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.

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?

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.

The Danube flooded during my visit. It rose to cover the highways on both the Buda and Pest sides of the river, and swamped a row of park benches where I had been walking a few days earlier. There was a summer festival on the Chain Bridge, and as the festival-goers drank Soproni and listened to Roma music, we watched the water creep higher onto the road underneath us. The river lapped at one lane so the road was closed to cars, but people strolled along the water's edge in the other lane, including a bridal party. The bride didn't seem to mind the water soaking into the hem of her puffy dress. I wondered how many times the river had engulfed such a resilient city. Even overwhelmed, the city is elegant and emerges resplendent:

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.’"

more on english laundry soaps

I used the last of my flatmates' laundry detergent this afternoon. As I didn't feel like writing my essay about Russia, I figured that I would briefly procrastinate by stepping outside to replace the empty soap bottle. I dropped my house keys and four pounds into my coat pockets and set off for the 98 pence store on the corner. I only brought four pounds because I didn't think laundry detergent could possibly cost more than four pounds, and if it did, well, I assumed that I wouldn't want to buy it. But being a champagne socialist complicates matters. I was insistent on replacing it with the same brand of "non-biological liquigel" that my flatmates had previously purchased. The biological detergents have enzymes in them, and are not as gentle on clothes. Athough I'm not sure why I care; all of my clothes come from charity stores. Anyway, the 98p store failed to stock Persil non-bio liquigel. I wandered the aisles for awhile in search of it, getting distracted by the Valentine's Day section with its temperature sensitive coffee mugs with photos of men and women whose vestments evaporate when coming into contact with hot liquid. I absentmindedly doubled back to make sure that I hadn't missed the detergent, humming "Its gettin' hot in here, so take off all your clothes..." and marvelling at the stacks of Ribena black currant juice with which people here appear to be obsessed. I popped into the A&E Discount store nextdoor and was similarly disappointed. I considered buying some green jeweled hair clips but thought better of it when I remembered that I hadn't brought my wallet and I had to save my precious four pounds for the elusive laundry soap. I grew increasingly exasperated when I realized that the turkish store across the street didn't carry my non-bio soap either. Annoyed, I resigned myself to walking a bit farther and braving the long lines at the Morrisons, "Britain's Best Supermarket," according to the billboard-sized poster above its car park. I pushed my way past the crowds of Sunday shoppers only to discover to my horror that the Persil non-bio liquigel sitting on the shelf in all of its gleaming glory cost four pounds and NINETEEN PENCE!!!!!!!!!!!!! I angrily fingered the four pounds in my pocket pushed my way out of the store in a huff.

I decided to console myself for my misadventure and continue procrastinating by stopping at the Ocean Breeze Fish 'n Chips on the way home.
"Hi," I greeted the turkish man behind the counter, "A small chips, please."
"Open or closed?"
"I'm sorry?"I don't know why this question caught me off guard, but it did. I was confused, because I didn't think the chips came in a sandwhich or on bread of any kind, and I was worn out from my laundry soap search.
"Open or closed? You don't understand?"His eyes sparkled with mocking and he chuckled mightily.
"No."
"You speak English?" He stared at me as he scooped up the fries, erm, chips.
"YES [Very well thank you!]"
"Where you from?"
I refrained from pointing out that his question lacked a verb and that technically he really shouldn't end his English sentences with prepositions. Like Winston Churchill once exclaimed, normally "That is the sort of thing up with which I will not put!" Instead, I just smiled my widest most insincere American smile and sweetly answered, "The United States." Now give me my damn chips!!! I lunged for my remaining two pounds thirty pence and walked home wihout my non-biological liquigel.

Overheard

I used to live a few blocks away from a fantastic Japanese noodle restaurant called Fujiyama, and the last time I was there I overheard a bemusing conversation between two British ladies with matching gray bobs. "...yes, she acts on stage in New York, yes, New York!" "Well, my online name is Laura London...because my cat's name was Laura, and I live in London." "Did you see, the BBC had a wonderful series on a few nights ago, all about Islam, yes, fascinating, and all the more so because I have this friend who is a professor, you see, who knows all about those things, you know..." I was tempted to lean over and exasperatedly interject, "YES. I know," but I luckily remembered that I wasn't supposed to be evesdropping. I took a sip of wine, looked down at my noodles, and ate a chili.

The reason I mention this now is that the BBC is now showing a new documentary that everyone should watch. Iran and the West is a 3-part series that includes interviews with former Presidents Jimmy Carter, Rafsanjani, and Khatami. Should be interesting. Fascinating, even...all the more so because you have this friend who, you see, knows all about these things, you know...

We Don't Like.

When I was a little girl, my mother drove me crazy by speaking in the royal we. I remember with particular clarity one incident wherein my mother informed my friend's mother that "We don't like fried foods." "Speak for yourself!" thought my indignant five year old self, "You don't cook anything delicious because dad won't let you because he doesn't want you to get fat!" ("Because he's a misogynist jerk," realizes my twenty-five year old self). As a result, since confronting the reality that I too could have children if I so chose, I've become hyper-aware of mothers' tendencies to subsume their identities to those of their children. I am very, very conscious of striving never to speak in majestic plurals. When I talk to my brother, or when I babysit, I am careful not to assume, to overstep, by using the royal we. It does not amuse me. Or as this country's monarch, Queen Victoria, famously said, "We are not amused." I am afraid I will end up as dazed and confused as my mother as to who I am, and worse, crush someone else under a collapsing identity.

Despite this paranoia, I was excessively amused by the following bumper-sticker-sized sign declaring simply that "We Don't Like." I first saw this weeks ago, long before the holidays (probably not long after my last blog post, if that gives you an idea of just how long ago this was), when I went out on Brick Lane with two girlfriends and a guy who, while I love him, doesn't share my friends' and my feminism and can make unfortunate comments that have more in common with my father than I am comfortable with. The four of us were sitting outside of a curry house/bar on a wooden picnic table in the cold when a man handed us each a "We Don't Like" sign. "I don't like the royal we," I told him. "It amuses me not," I said in what I hoped was an amusing way, blowing smoke in his face for good measure. "What is this?" I asked. He informed us that he was part of an improvisational theater group called We Don't Act, and he urged us to come to his show the following week. "We" said we would consider it, and then I asked him coyly, "So what don't you like?" He thought about it for a second and said, "Hrm. I don't like violence. And I don't like having wives." "Wives? You don't like having wives or you don't like having a wife?" "A wife." The three women at the table, well, we were not amused, and we realized that this sign could succintly express our displeasure. In unison we held up the signs towards our solicitor friend and chimed together, "We Don't Like." After this, the signs came up nearly constantly throughout the rest of the night, mostly in response to any borderline misogynist comments from our friend. We joked that we should bring the "We Don't Like" signs to all of our seminars, and hold them up silently whenever a student made a tedious, annoying, or poorly argued point. Just think how amusing this could be during meetings????!!!!!




I was in fits of giggles that entire night, and I don't foresee the "We Don't Like" sign getting any less funny anytime soon. This is probably because "We Don't Like" a lot of things--most notably blogging. I am not a blogger, and I realized why. Not only do I at least attempt to privilege the present over the virtual, I prefer talking to people individually. Its difficult for me to write solipsistically for a wide audience. We also don't like CCTV and constant surveillance of citizens in England. As I was riding the night bus back from Brick Lane that night, I took a photo of this sign that enthusiastically [creepily] declared, "Our new buses are fitted with digital CCTV so that you have a safe and pleasant journey. We have prosecuted over 60 people for vandalism and graffiti on our buses. You are being monitored NOW by cameras fitted to this bus. So just sit back and smile!"


We Don't Like.