Going back to Cali
Here I am in Glen Park on the south side of San Francisco wondering exactly what just happened to me. Yesterday I was in Nepal, easting breakfast with fantastic people, holding back the fruit of separation from them. Now, I am in a coffee shop bardo across the street from the BART station wondering why this corner looks so much like Madison.
The journey back has exacerbated a small, friendly alienation I feel as a "'Merican." I had several interactions with people in those flawless transnational realms of Suvarnabhumi, Narita, and SFO. Folks seemed to be unable to guess that I was from the United States. Either that or they were humoring me.
Being from the states has a wealth of privileges, but I am unsure just how valuable those are. Materially, sure, but I cannot escape the feeling that there is something very wrong with those privileges.
Who am I kidding. I know there is something wrong with them. We have them because others do not.
posted by Breathing at 1:24 PM
1 Comments:
oh yes.
i've been feeling verrrry uncomfortably anglocentric lately; i've been reading all this stuff about evolution and dinosaur discovery, and i wonder: why are all these scientific moments happening in the west (specifically, england and america, with france and germany as sideline players)? where is the entire rest of the world?
and how can i stop myself from this awful privileging of western science, as if "discovering" evolution is somehow a marker of intellectual superiority and progress?
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