Beautiful and Finite

Below you will find a video. It is powerful. It is beautiful. It is vital. I have a cumbersome batch of thoughts on it that I cannot seem to capture. They are deceivingly light and agile. They are connected to my recent spate of technology related anxiety. I started a post with rooted in that agitation, but my train of thought went to a different station. You can follow those tracks by reading this.  

I thought I would watch the video again and see if we can’t arrive at the right spot.

I miss the earth. I am here, but feel so distant. I have escaped into screens and am making connections with texture I cannot feel. Shallow surfaces that leave no residue, but guilt and emptiness. I have forgotten the feeling of soil beneath my feet--tile to car to tile to cement to car to tile to bed. I have forgotten the gentle song of the moon. The stars blanked out by the buzz of machines. I have taken for granted the soul-shaking wonder of a living planet.

I want a change. I want a break. I want to unplug.

                 want change.       want break.       want unplug.

                                change.             break.              unplug?

Aw.. screw it. I don’t know how to steer this train. Watch for yourself. What do you think? What do you feel? Have we gone too far forward? Progressed too much? Can we get our planet back?

Gain- A Review

If I don’t write this post/review right now, tonight, I will never write it. It has been festering beneath my skin, down near my bones for a little over a week. I keep telling myself to wait till the time is right. Wait until it comes oozing out and the words write themselves, but I am not sure when that time will come, so before this post becomes infected and pusses into a disgusting wound, I will try to get it out.

I am having a difficult time sharing my thoughts on the novel Gain by Richard Powers, because it could be one of the best books I have ever read. It deserves more than the sloppy stream of consciousness style post on which I am making my name. It needs a dissertation, a New Yorker article. At least a well planned essay. Perhaps I need to teach it as a graduate course novel, as Mary the person who recommended it to me, has done. But I haven’t the energy for such intellectual pursuits at this time. So let’s start with the basics:

In Gain, Richard Powers puts our modernity through the wringer once again. This time, though, he points the finger at one villain in particular: rampant, American-style capitalism, as exemplified by a conglomerate called Clare International. His novel, it should be said, is no piece of agitprop, but an intricate lamination of two separate stories. On one hand, Powers describes the rise (and fall and rise) of the Clare empire, beginning in its mercantile infancy. The author's Clare-eyed narrative amounts to a pocket history of corporate America, and a marvelously entertaining one. Lest we get too enamored of this success story, though, Powers introduces a second, countervailing tale, in which a 42-year-old resident of Lacewood, Illinois, is stricken with ovarian cancer. Lacewood happens to be the headquarters of Clare's North American Agricultural Products Division, and lo and behold, it seems that chemical wastes from the plant may be the source of Laura Bodey's illness.

These two stories are woven together with such subtle delicacy that I was left wanting at the end of each chapter. In the story about the rise of Clare, the reader is treated to a muck-raking ,journalistic narrative seeped in historical fiction. A clear and objective narrator tells the tale of a small soap company that transforms into a multi-national corporation over the course of a hundred years. The voice telling the tale is born of both Ayn Rand and Upton Sinclair, in that the reader is never quite sure what it is trying to tell about the rise of capitalism in the Untied States. At times, the narration is sharp and critical of the often ruthless purity of the American business-- “Industry’s raw inputs were endless, the land fecund enough for any machine dream. A nation come of age possessed no greater peacemaker than power.”

This is not solely an anti-capitalist tirade, however.  At times, Powers begs us to consider that perhaps business, tainted with it’s altruistic hue of science and technology, only exists to make our lives better and easier. But, no matter which side of the moralistic coin you choose to dwell, this is a novel that will force you to think about the current state of global capitalism by examining it’s history.

The novel acts as textbook for American history, economics, business, class struggle, marketing, as well as chemistry, environmentalism, and technology. It is a petri dish of discussion topics. But the beauty is that, it is not a textbook, but rather a beautifully crafted novel of intense beauty and poetry. The words drift and float leaving traces of sentences that when sorted into paragraphs leave lasting impressions. The sections of the book that tell the story of Clare, undertake a more formal tone, but are accented with hints of Whitman wordplay and Dickens storytelling in their charm and civility.

Then there is Laura. There is the cancer. The anguish. Tears and soft smiles and goosebumps. The deterioration of the same dream building up on the other side of history. Just as easily as Powers unleashed his powerful lecture on the rise and sometimes awe inspiring beauty of capitalism, with a voice of unquestionable expertise and authority, he now tells the fragile and honest story of a family in crisis in a voice much like Franzen.  A quick wit and humor infused with a underlying joyless reality are the back drop of the story of Laura’s cancer. The reader will be left laughing with tears in their eyes at the injustice of a disease that can only survive by growing beyond it’s means-- cancer or capitalism?

Please do not accuse me of hyperbole, when I say this is one of the best books you will ever read. I will read this book again. I will read everything Richard Powers has ever written. Someday I will teach this book. If you respect my opinion on anything, please do yourself a favor and read it.

Be warned, you will not look at the world the same again. It has altered the way I think about technology, science, marketing, America and the very objectives of our species--We have been taught to think that America is leading the train. That science and progress and technology and the cloak of marketing in which it has all been wrapped will save us from the terror that lurks in nature, that somehow the myth of Genesis married to Manifest Destiny, married to expansion and growth and progress and pre-emptive war and the American Dream will somehow save us. From what? No one stops to ask. There has to be something different out there...this novel will force you to stop and ask why you have never thought to question a system that is killing us all in one way or another.

What Next?

Imagine living in a country where government officials told you that riding your bike could be dangerous to your personal freedom. That thinking about and acting on your instincts to lessen your environmental footprint was a conspiracy dictated by the Untied Nations to bring down the US Constitution.

Imagine living in a country that was so afraid and paranoid that the word community had negative connotations, a place where citizenship, understanding, and awareness had been replaced by fear, spite, and ignorance.

Government candidates running on a platform that riding bike is bad but laying off state employees good, would not only not to be laughed off the stage, but actually had a chance of winning Governorships! A place where wanting to belong to a global community dedicated to unity was bad, but drilling for gas and oil was okay.

image by pfv.

There are some strange things going on in the fine United State of America. I will confess that I ignore most everything that passes these days as serious political discourse. Except for the occasional Daily Show or Stephen Colbert Report, I choose to wait for the wreckage of the vicious shallow farce that falls into my lap from friends, Twitter and my RSS feed.

On thing that is clear is that any system that takes Sarah Palin seriously and actually has Tea Party members running for serious government posts is ready to implode. I don't know about you, but I can't trust anyone who can't even manage to smile authentically.


I wish somehow this guy's caravan could get encircled by an angry mob of lesbian critical massers pelting him with...I will stop here before I become unproductive and mean.

I wish HST was here to say what I cannot. Shaking head in disgust and clicking on the link. What next America? What next?

Life's Journey

Readers of this blog should be familiar with Betmo. She is a regular reader and an avid commenter here at Intrepid Flame. Through out the last few months we have been building a nice little friendship. We share many ideas and have watched each other grow.

She sent me the email below, after my last post, and when asked why she didn’t leave it as a comment, she said she didn’t want to get in the middle of martial arguments. While I appreciate her discretion, I think she raises some good points that add to the discussion:

i can only speak to the world situation as it is. my first
thought is- it is that bad. many folks don't want to wake up and
realize that but it is. the environment is crashing- entire species are
going extinct and scientists are now concerned with disappearing solar
winds and methane bubbles in the arctic. aware is about all you can
be. the basic necessities of life- food, water, shelter- all under
siege- from the environmental impacts on growing and whatnot to the
growing shortage of water. inflation and unemployment is going to be
staggering. millions are going to die and martial law will be declared
in places around the world. probably even here in america. i don't
know how much news you get there from here- non propaganda i mean. as
for procreating- i can only give you my opinion as a deliberately
childless woman in a couple who mutually agreed- what kind of life can
you offer a child? not just when they are small. what kind of world
are you leaving them- are the people in charge now leaving them? a
world crashing environmentally and economically. jabiz- if you aren't
thinking about these things all of the time- you aren't aware.

now, that's not to say you shouldn't live in the moment too and enjoy
what you do have. relish and cherish what you do have. but you can't
pretend that everything is going to be fine because it isn't. even if
folks who aren't corporatists take charge- there's a whole lotta mess to
clean up and realistically, the tipping point for life sustainability on
this planet was tipped decades ago. long before you or i were born.
the short sightedness of the people in charge when our parents were
young has led us down this garden path. life has dealt us this and we
have to deal. the only thing you can do- live each day as best you
can. that means- do what you have to do to get yourselves somewhere
that isn't a desert. you must at least grow your own veggies. really.
it is late in the game to start the self sufficiency route but please
trust me when i tell you- get as self sufficient as you can. lower your
debt, grow your own food, conserve water, consume less and reuse and
recycle. we can't fix the world's problems- they are too big and the
planet is going to be here when we aren't. human beings are extincting
themselves and i don't believe it's a bad thing. we are leeches on a
big beautiful earth- and our time is reaching an end.

i have no faith in americans. perhaps i can renew my faith in humanity
outside of here. what i see in my daily life and what i read about and
hear about- people here are just shortsighted users. i don't know if
this is helpful or not. all you can do is let go of the big picture and
scale down. i hope your wife gets on board because middle class
suburbia is ending. it's unfair and it's on the down swing. i have
never met your wife so i will not presume to have insight that i don't
have. it's a process and i have had to help husband see too. he is a
surburbanite too. not easy. people look at me as if i am crazy- and i
am not. i just know human nature and i see the trends. and i hate
being right these days- but i had been harping on the impending economic
collapse a year ago and the martial law tactics too. we are now going
to have army personnel deployed-- to america. they will be on duty here
on american soil for the first time in our history. and i don't have a
good feeling about it.

anyhoo- you have a right to be depressed but no right to brood. there
isn't anything more you can do but take care of your own life and help
plant seeds of freedom and truth in the next generation. the next baby-
is you and your wife's decision. i have a narrow view where i think
anyone having kids are selfish but that's strictly my view. namaste my
friend. b

Crude Awakening

"It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine."

My wife doesn’t like it when I talk about the future. In fact we just had an argument, because I was brooding around the house, griping about the 700 Billion dollar bailout for the criminals on Wall Street, and contemplating our future in a post-apocalyptic landscape in which we find a plot of land where we can feed and take care of our family.

I am sure every generation feels that their future is in peril and that the world is coming to an end. But something about the where we stand on the brink of the 21st century, feels too real. My wife, rightfully although I don’t want to admit it that, if the future is a s grim as I predict then why have another baby as we are planning on doing. If the population of the planet is already staggeringly unsustainable, if the world could realistically only support about one billion people, then how or why would one even consider procreating. Isn’t it cruel to bring another life into a world that you are certain will be filled with doom and gloom and war?

I don’t have an answer. I have a hard time articulate my views to her in person, so I have decided to try my hand here in text. As much as I gripe about the human condition, I believe in humanity. Despite the near suicidal decisions we have made as a species, I still think that when the smoke clears, human beings will be able to regroup and restart. Being the eternal optimist, I guess I just hope that my family and I will be resourceful enough to make it through what ever the future has to offer.

Why am I arguing with my wife about trying to find a piece of land on a connected landmass away from major urban centers where we can raise our kids along side our own food? I have watched another film that has scared the shit of me.

As documentary films go, Crude Awakening: The Oil Clash is only as good as its title, and that is not very. Cinematically, artistically, and in terms of craft the movie is average at best and riddle with clichés that make some scenes laughable. But the message is there and worth considering. I feel that every high school student in the world should watch this filmed!

I am not sure if it is best to run blindly into the future hoping that things stay the same or get better, or if it is better to look to the future with fear, but I cannot simply look the other way. This movie is a only one item on a list of material that I have been ingesting lately that makes a pretty strong case that the world is changing and not for the better.

Despite of this, contrary to what my wife thinks about my attitude, I think that we have a stake in living. We may not be as “green” as we can be; my recent trip to Shanghai was the second or third major trip of four I will take this year. Who am I kidding? Air travel is one of the worst uses of fossil fuels out there. But we can continue to live our lives, not as normal, but as aware.

To run blindly into a future pretending everything will be okay is irresponsible, when there are so many signs saying that it will not be okay. I can only live my life the best I can. I feel sorry for my wife for having to put up with me, but I cannot imagine interact with the world in any other way. I cannot explain why I want to have another baby. I know that ecologically it is not a wise choice. It is easy to sit back and suggest that the Chinese only have one baby each, because they are over their quota, but it is another to limit yourself to the idea of forced family planning. I guess like all of the choices we make in a globalized, fossil fuel consuming, market economy, we feel powerless to act differently.

My wife often accuses me of standing on a morally superior soapbox, and this saddens me, because all of the judgment I may appear to be lashing out into the world is first and foremost directed at myself. I find myself trapped in a system that I did not build and cannot escape from. I know that ultimately I could easily choose to live off the grid and make major life changes, but that is easier said than done, and I applaud the people who have the courage to make those choices.

I am rambling now, so I will go back into our room and apologize to my wife for being so serious all the time, but these arguments are good to have sometimes, because when the future comes, and it will be a bit scary, perhaps we will be better prepared to deal with it.

Here is the trailer for Crude Awakening: The Oil Clash. Please watch the film in its entirety and if you are teacher show it to your kids! Spend some time on Youtube and check out the other clips.

What if?

What if I am wrong about everything I hold to be true? What if a jealous, vindictive, masculine god really did create the world six thousands years ago in only six days? What if women shouldn’t have the right to choose and god really does hate the gays? What if blacks are only three-fifths human beings and ignorance and intolerance build strong communities teaming with family values? What if it does make sense to spend my tax dollars on endless war, Wall Street bailouts, and a police state? What if teaching to the status quo is what the world needs? What if I believed that my daughter should not worry about the planet but should spend more time on what she wears and buys? What if I thought that the American system is the best in the world and so we should keep the Mexicans on their side of the fence? What if I could be all I could be in an Army of one? What if I trusted homeland security, the police, and politicians? What if I believed in the market to regulate itself and had faith in corporations to be better stewards of the planet? What if human nature is base and greedy, and nothing will ever get better? What if Fox news really is balanced and the liberal media is trying to brainwash me? What if murdering animals and eating their flesh is what I was meant to do? What if competition builds character and cooperation stifles creativity? What if Milton Freedman was right and Naomi Klein is dead wrong? What if torture works and Guantanimo is not a shameful insult to human rights everywhere? What if the third world is lazy and corrupt and lucky have us buy their water supplies? What if colonialism is in the past and Globalization the future? What if the world really is flat? What if teaching to the test and grubbing for grades really does help students learn? What if a meaningless degree and a 4.0 is better than life experience and travel? What if we should have guns, panic rooms, and brainwash ourselves in sub-divisions? What if power wasn’t meant for the people? What if there is a heaven and a hell? What if anybody even cares?

Plastic Ocean

I recently read an article from Best Life magazine about the “Eastern Garbage Patch.” You can read the article in its entirety here, but I wanted to cut and paste some of the points that stuck out for me. I am still a bit wiped from my Obama post, so I have no commentary on the information you are about to read, but I hope to do something creative with it soon, perhaps a short film, or maybe a Flowgram. In the meantime, I hope the data below strikes you the way it did me.
The gist of it is that there is now a wad, pile, mound, I don’t even know the right word for what it is, but whatever it is, it is made of plastic garbage twice the size of Texas floating in the Pacific Ocean that is poisoning our food supplies and making us impotent as a species. The following is a series of cut and paste quotes from the article, please read the whole thing if you find my synopsis disjointed.

It began with a line of plastic bags ghosting the surface, followed by an ugly tangle of junk: nets and ropes and bottles, motor-oil jugs and cracked bath toys, a mangled tarp. Tires. A traffic cone. Moore (Scientist studying this blob of trash) could not believe his eyes. Out here in this desolate place, the water was a stew of plastic crap. It was as though someone had taken the pristine seascape of his youth and swapped it for a landfill.

Moore realized that the trail of plastic went on for hundreds of miles. Depressed and stunned, he sailed for a week through bobbing, toxic debris trapped in a purgatory of circling currents. To his horror, he had stumbled across the 21st-century Leviathan. It had no head, no tail. Just an endless body.

Dragging a fine-meshed net known as a manta trawl, he discovered minuscule pieces of plastic, some barely visible to the eye, swirling like fish food throughout the water. He and his researchers parsed, measured, and sorted their samples and arrived at the following conclusion: By weight, this swath of sea contains six times as much plastic as it does plankton. This statistic is grim—for marine animals, of course, but even more so for humans. The more invisible and ubiquitous the pollution, the more likely it will end up inside us.

bisphenol A (BPA), which scientists are discovering can wreak stunning havoc in the body. We produce 6 billion pounds of that each year, and it shows: BPA has been found in nearly every human who has been tested in the United States. We’re eating these plasticizing additives, drinking them, breathing them, and absorbing them through our skin every single day.

Most alarming, these chemicals may disrupt the endocrine system—the delicately balanced set of hormones and glands that affect virtually every organ and cell—by mimicking the female hormone estrogen. In marine environments, excess estrogen has led to Twilight Zone-esque discoveries of male fish and seagulls that have sprouted female sex organs. (Can we get a huge WHAT THE FUCK here please!)

“That’s a concern as plastic proliferates worldwide, and people run out of room for trash and start burning plastic—you’re producing some of the most toxic gases known,” he says. The color-coded bin system may work in Marin County, but it is somewhat less effective in subequatorial Africa or rural Peru.

“Except for the small amount that’s been incinerated—and it’s a very small amount—every bit of plastic ever made still exists,”

It has a point. Each of us tosses about 185 pounds of plastic per year. We could certainly reduce that. And yet—do our products have to be quite so lethal? Must a discarded flip-flop remain with us until the end of time? Aren’t disposable razors and foam packing peanuts a poor consolation prize for the destruction of the world’s oceans, not to mention our own bodies and the health of future generations? “If ‘more is better’ and that’s the only mantra we have, we’re doomed,” Moore says.

So there you have it! Maybe now you have a clear picture of what I mean when I say politics is too small a subject for the world we have created. Everything must change and that change must start with each of us. I hope to write soon about my plans to deal with the plastic in my life, and believe me; it won’t be easy. The shit is everywhere!

The Nature Conservancy

My friend Jeff, recently sent me the following video he shot and produced for The Nature Conservancy regarding some work that James Taylor is doing in Virgina for migratory birds. In the spirit of sharing information, I am posting it below. Nicely done Jeff.

I've Been Thinking

I’ve been thinking about writing poetry lately, but the verse remains locked behind a wall of expectancy. No action. I’ve been thinking about de-industrializing as much of myself as I can. Eating more fruit, more vegetables, less processed foods, less petroleum. I’ve been thinking about the need for a more participatory ecology in my life, my relationship to soil, the sky, and my pets. I’ve been thinking about recreating myself even while self-exiled for another year in the desert: perhaps a compost pile, a chicken coup, may be just a few houseplants I can sing to and nurture. I’ve been thinking about the decisive nature of politics and the need for tenderness and self-love. I’ve been thinking about taking better care of body-stretching the muscles and feeding them with real food instead of Pizza Hut. I’ve been thinking about building a community, sharing ideas instead of gripes about work and gossip, sharing responsibilities, food, and art. I’ve been thinking about painting more and gluing dreams on canvases- exposing people to the nature of our manufactured existence and the alternatives. I’ve been thinking about becoming a bridge back to earth. I’ve been thinking about our collective sickness and my personal symptoms: profit over life, relentless ambition and growth replace virtue and simple sustainable existence. I’ve been thinking about the point of no return and the apocalypse- a broken world void of life, my daughter asking me what went wrong. I’ve been thinking about utopias and advertising. Lies, market research, and the ranking of world: 1st, 2nd, 3rd. I’ve been thinking about the peace of words splattered across a collective consciousness- backtracking to a simpler time. I’ve been thinking about history pre-industrial revolution, long journeys across worlds. I’ve been thinking about capital and debt and yields and death. I’ve been thinking about bees and ants and humus and bacteria and fungi and decomposition. I’ve been thinking about soft harmonies dancing with memories on long warm evenings and the inner song I’m finally learning to sing. I’ve been thinking about giving up and carrying on. I’ve been thinking about disappearing and making my stand. I’ve been thinking about you, reader, and whether you care enough about us to lend a hand.

Please leave a comment and let’s start some conversations. The world is slipping away, find your strength and let’s get to work.

Not Sure How To Escape

Warning: This post will wander and meander and not end up anywhere satisfying. It represents the first few steps of a long journey I plan to take this year. If you are looking for answers, do not read on, but if you want to help me find my way or perhaps see if your journey follows a path similar to mine, please come join me and let’s see if we can’t move forward.

This daily writing session on the porch could develop into a habit. Half past six and shades of purple sunlight are hiding somewhere in the clouds, thick again, with the notion of a storm. My hair is still damp from the pool, where Kaia was beginning to actually swim. She pushes off from the wall and kicks and swings her arms till she gets back and clutches the concrete. People who see her are amazed that a child so small can be so comfortable in the water. I simply watch her tenacity and independence and hope that I have had something to do with it, but I know better. This is her personality. I understand her resolve; I share her blood after all. I just hope I can guide her to use it to find some comfort. I can see it in her eyes as she pleads, “Kaia do it!” that she too will take on the world, just as I have chosen to do. What can we do with our destinies but swim?

I can here a few birds chirp over the music, Sun Kil Moon Again…you wasted life, why wouldn’t you waste death? This lyric haunts me. Sitting here, I feel like I am right where I am supposed to be. I am nothing special, just a husband and father, a friend to some and a teacher to others. I am a son and that is all. Nothing feels wasted. So why do my confessions sound like a lies. Wasn’t there meant to be more?

You can tell a lot about a person’s mood by the books they choose to surround themselves with, and I have been reading some great books lately. Upon finishing each one, I want to sit and type out my new manifesto, but life, my own angst, and self-pity and have prevented me from doing so. I never seem to be ready to start the big recap, but now seems as good as a time as any to start understanding why I have been so disappointed with life lately. Perhaps I can use my books as a map. Here are the last six books I have read:

After reading Ishmael, the philosophy book, and now Earth Democracy, I think I have a good idea of where to begin. My feelings of grief are bigger than the events I have faced the last few months. Losing my job only magnify an overall sense of dissatisfaction with the bigger aspects of my life. I think that I am experiencing a more universal sense of discontent. I am starting to realize that while living in the desert is not the sole cause of my malaise, it has definitely enhanced the feeling of disconnection with nature. This sense of detachment from the earth is at the root of my issues. I do not think I am alone. I think humanity is suffering from prolonged separation from the organic world.

I think the majority of my political disagreements with the capitalist, imperialistic, patriarchal, globalized market economy is based on the fact that the new world order is so disconnected with the very things that bring me joy. (I hope to take inventory on what these things are in the coming weeks and months.) Reading Earth Democracy has really opened my eyes to the fact that the very foundations of humanity have been reduced to commodities. We are more and more often living in a world where all that has value are things that can be bought or sold. The market has overshadowed every aspect of our lives.

The politics of this book as well as Ishmael are more complicated than what I have laid out here in this post thus far, but my discontent basically boils down to the idea that for those of us living in the developed, western world, we are too far removed from the earth. For the most part, many of us have no idea where our food comes from, we are too far removed from the production and manufacturing of the very things we strive to accumulate, and we have abandoned the very aspects of what makes us human. (Again, I will explore these ideas in later posts)

We are no longer part of an ecosystem, and as organisms who should be functioning under the laws of nature, we suffer confusion when forced to live outside any explicable ecology. Our religions, governments, and economies have trained us to see the earth as a source of raw materials for our manipulation and consumption, rather than placing us in the middle of a web of life, where we belong. The more I study myself searching for the source of my own decline, the more I see this disconnect with life as the root cause. Further aggravating my sanity is the fact that I can see my daughter’s future being dictated by a close-minded drive toward growth and progress, rather than toward a reconnection with simpler human traits.

I feel trapped and hopeless. My own hypocrisy and shame weigh on me constantly to the point where I can no longer function as expected in the globalized economy, but I do not know how to function any other way, because I have been trained since childhood to be a consumer. I want to be more than a consumer. I want to create and share.

Recap main point:

Cause of my current dissatisfaction with life is due to a disattachment to nature and a sense of incarceration in a globalized economy fueled solely by the needs of a market economy based on progress measured only by growth. I want out of the market-based world. I want to place humanity over profit, cooperation over competition. Simply put, I want to realize my full human potential regardless of how I function relative to the market. But I don’t know how.

I am not advocating living off the grid, although I think that is something I would love to retry. I lived in a small two-room hut in Mozambique for two years with no electricity and running water, but as I am sure my wife would point out, I was not entirely happy there either. I spent a large amount of my time complaining about boredom and my desire to reconnect with the very material possession that I am deriding now. I am sure that people who champion the American Way will comment by saying that I am ungrateful for the very tools I cherish: Get rid of your iPod, why are you using a corporate machine like your Mac Book, etc…I don’t think this has to be an either/or topic. The knowledge that escape is not the answer either further aggravates my plight.

This post was meant to be a sort of brainstorm. I apologize for the disorganized tangential flow of it. It’s just that I have had a lot on my mind, and I wanted to start sifting through some of it. Any advice on which direction it should go? How do you deal with living in a world based on greed and profit?

Here are a few ideas that I am mulling over and would like to explore further in the coming weeks:

The direction that the IMF, World Bank, WTO and the capitalistic world order, led by the USA, are headed is a suicidal unsustainable path, and one that I want to disconnect from as much as possible. The more I read about a future where corporations make all the rules, the more I realize how vital it is that we, all of humanity, begin to take the power back. This action must be more than boycotting Nike for sweatshop violations. The world is up for auction and our most important resources are being privatized and sold to a handful of corporations. Our food and more importantly our agricultural seeds have already been sold to Monsanto, medicines to Pfizer, water to Bechtel, fuels to Exxon, media, government, security all of it sold off to corporations who only place value on returns on capital on their investments. This is not some Orwellian future. This is happening right now. We are losing our world; actually we have already lost most of it.

I want out, but I am not sure how to escape.

I am trying to find a middle ground between living in the jungle and being some American dupe living in a subdivision, or worse working for an American Oil Company in the Middle East, yes my life is a constant contradiction and yes even I am baffled at times by my hypocrisy. I hope my honesty makes my words palatable. But in the words of Ben Harper, “I have see enough to know I have seen too much.” Now what do I do? What do you do? Let us work together to make this a place where my daughter can realize her full potential as a beautiful human soul, not just another statistic on an investment report.

To be continued…

Remembering How To Smile

Here’s the scene: 1:48pm the temperature is a perfect sticky 90 or so, the same temperature as my blood. It is difficult to tell where my skin begins or ends. The afternoon storm clouds make their way into the sky like a herd of elephants, grey and enormous, ready to explode, unload and clear the air of this weight. I am listening to Sun Kil Moon’s album of Modest Mouse cover songs. It looks like this:

Please listen to this song as you read the rest of this post:
Kaia just had lunch and is off for her nap; we spent the morning eating breakfast at our favorite restaurant in KL and swimming at a friend’s pool. She is not yet two, but she can nearly swim. I know that if she jumps in the pool by herself she will not drown. I don’t know why, but the fact that she feels so comfortable in the water makes me so proud of her. This pride when mixed with love is the emotion I have been searching for my whole life. It must be what heaven feels like.

I am living two clichés and contemplating where my life is going. Let me explain: The grass is always greener, and you don’t know what you’ve got till its gone, both lessons in living in the present, or better stated my inability to live in the now, haunt me as I reacclimatizes to Kuala Lumpur. I find myself staring at the trees, asking myself why we ever left Kuala Lumpur. This place is nearly perfect. Living in the desert has taught me to appreciate things I took for granted while living here. The city itself is so green. Living in Doha, I yearn for trees, but here they are everywhere. A simple drive down our old street nearly brought me to tears.

How often do we appreciate the trees in our lives? They are truly magnificent creatures. It is easy to weigh them down with symbolic meaning, but just to watch them in their natural element is enough. They are like bridges between the earth, the air, and water in the atmosphere. Rooted in the earth, they pump air and water better than any man made machines. They are perfect. I strongly believe that their absence in my life in the desert affects my moods. I watch them sway in the late afternoon here, waiting for the rain, another element missing in my life in the desert.

Yesterday I was driving with Kaia in the back of the car singing songs, when I noticed the low lying fog, heavy with moisture, crawl past a hill covered in the remnants of a rainforest. My thoughts: this is where humans were meant to live. Near the equator where the air is the temperature of our blood and we float amongst the clouds stripped of our skin. The air leaks water intermittently, tiny drops bouncing off our windshield. There is no sand in the air, no unbearable heat, life is real. It is alive….

Walking to get dinner, Kaia’s hand in mine, I notice all the people I never noticed when living here. They come in all shapes and sizes. They are wearing shorts and I see their shoulders and calves. They are lean and fat. They are beautiful and ugly. Their diversity is refreshing. They are not covered from head to toe in black cloth. They are not staring at me form behind a veil. They are out in the open. They are socializing. They stop Kaia and I to smile and grab her cheeks. We smile. We may not be family, but we are not enemies. They do not make me feel uncomfortable. I miss interacting with human beings. In Doha, people skitter by like ghosts.

Not sure where this post was going. I didn't want to write a compare and contrast essay, but that seems to be where this is going, so I will stop. I just wanted to document this perfect afternoon as I sit here listening to soft music and trying to pin down exactly what this moment feels like. Before I left Doha, my mom told me to calm down and relax. Well mom, I am off for my afternoon nap and haven't been this happy for as long as I can remember. I will try to learn how to return to Doha with this feeling tucked away somewhere safe, but for now I will enjoy what I have right here…Remembering how to smile:

Intrepid Classroom

I haven't talked much about it here, but I have started an online class to keep me busy while I am unemployed. It is called the Intrepid Classroom and here is the first video trailer:

Global Oneness Project

I thought this video was the perfect Holiday post. The website for the group is here, but the video says it all. Peace.

Another Day, Another Site

I have added 19.20.21 to the feed your brain sites in my sidebar...check it out. Some scary/interesting stuff.

The Story of Stuff

I was spending some time stumbling around the internet tonight, when I found this website. After watching it twice, I have realized that it is my personal mission to get as many people as I can to watch the short twenty-minute film and to get them talking about what it is saying. I also hope to use the resources on the site to help me make some changes in my lifestyle.

From the site...

From its extraction through sale, use and disposal, all the stuff in our lives affects communities at home and abroad, yet most of this is hidden from view. The Story of Stuff is a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns. The Story of Stuff exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create a more sustainable and just world. It'll teach you something, it'll make you laugh, and it just may change the way you look at all the stuff in your life forever.

As a teacher, I cannot think of a better tool to get kids thinking about these issues, and hopefully create a few activists. It delivers the message in a simple enough way to reach young people, but also applies a level of sophistication that gives it gravitas. But enough talk...please go to The Story of Stuff and see for yourself. Once you have seen the video share the wealth- comment back here, post on your blog, set up a screening, do something!