Frontier.

Nordic flags and If-Only Boys.
Originally uploaded by Any Syler

What a fantastic weekend. If only it could have gone by a little slower. Time disappears when you are having a great time. I don't like it like that.

I have dumped upon myself many projects to do in less than a month. I have three deadlines that I would love to have finished by the end of February. In ten days, I must write a 10-20 minutes play. In 20 days, I must write a short film for the school's literary magazine. The other, I don't want to think about yet.

But, this play I have to turn in ten days... I haven't the slightest. I have been trying to settle on an idea, and nothing is coming to mind at all. I figured I would have a panoptic-inspired short play... or an absurdist Albee-inspired short. I can't say I can't do this, because I won't know until I try to do this.

I am trying to see what the word Frontier means to me. I shall admit that the first thing I thought of was Frontierland from Disneyland, where you can travel on a raft to Tom Sawyer's Island, take a risk on riding Thunder Mountain. This idea of a Frontier- a new border, a fresh start, where dreams of making a new home, breaking the boundaries of the Puritan values, and discovering things unseen by the majority of the planet. I am trying to imagine crossing the vast American Plains, going on the Oregon Trail, seeing and experiencing things that nobody would ever understand.

I wonder if that is why life seems so boring to Americans nowadays? There isn't anything new to discover, and we are all pretty much over this whole Space idea. Travels in space have not been announced very often, being as the entire planet is in debt, there has been a major slowdown on external-earth studies. For a short time, I would always believe that space studies were a wasted of billions of dollars. Why would we need to study what else is out there? If we were to know about anything else, we would know about it by chance. I would be a hypocrite to say that we shouldn't search for things, as I am someone that is constantly trying to search for something.

// Searching. Maybe that is my Frontier. Not just these definitions off of Oxford English Dictionary:

A. n.

1. a. The front side; the forepart. Obs.

b. The side that fronts in a specified direction. Obs.{em}1

c. The forehead. Obs. rare{em}1.

2. = FRONTLET 4. Obs.

3. The front line or foremost part of an army. Hence ‘attack, resistance’ in phr. to make frontier (tr. OF. faire frontière). Obs.

4. a. sing. and pl. The part of a country which fronts or faces another country; the marches; the border or extremity conterminous with that of another.

b. U.S. ‘That part of a country which forms the border of its settled or inhabited regions: as (before the settlement of the Pacific coast), the western frontier of the United States’ (Cent. Dict.). Also in specific use (see quot. 1894 and D.A.).

5. a. A fortress on the frontier; a frontier town.

b. A barrier against attack. Obs.

6. A settler on the frontier; a frontier-man.

B. adj.

1. Of or belonging to the frontier of a country; situated on the frontier, bordering; const. to. Also, characteristic of people living at a frontier; pioneering; primitive.

2. Fronting; opposite. Obs.

C. v.

1. intr. To be a frontier, or as a frontier; to border on or upon. Obs.

2. trans. a. To look upon the frontier, boundary, or coast of; to face; now rare. b. To stand in front of; to bar, oppose. Obs.

Hence frontiering ppl. a., occupying the frontier or border; neighbouring.

Sorry to take up so much of this post with a significant part of it being definitions of a slightly uninteresting word... It keeps mentioning the forehead, the front... maybe experiencing something on the surface. Looking at the surface of things. It's coming to me... but not quite. Not quite there. I can feel my full understanding of Frontier surfacing, but I still don't have a grip on how I want to view it yet.

Hej hej,

Any