Just an Update

An update of my life. In my quest to continue finding work in new places, I've applied for two (so far) positions on a cruise line. One attracted me because it needed someone who could speak most of the languages I know (the only one it asked for that I can't yet speak was Dutch). The second was the position of librarian on the ship. I've worked in libraries before and helped found in in Peru, so I am certainly not a novice to them. However, I have yet to hear back from the line, but given the way things have gone with other application submissions, I have to realistically expect I probably won't hear from them.

The process has gotten me thinking again though about what I might want to study. I wonder if I would enjoy going back to school to learn librarian science. I like learning, and they have libraries all over the world. I started imagining myself being a librarian type who instead of is all bookish, but one who goes out and tries to do in-the-field research, like an Indiana Jones type librarian. That thought has brought a smile to my face many times.

At work I'm trying to learn how to drive a stick shift, a skill I've never needed till now. I've gotten a lot of it down but since I don't have much time to practice I still am not very confident at it. My co-worked chided as I pulled away from his house that I should try not to hit his neighbor's house adn that his garage door his new. He then made me feel super by saying: "It's amazing you can learn to speak for languages, but can't drive a stick." It's actually three languages (at the time of this writing).

Maybe it just wasn't my week: Lord knows today I lost my sunglasses and found them hanging from the front of my shirt, right where I left them, but that was after I locked myself out of my truck. At least I had the window rolled down. Thankfully though I have a much better attitude than I used to have. Mostly I find these things amusing, or if I don't, I find them amusing very soon afterwards.

In the meantime, my job has kept me very busy. I've worked two weeks or more, weekends and all with no days off. I'm not complaining about that; working in a yard store means being busy in the spring. But I'm certainly looking forward to Memorial Day where I'll finally get a two day weekend for the first time in over a month. Earlier this week I made sure to relax from that with a bubble bath, a tumbler of whiskey on the rocks, and a novel about a hermaphrodite Goth explorer in the ancient Roman empire.

I've been considering continuing doing some kind of volunteer work elsewhere, like what I did in the Peace Corps. I've even considered joining up again, but if I do that I'd rather do that years down the road, perhaps after I am married, for example. I'm also looking at working at resorts or parks or other places like that, both domestic or abroad. I've considered teaching English and might end up taking that route, though right now when I think about it it honestly doesn't feel right for me, so for the time being I'm not too occupied with that.

In any case, I'm seeing that I'm more of an experience seeker meaning that I want to see the adventure that is life. And I need to get focused and do something, because being with my parents is becoming a real challenge for me. This isn't where I want to spend the next half year or so of my life.

Anyways, I know this has kind of been a meandering blog, not my strongest entry, but I wanted to update with something and let everyone know how life is going.

Tristan Foy

End of an Era

This evening I went to a dinner with my dad and, predictably, for part of the time the subject of the talk was Osama's death. Ten years of looking for the most wanted man in the world are over, and understandably, the remarks were gleeful. One man said the only thing that was a pity was that no one could take bin Laden's head and put it on a stick on the White House lawn, or at Ground Zero. Surely many would see poetic justice in that. Another said that if he had been there, he'd have considered shooting bin Laden in the kneecaps, then in the arms, and then in the testicles, before finishing him off.

When I first saw the news last evening, I also felt glad that an end of an "era," so to speak, was over. But when I stepped back and looked at it, I saw little to be joyful about.

I don't blame anyone who feels joy at Osama's death. We live in a world where it does feel good to get justice, but too often I think it is actually revenge disguised as justice. Revenge is to justice what lust is to love in that both are emotionally driven and risk hurting both parties.

Do people's actions outweigh their humanity? What does it say when we rejoice in the streets at a life lost? And are we celebrating the departure of that life, or of a finality to the doer's deeds? It is just the body and mind that dies, and what are those but conditioning?

This does not condone actions of evil of course, but is ever one bloodlust good while another is evil? Ideologies tell us that there is a right and a wrong, a good guy and an evil one, but where is the universe ever so black and white?

I don't consider bin Laden's death a murder. If I had been a soldier in that group, and in the course of the firefight if it fell to me to take him out, I probably would have done it, but there would be no joy in it. Only the feelings of performing a duty as a soldier to defend myself and my comrades. Killing bin Laden only doesn't undo what harm he's done already.

I am not an "ah shucks, just let him go" person. I know what it feels like to want to take a life. Once, a close friend of mine was sexually assaulted and had to get an abortion as a result. I know what it feels like to want revenge on a searing level, and even more, to do it at my own hands. Often, as it was in my case, those chances are not granted, perhaps for the better. But that is not my justice, only my wish for revenge against an ugliness.

I can't suggest what an appropriate justice is in such cases. But my point is, we often forget that it is a human being committing such heinous deeds, and that while the humans' actions are a manifestation of fear and hate, too often we forget that we live in a culture where fear and hate run course through like rabies through an infected brain. If we lust after and celebrate revenge of anyone's death, it is not a sign of a healthy society. This only breeds more madness.

I do not blame anyone who is celebrating the death of a criminal or a terrorist. I am not sorry bin Laden was killed. But I will not rejoice in a death.