Since I am just chilling out here in Buenos Aires...I will write this time of thoughts instead of happenings. The happenings have been fairly simple; drinking wine, sleeping in, hanging out with my Argentine friends, reading in parks, laying in pools of sun and green grass and other things along these lines. These are some fotos that I took walking around today...Soon good old Bamfer and his lady will be here and we will be on the road again...but until then, I'm chillin'!!! So...
Happy New Year All!! I wanted to take a minute to say that. It is a time of year that alot of people like, for all sorts of reasons, and so to all those people, Feliz Año Nuevo!
It is funny how there is so much buildup to New Years Eve...so much hype. My good friend was saying this recently and I definately agree. She said that has always found New Years Eve to be a letdown because of all the bruhaha surrounding it. I, too, have found this. In years where I have had a job around this time of year, (that sounds funny doesn't it?!) I kindof secretely hope to get scheduled to work on New Years Eve. That way I have a sort of excuse for something that I 'have' to do, plus in the food service industry, working in the kitchen on NYE is often a lot crazier than going to a party. You have somewhere to be and fun people to be around. This is not to say that I don't love a good get-crazy-lit-and-dance-on-the-table type of party from time to time. I am not as young as I used to be, but I still dig a good hoedown from time to time...and some of the best ones in memory were on NYE or the nights before it. It is likely that this year will be a grand noche for me in that respect. I seem to be recuperating from the last bit of craziness just in time to be ready to rock and roll tomorrow night here in Buenos Aires...and I'm ready for it!
I begin the blog in this manner to say that I think that New Years Eve is great as a reason to party. A lot of folks seem to need a reason to party, which is a funny notion in and of itself, so if you need a reason, here's the biggest one. I can also see this night as a kind of ritual, a long-standing symbol of a fresh start. In lots of places in the world, this night is associated with acts of ritual; normally the ritual of purification. The idea is to cleanse oneself of the past year and begin anew with a fresh one. A clean slate, a fresh start. In some cultures they throw bread into moving water, to symbolize the getting rid of the old, and of nurturing the world around to prepare for the new life to come. In some cultures, all of the holy statues are taken to the water to be washed on the last day of the year. In some places, on the night before the new year begins, they have a ceremony in which the people make as much noise as possible, to please the gods, because the day after, the first day of the year, they are all completely silent as they pray and meditate on the coming time.
The Chinese believe that it is bad luck to go into a new year in debt and so they do everything possible to pay it off beforehand. All Chinese children and young people not yet married, are given red envelopes with small amounts of money in them, for luck in the year to come. In Italy, in certain places, people actually throw the things that they no longer want right out the window!! Anything on the street is up for grabs. In some places the tradition is to throw money into the house upon the first time entering it again in the new year. The money is left where it falls for 24 hours and then stored on a family alter or given to charity. In Peru, I recently learned that to eat twelve grapes at the stroke of midnight on NYE is said to bring good luck. And to slowly walk around the block of your house will bring good luck when travelling in the next year. Everywhere you go it seems that there is some prevailing superstition or belief regarding the change of the year. And I like these ideas. I think they are a way of preserving some of the ideas of our past. Am I supersticious? Less than some, and more than others. That is probably the best way to answer the question.
Here is the thing for me. In America, the sentiment related to NYE is that of flushing the shitty parts of the past down the toilet. It is a selective sort of celebration, one of hoping for more of the good things in the coming year, and praying for less of the bad things. Then we have these things that we call resolutions. I guess this is the thing that I really don't like. A resolution is meant to be a thing that we would aspire to change in our lives in the following year. Something like, eating less fatty food, or making more time for family. Now, these things in themselves are fine. Health and quality time are good things to want in life. But to me, in regarding my countrymen in the act of playing out these resolutions, I see the word defined more like this: Something that would be nice to have or do in my life, but not something that I really expect to happen, because I am not, in reality, willing to work that hard for it. The problem here is not the thing that is desired as much as the lack of will in the person exacting the change. This gets onto a topic that is close to my heart. That of taking charge of your own existence. Most people, it would seem, would like these changes to be made for them. They like the idea of being slimmer and more attractive, of having more time to pursue the things in life that they are missing, but they are not really willing to make these things happen in any real sense, because in truth, these things are often not accomplished in a single day. For this we see the very common and boring joke of the New Years Resolution.
Dummy 1: So Bob, ya gonna get yer fence built this year?
Dummy 2: Well Dick, I'd sure like to...I've got it on the list of resolutions.
Dummy 1: You do? Well that's great!!
Dummy 2: Yep, right beside bein´ nicer to my wife, and walkin´ at least one mile a day...
Dummy 1: Wait a minute there Bob, weren't those your resolutions last year?
Dummy 2: Yeah, but this year I really mean 'em!! Ha ha ha!!
Resolutions in our culture bother me in the same way that the very well marketed concept of "dreams" bother me. Dreaming, is not what I am talking about here. The act of dreaming is just fine, and of course, it is involuntary, so dream away you dreamers!! What I mean is the idea that is expressed in cliche statements like, "one day I'll realize my dreams!!" and "If you had one dream in life, what would it be?" There is a sort of naivaté in these questions that would seem to keep them in the realm of conversation of high school guidance counselors and teen-idol pop singers...but alas, somehow they have been converted into a major part of our national psyche! Escapism and media are no doubt at the heart of these dream misconceptions, but the idea is not to place blame on the exploiters of this market. Again it isn't the things being wished for that are the problem! It is that "dreams" and "resolutions" are words to point at things that we don't really expect to happen. Not because they aren't possible, but because it is easier to not really go after them. In our cultural sense, saying you have a dream is like saying that the thing is out of your reach. A dream, in any concious sense, is always out of our reach...you may be able to remember a dream you had, but you certainly can't hold it in your hand. There is a sort of wistfulness expressed in the discourse of 'achieving dreams' that is really childish and annoying. Anyone who has already achieved what would have been their dreams will agree with this sentiment. There are people and personality types that don't fidget around with the Disney-style dream wishes, they don't hold something off in the distance, they just go and get what they want. Henry Ford, Martin Luther King, Leonardo DiVinci, these guys weren't sulking around, winjing about all the stuff that didn't go right for them. People like them understand that instead of laying around 'dreaming', they can go out, work hard, and achieve the things that they want. You say something like "Well, I had a dream once, but I just wasn't ever able to realize it..." to one of these types of people and they'll wanna smack that silly little self-pitying tear right our of the corner of your eye. I know that this is a sensitive topic for many folks, and I will certainly get a lot of disagreement on this, but I'm sticking to it. Most Americans have their dreams dangling just beyond their reach for their whole lives. Like a hotdog on a pole that stretches out over their heads from their shirt-collars, and bounces tantalizingly just outside of the grasp of their hungry fingers...And then all the sudden they are older and they get all sad-faced about the things they could never have...in some Hollywood, I-know-there's-a-camera-hiding-in-those-bushes-filming-the-great-drama-of-my-life sense. I am a big proponent of people who say, "This is my goddamn life and I am going to go do the things that I think are important with it." Even when the things that they do seem silly to others, at least they did them!! I hear people saying, "Yeah, but not everyone has as much opportunity as others..." This is true in one sense, but total bullshit in another. I just left Bolivia, where the people are way beyond poor and there is hardly a drop of hot water to be found. Here, you can say, "People don't have the abilities or resources to achieve grand dreams." You can say that in Zimbabwae, Cambodia, Bangladesh, Guatamala City, Nigeria and The Dominican Republic. But you can't say it in America. In a few isolated cases, you can. Okay. But in the vast majority of cases...saying it is an excuse. Even the poorest of colleges students, supporting themself with Ramen Noodles and peanut butter and jellies, has infinitly more resources at their fingertips than these folks in the third world. And that is the problem for me. There are always excuses. Excuses are easy. Excuses are everywhere. People who are angered by this will probably find that this anger stems from the sting of the truth. It is always easier to find excuses for doing nothing than it is to actually go out and do something with your existence!! To actually get up and do the things that would be your dreams...except that you have already achieved them and so they are now happy memories instead of some possibly possible future shadow. And this is no statement about the size of ones goals...that is immaterial...this is not comparing oaks to elms...this is to say that, no matter what it is that you wish for, thinking about it like a real and actual part of your future, instead of the ghost of a possibility, is the first initial step to actually getting there.
I also understand that a lot of people really don't ever want to get those ultimate dreams...because then what would there be left. It reflects Ayn Rand's idea of Motion and Purpose, or the Eastern concepts of Potentiality, and the idea of moving towards something, being motivated. Those are all fine and good...but if this is your motive for not getting anywhere, then you can't complain about not having achieved the 'dreams'!!! I say all this, not to chastize or belittle anyone. I say this, because it is resolution time and these resolutions rub me the wrong way in America. These desires for change in our lives might be real, but the resolve to see them through is rarely truly there. I don't feel as though we need the dates of December 31st/January 1st to get a clean start. We have a clean start with every ring of the alarm clock, with every setting of the sun, with every blink of our eyelids...if we can only remind ourselves of it. In every day we can have resolutions, real ones, that we will actually set about to change...it is in this spirit that people like Mandela, Ghandi, the Dalai Lama have achieved such great things through peace in our violent world. And people with far less fame and notoriety too.
The idea of Potentiality relies on the individual, not on some 'dream fairy' that comes along and makes you thinner, less bald, less ignorant, less stuck, more inspired, more rich, less lonely, less bored, less abandoned, more accomplished and ultimatley, more happy. There is more than likely going to be some sweat involved. This year, my one resolution is to keep having the same resolutions that I always have and act on pretty much daily...this is a system that seems to work for me. The people of America will do whatever they like. And that is fine. Weepy weepy, 'I wish this' and 'I wish that' will certainly never go away. But it seems to me that if you want to be happy with your life and the things that you aspire to...the first and best way to feel like your failing at it, is to leave it up to someone or something else...
Alright, enough of that...now let's party!! Ja ja! In all honesty, I hope that everyone has an enjoyable night this New Years Eve, whether it's at a party or in your living room or at your job....and I hope that the ritual of the cleansing can be fruitful and enjoyable in one sense or another. I also wish you all a year of prosperity, full of things that inspire you and please you. Finally, I wish for us all, the ability to take the negative things that will inevitably come to us, and make them just as important in our own individual processes of self development...may we see them not as things to fall victims to, but as teachers and fellow travelers on this "long and strange trip" that we keep finding ourselves on...Happy Maldito New Year!!!
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