a life less ordinary…

if fear and happiness are unique to each person and to cultures, then they must be conditional and learned emotions. does this mean that we can unlearn our fears, and learn our chosen happinesses?

take your deepest fear. maybe it’s being alone, truly only listening to your own voice. perhaps it’s running out of money. it could be never achieving your definition of success, or being too “different,” or showing your vulnerability. whatever it is, it’s impeding you every single day. you will only ever truly be self-realized once you have overcome this fear, and effectively unlearned it.

so what does it take to do this? the first step is unburying this fear, coming face to face with it. next is identifying the behavior patterns it results in. then somehow you’ve got to reverse these behaviors, without going too far in the opposite direction. condition yourself not to be afraid. learn happiness. this is the task of living that is before each one of us.

is that you wake up to your own thoughts
and you go to sleep with your own dreams.

being productive in your mind and soul
is not so hard as it seems.

you function only as an essential human being;
only care what your heart is seeing.

the jobless one works only for his own spiritual wealth,
seeking not to impress but to develop himself.

thinking and acting upon individual wants
is the badge of dishonor that the unemployee flaunts.

for nobody likes such an overt display
of pure self-service; it would appear to betray

the foundations of society, which dictate with clarity
that an unproductive person is a freak,
a useless, disgusting hilarity.

getting too close to this placebo of a citizen is contagious,
for you may become one, too–
left to search for your voice, with no one to give it to you.

so the judged and the judges are left shaking their heads,
and nobody verbalizes what really needs to be said.

the glory of being unemployed is that you’re really working full-time
for the divinist company of all, the glory most prime.

and you’re doing it for free, but with benefits galore;
such as the ability to fall asleep exhausted and yet
wake up wanting more.

it’s the cushiest of jobs, and you never even had to apply for the position;
you just sprung from the womb–it was actually a nice transition.

now everyone is telling you get a real job, get to work, make a career.

and you think you’ve been doing just that
every hour
of every day
of every year.

We’re poets, and we don’t see the world the way other people do. We don’t always want to wake up in the morning and repeat the same motions over and over. We try to understand, and we question. We’re not innocent, but we don’t sell ourselves either. We speak, and against a good deal of adversity, say what’s on our minds. We appreciate what makes Wall Street work just as much as we love what rocks the soul of Harlem. We search for beauty because it’s what makes us feel alive, what makes us want to dance, want to offer ourselves to the glory of living.

10-19-07

Rainy day.

Taxis honking.

Wet spring rolls.

Dancing drip drop on the roof top.

Cantonese jabber.

Drip drip.

Written on Sunday, October 16, 2007

Today I went to Culture Fest 2007 in Battery Park. In the booth of the East Side Tenement Museum there was a woman dressed in costume, acting as an immigrant living in an early twentieth-century housing project. I spoke with her as my present self, and I realized I was communicating with someone who lived and worked alongside my ancestors.

“You probably knew my grandparents,” I said, “They were Italian and Polish.”
“Oh, did they speak Yiddish?”
“Well, my grandfather probably knew Yiddish, but I think he tried not to speak it in public, and he didn’t teach it to my dad.”

It turned out she was from Sephardic ancestry, and spoke Ladino. Our ancestors probably thought each other to be inherently backwards in their cultural differences. After all, Ashkenazi Jews and Sephardic Jews both believed themselves to be preserving the true Jewish tradition, although they were practicing different rituals.

Charlottesville, Virginia. The annoyingly cute - yet hip - college town where I learned to manage independence, decipher Foucault, write annotated bibliographies, and crush a keg of beer.

Everyone lives in ordered, separate houses and has neatly landscaped frontyard gardens, which are blooming with carnations and infested with mosquitos. And the cars. One by one, they line the streets, like plaque clogging an artery, with each little vehicle carrying one or possibly two people, who gaze mechanically at the line of traffic in front of them.

Welcome back to the States. Once I happily greeted my family, friends, dogs, guitars, and closet of clothes, I began to feel the shock. Small things caught my attention at first. Like the large cups of coffee that are so common for breakfast and even afternoon. In Argentina you won’t find a cup of coffee drip-brewed, and the espresso is served in tiny cups with delicate silver spoons and sugar cookies. Next I marveled over the bigger things that I had completely forgotten existed over these months. Dishwashers: what a genius idea! And microwaves. You don’t have to heat food over the stove; it’s incredible!

Thankfully I have avoided scenes of utter consumerism such as Wal-Mart, which might me too much for me to handle.

Now the things I miss about Argentina. The kioscos where I bought my daily newspaper - the Buenos Aires Herald. Being able to walk or take the bus or subway anywhere. Tree-lined streets all over the city. Children playing on the sidewalk. Parks full of people drinking mate and playing guitar on blankets. Steak. Wine. Tango. People on motorcycles with the wind blowing their hair back as they ride. Practicing yoga in Spanish. Playing the “guess what country I’m from” game. Speaking with “vos.” Did I mention wine?

thrashing

this way and that

sometimes toward mountains
other times between concrete jungles

with the Mediterranean in my heart, the Negev in my blood, and the Appalachians in my bones.

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You look on a map of the provincia of Salta, and the town of Iruya is like a tangent coming from the main route, a remote speck that just calls to you to break away from the beaten path and come visit it. So you board a huge bus resembling a tank in Humahuaca, one of the last towns in Argentina before the border with Bolivia, and brace yourself for a three-hour seat-gripping descent into a mountainous valley where lies the town of Iruya.

The ride seemed to take us into the mouth of the Earth, further and further into the jowls of jagged gorges like a pill going down the throat of a monster. When we finally arrived, the passengers actually applauded the driver for having navigated us through so many traverses and quick turns. Then we were greeted by small, bubble-eyed girls who took our hands and led us to our lodging. We climbed up the largest hill in the town over cobblestone paths. The room we stayed in was humble, but just sitting out on the stoop and drinking mate, enjoying the view, was enough to make us feel like we were in a palace of natural beauty. Read the rest of this entry »

It´s surreal — and I´m not sure I like it — to be using the internet in the middle of the Quebrada de Humahuaca in the dramatic desert landscapes of the Argentine altiplano, just a two-hours drive from the border with Bolivia.

But that´s the reality of South America in the 21st century. There are few areas that are truly untouched by technology, capitalism, and materialism, the legacies of colonialism and modernization.

Fortunately, computers and paper money don´t change the basic facts of life here in this remote corner of Argentina, cornered between Paraguay, Bolivia, and the Chilean desert. The millions of stars still shine brightly in the sky over vast plains of cacti and corn, mountains the colors of rusty coins and sunsets, and tiny pueblitos where families live under flat mud roofs in adobe houses. Read the rest of this entry »