Oh my dear readers how I’ve missed you. Don’t think I have forgotten about you just because I’ve been absent here. Over the past couple of weeks I’ve had my wonderful friend and fellow Texan, Megan Tope, visiting from Prague and then my dear parents came to stay with me.
During that time I took some notes of the issues I was thinking about. They’ve included AIDS, oil, oil, oil, music, love, oil, capitalism, my body, murders in Thailand, memory verses experience and food.
It’s just too much for this one post so I’ll start with my bicycle. Today I washed my bicycle, oiled my chain and thought about my cousin, Sadie, who is also a writer and who I haven’t seen in about nine years. She has posted that she is sorely disappointed in our government administration for their lack of needed actions in response to the crisis in the gulf. She is surprised that more people are not critical towards the government in these regards. Well, luckily, I surround myself with people who are critical enough to at least watch closely with concern and questions, but as I removed old gunky grease from my chain, I thought more about a question I’ve been asking myself, which is, what can I do? And I had this little song in my head:
Okay, obviously I love the Internet and believe it does have strong political powers and allows anyone, who is privileged enough to have education and access to it, a voice. But aside from blogging and expressing criticism on facebook, what could I possibly do? And what will I do? I will not, despite learning quite a lot about booming from the video below, go to the U.S. and protest for proper booming techniques.
I will not gather or distribute pictures of oil covered birds or dead turtles except for these:
I don’t want pictures of dead or dying animals on my blog, but I will keep them here in honor of these creatures.
What I will do is feel stronger in my desire to live a life that depends less and less on things that cause suffering in people, animals, or the environment. This brings me to capitalism. Before moving to Europe, and especially Berlin, and especially Friedrichshain, I had never so strongly questioned capitalism. I am an American and I love my luxury goods, my Macbook, my Nikon SLR, my dark green leather jacket that really does make me feel 20% cooler while keeping me warm. I also have a strong desire for more luxury goods like a 160gig ipod, or those incredibly cute over priced shoes in the window down the street. Now that I’m trying to eat vegan, I think about the animals my clothes are made of as well. I won’t give them up and I doubt that I will refrain from ever buying more animal products, but I am trying to allow these decisions of consumption a bigger place in my consciousness.
My body consumes and has been consumed. This is weighing heavily on my consciousness. I don’t always treat her right. I want to be aware of what I put in and on my body, but recently I was deceived and this awareness and my body were taken advantage of. I will not say more on this note. I don’t even know who you my dear reader are (yes, this is blind love), but I’m quite certain that if you are female you have experienced your body taken advantage of, assaulted, possibly raped and if you’re male, well, it’s also not unlikely. Yes, I am angry. Yes, I am afraid of walking alone in the dark in less populated places. Yes, I sometimes treat my body badly out of sadness of how it has been treated badly by others. But, when it comes to humanity, I am still an optimist. This might not sound like a song of an optimist, but it sums up one way of how I feel about consumerism and consciousness at the moment:
In the morning I will wake up and teach English in my living room. I will not pay taxes. I will make my own decisions. I will ride my bicycle and hang on monkey bars for exercise. I will read. I will cook. I will dance. I will experience 100 reasons to be an optimist in a world of greed and oil and deception.
During that time I took some notes of the issues I was thinking about. They’ve included AIDS, oil, oil, oil, music, love, oil, capitalism, my body, murders in Thailand, memory verses experience and food.
It’s just too much for this one post so I’ll start with my bicycle. Today I washed my bicycle, oiled my chain and thought about my cousin, Sadie, who is also a writer and who I haven’t seen in about nine years. She has posted that she is sorely disappointed in our government administration for their lack of needed actions in response to the crisis in the gulf. She is surprised that more people are not critical towards the government in these regards. Well, luckily, I surround myself with people who are critical enough to at least watch closely with concern and questions, but as I removed old gunky grease from my chain, I thought more about a question I’ve been asking myself, which is, what can I do? And I had this little song in my head:
Okay, obviously I love the Internet and believe it does have strong political powers and allows anyone, who is privileged enough to have education and access to it, a voice. But aside from blogging and expressing criticism on facebook, what could I possibly do? And what will I do? I will not, despite learning quite a lot about booming from the video below, go to the U.S. and protest for proper booming techniques.
I will not gather or distribute pictures of oil covered birds or dead turtles except for these:
I don’t want pictures of dead or dying animals on my blog, but I will keep them here in honor of these creatures.
What I will do is feel stronger in my desire to live a life that depends less and less on things that cause suffering in people, animals, or the environment. This brings me to capitalism. Before moving to Europe, and especially Berlin, and especially Friedrichshain, I had never so strongly questioned capitalism. I am an American and I love my luxury goods, my Macbook, my Nikon SLR, my dark green leather jacket that really does make me feel 20% cooler while keeping me warm. I also have a strong desire for more luxury goods like a 160gig ipod, or those incredibly cute over priced shoes in the window down the street. Now that I’m trying to eat vegan, I think about the animals my clothes are made of as well. I won’t give them up and I doubt that I will refrain from ever buying more animal products, but I am trying to allow these decisions of consumption a bigger place in my consciousness.
My body consumes and has been consumed. This is weighing heavily on my consciousness. I don’t always treat her right. I want to be aware of what I put in and on my body, but recently I was deceived and this awareness and my body were taken advantage of. I will not say more on this note. I don’t even know who you my dear reader are (yes, this is blind love), but I’m quite certain that if you are female you have experienced your body taken advantage of, assaulted, possibly raped and if you’re male, well, it’s also not unlikely. Yes, I am angry. Yes, I am afraid of walking alone in the dark in less populated places. Yes, I sometimes treat my body badly out of sadness of how it has been treated badly by others. But, when it comes to humanity, I am still an optimist. This might not sound like a song of an optimist, but it sums up one way of how I feel about consumerism and consciousness at the moment:
In the morning I will wake up and teach English in my living room. I will not pay taxes. I will make my own decisions. I will ride my bicycle and hang on monkey bars for exercise. I will read. I will cook. I will dance. I will experience 100 reasons to be an optimist in a world of greed and oil and deception.
Jen, thank you for this beautiful sharing of your ideas and ideals; guess i can only speak for myself and say that here you articulate a lot of what i've personally been feeling/questioning and moving towards as part of personal choices within an ethical/ responsible living framework. in relation to what one experiences (local-individual, or communal dialogues with those we are in contact with) "versus" (or, no i don't like that word...) should i say, simply, instead "in relation to" certain greater issues that one faces as being part and participant of a larger earth community. i agree with you, think it comes down to local (individual) choices that we make in how to shape our lives, and what we choose to experience and share and shape our art with, and for.
i wish you strength and power, gooNa!
-andy