I don't think I'm going to win NaNoWriMo this year, but I'm still going to give it my best shot with a feverish procrastinator mega-sprint over the next four and a half days.
I'll be almost totally offline until December 1. In the meanwhile, I won't be checking email, comments, or feeds. (Please, o brutal daemons of the deepwebs, do not slashdot and flame me to pieces in my absence.)
The project has been fun and instructive, no matter how it ends. I would definitely give it another go. Next update, I'll talk about how the last phase went, what I took away from it, and what I'd do differently next time around.
Just because. Give the source if you know it, because I do not.
We finally had our first "Whoops! Nobody checked the bird last night to see if it was properly thawed" Thanksgiving at chateau Fjords. There was also exploding bread and broken sauce. Somehow all of our improvisational quick fixes worked out beautifully and everything was fine in the end. The broken sauce went back together. The giant bread was airy and golden. The turkey was dead and did not care. There was family and fun and a walk in the rain. Huzzah!
I had a great day. I even briefly entertained the idea of thinking up things I am thankful for.
But, no. I will spare you. I did take a look around to see everyone else's lists, though. Apparently lots of people are thankful for:
1) Luck, God, nature, and other real or imaginary forces of apparent ambivalence.
2) Not being terminally ill or dead.
3) Not being a starving African child or a victim of white colonialism (uh... maybe rethink that last one, really--I'm pretty sure we all bit it regarding this part, in one way or another).
4) People who have formed positive relationships with them.
5) People/forces who have abused or mistreated them. "They made me so much stronger!"
6) Stuff.
7) AMURRICA. (see numbers 3, 5, 6)
8) Sports teams.
9) Personal accomplishments or talents. (???)
I don't know.... Aside from #4 and possibly #5, it all seems a bit contrived to me. Does randomly not dying this year actually make most Americans feel fuzzy waves of gratefulness? Together? On schedule? Somehow I doubt it. And who are you feeling thankful toward for your having taught yourself to paint better?
Maybe most of us just take "thankfulness" to mean "happiness". Or "preference" or "relief". Or maybe even just "being aware of a benefit," as one newer online dictionary limply proffers as an alternative meaning for "thankful". As in, I would prefer to be alive instead of obliterated at the moment and Grunt McMustache is happy the Piggers are winning. We are relieved our would-be murderers did not crush our resolve or our capacity for growth. We prefer not to have leukemia (k thx) and we are aware it is a benefit to feast and not starve.
I feel a bit too grinchy deconstructing people's Thanksgiving lists. It's probably not a bad thing for us to reflect on what we've got, even if we don't always describe it well or understand the full significance of it. I'd rather see proof that people are interested in getting our asses in gear to rectify a lot of our joint problems.... but... maybe I am actually seeing a bit of that, too. I'm still being sarcastic in this post title, though. Take that, Pollyanna.
Anyhow, I love my family. I kind of liked reading people's lists after all, even though at first I mind-gagged. I'm warm and full and probably safe for the moment.
Also, spotted on the news today: an Immortal Technique The Martyr poster in a tent at Occupy DC. :-)
Good, impotent wishes to all! And a merry Buy Nothing Day! Let's expand on the notion and crash this burning dirigible, eh?
About a week ago UC Berkeley issued a press release or some such about new research on a certain SNP on the OXTR gene. The study, first published in October, was billed in the news as showing that strangers can spot in seconds whether or not you have the "empathy gene".
That isn't quite true, of course (as you probably guessed). There is no single gene that accounts for all the various empathetic phenotypes you'll observe around you. Furthermore, the study examined one possible effect of one variable base pair, not an entire gene. The OXTR gene alone consists of 19,221 bases. Only 372 of those are considered SNPs*, according to the NIH GeneCard, but that's still a pretty big number to explore.
I have to feel sorry for the plight of mainstream media science writers, who are constantly tasked with the impossible. They are supposed to report accurately on scientific findings while describing matters in terms that people with a sixth grade education can easily comprehend. And no doubt there is also pressure from above to phrase things in the most titillating and click-inducing way possible. The boss doesn't care if millions of people are running around parroting bad information, so long as those millions provide ad revenue and the news corporation isn't sued.
Personally, I would prefer precision over general accessibility if one of the two must be sacrificed, so this science news situation strikes me as a grand fuck up. But that's a topic for another day. In the meanwhile, fortunately, there are scientist-bloggers and science-writer-bloggers out there who often do a much better job of synopsizing this type of news in their own space (Ed Yong, Emily Willingham, Carl Zimmer, Scicurious, etc).
Back to the study now. I want to yak about it.
Some background:
Firstly, I am not an expert, just a flaming wannabe.... so keep your BS goggles on. I will not shit you on purpose but I might make some mistakes in terminology or interpretation.
The SNP in question is rs53576, possible genotypes being GG, AG, or AA. There has already been a lot of investigation into the effects of this particular area. It's not the be-all-end-all of empathy because nothing is, but it does appear to be significant. Among other things, those with the GG genotype are thought to either be more in tune with social affect expectations or simply more likely to display positive affect. GGs are not exempt from autism and don't necessarily have great social skills across the board, but they seem to be more sensitive to some select aspects of social interaction. In the United States, GGs tend to reach out more to other people in times of acute crisis than their AA and AG counterparts. In Korea, where reservation and self-control are more valued, GGs are more likely to keep their feelings to themselves and not ask others for help.
According to various studies, GGs tend to be better than non-GGs at non-verbal interior reasoning and visual pattern recognition, as well as recognition of the emotions of other people. GGs tend to empathize more easily with children and have a more attuned parenting style. They display more gullibility, warmth, and willingness to trust in general, but not if repeatedly abused, badly parented, or otherwise traumatized during formative years, in which case they rate as less trusting and (by some measures but not others) evince more emotional dysregulation as compared with AAs or heterozygotes. Under those same pressures they have a higher suicide rate than non-GGs as well.
In short, the pattern seems to suggest that that GGs are in general more responsive to the emotional temperature of their environment. If stuff is good, they do really good. If stuff is bad, they have a harder time dealing with that.
The Berkeley Study:
Basically, a bunch of romantic couples were rounded up. In each couple, one person was told to relate a story about a time when he or she had suffered a lot, and the other person was genotyped and told to sit opposite their partner and listen to the sad tale of woe. Then the listeners were filmed.
Later on, other people who did not personally know these couples were asked to view the films (which are silent) and rate how the listeners came across in terms of trustworthiness, kindness, and compassion. Surprise! GGs were rated the highest.
The above video is a sample of five of these clips. You can guess for yourself who is or is not a GG. I will spoil this shortly, so don't scroll down yet if you want your views untainted.
The study results have been criticized as being statistically insignificant, due to the small sample size (23 couples). But the observer group was significantly larger (100 people) and I wonder if some critics are overlooking that fact. The researchers themselves state that they believe further inquiry is warranted. I respect that and (speaking as a layperson) I do think that the results are interesting and worth having published.
Personal Reaction:
Well, first off, when I heard about this study, I looked up my own genotype at this locus (I got a DTC SNP analysis last year for Christmas). I am a GG, of course.
(Yessssss. I knew it. I was a magical sparklevamp the entire time!)
Only... wrong, because it's actually more common to have the G allele than the A.
(Awww...)
You can look up the allele frequency for rs53576 in several different places. My favorite is Yale's ALele FRequency Database (aka ALFRED), which will give you charts and graphs showing rates of heterozygosity and frequency for over 50 population samples. ALFRED shows that in almost every part of the world, G is the most common allele at this locus. There were no A alleles at all in the Oceana population sample nor in two of the African samples. The highest rate of all for A was in native Siberians at 68%, but this looked exceptional and far beyond any other group.
According to other sources, around 50% of white USians are GG. Rates of AA are around 8-15% and the rest are GA. Good to know.
My thoughts on the video, along with the real answers:
Person 1: Within a couple seconds I felt strongly that this guy was a GG. I kept wanting to go back and see him listening to his partner again because it was so sweet the way he was looking at her. At one point he appears to have a very organic urge to reach out and touch her with his right hand and he automatically starts in that direction, but he realizes the clipboard will fall if he does, so he puts his hand back down. I found this very moving and honestly probably would have teared up if the clip had been longer. He was indeed a GG.
Person 2: Gut reaction says very strongly: this guy is super bad news. Do not like. At all. (sorry dude) Not a GG.
Person 3: Seemed nice and good-intentioned but lacked a certain something that the first person had (such as the ability to judge that this wasn't a good moment to fidget a lot), and just didn't seem so attuned to his mate, not even as he verbally reacted to the story. I know a couple people who have the uncontrollable urge to jiggle their legs the way this guy is doing, and I really like those people... they're good people... but this still didn't feel quite right. Passable behavior, but not warm. I couldn't decide what he was, though. Turns out he was not a GG.
Person 4: She seems nervous and self-conscious, but she's also paying good attention and at the end seems almost apologetic for her nervousness as she laughs. She doesn't scream "GG" to me the way the first guy did, but she seems caring and likable. She was GG.
Person 5: Uh, no. Just no. Immediate no. And she wasn't.
I only got three right, since I waffled on numbers 3 and 4. I would really have liked to see all 23 video clips.
Also, as others have mentioned, I would love to know whether GGs and non-GGs read these people differently. Aside from issues of statistical significance (which I don't well understand), I am curious if any positive results could just be a matter of "like prefers like" rather than real detection of empathetic traits. I saw one confirmed non-GG online say that persons 1 and 4 came across as impatient to him, which surprised me.
ABRUPT ENDING! ...for I am le tired.
---
*If I understand correctly, in order to be considered a SNP, the less common allele at a given base pair position has to be present in no less than 1% of the members of a reference population. I am guessing that there must be some exceptions to that rule in cases of very rare disease mutations, but I don't know for sure.
All tied in knots today. Or... all... something. I have the impression of treading on a very fine edge, but I can't put my finger on what, exactly, that edge is, or whether I am wrestling there with nervousness or happiness. There's pleasure and pain in it all.
And I don't know if that makes me some kind of sicko... but I kind of like it that way? That half-ecstatic, angsty-yet-peaceful feeling experienced interiorly when we take our bitter and sweet experiences and let them mingle together. When things happen that seem on the surface unfortunate, or when you're operating under conditions that don't make any sense, strategically speaking, for you to value... but it all still somehow feels like an enormous boon. Sometimes I feel built for that. Like if suddenly all the world were made right and purely good and non-confusing, I might still want to lie in the grass by a river and conjure up that old bittersweet feeling again.
Maybe I am just talking wee hours nonsense here and when I wake up and read this, I'll be all "WTF were you on about?" Oh, well.
I'm trying really hard not to lose my words because I feel like I've fought so very hard to regain them. After the full significance of Very Bad Event hit me, there were several months during which I couldn't talk or write about anything of substance. I wanted to talk, but it was like my brain was just throwing the kill switch on outgoing verbal transmissions for everything even remotely connected with what had happened (and since I'm rather good at making connections between ideas... the swamp of verboten speech grew quite large). My wordless thoughts flowed smoothly, but there was no translating them to words. I could make enough nice-nice small talk to survive, but could communicate nothing risky outside of very select comfortable situations. So I made art instead. Only it wasn't very good art, so... I'd rather keep talking. But I'm wobbly yet.
So I keep thrusting myself into situations that scare me. (Preemptive attack!) I don't refer to situations that still seem dangerous after a rational appraisal, just things that feel dangerous but are in actuality fairly low-risk insofar as my personal safety is concerned. Sometimes it feels like I have to grasp on tight to the momentum I've got, because if I let it escape it will be too hard to recuperate all of what was lost. But I haven't always had that option, so it feels good, even when it isn't easy.
Speaking of scary, I started Pema Chodron's The Places That Scare You a few days ago. I'm not reading it with my usual gluttonous fervor, since there are several more time-sensitive activities requiring my attention at the moment. Instead I just read a handful of pages when I think about it and have the chance. Buddhism as a whole isn't my bag, but I like borrowing some of the tools inside of it. I liked this passage from the book:
"Warriors...not warriors who kill and harm but warriors of nonaggression who hear the cries of the world. These are the men and women of the fire. Training in the middle of the fire can mean that the warrior-bodhissattvas enter challenging situations in order to alleviate suffering. It also refers to their willingness to cut through personal reactivity and self-deception, to their dedication to uncovering the basic undistorted energy of bodhichitta..."
Okay. So... unimpressed with the "undistorted energy of bodhichitta" bit. I have to sub in mentally my own less spiritual version in place of it.
But I'm down with the warrior metaphor. So many books on this sort of subject are full of fluffy, flowery language, talking about surrender and thankfulness and acceptance and optimism and other barfalicious stuff I can't bear too much of (even the word "mindfulness" has gotten kind of barfy to me). Those words make me want to give up and turn in for eternal hibernation. They have their place, but when they're heavily concentrated there's no room for real meaning anymore. But words like "fight", "warrior", "fire" .... those images have always brought me to alertness and moved me. They can be overdone, too, but that wasn't the case here. Flowery, peaceful language interspersed with warrior language is just more intriguing to me than either on its own, I think.
And "cries of the world" reminds me of FF7, of course. Which brings me my own type of warm fuzzies that I'm okay with.
(This is pretty much where the post should end but doesn't.)
I did a 40 day media fast a few weeks back. I didn't cut off everything, just TV, feeds, news sources, and aimless internet browsing.
What's great about 40 days is that it's just long enough to make or break a habit... for me, anyhow. And it's not too overwhelming of a time period--easy enough to stare it down on day one. Plus it's a number that comes highly recommended by my former imaginary sky-friend.
Someone once told me I shouldn't post things like this because otherwise nobody will take me seriously ever again.
The fast came about because I had been reading the news too much. It's not that I was spending too much time at it, but the information itself was impacting my daily functioning in a negative way... until I got to thinking that maybe it wasn't such a good idea to be so very up-to-date on so many examples of shitty world events. I'm not a political columnist--I may crave being jacked in, but I don't really need all the details of the latest travesty so that I can be precise in my objections or back up my points with citations (er... though I suppose some political columnists don't bother to do either of those things). I already know basically what's going on and where and how bad it is. Disturbing world events appear to be subject to some cousin of rule 34--if you can think of it and it is physically/technologically possible, someone out there has already done it or is about to do it very soon.
Long story short, the fast was helpful. I got out of the rut I was in. I lasted a few extra days past 40 just because I liked it. Afterward it was easy to pare down my feeds and let go of sources I didn't feel comfortable cutting myself off from beforehand.
Time to cut off Twitter for a bit, next. I don't have a problem with talking too much on it, but I do have a problem with checking up on the latest protest updates.... maybe... a little obsessively...
Not that it's bad to check on such things. I've learned a lot through it. But I've also wasted a lot of time and gotten myself into that daft pattern of peering repeatedly into empty corners as if there were going to be something amazing there any minute now.... as I alluded to in an earlier post.
I'm staying off of it at least until December unless something huge happens.
Reading other people's accounts of going through NaNoWriMo, I can see that everybody's trip is different ... but there are still a number of milestones or emotional experiences that different writers share. I don't mean there is a single set of stages in novel-writing progression, just some similarities in the problems we face and the ways we react.
I had expected to share others' frustrations: days where nothing fits together right or the words won't come to you, when you realize that one of your most beloved characters needs to be scrapped or reworked, when a major plot arc falls apart, general feelings of doubt and inferiority and incapability.
But I didn't expect this. I didn't foresee at all the part where all the requisite pieces click into place with a satisfying snap. Nor the part where I would feel a tranquil acceptance regarding the imperfect edges of my work, the puzzles that I don't know how to solve yet or may have to release back into the wild, an embracing of the fact that no matter how I might contort or guard myself it is unavoidable that I will in some fashion bleed into these pages and people who read them will see parts of me.
When I last updated, I said that I'd chosen to set aside what I'd learned about how to write, and that I was also putting aside pretty much the entirety of what I'd written so far in order to begin again. So far I have not even for a moment regretted that. It felt like removing the cork from a bottle--everything started flowing again.
I don't know all of where this story is going. I don't know if it will interest anybody else. I don't know if it will be "good" (whatever that is). I don't know how much it will hurt. I don't even know if I can make it make sense, or if it will be beautiful to me in the end.
But, jeez, I'm here. I'm here, I'm here.
maybe next week i will be here instead--who knows?
What are we looking for when we're hitting "refresh"?
Maybe you're on Lifehacker, Jezebel, The New York Times, Twitter, your favorite message board. (For me, it's usually my google feeds.) Maybe you're waiting for your crush to PM you back or I'm hoping that one of my favorite bloggers has something new up her sleeve. Whatever it is, wherever you are... what do you really want?
Do you want to feel like a kid again? Do you want something to really grip your attention and hold you? Are you trying to connect? Do you ache for human contact? Do you just want to hear that someone else is feeling what you feel, thinking what you think? Do you want a little hope, a little sign that things aren't as bleak as you fear? Do you want to feel like you're a part of something bigger? Do you want to help somebody? Do you want to push someone down?
Boredom isn't a good enough answer, by the way. You're not just bored--nobody is. Boredom is one of the many feelings you might get when you're not satisfied with what you've got available to you or with what you're doing right now. But it's only a raised flag, that's all.
Maybe there is no immediate visible cause sometimes. Every drive and stimulus and desire we have can get all twisted up into one big ball of tangled stuff.
---
It frustrates me now and again how we keep visiting the same places we've visited before. I grapple with something and learn how to deal with it, then I forget partway. When I next see the same challenge, I start having false epiphanies, making the same connections as before. Learning how to do something that I feel I should already know by now.
At the same time, I recognize that even when we visit the same places and go through the same challenges as we've gone through before, each time we're coming at it from a different vantage point.
That's what the spiral in "Lateralus" has always meant to me, privately, from the first time I heard the song. I envision life like a winding path leading up and down, narrow on the bottom and wide at the top, like an inverted cartoon snake all coiled up perfectly over itself in a conical shape. You walk up it (or down, if you like) and every time you're facing north, it's a slightly different north from the last time you faced it. You're a little higher or lower. You're looking at things from a new angle and you can see more than before, if you want.
So, yes, you've been here before. You'll be here again. And at the same time, you're spiraling outward to someplace completely different.
I'm at a stuck point right now with the novel. I'm strangely okay with that, though. Win or lose, I'm still learning about the process of writing. So far I've gathered that one of the most important things is just not being afraid of sucking.
At the same time, you can't go on writing what you believe to be a sucky book, either. At least... I can't. You're not supposed to shuffle things around or edit what you write for NaNoWriMo. But that brings me to something else I've learned: obeying all the rules at the expense of everything else involved doesn't tend to work out well for me.
So I'm pretty much starting over. I'm not erasing or getting rid of what I've written so far, but it doesn't strike me as a good beginning--not for this novel. So I will tuck it away somewhere else and maybe use bits of it later on. Or chuck it.
Also, I am trying to forget about all the advice I've ever heard or read about writing. And the fact that everybody else's writing looks awesome to me right now. As another blogger mentioned, Twilight can start looking like high art after a week or two struggling with writing your own novel.
Writing your own novel. AKA coming to grips with the fact that you are sometimes very stupid and during those times you produce very stupid writings and you're getting kind of scared you're going to turn out to be the type of person whose natural writing style will be suitable only for extremely sloppy and emotional video game fanfiction and if you die tomorrow in an auto crash and someone in your family reads your clumsy efforts they will pass around the story to other people and laugh together while fondly remembering your endearingly high level of utter suckitude....
It was almost a wallowing evening last night. Hard times.
Instead I found a new webcomic to read. (I'm mad about it; it's so very excellent--go look!)
But all the pain was still there when I was done reading the entire comic. It was still there at bedtime. It was still there all the next day.
In retrospect, I think I probably would have been better off just sitting with those feelings in the beginning, when they first resurfaced. I kind of wish I'd gone ahead and wallowed.
---
When you're a certain type of person to begin with... and then you go through certain types of harrowing situations, it leaves a sort of imprint in your mind and body. Or, rather, your body creates a horrid little save state of itself that it will resume automatically later on whenever it feels threatened in ways that remind it of what happened before.
There's the regular type of flashback, of course--the memory-based kind. That kind is covered in movies and shallow news articles, so pretty much everybody knows more or less what a flashback is. But there's something else a bit more subtle that also happens but doesn't get talked about so often ... it's sort of like an endocrine flashback. All of a sudden, memories or not, you're biochemically back there (in 'Nam or the second grade or wherever your initial poison was administered to you), pumping out all the same hormones as you were during the initial event(s).
Anyhow, that's the particular kind of hard time I was having. I guess that's not too important though. All emotional pain is similar. There are all sorts of fine distinctions we can make between different psychological or philosophical disturbances--and believe me, I love me some fine distinctions--but the practical differences aren't so big. There's not much separating PTSD from existential anxiety/depression/aloneness/dread/angst (or, if you enjoy spinning things in a more optimistic way, "positive disintegration").
Not everybody has flashbacks, but everyone knows what it's like to be scared or grieving or depressed. Part of why I don't talk about modern psychological constructs much on here or identify personally as having xyz condition is because I simply don't agree with the pathologization of normal human emotions or responses to environmental stressors. If you live in an industrialized, modern culture and have never done or felt anything that would qualify you for at least one DSM diagnosis, then in my book you are one seriously sick puppy.
As far as I can figure out thus far, the only choices we have when those moments hit are
1) Medication
2) Distraction
3) Delusion
4) Riding it out... sober, clear, and aware.
Number four is sort of an invisible choice. It always was an option--often it's the default option!--but we don't necessarily want to acknowledge it. We want to fight it. We think we couldn't possibly just deal with it--no! We want to fix it, box it up, ship it out, redraw our lines and definitions so everything is okay again. We also fail to notice our progress in dealing with it.
I remember scrawling out a similar list on a scrap of paper when I was 21 (probably while listening to Tool or Manic Street Preachers or something), except #4 wasn't even on it. Number four, as far as I was concerned, was the problem, not a possible coping strategy.
only three solutions to the big problem: 1) drugs (do not want) 2) hedonism/egoism/materialism (can't manage it very long) 3) god?
What can I say? I am slow to develop in many ways.
I want to learn more about #4 now. There are so many different ways to ride through it--you can cry, you can let it wash over you in acceptance, you can sublimate through art and poetry and music, you can welcome it in thoughtfully and explore every angle of it. You can wallow. I've learned a lot already just by trial and error over the years, but I'm sure there's more to know. And I want to get better at choosing it deliberately and in a timely way.
David Hayward (The Naked Pastor) posted a new painting and a little on this subject today, which I was grateful for:
I have a strategy for sadness that I want to share with you. There are times I just let myself feel all the sorrow. I let myself cry. I have experienced a lot of painful things and there’s no use denying it. And I watch many people go through so much suffering. I allow my body to feel the full impact of the weight of grief. And I weep.
To deny it only strengthens its unconscious crippling power. To dwell in it as all that is real is to drown in it and be overcome by hopelessness and despair.
Even if you believe they are illusion, it is helpful to allow your body to experience the illusion’s impressiveness. Even if it is an illusion, it presents itself as very real. Just notice it. Permit it. Say “I see your sadness“. Observe it. Feel it. It will pass for a time.
I like that a lot. It's something I've found to be true for myself as well, but somehow it always helps to hear this kind of thing from other people. It cements in your own experience a little better.
He's a big critic of our dependence on virtual reality—computer games, TV, and animation, too. He complained, when I met him, that so much in our culture is "thin and shallow and fake." He's also an environmentalist, of a somewhat dark and apocalyptic variety. He's said, not entirely jokingly, that he looks forward to the time when Tokyo is submerged by the ocean and the NTV tower becomes an island, when the human population plummets and there are no more high-rises.
credit: Tokyo Genso
On a semi-related note, worth looking up is Ran Prieur's essay "Where Was Luke Skywalker on September 11?" I'm not totally down with the first half... because I tend toward being one of the unicorns he discusses as not existing (people who feel equally badly about the suffering of people they do/don't know)... but I do agree with his assertion that most people (including me) felt on some level good about 9/11. I felt the same thing about Oklahoma City and I was just a kid. And then there's post-apocalyptic art...
credit: unknown
What do you feel when you look at it? Frightened? Angry? Disgusted that people would make such depictions? Sad about the people who died? Bored?
Excited?
credit: Lori Nix
I love books a little too much to be entirely comfortable with that last one, but I do get excited about art depicting the ruins of modern cities. I feel hopeful. And when there are vines and other plants covering the ruins, I feel peaceful.
I don't want anybody to die or to be hurt, but I don't want this either. I don't want what we've got going on. I don't want my kids to grow up and be schooled in the art of being a cog--or, worse, the art of using and abusing.
Sometimes I take my sons to the little forest that remains protected near our home. Sometimes when they're there, they run through the leggy branches and roots of a certain cluster of tender, young trees I don't know the name of, and they play at being like Mei and Satsuke, searching for Totoros. And--being the grown-up--I'm Totoro.
When I think of desires like these (all of these--Miyazaki's remarks, children loving the forest, post-apocalyptic longings conveyed through art), I always think of Ted Kaczynski. Did you know that when he was a tiny baby, he was hospitalized for a severe allergic skin condition? He was taken from his parents and isolated, not allowed any human touch or visitors outside of a narrow window of visitation time. This was done repeatedly over a period of eight months.
From CNN:
He was pinned down in a spread-eagle position for an examination. Someone in the hospital took a photograph to record the baby's symptoms. It showed an infant's eyes brimming with terror.
That's not unusual. That's how medicine thought of babies back then; they also operated on preemies without anesthesia. Ten thousand years ago in Europe we were routinely making human sacrifices. In the past 48 hours we killed over __ people in Somalia with drones, the majority non-targeted civilian casualties*. (And that's just drones, just technological barbary, the tip of the iceberg--how many kids were beaten to death by their own parents yesterday all over the world?)
What's my point?
I guess I'm rambling. I originally wrote some of this for my October 31st post on Miyazaki, but it didn't seem to fit right there.
I have no illusions, really, that capitalism, technology, or corporatism are what makes us terrible. The plants and the animals eat each other, after all (neat cover, btw). We were killers always, long before bombs.
But I don't really want to be just an animal. Do you?
And even if those aforementioned cultural constraints aren't what make some of us cruel, they do seem to wound us in other ways, removing from reach some of our key human needs. Look how we react. Look at our fatness, our depression and OCD, our cutting, our mindless television viewing, our drugs, our listless self-destruction... we're like caged rats pulling out their own fur, pushing the coke bar.
Look at the difference in skin clarity and eye brightness between people who set their own schedules and can afford to go skiing and hiking on the weekends vs. people who must work full time at Wal-mart and take care of relatives on the weekends. Or Mormon mommy bloggers (who believe that God is going to set them up with a cooler place after this shit is over) vs. the average middle class office grunt.
Where's the future going? What do you think about it?
What forms do you think transhumans and AI will take, in the real world, if we survive until then? If you were the world's benevolent dictator, what would you decide? Can we get ourselves out from under the nasty, uncaring sorts of people who currently rule us, or will they be the ones who craft what's to come? Or will our future technology bring nothing more high-minded than sexbots and police surveillance?
I keep thinking, too about this quote from Derrick Jensen:
Every morning when I awake I ask myself whether I should write or blow up a dam. I tell myself I should keep writing, though I'm not sure that's right.
I'm not sure, either. Not anymore. Let me be very clear, here: I won't ever be blowing up anything, personally, nor supporting such things verbally, financially, or in any other way. I have too many ties and responsibilities for that. Furthermore, in practice it's probably nigh impossible to avoid hurting innocent people and my own moral code makes collateral damage unacceptable.
But, theoretically speaking, I'm getting afraid that Gandhi doesn't really win. That he can't.
Nature itself often rewards the brutes (although there is usually room for other strategies as well). And our current economic and political system is set up to reward outright psychopathy. Even popular uprisings tend to favor corrupt and forceful agents, not the gentle (you can see this happening in #OWS, even, if you're watchful).
Not depressed over this at the moment, though. More just waiting to see if the outcome of all this unrest surprises me. =)
---
*I removed the figure, as it's looking like the news report I read may have been inaccurate. I think my wider point still stands, even if this particular incident turns out to be untrue.
It can cause love-based paralysis. You know--where something is so beautiful you don't really want to touch it because surely you're going to ruin it?
It's sort of like having a crush in the sixth grade, back when your main romantic strategy was still something along the lines of: "DON'T LOOK AT HIM EVER NO MATTER WHAT OR HE WILL KNOW."
(...am I the only one? *googles rage comics*)
Nope. Not the only one.
Except I'm a big kid now and I think I can get over this. The ideas are flowing really nicely. It's just a matter of not freezing up when putting pen to pa--er, fingers to... writing shit down typing stuff? I'm one fiftieth of the way done and it's Day 4.
I think I need Sugar to tell me to "Write like a motherfucker."
I've been thinking about participating since its inception, but the time has never been right. There's always something big going on--moves, transitions, classes, newborns, crunch time at work, crippling cases of imadepresssedmofo--and supposedly not enough time to write.
I waffled on it interiorly again this Halloween and finally came down on the side of "nah." Might as well just admit I'm not going to do it and write off the possibility this year...
Then today I thought... fuck it. I'm going to jump in. CANNONBALL-STYLE. Sometimes impetuous decisions are the worst. Sometimes they're the only thing that gets serious introverts off their asses.
I have a huge file of story ideas, kept both digitally and in my head. I'm not going to use any of it. For NaNoWriMo I will need the freedom to trip all over myself and write a spectacularly bad novel without having to abort any of my precious brain-babies.
So I'm starting from scratch, today. Gonna write. And write. And coffee, probably.
I feel a little weird about how many people reach my 2010 November quotes post in search of quotes about the month of November, of which there are none on my blog at all.
To compound my guilt, I will post this poem by Robert Frost. It is entitled "November" and--like my quotes post--has very little to do with the month.
November
We saw leaves go to glory,
Then almost migratory
Go part way down the lane,
And then to end the story
Get beaten down and pasted
In one wild day of rain.
We heard "'Tis Over" roaring.
A year of leaves was wasted.
Oh, we made a boast of storing,
Of saving and keeping,
But only by ignoring
The waste of moments sleeping,
The waste of pleasure weeping,
By denying and ignoring
The waste of nations warring.
I came across some fragments of very old interviews with Hayao Miyazaki today. He was asked, probably for the hundredth time (or maybe not so many times yet, since these interviews were from the 80s and early 90s), why he tended to favor girls as his protagonists.
He expressed a couple of things in response that interested me.
First he rather strongly denounced what he viewed as a troubling tendency for otaku to sexualize and fantasize about young girls in animation. On a semi-connected note, he also said he felt forced by the economic model of things to betray his own artistic vision and create characters that were prettier than he would have liked. He mentioned having a desire to create a story in which a very plain person is the hero(ine), but expressed doubt that such a film would sell. (Perhaps that's in part why he came out of retirement to work on Howl's Moving Castle? Pure speculation on my part, but interesting to think on.)
Secondly, he said that part of the reason why so many of his protagonists end up being female is because when he envisions certain scenes, he often feels it would be too awkward and ridiculous for a boy or man to behave in the flexible/emotional/enlightened way required by the scene. He said that a woman's decision to take up the sword or use a gun or go on an adventure carries with it a sort of depth and sensitivity that wouldn't exist in the same situation with a man. People are more excited, he claimed, to see a woman make that kind of decision because it is easily inferred that the choice was made deliberately, meaningfully, not because of mere cultural pressure or being a brute.
I find that last part very sad. It's a sad cultural commentary (not on Japanese or American culture, specifically, but rather on the vast majority of the cultures that have existed on the face of this planet all throughout history) and it's sad on an individual level.
Really. Think about that. What does it mean to believe of your own sex that it's ridiculous to have depth and sensitivity? Or, conversely, that it is impossible that members of your sex ever act rashly, destructively, or with a strength that others fear?
It's a tragedy. It's poisonous. Bad for the growth of all of us, individually. Bad for the growth of humanity. Especially bad for those of us--all of us--who are at one time or another caught up in the boil-over or explosions caused by all that repression and false knowledge.
And it's none of our fault, paradoxically, even though we've done it to ourselves.
To me, being a progressive person--put aside for a moment the political trappings of the word--is about gradually ceasing to poison ourselves and our children with cultural norms like that one.
(This is not, by the way, even remotely a criticism of Miyazaki, who has my thorough admiration.)
My mind shoots off into so many different directions from this idea, I won't be able to write my full thoughts here (insufficient time).
But, briefly:
1) Fight Club.
I love this movie. But in the film we do kind of see what Miyazaki is talking about. Some really profound truths about our modern life are stated clearly in the film, especially in the first half (and I feel like we didn't fully grasp the weight and terror of those truths until now, actually; today we're finally out the the streets protesting over the arbitrary algorithms used to decide who lives and who dies, all for the sake of the bottom line of a powerful few... and we should have been this angry a long time ago). Then the men start fighting and most of the intellectual analysis and poetry is turned off, replaced with shock value, jokes, locker room talk, and the not-so-original mindfuckery plot arc.
What does it mean for men, if we reduce "real" maleness to grunting, sociopathic brutishness? What does it mean for women, if we refuse to allow any room for thoughtless rage and fighting in our model for "real" feminine behavior? I think the movie, in a way, attempts a weak answer to these sorts of questions, but it's just a start. We need to keep fleshing this out, doing the work, figuring out what our true limits are and refusing to stop sooner just because our cultural values tell us to stop.
Our urge to fight tells us something: it tells us something's wrong, we're unhappy, we don't have enough of something. If we're not allowed to recognize our rage to begin with (because it's unfeminine or not "civilized"), we linger too long with our problems without seeing them for what they are. If we make a war or a bomb or a fight club, or punch someone out or call him a dickwad, I guess we are honoring our urge to fight. But we're still forgetting to figure out what the fuck is wrong and fix it.
2) Dreams.
These mistaken notions are locked deep within us, I think. For example, for many years in my dreams (which frequently involve apocalyptic or dystopian scenarios), I was not allowed to fight while being a woman or girl. If it was just a matter of fleeing, resisting through sneaky or non-violent acts, or peacefully enduring torture, I could be myself or another female. But to stand and fight... I needed to be male. Sometimes my form would shift mid-dream depending on what was going on. Like a reverse Chevalier d'Eon.
I never even recognized this as a problem until it was resolved earlier this year and didn't happen anymore (it went on for almost ten years!). Now my dream avatars still shift around to all sorts of forms, gender identities, viewpoints, and ages, but nobody is restricted to/from battle based on sex or gender any longer. That change corresponded with a shift in my waking self as well, just feeling stronger as an individual.
But... it makes me wonder. Why is there so much fighting in our dreams in the first place?
It has long been theorized that the purpose of dreaming (and nightmares, particularly) is to rehearse dangerous situations, so that we're mentally prepared. When we dream about fighting perhaps it's because we expect, on some level, to have to fight someday in reality?
Note 11/4 - This week the results of an fMRI study were published, reporting that when a lucid dreamer dreamed about waving his hand, he was using the same part of his brain that he would be using if he were awake and actually performing the same action. No surprise, really, if you think about it... but kind of interesting, all the same.
I'm at a point in my life where I don't really know where I'm going. I'm already in the twilight years of my twenties (sounds rather dramatic, doesn't it?). I have a family established. I have many deeds and experiences under my belt of which I feel proud, not-so-proud, or frightened-in-retrospect. But I still have that sense of being unmoored, a bit directionless, that has been with me ever since I was a small child.
These days I'm in the habit of rescuing spiders--excepting the poisonous ones, which I regretfully execute under a quadruple layer of paper towels because I can't bear to look. Sometimes when I go to set a (live) spider down outdoors in what seems to be a safer spot, the spider flails its legs out for a long moment, trying to get its bearings back. And I always see myself there, living my entire life in the spirit of that long moment of flailing about.
I don't know that I will ever stop looking around in every direction, trying to orient myself. I'm not convinced anymore that it's a bad way to be, either. Probably I will never have any worldly ambition other than the ambition to know all I can about the things that interest me, or simply to be a good person.* Probably I will never stop being acutely aware of the precise shape and size of the horrors of the world, either. But in a way these drives (or lack thereof) are freeing. I'm unlikely to achieve worldly success, yes, but I'm also not very attracted to the trappings of success to begin with (often I am pretty much disgusted by them).
Why settle for being a king or queen when you could be a farmer, historian, explorer, or monk? (Or the mastermind behind a political rebellion, perhaps?)
I watch politics and money because I know that politicians and fat cats are dangerous--but they're also gross. It offends every freedom-n-truth-loving, independent bone in my body to watch people caper and smarm about, lying their own pants off, selling themselves like over-priced prostitutes or waiters--for what, ultimately? Money and power, of course, and staying on top rather than falling into the pit o' losers, but--again--for what? To eat a little more caviar than before, tour some obscure island chains, buy a bigger house, pay poorer people for sexual services, send junior to Yale? So junior can eat a little more caviar? Please. There's a lot of research backing me up on this, but it doesn't take a scientist to recognize that hardly anybody who has these things is actually made happy by them.
It's easy to get fooled, though. Mere stuff--above and beyond what's necessary for basic comfort and survival--generally does not improve our quality of life.... but we are told it will, day in and day out. This is the dark end to which our system leads us. Under our present way of life, we live by what kills us. We feed ourselves memes that distort our appetites and keep us always wanting.
I am not immune, either, although my natural resistance grows whenever I turn off the box and unplug. (Almost everyone's does, doesn't it?)
When I was fifteen or sixteen I used to take a bus route daily that involved stopping by an advertising and business center in a haute little city (I swear, every time I go back to visit, I feel like a yokel). There were lots of wannabe bigshot agents and such. One woman made friends with me over a period of weeks, then invited me up into one of those glass towers to take some photos and talk about some possible modeling work. I don't know if it was a scam or "real"--I have never seen myself straight in the mirror. I remember I had a sassy retort when she asked why not: "Because I don't want to be involved in a business that robs people of their self-esteem and sells it back to them." (Her face turned cold and that was the end of our sitting together on the bus.)
What I said was some cliche I'd picked up somewhere--I am sure you've heard it before. I felt strong and brave saying those words to the modeling agent. The truth was that I only ever owned one beauty magazine and it was hidden under my mattress because my mother had told me it would only hurt me and I shouldn't ever buy one and I disobeyed anyways and she was right--it was a barb in my side every day, the cause of skipped meals and stomach pains, early morning awakenings to do my hair like the magazine told me, bizarre calisthenics, hours on the treadmill, abs held tightly in all day, sexy shoes, assorted baubles, mangled fun-house images of what men and women wanted and should be.
I think it's natural to want to decorate ourselves. Little boys and girls alike love to wear bracelets and paint their skin with brilliant colors (I am truly sorry, dear men, that this drive apparently gets beaten out of you over the years through social disapproval and punishment). But if you watch little children play at this, you will see they love to share and help and to experience these decorations as something that draws them together. They are made joyful and close through the process of adornment. Contrast that with first-world teenagers, who usually groom alone and are often made to feel depressed, powerless, and self-conscious about the whole business.
Anyhow. I guess what I logged on to say tonight is that my natural tendencies plus the journey I've been on have made me just sort of openly pensive lately (I mean pensive in a present, mindful way--as opposed to rumination). I've finally accepted that I'm not interested in reaching for the brass ring, so I've also accepted I shan't be hearing any applause and "GOOD GIRL!" when I [don't] grab ahold of it.
So...?
So, what next?
I don't know all of what's next. But it occurs to me frequently lately that if you're not striving for approval or prizes or power-over... then, really, all you've got to enjoy are the simple pleasures of living.
I am not really a live-in-the-moment sort of person. DFW said in an interview, "I'd like to be the sort of person who can enjoy things at the time, instead of having to go back in my head and enjoy them." I get that, on an utmost level. But he was talking about not really enjoying the accolades he received after Infinite Jest, about worrying he'd become a douche if he were to allow himself that enjoyment, then admitting he didn't feel that tempted to enjoy it anyways. Me neither. But what about a different kind of enjoyment? What about just being, and being okay with that? That, I think I might be able to swing.
So.
A feeling that warms me lately is the one I get from staying up after the rest of my family is asleep and being the one to lock up the house at night.
I feel like I'm their guardian, doing something important and protective (which I am, and it is). I love hearing my partner's sleep sounds. The children look peaceful and calm, and they smile in their sleep if I rearrange their blankets or kiss them on the forehead. I refill my oldest boy's water cup that he keeps near his bed and set him out a morning snack. I lock the doors and windows. I love feeling of the carpet under my feet as I move down the hallway, and hearing the soft thrum of the appliances, normally covered up with play and conversation. I love how my old cat--a veteran of the woods--climbs onto my lap and purrs in his rattly, old way.
I have struggled with how to replace the almost zen-like peace that I lost when my God perished under the weight of reality. At this time of night--doing something so simple as locking up the house and taking joy in the action--something in me wants to say:
"This is our faith. This is the faith of the church. We are proud to profess it."
---
*An atheist with few worldly ambitions! That doesn't augur well, does it? Indeed, we have probably both seen people die of this condition, but I do not intend to go that way (although the club has a tempting list of benefits, doesn't it?).
Every now and then it’s worth pausing to reflect on how often we talk about the killing of people by the U.S. Literally, the U.S. government is just continuously killing people in multiple countries around the world. Who else does that? Nobody — certainly nowhere near on this scale. The U.S. President expressly claims the power to target anyone he wants, anywhere in the world, for death, including his own citizens; he does it in total secrecy and with no oversight; and this power is not just asserted but routinely exercised. The U.S., over and over, eradicates people’s lives by the dozens from the sky, with bombs, with checkpoint shootings, with night raids — in far more places and far more frequently than any other nation or group on the planet. Those are just facts.
More and more, being an American is feeling like this:
---
Last night, while Muammar Qaddafi* was newly dead or dying, I had an interesting dream.
In the dream I was a young nurse, working her first shift at a hospital. I have no real-life ambition to be a nurse; it's just a symbolic artifact of the dream. The head nurse was teaching me how things were to be done at the hospital. She murdered our first patient of the day--who had complained of pain and asked for medication--with a large overdose of morphine.
As the patient caught on to what was about to happen and she pled for her life to be spared, the head nurse looked at me patronizingly and said of the sick woman, "Do you hear all that nonsense, all that crazy talk it sputters? Do not listen to it. It doesn't know what it needs. I know what is best."** Paralyzed with shock and fear, I watched helplessly as she injected the drug and the patient died.
Later on, another patient--a painfully thin refugee from Iraq who appeared to be wasting away from an AIDS-like illness--whispered to me that the head nurse was abusive toward him, that she made threats to him and pinched him hard enough to leave bruises when no one else was looking. I whispered back that I was sorry and that I would try to help him transfer to a different hospital where no one would hurt him. He laughed bitterly and replied, "Don't you get it yet? There are no other hospitals. This is it. This is all there is."
Is it?
I still hope not. But if that's true... I think it's high time for a little hospital reform.
---
* An undeniably awful leader and a murderer himself, if I understand the situation correctly. [Update, 6/2012: I don't know even that much anymore. I guess I didn't/don't understand it at all. I'm not even sure it's possible to do so when limited (as plebs are) to the information currently available to the general public. Just forget what I said--I know nothing, neither do you... and that really bugs me.]
** On waking I recognized this as a very loose paraphrase of something Jean-Marie Charcot said of a patient he had diagnosed with hysteria: "Note the emotional outburst... Again, note these screams. You could say it is a lot of noise over nothing."
Below I will be collecting links to what I regard as the best news and blog coverage about Occupy Wall Street and other such occupations. This post will be updated as I come across new articles and resources that stand out to me.
If you're interested in canvassing to support our joint occupation of the United States, there are some slick looking printable flyers here at Occupy Together.
Are you following the ongoing Occupy Wall Street protest? If not, check it out. If you're sympathetic, take a look at these Adbusters suggestions on how we can all help out, regardless of how far away we may be.
Mainstream media outlets were fairly quiet on the protest before today, when a large number of protesters were arrested. It's too bad that the media only pays close attention when scenes like that occur. I've been watching since the beginning of the protest and--while I always have my quibbles with the manipulative antics of some of the professional activists involved in matters like these--I support the movement and the ideas behind it without reserve.
Corporate interests are steering this country and the interests of the common people have taken a backseat. That's unacceptable.
Notes
November 3 - I'm currently uncomfortable with pretty much all preexisting organizations that support the Occupy movement, including Adbusters. I still support the movement itself, but I would really urge fellow supporters to act according to their own convictions and be cautious of the potential for manipulation.
June 20 - My former enthusiasm for this movement looks naive as fuck to me now. As does my former optimism regarding the potential endgame. Oh, well. That's life, I guess. I'm still not sure why the most effective of the available tools and blueprints for this sort of thing weren't very much taken advantage of during the heyday of OWS. It's not like any of it was a secret, how best to strategize and implement a movement of this kind. Our own government developed most of these strategies itself for use abroad. Many of the manuals and tactical breakdowns are even available online without charge. But here, things fizzled out. I could speculate as to why... and I do have some decently sound ideas... but it's still just speculation (i.e., pretty worthless to publish, at least in this context).
Came across this gem in the early summer and forgot to post it! Here it is now.
Be Greeted, Psychoneurotics! a poem by Kazimierz Dabrowski
Be greeted, psychoneurotics!
For you see sensitivity in the insensitivity of the world,
uncertainty among the world's certainties.
For you often feel others as you feel yourselves.
For you feel the anxiety of the world, and
its bottomless narrowness and self-assurance.
For your phobia of washing your hands from the dirt of the world,
for your fear of being locked in the world's limitations,
for your fear of the absurdity of existence.
For your subtlety in not telling others what you see in them.
For your awkwardness in dealing with practical things, and
for your practicalness in dealing with unknown things,
for your transcendental realism and lack of everyday realism,
for your creativity and ecstasy,
for your maladjustment to that "which is" and
adjustment to that which "ought to be",
for your great but unutilized abilities.
For the belated appreciation of the real value of your greatness
which never allows the appreciation of the greatness
of those who will come after you.
For your being treated instead of treating others,
for your heavenly power being forever pushed down
by brutal force;
for that which is prescient, unsaid, infinite in you.
For the loneliness and strangeness of your ways.
Be greeted!
---
If you're not familiar with Dabrowski and his work, treat yourself to a little internet stroll--I recommend it especially highly if you're somewhat aspergian, "gifted"*, or otherwise unusually sensitive (Myers-Briggs INXXs represent).
Curious about the political beliefs of the campers who were massacred in Norway this week?
Our core values are:
Freedom for all people. Justice in a society where everyone has equal opportunities. Solidarity in a society where people take responsibility for each other. Participation in a society where everyone is involved in creating the future. Respect for nature and a society in harmony with nature's carrying capacity.
In other words, these brave young people are what the world currently likes to eat for dinner.
Last Thursday my littlest son screeched at me in the grocery store for the very first time.
We were over in the bulk foods section. He'd just found out that he wouldn't be able to have a cookie as soon as he'd hoped, since the little sack of goodies we'd picked out would need to be weighed up at the checkout stand. He's two and a half years old. He took a deep breath, turned a funny shade of purple, opened his mouth and...
^_~
(It was possibly the loudest, most piercing scream I've ever heard in a grocery store.)
I was a bit taken aback, of course. And the angry stares of passers-by didn't help matters. Ouch. Just trying to do something nice for my kid and suddenly I'm getting looked at like I'm a miscreant.
But you know what else?
I was also very happy.
Why?
Because my baby isn't afraid of me. He's not in the slightest bit hesitant to tell everybody what he wants or how he feels.
To him, this was a seriously dire situation. (No cookies when I want them?! Even though I am very tired and it feels like it should be lunchtime and we have been out of the house for much longer than usual?! I need my mommy to hug me, STAT!) So I pulled the cart over out of the way and I picked him up and snuggled and rocked him... and that was all he really needed.
I hope he keeps that spark. I hope he always knows that, no matter what, his feelings are legitimate. I hope he always has someone who he knows will listen to him without judgment and try to help him feel better. I hope he always insists on being heard, never shushed.
I mean... yeah, of course I hope he also learns to reel in the intensity a tad and watch out for other people's needs, too. And I'll do my best in the future to avoid recreating the precursors that led to that awful scream (too many errands on a day when he hadn't slept well, buying treats that require weighing when I already knew he's not too keen on delayed gratification).
But, still, I'm glad that he's comfortable enough to be spunky. I'm happy he insists on help when he needs it. And I'm relieved that he has faith in me to provide that comfort and help.
It's not about the cookie. It's never about the cookie.
It's about "Mommy, Daddy... I hurt. Do you love me? Are you there for me?"
Yes. I do. I am.
Every day.
<3
---
I'm aware, btw, that screaming in the store is hardly a reliable indicator that a child feels comfortable and well taken care of.
In my experience, some better (but not perfect) indicators of a good home environment and strong, healthy attachment would be: 1) the child's tantrum/complaint is focused on a specific, immediate stressor or desired outcome, 2) the caretaker responds immediately and with compassion, and 3) the child is easily consoled by a caretaker's expression of empathy.
Children who have been through a lot of crap, on the other hand, tend to be in the habit of either shutting down and rarely protesting much of anything no matter how stressed (this is the outcome that authoritarian parenting is meant to bring about) ...or else they are bubbling over with noise and nervous energy, expressing discontent in a frenetic, unfocused, and generally inconsolable way. In the latter case, parental response in the moment can be shitty or stellar and--insofar as the immediate outcome is concerned--it doesn't make a bit of difference, because the child's wounds are not confined to the present moment and no amount of empathy over the cookie is going to make up for the real, underlying issue instantaneously.
Also--yes, I appear to be tooting my own horn a bit here. I'm admittedly proud of how hard I have worked at becoming a better parent. The audacity, right? ^_^
All you need to know about my "Other Country" is that it's like every poor country out there. And a little bit like the rich ones, too.
The US consulate warns you that robbery and rape are endemic. The unemployment rate is several times higher than the highest number that the governing officials are willing to report to the outside world. You will come closer to freshly murdered corpses than you've ever come before. Trash litters the roads and streams. Some first world nation will come in and try to strip mine the fuck out of some impoverished backwater province, while old men chain themselves across the road and stare at the oncoming trucks. Graffiti depicts Uncle Sam as the grim reaper; he has a scythe and a star-spangled hat.
Jobless city men strut and swagger and hit. Sometimes with fists, sometimes with bullets. Young country women tie their babies to the kitchen table and leave them there while they go out and work the fields. People sing and dance and drink as if their lives depended on it. The citizens are absurdly patriotic. And they believe in God--often the God of Abraham and Isaac--but God's clearly not powerful enough to fix anything of consequence, so--for good measure--they send up their prayers on superstitious wings of fairydust, colored smoke, and voodoo magic.
And you know what else?
Fuck you.
Fuck you for needing me to come back and tell you that all I saw were hard-working farmers with fat, rosy-cheeked, adorable black-eyed babies.
Fuck you and your gaily painted houses and your quaint, cobblestoned remnants of colonialism.
Fuck your edgy, uber-privileged hipster spring break, combing through the markets for funny t-shirts exported from America, keepin' it real, eating a fresh mango on a pier, banging the sons and daughters of local lawyers who troll the posh bars you think are very fucking rustic.
I saw your long-suffering-but-cheerful farmers. I went to the folk dances and the ancient rituals and the fundamentalist revivals. I dipped traditional flatbread in traditional sauces cooked in traditional stoneware over traditional fire pits. I saw those people you call "inspiring"--you know, the ones who pick up the shambles of their fucked up lives and try to make the best of things, just like everybody else who ever lived.
And I saw dead babies. Abandoned babies. Drug babies. Mutilated babies. Babies with AIDS. Babies shot in the back. Sex slaves with missing teeth. Seamstresses afraid to go back to the clothing factories because their coworkers keep ending up raped and headless in the ditches out back. A gang shooting. An eight year old trying to sweet-talk an old woman out of her wallet and then kicking her in the shin when it didn't go over well. Another eight year old mugged for his mother's grocery money. I saw drug lords rolling by in their dark cars with dark windows, and I saw young men hide and cry in despair at being unable to deliver whatever it was those drug lords wanted. I saw faithful people throw their last coins in the collection bag at church. I saw a bus driver say "fuck this shit" and overturn a load of innocent passengers down a mountainside. I saw people running orphanages for the sole purpose of siphoning off donations to use on hookers and cars, handing off the kids to child molesters and not giving a rip. I saw swindling and beatings and flat, dead apathy. I had the shit beaten out of me by a man who had ghosts in his eyes.
And I saw people fighting back, spinning tales of hope and growth and revelation. Good on them, I guess. I can't spin very well. Not for very long. They keep trying to teach me and it never sticks.
But you don't really want to know about any of that, do you?
