Thursday, March 31, 2011

Dan Osman.

There are no words to describe my awe...

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Metachase.

"Rocks truly are amazing things, as I have said before. You can learn all that there is to know about their ways in a month, and yet after a few billion years they can still surprise you at a pinch"

Is it wrong how ridiculously excited I'm getting about being able to identify a bunch of rocks? It's amazing the story they tell, the things they've been through, all that they have seen...



"Screen Your Worry From What You Won't Ever Find."

"One certainly has a soul; but how it came to allow itself to be enclosed in a body is more than I can imagine. I only know if once mine gets out, I'll have a bit of a tussle before I let it get in again to that of any other."
-Lord Byron


This semester, my honors seminar is a class on brain plasticity and the immeasurable possibilities of such an astounding capability. While I could go on for quite a few blogs as to the content of the course and the many implications of such plasticity, this blog is addressed towards our uncharacterstically philosophical discussion near the end of today's class. Our readings for discussion today were centered around the capabilities of thought, visualization, and imagination as they relate to brain synapses and the resulting physical performance of a specific task. Like I said, I could go on a tangent for quite some time of all the course work and class discussions, but to get to the point, near the end of class today, one girl brought up the idea of one's soul. Well, one thing inevitably led to another and next thing you know we had begun to undertake the timeless uncertainty of where's one's soul existed, whether or not we are all born with one or whether or not we must be taught to have a soul, if it is separate from the body or somehow incorporated within, if we can lose our soul, whether or not we even have one. I'm sure I probably built this particular blog up with anticipation for some sort of answer, or insight at least into my perspective on the matter. However, I myself find my own opinion throughly lacking with so many questions left unanswered. I suppose I have always thought of one's soul as a shapeless energy of sorts somewhere within each individual's mind, which to me is the root of everything that makes us who we are as a person, as an individual, as Chase. Does this soul linger after the extinction of one's mind, of one's life? I believe so. How? That I don't know. That I don't think anyone has an answer to if it does indeed endure. I feel as if this is the beginning of a philosophical resurgance for me. It seems ages since I've really thought deeply about something like this. Profound thought is an essential part of our growth as individuals as well as a human race. Without it, I feel as if we are doomed to complacency. But it's getting late, I feel like my own mind is turning into a jumbled mess from the anticipation of some much needed sleep. Hopefully there will be more to come on this topic.

“You don't have a soul. You are a Soul. You have a body.”
-C.S. Lewis

Monday, March 21, 2011

Hafiz.


"Even after all this time the Sun never says to the Earth 'you owe me.' Look what happens with a love like that, it lights the whole sky."

Sunday, March 6, 2011

"Society, You're A Crazy Breed. I Hope You're Not Lonely Without Me."

"Now and then it's good to pause in our pursuit of happiness an just be happy"

My fortune as a result of last night's craving for some Chinese seems to speak multitudes of my life's current circumstance. Since the disastrious domino effect of about a month ago, I seem to have regained some balance in mindset. I'm somehow managing to survive my 19 hours of classes this semester and all the obstacles it seems to have been throwing out at me, all the long nights of no sleep and disappointments that were added to the mix. Things have been pretty nice of late though. These days it seems as if i'm continually inspired, continually appreciative, continually motivated by my typically highly erratic ideals. I've been regaining my footing, I've met someone that makes me happier than I've been in a long time, I'm rerealizing just how fortunate I am to have the friends and family that I have, and there's the anticipation of the next week spent outdoors. In about an hour I head out to the New River Gorge in West Virgina to spend the week rafting, camping, and climbing. Water levels of the New are supposedly 13x normal, it's dumping snow outside as I type suggesting quite a cold night ahead, and there's the possibility of rain that could hinder the climbing later on, but my eagerness to get outside seems to have only been strengthened. I think I've finally paused from my pursuit of happiness, to finally just be happy.