Reflection on Friendship

I have probably talked about this before, but I have been thinking for a very long time about the issue of friendship. What is the nature of a friendship? What is the point when one stops being mere acquaintances and become friends? And what is the point when two people stop being friends become either acquaintances again, or, if romantically involved, become lovers? It is interesting to note that becoming a friend does not require a formal declaration, while when we demote or promote friendship, a declaration is required. Well, at least I think it is required.

What are friends supposed to be like to each other? I know the most generic answers: be nice, encouraging, supportive, caring, honest, understanding, trusting, etc. All these qualities are very good. But one can be like this to just about anyone. (In fact, one should be like this to anyone!) What I don't understand is, what is the nature of the bond between two supposedly friends?

Do friends need to be able to read each other's mind? Frankly, I am horrible at this. I really don't know what is going on, even if sometimes things are spell out for me. Maybe I'm just a narcissist. Some people are especially sensitive to others, knowing not only the meaning of every word and action, but also the silences and the implications. Is that what friends should be able to do?

Do friends share everything with each other? What things are to be kept silenced? Every detail of one's life? One's love life? One's academic life? One's social life? Friends talk about the "deeper" things - one's aspirations, goals, values - yet, again, I tend to share that with many people anyway.

I have a feeling that all these actions are not good indications of the status of a friendship. Often all these things are masks that form part of our identity. It doesn't seem to express any deeper sentiments. The question is, what can?

Perhaps the simple answer is: the way your friend smiles. If I don't ever understand anyone's personality, my hope is that at least I understand his/her smile.

Epistle III: Charlotte to Werther

Peace! Werther, no more raging words at last:
Your silence compliments the graveyard frost;
Your spirit, freed from Time's profane cocoon,
Timelessly flutters through the perfumed dune.
But Memory shall never let you rest
As I read and arranged your words depressed -
You live again! Your words arouse my heart!
Yet more than live! They split my world apart:
My fountained tears press through your pensive leaves,
Reluctantly your words perform as thieves
To rip me from appearances aligned
And flung me to the tempest of your mind...
Perchance if words may bring the dead alive,
Then let me write, and your presence revive.

These pages here I hold within my grip,
Some felt my anger, some, my upper lip;
All prone to fire and ought to be destroyed,
But Werther! How they filled my aching void!
If you desired to hold me in your breast,
Then now your being I in full possess.
Your letters bring your essence to my mind,
And let me to your smiles and sighs be blind.
O! time and space unfold, progress and funnel
Through your viewpoint - like beams of light that travel
Across an optic glass, dispersing rays
Of rainbow to the unaffected gaze -
Revealing all of your complexities:
The origin of your heavy imageries,
The colours of your bold philosophies.
All these and more your words have clearly caught;
Your letters form a Werther in my thought.
Yet not a ghostly Werther for the eyes
But one who speaks on without my replies -
A stream of consciousness errupting from
A fountain of emotions, bottled dumb
By policies, politics and politeness,
Then exploded onto the pages' whiteness.
My eyes on you, unaffected before,
Now see beyond your flesh, into your core;
My soul with you, though ink and paper bounded,
Now by the bubbling stream of passion drowned.

Drowned! Werther, no more raging words at last!
Nature has formed and consumed you too fast:
Just as Narcissus came to his fatal pool,
Noticed himself a most delightful jewel
And could not take the image off his sight
Until he kisses the imaginary knight
And dies in love, so Werther, you likewise
Have, in narcistic love, your own demise.
You wrote in language; language wrote in turn
A double for which you unconsicously yearned.
In words you anchor your entire life,
'Tis with reality you fight your strife.
Your pitying words become your pitiful world,
Reality, by words and letters, hurled
Out of your mind; imagination took
A pen and painted the trees and the brook,
The flowers and the mountain, clouds and sky -
Unlimited is your poetic supply!
But no one lives in a world of his own,
Most selfishly - in the imagination alone.
Arachne, full of godless arrogance,
Wove out a text in self-important trance -
A text unfit for mortal minds to know,
(The deeds of gods, desires of men below),
And to a spider fittingly transformed,
Condemned to weave forever, thus deformed.
My Werther, now in letters you must live,
Your voice may cry; my soul will not forgive.

O you declared your death, a proud decree!
You lived a life admired, noble and free!
How easily you may take away your life
And leave because you cannot find a wife!
Not everyone may live a life of words,
Not everyone may fly to Heav'n like birds:
Mothers have sons and daughters to be fed,
Peasants have families starving for their bread.
Responsiblities can't be erased,
Nor mother's love can simply be replaced.
That Werther may to Hades bravely dive,
But Charlotte has mourn her friend alive.

Oh Werther! no more of my raging words!
Your tragic choice has tore my heart to thirds!
Your heavy spirits shall rest in heav'nly peace,
But let your love in epistles release.

On the Concept of Home: Part III - How do we come to know what "home" is?

We have discussed the concept of "home" in the previous part, but it remains for us to find out how is it that we come to know what "home" is. That is to say, how do we know we are at home? If "home" is an imaginary space in which we create in our mind in order to satisfy our own needs to feel protected and belonged, how we come to know "home" seems to become some kind of circular argument: Home is where I feel belonged; I feel belonged because I'm at home. "Home" becomes a concept that is known only through intuition, and no discussion of "home" is necessary.

Perhaps we can tackle this circularity this way. Let us pose a sub-question for this inquiry: what is belonging? We belong to all kinds of different things: physical body, physical space, institutions, social, political and cultural networks, etc. All these things are of different categories, that is to say, some are physical areas, many are meta-physical constructions. But when we say we belong to any or all of these things, there is one thing that is common between all of them: by "belonging" we mean we are subjects of that thing - by being subjected one becomes a subject. We belong in so far as we can work within a system of signifiers (or symbols) and make use of those signifiers. These signifiers can be anything - from a word to an object to a rule. And being subjected allows you the freedom of subjectivity, to work within a given framework, with bounded freedom (if this oxymoron holds). For example, we are subjected to our own home as a physical space because it marks our functions: we cook in the kitchen, eat in dining room, sleep in the bedroom. But at the same time we are given the freedom to do otherwise: eat in our bedroom, sleep in the kitchen. In a strange place (your classmate's house, for example) you are not subjected to the same rules of your classmates' house: you are subjected to social convention of guesthood. In turn, of course, you are allowed to move within that greater, conventional framework (e.g. "make yourself at home"). Or another example: one is at home or belongs to a certain culture by having the ability to function within certain traditional framework, e.g. gender roles. Being in a certain gender role is, again, like a kind of bounded freedom: one is subjected to gender scripts, but one is also at the same time a subject (not an object) of that gender script, meaning having the ability to perhaps mis-act it or change it. This fluidity between the content and the boundary, the idea of "subjecthood" as both subjected and subjecting at the same time, I think, is the meaning of belonging.

Perhaps the simplest answer to our question in this part - How do we come to know what "home" is? - is that, we know when we feel we are subjected to certain signifiers, and by "subjected" I mean having the ability to both understand the sign-ificance (but not meaning; I will get to this) of the signifers and manipulate for sign-ification within the system. It is no wonder that "home" feels like an intuitive thing: none of us ever consciously function within a system of signifiers. We never, for example, stop and think about the very words, tools and living spaces we are using. We never pause in the middle of dinner and ask "why is this place the living room, not the dining room?" When we become self-reflexive, that is when the imaginariness of home comes to surface.

The reason that subjectivity is built on a system of signifiers, not signs, is because signs (if we follow Sausurrean linguistics) have both signifiers (the word) and signifieds (the meaning). But post-structuralists have clearly showed us that, if we accept the proposition that reality is ultimately textual, then there is no such thing as signifieds. All signifiers, when they are defined, are traces of other signifiers and never signified. More over, meanings are always marked off in relations to other signifiers. It has nothing to do with the intrinsic meaning of the signifier. And I think more importantly, the other thing about homeness as subjectivity within a system of signifiers is that the signifieds will never be reached. This is parallel to the fact that "home" is meant to be imaginary. It is something that can never be completely captured by a system of signifiers. It remains fragile and breaks once a system of broken down and shown its arbitrariness.

On the Concept of Home: Part II - What is Home?

Before we can talk about why we must live in our homes, we must know what kind of "home" we are talking about. Hence it is only fitting to post "what is home?" as the first of our pre-questions. This question may seem simple at first - we all know what a "home" is. On the other hand, as I have suggested in the introduction, "home" is actually quite an vague and abstract concept, requiring some careful thought in order to come to the fullest understanding possible. And certainly we should not aim at the a complete understanding, if such completeness even exists. It would be as impossible as trying to capture the definition of "love" or "knowledge" in its entirity.

The method to find out the manifolds of the concept of "home" is to examine the everyday usage of that word. I choose this method rather than just go straight into a dictionary definition because the nature of language is in its very usage. Language, like everything else in the world, is fluid; words come to mean something in a certain context, and acquiring other meanings in other contexts. The only way to understand "home" to the fullest possible extent is to examine it in different contexts. Here are some possible sentences using the word "home":

1. "This body is not my home."
2. "Look at those homeless people sleep in the streets."
3. "Finally, after 13 hours of flight, we are back home."
4. "I'm going back home for Christmas to see my relatives, then I'll come back for school."
5. "The way these people act is so much different than those back home."
6. "Make yourself at home!"

Of course, the number of possible utterances are infinite. But for our purpose the six listed above will do.

The first sentence ("This body is not my home.") is not as common as the other ones, partly because it is something most of us take for granted. This sentence, one can imagine, might be uttered by someone who is trans-sexual, someone whose mentality is sexually different from his/her biological sex. The mind and the body functions differently and not in sync. In one episode of Oprah, Oprah interviews a trans-sexual, who tells Oprah that the experience of being trapped inside the body of another sex is like Oprah as a woman having a penis instead of a vagina. Given such an experience, it is very difficult to feel at home because one's very physical being is at odds with one's mentality. One is a stranger to oneself everywhere one goes.
The first sentence also refers to a more general problem of gender. Society comes with gender scripts for each sex: males should be masculine, females should be feminine. When our bodies become in conflict with the gender scripts, again we do not feel at home. Now instead of being a stranger to oneself, one is a stranger amongst everyone else. Your body is given a gender script, but your mind wants to do the opposite. Again there is a kind of mental-physical disagreement, and in this sense, you do not feel at home - you no longer belong to your body; your body no longer belongs to you.

The second sentence ("Look at those homeless people sleep in the streets.") is a common observation, and it is indicative of what we generally associate the concept of "home" with: a dwelling place. The term "dwelling" is very powerful because it does not just mean a place for you to sleep. "Dwelling" means protection, comfort, belonging and privacy at the same time. When we are done with work or school, we come back home, where we can be protected from the winds and the rowdy kids, comforted by familiar surroundings and unbounded from the gazes of others. The four walls of the house is the symbol of that dwelling: behind the walls you are free to do as you like, and you are comfortably free. This is what we mean by "homeless": not that there is no place to sleep, but a "home" is more than a place for sleeping.

The third sentence ("Finally, after 13 hours of flight, we are back home.") refers yet another concept of home. This "home" is also a boundary, but a political boundary. Nationality is also a kind of home: we are more familiar with the traditions, laws and culture of our nation. The nation is a bigger family, living in a bigger dwelling. The interesting thing about this is that national boundaries are entirely arbitrary and out of our own control: one day Quebec is part of Canada; the next day, not. And it is very different from your own house, where you are at will to make the changes you want to make - move a bookcase here, a garbage can there. In a nation (or even at a larger community), we cannot just add a library here and a dump there. The really key difference between "home" as dwelling and "home" as nation (or community) is the mode of participation. "Home" as nation requires involvement to a common cause. "Home" is actually a network of people within a given political boundary, and the political boundary is the symbol of that network.

The four sentence ("I'm going back home for Christmas to see my relatives, then I'll come back for school.") presents the idea of "home" in yet another way. "Home" is no longer a physical space, but a desinated area where something else (namely, family) is. It is interesting to see that the idea of "home" can be applied to something that is not stable, in the sense of a certain space. Family members can live anywhere, yet some kind of home-ness remains in that fluidity. But at the very root the essential meaning of "home" does not change: family is where one belongs; it is where one is protected, where one feels comfortable, and where one does not have to be self-conscious all the time.

The fifth sentence ("The way these people act is so much different than those back home.") is even more abstract than the fourth case. The sentence implies that a certain social culture makes one feel at home. It is not a physical space, nor is it even a desinated area of any sort. "Home" in this sense is simply familiarity (and where, we get back to the root word "family"): one does a certain thing and is not considered as a stranger by the gazes of the surrounding people. Belonging to the same culture gives an imaginary protection, comfort and satisfaction. The physical boundaries of a dwelling place is completely erased.

This erasure of physical boundaries when we talk about home leads us to the last sentence. The last sentence ("Make yourself at home!") is perhaps the most profound of all expressions. It is commonly used but uncommonly discussed. This expression is profound because the only possible way to make onself at home is only if "home" is completely imaginary. One builds an idea of home inside one's mind, and apply it on different scales in different times and location. "Make yourself at home" is the extreme case; at the same time it is the most common case: it is instinctively what we do when come to a new environment, a "non-home" environment. We try to make it home in any possible way, whether it is a physical, mental, social or cultural level. Remember your first day in elementary school, or highschool; what you do when you go to your friend's home; what you do when you first went on a social function. I would imagine you try your very best to establish a space of your own, which, at the same time, blends right into the larger social space.

And I think ultimately, considering all of these usages of "home", "home" is an imaginary space which allows us to feel belonged. Who are we kidding when we think that our bodies, our houses, our countries and our families actually give us 100% protection, comfort and privacy? Every one of these entities are so fragile, that it is all too easy for them to fall apart - accidents, evil schemes, social disagreements, political turmoil or just plain personality-disorder will tear these imaginary spaces apart. But we constantly "make ourselves at home" because homes offers a refuge for us. We feel that there is something we can hold on to. I can "go home" after a long day at work. You can "go home" after you've travelled in a strange place. We can "go home" after for a while stepping outside of our normal course of action. So what is "home"? Plainly, it is an imaginary construct which allows us to feel belonged. The "other" is outside.

On the Concept of Home: Part I - Introduction

My friends, do not be alarmed by my lack of updates. I have intentionally avoided writing because the Haiku project was not effective and I was trying to do something different, something that will spark again my criticial faculty as well as help me with my many writing projects at school. Hence here is the solution: I will be presenting another series. This time, the series will be directly related to my presentation for the MURC in the upcoming March. I would like to discuss the concept of "home". My haikus have hinted at this concern, but now I am going to make explicit address to it.

The main inquiry here is this: "Why must we live in our homes?" I posit this question because the idea of "home" is both intimately vague and vaguely intimate. What augments the importance of this question is the fact that we all consciously or unconsciously take "home" for granted, that is to say, it is the starting point in which we approach the structure of our everyday lives. "Home" anchors our sense of space: in a typical day, we begin at home, then we go to work, and finally we come back home. "Home" is the anchor to our daily activities. "Home" also anchors our sense of time: we move away from place A (which was your home) to a new place B, and over time that place B may or may not become home. But the reference to the history of place A anchors our sense of time, grounding the fact that now (after a passage of a certain time) B is home instead of A. "Home" is also the ground of our ethics: it is a place where you know what to do and what not to do. And this is most clear when we go to an entirely different culture - a culture that is not home-like - and we feel at lost when people do things that are different, perhaps even offensive. "Home" grounds our entire being, in space and time, in physics and metaphysics. But there is something strange about this grounding: why must we live grounded lives? Why must we live in our homes? Can't we live unattached to home, like the migrating bird moving seasonally and spending half of its life in the air traveling? I think human behaviours would suggest that we cannot live like migrated birds because even travelling hockey players have homes, even people who does not have a physical house and is actually travelling in an impromptu style will tell you that location X is home. That is why the main question is not "must we live in homes?", but "why must we live in homes?"

If Camus believes that suicide is the most important of all philosophical question, then I believe that the exact opposite - the question of home - is the most important of all philosophical inquiries. But before we launch ourselves in this intellectual wandering - after all, we too are starting from the home of our mind towards a new home - there are several pre-questions which need to be addressed. They are the inquiries of the various assumptions of the question of "home". As an introduction, I will list these questions out.

1. What is home?
2. How do we come to know what "home" is?
3. How does "home" come to know who we are?
4. Upon understanding the many layers of "home", how does it influence our everyday lives?
5. Must we live in our homes?

After we figure out the answers to these pre-questions, we can then legitimately deal with our main question. And after dealing with the main question, our inquiry still beg us to ask one more question: how do we build a home?

As of now, I have very brief ideas to the answer of these questions. However, whatever the answers may be, I am confident that these are the right questions to ask; philosophical discussions, as a general rule, require the right questions, not the right answers. I hope this wandering will bring us back home, but with a firmer understanding of our journey and of our dwelling place.

Haiku #40

I have stopped loving:
How can there be love if Time
Viciously flows on?

Haiku #39

No fascination
Is more obsessive than that
Which is a virgin.

Haiku #38

Would you date yourself?
I would date my opposite
But marry myself.

Haiku #37

If there is no light,
No ball of crystal will shine -
Heavy it dangles.

Haiku #36

There is happiness
Without joy - a kind of pill
That numbs a clear head.

Epistle II: Concerning the Nature of Women in Society, as Portrayed in Ms Burney’s Novel, Evelina

Nothing so true as what you once let fall,
“Most women have no characters at all.” – Alexander Pope, Epistle 2. To a Lady

Unhappy woman’s but a slave at large. – Mary Leapor, An Essay on Woman

Exchange! My Muse, I call thee to a trade,
A trade to me well done, to thee, well paid,
That thou mayst help me sing a serious song
About all other muses, strong or wrong.

Of all the ladies’ ridiculous acts,
Poets have sung and recorded the facts:
That she may speak as long as the streams run
Of matters trivial like the sunny sun;
Or she may talk as loud as the winds roar,
Attracting gazes like a concert snore;
Or one may dare in darkness take a walk,
The other swears the rape of her fake lock;
Or all of them in painful envy glare
At one, who was affecting unaware.
These acts (the male) poet has sung and sung
While cutting off the female poet’s tongue.
But many gentlemen have no more worth
Than social ladies’ nonsensical mirth.
Indolent bastards squander excess wealth
To bet on agèd women’s strength and health;
Imbecile captains “prank” on ladies old,
Tying them up, leaving them in the cold.
Vain knights observe theatrical displays –
The ladies, not the operas or the plays.
And men with gallantry to girls assure,
Except the ugly, manly, married or the poor.

Both men and women, famed for worldly games,
Why solely joke with gentle-ladies’ names?
Successful men require a symbol bright
To show their eminence and social height,
And idle women in the upper class
Are perfect choice, choose from the common mass.
A lady should be like a fragile vase,
Put on display in public, open space,
Negotiating status, wealth and name
For her own reputation, beauty, fame.
The reputation, beauty, fame of women
Are categories judged by jury-men:
As vases must be curved to perfect shapes,
With artful painting mask their shameful scrapes
And give the aura of light elegance
(An object still, yet lively like a dance),
So ladies too must please their future buyers,
With blinking eyes and glittering attires.
And fragile vases they are; none can doubt
The risk of unconforming to the route
Society has offered – one may try
To leave the trade and for yourself supply,
But hateful words shall hide in mocking phrases:
A shattered vase swept off the sphere of gazes.
If few have read about the Golden Mean,
And many dreamt to be a mansion’s queen,
Then if the girl o’eract to please their sires,
Can they be faulted for their vain desires?
If talking long may catch a hungry ear,
If talking much may thrill a man that’s near,
If talking silly may draw sympathy,
If talking rude may kill an enemy,
Then why not talk, to lure a man’s fancy?
While men have time, may choose to play the game,
Women must live, must bargain for her name.

Great Pope and Swift! How badly you’ve mistaken
The problem: ladies never have forsaken
Their virtues – they cannot be disinterested
If they desire to survive unmolested.
If suddenly a lady lost her name
By accident, it is futile to blame:
This virtuous vase may have no cracks to hide,
In losing its maker, its value’s tried
And none would purchase such a debasing prize
Unless the men a forcèd tie devise.
Hence marriage! is the solution to all:
A vase now safely hanging on a wall
In a delightful cupboard down the hall.

Haiku #35

Upon listening to the soundtrack of the new Pride and Prejudice movie

The fantasy of
Romance must be carrièd
On the wings of song.

Haiku #34

Here's a labourer
Tired from carrying the bricks
Of words round and round.

Haiku #33

Boxes of homes that
Tries to house a self that is
Imaginary.

Haiku #32

We are forever
Pursuing a home from the
Imagination.