Much ado about almost something

Caution: Significant levels of late-night ruminations ahead, which may or may not make any sense at all. Read at your own risk. Feel free to turn back now.

I was tired hours ago, and I wanted to go to bed. But I kept thinking and forming phrases in my mind , and I knew that this evening would be my last night to myself for quite a while. So I'm here and I'm writing instead, about life, the universe, and everything, in a lengthy and possibly pointless reflection on several specific and nonspecific things.

Tomorrow I start my first trans-Siberian. I am, of course, nervous about this, because I'm always nervous about starting new trips. New trips in the sense of my job, of bits of organized travel that I haven't done yet, because obviously I want to do a good job and that comes in large part from knowing the territory beforehand. But also new trips in the sense of new journeys, a different part of the world for me and a new departure from the US and everything that forms part of my life there. I have to wander, this is a given. Exactly why, I'm not sure, but I know it's something fundamental that I have to do. Every time I leave, though, it makes me wonder a little more what my reception will be when I return. Will people still have a place for me in their lives, or will my place be filled with other things? Is it truly out of sight, out of mind? I can go months without seeing people I'm close to, but I still care about them just as much. I don't know if I inspire the same feelings or not. It's hard to maintain even friendships across long distances, to say nothing of romantic relationships. I try. Sometimes I fail miserably at both.

While in the US, I tried hard to see a lot of people. I managed to see almost everyone that I wanted to see, even if only briefly. But I always feel that I could have done more. People in DC I could have seen more often, as I was there for a while. People in Florida I scheduled so tightly that I sometimes missed them, or was horrifically late in seeing them, or saw them only far too briefly, or very occasionally missed them completely. I worry that many of my friends feel slighted, either because I was either constantly running around in Florida or constantly holed up in a computer cave in DC. I worry that my efforts, both here and in other areas, might have been counterproductive and in vain.

Sometimes I'm tempted to cut ties with everything. Start with a completely new slate somewhere, with neither past nor future to think about, no people to worry about. I want to go back to the Camino, when I felt completely free. I could easily do it, just disappear off the face of the earth for a while. The world is a big place, and I've only explored a small part of it. It's full of places that I could hide. But cutting ties with the life I've lived up to this point would hold its own set of problems. People I care about, people I love...I don't want to lose them. It's so hard for me to find people who are worth much of anything to me...most of the human race is entertaining, but very little more. People who are worth caring about are few and far between. People who aren't trying to own me in some way are even fewer.

For most of my life, there's been a constant struggle of trying to figure out where I stand in the world. Being strange made it hard for me to find friends as a child, though I could not for the life of me figure out what made me so different. I remember in elementary school wishing that I was pretty, because then maybe people might like me. Mostly, I wanted to be like everyone else. If being stupid and vapid meant that I might have friends, it seemed like a reasonable tradeoff. Impossible to make, but reasonable nonetheless. Later, I just wanted to leave the world. Possibly by meditating on top of a mountain somewhere. Possibly by doing something else.

I seem to have stopped at that thought there. Unsurprising, as it would have been a full stop in time.

But moving on. I'm still here, and I feel as though I need to justify my continued existence on this planet by doing something with it. I'm not a person who can just exist and be happy with a normal kind of life. Every time I try, I feel trapped. And I'm caught in a double bind, because in order to feel that I'm making any kind of progress I have to be moving around, but to finish and refine anything I need to be in one place. This is true of writing. This is true of photography. This is true of really almost everything. But I have trouble finding the balance. I would like to write something extraordinary. If this takes the form of fiction or creative nonfiction I don't care, but I need to write something that I'm proud of. I'm only inspired when I travel. I can only edit when I'm stationary. I would like to save the world in some manner. There are all sorts of things that need fixing. I'm still figuring out which Herculean task is mine, and how to go about doing it, and where I need to be. I would also like to have good people in my life. But I've always had the feeling that I was meant to walk alone. Now that I know what it's like to have friendships, I'm rather attached to them, but as I've said, relationships can be fragile and hard to maintain. Somehow I need to figure out what I'm doing here. And how to do it. And who to bring. Ideally, I'll have my girlfriend, my friends, a book or several, limitless opportunities to travel, and interesting projects that make a difference in the world. Inshallah that's what I'll be able to get.

So these are my disconnected thoughts for the evening. The questions swirling in the miasma of my mind. If you haven't followed this far I don't blame you; my mind takes circuitous paths and I haven't bothered to clear the underbrush. It's closing in on 3 in the morning now, and I have things to do tomorrow. continued preparations for work and life. Possibly, after writing all this, I'll be able to finally sleep. Or perchance, even to dream.

Muslim =/=Arab=/=Muslim

All Muslims are not Arabs. All Arabs are not Muslims. Unfortunately, not everyone realizes this, including many Muslims. When I lived in Morocco, I discovered that it's not considered to be a "true" Arab country, and it took thirteen years for it to be admitted into the League of Arab States. Because half the population is Berber and has a different culture, and because Moroccan Arabic is so different from Classical and Modern Standard Arabic, it somehow lacks credentials within the Muslim world.

The problem lies with the fact that the prophet Mohammed was from Saudi Arabia. When a religion or philosophy is anchored in the time and place of its origin, it is certain that problems will arise as it's transplanted in time and space. It's fairly impossible for this not to occur, because nothing grows in a vacuum, and the culture in which an idea originates is bound to influence it. The choice lies in whether or not to adapt the idea to the time and place, or the time and place to the original idea. I generally think that the former works better than the latter, but the latter is a popular choice. Why do we have so many varieties of Christianity and Judaism if not for this very same conflict? Somewhere along the line, people had to choose. Do we follow Byzantium, or do we follow Rome? Do we follow the Pope or King Henry VII? What about following Luther? I don't know as much about Judaism, but I know that there are Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform sects, which meant that schisms had to take place at some point over questions of how to believe and behave. Islam is ripe for schism right now. But Islam is supposed to be unified and uniform. Which means that schism will be difficult if not impossible (even though there are already different schools of thought and different sects--Shia, Sunni, Sufi...).

This blog post came about because of reading another blog post on a similar topic. http://www.racialicious.com/2009/04/17/searching-for-my-pakistani-identity/


The author is Pakistani, and observes that other Muslim South Asians are flattered if people mistake them for Arabs and try to display an Arab cultural identity rather than their own. But they are still Muslims, regardless of their culture or race. Likewise in Morocco. Or Indonesia. Or the US.

Same Same but Different

St. Petersburg and Moscow both have extensive metro systems, and one of the most common sights you'll see on the uberlong escalators is of young couples cuddling, kissing, or otherwise engaging in rather sickening public displays of affection. I generally ignore these couples, think sour thoughts at them and look away, because in general I a) think these activities are better done in private and b) would rather not be reminded that I'm several thousand miles away from the only person with whom I could engage in such activities. Last night on the metro I saw another one of these couples, and as they were right below me I found them hard to ignore. When they came up for air, though, my opinion of them changed drastically.

They were both female.

Living for a year in a country in which homosexuality is illegal, I developed a keen sense of Things You Do Not Do Or Say In Public. Clearly, these girls had no such sense. They were totally absorbed in each other, and they didn't care who saw it. Because whoever saw it didn't matter. No one paid them any attention at all. It's amazing to think that homosexuality could be such a nonissue. It's so politicized in the States, often needlessly so, and while there are places where it's a nonissue, there are more places where it's a Very Big Deal. I'm not so naive as to think that all of Russia will be like this, as it's even larger than the US and has far more rural areas. And I'm certainly not taking it as a sign that I should come out to my coworkers, because I like to keep my personal life private and separate from my public self. But still. It's nice to know that there are mainstream places where young queer couples don't have to worry overmuch about expressing who they are. It gladddens my queer-happy heart.

Banyas and body image

Last week, I went to a banya with my group. A Banya is a public bathhouse/sauna, in which you sit in an exceedingly hot steam room for a while, exit and dump a bucket of cold water on your head, sit for a few minutes, and repeat. During further repetitions you get to use birch twigs to whip yourself and your friends--it's supposed to be good for circulation and muscle soreness. It's fabulous, and I freely admit that there's a certain masochistic flavor to it that I thoroughly enjoy.

Inside the banya, large groups of naked women sit talking, drinking water (or beer or kvass) between sauna sessions, sometimes eating snacks. It can be an all day event for some people, and given how cold it's been outside I don't blame them for hanging out in the only truly warm place in town. The interesting thing is that no one seems to notice or care about what anyone else looks like. It's possible that because the average age was fortysomething and they'd clearly all had multiple children they were beyond caring about such things. But it was nice to be in an environment where what people look like doesn't make a difference. It's at odds with what I've observed on the street, the high level of fashion and makeup that scream "look at me!" to everyone who passes by. Perhaps it's a generational difference, or perhaps it's because the banya was in a smaller city (not Moscow or St. Petersburg). For whatever reason, the banya seemed to be the one place so far where people are free to let it all hang out. Which is not a bad thing at all.

New Country, New Norms

I arrived in Russia a few days ago, and already I'm beginning to notice the gender norms of the place. Women walk around tottering on high heels as they walk over cobblestones. Their outfits hover between understated fashion and over-the-top uberclothing (think hot pink tights and black miniskirts--I only saw one outfit like this, but it was memorable). In general, there's an emphasis on looking good. Men don't seem to pay as much attention to their own appearance. They generally look dressed down, with the occasional suit and tie amongst the older generation.

More than fashion, I'm noticing that people here have less in the way of personal space issues than we do over in the US. I've seen lots of girls holding hands or walking arm in arm, and while they're obviously just friends and nothing more it still makes me happy. The phobia of touch is something that I don't entirely uderstand about my own culture, even though it's something in which I tend to participate. I like my personal space, but I also enjoy being affectionate with close friends. In the US, it seems as though most physical contact is construed as being in some way sexual, so no touch is permitted unless it's with someone you actually want to have sex with. I've found in most of Europe that this social taboo is much less prevalent, and consequently friends don't need the twelve-inch personal space bubble that we require in the US.

Klein Grid

A while ago (as in, a few weeks ago), I took a short version of the Klein test for sexual orientation, out of curiosity to see if a somewhat standard test would give results in line with my own self-perception.



It came out more bisexual than I think is really accurate, largely because for the set of questions about who I'd been hanging out with for the past year (not dating, just people I spent time with) I had to answer "mostly male." This was more out of necessity than actual choice; who you hang out with has a lot to do with who's available, and most of the people I knew in Morocco were men. In general I think I'm about 80% gay, but it's not even really as simple as that. I'm attracted to people who fall outside gender norms. So if the pool of people I could potentially date was set at ten, seven would be female, one would be male, and two would be so completely androgynous that no one who wasn't dating them would be able to tell. And all of them would be androgynous to some degree. I think that tests of this nature fall short of accuracy because they fail to take into account that gender itself is not a binary. There isn't just a spectrum of gender-orientation, there's a full spectrum of gender-identity. But no one in research circles is likely to try to quantify that fact for at least another ten years.

More Good News (and questions of language)

Huzzah! We now officially have four states in which it's legal for same-sex couples to get married, now that Vermont has joined the team. And our nation's capital has taken the unexpectedly enlightened step of recognizing same-sex unions performed elsewhere, even if not allowing same-sex unions of its own. Hamdulilah, life is becoming good.

On a completely different note, one I'd planned to blog about before I got the celebratory news of increased legality, I'd like to talk about language. Ever since I started learning foreign languages, I've always been fascinated by the idea of gendered words. From the obvious and inane middle-school jokes about "how can you tell if this pencil's a boy or a girl?" to more evolved questions in high school and college, gendered words have always held questions. Why, for example, is the moon in Europe almost always considered feminine and the sun masculine? Why is it reversed in Japan? Who came up with gendered language in the first place? And does it actually affect how we think about the words themselves? I've had several people scoff at this last question, but a researcher at Stanford has now decided to look at this question as well. Her findings? People do indeed think differently about differently gendered words.

When you think of a bridge, how would you describe it?



Which of these sets of descriptions would you describe as more masculine or feminine?








As it turns out, the set of more "masculine" attributes--"strong, sturdy, towering, etc." was chosen by people whose primary language is Spanish, in which "bridge" is a masculine word. The set of more "feminine" attributes was chosen by people whose main language is German, in which "bridge" is a feminine word.

So does gendered language affect peoples' perceptions of objects? I think so. The question now becomes, what do speakers of an ungendered language like English have to say?

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102518565&ft=1&f=1007

Iowa!? Yay!!!

So...I would never have thought that Iowa of all places would do this...but their Supreme Court just legalized gay marriage! Happy days are here :)

http://www.hrcbackstory.org/2009/04/human-rights-campaign-applauds-iowa-supreme-court-decision-on-marriage-rallies-to-be-held-across-the-state/

Maybe this means that there's hope for the rest of the nation...