On the airplane yesterday
I am on the airplane from Frankfurt to Dallas right now, somewhere above the northern atlantic ocean. How romantic! To speak of being in airplanes above oceans! I am heading home from my one week stay in Europe. I was in Frankfurt for 3 days working and then I went to Barcelona for 3 days for fun. I just finished watching the movie the Pursuit of Happiness and it made me laugh, it made me cry, it was a real tear jerker. It is great to feel, to feel so much that you make strange noises (laughing) and emit salty solutions from your eyes (tears!)
For several days now, my thoughts have been swirling in a wonderful way, sometimes nebulous and sometimes more solid. The pleasurable thing has been that I have had no trouble focusing, and if a thought comes into my head, I can use my brain as fingers and turn it around and examine it, like holding a sea shell you’ve just dug up in the sand on the beach – touching it, looking at it, smelling it, hearing it…. It’s not difficult, it’s relaxing and interesting. Traveling always gives me a sense of focus, and that is something that is often missing from my day to day life. I feel that I spend a lot of time WALLOWING through life, as though it is made of mud, and it’s all plain and soupy, and difficult and frustrating.
But it isn’t!!!! The mud is in my head. The mud is in my head. The mud is in my head. I have to remember.
In Frankfurt I was intensely focused on work, I barely slept, and I only took breaks to eat. I can only focus so intensely on my work when deadlines are biting me in the ass. I guess I like the adrenaline. For some reason the fervor of having to meet a deadline gives me inspiration that the work itself cannot. I would like to find some work that really gives me inspiration, in and of itself. That would be good, wouldn’t it?
I ate fish almost every night in the hotel in Frankfurt. It was either perch or salmon. I ate it with perfectly cooked rice, and an entire medley of vegetables and fruit, some cooked and some uncooked. For desert, there were delicious creamy puddings, strawberry, chocolate, vanilla, tapeoka, or hazelnut. It was a feast for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It was like magic. I think we Westerners really forget where all of our incredible diversity of food comes from. I forget all the time. I relax and enjoy my meal, and I don’t worry about where it came from. I don’t think about millions of people starving every day. Or the 100 million metric tons of fish that were taken from the ocean just last year! I can’t think about that, can I? Can you? Can we? Should we?????? It’s sort of petrifying. So, you have a warm bed, a roof over your head, and plentiful food, and you want to be a “good” global citizen. YOU, the comfortable, healthy, wealthy person, want to feel good about yourself and your place in the world. You have time and energy to think about the other people in the world who don’t have things as nice as you have them. Or about our impending doom, ala climate change and overconsumption.
I was reading an article in the national geographic magazine and one page really grabbed my attention because it was (indirectly) about me. A picture covers most of the page. In the distance, there are a few puffy white clouds over a light blue sky, above tall green trees. In the foreground, a large pink fish carcass hangs from a man’s hand, and is being offered for sale to a small crowd of Tanzanians. The brow of the woman closest to the fish carcasw is furrowed, and she is examining with her eyes, the fish’s bones, head, and fins. The caption reads “Emblematic of First World exploitation of Africa’s resources, only the carcasses of Nile pearch are affordable sources of protein for some Tanzanians living around Lake Victoria. Perch fillets are stripped in 35 lakeside processing plants and shipped north, mainly to Europe, but also to Israel. With years of overfishing, perch stocks have fallen drastically, imperiling the livelihoods of more than 100,000 fishermen and depriving local people of food.”
I looked at the photograph and thought about the buttery fillets of pearch I ate in Frankfurt just a few days ago. Whether I like it or not when I enjoyed my meal, I was the consumer at the end of a chain of transactions that was very damaging to a lot of people. Whether I like it or not, I have to ask myself the question, IS IT OK TO ENJOY A MEAL? Can I enjoy my meals of fish in Europe? Can I enjoy them at home in Texas? What does it mean? Does it matter? What should I do?
I guess this is just one of the many dark sides of globalization and overpopulation. The phrase “it’s only natural” comes to mind. That the rich will steal from the poor, that the most powerful species on the planet will overgrow itself, strip the planet of most of it’s resources, struggle and fight and kill each other, until the population is sufficiently thinned out by starvation, famine, and war, niches are left empty, and the world can take a deep breath, heal and grow again, but different this time, different every time. It’s a cycle with no beginning and no end. To think that we are so special that we can sustain ourselves forever is silly, isn’t it?
Some people believe that we can save ourselves. People dream of a BETTER way, a sustainable way, a just and equitable society wherein everybody wants to be a good citizen and enjoy life. But it’s only a dream isn’t it? It’s never existed, has it?
People will exploit each other. People will be ignorant of the consequences of their actions. People are utterly alone in their individual lives, and learn only through their senses the collective living knowledge and the collective ancestoral knowledge that is ever shifting, and changing. Senses can deceive us. One man’s experience tells him that capitalism is the best way. Another man’s experience tells him that socialism is the best way.
There is no “one way.”
Life is a cycle, joined by death.
“Each man is an island,”
Joined to other men by rivers and oceans and lakes.
We can visit each other but not KNOW each other. We can crowd into the room of mirrors and strain our necks and try to see the truth, but the truth which is reflected back to us is not the truth, it is only what it is, nothing more, and nothing less, there is no truth! Everything is nothing and nothing is everything.
It’s the only conclusion I can come to!
For several days now, my thoughts have been swirling in a wonderful way, sometimes nebulous and sometimes more solid. The pleasurable thing has been that I have had no trouble focusing, and if a thought comes into my head, I can use my brain as fingers and turn it around and examine it, like holding a sea shell you’ve just dug up in the sand on the beach – touching it, looking at it, smelling it, hearing it…. It’s not difficult, it’s relaxing and interesting. Traveling always gives me a sense of focus, and that is something that is often missing from my day to day life. I feel that I spend a lot of time WALLOWING through life, as though it is made of mud, and it’s all plain and soupy, and difficult and frustrating.
But it isn’t!!!! The mud is in my head. The mud is in my head. The mud is in my head. I have to remember.
In Frankfurt I was intensely focused on work, I barely slept, and I only took breaks to eat. I can only focus so intensely on my work when deadlines are biting me in the ass. I guess I like the adrenaline. For some reason the fervor of having to meet a deadline gives me inspiration that the work itself cannot. I would like to find some work that really gives me inspiration, in and of itself. That would be good, wouldn’t it?
I ate fish almost every night in the hotel in Frankfurt. It was either perch or salmon. I ate it with perfectly cooked rice, and an entire medley of vegetables and fruit, some cooked and some uncooked. For desert, there were delicious creamy puddings, strawberry, chocolate, vanilla, tapeoka, or hazelnut. It was a feast for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It was like magic. I think we Westerners really forget where all of our incredible diversity of food comes from. I forget all the time. I relax and enjoy my meal, and I don’t worry about where it came from. I don’t think about millions of people starving every day. Or the 100 million metric tons of fish that were taken from the ocean just last year! I can’t think about that, can I? Can you? Can we? Should we?????? It’s sort of petrifying. So, you have a warm bed, a roof over your head, and plentiful food, and you want to be a “good” global citizen. YOU, the comfortable, healthy, wealthy person, want to feel good about yourself and your place in the world. You have time and energy to think about the other people in the world who don’t have things as nice as you have them. Or about our impending doom, ala climate change and overconsumption.
I was reading an article in the national geographic magazine and one page really grabbed my attention because it was (indirectly) about me. A picture covers most of the page. In the distance, there are a few puffy white clouds over a light blue sky, above tall green trees. In the foreground, a large pink fish carcass hangs from a man’s hand, and is being offered for sale to a small crowd of Tanzanians. The brow of the woman closest to the fish carcasw is furrowed, and she is examining with her eyes, the fish’s bones, head, and fins. The caption reads “Emblematic of First World exploitation of Africa’s resources, only the carcasses of Nile pearch are affordable sources of protein for some Tanzanians living around Lake Victoria. Perch fillets are stripped in 35 lakeside processing plants and shipped north, mainly to Europe, but also to Israel. With years of overfishing, perch stocks have fallen drastically, imperiling the livelihoods of more than 100,000 fishermen and depriving local people of food.”
I looked at the photograph and thought about the buttery fillets of pearch I ate in Frankfurt just a few days ago. Whether I like it or not when I enjoyed my meal, I was the consumer at the end of a chain of transactions that was very damaging to a lot of people. Whether I like it or not, I have to ask myself the question, IS IT OK TO ENJOY A MEAL? Can I enjoy my meals of fish in Europe? Can I enjoy them at home in Texas? What does it mean? Does it matter? What should I do?
I guess this is just one of the many dark sides of globalization and overpopulation. The phrase “it’s only natural” comes to mind. That the rich will steal from the poor, that the most powerful species on the planet will overgrow itself, strip the planet of most of it’s resources, struggle and fight and kill each other, until the population is sufficiently thinned out by starvation, famine, and war, niches are left empty, and the world can take a deep breath, heal and grow again, but different this time, different every time. It’s a cycle with no beginning and no end. To think that we are so special that we can sustain ourselves forever is silly, isn’t it?
Some people believe that we can save ourselves. People dream of a BETTER way, a sustainable way, a just and equitable society wherein everybody wants to be a good citizen and enjoy life. But it’s only a dream isn’t it? It’s never existed, has it?
People will exploit each other. People will be ignorant of the consequences of their actions. People are utterly alone in their individual lives, and learn only through their senses the collective living knowledge and the collective ancestoral knowledge that is ever shifting, and changing. Senses can deceive us. One man’s experience tells him that capitalism is the best way. Another man’s experience tells him that socialism is the best way.
There is no “one way.”
Life is a cycle, joined by death.
“Each man is an island,”
Joined to other men by rivers and oceans and lakes.
We can visit each other but not KNOW each other. We can crowd into the room of mirrors and strain our necks and try to see the truth, but the truth which is reflected back to us is not the truth, it is only what it is, nothing more, and nothing less, there is no truth! Everything is nothing and nothing is everything.
It’s the only conclusion I can come to!
posted by Xgoose at 4:17 PM
6 Comments:
People only ever use "it's only natural" for bad things, I've noticed, they never say of something good that "it's only natural". The good is felt to be conscious, the bad is felt to be unconscious. Which is silly. Plus things do get better. Fish are not the worst thing Europeans have stolen from Africa.
On the other hand, in terms of enjoyment, I try not to not enjoy things. The poor will always be with us, but I'm only here for a while, as Jesus pointed out. Remembering the amount of work that goes into almost everything you touch, though, is never a bad and almost always a somewhat awe-inspiring event. Your food, the things you own and use, they're all the result of a tremendously complex infrastructure spanning the globe. And of the globe itself. Which is also tremendously complex. Basically I always feel lucky anything works at all, frankly. That's not to say I go out of my way to shop at Wal-Mart, but when I'm there I don't sulk because they treat their workers like shit. That just makes me feel bad.
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