Lego Houses with Plastic Figurines

If our childhoods are analogies for our adulthoods, then my symbols are toys.

I loved, loved stacking the Lincoln Logs together into fantastic houses with cantilevered balconies and secret chambers. Or I'd set up the entire PlayMobile zoo complete with grass as fodder imported from the yard. I'd build ships from wood scraps with my Dad and position MicroMachine humvees and helicopters in strategic locales.

Then I'd walk away.

When the normal child turned puppeteer and animated their creation, I left off, unsure how to proceed. What should the Humvee say to the Helicopter? Who should inhabit the balconied cabin? To where should the ship sail?

Attempting to slip inside my childhood mind, I find I knew how things should be -- I could see that clearly and entirely -- but not how they should progress.

Then adulthood. I publish websites and wander away for a month or two years. My novel's characters bore me to death, but the overall form intrigues me -- I've got a house for them, but they refuse to move between its rooms.

I've developed a Self with skills, ideas and general understanding but nary a concrete goal to pursue or destination to seek.

My friend Trevor posed the questions to me, "What do you NOT want to regret when you're 90?" and, "What do you want to be doing in 10 years?"

I'd rather he'd have asked me to solve the travesty of Industrialized Food. That's a question I can answer.

I'm in Sartre's rowboat (or was it Nietzche's?) on the infinite, vacant sea, with two oars and an indefinite period of time to row. It's not a bad rowboat, and the oars are sturdy, but which direction is progress, and where does it go?

An update, two weeks late

This is an email I sent on December 26. I didn't have time to post it here as I spent the next week traveling. Then I forgot it. Now, finally, an update, two weeks post. It's still fairly pertinent.

I'm drinking a Coke, High Fructose Corn Syrup and all. I just ate a Skippy peanut butter sandwich on the closest thing to white bread I've had in a decade.

I must be missing home.

I moved to the most Puget Sound-ish city in Korea in an attempt to allay the homesickness. Didn't work. Mountains here are 400 meters tall (I miss the sunset silhouetting the Olympics). Whole wheat bread means they didn't quite turn all the flour white (I miss Franz breads baked the same morning). The only non-Korean food here is quasi-Italian or pizza (I miss Ethiopian, Thai, Moroccan). Korea's homogeneous (I miss walking around Greenlake hearing 10 different languages). It RARELY rains here (and when it does you can't enjoy it for dodging the hordes of umbrellas -- Yesterday in Busan, every Korean I saw had an umbrella, save two who were carrying open wine bottles! :D). Most roads here are tollroads or full of traffic signals (I miss cruising for hours, through multiple climates, without slowing or stopping).

But, as I told my cousin, things are exactly how they should be. I've been sick a lot lately, which comes with new germs and new foods and new stresses, but that hasn't slowed me too much. I've been working on curriculum for a UN sponsored English camp to be held this January and trying not to miss the conveniences of the US too much. Things like warm cookies, aesthetics and carpet.

Korea and I are fighting right now. It's normal culture shock sort of stuff, but it's exasperated by the lack of tolerance I have when I'm tired, stressed and sick. I did find a ticket home for Christmas, a ~$170 round trip non-stop to Vancouver. A short train ride and I'd be home. Only the government taxes on the ticket totaled nearly a thousand dollars. ... So I'm spending Christmas in Tongyeong.

I've more journalistic entries in the works, but progress writing is quite slow as I don't have ready access to a computer. I'm scrounging to afford a computer during post-Christmas sales, but until then I have about 30 uninterrupted minutes a day on my school computer. The PC rooms I used to frequent are now off limits to me -- too much smoke, too little ventilation.

Vacation's just starting up here, and officially began the 24th. I'll have the 24th, 25th, 26th, 31st, 1st and 2nd off. Then I've two weeks of English camps. Following those Lauren and I have tickets to Thailand for two weeks. I'm very excited about the potential for warmth, Thai food and more people to more easily communicate with (from what I hear, there's more English speakers and foreigners in Thailand than Korea).

I've been silent so much here that now, after three months, whenever I get a chance to converse, I talk like a stampeding cow. My head shuts off and I dump a thousand word essay in the lap of the person I'm talking [at]. Then I realize it's been minutes since I inhaled and I relapse into silence. It's not the most effective way to win friends and influence people.

At the moment I'm headed to Busan, the closest metropolitan city (3+million people). Museums, Western food, and a doctor are all on the docket. It being Kwanzaa here, and Christmas where you are.

If you want a good laugh, here's an article about some Korean children, not unlike some children from the US. Politicians vary little, throughout the world.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-12/18/content_10525584.htm

Gotta go, the bus leaves soon.

Happy Hanukkah to Jews. Happy Kwanzaa to those of African heritage. Merry Christmas to Christians and consumers. And Happy Holidays for everyone who goes in for that sort of thing.

Old hat

Oh, and, yesterday marks my 5th year of blogging. I've left huge gaps in the narrative a newcomer might infer. Those omissions I store in my head, in my black books, in story, poetry, and some I let slip into the void, since holding onto all my memories leaves me burdened.

As Bertrand Russell said, "It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly." Our culture treats the past like a possession, and that preoccupation with the past distracts us from the life we encounter.

My 2007th year of Western Culture

Inspired by Kyle, I offer a brief sketch of my past year to serve as a sort of Christmas letter and a reminder to myself of just how much I live.

In January I moved out on my own for the first time. I joined two roommates unlike any friends I'd known before. Casey sketched beautiful art on canvases littered about the room and taped emptied beer boxes to the wall in the shape of a palm tree, and bats swooping. Miles interned for the public defenders office and echoed the grandest music against my wall.

For Jan term I studied Chaos Theory applied to leadership, permanently changing the way I perceive individuals in groups. An example: when fish swim in those pulsating schools, veering from dolphins while never losing cohesion, they do not do so by any complex communication network or ordered steps like a marching band. Each fish acts as an individual guided by a few simple principles: go the same direction as the other fish, at the same speed, and don't bump into any other fish.

In Spring I undertook a pesca-ovo-vegetarian diet. I only eat meat if a host serves it, or if it would be rude to refuse it. My body had more health than ever. I also studied and accepted philosophies of community and pacifism. The philosophies' complexity befuddles me; even now I wrestle with conflicting desires for sustenance and mobility without harming others' with my food and fuel needs.

I continued my transformation into a proletariat by helping design a protest at Whitworth. It occurred on the 8th of May and its effects are continually visible. I interned at the Center for Justice. I didn't get much done, but I learned more about me (don't give me paperwork. It bewilders me).

I totaled my car. USAA, the insurance company, didn't pay for the whole car, so I'm still paying for a car I don't own.

In Summer I moved to New York City. I lived in Washington Heights and worked three food jobs. Clinton and Mike showed up the first week of August, but Mike left after three days. Clinton and I spent the rest of the month bumming around (I quit my jobs) and exploring. I left for a week on August 7th to visit Emily in Maine. I got to volunteer on an Island through Ripple Effect. I hitchhiked in four states when I left Maine, traveling through New Hampshire and Vermont and back into New York.

Fall I took a number of required courses, but did the bulk of my learning through blogs, outside readings and thinking. I wrote for the Whitworthian again.

I attended two conferences on sustainability and eucology on November 1, and November 2-5. The latter, Powershift '07, occurred outside D.C.. After panels and workshops on various topics like eco-pedagogy, green investing, mountain-top-removal and faith-based environmentalism, 3000 of the conference attendees proceeded to lobby meetings with most of the representatives and senators in congress. I met with aides from Maria Cantwell, Jim Reichart and Patty Murray's offices. I presented my learnings to Whitworth's Sustainability Committee.

On to 2008!

At it again

I'm blogging again, but over here.

I will likely begin writing on this blog again once I move to Poland. This and a travel blog? I don't know.

My interests right now: ecosophy, Herman Hesse, human collaboration.

As I finish at Whitworth, I feel ill-prepared to continue onto grad school. However, I feel ready to go.