Resolution: write

My New Year's resolution is to write more or rather to write. Here are a few ideas that have been floating around my head or just in this moment came to me:

Icelandic arcs: A story about Iceland and its people; the financial crisis; tourism boom; and society's shifting landscape. I'd approach these ambitious topics through a profile of Hadda and Haurkur, who own and operate Hrifunes Guesthouse and Iceland Photo Tours. I stayed with H&H at their guesthouse in November. I want to explore the tension between hard work and gambling: how H&H worked to build things, and in contrast how hot shot bankers profiteered from gambles that eventually landed the 300,000 Icelanders with billions in debt. The premise is that individuals, including those that head up institutions (i.e. banks, governments) operate by principles. Haurkur and Hadda reflect good principles; many bankers reflect bad ones. Most clearly, the latter ended up living large on borrowed money and dropping their debts on the likes of Haurkur and Hadda. However, now H&H are thriving on the unexpected result of the speculative investing: the weaker krone has precipitated a tourism boom that is reshaping Iceland's many contours.

Dying migrations: A ruminative encyclopedia of migration with a focus on extinct, perishing, hampered, and mutated migrations (are there any?). The unit of analysis here is the migration itself, the periodic, ritual journey of procreation and renewal. I'd build up from the journeyers to the journey, synthesize across journeys, and then delve into dying migrations. I'd interrogate first, what is the purpose migrations? Who journeys and why? What is the salmon's motive, the goose's, the whale's, the antelope's? Are there human migrations? Why? I'd close with philosophical thoughts, untethered to great thinkers, on the loss and mutability of things. 

Dormant connections. In the mid- to late-1900s, the University of Pennsylvania partnered with a technical university in Shiraz, Iran called Pahlavi University, since renamed Shiraz. Penn worked extensively with Pahlavi to redesign the university in the American model. Students and teachers shuttled back and forth. Professors collaborated. Pahlavi awarded President of Penn, Gayord Harnwell, an honorary degree for his work. Then the Islamic Revolution happened, ended the collaboration, dug a nigh-uncrossed chasm between the universities and the countries. I'd like to explore the dormant connections and the potential for reconciliation in the political dynamics. I don't want to harken back to a better era. The earlier intercourse rested on imperial, autocratic, and unequal foundations. The Penn-Iran connection betrays a similar inequality of flow, an unevenness, elements of paternalism and imperialism. It was beautiful but it was imperfect and perhaps it fed the discontent that drove the revolution. Nonetheless, I'd like tot talk about the relationship, current political events, and prospects for reviving the lost relationship between Shiraz and Penn and Iran and the US.

Alien insect invader

It is not often that one comes into contact with an alien creature. With a beast so repugnant and otherworldly, whose existence belies any earthly explanation. Tonight I came jaw to mandible with such a beast. Train your eye to the image above to see the creature in question. Suppress your repugnance as I relate the circumstances of my alien encounter.

Consider the bathroom. Although not the most pleasant and beautiful of places, I submit that there is a special serenity to the bathroom. Not just any bathroom, but one's own bathroom. It is something of a sanctuary, a place of ritual and ablution, a place of utmost peace and aloneness. In a word, the bathroom is a safe place. Or so I thought.

This very evening, I was in my bathroom. I was in a state of Zen, brushing placidly, at peace with my surroundings. All of a sudden, to my shock and dismay, I realized I was not alone - I perceived a beast menacing me from the shower knob. If I screamed, you can hardly blame me. Not only was the illusion of immaculate security shattered, the agent of destruction was an alien creature of unparalleled repugnance. Having seen the artist's rendering, you cannot but agree with me. Obviously, the monster is not of this world.

Naturally, my second reaction was to document the happening - it's not everyday that one encounters extra terrestrials. It is thanks to this enterprising impulse that you are able to view the beast in all its glory.

I cannot look at her but experience a shudder. The obsidian bug-eyes, the mandibles, the sinuous, probing antenna, formidable carapace, and hairy legs. Note the amputated posterior hindquarter - most likely a battle wound. What kind of demonic, alien freak?!

Although it took only moments, when I had returned from examining the photos on my computer, the beast had disappeared. I suspect that it recognized my superior fighting capabilities and slunk off back down its hidey hole -the drain pipe in my bathtub.

I accepted the creature's capitulation, craven though it may be. I decided not to eradicate the beast in a horrific wave of inescapable water. Who am I to kick a living thing when it's down? Empathy is the supreme anti-sin, of which even insects are deserving. If my challenger has retired to regenerate its blighted limb, so be it: I will accept her challenge anew when she returns!

UPDATE (Nov. 3, 2010): The narcoleptic freak returned last night only to find Brad in full martial mobilization. I stumbled upon the beast apparently harvesting or sowing some unspeakable evil from or into my washcloth. I approached with a glint in my eye and she moved. For a gimp, I was astonished nearly to the point of defecation by her alacrity. You know what they say: you can't fault a guy for sharting in moral peril. After doing a somersault or other aerial maneuver too fast for my eyes to follow, our bitch (a veritable Grendel's mother) clung to the bottom of the cloth, batlike. Taking my life in my hands, I used kitchen tongs to sweep the washcloth and passenger into a bucket. Once inside the rabid roach whizzed about like a pinball in circles. It must be that she was dazed, perhaps by the light, for to have climbed out and brought the attack to my eyes would have been the work of a millisecond. Using the tongs to grasp the side of the bucket, I swiftly clothed myself in bathrobe and rushed to exit the building. Take a second now to appreciate my superhuman concern for species rights. Even in open war, I avoid murder. If I was muttering imprecations in the stairs, what of it? Admittedly, it wasn't very gentlemanly or empathetic to start screaming, "Get out! Get the fuck out of my bucket! Fuck you," when I reached street-level. As if in conciliatory response to my hysterics, the beast transported herself beneath a leaf. I picked up my bucket, and the battle was concluded. VICTORY!

O boy, this is a big one...

I read an article titled, "Election spurs 'hundreds' of racist threats, crimes." Surprise, surprise, the population of the United States is racist! We have a black president-elect; gun sales and hate crimes are on the rise.

[Admittedly, the cross-country gun sale rise (of 250%, by some reports, and in some places) is not really an indication of assassination intent. Not only do gun sales typically surge during economic and social convulsions, but it is a preemptive move based on the assumption that Obama will tighten arms restrictions.]

Americans are evincing a bizarre and backwards fear. What are we afraid of? Well, people of color, for one. The alteration of the color spectrum of the US population is terrifying to many. That, however, is visible harbinger of a less quantifiable trend; change. Humans (all humans) fear change, especially when it is perceived as out of control.

Fear of change makes us malleable mites. And, as Yoda would have us know, fear leads to suffering, by one route or another. The two greatest evils are self-deception and illogic (not really a word). Both are exacerbated by fear.

On Nov. 5th there were those around the world speaking various dialects of the same language, pronouncing dramatically, "Well, there goes the country, the good 'ol country of days yonder." What we should recognize is that things were not better in the past, and things will not be worse in the future. The only thing to lament, for some, is the fall from grace of the white man which is presumed to accompany the diversification of the population. Every society has a race-based social hierarchy, ours is dominated by whites (not to mention the traditional cornering of the elite market by WASPS and subsequently other Christians).

Populations always resist change. Americans have always deprecated and suppressed newcomers, be they white or brown or black. And then when they are poor because they are marginalized and succumb to higher incidences of crime, we portray them as petty, dirty, immoral and uncivilized. This is the racialization system of the US, and most places. We stereotype and pigeonhole them as different and our hostility herds them into isolated communities. Our elitism and xenophobia urges our marginalized ones to close up and develop differently, adversely.

O, I do not object to immigration restrictions. There is a question of self-interest involved (a big question, one for another post, perhaps).

What I abhor is deception, both that that is perpetrated against the self and the others. It is popular today to make little of racism or to treat it as a historical (aka solved) problem, or one that is endemic to the southern US. The truth of the matter is that racist thought exists in every geographic locality, every society, if not in every person. Racism is based on deception and illogic. Specifically, the premise that people are biologically different. That is disproved. If biologically all humans are the same, phenotype (the sum of physical characteristics) becomes simply a method of identification, or, in the case of racialized social systems, a method for categorization by which people are treated differently based on color coding. The hierarchy of treatment is formulated by elements inside (and sometimes outside of) society.

The argument for racism is extended to consider culture, a nut not so simply cracked. There is no doubt that what is known as culture (i.e. the confluence of attributes such as so-called race or ethnicity, religion, language, geographic focus, history, folklore etc.) is variable. Whether or not it is important, however, is up for debate. I recognize the importance of its consequences (just as I recognize the importance and reality of the consequences of race (perhaps more accurately called the concept of race)). However, I believe that humans are all fundamentally the same; i.e. we share a human nature. By that reasoning, all human action and interaction is comprehensible and comparable. Portraying people to be irreconcilably different is illogical and divisive. Using the "clash of civilizations" theory to wipe my bum would be an affront to my anus; the premise that wars in the future will be between radically different so-called "civilizations" rather than between states is asinine. When some blurry idea of the "Confucian world" squares off against the non-entity that is the "Muslim world" recall that I told you that such a conflict is impossible (under current circumstances and trajectories) and then wake from your drug educed stupor. The reality is that such grandiose theories are cooked up by bored academics to mollify or divert the masses (aka, me and you). That one, concocted by Sam Huntington, is particularly nasty and inflammatory. Unfortunately, it gets a lot of adoration and attention, especially by those who currently run this country.

If we could recognize some simple realities, we could make reasoned and logical self-interested decisions. We would not be as susceptible to deceptive propaganda. That said, everybody buys into his or her own brand of propaganda, to some extent. If we learn to trust ourselves, our judgment, our reason, however, we can convert propaganda into evidence. Robert A. Heinlein writes, "Shun wishful thinking, ignore divine revelation, avoid opinion, never mind what the neighbors think... You pilot always into an unknown future; facts are your only clue. Get the facts!" (This appears in his epic novel Time Enough for Love) Facts cannot coexist with self-delusion and illogic, reject those two natural tendencies and be brutally honest with yourself.


And, as a corollary, Saul Williams contributes, "And what you do is question everything they say do/ Every goal ideal or value they keep pushing on you/ If they ask you to believe it question whether it's true/ If they ask you to achieve, is it for them or for you?" (In the song, Act III Scene II on the album Saul Williams)
The point is this: Know yourself and trust yourself above all others. Everybody has an agenda. Fear is a tool by which we are manipulated. People are fundamentally the same but lamentably, inevitably, and probably permanently divided by social constructions of so-called race and culture.

It is not about race, it is not about ethnicity, it is not about culture. Everything essentially boils down to competition over finite resources. The polemics, the divisive, macho talk, the bullshit, it's all aimed at perpetuating worldwide inequality. Who among us is honest enough to be willing to admit that he/she likes being rich and would rather not share his and his society's wealth equally among the world's population? Raise your hands if you would prefer to maintain your munificence and star-kissed life opportunity, rather than give it away for drastically reduced wealth and life-enjoyment, if not misery and death. *raises hand*

Today the world's so-called melting pot prepares for its first black president. What does it matter? Well, as I noted in another post, it is symbolic of the potential of people of color, and of people of low social status and meager opportunity. Anybody can achieve, not that we needed evidence. Other than that, he is just another political figure, no matter his excellent oration. He could and might do great things, he might flop. Let us hope that he upholds truth, fallibility, and brutal honesty and does a little more than perpetuate the political pendulum. There is such a thing as progress, and change comes whether or not we want it or not. Obama will have awesome power to facilitate or stymie. Let us hope he chooses the former.