oh...just me: July 2006 Archives

I have no structure to my life! Only that which I establish for myself or my body demands (y’know, food, potty). The biophysicist had last-minute business in town yesterday and I had some stress with the quick change in plan. I realized there was no need for my reaction…then I recognized this bit of emotionality began two days ago with the cab fiasco. I wasn’t able to stop it at the moment of recognition: it’s momentum accompanied me into the evening until I got into a random itunes shuffle and started to organize my stuff. I think the silly anxieties are because I’ve never been in such a liminal space. Not that I can recall, anyway. (Perhaps I should say, not one of which I was aware.)

I have extraordinarily generous housing here at Sabanci Üniversitesi, which is a pretty darn fancy facility. I keep thinking of the underground atom smasher in France (I believe I read about it in Dan Brown’s “Angels and Demons”). It's appropriate, anyway, as CERN works on superconducting magnets and my pal here works on metal ions. I’ll be able to get online with my laptop and use the gym facilities. I saw someone in the lunchroom today that I swore I recognized from the conference but couldn’t place. Tonight I came across her business card, Ayse Öncü!

(Some time ago I signed up on the site “43 things…” and have a few of the “things I’d like to do” sent to me periodically, they come addressed to ”future self” from “past self.” One is “trust more”. It’s almost weird that the more I relax the more things seem to work out . . . although not always how I envision. I’m still adjusting to the disappointment of not being able to go to Iran.)

My last massage appointment (before I left the States) is on my mind. KZ found a rather knotted up on spot in a forearm and said, it’s the Jin Shin Jyutsu spot for control. “Something might be up with that.” Hmmm….

And now I recall that my annoyance with the transportation system was not the first welling of emotion; that had occurred earlier in the day upon preparing to enter the Ayasofia.

I mentioned the paintings that were on exhibit…I’d love to put them on display, but go look at the artist’s site: Ayten Mungan Polat. She uses the technique called marbling, “trying to tell in a spiritual and abstract way with her own symbols the impressions of life on her and the life itself . . . telling creation . . . “

I found her work moving, this one is titled Love is Lonely Rider. (She gave me permission to photograph.) I’m more and more convinced that the effect (as in effectiveness) of art is contingent on the subjective state of the viewer/receiver – or maybe that’s just my narrow capacity for appreciation? I know one can learn the technical features that make a work stand out, but if it doesn’t affect you, what’s the point?

Remember that “respite” I anticipated enjoying a few days ago? Well, I received a phone call saying, “Let’s leave in three minutes!” This was not possible. I was still in pajamas! Hadn’t we already decided not to go out? “Oh take your time. The next bus is in 20 minutes. We can sleep over and you can spend tomorrow in town.”

Take my time? Twenty minutes? I’ll have you know that I made it, and Gizem’s father described me as “pleasant, mellow, and down to earth.”

(Perhaps I am undergoing a personality transformation?) :-)

I was annoyed (some 24 hours later) to miss the 6:30 bus from Kadiköy to Sabanci. I turned it into a more than decent evening though, had tea (cay) and tost at a tea garden on the shore,

I slept for 12 hours. Which was a good thing because I woke up to the home of a biophysicist. I made myself a nice breakfast and cup of tea, choosing the cup that most resembled how I felt. :-) Actually, it is a relief to break the hectic pace of the past week. No regrets, but I really don’t live my life so frenetically most of the time.

Yesterday I enjoyed a leisurely breakfast with Catherine and the Dragon before they returned home, then Spark and I played tourist at the Arkeoloji Museum, and then Pera. I’ll devote a post to each of these later, replete with photos. I ate some more kokoreq – fried this time, which is The Best! – and tried the rice-stuffed clams. They were not so delicious, too much cinnamon and otherwise overcooked. Oh well. I’m sure there is variation. The waiter remembered I like Efes Dark, which was fun. We also tried Turkish ice cream, which has its own unique texture and included a show. The ice cream man made both of us look foolish but it was definitely worth the laugh. :-)

Then it was time for live music. Our first stop, the Munzur, was the best. Later we heard some young guys improvising between traditional Turkish and modern electronic sounds – not bad, actually, and the third venue was cheesy as all get out (although the squat toilet was rather luxurious compared to others I’ve encountered).

I had entertained hope to attend the free show at Babylon tonight – it’s a hot music place that’s been closed for awhile for renovations or some such. But, inertia is going to keep my behind planted. Perhaps I’ll catch another show there later, since hope for Iran is fading. I heard a story of some filmmakers who tried to get in (also under short notice) and failed. Would my luck have been better if I had applied on my own through the Pakistani Embassy in the US? Who knows, but the timing would still have been very very tight. Clearly, the claim that one’s request could be expedited by a mediator within Iran is also subject to many variations. If I had loads of capital to invest, wanna bet I’d already have been approved? sigh.

The City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau

On fear:

“Somewhere inside her, a black worm of dread stirred…could things really be as bad as he said? She didn’t want to believe it. She pushed the thought away” (2003: 18).

On belief:

“Sometimes you can find useful things just by choosing randomly….just reach out and grab something – in the hope that by accident you might come upon the very information you need. It might be something that another person had written down … just a sentence or two that would be like a flash of light…fitting together things you already know to make a solution to everything” (edited: verbs changed to present tense; “he” to “you”; 120).

On major life transitions when someone takes care of you:

“The day had a comforting feel to it, like a rest between the end of one time and the beginning of another” (141).

On desire:

“She suddenly wanted those things so badly she felt weak” (152).
“She remembered the hunger she’d felt . . . It wasn’t a pleasant feeling. She didn’t want to want things that way” (153).

On earth:

“Light,” she said.
“I see it,” said Doon. “It’s getting brighter.”
The edge of the sky turned gray, and then pale orange, and then deep fiery crimson. The land stood out against it, a long black rolling line. One spot along this line grew so bright they could hardly look at it, so bright it seemed to take a bite out of the land. It rose higher and higher until they could see that it was a fiery circle, first deep orange and then yellow, and too bright to look at any longer. The color seeped out of the sky and washed over the land. Light sparkled on the soft hair of the hills and shone through the lacy leaves as every shade of green sprang to life around them. (255-256)

On life:

“Take a lamp, for instance. When you plug it in, it comes alive, in a way. That’s because it’s connected to a wire that’s connected to the generator, which is making electricity…But a bean seed isn’t connected to anything. Neither are people. We don’t have plugs and wires that connect us to generators. What makes living things go is inside them somehow” (68).

Next: The People of Sparks

It will be hell. (But if you have a good post-party (or two) - as I did, grin - then it's worth it.) (What I learned last night? Maintain ironic distance.) ;-)

They probably won't try to make so, but something will get screwed up, outside of anyone's control (unless you've really annoyed someone; then they might (?) take advantage of this already high-stress opportunity to see if they can stimulate an implosion).

First, three days before I was to begin, was the email stating that two of my (already scheduled!) dates were now "unavailable." Ha.

(It was resolved - some 36 hours later.)

Then, at the end of Day 3, I was told Questions 5 and 4 were being switched. (It obviously didn't matter to them that I had carefully arranged a day OFF in-between Questions 4 & 5 in order to study for Question 5. Ha Ha.

This just happened to be on the same day I found that I'd dumped an entire bottle of OPEN shampoo into a duffle bag. If you ever check out a particularly soapy book from the library... that would be me.

Here's a link I found just prior to the Last Question which is a perfect example of something it would have been nice to have known about roughly a year ago: Discourse Theory. Ha Ha Ha!

“Instead of trying to erase the traces of power and exclusion, democratic politics requires us to bring them to the fore, to make them visible so that they can enter the terrain of contestation” (Mouffe 2000: 33-34).

Ziarek has "suggested that such a [redefined political] discourse, based on the dissemination and mediation of differences, should be articulated in the gap between the ethos of becoming and the ethos of alterity, between the futureal temporality of political praxis and the anarchic diachrony of obligation" (Ziarek, 2001: 83).

“…in the case of liberal-democratic politics this frontier [of a ‘them’] is an internal one, and the ‘them’ is not a permanent outsider . . . without a plurality of competing forces which attempt to define the common good, and aim at fixing the identity of the community [even though such can never be accomplished as a final achievement], the political articulation of the demos could not take place” (Mouffe 2000: 56 ).

"Community interpreting," said one interpreter educator, "is a condensed form of all the communication problems that can happen between people. It can teach you a lot about what it means to be a human being."

Amitav Ghosh on interpreting (excerpts from The Hungry Tide).

“…there is a lot that language does to people” (Blommaert 2005: 13).

“An analysis of voice is an analysis of power effects – (not) being understood in terms of the set of sociocultural rules and norms specified – as well as of conditions for power – what it takes to make oneself understood” (Blommaert 2005: 5).

“Any concrete utterance is a link in the chain ….Utterances are not indifferent to one another, and are not self-sufficient; they are aware of and mutually reflect one another. These mutual reflections determine their character. Each utterance is filled with echoes and reverberations of other utterances to which it is related by the communality of the sphere of speech communication. Every utterance must be regarded primarily as a response to preceding utterances of the given sphere…” (Bakhtin 1986: 91).

(emphases added)

“Those social scientists most successful in establishing such interdisciplinary partnerships view themselves initially as participant observers, showing respect for the work of practitioners and technical specialists, and seeking to learn from them . . . As the social scientist gains an understanding of the organizational culture and work systems, he or she will find ways of contributing that are appreciated by the technical specialists. This will pave the way for establishing the full partnerships presented by PAR” (Whyte 1991: 240).

With a [heteroglossic] conception of organization studies, "one can strive for reflexivity, by which we [Clegg and Hardy, 1996] allude to ways of seeing which act back on and reflect existing ways of seeing" (4).

I throw myself to the lions' "chasm of teeth."

(In Nietzche, What is the meaning of ascetic ideals?, translated from the original Greek, p. 116.)

"By reason of this attainment of self-consciousness on the part of the will for truth, morality from henceforward - there is no doubt about it - goes to pieces: this is that great hundred-act play that is reserved for the next two centuries of Europe, the most terrible, the most mysterious, and perhaps also the most hopeful of all plays" (117).

I woke up early and wandered outside. I immediately encountered a fat ol' bumblebee bumbling around a flower. :-) (Is that me, getting ready for comps?!)

I finished reading Gr....'s introduction to Althusser. Ate by the gurgling water garden. (Oh how I want to make one!) Three fat frogs refused to move, hunting their own breakfasts.

Rode my bike. Finished the blog about Sam. It needed time to gestate. I remember us on the boat Sunday, leaning into the headwind, straining to catch our last deep breaths of Sam, here, in this world with us. As if seeking to suck in his spirit to carry us along the tradewinds of our own futures. From now on, our memories of him will be private, although no doubt friends, family, and loved ones of all stripes will still gather in his name.