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Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Curaçao 1: Growing Into My Grown-Up Travel Shoes

My recent, very very short trip to a little island in the southern Caribbean (Curaçao), inspired a number of personal and anthropological thoughts that I will try to cover over my next few blog posts. First, and the one that hit me hardest toward the end of my 5-day (2 of which were spent travelling) excursion, is the idea of growing into a new identity as an "adult" traveler and thinking about what this means for travel and cultural experience in general.

When I was a kid, I had the fortune of riding my parents' coattails when it came to travel. I took my first steps on a boat off the island of Capri, was kicked unceremoniously out of London's pubs while still in a stroller, and lived in Strasbourg, France for a year as a toddler. In the years that followed, thanks to my father's francophilia and my mother's love for movement, I travelled repeatedly to Europe as well as travelling and eventually living all over the United States. When I hit my early twenties, I began to cultivate my own preferred style of travel. It involved working, sort of saving money, quitting my job and impulsively "moving" somewhere (to another state, another country, whatever made most sense at the time) for anywhere from 3-15 months but never more. In this vein, between the ages of 21 and 27 years (when I moved to Colorado), I lived in six states within the US, three countries outside it, and on three continents in total:

* New York City
* Charlottesville, VA
* Fes & Essaouira, Morocco
* Tempe, AZ
* Streitdorf, Austria
* Montreal, QC, Canada
* Rawlins, WY
* Cleveland, OH
* and finally, Fort Collins, CO.

While this movement was eventually exhausting, it was also exciting and enabled me to really get to know places and their people. It was my recreational release for my inner-anthropologist. I used travel as an occasion to get to know a culture on some level.

Since coming to Colorado, I have lived in one city. I have now been here for longer than I remember living anywhere in my entire life, and for personal reasons, I suspect I will live here for at least the next twenty or thirty years. But my feet still get itchy, as in, I still get intense urges to "get out of here". Which is where this trip to Curaçao came in - I needed to celebrate my successful dissertation defense and I needed to do it away

Unfortunately, in the past five years of rootedness, I've learned that I don't particularly enjoy this type of travel that many of us participate in for vacation and relaxation. After three days on this beautiful little island, I felt like I was just starting to hit my stride and get a sense of the island's own personality and pace. I felt that I knew more about what the tourist agencies wanted me to know and nearly nothing about what real life looked like. A couple of years ago, I visited Costa Rica with a good friend and had a similar experience. It was a great trip and the scenery was mindblowingly beautiful, but it was impossible to get into the rhythm of the country - which is the main reason I love public transit! - and still see what we wanted to see. We just didn't have enough time for both, a problem that was in part due to the fact that we only visited for a week but that was exacerbated by the fact that I am a poor planner and a horrible rusher. Apparently, I prefer to just move somewhere, hang out for three months, and call that my vacation. But as an adult, in my current life, that kind of travel doesn't seem realistic. So, I am searching the landscape of less lengthy travel patterns to find something I like, that perhaps I can learn from if not emulate. But I'm struggling as most of what I've seen simply does not fit with what I want to get out of a "vacation".

I remember being shocked while visiting a dear friend in Egypt. When we went to one of many of the amazing historical/tourist sites, a bus full of Italian tourists had stopped as well. Many of the women wore only short-shorts, flip flops and bikini/bra tops. None of this was culturally appropriate, but more importantly, it was explicitly disrespectful. There is certainly room for critiquing cultural relativism when over-simplified and over-applied, but it seems to me that if you have the choice to visit a country on vacation, you should select a country whose culture you are capable of respecting, at least outwardly. After all, you are funneling your money into their economy so it may as well be something you support on some level or at a minimum can live with. Many people I know travel exclusively for the very reason I went to Curaçao - relaxation & escape - and so they plant themselves at (all-inclusive) resorts or get with a professional tour company that arranges everything and whisks them from site to site providing carefully selected historical and cultural "context" (I'll talk more about this in a later blog). And, while it's not particularly my preferred way to travel and I am sure there are myriad culture and economic issues associated with traveling this way, it may not be all bad either. At least the people on tours are attempting to learn about their context even if it's typically done in a highly sanitized, voyeuristic way. And those who are going to all-inclusive resorts or refusing to leave the tourist zone are being honest with themselves and what their travel intentions are and may have set themselves in an environment where they won't offend local sensibilities. 

But the lurking question persists: Are we doing ourselves, our home cultures, and those we visit a diservice when we insist on traveling at the constant rushed pace of an American or with the cultural ideals regarding modesty of a "Westerner" (whatever that means)?   

I know that what I love about travel is slowly learning the rhythms of a new place, whether it's in the US or further afield. I find that it fosters the kind of experience that is life-changing even if it's not always as photogenic or as impressive on facebook. Unfortunately, my current life doesn't facilitate this kind of travel. In order to sit peacefully in one place for the next thirty years of my life, I had to settle down. I have a partner, a dog, a horse, all of whom make it difficult (emotionally, as in I would miss them all terribly,  more than logistically) to just pick up and leave for months on end. I have a job that is flexible, but, at least at this point, perhaps not that flexible. So I resign myself to movement-packed travel that often feels like it is more about the principle than about the experience, and I have not yet figured out how to mix my need for cultural immersion with my reality. What I fear is that this new way of travel is simply my new normal, and that a tender part of my soul will just have to wait until I'm retired.

Saturday, June 9, 2012

Drugs in the Media - What's up with the romance of heroin?

Last night, Mike and I went to see my awesome friend Chelsea in a production of Rent. This was great for a number of reasons, some of which hadn't occurred to me until I read the director's note in the program. First, it was great because I adore supporting friends' engagement in this kind of stuff - how can you not want to watch a friend thrive in a context totally separate from the one you typically see them in?! And this one was a special treat because Chelsea is talented. A friend from the barn, we usually see one another in a context of hay, sweat, slobber and dirt; but last night she danced in heels and revealed an enviable singing voice as well as a gift for performance overall. SOOOO much fun to watch! Ok, so in addition to that, this production of Rent was great because it was really well done, and because I will just always love the play, and I will always go home humming "There's only us, there's only this, . . .", and I will always cry because I am enough of a romantic that I will always root for the characters even when I know their fates. I want to mention one last (and unanticipated) awesomeness of this production, and that is the one pointed out by the director: the importance of showing this play in a community theater in Loveland, CO. Yes, it's great that Rent has been adopted by other countries and that it has shown on probably every major stage in the US, but that it can reach (even though it's almost 20 years after it first opened) these smaller sub-rural (is that even a term?) communities is just as important.

But all of this is beside the point because, as much as I love Rent, I apparently cannot quite remove my "I research drug use & addiction and its portrayal in the media" hat even for an evening. So, of course, I came home wondering, would the play's many current and former injection drug users be sympathetic, likable, even relatable if they were meth users?

This question came to me in part because, two summers ago, I spent the majority of my time watching, reading and analyzing popular entertainment media that featured methamphetamine and off-hand, I can't think of a single example of a meth user who was portrayed sympathetically, let alone romantically. Yet, back during my undergrad years in the late 1990s/early 2000s, I went through a phase of watching heroin movies. While heroin is not necessarily glamorized in popular entertainment media (think Requiem for a Dream), my not at all systematic observation suggests that addiction to this drug is often portrayed as something that a general audience can sympathize with if not relate to . . . think about the tragic romanticism of movies like High Art and Gia, for example. Even Basketball Diaries and Permanent Midnight (both of which are based on true-life stories) have characters you root for. Most meth users in popular media are horrible people, far too "folk-devilish" to drive a film in such a way. Rather, the meth users in these media tend to drive stories entirely through their scandalous antics with very little humanity (though there is a scene toward the end of Spun when Brittany Murphy and Jason Schwartzman share a spun out bonding session).

Now, I'm not saying that the romanticized portrayals of heroin addiction in the media are preferable to the portrayal of the scandalous meth addict. Rather, I'm curious what it is about the respective substances and their histories and patterns of use that makes them take on their respective roles in entertainment. Any suggestions? I'd love to hear them!

Part of me wonders - thanks in part to questions asked by many a research participant over the past couple of years - whether it could have something to do with the lack of visible dopesickness experienced by meth, cocaine, crack and other non-opiate drug users. Does the fact that heroin makes people go through well-known physical withdrawals make addiction to it something worthy of sympathy rather than scorn? The women I've interviewed in my own research are predominately meth users and several have told me that they feel judged even by other drug users. While popular entertainment media certainly does portray the heroin addicted person as scandalous at times, they also portray her as struggling with something that would clearly be difficult for anybody.

But romantic? What on earth is romantic about dopesickness? Or the drastic loss of libido experienced by so many long-term drug (especially heroin) addicts? I still just can't quite figure out what it is that makes heroin take this role but it certainly does in Rent. Of the characters we learn anything about, most have HIV and for some of them (Roger and Mimi in particular), it's strongly suggested that they got their disease from injecting heroin. But they are wonderfully drawn characters (especially for a musical) whose addictions (present and past) and daily struggles are still made relatable. And their tragic love story is only strengthened by Roger's barbs about Mimi's continued heroin use.

I think this is an issue I may need to explore academically at some point, systematically. I wonder if my impressions are simply the result of having spent so much time turning a critical lens on meth but not on heroin...all the same, a lay impression is important when thinking about the role of these types of media in constructing the meaning of drugs in our society, leading me to ask for future literature reviews if not studies, how do the meanings of meth and heroin diverge from one another and where do they overlap? And, of course, what do these meanings in context tell us about our society & culture?

Sunday, June 3, 2012

The dog day

So, late last week, we moved into a new house in a new neighborhood and so far, Bagel the dog is beyond in love with her new (bigger and less landscaped) back yard. Since the house didn't yet have a dog door into said back yard, Mike and I went to the hardware store to get the necessary door along with other just-moved-in items like paint and potting soil. Because we have a great dog and are eternally trusting optimists regarding human character, we simply left the back door open so Bagel could come and go as she pleased.

As I was getting out of the car upon our return home, I heard Mike say, "There's a dog in here. There's a dog in the house other than Bagel . . . " Huh? Note, Bagel does not particularly like other dogs, so while my first reaction was amused surprise, my second was one of minor concern (were they getting along? was Bagel ok?). We walked into the house's front room to a happy, tail-wagging Bagel and a nervous, barking heeler/pit mix who was backing his way through the house toward the back yard. Because he had a collar with tags, we assumed he was just nervous/scared at having maybe gotten lost and somehow landing in our yard/house. But after spending about a half hour trying to coax the very wary dog with treats, we were never able to grab his collar to get the necessary information to call his parents. So, we called the humane society (nobody had reported a dog like him missing) and decided to try one last ditch effort at catching him before having them come pick him up. This last ditch effort was to somehow get a leash around his neck, so we again coaxed him with treats, dropping one in the middle of the leash's circle, and when he went to eat it, Mike tried to slip the leash on him. This failed miserably and the dog simply backed up, glowered disdainfully at us, walked to the back of the yard, and ably climbed the chain-link fence to let himself out. This dog was clearly a pro, and he made it clear that he would rather have his freedom than food or treats or praise. Bagel, meanwhile, wiggled and nudged the treat bag at my hip, and licked my hand, making her own preferences known - she loves having a home with her humans and she was pleased that other dog had left. For me, however, the dog's departure was upsetting for a couple of reasons. First, struck by his wariness of people, I worried the dog would return (or be returned) to his own less-than-loving humans. Second, despite my own cerebral questioning of the way we tend to keep dogs (and, arguably, ourselves) leashed, fenced, etc., I found the idea of this dog as lost or homeless unsettling as well.

Lately, Mike has been pointing out that the very idea of having this little (50lb) animal live with us is really kind of strange. But, it seems that what is unusual about it is less that we share a life with her and more that she helps herself to the bed/love seat/couch/papasan chair, etc. She also eats pretty much whatever we will give her - appropriate veggies and fruits included - and would rather hang out with us than other dogs or non-human animals in general. Perhaps the strangest, especially given her affinity for camping, backpacking, hiking and the like, is that she simply does not like to sleep outside. When it's bed-time, she wants to be in a bed, in a car/house/camper/tent. When we go on climbing trips, she does not spend evenings curled up beside us by the fire; at home, when we are up late, she grumpily makes her way to our bedroom on her own. So, perhaps, what seems odd on the surface is that we seem to have a dog who has adapted quite well to the trappings of human luxury.

But, is her attachment to these things really so strange? After all, at 32 I might be hesitant to spend a spontaneous night wrapped in a stray blanket on a beach though I was happy to do so nearly a decade ago in Morocco. Mike and I also transitioned recently from spending our climbing trip nights sleeping in the back of his truck to spending them in a camper (a slip-in, but a camper nonetheless). As I trepidatiously leave my youth and veer toward middle age, I have come to appreciate comforts, and as a species, humans have done the same, becoming increasingly sedentary and dependent on things that facilitate . . . (eating, commuting, communicating, etc.). All of these markers of "culture" have come, in turn, to serve as symbols of our humanity, as ways that we differ from or control nature, including animals.

Anthropologists have spent the last century plus studying what it means to be human, and this has meant first and foremost constructing a category of "human" that is delimited by factors beyond biology, factors such as language and culture. Yet, from an anthropological perspective, the dog (perhaps the animal with whom humans seem to have most closely evolved) becomes a problematic because it challenges our presumed relationship with nature in two ways. Our society's concern about and fear of/for the independent wanderers and "stray" dogs like the one found in my back yard this afternoon may reflect a fear that culture really cannot contain nature. After all, the very premise of modern American society is based on this idea - some striking individual and community-level exceptions aside, we have not shown ourselves to be a culture that seeks or even recognizes an interdependent relationship with nature. On the other hand, our view of Bagel's behavior as "strange" could represent a concern that dogs and humans are less inherently distinct than we would like to believe. Both of these examples blur the lines and presumed relationship between culture and nature, human and non-human. In doing this, they also illuminate the ways we define ourselves.