tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-92220210576825257362024-03-21T06:08:18.487-07:00A Heart of ArkenstonePop Culture and Anecdotal EvidenceUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger173125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9222021057682525736.post-87176445608517361832014-12-25T11:23:00.001-08:002014-12-25T11:23:16.961-08:00The Bluestone Theory<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;">So I found my sweaters. All stacked neatly in the old futon covered by an egg shell that I slept on for a month when I left Student Services and 20th Street.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;">Joe, my old roommate (along with Jill, Jewel, Jal and June), notified me that he believed a stray Havaiana and a Norelco charger were left in a pile at my old apartment. He was right and I had been confused about those missing items because I hadn't shaved since I moved, hahaha.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;">I finally dropped by the apartment to hang with Joe, we rambled about our lives before we went into my old room. I grabbed my belongings and he asked if, opening the futon, whether these Trader Joe's and Census 2010 bags </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;">Full of illegible notebooks were mine. "Oh yeah!" I said in a mix of excitement and shame. I collected them, slinging them all on my shoulders and he asked, "hey, and this sweater, is it yours?"</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;">"What sweater?"</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;">"Actually, all of these sweaters," pulling out three stacks.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;">"Oh, my god." I laughed. I laughed and cursed and danced. I hadn't lost anything, I simply shoved a quarter of my belongings into a futon and walked away.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;">It was joyous. We drank a beer and ate Alligator pizza to celebrate.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;" /><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 13.3333339691162px;">My parents, Saints that they are, have been sending me sweaters in the mail and handed me five more when I went home for Thanksgiving. I was thankful (I'm wearing the cerulean one now!), but these old sweaters are gifts, memories, and had once defined me, like my ironic t-shirts in middle school, or </span><span style="font-size: 13px;">bandanas</span><span style="font-size: 13.3333339691162px;"> and jokey sweatshirts in high school. I had recovered some pieces of myself.</span></span></span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;" /><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 13.3333339691162px;">(And I think I'm not materialistic!)</span></span><br /><br /><span style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 13.3333339691162px;">Today, I'm overwhelmed with sweaters and suit jackets and loans and </span><span style="font-size: 13px;">transcriptions</span><span style="font-size: 13.3333339691162px;">. </span></span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;">****</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;">Taylor had a percussion teacher in high school named Joel Bluestone. Taylor always had such great things to say about Joel, and I was always happy to hear them, and not just because of his great name. I actually saw Joel play once at POP PDX and his band was fascinating and groovy. He was a cool guy but when Taylor left Oregon, he did so gladly, with need of a new perspective in life and in percussion. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Taylor moved back to go to PSU a couple years after and</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;">I asked him who he would take for lessons, and he said "Joel, probably."</span><br />
<br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;">"But you left. You went beyond his lessons, I thought."</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;">~ "No, I left because I needed a different perspective to grow. He still has more to teach, of course."</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;">And it made sense, eventually. Joel wasn't a teacher just for his youth, but a skilled, open teacher with much to offer. It was easier to see what else he offered after he left and experienced other perspectives.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;">I'm thinking about that a lot, lately. I'm thinking about that with a lot of things. </span><br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9222021057682525736.post-345337815892728472014-12-11T20:42:00.001-08:002014-12-12T06:53:40.885-08:00Eric Garner Protest - December 3rd, 2014<span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;">A block away from my office is Times Square and when I read the cop who choked and killed Eric Garner had not been indicted in Staten Island and that a protest would be gearing up in Staten Island. I went to the protest, sort of. I more so gawked and the protest and steeled myself against some pretty heavy emotions. It was a very jarring experience. I've been part of some protests before, many of them when I was a kid, but the emotions were so raw from this case, and so personal for so many New Yorkers, that there was an odd flurry of emotion in the air.<br /><br />It's a week and change after the protest, but I wanted to share what my (mostly) unedited thoughts were at that moment, and in the moments after when I walked alongside a mob of police officers, and then at the same protest at a different location. Here it is:<br /><br />"How do you spell racist?!"</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;">"NYPD!"</span><br />
<br style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;" />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;">I feel nauseated and silent. I don't need to speak when the people are speaking. I'll speak low even though this is a space for yelling. But this shit is sickening.</span><br />
<br style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;" />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;">[This protest is] surprisingly joyous. Joy is the wrong word, but protests have an energy about them. Excited. There are possibilities and an openness about politics. Direct engagement but also a social activity</span><br />
<br style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;" />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;">"This is what democracy looks like!" "This is what democracy looks like!"</span><br />
<br style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;" />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;">They decided not to indict the police officer that chocked and held Eric Garner off the ground. A Supreme Court in Staten Island. A jury of his peers [?] decided that no crime was committed. In just a few days after the Michael Brown Indictment, a jury decided that no crime was committed when a man was held above ground by a baton and wheezed until he died</span><br />
<br style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;" />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;">"I can't breathe! I can't breathe!"</span><br />
<br style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;" />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;">I started tearing when I heard that chant. There was no joy in that chant. That is the last words of Eric Garner and the chant carried more weight. I couldn't hear it from the distance as the mobile protest joined with those standing and idly yelling. Walking and closing streets and throwing rocks and burning cars, that feels like a protest, feels like a movement. A civil chanting feels like nothing. It's cold and we're huddled.</span><br />
<br style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;" />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;">Worse yet, we're surrounded, the protest is surrounded by the police. We have an armed guard in case we get out of hand. There are always swarms of police officers in Times Square and they seem just as routine. We won't harm them but if we threaten them, they have an authorization to kill.</span><br />
<br style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;" />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;">"NYPD!"</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;">"KKK!"</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;">"NYPD!"</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;">"KKK!"</span><br />
<br style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;" />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;">This circumstance, this instance was determined as not a crime, as lawful. The officer will likely resign, and likely work for a subcontractor or one of the dozens of security firms in the city. What's frustrating for me and for many is that this instance was authorized by the decision, and the whole system of regular, unwarranted stopping, frisking, incarceration, and killing of people of color is left unquestioned in the courts.</span><br />
<br style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;" />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;">It cannot be Fought in the courts. Out here today, in Ferguson, in LA, in Portland, the hundreds and thousands of people are gathering to say that it may be authorized but it is not just. Though The streets of Times Square, of union square, of washington square, like the tents in Tahrir or in Taksim, are not exactly analogous to the court of public opinion. We disagree but do they?</span><br />
<br style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;" />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;">"THIS IS WHAT DEMOCRACY LOOKS LIKE!"</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;">"THIS IS WHAT DEMOCRACY LOOKS LIKE!"</span><br />
<br style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;" />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;">I stepped out of the protest, mostly silent and gawking rather than participating, to see it from outside. The news crawl above the people was from ABC and read "BLACK-ISH after MODERN FAMILY." I thought that was poignant so I drew out my phone to take a picture and it flashed out and was replaced with "Police Officer feels 'Very Bad' about Eric Garner Choke Hold." I snapped a couple pictures of that and put my phone away when it flashed again. It was an advertisement for, I kid you not,</span><br />
<br style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;" />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;">"HOW TO GET AWAY WITH MURDER"</span><br />
<br style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;" />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;">I know it felt like something to be in the crowd and yelling, but I don't know what direct action does anymore. This keeps happening. More kids keep being shot down by not just Eric Zimmermans but police officers, sworn to literally protect. How is every black person a threat to protect against? When does this become presidential action? When does congress start agreeing? There are people on the streets. As much as you can brand them all anarchists and homeless and violent (even if they are), they're still missing work, missing school to come down and protest.</span><br />
<br style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;" />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;">"BLACK LIVES MATTER!"</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;">"BLACK LIVES MATTER!"</span><br />
<br style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;" />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;">When does this come to a head?<br /><br /><br />********<br /><br /></span><br />
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">
I'm walking south on 6th avenue to meet my friends in the east village. Police cars and vans full of cadets are weaving in and out of traffic , all with their lights on, sirens on. I walked away from the start of the protest. It looks like it just got heated.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">
"HANDS UP!"</div>
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"DON'T SHOOT!"</div>
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<br /></div>
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Now all the unmarked crown royals and fords packed with officers are heading to Times Square. I just passed a police car dropping off a well-dressed white couple looking like they're starting their night out, and the man gives his a ride a "Thanks, Gentleman."</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">
"When the system doesn't work?"</div>
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"Shut it down!" </div>
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<br /></div>
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I hope no civilians get killed <a href="https://www.blogger.com/null">tonight</a> </div>
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<br /></div>
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[I'm] Walking in a mass of cops [along Broadway and 6th avenue. The cops are rowdy, some nervous and some upbeat.]</div>
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Roving bands.</div>
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Telling jokes about the protests </div>
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Stepping on banners of "everywhere is ferguson"</div>
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<br /></div>
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NYPD is multiracial, multicultural and yet they cannot speak the language of the protest. Even if the cops agree, they cannot agree. There was a secret hand gesture the cops would give if they secretly agreed with the politics of the [Occupy] protest but people are still being killed, secret solidarity or no.</div>
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<br /></div>
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The police are people and they are sometimes people who kill other people.<br /><br />[I walk with the cops for some 10 blocks, sometimes in the bike lane, away from their prowl, sometimes in the middle of the 25 officers, like a VIP</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">
Which laws are ignored in a riot? </div>
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<br /></div>
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In Union square, the standing man from Istanbul has been renewed. Radical politics shares a language. About 60 People are standing with their hands up silently. A sign reads, "I know you're scared but you should ask us why we're scared too!"</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">
Don't make me a target </div>
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">
But I won't be. I'm not even on a list</div>
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<br /></div>
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This is my kind of protest. Denying the violence out of fear for myself and fear of retribution. It was silent, more and more people gathering when one man yelled "Hands up!" And three, four people responded "Don't shoot!" Hands up, don't shoot, and then everyone was yelling it. Five minutes? </div>
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<br /></div>
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One woman yelled "I can't breathe" and the shouts and hands subsided into "I can't breathe! " and "Don't choke"</div>
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<br /></div>
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And back and forth</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">
"hands up!"</div>
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">
"don't shoot!"</div>
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">
"Hands up!"</div>
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">
"Don't shoot!"</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">
I'm in the crowd; my arms are shaking</div>
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The other side of union square, people are shopping for Christmas trinkets in the bazaar</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">
hands up, </div>
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">
Don't shoot </div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">
Hands up, </div>
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">
Don't shoot</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">
Hands up,</div>
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">
don't shoot.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9222021057682525736.post-86310016693403369082014-10-22T16:47:00.001-07:002014-10-22T16:47:37.068-07:00Third (D)ave<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;">While I was doing laundry on October 19th, I realized I lost all my sweaters. One big box, the first box I packed before I moved to Brooklyn, was suddenly misplaced. Vanished. Disappeared not unlike the 43 Mexican student teachers.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;">Well, maybe not disappeared, I must have lost it long before October 19th. I must have misplaced it at 20th Street or maybe I took a cab and left it in the trunk. It was my biggest box, so I have a hard time believing that.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;">One way or another, I don't have my sweaters and it just got cold. Cold like I wake up freezing, stand in the bathroom after a shower soaking in the heat before I spring back to put socks on. And it just gets colder all year.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;">Luckily, I still have my flannel and jackets and sweatshirts, so I'm making due. I just bundle and layer and pretend the hodgepodge of fabric is as warm as a sweater or as snug as a sweater.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;">I don't feel great about losing these pieces which were part of me for so long (a couple of sweaters were my uncle's! A couple were from high school!) but in a different sense, being without them is freeing. I'm not tied to those threads, I am not defined by those colors. I can be a, like, a gray pashmina guy now. Or something. Are sweaters made of pashmina? <br /><br />I feel like I'm rationalizing an accident, rather than finding the silver lining. I wonder if I were more careful, would they be lost in a cab, all of my best four plates and a pile of sweaters in soggy grocery store cardboard stuffed underneath a spare tire. Maybe I should have been more thoughtful. I wonder if they're being used or stuck with someone who doesn't handwash or sitting alone in a room, unused and unwanted. I wish I could tell them what they meant to me, now that they're gone.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;">But that's a waste too. Now I'm just repeating the mantras that I hear all the time. You move to Brooklyn, you lose your sweaters.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333339691162px;">It really resonates now.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9222021057682525736.post-8879950452750211562014-01-25T22:12:00.000-08:002014-01-25T22:12:57.888-08:00The Big CucumberI had a post idea in November(?) about finding a big, neglected cucumber in my refrigerator, taking a moment to think about how I would cut it up and eat it for a snack. Instead, I rushed it to my mouth and chomped on it like a rabbit eats a carrot. I was going to write a couple of small paragraphs about how life was like a big, neglected cucumber, sometimes, and you just have to go ahead and take a bite out of it. Sometimes life deals you a shitty hand, and you just play on and I'm not very good with long metaphors. <div>
<br /></div>
<div>
But I forgot to write that down. I was pretty busy. I was told yesterday that I was vibing people, acting really self-involved and cold. I don't remember that, but I remember a stressful November and December where I felt like I was going to fail a class for the first time. Grad school is hard! (I imagine all programs are hard!) <br /><br />I'm on the other side now, though, somewhere in 2014. I lost count. 2013 was a year of diversion and 2014 is a year of waiting and then exclaiming! 2013 was a year of going to Turkey and going to Philly and going to Seattle at regular intervals. It was a year of escaping tragedy, escaping boredom, escaping tear gas and escaping myself. Both my grandmas, my real ones, not the many remarriage ones (thanks Grandpa!) died this year and I had a weird time coping. Like in 2012, I didn't cry for months in 2013. Once I get coverage, I should probably talk to a therapist about that, but I'd rather be reactive than proactive when it comes to therapy. For whatever reason.</div>
<div>
<br />2014 is bigger, though. I'm going to graduate from my program, and leave The New School fully. I will sign a lease for the first time. Hania is going to be moving to New York in June, so we'll live in the same place at the same time for the first time in years. 2014 is the year of full time employment instead of cobbled part time employment (I'm looking at you, 2011!) Hopefully this year will be a lot of open doors. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Or at least closed doors. I'm going to burn so many bridges when I leave this place! </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
~~</div>
<div>
I've been watching a lot of Homeland and getting pretty emotional while talking to Hania about high school. I had a big wave of nostalgia wash over me in thinking about listening to the radio for the first time, and what a wonder it was to hear Nirvana and David Bowie outside of soundtracks. I want to look at the world the same way I did when I was just discovering things, but I was probably too cynical and ignorant, hopeful and naïve to understand what was happening. I want to time turner the hell out of high school, just to see it over again with these eyes, but those terrible jeans and running shoes and bandanas and carabiners made me who I am today, including the nostalgia. I have to live with them in order to look back this way. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I've also been getting into "Welcome to Night Vale," this funny, affecting, dark podcast in the vein of "News from Lake Woebegone" and The X-Files. I'm about 30 episodes in and loving it, but a couple of passages really spoke to me. One has to do with Carlos, the skeptical and beautiful scientist, but the one that really made me stumble in awe (it was icy!) requires less context and reminded me of what it is to be alive:</div>
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"Thinking back, ladies, looking back, gentlemen, thinking and looking back on my European tour, I feel…a heavy sadness descend upon me.</div>
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Of course, it <em style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">is</em> partly nostalgia — looking back at that younger me, bustling around Europe, having adventures and overcoming obstacles that, at the time, seemed so overwhelming — but now seem like just the building blocks of a harmless story.</div>
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But here is the truth of nostalgia. We don’t feel it for who we were, but who we <em style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">weren’t</em>. We feel it for all the possibilities that were open to us, but that we didn’t take.</div>
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Time is like wax, dripping from a candle flame. In the moment, it is molten and falling, with the capability to transform into any shape. Then the moment passes, and the wax hits the table top and solidifies into the shape it will always be. It becomes the past — a solid single record of what happened, still holding in its wild curves and contours the potential of every shape it could have held.</div>
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It is impossible — no matter how blessed you are by luck, or the government, or some remote, invisible deity gently steering your life with hands made of moonlight and wind — it is impossible <em style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">not</em> to feel a little sad, looking at that bit of wax, that bit of the past. It is impossible not to think of all the wild forms that wax now will never take.</div>
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The village, glimpsed from a train window — beautiful and impossible and impossibly beautiful on a mountaintop, then you wondered what it would be if you stepped off the moving train and walked up the trail to its quiet streets and lived there for the rest of your life. The beautiful face of that young man from Luftnarp, with his gaping mouth and ashy skin, last seen already half-turned away as you boarded the bus, already turning towards a future without you in it, where this thing between you that seemed so possible now already, and forever, never was.</div>
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All variety of lost opportunity spied from the windows of public transportation, really.</div>
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It can be overwhelming, this splattered, inert wax recording every turn not taken. </div>
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"What’s the point?" you ask.</div>
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"Why bother?" you say.</div>
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"Oh, Cecil," you cry. "<em style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Oh, Cecil</em>.”</div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #626566; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20.799999237060547px; margin-bottom: 20px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
But then you remember — <em style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I</em> remember — that we are, even now, in another bit of molten wax. We are in a moment that is still falling, still volatile — and we will never be anywhere else. We will always be in that most dangerous, most exciting, most possible time of all: the now. Where we never can know what shape the next moment will take."</div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20.799999237060547px; margin-bottom: 20px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
I found the transcript for the episode "A Memory of Europe" <a href="http://cecilspeaks.tumblr.com/post/60130975390/episode-21-a-memory-of-europe#more">here</a>. I highly recommend both Night Vale and Homeland, but also Guacamole Hummus from Trader Joe's (if available). Together, those three have prepared me for my last semester in school (as far as I've planned). </div>
</div>
<div>
There will be more frequent posts this year. I'm going to Vegas in March to intern my dad's mom with all my family. I'll write something about that, later. </div>
<div>
<br />That's all I have. Have a good night, though.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9222021057682525736.post-41705766037594501542013-08-02T07:20:00.002-07:002013-08-02T07:24:48.998-07:00Didn't someone tell me<blockquote style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333015441895px;" type="cite">
<div>
That Charles de Gaulle airport was awful?</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
No problem coming in, dressed in my best impression of someone who wears a suit. I was ready to apologize for being late and Skype into a training session, but for fun, I decide to swipe my passport to see if I could check in to my second flight, as I was unable to check in in Istanbul and at Ataturk. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The answer was no. My flight, I was informed shortly after, was cancelled for what seem to be "technical difficulties," he said confused, skimming the screen. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Okay, no problem. I laugh it off the whole time. The guy trying to get to Cairo that missed his plane is angry, resentful and uncooperative. I am not that guy. I am a breeze. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
While I'm waiting, my Airfrance friend and I are chatting, and we're the same age. We both thought the other person was older, me because she had a job, and her because I have a beard. She says she likes airport movies but she hasn't seen The Terminal. She says she likes airplane movies, but she hasn't seen Up in the Air. "In France sometimes movies have different names..." Yeah, maybe. Has she only seen Airplane or Airport '77? I don't know, I would have asked, but the guy to Cairo was making a fascinating scene and we were both distracted.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Maybe I can visit the FL tower while in Paris?<span style="background-color: transparent;"> What?</span></div>
</blockquote>
<blockquote style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333015441895px;" type="cite">
<div>
<span style="font-size: 13.333333015441895px;">Oh, Eiffel! Sorry! I don't speak French and I feel very guilty about that. </span></div>
</blockquote>
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<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
(The French legion soldiers march past me, hands on their rifles as I type this, no lie. Walking like they talk it, cold expressions to say that they don't know this is an airport, and why are you in France) </div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="direction: rtl; text-align: right;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
Maybe I could visit the Eiffel Tower? It's closed now (11 pm) but you can look at it. Your American visa lets you leave the airport, so you might as well. Okay, I guess. You'll pick up your luggage and to take the bus because the train is unsafe at this hour (11 pm) so it'll run you 20€ but when in Paris</div>
</div>
<div>
right?</div>
</blockquote>
<blockquote style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333015441895px;" type="cite">
<div>
</div>
<div>
I go to collect my luggage and wander around Paris, but wait, there is no luggage. My luggage had not arrived in Paris according to their computer. It's routine, I'm told. Nothing I did. Okay. I can check back in Nice (my new connecting airport) and</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
(Wait, that was too fast, did the announcement tell me I have to leave now?) </div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
Maybe they'll have more information then. Okay, no problem. I'm handed a toiletry kit and I'm not angry, more confused. My other new friend at baggage services did not reciprocate my jocular humor so being stranded becoming slightly more real. Still not annoyed, I'm not that guy.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div style="direction: ltr;">
I'm not in the financial position to tour around in a taxi (that should run you 100€) and also not to get a hotel for the night, so I'm going to rough it in Charles de Gaulle. I'm fine though, I have everything I need: a couple books, some hangers, envelopes, a toiletry bag and all the free Internet I can use for 30 minutes. 15 minutes. 5 minutes.</div>
<div style="direction: ltr;">
<br /></div>
<div style="direction: ltr;">
At least I'm in the right gate, I think.</div>
</blockquote>
<br />
UPDATE: Flight was delayed in Nice, which was fine, but I didn't have any clothes so I would have sweat through the nice shirt I was wearing and made everyone on the flight to JFK uncomfortable. Instead, I read Man in the Dark by Paul Auster and it was incredible. When I got to New York, I found a voicemail from Nice saying my luggage was in Istanbul and I should contact this number in 28 hours or less. They will send me my luggage, so no problem. Or as they say in Turkey, "Puroblem yok."<br />
<br />
It was an adventure, and I read like two books. After a last minute cancellation, a delay that I find when I get to my connecting flight and lost luggage, I'm probably not riding Airfrance for a while, unless they have really good deals, then what does it matter?Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9222021057682525736.post-60152590127489467502013-07-15T16:53:00.003-07:002013-07-16T02:38:15.244-07:00Image Problems and Topography<div class="MsoNormal">
Turkey, and Istanbul particularly, benefits from the East
meets West image of the region, so much that it trades in stereotypes. The food is a proud mix of West Asian and
European cuisines, the people are all sorts of tan and brown colors, and the
area is even called Asia Minor. Turkey is a fascinating mixture of disparate
cultures and languages (now), but the problem is exactly that it’s a mixture,
not a solution. The people are friendly in the park forums, but there are severe
cleavages in Turkish society. Ethnic, social and religious groups identify
themselves by their Turkish narrative, but there is only some overlap in the narratives and
completely different readings of Turkey’s history.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Sometimes what we've seen in the political arena is less East meets West, and more East vs. West.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What I expected in Istanbul was some glistening oasis
straddling the Mediterranean, which I immediately found wrong, having not consulted a map, apparently. The vibrant Europe I expected was replaced by neighborly köys. The quaint Turkish villages I expected were replaced by incredible traffic and businessmen. The Islam I expected was confronted by demands for a more secular state, but the secularism I expected is <a href="https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/tu.html">99% Muslim</a>. This all speaks to my surprising ignorance of everything, especially of the Middle East as it actually exists, but it also speaks to the availability of completely different, authentic Turkish experiences. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It was made clear to me that the other American interns at Mazlumder had seen a different Turkey and had a slightly skewed image of what was going in Turkey. They were staying in Fatih, the most conservative part of Istanbul, and had to get picked up and dropped off at work. They were losing their minds from the closure and I think that losing the opportunity to wander around and stare or be stared at depressed them. One of their coordinators said there were no good places in Istanbul to drink. That wasn't a joke he told, he outright stated that drinking was not commonplace. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As I previously hyp<span style="font-family: inherit;">erlinked, Erdogan has gone on record denying that the national drink is a liquor called rak<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19.1875px;">ı, and in</span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19.1875px;">stead this salty yogurt drink, ayran, and some recent laws have attempted to constrict the drinking culture, but what? People get drunk in Istanbul. There are many liquor stores and the cheap beer is safer to drink than tap water. And even though it's Ramadan (Ramazan in Turkish) in a majority Muslim state, the bars are by no means empty. That doesn't speak to Turkey as a whole, but you're in Istanbul, the New York (and New York exceptionalism) of Turkey. It's different here, but people argue endlessly about the nature and legitimacy of this difference.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">One of the ways you can clearly see the cleavages in society is touring through the town. Fatih has all the ancient mosques and Ottoman and Byzantine buildings with engravings of ancient architects and visiting mathematicians, and the like. If you walked around all day in Fatih and never left (could never leave), as many tourists do, you would think the nation is full of observant Muslims, beautiful and ancient architecture and cheap, knock-off items like you'd find on Canal Street. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">On the other hand, I walked up past my little neighborhood to Levent and I was amazed by the wide streets, carved skyscrapers and smoggy orange sky. There was a hypercorporate </span>Levantine<span style="font-family: inherit;"> oasis mere blocks from Ortaköy. It was impressive and manicured with cavernous malls and American and European fast food chains, a far cry from the cobblestones blocks away. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The strangest and most visual difference is on Dolmabahçe road, the thoroughfare I take to work, with its blown up images of Atatürk kissing babies and staring through periscopes. There isn't an attempt to connect the history of the founding of the republic to the realities of the pictures, so they're fixed anachronistically, onto the sides of road where taxi drivers could care less. Likewise, in all government buildings (in a country where the </span>bureaucracy<span style="font-family: inherit;"> was byzantine, there many state and municipal buildings) a large, more than life size picture of Atatürk is required to adorn the walls. Every building has a corner for Atatürk.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">There is a strong connection to Kemalist tradition and the education system here pushes how glorious Kemal Atatürk was with his revolution, and that is apparent with the reverent images of the man throughout Turkey. </span>İsmet İnönü, another founder of Turkey, has a stadium named after him near Taksim. You'll see his or Atatürk's gilded head literally jutting out of <a href="http://www.travel-images.com/pht/turkey476.jpg">buildings</a>. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The prominent presence of Atatürk in the architecture of Istanbul demands the attention of a deity of a civil religion. Kemalism is an official narrative; even the religious conservative parties have to harken to nationalist sentiments. It's a major voting bloc. What's interesting is that it runs counter to the Muslim narrative of Turkey. The "only functioning secular Muslim democracy" schtick, like the East meets West, unravels when you examine it. The narratives don't coalesce, they stand opposite each other, especially further away from the Kurdish narrative also gaining national credence. The protests of the last two months have shown that the Turkish public takes quite seriously the identity and story of the nation, and go to the streets to demand their own narrative.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p>Turkey is facing serious image problems, not just in the region and in the Western media, but from inside. It hasn't sorted out its own history, still fighting Armenia on the semantics of <a href="http://globalnews.ca/news/624150/pope-angers-turkey-over-armenian-genocide-comment/">genocide </a>from 100 years ago. The Kurdish people have only been able to speak Kurdish openly in recent history. Declaring yourself a non-Muslim on your state identification takes incredible effort and only certain groups, like the Rum Orthodox Christian people, have permission to do it. </o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p><br /></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p>"Turkey is a nation of contradictions" is also a stereotype, but it's accurate. Turkey is a nation of disparate realities, village life and pleated shirts and 300,000 Syrian refugees and EU aspirations and secular folks in the streets and 99% Islam. I don't think secession is the most viable solution to the problems created by these contradictions, but Turkey needs to find some common ground. </o:p><br />
<o:p><br /></o:p>
<o:p>None of these groups are disappearing. No one is going to drastically change their life, at this point. The government and Turkish society needs to find ways to better integrate these groups and halt the polarization deepening the ridges between them. It starts with new rhetoric and education. </o:p><br />
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<o:p>I don't know where it goes after that. Maybe I'll take a class.</o:p></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9222021057682525736.post-43854245210076199282013-07-07T16:38:00.000-07:002013-07-09T02:23:01.317-07:00Coups and armies, democracy and legitimacyOutside of Turkey, my current knowledge seriously wanes, but the action is making me want to write a lot more about it. The situation in Cairo mirrors some of the possibilities in Turkey, even though the clashes in Egypt are much more violent. It's the same problems. It's legitimacy, it's democracy and it's disaffected folks disconnected from their governments and leaders. The same course of action is erupting all over, whether it's protests or clashes or coups. Bear with me.<br />
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On June 30th, massive protests erupted in <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/04/world/middleeast/egypt.html?hp&_r=0">Egypt </a> with folks demonstrating against the government led by democratically elected President Muhammed Morsi. The autonomous Egyptian military on July 1st issued an ultimatum that they would intervene in 48 hours if protests continued. The protests continued and the Military deposed Morsi on June 3rd. After the overthrow, there were protests and celebrations in Tahrir Square, the epicenter of the 2011 protests, with laser shows and everything.<br />
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There have been some arguments about whether this deposition was a coup or not. There are some Egyptian protesters and allies rallying for the redefinition of the word "<a href="http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/07/07/the_wikipedia_war_over_egypts_coup?wp_login_redirect=0">coup</a>," in part because coups are illegal under the Egyptian Constitution and states under coups receive less international aid from the United States, a major <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/07/03/law-says-the-u-s-is-required-to-cut-aid-after-coups-will-it/">beneficiary</a>. I think, despite the financial concern, that the whole argument is bunk and missing the point. Of course it's a coup, but more importantly, it's a coup by the Egyptian military, a governmental, social and economic institution which existed under previous Egyptian authoritarian leader Hosni Mubarak,<br />
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After Mubarak who was forced to step down in 2011 after months of violence between government supporters, the military and protesters, the military took temporary control of the government until elections were held in Summer 2012. Their short rule marked a period of increased violence, that slowed but did not end after Morsi, the candidate from the Muslim Brotherhood, took office. The military was also the organization that deposed the King of Egypt in 1953, and has since become autonomous and powerful in its own right, without ever being an democratically elected institution.<br />
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I wrote two years ago that what threatened Tahrir Square and the Egyptian revolution was the military, and it still is, I think.<br />
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The news of the Egyptian clashes struck me as cut and dry bad. Sharif, my roommate, used to live in Egypt and has a keen interest in the politics there. He was appalled by the celebrations of an organization that is as despotic with a striking history of violence. The military had a role in torturing many of the "dissidents" under Mubarak and get half the criticism as the former regime. There was violence under Morsi, who was sort of <a href="http://www.egyptindependent.com/news/report-accuses-morsy-corruption">corrupt</a>, but the <a href="http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/12466/unpacking-anti-muslim-brotherhood-discourse">criticism</a> he received was more pointed because of his leadership of an Islamist organization<br />
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and the military offers a counterpoint.<br />
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My relationship with autonomous militaries is different and has changed since I've been here. In Turkey, there is some sentiment that the army of the past, the "guardians of Kemalism" as they say, should have taken down Erdogan after the protests, handily, as they have in the past. Now, however, the Turkish military is not in the position to overthrow, but because it's been weakened by AKP (a move lauded by European and American <a href="http://www.cfr.org/turkey/weakening-turkeys-military/p21548">spectators</a>) and because it's made some agreements with AKP and Erdogan to not plan some coups.<br />
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But some of my friends, when talking about the absence of the military, have to keep reminding themselves that it's good for democracies that militaries are not autonomous, but it's a struggle! Turkish dissidents can no longer be comforted by the fact that the military will overthrow the government if it strays too far from Kemalism anymore. Even if it's good for democracy, it's a reminder that times have changed and that the opposition forces are weaker.<br />
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And at first I felt the same way. "These protests would be over a lot faster if the military would just step in and clear everything out!" I was excited at the beginning when military folks came in and brought real, sturdy gas masks for the protesters. When they were reprimanded, I felt cheated. It's their job to protect the state, I thought.<br />
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But they weren't protecting the state in that instance, they were jockeying for power, if ever slightly. All actions by autonomous militaries are inherently political!<br />
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This is the same thing we're seeing in Egypt, and it's unsurprising that the Muslim Brotherhood members and <a href="http://mg.co.za/article/2013-07-03-egypts-morsi-army-pledge-their-lives-to-the-final-hours">supporters </a>are not letting the coup-via-protest <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/both-sides-in-egypt-pledge-their-lives-2013-7">stand</a>. Both parties feel that the opposition is illegitimate and should be fought against completely. And so they have.<br />
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But all this is not that simple. I'm ignoring the fact that there are thousands upon thousands of Egyptians in the street, protesting <i>for</i> the military to take over. There has to be something I'm missing.<br />
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In talking with my colleagues and friends about the protests, I've found that my misunderstanding was about democracy in the first place. I thought that a clear and recent democratically elected leader removed from office (and put under house <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/International/president-morsi-ousted-democratically-elected-leader-house-arrest/story?id=19568447#.Udn4RDusiSo">arrest</a>, awaiting charges of whatever) was not logical and was the most illegitimizing action the military could take. It was inconceivable to me, but the Egyptian presidency itself is illegitimate right now. The first presidential election was a year ago and as a society, Egypt's coming to terms with major disagreements in ways that look similar to many other <a href="http://occupywallst.org/">nations</a>...<br />
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"Coups are a means" as Sharif said to me yesterday, and even though they are not legitimate, the military is one of the most legitimate actors in Egypt. It helped found the state and it's claim to power is stronger than Morsi's for a surprisingly massive group of people. The coup is not legitimate, but is only a means to the larger claim that the military is the most righteous leader of Egypt right now.<br />
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My friends have also reminded me that democracy is slow and looks different everywhere. Though I don't think political Islam is dead, regardless of what all the <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/07/07/egypt-middle-east/2496403/">major</a> <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2013/07/04/opinion/coleman-muslim-brotherhood">news </a>is <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/ap-analysis-morsis-fall-blow-islamists-021241783.html">spewing</a>, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt may be banned and denied its NGO status in the aftermath of these protests. That does not mean the people who supported Morsi are leaving Egypt or the people who protested Morsi will be satisfied with their current state.<br />
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The military will impose a leader soon and they'll be building back up to an election in the next years,<br />
or until the next protest...Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9222021057682525736.post-48747211449196360132013-06-28T12:17:00.000-07:002013-06-29T01:28:07.818-07:00Back to AthensOr, more accurately, back to New York and Oakland.<br />
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On June 3rd, the President of Turkey, Abdullah Gül attempted to differentiate himself from his party's <span style="font-family: inherit;">response to the protest. Erdogan, among <a href="http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/police-to-consider-protesters-in-istanbuls-taksim-square-terror-organization-members-minister.aspx?pageID=238&nID=48875&NewsCatID=338">others</a>, made statements about the undemocratic nature of the protests and how the people did not truly represent Turkey, as Erdogan was elected in a landslide in 2011. Gül, on the other hand, scoffed in an interview that the ballot box was not the only form of <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2013/06/03/turkey-istanbul-protests-erdogan.html">democracy</a>. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I thought about his statement when I went to the<span style="background-color: white;"> <span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 24px;">Abbas Agha Park Forum on June 26th. The forum was in a </span></span></span><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 24px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Beşiktaş park, a couple of blocks North from where the police threw teargas at protesters in my first posts about Turkey. Now, all over the country, forums are held with dual aims of education about the protests and</span> injustices and also motivation to change Turkish politics. </span><br />
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I arrived a little after 9 pm, which means I missed the clapping and banging of pots and pans still taking place throughout the city. For some five minutes at 9 pm in Turkey, cars honk and flash their porch lights in solidarity. It was odd at first, but now it's a reminder that this isn't over.<br />
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So after the 9 pm banging, my group arrived at the park where hundreds of folks were gathered to listen and participate in the forum. The protesters spoke in Turkish, and my language skills were nowhere near good enough to understand everything, so it was a little bit like I was an interloper, only there for the sights, but a lot of people spoke English and could contextualize the hand waving and speeches. I asked in Turkish what one of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupy_movement_hand_signals">signals </a>meant, and he told me, in English, that it meant to hurry up the speech. "Oh, that was the same in Occupy."<br />
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"Yeah, it's inspired by Occupy."<br />
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I hung around for awhile after my friends left and lent my phone so one of them could record interviews about legitimacy for her research (which I need to get on!). There were smaller working groups scattered around the park. I listened to the politics and media debates, standing idly, but intently focused on the dozen words I could take out of each speech. It's surprising but you can really get the gist of most things with tone and a few key words.<br />
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I stayed for a couple hours and met up with two other friends who'd been there separately. We all connected and talked politics but I mostly told jokes for another hour. Before we left, I tried to go find a bathroom, but wandered around asking people where the "bathhouse" was, which elicited all sorts of weird reactions and poor directions. There is a stereotype here that anyone will give you directions and they're often inaccurate. That is a proven stereotype. It's so nice that everyone wants to help, but I should have just listened to Florencia and I just learned directions in our Turkish class.<br />
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We were there long enough to see the next group set up and start presenting. Some group from Paris made the banner pictured above of a tree and its roots. The French group sent a message solidarity with #direngezi or whatever it's called now. The point was that direct democracy is nouveau again and it's popping up around the world. Regardless of their outcome, the occupations and rebellions throughout the world and especially in Middle East and North Africa, are about popular dissent at their core.<br />
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This forum is another democracy. It makes me wonder, how many types of democracy are there? And, are any of them more legitimate than the others? Erdogan posited that his favorite form of democracy is the ballot as it is the most legitimate way to measure the people.<br />
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It's strange in Turkey, though. Actually, a lot of the politics in Turkey is strange and misleading. Erdogan, the head of the majority party in a parliamentary system, is elected by the party machinery, operating at full force at all times. AKP is a rigid hierarchy and Erdogan sits firmly at the top. His party is buffered by the fact there's a national 10% threshold for any political party to be elected into the parliament, meaning that parties that sweep elections in the East, especially Kurdish parties, can't muster the 10% and are not represented at all. This means there is a stark overrepresentation of AKP and CHP, the historically Kemalist (nationalist-secular) party.<br />
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So Erdogan's quotes about representing the "true Turkey" are full of steam. His democracy is problematic and unrepresentative, and there is a counter-democracy on the ground actively trying to unseat him. Their methods are a little more old school (or at least a performance of old school) but their resistance is not only a demonstration against Erdogan, socially conservative policies, police violence or Islamization, but also the kind of status quo politics that the national elections provide.<br />
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There are several kinds of democracy at work in Turkey, and they often work hand in hand. Erdogan initially relied on his 2011 election in his anti-protester rhetoric, but he and the AKP upper brass felt that the people were eventually going to be moved by police violence on peaceful protesters, so they planned and ran their own rallies. They're a lot more vitriolic and a lot less <a href="http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/ruling-akp-to-hold-two-mass-rallies-in-istanbul-and-ankara-next-week.aspx?pageID=238&nid=48462">funny</a>, but I think the operate on the same premise. If you have a large portion of society visibly represented, it is effectively democratic, even if it is a rally for an increasingly authoritarian leader. The presence of sheer <a href="http://www.trbimg.com/img-51be2e33/turbine/la-fg-wn-erdogan-speaks-to-supporters-as-prote-001/600">mobs </a>of people appear to be the democracy so it's an affirmation of the ballot box.<br />
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But this is a false affirmation, because the rallies, stocked with folks from all over the <a href="http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2013/06/erdogan-rally-istanbul-gezi-protests-turkey.html">nation</a>, clearly lack the critical insight of the secularists and young folks lining up to take Erdogan down.<br />
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(It makes me think, would Occupy have been different if everyone was focused on throwing Obama out of office?)<br />
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Because of my work with Mazlumder, I'm sensitive to the opposite criticism, too. Despite the solidarity for religious folks in the protests, they really are not present in the dialogue. In the above pictures there are no women in headscarves. The women at my internship are convinced they'd be attacked if they went, which I find unlikely, but the fear remains. There are definitely nationalists that are offended by the sight of a hijaab and there are people who are offended that anyone drinks <a href="http://en.haberler.com/will-gezi-protests-divide-turkish-society-280122/">alcohol</a>.<br />
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True democracy is illusory and the media represents the masses in contrasting ways. The point is that there may be solidarity, there may be clear ballot winners, but neither democracy, yet so far, has bridged the gap between the two massive <a href="http://en.haberler.com/will-gezi-protests-divide-turkish-society-280122/">groups</a>.<br />
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It's uphill to Athens.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9222021057682525736.post-56832281510034682892013-06-22T09:48:00.001-07:002013-06-22T09:48:53.169-07:00Taking a Stand (sakin, sakin)A couple days after my last post, which was written half in fear, the police stormed Gezi Park intent on removing the protesters. Erdogan wanted to hold a rally for his supporters near the airport, and then one in Ankara, the capital of Turkey, and couldn't stand the dissidents. <br />
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A couple days after my last post, also, a gun started <a href="http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/standing-man-inspires-a-new-type-of-civil-disobedience-in-turkey-.aspx?pageID=238&nID=48999&NewsCatID=339">standing </a>in Taksim Park, not in Gezi, which is now empty of protesters and occupied by police. This man stood for hours and was joined by other folks, just standing silently, in front of the buildings upon which police draped a picture of Atatürk (it always comes back to Atatürk). The folks stand out in the open with journalists and tourists buzzing around them, next to kids selling water and teenagers selling simit.<br />
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Unlike the earlier Gezi Park protest, which was shrouded with trees and barricades, these protesters stand side by side demonstrating their quiet and peace. They challenge the Erdogan, they challenge the media, they challenge the nation to listen by proving that they are not inciting riots, that they are peaceful and respectful, that they just <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8_FOQ7-P30">disagree</a>.<br />
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Via the (now!) ever-present cameras, they watch the government watching them. They silently provoke the government, challenging them to spin a hundred people standing into a public menace. They provoke the people in the city that aren't protesting and the people in their homes that disagree, by staying in the public sphere and staying visible. It's impressive how simple an idea like standing gained some much traction immediately.<br />
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What is clear from the interviews and the insight of my friends, this slow-burning revolution is full of working folks. It dies down for a while, people need rest, need to visit their parents, need to help their kids with homework. In other states, when the protest stayed burning hot for weeks and months, the working folks went home and the militant radicals took over. The face of the protest changes and it turns into war, as we saw in Libya, Egypt and Syria. The folks who do rage against the state, professionally, have the most practice and are ready to take the helm whenever it's clear.<br />
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That hasn't happened in Istanbul. The protest continues on but it changed, needed to change in order to keep the focus on dissent and not war. The protesters were accused of throwing molotov cocktails and, rightfully, of provoking police by breaking the concrete out of walkways and throwing rocks. The protesters were accused of all sorts of stuff that just doesn't hold water when it's just a bunch of folks standing in a park.<br />
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While personally (and I hate to be confused as an infiltrating foreign element), I think violence can have a place in protests and especially in revolts, and has often been necessary as a tool of the powerful and the powerless, the protests in Turkey have clearly not been about violent uprisal. The protesters, who never had a strong grip on the national and international narrative, were losing control even further, and were forced out of the park.<br />
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Instead of returning in battle gear, making soap in their bathtubs, they stopped reacting and regrouped. I think the standing man protests are operating on thought and not panic, which gives them more control, and it's a bunch of folks idling against the government, successfully! How novel is that!<br />
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It may be fashionable, all this standing, but it's not blind. It's a disorder of the normal politics in Turkey and no matter what the media says, it's not throwing rocks.<br />
<a name='more'></a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9222021057682525736.post-83025853052906164472013-06-15T16:52:00.002-07:002013-06-15T16:52:52.325-07:00Taksim is being cleared right nowA bunch of nonsense is happening right now, June 16th, 2:40 am. Watch <a href="http://www.livestation.com/reuters">here</a>. or <a href="http://www.halkhaber.tv/">here</a>.<br />
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Police have taken off the numbers on their helmets, so along with many of them wearing civilian clothing, there is nothing to distinguish between police officers. That's bad news, especially considering the following:<br />
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The Turkish military has joined in. There are vehicles that look like SWAT cars from the US, anti-riot vehicles, as well as larger military vehicles. There are still clashes with police around Gezi park.<br />
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<a href="https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10200221183992640">Police </a>are throwing teargas into the nearby Divan and Hilton hotels, one of which has served as a medical space for protesters. One person staying at the Divan Hotel, Claudia Roth, is a member of German Parliament (MP) from their Green Party. <a href="https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151675877811291&set=a.159845786290.156739.637756290&type=1&theater">She </a>was injured by police and she is refusing to leave, and seeks to broadcast what's happening right now.<br />
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Turkish newspaper Hurriyet Daily News <a href="http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/everyone-who-enters-the-taksim-square-to-be-treated-as-terrorist-turkish-eu-minister.aspx?pageID=238&nID=48875&NewsCatID=338">reports </a><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, Tahoma, Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, Arial; font-size: 14px;">"[The police] will intervene in everybody who try to enter the Taksim Square [treating them] as a terrorist," Egemen Bağış said hours after the police's intervention in protesters in Istanbul."</span><br />
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It's still safe to be in Istanbul, but it's not safe to protest right now. I'm not around these parts, but I keep getting updates, as do my roommates.<br />
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These measures are not the products of thoughtful governance, or respect for human rights. These policies are the product of survival instinct. AKP is threatened and is reacting accordingly.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9222021057682525736.post-89307307618492354692013-06-13T16:56:00.001-07:002013-06-14T11:34:34.458-07:00Backed against a wall and Backed against a wallYesterday, June 13th, Turkish PM Erdoğan announced that he was rather tired of all the protesting shenanigans. He would much rather take a quick referendum on the park conversion and for protesters, çapulcular (marauders, or riff raff) to get picked by their mothers and ushered home (he actually said <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-22889060">this</a>). Erdoğan is done with the protesters and would like to resume with his big boy politics, this coming from a man who said that one drink and you're an <a href="https://twitter.com/mkoplow/status/341196034157977602">alcoholic</a>.<br />
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He also stated that he planned to clear out the park within 24 hours of June 13th. Alexi, a friend in my cohort, and I went into Gezi Park to conduct some interviews for our internship (the absence of roadblocks and barricades was eerie), but we cut out before 6 pm, when I heard police were going to come in. No word yet about what's happening tonight, but the clearing and the referendum will happen soon. The referendum is a measure to divide the protesters, because they really can't say no when their first and only clear demand (outside of a return to democratic politics) is to keep Gezi Park and not create a mall. The protest is so much bigger than that, though. It's about justice and democracy and identity, and increasingly about the authoritarian and anti-democratic moves by the leaders of the majority party. The protesters (and the public) can't say no to the referendum, but it will appear to solve their problems.<br />
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In the past few days, there has a sharp increase of violent clashes between the protesters and the police but from the interviews with protesters yesterday, it seemed there was consensus that the protesters throwing molotov <a href="http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/molotov-throwing-protesters-in-taksim-not-our-members-says-socialist-party-.aspx?pageID=238&nID=48593&NewsCatID=341">cocktails </a>at police vans were not part of the generally peaceful protest. Some of those interviewed had pictures of the violent protesters with walkies and guns on their sides, looking exactly like plain clothes officers around the fringe of the protest. The same day as the molotov cocktails were thrown, some 70 lawyers defending the protesters were arrested and beaten <i>in a courthouse</i> by the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-22880317">police</a>. Fascinating times to be in Turkey.<br />
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So why do people protest in the first place? Why not just vote your stupid leaders out of office? In talking to some of the disheartened leftists in Istanbul, the hope for a long-term change out of this protest seems quite diminished. CHP, the main opposition party in Turkey, only gained 23% of the vote in the 2009 election and hasn't been in control of the nation since its heyday under a single party state immediately after the founding of the republic. There are strong feelings of support for CHP, and what CHP stands for (the legacy of Atatürk, secularism), but their leadership is obtusely hierarchical and they don't pose a real alternative to the current government.<br />
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AKP, the conservative majority party, has a hold over several sectors of the government, as well. The main contributors to the opposition have been undone and replaced by AKP members or supporters. The judiciary in Turkey was more radical in the past, and now houses many conservative judges. The Turkish media too, which failed to report the protest well or at all, tries not provoke the government. One of our interviewers described a striking example of biased coverage: CNN International reporting from the front lines of Taksim, and CNN Türk reporting from the police barracks.<br />
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The military of Turkey has played a decisive political role in keeping the autocrats (and the Kurds, and the Armenians, and anyone, really) in check throughout Turkish history. Because of this, they are often called the "Guardians of Kemalism" and secularism. The military posed many coups, including the one founding the state, and has operated outside the scope of the government as part of a "deep state" for a hundred years. AKP, in the last ten years however, has defunded and regulated the actions of the military to the point that their insider-political machinations are basically absent. Even a lot of the public workers have their jobs because of who they know in AKP.<br />
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What's most interesting for me is the organization that I started working for, Mazlumder, is on the other side of the debate. It was formed in 1991 by lawyers, authors and businessmen to support the human rights of Muslims denied by the state at that time. Muslim women who cover are still discriminated against in a state that is as rigidly secular as it is Muslim.<br />
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Fascinating times to be in Turkey, but Turkish politics is defined by pendulum swings from one pole to the other, where some leader is representing only part of the public. Secular people feel today that the new AKP laws discriminate against them, but the government 20 years ago discriminated against Muslims. There seems to be little, and decreasing, middle ground, nationally. AKP provided a glimpse of a middle ground, working with Kurdish nationalists as no other party had done before, but is instead increasingly defined by its heavy-handed and violent politics.<br />
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Taksim looks like the best place for middle ground, but it certainly doesn't represent all of Turkey.<br />
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Mazlumder is a strange place to work, and I'll write a lot more about it as time passes. They're a Muslim human rights organization with informal ties to AKP, but has been critical of its policies. I'll find out more about their official stances soon.<br />
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I'll try to stay more on top of writing in the next couple of days. I feel overwhelmed with the writing. There's a lot to do and I've got a cold, but I'm still pumping along. Hagia Sofia and the Black Sea this weekend, maybe. Until then, I'm drinking some tea and watching cartoons.<br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9222021057682525736.post-82983647494316201472013-06-06T06:34:00.001-07:002013-06-06T06:51:26.438-07:00Initial Reflections on the Protests in TurkeyI feel like everything I write about Turkey is more accurate and informed than the piece before it, so the first post will be so dated and strange by the time I leave that I'll be convinced that I wrote it in my sleep or in a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rak%C4%B1">raki </a>hungover. I really enjoy hyperlinking.<br />
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I haven't traveled out to Taksim or Gezi since Monday, and I think I'll wait a while before I go again. The protesters will likely not leave and Erdogan won't resign, so I have many more chances to engage with the protest. The last couple days have been inspirational for expanding my knowledge of the context of the protests. We've had talks with local academics and a couple outside perspectives that follow Turkey's politics closely.<br />
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The first upset of my initial conception of the protest was that not every demonstrator agreed with the concerns of the few I interviewed. The legacy of Atatürk is important to many in Turkey, but not all. Some of the people that are most charged about the the state of Turkey as it relates to its founder are members of the Republican People's Party (CHP in Turkey) which was actually Atatürk's party at the founding of the Republic and through more than a decade of single party rule.<br />
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There are many factions in Turkish politics and in the protest especially, and they are not neatly divided. Some of the larger overlapping factions whose interested are sometimes at odds include Secularists and Islamists, conservatives and liberals, Liberals and Socialists, State Socialists and Marxists, Kurdish Nationalists and Turkish Nationalists, Kemalist and European-minded, Alevis and Ultra Nationalists and Christians and Jews and others. Turkey is not so much a state of contradictions as it is a state of confounding difference upon which nationalism has been built. There are so many different groups that don't fit into my (or the common) boxes that work in strange configurations to reify Turkey's idiosyncrasies. I'm beginning to understand how different this nation is, one based on an artificial linguistic and ethnic nationalism.<br />
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(and why is it that Turkey is where Europe ends and the Middle East begins when most folks in the Mediterranean look similar and have roots from all over? Why is it that Europe gets its own special recognition when it's just a hand on the left of Asia?)<br />
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The protest that started in Gezi Park and expanded to the rest of the nation is rather heterogenous with many different groups rallying around the ouster of Erdoğan and the discomfort of the encroaching socially conservative policies. What is remarkable to the academics that talked with us is the absence of violence in these protests, especially among people who would skin each other in any other circumstance. This is not complete exaggeration: Earlier in May 2013, Istanbul football team Fenerbahçe fans <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-18046286">rioted </a>against police and Galatasaray fans, as Galatasaray won the Istanbul derby. Along with Beşiktaş, the other main football team in Istanbul, Galatasaray and Fenerbahçe fans work in Taksim together, putting down the fierce (some of the fiercest in Europe) rivalries for the larger cause.<br />
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The definition of that larger cause has yet to be stated, though. With Turkish nationalists, secularists, socialists, Marxists, Kurdish nationlists, Weather Underground-type militia members and environmentalists working together (so far) in harmony, how could any one specific political determination be adequate?<br />
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I keep asking myself, What is the lesson to take from Occupy Wall Street's dissolution? That too was a national movement that was strident and specific at first, but slowly allowed an opening for it seems every partition of Leftist politics. The ideological takeover of Anarchists from inside (at least in the New School shreds of Occupy) and the slow loss of steam were larger reasons for the dissolution of Occupy, and those problems will plague any movement based in demonstrations without corporate sponsors.<br />
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The protesters in Taksim feel that their way of life is threatened and that their Prime Minister thinks he's a king, so what will it take to turn that bare rage and disgust into political change?<br />
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There's no conclusive answer yet and that may be for the best. The disheartened Turks that see their country moving away from both their ideals or utopian vision of what it could be and Taksim provides a space for a discussion, an opening of politics. Maybe this protest, at the very minimum, offers a sense of optimism that change is possible where there was none. Maybe this protest will create something more in time for the 2014 elections.<br />
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We will see.<br />
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For more information and excellent insight, you can check out Yunus Sözen's article on the protest <a href="http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article2996">here</a>.<br />
Many trade unions went on strike yesterday in solidarity of the protesters and hopefully that effort continues. I start my internship with <a href="http://www.mazlumder.org/">Mazlumder </a>tomorrow, and I'll be away from the action in the Fatih District 5 of 7 days a week, but several folks I know are working in Taksim, so I'll get updates from them.<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9222021057682525736.post-86337195406433976892013-06-04T04:49:00.003-07:002013-06-04T04:49:23.940-07:00June 3rd: Day 5? of Turkey ProtestsI may have gotten the days wrong. I'm questioning my the logic of placing "Day whatever" of the protest because it denies the larger history of the protest and the fact that protesters have been in Taksim on and off since December 2012. So Day 130?<br />
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The police came back last night, razed the Beşiktaş area, where the violence was the strongest overnight. The protesters resisted throughout and attempted to break into the empty palace and Istanbul home of Erdoğan. I don't think they were successful.<br />
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I woke up late and wandered to Beşiktaş with a group of six students. We scoped out the scenes, which looked much different this time. I heard that Istiklal Street, the thoroughfare from my neighborhood to through Beşiktaş to Taksim, was covered in debris and blockages, but was cleared by morning. Bricks from the sidewalk were <a href="https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10201487417006887&set=a.10201487328164666.1073741826.1219950968&type=3&src=https%3A%2F%2Ffbcdn-sphotos-g-a.akamaihd.net%2Fhphotos-ak-frc3%2F627_10201487417006887_1042071688_n.jpg&size=717%2C960">missing</a>, though, lifted and placed into <a href="https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10201487418166916&set=a.10201487328164666.1073741826.1219950968&type=3&permPage=1">roadblocks</a> leading up past the stadium Rihanna performed in 5 days ago, to Taksim Square.<br />
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The culture of Beşiktaş was odd. It was emptier than yesterday, but still tense. Less joyous, more prepared. A lot of younger protesters, teenagers, were methodically and sometimes powerfully taking apart small retainer walls or signs to create stronger barricades. There were some gleeful at the destruction, but others were more grave. This was serious business, regardless. One of my Turkish friends from New School said that this protest was a civil war, and seeing the youth take apart walls to make their barricades and walk about the burned out buses seems like a war effort. I saw 10 or so strategizing. This is not just an occupation of public property anymore, if it ever was.<br />
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We climbed past the barricades to Gezi Park, the forested portion of Taksim Square still threatened by construction, and found the camps of protesters. Many were playing cards, drinking beer, and sitting quietly in the shade. We marched on and found thousands more singing anthems and cheering, the sound of drums eerily filling the whole park (eerie maybe because I watch a lot of Game of Thrones and Doctor Who). The scene was comforting, though. Protesters were occupying and respecting the space, unlike the destruction in Beşiktaş. It was a communal and left-leaning experience, though many of the protesters are nationalists and would on no other condition share cigarettes and shade as they did in Gezi Park.<br />
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On the other side of Taksim Square, an area empty days ago, thousands more cheered and gathered. I spoke with an older protester who couldn't speak much English (and my Turkish is very limited), but still managed to explain that the supply table in front of the Taksim <a href="https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10201487427407147&set=a.10201487328164666.1073741826.1219950968&type=3&src=https%3A%2F%2Ffbcdn-sphotos-d-a.akamaihd.net%2Fhphotos-ak-frc1%2F419161_10201487427407147_1208914431_n.jpg&size=960%2C717">Starbucks</a> was part of an interntional solidarity organization, and that the proletariat had been provoked for socialism. I said goodbye and called him a friend and he said goodbye and called me a comrade.<br />
<br />Some of my friends were nervous about the yelling in Turkish and our poor knowledge, so four of us split off and took the Metro subway North to get out of dodge and ended up far North of my place, and I obstinately didn't want to pay for a cab, so we walked for too long in a nice neighborhood (extra information).<br />
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After we left Taksim, <a href="http://i.imgur.com/qh9gQdG.jpg">Tens of Thousands</a> marched into the park, vast numbers my friends couldn't count. More than they had ever seen, marched and cheered, and jeered at <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do%C4%9Fu%C5%9F_Holding">Doğuş</a> Garanti Bank, a backer of several of the major Turkish news firms who continue to not air the protests. The police came back at nightfall and threw teargas into the crowds of families and while international news organizations measured the panic at the fray, CNN Turk aired a documentary about penguins. You can't make this stuff up.<br />
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As <a href="https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=609788105706135&set=a.139608119390805.21941.132550980096519&type=1&relevant_count=1">Protests rage all over Turkey</a>, and Erdoğan's AKP party offices have been attacked and set on fire by protesters in <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Turkish-protesters-clash-with-police-into-early-hours-315241">Izmir</a>, I'm wondering about the use of violence in political strife. I talked about this extensively in one course at the Transregional Center for Democracy in Wroclaw, how violence is sometimes necessary when all other paths towards political change are disrupted. This makes me think of Jacques Ranciere and his Ten These of Politics (a great, but coarse <a href="http://critical-theory.com/who-the-fuck-is-jacques-ranciere/">description of Ranciere's work</a>). The point of the protest, or any protest really, is in part to disrupt the police order of "dissensus" that is a false democracy. Putting themselves in the public sphere when they feel like their politics have been ignored by the ruling class, the Turkish protesters disrupt the status quo.<br />
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I'm going to listen to a talk about Turkish politics by a German think tank tonight. I'll come back with some more thoughts.<br />
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The Deputy Prime Minister apologized for police brutality and urged the protesters to leave the park, while <a href="http://news.sky.com/story/1099046/turkey-apologises-to-protesters-as-strike-starts">Erdoğan tours</a> North Africa. Today, though, the protests rage on.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9222021057682525736.post-90248622281077750302013-06-02T15:58:00.001-07:002013-06-02T16:09:50.475-07:00Day 4 of the Taksim ProtestsIt's my 5th day in Turkey for my academic program, which has ran roughly parallel with the protests in Istanbul. Peaceful protests began on May 30th as bulldozers started excavating the trees in Gezi Park, part of Taksim Square, the main public space in Istanbul. The park was originally military barracks under Ottoman times, but was renovated by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (the father of Turks) after the founding of the Turkish Republic and the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. Turks are, in general, big fans of Atatürk's legacy of creating the Turkish nation, language and identity from disparate Ottoman notions.<br />
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Protesters wanted to save Gezi Park from being demolished and replaced by a shopping mall and condos, a designation decided without the input of locals by the Turkish municipality and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the Prime Minister of Turkey. Police raided the protesters on May 31st, <a href="http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/05/31/uk-turkey-protests-idUKBRE94U0JA20130531">throwing </a><a href="http://english.ruvr.ru/news/2013_05_31/Turkish-police-fire-tear-gas-at-Istanbuls-Taksim-Square-protesters-12-injured-4755/">teargas into the crowds</a> and burning protester tents. The police brought in riot vans and doused the crowds in water and threw teargas into the metro station. Many protesters and bystanders sought cover in neighborhood stores, as white smoke covered the Square. </div>
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The protesters rallied against police brutality in Taksim, and all over Turkey; thousands more came to the aid of the protesters, including military officers handing out free gas masks. Violence against protesters escalated as several people were killed by the toxic levels of teargas. So far, 3 are dead, 3 blinded, many maimed and injured. On June 1st, 40,000 Turks lined the <a href="http://www.enduringamerica.com/home/2013/6/2/turkey-special-a-4-point-guide-to-the-protests.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+EA-Middle-East-and-Turkey+(EA+WorldView%3A+EA+Middle+East+and+Turkey)">Bosporus Bridge </a> in protest of the increasingly despotic response to what was a peaceful protest. </div>
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The heat died down after police left on the on June 1st, and as thousands of Turks stayed in Taksim and Beşiktaş areas, not far from where I am staying. </div>
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I went to check out the continued protests in Beşiktaş on June 2nd, as I heard there was a waning, and therefore an opening for foreigners like me, to scope it out. My friend and I talked to some protesters among the many standing in the street, singing the national anthem and waving Turkish flags with the face of Atatürk plastered on them. My friend was critical of Occupy's lack of specific demands (and viewed that as one of the fundamental causes of its failure as a movement), while I just wanted to chat, really.</div>
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We first talked to a couple that spoke English and explained that the movement was not about the park, per se, but about the politics of Erdoğan that cut freedoms, referring to the law passed recently banning the sale of <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/may/31/turkey-alcohol-laws-istanbul-nightlife">alcohol</a> after 10 pm, and the laws barring public displays of <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/25/turkey-kissing-protest-subway_n_3337004.html">affection</a>. "We just want to drink alcohol and live our lives and not be bothered," we were told. These sentiments were developed and expanded by the long conversation we had with two German women of Turkish descent in Istanbul for holiday and protest. They explained, at length, that the legacy of Atatürk was one of Turkish exceptionalism, and a necessary creation of a Turkish secular state that granted many freedoms to its citizens. Though his procedures and policies have been labeled autocratic and authoritarian, Atatürk has incredible support in Turkey still. </div>
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Prime Minister Erdoğan demanded in a speech on June 1st that the protests end and his decision had already been made, therefore the protests were in vain. He also stated that the Atatürk Cultural Center would also be <a href="http://en.apa.az/xeber_recep_tayyip_erdogan_____ataturk_culture_c_193934.html">destroyed</a>. The two people we talked with saw these actions as offensive to the legacy of the Turkish Republic and to Atatürk specifically. In Erdoğan's speech, he accuses the protesters of being atheists and government dissidents angry because they couldn't get their candidates elected in 2011. While many of the crowd were dissidents, many were not, and most waving banners or chanting the name of Atatürk in reverence.</div>
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What was most striking to me was the strength of the Turkish narrative of secularism in a mostly Islamic nation and human rights afforded to all people in Turkey. The protesters fall back on that narrative in times of strife and mandate that all politicians live up to the initial promises and compromises of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. </div>
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Upon pondering these grand truths, I saw university students and young protesters sprinting away from main road leading to Taksim, and yelling. My friend and I parted from our German and Turkish acquaintances, who high-tailed out of the line of fire and thanked them for talking to us. We crossed the street to get a better view of the action as police began to throw teargas canisters into the crowd, some 100 yards away. I caught a little teargas in my throat and we left the area.</div>
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I'm safe writing this now, in fact most people are safe, but the police may raid Beşiktaş again. I'll stay out of danger, but I'll try to report what I can!</div>
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The politics of Turkey are complex and very simplified in this post. This <a href="http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/11978/the-right-to-the-city-movement-and-the-turkish-sum">article </a>better explains the protest, but even it is short on some details. I'll do what I can to add context, but it will be limited. I recommend searching out news about the protest directly, if interested in more detail.</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9222021057682525736.post-80759173098057653222013-03-03T00:03:00.000-08:002013-03-03T00:03:07.948-08:00Familiar, Not ComfortableOn the day after my birthday, when I finally woke up, woozy and nauseous, I chatted with my friends and had a hummus spinach omelette. My new friend Joe packed up his cooking wares and brought them back down to apartment 3A, the suite I lived in last year. I helped him carry his mason jars and whatever French coffee thing, and walked into my old space.<br />
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It was so clean and orderly, I forgot I used to live there. The walls are white and the floor is white, so without the grime I bring and attract to every apartment, the suite looks sterile and feels worse. I look at the refrigerator and am transplanted back to a year ago, with half-formed, half-true memories. The feeling is familiar, but not comfortable, like when I visited the my first room in New York for a lockout and it was unlofted, and colorful with all these stupid ass posters of bowties. It was my home, but it was in a dorm, so now it's someone else's.<br />
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And that's the strangest thing about working in student housing, it's structured to be ephemeral. I'm lucky (or unlucky) to have a place to stay, but it's temporary and so is everyone around me. I'm Matthew McConaughey. There are faces throughout the university that I recognize (fortunately and unfortunately), but there will be another batch of a thousand, all with their quirks and part-time jobs and aspirations to make a lot of difference. I'll do what I can, and I'll do more next year, for sure. I want to do a better job with residence life. Building a community is tricky work, and I haven't done enough this year.<br />
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Oh, by the way, I took that job in "Idling." I'm not idling, I'm busting my ass this semester, even if I'm watching a lot of Avatar and Dr. Who on the side. I'm in grad school, in the Julian J. Studley Graduate Program for International Affairs (recent name change) and I work in a freshman dorm in the East Village. Probs going to Turkey this summer, if I scrounge the money for it, and I'm interning at the UN. I was SO worried about idling and falling into traps, but I shouldn't worry. Worry shades members of my family terribly. We look so rotted and grave when we worry. <br />
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I'm fine. I'm busy, but I'm fine. I should update this more. I should update you more, but I get so distracted, you know how it is, yani, yani. I was worried I was doing nothing, going nowhere fast but my birthday is a nice reminder that I'm doing tons and wobbly time doesn't care at all for my worries. It'll just keep pumping.<br />
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<a href="http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&cad=rja&ved=0CDgQtwIwAQ&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D8ggJS0p-QQc&ei=BQMzUavWMNDw0QGB1oHwCw&usg=AFQjCNF-5JCJXEK5BDvgwddnYkyrd2G5bg&bvm=bv.43148975,d.dmQ">My old apartment</a> is someone else's, and I found some old underwear from someone who lived in my current space before me. Time's going to keep going, and my home will keep moving. It goes that way, and it should so nostalgia doesn't keep us static and stationary. <br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9222021057682525736.post-30131582974804828572013-03-02T23:33:00.004-08:002013-03-02T23:33:59.147-08:00"And I guess I'm a writer who uses italics"<i>(</i>Accidentally deleted on March 3, 2013, cached and reposted from August, 2012<i>) </i><br />
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<i>Uses italics</i> uses italics<br />
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I reread what I rewrote from one of the last posts (pieces) and I
realized I was glazing my fists. Just obvious, obvious words strung
together. No room for the imagination. I don't lack in imagination; I
lack in narrative structure. Let me play you a song called "Narrative"
on the three chords with the four strings I know how to play.<br />
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It sounds a lot like "Wonderwall."<br />
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I don't read <i>Sartre</i>. I read No Exit and 3 other plays and it was awesome. I am not a person who <i>reads Sartre</i> or writes about <i>reading Sartre</i>. I hate those people. Matter of habit.<br />
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I AM reading a book called "Einstein's Dreams" and it's great. Little
vignettes where time acts differently and we act differently because of
it. It's moving and very human, these quick characterizations and
images. Long, tragic poems. Howl for physicists, or maybe not. It's good
though.<br />
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There was this particular vignette about time as discontinuous parts. I
finished the piece (post) and I was thinking about Portland in the
winter, how the sky will hang low and gray. How the birds will chirp and
Brian, my cat, will whine about whatever, how my friends will look
thinner, stronger, worse, paler in their sweaters and suits. I'll say
hello to them, do shots at the dive in Gateway, lose my patience, lose
my resolve, miss home, miss them. In an instant of the gray Portland
canopy, I remembered it's August. I won't be home (if it's even home)
for 4 months. It hits me hard when I have to unpack what I've tried for
so long to compartmentalize.<br />
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It's the same everywhere, all the time. I only miss where I'm not, who I'm without. What a drag and how silly!<br />
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The next vignette was about local time: all the cities are states and
time passes at different rates depending on the city. Travelers pass
between time zones and adjust to the new rate, but if they went back
home after a month, years would have gone by, or minutes. I wonder if
that's the real time, our time.<br />
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If I explore facebook, I can find all sorts of times, with classmates
now Captains and businessmen and children, with children. We're seeing
behind the curtain. All your time is local. You feel like everyone is
getting old so fast, losing and gaining and dying and dying while you
try to live. We're supposed to go back home and feel better or worse
about our situation because of how our time rate differs.<br />
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I think college is a vacuum, a time suck. Once I leave, I'll speed on
through the rest of my life, which was actually an earlier vignette...Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9222021057682525736.post-19356750094734878452013-03-02T23:24:00.001-08:002013-03-03T00:06:05.681-08:00Your Own PaceI was wandering back to my friend Alec's cavern loft, overall having a good day, and talked to myself about workouts. I was planning on running early this morning, and answered to my audience that I would replicate some of the old workouts that I used to love in high school. No, currently love. I'd run some laps Fort Greene Park, which Alec lives next to, and increase the speed every now and then, a regular <a href="http://www.coolrunning.com.au/expert/1997c002.shtml">fartlek </a>workout. No, no, I admitted to my audience, I'm not as fast as I used to be, but that was laright because I could go at my own pace.<br />
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It struck me for the first time how revolutionary that mentality is. I could run slower, but that was okay, because I was giving it my all. Everyone on my old cross country team could run at their own rate, challenging themselves in increments and it was all valued. That back-of-the-pack girl Khang liked or that sweaty guy Hania liked, they all could run and not worry about interpersonal comparisons. We trained on the notion of personal records (PRs), self-mythology. You ran your heart out and you knew it, and you were recognized for your effort.<br />
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As a stark opposite, one of our rivals, Central Catholic high school (about as bland of a name as you can get, barring something named after an aluminum company...) was an athletic juggernaut with the ability to send only the minimum number of runners to races, while the more elite competitors ran with the gods, or Galen Rupp or whoever. Their coach(es) strategically placed runners exactly where they were needed for the team to win each race, usually with great success. I only saw a handful of red (Central's colors) in each race, because the whole team was not necessary, just the tops. They were the anointed ones. <br />
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We ran our hearts out, all of us, and were still trounced by the hierarchical, the efficient Central Catholic Rams, most of the time. It was a given that we would place second or third, but where was the Central team? Where was the spirit of togetherness, of intersubjective support? It was absent, and I'll go as far to say the Central team didn't exist. They may have looked like they ran together, all huddled in obligatory prayer before each race, but when it came to the field, they all ran alone, burdened like Atlases.<br />
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Maybe our top runners felt this way, but most of them were all smiles after the race because someone out there with a green, damp jersey gave it there all, and that mattered as much if not more than the PR. And I swear this wasn't just me. This isn't hagiographical delusion. We were radical, we were together.<br />
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And I'm trying to get back into running now. Reintegrate those old habits, snot rockets and wearing tennis shoes like they made my outfit, running on empty stomachs, running through pain. I haven't reintroduced my bandanas, but they're still around, in a drawer somewhere in East Portland. I'll run tomorrow, groggy in the cold March morning, but I won't run alone, and even if I did, I'll PR for sure, and I'll come back to Alec's cavern, sweaty, but grinning, because I heard the team fanfare on the way back from the park.<br />
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It's not just a runner's high, it's recreated recreation. I've still got the raider spirit.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9222021057682525736.post-3685656666233165392012-07-25T22:50:00.000-07:002012-07-30T10:03:15.952-07:00IdlingI was offered a new job last week. I am pretty sure I'm going to take it, but won't until all the cogs are in place before I jump in.<br />
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A lot more of my time would be put into this job, and on top of the graduate program I'll start in a month, it will most likely stop me from interning until I adjust. I don't think interning is incredibly important and I could really do without it, our whole work system could do without it. It's not even apprenticeship, at least not in New York; it's our free labor that is required for later paid labor. Dumb for us, the workers, GREAT for the administration.<br />
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Alas, I probably need to do it. This new job is better, though I'd be away from a lot of my current co-working friends, I'd be with all new ones. I'm stuck, waiting for the cogs to be placed, unsure whether to attempt to bolster my (probable) illustrious career or take a better-paying, better job in the now.<br />
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I'm taking some time to make that choice. I have the contract signed, but in my hands. Waiting, in my hands, while I read plays by Sartre and watch Oz.<br />
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Alec told me that the ambient sounds of cities wreak havoc on the cortisone levels of its dwellers to the point of causing anxiety. His ride to the Public Advocate stresses him out because of the beeping and the braking, the sound of general movement of the city.<br />
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I rode Community bike back from whatever pier was screening <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quicksilver_(film)">Quicksilver</a>, that Kevin Bacon, Laurence Fishburne movie about bike messengers, and listened to the stalled traffic. What got me was the sounds of the cars when no one was moving, the regular hum and grunt of the engines. I forgot how much sound, how much energy you make to idle.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9222021057682525736.post-71267438009033527442012-07-01T14:36:00.001-07:002012-07-01T14:36:20.467-07:00Manipulative isn't the right wordAbby's coming over to check out the digs. I was cleaning, and then I realized I wasn't cleaning. I was rearranging. I wanted everything to look lived in. Not messy, but certainly not clean. I never want it to look clean, because then it would be clear that I cleaned. I wanted to appear as though I didn't live in squalor or disarray, but not cleanliness.<br />
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BUT, Abby knows this. She's seen my unprepared disarray in multiple states. She knows the messy-but-I-know-where-everything-is.<br />
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I forgot that I want to appear things, all the time. I want to sweep my bangs off my forehead to keep from looking like someone who Wouldn't sweep his bangs off his forehead.<br />
Also, they're all sweaty. Damn it's hot in the city, right?<br />
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I don't keep tabs on this kind of stuff. I don't notice, most of the time. I try not to notice how <i>prepared</i> I am. Like I'm my own proctor.<br />
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At some point, I just become what I appear to be. But I haven't stopped pretending not to care about appearing like I pretend to care about appearances.<br />
<br />On a different note, I've discovered in how many ways prose can be awful. Clear sentences, philosophers. Clear.<br />
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Please.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9222021057682525736.post-9629917116587132312011-12-31T20:39:00.000-08:002011-12-31T22:41:15.107-08:00Buttered popcornIt's New year's in New York, out with the old and the Amsterdam. The streets are as lit as any other Saturday night, except they smell abnormally like ganja. I'm back in the city to work this holiday. I've never put much effort into this holiday. Maybe I'll join a party, or light some fireworks in the rain, watch them roll down my hill. This isn't my favorite cultural tradition. Dick Clark and Carson Daly are not my favorite Easter Bunnies, but I'll through the holiday gods a bone. <div><br /></div><div>This year has been rough, but definitely not the roughest. I didn't write much, but that means I also didn't write much crap. I didn't emote on paper, I didn't serve in Occupied France. Hell, I didn't occupy. I decided I was part of the working strata that was being represented, rather than representing. Fine. I had to work. Reasonable excuse. I barely worked, though. I mostly sat and ran errands. What a year! Errands galore!</div><div><br /></div><div>It's been a good year, but certainly not the best. Some death, some disease, some letting go. The last few months have been surreal, if anything. No mandated ways of dealing anything. I live in post-modernity where all advice is relative! So I'm told I'm doing fine. Fine is shutting down a little, playing video games, wishing to stay sleeping most mornings, general doubting of life, not going to Brooklyn, not going to Staten Island (but why would I?)... </div><div><br /></div><div>It's been a fine year. I'm dating Hania, still. I haven't thrown that away. That's nice. It's a nice feeling not wasting something good. But really, I've put a lot of effort into keeping it floating, as has she, and it's going well. I keep cruelly joking about marriage to everyone. Maybe 2012 is the year I fully loosen my grip on social expectations and decide every big life decision. This year was sure a primer, if that's what I'm up against. I have set on some paths that require certain actions in the future. I will have to work, for instance. I can't ruin my parents' credit with vagrancy, much to my dismay.</div><div><br /></div><div>Maybe I'll go to grad school. Options are still open. I'm not at a dead-end plywood desk, just yet. Plenty of time. Too much time, actually. </div><div><br /></div><div>I've been getting debris off some blocked paths, too. I've been thinking about serving in the military (Is that what it's called? Am I pronouncing it right, military? It's so foreign to me). I'm really throwing my arms in the air, Who Knows rising from me like a chant. </div><div><br /></div><div>Chantix. I quit smoking, by the way.</div><div><div><br /></div><div>For 2012, I want to cut nicotine out of my diet, altogether. That's a goal. </div></div><div><br /></div><div>I really want to stop judging people, too. That's a goal. That's an every day goal, you know? Writing it now only solidifies it. I need to let people be people and not the categorized and compartmentalized boxes I can push them into. I've been watching a lot of The Wire and I'm pretty okay with drug dealers, now. That's positive change, ya feel me?</div><div><br /></div><div> I really need to see some more of the world. I started off a good streak with moving to Poland this year (where I'm writing from now), but I'd like to at least double my ambitions. At least. </div><div><br /></div><div>I really do need to get out more, even if a friend dies, I can't let that stop me. Just keep pushing, falling, rambling. Get a hard time, let it wash over me. I'll be a low island for 2012. I will be pushed skyward by volcanoes. Palm trees will grow from my sides. This metaphor doesn't make any sense.</div><div><br /></div><div>I really want to learn Arabic, and leave the United States with a salary. That's a goal. That's the goal. </div><div><br /></div><div>I really need to be okay with the silence.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9222021057682525736.post-29837279490741401972011-08-23T22:27:00.000-07:002011-08-23T22:42:59.516-07:00There are so many testimoniesI have been notorious for not responding well to tragedy. Not crisis, not emergency. I do well there. I create a sense of levity and try to calm people. No, not that, when tragedy strikes though, I go blank and feel nothing and then it slowly hits me for a week, two weeks, months, months.
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<br />I've had a lot of people die around me. I've watched old friends and acquaintances die. Flip over, fall down, whatever. Whatever. I don't know why Reynolds High School was a place of so many deaths. I don't know. I'm not processing anything.
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<br />Another of my friends died last night. This is the strangest it's been. When Victor passed last summer, I knew how to deal with it: blasting "Only the Good Die Young" and crying. For days. When Nick Vining killed himself my freshman year, I demonized him and then cried under his desk, and then demonized him.
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<br />Those aren't the <span style="font-style: italic;">best </span>strategies for dealing with tragedy, but they were how I was going to deal, regardless. Plan set. Those were the two deaths that hit me the hardest. I was reeling from both of those, but this one,
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<br />One of my best friends died last night and I'm just not dealing with it. "That's the right way, Joel, because there is no right way." Pat on the back. "Feel better."
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<br />I appreciate it, all, but I don't feel bad. I haven't processed it. Nobody knows how to respond to death and nobody, except trained professionals, know how to respond to those who are responding to death.
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<br />I just want to go away for a while. I just want to walk for a couple miles and stare at the water. I don't want to be hassled.
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<br />One of my other friends, a mutual friend with my dead friend, she told me that we should try to publish his music. Hendrix-style posthumous. Or maybe Van Gogh-style. Beethoven. In death, he will become a legend. Maybe, is my response. Yeah, sure. Is that honoring his legacy? Would he want his legacy honored?
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<br />No, I think he would want to get paid to play music while he was alive. Right?
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<br />And there's no solace in hell.
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<br />I am disappointed I didn't get to hear his last album, the one he recorded this summer. I'm disappointed he only had recently came to terms with who he was and was able to admit it. He lived with this knowledge only a month, two at the most. I'm disappointed that he didn't get to sell his music for a livable wage. He will only live in stories and caricatures and pictures and digital graveyards, he won't be able to give his testimony. That's what's hitting me now. He's silent.
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9222021057682525736.post-32564977043548590712011-07-22T06:52:00.000-07:002011-07-22T07:10:56.298-07:00I'll let it rain on me.Two things: I'm sort of worried about the rest of my life. I'm going to owe a lot of money and I'm going to have to pay it back for years to come. Fretting.<br /><br />I'm also in Poland, in a hotel listening at the rain and reading about modernity.<br /><br />I need to let go of one to accept the other.<br /><br />I am more aware of the former because of my age. Everyone else in this program thinks I'm a baby, even, I think, the 22-year-olds (oh, pardon me, 23). I find it incredibly patronising especially coming from academics who deconstruct everything (except age, it seems). Our professors, some aged 60 and over, see us all as children, or young adults which is a euphemism for children.<br /><br />"You want to work?" they ask me, incredulously. Yeah, I have a lot of fucking loans, I respond with exasperation. This heightens my panic about money, and makes me forget that I'm in Poland with REAL Polish people.<br /><br />Like,<br /><br />I signed off facebook with two of my friends yesterday because I had to listen to my Russian, blind violinist friend play some jazz next door. I was sitting back thinking how ridiculous it would be to explain that when I got back home, but in the moment it seemed normal and acceptable as a thing that happens in life.<br /><br />But earlier,<br /><br />I made some offhand comment about my disappointment with people that join cults to postpone accepting adulthood, a comment I was very proud of, and my deconstructionist academic peers said I was being ignorant. What is adulthood? Why accept such norms. Pish posh.<br /><br />I was talking to the program coordinator for the Wrocław a couple days ago at lunch. I asked about her doctorate, which she was given a month ago, and she told me to stay away from the doctorate. It is NOT worth it, she said. Once you finish your Master's program, you feel unaccomplished and the doctoral program helps you feed your academic addiction, but you're stuck in it for years, head to the paper. Everyone is working around you and now you are a doctor of your subject. Where did your life go?<br /><br />Another guy, a composer (one of two I've met on the trip), went to the New England Conservatory and then a conservatory in Wrocław for two Master's and told me he regretted his New England experience because of the expense. Really?<br /><br />I'm going to finish reading and sit back all of tomorrow. I'll let it rain on me, real Polish rain.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9222021057682525736.post-61043513028380813852011-07-09T15:32:00.000-07:002011-07-09T15:59:15.765-07:00Stupid Stupid, stupid (Dobranoc.)My concentration requires either an internship while enrolled or studying abroad. I didn't know how much time I would have in the next year, so I decided to go abroad. I am a student of the globe, so why not see the globe, rather than <span style="font-style: italic;">just</span> theorize it?<br /><br />I'm alone in the hotel lobby right now. It's next to a forested park with a big fountain that does water displays that move to music. I thought I was going mad in my room when Also Sprach Zarathustra danced outside our windows. Vitaly thought that the Poles were reenacting the war when the fireworks came.<br /><br />Turns out it's just a normal Friday night in Southeastern Wrocław.<br /><br />I'm one of the only students in this program without a Bachelor's. Most of them are working on their dissertation and are including their coursework in their projects. How many Polish intellectuals does it take to upset your vision of stupid Poland?<br /><br />Just one, just one intellectual. There are none here with toothless, happy grins, old world charm, there are none. These people are wearing better shoes than I am and many speak English. Honestly, whatever stupid image I had of the Slavic countries East of Germany... I will tell you, there are more scags on public transportation in Portland than there are here. I'm not even in the largest city in Poland. I'm in the fourth largest. People aren't rich here.<br /><br />I managed to upset one of the Polish students who are also part of the program. I said I disliked the mass-mediated discourse surrounding the failure of the socialist experiment that was the USSR. He was aghast. "You actually think that we should have another try at Marxist socialism?"<br /><br />Well, I guess not, when you say it that way. I believed in the decency of humanity and that the bourgeois were replaced with totalitarians that enacted and reinforced boundaries that already existed, but now I don't believe that. I can't believe that.<br /><br />I didn't live under socialism. I know nothing. Americans know nothing. Why does The New School discuss Marxism in so many contexts if it is not worth discussing? Maybe because it's great sociological critique, my UN table was able to agree on that, but Joel, the time for socialism is dead.<br /><br />I had to remind them that my name is Joel. You can't remember both names and polemics.<br /><br />That's a joke. I've only been here two days.<br /><br />I got into an argument with one of my closest friends before I left. I presented a radical leftist perspective unabashedly (and unprovoked). I was not received well. To fight complacency, I was reactionary and that did little in the way of conversation.<br /><br />I find this shit terribly interesting and righteous, but I don't have even reason to bring it up in social situations. I don't want to be a zealot. I don't want to not speak and go on like I have in the past, or like I am here, too embarrassed to mutter in Polish to go anywhere, but I don't need to be so virulent or <a href="http://newschool.edu/tcds/subpage.aspx?id=65257">violent</a>.<br /><br />And hell, even these international academics are less radical than I think I am. Maybe I should keep reading and absorb more everything. A crisis is like a sponge, and so will I be. I don't want to be wrong anymore.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9222021057682525736.post-8707163566928006802011-07-03T15:51:00.000-07:002011-07-03T16:25:45.028-07:00ProlixAll young whites are juggalos and juggalettes and I'm tired of it.<span style="font-style: italic;"> </span>I'm<span style="font-style: italic;"> tired </span>of kicking past Faygo bottles at MAX stations and I'm <span style="font-style: italic;">tired</span> of black and white makeup kits catching in gutters. I don't understand this whole fascination with the Detroit Mecca. Detriot.<br /><br />I don't understand the white people of today. White culture is so loud and obscene. I heard about the bullshit evangelizing of Violent J, but his name underscores a larger obbjective violence done to the faiths of his listeners. He is, they are ignorance and misappropriation. I <a href="http://www.avclub.com/philadelphia/articles/av-club-editor-injured-in-flash-mob-attack-in-phil,58134/">read</a> about a group of wild and rangy juggalos that attacked a group of journalists and teachers. Evangelism, Violent J? Your <span style="font-style: italic;">evangelism</span> brought this.<br /><br />I can piece together the puzzle and the politically correct media won't say it, but all of these kids were juggalos. The music is their destruction. Blither and bluster and stupid, stupid stupid. No time for it. Who to blame but ICP for this and similar assaults? I want these men to be punished for inciting these crimes, but I can't expect the parents to make a move. They were as easily incited as their children by the Black Flags and the Nirvanas and whatever. And their grandparents with the riot-induction of Gene Krupa, David Brubeck, Stan Getz.<br /><br />Every generation faces a moment of clarity where we can see the culprits and it is up to the strength and intelligence (not verbosity and wayward desires) of the society to pare down the overgrown culprit trees.<br /><br />We must not let this stand.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9222021057682525736.post-36914062222408290052011-06-20T11:38:00.000-07:002011-06-20T11:57:44.393-07:00Summer ModeI'm in summer mode. I will do nothing unless someone urges or yells at me and No one is urging me to apply to grad school or jobs, eat, read or blog. I'm withering away and I'm not even documenting it.<br />I think I could make FaceSmash.<br /><br />About a quarter of my summer so far has been in the two most happening cities in the Northwest: Corvallis and East Wenatchee. I jest (please see the municipal websites for both cities), but I enjoyed my time there more than here. Or maybe the same. I'm with old friends and only a handful have gotten old and stale. The ones that haven't seen my in years and mispronounce my name were someone else's friend to begin with.<br /><br />I finished <span style="font-style: italic;">On The Road<span style="font-style: italic;"> </span></span>recently. It was killer. I stopped after the ridiculous and benign first ten pages, but then I realized that was the whole book and dug it fully. That was the first for-pleasure book in months, maybe a year.<br /><br />I leave for Poland in two weeks. I'll have research papers due in Winter after I get back. I'm excited to be in a foreign country that isn't Canada, not that I don't love Canada or Canada isn't foreign (It very much is). I'm thinking of this trip as a test. If I fail, I have to work for the post office for the rest of my life. I won't be cut out for international relations. I'll be cut out for what I've done best so far: apologize for late packages.<br /><br />"I know you have the tracking number, but the number doesn't necessarily signify anything at all.<br />"I'm sorry."Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0