Wednesday, November 14, 2007

post script

I meant to add this to this post, but didn't. From the chapter titled "Native Genius" in Ecology of a Cracker Childhood:
Daddy's was an amazing triad of traits—frugality, creativity, and mechanical ingenuity—so that as I grew, our estate grew. Junk bred junk.

I know now my father's occupation has an actual title; he is a bricoleur, a term given by French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss to folk recyclers, people of creativity, vision and skill who use castaways for purposes other than those originally intended, sometimes for art. Theirs is a native genius—as Joe Graham explains in his paper about milusos, meaning thousand uses, of Mexico—that goes beyond simply making do with what one has. Native geniuses are "able to take the materials and technology at hand and solve complex problems."
I like this idea. It appeals to my practical sensibilities. We're already producing enough new crap in the world. We need more new spins on what we already have.

post script of post script:
What do you believe in? Luck? Tao? Kismet? Karma? Blessings? Good ooga booga? Prayer? Positive thinking?

Whatever it is, send some positive stuff to me tomorrow. I'd appreciate it.

2 comments:

Leila said...

I believe in LOVE. The big kind of love. The love that can, and sometimes does, lay everything like a morning blanket of snow.

Bricolage is what kids do in kindergarten and rainy days here in Montreal: playing with junk, glue and scissors. I didn't know it also had a philosophical underpinning. But of course the kids know, don't they.

erin said...

Love, yes. I can get behind that.