Inner (and Outer) Cultures

It's probably not surprising that the idea of "culture" is swirling about my brain, especially as I have endured yet another gruelling odyssey over the International Date Line this week, nineteen hours of flight time from New York, via Taipei, all the way back to Bangkok.

But I guess it's a bit surprising that it's neither Thai nor American culture that has grabbed my attention, but rather the cultures of the Introvert and Extrovert as outlined by Susan Cain's wonderful book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a Word that Can't Stop Talking. 

Introvert Power!

I've only progressed through Part One, but it already has me cheering her engaging take on today's bombastic extrovert-created "Culture of Personality" (think multi-tasking, salesmanship, and self-promotion), which has given de facto power, influence, and a sense of entitlement to the aforementioned group (championing a "be all that you can be" message so long as the ultimate outcome is extroverted).  This imbalance is a more-recent-than-you-would-think change from the "Culture of Character," before the Turn into the 20th Century, which generally favored an introvert's measured, quieter approach.

That's So Poetic!

Over the course of my five-month "Winter of Flux," my wife Tan has sent me scores of articles to look at on-line - on entrepreneurship, writing, growing old, education, and even this interesting article that made me think of Joseph Conrad and the boundless sea.  It's one of the ways we've kept in touch, sharing inspiration ... 

The Poetry of the Winter of Flux

One of the articles that resonated with me the most was a bombastic "defense" and praise of poetry (I didn't know poetry needed to be defended but I'm glad someone has its back). 

The writer, Amy King, expressed herself beautifully, championing the great freedom and flux of poetry, and unshackling from it the constant meta-drive (in American society especially) that something has to be commercially successful to be considered viable or even important.

Lights in a Northern Town

“There are lights in the woods in which I played.”

A long, long time ago, when I was much younger, this first line (or perhaps title) of a potential poem floated into my mind. I wrote it down, and it has sat quietly in my files ever since, a bookmark of a theme I mull over time and again.

Church Street in Burlington, VT

It was interesting enough, a bit clunky, but it was the image (and corresponding emotions) that have remained with me through the years.

The image? My woods, in Acton, Massachusetts, not really a wilderness to any extent but a lovely forest to my youthful soul, were being torn into by builders and developed into houses and yards for future tenants. Through the trees, where I had once seen only darkness and mystery, I was now able to spot less-mysterious, twinkling porch lights.

It was inevitable. Acton is only 25 miles from Boston, a tempting suburban option for the commuters who head into the city every day, and our family was only an early wave of what was to come in town, a steady stream of people buying up available land and housing.

The emotions? I guess it was an early existential crisis for me, of seeing a treasured natural playground of my early years bulldozed and taken away, and of the enduring and inexorable pace of change in the world, and of nature under attack. If my childhood forest could be sold and trashed, was anything sacred?