As human beings living in a modern society, we go through many types of journeys in our lifetimes. Some journeys are physical and others are spiritual. Some are easy and others are difficult. Some are very long and others happen in the space of hours, minutes, even seconds. I define “journey” as anything that takes you to another place or another level, anything that changes you, that shakes your insides and teaches you something new about who you really are.

I had the experience of a journey a couple of months ago, when I traveled to Vietnam. Before I left, I had ideas, hopes and fears about a very specific emotional issue that I would undoubtedly solve while I was there. But it never crossed my mind that, quite independently of that issue, my trip was going to be such a journey of discovery of love (in the broadest, most essential sense of the term), life and myself. My trip changed me, it reacquainted me with myself and it reminded me of who I really am. It changed my outlook on life and my attitude towards it. And, for the first time in a long, long while, I saw things clearly and found my own capacity for real joy.

The repercussions in my day-to-day life have been immediate and almost unbelievable. I have found a connection with my work as an actress that I had not found before, I have started doing things as a dancer that I never thought I would be able to do and I have discovered that I am capable of so many things that I always assumed were out of my reach. I am a better artist; I am a better person. I am braver and happier and stronger. And it still amazes me that all of this came about solely through a change of attitude towards life, with the simple realization that each day is just as unique as a day on a trip to an exotic land and therefore must be lived to the fullest. It’s all a matter of gaining perspective on yourself and your own life, like seeing yourself from a distance and with an objective eye — and I was lucky enough to be able to do this during my travels.

I have not failed to notice that, even with this great change in my life, even with this new outlook and this different attitude, my insecurities have stayed with me, like annoying houseguests that just refuse to leave. Yes, my insecurities are all still here and they are ready to pounce on me as soon as I let my guard down for even one second. It has taken me a while to realize that no journey will ever get rid of these houseguests, but that certain journeys can definitely give me the power to deal with them.

In the past few weeks, I have watched myself and the people around me very closely. I have marveled at how we are so conditioned by the opinions of others. You can go from being a beautiful dancer to looking almost laughable in the space of ten minutes if you think that your audience is judging the way you dance. It is truly incredible how much power our own minds have over us. Seeing just how much the opinions of others can influence me if I let my mind wander made me think of all the people who may not be performing to their fullest capabilities, just because they think that others don’t approve of what they are doing or of how they are doing it. Think about it. Think about all the unseen beauty, all the marvelous things that people are capable of doing and that are never seen, precisely because the rest of us are watching. The unfortunate truth is that, in many cases, we are more beautiful when nobody is looking.

On the other hand, the better you know yourself and the more connected you become with your essence, with what you really are, the easier it is to forget about all of the eyes that are watching you and to just be. The performing arts always include an audience, but ironically, it is only when you manage to forget about the opinions and judgments of that audience that you become a better artist. The actor who is emotionally connected with the character, the dancer who is in complete symbiosis with the music, the singer whose voice comes directly from that deep, deep corner of the soul: these are the people who are truly connected to life and who are, by extension, also the best artists.

We may be more beautiful when nobody is looking, but the truth is that life is always listening. And in the realization of this fact lies the key to connecting with the true essence of beauty.

tagged under: advice, art, music, travel

When I was a wee girl with rapidly growing feet, we used to go shoe shopping at The Little Red Shoe House. I don’t think that was actually its name but that’s what we called it; in fact that’s what everyone in town called it, though it wasn’t actually in our town. I remember long car rides, sitting in the way back, making faces at the drivers behind us until we finally arrived. It was an event. There was a small shoe shop in our small town next to the only pizza parlor. No one really went to this shoe store; maybe it was too expensive or didn’t have a wide enough selection or maybe when you live in a small town you look for any reason to get out and stretch your legs.

The Little Red Shoe House was a kind of secret place. It wasn’t in a strip mall or a town center; it was off the highway down a road riddled with potholes and gravel. It looked like the red schoolhouse from Little House on the Prairie on the outside, but when you entered it felt more like you were sneaking through the back door of a “Fresh Off the Truck” warehouse. There were tall pieces of scaffolding holding stacks upon stacks of rectangular boxes so that you couldn’t see who was in the aisle behind you — kind of like a peep show where everyone wants to remain anonymous.

I thought the shoe salesman was some kind of doctor, with his metal foot speculum that sent a chill up to my knees when I stuck my bare toes on it. Then the big “Oh my!” and “So that’s where you’ve been storing all your desserts!” and “We’ve got a ball player here!” upon seeing that my foot had grown a size and a half. I was always surprised because my shoes didn’t feel any tighter — in fact they felt just perfect - and why would I want a new pair that would require heavy socks at the end of August to prevent blisters? I’ve now learned as an adult that most of the time we outgrow things despite how good they might feel.

Then Dr. Shoe would bring down one of the rectangular boxes, kneel down and shimmy my submissive foot into a stiff new shoe. He’d lace or buckle it — whatever was called for — bring me up to standing in the new contraption and press his thumb into the leather, searching for my toes as if trying to find a heartbeat. My instinct was to curl my piggies under and hide them from the big bad wolf but he was too clever and soon drew them out. Often he did find my big toe grazing at the edge of the shoe which would swiftly be ripped from my foot and abandoned for another, bigger one that my foot rocked in like a row boat in an endless lake. “That’ll do. Half a size bigger to give her room to grow.”

Were Asian women’s feet broken and wrapped for fear that they would grow into whatever space provided? As a child, I thought my feet might never stop growing, and unaware of the laws of equilibrium, I thought that given the room they would grow to be as big as the rowboat or even the lake!

My feet did stop growing at a very acceptable 7 ½ — some might even call them dainty — and I never grew tall enough to be a basketball star. In the year since I’ve moved back to the U.S., however, my feet have grown a half-size to an 8. Maybe it’s a delayed growth spurt or the climate or that I’ve gained about 15 pounds, but I can’t help thinking back to The Little Red Shoe House. I often left through that back door thinking that I had been to a magical evil place that took away my snug security, leaving me naked only to re-house me with something that left me feeling small and inadequate.

Of course I would always be back six months later, sliding through that porthole looking to try on the next size. Today is Sunday; maybe I’ll go shoe shopping.

tagged under: america, fashion

Kelly Ramundo:
After roughly six hours of being on my feet, huddled in among other eyes on a screen, light-heartedly disparaging the “lazy” group of roughly 50 study abroad students who had been camped out on the floor since midnight, my tired legs knew what to do when Barack Obama was declared president of the United States: jump and not stop jumping. It was like being at a House of Pain concert, only it was the House of Ecstasy, Joy and Relief. What pundits had been predicting, but what I had not been able to fully bring myself to believe would happen had just been called by CNN at 5:00 a.m. local time. The unbelievable “fairy tale” had become reality. My optimism had been returned — just that like — as had my faith in America, my fellow citizens, the world.

I think the interesting thing is, for all the speculation about the race factor during the election, Tuesday night, in Madrid at least, Barack Obama was just our candidate, the best candidate, the classiest and most intelligent man in the room. For once, myself and 64 million other Americans refused to see color, which is what I myself doubted would happen in an article here over a month ago, when things weren’t looking so good for hope and change.

I don’t know if it was that, or the economy, or George W. Bush’s calamity of errors that paved the path for Barack Obama to be elected our next leader. It was probably just the perfect storm. What I do know is that whatever the reason, America proved me wrong. And I couldn’t be happier.

Chris Gladis:
I don’t often feel homesick. Living in Japan has been good for me, and I’ll stay here as long as it continues to be so. But I was in the Kyoto International House on Wednesday morning, watching that historic moment at 1:00 p.m. when the race was called for Obama and I felt something…missing. CNN was broadcasting views of people around the United States in jubilant celebration — dancing and cheering and hugging each other. People around the world were celebrating a historic moment. I was sitting in a quiet room with a few people watching TV and a guy sleeping on the couch. I had no crowds to dance with, to high-five, to join in celebration. My joy was contained: a gaze locked on the TV and a smile on my face, but that was it. I was happy, but I knew I would have been thrilled if I could have been with my fellow Americans on this day.

Parisa Aryán:
These are difficult times. There’s no need to listen to the news about the economic crisis, or even to think about the continuous flow of senseless murders, domestic violence and the thousands of other manifestations of the worst that is inside the human soul, to know that.

I hoped. When Barack Obama came into the picture, I hoped. I hoped that Americans would be optimistic enough to see that the glass was indeed half full and that it could be filled to the top if they decided to demand change. And I wondered if they were aware of just how much their vote would mean to the rest of the world, not just to the U.S.A. But still, I hoped. And deep down inside I knew that the people of the U.S.A. would know what they had to do. I woke up on November 5th to find that I had been right. Martin Luther King once said that faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.

That is the stuff that life is made of -– being capable of hope and faith is what gives us humans the power to make a change. And the fact that a majority of the people voting in these elections have taken that first step, so that their children, their grandchildren and themselves, will be able to see the rest of the staircase in the future, gives me a lot of faith. Today I can say that I am proud to be human.

Dr. GoodBud:
I’m not much for politics; I never was. In fact, I couldn’t tell you what’s going on in Parliament in my own country right now. To some of you that might seem strange, or even horrifying, but I live a happy little existence without the worrying effects of political mumble-jumble. But this election was so big, so important, so in-your-face that even I couldn’t ignore it. I’m relieved and excited about this new president and this new era in American history. I just wish people would stop asking if he’s going to be Canada’s president too!

Schuyler Hedstrom:
There are so many things I could say about this election experience but I think I’ll just focus on how emotional it was. Before this election I’d never been to a political rally or emailed my parents to say how strongly I felt about certain issues. Over the last year I’ve felt inspired by feelings of hope that change is possible and I’ve felt frustrated by all the negative media coverage and pandering to the lowest common denominator. I’ve been incredulous at the ignorance and barely-concealed racism that still runs through our country. But, after waking up yesterday morning and reading online that Obama had won, I felt awe and relief and pride. I actually started crying because I couldn’t believe it. It’s hard being an American living abroad because you feel privileged and guilty — like you’re the bad guy of the world. But I think with this recent victory I can hold my head a little higher and hope that, as promised, change will come.

The Baby Boomer:
As we watched the election returns on Tuesday night, we finally realized that what we had dared to hope for would become reality. Hope had triumphed over fear. With tears in our eyes we watched the joyous scenes from across America. When had ANY election spurred this outpouring of emotion? Never.

When had any event in my lifetime caused this spontaneous celebration everywhere? Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech? That certainly grew in stature over the years, but at the time it wasn’t fully embraced as the iconic symbol of the civil rights movement that it became. The only event that comes to mind is Neil Armstrong walking on the moon in 1969. But that was more of an awe-inspiring realization of the creativity of man’s intelligence and will to explore.

Tuesday night was different. We weren’t conquering science; we were making a statement that, as Americans, we were fed up with leaders who don’t represent our views, domestic policies that are short-sighted, and foreign policies that made us more enemies than friends. Tuesday was a great day for America.

The Innkeeper:
Seems like whenever I look up these days all I see are horses. Horses that are so high I can barely hear them neighing. Don’t get me wrong: I’m very, very glad that Obama won the election and that this country has finally broken the string of wealthy, Christian, middle-aged, white men as its leaders. And I understand that for those who have been oppressed, in the minority, or who have felt themselves hit the glass ceiling, that this is an extremely emotional turning point. My question is why the rest of the population seems to be ready to give itself an award for voting in an African-American president. Since when do we pat ourselves on the back for NOT being racist? Last time I checked, discrimination was illegal. We are not the first country to elect an ethnic minority leader, nor a religious minority leader. For goodness sake, four of the five most Muslim-majority countries in the world have managed to elect women as their leaders and yet here we are blushing and bowing and calling ourselves the greatest nation in the world for the umpteenth time. Call me naive, but it shocked me that race ever WAS an issue in this presidential election. What exactly are these “black issues” that people are afraid Obama will focus on? Civil rights? I hate to say it, but I don’t think we’re forerunners here. I think we’re behind the curve. If we want to say “good for us,” fine. But I think I’ll say “it’s about time.”

The Principal Traveler:
The moment I felt transformed was not the moment when Obama was projected to be the next president of the United States, nor during his stirring acceptance speech. It hit me while watching Fox News later, when a badly Photoshopped Obama was shown standing in front of that “waving flag” background. The stock image of the slowly undulating Stars and Stripes has always made me a bit queasy, bringing to mind the “If you’re not with us, you’re against us” brand of patriotism that emerged after September 11th. It makes me think of rage, small-mindedness, and intolerance. But on Tuesday night, it was as if this symbol were born anew. Suddenly, it represented change and infinite possibilities. I got a little choked up seeing Old Glory flapping rhythmically in the breeze. In the words of that country music group, I was proud to be an American.

Marta Rubio:
Obama. I like the sound of his name. I like the way the O and the B lead onto an A. Three vowels, two consonants. Vowels are the sounds with which human beings release our emotions. And Obama, a five letter word, has three emotional vowel sounds. A playful word. A hopeful name. Obama.

Election night was such an emotionally-charged event, I don’t think I’ll forget it for as long as I live. As the results progressively came out, something difficult to pin down with words, a collective feeling of hope, change, unison and belief in the unfathomable, took over the huge ballroom where hundreds of us were huddled around a huge plasma screen. Yes, it was possible. And it was happening right before our own eyes.

Unison. Change. Hope. We are one people. We must help one another. We won’t make it without each other. You are responsible for the change in your life, in your country and in the world. November 4th we were all Obama, and Obama was all of us. The voices of millions echoed out loud in his victory; the dreams of millions were reflected on him; the whole world looked on in hope for a brighter future, a change in direction, an end to the status quo, a reason to believe that a better and fairer world is still possible. Oh, “yes, we can” he said. And we all believed him.

Obama. Three vowels. Two consonants.
Obama. The man who reminded us of our endless power as a people.
Obama. The man who has already changed everything.

Nicole Pearson:
I am still reeling from the news. I find myself grappling with great relief over a despair I didn’t even know I had. I sat up all night Monday wondering if we could do it. I wondered if my country and I were ready to take this great leap forward. I wondered if we were ready to jump across the chasm of deferred dreams, broken promises, hate and division, to give up the possibility of being right or being wrong. I wondered, if we were ready to see one another beyond the bullshit and fix a society on the verge of collapse, a country waging not one but two wars and at odds with itself and the entire world. Tuesday was strange and sweet.

I no longer felt nervous but excited and ready to face up to the results whatever they might be. The first thing I saw when I woke up on Wednesday was an SMS that simply said, “YES WE CAN”. It was sent by a friend who argued that it wasn’t gonna happen, that it was too soon. I kept saying no, my country and I, we were ready, willing and able to grow up. And there was his message: “YES WE CAN”. I cried. I have been crying off and on ever since. I am so proud, so excited by this great opportunity, this gift we have given ourselves and the world.

Jacki Lewin:
I was there: I cried, I stayed up all night, I let Obama fulfill my dreams for a new day. Yet, looking at myself objectively I secretly thought: all this? For a politician? Is my generation even capable of this kind of involvement? For years I have distrusted our motives: having faith in our ability to bitch but not in our ability to do much else. Sure I went to the Iraq war protest that cold winter day in New York City in 2003 but all the while suspected that it wasn’t much more than a quirky social event: Look ma, I’m protesting!

But this year saw apathy and cynicism amazingly vanish. Suddenly we are giving money and staging fund raisers and calling voters in swing states and knocking on doors and calling our grandmas…and holy shit: caring! Wait, surely this must be a brand of faddish self-involvement; surely this is the self-congratulating recycling of the present day? But no: no. Absolutely not. Witness the tears, they are real. Witness the impromptu rounds of the National Anthem in New York City. Witness our joy and our protest and our taking back of our country from these assholes who have defined us for too long. This is about the ends but also about the means. Goodbye Baby Boomers, it’s our turn now.

tagged under:america, politics

Homeland Fare and Other Artifacts
Bush Leaves
Laura’s Pretzels
Cheney Shooters
Condi Rice
Gonzales Black Eyed Peas
Bodman Oil Dip
Tenet Curveball Drinks
Wolfowitz Mushrooms
Bremer Popovers
Harriet Miers Supreme Soufflé
Rumsfeld Shock and Awe Beans
Orange Alerts
Wobbly Economy Jello Salads
Polling Number Pickles
Nuts about Obama
Stand Up Chuck Roast
Baked Alaska
Moose Tracks Ice Cream
Joe Six Pack
Blackwater
Katrina Brownies

tagged under:america, food, politics

Dear Passionate Traveler,

When embarking on your next journey, there are a few things worth remembering in order to ensure the expansion of your mind, the enrichment of your soul and the safety of your heart. Here are a few tips to help you:

1. When deciding on your next journey, trust your own instincts. People will always have their opinions, ideas, desires and fears about what you are going to do, but at the end of the day, only your own opinions, ideas, desires and fears matter.

2. Your passion is a part of what you are, so don’t let anyone warn you against it. In the worst case scenario, it will at least provide color and excitement to your journey. In the best case scenario, it will take you places you never even thought you could get to.

3. Be careful with your expectations. I recommend that, if possible, you try not to have any expectations at all. As with everything in life, having great expectations will bias your point of view and will not allow you to appreciate things the way they really are.

4. A positive attitude towards the journey is essential. It is virtually impossible to have a journey with no bumps in the road and no problems along the way. When there is nothing you can do about these, just buckle up, sit back, relax and wait. When there is something you can do, do it quickly, forget about the incident immediately and go back to enjoying your journey.

5. Remember that, even if you have travel companions, it is worthwhile to spend some time on your own. This allows you to take in what you are experiencing completely, with no distractions. It allows you to think, to evaluate, to appreciate. Never underestimate the power of solitude.

6. Traveling on your own? Congratulations! A journey is completely different (in the very best of ways) when you are on your own. Take your time. Nobody is waiting for you, nobody is rushing you to move on to the next place, nobody is talking to you about what they are seeing or thinking, or about what you left behind at home, or about what you will find when you get back. You are free to walk around for as long as you want, or to sit down at a café and rest while you watch people go by. Take advantage of this; take in the vibration of the place, the colors, the sounds, the smells. Allow yourself time to think about it, to write about it, or to just close your eyes and feel it.

7. Remember that one of the very best things about traveling on your own is finding people along the way. Sometimes, when we have travel companions, we forget to make room in our journey for other, new companions. This doesn’t happen when you are alone. Open yourself up to the amazing fellow travelers and locals that you will meet throughout your journey. You all have so much to tell, so much to learn from each other and so much to experience together. Don’t let the opportunity go by.

8. If you finish a journey exactly as you started it, you’ve done something wrong. There are always things to be gained and things to be lost — that is the whole point of traveling.

9. So, once you finish the journey, make sure that you don’t lose the things you have gained. Keep them wherever they are safest — in a notebook, in a box under your bed or in a little corner of your mind — but make sure you keep them. On the other hand, make sure you mourn the things you have lost. You cannot say goodbye to them and let go until you have allowed your heart to grieve for them for as long as it needs to.

10. Be proud of your journey. Know that you are a more complete person for having done it. Be happy about who you have become after it. Because regardless of how it started and how it ended, what you left behind and what you are coming home to, what you gained and what you lost, or even what you missed out on — regardless of absolutely everything else — this was your journey. Enjoy that gift; enjoy your success.

11. Finally, remember to embark on your next journey with the same degree of passion as you did on this one. Never let your fear take over your passion. Because, dear passionate traveler, even a mistake, even the very worst choice of journey, will always beat the hell out of never leaving the safety zone.

Happy travels!

tagged under:advice, travel

The United States’ financial system blew up last week. In its wake, financial indicators — the stock market, the futures market, the price of oil — whose values have jerked around in past weeks with unprecedented single day losses and gains ultimately reflect one big uncomfortable truth: there so much doom and gloom in store for the financial future of America that not even the biggest Fed rescue package in history will fix Wall Street’s binge and the federal government’s willingness to let it feast.

As most economists argue, the most devastating effects of the current disaster are probably years away. While millions of Americans’ lives will change due to the crisis, it will be a different president’s problem, and it remains to be seen who the voters will trust with that task. While logic would suggest that the party responsible for the last eight years of disasters will also have to shoulder its fair share of the blame, recent polls, scandalously, suggest just the opposite.

John McCain, in some surveys, lags Barack Obama by just a point. Call it the systemic mis-education or political disinterest of the masses; call it the Republican propaganda machine; blame the media; blame the Democratic Party’s ineptness. I have just one explanation for what I see, and it is a harsh accusation, but by no means is it shocking: racism.

Many Democrats, Republicans and Independents alike will gasp in offense — “Who us??” — and maybe stop reading. They will point to other factors like Barack Obama’s presumptive lack of experience to why he is not strolling down easy street en route to Pennsylvania Avenue. They will suggest that Hillary supporters are as bitter as the Republican Party would like them to be. But there is an easier — and by that I mean more obvious — truth to explain why roughly half the population is willing to reward the party with the most horrendous handling of our country’s affairs, perhaps in history, with four more years on the job: America is not comfortable with having a black man as its leader. We have come a long way since Rosa Parks and segregated drinking fountains, but just not far enough.

If you don’t believe me, let’s take a hypothetical situation:

It is 2008. The economy just went into cardiac arrest. As a backdrop, we are fighting in two wars, one of which has been argued to have been just or necessary, the other for which no one left standing on any side of the political divide has dared to call either of those two things. We are only left to argue about whether an immediate exit will cause more damage than seeing it through until it fizzles enough to justify some kind of awkward backpedal.

Our military resources are stretched so thin that to avoid having to reinstate the draft, the government is drafting senior citizens (almost), Mexicans and sending under-equipped reserve soldiers back to the field for multiple tours even after being injured in combat. Our schools are collapsing, our scores are dropping. Our federal deficit is skyrocketing and will spike even further if Congress approves the Fed’s $700-billion rescue package for Wall Street (not to mention what the cost of two wars and President Bush’s two timely tax cuts for the rich have added to the mix). A look at the numbers makes one cringe to think about what will need to be sacrificed to get our spending back into check in the coming decades. (Bye-bye universal health care dream. Bye-bye social security)

Now picture this: A white72-year-old senator from the incumbent party, who is known to be a bit of a loose cannon, who has supported the war from the beginning, and who has voted with the president all but five percent of the time, is running with an obscure evangelical governor from Alaska who has left the country, not counting Canada, just once or twice.

His opponent, a well-educated 47-year-old Democratic senator from Illinois, who was one of the few politicians who opposed the war from the beginning, is running with a senior senator who is seasoned in foreign policy on a platform based on change. He looks like John F. Kennedy.

Prove me wrong America. I dare you.

tagged under:america, politics, race

I’ve been seeing a therapist who claims that honesty is most certainly not a virtue and that people should not abuse honesty in their relationships. He believes that, in order for a relationship to have the slightest chance of surviving the first few dates and progressing into something more long-term and serious, there are certain things that are better left unsaid, at least for a while. I really do see his point, but I’ve never really been able to put it into practice, which could explain why most of the men I go out with seem to fall off the face of the earth after the second date. There’s a term to describe this almost obscene sincerity from day one: it’s called being “emotionally slutty.” And something tells me that, nowadays, this is much worse than being just literally slutty.

When we are children, our parents do their best to try to teach us not to lie. We are told that if we lie we are “bad” and will be punished. If you belong to a religious family, you spend years being haunted by terrible nightmares about eternal flames and misery after death. If you don’t, you are just haunted by a very abstract guilt that you can’t really understand or get rid of. So it is safe to say that, either way, you are pretty screwed up with this whole lying issue for a good while.

Then, you grow up a little bit and realize that lying is actually a very big part of life. You see grown-ups lying and not worrying too much about going to Hell, and you learn the meaning of “white lies,” innocent little sentences that you throw in here and there to avoid someone getting hurt or to get out of a very difficult situation. You start hiding information from other people because “What they don’t know won’t hurt them” or because “It’s just better this way” and before you know it, you’re spending a scarily large proportion of your life lying.

So, is there anything really wrong with lying? If telling a lie is going to stop someone from suffering or is going to bring some other kind of advantage to you or to others, why is being honest generally considered better? Is my therapist right? Is dishonesty the real virtue?

There is an awful game-show on Spanish TV at the moment that is completely based on the fact that, most of the time, we are dishonest with the people we love. The contestants go through a lie detector test before the show and then are asked the same questions on the air in front of their husbands/mothers/friends (and half the country). If they are brave enough to tell the truth until the end, even if the truth is “Yes, honey, in the 20 years that we’ve been married I’ve had sexual fantasies about your mother every single night,” they win 100,000 euros — which, come to think of it, is really not that much money considering that you could easily be going through a divorce very soon.

I can’t really believe that someone thought this show up and I definitely can’t believe that millions of people watch it every week, but my point is that seeing a game-show that rewards you for being honest really makes you think about just how big a part of our lives lying is.

If you ask me, not the lies we tell one another, but rather, the lies we tell ourselves, are worrisome. Think about all the things that you tell yourself throughout your life in order to avoid suffering, all the “I’m fine”s and “I don’t care”s and “It’s OK”s that you have convinced yourself of when you really weren’t fine, you did care a lot and it was most certainly not OK. You see, this is one of the cool things that you get out of therapy. Alright, so it’s not that cool at the beginning and it does come as a pretty big shock when you realize that the feeling/thought that you were so sure about was merely a shell that you had constructed for yourself in order to keep going. You see, human beings don’t need to fight off other animals in the wilderness in order to stay alive — instead, this is the way in which we put our survival instinct into practice.

The thing is, after the initial shock of realizing that you’ve been deceiving yourself, you really have no choice but to start telling yourself the truth. And yes, you will most probably hate this truth at first, but this is really the only way to take that first step towards being a more complete person and living a happier life.

So I guess my therapist isn’t completely right after all — when it comes to the relationship between you and you, honesty absolutely is a virtue.

tagged under:advice, spain

The American Heritage Dictionary lists two definitions of the word “racism”:
1. The belief that race accounts for differences in human character or ability and that a particular race is superior to others.
2. Discrimination or prejudice based on race.

On Monday the Spanish sports daily Marca carried a full-page ad created by the Spanish Basketball Federation in the spirit of the Beijing Olympics in which the entire Spanish team is posed on a court smiling at the camera, holding back the sides of their eyes to make them appear slanted, a clear reference to their Asian hosts.

The article, immediately picked up by the British press has set into motion a furious debate on whether the ad — and to a greater extent the country — is racist, or if it was just an “affectionate gesture,” as one player has described the act.

Spaniards adamantly deny they are racist — no critique of the ad appeared in any Spanish newspaper — and will claim that countries such as England and the United States are overly sensitive to these “insignificant” gestures. They tend to agree with the player that the ad was meant to mean “We are all Chinese,” and was not done with harm in mind.

But this is not the first time in the sports arena that a Spaniard’s racially dubious act has been met with indifference by the Spanish media and public. Spaniards have on more than one occasion heckled black players on the soccer field, culminating in an infamous 2006 incident in which Barcelona idol Samuel Eto’o was bombarded with monkey calls by the Zaragoza team, eventually walking off the field. When the Spanish national team’s coach Luis Aragonés called an opposing player from France “a black piece of shit,” calls for his firing were ignored (although he was fined). There was no mass protest when fans wore blackface and harassed the black Formula 1 driver Lewis Hamilton during pre-season testing near Barcelona. In each case, these incidents were largely written off as harmless by a large majority of the Spanish public as the international community’s jaws dropped in disbelief.

No, Spain has not been a bastion of racial political correctness. In fact, the concept itself barely exists in a society that has been homogeneously Spanish for the last 500 years of its existence. And this, I believe, presents an interesting point in the debate. In Spain, calling someone by the word that best distinguishes them (distinguishes them from a Spaniard, that is) is a common practice. Chino (“Chinese”) is an Asian-looking person; negro (“black”) is a black person; gordo (“fat”) is a fat person. Spaniards argue that because they give less weight to their definitions (or their gestures) they are exempted from being considered racist.

And while I often believe that Spain is overly liberal with words and rash with generalizations, it is true that these excesses seldom seem to be indulged in bad blood or with harmful intent. Those who defend seemingly racist acts in sports claim that they are insults fueled by the heat of rivalry and not by racist sentiment — that is, not based on hate or prejudice stemming from skin color or other physical attributes.

While this logic would be a tough sell to those well-versed in race sensitivity, I think in the case of Spain, it may be necessary to consider a more nuanced definition of racism. Two of the questions I struggle with are: where does intent belong when considering race and where does cultural subjectivity fall in the debate? Can someone be ignorantly racist or must racism include hate or prejudice? Can what one culture calls racism be harmless in the context of another culture?

In my numerous internet searches, I could find no all-encompassing definition of racism, but most seem to be connected with hate or prejudice. Considering this, Spain’s lax attitude towards racially-sensitive issues would seem to imply a certain naïveté regarding racial issues that I’m not sure fits with a black-and-white racist label. It would seem that a culture is capable of committing fouls against racial sensibilities without meaning to.

In a similar vein, an article in Time magazine after the Eto’o soccer incident focuses not on the existence of racism in Spain, but Spanish society’s inability and reluctance to address it. Many Spaniards “don’t know how to identify racism when they see it,” the article argues.
The most likely conclusion is that Spanish society is not actively and aggressively racist, but ignorantly or unintentionally so.

One theory I found based on a 1986 study by Gaertner and Dovidio distinguishes between aversive racism or unintentional racism and old-fashioned blatant racism. While the latter is characterized by overt hatred for and discrimination against minorities, the former is characterized by a more complex, ambivalent racial attitude.

Aversive racists are described as “well-intentioned people” who do not think or act blatantly racist, but who “unavoidably possess negative feelings and beliefs” about the minority in question. That would seem to fit somewhat with the Spanish case, although not perfectly.

In America, due to our long, embarrassing history of racism and the racial sensitivities that were bred from it, we now know that our words and actions regarding race have the ability to hurt and to hurt deeply. Spain in its recent history has not been torn across a racial divide, which to a certain extent could give weight to the argument that crimes committed against our racial standards are just a bit less heinous.

I suppose what really has made me consider this possibility has been seeing that many friends here – people I judge to be educated and good — were sharply offended that I would suggest Spain had issues with racism, while at the same time writing off the actions of Aragonés or the Spanish basketball team as “silly things.” They are quick to remind me that when Spain could have flown their racist flag, after Muslim extremists blew up several train cars in 2004, killing hundreds, the country exemplified a racial tolerance to which America’s reaction to September 11 paled in comparison. They are right.

And after several hours of a circular debate, the fact still stands that my Spanish friends do not believe the ad was an egregious offense. They do admit the ad might have been in bad taste, but they are vehement that it is not racist. They plead common sense. They think racism only means tar and feathering, genocide, or Nazi symbols carved into the skin. They have yet to have been taught the nuanced side of racial discrimination and its effects on education, economics, crime, and of course, self-dignity.

Few would argue that Spain will be able to get away with ignorance forever. Immigrant levels are encroaching on ten percent of the population, and citizens are increasingly influenced by globalization. An American friend suggested that perhaps it is a matter of time before minorities in Spain carve out a democratic niche from which to express that there is often harm in Spain’s unintentional fouls. Perhaps this collective voice is what is needed for Spain to realize that while few complained before, it is not the offender’s place to decide what is offensive and what is not.

At the same time, I would also be more reluctant to toss the term racism around so lightly, as I have given myself a sustained headache trying to come up with a exact definition of racism under which to place the national basketball team’s horrible little ad and oblivious attitude. If you believe, as I do, that ignorance can harm, then you must believe Spain is on a precarious path. But then too must you also believe that emphatically labeling an entire country with the charged, complex and hard-to-define term “racist” in the wake of an incident like this, as is being done in many online forums, is just as dangerous.

I think a good rule could be: if it could offend, it should be avoided. And in the case of the basketball ad, I am fairly certain that more than a few Chinese don’t get the Spanish joke. In any case, as debate is what ultimately ushers in increased consciousness which fuels the evolution of ideas and attitudes, it is a debate which is greatly needed in Spanish society. Unfortunately, too many here are still reluctant to admit there might be something wrong.

tagged under:america, asia, europe, language, race, spain

When I came to Kyoto, I knew the place was old. It’s something that you see everywhere you go: this temple was built in the 15th century, that shrine burned down in the tenth. It kind of rolls over you, this idea of the age, and I quickly got used to the idea of living in an old city — until the first time I watched the Gion Matsuri.

This is one of the three great festivals of Kyoto — the other two are the far less spectacular Jidai and Aoi festivals — and for good reason. It’s been performed almost without interruption for the last 1,145 years, since the year 863. This floored me, and it still does. To get some perspective, think about it this way: the city of Kyoto has been performing this festival for five times longer than my country has existed. Amazing.

The festival is something that many Kyoto natives never go to, much in the same way that New Yorkers never go to the New Year’s Eve party in Times Square. It’s hot, it’s humid, and there are thousands of people walking through the mostly narrow streets. For three nights, about one square mile in the center of the city is cleared of cars, and people from all over Japan and the world fill the streets. People walk about wearing their yukata, eating unhealthy festival food and looking at the yama and the hoko. It’s a grand old time. To explain these terms, I’ll give you some history.

Way back in the mists of ancient time, the newly-built capitol of Kyoto was in the grips of a terrible plague. As was the fashion of the times, the Emperor decided that the god Gozo Tenno was angry. In order to deal with this irate deity, the emperor ordered a festival to be held to honor the god of Yasaka Shrine, Susano-o-no-Mikoto, a god of winds and storms who was one of the three primordial gods of ancient Japan. Sixty-six pikes, representing the 66 provinces of Japan were erected and portable shrines (known as mikoshi) were paraded through the streets of Heian-Kyo. The gods were placated, the pestilence ended, and a tradition was born.

Over the centuries the festival changed. In 1533, for example, the Shogun tried to put a stop to religious observances, but the people of Kyoto protested. Take the rituals, they said, but at least leave us the procession. Since then, it has been the parade that gives the Gion Festival its grandeur. The yama and hoko are the centerpieces of the parade — giant, elaborately-decorated structures that are pulled through the streets of Kyoto to help rid it of any evil influences that may have gathered during the year.

There are currently 32 floats in the procession, although the word “float” is a bit incongruous, considering that we’re talking about large wooden structures that can weigh up to 12 tons. Each float is maintained by a neighborhood in the city, and the number has varied during the history of the festival. From time to time, a float drops out because the pieces are destroyed or lost, and from time to time, a float resurfaces. Shijokasa Boko, for example, was out of the festival for 117 years, until it was restored in 1988. Since the festival is Shintoist in origin, women have a very small role to play. In some cases, women aren’t even allowed to go into the hoko. A group is currently lobbying to have some kind of onna hoko, or “women’s hoko” built, but they’ve met a lot of resistance.

While the actual rituals of the festival go throughout the month of July, what the public thinks of as the Gion Festival takes place from the 14th to the 17th. On the three nights preceding the parade, the floats are lit by beautiful lanterns, the musicians play the oddly discordant gion-bayashi music and people fill the streets. Families who have lived in Kyoto for generations open their homes to display beautifully-painted screens and antiques. Carnival games are open to take money off of unsuspecting children, and vendors are available to sell delicious okonomiyaki, yakitori, takoyaki and other fried foods.

On the morning of the 17th, the hoko and the yama line up in an order determined by lottery. The parade begins with Naginata Boko in the front, to the top of which is affixed a great halberd and inside of which is the chigo or Sacred Child. The chigo is the son of a particularly rich Kyoto family, and is one of the most important figures in the festival. He cuts the rope that begins the procession and rides in the float until he is carried off by his father at the end.

The procession takes about four or five hours from start to finish, and goes along three major streets in the center of the city. People line these streets, packing the sidewalks, all trying to get a look at the parade. The most coveted viewing spots are, naturally, at the corners. This is because the giant hoko and yama were apparently designed before anyone invented steering and are turned by a crew of 50 men. It usually takes about three tries and ten minutes, and it’s a crowd-pleaser every time.

While it takes a strong man to pull these things, it takes a strong person to watch from start to finish. Every time I tell someone that I’ve been to the Gion Festival every year that I’ve been in Kyoto, I get a look of either disbelief or amazement. With the sun beating down, nowhere to sit, the press of bodies all around you and — let’s face it — a pretty sedately-paced procession, it’s the kind of thing that most Kyoto people prefer to observe on television, preferably with the air conditioner turned on.

But I keep going. It’s a living antique, a reminder of historical continuity that I, a citizen of the youthful United States, cannot even begin to imagine. I can only hope that, a thousand years from now, Americans of the future are still celebrating Independence Day with fireworks and hot dogs, remembering the Americans of a millennium past….

tagged under:art, asia, food, living abroad, photography, religion, travel

My sister owns a plant that she keeps in our living room, right next to the TV. Don’t ask me what kind of plant it is; I have no idea. All I know is that it has huge green leaves and no flowers.

The thing about this plant is, in the two years that my sister has had it, it has died about a hundred times. I’m serious. We will wake up one day, go into the living room and find that the leaves are going brown and the plant in general looks like it will most definitely not last until the end of the week. We will go to bed that night assuming that we will soon have to throw the poor thing away, and then we will wake up again the next day to find that, out of nowhere, the plant has a new baby leaf that is the greenest of greens. And thus its cycle will begin again and it will live for another few months until one day we will wake up to see brown leaves again. And so it goes.

Because I don’t know what kind of plant it is, and because it has this freakish habit of rising again after we think it’s gone forever, I call it “the phoenix plant,” after the mythological bird that bursts into flames to reappear from its own ashes as a new baby bird to begin the cycle again.

I have always been mesmerized by the phoenix. There is something incredibly empowering about this mythological creature that rises again and again after its own death. When I was in high school, I started facing various different problems in my life, problems that suddenly became real as opposed to the somehow imaginary childhood troubles that came and went from one second to the next. In those times of trouble, it helped me tremendously to think of myself as a mythological phoenix that was capable of rising from its own ashes and rebuilding its life. To this day, I still picture myself as that bird when I have a problem or when I’m feeling down.

Actually, the process of being reborn from one’s life’s ashes is something that we all have to go through quite regularly. In general, I don’t think that we are particularly conscious of just how unpredictable our lives are; but in fact, they are so unpredictable that we never know when we are going to have to gather all our strength, put on a crash-helmet, buckle up and start all over again. Not everyone feels capable of doing this, but I’ve always thought that we can all do it — you just need to have a little bit of faith in your own strength. I know, it’s easier said than done; but believe me, it’s possible.

As an actress, I experiment with rebirths all the time. One of the most amazing things about my craft is that you can be reborn as thousands of different people in one lifetime. Not that this is always such an appealing thought: I have often wondered what makes me want to dedicate my whole life to being other people. What do I find in this that makes it so attractive?

At the moment, I am acting in a play about immigration in Spain. It is based on a series of real interviews with immigrants from different parts of the world who have somehow ended up in Spain, rebuilding their lives from the ashes left behind in their beaten homelands. Being a daughter to immigrants and never having shaken that condition (even though I was very young when we left Iran), the play is pushing emotional buttons that have never been pushed before. There was a time, at the beginning of the rehearsal process, when I thought that I wouldn’t be able to be a part of the project — that I would be crying non-stop throughout the rehearsals and shows and wouldn’t be able to tell these people’s stories with the dignity and strength that they deserve. However, the truth is that in theatre, as in life, sometimes you need to hit rock bottom with your emotions in order to rise again.

So maybe the phoenix isn’t such an unreal creature after all. I think that we’ve all been phoenixes at some point or another in our lives. It is this capability to build a new, better self out of the ashes of our previous ones that makes us who we are and leads us through our lives towards what we will become. And maybe this is one of the things that I find so attractive about acting: with every new character, I become a better person.

By the way, last week my sister and I woke up to find that the phoenix plant had grown a flower.

tagged under:europe, living abroad, spain