Anti-Suburbia

"I believe in God, only I spell it Nature."

-Frank Lloyd Wright

Cold mud

between my toes

Wet grass

under my feet

Grey sky

over my head

Not Carmel Valley

not San Diego

The Sierras

Yellowstone

Alaska

Scotland

Anywhere but

Concrete Suburbia

Anywhere with

Cold mud

I believe that it was Megan who said in class on Wednesday that nature has a way of transporting us anywhere in the world (sorry if I horribly misquoted you there). At the time, I didn't understand what she was saying. After doing the nature experiment though, I need no further explanation on nature's ability to transport a person.

Carmel Valley is the epitome of middle-class suburbia. Everything has its place. Everything has its square, its proper place. Even nature has been put in a place, relegated to a certain amount of lawn, a certain number of trees.

It's pathetic.

Perfect squares

squares of green

squares of brown

of cement.

Perfect tiles

red, beige, red, beige, red

so on and so forth

for what may as well be forever.

Perfection

shining, glinting

chrome plated

perfection.

It's unsettling.

Perfection.

It shouldn't be

but it is.

Trying to find some untouched bit of nature in Carmel Valley is like trying to have a discussion about the meaning of life with a two-year-old. Pointless. But try I did.

I ended up having to settle for the small square of green I call my front yard. I usually avoid this part of my slice of suburbia, as it's usually more of a mud field than an actual lawn. It was slightly more stable than usual when I sat down, although the cold mud still squodged up between my toes when I walked around. For the first few minutes, I felt just plain stupid sitting in my front yard doing nothing (very un-Emersonian, I know). 

After awhile I laid down on my stomach and just observed the grass, tired of looking up and down the street nervously for people thinking What the heck is she doing? 

Focusing on one, small thing helped me forget everything else. My world was condensed down into a few blades of grass. Paradoxically, by narrowing my world into those few blades, my horizons expanded. I no longer had to be in Carmel Valley. I could be anywhere in the entire world, anywhere with even the smallest hint of nature.

No longer surrounded by asphalt and mailboxes, I was peaceful, more than I had been in a long time. Any thought of impending homework, or looming tests was lost in the vastness of my tiny piece of green. 

It was beautiful. The blade bending over from the weight of the water on its tip. The dark, wet earth rising up between my toes. The smell of the dry air. It was all more perfect than any attempt at order by humans. That to me is nature. It is the absence of human interference. The absence of our lines and fences, our intrusive false laws and regulations.

I stayed in this state of semi-awareness until my dad's headlights temporarily blinded me as he turned into our driveway. Leaping up with fright, I took note of the time and promptly ran into the house, the memory of my Chemistry test the next day catching up with me.

It sounds horribly pretentious, but for a few moments, I found in my suburban hell, a natural heaven.

On the black-top street

In the middle of the night

A forest surrounds me

Photo courtesy of Flickr

Dew and Grass - Mosippy

Friendship is Hard

"Friendship with oneself is all-important, because without it

one cannot be friends with anyone else in the world."

-Eleanor Roosevelt

I'm not going to lie, I had major problems with this "experiment." It was incredibly difficult for me to be an Emersonian friend.

The difficulty came for me in the conceptualization of the experiment. The whole point of Emerson's essay, I believe, is that before a person should even conceive of being a friend, they must work on being an individual. If one is unsure of what they believe and what they hold dear, how can they expect to understand another person?

I'm not at a point in my life where I'm completely sure of everything I do and say and believe. It's as simple as that. If someone was to ask me to define myself, I wouldn't have a clue. In my own terms of friendship, a definition of myself isn't necessary, but on Emerson's, a lack of such a defini

tion makes things decidedly more difficult.

So, forgoing the most important (in my opinion) aspect of Emersonian friendship, I focused in on the more concrete ideas. Particularly the idea that it is better to be "a nettle in the side of your friend than his echo."

I've always cherished this idea. People that merely back down whenever faced with an opposing opinion have a

lways been more bothersome than friends should be in my opinion. What is the point of a conversation if within it you are not confronted with and challenged by views that differ from your own? Without them it is hard to grow as a person.

It was a small gesture, but I attempted to put this idea into action during a conversation. My friend (whether or not our relationship is exactly Emersonian in nature, I still consider it a friendship) and I were discussing the movie Twilight, and she was going on about how much she hated it. Normally, I may have agreed with her or just nodded my head and said nothing. But remembering Emerson, I interjected my own differing opinion into the conversation. The result was an interesting (if frivolous) conversation about the series. 

When confronted with the idea of saying exactly what I was thinking though, I couldn't bring myself to take up the challenge. Honesty can be easy or it can be hard, depending on what honesty is at that moment.

A friend (not in our class) asked me to read a piece of her writing and tell her what I thought and how she should change it. I read it over and, well, I thought it was awful. I looked up at her face, so proud of the finished product, and I just couldn't bring myself to tell her what I honestly thought. I failed Emerson when I looked her in the eye and said "It's a great start!"

Yes, it was probably more detrimental than helpful to give her a false sense of accomplishment, but I don't regret not having been honest. Who's to say that what I think is good writing is the end all and be all? What if in someone else's opinion what she wrote is a masterpiece? I don't think it's my place to define her work as either "good" or "bad," so I didn't.

In my opinion, Emerson's Self Reliance and Friendship essays are companions. In order for one to understand how to be and rely on a friend, they must first understand how to rely on themselves. Imagine if everyone knew themselves before attempting to know others. I believe that then, friendship would be much easier to attain.

Overall, I have to say that I think I'll have to work on being an Emersonian friend by first working on myself as an individual.

Gifts

"We are always too busy for our children; we never give them the time or interest they deserve. We lavish them with gifts; but the most precious gifts, our personal association, which means so much to them, we give grudgingly."

-Mark Twain

Emerson states that "the only gift is a portion of thyself." To give a gift that has nothing to do with who you are as a person is not to give a gift at all but to tell a lie. Today's gifts are but reflection's of others' talents, of their work and life, not of our own. Therefore, Emerson believes (or would believe) that every time we go to a shop and buy a "heartfelt" gift, we are but telling the receiver that they are not worth our real self.

The essayist holds the receiver to the same high standards though. Too often do we feign excitement or even gratitude for having received a gift, when in actuality we have no interest in it and don't believe it suits our personality at all. Too often does the giver expect such displays of false thanks. Emerson believes that the pinnacle of giving and receiving is to neither expect anything in return, nor to give anything back, but to merely accept and move on, having understood that that is all there is to a gift. A moment of perfect accord between two people.

Children are the best gift-givers. As children we have not a penny to our names, we do not understand the material concept of money, nor do we pretend to. Currency is an abstract idea that we cannot grasp, and so as children we don't exchange money for "gifts," tokens of our appreciation, but rather we are forced to give as Emerson tells us to. That is, we give something of ourselves.

We all remember being five or six and sitting in kindergarten listening to the teacher announce that Mother's Day is coming up and that we should make something for our own mother in appreciation. And after a few days work, handing her that hand-made card, or painting, or clay thing-a-ma-bobber that really has no purpose other than to represent your little kid love. Honestly, have you ever given a gift that gave your mom as much joy as when you were five? 

As kid's are the best givers, mom's are the best receivers. I disagree with Emerson here, I don't believe the best receivers are neither "glad [n]or sorry at a gift," but rather that whatever emotion they express, they express with the utmost honesty. No matter what her child hands her, no matter how useless or silly looking it is, a mother cannot help but be genuinely ecstatic at whatever it is she is given from the five-year-old hands of her child. I think this is because a mother is in some way transported back to whatever age her child is experiencing. As the child grows, so does she.

As children grow up, their ability to give and receive gifts fades. Today, we all (that means myself included) expect the latest gadget or the newest clothes. Therefore as givers, we want to meet the expectations of the receivers and our gifts are no longer something given as a desire to give something of ourselves to another, but rather to please the tastes of the receiver. 

Perhaps this year for Christmas I'll make my mom a useless thing out of clay, and perhaps she'll love it more than anything I could have had gift-wrapped. 

Self Reliance: The Conspiratorial Society

 "Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members."

The structure, rules, and regulations of society are what hold us back from individualism.

Societal laws help us every day. Without them we would be lost, or perhaps in a constant state of chaos. There is no question in my mind that we need them, for the most part. 

Yet there is a paradox in this idea. We need them to live (arguably), but it is perhaps only without these social norms that we can separate ourselves from the "we" of society, and forge our own identity. 

Think about it for a second. What do you believe? What is important to you, as a person? Then think about why or from where you get these values. Is it because you came to these conclusions yourself, or is it that your family told you what was right and what was wrong? Perhaps your values come from practicing a certain religion, or following a philosophy. But how much of what we "believe" comes from what we've actually learned from our own experiences?

I've come to the conclusion, after much contemplation (even before this assignment began), that "I" don't exist. What I refer

 to as "myself" and "me," at this point doesn't exist (in a philosophical sense). Right now, "I" am merely a compilation of the larger societal values, rules, regulations, and norms. Or rather I was, because after coming to this conclusion, I decided to start from scratch, build an individual "me" based off what I know to be true, not what others have told me is true or right or wrong.

The point of all this is that, as I believe Emerson is stating in this quotation, from an early age we're taught certain beliefs that come from the societies we take part in, and they become so much of a second nature that they form what most of us call "I" or "me," when in actuality they are nothing of the sort. 

Of course this is all dependent on what one defines as the "I." It may be that you as a person choose to define yourself as the beliefs you've been exposed to rather than the your experiences, which is completely fine and perhaps even more logical than the other option. But I firmly believe that whatever one chooses, whether it be to align themselves with what they've been taught or to forge their own self based on what they've experienced, it must be a conscious choice, otherwise one is merely a puppet of society.

Here's what I'm trying to say. Person A has grown up being taught a certain definition of success. Once they are older they form their own, completely individual opinion of what success is. They now have the option to choose between definition 1 and definition 2, but whatever they choose, they must be aware of the decision they make, otherwise it is meaningless.

Obviously there are problems in such a situation. Is there such a thing as a completely original concept, or is it impossible to keep the larger social psyche from perv

ading our most base functions? And should we even attempt to throw off the blanket society has cast over us?

Earlier this year, for my French class, I read the book L'Etranger (The Stranger) by Albert Camus. In it a man, different from the everyone else, is put on trial, supposedly for killing a man (which he did). Yet the entire case against him is built on the idea that he "buried his mother [who passed away earlier in the book] with the heart of a criminal." He is not judged against the laws of the court room, but rather the norms of a society that he does not understand. 

I understand that most of our laws and institutions are benevolent, but does it make sense that these social laws should replace common sense?

Perhaps it is true that society's rules and regulations are put into place to protect us from ourselves, but personally, I have faith in the essential kindness of humanity. I want to be certain that the person I define as me is just me, no one else.