itesser ink: progress, uncensored

Reagan borrowed From Beirut to Jerusalem by Thomas L. Friedman from his recruiter earlier this week and it is thoroughly blowing my mind. I'm only about 50 pages into it so I can't give you a quality blurb due to lack of exposure and lack of time to synthesize... but wow.

So far I've gotten full history on Thomas Friedman and selective history on the Middle East since the 1880s. Obviously, the book primarily deals with Israel, Palestine, and Lebanon. I've only just broached Friedman's time in Beirut, but his descriptions of the city in the 1980s are revelatory to me. I feel myself, my understanding, my significance, grow smaller page by page. My hunger for knowledge, my thirst for wisdom, however, grow.

All this comes on the heels of my completing Mark Twain's Letters from Hawaii, a book that has been pending far too long.

In my recent glut of drawing, my reading, writing, and thinking have been lacking a bit. Both books I've favored with my attention today have stimulated my imagination and my thinking-glands. I'm still too aware of my ignorance to say much about it.

These thoughts on themes of progress, displacement, society over savagery, and multitudes more haven't yet matured into conclusions. If what I'm doing is study, I'm studying in a vacuum, and in such a state it's difficult to solidify thoughts, questions, and theories into solid blocks or foundations.

I need a kiln!

Company this weekend will be nice.