I don’t really have anywhere left to pick up; I had dropped my graduate studies, given that I wanted to do something in life beyond reading journal articles and playing departmental politics.  I don’t have much of a job to go back to, beyond one that pays the bills; even if that is the status quo, I’ve never much cared for complacently following it (just because everyone else makes themselves miserable just to be “adults” doesn’t mean i’m going down without a fight!).  So now that I have a nearly blank slate, what are my new goals?

My main goal is to play music.  I’m skeptical about being able making a career out of it.  However, I at least want to make it a serious hobby.  So I’m looking to practice the hell out of some mandolin (and hopefully violin as well), and by December be up on stages, at least for open mikes.

Why December?  Because that’s when I can actually start looking into other options.  I can start reapplying for graduate schools; although I hated grad school in the humanities, I’ll give the sciences a shot.  It’ll at least be a different kind of awful.  Linguistics and economics are my top two choices; maybe poli sci as well.  At the same time, I’ll also apply for the foreign services exam to become a diplomat and get back to travelling.  That test is, by all reports, difficult, so I want some time to study.  Then I’ll be waiting for at least a year most likely to be placed somewhere (and grad school wouldn’t be much better, since I’d be waiting until August to actually go).  Finally, I might look at opportunities to teach English overseas.   Like grad school, it’s not my first choice, but going out and travelling (especially to East Asia) sure beats most prospects here, unless I luck out and land the perfect job, or find an awesome relationship, or ideally both.

So in closing, some musical and philosophical thoughts: I’m fascinated by alternative music systems, as I’ve mentioned before.  I was thinking today about how this relates to life (as I do about most things musical, or indeed most things period).  I don’t like completely atonal music.  Music needs some boundaries in order to be what it is.  Letting music be “free” might be an interesting experiment, but it’s not really music any longer.  However, just because music needs boundaries doesn’t mean that we need to keep the same old ones.  There’s room to explore, to create new limits or see what other people have done differently.  Creativity and progress cannot be anarchic; they thrive on rules, even as they question them.  (Similarly for dance: those people who come in and “just feel the music” are often the worst dancers on the floor, flailing around and being a menace to everyone around them.  You need discipline and practice to be the most creative and free.)  So both disregarding all rules and remaining tied to any particular rule are stagnating actions.

It is sad.  I miss my village, and many people in it.  I feel bad for them, thinking that they were going to get help and then being left high and dry.  Also, I wanted to make it through this challenge and say that, yes, I lived as a PCV for over two years.  Hiking in the mountains everyday probably also makes the list of reasons I wanted to return.

But I’ve also gotten tired of just waiting around here.  45 days in one spot, without crowded taxis to take me into town, with no challenge, just hasn’t appealed to me.  The governmental bureaucracy I had to deal with was tortuous, and quite honestly concerned so much with PR that their concern with PR is their main public image (and not a positive one).  And honestly, I was growing rather cynical of any attempts to help the children learn; they would just go back into the same broken system once I left.  There’s not much an American volunteer can do if South Africa itself doesn’t decide to make education a priority.

So time to head back to Milwaukee in a couple weeks and see what life has to offer.  It’s kind of nice having choices again.  And I’ve rediscovered my love of music in the past month; I really want to see if there’s anything I can do professionally with it, once I practise hard for the next year or so.  Already got some great blues pieces to play through on this mandolin, and I’m looking forward to a book on Gypsy Jazz coming in.

I’ll be heading out on more adventures, so I’m keeping this blog up.  I’m still looking toward the future and trying to find time wherever I can to make the world a more awesome place.

I doubt that I can manage any trips around things here, especially since I have to be ready for cancellations at any minute, so excursions to Billings or Milwaukee or Chicago or whatnot are out.  The only thing keeping me reasonably sane and occupied at the moment is music.  So seriously, send me messages or something, or set up a Skype-jam to give me incentive to play more.  Secret admirer gifts for Valentine’s Day are also accepted.

We all know the standard “glass half full/empty” scenario.  And in such a scenario, it may very well be rational to take the glass to be half full.  After all, one might as well be happy, all other things being equal.

But I, as a professional pessimist, don’t take the glass to be half empty.  Other things are *not* equal.  My claim, rather, is that the glass is darn well near gone.  The optimist might claim that the glass is half full, or even entirely so.  This is mere delusion.  It is an emotional security blanket that might give her peace and comfort, but at the cost of her ability to actually engage the world as it is.  Polyanna-ism is highly selfish.  

Other optimists might rather say that we should be grateful for the water we have instead of cursing what we lack.  As long as they also act on that latter knowledge, I guess that I have no serious quarrel with them; it is when they again wrap themselves up in “gratitude” to feel better while ignoring that lack that I have my concerns.

The pessimist claims that the world is actually in a bad spot.  She does not merely say that it can be viewed as such, but rather that things are actually messed up.  And recognition of this mess, no matter how uncomfortable it makes us, is a necessity to doing anything about it.  She might be factually wrong.  In that case, give her facts and evidence to show her otherwise.  But to deride her for being negative and critical, as if such were in itself a vice instead of active engagement with the world, is to showcase one’s own emotional inability to cope rather than make any statement about the pessimist.

In the end, emotions don’t tell us about the world.  They tell us about us.  Feeling good, feeling bad, feeling something to be true or false, are mostly meaningless when we assume that they refer to something more than, well, how we feel.  Which is not unimportant, and is ignored at one’s own peril; but to take them as our compass to the world would be like me saying to myself: I am madly in love with that woman, therefore we will be together one day.  The fact that a view makes someone feel bad or out of place is not in the slightest bit a piece of evidence that such a view is wrong.

So please, I implore my readers, don’t put people down for pointing out the uncomfortable.    Thank them for having the courage to do so, and honestly assess whether they might be correct.  Challenge them in turn if necessary, but never let comfort and peace of mind seal you off from the world.

And speaking of being sealed off from the world, I’m still sitting here, playing music and writing blog entries, probably for at least another month (though who knows? It’s not like I’ve had any clue about what was going to happen the rest of this trip back).  Send me messages and emails and music and, I don’t know, funny pictures or something.

It’s been interesting being back home. Also odd, because I constantly feel like I don’t belong here. My home and work are back in Africa right now. Of course, the fact that it’s been snowing here and in single digits (Fahrenheit) might have something to do with my newfound nostalgia.

It’s interesting coming back home and comparing it to South Africa. And I’ve found that I’ve become much more interested in exploring my own culture and its own folk traditions since studying those of KwaZulu-Natal. I spend time thinking about the course of most people’s lives in my little suburb of Detroit, one which still has barns randomly strewn along city roads in people’s back yards, one where many people grow up and remain their entire lives. I’ve also been out to Milford with its country feel a few times, which makes me think on how my own family’s rural roots compare to those of my little African village. (Though African rural sites do tend to have fewer gastropubs and microbreweries.)

Other than that, I’ve been learning languages and music, two of my biggest hobbies (/obsessions). My goal is to read Homer in Greek by the time I’m done with Peace Corps, and perhaps even to translate some of it into Zulu. Can’t you just see the stories of Achilles and Odysseus being set in the times of Emperor Shaka and his conquests?

In addition, I’m currently fascinated by alternative tonal systems in music. Not that this has anything to do with Peace Corps, but I’m bored of sitting around right now and have you reading this anyhow. Arabic music is fascinating (http://www.maqamworld.com/); as usual, I’m floored at the level of sophistication of their theoretical analysis and how little we pay attention to it in the West. My overall impression of Arabic scales is that they are circles and curves to the straight lines and squares of classical Western music. Western music is better for harmonies, but there is a sort of roundness and artistry about Arabic scales which smooths out melodies by playing around with quarter steps and microtones. Also: the Bohlen-Pierce scale (http://www.huygens-fokker.org/bpsite/index.html) is a harmonic scale which builds a set of tones from scratch that don’t fit into the traditional 12-step chromatic scale. Listen to some samples here: http://ziaspace.com/_microtonality/BP/. It sounds to me like the key keeps changing around almost atonally, yet there remains an odd coherence which atonality lacks. I think the music actually sounds quite lovely and wish I had an instrument which could play around with it.

Ok, geek mode off. Or at least hidden for the moment.

At the time, this presented a rather large moral dilemma to me. Now that I’ve left philosophy for Peace Corps, though, ironically I see less force to the conundrum.

First, let’s not pretend like people doing development work are making a huge difference in the world. We make small differences, and hope that they take root. They may not always. But we do not necessarily change the world any more over here than doing something else. Honestly, there’s not a whole lot I can do here until South Africa changes from within.

Second, one must keep in mind one’s own strengths. I was reading something by Brad Warner of Hardcore Zen fame. I forget the details and am having trouble locating the post right now (it might have been in one of his books, anyhow), but the point was that he had been doing a job that was regarded as being all nice and humanitarian and what-not. And stunk at it, probably making problems for people instead of solving them. So instead he went and made monster movies; a “lesser” job, but if he could work his values into something he actually could throw himself into, this was better than forcing himself to do the “right thing” and doing it poorly. Being a half-arsed teacher out here isn’t helping anyone and might harden communities against making the changes they need.

Third, there are all sorts of ways to be effective. Seneca, tutor to the Roman emperor Nero, was asked why he didn’t spend more time in the public life doing something. He answered that his writings would last far longer than the political actions of his day. Considering that I read that from him almost 2000 years later, and yet there is no more Roman Empire, Seneca seems to be on to something. We need some people helping raise the standards of humanity around the world. We also need some people in scholarship to remember our past, some in more “normal” jobs keeping things running, and creative sorts showing us visions of what life could be like. If everyone were to become a PC volunteer, or otherwise go and give up their lives to “be good people,” society would crumble.

Sometimes, doing the right thing might be enjoying yourself where you are.

The hike was intense. On one day, we hiked I believe about 700 metres straight up over just a couple kilometres, steep enough that we had to at least grab at the grass on the sides to pull ourselves up when not crawling up on all fours.

But the scenery was unbelievable; we probably passed through 3 or 4 different regions of plant life on that one day, to say nothing of the views. Baboon and jackal sightings rounded out the experience. One morning we woke up for the sunrise, and saw a sea of dense clouds below. Literally, or at least as literal as a metaphor can be. A couple odd mountain tops stood out as islands amongst the frozen fluffy waves. Two nights were spent sleeping in caves, falling asleep to the sound of waterfalls.

After our climb, we found ourselves at the top of a pass into Lesotho, the “Magical Mountain Kingdom,” a country completely surrounded by South Africa. It really did give the appearance of being its own isolated state lying on top of the mountains, with herds of sheep and goats after the mostly-empty wilderness of the Draks. The weather at the top of the pass was odd, to say the least; part of the sky was clear blue with scattered white clouds, other parts were reflecting the reds, pinks, and purples of the sunset, and yet another corner was oddly black and grey and gold. This is to say nothing of the violent thunderstorm right outside the pass, stopped as if by an invisible wall.

Then we stayed at the highest pub in Africa at the Sani Pass (around 9400 feet); rather underwhelming by that time, though. And the drive down hairpin turns at the Sani Pass certainly was not the best thing after New Year’s Eve. But memorable occasions, nonetheless.

Unfortunately, my Blackberry wasn’t able to catch the most interesting views, so you’ll have to just come and see them for yourself sometime.

Kuyoqhuma nhlamvu, ezinye ziyofekela. – Some seeds will grow, some seeds will die.

Right now I’m visting a friend in the Battlefields region of KwaZulu-Natal. The English fought the Zulus here, the Zulus fought the Boers, the Boers fought the English – everyone fought everyone. At one site, the Brits faced one of their worst defeats on African soil to the Zulus. Soon after, 150 British soldiers killed 4000 Zulus.

The area here is beautiful – grasslands with low spreading trees reminiscent of the Lion King, aloe vera plants which make me think of the Jurassic era, purple hills on the horizon, and sun. We went hiking through the bush down to a river, then relaxed on some rocks overlooking the churning water.

I dug a few channels in the sand at the beach. I’ve always liked doing that; when other kids were making sand castles, I would dig tunnels and watch how the water behaved. How would two tunnels interact? What sort of erosion would happen? Could I get the water to flow, to spiral or fill up the different resevoirs?

The fun is that you never quite know what will happen. A slight change can affect the entire structure. Digging a little deeper can cause more water to flow in, eroding the sides and closing off a tunnel, which in turn alters the rest of the flow. The water flowing out creates patterns of its own in the sand independent of my planning.

There are limits in our lives, but there are no limits to knowledge. Using what’s limited to try to catch up with what’s unlimited can only bring trouble. – Zhuangzi

Planning is sometimes overrated (only sometimes, though!). Occasionally one must just see what happens. That’s not to say that things always work out; it’s just that the world is complex and no one can see where change happens or all of its consequences.