Ideals Vs. Ambitions = A Lose-Lose Situation

Two nights ago I attended a Kiva social event at the SF Hub, and rubbed shoulders with socially enlightened San Franciscans and beyond, which brought my own conflicted feelings about ideals vs. ambitions into the limelight. Generally, I try to avoid that, as it tends to make me consume industrial amounts of sugar in an an attempt to turn inner conflict into inner confit. 

A small business owner in Huancanayo, Peru.
Kiva helped her get money to expand her store.

For those who are not familiar with Kiva (or the internets), they are a non-profit that enables micro-loans from socially concerned individuals in developed countries to entrepreneurs and small business owners throughout the world. The loans can be as small as $25 and Kiva is currently the “hottest” nonprofit out there. You don’t have to take my word for it – check out their press clips.

This is the concept behind "The Hub."

The venue – the Hub – is also an interesting beast. Housed in the SF Chronicle building, it is a self-proclaimed “nexus point of entrepreneurship, funding, and mission.” While I’m still hazy on what exactly that means, it seems that by day the Hub is a workspace of sorts that aims to replace “the sterile office, the noisy cafes” where people usually do business, and by night it’s a hot venue for non-traditional events like The Unreasonable West Coast Pitch Fest, where people pitch ventures like “Who Gives a Crap“ a non-profit toilet paper supporting water sanitation projects in the developing world,  and Sexy Salad Wednesdays, a mixer that involves salad ingredients and sexy brains. Enough said.

The Kiva social was eye-opening. I only wish I was wearing shades. Among the people I met there: former Kiva fellows who quit their cushy, well-paying finance jobs to volunteer in muddy boots in mosquito-ridden countries of the world on their own dime, folks who created non-profits to support sustainable and green fashion, and, thanks to my friend Michelle, Premal Shah, Kiva President.

But rather than continue to praise these amazing people and their lofty goals, let me tell you about my own inner gridlock. I really, truly admire the idealists who have the strength to follow their dreams at the expense of their career. I also really, truly admire the professionals who can dedicate themselves fully and unquestioningly to their career paths. My impasse stems from the fact that I am trapped between my ideals and my ambitions. While the former threaten to flatten my peace of mind under the footprint of unrealized potential and nagging doubt, the latter are basically etched in my personality by the chisel of parental aspirations.

I’m not sure if this is directly related to the fact that I’m a first generation immigrant and I carry in my luggage duty, guilt and ambition neatly folded, with a flavor of the hinterlands, or if it’s a wider characteristic of my generation. At any rate, I have to admit, living in San Francisco has made me exponentially more aware of this gray space I inhabit on the edges of emotional and professional fulfillment.

That said, the hors d'oeuvres were fantastic. 

Slate review of two books that explain why Americans love yoga

Two new books explain why Americans love yoga. - By Claire Dederer - Slate Magazine:

It wasn't the book reviews that caught my eye, but rather this innocuous phrase, an explanation for why Americans are so enthralled by Yoga: "Maybe it's because yoga offers a cure for American body-hating Puritanism."

I never gave it much thought until now. American women at the gym, running, climbing, contorting, complaining to trainers that other trainers don't make them "sweat enough" - I always took it for granted. If you want to look good, you have to work hard for it, right? But now I take a step back and think of my own girlfriends, who would rather lounge by the pool, play tennis, smoke or go for walks rather than work out any of their slim body parts. And they look good too, in different ways.

Is this really the case? Are Americans body-hating Puritans? But what of all the body-worship then? All the plastic surgery, the real housewifes of..., Nip/Tuck, Dr. 90210, etc.? Could it be that that's just the other side of the same coin?

Bodies are vessels for the spirit. If the vessels are flawed, so what? That shouldn't impede the spirit's ability to enjoy life and make the best of it.

But if the body is the end in itself, then, the spirit must take a secondary position and abide by the vagaries of the flesh, which brings about self-hate or Narcissism (a la American Psycho), addictive behaviors and other pests.

Re: Marilyn Monroe as a brand

Case in point for my post on Marylin - Zara t-shirts with the fabulous brand in question. QED.

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Ethnic Dance Festival recap

It’s one of the many benefits of living in San Francisco that you get regaled with events like the Ethnic Dance Festival, four weeks of choreographic candy, with tens of troupes and individual artists performing at the Palace of Fine Arts. The palace itself is an architectural jewel, but more about that in another post, dedicated exclusively to urban planning. (I’m learning the subtle art of the teaser…)

Last Saturday night we watched the last performance of the season, with a lineup that started off with a Christian ceremony grafted on pagan roots from Nayarit, Mexico, and ending with Las Bomberas de la Bahia, a Puerto Rican group of women-only performers that sang and danced to the rhythm of drums made out of rum barrels (barilles the bomba).

As it usually happens, some of the performances spoke more to me than others and I’m sure my own cultural background filtered everything to match my own paradigm, which is a pretentious way of saying – I liked some dances better than others, but that’s not a judgment on their intrinsic value. That said, three performances really stood out for me: an ensemble from Zimbabwe, a Bolivian troupe and an Oakland-based hip-hop group.

In hindsight, it shouldn’t have surprised me that such very different performances would move me so deeply. I could even break them down according to Freud’s Id, Ego, Superego. The Zimbabwean dance carried with it a wildness and a purity of spirit that only cultures very close to the land still posses nowadays. From the toils of agricultural work as only means of subsistence to the abandon of celebration, the Zimbabwean dance reminded me of things our polished surroundings, sterile meeting rooms and buttoned-up social reunions have long ceased to offer: a genuine connection to one’s surroundings, expressed through movement. I’ll let you guess with which facet of my personality this performance resonated.

Bolivia Corazon de America was a feast for the eyes that catered to my inner child. Their dance, Magical Encounters in the Altiplano, told the story of a indiecita (indigenous woman) who runs into a gathering of surreal, humanized birds called suri. She’s fascinated by them – the dancers have huge feather headdresses that spin like ethereal flowers. Eventually, after hanging out with the birds for a while, she becomes a bird in her own right: a Cinderella story for the avian kingdom and a visual delight that transported me back to my days in junior high when I skipped school to read Quetzalcoatl in bed with a thermometer in my mouth, faking the flu.

Here you can see one of the enormous Bolivian headdresses 

 Last, but by no means least, A Rose that Grows from the Concrete. Where to begin? I’ll take it chronologically. First, about thirty or so kids of all sizes and ages burst onto the scene, dressed in shades of gray, black and red. I stared in disbelief at this motley assortment of inner-city kids, none of which looked like professional dancers or even particularly graceful. And then they started dancing! I was quickly ashamed of my intital judgmental reaction: these kids not only could dance, they could rock out to the tune of a poem recited by a rather unpoetic voice, combined with Motown and hip-hop tunes that created a dissonant effect. I can think of no better incarnation of the Rose from the Concrete metaphor. The effect was one of heart-breaking realism, the kind of art that holds a mirror in the face of life and thrives from its imperfections. And as it turns out, the lyrics were written by Tupac Shakur, himself an icon of the pitfalls of urban coexistence.

I’ll leave you with his hopeful, sad and incredibly urgent-feeling lyrics:

“Did you hear about the rose that grew

From a crack in the concrete?

Provin’ nature’s laws wrong it

Learned how to walk without having feet

Funny it seems, but keeping its dreams

It learned how to breathe FRESH air

Long live the rose that grew from the concrete

When no one else even cared…”