I want to talk more about the Long Trip, but I have some incidentals, encountered recently and crying out for reflection. In no order:
A Great Quote
I saw one of those great quotes on Facebook; someone had written "Be with the person who makes you happy," only they had crossed out the "with" so it was the rather brilliant "Be (with) the person who makes you happy."
That idea has come to mind a lot quite recently: there are people who basically like themselves, and people who basically don't. Oh sure, we can all of us stand a little improvement in at least some areas, and most of us probably don't give ourselves enough credit, but you can fairly accurately divide humanity into these two groups, and it's a meaningful distinction. Those two groups - those who either love themselves fully and/or understand it is the thing to do and actively work on it, and those who do not love themselves and/or don't know it should be the focus of what they do - act and experience live very differently. It's as if there's an on/off switch at the bottom of every human being, and it's either switched on (love) or switched off (lack or love, a.k.a. fear), and that switch informs the rest of their lives. The truth is that love is indeed what it's all about, but not in the way its been sold in the fairy tales and news stories. It's NOT about being loved by someone; it's about loving, and trying to be lovable.
Think of families, a good example: sure, we know you have to *love* certain family members, because love is a behavior, but you don't have to *like* them, because like is a preference, and there's no accounting for taste. We get to like who and what we want, no matter how obligated we are. But we are obligated to try and love everyone. They say that's what families are for: learning to get along with people you did NOT chose to be close to.
So be a person who makes you happy, and if you can't do that, work on it. It's a good thing.
The Election: Ridiculous and Stressful
I didn't really mention the recent Presidential election - it was also a local and statewide election, lots of ballot measures, lots of props - because everyone was SO tired of it, so exhausted by it, by the stupid mud-slinging and the record-breaking media buys - the most expensive election ever, extravagant as if James Cameron had directed it (only we'd have gotten more entertainment if he had). It became something to be ignored if at all possible, which is sad, really. Elections could be celebrated, could they not? Could it not be a time of great national debate, stimulating and invigorating, like a good brainstorming session with smart and funny people? Instead, it's bile and bitterness, and anger, and people not getting what they want.
In terms of results, this one was not bad. I was immensely relieved that Romney did NOT win; that was the chief emotion, because I certainly didn't feel happy that Obama won. As someone on KPFA said, his re-election was crucial for continuing the work, but it was not going to be a catalyst or anything like that. Basically, Obama can at least be pushed to do (what is in my opinion) the right thing, but he won't do so spontaneously, or on his own. Certainly, there's nothing but shit that needs attention: from the looming so-called "fiscal cliff" (does it always have to be so dramatic, in the mainstream American news?) to global warming (Hurricane Sandy - Cassandra, actually - which was a distressing harbinger of things to come, many of us were reminded, I think, and voted Democrat because of that) to the prison-military-industrial for-profit complex to terrorism in Palestine to oil spills off the coast to Citizens United to the EU financial meltdowns in Greece and Spain, it's all a fucking mess out there.
Do not go out there, you think. Just try and pretend it's not as bad as it seems, and it isn't really. I believe that we each create our own reality, independently and also collectively, and Americans have an incredible sense of entitlement, so things seem to not get Armageddon bad. But they could. The planet lives under the shadow of places where things did get really bad - Nazi Germany, Pol Pot, Stalin, etc - and no one wants that. Only, the problem is, some people DO, though they hide it in smoke and mirrors, and I was glad those people did not get elected, because they were running, alright. Evil people are often up for election - and sometimes they win.
This time, they didn't - we're just stuck with our normal, expected hideously corrupt and dysfunctional government, which we can work with. PLUS a bunch of good things won: voters legalized both gay marriage and marijuana (not decriminalize, but outright balls out legal). Three strikes in California was lessened - although the death penalty repeal was rejected. Really people? We must execute fellow humans? As they say in the West Wing, we can't agree on banning rocket launchers? Hope dissolves in the face of such brutality. But an openly gay woman was elected to the Senate, and the House Democratic Caucus is no longer a majority of white men. So there IS hope. A few good props and ballots passed - a few places, states and cites, including San Francisco, passed resolutions that basically said corporations are NOT people, and Citizens United is bunk. Amen, I say - thank God.
It was a real treat to be away from America the month before such a frenzied election; it was so ignorable. I was planning on voting for (viable progressive candidate actress) Rosanne Barr the whole time. But the actual day was stressful - Romney was doing well at first, and friends' posts on social media were a buzz with concern and stress. Uh oh, we thought. It can't be so. (If you are on the other side of things, just sub Obama fear for Romney fear.) It won't be so, right? RIGHT? And I was all upset, and then it turned around, and even though there was widespread cheating going on, it started to turn out ok, and then it was over, and Romney gave a concession speech. After 2000, no one can ever take the concession speech for granted, and so it was a relief to have it be over in one day, rather than tense months, battling it out in a court system I don't trust.
It wasn't until the next morning that my whole body, my whole being, breathed a sign of great relief that I realized how much the election HAD been keeping me on edge, how much the looming uncertainty was wearing on me. It wasn't just me - social media reactions told me again that I was not alone in feeling this way. We all went: whew. Thank God THAT'S over. For a couple years, anyway...
Segue Back Into the Trip
Today, I got home and there was a package for me, from the gentlemen who was my roommate on the most recent trip, the Mediterranean cruise. My party consisted of my dad and his wife, and then my father's friends and their companions (wives and ex-wives). One friend was NOT travelling with his companion (a "roommate"), and neither was I, so we roomed together and it ended up that we sort became a default couple. We sat next to each other on the shore excursion bus, or were next to each other in photos and safety drills and the like. This man, B, is actually a gentlemen, old-fashioned, polite, well-spoken and witty, gracious in his manners and so on. He was a great traveling companion - we went to Egypt together (though he roomed with someone else that time as did I).
In Egypt, on the first day, I heard his camera click, and I said, wow, that sounds like a real camera, a film camera. And it turned out, it was. B had his rolls of film and his point-and-shoot - he's not a photographer or anything, just a Luddite - and when his film roll was over, he came and held it close to my ear so I could hear the ancient sound of a film camera auto-rewinding. Kids today will not know this sound. On this recent cruise, B once again appeared with 8 or 10 rolls of film and his manual thing. What was today's package? Why, he kindly mailed me a copy of all the prints - a huge stack of them.
What a pleasure! I never review a trip by looking at pictures I am HOLDING, by paging through them, holding them up to my eye, to the light, placing one behind the other as I went through the stack, handing them over to friends to view. So tactile, so immediate, so real - it was delightful. It was like a lost pleasure, something I'd forgotten about - how wonderful it is to look at travel prints. I must take the time to order them. The color was a bit old-fashioned, a little faded, as if they came from the 80's. It's not the same as digital prints; the look is different. I might venture his camera could easily be 30 years old, and it still works. I sound like some New York intellectual, but they had a textural quality, a tactility and immediacy that was quite compelling. It made me see my memories in a new way, whereas digital seems to just record.
Well, I don't have a conclusion except, if you have an old film camera, give it a whirl.
A Great Quote
I saw one of those great quotes on Facebook; someone had written "Be with the person who makes you happy," only they had crossed out the "
That idea has come to mind a lot quite recently: there are people who basically like themselves, and people who basically don't. Oh sure, we can all of us stand a little improvement in at least some areas, and most of us probably don't give ourselves enough credit, but you can fairly accurately divide humanity into these two groups, and it's a meaningful distinction. Those two groups - those who either love themselves fully and/or understand it is the thing to do and actively work on it, and those who do not love themselves and/or don't know it should be the focus of what they do - act and experience live very differently. It's as if there's an on/off switch at the bottom of every human being, and it's either switched on (love) or switched off (lack or love, a.k.a. fear), and that switch informs the rest of their lives. The truth is that love is indeed what it's all about, but not in the way its been sold in the fairy tales and news stories. It's NOT about being loved by someone; it's about loving, and trying to be lovable.
Think of families, a good example: sure, we know you have to *love* certain family members, because love is a behavior, but you don't have to *like* them, because like is a preference, and there's no accounting for taste. We get to like who and what we want, no matter how obligated we are. But we are obligated to try and love everyone. They say that's what families are for: learning to get along with people you did NOT chose to be close to.
So be a person who makes you happy, and if you can't do that, work on it. It's a good thing.
The Election: Ridiculous and Stressful
I didn't really mention the recent Presidential election - it was also a local and statewide election, lots of ballot measures, lots of props - because everyone was SO tired of it, so exhausted by it, by the stupid mud-slinging and the record-breaking media buys - the most expensive election ever, extravagant as if James Cameron had directed it (only we'd have gotten more entertainment if he had). It became something to be ignored if at all possible, which is sad, really. Elections could be celebrated, could they not? Could it not be a time of great national debate, stimulating and invigorating, like a good brainstorming session with smart and funny people? Instead, it's bile and bitterness, and anger, and people not getting what they want.
In terms of results, this one was not bad. I was immensely relieved that Romney did NOT win; that was the chief emotion, because I certainly didn't feel happy that Obama won. As someone on KPFA said, his re-election was crucial for continuing the work, but it was not going to be a catalyst or anything like that. Basically, Obama can at least be pushed to do (what is in my opinion) the right thing, but he won't do so spontaneously, or on his own. Certainly, there's nothing but shit that needs attention: from the looming so-called "fiscal cliff" (does it always have to be so dramatic, in the mainstream American news?) to global warming (Hurricane Sandy - Cassandra, actually - which was a distressing harbinger of things to come, many of us were reminded, I think, and voted Democrat because of that) to the prison-military-industrial for-profit complex to terrorism in Palestine to oil spills off the coast to Citizens United to the EU financial meltdowns in Greece and Spain, it's all a fucking mess out there.
Do not go out there, you think. Just try and pretend it's not as bad as it seems, and it isn't really. I believe that we each create our own reality, independently and also collectively, and Americans have an incredible sense of entitlement, so things seem to not get Armageddon bad. But they could. The planet lives under the shadow of places where things did get really bad - Nazi Germany, Pol Pot, Stalin, etc - and no one wants that. Only, the problem is, some people DO, though they hide it in smoke and mirrors, and I was glad those people did not get elected, because they were running, alright. Evil people are often up for election - and sometimes they win.
This time, they didn't - we're just stuck with our normal, expected hideously corrupt and dysfunctional government, which we can work with. PLUS a bunch of good things won: voters legalized both gay marriage and marijuana (not decriminalize, but outright balls out legal). Three strikes in California was lessened - although the death penalty repeal was rejected. Really people? We must execute fellow humans? As they say in the West Wing, we can't agree on banning rocket launchers? Hope dissolves in the face of such brutality. But an openly gay woman was elected to the Senate, and the House Democratic Caucus is no longer a majority of white men. So there IS hope. A few good props and ballots passed - a few places, states and cites, including San Francisco, passed resolutions that basically said corporations are NOT people, and Citizens United is bunk. Amen, I say - thank God.
It was a real treat to be away from America the month before such a frenzied election; it was so ignorable. I was planning on voting for (viable progressive candidate actress) Rosanne Barr the whole time. But the actual day was stressful - Romney was doing well at first, and friends' posts on social media were a buzz with concern and stress. Uh oh, we thought. It can't be so. (If you are on the other side of things, just sub Obama fear for Romney fear.) It won't be so, right? RIGHT? And I was all upset, and then it turned around, and even though there was widespread cheating going on, it started to turn out ok, and then it was over, and Romney gave a concession speech. After 2000, no one can ever take the concession speech for granted, and so it was a relief to have it be over in one day, rather than tense months, battling it out in a court system I don't trust.
It wasn't until the next morning that my whole body, my whole being, breathed a sign of great relief that I realized how much the election HAD been keeping me on edge, how much the looming uncertainty was wearing on me. It wasn't just me - social media reactions told me again that I was not alone in feeling this way. We all went: whew. Thank God THAT'S over. For a couple years, anyway...
Segue Back Into the Trip
Today, I got home and there was a package for me, from the gentlemen who was my roommate on the most recent trip, the Mediterranean cruise. My party consisted of my dad and his wife, and then my father's friends and their companions (wives and ex-wives). One friend was NOT travelling with his companion (a "roommate"), and neither was I, so we roomed together and it ended up that we sort became a default couple. We sat next to each other on the shore excursion bus, or were next to each other in photos and safety drills and the like. This man, B, is actually a gentlemen, old-fashioned, polite, well-spoken and witty, gracious in his manners and so on. He was a great traveling companion - we went to Egypt together (though he roomed with someone else that time as did I).
In Egypt, on the first day, I heard his camera click, and I said, wow, that sounds like a real camera, a film camera. And it turned out, it was. B had his rolls of film and his point-and-shoot - he's not a photographer or anything, just a Luddite - and when his film roll was over, he came and held it close to my ear so I could hear the ancient sound of a film camera auto-rewinding. Kids today will not know this sound. On this recent cruise, B once again appeared with 8 or 10 rolls of film and his manual thing. What was today's package? Why, he kindly mailed me a copy of all the prints - a huge stack of them.
What a pleasure! I never review a trip by looking at pictures I am HOLDING, by paging through them, holding them up to my eye, to the light, placing one behind the other as I went through the stack, handing them over to friends to view. So tactile, so immediate, so real - it was delightful. It was like a lost pleasure, something I'd forgotten about - how wonderful it is to look at travel prints. I must take the time to order them. The color was a bit old-fashioned, a little faded, as if they came from the 80's. It's not the same as digital prints; the look is different. I might venture his camera could easily be 30 years old, and it still works. I sound like some New York intellectual, but they had a textural quality, a tactility and immediacy that was quite compelling. It made me see my memories in a new way, whereas digital seems to just record.
Well, I don't have a conclusion except, if you have an old film camera, give it a whirl.
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