"Gimme my props properly. High off life. This high technology. Devry." - Child Rebel Soldier, Don't Stop!
I saw my mother today. She is in Hamburg, Germany and I'm in Los Angeles, California but I saw her. She was a little grainy and there was the slight delay in our conversation but over gChat, we were able to have an hour long conversation face to face. This was right after The Lady (who is 2000 miles away, mind) was able to give me an answer to what a jujube was via instant message over the phone faster than I was able to find it on my own in the Studio City farmer's market. As a co-worker friend reminded me earlier in the week, everything is amazing and nobody's happy.
I'm trying to not be a nobody today.
In other news, I did Halloween Time at Disneyland yesterday.
I'm going back next Saturday.
- The Best Thing I Saw This Week: Hrmmm. At Disneyland yesterday, we saw two kids in head-to-toe hand crocheted costumes from the movie Dumbo made by their mother. They were not amused. That was pretty world-changing. Runner-up: The poor middle child sitting on a two person stroller facing the back with his brother's junk in his face and his brother covering his crying with a map of the park. Poor Middle Child.
- The Best Thing I Heard This Week: An old favorite - Water No Get Enemy from the Red Hot + Riot compilation. I used the song in my post for Blog Action Day. As a follow up to that post, here's some more information about water from Tree Hugger.
- What I'm Currently Reading: Still making my way through L.A. Noir. I like reading it just a few pages or a chapter at a time. L.A. history is, not surprisingly, a bit like television. There's always a new twist coming in the very next episode. I'm sure I'll be done with it by this time next week, though. This also should serve as my reminder that I haven't been to the comic book store in nearly 3 weeks and Bruce Wayne is waiting for me.
- The Thing I Read This Week That Most Resonated:
It took continued exposure over 4 years to people with degrees of knowledge I didn’t even know existed, but somewhere along the way I realized that the mark of an educated person is that they wear their eruditition with an easy grace. Also I realized that when knowledge is taken as an end in itself, one can be comfortable admitting that one doesn’t know the answer. Five years ago these finer nicities were still things I didn’t know I didn’t know. It wasn’t that I lacked the intelligence, but that I hadn’t been exposed to the right cultural markers.
Why? Because I'm intensely aware that much of my successes in life have come because I haven't been lacking in sociocultural knowledge. I've lived in a variety of neighborhoods and gone to a variety of schools and worked in a variety of places but the running theme, for me, has been the rampant multiculturalism of my upbringing. I have always had friends with a variety of backgrounds. My parents excelled at exposing me to a big world and rarely stifled my outsized curiosity.
That lack of cultural constraint has served me well and I'm thankful for it every day.
The chancellor of the country my mother is in at the moment may think "multikulti has utterly failed" but my response is: that has not been my experience. The more of the world I know, the happier I am to be one of the people in it.
Let's amaze each other.
Let's go!
