Itinerant

“So we shall let the reader answer this question for himself: who is the happier man, he who has braved the storm of life and lived or he who has stayed securely on shore and merely existed?” - Hunter S. Thompson

I have a recurring vision of living on a desolate piece of land in the desert. The lack of civilization and of life in general - like a Martian landscape, wholly alien to the lush, temperate shorefronts and woodlands within walking distance from my home - provides me with the comfort that total peace is achievable. Surely death is representative of that peace, but its finality prevents me from pursuing that end.
My actual existence has headed in an opposing path - sprouting roots that keep me in suburban New Jersey. These roots prevent me, through an admixture of guilt and fear, from moving to an Earthship in Taos, New Mexico. Would I give up a job, a marriage, a child, stability for an unknown? I wonder about the ability we all have to take that leap and whether or not I'd ever.
Conceivably, we live through thousands of fictional ends in our own minds - maybe some of us repress those thoughts as not to have them (untidily) infringe on the controlled experiment we call life. Some of us indulge, but only along "safer" avenues that pose little threat to the current flow. A few will choose to live in what looks like complete wantonness or even chaos to the rest of us, because their "boxes" are not as tight or complete as the rest of ours. These renegades are often viewed as dangerous fringe types, as they threaten the  (surprisingly precarious) order of things that keeps most people from sleeping with their neighbor's wife or doing massive amounts of drugs.
Visual and performing arts, music, movies, books, and social media all provide users with fantastical threads at short bursts. It's clear why so many of us are "addicted" to the instant gratification of "new-new-new" that makes up modern communicative outlets. Glimpses of an "other," desirable or not, are always at our fingertips.
Recently, I read an article about the waning creativity of humans as we age. The evolutionary explanation boils down to the burden of responsibilities that comes with adulthood. It makes sense for our ability to solve well-worn problems to take precedence over wildly imaginative exploits that kept us entertained as children. I often lament this lack of imagination in my fellow adults (which drives my desire to avoid working with other adults when possible and why my occupation of choice focuses on children).  Post-childbirth, I felt, that more than ever, the society in which we live is devoid of any meaning. As an existentialist, the belief that there is an inherent meaning to anything is generally foreign to me, but I suppose I had been holding onto some hope that something meant anything at all. The nihilistic edge that crept into my worldview was already there, but the juxtaposition of a new life (my child) to the hollowness of walking (literally and figuratively) through an endless stream of consumer goods became truly jarring. I've written about that feeling before - after having watched "The Hurt Locker" and now I feel it on a daily basis, with little ability or care to suppress such thoughts as ludicrous.
This tension between what I feel and what I live brings me back to the idea tha control, however illusory, is a strong drug that takes hold of all of us in some way. So as I search for a big picture answer for myself, I can only work to change incrementally at the present moment - open myself up to different experiences than I normally would pursue. What we should inject into our lives is a little risk. Extending a hand to someone in need when you previously would have ignored their plight, traveling despite money being tight, attempting to learn a new skill like cooking or painting, applying for a job you felt was out of reach, swiping right on someone who's not exactly your type....No risk, no reward, right? 

What's so funny about peace, love and understanding?

This weekend was an impromptu 4 day one due to 2 snow days in a row at the tail end of the week. While it was nice to be off, on Thursday I noticed that one of my guinea pigs was refusing solid food. This is a bad sign in an animal whose entire purpose in life seems to be to eat and poop. Since I was waaaay snowed in on Thursday, I had to improvise by blending up some veggies and hay pellets and trying to hand-feed her. She was mildly receptive, but not really gobbling it up. On Friday I was able to order special food from Amazon for one day shipping and went and got some baby food to hand-feed with in the interim. The food never arrived on Saturday (and I had to actually call Amazon this morning for a refund). She is on the special food now (I found it at a small, local pet store that I forgot existed until today). I don't know if she will make it through this time - once guinea pigs stop eating solid food, it's kind of a bad sign/sign of the end. 

Vets don't seem to know what to do with these little guys either. The last one I had that needed medical care spent 2 scary nights alone at the vet where they shaved his teeth down (which I don't even think was the problem - they just wanted to charge me $2000) and died as soon as I brought him home (heart attack). So I don't really want to put her through the same stressors so either she will gert better or die naturally at home. 

But after the many trials and tribulations of trying to feed a tiny mammal out of an even tinier syringe, I am tired. But also thoughtful.  I have had 4 rescue guinea pigs and 1 store-bought pig. The store bought one died after a year (so sad). The rescue pigs have been heartier, though I don't know from where they originate. The 2 girls I have now are both around 5 or 6 years old. They are cute and friendly and just kind of hang out all day. There's not too much to interact with as they do not have the intellect of a dog or cat, but they are cuddly. On Friday night, after hand-feeding Twinkie, I sat in front of the heater in my bedroom with her on my lap and just cried. Here I was, on a Friday night, sitting in my robe, on the floor in the bedroom, crying my eyes out over a mammal with the life span of maybe 8 years. But I just couldn't help it. Whenever animals or babies are sick, I become a wreck of a human. I just start weeping for every little life out there. As she sat on my lap, I could hear her heartbeat and I watched as she looked around, but sat contentedly without moving. I thought that maybe I could have done more in the time that I had her - taken her out every single day, given her better treats, just been there to do more. But I can't because I work, and I have to keep on truckin' every day, even if that means not always being able to do what I would really like to do all of the time.

That led me to think about what we prioritize in society. Do we prioritize caring for the pets and the people in our lives? I mean, I think the average person would say they personally do, but I don't think our culture does. In fact, I would argue that our system is set up to do the opposite - move on, buy something new, trudge forward no matter what. The elderly are so quaint, with their reminiscing, but come on grandma, just die already so we can bulldoze your house. I mean, sure it's not as disturbing
as that, but I am sure as you read that line, you smirked a little bit. The past is boring! I teach history - I know what most people think about having to look back, and even worse, learn from it. Gasp.

When I was in a better place yesterday, I read this Atlantic article about stressors and their effect on the unborn fetus. Written by a husband and father, it raised a lot of interesting issues regarding how maternity leave is handled in the US. It seems as though there are two poles - the traditionally conservative view of protecting the fetus (more so than the mother's health) by limiting what the mother can/should do during pregnancy, and the more modern feminist view of a woman having complete equality to men no matter what, including not being labeled as "disabled" during their pregnancy (and thereby not getting any special treatment during those 9 months by their employers). I'm weighing in to say both sides are wrong here. Sure, I might disagree that pregnant women shouldn't be labeled as disabled -it's kind of weird honestly- but maybe a different distinction that disallows their employer from requesting that they continue on as though their condition is completely NOT a hindrance to their expected duties. We have to focus on equity and not absolute equality in cases like these. Otherwise we put undue stress on everyone. If we truly care about women, children, families, traditions, equity in the workplace, gender pay gaps, etc, we need to recognize individuals as unique and that a one-size-fits-all ruling will likely harm many people it was created to help. For example, single mothers or women working part time are less likely to be able to feasibly take much time off before or after their babies are born due to the fact that they might HAVE to work. This may also stress the mother, and subsequently, the baby out, causing a host of health problems for both in the future. Their employment status is not always due to their "inability to work hard" or their education level. There are a lot of good people out there today who are well-educated, qualified and willing to work, but there's nothing out there but a sea of entry level, retail and various part-time jobs.

So I am asking, what can we do to change this course we're currently on as a society - a course that finds every expenditure a chore. Sometimes a society needs to INVEST (which is a nice way of saying, spend some goddamn money) to get returns. If you want to clean up poor neighborhoods and end achievement gaps between the US and other countries, money and time has to be invested into improving public schools, not just constantly poking at them. This would include actually training and hiring quality teachers, ensuring that the school is run well, that funds are used properly, etc. It does not necessarily mean that a new curriculum or testing strategy should be adopted. Sure, Finland is homogenous and has a small population so their methods work for them, blah blah. I have heard all of the criticisms of Finland's schools and why it wouldn't work here. If that's the case, shouldn't Finland take the easy way out and just test the shit out of their kids? I mean, why spend time and energy and money to pay teachers more, have more class options and activities for a cohort of children that could learn easily from drill and kill since there's less diversity to overcome? Well, because the teachers and education community in Finland VALUE what they do by providing students with an enriched environment full of openness, play and personal inquiry. 

And to think, this all started with thoughts about a sick guinea pig. Some days I would just like to turn my brain off. 

Physics, the Universe and God

This is a part II to the previous post, which I felt was incomplete, but that I posted anyway because I couldn't quite figure out how to reconcile what I was really relaying. 

I have been reading a lot of science-based non-fiction lately. It started by watching Cosmos which re-ignited a piece of my brain that had laid dormant for a while - scientific inquiry. I always really liked science in high school. Science AND math actually. They provide answers to problems in a tidy way that just makes you feel accomplished. I have been waaaay out of that scene for a while though, so my skills of actually completing any sort of mathematical equations would be very compromised at this point without some serious remediation.

The book I am currently reading on this subject, "You Are Here: A Portable History of the Universe," by Christopher Potter, is more of a history of science, specifically science dedicated to understanding the universe. The author was in a related field, but personally had some issues with understanding his "place in it all" and the point of what he was doing. And I think that philosophical inquiry regarding our understanding of, well, our understanding of everything, is key to actually being able to understand! Haha. Confusing. But Socrates was able to formulate this idea over 2,000 years ago too - All I know that I know nothing. We've come further into our knowing, but we still don't know anything. It's like we have gathered more puzzle pieces but we still don't know what the puzzle will look like once we snap them all together. Hell, we have like half a face and 3/4 of the border and we're still squinting at it like a damn magic eye picture, trying to figure out what the fuck we're looking at (also, for the record, I can't see ANYTHING in those magic eye pics, so I might be useless when it comes to figuring out what the universe IS or ISN'T). And I am not saying we shouldn't be collecting those puzzle pieces. We just can't get bogged down that the puzzle will solve ANY earthly concern for us in the grand scheme of things.

Potter discusses the "standard theory" of the universe and how messy it is. How it can almost be nothing in the end since it's so nebulous and seemingly disjointed. I haven't finished the book  yet, but even so far throughout, he has been pointing out how little we really know. Or how un-definitive our attempts have been to make sense of the universe. We have the atom, we break it open. We have the smallest particles we think we can find, we find smaller ones. We have anti-particles, theorized particles, and a slew of unanswered questions cropping up for each question we do happen to answer.  The physicists looking for a "unifying theory" are looking for "god" in numbers. And it strikes me as funny because I doubt they'd believe that to be true, but it's why someone like Sam Harris is so laughable to me. I can't take this genius of neuroscience seriously when he talks, and especially when he criticizes religion and spiritual leaders, because he's so full of shit. He's positing a new vision of god - just one that he can back up with numbers.

Math is the "universal" language, but it's not something that exists out in the wilds of nature. It's a recognizable pattern that HUMANS imposed on something that has existed without explanation since before our appearance on this planet. So what if the Fibonnaci sequence makes sense with this series of numbers? We figured that out after the fact of its existence. Nature is the ultimate existence precedes essence.

Once you stop looking for god in math and science, in spiritual realms, in others, even in yourself, that's when everything starts making sense because you realize that nothing does. The unity is the experience of living more than anything else. From person to person, those experiences aren't ever the same, and will never be- so the endless judgments we cast only makes our shared interactions painful. But we can overcome these tendencies somehow. I have a hard time knowing exactly how. I keep trying to express love and understanding, only to find myself getting stuck in the rut of a hate-fest and cycles of frustration and despair. What I keep coming back to is that ultimately, the goal is to live and not simply to avoid death, which is a scary thought because living entails risks and potentially death. But if I cozy up in my home eternally, or even just never extend myself to try and break down walls both physically and mentally between myself and others, well, then what good am I? Any suggestions are welcome.

Never Fear Love

When I wake up, especially for work, my exact sentiment is a Peter-Steele-Type-O-Negative bass utterance of, "I hate the morning (4:46)."But then I get out of bed, get into the rhythm of the day and think, "Fuck, I'm alive," and just start living the day. I'm frightened by the prospect of death sometimes, but then I realize that I'm living right now - it's the same sort of message as in the first scenario. I don't exactly know when I reached metaphysical awareness of this, although, I suppose it really began to click when I stopped caring if I died in the big picture sense of it.

And I think we get caught in trying to capture or understand the purpose/meaning to life and what we do, but then we can't. The entire journey is just that - one epic journey. It's been said so many times and is such a cliche in and of itself now. That's fine too. We gave meaning meaning in the first place - with the development of symbols (language, concepts, reason). Some people try to apply that to everything to reduce the jagged edges of life from appearing (and there's a time and place for ripping a paper along the perforation but fringies on a damn paper shouldn't bother anyone that much). But everything isn't smooth all of the time, which we have to remember (otherwise we go crazy).

The post-structuralists were all about this. Humans have tried to explain everything - so many of us are insistent on this point. We are seeking a level of perfectionism and understanding over everything.  What a clever gilding! But it, too, is only a gilding - it doesn't last and can be peeled away.

Even the best meaning breaks down in the presence of pure fear, pain or love. So we, as a species, end up controlling our environment so much as to avoid: fearing an unknown, feeling an unabated pain, or experiencing true love for anyone or anything, including life. Here's an example from our society of all three rolled into one - American social norms make women feel as though not being married by 30 is somehow terrible, causing fear and anxiety to rise up. Once a woman is with someone, even someone who treats them poorly, they stay, to avoid pain of being alone and heartbroken. In the end, even for those truly in love, their intense feelings of affection are tamped down by a ritual devoid of any actual experience of individuality and spirituality.

There's a pattern throughout all of these posts - go out and live. Experience. Stop thinking sometimes. It's good for you. Cheesy as this is, once again, never fear love.