fires, college applications...hell...maybe this incomprehensible article can take everyone's mind off of things.

How am I not myself?

Read my lips: to thine own self be untrue. You can’t read my lips because you are merely reading a text that is independent of me. Also, there is no me. No one wrote what you are reading. If you’ve believed everything that I’ve written so far, then you are swimming in the correct lane. SPLASH! You will now need a lot of faith in absurdities to believe what is contained in the next sentence. There is not just one you; there are also many yous.

Take a trip…to your mind’s eye. Here you can imagine anything; keep that in mind. Imagine each of the classes you take here at Roslyn High School and line up each of the classrooms of these classes in a row (something like booths at a fair). Walk into each of the classrooms and look at each of your selves. Your appearance may not be different in each class, but your eyes usually deceive you. Listen (trust your ears while you still have them) to the quantity and quality of what you are saying. Listen to the quantity and quality of what your teachers and classmates are saying. How do your words, or lack of words, relate to what your teachers and classmates are saying in each class? The way you relate to each classroom situation creates a different self. You form these classroom selves over the year. On a numerical level, each class gives you a different grade representing a different self. On a social level, you’ve created a different talking head for each different class. You may try to make jokes in some classes, make intelligent comments in others, and do absolutely nothing in math.

But, hey, there probably aren’t many selves; there probably is just one self that does many things. You do have one body, and your appearance can be differentiated from other people’s appearances. What was I saying? Of course there is one self because you see only one reflection of yourself in the mirror.

The mirror creates two physical appearances: one real you and one reflected you. The verbally constructed self (in my case the “you,” in your case the “I”) does not have a permanent home as the body does. You are never able to differentiate the real verbal self from the reflected verbal self. Whenever you try to find your real “self,” you will always be looking through a facebook of reflected selves. Your thoughts, written words, spoken words, relations to other people, appearance to other people, movements, gestures and memories are merely representations of a concrete self that doesn’t exist. Your memory attempts to forge a concrete self, but it only can preserve certain memories. Those preserved memories cannot truly be a concrete self because they represent merely a fragment of you. The problem with a concrete self is that you can’t keep track of all of your thoughts, words, and experiences. Instead of saying that you are leaving parts of your “self” everywhere, you are leaving selves everywhere.

Theoretically, there could be a continuous self. Since all selves are constructed, the construction of a unified self is as a valid as the construction of selves.

Do you really think that you are doing the constructing? If there is an I something constructed it. The I didn’t construct itself. The self you proudly own is not yours. It was externally imposed on you. Language and society have given you this self and these selves. The reason that you have different selves in different classes is that your self is determined by your environment. Without society you can’t exist.

“To thine own self be true.” That is impossible. The self isn’t yours.

I'd really prefer snow days.

I'm not sure how much you guys have heard about the fires in Southern California ... things are improving slightly down here, although they're evacuating more people every time I turn on the news. Check this out:

http://edition.cnn.com/2007/US/10/23/wildfire.ca/index.html

Games Without Borders

Last Tuesday, the most notable contemporary Macedonian passed away in a car accident. He was a 26-years old singer, the most popular one in the Balkans. He led a fast life, just like Cobain, Hendrix, Joplin, and Morrison. Unlike them, he did not drink and take drugs; he sang on humanitarian concerts instead. The people of Macedonia and Bosnia and Herzegovina have always been thankful to him for the assistance he provided to them, at times when they desperately needed it. "The Elvis Presley of the Balkans", as he was described by BBC, was the only person who managed to unite the disunited people of former Yugoslavia. His music and humanitarian work proved to be stronger than the bitter memories of ethnic conflicts that have existed in this piece of the world since the bloody 1990s.

Since the tragic accident that happened a few days ago, I have been thinking a lot about life, friendship, and God, or the lack thereof. I have thought of several patches of memory that I would never remember if it were not for the unfortunate event which shook the entire Balkan Peninsula. Even though I have never listened to his albums, I knew many of his songs. He was omnipresent here; you would hear his songs wherever you went. People of all ages loved him and viewed him as the person who united the quarrelsome fractions of the Macedonian people. In the past days, no one here can focus on work and function properly; everyone is burdened by the death of the brightest star on the Balkan sky.

I feel I need to tell you that I care about you. Since no one knows what may happen tomorrow, I would like to say that I am happy I met you and made you my friends. You people have shaped my life, and that is something truly essential.

To all of you who are in the House - good luck with your interviews. I miss the sunset in Ithaca; I used to view it from the front porch, the one where we had fun on July 4. I hope you will have time to enjoy there and reminisce on the unique experience we had last summer.

Way Over Yonder in the Minor Key

I just got back from the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival in San Francisco. It was insane - something like 100,000 people showed up - and for good reason. This festival is in beautiful Golden Gate Park, has an amazing lineup, and is TOTALLY FREE. Anyway, I got really excited because I saw THREE - count 'em, three - "Ithaca is Gorges" shirts. They were all on people who looked to be about college-age, but Cornell is in session and SF, last I checked, is on the other side of the country. Thus, by such infallible reason, I concluded that they were all former TASPers. I thought about yelling "TASP" as loud as I could, to see if they turned around, but decided my assumption was good enough.
That night, I had a dream in which it was the last day of TASP all over again - except the Telluride House was in Central Park. I had a Wonder Years-style inner monologue running in my dream: "Walking past that house, I couldn't help but think how beautiful my time there had been. In the middle of the bustling City, blah blah blah..."