why do we do what we do?

Here is a quote from the vision statement of a friend's ideal theater company. They stole the words right out of my head, those kids!

"We live in a world that is increasingly globalised, yet increasingly divided. In times such as these, it is more important than ever to seek to illuminate and understand what makes us human, and the ties that bind across cultures, language, and experience."

haiku

Here is a haiku I wrote on the train this morning, remembering a moment of Paraguayan irony:

no water today
the holding tank has a leak
we'll drink Coke instead

This is inspiring me, now, to write a whole essay. Poetry is insanely dense.

how to be...

Here, folks, is some inspiration passed along to me by my new roommate. I haven't read the whole article, but I think it's good advice.

muse

When the Muse comes She doesn't tell you to write;
She says get up for a minute, I've something to show you, stand here.
- M. Goldman

these are the days of miracle and wonder

Lately, I have felt an overwhelming sense of amazement at several little things. Every day there is something that impresses me, however small. I have been reading Annie Dillard and she has a way of appreciating the tiniest, beautiful things and I think it has been rubbing off on me. This is a gift, I want to be sure to remember these moments.

The other day, I watched a boy who was about 6 or 7 years old, lean into the office to check the time on our clock. I realized that it is quite incredible that such a young person can look at the cryptic clock and know how to interpret the placement of those rotating hands. There are so many people in this world to whom a clock would hold no meaning. Many humans sharing the globe with us live in societies where ticking time holds little relevance; others may be our own neighbors, children and adults who simply do not know how to read. The confluence of this child's awareness of time, ability to read and understand numbers conceptually, and his interpretation of our western device which measures seconds and minutes and hours - if one is thinking about it in a certain mindset, this really is a miracle.

hm...

So NYT is all about Bahia these days. This is weird... Weird, I suppose, because I was just there and I know how I felt about it, and they make it sound all tourist-hot-spot, and I'm just "eh".

pt

I think public transportation may be just what is keeping people sane in this crazy city... although some days the delays and crowded aisles can be enough to drive one insane. My point is that when you're actually on the bus - you've waited and waited, it finally arrives and you board, you're in transit - it can be quite a soothing place (as long as you're not in too much of a hurry).

That moment, when you let go and allow the driver to make all the decisions, you are still moving toward your destination but you have relinquished control - that is precious time for me. Sitting in my seat, I have a little window on the world from a moving glass box. I can observe the passing buildings, I can observe my life as it moves along around me, time passes and I am completely removed from it.

I have experienced some wonderfully emotional moments on trains, buses, airplanes. I can see things with unparalleled clarity, and I have found I can feel things more - when I'm not weighted down by schedules and responsibilities, but I am still in the world. I hope others around me are in as deep a place as I am on the train. It takes those moments, when we can go to that place, then come back and deal with each other with perspective.

the classics

There are moments when you're singing an old song that everyone knows and hundreds of bands have covered, when you understand suddenly just precisely why the song meant so much to so many people and it is like you can feel the breath of a thousand people inside you and their voices power yours and you're all singing together. Those are wonderful moments.

the letter

I am currently working on a story called "The Letter" and the topic has brought up so many thoughts about letters - real letters, like on paper - that I have written over the last several years. Some funny, others poignant.

One that sticks out in my mind at the moment was a letter I wrote to myself (along with 25 of my classmates in one of my classes freshman year of high school). Our teacher assigned us the task of writing to our selves "four years from now" and she kept her promise to mail those letters the week of our graduation in 2000. I remember being unimpressed at what I had written, and I think I may have tossed the letter in the recycling after a quick skim, a semi-indifferent eyebrow-raise, and/or a forced chuckle.

The thing is, now I am wishing I had kept doing that - writing letters to my future self. I could totally use a refresher right now on what I was thinking during so many of those college and after-college moments when I made dramatic life-altering decisions on a whim. A friend told me she believes she did much more personal growing in her twenties than she ever did during high-school and early college years, and that makes so much sense. If I could have written a letter to myself on the day I graduated from college, now that would be one I'd want to read and re-read.

the social scientist

As a social science major in college, my research projects were structured as studies of societal phenomena. I would read books and articles and analyze lots of numbers with the ultimate goal of discovering why each particular phenomenon existed... or at least coming up with one possible reason that the event may have taken place under certain conditions and given all sorts of assumptions.

It was cool stuff. I particularly enjoyed researching the relationships between the U.S. and Latin American countries - disparities of wealth, legal and illegal trade, and the cultural factors (like a history of colonization) that kept the enduring power structures in place. Those were the things I was interested in at the time, having had the privilege of participating in a summer volunteer program in Costa Rica and a semester abroad in Mexico. I saw myself living a very different life in these new places, and I wanted to understand and expose the things I had seen.

I realized recently that I still do this, but I now call it something else. I now call it art. Observing the lives of others, analyzing my own life, and telling stories that I believe to be somewhat universal, with the hope that perhaps there will be one reader who'll see their own personal history a bit more clearly - this is the goal I have for my "art".

The artists I most appreciate are those who have captured a very universal feeling in a way that helps me understand myself, and embrace my humanity. Here's a great quote that I have been mulling over in my head since I read it on a poster in Batesville, Arkansas about a month ago:

"I write because I believe poetry has the power to change our emotional lives."
- Andrea Hollander Budy

switch-back

I have been working on a different blog lately, but the time has come to move back.