Saturday, September 30, 2006

the Tubernet

Jon Stewart: a lot of people don't know this, but the Internet is NOT a dump truck. Why didn't I think of searching for my baby daddy, ahem, I mean Jon Stewart, on youtube? And why am I so wide awake at 1 AM?

Answer: last night's "indigenous party," hosted by the Nasa I think. I drank chicha and made people laugh with my tall, tall dancing ways until 5 am Saturday. (Aside: one of the party-goers, a Wayu I think, kept asking why I wasn't an anthropologist. "But everyone here is either indigenous or an anthropologist," he repeated.)

I love coming home when the birds are coming up. One night last week I stayed up all night just because. Ah, the things I'll miss when I go back to having things like, I don't know, an actual job and a real live relationship, as opposed to one conducted almost exclusively over the tubes that make up the Internet (see clip above).

Thursday, September 28, 2006

living a little more

"Every moment of one's existence one is growing into more or retreating into less. One is always living a little more or dying a little bit. " -- Norman MailerTonight, Anne from Ireland read our stars. Porter and I were willing subjects. As much as we talk, there were surprises, spots of light shed on unexamined corners, and lots of future fun made.

Anne started mine out by exclaiming, multiple times, "boy are you weird!" Elly was perhaps not surprised, but I kind of was, a bit. I mean, I look fairly normal (lifetime studying how to look normal), I speak, walk, behave pretty much like other people. But Anne kept at it. I've never seen a chart like this, I don't know how to interpret this, I don't know what to make of that. Ultimately, she settled on some educational experience, combined with great shyness, shaped (misshaped?) my brain, and now I have a very unusual way of seeing the world. Well, it is astrology, after all, and we are humans, and we hear what we want to hear, but I confess, I was thrilled! Everyone loves to be told they are different, and here was my confirmation. I'm weird, it's in the stars. As Porter said, tonight was the ultimate narcissist's dream: complete focus on me and what makes me tick.

I may not believe in these things wholeheartedly, but there are so many ways of approaching human understanding, and this one may be just as legitimate as the next. I did learn a few things. I ought to trust my strangeness, my own lens for the world. Who of us knows how our own oddity? How can we? We're all wrapped up in our own thoughts, our own filters and prior beliefs. Who of us has any idea of the other?

In a minor example of this, Porter mentioned that at the U of Mich, referring to someone as an "anthropologist" is practically an insult -- they are completely focused on quantitative methods, and anything that values a different tool is threatening and therefore ridiculed.

Okay, Buckmasters, you can start making fun of me now. I did ask for it, calling to find out what time I was born...but I'll have you know I had your charts read too.

Wednesday, September 27, 2006

Fixin' to be

from Dave Pollard's post on Intentionality:
But there are steps and there are steps, and the important steps, even the small ones, are bold ones, with no turning back. These are the steps that we only take when we must, when we have no alternative, when the pain of going forward is less than the pain of staying where we are. Those who profit from our inaction, our lack of true intentionality, our fear, are counting (with good reason) on the fact that, for most of us, we have not yet reached that tipping point when we must act, must Let-Self-Change. They keep us distracted and addicted and comfortable enough with our prison life that escaping is never urgent enough.

My weblog is, more than anything else, a diary for talking myself into practicing what I preach, for convincing myself that I must act. Help convince me, it says to my readers, who are impatiently hoping for me to convince them. How to be a model, I write. Won't somebody be a model for me, I am asking, to those who want and rightfully expect me, the advocate of Let-Self-Change, to be the model for them. My audience is dwindling as so many get tired of all-talk, no-action. So we sit here, by the exit doors of the prison, talking about possibilities and trying to talk each other into real change, to make each other bold.

We do what we must, then we do what's easy, and then we do what's fun. We are not yet persuaded that we must take that first bold no-turning-back step, and we know that step won't be easy and that it may not be fun.

We will only leave the prison when someone, probably inadvertently, with the best of intentions, or accidentally, sets it on fire. Maybe that's what we're all waiting for.
Worth a look. I love how honest he is about himself.

change

"The moment you come to trust chaos, you see God clearly. Chaos is
divine order, versus human order. Change is divine order, versus human
order. When the chaos becomes safety to you, then you know you're
seeing God clearly."

—Caroline Myss, *Spiritual Madness: The Necessity of Meeting God in
Darkness*

I've been thinking about change lately, how we all change all the time, but often nothing seems to change for eons and eons (in our tiny brains). I decided I'm change-oriented: I focus on changing/improving myself, helping people around to make changes, changing the things I see wrong with society.

But Slim is helping me understand that it's also important to accept -- change, or lack of change, or just what's around us -- without growing complacent. That's the paradox: I had to learn to accept things the way they are in order to get better at making change. And now I'm learning to make change in a literal sense (cents...argh!) tending bar at el espacio (if it doesn't get shut down for good).

My latest favorite song: "I can change" by John Legend (with Snoop).

What's your orientation? Change, acceptance, something else?

Tuesday, September 26, 2006

Colombia Migration Project

Got a link to this site today: Have Money Will Vlog. It's an interesting approach to fundraising, and the featured project is a New York anthropologist's baby, the Colombia Migration Project, a series of interviews with Colombians living abroad. She is raising money to travel to Colombia to interview people waiting to leave. Some estimate that as many as 4.2 million Colombians are currently living abroad, whether for political or economic reasons. About half of these live in North America. In addition, some 3.5 million Colombians have been internally displaced.

photo from bbc.uk.co

Two organizations that help Colombians outside the country contribute: Conexion Colombia and Give to Colombia.

Monday, September 25, 2006

weekend wrap-up

El Espacio's website is up: www.elespaciobogota.org with photos of us, in capes. It only took me the whole first night to figure out who the guy taking all the photos was -- yeah, the webmaster. I kind of thought he was just a creep, oops.



Bad news for the Space, though -- more police harassment, and now they've been temporarily shut down after two minors were found in the 500 concert-goers. Check out photos of the party that spilled out onto the street, in the fanciest commercial zone in Bogota, you'll have a better idea why. Throw in a little sexual harassment by the police, some screaming aunties of rich, young concert organizers, and lots of kids who rather die than throw their own beer cans away, and you're practically there! The martini and seven jeans crowd doesn't want a bunch of punks messing with their exclusive fun. Or maybe it was all those capes.

------------

Medellin was great - no alarm clocks (you know how I feel about those, Slim), sweaty rivulets down our backs from just sitting still, lung-clogging air, streets that existed only to sell stinky fish, their eyes bulging from the heat, lots of aimless wandering punctuated by greasy and so delicious arepas, a mountaintop view from the comunas, friendly metro workers and warm people to match the warm weather in general, and dancing dancing dancing! And Craplations closed its doors in Medellin, so we actually (kind of) deserved the vacation we got.

-------------

In latest too strange to not be true news from Bogota, "Colombia's chief prosecutor hired a psychic who hypnotized his staff and even performed an exorcism over a voodoo doll in exchange for a government paycheck and use of an armored car." Full article: "Hiring of Psychic Haunts Bogota Official."

Wednesday, September 20, 2006

gone to Medellin

just as soon as we finish craplating. which is looking more and more like 7 am, just before the bus leaves. be back Sunday. Cheers!

It's 12 AM...do you know where your translator is? The chocolate store (they may sell other items, but if they do I don't want to know about it) closes any minute. Who will win, girl or chocolate bar?

Monday, September 18, 2006

new motto

Craplations, Inc.
Bastardizing your most urgent documents since Tuesday

procrastinating bits (a lemony stroke)

Songs my laptop sings to me:
If I could talk I'd tell you
If I could smile I'd let you know
You are far and away
My most imaginary friend
Elly says she's heard this song more in 9 months living with me than in the previous 24 years of her life. What can I say? Lemonheads are my favorite candy, but I only like this song.

Songs I sing to my laptop:
Oh Tennessee, what did you write?
I come together in the middle of the night.
Oh that's an ending that I can't write, 'cause
I've got you to let me down.

I want to be forgotten,
and I don't want to be reminded.
You say "please don't make this harder."
No, I won't yet.
What does all of this mean? That I have 40 more pages to crapulate, and my laptop and I are developing a very close relationship.

My roommate to me:
You talk way too much
You talk way too much
Me to my roommate:
Now we're out of time
I said it's my fault
It's my fault

Can't make good decisions
It won't stop
I can't stop
and both of us to The Woman:
Give me some time, I just need a little time
Give me some time, I just need a little time
Give me some time, I just need a little time
Give me some time, I just need a little time

You talk way too much
You talk way too much
It's only the end
It's only the end as you know it...

"You're not supposed to say that
you taught me too much"
Is this how it ends?
Is this how it ends?

Sunday, September 17, 2006

Friday, September 15, 2006

Images

The texture of life feels different to the touch in different places. In Colombia it's rough, like natural wool, but colorful, strong, and warm. I was walking home from a meeting of delegates elected from my neighborhood to set our priorities in social programs (which involves a substantial amount of yelling, if you wondered) when I walked into the kind of scene that I will carry with me long after I've left Colombia. Two mariachis were practicing, and the clear notes of their trumpets cut through the traffic and noise, leading the way for a lumbering Coke truck making its way slowly up the potholed side street, flowing over the lushest purple flowers you can imagine, growing in beautiful disarray across a brick facade.

The rest of the walk got me thinking about how people use, I mean really use, public space here. I passed groups of university students sitting outside a little grocery store, laughing and drinking; street vendors on their way home after a long day but still hoping for one last sale, more couples than I could count enjoying (but how) the grassy spread of the national campus, in short, people everywhere conducting important parts of their lives and social interaction on the street. To me that's a beautiful thing. Too much of the life I'm used to happens inside, and it feels so confining, so small. Give me the noisy, dirty, alive streets of the so-called developing world any day. I don't think I'm going to re-adapt to Atlanta well...then again, there's no Macondo in Atlanta!

And the Lilburn house is a haven of peace and quiet, a place with actual birds in actual trees, where you can hear the crickets chirp on hot summer nights, well, when the AC isn't drowning them out. I think I could get used to that again - lately we've been honest to god fantasizing about shooting out the sound system across the street.

Installment Deux, Correspondence: Craplations, Inc.

From: Rebecca Serna
To: Porter, Elizabeth
Date: Sep 15, 2006 1:14 PM
Subject: Portera!

In addition, find attached to this correspondence my latest foray into the sphere of translating documents from the original language intended to communicate purpose and resolve despite the unfortunate existence of a language barrier between the ONG WDI and the host country, in which the personnel have made numerous and varied adjustments to the cultural, social, and political contexts, given the reality of a lack of funding for translators and other cultural emissaries and so forth and so on.

In fervent hope a percentage no greater than 25% of the sentences in my translation sound like this one.

Also, I used the word "foray" today. Twice.

Onward, upward, el Ecuador-ward...

"Crapulating is my life"
Sernisma

------------------------------------
From: Elizabeth
To: Rebecca

brilliant, have i told you lately that you are? in spite of that its lacking originality, something for which should strive the people, it is thought a good idea writing in this manner that could be considered difficult for understanding by the people. in this way it is suggested that tonight the undertaking of the activity of crapulating, be accompanied by perhaps a pizza that could derive from the place that is considered by the majority to be in general preferred for these pies of DOUGH covered by SAUCE of TOMATOE and CHEESE and slices of TOMATOE.

your esteemed co-founder of this company which ventures to place in bank accounts funds in the form of dollars is available to volunteer to pass said pizza establishment that is the source of aforementioned pizza. she plans that she will be returing to the headquarters around about 8:30pm.

one more point that is worth mentioning is that miray, known as the other half of the team known as FOR presently residing in bogota, has thought quite definitively of the idea of traveling, on a bus, to the city that tends to be referred to as medellin, on the same wednesday that the team of crapulations will be on a bus moving towards said city of medellin(1) and also staying the night, as will also be the team of crapulations. it is an idea that has been posed that these three team members of different teams board said bus as a team and spend one night in a hotel still to be determined.

if any of those people reading this document are not in compliance with its suggestions, they should direct their queries at the person across the table (if the same person is in fact across the table at the time of reading) or if is not(2) dial the number of the celular phone of said person. then talk.

much suggestions of happiness,
grace w schmidt lovejoy

1. interview with trish abbott, interviewed 15 september, 2006
2. in this manner, will be teaching classes of english at the headquarters of an organization of the civil society which has no goals of profit.

Thursday, September 14, 2006

Goodnight, Ann

Very sweet article by Liz Smith about her friendship with Ann Richards.

The last bit:
Only recently when I asked Ann her point of view about granting some kind of amnesty to illegal Latins in the United States, she just laughed: "They better grant them some way to stay here because otherwise our hospitals and nursing homes will never have the staff to take care of all of us who are growing older. The people caring for me at Anderson are almost all Mexican, Dominican, Puerto Rican, and they are simply wonderful.

This was the last thing Ann ever said to me -- typically caring, penetrating, socially observant. So goodbye to one of the most fabulous women I've ever known. Ann, it was a great privilege to be your friend!

before the flood

GALEO: Threat received over voter registration:

"ATLANTA - Volunteers in Hall and nine other counties, working to register Hispanics to vote, have been told to work in teams after organizers said they received a "threatening" phone call. "We need to run you out of this country. You are destroying it," said the caller, according to a tape of the call made available by the Georgia Association of Latino Elected Officials, which is leading the voter registration drive. Since then, the volunteers in 10 Georgia counties that are working to register Latinos have been told to work in teams for their safety, said GALEO's director Jerry Gonzalez. "It demonstrates the dangers of political rhetoric fanning the flames of anti-immigrant sentiment," he said."

Visit GALEO's website to support their excellent (and blood-pressure raising) work.

Ann Richards died last night

It's a funny thing, the way some people we've never met can feel like old friends. Sometimes it's an author whose books we've read and re-read. Other times a public figure like Ann Richards, with her Southern aphorisms and steely wit, will insinuate themselves into our consciousness and become people that matter, without ever having exchanged a word or a glance, or a handshake, the politician's bread and butter. She was one special lady. NYT Obit

Ann Richards quotes. I really identified with this one:
“I have always had the feeling I could do anything and my dad told me I could. I was in college before I found out he might be wrong.”

Another good quote:
"They blame the low income women for ruining the country because they are staying home with their children and not going out to work. They blame the middle income women for ruining the country because they go out to work and do not stay home to take care of their children."

Wednesday, September 13, 2006

what I want to get out of writing

is this:
How did you get the idea for "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle"?

When I started to write, the idea was very small, just an image, not an idea actually. A man who is 30, cooking spaghetti in the kitchen, and the telephone rings -- that's it. It's so simple, but I had the feeling that something was happening there.

Are you always surprised by what happens in the story, almost as if you were reading it yourself, or do you know where it's going after a certain point?

I have no idea. I was enjoying myself writing, because I don't know what's going to happen when I take a ride around that corner. You don't know at all what you're going to find there. That can be thrilling when you read a book, especially when you're a kid and you're reading stories. It's very exciting when you don't know what's going to happen next. The same thing happens to me when I'm writing. It's fun.


from an old Salon.com interview with Haruki Murakami

You say that imagination is very important in your works. Sometimes your novels are very realistic, and then sometimes they get very ... metaphysical.

I write weird stories. I don't know why I like weirdness so much. Myself, I'm a very realistic person. I don't trust anything New Age -- or reincarnation, dreams, Tarot, horoscopes. I don't trust anything like that at all. I wake up at 6 in the morning and go to bed at 10, jogging every day and swimming, eating healthy food. I'm very realistic. But when I write, I write weird. That's very strange. When I'm getting more and more serious, I'm getting more and more weird. When I want to write about the reality of society and the world, it gets weird. Many people ask me why, and I can't answer that. But I recognized when I was interviewing those 63 [sarin gas attack victims on the subway train in Tokyo in March 1995] ordinary people -- they were very straightforward, very simple, very ordinary, but their stories were sometimes very weird. That was interesting.

Monday, September 11, 2006

Baby steps

From the Grist:
"In January 2006, the University of Michigan suspended the purchase of Coca-Cola products on its campus...the university cut the contract because of concerns over environmental issues in India and labor issues in Colombia. Corporate decision-makers should pay heed: this event is notable on several dimensions. "

"First, this decision was not due to any problems with product or pricing. Instead, the university cut the contract because of concerns over environmental issues in India and labor issues in Colombia. Second, and more amazingly, the decision was prompted by one man and the small nonprofit he runs out of his home in Southern California. Amit Srivastava and his India Resource Center have mobilized students on the Ann Arbor campus and elsewhere to petition their administrations to ban Coke from their campuses, and they are succeeding. Third and finally, this unusual form of pressure is leading the company to do something it would never have previously agreed to: open its overseas facilities to independent, transparent, third-party environmental and labor audits."
"Last year, the actions of a tiny nonprofit mobilizing college students over foreign environmental and labor issues was not considered relevant to the bottom line of Coca-Cola. Today, the decision of the University of Michigan (and more recent decisions by some Indian states to close Coke plants and ban both Coke and Pepsi products) has moved the issue squarely into the good-management quadrant."
Things do change, just not quickly or easily.

sample correspondence

Darling Portera,

Is the Peruvian document the country report? You know me and Peru don't get along. Elizabeth doesn't know any better, so she'll do Peru, and I'll do the Voluntarios de Vida now and the Ecuador report later.

Thanks so much!

Rebecca Serna
Craplations, Inc.

-----------------

What Up P-Dawg,

So the Parques Para Chile document was in Arial 10 pt font, when I put it into Times New Roman 12pt its 32 pages. So that's the way I'm going to turn it in, otherwise the rate I'd get paid at would be ridiculously low, and less than what we agreed on, since we based that rate on a standard font size, no?

So tell those bitches in Michigan they can come down to Bogota and fight it out with some modern dance/capoeira/yoga maestras if they want to squeeze us any tighter.

Oppressed translators of the world unite!
Peace out,

El-Dawg
Elizabeth G. Walsh
Craplations, Inc.

Sunday, September 10, 2006

a good day

The Boondocks
Today was a good day. I know because I can barely move. Strained my hip in yoga, then twisted in playing ultimate frisbee. Caught sight of a new white hair in the mirror this morning. Sheesh. Not too much longer and I'll be wearing knee highs, sitting in a comfortable chair with an afghan, watching the street life and thinking, three flights of stairs means grandma's staying in! Oh wait. That describes three out of the past four days fairly accurately, with minor caped excursions.

Saturday, September 09, 2006

Pearls before Swine

a minor success

is better than an utter failure, I say. so when I say the grand inauguration of "El Espacio" was a minor success, I mean that in the best possible way. The take home may not have been even enough to pay off friend debts/investments, but pretty much everyone who made it through the doors loved it. It truly is just that, a space. The capes went surprisingly well with the bare walls still pockmarked by shreds of old concert posters, and the shocking orange wall at the very end made it all hang together.

I think my destiny may very well be to serve liquid refreshment and keep self-conscious punk kids from hurting anyone on the dance floor. It may be. You'd be surprised how much authority a cape made from curtains inveighs. And when Josh and I open our coop bar "The Public," we'll even serve coffee. And organic dinners, just one basic meal, Colombian style.

Hopefully with a lesser police presence though. As we left, 5.5 hours later for me, and 8 for Eli, there were three cop cars parked up and down the street, and all their occupants were making a beeline for El Espacio. We had to hide the "register" (which Eli made with cardboard) 3 times because, surprise, their liquor license application has not come through yet. News to me, but it was exciting. Here's to the urban culture space, and here's to dreaming big and not letting a few police and some missing paperwork stop you. Now that's punk.

Friday, September 08, 2006

unrelated links (I think...)

Atlanta World Class Transit map and logo on bags, t-shirts, binders, etc.
Pope reborn as superhero in Colombian comic:
Kind of has a different ring for the English speaker, but "HomoPater" translates roughly to "Incredible Popeman."

CO soldiers responsible for bombing

Those blasts did come as a shock -- we spent "inauguration day" indoors while the city appeared to drift into a wakeful sleep. Bombs were not supposed to reach Bogota anymore. Today the local news reports CO army officers on tape paying off a former guerrilla to plant the bombs. No one was supposed to get hurt. It was a grey day, a day of expectant, guilty silence, but nothing much happened. The buzz of helicopters swooping nearby was the only sound we could hear from the balcony in a city accustomed to constant noise.

Thursday, September 07, 2006

google is Alert

I love google news alerts, even if google probably is invading my privacy. hey, programmers have to get their kicks too.

But let's be serious, because the news today from Colombia was not great. For one, Amnesty International: Colombia turning blind eye to attacks on human rights workers:
President Alvaro Uribe incensed the public when he lashed out against human rights groups in a 2003 speech, calling them "politickers for terrorism" and "communists in disguise." He later apologized. "By not investigating threats, and discrediting their work publicly, the government is essentially giving a green light to their continued persecution," Sofia Nordenmark, author of the Amnesty report, told The Associated Press.
Often the threats are coming from sources embarassingly (and outrageously!) close to the government itself.

On a related note, I'm sorry to see a good paper like the Guardian buying the Uribist security discourse. It's so similar to the Bushie terrorism siren call; I'm surprised they weren't more critical of the explanations given by the Colombian national government in this article: 'Safer' Colombia launches tourism drive.

Let's start with this sentence: "T
he president's hardline stance against leftist rebels and the demobilisation of more than 30,000 rightwing paramilitary fighters have seen kidnappings drop 73% and murders fall 37% since Mr Uribe first took office in 2002."

But murders started falling in the 90s, when changes in the Constitution allowed Bogota to elect its first mayor, Jaime Castro. Most urban observers have attributed the safety gains in Bogota to the series of innovative mayors that followed this essential shift. See: Bogota, Island in a Land at War (I know, you've all heard this song and dance before, but I can't believe people are still attributing urban homicide rate declines to Uribe...)

There's another problem with that article, though. Yesterday El Tiempo reported that the crime rates for 2005 were massaged (actually, just falsified) to make it appear that crime went down this year. An honest man at the chamber of commerce noticed that the numbers for last year's crimes were suddenly much, much higher in the 2006 report than in the 2005 report created for the central city government. What a pleasant surprise! Party hardy, tourists. You're safer here than you would have been in the imaginary version we created of last year's city.

Patterns of violent death in Bogota 1997-2003:

As you can see, homicides began their decade-long decline before the current president took office in 2002.

Colombia meets opposition in privatization of nation oil company. Where's Evo when you need him?

One last thing in today's CO news buffet: "The head of the army has accused his troops, including two officers, of participating in a deadly car-bombing on the eve of President Alvaro Uribe's swearing-in ceremony last month that was originally blamed on leftist rebels. Montoya also said corrupt soldiers were behind the high-profile seizure in recent weeks of several weapon stockpiles that authorities originally said belonged to rebels but which now appear to have been staged to impress their superiors." Full article here.

Gee, when you can't trust the Colombian army, who can you trust? Unfortunately army service is still compulsory. The Red Juvenil in Medellin includes many conscientious objectors who are persecuted for their decision.

The lack of progress but everything will be okay if you just quack like a duck Report, by G. W. Bush

Bush to visit Georgia today with a lack of progress report:
Bush to speak in Cobb County AJC, Sep 6, 2006
President Bush will be in metro Atlanta Thursday talking about the global war on terror before heading to Coastal Georgia to stump for Republican congressional candidate Max Burns. The president is scheduled to arrive at Dobbins Air Reserve Base in Marietta about 10 a.m., then motorcade three miles to the Cobb Galleria Centre to address the Georgia Public Policy Foundation [right-wing group with deceptively neutral-sounding name].

The president's arrival at the Cobb Galleria will be met by protesters from the Georgia Peace and Justice Coalition [just what it sounds like, how refreshing!], who are planning to line the sidewalks along Cobb Parkway near the Galleria, according to the group's website.
In other news today, US acknowledges existence of secret CIA prisons.

Boy do I feel safer.

Wednesday, September 06, 2006

on the brain


Can you tell I'm procrastinating? Translating, transcribing...sounding too much like DOJ today but minus the B-Money, thankfully.

Tuesday, September 05, 2006

Changes

In a discussion today, and a very serious one at that, about whether it's legal to change your name to a one-word name, I came across this article: Activist changes name to GoVeg.com. I hate USA Today, but the article is both ridiculous and mildly thought-provoking. What would your one-word name be?

And More: Slate asks, "Why do so many Brazilian soccer players go by one name?" "Brazil's affinity for nicknames might stem from the country's historically high illiteracy rate. As such, shortened spoken names are typically used more often than longer birth names. In Brazilian society, the use of a first name or nickname is a mark of intimacy. It's also often a class signifier. Lula, for one, is known for his working-class roots."

Eli is changing her name to Bob. She's interested in a man named Shaka, so if you think about it makes sense.

Falling

Today so far: fallen twice on my head, a few times on my knees, uncountable times on my ass. I must say, the last is by far the best body part to fall on. The head, not so much. Only cried once though - the last head drop was pretty painful. I decided to demonstrate to Eli, on returning home, the crazy move we learned in class today, knowing the wooden floor was not having it. Down I went, and stayed for a bit. All of this thanks to capoeira.

But I think it's a useful if bruising exercise. The instructor today said the most important part of capoeira is learning to fall. If nothing else, learning to fall not on your head seems like a good idea. I know I've fallen a lot in my life so far, and every time I've stood back up more grounded, more humble, and less obnoxious.

It's easy to get caught up in the "there are winners and there are losers" culture, and capoeira is an antidote of sorts to all that. People watching can tell who is more advanced, but anyone at any level can play with anyone else, the more experienced person just adjusts their play to the novice's level.