I don’t know why, but I’m really in the mood to read some dark science fiction. Barring that, I’d like to watch a movie that will really, really chill me on a deep human level. The only movies that have ever truly done that to me are Akira (sort of), the final sequence of Beneath the Planet of the Apes, and more notably The End of Evangelion. For some reason I’m just plain in the mood.
For the first time, in a really long time, pretty much everything in my life is lining up – or at least appears to be. Fortuna’s wheel is on the upward swing for ol’ P. Rhea.
My classes this year – of which I have only four but which total to 15 hours – for the most part seem both interesting and achievable (a combination which I have not met yet at college). Old friends, important to my development cycle and my own Legend, have returned from their wandering, and we even played music together, and sang. That was nice. The blocks of AIESEC are all falling into place, and I’ve got nothing but bright hope for my LC, for the country, and now that I can work on Project01 again, for the global network. I’m finding more of the mystical and mythological in the every day and in the once-in-a-lifetime, in the moments shared between friends and in the walk to the grocery store. According to The Pyramid (and my own heart) the only thing I’m missing is Companionship and Completion.
When the random puts on Beirut’s “Elephant Guns,” it just about can’t get better in the first half of the 16:00 hour in August – and it’s sunny, and I’ve got Dale Carnegie graduation tonight with people, threads woven together one last time before they go their separate, albeit newly carved, ways.
Damn, these trumpets are sublime.
Downstairs, Will had his 21st birthday party with a “no-pants” theme. If anything, it definitely opened people up to talking to each other. His band the Trophy Wives played, and afterward so did Thee Crucials, who were also good. I got permission from Mike, the guitarist / frontman for Trophy Wives, to use his nice video-camera to film the whole Trophy Wives show, and they used what I filmed to make this live music video for my favorite song of theirs, “Henry County Meth Lab.” Check it out – something I can be slightly proud of.
I have been digging on Tinariwen recently, thanks to my music buddy Shaun. I cannot recommend them enough to someone looking to branch out their musical interests to something currently relevant:
They are literally freedom fighters, fighting for the right to self-determination for the Tuareg people of Berber stock in Mali and Algeria. They came together and started making music about their situation while they were wielding guns in the ’80s and ’90s. The music they play can be called a “cousin” of the American blues, as it derives also from some of the West African origins where the blues originated, and it is specifically called in their language tishoumaren, meaning “unemployed,” very similar to the same concept of the blues in America.
Simply put, they’re pretty amazing.
I just was watching the Travel channel a bit, where I have been seriously turned on to Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations. It has a great mix of his own irreverent personality, unusual (to the “normal” American traveller) locales, and a solid yin yang pairing of experiences accessible to the “average” traveller and then also those more privileged, which are not as accessible. Those are worthwhile however because they aren’t just expensive, overpriced, touristy stuff – he gets those parts of the experiences because of who he is, and who he knows – something any networking nomad can aspire to. He also takes a keen and interested eye to the underlying cultural activity and the social ties that give his destinations their soul. Rather than review hotels and restaurants, he opens the door to understanding more about those peculiar things which make travellers enjoy their life out of their homes.
Tonight however was Samantha Brown, whose show was much more for the upper-middle-class tourist who has money to spend and isn’t terribly afraid to not spend that extra hour finding those deals – stay in that nicer hotel, eat at that more expensive restaurant, do that touristy thing. I remarked to Shaun and Bryan, “Why isn’t there a travel show by nomads, for nomads – shoestring budgets, hostels and camping, talking your way into and out of memorable situations?” They responded with something about an old Lonely Planet show. I dunno, though – I want to see a brave nomad combine their travelling with the lifecasting skillz of such personalities as iJustine, and show the world that you can change your life and experience culture abroad as long as you have the money to get there, and that’s it. I doubt I could be that person, but hey, I’d watch the show.
I ate very healthy in the last three days.
Although it may take me forever to pinpoint just where this hero’s journey began, the place I can most conclusively locate it was when I was on the Youth Council of the North Alabama Conference of the United Methodist Church. At the time, although I was certainly into something more like liberation theology than the complacent orthodoxy of most of my peers (and indeed that preached by the establishment of the religion itself), I was an eager and willing participant in this, my first serious foray into organizational responsibility. It did of course circle in no throwaway relation to the society and politics surrounding Camp Sumatanga, where the meetings were held and where the NAC held its summer camps – at which I had been both a repeat camper and a repeat counselor.
But we always discussed the circles – inner circles, outer circles, establishment. I recognized that I was on the very fringes of the inner circle, but even this placed me (at the most inclusive) somewhere in the “fifth” circle (where first is the centroid) of the society of the NAC youth, and of Camp Sumatanga. I enjoyed the experiences I had there, and the things I learned, and the friends I made. But I always recognized that there was just plain something wrong about those circles. And I could only talk honestly about that to a few people without being replied to with hurt and confusion. Inside jokes, experiences I couldn’t share in or wouldn’t be included in (and hardly just me), stories and legends that formed around individuals. I was out.
Maybe too by choice. I always kept my focus out of being a part of those circles, and rather on focusing on either what I had to do as a part of the youth council or simply on spreading liberation, deepening my challenges into my own spiritual beliefs and those of others, doing thankless good in the world. I wasn’t playing any of those political or social games, I was just trying to do what I believed was the right thing to do.
As I grew older, neared high school graduation, and learned more about how to deal both in my own life and as a leader in other organizations, I came to recognize that my time there was over, and I began to recognize that the problem there was two-fold. One of the problems had to do with piety and organized religion, and I think no further explanation needs to go in there. I recognize that time now as a key initial point of my eventual rejection of organized religion.
The other problem had to do with the way the thing in itself was organized. The implicit allowance of politics to seep in. Some people staying longer than others, and some personalities being lifted up and preserved and others being ignored and pushed out, even involuntarily. Maybe that is what the youth council needs, but it took that experience for me to recognize the problems produced therein.
In life, my chosen path as I see it now is to be a flattener of hierarchies and an exposer of truth – even a forcer of environments where, simply put, facts kill lies and plurality prevents dynasties. When those environments exist, I don’t have to take it upon myself to expose the truth or force in the rays of light from the other side of the fence. It happens already because there will be enough people to uphold that. What is key in any of those environments is for people to appreciate the open and free environment they are in so they can take their own hero’s journey, for the only real truth is the truth that one learns of his own accord. See it here:
No one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself.
The same holds true for anything in our lives, anything worth knowing and holding dear, or worth fighting against, or worth protecting or changing or growing or leaving.
That is why I am doing my part for AIESEC in the United States. We have already tried, as generations before us have tried, to restore pluralism and real open dialogue within the stystem. But it took those failures for people to know something in their hearts, including even me, that we should have known all along: you don’t end dynasties by talking them out of the throne.
But I hope that talking is all we have left to do.
They say it takes hardship, boy
To let you love the rest
Sometimes underneath the load
Is where I show my best
Go, put your work clothes on
Go and leave your mark
And they say
Don’t let it get too dark
Don’t let it get too dark
Don’t let it get too dark
No, not this time
– Michael Houser of Widespread Panic, “Pleas”
While walking outside of the Klaus Advanced Computing Building this afternoon to slave at more worthless ECE 3042 work, I was directly challenged thrice – thrice! – by a gray bird. It flew directly at my face and I had to wave my hands at it to deter it each time. It’s similar to a story of a kind of red-winged blackbird in Chicago around this time.
Also, we’re famous.
Today is Independence Day for the United States of America. 232 years ago, representatives from each of 13 colonies approved an extremely radical statement that asserted independence, ended the hereditary monarchy over a subject people with suppressed rights, and set up a truly representative form of government who answered only to an ideal, not to a king or a god.
There was a bloody Revolution there, and the homeland and its ideals were well-fought for. I recognize that I am descended from men who fought for independence in that war, and defended it in future ones. It gives me some DNA connection to those events, but I also strongly believe that sort of thing is not what America is about – just a devotion to an idea.
It has been going abroad, both to Spain and through AIESEC, which has made me recognize what America is, why I like what America is at the very core, and especially that I am extremely American. I respect what I am, and so I respect that. At our core is the ideal of independence itself, the ability to live and enjoy one’s life on one’s own terms. Clearly I do not disdain society or association, but I do respect someone who can live their life on their own terms, someone who is one’s own god and king. America does not need to press that on the world, we simply need to make it a part of the global melting pot, just as each society has its good ways.
The Revolution is not over, and it has never been over. Our state has gone through bloodshed, alienation, and a lot of soul-searching to ensure safe health standards, the feedom and enfranchisement of all people, labor rights, environmental cooperation and consideration, and many more accomplishments, and even failures. There is a much farther way to go, and it may never be over. I read an interesting article this morning at breakfast in Creative Loafing about the problems homosexuals still face in the military. That is only one place where the Revolution is not finished. We require people to show ID for domestic flights. People are persecuted over a war on drugs, not helped out of addiction. We still have a state.
I will probably dedicate a large part of my life to continue fighting that Revolution.
Today is a day of big changes. One year ago today I waved goodbye to my roommate Pepe and boarded a long, long plane from Valencia to Atlanta. Today is also the beginning of the second half of my LCP term.
Big things will happen.