Between White and Black

I do not know what happens when we die (and by we I mean any living animal). It does seem to me that the brain, and what we here in western civilization call the soul, are coherently linked. When our brains are changed either by injury, drugs or other external source so is our personality and in turn who we are changes; our soul is affected. Thoughts, feelings and actions that never would have occurred before the change now do occur because of how the brain has been changed.

So then, when my brain ceases to get enough oxygen for the cells to survive what then happens to what we call the soul? What happens to what I know to be "me"? My memories, my feelings my emotions, my thoughts...do they all move on into another form? Are they preserved somewhere? They were preserved in my brain (or maybe they were just the product of my brain), but now that brain is dead and nothing survives in it. Will my energy, chi, life force, soul or whatever you wish to call it survive the disconnection from the brain in which it has been housed and developed? If my soul does survive do my memories carry over as well? After all, I would surely cease to be who I am if I were to lose my memories and experiences, right? Death is an unknown to me and therefore I fear it. It brings a great amount of sadness to me thinking about everyone I know ceasing to exist. Everything they were, are and ever will be stopping in a single instant never to return.

Prior to me leaving on my travels I feared that death would come to someone close to me and Joey did cross my mind in those thoughts. Now it seems this fear may come true. Our family cat, Joey, is unhealthy and is dieing.

Joey is around 14 years old; near the average age for an indoor cat to live to. Joey lives his life primarily outdoors coming in only when he is hungry, cold or wants to be sit on someones lap to be pet. The average life expectancy of an outdoor cat is significantly lower then an indoor cat because cats that spend a lot of time outside have to dodge traffic, humans, other cats and disease. Joey has had his cat fights in the past and one of them nearly killed him. In this case, Joey's kidneys are failing him. I do not expect he will live much longer. One way or the other it seems he will die shortly.

The thought of having another animal "put down" is one of conflict for me. It reminds me of having to kill my dog Charlie; something I still have conflict with even today. Watching my dog cease to be was extremely hard for me and to know that it was us that were doing the killing. We chose her death to come sooner in life because we did not want her to suffer a life of pain, misery and suffering. I do truly hope that we made the right decision, but I suppose that we will never know. We could never ask Charlie how she felt. We could never ask what she wanted. We had to guess that she must not be able to enjoy parts of her life because of the pain that she was experiencing.

I think the situation with Joey is much more black and white. Charlie was not suffering from a terminal illness, whereas Joey's kidneys are failing. He has surely already started down a path of deterioration which will eventually lead to a painful death if nothing is done about it.

Distractions

This blog post is an excerpt from an email that I sent to my friend Mike. I feel that it pretty much sums up what is going on with me presently so I thought I would post it:

Things have been pretty crazy for me. The travels have been going fine. I have just been hopping from one major city in Ireland to another. Today I am heading off to Dublin. So things on the traveling side have been fine. Except that I am not enjoying my travels due to my current state of mind.

I was hoping that by going to new places and experiencing new cultures on this trip that I would be able to change the way that I feel about myself and life. I was hoping that I would find a place or a person or peoples that would inspire me in my renaissance of the mind. I now know and understand that it does not matter where I go in the world or who I meet, I will always feel like shit until I figure out how not to. I have come to the realization that there is no person (no matter how wise) that can change me and the way that I think. There is no place that I can go (no matter how beautiful and amazing) where my mind will be in a "more receptive state" to bring about change. There is no culture, peoples or religion that will inspire me to bring about a change of my mind. This realization has made me feel completely and utterly alone in the world. I feel as though no one can help me and no one can understand what is happening in my mind and this brings about a feeling of solitude and loneliness no matter how many hostels I visit and how many people I surround myself with.

I have been going through massive states of depression and fear. I wake up early in the morning and cannot go back to sleep because I am constantly in a state of worry about my future and I fear that I will always feel like this for the rest of my life. Because I am going through all of this mental torture I have not been able to enjoy any of the places that I have been to since my trip to Scotland. I have also come to the realization that everything that I do in life, now and in the past, has all been a distraction from me and my feelings. When I say distraction I mean: every action that I take on a day to day basis that is meant to bring me a state of joy or happiness at any moment in time which is essentially everything that I do. Examples being: watching a movie, sleep, sex, eating, talking to a someone new, talking to someone I know, traveling to a new place on the map, etc, etc, etc. Basically everything I do, day in and day out, is a completely selfish action that is made with the sole intent of making myself feel temporarily better by distracting me from what is truly wrong with me. In which case, this means that all of my relationships with people are built on that of a selfish nature. I am friends with someone because I expect them to be able to make me feel better about myself which is a terrible job to place on another person and is completely unfair and selfish. It also makes me wonder if I have ever had a proper relationship with anyone.

As long as I have a goal and something on the horizon to work towards, my mind has been distracted from the underlying and fundamental problems that exist for me. During this trip I have come to a point where I had no where to go, nothing on the horizon and nothing that I was working towards. I was doing nothing, I had no plans to do anything and there were no people around to distract me. There was nothing to keep my mind from everything that is wrong with me and the way that I think. During these periods of no distractions, I was in a state of massive anguish, fear and pain until I got on a bus and headed to a new destination effectively temporarily relieving the feelings of helplessness and hopelessness by giving my brain something else to concentrate on. As soon as I got to a new location or city the feelings would return as once again there was nothing for my brain to think about except my own mental problems. This has made me come to the realization that until I change these fundamental issues within my brain I will be in a state of depression, confusion, anger and fear which will forever dominate my life unless I figure out how to change them. It does not matter who I surround myself with, be it my friends or family or Irene; it does not matter where in the world I am, be it the most beautiful and majestic place in existence; it does not matter what job I have, be it the best job suited to me...I will always be in the routine state of what I can only describe as "depression" and daily distraction from that depression until I can learn to change that which is fundamentally wrong. I just have no idea how to make that change and yet I know that I am the only one who has the answer to that question. I am the only holder of the keys that will unlock the hidden doors of my brain. I am the only one who can find the keys, find the doors and figure out how to unlock them. There is no person, place or method that I can encounter that will help me in this change. Again, this makes me feel completely alone and disconnected from the rest of the world.

So now I am at the point where I have no idea what to do. I know now that traveling itself is one more distraction from me dealing with my underlying problems. I am burning through money just as fast as it comes out of the ATM. Where am I to go? What am I to do? Do I continue with my travels that I am not enjoying with the hope that it may help me in the long run? Do I return home? If I do return home I will risk falling back into my old routine which was filled with distractions that I have meticulously developed for years that kept me from dealing with my problems.

Highland Hill Hopping

I am currently in Belfast, Northern Ireland. I just arrived a few hours ago and found myself a hostel to stay in, although I am not really sure how much I like it. I left my backpack in the dorm room all by itself. I hope nothing in it finds legs and walks away. At the present moment in time I have no idea where I will be going or what I will be doing with the rest of my travels.

In my last post I mentioned that I was trying to get into a school in England. I found out the day after my return from my tour of Scotland that I was rejected from the school. I then put a lot of thought into where it was that I was going to go now and Belfast is what I came up with. I am not really sure what is here in this city, but I suppose I will find out soon enough. Anyway, after I found out that I did not get into the school I felt quite down. I was fairly sure that I would not have much difficulty getting accepted into the school, but alas, I suppose I was wrong. I am planning on calling the school tomorrow to find out exactly why it was that I was rejected. Not really a conversation I am looking forward to, but perhaps I will be able to change their mind...maybe.

On a happier note, I absolutely loved the bus tour of Scotland that I took. I got to see a lot of things in a very short period of time. Many things that I never would have seen had I just traveled up on my own and did my own exploring around. We went to many locations on the tour some of which were: Stirling, Oban, Skye, Inverness, Loch Ness. If you are interested in seeing the route that we took on the tour I updated the travel map on my blog to show pretty much exactly what route we traveled and the locations that we stopped to sleep. The most interesting sleep location was Carbisdale Castle which is now a hostel. Supposedly the castle is haunted and has a huge list of strange experiences people have had while staying there. I and no one on this particular tour experienced anything out of the ordinary with this visit, however.

There were many parts of the tour that I found wonderful. We went hiking up to a waterfall; saw many many castles and old castle like structures; and in general just took in the amazing scenery that is the highland landscape. There are two experiences of the tour that stand out far above the rest for me. On the first day of the tour our driver, Greg, wanted to stop at a Loch so that he could skip stones. I am a huge fan of stone skipping myself and was quite pleased that I had my sandals on. I wadded into the water and found all the best skipping stones that I could. I never expected to skip stones on a completely calm and flat faced Loch in the heart of Scotland, but I did and it was fantastic. I have known for many years that I love skipping stones, but the second experience that stands out on this trip was completely new to me. I believe it was on the fourth day of the bus tour that we came to the "Bone Cave". As you can probably imagine, these were caves which happened to be halfway up the side of a hill in the highlands. It took about a little over half an hour to hike in via a riverbed then up to the caves via some rocky paths. On the way up I found that I was hiking faster than everyone else and was leading the pack even though I did not know where I was going. I had to slow down in order to not lose everyone else. On the way down I knew my way and jumped out in front of everyone. I started going quite quick down the rocky path and then I started running flat out. I experienced a true feeling of euphoria traversing my way down the potentially dangerous trail. I think it was at that moment that I felt like a true Scotsman, running as quickly as I could over jagged rocky, wet, up and down highland terrain. My instincts took over and my brain was concentrating solely on finding my next footing. There was no thought or contemplation about anything--only a sense of joy and happiness and for the first time in a long, long time I enjoyed running again.

Before I left for my highland tour and after I returned I stayed with couchsurfers. Both people I stayed with were very close to the center of town and more importantly they were very nice and welcoming people. Couchsurfing is an extremely valuable way to travel the world and it seems so foreign to me to have people be so friendly and trustworthy towards someone they have never met before. All three of my couchsurfing hosts have given me keys to their homes straight away and allowed me to come and go as I please regardless if they were home or not. That just boggles my mind.

One thing I have come to realize in my travels is that I really do not fit in with the travel crowd. Most travelers are big into drinking, drinking and staying up late while they drink. I like to go to bed relatively early and I do not drink a drop. It seems like the thing almost all travelers want to do is go out to the pubs and get plastered. Sometimes I feel like an extreme outsider in this respect and I am not quite sure how to react. There are times when I go along to the pub or bar and try to socialize as best I can. Being as introverted as I am, socializing is difficult enough already, but even more so when I am already set up as an outsider and different. Sometimes it is fun, but most times I just feel out of place and awkward. I highly offended a pub owner in Scotland when I asked if could have some hot chocolate. If only I got a picture of her face after she heard me; it would have been priceless. With a great amount of disgust and annoyance she promptly stated: "This is a pub...". I then asked for tea and got a blank stare that lasted quite long then an eventual roll of the eyes and a look away as she contemplated who knows what. Eventually I got my tea and all was well. There could have been a large highland ball of spit in it for all I know, but it sure did taste mighty good.

I have updated my England picture album with a few shots and have added a Scotland album as well. I think you will enjoy them.

England

Scotland

ODDITIES: England + Scotland

There are some things about England that I find strange. I suppose that there are oddities about any place. I would think that when a person from another country comes to visit America, there are things that would seem a little strange to them. It is with this in mind that I have created the posts entitled "ODDITIES". This is where I will share my observations, thoughts and experiences about such things that I find just plain strange, odd and completely out of the ordinary, as far as I am concerned, with regards to the locations around the world that I visit.

I have come across the recurring need to eat food for sustenance. It is terribly annoying, but I suppose I manage through the cycle one day at a time. During these instances of feeding I come across times when I would like some juice, e.g. Apple or Orange Juice. I find, though, that I do not have the basic skills needed in order to open the packaging that these fluids of life come in. They are apparently made so that you are deterred from ever consuming their companies beverage. This is quite contrary to what I am used to in America, where companies would inject or force feed you with their product if they could legally get away with it. The thing that I really find odd, is that on most of these containers of liquid, whatever they may be, are the words "easy open container". I needed scissors to open up a small carton of orange juice that had this very saying on it. I have yet to determine how one normally opens up this particular type of container. The first carton of orange juice I tried opening in England had a nice plastic tab that simply said "lift" on it as the instructions for opening. I did as I was instructed and lifted. The plastic tab then came off completely. I sat there for a moment trying to determine if this is what was supposed to happen. Perhaps now I was supposed to prod the top of the carton with this new tool I had in my hands? It was not until later that I realised that the tab that was in my hands was not supposed to dislodge from its poorly constructed confines. Alas, it was a knife that came to my rescue in this instance. I have since successfully opened a carton of apple juice that used this same type of plastic tab system, although I was very careful to make sure the tab stayed on that time. In any case, things are hard to open in England and I find this quite odd.

They drive on the left side of the road in England. That is just plain odd in it of itself, but there is more about their driving that I find quite unusual. They drive fast everywhere they are going, all the time, regardless of how narrow or windy the road is they are traversing. I find this particularly troubling considering that when I was in the small village of Seaton taking Mariah (the dog) for a walk down these roads, I constantly had to be on high alert because there is no telling when some crazed Englishman in a BMW is going to come flying at high speed around a hairpin turn only to narrowly miss me and Mariah as we jump off onto the side of the road. It seems that the English like to pretend they are race car drivers. When walking from Seaton into the town of Uppingham 2 miles away: on every single curve and turn of the road that heads to town are tire marks in the mud to the side of the road where cars have constantly run up on the ground just like a race car driver would do when attempting to find the shortest route between point A and B. I must admit, though, after watching some of the English drive these narrow roads at high speeds, I have to hand it to them, some of them probably could be race car drivers. They are pretty good. That does not mean that I do not find their driving antics odd though.

There is something strange about the water in this country. Not the tap water, which probably has less things harmful in it compared to American tap water. No, I refer to the water in the Lochs, Seas and Oceans in and around England and primarily Scotland. When I left the Midlands enroute to Edinburgh, Scotland, part of the train journey happened to be right on the eastern coast of the island. Looking out to the sea I saw barely a wave or even a ripple in the waterline. It was completely calm like the water was in a state of hibernation. This is a very large contrast to the coastal waters I experienced while sailing down the coast of Baja California. That water had a temper. The water in England is old and wise. On my tour through Scotland some of the most beautiful landscapes were aided by the complete stillness of a loch reflecting the scenery of the opposite bank perfectly. For me this was an odd sight as I cannot remember the last time I saw a calm lake or body of water in California.

The Scots talk funny.