Posts Tagged ‘Perceptions’
Partially Helpful
I saw the movie “The Help” yesterday afternoon, with Cyndie. I came out of the theater feeling moved, entertained, and somewhat emotional over the experience. She had little to say. It was like it had poked her where she already hurts, but offered nothing beneficial for her. I wanted to explore some of my experience, but was sensing that she wasn’t interested in talking about the movie (or maybe, just wasn’t able). She does work as a racial equity leadership development specialist and transformational change consultant.
I got the feeling that there is a vast gorge between us regarding understanding complexities of racial inequity. The movie does a pretty obvious job of packaging the serious and dramatic situations of mistreatment of an entire race of humans, into a convenient parcel for popular consumption. It prods, to make people aware of the uncomfortable, without risking making them truly uncomfortable. I think it only served to make my wife feel like it sustains the damage of ongoing (unrecognized) inequity. By acknowledging a little of the problem, we satisfy ourselves that everything is okay now. It’s not. I think that made the experience of seeing the movie, entirely unsatisfying for Cyndie. It made the movie irritating for her. But that is my impression, speaking for her from my vantage point.
Afterward, I looked for some information about the movie, and when I read to her from this blog post: [Inconvenient Facts: The Whiteness of Memory in “The Help” Versus the Ugly Realities of Jim and Jane Crow America by Chauncey DeVega] she reported that the writer expressed pretty well what she was feeling, but couldn’t find the words to say.
Overall, I guess I would say that the movie is partially helpful. It does have people talking about the issues of racism and racial inequities. I don’t believe that it does much to inform on the actual realities experienced, nor on the extent of continuing institutionalized racism, and unacknowledged white privilege, that exists to this day. For that reason, in the long run, the movie may actually hurt, more than it helps.
Listless Listing
empty yogurt container
throw pillows
hockey game on Versus
missed shot
unopened mail
clock with broken hands
Canadian accent
tired eyes
absent mind
home alone
soft blanket
quiet confidence
plaid short-sleeve shirt
number 3
worthless knick knacks
shelves of books
remote control
brick wall
Tour de Prairie
I finally got myself on the bicycle on Saturday. It was nice to discover the bike remains in good shape. I added air to the tires, touched up the chain with a bit of lube, and it was ready to go. With minimal effort, I was able to find all my gear, although the helmet required a bit of adjustment to the straps in order to fit my head, sans dreadlocks.
I took my camera along and did a spontaneous tour of my community. The trees are just starting to pop. I meandered my way past Bryant Lake toward the place on Flying Cloud Drive where I worked for 18 years. Part of the building still remains, but much of it has been torn down and replaced by something different. I traveled among the buildings of the industrial park that replaced the farm of my earliest years. I rode past the Enblom’s place and then took a lap on the trail around Smetana lake. There were a lot of geese sitting on nests in the reeds along the shoreline.
Next, I traveled past the shopping mall where I worked at a record store for a year after I graduated from high school. Then south on Homeward Hills Road to Pioneer Trail where I ventured past Franlo Road to see if friends were out in their yard doing chores. Nobody home. Looked like they were away for the weekend.
Backtracking, I made my way to the sport fields by the airport where I coached soccer for so many years. I rode into the buzz of the Saturday afternoon activity to get a big dose of memories. I stood for a bit and watched a baseball team work on bunting defense. Repetition, repetition, repetition. It was fun to hear the kids shouting commands to each other, demonstrating they were aware of what they were doing.
The only thing left between that site and my destination of home was the neighborhood where I lived after the farm. I slowly pedaled on Cedar Ridge Road to the cul-de-sac where our house was located. They have changed the house numbers! Is nothing sacred? I tried and tried to see the trees of the neighborhood as 35 years older. It doesn’t look that different, except for the two trees right in front that have been planted since we left. The large number of cedar trees have hardly changed a bit. I’d be willing to bet there are few, if any, of the same families living in those houses.
As I passed the Picha farm spring plant sale, just before the street to my house, I saw that my odometer indicated 25 miles. I accomplished just enough distance, and exposed my unprotected limbs to just short of being burned by the sun, so I felt it was a good first-of-the-season ride.
Now, to somehow get myself to do it again before too long. Sunday, my neck muscles were tired and my seat was feeling tender. I have a lot of work to do to get into shape for my annual week of biking in June.
Nepal Thoughts
April is the time of year when I traveled to Nepal. That was a couple of years ago now. It is on my mind a lot this year because I have friends who are currently on a trek similar to mine. When I think back on my trip, and revisit some of the photos I took, the feeling I get is that the whole experience was more than I could absorb. I lived it, but it was more than I could grasp, even as I stood there breathing it in. Looking at the images again, somehow brings back vague hints of the vastness of experience. It almost feels as if the parts of that adventure that were beyond my ability to fully grasp in the moment, were not lost to that moment. Even though I couldn’t fully process it all, it still became part of me. The aspect of the trek that was beyond my comprehension still colors the portion of my life that is the event. The mystery moves forward within me. The same thing probably applies to many such adventures, but to me, it just seems so fitting for an experience in Nepal.
Ahhh, Spring
Spring in Minnesota does often look like this. Yesterday morning we awoke to the much more monochromatic vista of snow, instead of the bursting colors of spring.
I find it interesting to witness what it does to people’s psyche. I’m not sure if it is that they fail to understand the inevitability of such weather or just allow themselves to be bluffed that snow is done when the first days of sun and 70° finally arrive.
I do admit, that even I have caught myself wanting to remove the chopper mittens and window scraper from my car on those hot, sunny spring days that cause so many people to think snow is done and gone. Full disclosure: I took the mittens out… but, left the scraper in.
It’s not so bad if you mentally prepare yourself for the inevitable weather back-slide that briefly interrupts what we perceive as truly defining spring. Spring snow is incredibly beautiful. Depending on your perspective, I guess.
Explain the incredible beauty to the worm…
Time Passing
The passing of time happens faster than I can keep track of, yet change often comes very slowly. Perspective, perspective, perspective. I suppose a person who masters living entirely in the moment has a more consistent impression about the passing of time than I am able to achieve.
The common opinion around my region is that winter has been hanging around for a long time this year. However, even though we accumulated some huge piles of snow, and the prolonged cold temperatures and additional inches of new snow carried on into the first weeks of spring, it seems to me like the return to being able to see the ground happened rather fast.
What is fast? If someone takes steps to consistently eat healthy and begin doing regular exercise to lose weight and improve fitness, would the weight loss and increased fitness happen fast? Well, if they held to it for an entire year, and you hadn’t seen them in all that time, it might appear to you that their change happened fast. To the person making the effort to eat well and exercise toward a goal of making such changes, a year would seem like slow change.
I am wondering if my hair is turning gray at an increased rate. When I cut off my dreadlocks at the beginning of 2011, it had been 5 years since my last haircut. There was plenty of evidence as to what color my hair used to be on the ends of those dreads. I assumed that cutting it all off would leave me with a much higher percentage of gray, but I was surprised to find it didn’t appear to be the case. Now, 3-and-a-half months later, my hair is growing out a bit, and seems to be graying as it grows. Seems like fast change to me.
For some reason, I have neglected to get my bike down from its winter perch in the garage yet. I expect that the next 2 months until my annual week-long bike trip will pass very quickly. Of course, the sad truth is that when that week of biking with friends arrives, I want it to last forever, but it passes by real fast. Scary fast. Well, unless the weather is incredibly miserable. That can change things a bit.
I’m a little shocked that it is approaching the middle of April. It boggles my mind that we are in the year 2011. How did we get here so fast? Just a little while ago, I was an 11-year-old boy, running out the front door of our house on Cedar Ridge Road to hop on my orange 3-speed bike with the banana seat, to ride down the neighborhood road to see if I could find anybody out and about.
I wonder how fit I would be right now if I had started eating smart and doing strength exercises for life, back then. Heck, for all the healthy things I do do, I still don’t eat as well as I should, nor have I ever done regular strength exercising.
Not that any of that would do anything to slow down the rate of my graying hair.
Time passes slow, and time passes oh-so-fast.
Fun People
Let’s hear it for fun friends. Think about it. People who you consider fun, you probably also think of as being funny. We all benefit from laughter.
This morning, on the weekly television program, CBS Sunday Morning, there was a feature segment on comedian/actor Chris Rock. As it ended, I was left with the feeling that I wanted to have Chris Rock as my friend. That isn’t likely to happen.
I already have many friends that are fun. In an instant, I became aware of how my regular daily activity, especially when my wife is out-of-town, plays out lacking in the people I appreciate for their characteristic of being fun. People who radiate fun energy, cultivate fun attitudes, and display an artistry for being funny.
I have long known that my sports activities provide much more than physical exercise for me. I play sports with fun people. Beyond that small percentage of time every few days each week, I experience a lack of interaction with people who emit beams of the ‘fun’ mojo.
How much of your day-to-day life is lacking in healthy doses of fun people? It is telling to every so often take measure of our relative environment. It provides a reference measurement to highlight our surroundings and bring awareness to the things that are impacting the water we swim in, the air we breathe, the views our eyes see, the words we hear.
I want to increase my daily exposure to fun people. I wonder, do you think Chris Rock would be interested in taking a job in my industry in Minnesota?
Idea #637
I recently read that one of my online friends had her home broken into by thieves who took, among other things, her jewelry box. It appears that cash and jewelry remain a top draw for home invasion thieves.
Instead of keeping precious jewelry in the obvious jewelry box on the dresser, my idea would be to create a box that looks like a bedroom waste basket. Make it small enough that you can pick it up off the floor when you want access. Create a fake top that looks like used tissues and tags cut from new clothes, maybe some crumpled paper.
Thieves would not be inclined to look for valuable things in a trash bin, but if they do catch on to my idea, there is the possibility we could get them to start taking out the trash when they break into our homes.
Shhhhhh
I was driving home late last night after my weekly session of floorball (floor hockey played with a wiffle ball) when all of a sudden I became aware that the radio was playing unnecessarily loud, and the song at the time was not one that appealed to me in the least. I shut the radio off. The immediate transition created an impression that the quiet was quieter than the song had been loud, if that makes any sense; along the lines of “a deafening silence”.
It reminded me of an exercise I devised years ago on one of the rest days during an annual week of biking and camping with about 150 dear friends. The object is to practice becoming aware of everything that is audible in a given period of minutes. The process involves acknowledging what sound is closest and most obvious, and then disregarding that in order to move on to focus on the next sound. The priority is to strive to be able to discern the next further distant sound, ultimately culminating in what would be the input you are detecting from a source the largest distance away from you. It is all speculation, but in terms of an exercise, the reward is in the doing, and not necessarily the data obtained.
It isn’t important to know what the sound is. Just becoming aware that it is something you are hearing at that time, and being able to file it and move on, serves the purpose of this exercise.
Often times, what I discover during this process is the space between the sounds. It is there that resides, the quietest of quiets.
Relative Something 