Painting of my son

Just finished this one a few weeks ago

culture clash

twitter and facebook have totally altered my blogging habits. i find myself using 140 character sentences as an outlet of expression. i feel like i really shouldn't have more to say than what will fit in a status update. who the hell reads this thing anyway? well.... here's my attempt to see if i open up a blogger blank box, if i can find something to say.

i'm sitting in the habita hotel in mexico city, the place i called home for 3 months when i moved down here 6 years ago. this is the first time i've been back to DF since we left. we lived here for 3 years. flying from switzerland to mexico (without going through the US as a buffer zone) is culture electrocution. it's hard for me to believe that we as a family lived these two opposite lives, enjoying both so thoroughly.

it was in mexico that i started blogging. mexico gives you a lot of things to say. it's a culture and city that speaks loud and everyone can hear it. switzerland on the other hand is pretty silent, it doesn't talk much and this is the beauty of the place. the deafening silence and the screaming chaos clash as they bang up against each other and my brain gets a headache. if i listen to that headache here's what it tells me: it makes me mad. it makes me mad that there are homeless kids in the street being pimped by their parents. it makes me mad to drive through the new developments of high rise suburbia that displaced the slums that were there 3 years ago. it makes me mad that i benefited from the extremes of classism and had two full-time employees taking care of my life. it makes me mad that i wish i still had them. it makes me mad that i enjoy not seeing this harsh reality daily in the pristine world i now live in. it makes me mad that switzerland has billboards of crows eating the swiss flag to discourage immigration of the heathens. it makes me mad that mexicans need to disclose bank account information to get a visa to the US. it makes me really mad. so mad that i want to change it. so mad that i believe i can change it. this is the consequence of capitalism. to eliminate extremes of poverty, you must address extremes of wealth. one cannot be eliminated so long as the other is allowed to exist. what would happen if i refused to accumulate extremes of wealth regardless of how much money i was able to generate? what if there was a way to institutionalize it so that it went beyond charity but was embedded into the fabric of my business affairs? what if there were other people like me that wanted the same thing? what if we could build a money making machine that would never benefit us personally but would benefit the common good? could we present the world an alternative model? that's what i want to do and i'm not the only one. be mad arya but make sure that emotion doesn't go wasted, use it as energy to change reality.

moscow

i just came back from a trip to moscow. i found it a very jarring experience. it wasn't at all what i expected. i don't know what exactly i was expecting but what i saw wasn't it. i was reminded of disney land (?) sounds strange i know but that's the only thing that kept coming back to me. it felt like i was inside the exhibit of "it's a small world."

i guess i expected to see remnants of communism... some kind of thumbprint remaining from that massive experiment. but instead it felt like an etch-a-sketch wiped clean.

the economic situation - what's missing?

in my opinion, we haven't even BEGUN to see the extent of this current economic crisis. whether it takes 6 months, 6 years or 60 years, i think there is much, much more that will unravel. now we are officially in a "recession" and there's lots of talk of doom and gloom but i get a sense from what i'm reading that people in general think we have hit bottom or we are somewhere near it. i'm a big-picture person and when i step back and look at the big picture, to me it is a much, much bigger problem than what is being discussed in the news. this is clearly an over-simplification but i think that these two charts do a good job representing the magnitude of where we are.

the first chart shows how much the financial bailout cost us vs other large investments we have made as a country. the second chart shows the Dow Jones trend from the 1930's to the present time. the "crash" we have experienced (the little blip at the end) doesn't seem so huge when you look at the big picture. it seems to me like there's a lot further it can fall. look at the magnitude of the great depression! from a big-picture point of view, we are still at the peak. the bailout on the other hand is enormous. and this is just ONE industry! what happens when you add auto makers? who's next?

i believe this problem will get worse and i don't think it's solvable unless and until we advance spiritually as a global community. material prosperity and spiritual prosperity must be in balance for true human prosperity to manifest. Baha'is all over the world are working towards a revival of the spirit within the fabric of everyday life through application of the Baha'i writings in society through offering core activities, open to all, focusing on the education of children, study circles for adults, study circles for pre-youth and devotional gatherings. we had a devotional gathering at our home last night and the people it brought together and the discussion it inspired were beautiful! tomorrow night we have a study circle. participation in these activities shifts the focus of life from the mundane to the elevated and makes tangible how each and every one of us can make a huge impact through dedicating our lives to the service of humanity. we need to build a new foundation of unity upon which a new world civilization can rest. the Baha'i writings state:

"A new life," Bahá'u'lláh proclaims, "is, in this age, stirring within all the peoples of the earth; and yet none hath discovered its cause, or perceived its motive." "O ye children of men," He thus addresses His generation, "the fundamental purpose animating the Faith of God and His Religion is to safeguard the interests and promote the unity of the human race... This is the straight path, the fixed and immovable foundation. Whatsoever is raised on this foundation, the changes and chances of the world can never impair its strength, nor will the revolution of countless centuries undermine its structure." "The well-being of mankind," He declares, "its peace and security are unattainable unless and until its unity is firmly established." "So powerful is the light of unity," is His further testimony, "that it can illuminate the whole earth. The one true God, He Who knoweth all things, Himself testifieth to the truth of these words... This goal excelleth every other goal, and this aspiration is the monarch of all aspirations." "He Who is your Lord, the All-Merciful," He, moreover, has written, "cherisheth in His heart the desire of beholding the entire human race as one soul and one body. Haste ye to win your share of God's good grace and mercy in this Day that eclipseth all other created days." www.bahai.org

6 months

we've been in switzerland now for 6 months! this move has been a purification. there is something spectacularly cleansing about the swiss air which explains why Shoghi Effendi retreated here. great artists, writers, scientists were attracted here... courbet, einstein, fitzgerald, gibbon, hemingway, hesse, joyce, rilke... switzerland is unadulturated. it is what it is, nothing more, nothing less.

the culture preserves the status quo, which explains why a random customer in a grocery store yelled at me for going the wrong way through the check-out lane and a random passenger on the bus yelled at chad for riding the bus standing without holding onto the railing. there are rules here to keep things the way they are and the rules will be followed. there are rules and rules and rules! the trash rules really get me. special marked trash bags must be used for all trash. they are black and have special markings on them. they may be put out the morning of trash pickup, not the night before. there must not be any sneaking of recyclables into these bags... no glass, plastic, paper, cans... there is a special place open a few hours a day you are supposed to drive to with your recyclables and sort them yourself. we have yet to find this magical place and have heaps of trash in our garage awaiting chance of a second life. there's no speeding here. ever. there are cameras installed all over the roads that take photos and if you are speeding, a speeding ticket arrives in your mail with a hefty fine. there's no working women! children all go home for lunch hour and spend wednesdays with mommy while school shuts down. grocery stores close at 6 on weekdays and are open for a few hours on saturday. if a woman works anyway, she pays higher taxes in switzerland than a man. the rules i thought would infuriate me are the very reasons i love this place. it's clean, it works, you know what to expect, the lifestyle is built around family. it's brilliant. and it's been a wonderful cocoon to get our family back to the basics of life. we consume less of everything, we conserve more, we spend more time together and more time with nature. we live in less space and have had more visitors in 6 months than we have had the whole 14 years we've lived together. every other night there is someone over for a study circle or dinner. every weekend there are houseguests. last month we had 13 people in the house at one time! last weekend we had a friend living in sudan, this weekend we will have friends from texas and london. i've ALWAYS wanted an open home full of people, what i called a "spiritual halfway house" and here it is. in switzerland of all places!

pasta alla norma in catania, sicily

Mamma Rosanna made a killer Pasta alla Norma, a famous Sicilian dish. She invited people into her kitchen to see the food. Yummy. I have this expectation that all food eaten in Italy should be delicious. Last night I was very disappointed but tonight I'm delighted. Mamma Rosanna can cook!

Restaurant de Fiore
Via Coppola, 24
Catania

lavaux region bird migration

thousands of migratory birds feast on the vineyards after the harvest... it's an unbelievable sight, something out of "planet earth." i don't know what these birds are called but it looks like there are thousands upon thousands of them. the vineyards are well covered with nets before harvest and after harvest when the nets come off, the birds must be feasting on the leftovers. i had a hood on just in case but no "bombs" sighted...

harvesting in the vineyards

we have the first snowfall in switzerland on the mountains and the grapes are being harvested. this country is soooooo beautiful.

mac complaints

so i FINALLY did it and bought myself a mac. my old laptop died and i've been going back & forth, do i? don't i? finally i did it. i went to the apple store and bought one and was resigned to figuring it out after the fact. i've had it a few weeks now and i DO love it but it also drives me nutzo. i have my whole life, every random thought and scratch of paper from the past 5 years stored in MS OneNote (the killer app). there is nothing like it on the mac and that's the only reason i waited so long to make the switch. i've downloaded journaler and evernote, nothing is like it. i used it for literally everything. i'm loathing the process of converting all my "stuff" to a new program that just won't work the same way. i don't suppose anyone has any ideas? other annoyances: how come programs don't quit when you close them? why do i have 30 windows open that i can't seem to navigate between? why can't i get open office working? why doesn't imovie play my mpgs? how do i convert my mpgs? why doesn't finder show the entire structure? hey, i DO like it. it's beautiful (i've always been form over function) and it turns on & off really well!