{"id":799,"date":"2016-03-13T13:59:53","date_gmt":"2016-03-13T02:59:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/seeking-freedom-in-the-present"},"modified":"2019-08-04T12:11:01","modified_gmt":"2019-08-04T12:11:01","slug":"seeking-freedom-in-the-present","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/2016\/03\/13\/seeking-freedom-in-the-present\/","title":{"rendered":"Seeking freedom in the present"},"content":{"rendered":"

A boy lost in the woods. The path is a dragon<\/a> to be fled, cobblestones made of logical paradoxes to be solved. There is a sign pointing to freedom and wealth. There are warnings; a cacography of leaves and\u00a0bare twigs, foretelling failures and eternal damnation.<\/p>\n

The spirits sing sweet songs, gossamer echoes of Ariadne’s thread. “Here is freedom, here is choice.”<\/em><\/p>\n

But the boy cannot see them. Their silhouettes fade into the fractal worry of a\u00a0thorny bracken. His\u00a0disoriented footsteps presage their own boulevards<\/a>. When the boy is lost, the trees are lost too. He is sure that if he wanders far enough that he will find a destination.<\/p>\n

“Here you are, you are exactly where you are going<\/a>.”<\/em><\/p>\n

The diary<\/h3>\n

In another room, down a passageway that now stretches distorted through the aperture of the captive wayward, is a diary. Here are the memories of the place that was before, and the steps that became these steps.<\/p>\n

When he was younger he could climb over the bushes, traversing the entire maze in a series of arbitrary and determined leaps. But as the walls grew higher he could no longer see above them, and became\u00a0trapped in a cul de sac of apathy. It was during some of these depressed hibernations that the boy dreamt a series of step ladders that would return to him the freedom of his youth.<\/p>\n

“It is hard to watch the stars when all you can think of is ladders,” the fairies mourned.<\/em><\/p>\n

The map<\/h3>\n

Painted on the floors and on the walls, and on the hands and feet and forehead of the boy, is a map. It is painted in a pointillism of arrows, all of them pointing towards themselves.<\/p>\n

“You are here, and you are going there, and therein lies the boundary of your existence,” read the holy texts.<\/em><\/p>\n

When the boy flails in desperation, he seeks\u00a0proofs to equations yet unwritten, and flow charts for algorithms to undelineated means. But there is nothing there. And the calloused soil beneath his footsteps prove the iterations of his orbit.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the angels sing of the glory behind time, “Here we dance in your imagination, a false diagnosis, a cross-current of premises, a temple to the infinite.”<\/em><\/p>\n

A boy lost in the woods<\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A boy lost in the woods. The path is a dragon to be fled, cobblestones made of logical paradoxes to be solved. There is a sign pointing to freedom and wealth. There are warnings; a cacography of leaves and\u00a0bare twigs, foretelling failures and eternal damnation. The spirits sing sweet songs, gossamer echoes of Ariadne’s thread. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[159,90,121,114,106],"tags":[129,111],"metadata":[],"class_list":["post-799","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all-posts","category-blog-posts","category-out-of-the-darkness","category-story","category-the-traveller-is-the-journey","tag-emotion","tag-journey"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1463,"url":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/2017\/04\/24\/shmini\/","url_meta":{"origin":799,"position":0},"title":"Shmini","author":"Pala","date":"April 24, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"Shimini and Pesach or; Freedom and Matzah Pesach is the holiday of freedom Freedom is constructed (cf. Mishkan) Pei-samech-chet: The understanding (like the genetic code in an embryo) which brings about a paradigm (like a city wall) of construction (like a rope). Mem-tzaddik-hei: Bringing out potential (like a river into\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "All Posts"","block_context":{"text":"All Posts","link":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/all-posts\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2886,"url":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/2014\/10\/07\/hegel\/","url_meta":{"origin":799,"position":1},"title":"Hegel","author":"Pala","date":"October 7, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Life: Born 1770 Stuttgart Cf. 1789 fall of Bastille Cf. 1806\u00a0Napoleon's\u00a0Battle of Jena Cf. 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Here I've read the first part of section B \"Self-consciousness\", chapter IV \"The truth of self-certainty\", part B \"Freedom of self-consciousness\". That elaborate indexing adumbrates the topic matter: Hegel's studying a self-conscious entity, whose basis for truth is its certainty of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "All Posts"","block_context":{"text":"All Posts","link":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/all-posts\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1172,"url":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/2016\/08\/08\/seder\/","url_meta":{"origin":799,"position":3},"title":"Seder","author":"Pala","date":"August 8, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"I started by asking myself, \u201cHow is the story of Egypt abstracted?\u201d There are many ways this can be done, some of them deeply personal or mystical. But in the spirit of the assignment, I decided to look at the story as the myth of a community repressed to its\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "All Posts"","block_context":{"text":"All Posts","link":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/all-posts\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":39,"url":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/2016\/02\/02\/meeting-the-traveler\/","url_meta":{"origin":799,"position":4},"title":"Meeting the traveller","author":"Pala","date":"February 2, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"You are welcome to sit by the fire, its flames dance in the rhythm that aches for freedom inside us, and the rumble of the consuming fuel echoes the debt of time that strikes at us in unrelenting syncopation. You are welcome to sit by the fire, I am telling\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "All Posts"","block_context":{"text":"All Posts","link":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/all-posts\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"fire-1087426_640","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/fire-1087426_640-300x200.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1730,"url":"https:\/\/thetravellerslastjourney.com\/shai\/2010\/11\/30\/dangling-man-br-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":799,"position":5},"title":"Dangling Man (BR)","author":"Pala","date":"November 30, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Dangling Man\u00a0was the first novel published by\u00a0Nobel Prize\u00a0winner\u00a0Saul Bellow. It was published in\u00a01944\u00a0by\u00a0Vanguard Press, and which today is owned by\u00a0Random House. The novel forms a\u00a0diary\u00a0kept by Joseph for a one year: December 15, 1942, through to April 9 1943. 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