08:17L 01 July 2004

I can't believe summer is 1/3 over. Apologies to all for not blogging as regularly over the last few weeks. I hope to get back in the swing of it at least during the week. The previous few posts took a long time to get out. At one point I nearly abandoned finishing the story. I had thought about it several times and in some ways I had completely digested the idea. My writing feels like half of a discussion to me. If I've worked ideas over too much in my head it feels like I've already said all I can say about the matter at hand and I don't feel like repeating myself. Dunno if that makes sense, but I find my best writing is where my imagination is only slightly ahead of my typing.

I had an idea while walking the dog the other night that I wanted to expand upon. I'm frustrated because I can't really remember it completely. I think it was about guarding too much against rebelliousness and being too responsible at an early age leading to a trade off in later resentment. I also imagined a wise mentor saying to a younger me, "Don't confuse doing the right thing with greed" So much of our adolescent programming is "college prep" - do your best not for the health of your soul, but rather in order to get into a good college, so that you can get a good job and make money... Probably noble pursuits in some ways, and I have ideas about where/why they originate, but with an ill concieved motivation. Today I'm sucessful by many of those measurements but wish I had followed my less practical, risky dreams earlier. Today I have responsibilities that I won't turn my back on which prevent me from being as free to do so.



We have so/too much - can't even recognize a need to take a chance for more.

Last night I read a facinating forward to a book on Great Lakes maritime literature. There are some ideas I'll try to discuss in future blogs about the arrogance of man which this book touched. Today I'm thinking about beinig thankful. As I read about the risks that early sailors on the lakes took it became apparent that during the period shortly after the war of 1812 that the emerging commerce and resources of the great lakes offered a means for people to make a lot more money than they had access to before. Hence they took risks and had an average life span of 5-7 years once sailing. (and remember there were no icebreakers then so a year of sailing on the lakes was really less than 3 seasons/year) It seems so distant from any experience an American would take on today. Would even a poor american take a job where it was unlikely they'd live thru another decade in order to take care of their family, improve their way of life? Imagine seeing on the news that the factory job offered to the head of a homeless family would probably kill Dad in a few years. It's nearly incomprehensible to us. Imagine the dramatic improvement in your life that would be necessary for you to consider such a chance. Given all the blessings I enjoy we're talking millions of dollars before the risk/benefit makes sense. Clearly we have too much. How much could be taken away before we'd start to think in terms where life limited to 10 more years is a good trade for the survival or benefit of my wife, kids.... Today in Iraq an american civilian worker and probably a non-infantry soldier probably has a longer average lifespan than 10 years. Globally we're not so blessed. There are still places in the world where people strike this kind of balance and unfortuantely they may not be in a resource rich environment to take advantage of. I can't say I'm thankful, because our paradigm hardly allows us to understand how much we have. But I'm working on it.

At some point I should go off on the value I place on progress...I'm a non-practicing transcendentalist if that wasn't already obvious. And I'd love for a historian to comment on wealth's effect on societies. I love the part in Catch-22 where Art Garfunkle talks with the old man - "How long do you think your country will last?" "Forever, America is the most powerful country in the world..." "Egypt was destroyed, Greece was destroyed, Rome was destroyed...Forever is a long time" Or something generally along those lines...

stuck in my head - 3rd stone from the sun by Jimi Hendrix, from a boxed set I have.