In Reflection

Some times life throws you for a spin, and sometimes you throw yourself and your life for a spin, and sometimes, life just happens and its spinning. A year ago today, a time I think about a lot when I'm going through changes in my life. And hardly ever have I been in the same place, doing the same thing. A year ago today, I think I was in Phuket Thailand, for the vegetarian festival. Or in Charoensin, getting ready for Phuket, or in Bangkok, at meetings. I'd really have to check my journal to remember what exactly I was doing and where I was. A year before that, I was in Krabi Thailand... I think. It may have actually been a Buddhist holiday right before I left to go on either southern trip. It was hard to keep up with the holidays, because sometimes it seemed every full moon was a holiday. The equinoxes and the Solstices, those were for sure, as well as other auspicious occasions, New Years (both Thai and American), Christmas, etc. In either case, I was preparing to be in Thailand the next year. As in this year last year. Its actually been quite sometime since I've actually even had a plan for that long. I mean, I have an overarching and embracing plan for my life that I try to follow, but for some reason, the year to year plans are always shifting and changing. And Peace Corps had been such a major plan of mine for so long, now that I'm done and that's in the past, I wonder what next? And so what of it? So what of the two years I spent there? So what of the last 12 years that I've been following my heart and this ten year time frame of goals and things I'd like to accomplish. I mean I've done them all. Mostly. I wrote a book. It wasn't about Pennsylvania, or my time in Peace Corps, but its a book none the less. Just not polished...

I did the Peace Corps, and two years of AmeriCorps before that. I met and worked with Mark Lakeman and the other people of City Repair. I (mostly) finished a graduate degree in Community Development. And I'm at a place and point where I'm asking myself, but what of it? That goal, that image, that vision I had of my life almost ten years ago, for today, is that still what I want?

I remember it, a vision I've had for over ten years now, closer to 14 or 15, this youth and community development center. An idea and concept I developed after growing up hating where I was living. Something I saw in my head that could change things and make people happier and nicer to each other. I remember seeing it, sitting on my parents back porch that depending on the weather and season, you can see downtown Erie, the GE plant and the Peninsula. Its probably actually my very favorite vista in the world, maybe because its home and maybe because I love the dynamics between the industry and the environment. The image I always had was of an old building, rehabbed for a place for youth to go, and just hang out. That wasn't about consumerism, or a place the cops would chase you out from. Something that would create space for creative endeavors. Whether they be visual, audial or what have you. Over the years, the image has shifted and changed to include urban agriculture and sustainable design into the framework of the developmental theory.

And as I sit here, a year later, and a year ago, is that image and vision still in my mind? Is it still what guides my choices in life? I was wondering that a year ago today. I know that. Where ever I was in Thailand, I was thinking the same thing. A year ago today, I didn't think I would be sitting her on this couch writing this today. A year ago today, I thought I would still be there, in Thailand, or Laos. No, its not that I couldn't figure out a way to do it, or I changed my mind and wanted to leave. Instead, that old image I had reared its head and made me go for it. Because usually, some how, in that vision I always saw someone beside me. Or in someway, doing it with me. And through living my life the way I have been for years now, following an image and a vision and goals for ten years, I met someone that I saw myself achieving that vision with. And suddenly, my pursuit of that vision, made me change my mind about my life in Southeast Asia. If I had stayed there, I would probably be pursuing a vision of a small-scale, tourism based natural fibers production program.

I had it planned out and laid out and I had the contacts in hand to make it happen. So what happened? I looked at the program plan, and local capacity and local leadership and realized there was no one there to take my place when I was gone. And it was not a project that would become self-sustaining within the final year I had to make it happen within the framework of Peace Corps. And that other, older vision would not leave me alone. And now I feel caught, or trapped between the two. Trapped, by that image of me as a vagabond, and that vision of a community center. And maybe, most of all, where is this center even going to be that I'm going to want to stay long enough to see it through? Is it actually meant for Thailand? Do I even want to work towards that any more?

And always, an older vision rises its head. A vision of me, with a talent and a skill I could take on the road. Something that would allow me to travel, and something I found meaning in. Photography, or writing. Nothing extravagant, just enough to allow me to keep moving, keep seeing new things. And experiencing life, and documenting and recording my impressions of it. I remember wanting to become someone so well versed in the art of travel, that that became my way of life. I even saw my nieces and nephews growing up with stories of their wandering aunt. And well, shit, they have at this point. Nine and ten, or nine and eight or something, and since then, I've lived in Pennsylvania, the West Coast, the South, the Pacific Northwest, the Midwest, the South, Thailand, the South. I'm all over, maybe not as internationally as I had seen myself, but after five months in Rome and nearly three years in Southeast Asia, I've at least got my feet wet.

Where does the instinct to roam come from? Is it running from something, or running towards something that always seems to vanish before you get there, and then, is over someplace else anyway....

I mean, America is kinda driving me crazy right now. What with the government shut down and all this bullshit about dismantling the government and blah, blah, blah. I mean, I'm to understand that providing health care for millions of poor people is a better reason to destroy the structure we have governed our country with for over 200 years than illegally invading other countries? I'm so tired of all the yelling and fighting and disagreeing. I'm not sure that America ever really understood democracy, or had the wear-withal to practice it in its pure form. What we have is a plutocracy masquerading as a democracy. For the most part, American are so blind as to where we're actually coming from, we have no road map to anywhere. We are stumbling around in the dark, and brining most of the rest of the world down with us. We somehow convinced the Thais that our form of fucked up democracy was a better way to govern their country rather than their traditional Buddhist Monarchy. And to what end? So we could use their land for strategic military bases. So they could pump out cars and other trinkets for us. So they could become part of the global economic society.

Do you stay at home and make the difference where you're from, or do you go to where you are happy, and make a difference with your happiness? What about the used computers being burned on beaches in India under the guise of “recycling”? What about abandoned ships off the shore of that same country, or in the bay in San Francisco for god's sake? What about the millions and millions of tons of toxic chemicals we pump into our environment, our home and ultimately, our own bodies? In what way is any of that right and being allowed to continue? Why are we not more concerned about cleaning up the messes we already made everywhere before we make more all over the place?

I remember three years ago today. I was in Florida. About to head back to Erie, to leave for Thailand. After being in New Orleans after going to Detroit and deciding the oil spill in the gulf was a more pressing issue than my plans for Peace Corps. I had declined an offer for Peace Corps Mexico working on sustainable use plans for community forests with natives. Instead, I fell in with some Communists, then found some other activists and decided I needed to pursue developing a Barefoot Doctors program for communities affected by the oil spill. Egos clashed and heads butted and I felt powerless. I again, saw that image of that vision, of a community center, one that would work to reestablish wetlands and improve the health of coastal Louisiana and New Orleans. I remember, three months later, leaving for Thailand, on a bus to New York City, feeling like crying because of all the factories and messed up environments we were passing. Vowing to my mother to come back and fight against all that. My mother that is in America and all over the world. My mother that I am part of and that is my home. For some reason, I feel her here the most. Feel her being raped and poisoned.

I remember making a similar vow, longer ago, at a younger age, about working to find a way to clean up garbage. Not just like litter, but a way to decompose and clean up landfills. Maybe that vow comes from when I was 11, or so. An age of mine that has been bothering me for a while. It was sometime around my first trip to Washington, D.C., and drawing a map of things I had seen, that had fascinated me. I'm not sure if that's when my political consciousness had began to develop, but it was around then.

I remember when my obsession with Peace started. It was when I was 17 or 18 and started smoking pot and heard Imagine high. I realized a long time ago, that true Peace can never be found until there is Peace in one's own heart. But then I learned about Kali, and Shiva and the destroyer Goddesses and realized that Peace is not a lack of turmoil, but a skillful maneuvering of that turmoil. And ultimately, that Peace is harder to achieve than a constant state of serenity. Because that is a removal from the true nature of things. There will always be birth and death, development and decay, but they will also always be part of the same thing.

And that's where my boat is today, trying to navigate the waves and eddies of turmoil, and that's where my boat was last year, going with the flow and following the current.