Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Desolate; scattered

Nothing ever goes as planned. Ever. I got myself to Wonju to visit two papermills, but the schedule and outcomes of course were not at all what I had expected. Another day trip from early morning to evening, about 1.5 hours each way on the bus. I LOVE SLEEPING ON BUSES. When I met Bum last week and mentioned the whole traveling and coming home being like crack revelation, he said that there's just something comforting about being in transit b/c you can't do anything else, so you're finally free to do nothing. His premise was that it wasn't so much traveling that I liked, but being trapped on a moving vehicle that I am not driving. I sleep much better on buses than trains, b/c I can still do work on trains (I can't read or do handwork on buses).

I had about two hours to kill in the middle of the day and since there was nothing to see in the town-y part of town, I wandered around the more industrial part. More like the abandoned part. There was one area that was just all ROAD. As if people's bodies never traversed the area on foot, only in vehicles. Not even a road that leads to a parking lot, but a parking lot-sized section of random road. It made no sense to me at all. Probably b/c I was on foot.

I got all sad thinking about how disparate people's lives and environs are. I guess also b/c I am so attracted to attractive things and places, so it's hard for me to imagine living in a place that doesn't have at least a smattering of beautiful things.

I reek of smoke from wood fires and mulberry bark cooking in soda ash. I feel totally lost in my research objectives. I need to reassess this messy bag of half-formed thoughts and over-thought ideas and what-the-hell-am-I-doing concerns. Something is going to give soon. If I am brave enough to do things like knock down things I've held onto for a long time, and stick with the things I want to run away from.

The aspects of things that are most important for us are hidden because of their simplicity and familiarity. (One is unable to notice something - because it is always before one's eyes.) The real foundations of his enquiry do not strike a man at all. Unless that fact has at some time struck him. - And this means: we fail to be struck by what, once seen, is most striking and most powerful.

--Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations

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