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:: 11.30.2003 ::
Another long entry coming up, but first I'm going to hop on the band wagon (just this once, I promise!) and present the results of an Internet quiz I took:
Oregon is a nice place, isn't it? Yes, it is. You
should live there. So should I. As of now
it's not crowded, but you never know. So
ummmm, ok...Oregon....yeah.
(What State Is Perfect For You? brought to you (and me!) by Quizilla)
I'll be there in less than two weeks! Oh, and I didn't pick answers I thought would lead me to my home state, I was just honest. And these things are pretty precise, from what I'm told.
Ok, here's the long part. It's an essay I wrote for my maddeningly-named In Search of People in Nature class, but I think y'all should read it before I turn it in tomorrow and tell me what you think. I glossed over quite a bit, issues-wise, assuming that my audience would be able to figure out why Hummers (the cars) are bad and otters (the mammals) are good. I think it all makes sense, but if there are glaring errors, let me know; I'm not above humility, regardless of the essay's pretentious title.
Oh, and if you don't have time for the whole thing, just skip down to the manifesto part at the end. It's in italics.
Ok, ready? Here it is!!
Meditation on the Meaning of Nature and Pre-Amble to the Thrift Store Manifesto of a Re-Used Earth
In the Human Nutrition class I took my sophomore year we learned how to interpret the nutrition claims on food labels, most of which are just empty advertising. For example, lots of health foods boast to be “all natural!” but the official definition of “all natural” is that it’s got carbon molecules in it. This includes just about every food ever eaten by anybody.
For some reason we as a society seem to be really comforted by the notion that certain things are “natural” or even “nature,” but no one really has a solid idea of what those terms mean. I looked up “nature” in the Merriam-Webster dictionary and found that it actually didn’t mean anything worthwhile at all!. I don’t really want to quote it, but I’m going to anyway just to prove the point.
Pronunciation: 'nA-ch&r
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Middle French, from Latin natura, from natus, past participle of nasci to be born -- more at NATION
Date: 14th century
1 a : the inherent character or basic constitution of a person or thing : ESSENCE b: DISPOSITION, TEMPERAMENT
2 a : a creative and controlling force in the universe b : an inner force or the sum of such forces in an individual
3 : a kind or class usually distinguished by fundamental or essential characteristics
4 : the physical constitution or drives of an organism; especially : an excretory organ or function -- used in phrases like the call of nature
5 : a spontaneous attitude (as of generosity)
6 : the external world in its entirety
7 a : humankind's original or natural condition b : a simplified mode of life resembling this condition
8 : the genetically controlled qualities of an organism
9 : natural scenery
Definition five is specific enough, but it’s clearly not the one we’re concerned with right now. Ditto for three. You might think that nine is worthwhile, but I plan on decimating that one later on, so ignore it for now. The second half of definition seven might have been worthwhile if it were not for the absurdly open-ended definition of the first half. Four is funny if you think about it long enough. Everything else basically boils down to “all of the entire world,” or “everything ever,” which is an nice thought, but is basically useless for anything except hyperbole (“this is the best sandwich in the natural world!”), generalizations (“I really love nature!”) and abstract thought and theory (“poetry contains natural beauty!”).
And what it is really, really useless for is comparisons. But for some reason people think that’s what it’s for and say things like, “The city’s ok, but I’d rather be out in nature,” “Back home everything feels so much more natural than it does here” and, “We need to get back to nature.” There’s this subjective, culturally biased idea that “nature” means green trees and rolling hills, Free Willy and The Swiss Family Robinson, but when we examine what nature really means none of those ideas hold up. The hippie mantra that “we’re all part of nature, man,” turns out to be redundant instead of revelatory.
Of course we’re all part of nature! That is in fact, what nature is: everything. There’s no such thing as nature vs. non-nature, or even nature vs. technology as some have suggested. Technology, like nature is a neutral force - it can be used to destroy the environment (toxic waste, those soda can rings) or preserve it (solar panels, certain kinds of waste water treatment) and is not necessarily in direct opposition it it.
Technology is in fact part of the way a species adapts to its environment. There’s no easy line to draw between the otter using a rock to break open a tasty mollusk and me using a microwave to reheat a burrito. The microwave’s way more complex mechanically, but they both serve a specific purpose, and without either calling me or the otter stupid I don’t think there’s a clear, qualitative distinction between them. Other species have developed their own sorts of technology, like beehives, beaver dams and ant colonies for example. We tend to think it’s simple because they’re animals, or even insects, but I know I couldn’t have come up with that stuff (admit it, you couldn’t either). And while we tend to think that the city is separate from nature, I’ve got a pretty good feeling that an ant coming back to the ant hill after foraging for whatever ants forage for thinks “well, back to civilization. It was nice being out in nature for a while there, though.” Even if you believe in a subjective vision of nature, you can’t tell me that an ant’s perspective in unnatural.
* * *
So cities, technology, everything is natural. (There’s the promised decimation of definition nine.) Does that mean that everything’s hunky-dory, and I don’t have to worry about my life style, since whatever I do will be natural anyway? Or to put it another way, can I go buy a Hummer now?
No. And here’s where the distinction lies: the difference is not a matter of objects and places, but cultures and attitudes. It seems simple, but loads of people who profess their love and longing for nature still live synthetic lives, which means they must not get it at all.
Nature is everything in the world. To be natural is to accept and embrace that. To be unnatural is to want something more than what the world provides. The world does not provide the resources for a Hummer-based culture. It can’t sustain that. Same goes for cultures based on beef, coal mines and hyper-red tomatoes. But it does in fact provide us with everything that we need and if we were to stop eating beef we could end world hunger and if we were to stop burning fossil fuels the air would actually clean itself.
The world is so full of resources and wonders and the problem comes when we become numbed to reality and start believing that we need something more than the richness that it provides. Every great ancient civilization fell at the peak of its expanse and development, or was crushed by another civilization that was working towards expanse and development. Why? Because the “developed” civilizations dulled themselves to the rest of the world and began to think that they could exist on their own accord. But people lived for thousands of years without cars or elevators or polyester (or even extensive agriculture) and they didn’t just survive, they flourished. And yet, somehow we’ve come to think that we can’t live without these things.
When we try to rely solely on ourselves as our capitalist, Hollywood culture, with all its glorification of self-made men, tells us we should do, we will ultimately come up short. Egocentricity is in fact un-natural because it focuses solely on the individual and ignores all the intricacies and possibilities that make up “everything ever.” Because of its limited scope, self-reliance is in fact far more restricting than a more natural perspective. And yet, it’s become the dominant modus-operendi for the majority of the world’s upper and middle class.
It’s time to shake things up. Because not only is this artificial, man-made perspective damaging to us as individuals, it’s damaging to the earth, the future, and others around us.
We need to change our mind-set if we want to:
A). Create a sustainable future.
B). End hunger and poverty.
C). Save the environment.
D). Live personally and spiritually fulfilling lives.
One of my favorite analogies to our modern world is the thrift store. There’s been so much built up and accumulated up until this point, that if we go and look for it used it’s probably there. Buying new things is often unnecessary, expensive and quite frankly selfish. Reusing materials is practical from economic, environmental and civic perspectives (it’s inexpensive, doesn’t consume resources, and most thrift stores benefit a charity or non-profit organization) and for me it’s a great way express my reliance on the rest of the world. I plan on donating everything I’ve got that doesn’t wear out to a thrift store or other organization that recycles or reuses consumer goods, so in effect it’s all one big cycle, and an open admission that my life is in transit. When I apply that philosophy to the rest of my life I stop worrying about myself, for I know that everything I have was not earned, but given to me, and all my physical possession merely on loan. Matter cannot be created or destroyed, so simple thermodynamics renders the Earth as a Cosmic Thrift Store in which everything is comes pre-worn and everything bought will eventually return to the racks to be sold once again.
* * *
This is the thrift store Manifesto of a Re-Used Earth, designed to sever our selfish disconnection from nature and reveal the true, cyclical nature of our inheritance: All of Creation is laid out before me, but neither the Earth nor Creation, nor anything in the Universe is mine. I have no possessions permanent possessions; even that which is closest to me will be reabsorbed into the Earth. Nothing is new. The illusion of human creation is nothing but the rearrangement of matter, which has existed from the beginning of time. I will act in according to these principles and will not hide from them behind a façade of permanence. I will share what comes into my life and will give back as I have been given to. I understand that natural existence is in itself all that I need.
There it is. Thanks for reading!
:: Aaron Humphrey 10:03 PM ::
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:: 11.27.2003 ::
Having a girlfriend a couple of time zones away means I spend a lot of money to talk on the phone for a long time. On one hand, I suppose you could say if we didn’t like to talk so much it would be a lot cheaper, but on the other hand if we didn’t like to talk so much she probably wouldn’t be my girlfriend. But we do. And she is. So there.
I bring this up because recently the tables were turned. I took a weekend job administrating a telephone survey and found myself in the curious place of being paid to talk on the phone instead of paying for it.
Here’s how it worked: I would sit at a computer screen with a telephone to my right. The computer would say to me “call this number,” and since computers don’t talk back to you, I wouldn’t say “ok!” I would just call the number. And then I’d wait.
My first five numbers were fax machines.
After that it was
“This number has been disconnected and is no longer in service. This is a recording.”
Or
“ring____________________________ring____________________________ring____________________________ring”
or
“beep!beep!beep!beep!beep!beep!”
Dutifully I kept searching for signs of life, and in between rings I thought to myself, that even with all the wires and wireless signals connecting us, the world is a remarkably empty place. They had warned us about this during training, but it didn’t dull the effect. Those who truly enjoy the sport may object to this analogy, but I felt like I was fishing - casting out into the depths of orange county, enduring the silence for the promise of a bite. You can’t ever see the fish, so you’ve got to take in on faith.
At first I was carried on by answering machines. There are two types: most common are the robot voices that parse out “no one is home,” or “I am unavailable to take your call,” which sometimes made me think of Rosie the Robot on The Jetsons and sometimes just made me frustrated. Less frequent and more exciting are the personal messages, which although not always funny or interesting, at least provided some insight into a real life. One of them was a happy-sounding man from somewhere far away (India?), whose message was nothing special, but his voice made me smile through the next batch of disconnected numbers that followed his. Listening to each message all the way through was my guilty pleasure, although I worried about leaving a curious blip on the answering machine if I waited all the way for the beep.
For each unsuccessful call I had to make note of what happened, press a couple of buttons and then would be presented with a new, random number to call.
Every once in a while I’d catch a live one. Then I read questions off of a screen, and did my best to hope that I sounded interesting, not as much for the survey at this point, but for me - I wanted the other person to stay on the line. It was probably at least an hour before I finally found someone willing to take the poll.
All around me I could hear the progress of my fellow surveyors, over a dozen college students in cubicles with computers and telephones (unlike me, most of them had headsets). We were polling people to see what they thought about ‘public safety issues’ on behalf of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, and the questions weren’t exactly interesting, but everyone had a different way of asking. At first I fumbled, unsure of what would come up on the screen next, but eventually I grew more confident and began changing the inflection of my voice as much as possible during sentences to keep the listener interested and maintain some level of suspense and mystery. It sounds hokey, sure, but it seemed to work. The kid sitting in the cubical next to me seemed to have a different strategy, which was “people will like me if I talk like a computer.” Actually, I don’t think that was his strategy, I think it was just the way he talked. And for some reason, while I averaged less than one completed survey an hour, he got one every fifteen minutes. And every question he asked sounded the same. “Would you say you are very satisfied, somewhat satisfied, somewhat unsatisfied or not very satisfied?” It’s not a great sentence to begin with, but try making every word sound identical. It’s like listening to a metronome set on a very unpleasant speed.
But it was worse when he would get a question or objection. “Ah, ah, ah, ah, Sir, ah, ah, ah, the survey will only take a few minutes.” I saw this guy walking down the street a few days later and his head was darting left, right, up and down in a quick and deliberate staccato. It seemed as if though the pattern was painfully self-imposed and if he didn’t stick to it, he would come apart at the seams. He looked like a bundle of nervous twitches. I’d like to talk to him sometime and see what he’s really like.
Anyway, the next time you get a telephone survey, even if it’s during dinner, please try to be nice (most of the people I talked to were). Don’t take it if you get a twitchy robot and don’t want to deal with it, but do realize that you could be the interviewer’s last real human connection for an hour or more.
Oh, and some interesting math: I made 8.50 an hour at that job. My phone card (I don’t actually use the card anymore as I have all the numbers memorized) gets me 336 minutes for 10 dollars. So, how many minutes of luxury phone time would one hour of job phone time buy me? Anyone?
:: Aaron Humphrey 1:51 AM ::
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:: 11.21.2003 ::
I am sick today, and don’t feel like doing much of anything, but I realized that I never finished telling y’all about my journey to the Midwest, so I’ll work on that!
It was just starting to get dark by the time Erin picked me up from the airport, but there was still a lot to see. Our first stop was the Minneapolis Sculpture Gardens, which Erin had already told me a lot about. What I didn’t know was that the gardens also had an artsy greenhouse, which was a welcome attraction that evening as everything outside was below freezing, and we went there first. A greenhouse in such cold weather reminded me of the scene in Frosty the Snowman where he goes into one and melts, but this greenhouse wasn’t overbearingly warm, it was comfortable, almost a non-temperature. There were big green leaves and even palm trees spread throughout the calm glass hallways, and brick arches covered in ivy. I took Erin’s picture beneath the arches and thought she looked like Alice in Wonderland. In the center of the greenhouse was a giant fish sculpture made out of glass scales. Erin tried to take my picture next to it, but her camera decided to stop working, so the rest of our trip went undocumented in pictures. After we explored the patch of protected tropics, we ventured out into the wind and the cold again. Fortunately the sculpture gardens were lit, because the sun was already gone. I expected the “gardens” to be a bunch of statues sitting around a park, and there were a few of those, but for the most part the sculptures were big, explorable urban art. The only one that I can easily describe is this pond with a giant spoon holding a cherry in it. It sounds ridiculous, but somehow it makes sense when you see it. I chased after the geese by the pond and Erin pointed out notable points in the Minneapolis nighttime skyline. The top of one of the buildings is covered with big vertical panels that slowly shift colors, red, yellow, blue, orange . . . I picked a soft reed from the shore of the miniature lake and put it in Erin’s hair. This city seemed to have been made only for having fun in, and I was filled with the romance of it. But even romantics can freeze, so red-nosed and breathing out steam, we returned to the car and headed to her school, >North Central University.
Erin’s dorm is on the third floor of the library, which in itself is captivating, but the whole building actually used to be a nurses’ ward years and years ago, and though the architecture doesn’t give this fact up easily, it definitely points to some sort of mystery: a fireplace warms the computer lab just to the right of the entry way, and on the second floor the books are packed in tiny, hidden rooms that sprout from the hallways. Combined with the rediscovered nature of this building was that it was connected through stairwells, sky bridges and atriums to half of the other buildings on Erin’s campus. She could wake up in the morning and wind her way to the chapel, deli, gymnasium, and even some classrooms I think, and probably a few other places I forgot or don’t know about without stepping outside once - the early November weather kept at a pleasant bay behind windows that let in the crisp, clear skies, but hit the bitter, zero-degree winds. Unaccustomed as I was to the buildings that blended together, I kept second-guessing our route based on the more succinct floor plans I was used to, and bumping into or falling behind Erin as she navigated the sprawling academe, her scarf flowing around her.
More later, I’m going to go cough a lot now.
:: Aaron Humphrey 10:03 PM ::
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:: 11.12.2003 ::
Today began and I had nothing to offer it. My com class has 150 kids in it and today seven of them got up in front of everyone and gave speeches about things they cared about . . . and for some reason I ached for my own passion.
But I dug my heels in and with each slow step the day showed me that I don’t need to offer anything to it. I’ve just got to show up and keep my eyes open and the universe will provide the rest.
So today ended up being a gorgeous day. I climbed a tree and where came down scarred where its rough, thick bark brushed against my soft, smooth skin and later laid in the grass to read and daydream until the sun went down.
I should explain what happened with my location filmmaking pitch for those of you that don’t know yet. We were never able to gather the kind of crew or support we needed - we went through at least 3 producers, none of who stayed with the project long enough to really contribute anything, and never found a production designer, so it ended up being me and Chrissy, the cinematographer, carrying the whole project. Which neither one of us really had the time to do. I tried to recruit some last minute help before leaving for the Midwest, but it was a stretch even then. When I came back Sunday night, Grant had finished storyboarding the major scenes, but other than that, no one except Chrissy had done anything, and she’d been shooting a Production One project, so she understandably didn’t have time to do much. I met with her sometime after midnight, it was less than 12 hours until the pitch and not only were we missing a budget, costume designs, any sort of video or coherent production design, we didn’t even have a binder to put what we DID have in. I leaned against Chrissy’s doorframe and finally admitted what I’d know for a long time - it was totally hopeless.
The next morning I washed my hair the best as I could, in spite of the fact that the hot water had inexplicably gone out the night before and not returned. Then I borrowed an iron and ironing board from a few doors down and did my best to ease the wrinkles from my only silk shirt, a black one, which I wore underneath my navy blazer. I had a vague notion that this was a fashion faux-pas, but if it was no one said anything. Finally I folded up a few sheets of blank paper and shoved them, along with a dulled pencil into my blazer pockets, just in case I needed them.
I was 10 minutes early for my 10:20 appointment so I sat in the waiting room and read through Chapman’s FTV recruiting brochure, just slightly modified from the one that had won me over three springs ago. I was called in by my movie’s name (“Hades and Persephone”) and followed a professor down the hallway. The room was far more bright and jubilant than I had imagined - other pitch teams had left behind various testimonies to their excitement and creativity. There were five or six people sitting on one side of an oval table smiling expectantly at me, and no one seemed concerned that I had come in alone with no creative team and no materials to present. They asked me what I had to show them, and I told them the truth: the project fell through and we had nothing to present. They were understanding, sympathetic and even encouraging - if I decided to keep working on the script they wanted me to keep in touch because they really liked it.
I never had a need for those blank folded sheets of paper, but after the meeting, I sort of felt like one of them. In a good way. Sort of.
:: Aaron Humphrey 1:41 AM ::
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:: 11.11.2003 ::
Wednesday Aaron my roommate drove me to the airport too-early in the morning so I could fly out to see Erin my girlfriend. There was mysterious “freezing fog” in Denver that delayed my connecting flight for two hours and left me sitting helplessly on a grounded plane at the John Wayne Airport for almost as long. I sat next to a rich woman on the plane whose husband is filming a surf movie in January. In typical Hollywood fashion we exchanged contact info, so if I am transparently optimistic, there’s hope for an internship there. Ha ha. Once we got to Denver I swapped planes and was on my way to Minneapolis, where Erin goes to school. We met in the baggage claim, though at first I didn’t see her. I scanned every college-aged girl as I descended the escalator, but none of them matched my memory. There was a punk girl leaning up against one of the poles dressed in red and black. Her skin looked especially pale contrasted with her bright lipstick and short, dark hair, but she exuded a self-aware confidence. She was the most interesting girl in the airport, and stood out against its color scheme, like the focal point in a painting. I couldn’t help but look back at her as I passed, and then she smiled. And I was caught off guard - it was like she could see straight through me. I was already describing the mysterious girl to Erin in my head when I looked back at her and saw her still watching me and smiling. An airport seemed like a strange place to meet new people, but she looked like she had something to tell me, so I turned around and took a step towards her, cautious and curious. A question crossed my mind as I got closer and in a split second I knew - the hair, the makeup, the outfit, nothing was Erin, but the face. My roommate told me, as I once believed, that Erin looks different in every picture taken of her, but I when we paged through photo albums over the summer I learned what set her apart from every other girl in the class pictures and cross-country lineups, even during her high-school years when her hair seemed to change radically every month, and so I knew from her face - this was the girl I love. After we hugged, she explained the wig and borrowed clothes and as we walked hand in hand through the baggage claim I knew she was more than I could ever ask for.
There’s a lot more to the trip, but I’ll write it later. I need to sleep now.
:: Aaron Humphrey 2:48 AM ::
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