What Goes Here?

My summer is chaotic and I feel as if a whirlpool is tossing and rolling me through time so that I can’t see the last memory I had. I can’t find any time for anyone — even when I am with them, if that makes any sense — or any chores that need to be done at home. My room is on its way to becoming dilapidated and when I have any unassigned time, I need sleep. Since David is the only one who reads this, I want to especially apologize to you for never being able to “rock”.

Despite the irregular pattern my summer has followed, I can say that the list I created two blogs ago has pared down to a choice number of activities. Here is the progress I have made so far, at the expense of my general sense of sanity.

Done:

• weld (planning to weld a steel easel)
• CPR and First Aid
• silkscreen
• train
• kayak
• knot tying

To Do:

• wheels
• wood
• gun
• motorcycle/vespa
• mutual fund
• bricks
• song
• archery
• rock climb
• Watercolor/pastel/draw

Though it may seem that I have much more to do, I’ve also done many new and unexpected things:

• zipline
• luge
• gondola
• velodrome
• newborn
• won my very first raffle contest at company picnic

I also should add Batman at the Imax for my To Do, but it’s just so obvious.
This is a blog written at 2:32am. Welcome to my scatterbrain.

I hope people don’t read this.

Some time ago now I watched Ghengis Blues, a documentary following the experiences of a blind musician named Paul Pena. He was born with glaucoma, became a musical virtuoso, and played blues with some of the best. In the late 1980’s he heard Tuvan (an area North-West of Mongolia) throat-singing on a Russian radio station from his home in San Francisco and was so captivated by it that he studied it for 8 years — without knowing the sound’s origin — and taught himself how to create the strange vocal harmonies. By coincidence, in the early 1990’s, a group called Friends of Tuva had invited a famous musician from Tuva, Kongar-ol Ondar, to perform in the United States — particularly San Francisco. Paul Pena found out about this performance and impressed the guest musician by throat-singing near him after his performance. He was so impressed that Paul was invited to come to a triennial throat-singing contest in Tuva in 1995.

The movie captures Paul Pena and his friends’ trek to Tuva where an unlikely cultural exchange occurs. The whimsy of the story is enjoyable, but what I like most about this documentary is its profound message of brotherhood and friendship. Paul, a man isolated by his handicaps, finds more community in a place that is ostensibly a lost corner of the world than in America, his “home”, and so, too, a remote area finds its culture and land being admired by people from a country that typically garners praise (or at least attention).

I reckon this documentary affected me more than usual because it caught me at the right time. I was reading newspaper headlines on the Ave, and there was a story in the New York Times about manhole covers being manufactured in India by a labor force of shirtless, shoeless Indians who were at risk of being severely injured or burned around the scorching steel. Also, a week or so before I read that headline, when I was at work, I had to assemble a steel-pressed pedal-car in the design of a nostalgic Cadillac from the 1950s. Besides the fact that it was a piece of junk, I read what was written on the side of the box it came in when I went to go recycle it: “AMERICAN VINTAGE… (barcode and numbers)… MADE IN VIETNAM”.

Above all, after watching Ghengis Blues, I ended up watching a Frontline on Wal-Mart that I had seen a while ago (probably in 2004 when it first aired). (You can see it for free on the Frontline website if you’re interested.) The proximity in time between watching these documentaries made me more sensitive to the underlying beliefs of a corporation like Wal-Mart to expand and expand and expand.

I guess what I feel most after all this is, expand your heart, not your business. Watch Ghengis Blues, and you’ll see where I’m coming from.

On my way home from the university yesterday, I squeezed myself onto a crowded bus filled with good people and drunken, elated Seahawk fans who had just seen Arizona lose — badly. There were no open seats, so I was standing at the front of the bus, talking with a good person, buffered by the other good people from the drawling fans in the back who were hectoring one lone Cardinal.

After a long altercation wisping with cusses that floated into many children’s ears, the Cardinal, too drunk to consider consequences or to contemplate the practical importance of his loyalty to a football team, decided to hit the drunk girlfriend of one also drunk Seahawks fan hard enough to make her collapse as the bus pulled into Lynnwood transit center. Cries from the surrounding good people were soaked with fear of an imminent fight and immediately caused the back doors to fold open and explode with more cussing, shoving, and blockades. Cell phones from every spectator formed a string of numbers: 911 911 911 911.

In the cold stretch of time spent waiting for the police in the frigid air outside of the bus, the steaming yells finally condensed, and any intoxicatedly informed restraint dissipated: The Cardinal flies out of the bus into the hands of two Seahawks, who quickly push him down to the concrete and slam his head into the sidewalk until he is even more disoriented. As the Cardinal still struggles, the two Seahawks pin him down to the sidewalk so that another hawk can swoop down and lunge his one fist into the man’s face five or six times — SMACK. With his head supported by the unyielding concrete, the sound of pounding flesh was chilling and left a residue of horror.

Supine, the Cardinal was as flat as the violence that happened so casually.

It has been a day of plenty, and I can’t help but wonder about freedom.

The American public hears a lot about freedom, but what do we really know about it? Is it a lofty ideal? Is is a practical way of life? Is it an excuse for bigoted or reckless behavior? Most importantly, is it possible?

I say it is possible and that it’s none of those things.

I learned about what free was when I didn’t have to pay for something at the store. Why not let freedom just be that? The state of things when they don’t need to be paid for. In that sense, I’ve enjoyed my freedom today.

I somehow got a free vacuum cleaner, a free set of cleats, a free twix bar, and a free blog. In the past couple days, I’ve eaten about 2 times more dinners than usual FOR FREE and, foremost, I got a scarf hand-knit by my mom for free. What a time. I like when the markets can decide my freedom, especially when my luck is so good.

Anyway, I’ve been lubed up with tea mixed with rum. I could barely write this blog, but Michelle expects me to keep it up. I’ll do my best. I’m leaving for whoever is reading this a picture of my free self with a free scarf.