It’s been a while; I know. Funny how easy it is to rant and rave and complain and vent and gripe and share your woes, but when asked to jot down a few positive thoughts I can’t seem to make the time. I am more than happy to stay up untill midnight scribing a venomous rant about the Tea Party, but can’t seem to carve out five minutes to say life is good. Life is more than good; life is great. All systems go. Living as I should be.
I was gently reminded that however small, I have finally after three years created a small loyal audience here at my blog. Comments like the one below do wonders for ones self-esteemed, especially when said self-esteem is unhealthy wrapped up in need for attention and validation, but I digress.
This post was meant to be a quick pop in to say:
I am happy. I feel physically good and comfortable in my skin. Work is going well, and I finally feel like I am on the right track now that I am back in the classroom. (Spent the first few weeks setting up the program) I am doing cool things with technology and my students are responding and performing well.
My own kids are amazing. Skyelar is almost one and really becoming her own person. She growls when annoyed, but otherwise she is usually all smiles. She is a few weeks, maybe days away from walking and babbles non-stop. She is an eating machine who devours blue berries by the bushel. Kaia, well she is Kaia. Her tantrums and irritability have died down a bit and she is usually quite pleasant. She counts and sings in Bahasa and Chinese. It amazes me how big she is getting. Sometimes I can’t believe how much of a little girl she has become. She is no longer a baby or a toddler. She has entered girlhood for sure and this excites me to no end.
See this post doesn’t feel right! Who cares about these things? Why would anyone read about this mundane contentment? But I guess it does a body good to sometimes just step back and say, “My life is running pretty smoothly at the moment." Maybe when it derails and I fall back off, I could look to these times, to these posts and see what was going right. After all aren't these fleeting moments of joy the very thing we search for our entire lives?
So what is going right? I am simply living day-to-day and trying to do the best I can and enjoying the little things. I am working hard on a variety of projects: book, blogging, mentoring, etc…and I am trying to be as involved as I can with my family even though I am often exhausted. There is a trip to Singapore in my future and time is moving at a comfortable pace. Not to slow and not too fast.
I was going to delete this post, but thought what the hell…the positive vibe might help some one out there. Hope it holds you over until I can piece together something a bit more substantial.
On second thought, let's not discount this post altogether, maybe we can turn this into a conversation. What are the little things that keep you happy? The things that help you feel like things are alright? What are the little things that you cherish? And why do you forget them when life gets tricky?
I am sure the world does not need another September Eleventh post today, but as I sit on my couch on this quiet Saturday night listening to music, I can’t help but open the valve on my feelings to see how I may fill the cup. The events of nine years ago and the subsequent effects they have had on the world have been on my mind all day, and I need to free them the only way I know how- scribbling a few words on this page.
I will do my best to keep this post apolitical. I have no need to incite or aggravate any one in anyway. I simply want to jot down a few thoughts to help me clear my head and hope that my words will bring about some insight, comfort, or peace to whoever reads.
The best place to start, I suppose is a brief “where were you,” story. I was a Peace Corp volunteer living in a small town in Mozambique called Quissico. Our town was about six hours north of Maputo and quite isolated. I remember that day clearly, because it was the first day the new public phone was installed in town. Up to that point, if we wanted to make a phone call we had to drive about two hours north to Inhambane. They had installed the sole public phone across the street from our house, so we set up a casual surveillance to wait for a break in the line. When it appeared, my wife, girl friend at the time, pounced at the chance to call home.
We called her mother around nine thirty eastern time to share the great news that we were now connected with the world through the magic of telephone communication. Her mother was watching the news footage of the collapse of Twin Towers. After a brief chat we went to the local bar and restaurant with a TV and sat in awe and watched.
My first thoughts went to my two best friends living in NYC at the time. The Mozambicans warned us not to return home because America was now a war zone. The irony was palatable, seeing that Mozambique had suffered through years of war. For the following weeks we listen to BBC and Voice of American on the radio every night as the war began in Afghanistan. I remained in a haze of confusion for an uncountable amount of time. I am not sure I have ever been freed of the confusion caused on 9-11.
Here we are nine years later, and I am still filled with questions. What has changed? What have we learned? How have we grown? It is one thing to never forget, but what next? Should this event been a sign that we, I don't mean Americans but all people. need to change the way we do everything? Shouldn't we have created cross cultural exchanges, institutes, and conferences where people of all cultures and religions would meet as often as possible till we achieved peace? Shouldn't we have buried out flags and found more unifying images? Shouldn't we have turned our cheeks and sought to understand?
After reading the latest news about the Ground Zero Mosque, and the Quran burnings, one would venture to guess we haven’t come very far at all. A nebulous war on terror, two concrete wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, countless terrorist attacks worldwide and here we are where we started. The moderates blame the zealots, the zealots blame everyone, and we have done little to build a more balanced tolerant understanding of our differences. The blame can be placed on the shoulders of all sides, but one thing is clear- war has done nothing to help the families of the people who died find peace. War has done nothing to help move us forward. War has done nothing.
I am sure most Americans today will do their best to mark their connection to the events of September 11th. Facebook updates, Twitter hashtags will be chalk full of “Never Forgets, and God Bless Americas.” But what have we done to move forward? What can we do? What are you doing to help foster peace?
What does it mean to be truly tolerant of a world view that differs from your own? As a non-believer I see very little difference between Christianity and Islam, so I find it odd that so much hatred and fear can grow from two philosophies that as far as I can understand share a god and many stories. Where is the disconnect? As you can see, I have more questions than answers.
I wish had some profound advice to offer, but really all I have to say can be easily condensed into five stanzas of song. It may be clichéd and a bit sappy from years of play, but sometimes the biggest problems have the simplest solutions.
No religion. No countries. No possessions. This is what I am doing. I have dedicated my life’s work to move toward these three simple axioms. I want to encourage my readers and the people I meet to move beyond their nationalistic tendencies. If not able to make people question their need for religion, I want to make people think critically about their beliefs and the effects these beliefs have on other members of the world community. No religion. No countries. No possessions. They made sense to me at seven and I haven’t looked back.
Lest I be criticized for not being sensitive to the families of the people who died or the sanctity of the ground, let em say this- I can't help but think back to the fear I felt that first day when I thought my two best friends could have been dead. I think of my life without Ari and Richard in it, and can't help but feel unimaginable sadness. What would I do differently had they died? The answer is....I would try to unite. To educate. I would try to build a world with No religion. No countries. No possessions.
I drove to the Giant store to buy another shelf for the girls’ reading loft today. Yes, I am extremely proud of the fact that the oldest is barely four and our girls have too many books for the number of shelves we own. We are turning a small loft area upstairs into a place to get lost in books and stories and relaxation, a sort of retreat from tantrums, nervous hunger freak outs, and the general nastiness that a tired family sometimes faces. I will post pictures once it is up and running, but that is not what this post is about.
I was in the car alone with Skyelar when the song Healing Room by Sinead O Conner came on the iPod. We were in between storms and the sun was doing her best to break through the rain and clouds. The air was heavy with moisture and the droplets sparkled as they bounced about. I peaked in the rearview mirror and saw Skyelar staring out the window, enjoying the music, the rain, the day. I felt a twinge of euphoria.
I swore to document it later in the day. I know I often dwell on the grief and sorrow of the human experience to the point where many people may wonder how I can see any of the beauty in the world. This post is a quick reflection on the ability to be aware enough to savor the tiniest and most memorable moments of our lives.
I have a universe inside me Where I can go and spirit guides me There I can ask oh any question I get the answers if I listen I have a healing room inside me The loving healers there they feed me They make me happy with their laughter They kiss and tell me I'm their daughter I'm their daughter They say You have a little voice inside you It doesn't matter who you think you may be You're not free if you don't know me If you don't know me See I'm not the lie that lives outside you And it doesn't matter what You think you believe You're not free if you don't know me If you don't know me See I am the universe inside you You come to me and I will guide you And make you happy with laughter I joy in seeing you're my daughter You're my daughter So believe you're not free if you don't know me If you don't know me If you don't know me If you don't know me If you don't know me If you don't know me…
Holy shit! I try not use “bad” language too often here at the Flame, but Holy Fuck! I mean Holy shit. Holy fuck. There are no other words to express how I am feeling right now. I am speechless and angry and scared and spinning out of control. I feel powerless, guilty, and disgusted with the world, myself, and everything else there might be.
I just watched Consuming Kids: The Commercialization of Childhood. Let me start by saying that is a very well made documentary. According to the website:
Consuming Kids throws desperately needed light on the practices of a relentless multi-billion dollar marketing machine that now sells kids and their parents everything from junk food and violent video games to bogus educational products and the family car. Drawing on the insights of health care professionals, children's advocates, and industry insiders, the film focuses on the explosive growth of child marketing in the wake of deregulation, showing how youth marketers have used the latest advances in psychology, anthropology, and neuroscience to transform American children into one of the most powerful and profitable consumer demographics in the world. Consuming Kids pushes back against the wholesale commercialization of childhood, raising urgent questions about the ethics of children's marketing and its impact on the health and well-being of kids.
Let me just say that this is a must see for anyone who deals with children at any capacity. It is easy for me to be thankful that I don’t live in the USA and that my daughters are somewhat shielded by certain aspects of the relentless advertising saturation that surrounds most people, simply by living overseas, but after watching this film I am not sure how well of a job I am doing, even having isolated myself in far off lands for the duration of my children’s lives.
I like to think of myself as a petty well-informed and aware father, so why do I feel so powerless? Do I need to move my family completely off the grid in order to be able to live a life free of the intrusion of the global capitalist machine?
Don’t get me wrong; much of my guilt and shame is not derived by playing the victim. This film has made me realize how I have often encouraged much of the behavior I abhor. It is easy to sit and judge far off parents for the choices they make, but it is disillusioning to think that I have made some very bad choices myself.
I am not only writing this post to help change the bad habits I have noticed in my daughter, but more importantly to help identify my own habits and behaviors that have influenced her.
Number one! Less screen time! I don’t mean just TV, because Kaia actually doesn’t watch too much TV, but I have noticed that it has become a crutch for her boredom. Keep in mind that there are no commercials on the TV here, but the fact that she has become infatuated with Dora, Mickey and others is cause for concern. I can see that many times when she is bored she reverts to watching TV.
But when I said less screen times I didn’t mean just for her. That means me too. I need to spend less time online, on my computer during her awake hours. I am not comfortable with the amount of times in a day I say things like, “ I will be right there, let me just finish this, or post that, or check this.” I pledge to spend more time working on projects, creating situations where we have creative play, and time using our imaginations.
Too often because I am tired or not in the mood, I simply expect her to entertain herself, and while I no there is value in that, I need to be able to structure more creative activities for her, rather than letting her veg out in front of the TV. When given the choice she will always choose playing with me over TV, I cannot say how much longer that will last.
I have allowed the mosquitoes to keep us hostage in the house, but I pledge to spend more time outside. One of the reasons I wanted to leave Doha so badly was because I hated what we saw outdoors. Now we live in a beautiful compound with massive trees, grass, and flowers. Time to get on the bike and head outdoors.
Do my best to buy as many products that are character free as possible.
That feels like a manageable list and I will stop for now. What do you do to help balance your child’s peace and quiet with the world that is assaulting their sense on a daily basis?
What this film helped me realize is that, we are dealing with a bigger problem than just having kids want to eat this cereal or that one. We are dealing with an assault on human values and family beliefs. I can, and think that I do, try my hardest to create an authentic, organic, and real experience for my daughters but how much can I do? How much can I shield them from a value system that encourages them to believe that happiness comes from things, when I myself am consumed by things?
Perhaps this post is a bit pre-mature and I need to let the ideas settle. I am sure I will get a few comments telling me to calm down and that I am overreacting again. Well, I am tired of that response. My kids are the most important things in my life and if I am not gonna freak out about it who will?
Perhaps I need to watch the flim again and talk about it with my wife, but I felt the need to write something right after watching it. I felt the need to invite you to join the conversation. You can watch the film in its entirety, broken into segments on youtube starting with Part One. I encourage you to watch it and leave your initial thoughts in the comment section below and help talk me off the edge. Help me find a way to move forward and not be terrified of the signs of a creeping consumerism, I can already see in my daughter at the age of four.
I am in one of my weird dark moods. Not completely opaque mind you, there is a light. I see the light. Well, I don’t actually see it, but I can feel it’s warmth. It is a good light and it sustains me. It is Friday night, the house is quiet and I am tired. I am looking to write myself out of this shallow hole. Problem is I have little focus or patience for anything resembling an idea or any direction. This is where I am:
I am listening to Elliott Smith, and I wrote this 26 minutes ago.
It’s all I got. I know it is not much, and I should just close the laptop, grab a book and just relax, but I find value in documenting even the malaise and minutia.
Am I alone here? Do you ever just wake up in the morning, shuffle your feet in the darkness to the bathroom, look into your exhausted empty eyes and drop your head with the weight of disappointment and frustration when you are greeted by the same face you have been staring at your whole life. The same monologue begins to play in your head, and you know that you will be forced to listen to that incessant voice in your head for another day.
Having said that, I firmly believe that our lives cannot be photo albums filled only with smiles and celebrations. Sometimes we wallow, we grope, we struggle and we move on. I wouldn’t want it any other way. I like the dark tunnels; down here on my stomach scratching at the floor looking for a way back up is where I have learned the most about myself. Down here in the darkness is where I regain faith in myself. It is where I am reminded that the voice I complain is boring me, is the only voice that has been there since the beginning, and it will be the last voice I hear.
I know what you are thinking. This poor sap is suffering from self-loathing and low self-esteem, but believe me, as any reader of this blog or friend of mine can tell you, there is no lack of love for self here. Or maybe there is, how do I know I am no therapist. All I know is that I am pretty confident and usually make a pretty good go of it, but sometimes I allow myself to be carried away by the funk. I ride the waves of angst and let them carry me where they will. The result is most often a cliché trope of bourgeoisie angst that not even I will want to read in twenty minutes, but alas here it is.
The music has changed to Built to Spill and I can already see the clouds moving. You see maybe just a few words running along the sentence lines of this blank page are all we need to help make a seismic shift in attitude. Maybe we don’t need a new body. New eyes. New hair. A new outlook. New opinions and ideals. New core beliefs.
Maybe all we need is to allow the passage of time and a new song:
by the way the guitar at the end of this clip is off the hook
…and you better not be angry and you better not be sad you better just enjoy the luxury of sympathy if that's a luxury you have and you know no private bad you know that that's the meaning of you're done in a world that's not so bad
I could easily have watched Glenn Beck's "Restoring Honor" Rally - Interviews With Participants added my smug, flippant, elitist comment and passed it along on Facebook or Twitter. I would have bandied about words like ignorant, uniformed, red state, bible belt, and so on, but after watching this video three times, yes I am sick I know, I was left with a pile of pity so heavy in my lap that I had to write about it, so as to be able to sleep tonight.
Before I really get into it, let me say I understand that it is not fair to use videos like this to paint an accurate picture of an entire country or even a small group of people, even if those people are suspected Tea Party members. We cannot look at interviews with the same six people and claim they represent the ideas of even right wing fanatics, conservatives, or Republicans, whatever we are calling them these days. It is easy to edit the worst of people, stand back and laugh at the results. I get that. But there has to be some truth of the views being represented in this video.
There is something sad buried in here not too far below the surface. There is something scary in there as well. There is something that screams of fear and failure. We have failed, all of us as Americans if we allow this level of ignorance to continue. This misinformation seeped in panic and fear of the unknown brings out the worst in us. I see such terrified, insulated, uneducated people. I don’t mean stupid or even uniformed when I say uneducated, I mean people who are simply not thinking. They have never been taught that the world is made of many shades of grey.
Ideas, religions, even reality can be good and bad at the same time. We must question ideas and weigh the options. Look for reasons, motives behind our thoughts as well as the thoughts and ideas of others. I will not blame the lack of critical thinking on the American public school system, because after all I am a product of this system, and because teachers are getting a lot of bad press these days, I will simply ask- how can we as a nation work to help our citizens think more critically? How can we open their minds to the world outside America? This insulation is destroying our country.
Rather than ridicule or belittle the victims of this video, I want to see if we can think of a way we can reach out and share our knowledge of the world with Americans who perhaps see little more of the world than the talking points Fox News forces into their exhausted minds. Are you a teacher in a small rural town? Are your students afraid that Mexican hordes are coming to the US to drop anchor babies? Have you done a unit on Mexican history? Did your students learn all they need to know about Islam on 9/11? Can they find Iran, Malaysia, Qatar, or Indonesia on a map? I have lived in all four places and can Skype into your class and clear a few things up quickly. I am no fan of religion in general, but I will do my part to prove that Islam is not the enemy here.
The things these people say may border on the absurd, but careful examination shows that they are the main talking points of the punditry at Fox. If we deride and make fun of the most exploited amongst us, we are allowing Fox News the right to call us elitists and vilify us as they wish. If we do not help educate our citizenry, Fox will be more than happy to do it. We will never be able to compete with the Koch’s of the world, but maybe we can help open minds. We can move forward small classroom by classroom and help young people understand that America is not the last bastion. She is just a nation who struggles with other nations. She is made of people who struggle like all people.
I am not sure what percentage of people actually think that Al Sharpton has the ability to mobilize battalions of Black Panthers, but I would venture it is more than we think. Comments like the one about the Panthers illustrate how little people really understand the way our nation was built. I bet if asked to offer one aspect of the Panther philosophy, the subject of Black Power would quickly be changed or ignored.
There is something wrong with a nation if in the google age we cannot grasp the basic idea of what the Panther Party was about: We want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice and peace. Do we teach students about the Panthers, Chicago in 1968, Malcom X, Tupac Shakur, of course not, so why do we belittle people for being terrified of African Americans, when a Mormon puppet master tells them 100 times a day that their president is a Muslim monster. Once we understand our history both black and white, we will realize that Al Sharpton has about the same chance of mobilizing these kinds of numbers of African Americas as Glenn Beck does.
But that’s just it. Glenn Beck does mobilize his base. How? By repeatedly appealing to their pride, faith, and fear. American is the only worthy nation on Earth blessed by God himself. It says so right on our money, how could that be wrong? We are the Last Bastion of freedom, not even Canada has a chance. If we don’t watch out we will all be living as slaves to black Muslim communists. We won’t be allowed to pray at the monuments. How will we know all of this, “ we will be told by the news.”
I don’t teach in the US, so I will do my part by teaching my Muslim students to be open minded and have them kind enough and ready to interact with Americans if they you ever brave enough to come out into the world and join the rest of us on this beautiful planet. You can watch the video, but after writing all that, I don’t recommend it.
This post was meant to be a quick pop in to say:
