I Shook my Towel and a Lizard Fell Out

It’s hard to think about my culture without holding it up against another. I suppose, being immersed in difference, then, is an opportune time to do so. So, here I begin, albeit within a development context and with the awareness that I am currently part of a trajectory based model of time and progress within which ‘undeveloped’ countries are lagging behind those that are ‘developed’. I don't mean to be negative here, just constructively critical of myself, my privileged intentions and the way that I understand development systems.

When I think about my culture, I often wonder how securely attached it is to place. My value systems, my nuanced sense of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, do I have traveling versions of these so that I can let confrontations with difference pass? Being here, and not wanting to react to difference by making judgment calls, thus placing systems within a hierarchy of best practices, I am reminded of what my ashtanga yoga teacher said at the start of chavasana (corpse pose): “let your mind relax, when a thought enters your mind – whether it be about unpaid bills, dinner plans – acknowledge it and then send it on a train out of there.” I want this to be my answer to the problem of immediately making judgments, though because it is something we invariably do all the time whether we like it or not, I am doubtful I will reach inter-cultural enlightenment (does this even exist?) by sending my judgments away on trains. But the thought of a slow, multiple-boxcar train chugging off into the distance, loaded up with all of my biases is really a soothing, hopeful thought! So, what would this look like? I suppose it would be along the lines of recognizing difference, acknowledging it, even learning from it, but before making that unnecessary comparison, where this foreign something must be positioned as inferior or superior to familiar somethings, it gets a one way ticket out of here.

I realize I’ve been doing a lot of talking about how I position my culture and others, not so much about what my culture is. This is tough, but you know that, having done it all yourselves. Thinking about why it is so difficult, makes me question the actual state of culture. So far I’ve already decided that my culture is indubitably affected by being immersed in another culture, so it’s not static. Aside from that, I believe individual and group culture does change, but very slowly. This very fact makes the act of writing culture down challenging; it proposes permanence to something that is constantly changing. I am reminded of looking back at my old journals from high school. Reading them, is at first terrifying, but eventually, the horror in my old self subsides when I begin to be grateful for the change; I am no longer that self-righteous, tortured, selfish woman I once was.

That said, I am constantly negotiating my ‘surface’ culture in my new environment. These things are hard-wired into me. An example of this is my irrational fear of critters and my even more irrational, grater fear of critters that are foreign to me, more and greater because they are different. Here in Iloilo City, Philippines, I am grudging living with a whole extended family of lizards – grandma, auntie, ma and baby lizards are the movement in the corners of my eyes – who click to each other from hidden nooks all through the day and night. My coping mechanism is to talk about them; I do so constantly (Poor Jed – “this morning I saw a moth emerging from its cocoon by dragging it along the rough floor surface to eventually emerge…,” “I trapped a millipede in my water bottle and it’s turning the water red…”).

But I’m really not sure if fear is a good way to talk about my culture, even if it is surface culture, because it manifests itself into something negative when faced with difference. And this brings me back to where I started: difference, judgments and the hierarchy of 'best' culture...