Paris

Windsor Great Park

I recently spent a weekend as a guest of the Queen Mother at Cumberland Lodge near Windsor Castle. In between a series of scheduled bars (including one before and after both lunch and dinner) the International Relations department discussed such lofty and pertinent topics as dilemmas of China's rise, partnerships amongst India, Brazil, and South Africa, reflections on the end of the world, the decline of America, and the death of capitalism. Mulling such things over whilst surrounded by such finery and decadence, really put the champagne in champagne socialist.

The Royal Lodge:


The Royal Landscape:

Pineapple

After eight weeks of eating Sunday roasts and drinking pints of London Pride every evening at Ye Old White Horse, the Knights Templar, the Princess Louise, Shakespeare's Head, and the George IV pubs near LSE, I realized that I could use some exercise.

My flatmate generously offered me use of the fancy Nordic track in the garage (pronounced here with the emphasis on the first syllable, GARE-age), but I confess I felt a little too much like a caged hamster on a treadmill. In secondary school I used to run all of the time, going so far as to join the cross-country team, though I admit that running everyday was of secondary interest to the comraderie and the parties in the mountains. I remembered that when I attempted to revisit running here, dutifully setting off in the direction of Brockwell Park. Running has the benefit of making me too tired to think about anything in particular, which is good for me, but few people jog for fun here, and I got some alien looks as I shuffled past the Nigerian currency exchange stores and laundromats. There is a nice view of London from the center of Brockwell Park, which sits atop a hill, and I suppose the view was worth the expedition, but as I ran down I passed a group of people sauntering up the hill to drink beer and smoke. The men were all wearing tight black jeans and the women high heels. They were all thin and no one felt obligated or inclined to run. They moved past in a little cloud of cigarette smoke. It smelled fantastic, I wondered why I wasn't with them, and I vowed never to go running again.

A few days later I went to a classical jazz dance class at a studio in a converted pineapple warehouse near Covent Garden. I hadn't been to a serious dance class in at least three years, and when I realized that I could still keep up I felt as if I had stumbled upon a pile of bricks of cash stashed and forgotten about in the back of the closet or under the mattress or in the basement or something (haha, yeahhh...people do this in rural America....and there is a banking crisis on now afterall). It really was an extraordinary feeling; it made me inordinately happy. Also, at the same time it was useful for me to recognize that I was not the most prepared student in the class. Sometimes I get arrogant, and complacent, within my familiar circles of policy wonkette subject matter expertise. Dancing was simultaneously energizing and humbling, and ultimately centering, and reinvigorating.

The woman who taught the class was also really amusing. She has green eyes and wild curly red hair, and a semi-operatic voice that leaks out when she sings lyrics in lieu of counting. If the class danced a section well, she stepped back and bounced up and down excitedly, punctuating her jumping with little yelps of "YES!" She narrated one portion dramatically, instructing the group to, "Grab your heart, rip it out, throw it on the floor, turn front to the mirror, wipe your mouth a bit, yes, well, almost, yes, then...walk away, disgusted! You're disgusted!" and then "...On 'one' you hit the floor, 'two' you are lying on the floor, broken, but then! on 'three' 'and' you hit the floor with your fist, pound pound, 'four', you look up, you recover, that's right, raise your head, you're BACK! YESSSSSSSSSSSSS!"

Happy Thanksgiving.

I'm such an expat. I'm going to Paris tomorrow for Thanksgiving. To eat frog legs and freedom fries.

Last year I spent Thanksgiving camping in Oman. We ate spaghetti and coffee from a camping stove on the rocks.

Two years ago I was in the middle of nowhere, in the forest in the eastern part of the Czech Republic. My friends and I took a bus through a snowstorm to a small town in Moravia for Thanksgiving dinner with this eccentric man from, of all places, Sandpoint, Idaho, who'd moved to the Czech Republic in the early 90s for cheap drugs and mushroom hunting. He was, randomly, a friend of my friends' parents. It was a fabulous dinner, though my friend's and my enjoyment was tempered considerably when we were, as the women in the party, forced/encouraged to do all of the dishes while the men folk smoked before we took the bus back to Prague. You can imagine how well I handled that.

Even though I haven't been in the United States recently for Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays. Its such a successful national holiday, premised on gratitude, food, and with no specific religious foundation so everyone feels included.

So why don't I stay in the United States? Two words: Sarah Palin. If you haven't yet seen her Turkey interview, well, you need to:

Happy Thanksgiving.

Oh, and if you've ever wondered why our Thanksgiving bird is called a Turkey the answer is more obvious than you might think.

Display

Does anybody else find this window display near Covent Garden as creepy as I do?

Little Venice, Regent's Canal

Thames

Coffeeshop Couth

The idea of Italian men serving Italian coffee is brimming with promise. The reality is less amorous.

I met a friend for a coffee break this afternoon and as we were handing over our two pound ten pence to the dark complexioned man at the till, he cornily, with eyes twinkling, asked my friend, "How did you get those holes in your face?" ...What? I asked myself, What is he talking about? My friend has an appealling face, long pretty blond hair, cute freckles, and charming blue eyes. She has earrings...but only two, and they're demure. She does have a radiant smile--oh! and dimples. Okay. He was referring to dimples. I was relieved, amused, and pleased to have solved this puzzle.

She also has a sardonic sense of humor (which is clearly why I like having coffee with her), and she quipped, "Genetic defect."
"Oh no, not a defect at all," he bumbled conspicously.
"Mm hmm," she nodded, tightlipped. I raised my eyebrows. As we gripped our coffees and turned to walk away, he cheerily called after us, "Come back many times!!!" Any levity left in the air wobbled, tottered, and fell onto the counter with a thud.

Jubilation

We all woke up to a better world on November 5th (if we slept at all on Tuesday night). I am jubilant. Thrilled. Euphoric. Gleeful. Americans have chosen Barack Hussein Obama to be President of the United States. As I heard a young woman quoted the other day, "I feel like I want to wake up my neighbors and hug them."

I wanted to commit my jubilation to writing immediately, while my and the world's sense of elation was fresh. Impressively, the euphoria I felt when the Obamas walked to the front of the stage in Chicago has not faded. I remain jubilant days later. I am trying to savor for as long as possible the complete exhilaration of this historic turn of events. I have done little reading for my classes all week. Instead I have been replaying Obama's victory speech, savoring his eloquence, clarity, and awareness; I have been scouring the internet reading amazing after amazed headline; I have been clicking through a hundred images of the Obamas on election night on the campaign's flickr site. Mostly I have been calling and emailing my friends who are in the United States. Everyone is giddy.

Perhaps I spent these last few days pouring over articles and talking to friends because I needed proof: I needed to see it again and again to believe it. Barack Obama’s election was too momentous to sink in immediately. I realize I reacted similarly to a horrifying—not glorious—event this summer when one of my best friends was killed suddenly in a tragic accident. I spent the moments and days after her death reading the newspaper headlines, talking to our friends, and crying. I struggled to comprehend that something so big and irreversible had actually occurred. I was thinking of my friend on election night. I wish she could have seen Obama elected. She had more faith in people than I did, and we had both supported him for so long.

Before I convinced myself that it was all true, that America had indeed elected a thoughtful, analytic, minority president, all I could manage to do was make my way slowly home on Wednesday morning as if in a fog. I wondered if I had dreamt it. After all, the long election night was surreal. I watched the election with an American friend and a roomful of international classmates in her flat in a converted warehouse in a Turkish neighborhood of East London. In addition to my American friend, I was with her English boyfriend, a German man, an Englishman of Indian heritage, a Canadian woman, and a Romanian man. It is no exaggeration to say that the whole world was watching the American election.

I brought bottles of champagne to the revamped warehouse on Stoke Newington high street. The German watched me carefully place them in the fridge and smirked, "Champagne, huh. That seems remarkably confident." I looked at him nervously. I can't deny I felt anxious. He asked me what I intended to do if we had no cause to open the champagne at the end of the night. I admit I didn't know. I paused as if to buy time, to think of an answer or to assuage my fears. My eyes swept across the wide wooden floors, searching somehow for inspiration under the plants in the corner, or from the cat perched on the shelf. We were standing on the second floor of the converted warehouse and I gazed down as if into the abyss to the first floor. A few Moroccan pillows lay on the cement. I surveyed the distance and my eyes lit on the railing. "Well," I answered him; "I'll probably drink a lot of something else and then desperately throw myself off of this railing." I think its interesting that this sarcasm and cynicism that I have developed, which are integral parts of my personality, have been formed in part as a coping mechanism in response to the style of politics my country has been trapped in for as long as I have been learning how to evaluate the political landscape.

I never allowed myself to seriously entertain the possibility of McCain and Palin winning this election. I tried once or twice to consider that scenario, but when I pictured McCain--or worse, Palin--on a podium representing the will of America, I felt a knot in my stomach and a weight pressing down on me from all angles, the same heavy feeling I get when about to face something very terrifying, like flying or snakes. I had to banish the thought, the possibility, and the accompanying sinking sensation from my mind.

America has a resilient system of government. It is a strong but elastic system, and it can sustain a series of bad leaders...but it cannot endure forever. Everything has a limit. I feared that after almost thirty years of, as Judith Warner writes in a moving blog post "....An era of unbridled deregulation, wealth-enhancing perks for the already well-off, and miserly indifference to the poor and middle class; of the recasting of greed as goodness, the equation of bellicose provincialism with patriotism, the reframing of bigotry as small-town decency," something would snap. Like the purple silly putty I had as a child that I would pummel in my hands, grab from both ends, and abuse and threaten to stretch to the limits. I feared the system and the country would collapse like the bridge in Minnesota.

I held only a vague notion of what I might do if Obama lost. Especially if the majority of people voted for him, but the republican political machine had managed to steal it away, perhaps I would have given up on democracy altogether, taken up Abdullah's marriage proposal, and become a subject of the Kingdom of Jordan.

In retrospect I recognize that, as much as I hoped against hope that Americans would in the end choose maturity, tolerance, and a leader who speaks to people like they are adults, in the back of my mind I must have been bracing myself for the unthinkably illogical if only subconsciously in my preparations to come study in London. In my last post I alluded to having fled the country and I realize now just how true that was. First and foremost I wanted to put some distance between my family and myself, but I also wanted a European perspective on international relations. I wanted to afford health care. I wanted to see if my [ironically] Red state’s vilification of socialism and cosmopolitanism had even a shred of any basis in reality. I wanted to see if the European Enlightenment had anything to offer now. It is a pity I felt I could not find these things in the United States.

All of these reasons, worries, and fears evaporated when the Obama family walked to the front of the stage in Chicago. I burst into tears. I cried throughout his victory speech. I was so moved and so relieved that so many people would make prejudice irrelevant, would choose maturity over intolerance. I finally DID feel that America was a place where all things are possible. I had learned this in theory from my well-meaning seventh grade social studies teacher, but even then as I sat in a crumbling rural school from which few people went to college I had my doubts, and I suspect my social studies teacher did too, as to how well this worked in reality. Barack Obama’s pretty prose would be eloquent if his speeches were given by a monarch who has had the world handed to him, but Barack Obama’s speeches are inspiring because his background gives them weight. I am tremendously moved to see evidence that one can arrive with no political advantage, work hard, and on merit build one’s own connections.

When Barack Obama’s win was announced, I was jubilant that people were inspired to do the right thing. Even John McCain managed to do the right thing in his gracious concession speech, and in his quieting of his less gracious crowd of supporters. At this point I think I have read enough history to suspect that choosing to do the right thing occurs rarely enough that witnessing it is being part of an earth shattering moment of history. I wish I could have been in DC to share that moment, but it doesn’t matter, the whole world WAS watching and in the flat in London we jumped around giddily, poured my glasses of champagne, and hugged each other. I kissed the German man on his cheek, and wet his face with all of the tears streaming down my own. My friend and I danced around, almost tripping over the Moroccan puff pillows, clutching each other to avoid falling. This morning I was reading a spread about Obama in Time magazine, and I was moved all over again by the way Nancy Gibbs captured the spirit of election night, remarking that "…An election in one of the oldest democracies looked like the kind they hold in brand-new ones, when citizens finally come out and dance, a purple-thumb day, a velvet revolution."

Winston Churchill once said, "America can always be counted upon to do the right thing...after it has exhausted all other possibilities." Even though Barack said in his victory speech that “This victory alone is not the change we seek; it is only the chance for us to make that change,” the election of the first black President of the United States is in and of itself a lasting political change with enormous positive implications. Of course there are many challenges ahead, but the whole world has breathed a sigh of relief. It is refreshing to see the most powerful country act sensibly. Amartya Sen, the Nobel Prize-winning economist said of Obama's election, "The most important thing that Barack Obama brings to the presidency is his willingness to reason...the alienation of the world is not only because the U.S. has been so unilateral but also because the unilateral choices have often been so dumb."

I didn't realize to what degree my political coming-of-age has been inextricably bound up with the Bush administration. I didn't realize to what extent those policies have formed my opinions and informed my career choices and my job searches. I realized with surprise and something akin to ecstasy that now I would be excited to work for a Barack Hussein Obama administration! I would gladly work for the Foreign Service in the State Department if they would take me, or for other departments of the government of the United States of America. I had never considered these options seriously before. It really opens up my career opportunities, and that’s one more reason to smile.

Since I have been in London I have been meeting new people daily. We tend to have the same conversation repeatedly, usually involving questions like “What’s your name again? I didn’t catch that [over the loud music and chatter in a crowded pub]. What do you study? Where are you from?” Until November 3rd I tended to answer sheepishly, quietly saying, "I am...um...well...I am...from the United States." I would brace myself for negative reactions or snide comments, deserved or not. On November 5th I wanted to shout gleefully, "I'm AMERICAN!!!! Isn't it GREAT!!!!???" To quote Michelle Obama’s controversial but in my opinion deeply patriotic comment, “For the first time in my adult lifetime, I’m really proud of my country.” I have never been so proud to be American.

As I rode the train into central London yesterday almost every single passenger was reading the paper, plastered with photos of Obama–and almost everyone reading it was smiling, or had a smile in their eyes. And this can be a dark and dreary city, though I love it, where people smile infrequently, and even more rarely at Americans. At least for now the whole world is smiling at America. I got an email from a German friend that read, "Congratulations on electing President Obama! Yes, it really is good to see that the real US of A is back! I hope that other countries around the world - European ones included -will take note of such as engaged democratic election that has really resurrected the belief that people can effectively influence politics with their votes. Along with everything else Obama has redefined with his campaign - what a way to bid the Bush years good-bye. I hope the parties continue for some time yet!"

Perhaps that is why I am only now committing my thoughts to writing. I've been busy attending victory parties!!! The Democrats Abroad hosted an event at the "Texas Embassy," an American bar/restaurant near Westminster, a few nights ago. People were jammed into the upstairs with no space to move. Everyone was abuzz and beaming. A string of Obama's portraits on laser printer papers adorned the room with the words "Hope" printed repeatedly beneath his face. Also, as much as I hate to imply that this was different before, I could not help but notice that every single white person in the room looked at every single black person with absolute and complete respect, and everyone stood a bit taller for it. A woman sang the Star Spangled Banner. We all joined her. On November 5th my English friends hosted a Guy Fawkes Day party—a celebration of the capture of one of the world’s first terrorists who intended to blow up the House of Lords and kill the King in 1605. There were fireworks in accordance with the tradition but all that anyone could talk about was Barack Obama. It felt as if the fireworks were in honor of a renewed United States.

What a week. What a celebration. I still feel euphoric, elated, jubilant. The name Barack means "blessed" in Swahili and it comes from the Arabic root "baraka" which means depending on the forms "to invoke a blessing; to give one’s blessing, sanction; to be blessed; to enjoy, find pleasure, delight in” etc. I am certainly delighted and while I'm not one to invoke the language of religion in politics I do feel blessed this week. I have a new faith in humanity. I really do. God Bless America indeed. Ba'rock the vote, as we young people like to say. Or perhaps just Thank God, Alhamdullilah, Change has come to America.

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

I'm in love with London. I'm not sure if I came to London for the right reasons. Like the neo-conservative decision to invade Iraq in 2003, my mind was made up to go to London before I searched for some good reasons to justify my irrational move. Maybe I needed to counteract inertia, maybe I felt a need to flee the country and my family, but thats not the subject of this post. Whatever the reasons, now that I am here I realize its a perfect fit. And I have an exit strategy and a timetable. Unless I can find a job here willing to extend my visa, I'll be back in the USA next January. Maybe my love of London is made possible by the fact that I know I'll only be here for a year or so. Not long enough to let the weather make me SAD.

I stepped onto a bus a few weeks ago and asked the driver if the bus went to Victoria station. He answered gently, "Yes, love." My heart melted. I love nice bus drivers and I love "love" as a term of endearment to perfect strangers! I also like the way most people say "cheers" after just about everything, for instance: "Here is your change, love. Cheers!"

I also love the diversity in my neighborhood. I live in Brixton in the heart of London's caribbean community. Brixton is infamous for violence, knifings, and race riots, but its been almost thirty years since the Clash recorded The Guns of Brixton and now the cinema is full of "yummy mummies," and the neighborhood is rapidly gentrifying. Besides, no one has guns here like in the USA. Maybe everything feels safer after living in Washington, DC. This didn't stop a concerned and protective taxi driver from asking me on Friday night (after I said I needed to go to Brixton) whether I had ever been there before. I stared at him and said, "I live there." He was surprised, and intrigued that I was American. We proceeded to have the most ridiculously amusing conversation. He began grilling me about American civic trivia (i.e. what US state was the first to ratify the constitution? what do the stripes on the flag represent? From what two states do you have to drive south in order to get into Canada?) I asked him if he were studying for a citizenship exam, and then asked him if would give me a free ride if I answered all of his questions correctly. He said yes and I did (ha!) but in the end I couldn't not pay him. I told him next time he should abandon trivia in favor of better questions like whats the relationship between soverignty, rights, and justice? Admittedly I was a little drunk but I think he thought I was absolutely nuts. What a conversation for Halloween.

Besides the curious Irish taxi driver, my neighborhood is filled with other colorful people. I was thinking about how interesting my neighborhood was as I got on the train yesterday and had to push my way past these ladies in niqab before this man shoved a flyer into my hand. I looked down at it and read, "Professor Amine, International Spiritual Healer with 36 years experience...Don't hesitate to call the most acclaimed African medium. God gifted and well known for his competence and efficiency. Expert in all occult matters, even the most desperate of cases...For immediate help in looking for love, un-betwichment, court cases, strange illness...Enhance your career prospects! Call today for an appointment!" So if I require the services of Nigerian commercialized spiritual healing, I know where to go.

And the market! I love the Brixton market! Not four blocks from my house there is a giant open-air market. It is fantastic. Its extensive and fascinating and dynamic. I wandered through it for the first time last weekend and it felt like a middle eastern souq. There were caribbean vegetable stalls, arab halal butchers, pakistani halal butchers, colorful plastic chinese trinket pedlars, etc. I want coconuts, or plantains, or apples, or pig's feet, or zaatar, or cheap linens...I now know where to find them.

Also down the street is a church with a bar in the basement. What could be better? Or indeed, more British?

Oh sure, I also love my graduate program and the world renowned school, but what I REALLY love are the curious laundry packets they manufacture here! In the closet near the washing machine is a box of individually-wrapped packages of laundry soap that one just tosses into the load of wash as if it were another piece of underwear. You don't have to measure anything, and you don't have to get all the drippy drippy goopiness of blue laundry soap running down the side of the container. This little square of plastic (?) dissolves on its own. There is a similar invention for the dishwasher AND for fake-dry-cleaning clothes in the dryer. Its amazing. I've no idea if its ecologically sustainable...but I'm not sure I really care.

Of course, no love affair is perfect. London has its faults and there are some things I hate about living here. For example, I hate the Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) that is an ubiquitous presence throughout the city. Londoners are watched on camera around 44 times each day, in the supermarket, in pubs, on the sidewalks, in buses, in the train, even in taxi cabs. I think its creepy and has the potential to be misused in the future. On the other hand, my flatmate told me the first day I was here that if I walk down such and such streets to the tube station, I would be safest because those streets were covered in CCTV cameras and everyone knew it. "No one will touch you," he assured me. But the more I study things like deterrance, I'm not convinced that there is any significant evidence that deterrance does indeed prevent crime. We'll see.

I also despise the gossipy newspapers and tabloids that are aggressively distributed daily. Newspaper vendors thrust these thin papers with loud headlines into my face from all sides of the street at all time. At first I politely declined, now I just walk past, annoyed. I dislike that the tube closes at midnight. Even in DC, arguably the lamest city on earth, the metro stays open until 3am on the weekends. But here every weekend is a Cinderella story, and if I don't leave parties by midnight, the train turns into a pumpkin. I HATE the way my hot and cold water don't mix. Even in Egypt the hot and cold water mixes. Occassionally.

The jury is still out on London fashion. I'm currently neutral. Not sure what I think of the cropped bomber jackets, jeans tucked into boots (its not really flattering...it just kinda makes everyone look like they're running off to the stables after class), royal blue tights with everything even when they don't match, ditto with the scarves. I'm not saying the world needs to be matchy-matchy, but I am saying that if people are intentionally trying to stand out from the crowd, well, maybe they shouldn't dress like the rest of the crowd. Just a thought. Maybe its this analytic tenacity that got me into the Mick Jagger School of Economics. I'm also not yet sure what to make of the fact that my former fiance is now living a stone(henge?)'s throw away from here in Oxford.

Not everything can be perfect. But have I mentioned the dissolving laundry soaps?