I think I’m going to keep this blog. I should probably change the name and the thematic. I never thought I’d enjoy keeping a blog. I never liked keeping a journal; I found my thoughts mundane and I’d never feel compelled to keep it up. But that’s because I didn’t bother to explain complex things to myself. The blog is the perfect medium because I’m writing to be understood by others, even though I’m really just explaining things to myself. I therefore put way more effort into the act of writing about my experience. And no one has to read my self-indulgent musings. That’s the beauty of a blog I guess; it’s like writing a book except easier and not involving money. Though it’s weird that people I consider my closest friends couldn’t be bothered while the most random people on the internet find their way to my page. I don’t understand why people I don’t know would read my blog, but they often leave weird comments that I don’t approve.
I was always suspicious of blogs. I guess I’m a bit suspicious of things relating to the internet in general. I think the internet is a huge advance from the media of 20 years ago, depending on how you employ it and how you regulate your use of it. But it also feels like a distraction. And blogs seemed to me like a mode of virtual emotional promiscuity, a virtualization of human interaction that really serves to just alienate all of us. And I do think the internet has this effect. Things like Iphones seem to me pretty ridiculous, not because I don’t see their use but because the abundance of the information age seems to me completely contrary to the principles of meditation, mindfulness, and the art of being content absent stimulation. With the internet always around and especially when it’s in your pocket you never have to know how to entertain yourself, how to be with yourself and only with yourself.
I’m disturbed that depressions are depressions. In India, people might be miserable but not depressed. I mean not having enough money to live on sucks, and I am certainly privileged not to be subject to the plight of so many of the world’s people, even though my assets have a negative sign in front of them and no matter how much stuff I sold and no matter how much the insurance company might pay me off cause they stupidly insured a felon, I will not be debt free for a while. It’s weird that people are depressed when they can’t find a job, but when they have a job they hate their job. Is that observation insufficient to prove that a whole lot of people are unhappy just with being, with the very fact of their existence? That some people can’t find ways to be happy without the distraction of having to go to work; that they can’t find peace and passion and joy when life demands the least of them frightens me. That people, when stripped bare of stimulation, just don’t know what to do with themselves.
I’m going on a 10-day retreat with my girlfriend at the beginning of April to see what my mind does in isolation. I’m intimidated and I think it will be hard. But I’m probably also way too excited to do something that sounds to most people pretty much boring as hell. I hear from so many people, “oh man, that sounds intense. I could never spend that much time with my mind.” Yeah it will be intense, but if you can’t be with yourself, without internet community, without the Iphone, without going to a bar to kill your braincells, then who can you be with, and furthermore what is the point of living? Distraction until death? That kind of seems what the West is about. And some of those distractions are incredible and cultivated and spiritual, and I love us for what we have created, but what do we do when it all goes away? Suffer? Why? This is why Buddhism makes crystal clear sense to me.
I probably love being unemployed more than is good for me. But I’ve been spending my days reading, riding my sweet bike, rediscovering my aptitude and love of music on the piano and guitar, and, yes, the completely awesome instrument that is the sitar. I’ll be playing at an Indian cultural night at Reed this Friday (only took a week and a half to get asked to play somewhere). Another friend who studies sitar and I met up with an Indian engineer who is also a tabla player, and we are going to accompany the eating of delicious Indian food and the drinking of special lassi (I still love Reed though I know I should recede from the community). I really want to get into playing sitar more and now that I know someone else who’s into it and a real live Indian tablist, I might be in good shape to pursue it here in Portland. I’m also taking piano and guitar lessons, immersing myself in jazz and Rachmaninoff (if Dostoyevsky had composed he would sound like Rachmaninoff). Despite the seeming paucity of opportunity in the world at the moment and especially in Portland, which has one of the higher unemployment rates in the country, I sense, perhaps foolishly, the incredibly privileged position of having too many opportunities to choose from. I am hopeful about a job as a teaching assistant at the Portland French-American school where I would basically have to speak French to French kids and children of Francophilic Americans. I’m really excited about this possibility, and it seems like great work experience. But what I really want to do is get a degree in jazz guitar at PSU, which would take me 2 years and would ostensibly prepare me to be a real live gigging (and teaching) jazz musician, which sounds pretty sweet, even if music is in the end only a hobby at worst and a supplementary career at best. Or I could go get funded to go study what I love in an academic way. Or I could go to law school and try to change reality in a practical way. Or I could use my settlement money to live in the third world for literally years. The multiplicity of choice can for some people be just as paralyzing as having no choice. I feel like the privileged don’t take the risk to change their lives, because, well we could do a lot of things, couldn’t we?
But I am so happy to reconnect with Portland. Being away has allowed me to realize how enormously important my community of friends and loved ones is to me. I’m moving back into my old house, a beautiful old 1906 Victorian with a balcony overlooking Portland’s (well, generally lackluster) sunsets upon beautiful downtown and the west hills. I love that house; there was a lot of drama in it before and the people I lived with were not always ideal, but now my old bandmates live there, some of my best friends in Portland, and I am already taking advantage of the opportunity to be living with excellent musicians and friends.
Being deprived of so much as traveler makes me appreciate the smallest things, and this creates in me a burning sense of joy and gratitude. India teaches you not to expect anything, so when so many things go my way in this first world paradise we live in, it’s a constant novel surprise. I’m sure this will fade. It’s the good side of culture shock.
People ask me if it’s weird or difficult to be back. Usually I say that’s it is surprisingly not weird. I think it’s because there was no way I could ever really feel a part of Indian culture. Leaving India meant that all the constant stimulation, discomfort, strangeness, and insecurity just disappeared. I have taken refuge in the first world with the rest of my privileged sisters and brothers (wealth, like religion, is such an arbitrary thing being mostly based on geography). And because India was so different and because my life in Portland is so different and I deal with completely different feelings and priorities, I feel mostly disassociated from the things I felt while I was India. I do miss it though. People ask me what the first thing I wanted to eat when I landed in Paris was and I say, without skipping a beat, Indian food. Western food is boring and bland. For a couple of weeks, my body craved nothing but exotic spice and flavors, and there’s really no better place in the world to be a vegetarian.
But the biggest thing that bothered me while traveling was the deprivation of resources, the fact that I couldn’t, when I felt inspired, go play piano whenever I wanted to. Such resources, for me, are the basis of my creativity, and without that stability I’m just an observer. That’s exactly what I needed though. I was pretty prescient really. I think I knew that after 5 years of college, I’d need some distance before responding responsibly to the pressure of figuring out “what to do with my life.” And now I feel excited to be part of home, to build my life, and happy that Portland and more largely the Great Satan (America) is my home and I love it. We liberals do love to hate America, but as an American abroad I was able to find what I love about this country to defend it (mostly from Europeans). We have the best jazz, rock, classical music, whatever you want, literature, the Beats, the original hippies, theater, movies. We have some of the world smartest people, we are the center of Western contemporary art, music, academia, science, and technology. We are fucking awesome, and just cause some douchebag who wasn’t elected twice was tragically able to wreak havoc doesn’t negate our awesomeness. Every civilization has its Nero, but not every civilization eventually lets its ex-slaves rise to the top.
India has a special place in my heart. I probably will want to go back there sometime but only when I deserve it. Like when I’ve completed something as momentous as college and just need to chill out. Mostly I’m happy to be home. That’s all I’m trying to say. But if you, like, know of any jobs please call me.
