From: Ankur Shah <ank@gotog.net>
To: brazil-pro@gotog.net
Date: Dec 10, 2004

10 dec. aratuba. kids singing outside. it's the morning.

there's a sore throat up here and some mangos downstairs. they're falling off the trees and if I get some time this weekend i'll tantalize aratuba's youth (by flute or by frisbee) to take me mango picking.

one never knows the beginning until the end, of course. and that's a long way off. i had some fancy ideas of what I would do here -- a year ago, even -- and now am coming to understand that god isn't the only one averse to dice. in my mind it would have been (it will be, if the frustrated path is the singing elegant future, for us all...) a collaborative workshop, people content with creation, deriving satisfaction from quotidian work in whatever fields -- cooking and filming and programming and painting.
	and i now understand how funny, how precocious that was. when really we're all here on a faraway brazilian paradise (it's redundant i know -- there are no close-ups of paradise) to figure out what it is we want to do, how we want to collaborate. thats what the movie is about, i gather (ask karim) and that's what the cooking is about (an excuse for interaction) and on and on.
	one of kevin's last nights -- he left us handprints and joseph heller, hidden depths to revealed murals and a yearning for kraftwerk -- engaged this demon, endemic to a generation of the (over)priviliged and (over)educated. as always, it is both. a curse not to have a stated guild, a prescribed partner, a beaten path. and the blessings of freedom -- to be able to choose, to feel responsable for one's mistakes and missteps.
	was it like this before? did people think themselves into paralysis about how they would abstractly benefit an amorphous world community? i tend to think not; that it's the post-war welfare state, the intense exploitation of natural resources, the assymetry of wealth and power, the intense quantity of work and innovation -- all have given us the opportunity to confound ourselves over something other than our daily bread (although i'm still making it).
	and it leads, of course, to both and the same. a decadent and depressing consumer culture -- searching for meaning in all the wrong places -- on one hand, and the true possibiity of "doing something", in the culturally specific sense of our generation, on the other.
	so maybe that's some of what this is about. a rehab clinic of sorts. a half-way house for people who want to balance thought and action, atman and brahman, the kerry campagin with no-mind.

which is all to say that you can describe a cloud anyway you want and it remains to be Everything. lily is the same no matter who she's dating. And the muted posthorn reigns supreme. holland is here for other week and we should release a couple of CDs before he leaves. check out "the gentlemen scholars" on a google near you for more information. 

and keep your mailboxes pealed for that cookbook.

love, ankur