To My Sisters

The plan for this weekend was to join a friend and his students as they went down to Mexico and spent Saturday with children in various orphanages in the ramshackle city of Tijuana. I almost didn’t make it after buying a ticket to Denver for the All-Star Game, until my roommate made fun of me for bailing on orphans to fawn over millionaire basketball players. After she said that, I got sick and called Orbitz. Luckily, I discovered Orbitz allows one courtesy cancellation within 24 hours of making your reservation, and I got my money back.

My roommate felt horrible for making a joke that altered my entire weekend. All I can say to her is, “Thank you.”

The ride down on Saturday was entertaining, as my friend and I passed a little time discussing particle physics and string theory with his students; topics that couldn’t have seemed further from what we were driving toward. Then we crossed the border, and I came to realize that mere miles from the paradise setting of San Diego was a city so impoverished that it reminded me of the decrepitude and filth in the poorest areas of Thailand. But Thailand was on the other side of the planet, and that’s how I made sense of it. Imagine, now, having only to walk across a border no more foreboding than a strip mall.

We arrived at an orphanage and entered a room filled with small children and bunk beds. It was dark and raided by flies, smelling like sewage with mud covering the floor. The place was close to squalor. It reminded me of the Thai orphanage my sister was from.

In third grade, I’d visited the orphanage before we had “picked her out.” These tiny children were bald, ate dirt, and were covered head to toe in baby powder since the caretakers couldn’t wash them regularly. Then, after one tiny girl in the lot joined our family, it still took her months to be rid of the worms in her body.

By then her hair grew back and her distended belly grew in, and Sarah has since grown into a beautiful young woman.

Then there’s my new sister, who was left for dead in an orphanage in Cambodia. She was lying in a basket, only a few months old, sweating in the heat beside a handicapped child. The orphanage determined she was HIV positive and could only reserve their very limited resources for the healthy children. My mom took her in to live her life out comfortably, but Sophie turned out to be free of any virus and she is now a full-fledged Fleming.

But before I could even feel pity for these poor children in Mexico, a young boy around the age of five ran up to me and found his way into my arms. So many of the kids were like that; laughing and smiling, and for the next few hours we forgot about the poor plumbing and the dearth of potable water. The flies also seemed to disappear, and when the children weren't climbing all over my friend, I'd find him with one infant or another in his arms.

And these were the lucky ones. They were the small percentage of kids that were able to find their way to an orphanage as opposed to living on the streets.

Now, I’m in my apartment, writing this posting when a friend called to ask me if I was watching the All-Star Game. I’d forgotten it was on.

Thinking about the possibilities of where my two sisters could be now if not for such chance encounters and simple decisions can throw a person into an existential tailspin. But string theory, which is the best explanation we have on our physical existence as yet, poses that there is a fantastic amount of parallel universes out there. Combine that with basic probability, and that must mean there is a universe out there that is filled with all the missed chances and regrets that we couldn’t already pack into this one.

But, conversely, that also means we exist in one of those slices of universe that just happens to have limitless opportunity and, thankfully, many second chances.

"I'll do what I want with my pants."

"Don't Give Me Quotations..."

"...Give me what you know."

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

As I try to find time to work, have a life, and maintain a blog, one thing has become unequivocally clear: I can't do all three.

Fortunately I wasn't too invested in having a life anyway, so I'll stick with work and the blog. It wasn't a tough choice, really. With Valentine's Day approaching, what better way to dodge the imminent self-loathing than to declare it a personal choice, not circumstance, that I spend my free time in front of a computer in a small apartment bedroom in Culver City adjacent.

But I am still adjusting, and it is late, so I will have to use a few words that belong to someone else to fill my posting for the time being.

Something I wanted to mention recently is an article I read that mentioned some anniversary of Ayn Rand or her works or her philosophy.

Now, Objectivism is an interesting thing. I had applied it generously in my past to rationalize why it was okay to date shallow girls. Girls that only cared about cars and purses and whatever only affected their lives, I reasoned, were not paper-thin. Rather, they were levels above the quotidian philosophies of the common man. These girls were Objectivists, I felt. They staunchly believed in, as Ayn Rand described it, "...the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life."

Senses and sensation were paramount. It was the height of all reason.

Then, of course, these girls started to bother me.

But on the anniversary of whatever Rand, I remembered some words a good friend had forwarded on to me from a professor or someone at the University of Maryland, and I liked it and I thought to share it.

“Somewhere Aldous Huxley says that if we human beings were truly sensitive creatures, we would not know the meaning of happiness. At any and every moment someone is being tortured--by his fellowman, by her cancer, by their internal demons. If we were aware of and truly sensitive to all this suffering, we could never enjoy anything. We probably could not go on living. I suspect sometimes that one of the most fundamental goals in life has to be to try to find a balance between caring and staying sane. If we become so calloused that we don't notice the pain of others, are we really human anymore? But if we become so torn by the pain inthe world that we cannot function, we go mad. Finding a balance is very difficult. But it is essential if we are to continue as human beings. If this makes any sense to you, good luck in figuring out for yourself the ways you can help, the pain you can afford to respond to, and the things you have to let pass lest you lose your ability to remain sane and human. I think there are no tidy rules in this area: much of civilization tells us we need to care and help if we are to survive as a species, but the precise balance is left wonderfully and dauntingly up to each of us. But then that's just another part of the grand and terrible effect of human freedom."

Although I didn't write this article, I did take the liberty of heavily editing out parts I didn't think helped the piece, and I will take credit for that. But either case, I went to UM for two years and I want to give props to the author, whoever he is.

Yes, I said "he."

Fear the Turtle, please.