full moon, or close to it

yeah, so it was a full moon, or close to it, last night. i could tell. i was feeling really crazy. writing crazy things. unable to focus. and this morning, i noticed at my student teaching that the kids were similarly crazier than usual. when one child goes crazy at the "asylum," the disease spreads like wildfire. the result, tantrums galore, and a lesson thrown out the window...

i participate in stupid facebook conversations i have no business participating in. truth to tell, i'm bored, and what they say about the ubiquitous nature of the internet, and how it's so much easier to be rude and insinuate yourself into conversations and situations that you would never, NEVER even dare to in real life- well, it's true. i still try to be polite. i don't precisely tell people off or anything. but i give my opinions, and they can be pretty lengthy and overthought. i suppose it's my form of "friendliness," the fact that i would supply considered responses. but i know it can be offputting. i know that I would feel put off. i'd probably think: "who does this idiot think he is?"

i don't care, particularly.

facebook is faceless. it is the not-face-to-face face to face. you can shout whatever you want to the faces from your past and your present distant acquaintance, and nothing will really happen. those who forgive you, probably already know you well. those who don't; well, it's an education for them.

i'm thankful for the few that do respond, and provide tangents for me to follow. example: i wrote, for my status, the idiotic and provocative statement: "soul is a resonating chamber." and my friend phil responded with a link to the "great seal bug," an ingenious surveillance bug that utilized a concealed resonating chamber within a wooden american seal. he also mentioned that ancient cultures probably had a high understanding of resonance, but when archaeologists encountered their "resonant" artifacts, they just thought of them as empty boxes.

...which is perhaps another way of talking about what the western missionaries considered, regarding the "souls" of aboriginal cultures: empty (soulless) boxes.

i don't know why i thought of souls being like resonating chambers. as i stated to phil, soul has always been a problematic concept to me. this has particularly been so with regards to the western conception as something which can be "lost" or "gained." this conception implies that the soul is some "piece" of the self, or aspect/artifact of the self, that can be gained or lost, somewhat like a seal, or a core. and yet, it is also something fundamental to the self, something which the self cannot do without, something essential...

overstepping the problematic western metaphysical conception of the soul, i prefer to think of it more in the colloquial sense. when someone plays music, particularly "soul" music (jazz, blues, whatever), there is the notion that "you can play the notes right," but they can lack soul. what is this soul? i think it was this that turned me to the conception of it as a resonating chamber. in itself, it is simply an empty space. but given the right circumstances, given the right vibrations, a resonating chamber can make the very air sing... it can give away state secrets (as in the great seal bug)...

if soul is a resonating chamber, then the implication is that it only "comes alive" when the appropriate frequency plays at its mouth. similarly, a person only truly "has soul" when s/he is engaged, "resonates," with something: another person, an activity, a concept, etc. resonance, soul, love, all of these things have something in common.

crazy thoughts...

my temper has been short today. i'm blaming it on lack of sleep and the moon... i'm feeling, and i'm sure i come off as (to pardon the pun) "so full of it..."