Serendipity and Ghosts...

Sometimes I see things that aren’t there.

It's true.  Out of the corner of my eye, I sometimes see shadows large or small – just a shape, a movement, a sense that there’s something there that’s just out of reach of my senses. When I turn to look, I see, of course, nothing. I don’t think I’ve ever told anyone about this – perhaps because all too recently, we watched my husband’s grandmother slip into the clutches of dementia. She saw people the rest of us could not see and quietly rewrote history by some unknown guidelines that none of us knew. We couldn’t truly understand it, and it was frightening.  We ache as we watch and wonder what it is like to lose control of our faculties and be rendered to a point where we cannot tell what is real and what is the product of a damaged mind. And we wonder if, in the end, we’ll even care.

But, my own experiences with things that others cannot see is much different.  It's also been happening more often lately and while I know it could be cause for concern in another context, I honestly don’t think it is in mine.  If pressed, I think most would admit to having experienced something similar at some point, though it may not have registered. I also suspect, from a rational point of view, that because I’m looking for anomalies, I am finding them. Or it’s the heat or a stray hair or countless other things that are less resistant to reason.  I'm sure, also, that because I’m more aware of it, I’m noticing it more. I do not think it is ghosts or spirits or anything supernatural.

Or maybe I do.

Maybe I don’t know what they are and don’t really care. It doesn’t feel like I’m losing my rational mind – I never see something out of the corner of my eye and think it’s a real person. And when I turn to find nothing looking back at me, I don’t look around in a panic, wondering where whomever it was went. I just sort of shrug and move on. Nothing feels amiss in my brain or in my reality. Nothing feels menacing within my mind or without – it’s just the idea that there’s something there, but when I look at it, it leaves my perception.

I’m not sure if this blog is braver than the one about same-sex marriage, but it is certainly up there. There are those of you out there who will nod and smile at this – having experienced similar sightings before and feeling no fear at your grip on reality. There are those who will think I’m crazy – but you already do, so I’m not sure it’s dangerous for me to share. I believe all of this is harmless.

Most of you know that I am not religious in any conventional way – there is no name for what I believe in. Someday I will write about that – but for now, I will say that I believe that no matter how one might categorize it, there are things in this world that we cannot understand. There are things that don’t fit neatly into what we know and accept as real. There are forces in the world that will make you find the exact book you are looking for in a crowded bookstore just by reaching out your hand. Or something that lands a financial opportunity at your feet on the very day you were discussing money with a loved one. Or believing you saw the shape of your grandmother – gone for two years – disappear in a crowd as you leave from a visit with your grandfather in the hospital. Or something that makes you stay up way too late on the one night that a near-stranger desperately needs someone to talk to.

Coincidence. Random occurrence. Tricks of the mind. Perhaps these – but what if they are not? What if those are words and phrases for the forces of the world that we cannot explain? Do we render ourselves too vulnerable if we admit that things happen that cannot be explained through science as we know it? There is an awful lot of ugliness in the world, and it does my spirit good to believe that there is some sort of force out there that, through my own will or another’s, makes things go right sometimes. So, maybe that shadow is just a trick of the light or a tired mind – or maybe it’s something else. Either way, I will see its presence – for just a brief moment – with eyes of wonder and curiosity.

It is these moments that we praise the lucky coincidence, being in the right place at the right time, opportunity knocking, or even saying that fortune favors the blind.

Give me that which I cannot understand...blur my dreams with my reality...let me have my formless shapes...they harm no one and perhaps if we all slowed own and looked to the shadows that dance just out of our line of sight, we would find more beauty and wonder in the world...

“The most beautiful and profound emotion we can experience is the sensation of the mystical” – Albert Einstein

“There are no coincidences... only the illusion of coincidence.” – V in V for Vendetta

An Entertaining Truth...

I don't watch a lot of TV, but lately I've been exploring a variety of shows on Netflix Instant because it's so easy to start it streaming while doing something else. I've had fun with the over-the-top seriousness of Ghost Adventures and the occasional movie of late. My latest discovery, however, is a show that I've had quite a bit of fun with on a number of levels. The Syfy (strange spelling and all) has a show called Destination Truth hosted by a fellow named Josh Gates.

The premise of the show is that Josh and his crew travel to exotic locations to investigate local reports of (for lack of a better word) monster sightings. They have traveled from Africa and Japan to Egypt and the Ukraine, from the Everglades and Nepal to Indonesia and Australia. They gather photographic, audio, video, and other evidence and then bring it to experts to analyze.

Before I get into why I like it, though, I must first point out that it is not 'good' science. They only spend a day and night (or so) in an area, the cameras are generally pointed at their faces, and they have yet to find any conclusive evidence of anything other than 'there might be something there'.

But I love it anyway. I love it because of what they are exploring. The strange creatures come straight out of mythology and are fascinating reflections of local legends in and of themselves: the ninki nanka of The Gambia, the tarasque of Viet Nam, the mapinguary of the Amazon Rainforest, the tokeloshe of Lesotho in South Africa, el lobizon of Argentina, and the list goes on and on. They also explore things whose names are more familiar to us – sea serpents and the yeti, giant octopi and anaconda, ghosts, and the curse of Tutankhamen. Since I love mythology, I love these tales. And I love how he presents them.

The host and crew are very respectful of the cultures and belief systems they visit. They debunk when debunking is warranted, but they also acknowledge that sometimes belief and science can walk hand in hand – as long as you understand the powers of each. Josh has talked about how a creature seems to "live at the nexus of folklore and memory" and he is never judgmental of those he interviews. Unless they are just straight up silly. The fellow who 'transformed' into a werewolf on camera seemed a little dubious even with cultural respect in play. As Gates said, the way the gentleman checked his watch once the transformation was over to indicate he had lost time made his performance seem more fitting for dinner theater than for the strange phenomena books.

The episode on the Naga contains two of my favorite quotes. Together these quotes reflect some of my over-arching beliefs on mythology, science, truth, and spirituality. At one point, as he speaks to people who have more or less transformed their village into a temple dedicated to the naga, he says that "[he] was beginning to realize that the creature experiences in this town were more of the spiritual variety than the physical" (Season 1, Episode 2). And he says this without even the slightest trace of derision or scorn. His words are those of someone who is respecting the belief system of a culture that is completely and utterly removed from his own. As the episode concludes, he shares this:

My search for the naga revealed it to be more of a complex phenomenon than I ever could have imagined.  Steeped in Buddhist history, it seems to be a mythological meeting point between the physical and spiritual worlds.  As for its eye-witness accounts, I believe the Mekong River is sort of like a religious Rorschach test and that in Thailand, hints of that revered serpent  are what the faithful see in those waters....my instincts tell me it's a mystery for a reason.

This may not be good science, but it is good mythology and it acknowledges that there are things we will never understand and things we don't need to understand. I don't even care if they find anything – the investigation portion of the series is far less interesting to me than the interviews, the travel, the commentary, and the background.

So, I love the show for that – for seeking the truth (albeit in a limited made-for-TV way) but realizing that it probably won't be found. And then realizing, accepting, and respecting that it probably doesn't need to be found. For acknowledging that truth is not always painted in shades of literal fact and irrefutable evidence. For knowing that our world, for all its technology and civilization and progress, is a mysterious, dangerous, and wondrous place. And embracing that.

I love the show for all this.

And have I mentioned that Gates is also quite funny?  :)

Course Catalog I...

It's time for me to post something a little less heavy, and since it's going-back-to-school time, I thought it might be fun to share some teacher things.  Don't worry, if you're not a teacher or a student, or are one of those and don't want to be, this isn't heavy-handed with the pedagogy.  I love that word, though it gets used far too often throughout the course of my work...

Without further ado, I present to you a catalog of courses I would someday love to teach...

Gender Roles and MMOs - Some of you know me wholly through online games, and have often heard me talk about the fascinating experiences I've had as a 'bio girl'.  It seems that once someone figures out that I'm really a girl, I become their confidante, learning more than I ever really wanted to know about their relationships, their goals, and their failures.  Or I become instantly incapable of playing the very game in which I've out-leveled them on every character I've played.  Or I become a target for wooing.  Either way, I'm often over-protected, laden with gifts, and something of a curiosity.  Usually.  The strata of 'gamer chicks' is an interesting one and I would love to study, with a group of like-minded students, just who these 'girls' are and what their experiences have been.  I would also love to explore the psychology of gamers and gender.  What makes a male pay a female?  What draws that same male to see the revelation of his 'true' gender to be something akin to a confessional?  What is it about gender that is so (for lack of a better word) heavy in games that are, at some level, about role-playing?  What does this say about gender in society as a whole?

'Blasphemers: Depictions of Religion in Popular Culture' - This one is developed enough to have a name -- though I also like the colon-phrase of 'Irreverent Believers'.  There are a number of popular texts out there that offer a stolid belief in the core of religion but do so with such a fundamental shift in some important aspect of that religion so as to become the target of picketers and angry believers.  These are some of the texts I would consider including in such a course.

• Dogma directed by Kevin Smith - "He still digs humanity, but it bothers Him to see the s**t that gets carried out in His name - wars, bigotry, televangelism. But especially the factioning of all the religions. He said humanity took a good idea and, like always, built a belief structure on it."
• The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown - "Nothing in Christianity is original"
  
• Eddie Izzard - "“I think on the seventh day, God was running around, going, 'Oh, my God! What haven’t I…? Rwanda! I better create Rwanda!'
• Lamb:  The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal by Christopher Moore - ""It's very difficult to stay angry when a room full of bald guys in orange robes start giggling. Buddhism."
• American Gods by Neil Gaiman - "Religions are, by definition, metaphors, after all: God is a dream, a hope, a woman, an ironist, a father, a city, a house of many rooms, a watchmaker who left his prize chronometer in the desert, someone who loves you - even, perhaps, against all evidence, a celestial being whose only interest is to make sure your football team, army, business, or marriage thrives, prospers and triumphs overall opposition."
• Monty Python's Life of Brian - "I was hopping along, minding my own business, all of a sudden, up he comes, cures me! One minute I'm a leper with a trade, next minute my livelihood's gone. Not so much as a by-your-leave! 'You're cured, mate.' Bloody do-gooder."
• Monty Python and The Holy Grail - Where god himself says "Every time I try to talk to someone it's 'sorry this' and 'forgive me that' and 'I'm not worthy'..."
• "God Angrily Clarifies 'Don't Kill' Rule" - Published in The Onion right after 9/11- "'To be honest, there's some contradictory stuff in there, okay?' God said. 'So I can see how it could be pretty misleading. I admit it—My bad.'"
• South Park and the Muhammad debacle

Can you imagine the conversation in such a course?  Tricksters alive and well -- dancing in the realm of fiction but still causing waves.

The Medicine of Laughter:  Humor as a Tool of Healing -- This would be an honors course that explored the power of humor as a tool for coping and healing.  The role of the Trickster as a tension-breaker who gets us to laugh and think at the same time, who makes darkness more palatable, and gives us the momentum to move on in the face of tragedy.  It's also used as a coping mechanism by those faced with tragedy, addiction, and darkness all time - gallows humor, dark humor, morgue humor.  The horrible things said that aren't meant that just help us get through the everyday trials and tribulations of a difficult life.  I've talked about this with my friend Mary -- a co-taught course.  Humanities/English/Mythology and Chemical Dependency Counseling.  I love it.

Zombie Lit - Oh, wait...

"A Horrible End":  The Search for Meaning in the 21st Century - There has been, lately, a rash of long running (or sometimes not) television shows with endings that have frustrated many the viewers of said shows (though not all, of course). Shows like The Sopranos, Seinfeld, The X-Files, Battlestar Galactica, Firefly, and Lost have ended in ways that have raised questions, ire, and dissatisfaction for many.  Others have simply not even tried to end -- such as Millennium and Brimstone.  I haven't gone far with this one, but I've had a number of conversations with friends where I posited the idea that these shows were trying (consciously or not) to give us a unifying mythology and, as such, they could not easily be neatly ended to the satisfaction of the wide range of people who faithfully followed them.  We live in a time when many are seeking meaning -- a time when some of the old systems aren't working anymore.  Joseph Campbell summed up what I think these shows are trying to do.  Or what I think their followers wanted them to do:  "And what [the new myth] will have to deal with will be exactly what all myths have dealt with - the maturation of the individual, from dependency through adulthood, through maturity, and then to the exit; and then how to relate to this society and how to relate this society to the world of nature and the cosmos. That's what the myths have all talked about, and what this one's got to talk about. But the society that it's got to talk about is the society of the planet. And until that gets going, you don't have anything."  And so, the stories keep trying and the followers keep waiting...


Women Who Kill - Murder and the Role of Women - This one has just popped into my head.  It would be an exploration of the history of women who kill and how society placed them in a predicament wherein they felt there was no other option.  Infanticide, patricide, mariticide.  We would look at famous cases and not so famous, and look at some fiction as well like the play "Trifles" by Susan Glaspell and "A Rose for Emily" by William Faulkner.  I'd also use the book Women Who Kill:  A Vivid History of America's female murderers from Colonial Times to the Present" and explore the archetypal figure of the Mother and her negative image.  We would talk about Kali, Demeter, Medea, and others.

Courses change often and registration starts early, so please contact your adviser soon...

-T