the non-stop thoughtfulness of an alien environment
more rambling thoughts from Florida....
It's funny, just a few days I was telling my friend Jack that I really don't spend a lot of time by myself just thinking about things. And now here I am in the strange sub-urban lands often alone and often very, very thoughtful. The strangeness of everything, the weird modern suburban house I'm living in, the reasonably new and expensive cars I'm riding in, the restaurants I'm eating at, the television and the football games... they are all so unusual to me. The frequent interactions with people I care about who have some very different political beliefs and priorities... It's, well, very thought provoking.
My mother is always asking for details I don't know and often, honestly, don't find important. Though I can get very into the tiny perfectionist places on a visual/physical creative project I am not in my general mode of being a detail person at all. If some detail isn't directly relevant right now I really don't care about it and often don't even have the slightest curiosity. It's a fascinating little bit of self-insight.
I'm thinking about a great many things. The usual things like "what am I doing with my life?" and very momentary things like "what am I going to do with myself alone in this house while I wait for the lunar eclipse?" Writing seems like a good thing to do.
Going to the mall today I think about our society and what so much of it is, about the huge inequalities between the rich and the poor in this world and how almost none of the rich have any particular interest in hurting the poor, they merely want comfort and happiness and seek it in the ways most obviously and pervasively presented to them by their society. Like the way folks whose characters seek organized religion will most likely be Christian in the United States, Muslim in Java, and Hindu in India. All the predominant face of God provided by the cultural surrounds. Sitting at the nice mall restaurant eating salad and pizza and drinking a tasty but god-awfully expensive blood orange mojito, I tell my mother probably for the dozenth time in some conversation that I am a mystic. That I consider myself to have direct experience of the divine. Certainly, as my mother points out, most people do not buy every last piece of the organized religion they believe. Buffet Catholics (Hill!) are a common example of this, practicing and supporting the parts of the religion they like and that make sense to them and ignoring the parts (like birth control and pre-marital sex and believing that everyone else is going to hell) that they don't. Conveniently I don't have to play buffet. I was blessed to grow up without a specific religion and have instead shown up with my own picnic hunted and gathered myself from the forests and fields with a bit of this and a bit of that snatched off of some of those shiny buffet tables.
And my life itself though, it's a selection from the American restaurant. Sure I more and more bypass the buffet and go for some of the special order items from the menu. I've even discovered some of the secret menu items you can only get if you know to ask for them, but I'm still eating here and by choice. I could go back to Peru. I could go back to Bali. I could explore living in Europe, but I've done a lot of traveling and I've learned that I was very lucky to be born here where our fast food is someone else's fine dining. I'm privileged to high heaven and grateful grateful grateful to be so blessed and luckier than a great many Americans as well. Considering my blessings I believe it is my responsibility to make as big a positive impact on the world as I can, that if I were to just kick back, make some money and have a good time I would be shirking my responsibilities as one so gifted and lucky. I expressed this last sentiment to my mother and she replied to this the question of did I think she had shirked her responsibilities thus? No I don't think less of my mother for living the life she lives. And I was forced to realize that I hold myself to a completely different set of standards than I hold other people and I do so to the extent that if I were in fact to hold others to my personal standards it could even be felt as offensive and judgmental. And so, with whatever degree of logical inconsistency I allow other people to have whatever values they do (so long as they do not actively hurt others) but hold a completely different set of expectations for myself. There is certainly more thought to be done on these topics.
Hmmm. I think that's it for the public forum at the moment. I've been writing a lot of private entries lately and I'm going to switch to that format for the rest of what I'm thinking about.
It's funny, just a few days I was telling my friend Jack that I really don't spend a lot of time by myself just thinking about things. And now here I am in the strange sub-urban lands often alone and often very, very thoughtful. The strangeness of everything, the weird modern suburban house I'm living in, the reasonably new and expensive cars I'm riding in, the restaurants I'm eating at, the television and the football games... they are all so unusual to me. The frequent interactions with people I care about who have some very different political beliefs and priorities... It's, well, very thought provoking.
My mother is always asking for details I don't know and often, honestly, don't find important. Though I can get very into the tiny perfectionist places on a visual/physical creative project I am not in my general mode of being a detail person at all. If some detail isn't directly relevant right now I really don't care about it and often don't even have the slightest curiosity. It's a fascinating little bit of self-insight.
I'm thinking about a great many things. The usual things like "what am I doing with my life?" and very momentary things like "what am I going to do with myself alone in this house while I wait for the lunar eclipse?" Writing seems like a good thing to do.
Going to the mall today I think about our society and what so much of it is, about the huge inequalities between the rich and the poor in this world and how almost none of the rich have any particular interest in hurting the poor, they merely want comfort and happiness and seek it in the ways most obviously and pervasively presented to them by their society. Like the way folks whose characters seek organized religion will most likely be Christian in the United States, Muslim in Java, and Hindu in India. All the predominant face of God provided by the cultural surrounds. Sitting at the nice mall restaurant eating salad and pizza and drinking a tasty but god-awfully expensive blood orange mojito, I tell my mother probably for the dozenth time in some conversation that I am a mystic. That I consider myself to have direct experience of the divine. Certainly, as my mother points out, most people do not buy every last piece of the organized religion they believe. Buffet Catholics (Hill!) are a common example of this, practicing and supporting the parts of the religion they like and that make sense to them and ignoring the parts (like birth control and pre-marital sex and believing that everyone else is going to hell) that they don't. Conveniently I don't have to play buffet. I was blessed to grow up without a specific religion and have instead shown up with my own picnic hunted and gathered myself from the forests and fields with a bit of this and a bit of that snatched off of some of those shiny buffet tables.
And my life itself though, it's a selection from the American restaurant. Sure I more and more bypass the buffet and go for some of the special order items from the menu. I've even discovered some of the secret menu items you can only get if you know to ask for them, but I'm still eating here and by choice. I could go back to Peru. I could go back to Bali. I could explore living in Europe, but I've done a lot of traveling and I've learned that I was very lucky to be born here where our fast food is someone else's fine dining. I'm privileged to high heaven and grateful grateful grateful to be so blessed and luckier than a great many Americans as well. Considering my blessings I believe it is my responsibility to make as big a positive impact on the world as I can, that if I were to just kick back, make some money and have a good time I would be shirking my responsibilities as one so gifted and lucky. I expressed this last sentiment to my mother and she replied to this the question of did I think she had shirked her responsibilities thus? No I don't think less of my mother for living the life she lives. And I was forced to realize that I hold myself to a completely different set of standards than I hold other people and I do so to the extent that if I were in fact to hold others to my personal standards it could even be felt as offensive and judgmental. And so, with whatever degree of logical inconsistency I allow other people to have whatever values they do (so long as they do not actively hurt others) but hold a completely different set of expectations for myself. There is certainly more thought to be done on these topics.
Hmmm. I think that's it for the public forum at the moment. I've been writing a lot of private entries lately and I'm going to switch to that format for the rest of what I'm thinking about.