Change of Venue

From now on, you will find my blog posts over at http://davidbrown05.wordpress.com

:-)

Loza and Cigarettes

Last night was fantastic... . I attended a lecture on the erased, hung out with, and scored the personal email of, Silvia Federici and two Sloven activists / akademics from Ljubljana.

In talking at length about the issue of the Erased in Slovenia, about Freedom Fight in Serbia, and migrants and Roma issues, I felt totally at home in the subject matter. I also realized how strong my desire was to be part of an intellectual community and to be connected with the Balkans...

Ironically I also thought about the fact that it took a return to Maine to make akademic connections in Slovenia. But now I have them, and they will be useful, particularly if I opt for the MA Program in Bolognia, and go to Ljubljana for the second year. I will also have all the right connections for a sweet thesis on migrant / immigrant / Romski issues related to borders as power and transnational citizenship.

I still don't want to be a professor, but I realize how important it is for me to have this kind of stimulation in my life. Without it, and this happened to some degree in Belgrade (though I did have this kind of interaction with Aleks) and over this past summer, I get bored and lazy. This then becomes a slippery slope towards general unhappiness. So I am glad that I am finding a balance of work and intellectual challenge in my life again.
:-)

Welfare

I spent about two hours at the Department of Health and Human Services today in order to apply for food assistance. It was an experience in the diversity we have in Portland, it was long and it was boring, but none of that came as a surprise. Upon entering the building, I was confronted by a sign that read We are experiencing a high volume day... In other words: be ready to wait a long time. Ok so. I got in line, filled out my paperwork, took my number and began the wait. Sitting there, reading Virgil’s Aeniad and plugged in to my ipod, I was suddenly conscience of my upbringing, my class, and my ethnicity. I was suddenly the minority in all categories: white, middle class and a tri-lingual, continental European. It was clear to the eyes that looked me over that I didn’t belong there; these services were not supposed to be for me.

I likely reek of middle class-ness to some of my companions in this particular waiting room. Although this is not totally accurate, I really do have a few serious safety nets in my life. While my parents never earned a lot, it was middle class income and I was educated in elite International schools in two of Europe's richest cities. If I was truly about to face homeless-ness or destitution, I would be sent money for a plane ticket, or to see me through a few months (and there are a few sources at least, I can turn to). This means, as I walk into DHHS and sit waiting for benefits, there is a visible wall of privilege between me and my companions. For me, going to get food assistance is a luxury, something I decided (another indicator) to do during a quiet afternoon at work. I am eligible for food assistance because of the nature of my work (I am a volunteer on a very small monthly stipend). The reality of my income is such that it is very hard for me to live within my means, but only because of all the extras in my life: cell phone, credit cards, restaurants, etc. If I were to really go through my spending each month, and cut out just the “entertainment”, I bet I could live on my income and not need food assistance.

I was given more cause for reflection when I sat in the office with my case worker and she was going over my numbers. She literally threw money at me: food assistance, food pantry vouchers, heating assistance and medical insurance. All of this is great, and I am thankful that I live in a system that provides me with these support nets, but what struck me is how quickly my case worker determined that I, and my flat-mates, clearly didn’t have enough money. We needed lots of assistance to off-set our costs each month. We were offered ways of getting most of our ‘essential’ bills reduced (housing, heat, water, food, etc.) with virtually no verification.

I am struck by the fact that we are fortunate to have these supports, and I believe that we should have it this way, but it is also amazing how much we feel we need. We don’t live within our means and to some degree, we have a system that is facilitating this excess. On my income, it is a relief to get food assistance, but not totally essential, and all the other stuff just mean I am have more disposable income. Again, this is good, most of it will go into savings, but it is crazy to me that $800 a month, as a single individual, is considered too poor to survive without help. So, my point here is that rather than simply being supported in ways that are significant to the individual applicant, I left DHHS with a sense that I now had more ‘fun’ money, I was encouraged to take more than I needed.

To myself ~ a confession

I was accused today, of being conceited in how I use my lack of roots to keep my distance from everyone. I was accused of keeping everyone at arms length, and, in some fashion, martyring myself because I cannot settle. It stung. But it was liberating also. I wish I had been told these words months ago. I wish I had been told what I was doing, that I couldn’t see myself. I wish it didn’t take hurting a companion to see myself clearly.

When I came back to Maine from Belgrade I was happy to do so. I wanted the stability of Maine, of my friends, of being with someone very special. I got here and things didn’t work as smoothly as I wanted, and I began to feel a bit lost again. Everything was a challenge, and the European grass was getting greener and greener. I began to focus almost exclusively on a personal relationship, making it the definition of my happiness. This was totally unfair, and I became resentful when the relationship remained complicated, and didn’t solve all my problems.

I didn’t find any work that was fulfilling or that provided me with some stability in making future plans. But the reality was, I had returned to Maine because I wanted to be there, and I had claimed repeatedly that things such as material gains were secondary, that just being in Maine, in love, and with friends was enough. But alas, it wasn’t. Rather than looking at myself for what was wrong, I looked at all that was around me: bad economy, complicated relationship, lack of home, etc, and I blamed these things for my discontent. But really, I was just personally unhappy. I had lost sight of why I was inspired to come back to Maine. If I am objective, and recall some conversations about how I could justify going back to Maine, I was looking for small projects, a life less hectic than I would have at large, bureaucratic institutions. And, holy shit! That is exactly what I have. I have (had) love, friends and a job allowing me to focus on small local projects.

But somehow this wasn’t good enough. The reality is, I couldn’t hack the transition out of the OSCE. I was lost and no-one was offering me a job. I created a fantasy of returning to the farm; I returned to the farm; I still felt bad. Always it was someone else's fault though, never my own. The worst seems to be the effect it has had on the relationship I was in. Certainly it takes two to Tango, and certainly this is just my side, but I was so blinded by my own dissatisfaction (with myself) that I pushed her down and then got mad when she didn’t support me.

I allowed myself to wallow in self-pity rather than get up and get on with it: Yeah, I didn’t get the jobs I wanted, yeah, I only get $800 a month, yeah, I have to share an apartment; deal with it! But look at what I did get: Friends, a great place to live, love. I am sorry to all that the awakening has come late, but there it is. I am perhaps not quite the exile in Said’s terminology, but certainly I am in Freud’s. I am experiencing the forced separation from my symbolic mother, and I cannot return to the womb. It is simply impossible, and I cannot come to terms with the fact that I am standing on my own two feet. If I could come to terms with this, then I would see the world from a different perspective all together. I might see opportunity rather than insecurity, experience rather than disappointment, Love rather than problems.  Ironically, this experience has nothing to do with geography, though that has always been my excuse. I won’t ever find a replacement home by continually moving; because this isn’t about Geography, its about me. It is about realizing that I can do what ever I want, and that pressures such as job and money are only as powerful as we let them be. We are all exiles, or as she said today, we are all visitors in this land, and this is about me reconciling myself with a life that is not easy, but is or can easily be fulfilling and rich in experience, no matter where it is lived.

The Daoist would say I don’t need to leave my front door to know the world. There is infinite truth in that. The world is in me and you, and finding the world means finding me. I found work I am good at, I found an academic subject I love, I have amazing friends on three continents and I have a loving family. I hate to admit it, but there is no reason to be unhappy with that lot. I am so, so sorry.

On Love

Sent from Belgrade to cheer me up:

“To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering one must not love. But then one suffers from not loving. Therefore to love is to suffer, not to love is to suffer. To suffer is to suffer. To be happy is to love. To be happy then is to suffer. But suffering makes one unhappy. Therefore, to be unhappy one must love, or love to suffer, or suffer from too much happiness. I hope you're getting this down.”

~Woody Allen

Soccer violence

Is this an ominous foreshadowing of the end of the Federation? When Yugoslavia began to shatter between 1990 ~ 1993, the ethnic violence was initially manifested in soccer stadiums and between rival fans... Now Bosnia is in a political crisis, and we are seeing soccer hooligans, divided along ethnic lines, begin to kill each other.

http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/main/news/22632/

Think and Write

I'm wearing my Che t-shirt and a pair of chuck taylors; I'm unshaven and I don't give a fuck what you think.

 

~~

 

The weekend is past, and although it is Monday, I am feeling better than I have for sometime. Maybe suffering from the a mysterious stomach ailment on Friday and into Saturday was helpful in clearing out some of the mental blocks (i.e. I felt so miserable being sick, that once I recovered, everything had to feel better). Then Sunday was relatively relaxing and I can look forward to a three day weekend in the hills of New Hampshire in 5 short days.

 

E made an interesting point last night after the Belly Dance show. Asked why she thought that the No On One campaign might promote itself with a form of dance historically associated with inequality, subservience and servitude, E said it was possible that many of the Women likely considered it as empowering. Considering that once they were forced to dance, the fact that they now have a choice to dance, means they are controlling their involvement and reclaiming its location in their lives and in culture. This then relates well to No On One in that the campaign is equally about a marginalized group standing up and claiming equal rights under the law. Like Belly Dancers, they then choose to participate in one of the symbols of their oppression and exclusion (they choose to get married). It is not exactly apples to apples, as belly dancers were not excluded from the hegemonic community, rather they were objectified and used for entertainment (the fact that they were primarily Women meant, of course, that they were excluded from participating in community affairs). But the analogy of one marginal group (re)claiming power is what is relevant in this context.

 

I haven't seen a Belly Dance show since K left. I am still not sure how I felt watching it: there was a twinge of sadness mixed in with ambivalence about earlier association I had with it. But above all, the movements were beautiful as were the Dancers. On the night, I guess that is what matters most; that and the No On One campaign.