Thursday, October 29, 2009
Always Moving!
The Champagne Socialist has moved to a new, improved, and most importantly, uncensored location! http://champagnesocialistintheuk.wordpress.com/
Friday, September 25, 2009
Up in the air
I'm writing this from the cramped 26A seat on a BMI flight from London to Amman (it'll get pasted from the Word document later; I'm trying to be proactive, which is why I'm on the British Midlands flight in the first place). Pros of 26A: window, view of London fading away. Cons of 26A: near tail, very bumpy, hence vaguely motion sickness and fear inducing. I'm flying somewhere over western Turkey, and everything in my life is up in the air. Turbulent, if you will.
As of this morning I'm "formally" moved out of London. However, since I'm not yet really moved in anywhere else, that's only half true. Last night I slept on a sleeping bag on the floor, and this morning I surrendered the keys to my flatmate. Who needs an address when the world is your oyster? (Me, me, me!!!) My flatmates left the house with me and each helped carry a suitcase down the sidewalk, onto the bus, off the bus, down the stairs to the tube, onto the train, and I hugged them goodbye in between the closing doors of the Picadilly line. At Heathrow airport I alternately pushed, heaved, and gingerly pulled everything off of the tube alone. My arms are sore but I'm proud of the feat. Who needs a gym when you don't have money for a taxi? (Me, me, me!!!) I'm also impressed that I didn't pay a pence in overweight luggage fees, even though it required nonchalantly smiling whilst standing in front of the check-in counter while the straps of my hand luggage, in which I had placed all of my heaviest books, sliced into the skin over my collarbone. I assured my friend in Amman that I was going to try mightily to be brave around him about my uncertain future, and that I would consolidate my baggage in both the literal and metaphorical sense.
I hate saying goodbye to people (though I like goodbye parties, because I like any excuse to throw a party). Leaving DC over a year ago was heartrending enough; leaving London is sad because I've added more people onto the long list of people I miss. Today was a beautiful fall day, and as the plane took off and flew over London I could recognize many places that meant something to me. From 26A I noticed, "Oh, that's the airport road with the hotel where I had dinner with Karina during her half day layover, there are the Kew gardens! In the winter Joelle and I had tea there, and scones with clotted cream. We took a photo in front of the red Japanese pagoda, the pagoda is what you can see best from the air," and "Oh, that's the Public Records Office, the home of the British National Archives, it looks like a soviet office building, sprawling cement." I thought to myself, "That's the first place I spent time in London, I miss researching the Assyrians, reading old musty documents, the British Foreign Office was so organized, remarkable, it was so cold when I was staying at the archivist's house on that road there, I bought a scarf with orange and pink stripes at the Marks and Spencer's in that giant mall...there...I won't miss Marks and Spencer's...what a ridiculously overpriced store." As the plane flew closer to the center of the city the places I noticed and the memories associated with them grew denser, more intense, and more difficult to separate, and I was awash in a streamofconsciousness nostalgia for my year in London. "There's the London eye! Well, of course it's easy to spot. I went there with every visitor who came to town. The Thames. Such a long, important river. I've heard it's shallow, only three feet deep. One could wade across if it weren't for the undercurrents. I wonder what it was like three hundred years ago. Busier? Dirtier. Arsenal stadium! The Emirates stadium. Arsenal, sponsored by Emirates. Why? And the New Academic Building at LSE donated by Sheik Zayed and the PR firms of Abu Dhabi. I should go back to Dubai. The Dubai metro is running now, 'hamdullilah. There's Finsbury Park! My house, oops, not my house anymore, must be somewhere...right...there...aw, there's Regent's Park. Regent's Park is nicer than Finsbury Park. I hate to admit it, but it's true. I had a daylong picnic there with Emily and Olivia, and we ate the most delicious brie cheese. Those are the Southwestern railway trains snaking towards Brighton." I remembered in a jumble of thoughts the first trip I took out of London, this time last year, to Brighton beach. "Another beautiful fall day. I didn't have a mobile phone yet. How did I manage to find Jolie in Victoria station? Jolie and I sitting on the beach. Drinking beer and eating chips. Contrails in the sky, from planes headed towards America. Vegetarian Indian restaurant. Hippies and Caribbean Britons. I bought a pair of red and black striped beaded earrings. I think I lost one of them recently. How did I meet Jolie anyway? Caroline! Through Caroline! How is she? Is she in Germany? We went to dinner at the Turkish restaurant, by the river, somewhere...there...we walked along the brick quay near the Globe Theater to a wine bar. Tube back to Brixton. Crept upstairs in my old house by the light of a streetlamp. That house had the greatest kitchen and a cookbook that I always meant to buy for myself but now I can't remember the name of it..."
Now the map says 601 km to destination. I'm somewhere over Konya, the sufi town. Rumi is burried there. Its the home of the Mevlevi order of Sufis, the whirling dervishes. Not all Sufis see the value in this, of meditating while going around in circles. Maybe the journey is the destination? I don't know. Like everyone I have a strong desire to feel useful in the world, but at 35,000 feet, neither here nor there in life, I just feel nervous. But maybe that's the turbulence.
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Champagne Socialist in Croatia
A friend recently described the Croatian coast as "heartbreakingly beautiful" and he's right. Precipitous, stark, arid mountains fall abrputly into the Adriatic. The aquamarine water is crystal clear, and the most intensely green pine trees line the coast. Perhaps there is a Crayola crayon shade of sea-green or jade that captures the hue of that water and those trees. Medieval walled cities dot each island and are scattered along the coast. Inside the fortifications, the white Jerusalem stone is cool and muffles the peal of church bells. The air smells like salt and lavender.
The Dalmatian coast is truly one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen. This is saying a lot because I am convinced I grew up in the most beautiful place in the world. Surely this is partly subjective; I recognize that the familiar becomes precious. But the remote western United States is also just tremendously beautiful in its grandeur and its desolation. I often have difficulty describing my hometown. One evening we docked in Trstenik and my friend and I wandered down the sole street of the small fishing village. Dusk had fallen and the moon was beginning to rise over the mountains. The road came to an abrupt end at the bottom of a hill in front of a large, old wooden barrel with a bottle of wine placed on the top that doubled as a sign that read: "Wine tasting, ----> 10 kuna." We turned and walked up the hill a short distance to a small store set down a couple of stairs off of a narrow stone alley. It was cool inside and empty save for more of those ten liter wooden barrels. I remember my parents used to have a lot of those barrels decorating their first log house. They functioned as tables, or perhaps as a TV stand, though I don't recall having a TV. They matched the wagon wheels that were reincarnated as chandeliers. The barrels in the Croatian wine cellar were covered in drips of wax. Lighted candles in wine bottles were placed incautiously on the tops. There was no one around but we heard laughter and voices outside; it was late and the wine tasting had turned into a small party outside. Several people were sitting on the stone stairs and smaller barrels-turned-benches and chatting with the neighbors across the alley. They asked us if we'd come for wine tasting, and when we said yes, they invited us to sit outside with them. They warned us they were drinking everday table wine. The white was poured from an old two liter Coca Cola bottle. The red was very good. It was grown on the hillside behind us, which had apparently just been purchased by a rich California-based vintner. They asked us where we were from. "America." "But where in America?" My friend was able to say New York City and be readily understood. One man had played water polo at the University of Santa Barbara and still had a business and an apartment in New York City. They all looked at me expectantly and I concluded that the most appropriate and satisfying answer was, "From a village like this."
Later a man on the boat asked me where I was from. He was a young Croatian guy with a shaved head who darted about noiselessly and seemed to take great pleasure in appearing in front of people with no warning. He claimed he had been in the army. Now he was the chef, but his talent was catching fish with a small spear and snorkel while we stopped to swim more than cooking anything besides thin noodle soup and chopped up tomatoes with vinegar. "Where are you from?" he inquired. "You're not Aussie. You're too quiet." I laughed. It was true. The Australians with us stayed up all night playing music and proudly started a "breakfast club" where they would begin drinking cheap beer soon after the boat left port at 8am. I told him I was from the States but he pressed, "No, where are you really from?" "I'm really from the States." "No, your family, originally." sigh. "I guess my father's family is originally from Ireland. But it was a long time ago. Actually, my mother's family is Croatian." "Do you speak Croatian?" he asked in Croatian. "No," I had to admit. I wish I did. He frowned and looked pissed off, but that was his normal look. "So you are half Irish, half Croatian. You could say, all mixed up, or just one big mess." "Well, that last part at least is true."
After that, he only referred to my friend and I as "America." This would have bothered me if I hadn't referred to him only as "chef." I think his name was attractive. Marco, perhaps. One day he winked at me from across the boat and demanded, "America! Come here." He curled his index finger, gestured I follow him, and disappeared into the galley. "Try this." He handed me a plate of sea snails on a bed of radicchio greens. They were covered in oil and salt. "These are delicious!" I exclaimed, "So this is what you make for yourself!" He held a finger up to his lips, "I just found them. Ssshhh. Don't tell the others. Why do you like the States?" I paused with my fork of sea snails halfway to my mouth and thought about what to say. Before I could say anything, he said, "You are probably some rich girl..." I raised my eyebrows. But inside I wondered, Is this true now for all practical purposes? Instead I answered flippantly, "Maybe I'll marry rich and then that will be true." "Me too." "Well then you won't be marrying me." Was it my imagination or did he look just a tiny bit shocked? That I wasn't rich? That I didn't want to marry him? He continued, "You know what we say in Croatia? Love is a pile of shit, with honey on top. Once the honey is gone, you are left with a pile of shit. Love is just foolish promises. Like life in America." "Thanks for the sea snails."
The Dalmatian coast is truly one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen. This is saying a lot because I am convinced I grew up in the most beautiful place in the world. Surely this is partly subjective; I recognize that the familiar becomes precious. But the remote western United States is also just tremendously beautiful in its grandeur and its desolation. I often have difficulty describing my hometown. One evening we docked in Trstenik and my friend and I wandered down the sole street of the small fishing village. Dusk had fallen and the moon was beginning to rise over the mountains. The road came to an abrupt end at the bottom of a hill in front of a large, old wooden barrel with a bottle of wine placed on the top that doubled as a sign that read: "Wine tasting, ----> 10 kuna." We turned and walked up the hill a short distance to a small store set down a couple of stairs off of a narrow stone alley. It was cool inside and empty save for more of those ten liter wooden barrels. I remember my parents used to have a lot of those barrels decorating their first log house. They functioned as tables, or perhaps as a TV stand, though I don't recall having a TV. They matched the wagon wheels that were reincarnated as chandeliers. The barrels in the Croatian wine cellar were covered in drips of wax. Lighted candles in wine bottles were placed incautiously on the tops. There was no one around but we heard laughter and voices outside; it was late and the wine tasting had turned into a small party outside. Several people were sitting on the stone stairs and smaller barrels-turned-benches and chatting with the neighbors across the alley. They asked us if we'd come for wine tasting, and when we said yes, they invited us to sit outside with them. They warned us they were drinking everday table wine. The white was poured from an old two liter Coca Cola bottle. The red was very good. It was grown on the hillside behind us, which had apparently just been purchased by a rich California-based vintner. They asked us where we were from. "America." "But where in America?" My friend was able to say New York City and be readily understood. One man had played water polo at the University of Santa Barbara and still had a business and an apartment in New York City. They all looked at me expectantly and I concluded that the most appropriate and satisfying answer was, "From a village like this."
Later a man on the boat asked me where I was from. He was a young Croatian guy with a shaved head who darted about noiselessly and seemed to take great pleasure in appearing in front of people with no warning. He claimed he had been in the army. Now he was the chef, but his talent was catching fish with a small spear and snorkel while we stopped to swim more than cooking anything besides thin noodle soup and chopped up tomatoes with vinegar. "Where are you from?" he inquired. "You're not Aussie. You're too quiet." I laughed. It was true. The Australians with us stayed up all night playing music and proudly started a "breakfast club" where they would begin drinking cheap beer soon after the boat left port at 8am. I told him I was from the States but he pressed, "No, where are you really from?" "I'm really from the States." "No, your family, originally." sigh. "I guess my father's family is originally from Ireland. But it was a long time ago. Actually, my mother's family is Croatian." "Do you speak Croatian?" he asked in Croatian. "No," I had to admit. I wish I did. He frowned and looked pissed off, but that was his normal look. "So you are half Irish, half Croatian. You could say, all mixed up, or just one big mess." "Well, that last part at least is true."
After that, he only referred to my friend and I as "America." This would have bothered me if I hadn't referred to him only as "chef." I think his name was attractive. Marco, perhaps. One day he winked at me from across the boat and demanded, "America! Come here." He curled his index finger, gestured I follow him, and disappeared into the galley. "Try this." He handed me a plate of sea snails on a bed of radicchio greens. They were covered in oil and salt. "These are delicious!" I exclaimed, "So this is what you make for yourself!" He held a finger up to his lips, "I just found them. Ssshhh. Don't tell the others. Why do you like the States?" I paused with my fork of sea snails halfway to my mouth and thought about what to say. Before I could say anything, he said, "You are probably some rich girl..." I raised my eyebrows. But inside I wondered, Is this true now for all practical purposes? Instead I answered flippantly, "Maybe I'll marry rich and then that will be true." "Me too." "Well then you won't be marrying me." Was it my imagination or did he look just a tiny bit shocked? That I wasn't rich? That I didn't want to marry him? He continued, "You know what we say in Croatia? Love is a pile of shit, with honey on top. Once the honey is gone, you are left with a pile of shit. Love is just foolish promises. Like life in America." "Thanks for the sea snails."
Saturday, August 1, 2009
Coming to America
I have long admired T.S. Eliot's eloquent edict, that “We must not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we began and to know the place for the first time.” Can I contextualize the decree? Remember where I first read it? No, I'll admit I cannot (and a quick web search to find its origins retrieves only a barage of annoying inspirational quotations collections, business leadership forums, or other bloggers attempting to uniquely utilize it). But its impossible to deny that it has a nice ring to it.
I flew back "across the pond" to the United States last week for the first time after a year abroad, and so much of what had been familiar now seemed strange. Actually, I've always disliked the deliberate understatement of the idiom "across the pond." The Atlantic Ocean is not a pond. A pond is where you raise goldfish. However, now I have a better appreciation of the irony underlying the phrase, because there ARE big differences between the US and the UK, no matter how desperately people underplay them for mutual benefit.
'Course, I'm not going to write about the big differences, like race and class and how offensive I found a poster that I saw on the tube that was advertising visiting hours at Buckingham Palace by displaying an old photo from the 1960s of the Queen receiving a gift of a giant wreath of flowers from a young African girl. That would take too much emotional and intellectual energy for a weekend so I'll mention the superficialities.
For example, Americans seem really nice! I was in the lift--erm, elevator--going to the 18th floor of my friend's apartment, when the man next to me exclaimed, "Hi! Sure is hot out there! You have a good afternoon!" I recoiled a bit, thinking, "Do I know you?" This kind of overt pleasantness is startling after a year in the UK. Its also inspiriting. I appreciate the engagement and I believe its usually genuine. On the other hand, it was reassuring to me to learn whilst in the UK that one can interact with the world with my brand of sarcasm and bitterness and still be considered a very nice person.
Also: Americans are really fit or obsessed with becoming fit, and I am unconvinced this is healthy. I have an aversion to fitness as a program per se, because when I was a child my family was obsessed with health food in a very unhealthy way. This is one of many childhood traumas that has shaped my adult life. It explains my champagne socialist love of rich food with complex flavor, as growing up my mother, brother, and I were denied butter, anything other than skimmed or, worse, powdered milk, peanut butter, most cheeses, white bread, any sugary desserts, anything fried...and the list goes on. My father welded together his own set of bodybuilding equipment. Now I embrace a lot of this. I also don't think children should be fed piles of sugar or processed food, and I admire the way my mother baked her own bread and pizza dough and made chocolate cakes with yogurt instead of oil. I did not admire the insults my father launched at her if she looked pudgy.
As I was walking to my friend's house in DC last week, tired from jetlag, melting in the humidity, lugging my heavy suitcase, and seemingly walking even more slowly than I was because the expansive scale of the concrete neighborhood was so intimidating, a muscled young man jogged past me carrying a water bottle in one hand and an ipod in the other. Humph, I thought. Well isn't that great. We can't all be training for the Marine Corps Marathon. He then ran past me in the other direction, and I realized he was running circuits from the traffic light at the next intersection. He came towards me again, and again, and again. He stressed me out and made me want to smoke a cigarette! From what was he running????
How can I get some of that jogger's energy? I'm going to need it if I move back to DC. The city runs on youthful ambition. Its fascinating, but I worry about all of the Anne Taylor Loft-clad young people who succeed there from the beginning. Do they never develop a sense of how other places operate? Simultaneously, DC seems insular yet open-minded and outward-looking. Its doubtless an international city, yet so many people are there to do similar types of things. Since coming back to London I have a renewed sense of excitement for the cosmopolitanism that I felt so tangibly when I first arrived here.
Nonetheless, I recalled why I love DC. I love the sensual feel of the humidity, the garden parties, the inherent contradictions like the molasses pace of the rat-race, the greenery, and the view from the bridges over Rock Creek Park. I delight in the way everyone stands in front of the White House with big grins on their faces these days. Well, okay, not the crowds of angry Iranian activists upset over Iraqi crimes in Camp Ashraf. Mostly, I cherish my friends. I would love to live there again, and soon.
At the same time, I was ecstatic to go back to London. I found myself missing the kayfiyeh clad hipsters, the drunks on the tube, the fact that I never, ever have to fish around in the bottomless pit that is my purse for my ID in a pub, that I can drink coffee on the underground and wine on the grass outside of Hampton Court Palace, and that the posters on the underground aren't so serious. As I was on the DC metro train to Pentagon City (before I encountered the jogger), I was disturbed by the lack of adverts for anything other than military hardware ("The Only Platform for the Joint Cargo Aircraft"), health-care reform, medical insurance, or calls to "Rebuild America One Worker At a Time." Consuming DC metro marketing is exhausting! By contrast, the London underground trumpets Orangina with writhing ballerinas and bouyant jazz dancers proclaiming one needs "Shake It to Wake It!" It hawks theater performances, novels ("One beautiful British summer, a girl lost her heart to a boy named..."), and Magner's Pear Cider ("We love apples, just not in our Pear Cider").
Above all, I was happy to return to the Turkish bodegas near my house that sell freshly-baked rounds of sesame bread for 49 pence. I'm going to miss those bodegas. I was standing on 12th and G streets in DC when a man who had been trekking around for awhile asked me, "Where can I grab a sandwhich around here?" I thought long and hard but came up with a blank, confessing, "This is lame, but I'm sorry, I don't know. You may have to walk aways. There isn't much in this neighborhood." (Maybe I'm wrong? Correct me if I'm wrong). But what is wrong with DC in its lack of street food? I think, if the international development gig doesn't work out for me, I should open up a street vending cart and try to make it as a journalist on the side. I could sell crepes and food with European cachet. Egyptian-style koshari could be brilliant. The cheap, practical, national dish has four carbohydrates and spicy fried onions! I could charge $4 for a plate, $1 a carb. It would be pure profit! Who wants to join me? See, in America, one feels as if anything is possible. In the UK, well, things seem different. My favorite comedian Eddy Izzard captures the difference, saying "When I was a kid in school, the career advisor came to see us and said, 'Look, I advise you to get a career, what can I say?' And he took me aside and he said, 'What d'ya wanna do, kid? What do you wanna do with your life? Tell me your dreams!' So I said, 'I wanna be an astronaut! And go into outer space and discover things that no one's ever discovered before!' He said, 'Look, you're British, so scale it down a bit.'"
When I was twelve and thirteen I actually went through a phase where I wanted to be an astronaut, but its a good thing I changed course because I hadn't ever been on a plane at that point and as it turns out I'm kind of afraid of flying. At some point during my DC visit I was avoiding the humidity in the air-conditioned Borders book store and I read part of a chapter in Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers. It was about common conditions under which most plane crashes occur (I have little idea how this fits into the larger point of his book). Apparently, many crashes happen in bad weather, on flights that have been delayed, and in instances where the pilots have been awake for more than twelve hours before departing (this all seems rather obvious, other interesting conditions included pilot and copilot rarely having flown together, and an average of seven consecutive errors). Anyway, my flight back to London commenced with an announcement that boarding was severely delayed, as weather had been terrible all day. When we finally did board, we waited on the tarmac another two hours for thunderstorms to clear out of the Northeast. The entire two hours were filled with a baby's unrelenting, piercing, wails.
The only good thing about the flight (besides arriving in London in one piece), is that I had a really good time talking with a not unattractive gentleman sitting next to me. When the plane shut down its engines and the infant continued its high-pitched, mournful, lament, he and I sighed long exasperated sighs and knocked our heads against the seats in frustration. I guess this prompted him to talk to me. He (or I?) said something about needing a whiskey. I (or he?) said we should give it to the baby. Thus began a long conversation, but I realized when he bounded away to make his connection at Heathrow that I had absolutely no way to get in touch with him again. That's fine, but I was also thinking it would be a fun missed connection to write, something like: "We hated the crying baby and were both a little afraid of flying but didn't want to admit it. We drank a lot of wine to forget about both. You seemed interesting. I'm the woman you thought was crazy for wanting to move to Jordan. You had to run off to Greece and be fancy. I hope you weren't meeting your wife there on the islands, or your male lover."
Ah, well.
I flew back "across the pond" to the United States last week for the first time after a year abroad, and so much of what had been familiar now seemed strange. Actually, I've always disliked the deliberate understatement of the idiom "across the pond." The Atlantic Ocean is not a pond. A pond is where you raise goldfish. However, now I have a better appreciation of the irony underlying the phrase, because there ARE big differences between the US and the UK, no matter how desperately people underplay them for mutual benefit.
'Course, I'm not going to write about the big differences, like race and class and how offensive I found a poster that I saw on the tube that was advertising visiting hours at Buckingham Palace by displaying an old photo from the 1960s of the Queen receiving a gift of a giant wreath of flowers from a young African girl. That would take too much emotional and intellectual energy for a weekend so I'll mention the superficialities.
For example, Americans seem really nice! I was in the lift--erm, elevator--going to the 18th floor of my friend's apartment, when the man next to me exclaimed, "Hi! Sure is hot out there! You have a good afternoon!" I recoiled a bit, thinking, "Do I know you?" This kind of overt pleasantness is startling after a year in the UK. Its also inspiriting. I appreciate the engagement and I believe its usually genuine. On the other hand, it was reassuring to me to learn whilst in the UK that one can interact with the world with my brand of sarcasm and bitterness and still be considered a very nice person.
Also: Americans are really fit or obsessed with becoming fit, and I am unconvinced this is healthy. I have an aversion to fitness as a program per se, because when I was a child my family was obsessed with health food in a very unhealthy way. This is one of many childhood traumas that has shaped my adult life. It explains my champagne socialist love of rich food with complex flavor, as growing up my mother, brother, and I were denied butter, anything other than skimmed or, worse, powdered milk, peanut butter, most cheeses, white bread, any sugary desserts, anything fried...and the list goes on. My father welded together his own set of bodybuilding equipment. Now I embrace a lot of this. I also don't think children should be fed piles of sugar or processed food, and I admire the way my mother baked her own bread and pizza dough and made chocolate cakes with yogurt instead of oil. I did not admire the insults my father launched at her if she looked pudgy.
As I was walking to my friend's house in DC last week, tired from jetlag, melting in the humidity, lugging my heavy suitcase, and seemingly walking even more slowly than I was because the expansive scale of the concrete neighborhood was so intimidating, a muscled young man jogged past me carrying a water bottle in one hand and an ipod in the other. Humph, I thought. Well isn't that great. We can't all be training for the Marine Corps Marathon. He then ran past me in the other direction, and I realized he was running circuits from the traffic light at the next intersection. He came towards me again, and again, and again. He stressed me out and made me want to smoke a cigarette! From what was he running????
How can I get some of that jogger's energy? I'm going to need it if I move back to DC. The city runs on youthful ambition. Its fascinating, but I worry about all of the Anne Taylor Loft-clad young people who succeed there from the beginning. Do they never develop a sense of how other places operate? Simultaneously, DC seems insular yet open-minded and outward-looking. Its doubtless an international city, yet so many people are there to do similar types of things. Since coming back to London I have a renewed sense of excitement for the cosmopolitanism that I felt so tangibly when I first arrived here.
Nonetheless, I recalled why I love DC. I love the sensual feel of the humidity, the garden parties, the inherent contradictions like the molasses pace of the rat-race, the greenery, and the view from the bridges over Rock Creek Park. I delight in the way everyone stands in front of the White House with big grins on their faces these days. Well, okay, not the crowds of angry Iranian activists upset over Iraqi crimes in Camp Ashraf. Mostly, I cherish my friends. I would love to live there again, and soon.
At the same time, I was ecstatic to go back to London. I found myself missing the kayfiyeh clad hipsters, the drunks on the tube, the fact that I never, ever have to fish around in the bottomless pit that is my purse for my ID in a pub, that I can drink coffee on the underground and wine on the grass outside of Hampton Court Palace, and that the posters on the underground aren't so serious. As I was on the DC metro train to Pentagon City (before I encountered the jogger), I was disturbed by the lack of adverts for anything other than military hardware ("The Only Platform for the Joint Cargo Aircraft"), health-care reform, medical insurance, or calls to "Rebuild America One Worker At a Time." Consuming DC metro marketing is exhausting! By contrast, the London underground trumpets Orangina with writhing ballerinas and bouyant jazz dancers proclaiming one needs "Shake It to Wake It!" It hawks theater performances, novels ("One beautiful British summer, a girl lost her heart to a boy named..."), and Magner's Pear Cider ("We love apples, just not in our Pear Cider").
Above all, I was happy to return to the Turkish bodegas near my house that sell freshly-baked rounds of sesame bread for 49 pence. I'm going to miss those bodegas. I was standing on 12th and G streets in DC when a man who had been trekking around for awhile asked me, "Where can I grab a sandwhich around here?" I thought long and hard but came up with a blank, confessing, "This is lame, but I'm sorry, I don't know. You may have to walk aways. There isn't much in this neighborhood." (Maybe I'm wrong? Correct me if I'm wrong). But what is wrong with DC in its lack of street food? I think, if the international development gig doesn't work out for me, I should open up a street vending cart and try to make it as a journalist on the side. I could sell crepes and food with European cachet. Egyptian-style koshari could be brilliant. The cheap, practical, national dish has four carbohydrates and spicy fried onions! I could charge $4 for a plate, $1 a carb. It would be pure profit! Who wants to join me? See, in America, one feels as if anything is possible. In the UK, well, things seem different. My favorite comedian Eddy Izzard captures the difference, saying "When I was a kid in school, the career advisor came to see us and said, 'Look, I advise you to get a career, what can I say?' And he took me aside and he said, 'What d'ya wanna do, kid? What do you wanna do with your life? Tell me your dreams!' So I said, 'I wanna be an astronaut! And go into outer space and discover things that no one's ever discovered before!' He said, 'Look, you're British, so scale it down a bit.'"
When I was twelve and thirteen I actually went through a phase where I wanted to be an astronaut, but its a good thing I changed course because I hadn't ever been on a plane at that point and as it turns out I'm kind of afraid of flying. At some point during my DC visit I was avoiding the humidity in the air-conditioned Borders book store and I read part of a chapter in Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers. It was about common conditions under which most plane crashes occur (I have little idea how this fits into the larger point of his book). Apparently, many crashes happen in bad weather, on flights that have been delayed, and in instances where the pilots have been awake for more than twelve hours before departing (this all seems rather obvious, other interesting conditions included pilot and copilot rarely having flown together, and an average of seven consecutive errors). Anyway, my flight back to London commenced with an announcement that boarding was severely delayed, as weather had been terrible all day. When we finally did board, we waited on the tarmac another two hours for thunderstorms to clear out of the Northeast. The entire two hours were filled with a baby's unrelenting, piercing, wails.
The only good thing about the flight (besides arriving in London in one piece), is that I had a really good time talking with a not unattractive gentleman sitting next to me. When the plane shut down its engines and the infant continued its high-pitched, mournful, lament, he and I sighed long exasperated sighs and knocked our heads against the seats in frustration. I guess this prompted him to talk to me. He (or I?) said something about needing a whiskey. I (or he?) said we should give it to the baby. Thus began a long conversation, but I realized when he bounded away to make his connection at Heathrow that I had absolutely no way to get in touch with him again. That's fine, but I was also thinking it would be a fun missed connection to write, something like: "We hated the crying baby and were both a little afraid of flying but didn't want to admit it. We drank a lot of wine to forget about both. You seemed interesting. I'm the woman you thought was crazy for wanting to move to Jordan. You had to run off to Greece and be fancy. I hope you weren't meeting your wife there on the islands, or your male lover."
Ah, well.
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
All in a Wednesday
For better or worse, London is no longer an English city. There are many Anglophiles who would find such a claim contentious, even contemptible, but I don't think its such a bold assertion. London is a global city, and thats what I like about it. Everyday one is destined to encounter people from an assortment of far-flung places with a variety of far-out opinions. Today was no different.
When I jumped into the Tube at Holloway Road this morning, I sat near the most impressively elegant French woman and her adorable yet annoying daughter. The little girl, who was probably seven or eight years old, was fidgety on the train. She fussed with the purple bow in her hair and clicked together the heels of her silver ballet flats while whining about dying of hunger. Lately my usage of French has been limited to reading newspapers over people's shoulders on the train (un peu "creepy," I know) and trying to understand eight year olds, but this restless girl's mother inspired me to keep up my French. An integral concept in philosophy and social science is that one understands and defines oneself only in relation to others (or The Other, if you prefer excessive capitalization and are prone to quoting Hegel). Equipped with this intellectual framework and a year of living in London, I think I am beginning to understand the infamous interminable French and English rivalry! This French woman was amazing: amazingly chic in her black and white striped dress, onyx-colored blazer, and Greek-style sandals that exposed her painted toenails; and amazingly patient without being subservient as she handed her daughter napkins. I SO admire women who dress up despite having to feed querulous eight year olds on the underground.
Later this evening, I went to dinner at a Persian restaurant on Edgeware Road with two people in my International Relations program. Inevitably, we started discussing what we were writing our dissertations about. (A digression: the English higher education system refers to what is basically a short Master's degree thesis as a "dissertation," and to a long Ph.D. dissertation as a "thesis." I haven't quite gotten used to this, though I have taken to calling my roommates flatmates and my apartment a flat. It is a shorter word, afterall. But I don't think I'll ever in seriousness say "jumper," "loo," or "lorry," and I'm still not entirely sure if I should interpret "cheeky sod" as an insult or a term of endearment. Anyway, telling people that I'm writing a dissertation throughout the summer makes it seem a lot more difficult and important than it actually is). Nevertheless, I rather like my dissertation topic and I'm excited about the project, so I was enthusiastically describing it to my friends. (A disclaimer: the following sentence is extremely nerdy. Of course, if you're reading this blog, So Are You!) I explained how I was hoping to examine how Jordanian foreign policy is affected by the conflicting dynamics of regime security for the Hashemite monarchy, long-term national economic interest, the maintenance of Jordan's international reputation, and popular opinion and demands for democracy--especially by the 70% of the country's residents of Palestinian origin, who are frequently discriminated against in favor of the powerful Beduoin families close to the monarchy.
As it so happens, as I was describing "the King's dilemma" (How can a Malik modernize a monarchy, gradually liberalize a country in order to gain national and international legitimacy in the year 2009, and not make himself redundant, the victim of his own success?) to my captive audience over kebab, I realized that we had sat next to a table of Jordanians. I had first noticed the three of them when one man was extremely rude to the Chinese waiter when he didn't understand Arabic (at a Persian restaurant...), and then I overhead them conversing with curiosity about how we were chattering about Jordan. Since the guy kept looking at me, or, as I realize in retrospect, more probably at my V-neck shirt, I decided to engage them in a little polite restaurant conversation. I was thinking this was a good opportunity to practice my Arabic, but it was a decision that I came to regret. I asked him where he was from; predictably he said Jordan but when pressed as to where, he suggested that his family was 40,000 members strong throughout four powerful towns. He demanded to know how I spoke Arabic, exclaiming incredulously, "Surely you have Arab blood!" "No..." (I never know how to answer people's questions about why I've studied Arabic or am interested in the Middle East without sounding like an orientalist or a teenager or a spy). I asked him what he did in London and he evasively told me that he worked on "this and that, bits and pieces, yanni..." I quickly concluded that he didn't need to work and to the extent that he did it probably involved something sketchy, quite possibly with government money. Maybe that was an unfair assumption but nonetheless after swapping these pleasantries the conversation began to make me uncomfortable.
I tend to try to avoid unsubtle discussion regarding religion or politics with people about whose backgrounds I know nothing, but my Canadian friend shared none of my hesitation in this regard, nor any of my insight into this guy's likely loyalties. Instead, he saw an opportunity to elaborate on what we had just been talking about, and he enthusiastically lauched a barrage of overwhelmingly forthright questions at the group.
My jaw dropped when he nonchalantly asked them, "So, what do you think about the King?" and I felt really secure in my choice of research question when one man answered, "Of course, we love the King! I mean...Jordanians do not love him as much as they love his father, but he follows his father in all policies, or he tries to. We don't like that he married a Palestinian woman though. He should have married a Jordanian lady, or an English lady, like his father did." (A clarification: Queen Noor is actually American of Syrian and English descent, in that she grew up in the United States, but I guess if you're privileged as a result of your status as an "original" Jordanian whose family controls the army and the national institutions you don't grow up with a paradigm for thinking about people's heritage in such terms).
As if to illustrate this point, he proudly mentioned that he once "beat up a policeman and didn't even go to jail!" He added [ironically] that, "In Jordan, what matters is manners. It doesn't matter if you pray to God or to a stone, as long as you have manners. In this way it is the families of Jordan that matter, not the law." My Canadian friend couldn't get enough. He eagerly leaned in to ask, "Isn't that a problem?" I couldn't help to wonder how our new friend would manage to whitewash this answer, and I too leaned in as he continued, "No, its not a problem. We don't have any problems in Jordan. This is because the families [tribes] take care of things. For example, manners, we all know that there is only one reason that a man wants to know a woman, and when a man makes a relationship with a woman in a bad way, not in a respectable way, the families will make sure they are both finished. Halas."
Halas I was finished with my rice at this point, and while part of me wanted to record them and write down everything they were saying in defense of honor killings, a bigger part of me wanted to pay the bill and get out of there. My other friend, an Iranian, looked repulsed and receded from the conversation. I tried to hit his feet under the table in solidarity before he jumped up to get the check. Having grown up inundated with his fair share of repugnant political opinions, he had heard enough. He had just been telling us how his parents in Iran have to call his Canadian cell phone because the Iranian cell is blocked. He's pissed off because it costs $4/minute, but he doesn't have much choice. Apparently, calls from Iran to English mobiles have recently been blocked as well. Are English-Iranian relations still so bad after all of these decades? Or, like me, does he just never keep enough credit on his phone?
When I jumped into the Tube at Holloway Road this morning, I sat near the most impressively elegant French woman and her adorable yet annoying daughter. The little girl, who was probably seven or eight years old, was fidgety on the train. She fussed with the purple bow in her hair and clicked together the heels of her silver ballet flats while whining about dying of hunger. Lately my usage of French has been limited to reading newspapers over people's shoulders on the train (un peu "creepy," I know) and trying to understand eight year olds, but this restless girl's mother inspired me to keep up my French. An integral concept in philosophy and social science is that one understands and defines oneself only in relation to others (or The Other, if you prefer excessive capitalization and are prone to quoting Hegel). Equipped with this intellectual framework and a year of living in London, I think I am beginning to understand the infamous interminable French and English rivalry! This French woman was amazing: amazingly chic in her black and white striped dress, onyx-colored blazer, and Greek-style sandals that exposed her painted toenails; and amazingly patient without being subservient as she handed her daughter napkins. I SO admire women who dress up despite having to feed querulous eight year olds on the underground.
Later this evening, I went to dinner at a Persian restaurant on Edgeware Road with two people in my International Relations program. Inevitably, we started discussing what we were writing our dissertations about. (A digression: the English higher education system refers to what is basically a short Master's degree thesis as a "dissertation," and to a long Ph.D. dissertation as a "thesis." I haven't quite gotten used to this, though I have taken to calling my roommates flatmates and my apartment a flat. It is a shorter word, afterall. But I don't think I'll ever in seriousness say "jumper," "loo," or "lorry," and I'm still not entirely sure if I should interpret "cheeky sod" as an insult or a term of endearment. Anyway, telling people that I'm writing a dissertation throughout the summer makes it seem a lot more difficult and important than it actually is). Nevertheless, I rather like my dissertation topic and I'm excited about the project, so I was enthusiastically describing it to my friends. (A disclaimer: the following sentence is extremely nerdy. Of course, if you're reading this blog, So Are You!) I explained how I was hoping to examine how Jordanian foreign policy is affected by the conflicting dynamics of regime security for the Hashemite monarchy, long-term national economic interest, the maintenance of Jordan's international reputation, and popular opinion and demands for democracy--especially by the 70% of the country's residents of Palestinian origin, who are frequently discriminated against in favor of the powerful Beduoin families close to the monarchy.
As it so happens, as I was describing "the King's dilemma" (How can a Malik modernize a monarchy, gradually liberalize a country in order to gain national and international legitimacy in the year 2009, and not make himself redundant, the victim of his own success?) to my captive audience over kebab, I realized that we had sat next to a table of Jordanians. I had first noticed the three of them when one man was extremely rude to the Chinese waiter when he didn't understand Arabic (at a Persian restaurant...), and then I overhead them conversing with curiosity about how we were chattering about Jordan. Since the guy kept looking at me, or, as I realize in retrospect, more probably at my V-neck shirt, I decided to engage them in a little polite restaurant conversation. I was thinking this was a good opportunity to practice my Arabic, but it was a decision that I came to regret. I asked him where he was from; predictably he said Jordan but when pressed as to where, he suggested that his family was 40,000 members strong throughout four powerful towns. He demanded to know how I spoke Arabic, exclaiming incredulously, "Surely you have Arab blood!" "No..." (I never know how to answer people's questions about why I've studied Arabic or am interested in the Middle East without sounding like an orientalist or a teenager or a spy). I asked him what he did in London and he evasively told me that he worked on "this and that, bits and pieces, yanni..." I quickly concluded that he didn't need to work and to the extent that he did it probably involved something sketchy, quite possibly with government money. Maybe that was an unfair assumption but nonetheless after swapping these pleasantries the conversation began to make me uncomfortable.
I tend to try to avoid unsubtle discussion regarding religion or politics with people about whose backgrounds I know nothing, but my Canadian friend shared none of my hesitation in this regard, nor any of my insight into this guy's likely loyalties. Instead, he saw an opportunity to elaborate on what we had just been talking about, and he enthusiastically lauched a barrage of overwhelmingly forthright questions at the group.
My jaw dropped when he nonchalantly asked them, "So, what do you think about the King?" and I felt really secure in my choice of research question when one man answered, "Of course, we love the King! I mean...Jordanians do not love him as much as they love his father, but he follows his father in all policies, or he tries to. We don't like that he married a Palestinian woman though. He should have married a Jordanian lady, or an English lady, like his father did." (A clarification: Queen Noor is actually American of Syrian and English descent, in that she grew up in the United States, but I guess if you're privileged as a result of your status as an "original" Jordanian whose family controls the army and the national institutions you don't grow up with a paradigm for thinking about people's heritage in such terms).
As if to illustrate this point, he proudly mentioned that he once "beat up a policeman and didn't even go to jail!" He added [ironically] that, "In Jordan, what matters is manners. It doesn't matter if you pray to God or to a stone, as long as you have manners. In this way it is the families of Jordan that matter, not the law." My Canadian friend couldn't get enough. He eagerly leaned in to ask, "Isn't that a problem?" I couldn't help to wonder how our new friend would manage to whitewash this answer, and I too leaned in as he continued, "No, its not a problem. We don't have any problems in Jordan. This is because the families [tribes] take care of things. For example, manners, we all know that there is only one reason that a man wants to know a woman, and when a man makes a relationship with a woman in a bad way, not in a respectable way, the families will make sure they are both finished. Halas."
Halas I was finished with my rice at this point, and while part of me wanted to record them and write down everything they were saying in defense of honor killings, a bigger part of me wanted to pay the bill and get out of there. My other friend, an Iranian, looked repulsed and receded from the conversation. I tried to hit his feet under the table in solidarity before he jumped up to get the check. Having grown up inundated with his fair share of repugnant political opinions, he had heard enough. He had just been telling us how his parents in Iran have to call his Canadian cell phone because the Iranian cell is blocked. He's pissed off because it costs $4/minute, but he doesn't have much choice. Apparently, calls from Iran to English mobiles have recently been blocked as well. Are English-Iranian relations still so bad after all of these decades? Or, like me, does he just never keep enough credit on his phone?
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Champagne Socialist in Budapest
Its raining tonight in London. A soft, summer rain with a soothing patter that freshens the air--and hopefully rinses away the grime, pigeon droppings, and piss off of Seven Sisters Road. If it is acid rain, I'll choose to focus on how it will even more thoroughly scour the street.
A few days ago I was in Budapest, listening to thunder and watching rivulets flow down Vaci Utca street, past the Herendi crystal store, the Burger King, and an H & M. Those who had travelled there in the past told me that the city was unrecognizable from its days of complete disrepair. A Romanian man told me that he had frequently travelled to Budapest when he was my age to play tennis. He competed in tennis matches all around the areas occupied by the former Soviet Union, and he and his friends understood that Hungary was the most free country at the time because it was the only place in Central and Eastern Europe where one could buy jeans. Now there are sleek sushi restaurants around the perimeters of the central squares.
A few days ago I was in Budapest, listening to thunder and watching rivulets flow down Vaci Utca street, past the Herendi crystal store, the Burger King, and an H & M. Those who had travelled there in the past told me that the city was unrecognizable from its days of complete disrepair. A Romanian man told me that he had frequently travelled to Budapest when he was my age to play tennis. He competed in tennis matches all around the areas occupied by the former Soviet Union, and he and his friends understood that Hungary was the most free country at the time because it was the only place in Central and Eastern Europe where one could buy jeans. Now there are sleek sushi restaurants around the perimeters of the central squares.
Saturday, April 18, 2009
How I Feel About English Weather
Regardless of what you may think of Rushdie, this bit from his Satanic Verses captures how I feel about English weather:
"But where should he begin? –Well then, the trouble with the English was their:
Their:
In a word, Gibreel solemnly pronounced, their weather.
Gibreel Farishta floating on his cloud formed the opinion that the moral fuzziness of the English was meteorologically induced. ‘When the day is not warmer than the night,’ he reasoned, ‘when the light is not brighter than the dark, when the land is not drier than the sea, then clearly a people will lose the power to make distinctions, and commence to see everything –from political parties to sexual partners to religious beliefs –as much-the-same, nothing-to-choose, give-or-take. What folly! For truth is extreme, it is *so* and not *thus*, it is *him* and not *her*, a partisan matter, not a spectator sport. It is, in brief, HEATED. City,’ he cried, and his voice rolled over the metropolis like thunder, ‘I am going to tropicalize you.’
Gibreel enumerated the benefits of the proposed metamorphosis of London into a tropical city: increased moral definition, institution of a national siesta, development of vivid and expansive patterns of behaviour among the populace, higher-quality popular music, new birds in the trees (macaws, peacocks, cockatoos), new trees under the birds (coco-palms, tamarind, banyans with hanging beards). Improved street-life, outrageously coloured flowers (magenta, vermilion, neon-green), spider-monkeys in the oaks. A new mass market for domestic air-conditioning units, ceiling fans, anti-mosquito coil and sprays…. Increased appeal of London as a centre for conferences, etc,; better cricketers; higher emphasis on ball-control among professional footballers, the traditional and soulless English commitment to ‘high workrate’ having been rendered obsolete by the heat. Religious fervour, political ferment, renewal of interest in the intelligentsia. No more British reserve; hot-water bottles to be banished forever, replaced in the foetid nights by the making of slow and odorous love. Emergence of new social values: friends to commence dropping in on one another without making appointments, closure of old folks’ homes, emphasis on the extended family. Spicier food; …the joy of running fully dressed through the first rains of the monsoon.
Disadvantages: cholera, typhoid, legionnaires’ disease, cockroaches, dust, noise, a culture of excess.
Standing upon the horizon, spreading his arms to fill the sky, Gibreel cried: ‘Let it be.’"
"But where should he begin? –Well then, the trouble with the English was their:
Their:
In a word, Gibreel solemnly pronounced, their weather.
Gibreel Farishta floating on his cloud formed the opinion that the moral fuzziness of the English was meteorologically induced. ‘When the day is not warmer than the night,’ he reasoned, ‘when the light is not brighter than the dark, when the land is not drier than the sea, then clearly a people will lose the power to make distinctions, and commence to see everything –from political parties to sexual partners to religious beliefs –as much-the-same, nothing-to-choose, give-or-take. What folly! For truth is extreme, it is *so* and not *thus*, it is *him* and not *her*, a partisan matter, not a spectator sport. It is, in brief, HEATED. City,’ he cried, and his voice rolled over the metropolis like thunder, ‘I am going to tropicalize you.’
Gibreel enumerated the benefits of the proposed metamorphosis of London into a tropical city: increased moral definition, institution of a national siesta, development of vivid and expansive patterns of behaviour among the populace, higher-quality popular music, new birds in the trees (macaws, peacocks, cockatoos), new trees under the birds (coco-palms, tamarind, banyans with hanging beards). Improved street-life, outrageously coloured flowers (magenta, vermilion, neon-green), spider-monkeys in the oaks. A new mass market for domestic air-conditioning units, ceiling fans, anti-mosquito coil and sprays…. Increased appeal of London as a centre for conferences, etc,; better cricketers; higher emphasis on ball-control among professional footballers, the traditional and soulless English commitment to ‘high workrate’ having been rendered obsolete by the heat. Religious fervour, political ferment, renewal of interest in the intelligentsia. No more British reserve; hot-water bottles to be banished forever, replaced in the foetid nights by the making of slow and odorous love. Emergence of new social values: friends to commence dropping in on one another without making appointments, closure of old folks’ homes, emphasis on the extended family. Spicier food; …the joy of running fully dressed through the first rains of the monsoon.
Disadvantages: cholera, typhoid, legionnaires’ disease, cockroaches, dust, noise, a culture of excess.
Standing upon the horizon, spreading his arms to fill the sky, Gibreel cried: ‘Let it be.’"
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