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Leo Lopez, and the cost of speaking out

Many mornings I start my day by listening to “The Daily” podcast from the New York Times. It’s a well-crafted news show that focuses on more than just the headlines, and takes well-considered detours through important stories that might otherwise get lost in the cacophony of US political news raining down at any given time. 

One such story is that of Leo Lopez, an opposition leader currently under house arrest in Venezuela. Done in a two episode series, the story offers a powerful glimpse into one man’s political journey and intense determination in a country that is falling to pieces around him. It’s a well-produced and deeply touching story, and certainly one of the best things I’ve heard on the podcast. 

It’s worth a listen:

First Segment

Second Segment

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A Note on Tigers

There are small tigers and there are big tigers.

When you imagine a tiger in your head, even if you imagine it growling at you and ready to pounce, you don’t mistake it for the real thing. Your imaginary tiger can snarl and gnash it’s teeth all it wants, but you’re not likely feel afraid of it. You can take as much time as you want thinking about and analyzing this kind of tiger, turning it around and around in your head. That is a small tiger.

When you are confronted by a real tiger it is a different matter entirely. When you lock eyes with this tiger and feel its presence and majesty in your bones, there is no question of what is real or not. You do not stop to plan what you will do if you survive or spend time trying to figure out how you arrived at this moment. There is no thinking, no going back, and no turning around. There is just you and an unfathomable cat-shaped wildness meeting face to face. No one - not you, not the tiger - knows what will happen next. That is the big tiger.

When we create a plan for the future, or tell ourselves a story about the kind of person we are, or mull over something that happened in the past, we are in the realm small tigers. This is true whether we are thinking wonderful thoughts or painful ones. Of course, there’s really nothing wrong with these thoughts (even the painful ones) just as there’s nothing wrong with imaginary tigers (even snarling ones). In certain contexts it might even be quite useful to think about imaginary tigers.

All the same, it would be silly to mistake a small tiger for a big one. When we mistake the small reality of our thoughts for the big reality all around us, it’s like reacting to an imaginary tiger as though it had all the significance of a real one. We can waste a lot of time and energy this way. We might even become so distracted by small tigers that we fail to recognize and attend to the big tiger - the reality of the present moment - even as it’s pouncing on us.

Of course, the big tiger of present moment reality doesn’t always have to look like an actual tiger. It can just as easily look like your lover lying next to you in bed, or a frustrated coworker. It could be the warmth of your cup of coffee in the morning or the ache in your shoulders after a long day of work. It might even look like sickness or death. We can recognize it not by the shape that it takes at a particular moment in time, but by the unassailable immediacy of each moment of experience even as it changes and flows into the next. 

When we recognize our small tigers for what they are and welcome the big tiger as it is, we open ourselves to meeting our life (and death) in a very different way. This is not meant as a philosophy or an idea, it's meant as a sign-post pointing to a particular kind of experience. The paradox of the big tiger is that we can use ideas to point to it, but to actually encounter it requires loosening our white-knuckle grip on ideas and just being... NOW. And now. And now. 

When we begin to let down our guard in this way and allow the entirety of the present moment to seep in, whether it it happens to feel like the big tiger is lying down purring or eating us alive, it’s a radical exercise in unconditional acceptance. Welcoming the big tiger is not a strategy for having a pleasurable life or warding off death; rather, it’s an opportunity to experience both life and death, pleasure and pain as part of a single continuously transforming whole. 

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Over the past few years I’ve enjoyed making Jewelry every now and then as an on-again off-again hobby. Lately I’ve been getting more into it, and have loved the way the hours blissfully melt away when I’m intent on creating a new piece. These are the final result of several such occasions.

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Why every police officer should be required to take an implicit bias test

In the wake of the despicable killings of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling, one concerning piece of rhetoric I hear is people making a surface-level distinction between “good cops” and “bad cops”. The refrain seems to be well intended, meant to cast blame selectively rather than blaming all officers for the awful behavior of a few.

But it entirely misses the point.

While there are certainly cops out there who are more or less skilled in de-escalation, have more or less integrity, or are more or less likely to use force early, drawing a hard line between “good cops” and “bad cops” perpetuates a tenaciously embedded and toxic illusion: that some officers, the “good” ones, are immune to bias and racism. It places blame on a “rotten” few at the expense of a deeper truth: the disease of racism is endemic, it’s often invisible, and it is not limited to a few bad eggs. I’m not saying that cops who are too prone to use force shouldn’t be rooted out. They should. But it's not enough.

There is a very specific and persistent myth at work here: that someone is only racist if they feel racist. The truth is that even “good” cops, like the rest of us, carry a plethora of unconscious biases that impact how they conduct themselves with the people they come into contact with every single day. This is true whether they are aware of it or not. 

Queue the implicit bias test.

An implicit bias test measures a person’s unconscious bias across such areas as race, gender, sexual orientation, religious affiliation etc. Implicit bias tests are a sophisticated and well-established tool for measuring the strength of unconscious associations. They are also a powerful hammer for shattering the illusion that racism only exists in a few. Need to be convinced? Take a few of the Harvard Implicit Association Tests for yourself.

As part of their training, every police officer should be required to take an implicit bias test, and should be assessed based on their willingness to acknowledge and work directly with their own internal biases. To be clear, it’s not bias itself that should raise a red flag or disqualify someone from becoming a cop. If that were the case we would have no officers left. The true red flag is an unwillingness to recognize one’s own bias, engage with it seriously, and acknowledge it’s potential detrimental impact.

It’s encouraging that Hillary Clinton, in a recent speech, acknowledged the importance of implicit bias and how widespread it is: “Let's acknowledge that implicit bias still exists across society and even in the best police departments.” Until law enforcement as an institution also acknowledges that the issues leading to senseless black deaths are endemic rather than just a case of a few bad eggs, we will continue to see tragedies like the ones this week play out again and again. Tools like the implicit bias test that bring direct awareness of “oh, I’m part of the problem too” should be a requirement for anyone becoming becoming a police officer, and can help generate the kind of awareness that would change the tenor of policing in America.

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July 4th (2016) camping trip near Buchanan Pass, Colorado.

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Summer wildflowers, taken on a July 4th (2016) camping trip near Buchanan Pass, Colorado.

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I’ve long been fascinated by patterns and texture in nature. Over the past ten years or so I’ve been collecting textures with no well defined purpose in mind, although I imagine that someday I’ll assemble them into a larger project of some sort. Here is a sampling from the archive.

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Somewhere

Somewhere                        (who knows                        if it’s on a far pacific island                        or in someone’s heart)

                       a lost millennia of rock                        is cracking open in molten rivers                        to meet the breath of atmosphere                        for the first time.

Somewhere                        (who knows                        if it’s deep in a desert canyon                        or in someone’s heart)

                       rain is settling like laughter                        on the curving contours                        of a hidden landscape.

Somewhere                        (who knows                        if it’s in a distant valley                        or in someone’s heart)

                       awakened embers                        are threatening a forest                        at the cusp of spring.

Somewhere                        a forest                        is finally ready                        to burn.

By Carlin Gettliffe

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Ski touring in India, April 2015.

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Travel’s Small Moments

I’ve often found that it is the small moments that stick with me the longest after traveling. I was reminded of this on a recent trip to India, where the simplest rituals of daily life seem steeped in an uncanny richness:

Women throwing stones at a wandering goat to keep it from trampling their drying saris. 

Mourners at cremation ghats with solemn faces striking up hushed conversations as they watch wood being stacked. 

A man walking along a river with his two big dogs as countless feral ones bark incessantly at their slow traversal. 

Kids playing cricket in the most unlikely of places. 

Travel is the poetry of moving images - tiny stories that strike some resonant chord of beauty or horror or surprise, or all three. These micro-stories are difficult to convey or describe, because a photograph doesn’t capture their sensory fullness, and a straight-forward description (as above) inevitably sounds mundane on its own. 

Yet these moments are what so much of the warmth of encountering new people and places is about. They are intimate glimpses of life unfolding un-selfconsciously -  life’s energy dancing in the unique flavor of a single culture, context, and moment in time. These moments are best enjoyed as they occur, but their flavor can linger with surprising strength for days, or even years.

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Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it.

Mark Twain

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Just another morning on the playa.

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The beautiful, historic, and unused 16th St. Train Station in Oakland CA. Once the western-most terminus of the first transcontinental railroad, the station has been sitting empty for the past 20 years.

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Laos, 2012.