Text – Page 2 – Citizen Reporter

Life as a News Feed

The woman next to me is frantically scrolling down her newsfeed as more passengers put their baggage in the overhead and find their seats. As she scrolls I see the French flags, the Eiffel Tower images, and the occasional “Im ok” update. Crammed into the seatback pocket in front of her is a copy of the French newspaper, with extraordinarily large font describing the horror of last night. As the pre-recorded safety video plays, she continues to scroll, she seems unable and unwilling to stop. When the crew finally announce to switch off phones, she grabs the newspaper and starts flipping through the multiple pages with stories of carnage, again like she is searching for something specific.

Upon arrival in Stockholm, every TV screen has people staring at it as images of Paris run in loop. The look on their faces seems similar to the woman on the plane. They can’t look away. Like some key piece of information is coming up, like watching the programming is an essential task they must perform in the aftermath of mass murder in a place that everyone believes they are connected to. “I’ve walked there.” “I had a drink in a cafe next door”. “I know a guy who lives on that street.” The methods of triangulation and inserting oneself into a situation are many and sometimes baffling.

From the warm safety of a welcoming home I look at Twitter, Facebook, and the occasional update from the news app on my phone. New statements keep appearing. More of those French Flag profile photos that for some reason annoy me. I don’t see value in these acts and these statements. But of course, this isn’t about what I see, people feel the need to do these things, so they do them, why should I be annoyed? All day long people make big statements, emotional observations and argue about what has been done, what should be done, who’s at fault.. there is no end to what is being argued. Dumb people. Intelligent people. Those somewhere in between. They’re all talking. Making comments, writing poignant articles with bits of evidence and lots of attempts at convincing you of that their message really sums up the problem or the event itself.

What are we looking for with all this? Answers I suppose. We want reasons for things. We want to show others that we understand. We want control over our world. There’s nothing strange about that, I want control over many aspects of my own daily life. I incorporate all kinds of strategies and tools to gain as much control as possible over time and human reactions to my activities. I try this even though in the end I do not have as much control as I think I have.

Another day goes by. News of the escalation of “war” in Syria. Again social media and news apps make noise. Something significant is happening, this could lead to some big change. People get emotional and excited or maybe agitated. Lots of ideas about what should happen next. Lots of criticisms, again and again.” This time it is different.” “Those people there, these people here, they didn’t die in vain,” people will insist.

But really, haven’t we seen this before? Isn’t everything just a repeat or a variation on the mistakes and misdeeds that have happened previously? rewind a year, 5 years, 25 years, 100 years, it seems to me people die in vain everywhere everyday. Humans who survive occasionally try and tell the story another way. Not unlike the writing of a text like this one; I’m no different than everyone else, especially once I push the publish button. I’m foolish. I’m emotional. But, I’m looking at what is happening and how we react to it all, and I want out. There is something broken about the whole thing. But the process just keeps repeating itself. And it is too hard or abstract of an idea to stop the cycle and be critical of our own actions. Too hard to see how complex the world is and our individual roles in making it that way. Life has become a news feed, filled with routine -as well as random- human noises. Or perhaps it was that way all along, so there’s nothing to read here.

What Remains of You

We moved into a new apartment last month, my partner and I, in a beautiful and lively neighborhood of Amsterdam. Strangely enough on our second day in the house, as we unpacked the massive pile of boxes, a loud discussion burst out in front of our building, which included a good amount of crying by at least one female. When I looked outside to see the source of the noise, two police cars had pulled up and officers slowly put on blue surgical gloves as they tried to calm down the young woman. They seemed in no hurry to enter the building, but when they finally did I could hear their footsteps just above my head. Within minutes they thumped down the stairs and were back outside. More civilians arrived, these men and women would also join the vigil outside. An hour or two went by. A city medical examiner arrived, solemnly greeted the people, and continued up the stairs, again the action going on just above our bedroom. Hours later, in the middle of the night, a large funeral car with a team of two formally dressed individuals is outside. I’m awoken from my brief sleep to the sound of thunderous footsteps and struggling in the narrow Dutch stairwell. I peer through the keyhole just as large objects thump against the door. 3 or 4 men are struggling with a human body. The final piece of the story, the upstairs neighbor had passed away in his own bed.

For the next week(s) as family members arrived and I listened to the faint sounds of suffering and commiserating, those famous topics of death and how quickly life can change or even end rattled around in my over active brain. Here’s a man who lived alone, older but not old, loved by friends and family, yet isolated in his home in many ways. It is a common reality, in both cities and rural areas. It happens.

Twice a week in this neighborhood they have large garbage night. All month, twice a week, I’ve watched as pieces of a man’s life are painstakingly carried out to the garbage pickup spot. Trash bags. Bits of furniture. Worn carpets. “Unfortunately, my father was a hoarder,” one of his children tells me as she passes me in the stairwell carrying more trash bags. I recognize her as the daughter who stood outside all those hours when the discovery was made. She tries to laugh about it, but the sorrow and pain leaks out as she gives up on a smile.

Each night after the trash is put out, things get quiet upstairs, as family members go home. Then another kind of ritual begins, they come by car, scooter, truck, bike and on foot, to sort through the garbage pile. These are the scavengers, professionals, amateurs, random passer-by’s that see these things and decide to take them home. I watch from my window as they each show up. They scour the piles, feeling the bags, finding sets of things, occasionally accidentally dropping something that makes an attention grabbing crash. Sometimes there are 4 people surrounding the pile yet no one looks at each other, they focus on the pile and the possibility of finding what is treasure to them. By morning there are mostly only scraps and shards of broken things left. Pieces of what were once a person’s life, are sorted and transported all over the city.

It has been one month since the death of the man upstairs. A truck came to take away whatever was deemed of value for the family. His children have worked themselves to exhaustion cleaning the place. There is no more noise upstairs. Soon the landlord will come and paint, renew, whatever is needed to prepare the place for new people. Within a month new human(s) will live their lives upstairs from me. Occasionally they might throw out a large piece of furniture. A scavenger will have it loaded into a van within minutes. Life just goes on.

Armand DeMille: Positive Mind Like No Other

I started listening to Armand Demille sometime around 1996. It was that exciting time of both getting my learners permit (driving) and becoming more aware of the state of the world and humans in general. WBAI was, and still is today, this magical channel right there in the middle of the radio dial where you could hear voices like no where else on the radio dial. Grandpa Al Lewis with his passionate fire for world affairs, Amy Goodman who described the world from the bottom up, Gary Null who tool a militant wholistic approach to health, and there in the middle of it all was this gentle voice who spoke lovingly about each and every caller and would end so many calls by saying “call my office, we can work on this.” His show brought simple and beautiful themes like “fear”, “happiness”, “grief”, etc etc. In those days I was still a teenager and kept my love of this program that focused on emotions and psychology- a secret, listening only when I was in the car alone or working in the back lot at my first job at the garden center. Armand would speak from the heart and encourage everyone around him to find out what their heart was saying as well. He also brought kind and interesting guests, and of course unique music from around the world. He was a true lover of humanity and seemed impossibly busy with speaking with them for most of his life.

From the age of 16 to now almost 36, I have taken Armand and the Positive Mind with me to every corner of the world. From my late teens and university life in New Jersey and New York, to a new life in Lisbon and then Amsterdam, to the war zone of Afghanistan, the post-war zone of Kosovo, to the vast emptyness of Mongolia and beyond, Armand has been with me every step of the way.
In my mind he had no age. His voice and his ideas where as strong today as they were back when I first discovered him. His program and wisdom were as reliable as night turning to day. It never occurred to me that we could lose this fantastic international treasure.
As so it was that I learned of Armand’s passing this week at 75 years of age. Just like that, from one day to the next, this voice in my life that has had so much influence, ends. Of course there are the recordings, which I will treasure for as long as I live, and the ideas and values, which perhaps continue in each one of us, his faithful listeners. But beyond on that, we- as a world- still lose someone very special who made a real difference in millions of lives around the world. Thank you Armand. I will continue to take your wisdom with me wherever I go and will pass on your contagious spirit of possibility and positivity, any chance I get.

Back in Dubai. Briefly.

Just over one year since the Dubai Taxi Project, I found myself back in Dubai as a supporter of my partner and her teammates on the Dutch National Beach Ultimate Frisbee Team competing at the World Championships. A far different occasion than trying to record stories with taxi drivers and others who are pursuing some goal in Dubai. But nonetheless, a chance to reconnect with the city that left a lasting impression on me, that I have no shame in saying – I like.

One year later Dubai is as busy and bustling as I left it, with many buildings having been completed that were well underway some months ago. As a fan of urban planning, one very interesting development I got to experience regularly was a new tram line down at the Marina. First they impressed the world with their shiny efficient metro, now they’ve gotten into the tram game. And while some locals joked with me that you could walk faster than the tram goes and that you’ll feel rather lonely as no one uses it, I found the tram to be comfortable and good for getting me to places that the metro can’t. But yes it was a bit lonely in there.

The news tells us that the UAE is involved with the joint military operations against ISIS, which sounds heavy yet in Dubai, a very abstract idea. Here it is still what it has long been about- the projects, the work, the business opportunities. Money and development are the priority, later for all that talk about war, poverty, and the rise of the fundamentalist state.

I took far fewer taxi’s this year, both because my budget is small and public transport meets my needs when it comes to getting to a beach frisbee tournament on a daily basis. But when I did get into a taxi, it was very much a continuation of the podcast… minus the microphone.

“Best job I ever had was working for the metro. Good salary, steady work, and we built this beautiful line you see over us. It was a joint venture with a Japanese firm and they employed so many people,” Mo the driver explains as we drive down the busy Sheik Zayed highway which cuts through the middle of the city. “But now its finished. No more big projects like that. Now I just drive a cab. It’s no good.” In his almost 10 years in Dubai, Mo, who hails originally from the troubled city of Peshawar, Pakistan, has done a long list of odd jobs. Mostly as a driver; cars, trucks, loading vehicles, you name it. His story is a familiar one. Last year I drove with a gentleman from Kerala who had worked on the Burj Khalifa. Once the building was completed in 2010, he too was out of work and back to the low paying, long hours of driving a taxi.

Back to my man Mo and our conversation about life, he began to talk about things back home in Pakistan. “Some years ago, when money was better, I moved my family out of Peshawar to Islamabad. It was expensive to move but for the good of my children I did it. In Peshawar it is very difficult for girls to go to school, and we want our daughter to attend school, which now she does in the capital. It is sad but our home region is in a terrible state…” Mo’s voice trails off as he looks over the long line of traffic that has come to a standstill in front of us.

What followed was a very familiar and pleasant exchange about the evils of corruption and the importance of planning for a country or city. He complimented Dubai, despite his own disillusionment with his job, as a place that is not held back by the perils of corruption or lack of initiative. By the end of the taxi ride we were discussing a better world where people are honest and help one another. Again as I so often did in the past, I paid the fare with a generous tip and we shook hands and exchanged well wishes for family members and the future.

Some might say, there is nothing new here under the sun, we knew there were good people in this city, trying hard to make a better life for their loved ones doing work that is neither easy nor well compensated. For me there doesn’t have to be anything new in these stories. I’m happy to hear the voices of those who rarely get a chance to speak, to let them know they are not invisible or alone in wishing and working for a better future. It is brief. It is fleeting. But I still feel it is worth something.

Having Seen Life Itself

If there is one word to describe the tone of this website over the past 2 or 3 years I would choose the word “less”. Less writing. Less podcasts. Less photos. Less activity. Less experimentation. Without knowing exactly why or when it started, I seem to have gotten busy elsewhere. Offline life? Perhaps. Work life? Often. Somewhere along the line, my little corner of the internet that is now well over 13 years old, was no longer my obsession or even my canvas. And while that may be a good thing, to focus one’s energy elsewhere on new projects. It has also at times felt like an outlet that was missing from my life and my work. A void that would surely get filled somehow over time, but I do wonder if any of it matched the magic that once was right here in this space you are reading.

An unlikely source to trigger me back into writing: Roger Ebert. If you don’t know who that is, because of course I realize the world is larger than the United States or its sometimes global cultural tentacles, Ebert was a very prolific American film critic who reviewed films for the Chicago Sun-Times for an incredible number of years. In his career he saw and reviewed thousands upon thousands of films and got many accolades for his writing. He is credited for making cinema for accessible for regular people, and shedding light on emerging talent when others would not.

Of course I had no idea about this. I had never stopped to think about who this man could be and what he was doing. As a child growing up in 1980’s and 90’s New Jersey, Siskel and Ebert were seemingly always on TV reviewing films. But I never remember wanting to watch these two verbose intellectuals in what looked like the most boring theater possible talking about films like they were on display at a museum. I think my brother and I would simply change the channel and move on, in search of something entertaining like Abbot & Costello or Cartoons! (cartoons of course, trumped everything) As I got older, of course, Ebert’s name was always there. On television, in the newspaper, on the cover of the VHS tape at the rental place.. hell .. even the movie posters on the street… it just seemed standard that his name would be there. Sometime in the 2000’s, despite that fact that I was no longer living in the US, I did take notice when Gene Siskel’s name disappeared from its traditional place under the movie title. I heard he died suddenly and I remember thinking how odd the world seemed where there would no longer be Siskel and Ebert giving thumbs up for something. But sure enough Ebert continued, his name would pop-up reviewing a film and again just like when I was a kid, I would simply move on.

Then yesterday I watched “Life Itself”, a documentary about Roger Ebert’s life and above all… his passion for it. Some would perhaps say it is a film about his love of the movies and the changes he lived through, but for me, it was really about how much he loved everything in life; films – of course, but also friends and family – such a deep love and strong bonds that endure even at his darkest moments as his body deteriorates and he prepares for the end. This film, which I watched just out of curiosity and expecting nothing in particular, shook the core of my being. Perhaps because I remembered that child who never took notice of this person. Later, the adult, who just kept on presuming there was nothing there to be discovered or to learn about. He was right there all along, via his fantastic words, and somehow I didn’t look. Until he was gone. Until this documentary came along.

How could a documentary about a famous movie critic teach me or move me to such a degree? I think it is because I finally saw what I been blind to for so many years. That this film critic, this imperfect not-so-nice man, was in fact a fantastic guide and curious observer of the world we live in. He didn’t just observe, he put it to words, and those words had tremendous power and wisdom. The kind that you rarely come across even if you are on the look out for them. He loved how the cinema could show us hopes, aspirations, dreams, fears, or just help us share this journey called life. His journey was both a beautiful one and a particular difficult one, especially in his final years, but the daunting disease he faced was also something beautiful. Even in so much pain and under such difficult circumstances, I found it impossible to ignore the intense beauty that was this man’s existence.

A documentary alone is probably not enough to really talk like you know someone. But I’ll take that risk. As someone who writes, speaks into a mic, teaches, observes, and travels to many corners of this world, right there on my screen I found another teacher and it turns out he had been there all my life, ready if I’d ever take notice.

Zambians in China

The Dubai to Shanghai Emirates flight is jam packed with people eager to get to the people’s republic. I’m in the aisle seat with two jovial middle aged men to my right. They’re joking about the food or the flight attendant who always ignores their requests for food or drink, they speak with different accents yet they seem to know each other fairly well. The jokes are funny and kind hearted- it is going to be a nice flight.

Along the way more jokes mixed with pearls of wisdom about travel, airplanes, doing business in China as well as life in Zambia. These two gentlemen live in Zambia. One is a native son of Zambia with a fantastic sense of humor and a kindness you rarely see on a long haul flight. The other, to my surprise, is Portuguese, working the last decade or so for a Portuguese construction company based in Zambia. Their destination, a construction vehicle exposition in Shanghai. Because as you should already know and these two gentlemen remind me, down in Africa, it is the Chinese that go for every contract and manufacture some of the most budget friendly vehicles for those big infrastructure projects.

“You never know what you’re going to get; sometimes the projects are done well and you can see it when roads or houses last over the years. Other times the projects are of poor quality; roads and structures are falling apart within only a few years… you have to be careful because choosing the lowest bidder is not always the best thing for the country in the long term.”

Again, themes we hear about in the press and from first hand observers over the past decade. The conversation carries on and each man shares experiences dealing with Chinese development corporations and machinery companies; the good sides, the bad sides, the in between details. They’re both pleased to be coming to Shanghai, a place that is tens of thousands of miles away from home but that plays a very significant role it what happens there in the coming years.

As we made our approach to Pudong Airport, the interesting conversation carried on, moving from Portuguese politics to Zambian politics and the intricacies of each. Pulling into the gate, cards are exchanged, handshakes, best wishes, and off we go to our respective missions in China. I make a mental note, get over to Zambia, I’d like to see that lovely country.