Aang Waan

I've always found the greeting "What's up," whether inflected as a question or a statement, to be kind of nonsensical. Every culture has idiomatic expressions that don't make sense from an outside perspective, but under some scrutiny they may not even make sense from an inside perspective. I find this to be the case with "What's up?" Asking what is up has become completely acceptable as a greeting or a conduit to small talk, but nonetheless I feel like better greetings exist. Take for example, "Aang Waan." Hello, my other self. That is a pretty profound way of greeting people. Not only do you acknowledge their presence, but also your relationship to them, with them.

On Monday last, I walked out of class in awe of Larry Merculieff. That man, he is brilliant. I've always thought of brilliance as something contigent on advanced thoughts, thoughts inconceivable to my plain vanilla brain, but he suceeded in changing my mind entirely. Perhaps, in this age of infinite information, in which there is so much to process already, brilliance is being able to not think, to unthink... To switch off, in applicable terms considering how many of us walk around strapped with some whirring, girating computerized device that commands our attention. Today, my other self is my Facebook profile, or Twitter tweeter, internet avatar or whatever - not other people. I know a shamefully small amount about Alaska Native for having lived here my whole life, but I would venture to guess that native cultures are collectivist, egalitarian, unlike the Western individualist culture from which I have been constructed. I grew up in the I am me, you are you vein, in which other selves are nonexistent. "It's all on you, it's all about you." Common sentiment where I come from. I never grew up believing that I, and You, We are We. I was never We. I was Me.

I see and hear frequently in pop culture these days shirts that say and soundbytes that announce "I do me." That's cute. No regard for anything but yourself? Awesome. Then I won't care about you in the same way you don't care about me. We shall forever keep our distance from one another. We shall forever not be our other selves. I find that sad, but such is the reality of our cultural dynamic, at least in my generation and probably in subsequent ones as well. But, what I gleaned from Larry's visits to class is that I should make an earnest attempt to zone out from thinking, from stressing about inconsequential shit, from worrying about what is going on, and just be aware. Thinking and awareness, as he explained, are different things, and one is subject to fallacy, the other subject to zen-ness or something more eloquent than that.

Eestaakoon.

You Eat, Therefore You Are.

This post is coming to you on a Saturday afternoon at 2 PM. I woke up not even 30 minutes ago. This is what Spring Break does to me. Any break really - Christmas, Summer, Thanksgiving, even friggin' Presidents' Day. It's really easy to fall off the bandwagon of regular sleeping hours and meal times when there are no pressing matters at hand. No class at 10? Sleep till 2. As great as that sounds, I really, really hate it. Not so much because holidays throw off my sleeping schedule, but instead because they affect my eating habits. I ALWAYS feel like a fatass during the holidays, no matter how hard I try to combat the fat. For example, I slept for like 12 hours last night, and woke up well past lunch time today. Sleeping all day is not exactly great for your metabolism, as the body slows down its digestion during sleep to store energy. So upon waking and looking at the time today, I new that my body has a right to be displeased.

I am in something of a constant state of reevaluating my eating habits. Starting at about 14 years old I chose to "wisen up" (though I'm not entirely sure who I am quoting there) in regards to my consumption habits. Cut out the fast food and the soda, the processed high-glycemic carbs and machiatos, despite how much I enjoy them all. But the motivation was not really derived from who and how I intended to be through food - it was more about how I wanted to look. Which, in retrospect, was not such a bad motivator. Physical appearance is certainly very compelling. But now, nearly five years later, my attitude about food is different. Food was fuel but also fearful at 14, worrying about what I can and can't eat. Now, food is certainly still fuel, and certainly still some of it ought not to be trusted, but food is also life. I keep perseverating on that old phrase that "You are what you eat." It's totally true! Although I'd never REALLY critically thought about that heuristic, I cannot deny now that it makes total sense.

I'm writing this in the vein of Ishmael, but also, and maybe more prominently in the vein of The Story of B, having just completed it yesterday. The Story of B, in its final chapters gets to the heart of animism and the "Law of Life," which is that the universe has set up bioligical rules to foster life. FOOD. Food is the great proponent of life, considering that everything consumed has an affect on everything thereafter. Because the equation is simple, that F = L (food/life), no surprise comes from the fact that totalitarian agriculture has caused overpopulation, precisely because it has overproduced food supplies. Too much food means too much life, and then too much life results in not enough food unless we continue the totalitarian agriculture. So, you eat, therefore you are. I've been toting this with to the fridge, the table, the drive-thru, the coffee bar, and basically everywhere else where calories can be found. I don't want to be partially-hydrogenated, I don't want to be Monosodium Glutamate. I don't want to be high-glycemic, I don't want to be empty calories. I want to live through food, not get fat and die through it. I feel like this is highly relevant for Americans, considering that much of our food contains mystery chemicals X, Y, and Z. Anyway, once again the old wisdom prevails.