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| xanga's layout kind of sucks. really hard. I can barely navigate the welcome page, let alone customize anything. I think i'm going to switch to blogger
http://prolixmagus.blogspot.com/
woot!
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| Amanda has been in Spain for 3 days. I'm curious, excited, and jealous at the same time...I want to go travel already! I'm searching my brain for ways to keep myself preoccupied the week I'm here alone...any ideas?
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| January 28th - Feb 7th : Hawaii
February 10th - July 2nd : Australia (Sydney)
July 3rd - july 13th : New Zealand
People are making travel blogs, or keeping personal journals, and it got me thinking: maybe I should keep an online record of my travels! And then I remembered this xanga...and, well, I guess we're back in business fellas.
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| my room is once again messy and lived in...!
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| 8/8/08 ... I'll be Chinese today, its lucky!
The fireworks were spectacular, the ceremony was creative, artistic, and innovative. However, I wish I could have enjoyed China's accomplishments without the subtext of war (thanks, Georgia, and you too, Russia) and China's recent "modernization" policies.
Greed, rapid industrialization, pollution, forced nationalism, propaganda...yup, its modernism.
Though I am also really positive...China's economy has "increased in growth by double digits every decade" and is progressing while keeping its history alive.
I liked the cultural aspects of the festival, the values, more than the actual extravagance.
But enough about that. The child who walked with Yao Ming, who survived the earthquake and instead of escaping, returned to save two of his classmates because he "was the hall monitor, a leader, I was responsible", effected me more the ceremony.
He felt a part of them, part of a community.
We value individualism a bit too much these days, in American society. Everyone is struggling to be recognized as unique, but what they don't realize is that they want to discover themselves through designer jeans, or bumper stickers produced by factories, or kitchy t-shirts from obscure websites. They don't look within themselves...but how?
I want to feel part of a greater community. Not a nation: this is a place where you are inserted, molded, and where you function. It is where you are productive, and nations are present: they are ruled, can change. Nations are houses: a home, not where the heart is. A place where people can gather, will protect if it is under attack, will bond together for celebration and love. Nations have rules and customs.
But people, they have a history. People and a nation may share a history, but it isn't one and the same. People have familial bonds and structures.
Can a nation be a family? Do families become nations? Nations are groups of different families who bond together and compromise. A nation is a compromise on a grand scale, macro vs. micro.
Both function by different patterns.
I feel part of a family. I could say I am part of a nation. But am I part a universal history? I feel like you can learn to become part of a nation, a religion, but there are biological ties to family that cannot be broken.
The ceremonies in Beijing spoke to be because they were fitting: they were crafted for a modern time. I wish they spoke more overtly about certain issues, since the host nation is always in a position to speak, with almost the entire world watching, but their ceremonies were relevant: personal, yet universal.
I feel like Americans all too easily forget history, and the rituals of my religion are powerful, but they don't speak to the present time. Their basic values can stay the same, but they need to change their outward form, o have expansions. That is why there is the mishnah and talmud and shulchan aroch, new interpretations for the original, the Torah.
Americans change too much with no foundation. China clung to tradition without embracing change: but they are now.
Maybe I feel displaced because I am an American secular third genereation Polish-Russian Jew, whose grandparents survived the Holocaust, whose potential for history was obliterated (at least on one side): I guess children do pay for the sins, or victimization, of their forefathers (or antagonists of their forefathers). I am raised in a time completely different from that of my grandparents, and leaping beyond my parents understanding everyday.
I want to do tai-chi when I am older. I know I am a writer, I know I am a musician, I can make money that way...I can find myself that way...but I need physical activity, I need to love and I need to experience new things and NOT be a victim of fear, and most importantly, SELF DOUBT.
Now that I've found someone I can love, learned to love, pursued and won, I am left to contemplate myself in my free time...
I guess being with her would fill the emptiness I sometimes feel, the boredom of 'what to do'...I could just be with her, my annabelle, and be happy. Then I could feel a NEED to write, to create, instead of doing it to disract myself.
p.s.
to end on a more excited note:
Newport Jazz Festival tomorrow!
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