Gaspin'

Gasp.
Gasp at the interval of not writing.
Gasp for the opportunity to air it out.
Gasp surprised.
Gasp with pleasure.
Gasp yea, verily.

You know when you are really busy for a while. And all the sudden your not and you sort of have to rub your eyes and look around to take in the sudden change in reality mentality. This is like that.

As long as I am out of breath, stupefied and astonished, might as well roll with it. I am astonished with what I’ve done since being here. I am humbled by how much more could and should have been done. And I am familiarly overwhelmed by the crossroads of time. Dang there is a lot of stuff that brings you to where-when you are and so many place-times possible.

The question of the day for me: Is all this Central Asia stuff going to lead to a concretely related future or will it provide a perspective on a relatively disjointed life? Is there a difference? Ow, my headheartsoul aches so good. Is there happiness here long-time stylie or just lots of interest? Won’t know until I find out I suppose.

I’d take great comfort in knowing that a good friend was on a parallel road in the region. But maybe that would push me away. I worry that an aspect to it is proving my specialness to myself and others by dabbling in the Exotic.

I aint special.

That’s reassuring.

I like honesty because it is terrible and beautiful. I think that the most precious things are like that and that they are precious because they are honest, real, and often expressions of humanity. A sunrise is not terrible and war is not beautiful. But in the most human of things it seems they exist together, complimenting each other, undermining each other and providing that attracting repulsive confusion. Like first love unattainable. It consumes us but fills us with insight into the universe.

On auspicious occasions one can sometimes chose to decide if a reality is beautiful or terrible, funny or sad. It may be both but it usually inspires more so in one direction than the other. Our attitude is influence, if not determination, of truth.

Fittingly, there is a downside to seeing both sides of things. The Hamlet complex: Too much smarts for action. Maybe that’s how we can let the Allpowerful Allknowing Allgood off the hook for alllllll the terrible suffering in the world. But that hardly seems perfect. Damned.

The last couple weeks I have been trying to direct my mind towards stillness, openness and observation and away from the din of savage conciousness. The wellness and stillness will come for a lightning moment on the mashrootka or cooking or watching people while I walk somewhere. But I can’t get it to stick around or comeback. It seems to never strike twice.

Climbing has been big for me lately. I am learning how to build anchors and rappel and getting better but all the accomplices are Anglophones. The linguist purist nags at me to keep my distance and my eyes on the prize but I don’t know what the prize is.

Maybe if I win I get a Fulbright.

Accolades. It’s probably accolades. I fucking love accolades.


Alright. So I want to start thinking about how to apply the crazy implications of physics to other parts of reality, less quantifiable but very real parts. Maybe all it does is allow one an excuse for irrationality. But I like to think that it allows one to make sense of some of the paradoxes that define our little life-boat. It came up in a couple topics of conversation over the last week. I want to make a disclaimer that I only talked about this silly-serious stuff four times in the last few weeks. I am not Mr. Serious Pants 24/7.

The first area that it surface in was the trouble with being an ideological liberal. Is it possible to be accepting of all ideas? Even ideas that do not accept a plurality of views? I cleave toward the following objectionable presupposition, any acceptable idea must respect the right of other ideas to exist. It is a paradox. It is even hypocritical. But if the fundamental building blocks of the universe can exist in two places at once, so too can the basis of logic. I think it would be better to leave it to a moral intellectual obligation to question the basis of a totalitarian ideology because persecuting it legally usually just gives it martyr status.

I hang out with my director and her sister here at the end of the day. I practice my Russian, have a glimmer of a social life and they are great. Her sister studies international relations in grad school now, so it was only a matter of time before the US’s role in the world came up. Being from the US, I rushed blindly to defend it. That’s is not exactly true, but it is funny how when you are a US citizen abroad you feel the need to point out the upsides to contrast all the negative impressions of the US. But even though no half-hearted student of history or current affairs could agree with everything the US has done, influenced, not done I think it is good to try and see both sides of the issue. It also reminds me to remember to see things from the other perspective. If you look at things from a Russian or Iranian perspective, they don’t seem crazy at all. Rather, we do.

Right so the US is sort of like particle physics and relativity. Here it is if you measure it one way. There it is if you measure it another. They are both necessarily interconnected but it is hard to see how one actor could have two such divergent behaviors. Look at corruption. On the one hand, Big Players, especially the US because it is the biggest and playing-est, tilt the field in their favor. Or more importantly, they tilt it against smaller poorer developing countries. That’s not fair. It is bad. Its like the Yankees without a salary cap. Everyone (should) hate the Yankees, right? The US engages in corruption and other underhanded, often violent, manipulations of other governments. If you don’t believe me pick up a book about Latin America since the Monroe Doctrine. I mean if you are willing to believe that the Russians, French and Chinese do it, why wouldn’t the US? Just because they are American. That’s not very capitalist-competitive. If the US is one thing, it is capitalist-competitive. No likes a bully. So from that perspective it seems like reform should come from the top-down and that the rich and powerful have a greater moral obligation to play fair.

But then here in Kyrgyzstan I see very little evidence day-to-day that the IMF is the root of all ills. Rather I see people bribe a police officer rather than pay an extra sixty cents. Every form of administration and justice seems to be on auction. I get Western-righteous. The WTO, the World Bank, the IMF and US-based MNCs are a sideshow. Coca-Cola’s got nothing on the illicit market here. People accept corruption as a fact of life. They use it when they can and then grumble about it when they don’t/can’t. The buck always stops at the next tier up. Everybody is a victim just trying to get by in a mean world. And because everyone believes it, it is true.

In such moments of Western-righteousness I say nuts to the Washington Consensus, find a way to make sure you can’t by a MD degree for US $500, reform things so that a 13 year old kid can’t buy his grade for math and pause a moment to consider what you justice system is going to look like when at least 70% of the students at Law School pay bribes. That’s just education.

But both the international hypocrisy and the local hypocrisy are true and should be addressed simultaneously. Neither is an excuse for the other. In physics quantum craziness explains some stuff. Relativity explains other phenomena. We understand both and true and neither as the final truth for all situations. So it is in the world of International Political Economy. The global and the local are mysteriously related, perhaps too complexly for us to ever grasp fully. But to help resolve these problems most successfully we need to work from both sides, Local and Global.