Wednesday, September 10, 2008

the dialectic of good and evil

We were talking about dialectics today in Anthropology class, and Seibold explained them as being dichotomous concepts along a continuum. (In this case, it was the Positivist and Interpretivist approaches to anthropology). In trying to give examples to the class, Kathy listed good and evil as being a dialectic; most of us aren't purely, purely good, and most aren't pure evil. We usually fall somewhere in between. My mind immediately raced for examples of where I would fall on the dialectic, a self-reflective description: "She is, outwardly a good person. She'll do things for the people she loves; friends, family, someone desperately in need. But she's not really selfless. She's got the usual self-preserving tendencies. She's not necessarily more selfish than most, just more honest with herself about her selfishness. Unabashedly selfish, let's say. Most of the evil in her blood is released through silent brooding, feelings of resentment, and covert social sabotage to achieve her own ends. And most of her evil is caused by feelings of jealousy, inferiority, and insecurity. But she is very subtle with her evil, and makes sure to cover her tracks. I mean, who doesn't want to be viewed as a good person?"

Saturday, August 23, 2008

The Avett Brothers

Jayne and I went to see The Avett Brothers last night at the Knitting Factory. They were incredibly kick-ass; a lot better than I thought it would be, actually. I expected kind of a mellow, broken-hearted crooning set, lovely and calm. It wasn't what I expected, though. The best interpretation I could come up with was that these guys were rockers, not only at heart, but in attitude, stage presence, performing style - everything but their instruments. It was like someone handed them sheet music for "You Shook Me All Night Long", but gave them the string section from a Beethoven symphony. They were amazingly energetic.



http://www.youtube.com/v/ToxmNmWtZvw&amp

Friday, August 22, 2008

the choice is yours

They say that in a healthy brain, for the first 90 seconds of an emotional reaction to an event or situation, you are a victim of your own hormonal and chemical surges. You react without thinking; your brain sends signals, your heart rate increases, blood vessels do their thing, chemicals bathe your neurological pathways in goop that produces anger, happiness, shock, fear, whatev.

But that is only for a minute and a half. After that the flood subsides, and it's your choice how you feel. If you are harboring feelings you don't like, like jealousy, regret, etc., it really is a choice of yours.

Similarly, you can create your own happiness. Something might happen to make you feel good, but after 90 seconds, it's no longer "making" you feel good; you choose to feel good. And I like this feeling; I consider lying in bed and thinking about the one you love to be a wonderful, hedonistic, organic self-medication.

Monday, August 18, 2008

One Day = $720 million


We spend that much every day of the Iraq War. What useful projects could we put the money toward?

i love the smell of commerce in the morning

There really is nothing more inspiring than a coffee shop. Despite being charmingly ambient, you'll never miss the opportunity to overhear an entire conversation of a Bluetooth-wearing schmuck that thinks his conversation is more important, and ergo must be louder, than yours.

"What? Yeah, yeah Frank, ya know I have a 9 o'clock so this does actually need to be a good time for you. Yeah, no, I pulled the Johnson account. Yeah don't worry about that. What? Frank I can't hear you. Frank? FRANK are you there?! Okay, yeah. I lost you for a second. Ok, what I need from you is to let Jerry know..." And did you ever notice that they all have shmuck businessman names? Frank, Jerry, etc. and there is always a Bill thrown in there. I would say that 75% of self-important Blackberry conversations involve a Bill.

A lot of times they won't even have the decency to interrupt their "I'm an idiot because it looks like I'm talking to myself" conversation to even order coffee. The baristas put on a fake smile and roll their eyes at him when he digs into his fat wallet to drop $4.50 on a latte. Money that I cringe to put on the table, that's 10% more than I make an hour, or 20%, or 300%, since I don't have a job at all right now.

Saturday, August 16, 2008

edward abbey and my dad

Once as a matter of fact I did let Elaine bully me into attending a group encounter session. She believed in it (that season) and felt I needed the treatment. And why? What's my problem? Well, I have this queer thing about pretty girls: I like them. And this weird thing about steady jobs: I don't like them. I don't believe in doing work I don't want to do in order to live the way I don't want to live.

--From "The Fool's Progress", 1988

As I approach graduation and am faced with the what-are-you-going-to-do with your life questions, I seek solace in Edward Abbey. He was not a perfect man, however very inspirational, and not about to be pigeonholed into either of those categories. He actually reminds me a lot of my father. Didn't give a shit what other people thought of him, basked in his own human flaws and stark-faced self-acceptance of those flaws.

My dad has always said that time is more important than jobs, and I've taken that to heart. Of course, that's easy to say when you're living in the cush of post-high-school, pre-student loan repayment microcosm that is college and its surrounding years, but this is the only place I'm living in right now, and the only place I can live in, barring the life of some of my childhood friends who married the first person they dated, got two dogs and a mortgage, forever renouncing the drifter's life.

My dad lives alone at the top of a small hill in the foothills of eastern Oregon, and drives his old Dodge truck down to the Willowcreek Market for Hamm's beer, some smokes and a few rounds of Keno when his eyes aren't so bad. He lives frugally off of retirement money and Vietnam vetrans' benefits and grows his own weed for personal and slightly commerical use. An old hippie, still with deep-down, "don't trust anyone over 30" ideals, even though has been over 30 for most of his life. Hippie in his 1960's sex-drugs-rocknroll ideals, but without the pretense of so many Chaco-clad, bandanna-wearing, middle-class angsty 18-24 year-olds I know (and sometimes love). Not fiercely anti-government in the Anarchist, squatter, US version of ETA sort of sense, but distrustful at best. He doesn't believe we landed in the moon but that it was a staged scene in the deserts of New Mexico. He thinks the world is going to puke on December 28th, 2012, because that's when the Mayan calendar ends, and the whole world runs off of the Mayan calendar, you see?
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He left home at 12 to work for 5 years on a dairy farm before enlisting in the Navy at 17. He was a very good-looking man in his army photos: blonde, side-parted hair, piercing blue eyes, and a smirk that said "I'll play your game for a few years, but only so I can get out of Emmett fucking Idaho." I like better photos of him from our flowered family albums that smell like mothballs, where he has a beard nearly as long as his long blond hair, wearing cut-off 501's, riding our horse Job down by the canal. I can see why my mom fell in love with him, a free spirit to the point of self-alienation, and did I not have wariness for his type rubbed into my brain from my childhood, saying "this spells d-i-v-0-r-c-e", I would have fallen as hard as she did for him, or someone like him. Armed with this wariness, I still might.

He has almost no friends in conservative Willocreek, all the old hippies that used to live there having moved to California by now. We used to have parties for days at a time, he said, and smoke all kinds of things and eat rum-infused watermelon and play volleyball under the willow tree down by the pond. The stories he tells me make me laugh, about how he and Mom used to paint their free-running turkeys' nails red, white, and blue for a 4th of July and Thanksgiving celebration all in one, and how, to get rid of a litter of kittens one October, he put them in paper bags, poked air holes, stapled them shut and handed the kittens out as trick-or-treats. Stories that make me laugh and wish I had been born by then, but now as a self-reflective, world-understanding adult with my mom's own mothering neuroses, I can see how he drove her mad. He must have been entertaining, but I imagine being raised by him was like being raised by a kid. I don't know what happened between them, as I was 4 when they got divorced, but it must have been a long time coming. I don't try to understand it all, because it's a waste of my time and I have better things to do. But, oh, the stories they share! They are civil to each other, finally, after about 17 years, but of course maintain a cold distance. However, there are times when I'm talking with just one of them, when they'll begin a story about the farm in their old hippie days together, and I can see the glint, actually see that sparkle of fondness return to their eye. What's done is done and it could have ended better, but if the chief part of enjoyment in this life is re-living everthing through memory (and I think it is), then it's okay; all the good parts are still there.

Thursday, August 14, 2008

the good word

Why doesn't the human capacity to love extend beyond our own romantic interests and family? Is loving so hard? It comes easily to me, but maybe like a person is hesitant to love because they've been hurt before, humans are hesitant to love because the world hasn't been kind first.

It's a reciprocity sort of thing, that we expect something from the world before we will give of ourselves. Should we let our fear of reciprocity stop us from creating more good energy? I remember the first time that I, in my infinite five-year-old wisdom, reached out to a strange dog to pet it and it growled, barked and snapped at me. I was scared, I cried, but I didn't give up loving dogs.


From Belize 2008

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

la vie philosophique, goddamnit

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My new daily affirmation. Thanks to Katie for gleaning these words of wisdom from Ed Abbey.


"You heard me, Lightcap. Do you really want to be a professor of philosophy?"

"I certainly want to be a philosopher, sir, and to live la vie philosophique, goddamnit."

"Answer my question."

Henry reflected. A fork in his road of life had most suddenly appeard dead ahead. To the right, the right way, a broad and shining highway led upward beyond the master of arts toward the Ph.D.--the tenured leisurely life of overpaid, underworked professerhood. A respectable life. Anyone who is paid much for doing little is regarded with obligatory admiration.

To the left a dingy path littered with beer cans and used toilet paper led downward in darkness to a life of shame, of part time and seasonal work and unemployment compensation, of domestic strife, jug wine, uncertainty, shady deals, naive realism, stud poker, furtive philanderings, skeptical nominalism, pick-up trucks, a gross and unalembicated nineteenth-century eight-ball materialism.

He called his shot. I will not tell a lie. Looking at his three Inquisitors looking at him, he answered them collectively:

"Not really, he said."

What's Real?

"What's real?" asked the Rabbit one day. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you… you become Real."

"Does it hurt?"

"Sometimes." For he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

"Does it happen all at one, like being wound up, or bit by bit?"

"It doesn't happen all at once. You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or who have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby."

-Margery Williams
"The Velveteen Rabbit"

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

and as we wind on down the road

if you're laying on the bow of a sailboat and looking sideways at the water, the earth looks not only flat, but vertical, up and down. You feel like you're headed straight downwards, and I feel like laughing a Captain Barbosa laugh as I intentionally capsize my ship and head to the end of the world, Pirates-of-the-Caribbean-style. But I keep it to myself and just laugh inwardly, or the others on the boat are going to think I'm talking in my sleep.

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I like listening to old, old Bob Marley tracks, Cream, and the Stones' earlier stuff when we're on the boat. And Stone Temple Pilots' "Pretty Penny". I like bracing myself against the guy wires when we make a sharp turn so I don't fall off the deck. I like having to duck under as we come about so the boom doesn't smack me in the back of the head. I like living in my bathing suit, making sandwiches at the breakfast bar, and not going outside until after noon every day.

This kind of lifestyle is hard to maintain, but while we're on vacation and ignorant of everyday duties (like working your ass off to afford a lakehouse such as this) I'm content to think of it as a just desert. Or, just an opportunity que he aprovechado.

Monday, August 11, 2008

I love the phrase "bitch please"


I have recently become obsessed with hulu.com, phonezoo.com, and all manners and sorts of photo-sharing websites. I am hopelessly late to everything, which my mom says means I value my time more than other people's. I love the phrase "bitch please," and try to use bro- puns whenever I can (e.g. broseph and brosephine, wolfgang amadeus brotzart, bilbro baggins, etc., thank you watsons) I love hotsprings and boats of all kinds, mostly self-propelled. I'm not lazy, I'm just efficient. I am self-conscious to write in blogs because I get so much satisfaction out of mocking them. Oh well. A little harmless hypocrisy is the spice of life. Complete self-righteousness is boring, no?

I've been having some really good conversations lately. I've realized that it's important to meet for coffee when a friend is in town, and make time for them; it's amazing how much lost time you can make up over a six-pack of Newcastle Brown Ale or an afternoon at Flying M.

Thursday, June 26, 2008

Mundaka, the World of Water

June 26, 2008 - Mundaka, Spain

At least that´s what the Romans called this little town on the coast, 20 minutes north of Gernika.  Derived (or evolved, rather?) from the Latin "mundusaqua" or "mundus aquae"¨mundus¨= world, and "aqua" = water.  Thank you, Nikki Romani at Boise High School.

Daniela and I took turns jumping off the stone walls on the entrance to the harbor.  It wasn´t very high up, maybe 20, 30 feet, but still enough time for your body to realize it´s in free fall, curse the brain for making such a decision, and fueling the fire for more jumping with a spike of adrenaline.  Oh, to be young and in Spain...
Coming to towns like this reminds me of how young and naive the US is, especially the West where I grew up.  For example, we were walking along the stone that walls the harbor, and came across a huge cannon.  I thought it was a memorial for something, but nope.  Turns out it was an actual cannon that the town used to defend itself from attacks from the sea.... and IT WAS STILL THERE.  After what, 600, 800 years? 1000?  Bueno, anything beyond 100 years old is pretty old for us, though we have sufficient aridity in our air to preserve such things.  Iker informed me that where we were standing, next to the cannon, was where Sir Francis Drake (described to me as "el corsario legendario, Seer Frahnthis Drah-kay")   disembarked from his ship on a visit to Mundaka.  And I was standing on it. 
Oh, and the surfing.  Mundaka hosts the World Championships for surfing (and you´d know it by the tiny surf shop that sells Billabong t-shirts for at least 30 euro), but seeing the tiny beach you wouldn´t think it.  You have to get out past the sandbars and harbor, where the waves really hit.  Remind me to learn to surf, but that´s for New Zealand. One step at a time, gumshoe.

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Midsummer´s Eve, y la Fiesta de San Juan


June 25, 2008 - Galdakao, Spain

San Juan (the celebration of St. John the Baptist), was apparently another one of those Christianization phenoms where instead of stamping out the pagan holiday, they just attached a Christian name or significance to it (like Christmas, Easter, etc.)  San Juan, celebrated June 23rd, is the celebration of midsummer.  I don´t know if it´s celebrated the same everywhere, but in the Basque country it´s really popular, and in the Catalonia region of Spain, it´s a national holiday.

In Galdakao (close to Bilbao in the province of Bizkaia), a huge bonfire is built at the center of the plaza.  Andra Mari, the dance group of Galdakao that we´re friends with, did a big fancy performance in full costumes.  There were guys dances around the bonfire, and the girls made circles and sang traditional songs around it.

There´s something very tribal and ominous about fires, something sorta pagan, and that combined with the reenactment of ancient rituals makes for a really cool experience for me.  Fires were arguably the first huge discovery of mankind (except maybe the opposite sex, Lay-Z-boys, and mac n´cheese) and anything that reminiscent our anthropological roots, I think, is very powerful.

After the traditional dances are finished, the entire village gets involved.  A huge crowd forms around the fire, and everyone jumps over it.  Kids, adults, parents holding babies, etc.  I asked about it, and apparently when you jump over the fire, you burn all the bad spirits inside you.  Our friend Iker also added that it was linked to witch-burning, but since the pagans were often considered witches, I´m to assume that it was a later Christian addendum, and I´ll just stick with it being for good luck.  People also threw slips of paper into the fire and burned them; be they confessions or wishes for the following year, I don´t know.  Either way, it´s pretty cool.

Sunday, June 22, 2008

the belated arrival and $9 sandwiches

Wow, today has been a fiasco.  After missing our Paris to Bilbao flight b/c the booking hadn´t allowed us enough time to transfer planes, we were switched to the next plane to Bilbao (which would come in 4 more hours) and were supposed to be awarded with food vouchers to make up for the mistake of the airlines, so that we might be spared the ungodly cost of noshing at the airport du Paris, where the bad US dollar exchange rate combined with outrageous airport prices made for a meal most dear (dear as in caro, not dear as in querido).  We when realized that we hadn´t been given the promised vouchers, we went back to the Air France ticket desk, and from there were sent to the Delta ticket desk because supposedly since it was Delta´s fault, only they could award them.  Delta sent us back to Air France, etc. etc. long story short, I ended up spending the equivalent of 9 US dollars on a very small sandwich.

That would not have been a big deal, except for that we were carrying fairly heavy daypacks, it was about 80 degrees (F) with 80% humidity in the airport (which later enabled my body´s production of ¨eau du dirty European,¨ that olfactory experience we all know and love), we felt like walking zombies, and had the sneaking suspicion that non of these people knew what they were talking about and just wanted to get rid of us.

Anyway, we´re in the hostel Don Claudio in what might be considered the Garden City quarter of Bilbao.  Even Mireya, who picked us up at the airport, didn´t know where it was and had to look it up on GPS to take us there.  I have internet, though, that tenuous lifeline through which I have always been able to ward off all homesickness.

the belated arrival and $9 sandwiches


Bilbao, Spain --
Wow, today has been a fiasco.  After missing our Paris to Bilbao flight b/c the booking hadn´t allowed us enough time to transfer planes, we were switched to the next plane to Bilbao (which would come in 4 more hours) and were supposed to be awarded with food vouchers to make up for the mistake of the airlines, so that we might be spared the ungodly cost of noshing at the airport du Paris, where the bad US dollar exchange rate combined with outrageous airport prices made for a meal most dear (dear as in caro, not dear as in querido).  We when realized that we hadn´t been given the promised vouchers, we went back to the Air France ticket desk, and from there were sent to the Delta ticket desk because supposedly since it was Delta´s fault, only they could award them.  Delta sent us back to Air France, etc. etc. long story short, I ended up spending the equivalent of 9 US dollars on a very small sandwich.
That would not have been a big deal, except for that we were carrying fairly heavy daypacks, it was about 80 degrees (F) with 80% humidity in the airport (which later enabled my body´s production of ¨eau du dirty European,¨ that olfactory experience we all know and love), we felt like walking zombies, and had the sneaking suspicion that non of these people knew what they were talking about and just wanted to get rid of us.
Anyway, we´re in the hostel Don Claudio in what might be considered the Garden City quarter of Bilbao.  Even Mireya, who picked us up at the airport, didn´t know where it was and had to look it up on GPS to take us there.  I have internet, though, that tenuous lifeline through which I have always been able to ward off all homesickness.

Saturday, June 21, 2008

Leavin' soon


I'm procastinating packing, messing about on the internet, my room is a pile of clothes and toiletry bags, my mom is yelling at me to hurry up... the trip is getting close.
Just now, it's getting to the point where I'm excited.  It takes me awhile before all the upcoming excitement becomes tangible for me.  It will probably not fully manifest itself until we get to the airport.

Leavin' Soon


About to leave for Gaztemundu 2008.  I'm procastinating packing, messing about on the internet, my room is a pile of clothes and toiletry bags, my mom is yelling at me to hurry up... the trip is getting close.
Just now, it's getting to the point where I'm excited.  It takes me awhile before all the upcoming excitement becomes tangible for me.  It will probably not fully manifest itself until we get to the airport.

Sunday, May 18, 2008

page 11-1234

I really feel like this dream was pretty meaningful.  I was eating lunch somewhere with Becky Anderson and perhaps two Tiffany Elsberry’s.  Kat Ely was there too.  Genny Gerke was, so I sat with her.  I was wearing some kind of weird clothes with shoes that wouldn’t really fit, so I took them off.

As we were leaving lunch, Genny and Tammi O’Rourke (I think) went into this room.  I’m assuming it was in Boone because I didn’t recognize it before.  Or it could have been any college, maybe not C of I..  Anyway, I sat down and the professor was talking about western civilizations.  Our textbook had ancient Greece in it or something. And we were on page 11-1234 (which turned out to be the introductory section.) 

We were talking about global energy consumption and I made the comment like “isn’t it true that if everyone consumed energy the way the U.S. does, we’d need like 3 or 4 Earths to keep up?”  He somehow didn’t completely agree, which was weird.  Then there was a 5 minute break.

During the break, I inquired about the class (Genny said it was a 1-credit class every Wednesday from 7-11 or something) and the professor took me by the arm and said “well, I’m not really a traditional, orthodox professor here…” and dragged me down all these stairs, jumping through auditoriums, etc.  Then I was in this wormhole, and I can’t explain it.  But he basically showed me the mental journey the class was geared toward.  Like the pinnacle of it.  I somehow completed the entire meditational experience right then, when everyone else had to study for the entirety of the class in order to reach it.

When I was back in the seats in class, we were watching clips from people’s mental journeys, kinda as a promo video for the class.  Apparently, during mine, I was an egg bobbing in the water (like a chicken egg), then I was a pretty fish that turned out to be a beta hatching from the egg.  The professor was a huge gorilla, like the size of two cars, except he had a huge huge head and face.  Disproportionately huge.  And he was next to a beach and there was a convertible there parked with two people in it, and he as the gorilla grabbed the people and threw them into the rocky shore/surf. 

Crazy…..

Saturday, April 12, 2008

Zion National Park

 

We went here in April of 2008, for an Outdoor Program Spring Break trip.
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Thursday, March 27, 2008

Life Could be Simple

Oh and why can’t we always just type, and play with different fonts and love who we want to love and they’ll just love us back? Why can’t I sit with my back against an old oak tree, bare toes in the grass, and be poetic with someone’s head in my lap and draw birdsongs on a clean white piece of paper with a fine-point black Sharpie pen? So many questions, but it’s mostly because I don’t want to learn about Clara Schumann and Mendelssohn and the Cult of Virtuosity. Don’t worship others, worship yourself.

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Monday, February 18, 2008

the Big 10 on the palapa

Courtney and I went on our run today, and got cat-calls the entire time we were within sight of a construction site full of locals. Did the big 10 on the palapa deck and the dock. We met a guy named Moose (James) that looked like my dad in the 70’s. Well, if my dad had his 70’s look, aged 30 years. He was Caucasian, but had skin like tanned leather, and blonde/gray dreadlocks. He was riding a bicycle with no shoes on and said that if I brought my harmonica to the Roadkill Bar tonight, I could get onstage and sing.

And there we were, crashing through the narrow, dirt, potholed San Pedro streets, stacked to the top of the golf cart with beer bottles rolling out behind us, waving at every local and careening around corners screaming “woo hoo!” We blustered into the Roadkill Bar, didn’t buy drinks, and overtook the sandy dance floor. The girls in skirts, stomping and twirling, and BK and Geoff doing their best dance that boys can do.

Sang “A Whole New World” on the way back home under a full moon, and I don’t believe our rabble-rousing was appreciated by the locals.

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Sunday, February 17, 2008

island boy

Yeah. Laid out on the beach all damn day. Listening to some Bruce Springsteen, wind is blowin through the beachouse so hard it knocked over my bottle of tanning oil. Geoff climbed the palm tree wearing sailor boy pants and a bandanna, and came down with an armful of coconuts looking like a native. We told him he had to wear the bandanna for the rest of the trip.

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