Gaining some perspective...

Wow, no post since Tuesday. This week sure flew by. Vacations and holidays are nice, but it's always good to get back on schedule. So, I'm reading this new book right now; I am hoping to finish it this weekend. It is called Miracle on the Hudson and is about the 150 people who survived Flight 1549 last January when their plane landed on a river. Though it's not the best written book I've ever read, the stories are riveting. I chose to read it after seeing some of the survivors talk about it on Oprah the other day and I thought it would be an interesting addition to my studies about death. I was excited to read it because I felt it would offer up a glimpse at what happens right before you die. Even though no one did, most thought they would. The surprising thing to me was that some didn't.

One passenger said that the greatest thing he learned from the experience was that although there is only one reality, there were 150 different perspectives of it. Those in the front of the plane near the engines heard the collision as a giant boom, to those in the back it was only a pop. Depending on whether they were in aisle seats or window, some knew they had hit birds, others thought they'd been hit with a bomb or had collided with another plane. One man who saw the large V of geese coming thought it was a group of fighter jets. Some passengers thought they were heading back to the airport, others thought they were headed for the streets and buildings of Manhattan, and a few knew they were going into the water. Some people were sure they were going to die, others were sure they weren't.

I think this is an incredible metaphor for our individual perspectives of life, which vary as much as our fingerprints. Just because one person happened to be sitting in the back of the plane, does that mean the sound really wasn't a pop? Just because another is sitting up front, does that mean the sound really wasn't a boom? Just because one person sees life from one corner of the world and not yours, does that make their view any less real? I guess it's like Lars- back to the idea of delusions. If he sees his relationship with the doll as love, is he wrong? If I see this incident as a miracle, am I wrong? If I see it as just a lucky coincidence that numerous things came together to make for a successful water landing, am I wrong?

Like the passengers on Flight 1549 who did not discover the true reasons behind the crash until after the ordeal had ended, we won't discover the truth about life until our stay here has ended (at least that is our hope). If there even is an ultimate truth.


Talk about perspective when you're perched atop the observatory at Monte Alban. Definitely my favorite part of the trip. It's on a mountain over 6,000 feet up and you have to climb almost 50 steps to get to the top. It feels as though you could reach up and touch a cloud. I've never felt so close to God.

Flying the white flag...

I haven't posted in the last couple of days- for one I was exhausted, and for two, I've been in a bit of a funk. I feel like I've really been noticing the paradoxes of the world lately, and they've been mega bringing me down. But there's one in particular that struck me hard tonight. I was working on a photo project and had Coming to America on BET keeping me company. Immediately following the movie, a new reality series came on called Monica: Still Standing. For those of you who weren't 15 in the late 90's when she and Brandy were it on the pop charts, Monica is an R&B singer who is now apparently creating her own fashion line while raising two kids.

I feel that to accurately portray the point of this post I must first include the lyrics of the show's theme song, also a single on her upcoming album of the same name. Here is a snippet...

I've been through the storm, had dirt on my name.
I'm still holding on, champion of the game.
They say, "Whatever don't kill you make you stronger", well I must be the world's strongest woman.
See I done done a whole lot of growing.
Everything you say I'm already knowing, cause I been up against the ropes.
Everything you going through I've been there before.
Seen em all come and seen em all go.
You can bet your last that my head wont hit the floor. NEVER. I'm still standing.

Ok, so this is a respectable song, an ode to feminism, strength, and courage, right? Determinism and a refusal to give up- all good things, right? I'm not gonna say they're not, and I'm not gonna say Monica hasn't been through some shit. But I am going to use her words as an example of the weakness this new ideal of "strength" brings to our country.

First of all, the intro to her show features about 6 pictures of her in different "hats"- a mom, a business woman, a wife, etc. I understand the importance of gender equality and thank all those who have fought for it, but even things that begin as positive can lead us to negative. Now, women, in order to be "strong", have to work themselves into oblivion. It is acceptable for a man to work his 8 hours, come home, watch tv, and go to football games or what have you on the weekends. But a woman's work is portrayed as never-ending. The glory of the soccer mom to me does not represent strength but weakness. No one can do everything, and no one should do everything. This brings back to mind the interview with Michelle Obama that I wrote about recently. Her mother lives with them in the White House in order to help out. Family is a necessary component of the day-to-day function of their household. Does this make her less of a strong woman? Not at all.

Secondly, this line really got under my skin- champion of the game. Champion- one who is superior. Game- a contest. This is how people view the world. This is how they view life. As a thing to overcome, something to conquer. No wonder we are all killing each other and fighting and just plain hating. This desire to be "champion of the game" is intoxicating, and is the utmost example of delusion. To be the "strongest" person is to look down on other's suffering. Everything you going through I've been there before? Pure Kanye West syndrome. Surviving pain is something to be grateful for, not to take on pride over.


My definition of a strong person? Someone who doesn't whine or take credit for the struggles they've endured, but moves on with their path, not in spite of their troubles, but because of their troubles. (See also Smart, Elizabeth.) And, someone who can ask for help when needed. (See photo above.)

Finding life in unexpected places...

I've been thinking more about the movie I wrote about in my last post, Lars and the Real Girl. I was really impressed with the writer's use of characters, and I asked myself what it was about the doll that made everyone, not just Lars, create such a strong relationship with her. Then, I thought about this blog. I really feel I have a kind of relationship with this blog. I miss it when I skip a night of posting. Then I started to branch out to other inanimate, yet tangible, objects. I almost cried, in fact I would have had my sister not been present, when I had to let go of my first car. When we returned from Mexico, the smell alone of my house was so comforting. And, books. Stories. The characters may not be real, but we still cry for them and laugh with them. This reminded me of the movie Castaway, when Tom Hanks' character befriends a volleyball. A volleyball that may have afforded him his sanity in such a scary and lonely situation.

In thinking about all of this, I realized that we have more relationships than we realize. More support than we take notice of. It illustrated to me some of the Eastern philosophies I have just finished reading about. The idea that there is life in all things, big and small. Whether real or imagined, does it really matter?


Relationships. This group of teens spent the evening playing songs, singing, and laughing on the streets of Oaxaca one night. It was wonderful to be a witness to their relationship.

Dispensing with delusion...

I watched an amazing movie tonight, suggested to me by one of my friends. It is called Lars and the Real Girl and tells the story of a man who has a delusional relationship with a doll. Instead of rejecting him and telling him he is wrong and that he needs to change, the small town where he lives embraces him and his "girlfriend". It's a pretty awkward movie to watch in the beginning because it is so different. I found I couldn't even sit right on the couch, but as it goes on, it shines a light on the underlying flow of humanity that ties us all together. By the end, you can't help but love the characters, animate and inanimate.

All of us have delusions. It's funny because how many people have relationships with other human beings that aren't truly as they perceive them? How many times is a person seen as something that he is not simply because of where he stands? How many people have views of themselves that aren't supported in fact? I'd say pretty much everyone has fit into one of these situations at one time or another.

In my book, Eastern Wisdom, the author refers to sociologist George Herbert Meade's idea of "the internalized other". We have a kind of interior picture, a vague sense of who we are, and of what the reaction of other people to us says about who we are. That reaction is invariably communicated to us through what other people say and think, but soon we learn to maintain the commentary on our own, and each thought or observation is then compared to the idea we have formed. Therefore, this image becomes interiorized and in any given situation we must either rationalize why a certain behavior is consistent with that image, or force ourselves to change that behavior, or fail to change it and feel guilty for failing.

When it comes to our outward appearance, we know it is unwise to compare ourselves to others, for instance supermodels, but what about our inward appearance? We compare that everyday to an image that is essentially a delusion we have created of our own thoughts, and what we think are other people's thoughts about us. The character in this movie, however, did not take into account how others viewed him. Perhaps he is not the one with the bigger problem.


More from the Day of the Dead. Death might just be our greatest delusion.

Finding strength in my weakness...

Today I reentered the world of the State Park. It'd been a year since I'd gone away and my return was more than over due. It felt strange in the beginning actually. Especially with the photography aspect. Though I do still take nature photography now and then, it took me a minute to get used to photographing trees again instead of the people that have been my focus as of late. What a wonderful park it was to make my return to though. It was beautiful and today offered the perfect weather for hiking.

In case I haven't mentioned on here, I have been working on my state park project for, wow, something like three years now. Once I have visited each and every one (and they are adding new ones all the time), I plan to piece together my favorite shots of each and put them into a book, complete with a short history of each. My initial motivation, other than getting my butt off the couch, was to inspire others to explore the beauty outside their front door. Today as we hiked along the trails, my thoughts traveled back to the adventures of Karana in Island of the Blue Dolphins. Whenever I go hiking, I like to imagine what it must have been like to be the fist person to walk in that very same spot so many years ago. Today I thought how odd it is that only a little over a week ago I was hiking in the middle-of-nowhere Mexico, and today in what you could call the middle-of-nowhere Florida. And it's all the same to me. This is when I get sad that people take for granted the wonder that surrounds them. We are so lucky to be Floridians and have such beautiful resources around us like our state park system.

The best thing about the parks I visited today was that they centered around the water. Most parks I have visited are strictly forest trails. But this one was forest coupled with the beauty of the Sante Fe River. It seemed to be the quietest park I have visited thus far, and continually reminded me of The Neverending Story or The Lord of the Rings (which I hadn't yet seen before tonight). It was straight out of a fantasy storybook. The huge trees with their exposed roots reaching out in all directions. The leaves and growth covering the water. The sunlight peeking through the branches. The creatures scurrying here and there. And, my favorite part, the quiet tinkling of the water as it passed over stones. I have always loved the water, being born of St. Augustine, and having spent my weekends as a kid at our lake house. I mistakenly translated that into a love of marine biology when I entered college, but quickly found that I was happy to just respect the water as opposed to study it. In my reading of Eastern Wisdom the other day, the author relays Lao-tzu's, one of the fathers of the Tao, view of water-

He spoke of water as the weakest of all things in the world, and yet there is nothing to be compared with it in overcoming what is hard and strong. You can cut water with a knife and it lets the knife go right through, yet water alone cut the Grand Canyon out of solid rock.

Oh to be like water- strong in your weakness.


"What's goin' on, Betty Sue?"
"Oh nothing, just doing one of my daily green algae facial masks."
"So that's how you get that youthful glow!"

Relating opposites...

I have been reading the book Eastern Wisdom, which is actually a collection of three books on Eastern thought- What is Zen?, What is Tao?, and What is Meditation? I completed the first book yesterday, and enjoyed it very much. It definitely opened my eyes to one of many different perspectives of life that exist around the world. But today, reading the section on the Tao, I was taken aback. I found myself marking almost every page I read as something I wanted to blog about. The Tao is very focused on man's interaction with nature, something that has always been of vital importance to me, and the way they explained everything was so clear and just rang with beauty.

It is also centered on the idea of yin and yang, or opposites. It discusses how opposites not only determine each other, but are each other. To illustrate the point the author, Alan Watts, relates the fact that is is difficult to see a figure without a contrasting background. Were there no background to the figure, the figure would vanish. Because of the inseparability of opposites, you realize that they all go together. Without the bad, we wouldn't know what good is. Without the good, we wouldn't know what bad is. I really liked this in relation to my recent post about being thankful for the difficult things that happen to us.

The introductory poem of this book relates this idea of yin and yang...

When people see some things as beautiful,
other things become ugly.
When people see some things as good,
other things become bad.

Being and non-being create each other.
Difficult and easy support each other.
Long and short define each other.
High and low depend on each other.
Before and after follow each other.

The thought that kept arising as I read was that many Americans would probably dismiss Eastern thought because it is different, not taking the time to listen and realize that there are important ideas within it that coexist with Western religious beliefs. It always shocks me that some choose to make such a black and white issue out of religion. Thoughts are either good or bad, right or wrong in their totality. So everything that is not familiar is shut out. Same with politics. Black or white. The Tao recognizes this way of thinking- the human mind's need for opposites- but works with both sides together instead of pitting them against each other as we tend to do on this side of the world.


Life and life after death. What is one without the other? They are the same, both connected by love. This is a sand painting used in many of the altars of the Day of the Dead.

Striving for simplicity...

Another thing I noticed on my travels to Mexico was the fact that adults, children, and animals are all on an equal plane there. Every being is respected. You'll be walking down the street and a dog just strolls past. Or you're having lunch at an outdoor cafe and the waitress is actually feeding the pigeons. A bee lands on a man's head and he continues about his business unaffected.

I noticed it was the same amongst the different classes of people. Everyone gives money to the beggars. No one chases them away from the front steps of the churches, or the street corners. Vendors walk amongst tables in outdoor and indoor cafes selling their beaded necklaces, woven table runners, and carved wooden combs. The managers don't ask them to leave. And, the other thing I noticed is there is no underlying animosity toward tourists the way there is in European countries. They welcome everyone.

Possibly one of the greatest experiences I had while we were there was the very first night we arrived. We got in late. We'd been traveling all day. The lady at the hotel had just talked our ears off and pressured us to buy into her vacation club, and all we wanted to do was eat and get to our condo to sleep. Because the restaurants were supposedly all closed due to the hour, our future tour guide, Jose Maria, drove us to the local mini-market, Pitico, to pick up some groceries for the night. As the restaurants were closed, so were the banks, and we had only a few pesos on us. They obviously don't accept Traveler's Checks in a small market (or anywhere else we later found out). It was then that Jose Maria offered us all the money in his pocket. He had just met us and offered to pay for our groceries. For whatever reason, at that moment, in that tired state, it was the sweetest thing anyone had ever done. Immediately, he gained all of our respect. It was him, too, later in the week, who helped me through a difficult time, offering his knowledge of ancient Mexican healing traditions.

Here in the US the fad is to simplify life- to recycle, to buy organic, to use cloth bags at the grocery store. But these are all superficial actions. Without the actual mindset of simplicity, none of it is any good. To simplify life we must first erase the invisible and nonexistent barriers between us that we have created in the names of legality and independence. In Mexico, everyone is family. Here it seems we are all strangers.

In fact, I was reading an interview with Michelle Obama today and she was discussing the importance of extended family's part in raising children. She called for Americans to disperse the newly touted hero of the mom who does it all. No one can do it all; we all need help, she claimed. And the most interesting part was when she pointed out that not too long ago, people had children in order to help them, whether it be on the farm or just with the household chores. When she told the staff at the White House that she expected her daughters to make their own beds and clean their own dishes, they were surprised. But that is an important lesson for us all. If everyone plays their part, we can all live in peace.



I write all of this in honor of our newest housemate- the orbweaver who built her amazing home on our front walk while we were out of town. My normal reaction would have been to knock down her week's work, even though it is in no one's way. But, in honor of the Mexican way of life, we live side by side.

Following the light...

So I have spent the past three or four months assessing the art of writing and trying to find my own process. This blog ended up being a big part of that. One of the most important things I have learned thus far is that there is no exact definition of the word writer. There does not exist one way to write. I have been entirely too stringent on myself in my pursuit of becoming this thing I wanted to be. This nonexistent thing that I created in my own mind. So stringent I couldn't see that I already am it. The way I know is not measured in numbers of pages or words or accolades. It is in the way I feel. So, in an effort to one, stop being so hard on myself, and two, start pooling my energies towards my other writing projects, I am cutting back a bit on my blogging. I will still keep this blog up, writing when the inspiration finds me. Some weeks it might be three times, some might be all seven days. But I feel I am focusing in only one direction, and I have so many directions I want to explore right now. The world is waiting...


Following the light.

Hoping against hope...

I read about this study once that was performed on mice. The researchers put two mice in a tank full of water and waited to see how long they would swim before they died. It turned out it was 3 hours. (I know this is horrible, but just bear with me.) So the next stage of the experiment was to put another two mice in the tank, let them swim around an hour or two and then put a ramp in for them to crawl up on and rest. The next day they put those same two mice in the water tank and waited to see how long they swam before they died. This time the mice swam for something like 8 hours or more.

The point of the experiment was to prove the motivational power of hope. This can be both a good thing and a bad thing. I've always felt that this is what keeps people in abusive relationships. Even if their partner is only good to them 1% of the time, it is just enough to sustain the hope that keeps them from leaving. Yesterday, I was reading the narrative of Frederick Douglass with a student, and he spoke of how he lived off of his hope, even as he witnessed other slaves being murdered by their owners, he still had hope that one day he'd be free.

I write about hope because today in my never-ending novel (I'm finally on CD 19 out of 20, thank goodness), one of the main character's students wrote in a paper that life is nothing but crap and hope. Just people constantly swimming around in a water tank. Of course, I definitely don't subscribe to this view, but it got me thinking about the importance of hope and the sheer presence of it in almost every tiny facet of our lives. Then I realized how it is an underlying theme in just about every story I've ever read. We're always hoping for the best. The funny thing is we don't even know what the best is. But we still keep on hoping.

Hope can either incite you to create your own fate, as it did for Douglass, or it can doom you before you even begin. If you hope against hope for one specific thing to happen, and it doesn't, that which does happen is automatically labeled as "bad", whether it is or not. Maybe hope is a cosmic double-edged sword. Maybe it pushes us toward fulfillment, maybe it drains us of our perspective. Either way it is definitely a big part of the human experience.


This elderly woman sits outside of an old church all day begging for money. Hope.

Seeing where your eyes don't go...

Sometimes something bad happens. You live it, you survive the aftermath, and then, you are thankful for it. Because every single experience teaches us something. I'm not sure what the value is, but every time I learn something I feel closer. Closer to what, I don't know. But I am more knowledgeable, which whether or not I can carry it with me beyond this world, is a highly revered thing for me in this life. When something bad happens, you react. You are not dwelling or even thinking, you are acting. The aftermath is the hard part. You relive the experience over and over in your head every time you close your eyes. You have to tell yourself it is only temporary, have to continually remind yourself it will pass. And then, one day it does. And, once you have established that space between you and the experience, you can see the opportunity to be grateful. Because now you know how you would react in such a situation, now you know that you can survive such a situation, and because of that, you become closer to yourself, I think is what it is. You know yourself better. You appreciate yourself a little more. Your view of the greatness of being a human being gets just a little bit wider. And, though you're not glad it happened, you are grateful for that little glimpse at the part of yourself that you may never have seen otherwise.

There are two lines in my all-time favorite (well, one of the hundreds) They Might Be Giants song that I have always loved but never quite knew why until now-

Where your eyes don't go a part of you is hovering,
it's a nightmare that you'll never be discovering.

and...

Every jumbled pile of person has a thinking part that wonders what the part that isn't thinking isn't thinking of.

It's interesting to think of yourself as an iceberg, so to speak. Even you don't know who you are in total, and you may never know all that encompasses you. No one can experience all things. But, at least if you keep your eyes open, for the good and the bad, you might know yourself some. And, to know, know, know you is to love, love, love you.


Should you worry when the skullhead is in front of you
Or is it worse because it's always waiting where your eyes don't go?

Losing loss and focusing on gain...

Being a witness to the celebration of the Dia de Muertos, I thought a lot about death on this trip. Death has always been a fascination of mine, as I have mentioned before, with my early interests in ghosts and serial murder and crime in general. I got really interested in it in preparation for my trip which is why I have a couple of books that touch on the outlooks on death of different religions in my updated reading list. I foolishly took four books with me on my trip thinking I'd come home after my day's adventure and bundle up under the covers with a book. Ha. The second my tiny toe hit that bed I was passed out. Traveling sure can take a lot out of you. So, in the end, the only reading I really got accomplished was on the plane flights.

I guess the thing that most surprised me about the festivities as a whole was the overall comfort with death. We visited a small cemetery near our condo one afternoon and I was shocked to see people just chillin' in there. Some were sitting around talking, there was a group burying someone to the tunes of their radio, and another group doing what looked to be some sort of excavation. No one was whispering, no one was tiptoeing. It was as though we'd walked into a park. Later the next night, there was a huge block party in the same cemetery. Tons of people were there late into the night, lighting off cherry bombs, blaring mariachi music, and eating food from the vendors parked outside. I loved it.

Here in America everyone is so serious about death. And, I started to think about why that is. Here we have crosses and signs on the side of the road where people have died. Even stickers on the backs of cars wishing their peaceful rest. But when we look at these mementos, we don't feel happy, we get sad. We think of the past, all the times we had with that person and how we will never have them again. In Mexico, they dedicate almost a week out of every year to creating altars with offerings of things the deceased liked- breads, candies, beer, and Coke. They go to where the dead lie and celebrate their lives and their passing.

It seems to me that in our culture we focus on the loss, while in Mexico they focus on the gain. They are thankful for the time they got to spend with the person, and are grateful for the fact that that person has moved on. Here we celebrate other rites of passage- baptisms, mitzvahs- both bar and bat, communions, sweet 16, births, graduations, marriage, promotions, relocations, etc, etc. But death, we don't celebrate. We deal with it. Like a bad habit.

It's refreshing and energizing how lightly they take life in Mexico. Nothing is serious, nobody whispers. In the Day of the Dead pageant we saw, there were comical skits about a suicidal teenager, a pregnant nun, and a prostitute. All played out on a stage in front of the center's cathedral. Most in our country would have been appalled and seen it as disrespectful. But I saw it as wonderful. To me, whispering and hiding things out of "respect" equals lying. And, why lie about life? It is a blessing- each and every part of it, whether "bad"or "good". Life is too precious to be taken so seriously. We need to celebrate all life's stages, even...shhhhhh...death.


"El Senor de los Muertos" makes an appearance in a Day of the Dead parade!

Shaping life by hand...

The one defining moment of my travels to Oaxaca, Mexico happened my last day there. We traveled about an hour or so out of the city to a place called Coyotepec, where the art of barro negro, or black pottery, was conceived little over 50 years ago. We actually met and witnessed a demonstration of the process by the Don Valente, son of the woman who created the process that is now the main handiwork of the area. His workshop is a simple, but beautiful, hacienda full of pieces, ranging from a dollar to just over a hundred dollars for the larger pieces. Each piece goes through a highly detailed month-long process, done entirely by hand using only the tools of his ancestors, made from bamboo, and a piece of quartz over 20 years old. Yet, most only cost 10 to 20 dollars. The walls of the workshop are covered with photos of the family with famous people of the past and present- Nelson Rockefeller to the Pope. Our tour guide, Jose Maria, told us that a visiting businessman once asked Don Valente why he didn't raise his prices. Several hundreds of tourists, many of them wealthy retirees and such, pass through his doors monthly. He could make so much money! But Don Valente asked the same question back- why? I have my chocolate and my mezcal, what else do I need, he stated simply.

Traveling to Mexico was so different for me this time. Everything about it just echoed how I want to live my life. I'd move there in two seconds if I could. The people there, even some in the city, are so connected to life in so many ways. Every thing they do seems to be directly related to their own survival. Some harvest food, some make textiles by hand, some create art. They walk to their local market every day and sell their wares and make the money to buy the other things they need. The children do everything right alongside of their parents, not just learning their way of life, but living it from day one. They spend their days in the fields, in the workshops, at the markets, entertaining themselves with whatever may surround them. Every member of the family supports one another, in work and in life.

Here, we do jobs, most of which create a product invisible to the eye, and we get paid in money we never really see. We don't know who grew the vegetables we eat or who painted the pictures on our wall. Our invisible money goes to invisible people for things we can't touch- like cell, cable, and power services. We're so separate from the things that keep us alive, we start to lose sight of what being alive truly is about.

In Mexico, I realized how important the act of eating is. Just eating to me is a way of giving thanks to the Earth for all it provides us. Sleeping is a way to give thanks to our mind and body for carrying us through a long day. Laughing- a way to give thanks for the impermanence life offers.

Life really is what we make of it. And it need not be complicated or miserable. We just make it that way by separating ourselves from the Truth. The more "stuff" that comes between us and the Source of life, the more distance is created, and without realizing it, we lose our grasp on life, floating out into the abyss of the unknown. And, that is frightening.


Don Valente creating a pot for his barro negro collection in Coyotepec, Mexico.