At the Center of the Circle

It's nights like these when laying around in a hammock outside on the patio listening to the sounds of the band at the bar down the street that everything seems quite alright, even if there are problems. I'm realizing that coming to Brazil I had a lot of expectations, not necessarily about the program in particular, but that it would be this completely life-changing experience-every moment of it. Now that I am actually here in reality, it seems much more realistic that, of course, things are going to go astray, go wrong, because that is how things are. And that it is up to the individual to pick out the small things that do go right, the small things that are good, and concentrate on them. I have faith that I will walk away from this time in Brazil with good thoughts and knowing that I have become a different person, at least, perhaps the person I would rather be at times. Those moments where I feel at peace and can honestly tell myself that things feel good are the ones I will remember.

If this excursion is anything like the past two we have had, it will prove me right. And seeing as this one looks even better than the last two, that is quite good. This program has already given me so much to think about in only 3 weeks that in that regard it is already worth it. I keep thinking back to some of the critiques I received at my moderation board, how I was swimming in too much high theory, paying too much attention to method, and not enough to just, well, what happens with people. The way most anthropology articles/books for that matter seem to be written nowadays is a structure like this:

• general broad theory used to frame the author's point of view/frame of the subject
• talk about methods/motivations
• use small snippets of quotes from informants, but in a way that supports the theory/objective of the author (like in any science for that matter)
  
• concludes with how the experience down at the ground level challenges/reshapes the above theory

Being in Brazil, actually talking to people down here who do struggle to make ends meet, who are getting their lives together to keep communities intact, gives me a lot to think about. Those few excursions, which I see as the best parts of this whole experience for this/that exact reason, have already, I think, helped to break me out of the whole above mindset. Even talking with a few people from my group about some of these things has helped too. Theory is fine for framing the world, but you can't rely on it as a model for reality all of the time, obviously. When the going gets tough, people learn to sink or swim. When you lack money and resources, and you wish to keep your family together, no amount of environmental conservationist jargon on the inherent value of the rain forest, on the deep intimacy with nature, on how only looking at human issues is anthropomorphic, etc, is going to stop that said family from, lets say, burning down the rainforest to survive. It isn't totally deterministic, but Darwin had a point when he said that life is a fight. Because if you don't fight, you don't get to live, and you can't protect the people you love. And when it comes down to it all, that is what the whole thing is about, isn't it? Community based development, environmental justice, public health? It's all about community and the people who mean something to you. Of course, there's an interesting twist in there for those communities/cultures/groups of people in the world with various cosmologies and world views that would permit them to view those same trees as indeed "the people that matter to them". Of course, maybe us here are not that different either. Because I know that my dog meant just as much to me as any other important person in my life.

That all said and done, I feel that is the most important thing right now. And even if this semester in Brazil has it's ups and downs, like anything else in life, I can pull away that I am learning that. I am learning what does indeed matter most. If I had to go back to the US right now, for some strange reason, I would be ok with that, because I feel like experiencing what I have already, and coming to those conclusions, has been worth the trip in and of itself. I've always been pretty good at learning to make the most of things that are in front of me. I feel like now, it is my job to go back home, and apply what I now feel, not know, to life at home, at Bard, and at those communities around me. I left the US feeling something along the lines of something anthropologist Nancy Scheper Hughes said in an interview, when the interviewer commented that it must take an enormous amount of courage to go off into a different land and interact with its people, etc. She replied, me roughly paraphrasing, "Well, I think what you call bravery is in fact a sort of struggle to belong. A lot of us instead have always somewhat felt that they don't quite belong in their own culture, or that it is missing something, so what you call courage I would call a search to find something that fits with you". A month ago, Brazil was my "escape" from life back in the US, from home, from academic life at Bard, from the general everyday grind. Brazil was the place, from what I had read and heard, that I could imagine myself belonging in, coming back to to work later in life, etc. I imagined it to be the place where I would find something that had been missing. Now I find myself realizing that what I've found in Brazil isn't any calling to Brazil or Amazonia in particular, but instead just the simple realization that in the end it is the people you care about that matter the most, and you don't need to work in Brazil, or Belem, or Amazonia, in order to help protect the communities you know are important to yourself, but maybe more importantly, to the people around you. And to me, that holds more meaning than any academic published paper or high level theorized conclusion. And that feels good to be at that place.

I realize maybe that half of that might not have made sense. Thats ok. I've been flipping through the Tao Te Ching once in a while at night while I listen to the music coming from outside, so I'd like to just share a quick little passage (everything in the book is short and cool), which maybe sums up my thoughts much easier than I have done:

"Do you want to improve the world?
I don't think it can be done.
The world is sacred.
It can't be improved.
If you tamper with it, you'll ruin it.
If you treat it like an object, you'll lose it.
There is a time for being ahead,
a time for being behind;
a time for being in motion,
a time for being at rest;
a time for being vigorous,
a time for being exhausted;
a time for being safe,
a time for being in danger.
The Master sees things as they are,
without trying to control them.
She lets them go their own way,
and resides at the center of the circle."

I think the whole journey in Manaus and Santarem, between the rural home stay experience where we will all be isolated and the 10 day boat trip, will very much force me, like this excerpt, to stop trying to control anything, and just let things take their course. As we flow along the river, maybe I'll also just learn to let things flow. I suppose rivers are the best place to do just that. Saude e alegria, here I come.

Yesterday I managed to barter in Ver-o-Peso market. I successfully lowered the price of a pair of shorts from 15 reais to 13 reais. Does it make me a typical Bard kid to see a connection between the anarchistic Joker persona in Dark Knight and the Tau Te Ching telling me to stop trying to control everything? Tonight, it's literally into o coração do Amazonia, the heart of the Amazon, so says my host family.