David Sargent

out from a hole just to let you know i'm still here

2008-05-09T10:29:00.003+08:00

it has been over a year since the last publishing. since then my wife, jessie has been with child and is now 6 months post-partum. our son, whom we named - as you might guess - roman, is also 6 months post entry (this friday at exactly 26 weeks). we have lived such a concentrated existence for the last year (i am dull), but strangely enough it was only after roman was born that we found the time to get out.

we recently visited my family in the united states and introduced roman to the dreamy world of american society. he made definite connections with his relatives and moreso with the environment and since we returned he has really opened up. he is on the brink of major motor developments with sitting up and crawling only a month or two away.

he gets his daily redemption song on the guitar and has experienced about a quarter of hans christian andersen's works. he is a bright, interested, excitable boy and we hope to share him with you as he makes his way out into the vast world of human society.

From Indecison to Commitment

2007-03-02T12:05:00.002+08:00

Ciao amore mio! Ci vediamo in Seoul.

March 2006 - Meeting, Renewing, Longing

The days were growing long since my love came to visit me in Seoul. We saw our unlikely meeting on the Rome-Perugia train with considerable longing in each other's eyes. Tears well up inside my mind. Should we act quickly to quench our needs or can we wait and test our feelings for each other. It'll just be until July when we have enough money saved or maybe next March when my contract ends. I need to study Korean. I need to develop my journalistic writing skills and assist the resistance movements. But I also need her company.

With the popular world in view, time is short and ancient imperialism is finally catching up to the people's movements and modernizing its face. But on the opposite side of the same coin, time may also be short for love. This relationship is meant to take us somewhere.

May 2006 - Man visits woman

The decision was made for me to lie to my boss and skip town at 5am one morning on a plane bound for Beijing, China after having my visa processed by the Chinese embassy in Seoul without my boss knowing where I was that made me late for work twice in two weeks. There was a bit of finagling that had to be done since there was a holiday in between drop-off and pick-up and most visa processing was delayed by two or three days. It was nothing a few extra 5am mornings wouldn't fix. You'd be surprised to learn what being first in line can solve. I picked up the visa on Friday and left on Sunday.

From there I would enjoy an afternoon of spring air and make another long voyage to Rome where I would meet my unlikely partner Leonardo DaVinci airport. We would then make the 2 hour ride to Perugia and begin living together in an old stone-built apartment set in the stradine of old town Perugia.

Just like that, a new world was opened up to both of us. I accepted the new arrangements while she took a more reserved approach. I was simply happy to be around her. But out of work in the town of 100,000 Perugini was not a prospect that either of us were too happy about. Part-time teaching it would be while she worked full tilt and prepared for graduation.

September 2006 - Marriage it is!

After a thousand ups and downs we decided to get married. Italy and China require untold bureaucracy to bring foreigners together in the imperial ceremony, but the U.S. authorities asked us to come on down tomorrow morning where they would fix us up real nice. We made an impromptu trip to the U.S. and after giving all the invites out a week in advance went to the courthouse on September eight.

It was a great day. We said our vows and didn't look back. The celebration two days later at my parents' house was homely, short and to the point. We shared it with our closest family and friends, though many couldn't make it due to the timing.

November 2006 - Ciao Perugia, Ciao Umbria

We decided with much consideration for both of our situations in mind to move to China and really begin our lives together instead of living in the college town in rooms built for lonely students. Up until the day we left we were confronted with the problem of her boss not accepting our decision and demanding that she stay by threat of firing. He gave-in in the end and we moved like the lightning bolts we've become and flew with all of our things to the Chinese capital.

March 2007 - Burning coal
In the space of one blog, I have summarized what should have been four.

We have been moving nonstop. We just got back from a trip back home for my dad's 60th birthday. It was valuable experience for two people who constantly live inside themselves and rarely get to experience the social world. It showed us that to keep us from ending up like all the other couples you need to constantly live with a network of people who can act as your mirrors in order to test out your interpersonal judgments that might be too harsh if directly relayed. We are back and still have no concept of what we have actually been through the last 14 months. The only ways to relive those 14 months are through each others eyes in a vicarious, wishful way or through storytelling to others. Or through space between.

I don't know what we have done. There was no thought involved. It has made us both better people and we can only fight to make it last.

Now we know that these things do happen to people. It may seem like a dream while it's playing itself out, but after some time goes by, the reality of the people and the circumstances pulse through your helpless will making it stronger and making the world seem that much smaller.

ship off heavy, come back light

2006-02-19T14:51:00.000+08:00

i will only be in the united states for a few more hours. seoul is a day away. the next few weeks will be tumultuous, though engaging. time is just so passive. the other side of the world will become a world of logos for me. a world of active movement. social change.

all eyes will be on dechuri and pyeongtek and washington. the south could split just as factionally as the buks and the nams did in 53. autonomy is not to be taken lightly. these are obviously determined individuals who know the world scene and know even better the workings of their ill-reputed leaders. we may see instances of state-authorized force.

silly state, political nonviolence is a sign of apathetic and uninformed legislature. such a policy contradicts the language that set the governing body in motion. a state, by nature, should always be still and thus the anchor from which we may leap or on which we may lean. but it must find a way to maintain foundation and revolution at the same time.

the year of the dog is looking straight ahead.

time to move

when it rains it pours

2006-01-30T22:56:00.000+08:00

after limping about the airport the morning of my first post, meeting a friend and finally arriving at terminal 40, i sat down just long enough to stand up again and board virgin atlantic flight 3. i would be in the middle of row 55 with my long legs and 3-inch book. it was, needless to say, a full flight. upon wriggling into my seat cushion i noticed a long-haired gentleman drop a stack of papers laden with equations characteristic of physics and proceeded to project the next 7 hours of conversation in my skull with some anticipation.

some time after taking off i asked him of the nature of his printouts.

unified field theory

silence for 4 hours...

...so if the quality of a photon is such that it is both a wave and a particle, does that mean we are absorbing matter from distant stars when we look up at them or fall into their field of projection?

i had no idea who this man was or the significance of his position. i merely knew of the conceptual generalities of his field and even more generally of quantum electrodynamics. he is probably used to conversations with people who have no working language in science, let alone physics, but it was still hard to express the depth of the scientific self fully to someone with such knowledge because there was no room for metaphor or idiom.
precision is key.

now i must move to consicion.

加來紀雄's work solidified the direction of my worldly pursuits. the encounter brought mathematics back into grasp. no amount of money can quantify the value of this meeting to me. sometimes no amount of insular excogitation can work a problem better than with the dialectical precision that another body of resistance can provide.

careers seem to be either a priviledge or a burden. a renaisance man is not the same as a television and internet generation man, though both may excel at multi-tasking.

regardless of income, there is no knowledge without working knowledge, only spec-u-la-tion.

[opt out of popular speculation]

war is born

2006-01-19T14:20:00.000+08:00

i was introduced to the importance of web logs by a professor at a university in perugia, umbria, italy. he is one of the leaders in the italy-specific mediasenzamediatori.org movement.

i am very skeptical of web publishing, and publishing in general; a sentiment reinforced by a terse russian maxim i read in 2005 .

after attending a "historical," as he called it, meeting/workshop with professor griff of public enemy in the district of columbia in november of 2005 i was introduced to the daunting concept of the akashic records and became, suddenly, very careful and respectful of...things. and though a lover of thought and conceptual realities, i must keep true to the sensual reality we are involved in, however little it may actually mean in such a context. therefore, something like a blog or website must be approached with the utmost care.

just the other day, following a passing conversation and cup with a student pursuing her doctorate in brisbane, i was convinced of the positive nature of publishing in order to meet others on paper to cooperate with this vastly complicated system of dissemination that has been developed since the days of gutenberg. it is a way to develop your internal language to be more in accordance with other participating members of this post-modern human society. publishing is a translation from the personal to the public.

system is animal. animal is at least dual in nature.

so here goes...

[just concentrate.
remember.
buddha see buddha.
dog see dog :

: 集中.

记住.

菩萨看见菩萨.

狗看见狗]