inthemidstofthesea

i thought i might give you all a little more information concerning the title of my blog. it is a quote from walt whitman's leaves of grass. this is a remnant of my high school days and tim mcGee (my high school ap english teacher and one of my more influential teachers and friends). here is the quote:

"Long have you timidly waded, holding a plank by the shore,

Now I will you to be a bold swimmer,

To jump off in the midst of the sea, and rise again and nod to me

and shout, and laughingly dash with your hair."

Song of Myself pg 81 in the 1855 edition

perhaps i am still timidly wading, but i tried to jump when i boarded the plane to istanbul. i no longer wanted to take or experience things as a secondhander, but jump and float freely. it is hard to float, even here i find myself swimming back towards the shore. it is a struggle back and forth.

living for yourself

"For in the temple of his spirit, each man is alone. Let each man keep his temple untouched and undefiled. Then let him join hands with others if he wishes, but only beyond his holy threshold."

For The New Intellectual (65)

for too long now i have been dependent on others. if i have learned one thing in the last four years and two relationships it is that in the end we are alone. yes these things happen. i am dealing with that and i won't hesitate to jump back in if i see fit. but, nothing and no one is certain. in the end we are truly alone. this is why we should know ourselves intimately. we should no longer muddle our way through life and relationships unsure or ourselves. it is a dangerous mistake. defining ourselves through others. living through, and off of, others.

the return of the mind

the rand quote above probably deserves a bit of explaining. as i see it, this is my a sort of mission statement for my time here in istanbul. as most of you know my life for the past two years has been stormy to say the least, perhaps even tortuous at times. it was a bit of self-imposed suffering, playing the martyr. i finally realized i couldn't continue in that way. but rather than deal with it there, in that place, i chose to run. i removed myself from the various sources of my unhappiness to repair and reconstruct myself. i feel as though i have been more or less blindly stumbling my way through the last two years. living in an unconscious fog. no longer. i chose to move here in order to attempt to lift myself from the darkness. it is time for me to live for myself. analyze, evaluate, and change. i want to live deliberately rather than wander aimlessly. i wanted to put myself under the microscope of scrutiny and seriously think about myself, my life, how i think, and how i live. so here i am and there you are...