The Tao of TaoThe Tao of TaoI participate in humanitarian work and political activism and I share my observations and insights into those events and other world events from a socially progressive perspective.
Articles:
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Articles
Back in The Groove
2007-03-13 15:34:00 It's pretty amazing to think that we've almost been back two weeks already. Time just kind of slides by you here. It also helps that we've both been really busy, which is a welcome relief from the month of laziness in the States. Coming back through customs here it was pretty apparent both of our Spanish skills had atrophied somewhat. Although I have to say the customs agent was using some vocabulary that I wouldn't have known anyway. We were arguing with him about giving us the maximum 90 day travel visa and he only wanted to give us 60. Finally after we explained everything we were doing his boss gave us the go ahead. In true Salvadoran style he told us if we'd just told us that before he would have let us have it. Since we had more stuff coming down than we did going back to the U.S. we decided to pay for a taxi all the way back to Berlin. Taking that much stuff on a crowded chicken bus would have been its own version of hell. Now, we've taken a taxi from San Salv... More About: Life , Back , The G , Groove
Costa with the Mosta
2007-03-04 23:15:00 You may recall I left you hanging on the rest of Christine and I's Honduras/Costa Rica trip, specifically the Costa Rica half. Well, we lucked out in Tegucigalpa and caught a bus to San Jose, Costa Rica. Crossing the border was easy and I was excited to see what Nicaragua looked like. It's the poorest Central American country, but I was interested in possibly starting a hostel there at some point. To my dismay the vast majority of the country is dry and flat. It made me think of Arizona or New Mexico. There were cacti and only a few short trees. Our bus had a layover in Managua, the capitol of Nicaragua. On the way into town we passed the presidential palaces and there were poor people digging through the garbage. I guess that sums up a lot right there. We spent the night a simple little hotel and left early the next morning. Crossing borders isn't a very big deal unless the countries have a stark difference in wealth. The Costa Rica/Nicaragua border is by far the big... More About: Travel
The Power of the Written Word
2007-02-23 03:59:00 It occured to me recently while reading "Running with Scissors", watching the movie and then subsequently reading "The Kite Runner" that a book will always deliver the experience of an author better than any movie or non-documentary ever can. Even an actual documentary bends the reality of the experience simply by its existence. I'm not sure if you're familiar with the heisenburg uncertainty principle, but simply put it means that we can never know for certain anything because the act of us observing it changes it. It's the same thing when you introduce cameras into a situation, and anyone who has been filmed can attest to this. The next best thing is for an author to simply experience the situation in its entirety naturally and then write about it later when they have time to process and think about the details and wording to best evoke the situation in their own mind and eventually others minds. If you try to take it another step further with film you often end up overlapp... More About: Power , Rants , Word , Written 1, 2 |
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