A Spoonful of Fear Makes the Medicine Go Down...

Earthquake in Chile! 200 are feared dead!

Tranquil Waves Caress Hawaii's Sandy Beaches! Fear Spreads!

The media is always fascinated with fear and will flock and flounder to be the first to see heartbreak, to capture it "for you." Today was no different. Chile got old, so, like a child spitting out a piece of good-for-three-minutes piece of Fruit Stripes, cameras turned to Hawaii. The event? Well, nothing yet. Meanwhile, 33 aftershocks rattled Chile. We turned to Hawaii in hopes - er, in case - a giant tsunami may wash it away. We watched and waited and prayed and drove our cars to the highest peaks for fear that thousands may die. A river rose a bit and then receded. Analysts pored over the minutia of buoy data, predicting 29-foot waves while reporters feared only a high tide. A little wave washed over a resort. The civil defense sirens, like a passing train whistle, whirred in the television speakers. The news outlets pulled out all the stops and whipped up original fonts, filled in "Hawaii Tsunami" (which was yet to be determined) with flashing red letters and waited for someone to die. And somewhere in the distance, a pelican took a crap in the ocean.

The telephone interviews with Hawaiians revealed a normal Saturday: people eating brunch, disbelievers roaming the beach, a man surfing (from which the camera swiftly turned away; after all, this was a catastrophe), even a man oblivious to the network news camera who pulled out his Chapstick and fearlessly applied it within three inches of the lens. Obviously, hell was breaking loose. A reporter announced behind the scene of a beach that "you can see there is not a soul to be seen." Immediately a man appeared, leisurely strolling the coastline with his hands in his pockets and a flower-patterned shirt, to which the reporter responded, "Obviously, this man has no television... or radio... or methods of contact... or common sense." [Common sense looks a lot like fear.]

After the waves never came, the media sighed and drafted Chile in its second round pick of natural disasters. Nothing happened, nobody died, and sadly, no one was first to see nothing. There was nothing more to fear, so the world became boring again. The coffee went cold, the crossed fingers relaxed, and the world sat back for another scintillating round of footage and carnage. Hallelujah, our world was back at last.

We're Just Humans

In William T. Vollmann's Poor People, he describes poverty as the following:
For me, poverty is not mere deprivation; for people may possess fewer things than I and be richer; poverty is wretchedness. It must then be an experience more than an economic state.

Working in January on a mission trip based in Honduras, I felt something I had never experienced before while around the deprived and impoverished: a lack of sympathy. For perhaps the first time I felt as though ignorance was truly bliss for those who knew nothing outside their 1-mile radius - mud floors, 55-gallon drum bathtubs/laundry bins, open-air doorways. Who cared if these people never got addicted to a particular sitcom? Who cared if these people never developed the task of keeping up with their text messages? They found joy somehow. They had family. They had neighbors. They had church friends. And for as far as I knew, they were better off because of their deprivation, and I didn't feel sympathy for their apparent lack of American commodities. What a horrible life it must be to be without People and a daily onslaught of divisive politics! We may very well envy them.

Later in his text, Vollmann quotes a Mexican prostitute that he interviewed.
He asks: Why are some people rich and some people poor?
There are no rich and there are no poor.
Then what are there?
We're just humans.

I Am Now No Less Significant

I've recently decided that, perhaps because of the lack of love I've been giving my blog, or perhaps because I had a prophetic vision of a mass following of my teachings (which one is true you may never know), I've decided to revive the once lively page that was "Stalin For a Moment." May I only stall in Russia? No. I would like to stall at home as well. I'd like to spill out my lonely, electronic attempt at communicating what I find true to you once more. Thanks for your interest while I was (in most cases) so far from you. My thoughts are no less significant now that I am "home," and I hope you like them. Bye.

I'd now like to retract any arrogance I may have seemed to exude in the last paragraph. It was an attempt at dry humor. Bye.

[... soon a blog in which I would like to speak about poverty... or travel... or both]