A look outside the window. There are trees on the left, and a three storied apartment mirroring the one we occupy. Transcending both is a vast expansive sky. Not sunny blue, but a cool grayish white.
The journey thus far has been “rhizomatic” indeed considering that my inspirations are coming from Novels and now even Comics! it’s funny because in preparation for our life here, I “created” some characters too for our own “Chronicles of Kristiansand”, and it’s through their adventures running from being bitten by the Rat-King, that we have an imaginary universe to process some of our experiences, and play with some new episodes.
I guess when you are filled with so many words from academic reading, who would’t want to “escape” into another world? 🙂
There are different ways of “looking at” one’s pilgrimage, as well as “looking through” it. The great temptations is when it’s just another walk from one point to another, the focus tends towards the starting location to the final destination, and little attention on the journey itself, especially the pitstops where we pause and have a look back, before reaching forward. But the reward of doing so, makes the pilgrimage itself the means to polish the glasses one “looks through” especially.
Because the whole act of “looking” is not only about what is “out there” but what is “in here” and paying attention to what is “around” us. Interestingly, this little rambling on “looking” is in line with some of the ideas I’ve been exploiting academically, and surprisingly, inspired after “accidentally” borrowing a comic anthology. Funny how “fiction” and “myths”, “symbols” and “stories” are so important to our humanity, even when we’re engaged in so called “serious” thinking.
I picked up a classic yesterday at the Bibliotek (i.e., Library) downtown, and what intrigued me was Charles Dickens whom during my childhood days was known to me primarily as an author, was very much an advocate for the “liberation” for people in poverty, and thus a social campaigner extraordinaire. This is where “fiction” and “fact” has quite a complex relationship.
Furthermore, I’m imagining how his stories connected with both the oppressed and the oppressor, how the characters of his novels shaped or reshaped the imagination of the “public reader”, or at least, how his words gave language for the “unassuming reader” to have a fresh look at the “outside” world, as well as their “inner world”.
Both Novel and Comic play such an interesting role, and if one has been lauded as the great invention especially of modernity (which can be debated, but we’ll leave that for a while), perhaps the genre of comics maybe finally given some recognition in late modernity (which predict will likely be debated!). But perhaps we are coming full circle from the days of drawing in the cave walls?
Some fruits are still on the table. Watermelon and apple. I’ll make them disappear. 🙂
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Location:Gimleveien,Kristiansand,Norway