Following the news on Malaysia from Norway daily is quite an experience. What’s similar is that it’s still mainly online, what’s different is the physical difference. But the ‘vibrations’ of energy and struggle travels across land and sea, in and out of time zones, all the same.
At one time deeply concerned when friends are threatened for merely standing up for what is right and proper. Other times, elated by reasonable voices cutting through the shouting of slogans. It’s strange not to be there in person, but that doesn’t mean one doesn’t care.
I can feel the ‘vibrations’ growing and widening in scope. Some whom I wouldn’t imagine might go for a ‘walk’ on the streets to ‘join the chorus’, are contemplating ‘turun padang’ (a version of ‘getting your hands dirty’ in Malay). This reminds me of the day after the birth of no.3 Ewan. I was sitting at home with loads of identity card numbers after bringing my newborn son home as my friends got ‘water cannoned’. It was a key turning point of ‘conscientization’ for many people. I wonder whether the same is happening now. Based on the ‘buzz’ on Facebook that seems to be the case. Is it going viral?
Sometimes I wonder why I’m missing this for a second time, and yet once I’m finished thinking about myself, the attention is turned to that it is ‘actually’ happening. Sure, some might be able to wrestle with the issues in the head. I was once confronted that the real battle is in the realm ideas. Without downplaying that, but it seems to me that the ideas are truly felt when it’s embodied. And lots of people will get the ideas in an embodied experience.
Sitting here after another round of reading and thinking, clarifying and refining ideas and concepts, the limits of one mode of thinking (e.g. academic) with other modes of thinking which come in different shapes and tones come into clearer focus.
There’s loads going on ‘out there’ while one is pondering and wondering ‘in here’. The invisible line linking what’s ‘there’ and what’s ‘here’ is what I’ve been focusing on lately. And these lines in different directions delightfully is also seen in different academic fields in parallel with various spots often in the marginal borders of public and private space.
these ‘lines’ aren’t devoid of existential and emotional content as well. And it’s when those dimensions are factored into the more rational content, further linked with practical implications. Wham! Some serious ‘energizing’ is going on. When you pause and hold that thought for a little longer, imagine when at least three people or three thousand or thirty thousand or three million people are engaged in the complex seemingly chaotic activity above. Double, Triple .. super duper wham!
Now, I haven’t even started talking about how certain events globally might be affecting the local and personal. ‘Reality out there’ is so unpredictable. How some might wish to have control over what’s ‘out there’. But alas … no one does. No one can. At least none of us … we’re talking about humans here.
Back to something out of an ’email’ reminded me again and again, how we are so not in control of what we will face. Life is a gift. But life is also a struggle. Life can be a nightmare. Life may be a dream come true. Again, so much ‘folding, and unfolding’ … delightfully terrifying, terribly delightful.
Wrapping up this post while I’m listening to a song written out of pain. the human spirit is quite a mystery in itself. The human collective is even more a greater mystery. After all this anthropological (mixed with sociological talk), we haven’t even ventured into theology yet. Kyrie Eleison.
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Location:Gimleveien,Kristiansand,Norway