Medford 02155
West Newbury 01985
Bamako
Ouagadougou
Groveland 01834
Ipswich 01938
Boston 02115
Allston 02134
Rabat 10101
Brookline 02446
A list of the places I have put down roots in 22 years of life. The briefest compendium of my geographical history, a manifestation of sabbaticals, studies, divorce, suburbia, leases, mortgages.
A zip code can say a thousand words. What is yours? What attachment do you feel to the physical place you live in? What are the effects of a life without attachment, of transitory employment, of a disposable culture? You can live anywhere, do anything, be anybody you please, but where does that leave you? what is the value of an identity defined by its transient adaptability, and what are the adverse effects of an ephemeral existence?
Friday, January 7, 2011
Friday, December 24, 2010
Christopher Hedges David Foster Wallace
David Hedges Foster Christopher Wallace. no, not my new law firm. Wallace's voluminous essays make my mind race make me read with a dictionary at hand put my brain to work. the man speaks volumes of truth dissecting everything, he articulates some of my greatest fears and fascination with exquisite exhaustive extradetails
whereas
Chris Hedges shouted at me when I walked in the French doors. squawked from the ibm really, and the man was talking sense. He was talking all about our occupation of Iraq, how the sanctions were working and Saddam was crumbling, how much the war coverage emphasized our weapons and high technology, how much propaganda media tried to build public favor, etc. He paints a bleak landscape that eerily reflects a lot of America today;
furthermore,
this gentleman talks of the impending falloftheAmericanempire
which is also the name of a State Radio song.
There is so much I find problematic with things I see around me, I can't help. An illusion is something different from a dream. bread and circus, poor Cicero. Oh yes I forgot, Hedges talks about how absent a revolution our current trajectory breeds facism. Some would say we are already there.
whereas
Chris Hedges shouted at me when I walked in the French doors. squawked from the ibm really, and the man was talking sense. He was talking all about our occupation of Iraq, how the sanctions were working and Saddam was crumbling, how much the war coverage emphasized our weapons and high technology, how much propaganda media tried to build public favor, etc. He paints a bleak landscape that eerily reflects a lot of America today;
furthermore,
this gentleman talks of the impending falloftheAmericanempire
which is also the name of a State Radio song.
There is so much I find problematic with things I see around me, I can't help. An illusion is something different from a dream. bread and circus, poor Cicero. Oh yes I forgot, Hedges talks about how absent a revolution our current trajectory breeds facism. Some would say we are already there.
Thursday, December 23, 2010
Cold Winter Evenings
As a consequence of staying up late last night and celebrating the end of the semester, I find myself sitting on the computer at 12:33 in the am without a lick of tiredness on my airwaves. Sitting in front of the computer I mean, it is in fact young Birdy who has tried several times to sit on the computer. The living room/kitchen stretches out in front of me on three sides, the space a product of two lives joined together for the past several years. Lights festoon the dying evergreen erected near the deck doors and glow with the bright pointy blur that tells me my glasses are lying folded on some end table. One cat snoozes prone on a red armchair, one cat is out of sight, two cats with long hair lie together curled like furry presents on the Christmas tree's skirt. I thought pets were bad, but now we're dressing up trees?
I am being critical, but really I love the minor transformations of living space that accompany the holiday season in my dear Mommy's house. I feel blessed to have somewhere I can retreat to during the winter break between semesters, this being the last of my undergraduate studies. cookie dough sits in the fridge, the santa placemats are on the table (used for approximately 3 weeks of the year), the impressive array of nutcrackers stoically gaze ahead into nothing from their perch on the wood hutch, a motley cast of frozen figurines stand arranged on the mantelpiece around a baby figurine in a crib, 5 stockings of different green red and white designs hang on hooks besides the fireplace.
the traditions of this time of the year seem untouchable, and the fun comes from their enduring presence. before i go to bed, I will go around and turn off each window candle. even though people gripe about christmas shopping, and spending time with family, and cooking all sorts of delicious food, we clearly still go through the motions. there is some value that these traditions provide for us, otherwise we would cease to uphold them. whatever the value you get, it is still fun to examine critically these certain annual behaviors that we engage in.
for some people the only value might be the presents they receive. It is unfortunate that for some christmas has become nothing more than a time to get new stuff (that you may or may not need/like), though I would be lying if I said I don't look forward to that part of the holidays. If not, what kind of American would I be? Christmas is the biggest time of the year for most retailers, probably the biggest and most successful shopping campaign of manufactured demand ever created. our economy is fueled by the volume of stuff we consume, and we have to go through a lot of it to keep the machine satisfied. I spent probably two hundred dollars in the past 2 weeks on christmas gifts. how much of that stuff will be used and appreciated by the people I love? there are all sorts of economic studies that conclude that Christmas represents a deadweight loss of some several billion dollars, maybe 10, maybe more, because so much of what is purchased does not end up being used or valued commensurate to its cost. probably half the shit is lost, broken, or discarded before the new year, or we relegate it to that pile in the corner of the room to collect dust. the perfect gift is a rare thing, especially for people who have alreayd satisfied all of their basic needs. if we really want to be efficient, we should take the money we were going to spend on someone's gifts and hand it to them in an envelope with a hug and a kiss on the cheek. BUT, all of the money that is spent goes to sustain the economy, and we must do our patriotic duty as Americans to buy things, amass, consume, discard, repeat.
I am not saying that all christmas gifts are worthless, or that we should stop giving gifts, or that I don't love christmas. I am proposing an invigoration of common sense during the holiday season, maybe a suggested limit on the # of gifts, and a re-affirmation of the season's value and purpose, which is not to fill out corporations' 4th quarter profit margins: a celebration of light and joy to carry people through the long cold winter, to look forward to the coming warmth and change of seasons, to reflect on the changing year and the passing of time, to spend time with family and friends and share with them food, drink, and gifts, all of these things and more are part of what value I find in Christmas.
To me it is about making sushi with Mommy, a tradition we probably started when I was in 8th grade, and waking up early to peek at the wonderous packages that had miraculously assembled themselves around the tree during the night and opening stockings with Allan, a tradition we probably started when we were old enough to walk. It is about the christmas morning breakfast of whole wheat cinnamon rolls topped with buttery brown sugar, the scrambled eggs, the bacon, the sliced rounds of orange. It is about spending Christmas eve with Anna, Jennifer, and Eugene.
It is about family, first and foremost for me, and I dont plan on changing that any time soon. It makes me sad that my Papa is away for this whole break, and he will be sorely missed. We did get to hold a little goodbye evening for him, me, Allan, and Lois, last friday, to see him off for three and a half weeks working on Hausa teaching materials in Niamey, Niger. It was a lovely time, eating chiebou thienn (Senegalese fish and rice dish) with fried plantains, drinking adult egg nog, and sharing gifts and music in the living room of 511 Main street. It felt like an alternative condensed christmas, a fun change. It goes to show that the exact recipe for christmas at home will change, but it doesn't matter as long as the formula of family, food, (gifts) and fun remains. like I said, I am a sucker for the gift part; its only the buying part that I hate. [it is hard to beat the thoughtfulness of a good gift.] but that is more of an aversion to spending money, something I will never get over. I never developed my consumer genes, must be some weird mutation. I get physically uncomfortable after spending too long in a walmart/kmart/similar shopping experience, and a mall is the last place I want to go hang out in.
I still buy stuff, of course, it is just that I don't like to. No matter, I have come to recognize that it is a sticky situation that I will be dealing with for the rest of my life.
I am being critical, but really I love the minor transformations of living space that accompany the holiday season in my dear Mommy's house. I feel blessed to have somewhere I can retreat to during the winter break between semesters, this being the last of my undergraduate studies. cookie dough sits in the fridge, the santa placemats are on the table (used for approximately 3 weeks of the year), the impressive array of nutcrackers stoically gaze ahead into nothing from their perch on the wood hutch, a motley cast of frozen figurines stand arranged on the mantelpiece around a baby figurine in a crib, 5 stockings of different green red and white designs hang on hooks besides the fireplace.
the traditions of this time of the year seem untouchable, and the fun comes from their enduring presence. before i go to bed, I will go around and turn off each window candle. even though people gripe about christmas shopping, and spending time with family, and cooking all sorts of delicious food, we clearly still go through the motions. there is some value that these traditions provide for us, otherwise we would cease to uphold them. whatever the value you get, it is still fun to examine critically these certain annual behaviors that we engage in.
for some people the only value might be the presents they receive. It is unfortunate that for some christmas has become nothing more than a time to get new stuff (that you may or may not need/like), though I would be lying if I said I don't look forward to that part of the holidays. If not, what kind of American would I be? Christmas is the biggest time of the year for most retailers, probably the biggest and most successful shopping campaign of manufactured demand ever created. our economy is fueled by the volume of stuff we consume, and we have to go through a lot of it to keep the machine satisfied. I spent probably two hundred dollars in the past 2 weeks on christmas gifts. how much of that stuff will be used and appreciated by the people I love? there are all sorts of economic studies that conclude that Christmas represents a deadweight loss of some several billion dollars, maybe 10, maybe more, because so much of what is purchased does not end up being used or valued commensurate to its cost. probably half the shit is lost, broken, or discarded before the new year, or we relegate it to that pile in the corner of the room to collect dust. the perfect gift is a rare thing, especially for people who have alreayd satisfied all of their basic needs. if we really want to be efficient, we should take the money we were going to spend on someone's gifts and hand it to them in an envelope with a hug and a kiss on the cheek. BUT, all of the money that is spent goes to sustain the economy, and we must do our patriotic duty as Americans to buy things, amass, consume, discard, repeat.
I am not saying that all christmas gifts are worthless, or that we should stop giving gifts, or that I don't love christmas. I am proposing an invigoration of common sense during the holiday season, maybe a suggested limit on the # of gifts, and a re-affirmation of the season's value and purpose, which is not to fill out corporations' 4th quarter profit margins: a celebration of light and joy to carry people through the long cold winter, to look forward to the coming warmth and change of seasons, to reflect on the changing year and the passing of time, to spend time with family and friends and share with them food, drink, and gifts, all of these things and more are part of what value I find in Christmas.
To me it is about making sushi with Mommy, a tradition we probably started when I was in 8th grade, and waking up early to peek at the wonderous packages that had miraculously assembled themselves around the tree during the night and opening stockings with Allan, a tradition we probably started when we were old enough to walk. It is about the christmas morning breakfast of whole wheat cinnamon rolls topped with buttery brown sugar, the scrambled eggs, the bacon, the sliced rounds of orange. It is about spending Christmas eve with Anna, Jennifer, and Eugene.
It is about family, first and foremost for me, and I dont plan on changing that any time soon. It makes me sad that my Papa is away for this whole break, and he will be sorely missed. We did get to hold a little goodbye evening for him, me, Allan, and Lois, last friday, to see him off for three and a half weeks working on Hausa teaching materials in Niamey, Niger. It was a lovely time, eating chiebou thienn (Senegalese fish and rice dish) with fried plantains, drinking adult egg nog, and sharing gifts and music in the living room of 511 Main street. It felt like an alternative condensed christmas, a fun change. It goes to show that the exact recipe for christmas at home will change, but it doesn't matter as long as the formula of family, food, (gifts) and fun remains. like I said, I am a sucker for the gift part; its only the buying part that I hate. [it is hard to beat the thoughtfulness of a good gift.] but that is more of an aversion to spending money, something I will never get over. I never developed my consumer genes, must be some weird mutation. I get physically uncomfortable after spending too long in a walmart/kmart/similar shopping experience, and a mall is the last place I want to go hang out in.
I still buy stuff, of course, it is just that I don't like to. No matter, I have come to recognize that it is a sticky situation that I will be dealing with for the rest of my life.
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
On Gumbo
The murky depths of a steaming pot of stew universally entice the hungry diner. Part of the allure for is the mystery of the pot, a riddle of ingredients that neither sight nor smell can solve. The path to understanding requires a spoon, for only taste can begin to unravel this tale. Perhaps gumbo best exemplifies this mystery of the pot, for it is a dish with impenetrable complexity and hearty strength. It pulls the willing diner somewhere past the exotic to a sublime balance of nature combining elements of land, sea, and spice. Ingredients work in unidentifiable harmony; a second spoonful is required.
Thursday, December 2, 2010
Schindler's List
Just finished reading a review of Spielberg's 1993 movie written by Robert Leventhal of the University of Virginia. With the final credits of the movie and its violins still rolling over me, I found myself questioning everything I had just seen. Leventhal precisely deconstructs Spielberg's widely-acclaimed work into the sensationalist hollywood movie that it is. He concludes with this cool indictment, saying the film "colludes with the logic of reduction, condensation, compression, concentration and 'leveling' that are the trademarks of Fascism itself."
Leventhal raises big questions, and he found me right when I was reeling from the enormity of what I had just finished watching. After perusing the Wikipedia page, I found this review when searching google for more information about Spielberg's initial involvement in the project.
The cinematic quality of the movie and its acting is unquestionable, or hard to dispute, and I know it is near the top on many all-time best movie lists. I admit, that is why I wanted to see it in the first place. Now I realize that I, along with many others, was drawn into a narrative portrayal that distorts the truth and detracts from history by manipulating the legacy of the Holocaust for profit. Spielberg and others won fabulous awards for this work; it is Holocaust in the Hollywood mainstream. Though, as Leventhal says, it is valuable as an educational tool in this age, there is a cost to the design and success of this movie as a work of entertainment media. I do not mean to detract from the legacy of the victims and survivors of the Holocaust. Rather, I caution others not to take Schindler's List at face value, as I initially did.
Let us not forget the victims and survivors of any other genocide past or present, and let us work against future manifestations of such tragedies. The late Howard Zinn wrote eloquently of this in a piece titled, "Respecting the Holocaust;" I will leave you with his lasting words:
"If the Holocaust is to have any meaning, we must transfer our anger to today's brutalities. We must respect the memory of the Jewish Holocaust by refusing to allow atrocities to take place now...My point is not to diminish the experience of the Jewish Holocaust, but to enlarge upon it."
Leventhal raises big questions, and he found me right when I was reeling from the enormity of what I had just finished watching. After perusing the Wikipedia page, I found this review when searching google for more information about Spielberg's initial involvement in the project.
The cinematic quality of the movie and its acting is unquestionable, or hard to dispute, and I know it is near the top on many all-time best movie lists. I admit, that is why I wanted to see it in the first place. Now I realize that I, along with many others, was drawn into a narrative portrayal that distorts the truth and detracts from history by manipulating the legacy of the Holocaust for profit. Spielberg and others won fabulous awards for this work; it is Holocaust in the Hollywood mainstream. Though, as Leventhal says, it is valuable as an educational tool in this age, there is a cost to the design and success of this movie as a work of entertainment media. I do not mean to detract from the legacy of the victims and survivors of the Holocaust. Rather, I caution others not to take Schindler's List at face value, as I initially did.
Let us not forget the victims and survivors of any other genocide past or present, and let us work against future manifestations of such tragedies. The late Howard Zinn wrote eloquently of this in a piece titled, "Respecting the Holocaust;" I will leave you with his lasting words:
"If the Holocaust is to have any meaning, we must transfer our anger to today's brutalities. We must respect the memory of the Jewish Holocaust by refusing to allow atrocities to take place now...My point is not to diminish the experience of the Jewish Holocaust, but to enlarge upon it."
Thursday, November 11, 2010
goings on
I spent the morning working at the Greenside Out Garden, the physical home of my umbrella organization Bountiful Brookline. I love organizing things, taking stock of what is present, and cleaning as I go, so that is what I did to the shed there. Its like loading a dishwasher to maximize the use of the space and also ensure everything gets clean. Along with Laurie, a volunteer with BB, I harvested the last of the garden's bounty for this season. This included over 5lbs of kale, 1 lb of salad greens, 1 pound of assorted collards and chard, a few stubby carrots, and big bunches of parsley and chives. I planted garlic in 2 of our beds, and then I covered all of the beds with a nice blanket of leaves. I composted the stalks and roots that we pulled out with some leaves. This kind of work is really enjoyable, especially because it is such a refreshing break from my normal school work and reading assignments. Being outside in the crisp fall morning sun, rooting around in the dirt, whistling and thinking about everything and nothing. It feels really great, it just feels good to me. It feels right.
(It feels so much better than sitting here and finishing my resource economics problem set on fisheries, equilibrium harvest levels, marginal cost of effort, total revenue, comparative statistics, blah blagh. That is why I am writing to you!)
Tomorrow night the Hive is hosting a Shabbat dinner and get this: its free. An organization actually pays college students to host shabbat dinners for their friends and family, so that is what we are doing. Isn't it great? I don't even know what Shabbat is! This meal, which I am sure will be as lovely as our house meals always are, is happening after the first meeting for the Warren Towers Green the Patio project. I am excited for this to finally get started and to hear everyone's vision for this space. I hope to see a productive container garden with beds and pots that shows how easy it is to grow food in the city. And I hope that it will also become a lasting pleasant place that people can sit and enjoy themselves in for years to come, a little outdoor green haven away from the clutter of Warren Towers and the rest of dreary BU campus (its pretty drab, you must admit, and no amount of brick will change that) where birds and insects and people can interact in harmony. Sounds a bit cheesy, but oh well.
As if there wasn't enough excitement already, Saturday I will be biking to Salem to Roll Against Coal. It is a ride-to-rally put on by Greenpeace, Students for a Just and Stable Future, and Bikes not Bombs. We will be meeting Salem-based environmental groups for a rally at a church there, where the goal is to show our support for renewable energy and our distaste for the coal power plant there. It is an obsolete sixty year old behemoth, and there are many clamboring for it to close. Should be a nice little Saturday...
Also, my stupid glasses broke again. This is the second time in a year, and I swear it is not my fault. Luckily they are still (barely) under warranty, and I should be getting a replacement pair soon. For the mean time its nerdy taped up glasses for this guy.
Oh, and one more thing. There is a master urban gardener course offered by Boston Natural Areas Network that I am considering for next year. It is offered on 2 months of Saturdays from January-March, and it is free-suggested donation of 40 bucks. I think it would be a great supplement/contribution to my work with Bountiful Brookline, and it should provide valuable lifelong skills that I can more fully put to use after college. This year is great! Relinquishing my Saturdays is of course a bit of a daunting prospect, though when do I ever do much in the way of productive things on that day anyways. And it runs from 10-3:30pm, so the schedule is not too intense. We will see, eh?
(It feels so much better than sitting here and finishing my resource economics problem set on fisheries, equilibrium harvest levels, marginal cost of effort, total revenue, comparative statistics, blah blagh. That is why I am writing to you!)
Tomorrow night the Hive is hosting a Shabbat dinner and get this: its free. An organization actually pays college students to host shabbat dinners for their friends and family, so that is what we are doing. Isn't it great? I don't even know what Shabbat is! This meal, which I am sure will be as lovely as our house meals always are, is happening after the first meeting for the Warren Towers Green the Patio project. I am excited for this to finally get started and to hear everyone's vision for this space. I hope to see a productive container garden with beds and pots that shows how easy it is to grow food in the city. And I hope that it will also become a lasting pleasant place that people can sit and enjoy themselves in for years to come, a little outdoor green haven away from the clutter of Warren Towers and the rest of dreary BU campus (its pretty drab, you must admit, and no amount of brick will change that) where birds and insects and people can interact in harmony. Sounds a bit cheesy, but oh well.
As if there wasn't enough excitement already, Saturday I will be biking to Salem to Roll Against Coal. It is a ride-to-rally put on by Greenpeace, Students for a Just and Stable Future, and Bikes not Bombs. We will be meeting Salem-based environmental groups for a rally at a church there, where the goal is to show our support for renewable energy and our distaste for the coal power plant there. It is an obsolete sixty year old behemoth, and there are many clamboring for it to close. Should be a nice little Saturday...
Also, my stupid glasses broke again. This is the second time in a year, and I swear it is not my fault. Luckily they are still (barely) under warranty, and I should be getting a replacement pair soon. For the mean time its nerdy taped up glasses for this guy.
Oh, and one more thing. There is a master urban gardener course offered by Boston Natural Areas Network that I am considering for next year. It is offered on 2 months of Saturdays from January-March, and it is free-suggested donation of 40 bucks. I think it would be a great supplement/contribution to my work with Bountiful Brookline, and it should provide valuable lifelong skills that I can more fully put to use after college. This year is great! Relinquishing my Saturdays is of course a bit of a daunting prospect, though when do I ever do much in the way of productive things on that day anyways. And it runs from 10-3:30pm, so the schedule is not too intense. We will see, eh?
Thursday, November 4, 2010
a fresh start
November is a fresh start month.
It is really easy to succumb to my worries and fears, my nagging undertoads, to sad feelings sparked by all of the bad things that are happening all over the world. It is too easy to sit back and let anxiety about the future paralyze the present. No good will come of it.
There are so many situations in the world that I have no control over. There are a few that I do, and those are what I need to focus on now. Everything I am doing now is preparation for the future, when I can then apply myself more fully to different situations and contexts. A cursory knowledge of every problem in the world will not do any good. There is awareness, when a person has absorbed information and it contributes to the development of a new perspective, that develops after reading an article or watching a documentary perhaps. But what comes of it? Knowledge for knowledge's sake is important, of course. And awareness is the necessary first step. You don't know what you don't know. Being aware of a problem can inform a person's decisions down the road. Awareness tends to spread by word of mouth. Awareness can compel someone to take actions, to organize, to dedicate themselves to a cause.
I would posit a difference between awareness and being informed. It is easy to be informed about a whole slew of issues and situations. Today was a perfect example, for I watched two documentary films. I am now more informed about coal mining in West Virginia, and I am also more informed about the Nile Perch fisheries in Tanzania on the shore of Lake Victoria. Coal Country showed the effects of different kinds of coal mining, including mountaintop removal and strip mining, on the people and environment of this region of Appalachia. As they point out in the film, the industry's dirty practices, and the resulting effects on the health of communities, ecosystems, streams and lakes, and the air, would never be allowed in the Rockies or the Berkshires. The economic development of many places in the region is so limited that coal mining is the only way to earn a living (unless you want to be flipping burgers), and there is also a relative paucity of jobs in such a capital-intensive industry. Darwin's Nightmare is a very dark and disturbing snapshot of life in Mwanza, Tanzania, and the social, economic, and environmental effects of the booming export fisheries there. Rather than me trying to describe the power of this movie, it is better for you to see it for yourself. I wonder if any of the Europeans buying Victorian perch think about the street children fighting over food or huffing glue so they can sleep at night, many of them orphans of fishermen or HIV/AIDS victims...I wonder how many people are exploited in order to get my food to my table, or how many unseen and unknown consequences my actions and lifestyle create...I wonder why it is possible to mine the minerals or extract the biodiversity of a place, be it communities in Appalachia or Tanzania, and line the pockets of a few with the sweat and blood of others who are inadequately compensated for their labor. The workings, and continued existence, of the resource curse, this being one example, still mystifies me. No one is eating nile perch in Mwanza, and there was a famine in Tanzania when the movie was filmed (it came out in 2004) even as hundreds of tons of fish were exported daily. The resources of Western Virginia are trucked out, and the people who live there, who should be the true owners of these minerals and the ones to profit from their extraction, are the ones least likely to benefit from them and most likely to be hurt by them.
I don't know if this is awareness, or how long these movies will stick with me. I don't know if anyone will be motivated by my words to view these movies, or to poke further. I don't know if anyone reads this anyways.
But there are plenty of things I do know. I know that in this year, the culmination of three very transformative and wonderful and paradoxical college years, I will continue to learn and grow. I will continue to develop my 'worldview,' my interests, my skills as a scholar, a citizen, a gardener, a friend, a community participant, a son and a brother. I will contribute to my community, on the house and town level, because I believe in it and its power to nurture and guide and shelter (even if our living arrangement is technically illegal in Brookline-though I think a rousing family dinner would sway any inspector). I will slog through vague assignments and dry pages of reading and sleep-inducing lectures because I believe in the value of an education and I am shamelessly in love with getting good grades. Guilty. I will work to quantify and qualify the benefits of eating local and organic food which I already know to be true. I will ride my bike and take my hands off of the handlebars sometimes, and I will do my best to avoid the geese (sorry little fella). I will reduce and reuse as much as possible, so that there is less to recycle. It is not by chance that recycle is the third R, it is really just an intermediate stage until society figures out that we made a wrong turn down consumer culture road. How about "reduce, reuse, RE-PURPOSE, and recycle"?
I know that I will feel down sometimes, and that my undertoads will always be there pulling and nagging and croaking at my toes. And I know that this is ok. I am in a transition period, and it will be some time yet until I am over her. It is a gradual process, most things are. The long term benefits take time to materialize. Change will come whether we like it or not, and it is the ability to find the beauty in the process that is perhaps most important. I find solace in the prospects of the future, of the next great feast, of achieving that perfect ecstatic exhaustion, of being me.
It is really easy to succumb to my worries and fears, my nagging undertoads, to sad feelings sparked by all of the bad things that are happening all over the world. It is too easy to sit back and let anxiety about the future paralyze the present. No good will come of it.
There are so many situations in the world that I have no control over. There are a few that I do, and those are what I need to focus on now. Everything I am doing now is preparation for the future, when I can then apply myself more fully to different situations and contexts. A cursory knowledge of every problem in the world will not do any good. There is awareness, when a person has absorbed information and it contributes to the development of a new perspective, that develops after reading an article or watching a documentary perhaps. But what comes of it? Knowledge for knowledge's sake is important, of course. And awareness is the necessary first step. You don't know what you don't know. Being aware of a problem can inform a person's decisions down the road. Awareness tends to spread by word of mouth. Awareness can compel someone to take actions, to organize, to dedicate themselves to a cause.
I would posit a difference between awareness and being informed. It is easy to be informed about a whole slew of issues and situations. Today was a perfect example, for I watched two documentary films. I am now more informed about coal mining in West Virginia, and I am also more informed about the Nile Perch fisheries in Tanzania on the shore of Lake Victoria. Coal Country showed the effects of different kinds of coal mining, including mountaintop removal and strip mining, on the people and environment of this region of Appalachia. As they point out in the film, the industry's dirty practices, and the resulting effects on the health of communities, ecosystems, streams and lakes, and the air, would never be allowed in the Rockies or the Berkshires. The economic development of many places in the region is so limited that coal mining is the only way to earn a living (unless you want to be flipping burgers), and there is also a relative paucity of jobs in such a capital-intensive industry. Darwin's Nightmare is a very dark and disturbing snapshot of life in Mwanza, Tanzania, and the social, economic, and environmental effects of the booming export fisheries there. Rather than me trying to describe the power of this movie, it is better for you to see it for yourself. I wonder if any of the Europeans buying Victorian perch think about the street children fighting over food or huffing glue so they can sleep at night, many of them orphans of fishermen or HIV/AIDS victims...I wonder how many people are exploited in order to get my food to my table, or how many unseen and unknown consequences my actions and lifestyle create...I wonder why it is possible to mine the minerals or extract the biodiversity of a place, be it communities in Appalachia or Tanzania, and line the pockets of a few with the sweat and blood of others who are inadequately compensated for their labor. The workings, and continued existence, of the resource curse, this being one example, still mystifies me. No one is eating nile perch in Mwanza, and there was a famine in Tanzania when the movie was filmed (it came out in 2004) even as hundreds of tons of fish were exported daily. The resources of Western Virginia are trucked out, and the people who live there, who should be the true owners of these minerals and the ones to profit from their extraction, are the ones least likely to benefit from them and most likely to be hurt by them.
I don't know if this is awareness, or how long these movies will stick with me. I don't know if anyone will be motivated by my words to view these movies, or to poke further. I don't know if anyone reads this anyways.
But there are plenty of things I do know. I know that in this year, the culmination of three very transformative and wonderful and paradoxical college years, I will continue to learn and grow. I will continue to develop my 'worldview,' my interests, my skills as a scholar, a citizen, a gardener, a friend, a community participant, a son and a brother. I will contribute to my community, on the house and town level, because I believe in it and its power to nurture and guide and shelter (even if our living arrangement is technically illegal in Brookline-though I think a rousing family dinner would sway any inspector). I will slog through vague assignments and dry pages of reading and sleep-inducing lectures because I believe in the value of an education and I am shamelessly in love with getting good grades. Guilty. I will work to quantify and qualify the benefits of eating local and organic food which I already know to be true. I will ride my bike and take my hands off of the handlebars sometimes, and I will do my best to avoid the geese (sorry little fella). I will reduce and reuse as much as possible, so that there is less to recycle. It is not by chance that recycle is the third R, it is really just an intermediate stage until society figures out that we made a wrong turn down consumer culture road. How about "reduce, reuse, RE-PURPOSE, and recycle"?
I know that I will feel down sometimes, and that my undertoads will always be there pulling and nagging and croaking at my toes. And I know that this is ok. I am in a transition period, and it will be some time yet until I am over her. It is a gradual process, most things are. The long term benefits take time to materialize. Change will come whether we like it or not, and it is the ability to find the beauty in the process that is perhaps most important. I find solace in the prospects of the future, of the next great feast, of achieving that perfect ecstatic exhaustion, of being me.
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