it was starting to feel a bit strange, being in school again.

even moreso that for the most part, it was a positive experience.

starting out part-time was too easy -- so suddenly half-way through the program, a headlong plunge into the fever pitch of full-time student madness drew upon all available resources; in the process, molehills were made of questions that had once loomed large enough to hide the sun.

and now those questions return, somewhat smaller and more focused. what they lose in enormity is redoubled by their pointed relevance, compounded by the fact that time for decision-making runs shorter by the day.

one undeniable side-effect of being released from an intensive curriculum: the return of creativity and time to explore it (for the time being). suddenly memories resurface, images arise from unlived futures and ideas become full-color visual simulations.

the problem, then, is not the return to creativity, but rather, a nagging feeling that more "education" is necessary to complete the program. it seems increasingly clear that to reach any level of skill, learning must be a lifelong, self-motivated process. institutionalized pedagogy does not hold a viable answer to the desire for knowledge. in this sense, then, education means:

• time compression,


• navigation of the vertical command structure called "higher education" (or something like it),


• delay of the creative impulse that is the oft-forgot engine behind all of this.

hm... the brain... sulci and gyri, hills and valleys inside the cranium... all of the folds create increased surface area, allowing for more brain per square inch. is there a way to fold the perception of time in on itself as well, allowing for more experienced time within a given interval of clock time?

of course, the answer is yes. but hypnotic techniques require structure, precisely vague language, and ample practice to become habitual... learning can be quick; hallucination is not necessarily what it seems. perhaps more about that later.

audio: groove armada feat. stush & red rat . get down (calvin harris remix)

purpose, again.

the question is elusive, the answer even more so.

one educational process seems to have ended, only to culminate in a sense of incompleteness. what next?

-

walking down the street, cracks in the asphalt seem to be deeper than before; the familiar path is strewn with fragmented shadows and uneven surfaces. the heat of the day shimmers from the concrete in a tumbling sea of mirage-images gathering and dispersing at each footstep. an ankle turns suddenly on the cracked ground, causing momentary loss of balance. the resulting adjustment restores equilibrium only for a moment, as the waves of heat begin to penetrate into the earth rather than travel along its surface, soaking the cracked asphalt with vibratory tones of separation and dissonance. the deepening rifts become impassable abscesses, the traveler's gait interrupted and disrupted. navigation becomes a feat of concentrated awareness, as all other thoughts quickly recede into secondary importance. balance, agility and speed must be maintained in the face of vast stretches of yawning darkness that appear at the whim of unpredictable waveforms rippling and crashing into nothingness underfoot.

finally, the traveler is surrounded by echolalic depths of emptiness, supported only by a trembling jagged shard of crumbling earth. the illusion of rhythm has given way to the truth of chaotic instability; the comfort of routine is now an impossibly abstract notion with no referent in the present reality.

-

movement, influence, agility, fluency, response.

when an uncrossed chasm stretches to the horizon, how can a drawbridge be successfully thrown to the opposite side?

i suppose the first step is to find out exactly where the horizon lies.

audio: this is sander kleinenberg . cd 1 . chymera . arabesque