A new start...for an old habit

Its been a while....

2009-08-23T19:34:00.000-07:00

Wow this really has been a while.....

I honestly can not say that I even know where to begin and, to that end, this post will probably lack any sort of continuity. At the risk of sounding ridiculously cliche, in the time between the present and my last post, I have really been forced to re-evaluate myself in many ways. This "re-evaluation" process has allowed me to be more at peace with who I am and what I want from life and the people I surround myself with. I've learned that its not necessarily a terrible virtue to be self-contradicting. For the longest time I felt like I had to live on the tail end of extremes. Either I had to be an extremely social person and accept the loss of inner sanctity and deep meaning, or I had to close myself off and lose the comfort that comes from personal understanding that only close friends and relationships can provide. Nothing could be further from the truth and neither can provide the ever elusive "happiness" that we all seek.

Coming to the conclusion that people are walking contradictions wrapped up in bemusement and facade has opened up a whole new window for me. That last sentence makes me feel like I'm reverting back to my cynical nature but I'm really not. The point is that we are all so many different things at so many different times, that it becomes difficult to characterize anyone in any particular way. The more I have tried to do just that, the more disappointed I become. I guess at some point, I had to make the apt decision to just let people be people, including myself. I no longer feel like I have to be one thing at one time. Instead I can be a multitude of contradicting ideas at the same time. Its okay....

I've learned that my expectations don't always have to be met. If I stay too focused, I tend to lose sight of my surroundings. The 'eyes on the goal' mentality is great in some instances and terrible in others. Getting to the finish line but having lost all perspective in the process is not really a win. This has been hard for me to really grasp. My life has been so goal-oriented up until now........ do well in high school so I can get into a good college....do well in college so I can get a good job....get a good job so that im financially stable......but I wonder what I have lost in the process. I always have this lingering feeling that one day my fortunes could turn and I could end up where I started. As a seven or eight year old, getting food from foodshare and going to the donut and bagel stores to get the leftover food for free was almost a game. I'm sure some part of me knew I wasn't in the best position but I was ok with that....then. I always feel like I am one mistep, one mistake away from ending up back there at some point in the future....and the truth is I don't know if I could handle it now. So i move forward, continuing to set goals for myself, goals away from where I started, all the while missing the sights along the path.

WHEEEEEEEEW okay i feel better now :o)

Qualm about this election

2008-03-07T02:17:00.001-08:00

Let me start by saying how much the political junkie in me is loving this primary season so far. It feels like one of those mystery movies or some really warped episode of Law & Order. Just when you think you have the crime solved.... BAM... back to square one.

Anyway, my major issue with this primary season so far is with the Democratic Party and more specifically with Barack Obama and some of his supporters. I'll begin by saying that in the beginning i was a fledgling supporter of Hillary Clinton. As time wore on, and the issues I am about to discuss were raised, I became firmly planted in the Clinton camp.

Going to a liberal college, I find myself in the minority by not supporting Obama. I don't mind the position. What i do mind is the sort of attack that is being leveled against supporters of Hillary Clinton by many of Obama's supporters. I feel like Obama's campaign and many of his supporters throw out this subconscious guilt trip on any liberal democrat who refuses to support him. There is somehow this notion that because I am not supporting the first very viable African American candidate that I really dont care about racial equality. When in reality, it was the way that the Obama campaigned has attempted to play race as a trump card that turned me off from him in the first place.

For example, in New Hampshire when Clinton pulled out a surprise victory, the first thing the Obama campaign jumped to was the so called "Bradley Effect." For those of you unfamiliar with this terminology ( I admit I had to look it up to clarify the meaning), it refers to the campaign that Tom Bradley ran for the governorship of California back in 1982. At that time he was polling ahead of his opponent but then on election day he narrowly lost. Closer studies showed that many of the white people who overtly said they would support his candidacy did not in the voting booth. These people wanted to seem like they were open to an African-American candidate but when it came down to it, in the privacy of the voting booth, they really were not. Back to point, the day after her victory, the Obama campaign kept wrongly hurling this out there as an explanation for his loss. In reality, an upsurge of undecided women all went Clinton's way (possibly due to her tearful moment the day before), which gave her the narrow victory she pulled out.

Shortly after this happened, Clinton said this, "Dr. King's dream began to be realized when President Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act," Clinton said. "It took a president to get it done."
While Obama overtly feigned apathy at this comment, his campaign jumped all over it repeatedly implying that both the Clintons were racists. I shouldn't even have to defend this one. Bill Clinton.....racist?....really? There are a lot of things you can call Bill Clinton but I hardly think racist is one of them.
And lets be real here. Everyone knows the Clintons are both great politicians. Noone really argues this fact. They are calculating, and they will do what they need to in order to win. You have no argument from me on this fact. Tell me why then, would these intelligent, calculating, individuals throw out the race card at such a pivotal moment in the campaign. They had NOTHING to gain from it. Throwing out the race card would only upset African Americans and those lovely "limousine liberals" we have been hearing so much about. It makes no sense for them to try that approach in the Democratic Party of 2008. It might have worked in 1958, but not now. If I can figure this out so easily, I am fairly sure that Hillary Clinton can as well.

Lastly, I read this article http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/03/sorry_to_say_race_is_still_a_f.html
It personifies EVERYTHING I hate about some of these Obama supporters.
Case in point: "Moreover, exit polls in Ohio showed that fully 20 percent of primary voters acknowledged that "the race of the candidate" was "important" in deciding their vote. And Clinton won this group by a big margin -- 59 percent to 39 percent.
Clearly, this represents white prejudice against Obama because he is an African-American and not the racial solidarity that regularly wins him 90 percent of the African-American vote."

I am hardly on this end of this debate but I have to say that this offends me. I have read Cornel West and Dubois. I have taken many racial theory and racial politics classes. I know I can never comprehend what it is like to be a minority in this country. We still have a VERY far way to go before that issue is ever fully dealt with. That being said, that quote above definitely upsets me. Why is it that when white people vote for Clinton it is "racist," yet when NINETY PERCENT of African Americans vote for Obama it is just showing "racial solidarity?" That is the total personification of implied racism that I have been trying to convey. How often can you get 90% of any group to do ANYTHING? And you know, I really have no issue with the fact that 90% of African Americans voted for Obama. I understand why. What I do have a problem with, is this lovely little spin put on it that intends to make me feel guilty for not doing so.

I'm, tired of this continued implication that because I support Hillary, I'm supporting Hitler in a pantsuit or somehow voting against hope. Are experience and hope really mutually exclusive? Do you have to be a junior senator from Illinois to be hopeful?

Ok I'm done with my rant.

-Kyle

2008-01-15T01:28:00.000-08:00

Have to catch an early train
Gotta be to work at 9
If i had an airplane
I still couldnt make it on time
Cuz it takes me so long just to figure out what im gonna wear
Blame it on the train but the bus is already there

Its just another manic monday
Wish it was sunday
Thats my fun day
My I dont have to run day
Its just another manic monday.

- Yeah I feel you

Do we, as human beings, ever stop struggling with identity? At first, its a struggle to identify ourselves with something. Then it becomes a struggle to identify ourselves by what we don't identify ourselves with. As a kid, I used to think at some magic adult age I would begin to understand the complexities of humanity. I thought that understanding was something inherent to adults, but I am beginning to think I was wrong. I'm not sure why I always thought that by the time I turned 21, the mysteries of life would suddenly be revealed to me. I guess that is one of those big let downs that we have to come to terms with as we get older. I certainly didn't have any epiphany explaining to me why life is the way it is . In some ways, my experiences and the knowledge I have gained sinced I was a child has actually hindered the way in which I understand the world.
... strange

Random facts that startled me:
Infant mortality rate: United States ranked 42nd
Life Expectancy: 45th
GDP per capita: 10th
Overall Health: 72nd
Freedom of the Press: 44th
Literacy: 55th

What the hell happened?
When is this country going to get it together?

and so it goes

2007-12-09T04:15:00.001-08:00

There are techniques of the human mind whereby, in its dark deep, problems are examined, rejected or accepted. Such activities sometimes concern facets a man does not know he had. How often one goes to sleep troubled and full of pain, not knowing what causes the travail, and in the morning a whole new direction and clearness is there, maybe the result of the black reasoning.

-East of Eden

Randomness

2007-10-16T04:23:00.000-07:00

If you can figure out where these quotes are from then you can be my hero for the day...

If there's any kind of magic in this world, it must be in the attempt of understanding someone, sharing something. I know it's almost impossible to succeed, but who cares, really? the answer must be in the attempt.

I see the people that do the real work, and what's really sad is that the people that are the most giving, hardworking, and capable of making this world better, usually don't have the ego and ambition to be a leader. They don't see any interest in superficial rewards, they don't care if their name ever appear in the press. They actually enjoy the process of helping others.

I don't want to be one of those people who are getting divorced at 52 and falling down into tears, admitting they never really loved their spouse and they feel like their life has been sucked up into a vacuum cleaner. You know I want a great life. I want her to have a great life, she deserves that. But we're just living in the pretense of a marriage, responsibility, all these ideas of how people are supposed to live.

Baby you are going to miss that plane.
I know.

J: Okay, so you do believe in religion?
C: No, I don't think so.
J: What about fate?
C: [shakes her head] Mm-mmm.
J: God?
C: No. [laughing]
C: But at the same time I don't want to be one of those people who don't believe in anything magical.
J: So then, astrology.
C: Yes, of course! Now that makes total sense, right? You're a Capricorn, I'm a Sagittarius, that's why we get along so well!

A new chapter in an old book

2007-09-29T02:18:00.000-07:00

Before I begin let me make this random statement:
I love when people attempt to insult my intelligence and in the process make themselves look like uneducated morons. Case in point:
Random online person in the game I was playing: Wow your so stupid. You played that sooooo wrong.
Me: You're not your.
ROP: Shut up idiot.
Me: hmmmm no
ROP: My country created the English language. I know what I am doing.
Me: Really? I would assume you would be able to write it in a more proficient manner then.
ROP: THAN NOT THEN (in caps)
Me: No, then was correct. Than is for comparisons.
ROP: WRONG... HAHAHAHAH STUPID AMERICAN
Me: O ok... you got me there..... it has been fun...adios

Moving on....

Due to current events, I have been reading a lot of material about Burma, the military dictatorship in place there and Aung San Suu Kyi. If you have the time to read about the situation, I would suggest that you do so. Aside from being a morbidly fascinating story, I would be surprised if it really didnt touch you in some profound way. In case you don't have the time, Ill give a bit of a short overview here. Bear with me here if you aren't politically inclined, I promise to get to the point fairly quickly.

When Burma (Myanmar) gained independence in 1947 many thought it would be one of the most successful nations in Asia as it had a relatively large population, abundant natural resources and a high literacy rate. However, after decades of poor military governance, the country is in shambles and is incredibly isolated from the international community.

In 1988, a revolt of sorts took place under the leadership of Aung San Suu Kyi, a daughter of a general who helped Burma gain independence. The revolt was brutally suppressed by the military and Suu Kyi was placed under house arrest. In 1990 she won national elections (while under house arrest) but the government refused to accept the election results. She did not cower, however, she simply continued to resist in peaceful manner reminiscent of Gandhi.

For the past 20 years, this woman has risked everything for what some have labelled a hopeless cause. In the early 80s she Oxford educated and was happily married to a man in the UK. She could've remained in Britain and led a very comfortable life without anyone being the wiser but she refused to do so. Instead she boarded a plane to Burma in order to show her conviction and solidarity with the people of her homeland.

Years ago, her husband was lying on his death bed in the UK. The Burmese government offered her passage out of Burma with the implication that if she left, she could never return. She was absolutely torn. She hadn't seen her husband or sons in years but she knew that if she left, she would never be able to return and a symbol of hope and democracy for the Burmese people would be wiped off the face of the map. Therefore, in an amazingly selfless move she chose to stay under house arrest in Burma so she could remain with her people and continue to given them hope as they continued to be brutalized under a harsh dictatorship.

Although under house arrest, she does not complain. She continues to try and maintain at peace with herself with the hope that one day she will be able to exhibit this peace to the people of Burma. She once said, "It is not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it." Just reading about her story makes me reconsider what I stand for and what America as a country should stand for. It seems that we have managed to fight for the wrong and forget the right too many times. It would be easy to forget anything ever happened in Burma. It would be easy to forget the millions of people that have expressed their desire to live without the burden or persecution. It would be easy to work a 9-5 job and bank the money, all the while forgetting that there is another world out there. But how often is "what is easy" right?

I would like to end with a poem she wrote a while back:
In the Quiet Land, no one can tell
if there's someone who's listening
for secrets they can sell.
The informers are paid in the blood of the land
and no one dares speak what the tyrants won't stand.
In the quiet land of Burma,
no one laughs and no one thinks out loud.
In the quiet land of Burma,
you can hear it in the silence of the crowd
In the Quiet Land,
no one can say
when the soldiers are coming
to carry them away.
The Chinese want a road; the French want the oil;
the Thais take the timber; and SLORC takes the spoils...
In the Quiet Land....
In the Quiet Land, no one can hear
what is silenced by murder
and covered up with fear.
But, despite what is forced, freedom's a sound
that liars can't fake and no shouting can drown.

- Aung San Suu Kyi (In the Quiet Land)

The Globalized Age

2007-09-10T18:32:00.000-07:00

The recent debacles about American trade relations with China have made me kind of laugh at the real hypocrisy that the whole issue presents. After some isolated incidents regarding toys, pet food, toothpaste etc, there are now even some who are calling for the cessation of trade with China. My favorite critic of Sino-American relations by far is Lou Dobbs on CNN. He refuses to refer to China by just calling it "China." Instead, he makes a point to express that "Communist China" is poisoning average hard working Americans. The communist reference is obviously some ploy to try and engender feelings of resentment to China in America, one of the most capitalistic countries in the world. It seems some people would just love to turn this into Cold War II.
I do not wish to ameliorate the fact that companies in China did ship the U.S. some very tainted goods. However, I wonder if we can ever really expect anything more than the occasional tainted batch of toys. Isn't it the first rule of economics (and common sense) that you get what you pay for? There is no such thing as a free lunch. Let me recap a little bit of modern history here for a moment. During the mid 1970's China began to open up to foreign economic investment. By the 1990s, it was obvious that American companies had found a cheap manufcaturing home in parts of China. Today, there are thousands of sweatshops throughout China, most built by foreign capital, that pay workers ridiculously low wages and force them to work 12-14 hour days, 7 days a week. Is anyone really surprised that a person making a dollar a day and working 80-100 hours a week isnt the best quality control expert out there? American companies constantly pressure their manufacturing base in China to produce cheaper goods in order to be able to sell their product at a less expensive price on a Walmart shelf. Does this alleviate all blame from Chinese corporations and the Chinese government? No, of course not. But before everyone goes around pointing fingers and accusing "Communist China of trying to poison our kids," lets at least take a look at one of the main reasons we find ourselves in this predicament today. I'll give you one hint. "They hate us for our freedom."

-Kyle

To be considered...

2007-09-06T19:43:00.000-07:00

The Madness Of "King George"
Sept. 3, 2007(The Nation)
This column was written by Simon Prentis.
To those of us here in Britain, there is an Orwellian edge to the news that George Bush is invoking executive privilege to protect his policies from Congressional investigation. Just like that scene in "Animal Farm," when the newly-liberated animals start to believe that some are more equal than others, it sounds like the President of the United States has reverted to the divine right of kings. Wasn't that something you guys fought so hard to escape from? The phrase "I'm the decider" may have a certain folksy charm that Charles I would never have stooped to, but it's clearly coming from the same stable. And we should be just as suspicious of it now as we were then.I say "we," because even though you decided it was wiser to cut and run, risking all for a new life across the pond, those of us you left behind in the seventeenth century didn't like it any more than you did.Nobody does; it's humiliating to have to submit to someone who thinks he's unaccountable. We tried our hand at civil war, cut the head off our king and toughed it out for a while, but in the end our nerve failed us. And as we negotiated our shabby compromise with royalty, youmoved the project forward with a nation devoted for the first time to the cause of liberty - leaving us to watch with an older brother's bitter blend of scorn and envy as his younger sibling threatened to outdo him.As, of course, you eventually did. And little wonder. With the dispossessed of every land flocking to your shores in search of life on a level playing field, you were a beacon of hope for those on the run from tyranny and oppression. France even sent you the Statue of Liberty, a gift to mark your first centenary, and a fitting symbol of what you represented to ordinary people everywhere. Fueled by the power of this American Dream, you were then the beneficiary as the Old World fell apart over its ancient tribal rivalries. For a while, you shone as the best hope for stability and civilization in a world now facing anew kind of tyranny, the ideological impasse of the totalitarian state.But as the cold war ended, the mad math of the military buildup left you the de facto policeman of the world.What a chance you had then to use such awesome power for the good! To use that unique moment in history to reform the international institutions, make them truly democratic and bring the dream of world peace to fruition by consent! But the price of freedom, then as now, is vigilance; and somehow the lumbering giant of American democracy fell asleep at the wheel, tranquilized by its own success. The neocons -cheered on by our very own neocon-man, Tony Blair – were allowed to let that power go to their heads. And what they decided was not that the world was to be one but that it was theirs to be won - by force if necessary.Back here in Britain, when Bush came to shove and we were asked to sign up for the Iraq debacle, we turned out for the biggest demonstration in British history, with more than a million people choking the streets of London in protest against such lunacy. I know - I was there with my family, and old friends and new from all walks of life. We were there because we knew there was more at stake than the same old corruption of power. We were there to protest the assertion of executive privilege on the grand scale - the sidelining of the UN, the flouting of international law and the principle of the pre-emptive strike.Of course, it didn't do much good. As an old Empire on our uppers, we can only ever hope to play Greece to your Rome, with our leaders clinging lamely to your coattails. But this is not about empire anymore. It's about the future of our children, the future of the human project, the future of our planet. Because unlike the days of the Founding Fathers, there's nowhere else for us to go - the ground hasrun out under our feet. Whether we like it or not, we're all in this together now. The only place left to make a fresh start is where we already are.So as we watch your President elevate an excuse for evasion into a point of principle, we can't help wondering whether history has come full circle. Does this mean the world's most successful political experiment is destined to fail after all? Will the land of life, liberty and happiness succumb to presidential prerogative? For the sake of the rest of us, for the sake of the world, we can only hope you care enough to call your neo-King George to account, and say it ain't so."

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Apathy once again breeds ignorance. We realize where we are heading but choose to put on the blinders. I only hope that someone or something can force us to become an accountable nation again.

-Kyle

And so it begins

2007-09-05T18:17:00.000-07:00

It was the best of times
It was the worst of times
It was the age of wisdom
It was the age of foolishness
It was the epoch of belief
It was the epoch of incredulity
It was the season of light
It was the season of darkness
It was the spring of hope
It was the winter of despair
We had everything before us
We had nothing before us
We were all going direct to heaven
We were all going direct the other way
In short , the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.
- Charles Dickens in A Tale of Two Cities

I find that beginning to be a fitting start to a story about perceptions of the world seen through the eyes of a few global citizens struggling to eek an existence out in a time when immediate surroundings seemed to change at such a rapid rate that even the most forward minded individuals barely kept up.
Here I am nearly two centuries later trying to do the exact same thing. In a world where I am constantly told that I must give definition to abstract thoughts, I have become lost trying to place events on some moralistic ladder of importance. I have continued this process over and over for quite a while with the hope that it will somehow lead to my eventual enlightenment and happiness but I know that it wont. Instead, here I am sitting in a chair trying to trace back the steps that I took that made me lose the essence of what it means to be truly human. The following is the conclusion that I have come to after a few hours of reflection.....and taco bell.

I hate to make rash generalizations about people as a whole so I am going to try and only speak of my own personal experience. I think the day that I started to forget who I was, was the day that I realized that something made me fundamentally different than most boys my age. I dont mean to turn this into some stereotypical rant about how being gay made me hate myself because I think that most people, espescially at that age, went through stages where they truly disliked themselves whether they were straight, gay, or anything in between. (hhaha and i guess i just made a generlization) That was the first time in my life when I can coherently remember lying to myself. I constantly told myself that I was going to change. I was going to become "normal." That is all a self doubting 12 or 13 year old boy really wants. I just wanted to be like everyone else. I failed to embrace the gift of variance that I had been given, but I dont fault myself for that. Lying to myself was the easy way out and I cant fault myself for taking it. Sadly, the proverbial addage about how lying is a slippery slope came quite true in my life. The more I told myself all those lies, the easier it became and of course the next logical step was lying to others. As the years passed, I became better and better at both types of lies. I even got to the point where I could almost convince myself I was happy living in this self concocted lie that was my life. I never could quite get myself over the edge though. In the back of mind, there was always that one part of me that wouldnt allow me to completely engulf myself within my world of fantasy. Eventually that part of me broke through and I ended up telling everyone about exactly what it was that made me different than them. I only did it for an entirely selfish reason, becuase I could no longer live with myself. However, even today I still find honesty to be challenging for me. I dont like to lie but I find myself doing it almost involuntarily at times. It is easy but it stops me from progressing any further.
Even to this day, I doubt myself when I walk into a restaurant with another guy. Do they think I'm gay? Do they think he is related to me? Do they think he is just a friend?

Do any of those fucking question even matter one slight bit?
No

And so today begins a new process for me. I have to push past this doubt that has been tethering me to this sinking ship of lies and deception. I am 22 years old, old enough to know that happiness cant be found in a sea of lies. I may have graduated college but today I return to the fundamental truths that I have been taught since I was 4.
1. Be yourself.
2. Be honest.
3. It doesnt matter what other people think, It only matters what you think.

Call me naive, but sometimes the best solutions are the simplest.

- Kyle