leslie spit german provence

brooklyn

random bits

untitled

cutest snuggle-tron

find the saucisse dog in the picture


















best smell ever

the dot from island view

londres feasts

the sell

I've become completely weary of power and influence. The effort and energy that goes into selling and influencing around the world is staggering. It all seems so pointless. The amount of complete bullshit that people spew in high-level meetings is incredible. Who are these people? Do they actually believe the irrelevant conclusions that they are expending so much energy skirting around, all in the name of diplomacy? It's not even the people who are in a position of status or power, it's the people who court them and buy into it all who are worse than the feeling of eating ice-cream+poutine on a boat . . . in stormy weather . . . when prone to sea-sickness . . . or something even worse than that.

The thought of having to be in this environment on a daily basis completely terrifies me. It would be a fate worse than daily listening to fingernails scratching down a blackboard. The courting is at its absolute worst when former colonial elites veil their wagging fingers in so-called cultural exchange missions to developing countries. It's not even the obscene amount of money that is spent on these missions that is nauseating, it's the pomp and contempt and, worst of all, the attempt to disguise it as a friendly exchange. It's f-ing unsolicited advice, wrapped in posh accents and stiff upper lips. It's so completely tiring.

B-desh

super-decorated rickshaws

lots of pink

water everywhere

unicef-sponsored project that teaches children 5+ how to swim. the number one cause of death in children: drowning

cutest kid eyes ever

Surprise on the computer: Google in Bangla = ওয়েব

At some time non-specific in the last 48 hours, I was sitting at the airport watching people: one of my favourite activities. There was something really nice about seeing so many people express their faith through their dress. In Doha, the smorgasbord of traditional cultural and faith-based dress ranged from saris, hijabs, long white tunics worn with a taqiyah (a small pill-box-like hat worn by Muslim men), to flowing Bedouin gowns with keffiyehs wrapped like turbans. The airport lounge was full of people, expressing part of their inner state of being through meaningful sartorial splendor.

Every once in a while, a few people (often of European origin) in civilian clothing would dot this gathering of people with a special awkwardness. Maybe there was so much grace in the way people of faith moved that the pair of British (not that many Americans travel in the middle east?) tourists just seemed uneasy in contrast. The men in Bedouin gowns seemed to carry faith-laden and open hearts in their humble yet venerable chests, while the men in dri-fit hiking shirts seemed slouchy and often crossed their arms across their hearts. I'm sure I was just projecting my state of mind, but it almost seemed like they did not have enough faith inside them to keep their chests full.

It's important to believe, in whatever it is that one believes in and to be allowed to express it. It just seems such a shame to ban expression of faith because we have become so afraid of believing in false gods that we've stopped believing altogether.

I recently came across the term "imaginative overlay", which Yann Martel used as a substitute for the word "spiritual". He notes that the word spiritual connotes religion so much these days that most rational and scientific minds avoid it. So, in order to communicate to people thoughts on his secular beliefs, (untainted by dogma, history, and institution of religions) he now uses the term imaginative overlay. I.e. someone's imaginative overlay for life may involve believing in daily doses of pineapple and love + the existence of a collective unconscious . . .

In a way I'm saddened by this. As a friend pointed out recently, imaginative overlay sounds rather sterile. I like the word spiritual. I feel that I have been so obsessed by words and their exact meaning and semantics that I've missed the point somehow. I really feel that my life has been spiritually vacuous over the past few years . . . reading too many non-fiction books, searching for definitions and meaning through the intellect, overvaluing knowledge, and looking for linear processes.

Enter Herman Hesse.

I read Demian and Siddhartha by Hesse years ago. Both books really just confused me. They were given to me as presents by two different people. One a stranger, the other a close friend at the time. Until I re-read them, I hardly remembered the content, and the point of the books seemed like a blurry fog to me. It was strange because the narrative and stories seemed so simple. I just didn't get it.

When I began to acknowledge the spiritual vacuum in me, I picked up Siddhartha haphazardly, mostly because of its title (I remember that little from the first reading). It was probably one of the only books I had on my bookshelf that had anything remotely to do with spirituality.

Siddhartha, when I read it again a month ago, transformed me. I cried because the story resonated with me so deeply. It was so simple as a narrative and as a story; yet, it was incredibly deep and rich beneath the surface. The underlying spirituality of the simple story was like a whole different world, or seeing the world through completely different eyes. It felt profound and amazing in a very personal way.

I don't know how Hesse does it, but he manages to convey something as non-intellectual as spirituality in a way that just makes sense. I feel like he wrote about me and my life, my questions, my journey. I also feel like I'm committing a crime against Hesse's talent with these completely insufficient and inadequate descriptions of his work. I'm just so excited to have scratched the surface of my very own personal spirituality. It's really nice to have an imaginative overlay for the world, or my world at least. There really is just so much more than what's on the surface . . . much juicier this way.

bear necessity

sailing on the 10 metre bn

Before our sailing trip the other day, Lalsky and I had a Walter Cronkite news flash . . . that all boats and ships are female. Even if a boat has a masculine name (which is probably rare?), it will always be referred to as "she" or "her". In many places, real or imagined, waterways are symbolic of the course of life, and boats are vessels that carry life. Even the shape of boats are kind of vaginal (see photo as case in point).

This was the first outing for Wilma, the sailboat, this year. So, we freed her from the overgrown weeds and scrubbed her clean, readying her for the first sail. The cleaning and scrubbing was satisfying in the way of labour as opposed to work (labour stemming from a sense of care and love, while work stemming more from a sense of duty and maybe obligation). She needed care; she was a vessel of life, after all.

The sailing itself was more technical than I expected, with James, our teacher, patiently enabling us. Lalsky was steering while I was working part of a sail, whose technical name will forever be lodged in my mind as spanakopita. The sail was green and its name meant nothing to me, so I formed a mnemonic link to the Greek pastry with green filling. James was of course the glue that held the entire enterprise together (i.e. prevent capsizing/drowning).

Next time we're going to learn a song that we can sing while scrubbing Wilma.

Today Lalu, James, Pel, and I spent the large part of the day and evening in my garden, luxuriating in this Arabic-style cushion fest. It was the most beautiful day and the sun shone through my favourite birch tree in dapples. (Pel is dappled, too. A dappled dachshund.)

We gorged ourselves on Camemzola (a hybrid of Camembert and Gorgonzola), fresh bakery bagels, and pepper jelly in the afternoon and feasted on Indian deliciousness in the evening. Arabic culture has got it right: there is nothing like lounging and eating.

The secret garden was a little piece of heaven today.

We've misunderstood growth. How did it happen? How did we end up misprojecting growth onto the material? Somehow we've built this collective engine to generate external growth, fueling it with ambition, desperately seeking recognition, and ultimately feeling empty and hungry in the end.

We need and thrive off growth -- internal growth, growth in wisdom, growth in the openness of hearts, in relationships. When and how did this get sidetracked to growing cars, economies, and perfectly sculpted lawns and bodies?

We know all this, of course. But, it doesn't matter because we need first to learn a collective lesson through experience. Somewhere someone wise said that knowledge will become wisdom only if we've emotionally experienced/understood (felt, tasted, sensed, etc.) it. This is probably why we learn so well from mistakes--they're only born in retrospect.

My friend Paul was telling me today about circular theories and how special they are. I love circular theories. They're never what they seem on the surface. Kelly, just like this tree!

It's amazing how long I can cry sometimes. I cannot understand how I don't completely dehydrate myself and shrivel into a prune. Sometimes I'm crying so hard it feels as though my heart is going to slowly slide up my throat and be squeezed out of my mouth. I hold my head in my hands and I just cannot stop crying. The knot in my throat, that starts the whole thing off, spreads through my chest to my gut, until my whole body is essentially curled up in a big fat squeezing feeling, shaking with the cough-like sobs. Squeezing all the tears and sobs that are in my entire being out like a citrus juicer. My face squishes into a grimace and tears flood down my cheeks, purging and spewing out the hurt. Afterwards, my heart feels like it weighs a million tons while I feel so relieved and exhausted at the same time. Being heartbroken sucks ass, but I feel f-ing alive.

David Sedaris kills me sometimes. He makes me laugh so hard about the most inappropriate and unfortunate things. That's talent if you can evoke in your reader feelings that rarely occur simultaneously. For example, completely giddy with mirth + feeling like an asshole. It's pretty special.

Semi-non sequitur. I was reading through some old entries and was reminded of a few nuggets from West Africa: Back then and there, there was no wrinkle-free fabric laced with Teflon. People starched and ironed their shirts to have them stay stiff and wrinkle-free.

There were no genetically modified crops (too expensive), so the fruits and vegetables were a quarter the size of those in our supermarkets. Supermarket fruits would have to go on taste steroids, though, to compete with the deliciousness of their mini Togolese cousins.

When something broke, you repaired it because buying a new one still cost a zillion times more.

Yet, you needed a beautiful dress no matter how poor you were to go to church on Sundays. Completely lovely + dogmatically f-ed.

"The best argument against democracy is a 5-minute conversation with the average voter." - W. Churchill

I went to see Ray Zahab and Geoff Green speak about their adventures in the Sahara and the Ant/arctic. It was incredible to hear Ray's story of running across the Sahara in 111 days and Geoff's expeditions to two other incredible deserts on the planet. Both of them talked about the changes they saw in these environments due to climate change, which was incredible.

The most interesting comment from the audience was that neither of the two presenters were "stereotypical" endurance runner/arctic explorer in their physical appearance; rather, they both looked like average, everyday people. In response, Ray especially, emphasized that his success in running across the desert was 90% mental and 10% in his head, believing that everyone has the potential to do what he did.

I have heard a friend speak of Antarctica as a place that hits your inner reset button. Geoff's stories definitely echoed the sentiment. He explained that when he brought people to this desert, something in their eyes changes and often their lives change thereafter. I'm totally inspired by these two seemingly "average" guys.

"To have the opportunity to use this life to leave this world a slightly better place than when you found it -- what could be more amazing?"

I have created over 23 tonnes of CO2 emissions in the past year in flights alone. This is a violently disappointing number. This number makes all my composting, walking to work, and buying locally- grown/organic foods seem like a drop in the ocean. I don't know how I feel about buying my way out of this, but I can't seem to find any other solution. Carbon-offset purchase may be the only way to go at this time.

Ok, Kelso. Someone somewhere said that pain in people is caused by a decided resistance or rational nonacceptance of their emotions. Specifically, when controllable, conscious efforts are pitted against uncontrollable, spontaneous feelings, people feel pain or discomfort. So, if one is an overly rational person, it may be possible that this conflict between rationality and emotion is experienced more often. (On a side note, the English language is insufficient sometimes . . . using "you", in a general sense, assaults and accuses the person you're speaking to and using "one" makes you sound like the Prince of Wales/the Queen . . . still, I had to use you even in this sentence. Argh.)

Does giving in or ceding to the uncontrollable make people happier? Or is that just a short term gain?