Life in Italics

Back.

2011-10-25T01:37:00.001-07:00

Well well well. Since my last post A LOT has happened. Most importanly, I've become a mother. So maybe my posts, if I manage to get this blog going again, will be around that theme. You have been warned. ;) On the other hand, I started another blog about a year ago that unfortunately still has only one post, and now I'm thinking of starting a similar one again. Aargh. But...anyway....I'm back.

Why Doesn't the World Care About Pakistanis? - By Mosharraf Zaidi | Foreign Policy

2010-08-29T08:17:00.000-07:00

Why Doesn't the World Care About Pakistanis? - By Mosharraf Zaidi | Foreign Policy

Suomalaisia sananparsia

2010-08-09T09:10:00.000-07:00

Meilailin tana aamuna Aitin kanssa ja opin tallaisen sanonnan:

Paremp kymmena kyttyy ko yks naon nappula.

Musta se oli sen verran hauskasti sanottu etta paadyin etsimaan vanhoja suomalaisia sananparsia netista.

Tassa muutama osuva, jotka loysin osoitteesta http://sananparsia.blogspot.com/ :

Hyva tulj - ite tein. (Savo)

Se on toesinaan jouten ja toesinaan ei tie mittee. (Kuopio)

Ennen kulkee viikon turhaa ennenko kyselee piioilta tieta.

Kauan on koyha kallellaan ennen kuin kaatuu.

Jos lahtis sano Pispalan palokunta, mutta sarekkin taitaa tulla. (Hame)

Jarkki olis kyll muttei saa juaksema. (Varsinais-Suomi)

Joha mie sanoi vaikken mittaa virkkant. (Karjala)

Mika sita pittaa? sano kusijainen kun tamman raatoa veti. (Karjala)

A month on...ANXIETY

2010-08-08T02:27:00.000-07:00

It's been a month since my previous post. I have spent most of my time trying to finish my dissertation. It's been a slower process than I expected and with the heat and the attention span of a 2-year-old it hasn't been that easy to concentrate.

I'm also getting to that stage where I am starting to get anxious about finding work and being okay financially. I had a job interview about two weeks ago but didn't get what would have been an interesting and amazing job that I think I could have done pretty well.

And I'm just starting to PANIC. I don't know whether in addition to looking for paid work I should try and apply for an internship somewhere, or just do some volunteer work here. That is, if I want to work in International Development, whatever the hell that means. Another part of me wants to isolate myself and just try and write a little bit more.

I get anxious when I hear about people doing this and that and living their dreams and reaching their goals. If they're people I know, I'm happy for them of course. But at the same time I worry about when I'll be brave enough to recognise my dreams and go after them. I wish I had a clear idea about what I wanted to do and just went for it.

I also get anxious when I read about devastating events in the world. Most recently I've been reading about the floods in Pakistan. I get frustrated and angry with things like that happening to a country that's already gone through so much hardship.

I want to do something but I feel helpless and -more than helpless- scared.

Visc a Barcelona!

2010-07-08T10:20:00.000-07:00

I flew back to Barcelona yesterday night. It has been a soft landing so far.
On the plane, in the row behind me, sat three extremely conversational elderly Catalans who immediately made me practise my Catalan skills as I eavesdropped on their conversation and reminded me of my students as their practised their English phrases.
Spain´s football World Cup quarter finals game against Germany took place while I was in the clouds somewhere between Gatwick and El Prat , but as soon as we landed, the stewardess told us the news of Spain's 1-0 victory. The passengers cheered and dug into their pockets for their mobile phones even faster than usual to check the score for themselves, chattering away happily on their way out into the terminal building.
I was met at the airpot by the Anthropologist, who made it very clear that he was happy that I had come to stay indefinitely. He joked about me looking scared and worried on my way out of the baggage claim, which I denied with a laugh. Then it occurred to me that he had thought the same of me when I first moved into the flat where we met, so although I don´t think his observation was exactly true (or maybe a little), it can't be a bad start to this new phase in our lives.
We took the airport bus to Plaza Catalunya, which, along with Plaza Espanya, was closed because of World Cup celebrations. The traffic was embellished by Spanish and Catalan flags (the goal scorer Carles Puyol being Catalan) and plenty of honking and joyous shouting filled the streets and squares. It was't as crazy as it must have been in Madrid, as the Anthropologist pointed out, what with the anti-Spanish sentiment and separationist politics in Catalonia, but there was clearly an atmosphere of festivity and happiness in the streets.
It was then that I was reminded again of the beauty of the summer nights in Barcelona: warm, humid air mixed with nauseating smells of sewage, people wandering idly on their own or in noisy groups, sitting in the squares drinking cheap beer and eating ice-cream until the wee hours of the morning.
About a year ago I left Barcelona and its filthy alleys and romantic squares, ready to try something different for a while. I am sure I will face moments where I long for the tranquility, peace and the fresh air of somewhere a bit further north again, but I'm now in Barcelona, ready to embrace it in all its frustrating, endearing quirkiness, ready to live my life here and live it as fully as possible. I am ready to dive into the deep end of Barcelona.
And Spain winning the World Cup on Sunday would just make this start even better!

The beautiful game

2010-06-19T00:39:00.000-07:00

Football truly is The Beautiful Game.

I am neither a fervent follower of any league nor a fanatic supporter of any team, but when the bigger tournaments are on, I get pretty into it. I have a few favourite players, a few favourite teams, and I more often than not root for the underdog.

This year's football World Cup has already proved to be a great distraction from working on my dissertation. But more importantly, it has proved that football truly is a beautiful game and, as cheesy as it sounds, it brings people together.

The other day I was huddled around my computer screen with a Brit and a Nigerian, watching Uruguay play France. A couple of days later, I went into a pub run by a Scottish man in the centre of Norwich to watch Mexico play France. The pub was full of Mexicans with their flags, face-paints and horns. All the non-Mexicans were included in the fervour of the game and those who had nothing green, red and white on them were embellished with face paint in those very colours. Mexican snacks were served on the house at half time. A day later, I was crammed in a very small living room, watching from a very small screen as England played Algeria. There were almost 20 of us representing at least 11 nationalities, all equally thrilled by the game.

I'd say that's pretty damn beautiful.

"¿Por qué eliges mutilarte?" La historia de John Foppe

2010-06-18T03:59:00.000-07:00

Un articulo que me paso el antropologo. :)

John Foppe, hombre completo

"Nací sin brazos, pero no me pongo límites por eso"

Tengo 39 años. Nací y vivo cerca del Misisipi. Soy asesor: ayudo a transformar sueños en resultados. Estoy casado y tengo una hija de tres años. ¿Política? ¡Basta de ideas discapacitantes! Soy creyente. Eres un discapacitado si te resistes a sortear barreras

¿Cómo le doy la mano?

Apriéteme el hombro.

Encantado.

Igualmente.

¿A qué edad supo que le faltaban los brazos?

Al ir a la escuela, a los cinco años, me di cuenta de mi diferencia. Y sentí angustia y miedo, vergüenza y autocompasión.

¿Qué fue lo más duro?

Intentar acoplarme unos brazos ortopédicos: me daban calor, peso, era espantoso.

¿Nació así?

Sí. Y con malformaciones en la cadera y escoliosis, aunque esto se fue corrigiendo.

¿Cuál es la causa de su falta de brazos?

Desconocida. Somos siete hermanos, y sólo yo nací así.

¿Qué le decían sus padres cuando volvía triste del colegio?

"No eres menos que nadie por no tener brazos". Pero yo sí me tenía por menos y me autocompadecía... Y no hacía nada por mí.

¿Nada?

Como despertaba compasión, la utilizaba: tenían que hacérmelo todo, desde vestirme por la mañana. Pero sucedió algo...

¿Qué pasó?

Quise ir a las colonias del colegio. Y mis padres decidieron aplicarme el amor rudo.

¿Qué es el amor rudo?

Iría a las colonias si demostraba que podía hacerme cargo de mí mismo. Y ordenaron a mi hermano, que me vestía cada mañana, que a la mañana siguiente no lo hiciese.

¿Y logró vestirse usted solo?

No. Y me desesperé. Mi hermano, pobre, quiso ayudarme: mi madre se lo prohibió. Me dejaron solo en la habitación, desnudo...

¿Y qué hizo usted?

Puse los calzoncillos en el suelo, coloqué un pie en cada agujero, me tumbé de espaldas, levanté las piernas, dejé que la prenda cayera en mis muslos, me arrastré hasta una cómoda y usé sus salientes para subírmelos…

Vaya gesta.

Yo gritaba, lloraba, suplicaba ayuda... Sentía mucho miedo... Me veía perdido. Quedé en el suelo en un charco de sudor y lágrimas... Fracasé, y algo se me rompió por dentro..

¿Qué se le rompió?

La fe en la vida...

...

Pero luego reaccioné decidiendo que si había sido testarudo para no hacer nada, ¡ahora lo sería para actuar! Y así abandoné toda la rabia y la pena a un lado..., y actué.

¿De qué modo?

Pedí calzoncillos con gomas, y ropa fácil de ponerme, y un reloj de pulsera con gomas...

¿Dónde se lo puso?

En el tobillo, ¿ve? Y me adiestré en usar los pies para todo.

¿Qué es capaz de hacer con sus pies?

Escribir, dibujar, pintar, pasar hojas, cocinar, usar cubiertos, coger un vaso, conducir mi coche, llamar por teléfono, rascarme la cabeza..., ¿ve?

Sí.

Pero todo esto no tiene mucha importancia.

Hombre...

Lo que importa es dejar de ser espectador de las cosas: pasar a ser actor protagonista.

¿Y cómo vivió su adolescencia, cuando quería ligar?

Ellas querían ser sólo amigas. Y sufrí... Pero luego me relajé y decidí disfrutar de las cosas... Y entonces llegó mi pareja, Christine, igual que Meg Ryan: mírela en esta foto...

¿Qué le gustó a Christine de usted?

Mi amor por la vida. Ella tenía un novio culturista, guapísimo..., pero muy quejica, que odiaba mojarse el pelo... Cuando Christine vio como yo me tiraba de cabeza al mar...

¿Cuál es su lema, John?

Ser antes de hacer, hacer antes de tener.

Explíquemelo.

La gente suele decirse "¡no tengo dinero!" o "¡no tengo tiempo!", y de eso deduce "¡no puedo hacer nada!". Y de eso concluye "¡no soy nada!". ¡Qué error!: es justo al revés. Convéncete de esto: ¡sí "eres"! Y con ese motor interno, el resto va viniendo.

Pero cuesta "ser".

Porque todos somos discapacitados... anímicos: "no puedo", "es imposible", "no hay nada que hacer", te dices. Y, convencido de que tienes razón, te acomodas en esa idea.

A veces pienso así.

¿Y crees tener razón en esto? Entonces eres un discapacitado... con dos brazos.

Vaya.

Si das por inamovibles tus límites, eres tan discapacitado como yo cuando creía imposible ponerme los calzoncillos por mí mismo.

Denos un consejo a los discapacitados.

Elige ser. Elige quién serás: ten una visión y conviértete en tu propia visión. ¿Cuál es tu excusa para no hacerlo, dime? Pregúntatelo. Yo no soy un gurú de esos, no: ¡yo sólo hablo de lo que sé porque lo he vivido!

¿Y qué sabe, al final?

Que fracasar consiste en no intentar demoler barreras. Así que en vez de repetirte "¡no merece la pena intentarlo!", repítete siempre "¡merece la pena intentarlo!".

¿Sean cuales sean mis circunstancias, mis límites físicos o materiales?

Aunque pueda parecerte que no, ¡siempre hay una alternativa! La realidad es lo que tú creas con tu percepción de las cosas. ¡Crea una realidad nueva, pues! Porque tú puedes elegir tu manera de ver el mundo. O sea, ¡puedes elegir el mundo! Pero sólo tú, nadie por ti. ¿Por qué eliges mutilarte?

Si volviese al vientre de su madre y pudiese elegir nacer con brazos, ¿lo haría?

¡No! Yo soy este que soy.

VÍCTOR-M. AMELA - La Vanguardia 18/06/2010

http://www.lavanguardia.es/lacontra/lacontra.html

In reaction to the new burka prohibitions "for security reasons" in Barcelona

2010-06-17T05:17:00.000-07:00

What a daft way to stop your spaniel eating the milkman

As we know, one man once got on one plane in a pair of exploding hiking boots and as a result everyone else in the entire world is now forced to strip naked at airports and hand over their toiletries to a man in a high-visibility jacket.

In other words, the behaviour of one man has skewed the concept of everyday life for everyone else. And we are seeing this all the time.

Last month a Birmingham couple pleaded guilty to starving their supposedly home-schooled daughter to death. Now, of course, there are calls for parents who choose to educate their children at home to be monitored on an hourly basis by people from the “care” industry, and possibly to have their toiletries confiscated.

Then we have calls to ban sexually provocative pop videos from the television until 9pm and put Loaded magazine on the top shelf. Will this prevent teenage boys from seeing girls’ breasts? Well, whoever thinks it will has plainly never heard of the internet.

We see the same sort of overreaction to paedophilia. Just because one man in your town likes to watch schoolgirls playing netball, you must apply for a licence if you wish to take a friend’s kids to school in the morning. And I now run the risk of having my camera impounded by the police if I take pictures of my children playing on the beach.

Likewise, if I decide to take a picture of St Paul’s Cathedral I will be hurled to the ground by anti-terrorist officers and possibly shot six times in the back of the head — just because one person in Bradford once made a speech about the infidel.

We seem to have lost sight of the fact that throughout history 90% of people have behaved quite normally 90% of the time. Agatha Christie, for instance, was home-schooled and at no point was she forced to eat breadcrumbs from her neighbour’s bird table.

Of course, at the extremes, you have 5% who are goodie-goodies and who become vicars, and 5% who build exploding hiking shoes and starve their children to death.

It’s this oddball 5% that is targeted by the tidal wave of legislation. But making it more difficult to teach your children at home will not stop kids being mistreated.

It just changes the pattern of everyday life for everyone else. This is what drives me mad.

We now think it’s normal behaviour to take off our clothes at an airport. But it isn’t. Nor is it normal to stand outside in the rain to have a cigarette or to do 30mph on a dual carriageway when it’s the middle of the night and everyone else is in bed. It’s stupid.

And last week the stupidity made yet another lunge into the fabric of society with the news that government ministers were considering new laws that would force everyone to take a test before they were allowed to keep a dog.

No, really. Because one dog once ate one child, some hopeless little twerp from the department of dogs had to think of something sincere to say on the steps of the coroner’s court. Inevitably, they will have argued that the current law is “not fit for purpose”, whatever that means, and that “steps must be taken to ensure this never happens again”.

The steps being considered mean that every dog owner in the land will have to fit their pet with a microchip so that its whereabouts can be determined from dog-spotting spy-in-the-sky drones, and that before being allowed to take delivery of a puppy, people will have to sit an exam similar to the driving theory test. The cost could reach £60, and on top of this you will need compulsory third-party insurance in case your spaniel eats the milkman.

So to ensure that someone in the north called Mick doesn’t shove his pit bull into a primary school playground to calm it down, I will now have to computerise my labradoodle and answer a lot of damn fool questions about when my dog should be on a lead.

In other words, the normality of dog ownership will be skewed. Instead of spending your free time with your pooches, throwing balls or tickling them under the chin, you will be forced to provide tea and biscuits for someone from the department of dogs while he inspects your cupboard under the stairs for evidence that they’ve eaten the cleaning lady.

This will achieve nothing good. It will ruin the enjoyment of dog ownership for millions, it will result in thousands of abandoned dogs, as people realise they can’t afford the insurance, and yet it will make no difference to men in the north called Mick, who will continue to tattoo their dogs with gothic symbols of hate.

What good did all the airport legislation achieve? None. It simply means that you and I now must get to the airport six years before the plane is due to leave and arrive at the other end with yellow teeth, smelly armpits and no nail file. Did it prevent a chap from getting on board with exploding underpants? No, it did not.

Happily, however, I have a solution to the problem, a way that normal human behaviour can be preserved. It’s simple. We must start to accept that 5% of the population at any given time is bonkers. There are no steps to be taken to stamp this out and no lessons to be learnt when a man with a beard boards a plane with an exploding dog.

Government officials who are questioned on the steps of coroner’s courts must be reminded of this before they speak. So that instead of saying the current law is “not fit for purpose” and that something must be done, they familiarise themselves with an expression that sums up the situation rather better: “Shit happens.”

-Jeremy Clarkson

The Sunday Times 07.03.2010

An afterthought on 12.6.2010

2010-06-14T07:58:00.000-07:00

Despite having lived in 6 different countries during my life, I still have so much to learn about culture, identity and respect. It's humbling to realise that. I read over my post from two days ago and realised I wrote it feeling somewhat frustrated and a bit angry, and I feel that my intolerance came through perhaps a bit too much, especially in the part about culture and language. It can be difficult to embrace difference while juggling the many differences that fluctuate within your own identity.

I think that, as I am thinking more and more about belonging, establishing some kind of sense of community and having a network of friends and family to give their support which will be particularly important if I am blessed with a family one day, I am more and more conscious of the way I construct my identity. To some extent my identity is a case of pick and mix (although I can assure you I am by no means an extreme case), which makes for a lot of thinking as to what aspects of culture and society, and of what culture and society, you want to take on as your own and pass on to the next generation. I feel like I have spent at least 10 years mulling over this matter and only now am I starting to see myself a bit more clearly. Or so I thought.

Yesterday I was speaking with my dear anthropologist about the fact that, while I am keen to try and do something new and "settle down" a little bit more when I move back to Spain, how silly I feel about getting involved in a community that isn't mine (Gracia, Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain), and about my interest in being involved in a project to do with Latin America because, as I already pointed out, I am not from that continent. He astutely asked me why I was so keen to be involved in something to do with Latin America, and why did I think I had to get involved in working with e.g. a support group for Latin American women. Was there not something else I could do that wouldn't make me constantly question my involvement and my own identity?

I was a bit taken aback by his question. It made me realise that not only had I limited myself to a certain idea of Latin America and of being involved in some kind of community development project, I had undermined my own identity. I was trying to come up with a way of fitting a mould that I was never going to fit instead of creating a space for myself. That is not to say that I could or should never be involved in something that purely corresponds with who I am (if it were the case I don't think I'd ever find anything!). It simply made me realise that I sometimes compromise myself for no reason and seek ways of being me which maybe aren't who I am at all.

When a Colombian friend of mine said to me a while back that I was "practically Colombian", I took it as a wonderful compliment and a sign of friendship and acceptance from someone who takes pride in her country and her heritage, but also as a sign of perhaps having something of an insight to life and culture in her country. Now that the football World Cup is on, I join my Mexican friends in the pub, wear my Pumas t-shirt and support the Mexican team in some kind of desperate attempt to identify with these people who I have learned to love, but at the cost of what? At the cost of my Finnish and "other" heritage? Why do I sometimes not feel so strongly about those heritages?

For the past two months or so I have been reading and learning a lot about Colombian political systems due to the presidential elections in Colombia that have their final voting round on the 20th of June. I am also reasonably knowledgeable on Colombian education policy because of it is an integral part of the dissertation I'm working on. What frustrates me is that I probably know more about Colombian politics and education policy than about their Finnish equivalents. And occasionally I take this frustration out on my dear anthropologist, who, while taking an interest in Finland and its culture, is by no means as interested in it than he is in his own culture. And there is no reason why he should be. Having a strong interest for Latin America and having many friends and a significant other from that geo-cultural region, I sometimes I forget - as funny as it may sound- that in fact I in am NOT Latin American, never will be and should never even strive to be. Although I have learned to embrace my uprooted Finn-identity, I sometimes think that my identity is an obstacle. It of course, is NOT an obstacle. I just sometimes make it into one. I sometimes exaggerate the importance of other cultures and belittle "my" culture. And sometimes vice versa - being annoyed at people who think the Finnish language is "weird", or praising the Finnish social security system and every other possible system to high heaven.

Why is it that after all these years I still have such a love-hate relationship with my Finnish heritage? Or, better yet, why do I still struggle to find the right balance of my "other " heritage, all the many heritages and cultures that I love and can identify with due to my uprootedness? Why the imbalance?

All those cliches about getting to know yourself and finding yourself are true. It takes time to get to know yourself. It takes courage to live your life the way you want to. A dear friend of mine recently said that she was more afraid of succeeding than of failing, and I felt that at least to some extent I could identify with her feelings.

It's madness!

Why are we so afraid of ourselves?!

What I have learned.

2010-06-13T01:28:00.000-07:00

My academic year at UEA is gradually coming to a close. I am in the process of writing my dissertation, and in a few weeks’ time I’ll be moving back to Spain. It has been a tough year in more ways than one: being a full-time student after a 5-year break; being in a long-distance relationship; trying to find my feet in a small city to which I had no previous connections. It has definitely been a learning experience. I think it took me about 6 months to feel more at home here and more settled in my friendships, and then the academic year was pretty much over after that. Some of my course mates have already left Norwich; others, like myself, are coming and going for the past couple of months. We have all been dispersed somewhat – not that I really feel like we were exactly united and in the same place at any point. But yes, geographically we are all dispersed again, and those of my friends and acquaintances that remain Norwich are few and far between. We are all off to start a new adventure, or to return to where we were at before, just that little bit more knowledgeable about international development, with a fresh perspective on life and an inquisitive mind.

What have I learned this year?

I have learned a lot about international development. I had no previous academic background to the subject, so everything was new. One of the first things I discovered that Amartya Sen is a development theory guru and by quoting him you can cover your back pretty much on any topic. I learned a whole lot of jargon, buzz words and concepts that don’t necessarily mean anything much, the word “empowerment” perhaps the most over- and misused of them all. What I still haven’t learned is what “development” is, or whether such a concept even exists. Or, maybe that is exactly what I have learned.

I have (re-)learned that we live in completely unjust, corrupted world and that most of the efforts of those who try to fight it remain within a framework of structural injustice, and that there is always an us and them-juxtaposing going on.

Following from the above learning experience, I have (re-)learned that the language and way of thinking in the field of international development is often racist, prejudiced and patronising towards “developing” countries, and that studying post-colonial theory when I did English Literature at undergraduate level has helped me remain critical of that kind of discourse.

I have (re-)learned that I can write and that my writing is at its best when I just plough on bravely without constantly editing myself.

I have (re-)learned that I can be rather impatient and hard on myself, but that I can do anything I set out to do if I really want to.

I have learned to stress and worry a little bit less.

I have learned that I still procrastinate and that I still get very frustrated with myself for doing so.

I have learned that I can overcome silly little personal fears, but also some bigger ones, and I have overcome some of them to a great extent this year. A very silly example of this is my slight fear of horses. Having to walk past about 12 of them every morning on my way to lectures, and occasionally feeding them a little, was a good way to feel more comfortable around those beautiful (and huge) creatures.

I have learned to meditate a little bit.

I have learned that I have had enough of country-hopping for a while, and that I would like to feel more part of a small community and maybe put down some roots somewhere. This is a huge step for me as I have never really felt much like part of any community or even had much of a desire to do so. I think it will be challenging for me but exciting too.

I have learned to value and love my family even more than before.

I have also learned that some of my closest and dearest ones are very special and that it is important to hold on to these people, care for them and appreciate what I have with them.

I have learned that truly good friends are hard to find.

I have learned that I am starting to like alcohol less and less – especially beer.

I have learned more about trusting others and myself.

I have learned that it is worth investing in some funky heels and a timeless dress.

Having said that, I have also learned that I don’t really need that many things to be happy. Unfortunately, I sometimes forget.

I have learned to appreciate plants more.

I have (re-)learned that thank you-cards are important.

I have learned that sometimes I chase dreams that aren’t mine. But I have also learned to pursue some of my own dreams in small steps.

I have learned oh so many other things as well this year. I guess that goes to show that it has paid off and that despite my constant feeling of not having made the most of my time, I have got a lot out of my year.

And maybe –and that’s just maybe- I have learned something about that over- and misused word empowerment.

In praise of difference, (in)tolerance, the fine art of being (un-)PC, and the mysteries of a foreign language

2010-06-12T01:49:00.000-07:00

Sometimes those who consider themselves the most open-minded and tolerant people are in fact the most intolerant ones. Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) did well in writing political pamphlets for both the Whigs and the Tories back in his day - at the end of the day, politics is a full circle where the extreme left meets the extreme right and they are exactly the same thing, exactly as good or bad as each other, with very similar political agendas.

And the same goes for tolerance and intolerance, "religion" and non-"religion" (the word "religion" in inverted commas because it is a word and concept widely ill-defined and misunderstood). What I witness time and time again is self-proclaimed tolerant people expressing intolerant ideas in the most audacious manner. By tolerance I refer to something like not interfering with or judging a person or an idea without careful consideration and respect.

Let me give you an example: a weed-smoking, apparently left-leaning woman in her late 20's with a rock n roll attitude and a passion for international relations and social justice goes on about how open-minded she is, then proceeds to slag off a small group of practicing Catholics standing in the other corner of the room. A second example: An association of self-proclaimed neo-hippies (or hippies with credit cards, a friend of mine so aptly once put it), set up a cafe where people can come and go as they please, paint, play music, sleep on the battered sofas and bring their own lunch if they want. But alas, should a person who does not fit the stereotypical hippie and who may decide to have an un-hippie bite to eat in the cafe, (s)he is asked to leave. An allegedly open-minded young professional struggling to tolerate a new acquaintance who to him/her seems completely intolerant due to his/her faith and belief system.

I recognise my own false tolerance in similar situations. To tolerate someone you think is more intolerant than you can be intolerable, but often highly necessary. I can understand intolerance. Some things simply cannot be tolerated (and by this I mean very serious things). But acceptance of and respect for even the more conservative, allegedly more intolerant people is vital. How can one be open-minded and think that their open-minded way is the only way?

Nobody wants to recognise their own intolerance.

Now, a second, related, matter that I find intriguing is political correctness. I enjoy being un-PC in certain company. You cannot make un-PC jokes around most people. I find that despite enjoying making un-PC jokes, I find it difficult to understand and - here it comes again - tolerate authentically un-PC people.

The Spanish language is full of un-PCness. It is quite refreshing. You can call your chubby friend "Fattie", your anorexic friend "Skinny", your dark friend "Blackie" and your hairy friend - well, "Hairy", or, even better, with a little twist of irony, "Baldy" (the last one I keep getting confused with as the word for hairy, peludo, and the colloquial term for bald, pelado, are different by only one vowel). And best of all, they are actually considered terms of endearment.

Now, there are elements of this example of un-PCness which I don't really appreciate. Most of it has to do with ethnic minority naming within the community. Some rather racist or at best segretationist expressions are accepted as funny expressions that form part of the language and the culture (at least in Spain).

And so now we come to the difficult part - my intolerance. I have written about the importance of tolerance. But I am actually very intolerant of some un-PC expressions and attitudes. I am intolerant of intolerance. My problem is that I struggle to tolerate intolerant behaviour, in myself and in others.

One of the things I struggle tolerating, and now we come to the culture/language part again, is a possessive, diminutive term of endearment in Spanish (to my knowledge more common in Latin American Spanish than in Spanish Spanish). For example, calling someone "my dear so-and-so" when quite clearly the person is not theirs, and possibly not that dear to them either (or vice-versa). I have had many a discussion about this topic with a very dear (and now I use the word in what I consider the true sense of the word) anthropologist I know. I can understand close friends and family calling each other "dear". Even "my" goes. I have learned to use and appreciate the "my dear so-and-so" expression to an extent, and the diminutive, "my dear little so-and-so" as well. But I don't understand why everyone calls everyone else "my dear little so-and-so". Surely if "my dear little so-and-so" applies to everyone, it applies to no-one at all! If everyone is your dear, who truly is your dear? Then again, I understand and appreciate these terms of endearment. I even know that just because someone calls another "my dear so-and-so" it often simply means that you care about the person, or that you are being patronising towards them, or, from what I have gathered (and correct me if I'm wrong), most commonly, it means absolutely nothing. But it is this what I interpret as indifference towards the spoken word that I struggle to tolerate, even though to an extent I feel I understand it as well as I possibly can as a non-native speaker. And what I struggle to tolerate is the fact that I still struggle to tolerate this. Why do I still struggle to accept the fact that ahora can mean anything from "now" to "never"? Why is it that, even if you appreciate a different way of thinking and being, do the best you can to adopt it and know that you may never truly understand, it is still so hard to tolerate such difference?

Then again, maybe I am being tolerant in this matter. After all, I want to understand. Or, better yet, I want to not care about not understanding this aspect that I get hung up on time and time again.

Perhaps I am being too hard on myself and on other tolerant wannabes out there. Perhaps I am being too hard on those who don't even want to be tolerant.
Perhaps tolerance is simply a matter of will, understanding and time combined.

Perhaps tolerance isn't the word I'm looking for.

2010-05-26T07:22:00.000-07:00

Olha,
você é tão bonita quanto o Rio de Janeiro
em maio
e quase tão bonita
quanto a Revolução Cubana

Look,
you're as beautiful as the city of Rio de Janeiro
in May
and almost as beautiful
as the Cuban Revolution

From Cantadas by Ferreira Gullar

Sigh.

2010-04-26T17:03:00.000-07:00

I don't make a good ill person. You know how some people are just naturally good at it, resting their angelic curls on a pillow, sleeping like a baby, smiling weakly at visitors, taking their medicine regularly?

I'm not one of those. Taking my medicine regularly, yes, mostly. Sleeping like a baby - no, unless I'm VERY ill. Smiling - being a Northerner is my excuse. And no angelic curls either.

And for the past two days I have been ill. Not terribly ill, but just ill enough to feel dizzy when I walk, with a bit of a temperature, but not ill enough to just doze off into a coma and then wake up feeling a bit better.

I have tried to read but I feel dizzy when I do. I have watched old TV series to the point of despair. I have looked at old photographs, stretched my legs, bought paracetamol and lemons. I am incredibly bored and restless and uncomfortable and have decided that I will be out of the house tomorrow no matter what.

So, as I said before, I don't play the ill role very well.

A bit over a year ago I was pretty ill for a substantial amount of time. I had a fever and tonsillitis and swallowing was very painful, so I barely ate for a few days. It was terrible. It was also a difficult time for me in other ways - you may recall from a previous post that February is the worst possible month in the year for me. And other things on top of that didn't help.

In the midst of it all, when I was unable to eat and could only sleep (and badly at that) and grumble and produce puss and snot and tears, a very special someone, despite having a bit of a hard month or so himself, came to sit on the side of my bed and spoon-fed me. He fed me some soup with such gentleness and it was one of the most beautiful, selfless and loving acts I have ever been at the receiving end of.

And tonight this grumpy, restless mess of a woman wishes that very special someone was here, so that she could tell him in person how much she loves him.

Great Expectations

2010-04-26T16:35:00.000-07:00

After a conversation about meditation and Buddhism, a very dear friend of mine lent me a book called Going Buddhist by Peter J. Conradi as a kind of a Buddhism For Dummies-kind of introduction to the faith. I remember studying Buddhism in Religious Education class in school, so I didn't consider myself a complete beginner. Still, I thought a personal account of Buddhism, subtitled "Panic and emptiness, the Buddha and me", would be an appropriate way to learn to understand the philosophy in simple terms, and to find out more about meditation, something that I have been interested in for a while.

Now, I'm not one for self-help books. Or maybe secretly I am, but in practice I usually shun away from the overly cheerful paperbacks that scream quick fix. Still, I am half intrigued by them and was open to the one that was lent to me (although I was warned it was far from perfect). Going Buddhist is described as a "self-help book for cynics", and this too helped me in approach the book with an open mind.

Unfortunately, Conradi did not want to write a book about Buddhism, but about himself, about his friendship with Iris Murdoch, about the chip that he carries on his shoulder because of bad experiences with what they call "religion", i.e. some form of Christianity. It made me quite angry to first see the potential of the book and then be disappointed. It somehow justified my scepticism and left me feeling a bit bitter about it all.

Of course, it's not the book's fault. I'm sure my expectations were far too high as usual. I am often told that my expectations for various things are too high, so I'm sure books are no different.

So I decided to go for an author that I had a bad attitude towards: the Dalai Lama. Call me irreverent if you will, but I am wary of these saint-like 20th/21st century characters that pop up every once in a while: the Dalai Lama, Princess Diana, Barack Obama...I don't mean to say that I am against them as such. But I can't help but treat these figures with a bit of suspicion. So when I decided to buy a book by the Dalai Lama, I was taking a big step. I later told about this step to two acquaintances, and they didn't seem to understand why it was such a big step. In any case, I have got off to a promising start - I have cast away my negative expectations and my suspicions. I am in a sense back to having great expectations, in a good way, but somehow in reverse...if that makes sense.

Will I become one of the herd who hails the Dalai Lama to the heavens? I don't really like the idea, but half of me hopes it will be the case. Even if it's just because I don't want to be disappointed with a book two times in a row.

And, you know, it would be kind of nice to learn a bit about inner peace and all that once I'm at it.

Some Words of Wisdom

2010-03-22T15:09:00.000-07:00

"I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself..."-D.H. Lawrence

2010-03-22T15:08:00.000-07:00

"We are the ones we have been waiting for."-June Jordan

2010-03-22T15:06:00.000-07:00

If only we'd stop trying to be happy we'd have a pretty good time. - Edith Wharton

Beautiful people

2010-03-22T15:03:00.000-07:00

"The most beautiful people are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss and have found their way out of the depths.These people have an appreciation, a sensitivity and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness and a deep concern.Beautiful people do not just happen." - Elisabeth Kubler Ross

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2010-03-16T15:37:00.000-07:00

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A pleasant re-encounter with myself

2010-02-20T15:25:00.000-08:00

February has never been my favourite month of the year. I'd quite happily leave out November and February from the calendar and have 2 Junes and 2 Julys instead. The further up north in the world you go, the darker and more miserable these months get. You go to work in the morning in the dark and come back from work in the dark. November is miserable because you're exhausted by work/study and the Christmas holidays seem too distant. February is dreary because it's the month between the festitivites and spring. When T.S. Eliot claimed that "April is the cruellest month" (The Waste Land, 1922) he was horribly wrong. The only good things about November and February are candles, hot drinks and if you are lucky, cuddling by the fireside with someone lovely or a good book.

February 2010 was a tough one for me for various reasons, but I'm sure the mere fact that it was February didn't help. But the real reason I had the longest shortest month of the year this time around was because somewhere between my Christmas holidays and spring, I had lost myself.

I had lost my essence a little and one February evening I found myself again, or the part of me that had gone missing for a while. How did it happen? I was with some friends for an evening of sushi and singing. We made sushi rolls, had some wine, some ice-cream, some potent black liquid I had brought back with me from my brief visit to Finland, and we sang, played the guitar and all sorts of percussions. We sang beautifully, we played badly, we sang so loud that the neighbours came to knock on the door, we played more quietly. Or, as my French teacher used to say, we made a joyful noise.

And in that joyful noise I re-encountered myself - I felt much more normal again, much less anxious. I remembered what my priorities were, what I enjoyed doing, what I wanted to experience and try out in the near future. And after that evening I went and did those things.

That evening has been followed by a couple of other similar evenings that have reminded me of some of the things that are important for me in life: good food, good music, the company of friends, absolute relaxation, laughter, forgetting yourself and remembering who you are at the same time.

WARNING! DANGER!

2010-02-07T02:58:00.000-08:00

Highly not recommended dangerous activity: cutting your hair as a way of procrastinating.

Let's just say you just want too keep on cutting...and cutting...and cutting...

A rose by any other name would smell as sweet...

2010-01-23T14:17:00.000-08:00

There is a tiny new person in my family. He is less than a month old, and has no name yet. I used to call him Possu (Piggy) because his mother got a swine flu jab a bit before he was born, and I thought he might turn out to have a bit of a piggy nose like his aunt (I sometimes call this tiny new person's sister Kananen (Little Chicken) but in case you're wondering it has nothing to do with avian flu - she's just a wee chicken, that's all).

I haven't met the tiny new person yet, but I have seen a few photos and I can imagine he is wonderful. The most wonderful thing is that he has no name because his parents haven't decided on one yet. Although his mother seemed a bit distressed about the topic the last time it came up, I can't help but think that this tiny new person still has a certain freedom that comes from having no fixed identity in the form of a name. He has his whole future ahead of him not only in the sense that he is a baby and will most probably have many years of life to live, but also because he is simply the much loved tiny new person that does not have to respond to his name, does not have to sign his name or write down his initials, and has none of the other responsibilities that come with having a name.

When I was a child I wanted to change my name, and even more so when my mother told me that I could when I grew up. Now, well over the legal age required for changing your name, I can't think of what I would change my name to. I have had my fair share of problems with my name as the different linguistic environments (?) I have lived in have not always allowed for the correct spelling or pronunciation of my name, and so after I left university I considered calling myself by my middle name. But I soon realised that not only was it an equally confusing name, it simply wasn't me.

How do you decide on what to call your child, anyway? My parents apparently just knew. They liked the name and that was it. I share my middle name with one of my aunts who I never really got to know, and I have come to appreciate carrying her name for that very reason - it's my connection to her. Not too long ago I got a better peak at what her life was like through some photographs from the 60s and 70s that another one of my aunt's showed me, and it looked like she didn't shy away from enjoying life despite the hardships that came along her way.

Liking the name or wanting to pass on a family name are of course very good reasons, but there must be an element of compromise in the decision making process if for some reason the other parent , or, worse yet, your family does not agree with you. Or if a name may sound beautiful in your language, but in the other parent's language it means something rude. Or if the family name is just too commonplace and you want to name your child something that is a bit different, or not the fashionable name of the half-decade.

So, you think MY name is strange? Here are some that I think are strange, some to the point of being hilarious or scary or just...wrong. I opted to exclude the strange names of relatives and friends so as to avoid offending as few people as possible...;)

Milady (F, Mexico)
Ladydi (F,Mexico)
Stalin (M, Mexico)
Lyly (M, Finland)
Nyyrikki (M, Finland)
Hemminki (M, Finland)
Ylermi (M, Finland)
Signe (F, Finland)
Ilmatar (F, Finland)
Suometar (F, Finland)
Julio Cesar (M, Colombia)

Feel free to add to the list...

Insomnia Part 2

2010-01-15T17:48:00.000-08:00

The ramblings of an insomniac

01:50 am - I should have gone out tonight. I stayed in because I was tired, but now I can't sleep. It can't be jet lag anymore, it's been almost a week since I got back from my trip.

01:51 am - Anxiety, maybe?

01:51:30 am - Information overload, maybe?

01:52 am - Sometimes I get anxious and excited and feel like I'm about to explode knowing that there are so many good books out there in the world and that I haven't read half of them and never will and can never remember the ones I would like to read and the list never ends.

01:57 am - Finnish word of the day: pakahtua (verb). Describes the feeling I mentioned above in just one word. Gotta love the Finnish language.

Loved up

2010-01-15T08:55:00.000-08:00

I don't remember a time anytime in the recent past that I've read as much love-related literature as I am this week: on love as a philosophy and a way of life (Erich Fromm), Colombian love poetry (Dario Jaramillo Agudelo), and today I received a book of Finnish erotic (!) love poetry in the post (Tommy Tabermann).

What cosmic force brought these three authors to me this week I won't even try and attempt to guess, but I am truly grateful for their company. Especially since the year is only 3 weeks old January is a good month to cuddle up in bed with a book or something to write with and reflect on your own life philosophy and attitudes.

So...I'll reflect and get back to you.:)

How to beat the post-holiday blues?

2010-01-14T15:57:00.000-08:00

In other words, my way of recognising my utter and complete indifference and self-centeredness regarding this week, as displayed in the previous post, and to attempt to put things into perspective.

Port-Au-Prince, Haiti, 12.1.2010

Donate: Kirkon Ulkomaanapu - Haiti earthquake

How to beat the post-holiday blues

2010-01-14T15:21:00.000-08:00

1) Immerse yourself in work/study - no time to think about the absence of sun/signficant other/mojitos/beach.
2) Make sure you have jet lag - makes the days go by faster when you have no idea what time of day it is.
3) Watch a lot of mind-numbing re-runs of 90s TV shows on the internet, in bed, under your covers - also helpful for sleeping your jet lag away.
4) Break/lose your phone or don't pay the previous month's bill - you have to be more creative in getting touch with your friends and loved ones to moan about how dreary your life is.
5) Make all those appointments with the doctor, dentist and psychologist that you were supposed to have arranged 3 months ago - sure to keep you busy and your mind occupied.
6) Select and edit the top 200 of all your 500 holiday photos - you'll soon start wishing you hadn't gone on holiday in the first place.

Definitely wish I hadn't gone there...

...or there...

...or there...

-SIGH-

Taas kaikki kauniit muistot

2009-11-29T01:15:00.000-08:00

Those of you who remember me as a teenager may recall my acute sense of not belonging there and my adamant vows of never returning to Finland once I had left. I still don't know if I could spend the rest of my life there, and at the moment it's not even an option I would seriously consider. But the older I get the more I miss it. Sometimes I miss my family dreadfully. I miss seeing my little niece grow up. I miss speaking and writing in Finnish (so why am I writing this in English? I have no idea). I miss the scent of cold, cold air, the kind that you can feel in your teeth. I miss the unpresumptious trees that watch over you as you wander in the forest. I miss seeing my mum cooking in the kitchen, always with a tiny sense of stress but always willing to stop and do a little dance with her eyes closed if a good song comes on in the radio.

I miss Finland especially at Christmas. Today is the first Advent, and in my family that means going through a little ceremony of listening to "Hoosianna" the first thing in the morning. Someone will light the first of the four candles that count the weeks until Christmas, and we sit in devotional silence until the song is over. Sometimes I feel awkward listening to the song in religious silence, but I still think it's a beautiful tradition. Listening to "Hoosianna" permits you to listen to Christmas carols for the next four weeks leading to Christmas, and the anticipation in the air helps you get through the weeks of darkness and exhaustion that prevail at the end of the year.

I don't think I have a favourite Christmas carol, but I am starting to like the very traditional Finnish ones with allusions to snow and darkness. "Taas kaikki kauniit muistot" is one of my dad's favourites along with "Me käymme joulun viettohon". The former is the recollection of an adult thinking back to his childhood, going to the Christmas church service early in the morning, clad in his best outfit, and sleepily placing their head on his mother's shoulder, probably didn't understand much of the sermon, but recalling those precious moments and the snowy fields and parks that no-one can take away from him.

Growing up, I thought the carol was too earnest and too slow. But today the song reflects my sentiments...thinking back to my childhood, treasuring those moments of Christmas with my family.

So, I'll shed a little tear, light a candle and listen to "Hoosianna" all day.

Kolme Haikua

2009-11-28T14:55:00.000-08:00

I

Malta, aurinko:
rakkaani nukkuu yhä,
huokailen yksin.

II

Herääthän aamun
tuoksuun. Ihosi maistuu
pihlajapuulle.

III

Kirjoita minut
silmäripsiisi, sitten
itke minut pois.

Discovering Mario Benedetti

2009-06-21T01:35:00.000-07:00

Following my previous post, I thought the following haiku by Mario Benedetti was appropriate:

Hay pocas cosas
tan ensordecedoras
como el silencio

Mario Benedetti: Rincón de Haikus,1999

Being woken up by the neighbours at 4.30 AM and other annoying things that I'll miss about Barcelona

2009-06-20T01:02:00.001-07:00

Two sets of song lyrics have been playing in my head this week.

The first one:

Don't it always seem to go/that you don't know what you've got till it's gone.

Yes, "Big Yellow Taxi" by Joni Mitchell. NOT the Counting Crows version.

I'm leaving Barcelona temporarily, to do a Masters in Norwich, UK. Quite a change. Change is often necessary and usually good, but it can also be scary, especially if there haven't been too many drastic changes in your life for a while and you have become somewhat comfortable (and being comfortable can be a very good thing indeed).

And so, facing the slightly scary prospect of change of city, lifestyle, economic situation, social circle, work/study project and various other things that come with moving from one city to another, I find myself walking the streets of Barcelona with a different attitude and a certain notion of affection and tenderness for the city that I seldom feel. Noticing beauty in things that I hadn't paid attention to before, or re-discovering places in the city that I had forgotten about.

Now, Barcelona is a great place to be. Or can be. It's slightly schizophrenic with its hoards of quirky gems like obscure, ancient little statues in the alleyways of Barrio Gotico, anxiously waiting for be discovered by the passers-by, or its all sorts of smells rising from all sorts of sewers, or its Argentinian vegetarian restaurants with doors for tables and ghostly chairs for wall decorations.

It's a beautiful city, with sea and mountains and a pretty much perfect climate if you don't mind the humidity in the summer. It's full of history, art, music, entertainment, fashion, politics and activity.

But it is also full of tourists, nationalists, strange smells (a fact which I am aware I am mentioning for the second time), dog shit, lack of all things green, noise, noise, people pushing and shoving and spitting, and more noise.

The noise factor is one that affects me quite a bit, being a Northcountry girl. The time spent in various places much noisier than Finland throughout my life has not diminished my what I believe to be innate need for silence and privacy.

I think anyone would be annoyed by being woken up at 4:30 AM by a group of boisterous young men filling up their water bottles from the fountain in my square and making their motorcycle or moped engines scream in order to see who was the one who really had the biggest private parts. So imagine my reaction. I only wish I could have come up with the perfect line to shout down from my window, but my brain seems to work very little in the wee hours of the morning, and so I simply muttered angrily to myself and ended up waking up Juan Pablo in the process.

The thing is, despite the recurring agony I feel when I think that there is just too much unnecessary shouting and general racket going on, I quite like it too. Call me a masochist, but I find it slightly endearing that my flatmates can't control the volume of their voices as they tell about their Friday night out while slurping up their Saturday breakfast cereal. Or that the garbage truck roars in to pick up its goodies right outside my window at 2:00 AM on the dot. I enjoy the animated conversations that I witness, with people flapping their arms about with exaggerated movements and the people at the table next to yours having a shouting competition because, truth be told, in this country you have to shout in order to be heard.

So, yes, I will miss all the racket when I'm in the UK. Who knows, maybe I will be the one people turn to give dirty looks to for speaking too loud.

There are a number of other infuriating things that I will definitely miss during my time away. For example, getting incredibly merry after just one G&T just because in Spain nobody bothers with measuring the amount of alchol poured into a cocktail. Which, in fact, is not an infuriating thing at all, but in fact a wonderful thing. Will I have to gulp down three overpriced vodka&cranberries before feeling even a little bit intoxicated?

Anyway, back to the list of infuriating things that I'll miss:

-Excessive noise and constant shouting matches
-People being late (or, more diplomatically, having a flexible timetable)
-People jumping the queue - just kidding! This one I will NOT miss at all.
-Dust and general dirt
-Unprecedented concerts disturbing my Saturday siesta (actually, if the music's alright I quite enjoy it)
-People blasting salsa out on to the square on a Sunday (which, again, at the end of the day isn't very infuriating at all)
-The gypsies from Plaza de John Lennon migrating up to my plaza at midnight for a spontaneous flamenco session
-The piercing sound of the traditonal Catalan "trumpet" (the name of which I have forgotten) that accompanies the castellets (human castles).

*Sigh*

Moving on...

The second song lyrics that has been on repeat in my mind are from "Like A Rolling Stone" by Bob Dylan:

When you got nothing/you got nothing to lose.

Well said, Bob, and well sung, with that dry, dying voice of yours. He may be overrated, but Bob has proved to be a good companion in times of change (and no, I am not referring to "The times they are a-changing" in any way). When I moved to California, Bob Dylan and Nick Drake were pretty much all I listened to during the first month.

Much to my shame and possibly to your dismay, after such a long ramble that sprouted from those Joni Mitchell lyrics, and reflections on the noise factor, I have forgotten why exactly I wanted to mention "Like a rolling stone" in this post.

So, I will leave you with this sample of the annoying but oh-so-delightful music which I referred to in my list...

Sardegna May 2009

2009-06-20T00:52:00.000-07:00

Narrow roads winding up and down coastal hills, old women dressed in black, bad Italian radio stations, wine, hungover walks to the supermarket, the sea, pizza, chats with Charlie...

Despedida - Celso Machado

2009-05-04T14:02:00.000-07:00

On Running and Writing

2009-04-26T14:32:00.000-07:00

"Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional. Say you're running and you start to think Man this hurts, I can't take it anymore. The hurt part is an unavoidable reality, but whether or not you can stand any more is up to the runner himself. This pretty much sums up the most important aspect of marathon running." (Foreword)

"In the novelist's profession...there is no winning or losing...What's crucial is whether your writing attains the standards you have set for yourself. Failure to reach that bar is not something you can easily explain away...In this sense, writing novels and running full marathons are very much alike. Basically a writer has a quiet, inner motivation, and doesn't seek validation in the outwardly visible." (Chapter 1)

"I'm struck by how...you really need to prioritize in life, figuring out in what order you should divide up your time and energy. If you don't get that sort of system set by a certain age, you'll lack focus and your life will be out of balance." (Chapter 2)

"Most of what I know about writing I have learned through running every day. These are practical, physical lessons. How much can I push myself? How much rest is appropriate - and how much is too much? How far can I take something and still keep it decent and consistent? When does it become narrow-minded and inflexible? How much should I be aware of the world outside, and how much should I focus on my inner world? To what extent should I be confident in my abilities, and when should I start doubting myself?" (Chapter 4)

"Exerting yourself to the fullest within your individual limits: that's the essence of running, and a metaphor for life - and for me, for writing as well." (Chapter 4)

-What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami

Rrroma

2009-04-12T05:54:00.001-07:00

I felt very spoilt when Juan Pablo gave me a trip to Rome for the Easter holidays as a birthday present this year. I had been in Catalonia for 7 months without leaving it except for a daytrip to France and a weekend in Madrid. Those 7 months had taken their toll on me and I was desperately in need of a break. I was very touched by the present, and thrilled by the prospect of going to a country and a city I had never been to before - and in excellent company.

I had certain expectations of Italy - delicious food and stereotypes of energetic, smiley, loud, possibly somewhat brash Italians, just to name a couple. As for Rome - I envisaged a polluted, chaotic city embellished with pickpockets and ancient ruins.
The morning we left for Rome, I was in extremely high spirits despite the early start. We had plenty of time to have a bit of breakfast at Girona airport before hitting the clouds and arriving in Italy a bit over an hour later.

The sun shone in Rome. I couldn't have been more delighted at the first Italian encounter that I witnessed - an ecstatic "Amore mio!" followed by hugs and kisses as an elderly woman came to pick up her husband from the bus stop outside the airport. To me the way it happened, the gestures, the facial expressions and the wife's perfect hair and designer bag were just as I thought those of an elderly Italian couple should have been. After the affectionate greetings, the wife dutifully let his husband take the front seat as she accompanied her chihuaua in the backseat of the car. Just as a dutiful wife should have.

We stayed in a stuck-in-the-seventies hotel near Termini, the main train station. It was so ridiculously tacky and overpriced that we couldn't help but laugh about it.

Getting around Rome wasn't as complicated as I thought. The metro system was a bit limited due to only two lines, but it did the trick for us tourists, anyway. One of my first rides on the metro was to the Vatican. I was a little bit sceptical about going there, afraid of being stuck in a crowd of fanatic pilgrims, but I decided I want to see what I had heard talked about ever since Mr. Embling's art class at the age of 8 - the Sistine Chapel. It was all a bit too much to take in, and thinking about how all the non-Italian works of art ended up in Rome made me shudder. But after a good two or three hours of wandering through the halls of the Vatican museum, reaching the Sistine Chapel was worth it, even with the ridiculous amount of tourists you had to elbow your way through.

What impressed me most about Rome was that, not having done my research or looked up photographs on the internet, I was blown away by the fact that around pretty much every corner of a Roman street there is some breathtaking Roman ruin in the midst of office buildings and clothes shops and ice-cream parlours (which, may I add, served amazing ice-cream flavours like limoncello and nocciola). I was also surprised by the tranquility of the city - you could easily find a quiet neighbourhood right in the middle of the city. After 2,5 years of Barcelonian racket, the Roman buzz and the stereotyped image I had of Italians arguing over nothing with the loudest of voices truly became a myth.

My intention was to write in more detail about Rome, but it has been a couple of months now since our trip...so this will have to suffice...*sigh*

...

2009-04-06T15:10:00.001-07:00

Maybe the biggest wrongdoing against yourself is expecting yourself to be someone that you're not and never will be or never should be.

Or simply expecting things from people. From yourself and from your loved ones.

I don't know where those expectations come from.

El Prado

2009-03-17T11:53:00.000-07:00

On my way to El Prado I passed a sea of homeless people slumbering in their cardboard coffins. Nothing I saw after that impacted me as much.

Notes of a Delirious Woman - 21 of February 2009

2009-03-17T11:35:00.000-07:00

Madrid.

Mental note: never go travelling alone while still recovering from tonsillitis.

Got to my incredulously luxurious hotel, had a shower, rested a little (very little) and decided to go and check out Saturday night in Sol.

Saw people dressed up as pirates, wheres waldos and other delightful creatures. Felt dizzy, failed to gobble down a hot dog and took the metro back to the hotel.

Disappointing.

Not disappointed, however, by the efficient metro system. The bigger the city, the narrower the trains.

Also not disappointed by people keeping the door open for the other person at the metro exit/entrance.

And most touched by the woman in the grocery store who would have chatted to me all evening about "breakfast biscuits" had I let her.

Ah, Madrid.

2009-03-15T09:06:00.000-07:00

A wind is ruffling the tawny pelt
Of Africa, Kikuyu, quick as flies,
Batten upon the bloodstreams of the veldt.
Corpses are scattered through a paradise.
Only the worm, colonel of carrion, cries:
"Waste no compassion on these separate dead!"
Statistics justify and scholars seize
The salients of colonial policy.
What is that to the white child hacked in bed?
To savages, expendable as Jews?
Threshed out by beaters, the long rushes break
In a white dust of ibises whose cries
Have wheeled since civilizations dawn
>From the parched river or beast-teeming plain.
The violence of beast on beast is read
As natural law, but upright man
Seeks his divinity by inflicting pain.
Delirious as these worried beasts, his wars
Dance to the tightened carcass of a drum,
While he calls courage still that native dread
Of the white peace contracted by the dead.

Again brutish necessity wipes its hands
Upon the napkin of a dirty cause, again
A waste of our compassion, as with Spain,
The gorilla wrestles with the superman.
I who am poisoned with the blood of both,
Where shall I turn, divided to the vein?
I who have cursed
The drunken officer of British rule, how choose
Between this Africa and the English tongue I love?
Betray them both, or give back what they give?
How can I face such slaughter and be cool?
How can I turn from Africa and live?

A Far Cry From Africa by Derek Walcott (1962)

Introducing...El Otro

2009-03-15T08:38:00.000-07:00

I hope to get working on a blog on ID and postcolonialisms and "the other", with emphasis on literary/"cultural" topics...Nothing posted on it yet but hopefully in a few months' time it'll be buzzing with good stuff.

www.elotroproject.blogspot.com

Doctor, doctor...

2009-03-15T08:28:00.000-07:00

Hernando led Schultes into the park where they stopped en route to the pensión to have their shoes shined by an old man who had set up his station beneath the shade of an enormous ficus tree. Just behind them the steeple o the San Francisco church rose above the red-tiled roofs of the city. Four stories high, it was as tall as any building in Bogotá.
"Orange peels?" the bootblack asked as Schultes placed his oxfords on the small wooden step.
"Excuse me?"
"Do you want me to use orange peels, Doctor?"
"For the leather," Hernando explained.
"Sure, why not?" Schultes said. "But how did you know I was a doctor?"
"In this country," the man said casually as he rubbed the fruit along the instep of the shoe, "every son of a bitch with a tie and a pair of bifocals is a doctor."
"I see." He turned to Hernando. "Ten years of training, and all I really needed was a pair of glasses and a proper suit coat."

From One River by Wade Davis (1996)

Suzanne

2009-01-25T06:02:00.000-08:00

Suzanne takes you down to her place near the river
You can hear the boats go by
You can spend the night beside her
And you know that she's half crazy
But that's why you want to be there
And she feeds you tea and oranges
That come all the way from China
And just when you mean to tell her
That you have no love to give her
Then she gets you on her wavelength
And she lets the river answer
That you've always been her lover
And you want to travel with her
And you want to travel blind
And you know that she will trust you
For you've touched her perfect body with your mind.

And Jesus was a sailor
When he walked upon the water
And he spent a long time watching
From his lonely wooden tower
And when he knew for certain
Only drowning men could see him
He said "All men will be sailors then
Until the sea shall free them"
But he himself was broken
Long before the sky would open
Forsaken, almost human
He sank beneath your wisdom like a stone
And you want to travel with him
And you want to travel blind
And you think maybe you'll trust him
For he's touched your perfect body with his mind.

Now Suzanne takes your hand
And she leads you to the river
She is wearing rags and feathers
From Salvation Army counters
And the sun pours down like honey
On our lady of the harbour
And she shows you where to look
Among the garbage and the flowers
There are heroes in the seaweed
There are children in the morning
They are leaning out for love
And they will lean that way forever
While Suzanne holds the mirror
And you want to travel with her
And you want to travel blind
And you know that you can trust her
For she's touched your perfect body with her mind.

Leonard Cohen

Very Good Thoughts On A Very Bad Day

2009-01-21T12:18:00.000-08:00

Stumbling on a cozy café you have always known existed but had never entered. A former lover a new-found friend. A candle-lit face. Looking into your loved one's smiling eyes, so close you have to squint. A silent house when you don't want to hear your own thoughts. An awe-inspiring thought creeping up on you.

2009

2009-01-01T01:39:00.000-08:00

The past was nothing to her; offered no lesson which she was willing to heed. The future was a mystery which she never attempted to penetrate. The present alone was significant...

Kate Chopin: The Awakening (1899)

2008-12-31T00:59:00.001-08:00

Diego Rivera: Espalda desnuda de una mujer (1926)

Tunteellinen Siili

2008-12-30T07:43:00.000-08:00

Oi, sanoi siili,
olen tunteellinen siili,
olen hyvä, kiltti, hellä.
Ja kelläpä, kellä
on vastaansanomista?

Se vain on surullista,
että piikkikuoren alla
siilin hellyys piili.

Oi, sanoi siili,
olen surullinen siili,
niin yksinäinen jotta!

Ja se on aivan totta:
Se yksinänsä eli
ja piikein piikitteli,
ja piikkikuoren alla
sitten itkeskeli.

-Kirsi Kunnas-

Reiki (霊気 or 靈氣)

2008-12-30T05:38:00.000-08:00

Instrucciones para llorar

2008-12-29T04:47:00.000-08:00

Instrucciones para llorar. Dejando de lado los motivos, atengámonos a la manera correcta de llorar, entendiendo por esto un llanto que no ingrese en el escándalo, ni que insulte a la sonrisa con su paralela y torpe semejanza. El llanto medio u ordinario consiste en una contracción general del rostro y un sonido espasmódico acompañado de lágrimas y mocos, estos últimos al final, pues el llanto se acaba en el momento en que uno se suena enérgicamente. Para llorar, dirija la imaginación hacia usted mismo, y si esto le resulta imposible por haber contraído el hábito de creer en el mundo exterior, piense en un pato cubierto de hormigas o en esos golfos del estrecho de Magallanes en los que no entra nadie, nunca. Llegado el llanto, se tapará con decoro el rostro usando ambas manos con la palma hacia adentro. Los niños llorarán con la manga del saco contra la cara, y de preferencia en un rincón del cuarto. Duración media del llanto, tres minutos.

Julio Cortázar - Historias de cronopios y famas

The Queen of the Forest

2008-12-29T04:29:00.000-08:00

Just to brighten up this blog a little...

2008-12-29T03:40:00.001-08:00

9.30 am.

I am Jonah, swallowed by the duvet, swimming in sweet slumber.

Buzz.

Hmmrgh...

Buzzz.

Hmmmmmrrgh...

Buzzzzzz.

I open my eyes.

I know I am expecting something.

Visitors? - No.

The plumber? - No. The plumbing works just fine.

A present.

UPS, DHL, Fedex, Nacex.

A delivery.

My Christmas present!

Buzzzzzzzz!

I'm up, skidding in my woolly socks, jumping and leaping and praising God.

Hello?

It's UPS.

I let Mr. UPS in. His footsteps are slight. He is in a hurry. He has been buzzing for too long. He will be cross with me for making him buzz for so long. Will he?

I don't have time to think. Mr. UPS is at my door with a package.

A little early.

He grins.

I have morning breath.

I am wearing my grey pyjamas and my hair is pointing in so many directions even a compass couldn't indicate them all.

I'm on holiday.

I grin back.

I sign. He asks me to confirm my name for the record. As if he'll know how to spell it...as if he'll even remember it when he gets back to his motorbike or whatever mode of transport UPS people use.

My present.

A book.

Yesss...

Look out 2009!

2008-12-29T01:41:00.001-08:00

Changes will take place on this blog...Changes for the better methinks. Watch this space.

From "Waiting for Godot" by Samuel Beckett

2008-12-28T12:13:00.000-08:00

We are all born mad. Some remain so.

A Night at the Opera - Le Nozze di Figaro, ossia la folle giornata - Liceu, Barcelona 22.11.2008

2008-11-23T06:49:00.000-08:00

www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OZCyp-LcGw

This Sunday´s Just Not The Same

2008-11-23T05:28:00.000-08:00

This Sunday's just not the same.

The shabby-looking man who runs the kiosque on the other side of the plaza from where I live has been ill for about a week now. He has scrawled a note informing his customers that he had "fever, the flu, any other illness you may want to add" and has left the kiosque locked up for more than 5 days now.

The man, whose name remains unknown to me, is (in)famous for having his kiosque - the only place in the neigbourhood where you can buy rollies - open as early as 7 in the morning until as late as 10 at night.

The special offer duvet that Juan Pablo and I bought as a result of 4 weeks' worth of saving up coupons from El País was picked up from that kiosque. I usually buy my Sunday paper from him and often end up sitting across the plaza from him on one of the benches that bathe in the sun. He has his own internet connection in the kiosque and watches Hollywood blockbusters from a plasma tv he has set up between porn magazines and cheap paperbacks. And every weekend without fail he blasts Dusty Springfield´s "Son of a Preacher Man" and his other favourite tunes from his hi-fi stereo, drowning the square in groove, much to the dismay of those having their afternoon siesta or salsa class in the neighbouring buildings.

But not this weekend. This Sunday, the kiosque is void of life. The Sunday sun has an eery shine.

Rattivasyneen mietteita iltaruoan jalkeen

2008-11-17T13:35:00.000-08:00

Loppujen lopuksi ei siita muuta elamassa tarvitse kuin riittavasti ruokaa, unta ja liikuntaa.

The Chosen One

2008-11-03T12:36:00.000-08:00

The fate of the world for the next 4 years will officially be decided tomorrow as Americans go (or not) to the polls. 4 years - if the Chosen One doesn´t make a big mess of it all and end it before his 4 years are up.

The prospect of good ol´ Johnny descending to the throne of the Empire of the United States of America doesn´t exactly thrill me. Nor am I convinced by the cult of Saint Barack or its worshippers, simply because, being a pessimist at heart, I don´t believe that the nature of politics can permit someone as seemingly promising as B.O to prevail for long...

Hearts

2008-10-29T13:04:00.001-07:00

I bought two hearts in a box - one for you, one for me. They may last a lifetime...or I may get greedy and eat the one that belongs to me before you even open yours.

Variations on the Word Love

2008-10-26T12:18:00.000-07:00

Variations on the Word Love

This is a word we use to plug
holes with. It's the right size for those warm
blanks in speech, for those red heart-
shaped vacancies on the page that look nothing
like real hearts. Add lace
and you can sell
it. We insert it also in the one empty
space on the printed form
that comes with no instructions. There are whole
magazines with not much in them
but the word love, you can
rub it all over your body and you
can cook with it too. How do we know
it isn't what goes on at the cool
debaucheries of slugs under damp
pieces of cardboard? As for the weed-
seedlings nosing their tough snouts up
among the lettuces, they shout it.
Love! Love! sing the soldiers, raising
their glittering knives in salute.

Then there's the two
of us. This word
is far too short for us, it has only
four letters, too sparse
to fill those deep bare
vacuums between the stars
that press on us with their deafness.
It's not love we don't wish
to fall into, but that fear.
this word is not enough but it will
have to do. It's a single
vowel in this metallic
silence, a mouth that says
O again and again in wonder
and pain, a breath, a finger
grip on a cliffside. You can
hold on or let go.

-Margaret Atwood

Maldita Resaca

2008-10-18T00:26:00.000-07:00

In a desperate attempt to fall asleep again, she counts the freckles dancing on his back. His skin smells like man and yesterday´s smoke, the beat of the previous night still thudding between his ears. She smells of him, her fingers of intoxicated cigarettes.

Every morning after the night before, almost without fail, she wakes up at 9 am and is unable to go back to sleep. She counts the number of drinks she consumed - not too many but, as usual, enough to keep her from having her much looked forward to Saturday morning lie-in.

She insists on staying next to him under the covers for what seems like hours, then gives up and goes out onto their little balcony to up to fill her lungs with the torrential rain that has not stopped since destroying their collection of herbs the previous afternoon.

The neighbourhood wakes up and stretches its limbs. Construction workers start their sporadic, lazy drilling. Unhappy little people are dragged by their grouchy mothers to look for unhappy little boots for the rainy season. The trees want to lie down and curl into a ball, drenched and tired by the continuous downpour of rain.

He wakes up and sees her on the balcony, a blurry naked figure hunched over a forest of droopy pot plants.

"Good morning," he says.

1492 and everything after

2008-09-21T06:48:00.000-07:00

A confused, chaotic city, fighting back the flood of unwelcome immigrants, embracing its ugly-beautiful modernist style and its newly-found status of European tourist mecca, Barcelona reeks of history.

The Mediterranean has washed onto its Catalan shore a number of freakish figures of importance as far as "Western" history written by men is concerned. One of these figures, in all his ambiguity, depicts the hodgepodge character of Barcelona rather accurately.

Cristóbal Colón, of debatable origin, has a statue erected at the end of one of the most touristy streets in the celebrated, foul-smelling capital of Catalonia. Tourists swarm around him, capturing his image to add to their collection of uninteresting musts and soon forgotten souvenirs.

Why is he there in the middle of Barcelona, circled by cars, pickpockets and fat people with cameras?

His anglicised self, Christopher Columbus, "sailed the ocean blue" in 1492 and, according to the legend, "discovered" what is now known by some as "America". He became something of a celebrity and was received by the royals in Barcelona. Hundreds of years later, his name butchered and translated into numerous languages that claim him as their own, he remains at the top of the list of the obligatory colonisers whose names and life stories elementary school children have to memorise. That may be reason enough to be standing on top of a pole for everyone to see.

But between his travels, how did Colón feel being in Barcelona, a famous stranger walking around the piss-infected streets in his purple robes and heavy hat? Faded by the Atlantic winds, did he have the strength to go and climb up the steps of the royal court to greet the King and Queen? Did he sneak out to fuck the prostitutes in the shadows of El Raval, just to get a breath of fresh air from the stuffy alleys within the city walls? Did he drink fermented sugarcane juice from his own little bottle in a bar with an Arabic name? Did he, bleary from his voyage, want to just curl up into a ball and drown himself in the caresses of the rum-coloured woman he had left behind?

The tourists won´t leave him alone. He remains there on top of the pillar, a lonely creature longing to escape the circus, his stoney eyes looking across the waves, his accusing finger pointing at the sea.

...

2008-09-20T15:42:00.000-07:00

I have to stop being the observer.

Maa, jota ei ole (Edith Södergran)

2008-06-17T13:14:00.000-07:00

Ikävöin maahan jota ei ole,
sillä kaikkea mikä on olen väsynyt himoamaan.
Kuu kertoo minulle hopeaisin kirjaimin
maasta jota ei ole.

Maasta, jossa kaikki toiveemme täyttyvät ihmeellisesti,
maasta, jossa kaikki kahleemme kirvoittuvat,
maasta, jossa vilvoitamme raadeltuja otsiamme
kuun kasteessa.

Elämäni oli kuuma harha.
Mutta yhden olen löytänyt
ja yhden olen totisesti voittanut -
tien maahan jota ei ole.

Maassa jota ei ole
kulkee rakastettuni, otsallansa sädehtivä kruunu.

Ken on rakastettuni? Yö on pimeä
ja tähdet vapisevat vastaukseksi.

Ken on rakastettuni? Mikä hänen nimensä?
Taivaat kaartuvat korkeammiksi,
ja ihmislapsi vajoaa äärettömiin usviin
vastausta tietämättä.

Mutta ihmislapsi ei ole mitään muuta kuin varmuus.
Ja se kohottaa kätensä kaikkia taivaita korkeammalle.
Ja vastaus tulee: Minä olen se, jota rakastat
ja aina olet rakastava.

Paiva 36 (keskiyo)

2008-06-16T14:53:00.000-07:00

Kuinka sita jaksaa odottaa toista? Paivat kompuroivat jalat kahleissa. Tunnit takertuvat kurkkuun. Palaathan tanne, palaathan?

The Fruit Shop Incident

2008-05-31T23:11:00.000-07:00

On my way home from work I stop by to buy some fruit and vegetables just a couple of streets from where I live. A spacious but poorly lit shop, there are no customers as I meander through the tables of fruit laid out beautifully by the entrance.

"The plastic bags are just there on your left!" a voice shouts out from the back before I even get a chance to study the selection available. Slightly perturbed by the disturbance of my not-yet-started fruit-gazing, I nod with a smile and, as though to reassure the voice that I am grateful for the tip.

The voice emerges from the back, a 19-year-old boy pacing around the shop. He is about to strike up a conversation, but much to my relief, a Senegalese man enters and asks for bananas.

"The Spanish like bananas from the Canary Islands," the boy declares. The Senegalese man brushes away his unruly dreadlocks, unfazed by the bold comment.
"I don´t care whether they´re Spanish or Catalan or whatever," the man retorts, reaching for the other type of bananas.
"No, I don´t care either," responds the boy. "But the Spanish always buy the ones from the Canary Islands. I don´t know why. The Spanish always buy them." He belts out a forced laugh that is left to resound in the awkward silence.
"Let me get these," the Senegalese man says firmly and hands over the dangling fruit to the boy, who eagerly races to weigh them.

I decide to add a few cherries to my basket. The boy thanks his previous customer and then walks directly to me. "Are you from here?" he asks, staring shamelessly at me from the other side of the sea of cherries.
"No, I´m from Finland."
"Fin...where?"
"Finland. From Northern Europe."
"Finland. Yeah coz you don´t look like you´re from here."
I give him a weak smile and look intently at the cherries in the hope that the boy will leave me alone. But he is pacing around the cherries, waiting for me to continue the conversation.

He has an innocent face with a crooked nose, a matching crooked smile and eyes just a little too close to each other.

"What about you? Where are you from?" I don´t know what possessed me to ask him.
"Ecuador."
"Have you been in Barcelona for long?" It must be some kind of maternal instinct in me that blurts out the question.
"6 months."
Again, the forced, foolish laugh.
"Do you like it here?"
"I don´t care. I don´t want problems."
"Do you miss Ecuador?"
"Yes, very much." He looks away but the smile doesn´t leave his face.
"Is this shop run by your family?" I suddenly find myself in the middle of an interview.
"Yes. My parents came here four years ago. I miss my friends in Ecuador. How long have you been here for?"
"Almost two years," I say.
"Almost two years," he repeats.
"Yes."

I move on to the apples, the pears. I reach for some lettuce. The boy keeps pacing around the shop. I approach the counter and pull out my money.
"How is it?" the boy asks as he positions himself behind the counter and unloads my basket.
"I´m sorry?"
"How is it?"
"I don´t think I understand," I reply, slightly taken aback.
"What do you mean you don´t understand?" he laughs.
"I don´t understand your question. What do you mean?"
"How do you like it here?"
"Oh."
"How do you like it here?" he repeats.
"I like it. But I´m not from here. I will always be a foreigner here."
"What´s so bad about being a foreigner? - Do you prefer the bananas from the Canary Islands? Spanish people always go for the ones from the Canary Islands."
"Because of the name?"
"I don´t know. They always go for them. I don´t know the difference between the ones from the Canary Islands and the other ones. They´re all the same to me. Do you want some parsley?"
"No, thank you," I reply, getting slightly impatient by the speed at which the boy is weighing my purchases.
"Are you married or single?"
"That´s a bit of a direct question, don´t you think?" I laugh. My comment is ignored.
"Are you married or single?"
"I have a boyfriend."
"Oh, you have a boyfriend. Is he from where you are?"
"No, he´s Colombian. He´s your neighbour - doesn´t Ecuador share a border with Colombia?"
"We share a border with Peru. Peru is our neighbour."
"But don´t you share a border with Colombia?"
"Yeah, but Peru is our neighbour."

The boy finally weighs the bananas.
"So are you going to get married in Colombia?"
"Who knows. Maybe."
He laughs again, this time clearly amused by the thought.
"You´re going to get married in Colombia."
"Hmm."
"You´re going to get married in Colombia."
"And the cherries?" I point at the bag of pink that has been left on the counter.
"Oh, I forgot," he laughs and weighs them. I pay him.

The Senegalese man walks in.
"I had to get some ciggies," he says to the boy as he walks to the counter where I am putting my money away, ready to leave the shop. "Here´s the change I owe you."
The boy shares a foolish laugh with the Senegalese man. I shrink, walk away.

The conversation turns to bananas again.

And some more Doris...

2008-05-11T10:33:00.000-07:00

'What use are men?' asks Lessing
Doris Lessing
Men are a 'haphazard species' says Doris Lessing

Veteran author Doris Lessing asked her Hay festival audience what use they thought men were - in an ever so slightly tongue-in-cheek way.

Lessing's latest work The Cleft is a sci-fi fiction which imagines what happens to a mythical world of only women, when men are introduced.

In her eyes men had been introduced to "pep up" a slothful, lazy world of women," said the 87-year-old.

"This is what I think men were for. The Y chromosome.. to pep up everything".

She said men were a "haphazard species" who always have to be looked after and died "much too easy".

But she admitted she would not want to live in an all-female world.

The novelist and essayist, on the final weekend of the book town's 20th festival, spoke of how her latest work had attracted criticism because of its inclusion of the mutilation of baby boys.

But she said it contained much nastier scenes - including a gang rape of a girl who escaped from her all-female world.

We like to think we are motherly and kind and that we are not going to go to war, but it's not true, is it?
Doris Lessing

And she asked why that should be?

"Obviously because its a female's lot to be raped," she said, and then referred meaningfully to some of the current strife in Zimbabwe - she was brought up in Rhodesia.

"Believe me, if you're a woman wandering carelessly in Darfur... rape is the least of it."

But asked by a member of the audience if it was men who waged war, she replied: "I have not noticed that women, when they get to be prime ministers are particularly peaceful."

On the contrary she said some of the worst crimes had been committed by women.

She said: "We like to think we are motherly and kind and that we are not going to go to war, but it's not true, is it?"

'Something abrasive'

Lessing described how her latest writing had been partly "inspired" by her own experience of giving birth at 19 and the woman in the next bed, already a mother of two girls, harshly rejecting the son she had just had.

She said the woman's reaction to her new-born was "primitive " and "shocking" and added that often these supressed ideas resurfaced to colour her writing when "without you even knowing you're doing it".

Lessing lamented the lack of modern science fiction writing and spoke of her own love of writing for the sheer surprise of what happens next.

She said she was often surprised by criticical reaction to her writing - the early reviews to her 1962 masterpiece The Golden Notebook were "horrible", she said.

Lessing said "There's something abrasive in me because I have often made people very cross".

But she said as a writer it was important not to care what other people think and that the profession must honour that.

"We are free... here I can say what I think. We are lucky, privileged, so why not make use of it?"

(BBC News 2 June 2007)

Doris Lessing

2008-05-11T10:29:00.000-07:00

Speaking about her writing, she said: "It has stopped, I don't have any energy any more.

"This is why I keep telling anyone younger than me, don't imagine you'll have it forever.

"Use it while you've got it because it'll go, it's sliding away like water down a plughole."

(BBC News 11.05.2008)

Vapaapaivan huokauksia

2008-05-09T06:17:00.000-07:00

"La Nena".Tuudittaudun kaneliteen tuoksuun ja olen kirjoittavinani jotain maailmaaparantavaa.

Viereisen poydan tytolla on suomalaiset silmat ja karsinyt tukka.

Joskus tunnen oloni niin yksinaiseksi, etta etsin tuutuja kasvoja ihmisjoukosta...luulen loytaneeni lapsuudenystavan, kohdanneeni kaverin kadunvarrelta.

Kahvilassa soi No Woman No Cry laiskana jazzversiona. Haarukkani taistelee omenapiirakkaa vastaan, vaantaa kunnes leivos murtuu ja antautuu.

La biblioteca - Vila de Gracia. Kirjasto muistuttaa opiskeluajoista. Se on kolkko ja kirjahyllyjen vaatimattomat kokoelmat tuottavat pettymyksen, mutta siita huokuu 70-luvun vasynyt charmi.

What's new, Hillary?

2008-04-06T13:36:00.000-07:00

e·man·ci·pate

[i-man-suh-peyt]

–verb (used with object), -pat·ed, -pat·ing.

1.	to free from restraint, influence, or the like.

2.	to free (a slave) from bondage.

3.	Roman and Civil Law. to terminate paternal control over. (source: www.dictionary.com)

In his column in El País 22.03.2008, Carlos Fuentes comments on the battle of the minorities within this year´s race to govern in a modest white shack on a hill in Washington DC, the United States of America.

According to Fuentes, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, a symbol of the emancipation of women, and the hope for the emancipation of the blacks respectively, stand neck-to-neck in the final Democrat spurt to stand up to yet another competitor, the Republican John McCain. More backstabbing and spite has gone into the Democrats' vicious dogfight against each other than against the Republican camp. Interestingly, the Republican candidates went through their scuffle in relative peace and harmony, diplomatically dropping out one by one like rotten fruit, until only one shrivelled apple was left dangling from the Republican tree of The Knowledge of Good and Evil. That apple could buy the Republicans four more years of presidency.

But should a Democrat win the rigorous battle, which will see "emancipation" first - the female population or the black population? Is it Hillary's time to flourish or will it be Obama's moment of glory?

(Please note that, like all writers and journalists and political experts, I too am on first-name terms with the female candidate but I choose to use the surname of all the male candidates. "Barack who? John who?")

What is this fancy buzzword "emancipation" that resounds in the chambers of the political heart of the United States? Like most political themes, it is definitely not a new concept: Western European historians talk about women's emancipation in reference to women's suffrage in the late 1800s; the British writer Mary Wollstonecraft was portrayed as one of the first defenders of the emancipation of women, with her no-nonsense "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman" that was published in 1792 in which she claimed that women were not inferior to men but simply seemed to be because of their lack of education.

Take a look at Pakistan, a Muslim country that had its first female head of state in the 1980s. What kind of liberty has Pakistan allowed women since then, or as a result of the brief reign of Benazir Bhutto? Very little, if any. Where was emancipation in Benazir? (Again, please note Benazir, not Bhutto.)

How, then, would Hillary's victory emancipate women? America the Free will continue to be the haven of underpaid immigrant women, unpaid women on maternity leave, brusied and beaten pop princesses and insecure maidens with facelifts and boob jobs. No shortsighted, Yale-educated 60-something-year old woman with a bad haircut will change that.

The female emancipation that refers to Hillary´s possible presidential victory is nothing more than yet another male consturct of the female. How many times do women have to be emancipated in Western male dialogue?

2008-02-09T12:01:00.000-08:00

I recently finished reading "The Kite Runner" by Kholed Hosseini. A novel set in Afghanistan, it starts out promising, but ends up somewhat predictable and with little depth. The story is a tragic one, perfect material for a film with its clear storyline of violence, love, friendship, history and mistaken identities. A book that brought Pakistan back to my dreams, I wouldn´t think twice about recommending it, but at the same time it failed to satisfy me in the literary sense.

One thing that disturbed me about the novel, was the use of Dari quotes in the novel. For quite some time now, I have questioned the use of a language other than that of the original work of fiction. To me it seems superfluous and pretentious to drop in the "other" language and then immediately proceed to translate it. Above all, the fact that the "other" language is always written in italics infuriates me. The English language is very rarely seen written in italics.

Why the italics? Why is English never the "other"?

Why am I writing this in English?

Why English?

M Fontana

2008-01-05T02:22:00.000-08:00

What first caught my attention about her was the incongruency of her dishevelled hair and shabby clothes with a bright pink designer handbag that she was clutching as though hanging on for dear life. She couldn't have been over forty but there was an almost eery, ghostlike element to her as though she had died and come back to life unwillingly.

A tired, slightly crazed look in her eyes, she grinned at the passengers on the other side of the aisle. "Yo tambien tengo hijas," she said to the two middle-aged women to whose conversation she had trespassed. She also had daughters, like the ones the ladies were talking about: daughters with active social lives, daughters with good-looking, successful boyfriends, daughters with good jobs and manicured hands. Only she hadn't seen them for a while. But she had them all the same, and she wanted the women to know.

The next stop was Fontana. The woman got up, said something unintelligeable to the rest of us passengers, and kept grinning, holding tight to her designer bag and trying to keep her balance on the braking metro. A few stifled, pitiful laughs circulated around the carriage.

She got off in Fontana, a pair of skinny legs an extension of the scrawny body she was hiding under her big winter coat. I saw her push the Help button at the information point in a frail attempt to get some conversation before disappearing into the mass of commuters.

Another stifled chuckle in the carriage.

Journey of the Magi

2008-01-01T11:22:00.000-08:00

'A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.'
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky.
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place, it was (you may say) satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different, this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

T.S. Eliot (1927)

It has been a while since I have tried to make sense of poetry, and I don't dare to expect anything from myself after nearly 4 years' absence from English Literature studies. Although I have no intention of attempting to write an intricate study of the poem above, delving into Eliot's work still feels like jumping into the deep end (and so it should always be) .

It may be what Eliot himself is doing in his poem: contemplating a leap into the unknown, deliberating a difficult, apparently senseless choice made by one of the wise men, possibly reflecting on his own journey from agnosticism to Christianity the same year. "The very dead of winter" that the wise man speaks of in the poem resounds a state all too familiar to us: our lives not going the way we plan, our means of moving towards our goal "refractory".

"Finding the place...satisfactory", the speaker is clearly enriched by his arduous travels, but, interestingly, the "silken girls bringing sherbet" and other comforts that he longed for on his journey no longer seem to be of importance:

We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.

The journey has changed his attitude, his way of thinking, his calling. "Our places" are now the abode of "an alien people". The speaker does not identify himself with "these Kingdoms" anymore. In fact, returning home, he is the one who is estranged, "an alien" in his own land. His painfully beautiful journey embellished with affliction and crowned with an inexplicable "hard and bitter agony" leaves the wise man all the more thirsty for meaning in his life.

Rather than seeing the poem merely as an analogy of Eliot's conversion, the reader is left with a lingering feeling, another feeling of loss and an absence of identity. The speaker is a foreigner as he wanders through "the cities hostile and towns unfriendly", and the end of the poem sees him a foreigner even at home. He feels an acute discomfort, but he cannot pinpoint it. He "should be glad of another death", perhaps in order to feel like he is heading towards a goal again and to achieve a sense of meaning. "The very dead of winter" made the wise man doubt and feel uneasy, "with the voices...saying/That this was all folly", making him uncomfortably human. Yet in his doubts and uneasiness he feels more comfortable than when he is back in his "summer palaces on slopes".

The Journey of the Magi does not bring closure. It vexes its reader and raises more questions: Why "another death"? Why is returning home perhaps even more uncomfortable than constantly moving towards something that, albeit "folly", gives you some kind of direction in life?

Khuda-hafiz, Benazir

2007-12-28T00:00:00.000-08:00

There is a photograph of me taken in the summer of 1990, my first full summer in Pakistan. I'm 9, a blonde, skin-and-bones girl, standing erect with a big smile, my two big front teeth gleaming. I'm wearing my mother's red-framed sunglasses and a pink dupatta wrapped around my head. I'm dressed up as Benazir Bhutto, Pakistan's prime minister at the time.

Benazir Bhutto became the first female prime minister of a Muslim country in 1988, a year before my family moved to Pakistan. She seemed a breath of fresh air in the political spheres of Pakistan, if only for being a woman, and quite charismatic at that. She was prime minister from 1988 to 1990 and again from 1993 to 1996, and was going to lead her Pakistan People's Party in the elections of January 2008. She spent years in prison in solitary confinement and in exile. The footage of her stepping down from the airplane to her homecountry after a 9-year absence shows a more human side to her as she wipes tears from her face, overcome by emotion.

When the news announced her death yesterday, it wasn't so much a feeling of disbelief and shock that overpowered me but a sick feeling in my stomach of yet another disappointment, another violent act to continue the cancerous legacy of Pakistani politics. "The unrest", an overused expression in the English-speaking media that I have grown to strongly dislike, has continued to grow in that weary artificial nation since the day a group of Oxford-educated gentlemen - who had never set foot in their colonial relic - forced a border halfway down the Indian subcontinent and created The Land of the Pure.

Ah, Pakistan. You break your people's hearts. What will become of you?

Insomnia

2007-12-27T16:23:00.000-08:00

Cheese. Damned cheese. It's what I have chosen to take the blame for my insomnia. Clearly my post-Christmas evening binges are what have caused my sleeplessness tonight.
That, or possibly the end of the year that is looming. Things left undone, unsaid. Looking back at the year gone by, gazing at the year ahead.
Possibly.
Nah.
A better scapegoat - in fact, not a scapegoat but the real thing:
Aloysius Lilius. Damned Aloysius Lilius. The man who came up with the Gregorian Calendar in 1582. If it weren't for him, these last few days that wind down the year, the ones I am living through as I write, would merely be like any other day...
Or quite possibly, we would come across these last few days within another rigid X-number-of- days-in-a-year system.
Why are we slaves to these numerical systems? We love our traditions and rules yet they suffocate us with their unrelenting dictation of norms and behaviour.
And why does this Gregorian system, on approaching day 360-something, make me reflect on my life, feel guilty, thankful, powerless, scared, excited...?
It's too late at night. My insomnia may be fading after all.
Just blame the cheese.

Running in Parc Guell on a September evening

2007-09-26T13:40:00.000-07:00

My head was spinning from staring at the computer screen all day, hunched up at my desk. I hadn't been for a run in about two weeks, and although I had been out for a small trek in the hills a few days earlier, I obviously hadn't got the need to do exercise out of my system. I overcame the temptation to stay at home sprawled on my bed and set out to Parc Guell. After a good 15-minute walk uphill from Gracia, I started running. The steep start that I usually conquered with clenched teeth didn't seem so bad that day, and I was (what at least felt like) speeding past rambling tourists and the occasional jogger with surprising ease. I ran and ran until it felt like it was the only thing I could do, there was no option, there were no brakes, only accelaration, accelaration, accelaration...I ran up to the viewpoint at the top of the park, passing the 90-something-year-old man I had once met with Leandro (I greeted him with a rushed "buenas tardes"), explored a new path that eventually led me to a dead end, kept running, running, running...and when I finally stopped running, going downhill, the pink clouds grinning at me from above La Sagrada Familia...the whole city was spinning, the clouds were all too pink, the Gaudian swirls too organic and innate to the landscape, the air too fresh to belong to the city...I couldn't breathe but I was breathing. I had to check my heart was still beating...It was, but I couldn't hear it. My chest felt like after I had run a race, pushed myself, done my best and won. My feet took me down the hill, down towards Gracia, guiding me home. It's a good thing they did because I was in such a state of euphoria that I wouldn't have known where to go. And I got home and my head was still spinning...

2007-09-09T04:47:00.000-07:00

After several months' absence I'm back again...

Museo de Arte Precolombino de Barcelona

2007-03-20T12:37:00.000-07:00

On Saturday morning I decided to culture myself a little. Barcelona is a good place to do that, but I must confess I haven´t been making the most of the museums and galleries as much as I should have by now.
I went to the Museo Barbier-Mueller de Arte Precolombino de Barcelona, a museum of Pre-Colombian art. It´s a small museum in Born, a lovely, old, smelly, touristy part of the old city, across the alley from the Picasso museum, one of the most visited museums in Barcelona. Needless to say, the queue to see Picasso´s art was neverending; in fact, it was standing in that queue at 9 am in early January that I noticed the smaller museum next door with no queue whatsoever and decided that I should go there sometime.
I elbowed my way down the piss-smelling Calle Montcada, through the crowds of tourists waiting to see Picasso´s works, past the busker who was there in January as well, and past the Pakistani man with his 1 euro scarfs displayed elegantly on the ground and finally into the Museum of Pre-Colombian art, only to be greeted by a sour face that sold me my 3 euro-entrance. For a moment I wondered if she could be the reason the museum seemed so quiet, but then thought maybe she was just having a bad morning.
The next thing I was encountered with was a glass door to a room with a few statues, and before seeing the steps leading up to the main part of the museum, the thought that maybe the museum consisted of only those few exhibits crossed my mind. As well as noticing the stairs, I also realised that in my eagerness to go through the glass doors, I had walked right past an enormous sculpture of a man´s head. It was quite impressive, and gave me a little fright. Feeling a little sheepish, I decided to study the exhibition upstairs with the utmost care.
And I did. It was just me and the pottery. Me and the Costa Rican clay lantern. Me and the Mexican water jug in the bizarre and very detailed figure of a man and a woman having sex. It was just me and Pre-Colombian art in a mysteriosly lit room. It was great.
I left feeling like I had been on a first date, or at an important, secret meeting. Nobody had shared my encounter with the pots and grinding stones and statues with me. They had been there just for me and for me only. I even hurried my visit a little should anyone unexpectedly come in and spoil it. But nobody came. Nobody. I wondered if the sour faced woman at the ticket sales would notice and get worried if I stayed there for more than an hour.
I don´t know how long I stayed in the museum. It couldn´t have been more than half an hour. When I went past the ticket office, I thanked the sour face that had sold me the ticket. She glared at me, with the same cara de culo as before.
What a great start to the day.

4 years

2007-03-19T12:41:00.000-07:00

Another landmark in time. It´s been 4 years since the Iraq war started. I was in California then. I remember dressing in black that day as a protest. Didn´t do much good. Neither did the protest I had gone to two months earlier in San Francisco. But at least we protested. And we still do, 4 years on.
4 years is a long time.

Important dates and learning experiences

2007-03-11T11:51:00.000-07:00

It´s been three years today since 11-M, the bomb attacks on the commuter trains in Madrid. It was all over the news today, obviously. They´ve also put up a monument para no olvidar. I probably would have forgotten all about it had I not bought the Sunday paper. But I do remember seeing it all over the news when it happened. I was still in Scotland and at that point toying with the possibility of going to Spain.
It was also International Women´s Day on Thursday. I completely forgot about it until the evening when my friend Katja reminded me.
Another less significant day on the grand scale of things was on Saturday - Barcelona and Real Madrid played in Camp Nou here in Barcelona. The last time they played was in the autumn sometime, and I went to see it at a little bar near Arc de Triomf with Leandro and Federico. This time Leandro, Valeria and I watched it on Leandro´s TV. 3-3. I´ve noticed myself becoming less of a Barcelona supporter living here. If you read the papers you´d think Barça and Madrid were the only two football teams in Spain. When I was still in school, I used to watch the Champions League with Kata and support both Barça and Madrid - the unthinkable, ignorant as I was. Now if I had to choose a team, I´d go for Villareal. Let´s face it - they have the best uniform. And they have some nice-looking players. If Raisa ever reads this she´ll roll her eyes and say that there´s more to football than the men. And she´s right. There´s the game. And the money. And the politics. And the money. And...did I mention money? Still, I enjoy watching a good game of football. In December I was lucky enough to get tickets to see Barça play. It was nice, and our seats were quite good. But the passion that I´d expected to feel and the chanting and singing crowds were almost non-existent. Silly me - we weren´t in England. Or in a Barça-Real Madrid game. Is that what it takes to heat up the crowds - an ancient rivalry? Of course there is the fact that Franco was a Real Madrid "supporter" while doing all sorts of horrible things to the Catalans. And the two biggest cities-rivalry is evident just about everywhere in the world.
I have been trying to educate myself in more than just Spanish football. I´ve been in Barcelona for a bit over six months now and it hasn´t been the easiest six months of my life. I don´t know why I thought it would be easier. After all, I´d lived in Spain before. Something that has helped me articulate my confusion and clarify a few things, as well as give me a better understanding of the history and culture of Spain is a book called The Ghosts of Spain: Travels Through a Country´s Hidden Past. It´s a book by a British journalist, Giles Tremlett, who has lived in Spain a good wee while. I´m usually a bit sceptical when it comes to books like that, "history made accessible and somewhat entertaining with personal anecdotes". I don´t know why. This book, though, I´ve enjoyed.
Maybe little by little I´m accepting some of the more infuriating things about Barcelona (and Catalonia, Spain, whatever suits your idea of being politically correct). There are a lot of things I like about Barcelona. The weather. The coffee and croissant you can get for under 2 euros. Reading El País outside (although I confess I´m not always very patient with myself when reading the paper in Spanish). There are various lovely, interesting parts in the city. There are lots of little boutiques for the times you´re feeling rich. The "Chinese shops" that sell everything are open till late. Actually, a lot of things are...but the Chinese shops have a special something. There are a great deal of other things that I appreciate about the city. But the things that drive me mad are people pushing, not queuing, shouting...maybe living in quieter places for too long has made me forget that it´s actually not a crime to sit next to a stranger at the metro stop when there´s plenty of room on the bench, but I´m still not used to it. Still, there are things that I´m learning to accept and appreciate little by little. And I quite like Julio Iglesias now, so that´s definitely something!
Back to learning - a couple of weeks ago Leandro and I had the opportunity to delve into European history when we visited Berlin. Well, we didn´t quite delve, but it was another learning experience even during the brief 4 days we spent there. The city has so much history it´s overwhelming. The Wall, The Holocaust Memorial...On a lighter note, though, another overwhelming fact was the tranquility of the city. After Barcelona, Berlin felt almost eery with it peaceful streets. It was refreshing. The sovietic feel of East Berlin still lingered, and I would have liked to have seen even more. Maybe I´ll go there again one day, but in the summer, as it´s bound to be even more interesting then.

Other useful constructions

2007-01-24T04:54:00.000-08:00

In my dream last night a man left a black briefcase in the middle of the metro I was in. I knew it had a bomb in it, the way you know in dreams. The briefcase was right next to me. I started to panic. The dream ended. This morning I thought back to my dream and decided I had probably been too absorbed in either the news or a book I´ve been reading for who knows how long, Year 905 by Noam Chomsky. In it he talks about "International terrorists, Hispanic narcotraffickers...crazed Arabs and other useful constructions" that are used in the media and by various governments to control "Americans" or other "Westerners". And it just made me wonder how often people actually start to panic when they see the "crazed Arab" with a big bag on public transport...? In a city like Barcelona, which is full of people from various ethnic and religious backgrounds, or in London, do people immediately think of the "construction" shown in the media...? Because if they do...it´s a hard life.
And what "construction" am I?
I don´t think I actually quite said what I wanted to say, at least not in the way I intended. But oh well.

On death

2007-01-23T10:21:00.000-08:00

It's been a very windy day. Kind of a relief, after a scorching 18 C last week - and this is mid-January...
2006 ended on a sad note. The mother of a dear friend of mine died in an accident and that made me think about death more than usual. And then Saddam Hussein's execution and all the rest on top of that. I think about death often, I always have. Not necessarily in an obsessed, morbid way, although no doubt there´s a little of that too in there somewhere. I just wonder about it, and probably some of the religious/spiritual influences I had as a child have contributed to my obsession/fascination/interest.
Someone very dear to me once gave me his theory on what happens to us when we die. I wish I could quote him as articulately as he put it but basically it was all about becoming part of the cosmos again, part of the earth, part of the air that we breathe...so nothing that new as a theory, but at that moment it just made sense and has done ever since. It´s a comforting thought, not going anywhere too far...being part of the lives of your loved ones.

Prediction

2006-12-27T06:15:00.000-08:00

2007 is creeping up on us in a few days. It will be a year of changes and big decisions in my life, if I'm any good at predicting. Saa nahda...