Boys don't cry

Just saw Boys Don't Cry for the first time. I'd been avoiding it for a long time since the only thing anyone seemed to say about it was that it was "really good" and "really heavy/depressing/sad". So I thought, I'd wait til the right time. Well, apparently it was tonight, after my free Chan (that's the Chinese version of Zen) meditation class at the monastery down the block. See, in Berkeley you can say things like that: "I'm just gonna run to the monastery, I'll be right back." In Oakland it's the liquor store. Anyway Heather, my roomie, has HBO and it was 10 o'clock and I'd been just yesterday asking my coworker Steve if he could recommend any really good movies and when he started listing comedies I even said "it doesn't have to be funny, it just has to be really good."

So it was the right time.

Especially considering my whole circle of friends is almost all dykes here.

What I'm surprised at is how much the movie is about class. No one ever really talks about that. Well, maybe if they ever get beyond the "really depressing" part of the commentary, but I never thought to ask because I thought the depressing thing was that this cross-dressing woman got killed because of her ways. I didn't know how much it was just as much because she was in a really poor and depressed community out in Nebraska.

The movie makes me scared of & hateful of men in general, but more it makes me scared of poverty and ignorance. It even made me reconsider my partying ways and romanticization of poverty/white trash culture. Not that I know much about it. What I do know is that I made many friends out here in Oakland who come from a white trash background, who pump their chests and brag/joke about it when I hang out with them. But these are all people who have gotten out, who have educated themselves, who were eager to leave that environment. I am so sheltered, it's really easy for me to misunderstand the reality and the complexity of such a background. Of course there are people in there who love, people who hurt, people who have just as much capacity and potential as people from different backgrounds. The difference seems to be that they have so much more baggage, so much more drama, so much more volatility in their lives. This, of course, I base all on a movie.

* * *

This morning, Jack, the son of my neighbors from upstairs, was waiting to leave for school. He's 7 and he's adopted. His biological mother is in prison and his father's whereabouts is unknown. It was a gorgeous sunny Berkeley morning, and he was waiting for Heather to take him to school on Walk & Roll day, where kids only bike or walk to school. Heather was trying to fix the chin strap for her helmet and Jack and I were standing on the porch. "Did you ever touch this?" he asked, pointing to the potted cactus that stands on a little table on the porch. Underneath it is an ashtray filled with my cigarette butts. First I thought he meant the butts, then I realized he meant the cactus. No, I said, I know what they feel like.

* * *

The movie made me crave a cigarette the whole time I was watching. The actors must have smoked a pack each. You know how it is with watching people smoke-- even if you don't smoke it makes you feel like having one. But, as I said, the movie also made me disgusted with that lifestyle, the easy rapport of beer and cigarettes and pot around the clock. So I thought about abstaining, but when I started writing this blog I stepped outside for a pall mall nonetheless. When I got done I put it out in the little ashtray. Just as I was stashing the ashtray under the little table, I leaned with my other hand, the one with which I was holding the laptop and my cup of water, against the cactus by mistake. It was not heavily enough to make me cry out or drop the computer or anything. But I felt the sting of the thorns. Just for a moment, I felt the sting.

Demagoguery and the Debate

It's hard to believe the way the Iraq issue is being handled in the presidential race. I just watched the debate and it seems McCain's strategy was to equate any mention of withdrawal with "defeat", thereby appealing to the competitiveness of his audience, to Americans' obsession with being a "winner" or a "loser." "What a game American politics is" says Heather, remote in hand, switching from CBS to MSNBC, sitting literally on the edge of her seat, putting her spectacles on and off. But is politics really a game?

And if it is, and if war is a game, then the U.S. can at least ADMIT that it's in Iraq not because of oil, or WMD or any goddamn democratic idealism but simply out of Ego. Whenever people now say "Oh, but we can't leave Iraq now," I just want to say (and only tonight did I really realize how angry it made me): What the Fuck Do You Care about Iraq? If the U.S. government or U.S. citizens cared anything about Iraq they would have withdrawn as soon as possible. Or would do it, as soon as possible. So I don't buy this self-deluding bullshit about let's stay in Iraq to make sure it's okay.

And, I think, neither does anyone else. Because, as the main spokesperson and supporter of the war, McCain and the Republican rhetoric focuses exclusively on the undesirability and Nonexistence of "defeat" in Iraq. In this way the similarities with Vietnam are frightening. You can't acknowledge the fact of defeat, you can't utter these words, even though it is an actual factual reality because it strikes too lethal a blow to American self-delusion, to Americans' egos, because it gets too close to the archetypal American personality's Neurosis.

So tonight I saw how obviously and repugnantly American idealism was coupled with American competitiveness to lull this nation into staying in Iraq. A friend of mine who works at an arts institution said, of her efforts to shmooze rich folks for contributions "I'm really good at serving them their own shit on a plate." Buon Appetito, America.

David Foster Wallace is dead

He killed himself on Friday. I can't believe it people. I can't believe it. I can't believe it I can't believe it. He was such a good writer. So brilliant and sensitive, so gifted in both mathematics and language, all these sos and sos. S.O.S. S.O.S. It brings up all kinds of thoughts-- was this inevitable? Is there anything that could have helped him, including himself? I mean, someone like that, you would think there is nothing you can tell him that he doesn't know. And not just cleverness-wise, but also in terms of insight. Check out the commencement speech he gave at Kenyon college a few years ago. There is so much there, so much knowledge of being human, of what is necessary to be human, both hard-earned and natural insight.

He was a great writer and a respected professor. He had every resource available to him. I know he'd been under medication for a long time and his depression was getting more and more severe. I read a quote from his parents that said he just couldn't stand it anymore. It sounded almost sympathetic, and that clues us into the extent of the misery he must have been experiencing. But god. It just makes me so sad. No one is infallible. Depression is truly a disease. Or is it? I mean, didn't he try everything? He must have tried other things like buddhism or yoga or the non-academic sciences of the soul. He must have, right? Someone so intelligent could not have failed to look into these other ways. So how is it that nothing helped? I don't know i don't know. It definitely makes me think the old-school thought of depression as something that can be overcome by sheer will or something is bullshit. I don't know if DFW was manic-depressive. Probably.

Oh man.


oh man. oh man. It is a huge loss for us. And it's scarier to think someone like that could be so lost to himself.

BUt what does "someone like that" mean? How do I know what he was like? I don't. And even his wife, his mom, his dad, probably are not a whole lot closer to what it was like to BE him. To be inside his head. And that is the great mystery and paradox of this life, of this consciousness. NO ONE CAN SEE INSIDE YOU.

Think about the autonomy! Think about the freedom! Think about the privacy.

No one knows what goes on inside you.





We answer to ourselves, ourselves only. To our own conscience. That is the ultimate judge, the ultimate god. But maybe we can get to know our god. Get to know how our conscience is formed (how much of it is the superego, paternal authority figure, etc),and if any of it is simply irreducibly There. The little voice inside you, your soul, etc. I don't know what any of those really mean but one option is to engage our sense of right & wrong in a dialogue. We do this all the time of course, with various frequencies depending on the person, but maybe a more conscious dialogue. A written one perhaps, with a particular situation from our life as a jumping off point. Alternately (or supplementarily) the Buddhists would recommend that we not engage in a dialogue but step back and observe the edicts of our inner judge and any reactions/responses we have to these. For me, observation is hard because I always think of it as a reporting position. As in-- okay, I'm in the field, collecting data on the mating behavior of these gorillas (which describes my mind quite well) and now that I have the findings-- who do I go to?

A scientist of the mind. I like that. Especially since Jane Goodall is one of my heroes.

And so was DFW. Maybe that's why it's sad. When your hero kills himself.

Crones and Drones

So I just saw "The Women" starring most of the female actresses in Hollywood. There's Meg Ryan (flappy-floppy as ever), Annette Bening (where Diane Keaton should be), Jada Pinkett-Smith and Debra Messing. Even Bette Midler shows up as a (who else?) loudmouthed multiple divorcee. I'd planned to see the original George Cukor film first but circumstances dictated otherwise. Therefore, I can't offer an informed comparison between the two just yet. Nonetheless, I want to record my initial reactions hot off the movie seat.

It's telling that the last words of this version of "The Women" are: "It's a boy." This is a reason for joy, an ultimate fulfillment in the storyline for one of the characters. And though there are NO MEN in the movie, the patriarchal, old boys' style of thinking (manifest in the shameless commercialism and googly-eyed admiration of all things high-society NYC) permeates the movie like musk. From the first shot of the movie, you know there's nothing new to expect. A camera tracks fast over a blue body of water to reveal... the Manhattan skyline! It doesn't help that the first shots of the movie are straight-up product placements as an unidentified female protagonist struts into Saks Fifth Avenue and surveys the store through Terminator-like vision, pinpointing items of desire Prada Shoes --Must Have! Cartier Perfume...New Line!. The woman is revealed to be Annette Bening whose body language is a direct imitation of Samantha from Sex and the City and whose next encounter reveals the other side of the movie--- false female empowerment. As she strides through the store she is interrupted by a sales girl who asks her if she wants a facelift in a bottle. This is my face. Deal with it. Says Bening, tossing her head saucily.



And yet soon enough we see Candice Bergen (who is pretty fucking good I must say) in a post-facelift relaxation room looking for all the world like a burn victim and telling her daughter that she had to get one-- "Haven't you noticed? There are no sixty year old women in New York. I was the only one." It's funny but as her daughter admits, she will be in her place in another 20 years. So it's just a matter of time before we must stop asking the world to deal with our aging faces.

To make things worse, Bening is the high-powered editor in chief of some women's magazine who is having crises of conscience about the messages they are giving women. WHAAA? This whole movie is like a video-stream of Cosmo magazine. Not only is the hand-wringing about the models not being real people hypocritical, but it's also tired and cliche. Speaking of which, the writing in the movie is predictable to eye-muscle-fatigue-inducing levels. When Meg Ryan tells her mom she has no idea what it feels like to be betrayed old Candice (bless her sporting heart) heaves a deep sigh and says: "Let me take a guess... You feel you've been struck right in the stomach." No WAY! "You feel like you're in a dream... you know the one.. where you're falling and you can't stop." Get OUT Candice Bergen! Oh man, I bet YOU were betrayed too once! It all makes so much sense now.

Meg Ryan is "a good person. You know, I give money to homeless people. I recycle." Both these quotes had an invaluable third to strenghten their triptych of association, but I don't remember what. Suffice it to say, you've heard it before.

So I feel disappointed. I don't know what I was expecting. But this makes me feel depressed. Oh yes, when Meg Ryan takes a hit off of a joint she says-- you'll never guess! "I haven't done this since freshman year in college." Which is interesting ultimately because that's the level of maturation that any of these women have. That's the level of thought that this movie is aimed at. Which is not to diss college freshwommmyns, many of whom, I know from being their teacher, are way more articulate and composed. Add to all of these the fact that the women of the women are all your two-dimensional Sex and the city stereotypes, you find yourself nodding in beleaguered approval to people all over the world who announce "It's a Boy!" with something more than parental joy.

The Inner Fascist

Talking to Sol the other day I whipped out the phrase "the inner fascist." That is what I call the side of me that does not tolerate weakness or failure. That reveres strength and power in a fanatical way.

I suppose we all have an inner fascist. I mean, how can you have ideals without value judgments? Unless you're a Taoist, in which case you know that being "weak"-- i.e. small, flexible, humble like a blade of grass-- is real strength. Just think of how a big oak gets uprooted and falls in a storm. Ah but I'm no Taoist, as you can see from my inadequate explanations of that line of thought. Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that we privilege certain parts of duality like Strength, Beauty, Intelligence, Light, Height, etc. But I guess when we become slaves of this qualification instead of its masters, then we are fascists. But look at my word choices! Slaves vs. Masters. And I privilege the latter.

This stuff is entrenched. Ain't no easy way out. I'm just writing stream of thought here so I'm myself surprised that Taoism came up. But it does seem pretty relevant.

So, a Taoist approach may help with keeping the inner fascist under control but for me, the best antidote to the inner fascist is compassion. And empathy. Of this I am sure. When Murat was trying to quit smoking he was being really hard on himself during his lapses. I told him to be nicer, and mentioned the inner fascist. He imagined it as a dictator of small stature-- little Hitler, he called it. He would give reports on little Hitler's behavior throughout the days, laughing at him and occasionally falling prey to his moods. Mostly, though, he learned to be kind to his little Hitler-- and I think at some point little Hitler jumped into his arms.

I watched a documentary a long time ago about the Holocaust and it was made by a female psychologist (it was like half documentary interviews, half drama, can't remember the name or track it down) but the central tenet of the movie was that it was the lack of empathy that was the most clear cause of the atrocities in the Holocaust. There are other factors of course, but I was reminded of this film when I watched Elephant the other day and then did some research on the Columbine massacres. There was a good article in Slate that said that Eric Harris, the mastermind of the two youths, was a psycopath and described that condition as having ZERO understanding of what someone else is feeling, or that they are feeling anything at all. Complete lack of empathy.

I guess I'd heard this before but it blows my mind. It's fascinating, and horrible. Then, as I was trying to google-track down that movie I mentioned above, I came across this essay http://www.crisispapers.org/essays8p/empathy.htm which mentions the findings of a psychologist named G.M. Gilbert who studied the Nuremberg trials. Apparently the essay is quoting yet another movie (goddamn! why do movies shape so much of our reality-- it's always scared me) but says it seems a correct representation of the real Gilbert's findings when he says "I told you once that I was searching for the nature of evil. I think I’ve come close to defining it: a lack of empathy. It’s the one characteristic that connects all the defendants: a genuine incapacity to feel with their fellow man. Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy."

So there we have it. Psychopaths and Nazis and You. My friend. Yes, you. Yes, me. I'm gonna take a step further and say this: The reason "Evil" is so fascinating is because it exists in all of us. We all have our psychopath moments. It's actually a really preferable option in many cases to shut ourselves down and not imagine how someone else feels. And if you were to open yourself up, to talk about these things, you expose yourself to ridicule. It's easy to make fun of "feelings." To call this stuff namby-pamby, to characterize it as (oh, what's this?) "feminine." I've been listening to a lot of shock-jock radio recently (don't ask why but it's for reasons beyond my power) and those guys' reverence of toughness is really a transparent terror of facing and accepting any "weak" parts of themselves.

So what I'm saying is, watch out for little Hitler. He comes dressed in all kinds of guises. Often, that guise is You. But when you see the little guy, just ask him to come sit on your knee, and slick his hair to the side and give him a pacifier shaped like a cigarette. He'll start sighing and falling asleep soon enough.

Hanging with Tu-pac

Upon arriving in Ersas, our summer house, two days ago, I was happy to see my old friend Tuana. We spent the whole day today swimming and laying out on the beach. She's so much fun to be around! Her mom works at the cafe we have on the premises; cooking, serving tea and coffee, and generally trying to appease the grumpy old bastards who dominate the populace here. For example, Tuana's uncle got so mad while serving dinner last night that he put his fist through the glass of the bread cabinet. It was a big hubbub and some of the aforementioned g.o.bs threatened to call the police.

Besides swimming, we made some sand art:



That's Cinderella on the left and her fairy godmother on the right. As you can see, Tuana likes to work more in the abstract (I did old cindy). I'm glad she's gonna be around since I don't have many other companions here. We took a final picture to commemorate the day:

Report from the Airport

Report from the Airport


Sacred body, profane soul.

The sign said Meditation Centre and I was immediately hooked. I'd been to
one of these before in an American airport, I'm trying to remember which one
it was. Possibly Minneapolis, or Detroit. There it was called a Prayer Room
and it was tucked away in a far away corridor in a corner of the airport.
Nonetheless, it was a good experience. Judging by what I've seen here I can
say these places are both calming, sanctuary-like but also kind of creepy.
The carpeting is a negligible color like grey or teal, and folks often take
off their shoes. The rooms are empty and strange-- like empty conference
rooms more than anything. In the Meditation Centre here there were chairs
and a table and non-representational stained glass panels at regular
intervals in front of the frosted glass windows.


But I got no kind of meditation done. It started before I even entered, when
I realized I was wearing a tank top. It's not particularly revealing but it
is a tank top. You don't enter mosques with those and I recalled in a flash
reading on websites of Buddhist retreats where they asked the attendees to
refrain from wearing tank tops. So I put on my sweater. Which, you know, is
no big deal, not a wrenching concession, and yet it is a concession, and one
whose necessity I'm not entirely convinced of. I understand that you should
not be falling out of your jeans or shirt or whatever, keeping the t&a to a
minimum, but a tank top seems to be pushing it. Also, and here's the heart
of the matter, it just seems to apply more to women. Out bodies are more
profane, more suggestive, more explosive, or at least that is how we are
raised to feel. By "we" what do I mean? I'm not sure the we applies to
American women of my age-- I don't know how self-conscious they feel about
the way their sexuality is perceived, about how much they objectify
themselves. So maybe I should speak with the safer "I", the formation of
which I will summarize thus: raised in a secular, middle-class Turkish
family, as an almost completely nominal Muslim, educated in schools and
countries all over the world, and a US resident for the last 17 years or so.
Age 31. So that's the stats folks. Yeah, the we really makes no sense
because I have lots of Turkish girlfriends who seem much more liberated
about their sexuality, more accepting of themselves as sexual beings. I
attribute this difference to their more established urbanity-- they come
from families who have been big-city dwellers for many generations. My
father's side comes from a provincial town in the Thrace region of Turkey
(the European part of the country).


as i write this my fellow passengers on the KLM 1613 from Amsterdam to
Turkey are filing past me. people are so weird and varied. so many different
shapes, hairy forearms, stumpy fingers, so many crazy riffs on the same
theme. at the moment i feel charitable and so they all seem beautiful to me.
A whole host of african women in islamic headdress, different from the
turkish AKP headscarf. Children, brushing past with that wonderful
indifference to touch that they still have. *



Anyhow, back to the meditation on the Meditation Centre. As I was saying, I
am only a little ways removed from the provincial mindset of Tekirdag, one
which is more socially conservative than religiously conservative, but like
most value systems, uses the female body as its currency and soapbox
nevertheless. So what this translates to, in my life, is being frequently
self-conscious about how I'm perceived, particularly in regards to "virtue."
Yet at the same time I'm sort of a hippie at heart and couldn't care less.
It's in the US that I can don the latter identity more freely, and that is
part of the reason I prefer to live there. I'm not as worried about my
nipples asserting themselves or my dress being too sheer when I walk around
on the street in the US. These seem like trifles on the surface, and also as
more obvious trademarks of public dress code in Muslim countries-- the stuff
you see as Tips in any tourist guide. But there's a lot lying underneath it,
especially if you are from the country itself.


So I went in there and there were a few guys praying on the free prayer rugs
provided by the center, facing east. I felt a bit at a loss as to what to
do. My body, just released from 7 hours in a transatlantic economy class
flight, was longing to stretch and ease itself. But, if wearing tank tops is
inappropriate, isn't doing yoga worse? But how stupid! Why this
sexualization of yoga poses? Am I in denial here? The asanas are spiritual
and meditational practices, simply more physicalized. In fact, being right
next to the praying Muslims it was impossible to not notice the similarity
of the movements between their movements and sun salutations. But it was
specifically the Muslims who put me on edge, sort of nailed into my body,
trying to satisfy my aching limbs with Tadasana, mountain pose. I was
worried about their approbation, and about causing them to break their
ablutions, which in Turkish we call "abdesti bozmak" . The idea is that, by
washing their hands and feet in a ritual manner, the worshippers are
purifying not just their body but also their minds of impure thoughts. This
state is necessary to enter prayer and lasts until after prayer. There are
many things that can break the purified state, lust being among the first.
So, while possibly flattering myself that I could be the cause of such a
phenonmenon, my point is that it's actually the complete opposite--there is
nothing appealing about that prospect. It's simply filled with shame, like
you are this dangerous vessel, like a loaded shotgun, that needs to be
carried gingerly, handled with care. When in fact it's the men who are the
loaded guns and it's the other point I have about not flattering myself with
the thought: most any female figure bending over is a possible breaker of
the man's absolution.

But

why do I care?

I hate that I automatically inhabit this male consciousness, that I am more
protective of a stranger's virtue than my own peace of mind. And isn't that
weird I said virtue, cuz my protection of my own virtue is basically in
order to protect the men's virtue ultimately. You know, don't be a cause of
temptation, don't make the men feel bad about their own desirousness. Or
something. GodDAMN! It makes me so mad. And in the Meditation Centre here I
am finally decided upon zazen, sitting there thinking "Breathing in, I am
aware that I am breathing in... breathing out..." but I can't stop wanting
to stretch, and so I'm hyper conscious of the guys' presences, wishing they
would leave so I could be alone in the room. It's the most unmeditative
state imaginable. In fact, it's downright misanthropic, that's what this
fear and worry turned me into: crabby, hypersensitive bundle of nerves and
aching muscles.


I know I could have done all my scandalous bends and twists out on the
airport floor, in some discreet corner somewhere, and I've done it before in
the past. Still weird and awkward, though. Also, the Meditation Centre had a
nice plush carpet and it was nice and quiet. Finally everyone left and I got
to do some stretching but I was so afraid of being caught in the act that it
wasn't that relaxing.


Am I being too self-conscious about yoga? Maybe, but the feelings of shame,
virtue, bodily terror were triggered by the praying Muslims and gave me a
necessary reminder of the mental state that awaits me upon my return to
Turkey. And here, I want to emphasize the idiosyncracy of my perspective.
Like I said, there are plenty of women in Turkey who work it and don't care,
who don't have the hangups that I do. Basically, what I'm saying is, these
feelings are the results of as much personal hangups as social realities.