Ugh.

It’s been one of those days. Well, weeks really. I can’t get motivated to do one thing work-related. My desk shows it- just piles and piles of papers, files, coffee cups, post-its and Dos Mundos newspapers. Gross. I refuse to move forward, to be productive, to return phone calls to clients left in my voicemail purgatory for days. I’m tired of talking about Medicaid, I don’t want to connect with any more interpreters, and I sure as hell don’t want to do any database entry.

What I’d love, is to sprawl out on the grass somewhere. I want to put barefoot toes in an ice-cold stream, skip rocks, read, get tired from walking and fill my skin with Vitamin D. Maybe that means I need a vacation? I just wonder if this happens with every job. Would I feel this way with a job that let me be outside, that encouraged work with my hands, that made me feel physically tired from something other than staring at a computer and sitting? I refuse to acknowledge too much discontentment, because I strongly believe it's our generational breeding and I don’t like it. I want to be present, to learn contentment in day-to-day simplicity and to find beautiful happenings in the ordinary. Sustained attention to the particular. Yes.

Instead, I’m frustrated. What’s the cure? Always, always, always Wendell. (Yes, I would be in his cult if he had one)

From the union of power and money,
from the union of power and secrecy,
from the union of government and science,
from the union of government and art,
from the union of science and money,
from the union of ambition and ignorance,
from the union of genius and war,
from the union of outer space and inner vacuity,
the Mad Farmer walks quietly away.


There is only one of him, but he goes.
He returns to the small country he calls home,
his own nation small enough to walk across.
He goes shadowy into the local woods,
and brightly into the local meadows and croplands.
He goes to the care of neighbors,
he goes into the care of neighbors.
He goes to the potluck supper, a dish from each house
for the hunger of every house.
He goes into the quiet of early mornings
of days when he is not going anywhere.


Calling his neighbors together into the sanctity of their lives
separate and together
in the one life of their commonwealth and home,
in their own nation small enough for a story
or song to travel across in an hour, he cries:


Come all ye conservatives and liberals
who want to conserve the good things and be free,
come away from the merchants of big answers,
whose hands are metalled with power;
from the union of anywhere and everywhere
by the purchase of everything from everybody at the lowest price
and the sale of anything to anybody at the highest price;
from the union of work and debt, work and despair;
from the wage-slavery of the helplessly well-employed.
From the union of self-gratification and self-annihilation,
secede into care for one anotherv and for the good gifts of Heaven and Earth.


Come into the life of the body, the one body
granted to you in all the history of time.
Come into the body's economy, its daily work,
and its replenishment at mealtimes and at night.
Come into the body's thanksgiving, when it knows
and acknowledges itself a living soul.
Come into the dance of the community, joined
in a circle, hand in hand, the dance of the eternal
love of women and men for one another
and of neighbors and friends for one another.


Always disappearing, always returning,
calling his neighbors to return, to think again
of the care of flocks and herds, of gardens
and fields, of woodlots and forests and the uncut groves,
calling them separately and together, calling and calling,
he goes forever toward the long restful evening
and the croak of the night heron over the river at dark.

Amen

Information!

The past few days, I've been listening to a good many TED talks. One stuck out to me today- I think because it linked something that I love with something that causes me much stress! Mr. Rangaswami links food and information in this TED talk. 

Too often I realize my disconnected-ness and I start checking the BBC daily. Shortly thereafter, I get so overwhelmed by all the information from all over the world I slump back into ignorance. One of my co-workers is brainstorming with friends on the concept of a positive-only newscast. Only stories of hope, perseverance and positive ideas would make the cut for information being broadcast to the general public. I think it may be an extreme idea, but one that would counter the extreme media most of us encounter. 

Most of us are also at our computers for a large portion of the day. It makes it impossible not to browse the web, looking for who-knows-what just to pass the time. They've even created a website where people can re-post things to simply look at. It involves nothing they've created, discovered or necessarily intend to participate in- just more information and pictures to consume. 

This is what made this TED talk so intriguing to me. In our society, we tend to consume without thought. That is evident in our consumption of food, products and entertainment thrown at us daily by marketing companies. Our filters don't exist- or perhaps we just ignore them. What Mr. Rangaswami suggests is that we do the same with our information. He states that the problem is not information overload. Rather, it's a filter failure. We should think of our information intake the same way many dieters think of their calorie intake. Exercise of the mind is just as important as exercise of the body- intaking information that is important and good for our selves. Consumption control [or what some people might consider a diet] is just as important- to regulate what we think about, see and internalize.

I like this concept, because it creates a middle ground for the extremes most of us bounce back and forth between. On the one end, I'm  too caught up in every bit of news from around the world, all the latest movies and books and music, and blogs with new spins on old ideas. On the other, I find myself lost in solitude and avoidance of anything happening outside of what immediately affects me. Most of the time I think I'd rather be in that extreme. Living in a sort of Mary Oliver poem:

The dream of my life
Is to lie down by a slow river
And stare at the light in the trees-
To learn something by being nothing
A little while but the rich
Lens of attention. 

But as the poem ends (Entering the Kingdom- read it!), the crows come and we're taken back into normal society. We return to begin our reconciling of the extremes again, and I think Mr. Rangaswami is stepping in the right direction.

Hunger.Games.

I definitely jumped on the Hunger Games bandwagon this month. After waiting so long to read Harry Potter [because everyone else was reading it] and then thoroughly enjoying it, I decided not to wait until the fuss was over this time. Just jumped right in. 

I was shocked that I became so quickly engrossed in the plot- I read each book in a matter of days and found myself cancelling plans so I could stay home to read it. It was like I had entered into a new world and the 'cliff hangers' at the end of each chapter begged the reader to keep going. 

Many people had strong opinions about which book was the best, how they would've written the 'love triangle' to end up, the way the war would play out, etc. What struck me most was the obvious comparison between the Capitol residents and citizens of the United States. The people in the Capitol were blissfully ignorant of the suffering outside of their district, obsessed about their looks, had so much food that they would throw up just to keep enjoying the process of eating more, and loved watching the Hunger Games [children slaughtering one another for entertainment]. In the last book, most of us were rooting for the Capitol to be overtaken. Once that happened, though, we realized that the new group of people were going to rule in the same, violent way. They also wanted a Hunger Games event, but with the oppressors becoming the oppressed. This concept alone disturbed me beyond all others in the book, I think because it was most realistic. So often we, as a nation, believe that we know what is best for all other nations and people groups. Usually this ends with us joining or starting a violent war, claiming that we're killing to stop the killing. It begs the questions, 'When does violence ever lead to peace?' and 'How does one group killing to get what they want stop another group from killing to get what they want?' I'm not sure what logic has led us to these conclusions [other than ethnocentrism], but these parallels were easily drawn in the book. This sad fact was enough to outweigh any hope the book brought. 

The one glimmer of hope though, was that the main character was able to move beyond her fears and trauma to function in normal society. She was able to love someone, to have a family and to live in some kind of peace, even though she fully remembered and continued to wrestle with the trauma she had experienced. This is what we hope for with our refugee clients- that they are able to cope with their trauma and past and use that to integrate with the new self they are creating in this culture. It's too easy to try and forget our pasts. To reconcile the hard past with our present selves is such a beautiful concept- and I think the author portrayed it in a very realistic way.

As I think about the citizens of the Capitol, I am sickened to realize that most of them were drawn to the Hunger Games each year because of their love for drama, violence and romance. It dawned on me that probably I was the exact same- that those characteristics were exactly what drew me to this book trilogy and kept me hooked until the end. Yikes.

Such heavy concepts for a book written for such a young audience! Middle school English classes, watch out! 

Happy International Jazz Day

Today I went to YJ's and sat and read the paper for a much-needed break. This is what I found, sitting on their piano next to my table. I had no idea there was a 'Jazz Day', but apparently it's today! Such a beautiful reminder of what music can do to bring people together- and why I like jazz so much.

A sneak peek:

“Musicians have always felt that if you can sing or play it doesn’t matter if you’re black, white, yellow or brown,” Mr. Duke said. “It’s the other folks who brought that other stuff into it. Jazz at its best is a microcosm of what society should be, incorporating and absorbing what’s going on around us and coming out with something that breaks down barriers and connects people. Would that the rest of the world could do that.”       

Hello there. :)

I cannot believe it's been almost a year since my last post. Oh, all the things that have happened. Instead of going into all of that, though, I'm going to recommend a book. It sounds a little extreme [and the project really was], but the author is very grounded, funny and brought me much hope. 


 A few excerpts from No Impact Man: 


     They say a peaceful mind makes a peaceful man. A peaceful man makes a peaceful family. A peaceful family makes a peaceful village. A peaceful village makes a peaceful country. A peaceful country makes a peaceful world. 
     What does this mean? That if I want to change the world, I have to change myself. 


     After the Industrial Revolution’s two hundred years of inventing more and better products, we may have come to a point where certain products have reached their zenith. We may have come to the point of diminishing returns. We may have reached perfection. We may have reached the point where using more resources may actually make us less happy- where there may not be any more progress to be had. 
     Continuing to do what we’ve done for the past two hundred years is not progress. It’s more of the same. Staying on the same path is not the definition of progress. 
     I simply feel that now that we’ve so utterly perfected the walkie-talkie to the point where it has become the iPhone, maybe we could turn the great minds that brought us the Nintendo Wii to, say, getting fresh water to the 1 billion people on our planet who don’t have it. 


 ...if we rely on technology alone, then we miss the tremendous opportunity for lifestyle improvement that we find in this crisis. If we build electric cars, we will still be stuck in traffic jams. If we keep building suburbs, we will still be isolated and lonely. If we put improving cell phones first, then our best minds will still be distracted from getting clean water to the billion who lack it. If we use technology, in other words, to rebuild the current system so that it can last forever, then we miss the opportunity to ask whether the current system really delivers the good life. We miss the opportunity to have happier people as well as a happier planet.

Birthday

This morning I began the day on my porch, with a cup of tea, toast and Wendell Berry. He read aloud a poem from Leavings to start the show, and I think it was very fitting for my 25th birthday. I'll post it below. For the rest of my day: A bike ride to the farmer's market to buy food for tonight's risotto, planting things in the pots sitting on my porch, sitting in the sun and enjoying a glass of wine with a few friends. I like getting older.

I know I am getting old and I say so,
but I don’t think of myself as an old man.
I think of myself as a young man
with unforeseen debilities. Time is neither
young or old, but simply new, always
counting, the only apocalypse. And the clouds
—no mere measure or geometry, no cubism,
can account for clouds, or satisfactorily, for bodies.
There is no science for this, or art either.
Even the old body is new—who has known it
before?—and no sooner new than gone, to be
replaced by a body yet older and again new.
The clouds are rarely absent from our sky
in this humid valley, and there is a sycamore
that I watch as, growing on the riverbank,
It forecloses the horizon, like the years
of an old man. And you, who are as old
almost, as I am, I love as I loved you
young, except that, old, I am astonished
at such a possibility, and am duly grateful.

The Quiet War

I've been reading and learning about what is referred to as 'The Quiet War'. You should do the same. I first learned about it while reading the book in my last post.

[In the United States the conflict in Laos was called the ‘Quiet War’- as opposed to the noisy one in Vietman, whose escalation had turned the Laotian civil war into an international free-for-all, with the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China throwing their weight behind the Pathet Lao while the United States continued to back the Royal Lao. But for the Hmong, the war was anything but quiet. More than two million tons of bombs were dropped on Laos, mostly by American planes attacking communist troops in Hmong areas. There was an average of one bombing sortie every eight minutes for nine years.]

Surprise, surprise, the United States interfering when they shouldn't have. (Read about the 1954 and 1962 Geneva Accords)

King Savang Vatthana of Laos made this statement in 1961.

[Our country is the most peaceful in the world….At no time has there ever arisen in the minds of the Lao people the idea of coveting another’s wealth, of quarreling with their neighbors, much less of fighting them. And yet, during the past twenty years, our country has known neither peace nor security….Enemies of all sorts have tried to cross our frontiers, to destroy our people and to destroy our religion and our nation’s aura of peace and concord. Foreign countries do not care either about our interests or peace; they are concerned only with their own interests.]

Prince Souvanna Phouma, Prime Minister of Laos, addressed Henry Kissinger in 1973 when he was visiting Vientiane.

[The very survival of Laos rests on your shoulders. But your shoulders are very broad. We are counting on you to make our neighbors understand that all we want is peace. We are a very small country; we do not represent a danger to anybody. We count on you to make them know that the Lao people are pacific by tradition and by religion. We want only to be sovereign and independent. We ask that they let us live in peace on this little piece of ground that is left to us of our ancient kingdom….Therefore we must count on our great friends the Americans to help us survive.]

The Americans used the Hmong people to inflict their ideals on another country, bombed their communities, disturbed their way of life, and then pulled out before anything they had set out to do was accomplished (taking all USAID with them). Shortly after, a newspaper of the Lao People's Party announced that all Hmong must be exterminated down to the very core of their tribe, because of their support to the Americans. This activated the migration of the Hmong people to Thailand, refugee camps, and eventually to the United States, where they are viewed as lazy, backwards, and primarily as a group who takes advantage of the welfare system.

History repeats itself. Our responsibility is to know and understand our history, not so we can walk around with our heads buried in our chest from guilt, but so we can learn and make better choices in the future. I think about the links between Vietnam and the War in Iraq a lot, and this 'Quiet War' has me thinking about those connections again. When will we pause before assuming our way is best? And what makes us think violence will persuade a country to live peaceably?