It's a hard-knock life

I watched Tsotsi last night. Like most good works of entertainment (or some might say art), it drew self-reflection.

I would move to a South African township.

I would live in a shack with a tin roof.

I do not think that I would enter as an agent of change, to impose Western ideals. I would come to learn. But I would still be wrong to be there.

Because I would be having the time of my life.

Why live in a South African township? To experience the oppression, witness the squalor, understand the injustice and my role in it. And I would be electric with emotion. I would feel alive, which is hard to do in a house in the suburbs, or a coffee shop on a corner in San Fransisco.

Even if I experienced immense pain, it would be in sympathy for the pain of others, it would not be my own pain. I would drink it in, revel in the "life experience". Then, I could brush that pain aside, very easily.

I would leave the township.

I could never exist there without knowing this is not my future. I cannot act in this world without the burden and the freedom of privilege. I am an international agent, skipping from continent to continent, acquiring and consuming the knowledge of life, while those in the township look at the days ahead and the township stretches before them.

And besides the pain of living, I would enjoy the weather, play in the ocean, eat and drink the new, befriend the foreign.

I would better myself.

All this at the expense of others.

Broadening my world view.

I know the arguments. I recognize the irrationality. And I am paralyzed by the futility, filled with loathing I cannot articulate.

Life of Luxury

I have chosen this picture because while it is difficult to decipher, it is representative of my current situation. If you look closely, you'll see a profile of a leopard in the face of a mountain. I'm assuming the peaks our furry friend is superimposed on depict mount Kilimanjaro. The grassy plains sweltering in the African heat below the leopard and the mountain are possibly Tanzania. For my purposes though, the mountain is Jordan, the plains are Nebraska and the leopard is an attainment not yet reached. What the picture is lacking is a man in the shade, dying in a hammock, which would represent me.

I'm stealing Hemingway's The Snows of Kilimanjaro. In this short story, one of my favorites, a writer safaris in Africa with his wealthy wife. He contracts gangrene from a mere thorn prick and slowly withers away, anguishing in the sun and lamenting over the mistakes he has made throughout his now shortened life. The bulk of his regret comes from his lack of writing, or action of any kind, because he has been lulled into a life of complacency and luxury. What used to matter to him were his experiences among those living on the edge of life, the poor, the artists and adventurers, people interesting enough to write about, not the dull upper crust he is surrounded by. When he passes, his death is not a graceful exit. His wound is wreaking and devouring his leg and much of his body. His end is gruesome and lonely in the harsh climate of the plains, dramatically back grounded by the awesome beauty of the towering peaks. As if heaven rises above him while he is eaten alive in hell.

There is one other death detailed that the author uses as a comparison. The story begins with the image of a leopard frozen in the snow of the mountain, climbing to the top for purposes we know not. Some argue this leopard represents Hemingway's pessimism, his attitude that if you look up for better things you will get shot down. But I disagree. While the leopard has been stopped in his pursuit of grandeur, he has been perfectly preserved in the lofty peaks above the writer's horrible demise. I believe what Hemingway is trying to convey is that pursing a difficult path filled with challenge and hardship is better than an easy path in which one becomes boring.

It's not hard to read the symbolism for my life. In Nebraska, lounging in a large house, with a TV in every room, a fridge filled with food and all the amenities I could ask, I have become unproductive, uninteresting and longing for life. So even though I am scared to face the challenges of living in a foreign country, I know the rewards will far outweigh the comforts I will be sacrificing. And really the locations, such as Jordan and Nebraska, need not be so specific, though they fit aptly for my present circumstances. It could be a metaphor for my unforeseen future, accepting a well-paying job in a US city with a good man to share my time and giving up my dreams of traveling, experiencing and growing. I try to remind myself of this whenever I feel queasy at the thought of my fast-approaching voyage and new life.

When Spiders Attack

CITIZENS BEWARE!!! A strange fog descended over the city this morning. Residents on a walk or their way to work noted that there was an eerie hush throughout the neighborhoods. As if the white haze was hiding something. When the alien fog lifted, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of spider webs lined the porches and windows and wove through the trees.

Experts can only speculate at the reasons for this freak occurrence. There have been whispers of terrorists or top-secret government experiments. Some are even looking to the skies for answers and have prepared their bomb shelters in case of invasion.

Others believe the spiders have a more altruistic purpose, "I believe them insects are tryin to tell us somethin. I been out here with my pen and paper all day waiting for a clue but I ain't seen a dern thing yet," said one local.

Authorities warn not to be alarmed but to stay indoors whenever possible and not to take any foolish chances.

Verisimilitude

At our Household Hazardous Waste collection, we were lucky enough to be joined by volunteers from The Rock, a church at the University. Eight God-fearing Christians appeared bright-eyed and ready to work at 8 in the morning on a Saturday and because the event was not too demanding, and definitely did not require more than three or four extras, I spent much of the day lounging in the sun, supervising and getting to know the help (i.e. eavesdropping).

As I sat and sweated and directed cars containing either paint or cleaning fluids which line to stay in, a tall, male volunteer said loudly to the girl beside me, "Hey, I know how much you like stories about open wounds. I've been meaning to tell you this one about my brother." He walked over to a youngin not a day over eighteen, in sunglasses and blond ponytail and squatted down beside her. He began to describe in detail a large, black pustule that had developed on his sibling's knee. Its appearance was blamed on exposure to toxic chemicals (much like how super hero's gain their powers), which his brother was frequently vulnerable to as he works in sanitation. His brother sought a doctor to attend to his wound and the infected area had to be squeezed, pulled and ripped open, leaving a rather large, gaping hole on his knee. Since, three more abscesses have developed and the painful removal process will need to be repeated.

When the gruesome story was finished, the tall male stood. The girl stared up at him with her mouth open, sunglasses now in her lap, looking strangely satisfied. After the storyteller left, I turned to the girl and asked her if I had heard correctly? Did she really enjoy stories about open wounds? She replied with a serious, wordless nod. Her blue eyes piercing my own. It appeared as if she was waiting expectantly for my own gaping wound story. I had none. I felt strangely inadequate.

Bushido Blade

This morning, my boss and I went to visit a local nursing home. We have asked all of the retirement communities in the area if they could spare any scraps, ribbons or craft items that we can use at an upcoming Festival of the Arts. The scraps serve a dual educational purpose; to teach kids the joys of creation and recycling.

Terrace House was one of the first to agree and we loaded into our van, or what my boss has affectionately dubbed the brown beast, and arrived at the quaint facility complete with classical music playing in the lobby, a crystal-chandeliered dinning room and signs posted outside warning drivers to watch for strolling residents (an octogenarian was in fact meandering dangerously when we arrived). Our contact was a sprite, older woman with short gray hair. She greeted us energetically, pumped our hands with surprising strength and led us up to the second floor, past the library that resembled a used book store and into a room with a large table and a closet. She threw open the closet door to reveal shelves of boxes brimming with brightly colored objects and instructed us to take whatever we liked. She pulled down several boxes to show us what was inside and then grabbed a little-red riding hood basket with a red bandanna attached to the side. A weathered, wooden handle peeked out of the clutter and she noticed our attention drawn to the random and seemingly misplaced object.

"Oh yeah, this thing." She gripped the handle and yanked it out, revealing a 2-foot blade sheathed in faded, green canvas. She pulled the bland out of its covering and a sharp, rust-colored metal weapon stood before us. It looked well used. She turned it in her hand for a few seconds, examining each side and then returned it to its home. "Yeah, this horrible thing belonged to a resident. He pulled it off a dead Japanese in World War II. He died a couple years ago and his family didn't even come to the funeral so of course no one claimed it. I haven't been sure what to do it with." And with that she set it nonchalantly on the table and began rummaging through fabrics and feathers and chattered on about what we could take.

"Is that really from World War II?" I asked incredulously, unable to take my eyes away from the relic. My imagination ran wild as I pictured a young soldier hastily pulling it off a dead man he had just shot, bullets raining overhead as he escaped into the jungle at the sound of explosions. (My imagination may have been combining Vietnam and World War II).

"Oh yeah, definitely. It's a weird thing to have around and frankly creeps me out just thinking about it."

However, my sweet, Christian boss became extremely excited about the artifact and explained that her brother was obsessed with World War II and had attended West Point and majored in history. My boss marveled at how much he would love an object like that knife.

"Well take it then, I don't want it. I'll be glad to get it off my hands." My boss looked at her, eyes large and questioning. "Really?" The old woman nodded and my boss shoved the knife back into the basket we would be returning with, a large girlish grin remaining on her face. She then proceeded to cover the knife with sparkles, ribbons and kids items and babbled excitedly about what an amazing Christmas present it would make.

The Complexity of Evil

I think one of the traps that many of us liberals fall into is the assertion that those responsible for the injustice in the world are not the equivalent of silent film villains. These antagonists are evil incarnate. Their physicality is meant to incur nothing less. They are typically spindly characters with skeletal, long fingers between which they twirl their greasy, pencil-thin, jet-black mustache, grinning sickeningly and beady eyes twinkling over a beaked nose as they merrily watch the damsel in distress struggle against her dubiously tight ropes as a train barrels ever closer. These characters are one-dimensional, driven by an all consuming vile emotion, such as greed or lust or jealousy.

It's all too simple, we argue, for today's multifarious leaders in such a complex world to be compared to these characters. Even I have found myself at the defense of men and women who deny sick people life-saving medicine because billionaire companies like Pfizer don't want to lose a penny. I've explained away the complexity of those who rob indigenous citizens of land they've tilled for centuries so that space can be made to extract oil. The list goes on. What about the governments who charge the poor and thirsty for water they can't afford because the West wants them to privatize. Or organizations as great as the UN who simply ignore the pleas of help in times of genocide, refusing to even call it by that name because it means countries with soldiers and resources to spare will have to come to their aide. I've argued it's too easy to just say they're greedy or selfish. Or have even been excitedly reminded of the same argument by one of my favorite SIT teachers if students balked at the sheer cruelty of the IMF and World Bank loan regulations.

Yet I'm starting to wonder if we're explaining away some of the problem. People are complex. I would never argue that. But they are also driven by greed just like that villain. I'm not talking about the kind of questionable acts that are brought on by desperation or ignorance, but the kind CEO's of multinationals participate in daily. And just like in the movies, it's still wrong. Simply wrong. There is a myriad of examples of this simple greed in books such as John Perkin's Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, where men and women goad and manipulate leaders into accepting loans that cause their countries to be indebted to the West forever. Or in Jawara and Kwa's Behind the Scenes at the WTO where men are moved to tears during negotiations. Some men because their jobs as pharmaceutical agents are threatened when Southern countries begin to demand affordable generic drugs for their dying masses. Others because of the hopelessness in their countries when the generic drug production is denied as even a topic of discussion at the Doha Round. To me, this seems simple. Greed does motivate people to do awful things and just because our complex system allows it, even encourages it, doesn't mean we should write it off as too complex to be labeled as such.

If everyone started working against a natural tendency to dominate, acquire and destroy, maybe our complex system's foibles could start to become as recognizable as a skinny man in black attire, twirling his moustache and staring hungrily at an innocent youth.

Chatterbox

I have a temporary job with the city coordinating their volunteer recycling program. It has helped to stave off boredom, feed my starving bank account and reaffirm my worth as a productive American citizen.

It's office life. I sit directly across from my boss. Our two desks touch and we are squeezed into a cramped, overflowing, windowless cell. While my boss is immensely good-natured and polite to a fault, her constant chatter, obsession with AP grammar, defense of Walmart and Christian views have started to rub raw a nerve. My mornings are now an endurance test, a mental feat of strength to repress a biting retort or an eye roll.

Besides some of her other peculiarities, one that surfaces most often is her obsession with Maggie, her future adopted daughter. My boss and her husband are in the process of adopting a baby from China. This can be a three to five year fiasco and they are only into their second year. However, this doesn't seem to stop my boss from talking about Maggie as if she were in existence. As well, Maggie seems to be their biological off-spring and has manifested traits of her parents, such as an affinity for board games and a love of dogs.

This morning though, my boss took a moment from her nonstop commentary on her life, past, present and future, to answer her cell phone. Almost immediately she shut the door and had problems speaking because she was choking back sobs. It soon became evident that the caller was a very young mother-to-be. Apparently Maggie will have brothers and sisters. My boss's voice filled with hope and even a bit of desperation as she explained what nice people she and her husband were and if the girl would only meet them and then she would understand how much they wanted this baby and how they had been trying for five years and how they would even hold their little pekingese puppy cradled in their arms because they didn't have a human baby to hold.

One of the cruel ironies of life was right there in our claustrophobic office contained between the two of us, a woman who wanted a baby so much she had imagined one into being and a co-worker who's family was so burdened by two beautiful boys that it almost tore them apart trying to get rid of them. And right then I wanted her to have that baby as much as she did, more than anything in the world, because she deserved it.

As my boss hastily hung up the phone and prepared to rush to a meeting, she looked at me with bright, moist eyes and emitted a girlish squeal. Tears welled up and she had trouble speaking again. "I spoke with her grandma a month ago and didn't think the girl would even call me because the father is reluctant to give up custody." She glanced at her watch, gasped and began hurrying out the door. She peaked her head back in though, blond curls bouncing, "OK, so if I'm like a nervous chatterbox all day, this is why." She squealed again and scurried down the hall, high-heels pattering like rain drops. As my stomach turned somersaults at the thought of the rest of my mind-numbing day, I wondered if perhaps on second thought maybe I didn't want her to have this baby that much.