she moves she

In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue.

In his diary he wrote this:  “…They [the Arawaks] willingly traded everything they owned…. They were well-built, with good bodies and handsome features…. They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance.  They have no iron.  Their spears are made of cane…. They would make fine servants…. With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.”

And he did.

Celebrating Columbus is like celebrating Hitler.  The only difference between them is that Columbus did succeed in extinguishing an entire race of people.  It all happened under the guise of “progress.”  A holocaust that progressed us to Now.  And was it worth it?  Does the weight of all the advancements of Western Civilization equal that of mass genocide?  How does the tiny population of Native Americans feel when banks and schools close to celebrate the man who basically annihilated their entire culture?

On to happier trails…

The job at the zoo is stellar so far.  And so is being back in Birmingham.  I completely flip flopped my life.  Nearly every single aspect of my life has changed.  I feel like I jumped off a six hundred foot cliff and plunged into ice cold water and for the past 43 days I’ve been swimming slowly to the surface.  I still feel like I’m swimming to the surface.

Outside of metaphors, I’ve been hanging out with tv crews, snakes, bats, sea lions, rowdy birminghamians and my cat.

I have not…been writing.  There’s something suffocating about time and silence.  In the city it was too noisy, in the country it’s too quiet.  There is no reprieve in either extreme.  Like most things in life…the solution is in the compromise, it’s somewhere in the middle.

Oh.  And my new best friend is Rachel Maddow.  I love her.