Back indeed. I apologize for the delay in this long overdue update into the day-to-day upkeep of my trip back into the Ecuadorian adventure, but I have been devoting my attention to falling back in love with the islands of Japan. Because I actually miss writing to you, and for many of your requests, and further more because I will be traveling again to Korea shortly - I am beginning an upkeep of those days when I traveled half way around the World to be again with family and friends.
Here we go.
I can not say with any amount of certainty what it was that I was dreaming about over this night. I can remember surely the feeling of one bothersome lump on the left side of my bed, the smell that can only come of living in a true house made of fine wood, and the sounds of animals that come with the undisturbed countryside - but I don't remember just what it was I was dreaming of. Whatever the theme, I woke up this morning wondering whether the superior avocados found in the garden outside my bed window should be classified as a fruit or vegetable.
Fruits; I thought at first because of the seed that is found on the inside. This is the obvious clue with regards to other examples of fruit such as apples, bananas, and cherries. However, I did not fully trust my reasoning in this sense, since the reasoning forces strawberries (yet another classic fruit example albeit with its seeds on its outside) and tomatoes (a vegetable choice with its seeds on the inside) into their would-be opposing groups.
Just where to place the avocado in classification (as well as the triviality of its placement) is just the sort of exemplary internal conversations that come with the scenic territory of living under the trees. No news updates to distract the thoughts, no chimes emanating from our personal devices to interrupt the wonders that wonder the mind. Surely it is why so many great thinkers take walks in their respective countrysides.
And so avocados ran through my mind's eye again as I stood in the back yard of the home later that day. Nothing on the agenda that day, people in the house filled the time with their own various activities, weaving others into and out of parts of their day. I, after lunch, found myself outside. I was protected from a bright, intimidating Ecuadorian sun by the accommodating shade of a giant avocado tree and the grass that I used as my pillow. One of three avocado trees in the yard, I compared them side by side to tell whether or not they were related. As I did, a ripe avocado fell strait down to the ground in front of me. Its drop snapped me out of my daydreaming, but I soon slipped back into the twilight of lucid dreaming and remarked to myself how easy it was, now, to think of this in terms of gravity since Newton had made it a popular example in terms of physics and after Einstein had refined the theory further. All from the fall of a something simple. Imaging what simple things we have witnessed today that could overturn the most basic of cemented understandings, or usher in a fresh epoch of cooperative knowledge.
Back in the yard, a craving of guacamole overrode my pondering and I was forced to negotiate more of the fruit/vegetable's inelegant descents back to Earth. This time with a stick.
It was my father who adapted the an abandoned bamboo staff left in our yard for avocado picking. As he cut, wrenched, and tweaked the bamboo, I snapped this photo of his effort because it reminded me of something primal. Not in a barbaric or uncouth sort of way at all, the chipping away at a basic tool connoted something much more personal and cultural in richness, but I couldn't place exactly what it was at the time. The meaning is a little more clear now.
First, by no absolute means is this photo artistically composed. The face is hidden, the blue pants framed middle draw in too much unneeded attention, the shadows are unfairly divided through the shot, and the plants are unevenly positioned to make any compliment to the subject of the photograph. Yet, like I am hinting at, the assumption underneath the content of the photo is prolific.
To me, any photograph worth the time it expects from an audience is relative to what it captures, tangible or otherwise. This is why some of the most ascetically brilliant photographs capture moments in motion, like that moment when a falcon drop opens its wings and digs its claws around an unsuspecting fish, or after a dog climbs out of a body of water and shakes off his/her fur - it is in the interest of photography to capture the hundreds of little droplets of water spraying off the canine, to freeze that moment in time for an audience to indulge in beautifully. Conversely, this photo does not capture a rare micro-moment for its audience because how can you capture the almost infinite span of what is Culture in a single moment? You cant. Yet, that is what this is what this photo does in part, it depicts an embodiment of Culture.
Now, "culture" is somewhat of a wastebasket term for the field of Anthropology; this is because so many things fall under the realm of culture that practically nothing at all can be excluded from being considered cultural beyond the general guideline of a transmittance of knowledge. That is, something that is lived for without inter-generational transmittance or presence is not popularly taken to be a culture tab. This explains too how culture can be lost and certain people's struggle to unfairly preserve it.
Culture is thus embodied as a transference and transmutation of information and skill.
For me and my father, the exchange is personal. I watch; and in doing so learn by observation, as we all instinctively do. The picture above may be my favorite picture of all - because it is simultaneously ugly in its composure and beautiful in its message.
Ah, to climb a tree. I understand why we no longer climb trees as adults. It is not because we cannot. We choose not to climb. Isn't strange? Maybe not. I think it is.
I enlisted the help of two great tree climbers in the search for healthy avocados. Emilie and Antonio were to scout out where I could use this new tool that father had fashioned.
And use it I did to reach those hard to reach places. The plan was simple enough: grab the fruit/vegetable by the stem between it and the tree branch with the slit in the bamboo created by dad's knife, twist, and catch. Plans, however, are easier stated than executed.
By the end of the day, we did catch many green splendors. And we did make guacamole.
There are many people who greatly desire for us as a species to abandon our technological gadgets (traps, or prisons, they are sometimes referred to) and return to a simple life of hunting and gathering, of living with one within the branches of Nature rather than modifying her to suit our apparent needs. This is one of the main themes in Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club book. And while it is not explicitly stated within any specific argument deduced by Foucualt, the argument that the times and conditions are getting worse, not better, for the overall population under the guise of modernization can be drawn.
I don't feel the need to abandon so many things. There is an old Stoic practice that states that we should, for a time, throw on some old raggedy clothes, sleep on the kitchen mat, and live off bread and butter and water for some time. Then, it is proposed, that one can still be happy in the absence of material possessions.
Whether or not you do or do not, there is a certain charm that I find in living within the basic. More than charm, there is satisfaction. Growing up in a huge city of San Francisco, my personality is more in accordance with bucolic life. What about you?
-A
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