I'm cursed. I enjoy diversity.
I like Kung Pao Chicken. I crave Spicy Tuna Rolls. I devour Fajitas. I wish I could find more Falafel. I enjoy Paella.
Sam Adams is my favorite beer because they brew so many distinct varieties -- Oyster Stout, Boston Lager, Black Lager, Summer Ale, Octoberfest, Pale Ale...
I've been to Europe, I'm going to Peru and I want to go to China.
There isn't enough time in the day to read all the books on my reading list. My netflix queue is backed up with foreign films, documentaries, new releases and Showtime tv shows.
My hobbies involve 6-hour poker games, 3-hour bike rides, 4-hour rounds of golf, 1-hour trail runs and night-long partying with friends.
I read endless blogs. I listen to a British radio station (Absolute Radio).
I'm intrigued by almost all of the world's religions.
Never satisfied with what is in front of me I look for more.
New restaurants and not the same old place with the same old faces.
New places to travel and not the same beach in Florida every summer.
New people. Not just the regulars at the local bar.
I guess diversity is the only curse that I enjoy.
While it can be frustrating and challenging, it is also incredibly rewarding.
Diversity has allowed me to drink Chianti on the Italian Riviera, eat Oysters on Cape Cod, ride my bike across Iowa, run 26.2 miles in Duluth, meet a bunch of English girls in Boston, see Broadway shows, golf at Cog Hill, watch Tiger at the Masters, and read about the Mexican Tarahumara ultra-runners.
Let the curse continue. The frustrations of new experiences and uncomfortable situations are well worth the fulfillment.
I wouldn't have it any other way.
Enjoy the ride,
Damm
Diversity is not tantamount to being a member of a class that is so hegemonic as to requisition americanized versions of foreign quisine to be produced endogenously by linguistically and culturally marginalized "others". Nor is it about lining up a perfect queue of videos from within a corporate library of approved entertainment, or some brand of beer designed to tickle your nostalgia for American history classes without regarding the fact that Sam Adams wouldn't be particualarly enthusiastic about trading his products within a federalized banking hierarchy.
ReplyDeleteDiversity is not about full realization of an identity within the structure of the bourgeosie. Your curse, though you try to state it facetiously as the task of chasing your consumeristic whims into whatever strange and eerie corners of the world will take dollars, is really to even find a mere glimpse of diversity within an unsatisfied quest for "more". True diversity is the intercultural quest for points of human convergence within a totally dizzying spectrum of miscommunication and difference. Diversity: the beauty in not living the sins of our fathers, the creativity in creating a world of human collaboration rather than an unthinking parasitism on the people who produce the widgets of the post-industrial middle-class half a world away.
1. Way to use big words.
ReplyDelete2. I like Sam Adams beer because it tastes good. I'd like it if it was cheap brew from anywhere in the world -- federalized banking hierarchy or not.
3. Way to use big words.
4. I have also been on this intercultural quest for points of human convergence -- I have hosted a family of Africans who performed at my church. After researching many international charities, I have donated to various organizations that support the world's poorest people. I have worked with college students. I have started a community service program at my college that has lasted for 3 years now.
5. Are you from America or the USSR?
6. Who are you?
7. My only point of this blog is that I have a peripatetic leaning in life and I enjoy many different cultures. I personally know people from Peru, Germany, Mexico, England, Belgium, France, Liberia, Egypt, South Africa, and Canada. Some rich, some poor.
8. You seem angry.
9. This is why I'm not in graduate school -- because people like you, with your holier-than-thou attitude, absolutely piss me off.
10. I'm trying to learn more about Taoism and Buddhism and I want to be kind to all people but you fucking piss me off.
11. Bed time.