The problem with my life these days back in the U.S. is that all sorts of people smarter and more articulate than me keep stealing my damn ideas and publishing them in essays or books. Ahem, Elizabeth Gilbert. But my story is actually better than hers because my end is bittersweet, not sappy, and therefore superior. Happy endings are for schmucks. More on vile Elizabeth later as she merits her own entry. But today I read something quite lovely from a professor giving a speech to freshmen in college. I am slightly embarrassed at how much graduation type speeches resonate with me at the present. Oh well, I forgive myself. Cue Stanford professor guy (William Deresiewicz):
“Moral imagination is hard, and it's hard in a completely different way than the hard things you're used to doing. And not only that, it's not enough. If you're going to invent your own life, if you're going to be truly autonomous, you also need courage: moral courage. The courage to act on your values in the face of what everyone's going to say and do to try to make you change your mind. Because they're not going to like it. Morally courageous individuals tend to make the people around them very uncomfortable. They don't fit in with everybody else's ideas about the way the world is supposed to work, and still worse, they make them feel insecure about the choices that they themselves have made—or failed to make. People don't mind being in prison as long as no one else is free. But stage a jailbreak, and everybody else freaks out.”
I found this article while job searching on-line and quite frankly it made me quite relieved. This professor’s whole premise is that we basically get on a track in life, and keep moving along, keep specializing, keep narrowing our focus. He suggests that maybe we all need time to jump off the track and take a route that is less programmed. Since I have been back in the U.S., I’ve been second guessing myself, wondering if this whole taking a year to travel, rethinking my career was a ridiculous thing to do. And maybe it is and was, but maybe we need a bit more of the ridiculous in this world. I quit my job, my apartment, and my life in order to do things I love, to explore some old passions and find new interests. I traveled completely uninhibited, unplanned and unorganized, something I’ve certainly never done before. And I think it’s time to take some inventory.
I never wrote about the end of my trip. Maybe I should do some backpedaling. I started this blog with an entry wherein I bragged about the fact that I have no keys. I didn’t then in Aug. 2009 and don’t now. Having staged my own successful jailbreak, here’s where I’ve landed a year into unchained living. And yes, I make others a bit uncomfortable, myself included as this directionlessness is so un-American. But the rewards for staging one's own jailbreak can be great.
Inventory of what I (still) don’t have: a job (ok, a real one), a car, a house, mortgage, an apartment, a marriage, children, significant other, financial debt of any kind (and well, needless to say I've got a lot less in savings!). Interestingly I’ve still got no keys.
What I have now that I didn’t have a year ago: A new favorite artist (Mapplethorpe), love of Majda Rumi and Nissar Qabanni, improved Arabic, amazing concerts attended: Chucho Valdés, Adir, Ismaël Lô, La Danse Fait Sa Comedie (incredible, stunning group of dancers from France). I have new friends and renewed friendships, including people I can now visit in Rwanda, Japan, Turkey, South Korean, Tunisia, Spain, Ireland, Italy, Switzerland, Kansas, San Francisco and Florida. I have a wedding in Provence, nights in the dessert, days spent on Mediterranean beaches, and hiking in the Alps. I left soulprints along every step of northern Spain, from the French Pyrenees to the Atlantic, at end of the medieval earth in Finisterre. I have a month in my life in which every single day I drank good wine, ate good chocolate, and walked an average of 25 kilometers a day (and I say kilometers because it sounds longer than miles). A love affair with handsome Uruguayan, complete with romantic chance meeting, tango lessons, and week in stormy Venice with whole days spent not seeing Venice. I have moments and people, food that is delicious, and good conversions that are nourishing. I have thoughts and ideas, time spent thinking and reading, ruminating on Islam in Tunisia, Islamophobia in Europe, the veil, the minarets. How best to teach foreign languages? Is Jazz more alive outside of the U.S.? How will these blood oranges taste with dates, cinnamon and coconut? (Delicious, indescribably delicious) Can a person eat too many vegetables? How much French is really in Tunisian Derja? I also have a good end to a childhood story.
My final days in Tunis were simple and I didn't know how to write about them. I went to my favorite beaches. Saw my friends, shared meals, drank lots and lots of coffee, smoked some chincha (hookah in Tunis) and had conversations. Said goodbye to my favorite places, namely the second-hand market at Ibn Khaldoun where I spent about 40 dollars for an entire new wardrobe. Saw the ruins at Carthage since it seemed silly to leave without at least visiting once. Bought lots of gifts in the Medina, spent hours in the jewelry section, sifting through boxes of treasures, meeting Turkish diplomats. Then I wandered on to buy gifts of olive wood, leather, and Tunisian cotton. I did my final run in the Parc Belvedere. I didn’t cry. I threw my own personal goodbye party to Tunis from the rooftop of my apartment with some chocolate and a bottle of wine, while I listened to noise from the streets and watched the clothes blowing about on the lines above all the apartments under the starry warm sky. Paid my final bills, somewhat of a herculean task but it was accomplished. On the penultimate night I waged a furious battle in my bedroom with an evil cockroach that I initially mistook for a mouse. As we spared, it had the gall to run across my bare foot which caused me to kick it so quickly that I tossed it into the air and it landed on my bed, entangling its stupid self in my bed sheets. Thereby causing me to scream (and clearly change my sheets!). Then it crawled under the bed, where I could finally see its huge antennae twitching, smugly waiting in the dead middle of the space under my bed. Vile beast. Ultimately, I won, and in punishment for touching my bare foot the bug was left under a shoebox with a large rock on top that no one would disturb. The next night, after a final meal of my favorite fish in La Goulette, I left Tunis. Boarded the plane and watched the sparkly lights of the coast fade from view, and felt calm. And didn’t cry.
I never wrote about leaving Tunis because I’m not sure what to make of the end. Sure, I’m back in MN, a place which I’ve never been able to leave completely, yet to which I don’t completely belong. And I feel that the trip is not over. I might keep traveling. As you may have guessed, I have a few other places on my list. But I am going to keep living in a way that is morally imaginative and morally courageous. In forgoing comfort, safety, things known, familiar, and reassuring, I’ve made a very good gamble. Whilst my bank account has taken a serious beating, I feel richer. All these things I would not exchange for any key. Keys are for prisons.
Last night I saw the play The Last Seder. I went by myself, thanks to a really nice guy I work with whose wife gave me a ticket as she’s the stage manager at the Park Square theatre in St. Paul. Having been a participant in a number of very lovely Passover Seders, the whole play felt familiar. And it seemed somehow like I was cheating, as if a Midwestern product of Catholic schools has no business nodding in recognition of the hiding of the afikomen, the open door for Elijah, the why of the bitter herbs and the youngest asking questions. The actors sang dayenu and I hummed along. Then each character took turns saying “if I had only my family and nothing else, dayenu.” It is enough. Or another “if I had only my husband and nothing else, dayenu” and “if I had only this day and nothing else, dayenu.”
As for me, if I had only what this year afforded and nothing else, dayenu. So much more than enough.
P.S. Read the professor’s whole articles, it’s fantastic.
http://chronicle.com/article/What-Are-You-Going-to-Do-With/124651/
Sunday, November 7, 2010
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Dressed to kill (yourself that is)
It’s hot. I know this because this afternoon when I brought laundry to the roof of my apartment building and clipped each item onto the line, upon reaching the end, the first two items were already, completely bone dry. I think it was 102 today. And to all you people whining about the heat in New York and Boston, we’ve haven’t exactly the AC coverage that you enjoy. Your woeful Facebook posts win you no pity from me.
Considering the heat, it does surprise me when I pass women in the street dressed head to toe. Now, I may have stated previously that the general dress of Tunisian women ranges from Lindsay Lohan to various manifestations of an Orko from He-Man look. I kid not, better still is the fact that Lindsay and Orko can often be seen walking together arm-in-arm. Daily there’s mom walking down street in a failed-attempt-at-stylish leopard print dress that covers neck to ankle, holding daughter’s hand who is wearing skinny jeans and a Zara t-shirt that could only have been painted on. Mom and daughter are giggling and find their outfits totally unremarkable.
I concede that wearing shorts and a tank top really isn’t the smartest option with this blazing sun. There are plenty of examples of so-dressed, idiot tourists who come to Tunisia for a beach holiday, throw caution to the wind leaving the sunscreen at home, and therefore spend the final days of their trip idling in Tunis’s souks with exposed shoulders all a-blister. Ick. Even if the sun does not burn you to a lovely shade of lobster, it will beat down on your poor little epidermis, so it actually feels nicer to wear nice light, loose-fitting cotton. This I learned in Niger, where it was actually hot (140 degrees often and I actually saw it hit 155). Women and men wear the same clothing-concept: huge pieces of thin, thin cotton, draped loosely, and only once, about you to let optimal air flow and prevent sun from crisping your skin. No insane layers, no exposed skin. They are geniuses; this is what one wears in oppressive heat.
As the temperatures climb in Tunis women respond by removing their winter coats, or maybe they wear a shrug over a long-sleeved shirt, but it’s the men who look really ridiculous. Every day I see men in their 40s and 50s walking around in athletic shorts (thigh high ones!), tank tops, and flimsy plastic flip-flops. I think they believe that this constitutes being dressed. One could wash a car, sit on lawn furniture a la "Dad on Father’s Day" card, or God forbid, work out in such attire. It is beyond me how anyone could find it acceptable to walk into a bank, eat in a restaurant, or sit in your dentist’s office so dressed. Unless you are seven. The rest of you are simply flaunting the fact that it’s socially acceptable for men to look stupid.
Of the many couples sporting a look that says “Orko is escorted by Larry Bird circa 1983,” I saw my favorite today. This afternoon I passed a couple walking hand-in-hand down Rue de Marseille, being flirty. She was wearing a light turquoise, sparkly head scarf, one of the tight ones that covers the neck up to the chin, then she had on the ubiquitous white long sleeve t-shirt under a long, to the ankle sun dress (turquoise, hot pink and white): very Muslim chic. He was wearing basketball warm-up pants, the kind that swish when you walk like the pants are trying to get you to “be the net, feel the net.” He pairs these dashing pants with a tight, white tank top, which nicely highlights his skinny frame, and is cut so as to reveal both, both his nipples. We can’t see her neck, but we can see the gentleman’s nipples. Lovely.
However, in a rare moment of magnanimity on my part, I immediately recalled a couple I saw this January in Boston. It was a dark and snowy evening, a balmy 17 degrees, as I passed Gypsy Bar and noticed a couple waiting in line. She was wearing a black mini-skirt, and had really long, gorgeous, very naked legs. Her naturally long legs clearly were lacking 3 inches, so she was perched on pencil-thin silver heels. The top was sparkly and nicely displayed unnaturally high breasts, likely due to some really expensive gravity-defying bra. She had a coat on, but obviously it being well above zero degrees she needed to have it unbuttoned. He was in the every-man going out in Boston look: completely average-looking but probably really expensive jeans and some Brooks Brothers type button down shirt. As I pass them, my ankles tighten, they look up at me pleadingly, “Oh please don’t ever do that to us in this snow! “Oh darlings, you know mommy loves you too much! You keep running nicely and I’ll keep wearing comfortable shoes that make me look ten years older than I am.” Two little ankle voices squeal “yeah.”
So who is the more ridiculous couple? Mr. and Ms. Tunis, enjoying a stroll in the 101 heat while she sports 25 pounds of clothes and his nipples enjoy the breeze? Or Mr. and Ms. Boston-Clubbers, waiting in line as she is about to loose those nice legs to frostbite?
I will award each couple an honorable mention for adhering to the globally accepted rule that she must outdress him by a ratio of 6:1. However they both lose. Rather the men win because despite looking lame, they are dressed for the damn weather they are standing in. And the women lose because they are idiots. Blah, blah, I know: both women are responding to male-dominated social definitions of female beauty and control and manipulation of such beauty. In one context male pride depends on other men seeing his girlfriend’s long, sexy legs, thereby earning him “man-points” for how jealous other men are of him. While Mr. Nipple earns his man-points by showing off the prettily wrapped present parading down the street with him, and other men get to be jealous that only he gets to unwrap said present. (Although this couple could not have been over 23, and there’s no way a guy dressed like that has the money to get married in Tunisia, which really leaves him with only one package to play with).
Forget these tools, I blame the women. Lick your finger, hold it up in the air and guess what the temperature might be. Then try, try to think of what would make you not miserable in such weather. Ladies, all of you, can we please dress for ourselves? Can we consider the raging monsoon outdoors, the hazards of skin cancer, or the health and longevity of our ankles? Or can we at least, as Van Morrison chides, dress up for each other?
Considering the heat, it does surprise me when I pass women in the street dressed head to toe. Now, I may have stated previously that the general dress of Tunisian women ranges from Lindsay Lohan to various manifestations of an Orko from He-Man look. I kid not, better still is the fact that Lindsay and Orko can often be seen walking together arm-in-arm. Daily there’s mom walking down street in a failed-attempt-at-stylish leopard print dress that covers neck to ankle, holding daughter’s hand who is wearing skinny jeans and a Zara t-shirt that could only have been painted on. Mom and daughter are giggling and find their outfits totally unremarkable.
I concede that wearing shorts and a tank top really isn’t the smartest option with this blazing sun. There are plenty of examples of so-dressed, idiot tourists who come to Tunisia for a beach holiday, throw caution to the wind leaving the sunscreen at home, and therefore spend the final days of their trip idling in Tunis’s souks with exposed shoulders all a-blister. Ick. Even if the sun does not burn you to a lovely shade of lobster, it will beat down on your poor little epidermis, so it actually feels nicer to wear nice light, loose-fitting cotton. This I learned in Niger, where it was actually hot (140 degrees often and I actually saw it hit 155). Women and men wear the same clothing-concept: huge pieces of thin, thin cotton, draped loosely, and only once, about you to let optimal air flow and prevent sun from crisping your skin. No insane layers, no exposed skin. They are geniuses; this is what one wears in oppressive heat.
As the temperatures climb in Tunis women respond by removing their winter coats, or maybe they wear a shrug over a long-sleeved shirt, but it’s the men who look really ridiculous. Every day I see men in their 40s and 50s walking around in athletic shorts (thigh high ones!), tank tops, and flimsy plastic flip-flops. I think they believe that this constitutes being dressed. One could wash a car, sit on lawn furniture a la "Dad on Father’s Day" card, or God forbid, work out in such attire. It is beyond me how anyone could find it acceptable to walk into a bank, eat in a restaurant, or sit in your dentist’s office so dressed. Unless you are seven. The rest of you are simply flaunting the fact that it’s socially acceptable for men to look stupid.
Of the many couples sporting a look that says “Orko is escorted by Larry Bird circa 1983,” I saw my favorite today. This afternoon I passed a couple walking hand-in-hand down Rue de Marseille, being flirty. She was wearing a light turquoise, sparkly head scarf, one of the tight ones that covers the neck up to the chin, then she had on the ubiquitous white long sleeve t-shirt under a long, to the ankle sun dress (turquoise, hot pink and white): very Muslim chic. He was wearing basketball warm-up pants, the kind that swish when you walk like the pants are trying to get you to “be the net, feel the net.” He pairs these dashing pants with a tight, white tank top, which nicely highlights his skinny frame, and is cut so as to reveal both, both his nipples. We can’t see her neck, but we can see the gentleman’s nipples. Lovely.
However, in a rare moment of magnanimity on my part, I immediately recalled a couple I saw this January in Boston. It was a dark and snowy evening, a balmy 17 degrees, as I passed Gypsy Bar and noticed a couple waiting in line. She was wearing a black mini-skirt, and had really long, gorgeous, very naked legs. Her naturally long legs clearly were lacking 3 inches, so she was perched on pencil-thin silver heels. The top was sparkly and nicely displayed unnaturally high breasts, likely due to some really expensive gravity-defying bra. She had a coat on, but obviously it being well above zero degrees she needed to have it unbuttoned. He was in the every-man going out in Boston look: completely average-looking but probably really expensive jeans and some Brooks Brothers type button down shirt. As I pass them, my ankles tighten, they look up at me pleadingly, “Oh please don’t ever do that to us in this snow! “Oh darlings, you know mommy loves you too much! You keep running nicely and I’ll keep wearing comfortable shoes that make me look ten years older than I am.” Two little ankle voices squeal “yeah.”
So who is the more ridiculous couple? Mr. and Ms. Tunis, enjoying a stroll in the 101 heat while she sports 25 pounds of clothes and his nipples enjoy the breeze? Or Mr. and Ms. Boston-Clubbers, waiting in line as she is about to loose those nice legs to frostbite?
I will award each couple an honorable mention for adhering to the globally accepted rule that she must outdress him by a ratio of 6:1. However they both lose. Rather the men win because despite looking lame, they are dressed for the damn weather they are standing in. And the women lose because they are idiots. Blah, blah, I know: both women are responding to male-dominated social definitions of female beauty and control and manipulation of such beauty. In one context male pride depends on other men seeing his girlfriend’s long, sexy legs, thereby earning him “man-points” for how jealous other men are of him. While Mr. Nipple earns his man-points by showing off the prettily wrapped present parading down the street with him, and other men get to be jealous that only he gets to unwrap said present. (Although this couple could not have been over 23, and there’s no way a guy dressed like that has the money to get married in Tunisia, which really leaves him with only one package to play with).
Forget these tools, I blame the women. Lick your finger, hold it up in the air and guess what the temperature might be. Then try, try to think of what would make you not miserable in such weather. Ladies, all of you, can we please dress for ourselves? Can we consider the raging monsoon outdoors, the hazards of skin cancer, or the health and longevity of our ankles? Or can we at least, as Van Morrison chides, dress up for each other?
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