, at this point makes sense, were made to supposedly resemble the Oroboros and dragons and whatnot from mythology. If anything, this level of interdisciplinary references speak of a mind fascinated with the classical Western mind, and deftly surpasses Code Geass in that respect. It somewhat reminds me of Good Omens, but only somewhat, in terms of the author's almost unflinching gaze at what ineffability means within reason and logic using a mortal mind that cannot move out of its own temporal, human, and ultimately, fluid, prison.
For that reason alone I cannot regret the possible wreck my mind is in right now, having had four hours of sleep after almost 24 hours of being awake, 10 of those hours hungover, and two of those 10 teaching while the rest was spent on getting and being here. This is why I cannot yet stare at the reason why I feel like the more I talk about leaving the more real and the less real it becomes. If anything, my mind is still inundated with the anime, which has the cliché, "Everything happens for a reason." In the anime, everything that happens to some of its characters are due to having a script written for them (like the mage of Exodus, whose nature is to be what it is, and whose fate is determined into a closed loop by the time-travelling mage of Genesis). I cannot accept this line, I will not accept the reasoning that everything happens for a reason, for I am human. I will not have the abyss stare back at me this way; I refuse to grant the name fate for this ineffability. Not because I am afraid of (or / and therefore that there is) destiny in the trivial sense (although I am that, certainly), but because I cannot also help but feel that leaving as it appears in my head will just be in my head. Being awake for this long is the anteroom to hysteria, I now know, and in this anteroom my god complex and apathy, which are the only things that sustain me, do not work very well. I am, after all, starting to give substance to the fact that I only watched this anime because I saw a .gif of one of its climaxes in 9gag, and that, made it bad taste. And so to counter this I am making this piece longer than is justifiable, by also giving substance to the ways by which we begin time, by letting time be time - but is that not also part of ineffability? When you change what you think is your fate by exercising what you think is your choice, when you burn the script - or no, more correctly, if you deny that a script altogether exists - is that not part of a script written more largely?
But the more important point in that question, I feel, is that the "more largely" only makes sense when you have already believed in the script anyway, and therefore not prone to discredit it, no matter how you try. It is black or white, in what appears to be the final accounting: either you believe in fate all the way, or you do not, all the way.
I have been teaching the problem of objective, mind-independent reality for nearly a month to my students now, and now this. In this increasingly oscillating hysteria I will leave the thought: There are some things that we do not need to know, and then we need to know that we do not need to know them, for us to (have already) moved forward. Genesis and Exodus. The beginning and the journey, which are actually the same, if you understand your humanity that way, and if your metaphysics denies unanchored essences. Or, what is the same thing, the process is the result. Reason cannot be logical: this is what that means.
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