heritage
Posted by Jess is Jess , Sunday, January 17, 2010 Sunday, January 17, 2010
"Anthropology was the science that gave her the platform from which she surveyed, scolded and beamed at the world."
Jane Howard
It's very true.
I'm not sure who Ms. Jane is speaking of, but it just as well could have been me.
I love this world and the people in it.
On it.
In it.
Either way. I love the little intricacies of our every day lives that make us the same whether we grew up in California or Calcutta.
The loves, the lies, the every day moments that touch our hearts. And I love that we cling so desperately to our differences, trying to set our selves apart from one another. To be the "other." And in anthropology really all we are doing is observing this "other." Trying to figure out the equation of all of the millions upon billions of atoms and molecules that make up the human heart and soul.
All the while valiantly striving to not judge and to remain culturally objective.
I think that this in particular draws me in because I try to do that every day in my own "regular" life. I know that I don't always succeed. I know that I don't often succeed. But I am trying and I have to believe that that counts for something.
I've jokingly said many times in the last five or so months that I am doing an ethnography of the South by living in Knoxville. And I know that I myself am clinging desperately to my own "otherness" claiming that California is responsible for the features of my heart and mind. As if California is an entity itself.
This is a little problem that I have - I tend to anthropomorphize things that maybe I shouldn't.
Regardless, I think that maybe I have set myself up as a scientific observer here, maintaining a respectful distance from the community I'm observing rather than digging in and making myself at home.
I knew that this wasn't going to be easy, but I think that I'll be okay.
This life I'm leading is exactly what I wanted; to jump of the path that I had paved for myself and to traipse up and down the mountainside as I pleased.
I just watched that movie What the Bleep Do We Know, and it really got me thinking about alternate versions of reality that we could be living at any given moment. There have been countless times since I have made the move to Knoxville where I have had to pause because of deja-vu or even more to the point, an intense knowledge that I had dreamed these moments.
Not that I believe that I have powers of pre-cognition because I know that I do not.
But rather a sense of knowing that I am making correct choices.
I am choosing my own adventure for the first time in my life.
Following the direction of my soul.
I'm glad I finally listened.
