illusions

Reading a poem about how we miss things, how unexpectedly we realize their value only when they're gone: how when you sit down at one tree with a friend, you get leave to realize that you have discovered another, and how things hide one another, memories on top of memories, obscuring.

Back from the south after a gruelling but relatively pleasant trip meeting with government school principals who've requested libraries and facilities in their impoverished schools. Met principals who're local JVP politicians (extremist Marxist Buddhist party), and whose schools are relatively well-furnished. Met principals who've had to fight to keep their schools open, their building roofs falling down due to poor construction, their children leaving because of the lack of teachers, teachers who've contracted cancer but who still fight to come to school everyday, scarved, to keep libraries open. Why do some people fight against a system, when they know the odds are stacked against them? And why do others, who have everything, relatively, give up at the sight of the first obstacle? What is it that animates someone, that life-spirit that refuses to let them give up?

I don't know. Images passed us by, a cowherd washing his water buffalo, waist deep in a river, coconut trees bent double by the force of the wind, rice paddy fields ruffling in the breeze, a Muslim town boycotting a newly built road because it was badly built, with blocks of stones placed in the middle of the road rendering passage of vehicles impossible (but in the end, it's the town who suffers, not the government who built the road). Met a child who paints well and has won all island competitions, and commissioned a painting for the office. So much talent, so randomly placed. This is why structures and equality of opportunity are so important in a well designed government and society, so that everyone has a chance, at some point, to bloom, to make their lives better, to progress.

I believe in the importance of the cause. But I don't know how it's all going to come together.

Went to the Koggala lake, a 2000 acre tranquil lake near the seaside, hidden away by brush and forest. There are plans to develop a seven star luxury villa resort on this island, with wooden chalets on stilts nestled among trees in a 300 year old cashew forest, cantilevered out from the cliff onto the lake. They're not going to tell the foreigners that the waters is 30% contaminated by agrochemicals. The approval process from 3 different ministries to construct the property took 2 years and about 20,000 USD in bribes.

How do you fight a system? How do you get enough money and power in order to fight a system? How do you remain without compromise in life? I don't know.