Strange lands

Agency condemns its own Falklands advert

Early this morning, I sat up in the bed and enjoyed watching out the window.  Birds were playing around the feeders that our neighbor has set up, including a large woodpecker, of which I have always been a fan.  Ben wouldn't look at it. He was still sleeping and missed the view.  It was snowing around the lush green conifer trees outside, which I absorbed from my warm bed.  Being a person used to sleeping in, I have found the change in my sleeping habits to be refreshing.  

That's not all that I like about our visit so far.  So many little aspects of our daily life have changed, it feels as if nothing is quotidian anymore.  I was riding the bus to work yesterday, when it occurred to me that I was thoroughly enjoying the ride.  Analyzing the situation, I realized that what I enjoyed about the ride was passing everyone on the street and seeing what they were doing and who they were with.  There is something so pleasant about waking up in your home and and joining the larger city that is waking up with you.  I have always said that I was a country boy who wouldn't fare well in a city, but that no longer seems to be true.  Those sentiments were based on my experiences as a traveler with no real home to go to.  This is the first time that I've actually tried to live in a city, and I must admit that I like it.  Yesterday morning on the bus, I imagined myself living life as a professor in a cozy city like Oslo, and I think that it is totally doable.

There are also a variety of little things that have improved in the past few days.  I've eaten a large breakfast each day, my meals are a lot healthier, and I'm focusing on maximizing the quality of down time rather than the quantity of it.  Each early morning has started with a reading from Thich Nhat Hanh, for which I have a much more pleasant day.

The following was a passage from yesterday's reading, which stuck with me all day while I worked at PRIO:

"Our knowledge is relative and limited and limited.  An orchid, for example, knows how to produce noble, symmetrical flowers, and a snail knows how to make a beautiful, well-proportioned shell.  Compared with this kind of knowledge, our knowledge not worth boasting about, even if we have a Ph.D" [Hanh 2001: 32].

I have tried to "medidate" each morning, but I am surprised at how lasting the few words contemplated in a few minutes of silence are.  It is humbling to be reminded about the relativity and complementarity of knowledge.  At PRIO, I have spent the past few days acquainting myself with real scholars, editing a manuscript for resubmission to a journal, and preparing a paper for a presentation that I will give at the institute on Monday.  The overwhelming feeling of being a little fish in a big, super-cool, smarty-pants pond is reigned in by the reminder that "knowledge is relative."  I hope that my involvement at the institute better prepares me to make an impact on political science, however small.

The city, the summer, and daily life feels delightfully foreign.  Songbirds have returned to the feeders and the streets below are stirring with the sounds of cars.