Part II

Here is another pearl of wisdom I've been longing to insert into my blog:

There does not seem to be a great deal of disparity between an uncivilized and civilized woman, but a world of difference between a civilized man versus uncivilized man. Uncivilized man is no more than a shaved ape.

I try to balance the excess of negativity about humans with the lightness the natural world offers. I swam in the deep waters of Akyaka, eyes wide open beneath the sea, observing friendly fish. I run in the forest, dodging sexually-repressed Turkish men between the ages of 18-25, taking note of turtles, lizards, different varieties of spiders, and large size insects with protruding eyes, and lips. No kidding, insects have faces! They are adorable. I should have studied the world of insects instead of concentrating my efforts on the study of human mammals.

I will see if I can post photos of forms of life in this Gulf at a later date. Animals are certainly worth it. But they are to be experienced directly with all our senses, not just to be read about.

Animals whom we have made our slaves, we do not consider our equal.
Charles Darwin

Turkey

I've been in Turkey for exactly a month now.
It has been an emotionall taxing process for me. The first three weeks I felt somewhat physically ill from culture shock. One of the first things one finds shocking is the level of gender inequality. Patriarchy in this country, just as any Islamic country, reigns supreme. Men, of all ages, roam the streets usually in groups of three, four in that boastful, confident taking charge of everything and anything in their way. Women are almost always with family, or with boyfriend/spouse. It is a rarity to encounter a strong, independent woman, alone, confident free. By all mannerisms, it is clear that women are socialized and conditioned into being passive, uncritical vessels for the needs of men- perhaps even the greatest cheerleaders of patriarchy.

Surely, had it not been for the Turkey's revolutionary leader Kemal Ataturk in the 1920s, and 30s, women's rights would have fared worse. I am not an expert on the issue at hand, but I'll venture to say that Turkey would have had precisely the same fate as its Middle Eastern neighbors.

I realize more than ever how fortunate we are as Western women to have the rights (and consequently respect/dignity that comes with rights - men in Turkey treat women with as much respect as the poor dogs in the street), but we certainly have a long more way to go in equality.
With the present state of affairs in the US, achieving true equality seems more fantasy than reality.

All is not bad. I am presently sitting atop a balcony overlooking mountains whilst my ears pick up the songs of crickects. There is a lone cat slowly making her way to the cement home across from the cobbled street. Tonight the chirping of crickets is interrupted by a distant, and yet loud enough, sound of drums which is typically played in Turkish villagean weddings. I can't rejoice; I am thinking of the limitations, obligations, responsibilties, oppression that await the bride.

Notes from Running on Emptiness John Zerzan

Why do modern societies have such a hard time producing adults capable of intimacy, work, enjoyment, and ethical living? Signs of damaged life are so prevalent. Chronic pain and depression, often linked and occasionally regarded as a single disorder, constitute an immense crises in postmodern life.

Freud predicted that the fullness of civilization would mean universal neurotic unhappiness.

Contemporary society exerts a ban on living in favour of its representations; images now in the saddle, riding life.

Symbolic culture inhibits human communication by blocking and otherwise suppressing channels of sensory awareness. An increasingly technological existence compels us to tune out most of what we could experience.

A "future primitive" is called for, where a living involvement with the world, and fluid intimate participation in nature will replace the thingified reign of symbolic civilisation.

1623 William Drummond, "what sweet contentments doth the soul enjoy by the senses. They are the gates and windows of its knowledge, the organs of its delight."

Emotional desolation comes from a severe restriction of the sensual.

Rainer Rilke: Now from America empty indifferent things are pouring across, sham things, dummy life. Meanwhile the whole natural world has become an object."

Tommy cried out in the Who's rock opera, "see me, feel me, touch me, heal me.."
The senses have come to be isolated and subdued.

Aristotle once declared, "each sense has its proper sphere." An alienated counter-world driven to estrangement by ever-greater division of labour, humbles one's own somatic sensations and fundamentally distracts from the basic rhythm's of one's life.

It is all about the environment

For weeks now, I've felt as though I've been constipated and constrained by the famished, noisy environment. The sky has refused to bestow upon us the 'blessings' of the winter, and now it seems it is gushing with a vengeance. When I discovered upon waking up, the smooth, silent falling flakes, I wanted to jump up and down jubilantly in the manner of a child.

Just as a famished, super technosized (perhaps I've invented a new word) environment can bring me down to my knees from intense pain and anguish, snow has the uncanny ability to placate my frazzled nerves. It is akin to shooting valium up my veins, only without the horrific side-effects. Snow washes away the dust of everyday living; the anguish of having to endure a mechanical, inorganic environs. By blanketing the unnatural world around me in powder white, it takes away decades of world-weariness and cynicism.

Simply put: I love the snow. I could spend an eternity in it. Canada, when will you claim as one of your own?

Sands of Time

The winds of change are everywhere
And all the world must be aware
There's nowhere left for man to go
The sands of time are running low

These visions fall before my face
I see the end of human race
These feelings rise inside my soul
And everything is out of my control

The winds of change are in the air
The winds of change are everywhere

Judas Priest

The Pathology of Civilization

“We reproduce catastrophe because we ourselves are traumatized - both as a species and individually, beginning at birth. Because we are wounded, we have put up psychic defenses against reality and have become so cut off from direct participation in the multidimensional wilderness, in which we are embedded, that all we can do is navigate our way cautiously through a humanly-designed world of symbols – a world of dollars, minutes, numbers, images and words that are constantly being manipulated to wring the most possible profit from every conceivable circumstance. The body and spirit both rebel.” (David Watson, Pathology of Civilization)

Poem - The sting of Loneliness

Loneliness

by Rebecca Drollinger

It is cold today
Indeed the rain is falling and I am alone.
Thoughts of life and love,
meaningless to anyone but myself.
I am alone.
They watch me, their eyes not knowing,
knowing nothing of what they see.
I am but another creature, alone.
They scurry on the surface, unaware,
unaware of the life below
when you are alone.

Loneliness, not a burden nor a sorrow,
but a time of solace, of deepness
never to be shared, never to be understood.
They can never reach the place where I am
And I know I will never reach the place where they are.
I know I don't want to reach that place.
True happiness is here, unmisted.
Unmisted by smiles or laughter,
unmisted by the joys of company.

To find true happiness,
to know if one is truly happy,
he must be happy alone.

And the gods created music

It seems forever since I've written here. I've been preoccupied with music as of late - 6 months to be precise. Ever since music re-entered my life everything else has fallen to the wayside.

Music was my childhood passion. My classmates, friends dreamt of being lawyers, and doctors (fueled probably by parents' dreams that never materialized) I dreamt of being a concert guitarist or pianist. I remember picking up my mother's broom and pretend playing on it for hours on end, until they got me a mandolin. I'd strum it, pick it, sing along with it, pretending I was the next great musician. During the summer heat, I'd leave the bedroom window ajar and give my neighbours an earful. But they only had praises; "we hear her play all night, and enjoy it...you should send her to the conservatory," they'd murmur to my mother. Even the class teacher had summoned my dad to come in and listen to me sing during music class in an effort to persuade him to send me to music school.

But alas, all musical dreams were to come to an abrupt end when we - once again - changed countries. We lived in a Middle Eastern Islamic theocracy for the next 8 years where all musical activities were banned. I was robbed of not only my dreams but also my childhood and adolescence as a result.

So, almost three decades later I've picked up my greatest passion. I train from 3-5 hours a day on the classical guitar. Nothing is ever the same again. I feel fulfilled, satiated, complete in a way I haven't since childhood. Friedrich Nietzsche had a clue when he wrote, "without music, life would be a mistake."

"So many squandered moments, so much wasted time," goes the lyrics of a song. That is how I feel about my former life.

But it is never too late, is it? As long as this heart feels the intensity of each note, and as long these long, slender fingers can emulate what the heart feels on the instrument, I will be playing...Oh yes, I will be playing until my last breath, much like the celebrated late Spanish guitarist Andres Segovia.

"Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life."

The Well of Loneliness

There are few instances in life where you get to peek through someone’s very essence. Most people will act only in ways that correspond to the image that they are trying to portray to their audience, whoever the audience might be – a first date, intimate lover, friend or sister. Sociologists even have a term for this: impression management, coined by the symbolic interactionist Erving Goffman.

Leafing through someone’s album is probably right up there in deciphering volumes about the person in question. I happened to stumble upon my sister’s album today as I was instructed to water her parched plants while she visits her fiancé abroad. I came upon this album of gargantuan proportions, reminiscent of a bygone era, as I was eying her bookshelf for potential novels. I made myself comfortable on her not-so-comfortable new age sofa, and slowly turned the pages, savoring each postcard size photo. An endless array of photos of shiny, well-dressed, happy, perky people that you’re more likely to see in People magazine, as opposed to a personal album leapt from every single page. But perhaps the most striking aspect of the album was that there were only two photos of *me – her sister, that is. The one who waters her plants, the one she calls when mother or some other matter gets her down, the one who cooks her cherished foods. And looking at those two photos, it was hard to determine whether they were there because they showcased me, or my cat whom she adores immensely. Granted, I am not the most happy-go-lucky person in the world, and she may have thought one too many photos of my melancholic, pensive face might contaminate the mood she was going for in this album.

Sitting there, her house keys on my lap, an all too familiar feeling of loneliness crept up, cutting flesh like a thousand razor blades. How well do we know the people in our lives? How well do we know what others think of us? I mean really think of us. To listen, to share, to reminisce, to consult, and yet to be relegated to mere two photos on the last page of a personal album. The feeling of loneliness swelled inside of me, than shrank, then swelled again. I could hear the pangs of the loneliness so well in this hushed, still house as the hour struck 3pm on the dial.

We pretend to be someone we are not, we pretend to listen, we pretend to care. Why do people have to be this phony? What is the point of it all? People are like deep wells, you don’t really know what is at the bottom. All you can do is imagine what lies there.

Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America

“The real conservatism of positive psychology lies in its attachment to the status quo, with all its inequalities and abuses of power.” Barbara Ehrenreich

I’ll admit I am a bit of a crank, a ‘walking nimbus cloud’ if you will and would certainly describe myself as pessimistic about the future of the world, though not necessarily about my own future. This apparently is a sin in a country beaming, oh, just radiating with pop positive thinking that permeates every aspect of our lives. Talk show hosts, “life coaches,”, commercials, psychotherapists, friends and family (think of all those smiley faces and exclamation marks), employers and colleagues all encourage us to plaster a smile on our faces and go about our merry day.

So you can imagine my delight when I came across Barbara Ehrenreich’s latest publication Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America. I have followed her since my undergraduate days and have read almost all of her books. She is a “god-sent” (we need to come up with a better word for atheists) for the independent and critical minded. Although I’ve found meaning in all of her books, this one probably resonated the most with me.

The book is on the tyranny of positive-thinking in America. We’re constantly told to look on the bright side of things, to see the glass as half full (even if lies shattered on the floor), to put a smiley face on, to radiate positivity…but as she contends this super insistence on the almighty smiley face “is a great way to brush of poverty, disease, and unemployment, to rationalize an order where all the rewards go to those on top. The people who are sick or jobless – why, they just aren’t thinking positively. They have no one to blame but themselves.” Barbara is finally sounding the alarm bells on this predominant mode of thinking in our culture. Never mind that wages have stagnated in the last couple of decades, that environmental degradation has reached an all time high, that jobs are fleeting at a faster rate than you can say ‘where is my cheese?’, that unions have been all but destroyed…no, never mind all of that..you just need to send out positive energy into the universe, and before you know it you too can have success, wealth and health.

I have always found the pervasiveness of positive thinking in America to be crippling, and a great way to avoid working for social change at a larger level. Why bother working for causes that could lead to the leveling of inequalities when you can work on yourself, right? It seems highly impractical and time-consuming to work on changes at a larger societal, political, cultural level, but what we fail to realize is that in the long term we pay a very high price on not being realistic about the root causes of our troubles, whatever those troubles may be.

We can't expect to improve our situation without "addressing the actual circumstance we find ourselves in. Positive thinking seeks to convince us that such external factors are incidental compared with one's internal state or attitude or mood."

Reflections on Light and Darkness: My tribute to Michael Jackson

I have read quite a few articles reminiscing, explaining, interpreting, re-interpreting Michael Jackson, the person, the saga, the legacy. None have come close to the insights as this one posted in the Washington Post by a commentator. I couldn't have written it more eloquently. This one struck a nerve since when I heard of his death, the first thing that had come to my mind was he, as a deeply sensitive soul could no longer handle the cruelty and ugliness of our world. He wouldn't be the only sensitive celebrity to die this year: Heath Ledger and David Foster Wallace come to mind. Ledger was found dead from an overdose of anxiety and sleeping pill medications. Foster hung himself in his basement. Both were sensitive, caring, fragile souls unfit to cope with the sheer insensitivity that surrounds us.

I too suffer from acute sensitivity, and find solace in the words of Pearl S. Buck when I ponder
this unique trait I share with some of the most gifted, and talented minds.

"The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this:
A human creature born abnormally, inhumanly sensitive.
To him... a touch is a blow,
a sound is a noise,
a misfortune is a tragedy,
a joy is an ecstasy,
a friend is a lover,
a lover is a god,
and failure is death."

It saddens me to think that the big, bad, bully world has claimed yet another beautiful soul.

Reflections on Light and Darkness

“There is a crack in everything; that’s how the light gets in” (Leonard Cohen)

There are no doubt millions of fans of Michael Jackson’s music who remain baffled by what little they have known of his behavior, character and appearance. There are millions more who are totally indifferent to the music and, if anything, repulsed by what they perceive as an offensive eccentric at best or dangerous deviant at worst. In the days immediately following his tragic death, almost all commentators chose to emphasize this ostensible polarity of Michael’s legacy: “a genius in his art, but a disturbed human being.” It seems like there was always a “but.”

If mainstream gurus are good at anything, it is turning truth on its head and, in the process, eviscerating all that is pure. It is not in Michael Jackson’s musical artistry that his foremost greatness consists, but it is in fact in his wonderful humanity. His music is only just one expression – just one manifestation – of that humanity. These misguided eulogies, therefore, have it all backwards. Michael’s legacy is not limited to an artistry that is somehow soiled by a troubled and troubling life. Michael’s greatest legacy is his loving character and the lessons it teaches us, through his ultimately tragic life, about the true face of an often brutal and ugly world.

In Michael Jackson, we see an innocence and purity rarely seen in an adult. Jackson’s “childlikeness” is perplexing to many people, but it is precisely this trait that sets him apart from an adult world that has learned so effectively to be cold and calculated, smart and shrewd, proper and professional. Adults seeking to better themselves ought to become more childlike. If Michael was guilty, his sin (borrowing Dylan’s prophetic words) was that he knew and felt too much within. Unfortunately, it is typical for those who feel deeply to seem to others utterly odd and insane. Hence the proverbial Pierrot, buffoon or idiot, whose superficial lunacy conceals a deep understanding of the human heart. Michael’s intense capacity to feel allowed him to be a loving, caring and responsive human being. He was far more capable of love than are most adults. Because of this acute sensitivity, what we also see in Michael is an utterly vulnerable, susceptible man.

Michael’s bizarre appearance and eccentric behavior were, paradoxically, far more sensible than the “normal” behavior of most “normal” people within the confounding context world that is itself upside down. All of Michael’s strange gestures and attitudes make perfect sense given one profound premise – that the world is pure, innocent and harmless. Of course those of us who have “grown up” have learned that the world is not “pure, innocent and harmless.” Hence the tragedy of Michael Jackson. His actions, whether holding his baby over the balcony or jumping on top of a car to wave to adoring fans or spending millions of dollars on a single shopping spree, seem irresponsible and disturbing when seen and interpreted through the categories of a deranged world. In fact, his actions were selfless and harmless.

The truth is, Michael had the eyes and heart of a child who saw in one dimension – that of pure love. When he saw that someone desired something from him, he gave selflessly, paying no heed to logical consequences or reasonable caution. The dictates of propriety and convention were, as they ought always to be, totally subordinated to the dictates of love. It made perfect sense to him to give joy to others, even if this exposed him and his own actions to spiteful or selfish manipulation by others.

Michael was not willing to assume, as most adults are conditioned to do, that someone he approached could have a tarnished nature. He gave others the benefit of doubt, approaching them as if approaching angels and children. When he met demons, thus, he was utterly exposed and likely devastated. This, no doubt, brought him much suffering, i.e., not so much the suffering that was inflicted upon him by the malice of others but only just the sudden realization (played over and over again anew) that the person he had hoped was an angel could in fact be so malevolent. Michael never allowed himself, it seems, to draw the seemingly rational and sensible conclusion that most adults have drawn from repeated experience: the world is generally just this way. In other words, Michael’s purity was such that if he met nine people, all of whom turned out to be vile, he would still greet the tenth as an angel. This defies reasonable human “logic,” but it remains steadfast in an adherence to the greater logic of divine love.

Michael surrounded himself with children not because he was perverted, but because he saw in them the hope for a world which had grown to be far too mature. What he loved in children was the proof and justification of the “purity of heart” of which we hear in the Beatitudes. He tried desperately – in only seemingly irrational ways – to protect this adolescent purity from a world whose hideous cruelty he felt in his very own flesh. If the fact that he saw nothing wrong in expressing love toward children in emotionally intimate ways attests only to his purity, our inclination to assume that he was a pedophile and our willingness to assume that love is a pathological deviation can only attest to our essential impurity. In a world that has fallen to pieces, it only makes sense that (to quote Dylan once again) what’s bad is good, what’s good is bad. Thus, love is a pathological disturbance, whereas cold, rational remoteness defines the new “humanity.”

Michael created and surrounded himself with a world fit for a child because he felt that this is the ideal the entire world should aspire to - an ideal that the world so woefully fails to live up to. It was also, incidentally, a way for him to compensate for the pain that was so ever-present to him – the pain of his past and present, the pain of his visceral, personal experience. Michael was sensitive – perhaps hyper-sensitive – and in so being, he felt the pang of every brutal truth far more directly and deeply than most others would. The harm that was inflicted upon him and others was so real to Michael that it induced in him an absolute and immediate moral response. This response - this Neverland world that eradicated the pain of reality through one sweeping contradiction - however unrealistic and idealistic it might seem to a practically minded adult, was totally reasonable for Michael. Michael was the perfect mixture of a child’s innocence and an old-man’s sagacity. He saw both much less and much more. Quincy Jones was therefore profoundly astute and when he famously described Michael as both the oldest and youngest man he knew.

Michael’s innocence is strangely evident in his infamous shopping spree that evoked such a furor when shown in Martin Bashir’s exposé. My own socially and environmentally conscious logic is tempted to condemn and rebuke such wanton excess. And yet, I can only smile when I see Michael in the store. Why? Perhaps because what I really see is an innocent child grasping for an ideal utopia – pleasantly oblivious to the ugliness of a consumptive and destructive society concealed behind a façade of harmless, pretty, enjoyable products. Michael sees only what is immediately there – the potential for a beautiful world wherein children and adults alike have what they need – the joy and inspiration, the peace and beauty. There is really no concern here for stuff. What allows me to smile rather than to cringe is that Michael’s thoughts and actions flow so naturally and effortlessly along these ideal and pure categories, which seem so improbable to my rational mind. He does not see the horror and the ugliness. These do not factor into his thinking. His urge to buy is not inspired by an egoistic urge to amass stuff for his own gratification. Nor does it arise from being manipulated by an insidious system that wants you to buy for its own impure interest.

The Bashir Interview: Casting Pearls before Swine

When I first (only recently) watched the notorious Martin Bashir special, which was shamelessly aired again and again on MSNBC after Michael’s passing, I could not help but cry. At times I felt as though I was witnessing the public humiliation, flogging and crucifixion of an utterly helpless and harmless child. My first thought was, “why did Michael agree to do this? He should have refused!” Upon some reflection, however, I realized that Michael was willing to expose himself (repeatedly) to Bashir’s sadistic onslaught precisely because of who he was. Michael thought that Bashir’s intentions were pure. He wanted to believe that Bashir would not manipulate what had been said and that the journalist’s quest was simply to share the truth with the world. Why not believe this to be the case? Why assume that the interviewer’s instincts could be self-interested and impure? Would that not be admitting that the world is ugly – that the world is not and will never be Neverland?

The contrast between Bashir and Michael really could not be greater. Bashir went out of his way to appear reasonable and measured. Michael, on the other hand, had little regard for how he appeared. His main concern was the truth of how he felt and what he believed. To many people he appeared “crazy.” The truth, of course, was just the opposite. Bashir was consistently cynical, sardonic, judgmental, and seemed to exhibit a pathological indifference when, again and again, he picked at Michael’s raw, open wounds. He showed no regard for the human heart and its anguish. If he had any concern for Michael’s torment, perhaps he was too proud to show it. Bashir concealed his cruelty behind a façade of intelligent, reasonable and intellectual professionalism, as if he were just a skilled journalist in the disinterested pursuit of truth. But it is when things sound perfectly civilized and appear so prim and proper that we should be most wary and suspicious. If we pay close attention, we see that Michael possesses the genuine and good heart and is quite reasonable in all he stands for, whereas Bashir is the true sociopath.

Bashir conducts his hurtful interviews all the meanwhile adhering to the highest professional protocol and journalistic etiquette. At one point in the broadcast, Bashir reflects: “Confronting Michael wasn’t going to be easy, but now it had to happen,” as if this shift to difficult personal subject matter were the result of some inescapable logic, perhaps some imagined standard of journalistic professionalism, which dictates that the truth must be uncovered, whatever the human toll. It is not relevant or important to Bashir how personal the truth may be, whether it has any important humane or useful significance to the audience, or what the consequences of the pursuit of that truth might be. The single thing that matters is the successful exposure of facts, which will secure for Bashir pride among his peers. Are we to admire this journalist’s professional ardor, persistence, and his supreme objectivity in the pursuit of his goal? Is it of no importance that a human being must be sacrificed on the altar of this professional ideal?

In yet another disingenuous attempt to establish his superior ethical and professional credentials, Bashir explains to his audience that his line of questioning is inspired by a “worry” for Michael’s children. Meanwhile, Michael sits and writhes in obvious pain and discomfort. Seeing this, Bashir, ever the objective scientist in hot pursuit, does not desist but rather intensifies his inquest. Michael, the victim, is increasingly desperate and begins to crack. His humanity is bared for all to see. Michael’s legs tremble with anxiety. Under duress, Michael opens up and his emotions spill over. Defenseless because of his innocence, and so pure that he cannot even fathom the foul logic of reason, Michael describes the act of sharing one bed with a child as an expression of care and love. How fair-minded propriety dictates that care and love are in fact deviant behavior is rightly incomprehensible to him. Desperation ringing in his voice, he explains that he cannot abide a crazy world wherein guns and computers have, for children, replaced human contact and compassion. “Why does it mean so much to you?” asks Bashir. The question seems to embody concern, but there is a just barely palpable accusatory tone: Wouldn’t a normal, rational person care less…? Perhaps you care so much because you are demented or perverted…?

The proper question, of course, is how anyone could ever be indifferent to the plight of children in an alienating world? How could anyone care less? Bashir’s rationality has itself become a pathological deviation. Bashir stands in judgment over a phenomenon he cannot understand, because he has grown up beyond where he could ever comprehend the simplicity of a pure heart. His logic is far too sophisticated and proud. When we have grown up to the point where we are actually capable of dispassionately analyzing a tragedy without breaking down and crying about it, we have then truly lost our humanity. Erecting ideals like Neverland in an effort to cope with dismal reality is not a moral failure. Properly seen, it is just a symptom of or testament to the pathological state of the world. The moral failure is the dismal reality in itself.

Bashir is the sort of person who could stab a person and, with cool and calm demeanor, go on to ask why the victim is in pain. He is “disturbed” by Jackson’s ostensibly eccentric behavior and “concerned” for the children, all the meanwhile inflicting psychological torture on the father of these children. Perhaps Bashir even understands that Michael’s sensitivity will make him susceptible to manipulation. He throws Michael off balance and then points to his angst as evidence of character flaws. Bashir is especially interested in the personal and largely irrelevant matter of plastic surgeries, and here his interrogation borders on sadism. Knowing the topic will open painful wounds, he pries into Michael’s demons. Bashir’s interrogation can only bring to mind an SS officer with his cool and scientific method. Perhaps what Bashir was really looking for in his ideal subject was a cold hard rock rather than a human being. What he found instead was an angel.

On writing

It has been over two weeks I have not written. I go through these weeks I can't even fathom composing an email, let alone write prose, or essay (and yet here I am writing a blog entry - perhaps in an attempt to unclog the writing passageways in my brain).

I wonder if other writers are also plagued with frequent shut-downs. We've all heard of writer's block, but that is a different phenomena than what I am experiencing. With writer's block, one finds it difficult to be creative, whereas with a complete shut-down, one finds it difficult to even breathe.

I imagine even if writers suffer from it, they wouldn't reveal it as it would make them seem weak. Unprofessional. Part of the loneliness that comes with our profession, I find is that many are hesitant to reveal aspects of their writing lives. We'd much rather converse about our next gig, fund, where we've been published than talk about more personal, intimate topics related to our profession. We've sort of dug ourselves into this hole of loneliness.

Garden State

I just watched a 2004 movie entitled "Garden State."
Although I wondered if the premise would have been strengthened more if the producers had cast older actors, I did enjoy the many themes that were explored in the movie. It might come across decadent, self-indulgent at first, but there is a clear thick philosophical narrative behind it. The message is one of feeling life intensely, shamelessly and fervently with all its pain, chaos, grief and joy. That numbing out the psyche with a bubbling assortment of modern day pills will surely suppress pain, but it will also dampen joy. To live life, is to embrace the good, the bad and ugly.
Embracing all aspects of it, is the very essence of living.

One line from the movie particularly resonated with me where the main depressed, pill-popping character says: "I’m 26 years old and I’ve spent my whole life waiting for something else to start. Now I realize that this is all there is and I’m going to try to live my life like that."

It is at times difficult to accept that 'this is it,' 'this is all there is.' Perhaps it is years of indoctrination by parents, by society at large that has taught us there is something beyond the mundane limits of everyday existence, that makes us lazy about living life to the fullest here and now. I am certainly guilty as charged. I turned 30, 33, 35, 37, and expected life to begin with each passing birthday, but instead sank deeper and deeper into a state of nihilism, or as Emile Durkeim aptly put it 'anomie.' This amorphous, borderless, restless. free floating state of anguish that makes one feel like a mere body occupying space and time with no substance, and certainly no impact on the world that surrounds the self.

Oh, and everyday I tell myself this day will be different from the previous one. That I will fulfill something, anything I've longed to fulfill in my 37 years on this earth. It will be a day filled with purpose, with raison d'etre pouring out in streams from inside and out, spilling out from the edges. But alas, that day never comes. There is always something distracting me from reaching out and grabbing life by the horns: chores, work, my girl-cats, exercise, shopping, socializing (however far and few that may be). But it has to come at some point, I refuse to die before having materialized my dreams, as cliche as that may be. Ever heard of that expression 'the fear of dying is the fear of never having lived?' We only get one shot at the business of living (unless of course you believe in the promise of some after life, brimming with medieval ghostie, ghosties looking to cater to your every whim and caprice in the gates of heaven - oh, grow up already people!) But yes, how hard it is to live, I mean to really live. How easy it is to just succumb to a state of mind-numbing boredom, or as someone aptly put it, 'lost paradise of nonexistence.'

The Band's Visit

I saw this movie the other night and it has left quite an impression on me. In a day where movies are predicated upon fast cars, beautiful young women, and superficial, cheesy lines, this one stands out like a gem.

The movie essentially involves the visit of a band from Egypt to Isreal. They get lost and seek refuge for a day in the home of the owners of a fast food joint in the middle of the desert. Some people thought the movie was of comical nature, but I thought it had a tragic element. The message is one of universal value about the all-pervasive, sometimes painful human condition: loneliness.

The message is that whether you are a Jew or an Arab, you are alone in this universe. Despite the difference in customs, beliefs, traditions, mores and values of our unique cultures, we all are familiar with the pangs of this 'universal human condition,' as Nietzsche once quipped.

Pains of birth - no, not a baby, but an article

The writing process is often likened to the pain and suffering that accompanies popping out a baby. I have never had a child (and never will- see my other postings) but I'll venture to say that writing is even more painful. I've never heard of a delivery that can take weeks, even months. And yet this is the reality for most of us writers. From the time the seed of an idea is planted to the researching, drafting, writing, editing, re-editing and interpreting of the final product, weeks, months or years elapse. And throughout that process we suffer, oh do we suffer, from the painful, agonizing pangs of
birth.

Surely, some ideas are easier to research and write than others. Issues related to holistic healing come to me easier now than articles of a political nature. Year 2007 was my political writing era, but I've grown increasingly bored with the subject matter, and even downright hostile to it. I presume the hostility parallels with my over all disillusionment with politics in general. I don't see the point anymore of crafting articles on the dangers our politicians are driving us into. Who listens to writers anyways? So I'd rather stick my neck in the sand, and write on more uplifting, rosy topics. Trust me, this approach has helped me retain whatever sanity I had left; otherwise I'd be all damaged goods.

To be continued...on a mere 3 hours of sleep today. Until next time.

So now what?

After a grueling 9 months of having changed 3 different countries, I am back home. Not home, as in Colorado, since I've already been here a little over a month. But back home as in, in my own house..basement n' all. That's right. I am finally home. Now I can undertake all the projects I wanted to complete, I can even adopt a dog, convert one of the rooms into a studio. The possibilities are infinite..or so it seems at the time of this writing. I have a monkey, fickle brain, and all of this optimism about the bright, shiny future that lays dormant ahead of me could vanish as fast as a box of chocolates.

But I don't think I will ever be ungrateful for what I have been graced with, in terms of this home. When I think of the many months I spent in Belgium in captivity under the watchful eyes of a borderline personality disordered lover, almost in the manner a caged bunny, I can't help but feel grateful that I am free, and at home. I will never forget the way he looked so amused and empowered with his new pet (me), locked up in a home, in a country that was anything but cozy for her, as day after day he grew sicker and sicker. In the end, I started to doubt my own sanity. Had I really moved across the ocean to be with a boy I'd met online? Had I really bought into all of this 23 year old's promises of eternal, undying love? Had I really sold all my furniture, rented my home, and left behind my cat who had been the only consistent thing in my life? Had I? Had I? Yes, I had. Perhaps it was I who was so insane.

Then I think of the transition to Turkey. The values, the customs, the worldviews, the faces all different. A vast world apart from my own. I couldn't stand it. I wanted nothing to do with this alien world.

I am happy to be home.

Conform, conform or die..

It seems to be another dreary day of fatigue and lukewarm boredom. I have been productive to the extent that I have read more than 70 pages of a new book entitled "Loose Girl." The genre is not one that I would take into easily, but I thought I wouldn't mind reading a book that in some ways echoed my life of 'love promiscuity'. In this book, I attempt to find answers to my lifelong 'love addiction.' Believe me, it is no lesser of an addiction than drug addiction. I know deep down inside
the many lovers that drifted in and out of my life, were all attempts to find a home, a security base where I am loved and accepted under all conditions. Forty plus lovers (most of whom were not even physical/sexual, but merely platonic) later, I remain as homeless as ever. No, don't take pity on me. I am a hopeless, incurable, sentimental romantic, not in the sense of flowers and teddy bears, but more in the sense that a soul mate is out there, that there are indeed possibilities.

Speaking of love, I stumbled into my ex-husband's site which proudly declared him to be the new father of a boy. My jaw dropped instantaneously. I felt immobilized by the sheer weight of the news. Then the words 'What on earth?' whizzed through my mind like a Hawaiian hurricane. Is this self-proclaimed, venom spewing misanthrope who had in his days vowed to be childfree really, truly, deeply a father of a newborn boy (who I might add looks more like a wrinkled washcloth than a human)? So was the vasectomy he had undergone in our 3rd year of the relationship just a ploy to marry me? A die-hard environmentalist and lover of my freedom, I had put forth vasectomy as one of the prerequisites for marriage. It seems so. Oh yes, it seems so.
I couldn't help but wonder if he had just succumbed to conformity; you know the ubiquitous social pressure to be part of the herd, especially given the country he comes from. I will not name the country, but suffice to say that it is part of the Islamic Middle East.

I don't know, perhaps I don't want to know. But my mind has been a whirlwind of thoughts, and memories, as I interpret and re-interpret my past, not just with him, but all the lovers that have come and gone, come and gone, like the leaves of a tree. Were they also pretending to be someone else? How does one ever know?

Dribblings

Almost two years have passed by since I last visited this blog. Two of the longest years of my life, though they should have passed faster given my move at least three different times to three different countries. It is not as though I am a restless soul, really. I am just looking for a place to call "home" - and with that comes absolute peace and quiet. An endangered quality, I will tell you.

I am yet to find that spot that is not pierced by the shrills of technology. What have we made of this world? We are all swimming in the turbulent, noisy sea of technology. And yet only a few amongst us questions the insanity that bombards us daily.

So where am I today? Belgium. You know that country that has been dubbed an "accident of history." It is really not famous for anything but chocolate and beer. Oh and some good cheese!
Perhaps the royalty too? Though I have no idea what their names are. I am stuck here in my own little bubble with my lover. Save the work, neither of us has any care for the world. Speaking of which, it makes it hard for me to be a freelance writer. How can I come up with any ideas if I don't have a care for anything in the world (well, I am exaggerating, I do love nature and animals)? See why I have been outa work for awhile?

Tears of Blood: Blue as me

“My grief lies all within, and these external manners of lament are merely shadows to the unseen grief that swells with silence in the tortured soul” W.S

“Time heals griefs and quarrels, for we change and are no longer the same persons” Pascal


Ask binlerce defa olur. “Love dies a thousand times.” Many a writers have so exquisitely detailed the pain of loss. Would we even have words to describe the pain had it not been for the ability of these writers to tell the truth in such an unabashed manner – all the while making it sound so beautiful? Perhaps there is no greater agony in life, save the loss of one’s health, than the agony of loss. The stages of grievance vary from one person to the next, but grievance follows a similar pattern. First comes, shock. This is when you find yourself acting completely out of character, a temporary case of irrationality, insanity ensues. Then comes denial. You expect to have the same routine i.e. receive emails or calls at the times you used to from your X. You delude yourself into thinking it is just a temporary stage and all will be good in a few days, weeks or even months. ‘All is good’ you reassure yourself, holding yourself tight..It is just a nightmare that has come too close to reality. A vivid one at that. We all have those. If you have already been through a major breakup before, however, you might skip this stage. Then a thought will strike you with unprecedented force: Life sucks. Thoughts of suicide might (or not) surge beneath that callous, stoic surface. But most importantly, you’ll come to a weary acceptance that this is as good as life gets. If you are a lucky soul on this earth and are surrounded with a nice cushion of family and friends, they might be able to convince you that a session or two with a shrink is in order. But if you are a member of the minority club of loners, then this will stage will lurk around in dark corners of your psyche for days on end. Bills will sit unpaid in your inbox. Some polished from your former life and some unpolished queries will hunker in the ‘queries’ folder, screaming to be be put to use. Everyone and everything will feel ephemeral, transitory, taking on surreal qualities. What you were most attached to, what gave a warm and fuzzy feeling will take on an ominous meaning. Think household pets. They will irritate you with that l’air of detachment. How could the suffering not be infectious?

You, the reader, might be wondering how came to dissect the architecture of grief so well. Psychology courses in college? Hardly, that was more than 15 years ago. It was October six years ago; fall was drifting away into an unbearable chill. I was at the end of my twenty-nineth year on the planet, and was living in the capital of murder, trying to support myself as an adjunct lecturer and teaching English to a bunch of bourgeoisie weasels from Latin America – taking part in the kind of urban life may 20 somethings find themselves in. Six years on, I still recall the heartache of discovering that he, who had been my rock, my crutch in a world I found intolerably cold, whom I thought would be a permanent fixture in my life had another life on the side. Beads of blood sweat draping my forehead, heart galloping at 200 miles, I read those carefully typed few words in his email box: “Bu gece maximumdayim” read the email. From a 19 year old.

Perhaps the greatest agony of this is the unraveling of the past before your eyes. Every heartache takes you back to the first piercing of feelings of loneliness preceded by abandonment in childhood. One by one, you relive those agonizing moments of abandonment at your most vulnerable stage. Then it strikes you that it is not just the loss of a person that you’re bleeding over, but the loss of an entire future. If future is an infinite succession of presents, then my present was my future. Dreams, goals come crumbling down at the mercy of a gigantic crane that is the dissolution of a marriage.

Then I am reminded of a passage from one of Mary Sarton’s books. Think of trees, she said, and how simply they let go, let fall the riches of a season. How without the tentacles of grief, they can let go of the brilliantly coloured leaves and sink deep into their roots for rejuvenation and sleep. “... Imitate the trees. Learn to lose in order to recover, and remember that nothing stays the same for long, not even pain, psychic pain. Sit it out. Let it all pass. Let it go."

How I wish to be a tree now.

From Derrick Jackson, columnist for the Boston Globe, in yesterday's paper:'

'All we are left with is our aspirations in a game where the average share of the American dream is being spoiled. The Institute for Policy Studies and United for a Fair Economy, the two liberal think tanks that annually chart the gap between CEOs and workers, currently list the gap at 431-to-1, or $11.8 million to $27,460. That compares with a gap of 107-to-1 in 1990. If salaries of the average worker had kept up with that of a CEO, he or she would be making $110,136. Had the minimum wage risen at the same pace as CEO compensation, it would stand today at $23.01. The federal minimum wage of $5.15 has not risen since 1997.more....

In 1980, the gap was only 42-to-1. Where the spoils go are quite clear. According to 2005 federal data from the Congressional Budget Office, the share of America's income that went to the highest 20 percent of households increased from 45.5 percent in 1979 to 52.2 percent in 2003. The remaining 80 percent of American households all saw their share of the nation's income drop.''The higher you go in that top 20 percent, the more the rise in their share of the income. The top 1 percent of Americans saw their share of America's income zoom from 9.3 percent in the last quarter century to 14.3 percent. The top 10 percent saw their share go from 30.5 percent to 37.2 percent.''How [Treasury Secretary John] Snow thinks that 10 percent of Americans holding 37 percent of the income represents a sharing of the spoils is checkout-counter economics. His claim falls especially short considering that 46 of the nation's 275 largest companies, according to the Institute for Policy Studies, the United for a Fair Economy, and another liberal think-tank, Citizens for Tax Justice, paid no federal income tax in 2003. Eighty-two of the largest 275 companies paid no federal income tax at some point during 2001-2003 as the current President Bush cut taxes for the wealthy.''

...and the trend shall continue insofar as Americans continue to drown their miseries in the bible, and go on murderous rampages, blaming their fellow socio-economic class members for their dire predicaments. A truly tragic country with a disastorous future for the 'little guy.'