Wednesday, March 15, 2006

The new guy

Hi, I'm the new guy. Bennett.

A little about me: Like Kris, I'm a Watson Fellow, and I'm spending this year traveling the world following a passion on a self designed project that must be 1)personal and 2)cultural. Also I have to stay out of America for one year. So my project basically involves going to different countries and recording/participating in their musical labor traditions- musical farming, fishing and herding, to be specific. I'm now in Hanoi, Vietnam, preparing to blast off to Ulaan Bataar, Mongolia.

Though I've somehow managed to put up loads of posts at worksongs.blogspot.com, I've been agonizing for some time what to put up as my first Blog entry here at traveling beans. Perhaps because of the daunting group of young travelers posting here. Anyway, I've decided to just lay out a thought that keeps recurring, in different places and talking with different people, to the point where it must be addressed.

Namely, I've found that the more I travel, the less I know about each destination. In other words, I feel like I'm moving around so much I barely get time to learn about a place, and then I up and move camp. And the more I think about it, there is so much to learn about each place on this earth, you could spend your whole lifetime getting to know the square mile around your house. And everything in a huge space column above your house and the column of soil and rock below it, stretching off into infinity and back into time and forward into the future. Or you could spend a lifetime exploring just the ecology of the plants growing in the cracks in your sidewalk. Or many, many lifetimes learning about the life of the molecules in those plants, how they move, what they desire, their genealogy, their future...

It's positively thrilling: there's so much to think and learn about, everywhere and always. Right now I feel like to some degree the traveling bug is getting in the way of the real learning, like who built the stone walls near my house, why buds look red in the spring, the history of the manufacture of the nails used in my house. To be skipping continents on a monthly basis, though exciting, seems almost irresponsible, in the sense that I am denying myself a life (perhaps my only life!) where I get to know one place, to learn everything I can about a patch of grass and then to settle into it for a long, comfortable nap.

Of course, the supreme irony is that it took seven months on the road to reach this point. Most people who stay in one place just want to get away from it. But the more I skim past cultures, suburbs, fields and ideas, I find the hunger to learn everything about my own backyard is just getting stronger and stronger.

I'm curious to know how you all feel about it.
Bennett Konesni

1 Comments:

At 21/3/06 10:26 AM, Blogger jacquelina said...

Welcome...greetings and salutations...it's about time you joined...muhahaha. ;)

 

Post a Comment

<< Home