A bow is not just a bow anymore...or ever

In today's multicultural and dynamic world this should be an instance of pride and progress. http://bit.ly/V73P8
Not everyone thinks so. On a hard right political commentary site Obama's bow made a bitter taste on some very red tongues. Globalization is like the tectonic plates our earth's crust floats on. Plates collide, will collide and have collided. You know what has come of this? Mount Everest, the Marianas Trench and a feature I see as one of the most important and pivotal to human evolution, the transition of the island planet Pangaea to our modern world where vast land has led to the mixing of cultures.
My point? A bow isn't just a bow anymore and because of what we know, Mount Everest is not just a mountain. Both are complicated structures pregnant with meaning and ties to the past not to be judged in their simplicity but studied for their complex creation.

It's not going to be so bad...there are jobs out there

A friend just came over and having not talked in a while I listened while he explained his new job. It seemed like a job that was a dime a dozen back in the dot.com boom. I couldn’t believe the opportunity he had. It was a position one would be happy with three years ago and would be desperate for now. Seattle is so fruitful. Among the areas of the nation still nursing recession wounds, Seattle has already had its first breakthrough in Occupational Therapy. Amazon is up, startups are still starting up and not plunging down and the company I work for is thriving. Even my fiancé’s non-profit Biotech is expecting to expand up to 60% next year. Yes, it is a Biotech but that is part of our economy, which makes its impact known. The point is there is a general palpability of growth. This begets hope and hope begets the motivation to find the success in this city and associate myself with it.

"in this economy"

I'm seeing that 'hard times', as they must vary from person to person, aren't so hard. For one, I'm hearing about people changing careers and trying new things because they were no longer an asset to their former industry. New industries are lucky enough to absorb this passionate talent and are benefiting greatly. My friend got laid off from her banking job, went on unemployment and eventually found a job as a receptionist at an ear, nose and throat doctor's office. Her position gained substance as a result of cut staff and now she is much more than a receptionist. It even inspired her to start school again, taking pre-nursing classes. I'm at a particularly exciting point, nearing the end of my internship, a degree in hand and a solid resume with excellent references. Sounds good? Keep in mind, that isn't enough. I just don't have the years of experience it takes and so I am looking outside my area of expertise. At this point I could end up writing, doing PR, finding a place in marketing or even, sigh, being an admin. I'm applying for all in hopes of the right one coming out of the clouds. These aren't hard times if you're like me or my friend. They are exciting and full of possibilities. Money is almost non-existent and important life events are being pushed back; for me, buying a car and getting married to my fiance of nearly a year now and having a baby for my friend. This is the pang we receive in return of our promising future. There is a certain refreshment, however, in life not going as planned. The college:marriage:house:family cycle is being segmented with flexibility:more planning:more choices being inserted in their place. Not a bad trade off if you ask me.

what everyone else is talking about

My self -doubt, and likewise self-confidence, tends to oscillate with my blood sugar, however for once I feel like whatever worth I hold is an actual development built through five years of…really whatever those five years were made of. What is it about ‘this economy’ that distorts reality yet makes us all feel that the truth is finally out? Yes, people are being laid off. Yes, people are jobless yet educated. Yes, I actually know someone with a college degree who is now a discount store stock boy.
How is it that I, of all people, am actually getting some breaks? Apparently I was so disillusioned that I began to accrue the pessimistic mother-of-pearl a New Yorker carries. Regardless, here I am, not where I expected to be at 24 but moving towards the person I expected to be at 25. Well, I hoped to own a house by then but well….’this economy’ is getting in the way. Not in the way of my wedding though, not that I would let it, and not in the way of getting what I deserve, apparently. I suppose I’ve been acting as a martyr for the cause of higher education, seeing my high school friends speed past me, getting married, buying cars, houses, various recreational equipment all the while ‘reminding’ myself, like I ever forgot, that eventually I would be paid back for this. So I’m getting that pay; then why am I so uncomfortable with it? And what about everyone else? The newspapers asked this same question, and it was the baby-boomers who answered. When I see a sharp looking businessman old enough to be my father walk into a Starbucks and ask if they are hiring it hits my gut like a pink slip would. I have to ask myself though, why doesn’t he know to just go online, as that is always the response from chain branches. Maybe they aren’t the ‘Wall Street’ type I suspect they are. A well-cut suit can do wonders. I’ve yet to find that suit myself. I just can’t find a pencil skirt that works. Seriously though, is it harder because there are tech savvy kids being pumped out of University like they were from the womb of America after the war? Or is it easier because they have more years of experience than we have of life? Who’s really ahead? I don’t have a sense of that yet, nor do I have a sense of my whereabouts in all this.
Some of the things I am seeing on the way to my Starbucks to buy a three-dollar coffee disconnect me from the economy. I walk out guilty that I don’t have the cash to spare the guy hovering over the garbage can, but then the farther I walk away, the less I am confronted with that guilt. Truthfully, some days I do have the cash but I tell myself that I worked so hard to get where I am and that I am allowed to be selfish with the rewards. It doesn’t sound as dignified when I type it. I did want to stay connected and offer a hand out, providing what resources I can spare, which is time. I put an ad on Craigslist advertising resume help. I’ve seen a number of resumes over the past couple of months, via a discrete social experiment, and the reality is that some people don’t have a chance. The UW really has given me a leg up in that respect with their great Career Center. Lucky are those who just now have to create a resume, a signifier they have been employed for quite a while. Marketing one’s self is hard to embrace at first, almost like you are doing something wrong. We are taught not to boast and to be humble, but those who follow these codes of conduct must be the ones by the garbage cans. I find I work harder when I’m humble and so I’m glad I no longer have to boast because now I can get down to the business of being employed.

City life

Sleepless and aimless, I decided to take a midnight walk with intentions to tire my body and perk up my soul. As I walked, I began to think about what it meant to live in a metropolitan city such as Seattle. Now, I know that the city isn’t for everyone. Living in the city, among other inconveniences such as noise, pollution ect requires a certain level of tolerance towards suffering. New Yorkers are jaded because they have, arguably, seen it all. We too, as Seattleites, are known in the nation as residents of a major port city and with this brings not only generous attention from the media and wealthy residential status, but all the grief and strife many large cities attract. Living in a city means dealing with this daily, if not more often. Growing up in small town suburban America, I vaguely have any recollection of witnessing first hand any crime at all. I remember being told about homelessness and drugs like they were urban legends and nothing more. Horrible things that occur to horrible people and since we have money, we are good people. Even as a child I was a skeptic to my mother’s suburbanite myths. We know now, as adults, that crime and the like do not directly coincide with bad people nor are the two mutually exclusive. So, as I strolled down Broadway, meandering betwixt my meager upbringing and its paltry truths of life, city life and its troubles, literally, reached out to grab me. This is why I LOVE the city. Few people would consider being in such frequent contact with the homeless a plus on a neighborhoods status list, but me, I am different. These are the things that life is made up of. And if you care, it’s there. Not in a myth somewhere up north, but right there, at two in the morning, reaching out for nothing other than a spare buck or two to quell the pain of hunger. Nothing elicits more fear for some city dwellers than a midnight run in with homelessness, drugs, crime or any/all of the above. Of course I must belong in New York because it is not fear that dilutes the serenity of my evening stroll, it is empathy, it is grace, it is compassion.
We talk of the homeless and vagrants of the city as if they are the mountains, too far off to be tangible and too elusive for any immediacy. The Seattle Times editors, talented as they are, feature exclusives on them, feeding off of public interest and the tendency to be fascinated by what we can look down on and afraid of what we don’t know. I wonder if they have felt what I felt this night. I wonder if they were torn on weather or not to help up the old woman at the bus stop and buy her a hot meal or cross the street, curtailing any possible conflict and keeping safe my personal surroundings. Bus stop after bus stop, storefront after storefront, sleeping bag after sleeping bag. They line our streets at night and vanish during the waking hours, not unlike the rodents we treat as one in the same. They are old, young, sick, and healthy all sharing one thing with those who walk above them, beyond them and with no regards to their well-being, they are all human, just as we are. However relatable or not, they are separated by an invisible shield, making it inappropriate to simply reach out and help. They are, to us fortunate ones, a theory of grief, a mere depiction of suffering and loss. We read about them, hear about them and may see them as well but we do not embrace them. And so they become more and more what we want them to be, untouchables. Isolated from the rest, they live and we live too, but only feet from them, on the same streets they inhabit, we live and under the same rainy sky, they sleep. The enormity of homelessness has raised this concept, abstract to most, to a pandemic level. And they suffer silent and ashamed, hungry and callused as we try to ignore their presence, drop our dollar in their cup and pass on, as society has allowed us to do.
Unfortunately, contrary to the media, money isn’t everything. Not even for the homeless. Sure, with money they can possibly find housing and food, but can they ever begin to buy back the dignity they lost when living on the streets? Can they wash away the shame that stained their cheeks more resistant than tears? Can they ever resume normal public status after we have spit at them and tossed some change down in their gutter? More must be done to help these individuals regain progress. We must embrace them as part of this city, part of the beauty and part of the problem.

Poem in The Daily

Octopus Songs

The Conversation of Mankind

It cannot go without saying that in the last few decades (the PC enlightenment), a veritable influx of communication methods has stormed our lives. Text messaging, IM’ing, cell phones, web cams, chat rooms, voice chatting and two-waying are just some of the forms of communication we’ve added to our lives. What is unfortunate about this is that we almost have no choice whether or not we jump on the bandwagon. We absorb, translate and transmit information without even knowing it. Being “online” is no longer the über savvy way to stay in contact with the rest of the world; it is a necessity to thrive in our information based society.
We encounter various forms of communication almost constantly throughout our daily lives. Those who don’t are lucky and presumably less stressed out. We only have to go back in time about 150 years to land in a world where literacy was a privilege. Flash forward to today and if you can’t read, you can’t live. This overstatement (for emphasis of course) rings with truth for anyone living in the first world. Being constantly engaged in communication draws up some interesting questions. First off, where is all this communication? Communication is hidden in everything. It is in the usual suspects, like books, music, film and basically any kind of written text we encounter on a daily basis. But it can also be elsewhere, places not looked at as sources of messages, and therefore problematically, places of miscommunication. Fashion is one major influential source of communication especially in America. Where do trends come from? They aren’t just made up in Cosmopolitan think tanks; they almost directly react to the demand of the public. In a capitalist society as such we are, it is us; the consumers, that ask and receive what we want. Fashion cannot only speak for us, but the public as a whole. Of course this is just one of the forms of communication we partake in without consciousness. This leads us to judge others based on how they look, or rather, the message they are sending us with their appearance. But is this wrong? In some ways, we cannot help but absorb these implicit messages woven throughout our lives.
Prejudices of someone’s appearance, gender, race, culture, religion, sexual identity or ethnicity are all forms of communication. These are also often the messages that are hard to read. To avoid these
misrepresentations we can turn to other forms of communication that are more reliable. Written and spoken words are two that contain much more concreteness. Art is another way of reading someone’s message although often up to the viewer’s interpretation. We also send messages through facial expressions and body language. These forms are relied upon on much more than we think, however are either difficult to decipher or simply go unnoticed.
Mankind’s need to communicate effectively will always be a source of much debate. Forms of communication, the way we intake information and the way we attempt to transmit messages are controversies within the discourse of language. If you ever feel that you are being misunderstood or misread, think about the communicative techniques you are taking part in unconsciously. If we make an effort as humans to read wisely of our lives and speak about ourselves (in various ways) truthfully, then we can reach a better understanding of our culture and ourselves. Communication in its advanced forms is something uniquely humanistic, a source of great achievement as well as conflict. Let us all think twice about the communication in our lives and in our world to better the flow of conversation amongst us.