athensinternational

athensinternational

As I first began to indicate to friends and acquaintances that I may be moving abroad, it was not rare for these people to occasionally make a jokey reference to bird flu. As of this week I know that I will be living on the very Indonesian island where a family has lost seven of its members to the aforementioned disease. It's no joke anymore. Still, I have steeled myself against all middle class worry regarding such dangers. The death I fear is the death of a life lived so safely, so unimaginatively that it bears no fruit whatsoever. I fear dying slowly in front of a hd television watching the corporations broadcast the worst circuses in history. I fear knowing about and caring about the personal lives of mediocre to awful actors, or worshipping the culture of celebrity, or hoping to join in among those our sick culture deems praiseworthy. Vipers and tigers and disease and acts of god are far less frightening than the slow descent into malaise offered by staying here. There's a big world that some would like to shrink, but they can't really shrink it. It still takes 30hours in a plane to get to Sumatra.