Snorkeling

You start above the surface. Crouching on the wet rock you see the deep green forest dip down to reach the drifting waters, while the ripples slosh lightly at your feet. You are awkward, flapping towards the shore as you lift each flat, pancake-like foot and shift the airtight goggles that have already begun to leave a mark on your forehead. You bend to stroke the water, recoil after the chilling immersion into wetness, and brace yourself for total plunge. Down you go.

Bubbles burst towards the surface as you sink beneath the lip of the lake. The cold surrounds you for a moment before dissipating into nothingness, and your pancake feet have suddenly become lean and powerful. The world above was filled with chirping birds and chittering squirrels, but this new world is saturated with a peaceful silence, broken only by your rasping breath that reminds you all too well that you do not belong. Below you lurks darkness, casting shadows that you can discern just well enough to realize they are there. Your body is white and spidery by comparison, hanging like a delicate weed, vulnerable to the pull from below.

You kick your fins and the moment passes. You have been liberated from the shackles of gravity, free to twist and flip as you please. A gray fish darts beneath you, and you decide to follow it further into the depths. Does it know you are there? It stops abruptly, but does not turn. Would it feel fear for the looming monster that waits behind it, with tentacle-like limbs and eyes that are large, flat and empty? The monster means no harm, but sympathy does not favor the grotesque. As quickly as it stops, now the fish scuttles away, and you begin to follow when you hear a scream in the distance. There is a violent whine that comes closer and closer, threatening to overtake you, but as you turn around yourself the underworld remains dark and devoid of motion. At last the cry is too great. As quickly as you had stopped, you turn and lunge for the white surface

and suddenly you are back into paradise, watching as a simple motor boat zooms by in the distance. Your shoulders are cold, and your forehead can feel the pressure of the strangling mask once again. You

dip below one last time before

rising to make your way back up the rocky shore.

July Surprise

When the people forget to tend their gardens, the spiny weeds come. Pricklier than cacti, they knot themselves into hopeless tangles, overwhelming their victims until the land becomes theirs. But by the first of July, a knob that formed in late May reaches its completion. A black, glistening raspberry bursting with seeds and ripe for the picking.

We came out with baskets, buckets, and colanders to harvest the crop that had grown, not out of effort, but a lack thereof. Five minutes later we returned to the house in search of long pants and pruning gloves. The irony that such an aggressive plant would produce such a desirable berry was not lost on us. It seemed the only others able to enjoy the fruit were the flies and mosquitoes that buzzed around our heads. As a result, the yields were plentiful and satisfying.

In one patch of land the black raspberries were particularly abundant. They curled their spiny tentacles around the metal fence that had been built to protect us from the evil dogs on the other side. These dogs had their own cages, and every time someone would get near, they would bark for as long as it took to drive the person away. One winter, as they were being taken out of their cages to go, the dogs decided to chase my mother and I across the ice, dragging their tattooed owner along by the leash. So now there was a fence. At least the black raspberries liked their new home.

The dogs began howling as soon as we began approaching. We chose to ignore them. They barked as loud as their lungs would allow them. We continued to ignore them. Instead we pushed our way through the brambles, reaching for the richest shades of black. To our left, the dogs threw themselves against their metal cages, testing out the strength of the bolts. Hornets circled out heads, threatening to come nearer with every spiral. But the branches were full of berries, so we chose to stay.

When our baskets and buckets and colanders were full, we made our way out of the berry patch and headed back to our house. That night, we made ice cream.

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Musings on Luck

I’ve been reading a book called “Einstein in Love” recently. It’s interesting because it presents Einstein without his usual attire of geniusness, instead showing a passionate, arrogant thinker who either highly praised his peers or violently denounced them. Some of these peers were great thinkers in their own right, and in fact seemed to have a greater right to the term “genius” than Einstein himself! Not to put down Einstein’s achievements; they were still brilliant. But by no means was such intelligence unique.

It would be foolish to say that Einstein should have attributed all his success to luck. He was an industrious worker, and was constantly trying to improve his theories and his living conditions. But it was also lucky that Einstein had his intelligence to begin with, or else he might have been crushed from the start, destined to be trapped in the numerous failed electric companies of his family. So ultimately the question arises: what is luck, and how does it play a part in our fates?

Some people (intellectuals especially) are quick to label the concept of luck as a superstitious creation of ignorant minds. Indeed, in some languages, the word ‘luck’ doesn’t even exist. But does that necessarily mean that luck, or something like it, cannot exist?  In my opinion, the greatest issue is when people put stock in luck to predict the future. More likely, luck is just a tool to analyze events and patterns of the past. If someone has a greater tendency to succeed, it wouldn’t be incorrect to claim that they were “lucky.” But when it comes to placing stock on the outcome of something based solely on these largely unrelated successes, those involved are bound to run into trouble.

Let’s apply this theory to the case of Einstein. Certainly Einstein succeed in his lifetime through a combination of intelligence and luck. But during his lifetime any application of the lucky label would invariably create conflict. Looking back on Einstein’s life in its entirety is a safe perspective to introduce luck. Not so from the perspective of the moment. In fact Einstein was constantly faced with obstacles of his own, to the extent that his life was truly a roller coaster of fortune. Only someone with hindsight could argue that overall Einstein was a lucky person, but then there is the issue of whether Einstein himself would have agreed. Value, after all, can be a matter of opinion (see “Musings on Value”).

Luck, then, plays no role in our lives other than as a language crutch for describing a pattern in the past. Or does it? After all, it is sometimes a genuine belief in one’s luck that drives people to action. Gambling bases its entire existence upon this premise. But gamblers might think twice about putting money down if they knew the true nature of luck. To be lucky is to defy the odds of probability in your favor, but to do so means you must take on the odds of probability. Oftentimes it is these odds that themselves act in our favor. After all, according to the laws of quantum mechanics, all kinds of unusual and disturbing outcomes are possible when matter interacts with matter. The fact that they don’t occur is probably a result of the overwhelming odds against them. And one shouldn’t forget the conveniences of normalcy, such as predictability. To be normal is to be stable, while to be lucky is to be precarious. Luckily, we live in a world where the former in more often true.

Agents of Rebirth

Photo courtesy of Alex Westfall

I few weeks ago, I took a trip to Peru. Prior to beginning the Inca Trail, a 26 kilometer path that would take me to Machu Picchu, I stayed for a few nights with a family of farmers living in the countryside. For the most part, the land and the people fulfilled the picturesque stereotype of a rural lifestyle. The house was a somewhat ramshackle structure of adobe bricks, and, with the exception of a road that passed by the chicken coop, we were surrounded by nothing but fields. But there were a few anomalies in the cultural landscape. In the main room of the house, the kitchen/dining area, a modern radio and CD player rested incongruously in the window next to the open electrical wire. There was even a place to plug in an iPod. At night, I would see the mother or father walking around with a battery-powered flashlight, and almost every twenty minutes I would hear the cellphone of my host  make its presence known with a tinny version of “Ride of the Valkyries.”

I thought back to some of the other, more urban, towns I had seen on my trip thus far. Advertisements for presidential candidates and Justin Bieber would be plastered side by side along the crumbling walls of the local shops. Donkeys carrying bundles of grain stepped on loose flyers sailing along in the dust. Even in this relatively remote setting, the arm of a different society had reached in to influence the people. The most memorable example was on an empty road in the desert, where Coca-cola and Pepsi had set up nearly identical billboards directly across from one another on either side of the highway.

But could one fairly call such conveniences such as flashlights and cellphones merely infiltrators of a different culture? The CD player and radio were for listening to traditional Peruvian music, so that the local children (and sometimes adults) could dance their traditional dances. The flashlight was for making sure that the animals were safe in their pens every night. And the cellphone was to communicate with workers in the fields and at the local market. Rather than a transformation of the culture, these conveniences were more like agents of rebirth.

Perhaps the increasing influence of our own culture threatens to change the cultures of others. But is it our responsibility, or even our privilege, to dictate how these people should live their lives? Some would rather lessen the capitalist waste that pollutes certain regions than sit by and do nothing, but with every action is a consequence. Perhaps it is too late to fully rescue the ways of the past, but we can preserve them by helping them become the ways of the future.