An afterthought on 12.6.2010

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?!

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

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.

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

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Discovering Mario Benedetti

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

Despedida - Celso Machado

Doctor, doctor...

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)

Diego Rivera: Espalda desnuda de una mujer (1926)

Instrucciones para llorar

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 Fruit Shop Incident

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.

Museo de Arte Precolombino de Barcelona

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.