FLYING: Confessions of a Free Woman

 It was Monday morning and I woke up to prepare my kids for school, when I noticed that Busi was still sleeping.  So I went outside to Bongiwe’s room to wake her up.  To my surprise and disgust, Busi had slept in the same room with Bongi- her boyfriend- and Lugelo, Bongi’s daughter.

The thing about Bongi’s boyfriend is that he is a convicted rapist.  He was just released from a 15 year jail sentence, for gang raping a girl from our neighbourhood years ago.  And I was against the affair, but also knew that I can’t tell her how to lead her life.  But, again I thought it was not fair that Lerato has to see the guy all over again.

I humbly asked my sister to go meet with her lover some place not at home, and we had a fight.  After sometime I asked her not to sleep in the same room with her daugther and the guy, and we had a fight again.  Then I decided to take a back seat.  After all it’s her life and her daughters.

Oh my god!  I really lost it when I walked in the room to find Busi and the boyfriend.  I couldn’t even control my anger.  We had a heated argument that turned physical.  Truly speaking, I hate the fact that I was born into this family.

My mom and gran believe that I am wrong and Bongi is right.  They think this guy learned his lesson and he won’t do it again.  But I say a leopard wont change it’s spot.  As for Bongi, what is she teaching her young sister?  How can she sleep in the same room with her boyfriend and Busi? As for my parents, why cant they separate wrong from right?  In our culture it’s wrong, immoral and disrespecting for a boy to sleep in a girl’s home.  I don’t understand how a woman can date a man who has no regard for another woman’s feelings.  A man who violated, humiliated another woman’s rights.  A man who took away something special and unique from this girl, something that he can’t take back.  Not even a jail sentence can erase that awful day.

How can my sister fall in love with this animal?  How does she really feel when she makes love to an ex-rapist?  How can she bring this man in our lives for god’s sake?  We also have baby girls.  Isn’t there a chance that one day the devil can start whispering to him?  I don’t want to be there when something like that happens.

Bitter? Moi?

Mais, non! I live in the greatest country in the world. Everything we touch turns to gold! Why, just look at all the great things we’ve accomplished in Afghanistan!

In today’s Guardian, we learn that Three Cups of Tea and The Kite Runner be damned, things are NOT better for women in Afghanistan.

Afghan women protest at the proposed new family law Photograph: Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images

(For more of my writing on this subject in the past, see When Will Women Matter; Faces; Will Women Pay for Peace in Afghanistan; and How Can I Bear It?.)

According to reporter Janine di Giovani:

Eight years later I returned, but the Afghanistan I found was far from jubilant. Despite the money poured into reconstruction and development, it is one of the five poorest countries in the world. There is 40% unemployment – nearly 80% in some parts of the country. A third of children under five are malnourished. Life expectancy is 43 – and it is one of only three countries in the world where women die earlier than men.

Did you read that statistic? LIFE EXPECTANCY IS 43 and women die earlier than men. 

You would think, given those miserable statistics, that perhaps the United States and the Afghan government would be looking at ways to improve the lives of its people, especially its women.

Yeah, right. When things aren’t going right in a society, what’s the first thing that gets blamed? Lax morality. And who is responsible for lax morality? Yep. Us. Those daughters of Eve.

I arrived to meet women before the presidential elections next month and to talk about a new law, which if brought in, could have drastic repercussions for women. The Shia Family Planning law was signed last March by President Hamid Karzai in an attempt, many believe, to appease powerful mullahs. The Afghan constitution allows Shias to have a separate family law from the Sunni majority based on traditional Shia jurisprudence, and some think the law is linked to the August elections and the Shia electorate who would have to abide by it (they could form up to 20% of the electorate).

The proposed law led to furious protests from women’s groups. It sanctioned marital rape and brought back Taliban-era restrictions on women by outlining when a woman could leave her house and the circumstances in which she has to have sex with her husband; Shia woman would be allowed to leave home alone “for a legitimate purpose” only which the law does not define, and could refuse sex with their husbands only when ill or menstruating.

You see? The best thing for a woman who is not going to live very long anyway is to just have sex with her husband whether she wants to or not; to stay in her house; and to keep her fucking pie-hole shut.

Following international outrage, Karzai backtracked and said the law would be reviewed. This month it was amended and re-signed by the president, but has not yet been ratified by parliament. Human rights groups say it is unclear how much the amendments have done to improve the law. And the law has already achieved its aim – instilling fear and insecurity among an already traumatised female population.

Soraya Sobhrang, a human rights activist I met in her Kabul office, says, “The law will affect all women if it goes through. It opens the door for other repressive laws to be passed, for Sunni Muslims as well as Shia.” A young doctor friend, Najeeb Shawal, says he is seeing more female patients who were depressed since news of the law emerged. “They have the kind of hopelessness that comes with knowing your life is incredibly repressed. And might become more so.”

Congratulations. The law is already working. We love it when women are depressed. That means we don’t need to worry about them going outside and making a ruckus. Instead, they’ll just stay inside, and, if we’re really lucky, they’ll stick their heads in gas ovens or set their burqas on fire. Everybody wins!

By the way. Karzai’s original excuse for signing the law? He didn’t read it before he signed it. 

There are bright spots in Afghanistan:

Bamiyan is the home of the Shia Hazara, the third largest ethnic group in Afghanistan. I am surprised by the “city’s” remoteness because there has been a huge outcry here from the women over the law: demonstrations, protests on the radio, grass roots organisations very quickly coming together. I meet one of the protest leaders in a small restaurant overlooking the holes in the mountain left when the Taliban blew up the ancient Buddha statues there in 2001. Batool Mohammadi is 27, black-robed, and heavily pregnant. “The law does not fit with humanitarian law,” she says. Batool, a Hazara, comes from the generation of Afghan women born after the Soviet invasion and raised during the Taliban era. She has only known war, conflict and repression. The small window of triumph after the fall of the Taliban – who brutally repressed the Hazaras – has given her a taste of freedom and she is not ready to give it up. “In an area as traditional as Bamiyan, one of the major problems with this law is that it will stop the trend towards modernisation.” As Batool leaves, she says that when her baby is born in June, she wants him or her to enter a world moving towards equality, not repression.

The governor, Habiba Sarabi, is the former Minister of Women and as a Shia will have to obey the law if it is passed. She meets us in her sparse office, a grim, Soviet-style building set on a windswept plain. There are plates of nuts and fruits and the governor, looking exhausted, nibbles dried apricot. At 53, Sarabi is no-nonsense. She is a chemist by trade and speaks good English. The daughter of an illiterate mother who encouraged her daughter to read and write, she tells me when she was young she was mocked as she walked to school alone. Having struggled so hard it was particularly hard to see her own daughter, now 24, denied education under the Taliban. The family escaped to Pakistan and Sarabi worked on human rights and women’s projects.

On the new law, she tries to be diplomatic, but I can tell she is concerned: “Fortunately, women raised their voice.” She is confident (perhaps overly so) that the law will not go through. But later, at her residence, when she curls her stockinged feet under her, she admits the wider crisis. Bamiyan is one of the few success stories in Afghanistan: it is poppy-free, the government functions well, and as she points out, “It is the safest place in Afghanistan. The rule of law is important here.” She has improved the education and health services (instigating midwife programmes, for example, in a province that has one major hospital). But can this last? If, following elections, Karzai succumbs to the mullahs (who exercise huge political power in Bamiyan and the rest of the country), for how long will it be safe for women? Even Sarabi finally admitted that if the law is ratified, it would affect her too.

But those women who have been unaffected by these new laws are rare. And a lot of women are frightened: who wouldn’t be?

Women who have managed to cross gender boundaries seem in a state of shock over the law. Jamila Barekzai is a police officer whose female colleague was killed by the Taliban last year in Kandahar for daring to do a mans’ job. When I go to meet her at the Central Afghan Police Headquarters on the edge of Kabul, next to one of the biggest Shia mosques in the city, she is wearing her olive uniform and heavy black eyeliner. She was transferred from Kandahar last year to Kabul when she thought she would be killed too. She takes out her mobile phone and plays a recording of an unnamed Taliban telling her to stop working, “or you will be taught the lesson we taught your friend”. She says she was mainly frightened for her children and touches the gun at her hip.

President Obama has committed more troops to Afghanistan, ostensibly for finding that guy (what was his name? the one who blew up the towers?) and gettting the increasing threat of terrorism from the Swot Valley in Pakistan under control.

But are women on President Obama’s radar? Are we going to be willing to trade stability in the area for the lives of millions of Afghani women who will once again be confined to their homes, illiterate, ill-considered, depressed, and basic sperm receptacles for their husbands? Is this the legacy that Obama wants to leave in Afghanistan?

Or can we start, right from the beginning, by saying to Karzai that yes, we know you have us by the gas hose right now because you have access to that pipeline we want, but hey, women are people, too.

Please, President Obama. If we are to go to war in Afghanistan, make it mean something. I do not want to have to write in five years that we have subdued the terrorists, but once again, we have paid for it with women’s lives.

President Obama, First Lady Obama, Secretary of State Clinton–anyone–everyone–who will listen: do not turn your backs on the women of Afghanistan. They are not collateral damage. We are not collateral damage of war. We are human beings. We have feelings. And bodies. And we hurt. And we ache. And we grieve. And if, once again, we are told that it is more important that we are treated like pieces of shit so that some problem may be solved, it may be that some of us may not be able to take that anymore.

So please.

I beg you.

On my knees.

For the women of Afghanistan.
Don’t. Forget. Us.

When I leave, someone tells me the Taliban spring offensive has begun, American troops are pouring in, and President Karzai is beginning his political campaign. I keep thinking of Batool, the pregnant activist in Bamiyan, and her baby, and her life in 20 years’ time. If the law does not pass and women continue rolling on, she has a chance. If not, she might still be wearing a burka and never learn how to drive.

—–

Governor David A. Paterson has directed that flags on New York State government buildings be flown at half-staff on Thursday,  July 16, 2009,  in honor of  a Fort Drum Soldier  killed in Afghanistan on July 9, 2009.
Spec. Joshua R. Farris of La Grange, Texas, died in Wardak Pronvince of wounds suffered when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle.  Spec. Farris was a member to the 2nd Battalion, 87th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team of 10th Mountain Division.
” I speak for all New Yorkers when I say that we will forever honor the service this young soldier gave to our nation, ” said Governor Paterson.  “He was not a native New Yorker, but we consider all soldiers stationed at Fort Drum to be one of our own.  On behalf of the people of the State, I extend our deepest sympathy to the family, friends and fellow soldiers of Sepc. Farris.”
Governor Paterson has directed the flags on all State buildings to be lowered to half-staff in honor and tribute to our State’s service members who are killed in action.

And the beat goes on….

Image taken from The Art of Romance: Mills & Boon and Harlequin Cover Designs by Joanna Bowring and Margaret O’Brien

Am I more than my body?

As a woman, of late, I feel as if I have had to defend the boundaries of my body in order to prove and preserve my personhood.

Forces abound that seek to put me in my place–violently, if need be. (Paul Krugman’s column this morning is masterful. Please read it.)

I see at work in our culture. I have written before about laying claim to my own body and rejecting government control over what I do with it. I have written my own privacy manifesta, declaring that my privacy is sacrosanct, and not subject to invasion by either the government or the moral scolds in our culture. And, in the past, disgusted with the Democratic leadership over issues such as confirming John Roberts and Samuel Alito without so much as a peep of protest, I considered leaving the party.

You know what? I’m tired. I’m tired of continually having to defend my right to my body. I’m tired of having to say that I’m not your brood mare, that I decide what enters my body, what I carry within my body. I’m tired of this fight. But I have daughters, so I’ll continue this fight as long as I need to.

But I want to say something else. Even as I defend and protect the boundaries of my flesh,  I am more than my body. Women are more than their bodies. Sometimes, I don’t think that everyone thinks so. I’ve read some of the recent posts to OS, and quite frankly, I’ve been sickened. Some of the things that have been written about women make us into nothing but cunts and asses; reduce us to our parts. Our mouths become only good for blow jobs. Our cunts and asses are only good for penetration. Our bodies are broken, bent, spread-eagled, impregnated and harvested for pleasure.

You all know that I’m not anti-sex. I write erotica. Multiple orgasms are … well … you know. And you all know how much I love the man who is my partner.

So, I don’t hate sex or men.

****

I do feel as if we are going backwards as a culture. If, at one point, we were moving toward a sense that women could control their own fertility, women were entitled to equal rights, women’s minds were as fine as men’s and we could compete with them in all intellectual fields, these days, I feel as if we’re having to re-establish that a woman is more than her uterus.

The right wing spews hate against gynecologists who perform abortions, and then refuses to accept responsibility for inciting hate crimes. In fact, to hear some tell it, it’s the pro-choice insistence on a woman’s right to abortion that caused the murder of Dr. George Tiller, not the hateful shit spewed by the right-wing talking wingnuts.

A Latina woman is nominated for the Supreme Court, and suddenly, we have discussions about whether menstruation will affect her ability to make decisions (or whether the pronunciation of her last name is unAmerican, or whether her eating of spicy food is unAmerican, or whether “empathy” makes her unqualified). Never mind that she went to some of the finest universities in the country. She’s a woman, and her body will prevent her from being able to think “rationally.”

I could go on and on.

But I want to get back to the point that I am more than my body. This is not the 15th century, for fuck’s sake. We are not debating the four humors that make up the human body and how women cannot be as smart as men because she’s composed of the wrong essences. We shouldn’t be talking about “hysteria” or “wandering wombs.”

We should not be continuing the old canard, the oldest piece of bullshit, that male is normal and female is “other.”

We should be talking about who is the most qualified to be in the various positions that will help this country get out of the mess it’s in. We should be focusing on the contributions that both men and women can make to improving the world. We should be celebrating the fact that we all bring to the various tables different talents, and we should not immediately eschew one set of talents because the person who possesses them also happens to possess a vagina.

I really didn’t think that I would be 46 and having to argue that a woman can be as good as a man. I didn’t think I would be 46 and having to read defenses of being a misogynist asshole. I thought, mistakenly, that we were going to be past this. I thought that men, women–and the genders in-between–could treat each other with respect, could revel in each other’s brains and hearts, could celebrate difference, instead of either apologizing for it or denigrating it.

I guess I was wrong.

And so, here I am. It’s 2009, I’m 46 years old, and I have to say, I am more than my tits and ass and cunt. I have a brain and a spirit. I am a human being.

I am a human being.

Please don’t ask me to write a history of violence against doctors and clinics who provide reproductive medical care to women.

If you are at all aware, if you have read a newspaper in the past 25 years, you know. You just know.

The Wichita Eagle has a full page of reaction to Dr. George Tiller’s murder on its front page. Last night, mourners turned out to hold a vigil for Dr. Tiller. As usual, those who like to dance on others’ graves also turned out, with their hateful signs. These signs were similar to the hateful twitter messages that ChangeAgent has so masterfully documented over at her blog.

When President Obama said that he wanted to meet in the middle on the abortion issue a few weeks ago, I wrote then that I felt as if he had just thrown women under the bus. There is no middle with anti-abortion extremists. They are not interested in meeting in the middle. They are only interested in one thing: eradicating all abortion, all access to abortion. In many cases, they want to eliminate access to certain forms of birth control, (some–all forms of birth control), and, if they can’t get what they want by legal means, they practice terrorism.

Thus, yesterday was inevitable.

The anti-abortion violence of the 1980’s and 1990’s, when clinics and OB-GYNs were slaughtered–some in their own homes, as Dr. Slepian was, were horrible times. They have left us now, with the experience of going to Planned Parenthood and having to pass through metal detectors and bullet proof glass. If you are going into a clinic where abortions are performed, you have to pass by people who feel it is their job to judge you, no matter why you might be going to the clinic.

These people have no compassion. You may be having to go in for a D&C because your fetus has died inside you–you’re still a babykiller in their eyes. You may be the victim of rape. Babykiller. You may simply be too young, or too poor, or not able to care for a child–you’re a babykiller.

Funny, but I don’t see those same people outside urologists’ offices screaming at men that getting a vasectomy constitutes being a sperm-killer or a potential baby killer.

I wish I could write something eloquent, something full of compassion for those who oppose abortion so violently and ask, “can’t we all get along?”

But I don’t have that in me today.

I am mourning Dr. Tiller. I am mourning the women who decided today that they are too frightened to take care of their medical needs. I am mourning the areas of the country that will lose access to adequate medical care for women. I am mourning the messages that are being sent out–once again–to women that their bodies don’t matter. The only thing that counts about a woman’s body is that she can produce babies. And if she wants to not produce babies, well, if we can’t stop you legally, we’ll close the clinics, kill the doctors, tighten the noose so that you will have to travel thousands of miles to find help.

I grieve. Please don’t ask me to be rational or make sense.

I grieve. And I’m angry.

I grieve, but I will not hurt someone in return.

I grieve, but you will not silence me.

I will grieve, and then I will do whatever I can to fight for reproductive rights.

I repeat the pledge I made a few weeks ago: I will purchase Plan B contraception for any woman who needs it.

To the hate-mongers on television who equate abortion with murder: you condoned this, you encourage those who are unhinged to carry out your dirty work. You should be held accountable. I will not hurt you with violence. But I will write to your advertisers, and I will encourage those who advertise with you, to withdraw their advertising or ask them why they support terrorist sympathizers.

For this is what this is. Terrorism. Plain and Simple. Not done by “foreigners.” But by “Americans.”

There is no excuse for it. None.

And we will fight you. Peacefully. But relentlessly. We will not go back to the days of coat hangers and illegal abortions. We will not sneak around to maintain sovereignty OVER OUR OWN BODIES.

We are here. We are not going away. And you will not frighten us.

I had been to South Africa many times for work and I often told people that, “I had fallen in love with the country”. But what I never explained is that I had also fallen in love with a South African man and perhaps that affected the way I saw the country. As the saying goes, “love is blind” - a phrase I hated when I was younger. But, as the years pass and experience accrues, I see it more and more as true. So when I fell out of love with my South African man, and all the beauty I had seen in him seemed to shrivel up and evaporate in the parched continent’s sun, it happened that on my seventh trip to that country I felt like I was suddenly arriving in a strange land.

Forgive me South Africa, because it is not your fault that my love for you died. In fact, you didn’t change at all. All along those three years I visited you, your terrain was rampant with adult rape, car jackings, robbery, murder and even something I had only learned about because of you - baby rape. Your skin was crawling with black against black violence, white against black violence, and black and against white violence. You had always been a dangerous place hidden behind a severe and blinding natural beauty. It’s just that one day the sun went down in my eyes and in the shadows I fell over the other South Africa, the “picked over skeleton with the skull locked in that horrible scream of death” South Africa.

Before this trip, I remember having a conversation with a woman who worked for an NGO – a non-governmental organization – in Johannesburg where I usually stayed for work. She was an extremely bright Indian woman dedicated to helping end poverty in South Africa. She was running a program that was creating alternative job training for the masses of jobless youth in the African population and she wanted to discuss with me the possibility of helping her create a film training program for teenagers. As we sat and had coffee in a quaint little bistro in an even quainter little town called Melville, where I was staying in a beautiful guesthouse with a pool and palm trees and a four-poster bed, she told me that there was 50% unemployment in South Africa that year. I remember my eyes popping out, yet a warm glow in my gut, thinking that this kind woman would be helping to eradicate that horror.

When I asked how long it would take to reduce unemployment, she looked at me blankly and said, “Oh no, there is no hope of reducing the unemployment rate in South Africa; there will never be enough jobs for the population. Everyone knows that.”

I stared at her with a kind of shock: “But then why do you want me to help create a film training program? Don’t you hope these kids will be able to get work afterwards?”

“No,” she said blithely. “There will never be more jobs in the film business here. We already have way too many applicants for the slots. We can only hope to keep these young people busy for a few weeks…”

I tried to fathom what she was saying as she asked for the check, but I promptly put her words beyond me. You see I was still in love — with the guy, with the dazzling sunshine, with the idea of democracy and a rainbow nation, with people’s ability to argue about politics (something Americans had lost until recently with our new elections.)

But on my last trip to the country, the guy was gone. And it was not a good break up. I suppose you can say I am still picking the shards of glass out of my weak flesh even now, years later. Back then I still didn’t know how much love would cost me, but that is another discussion. Now, I had returned to film a friend of mine Khosi, who lived in Soweto, for the FLYING series I was still in production on at the time. This would be me my last trip to the country for the project. I had filmed Khosi before and what I would record this time never made it into the film, but perhaps was more important than much of what did.

I am trying to explain how the terror rose in me that trip like a snake silently coiling its belly around your spine until it is facing you and looking in your eye. Why you never felt the snake in the first place and why you were standing in a place that had poisonous snakes slithering through the grass is another question that could be asked and should be. For the moment, suffice it to say, up until then I had been too stupid to be afraid.

When I arrived to my little guesthouse in my lovely little town of Melville that I always stayed at, I was still feeling fine; I still thought it was the same country I loved even though the guy was missing. I could do this, I thought to myself, nothing had really changed. But in the middle of the night I got a call from Khosi crying. I tried to ask her what was wrong but she wouldn’t say. She only said that she couldn’t see me the next day as we had planned for filming. I told her – no, begged her – to please let me see her any way, we didn’t have to film, but then the phone cut off. When I tried to call her back I understood she had run out of minutes on her cell phone, something that I had gotten used to happening in South Africa where many people couldn’t afford a permanent plan and bought their time sparingly.

I had no way to get to Soweto alone, so I had to wait until morning, when the driver I had used on many shoots could pick me up and we could head over to Khosi’s new home.  Before leaving, I texted her that I was on my way; she must have bought more minutes, because she texted back, “all right”.  I gave the driver the new address in a poor part of Soweto, which I am telling you because, unbeknownst to foreigners, there are wealthier, middle-class parts of Soweto too. All she had told me on the phone when I had spoken to her from America to set up the meeting was that her life had taken a different turn since I had seen her the last about two years previous. She had moved out of her grandmother’s house and was living with her new boyfriend.

We found the address on a dirt road lined with square one-room government-issued box houses that had been created during the apartheid system. She stood in front of this new house I had never seen before, much like I had left her before in front of her granny’s house. She was wearing a white halter top and jeans, as beautiful as always – and looking about 13 years old even though by now was 22 or so. It was only when I got out of the car that I saw what was wrong, one side of her face was black and blue. She was smiling as always and saying things like “don’t worry Jen” and “I am so sorry I called you last night” and “everything is fine really”. Then she took me by the hand and led me to her home, a one-room shack behind the house I had arrived at, which belonged to her boyfriend’s sister. As we passed, many neighbors came out of other shacks and homes to get a good look at Khosi’s white guest.

Once inside, we sat together on the bed that filled the room, which was neat and covered with a paisley comforter. There was also a wooden dresser and a plastic cooler for milk and food, filled with ice. Between us played Khosi’s new baby girl, now about nine months. She made me tea on a little portable stove in the corner of the room and sat down again.  Khosi explained that when she had become pregnant with her daughter, she had to leave her first child, the three-year-old boy that I knew, with her mother and grandmother because her new boyfriend felt jealous of having another man in the house. Her little girl had been born with a hole in her heart, and a cleft lip, but miraculously they had been able to give the girl open-heart surgery at three months and save her. However, she still wasn’t healthy and Khosi spent her life going back and forth to Baragwaneth Hospital, the only hospital in Soweto, which was a huge ordeal. Khosi didn’t know how long the child would live.

She told me how her Gram had kicked her out of the house when she got pregnant with her second child, calling her “slut” and “whore”, even though this boyfriend was only her second in her life. Her first boyfriend and father of her little boy was the first man she had slept with – and by him she immediately became pregnant. The first guy had beaten her terribly and often, but she had managed to escape. Now, this was her second boyfriend, who at least had a job in the South African army and therefore some money. He was ten years older than her – and she immediately got pregnant again. She swore to me that he rarely hit her and that he was a good man, but that they had gotten into a fight the night before at a party, where he accused her of flirting with another man. She had told him to “go fuck off’ and continued to talk to the same guy, but her boyfriend couldn’t stand it and he had immediately started to beat her. She wouldn’t back down, she said, and so she hit him back, but of course he was stronger than her.

Now she didn’t know what to do. She didn’t want to stay here, but she couldn’t go back to her grandmother’s after she was treated so badly. Her grandmother hated her and preferred her sister. Today, her boyfriend was back at the base, but would be home again in a few days. Anyway, how could she support her child if she left him? She wasn’t able to find a job no matter how hard she tried. Then she began to cry. And I started to cry too. We were hugging each other and crying. You see, we had known each other a long time, since my first trip to South Africa. We had made a film together about her best girlfriend who was HIV positive; we had been through a lot.

“How can I help, Khosi?” I asked softly.

“There’s nothing to do Jen….” She was wiping her tears now.

“Look, what if I can pay for some training…?” I said, wanting to be practical, “I mean if you could get a job, you wouldn’t have to live here…  Is there something you want to do…?”

She looked at me with sadness and shook her head. “I don’t know Jen….”

“Alright…” I said weakly. I was surprised; she had always wanted to go to school before. “Let’s just think together. I am here for you…”

There is nothing like being a stupid foreigner. I knew all too well that what Khosi was facing was so complex and beyond my understanding, that I could only bear witness and pray for intervention. It is a horrible feeling for a person like me, raised on the concept of agency and the ability to change one’s fate if only one works hard enough, to learn that the truth, for many people, in many parts of the world, is that little can help. I knew also that my “being there” for Khosi was relative; I would go home and be safe, and she would not be. So much for being the big, white American savior.

“Jen, I’m scared,” she said.

“I am too, Khosi…” And I was, even thought I didn’t even know exactly why yet.

“I am scared some days what I might do to my child… Sometimes I get so angry, especially with my little boy, that I can’t stop hitting him….” Khosi looked me in the eye to see if I understood what she was saying.

I thought I understood. “You know Khosi, when I was a kid, I saw my mom get so angry at me that I thought, ‘I can’t have children, because I will look at them like she looked at me.’ I was so afraid that I would pass that anger down and hate my own kids that I never wanted to have a baby myself….”

“Yes,” she said, “my Gram was like that to me. She beat me so much; I hated her…. “ She took a deep breath. “But now I am afraid. Jen, some days I am afraid I might kill my children… I love them so much… But I don’t know what to do.”

There was silence in the little shack as we both listened to her baby’s breathing, now asleep on the blanket between us.

“Jen, can you help me get therapy?”

I hadn’t expected her to ask that. I was happy and surprised by the request. But seven trips to South Africa had made wiser to the obstacles I would have to deal with:  “I can try Khosi, when I go back to the guesthouse, I will make some calls…”

”You know I’ve tried going to the social workers that they give you at the hospital, you know like when my father was murdered, or after my sister died of AIDS, and now since the baby was born, I went again…but they all say the same stupid things, like I am not being ‘positive enough about my life’. That ‘I have a bad attitude…’”

Hearing that someone had the audacity to tell Khosi that she wasn’t ‘thinking positively’ enraged me so that I myself wanted to kill someone right then and there. I hated this psychobabble - used again and again by people who really needed some help. And it was rampant in South Africa for some reason, like they’d watched too many episodes of Oprah.

I told Khosi what I thought. But I also asked her if she thought that she needed to be away from her children for a little while. I was worried deeply for them. She said she had strategies of what to do when she felt that way, neighbors she could leave her daughter with; thankfully her son was at her mom’s, but the problem was that when she saw him, he behaved so badly because he was angry at being left there, that she got angry back at him. We talked until the darkness fell and the air turned cool again

When I left Khosi, we hugged for a long time. I would see her several more times on that trip, and I would find her a good therapist, whom she went to see once, but after that session she stopped going (although it would take a few months before this became obvious). The problem was that it took her all day to go back and forth to the good therapist in the fancy section of Johannesburg, actually only 20 minutes away if she could have driven there straight. You see, there is no public transportation system in South Africa – another legacy from Apartheid – so you have to take a series of “Combis”, which are mini-vans driven by private drivers. Each driver packs his van fill of people on a specific route. So it might take her five or six Combis to get to the closest stop to her therapist and then she’d have to walk a half an hour. Who could she leave her baby with? How could she take a whole day just for therapy? Suppose she had a doctor’s appointment for the baby on that day? How could she pay for the transportation? But there were other obstacles too, like when the second appointment came time, it rained, and she didn’t have an umbrella or a raincoat and she was afraid to catch a cold, so she didn’t go.

I tried to solve some of the complications: I had to give Khosi money for the combi rides, but I couldn’t wire it to her directly because she didn’t have a bank account. Meanwhile she couldn’t keep a lot of money on her at any one time, because she could get killed if someone thought she was getting extra cash from a foreigner. So I had to find someone in Johannesburg who would agree to receive the money, but then they had to arrange to get it to her. Then, another fear started to haunt me: What if me trying to help meant her leaving her baby home alone or with a stranger– and then something happening to the baby – like was happening all over south Africa, where mothers had to leave their babies to go to work and gangs of men were coming and raping these tiny beings.

I drove away from Khosi that night, the air ripe with the smoke of kerosene from the gas stoves being lit across the valley of Soweto.  As we passed kids playing kickball in the flickering shadows of bonfires on the dirt lanes, I sat in silence. When I arrived at my guesthouse, the driver let me out and drove off. One of the young car parkers that roamed the street making small change by helping people get parking spots – a job that was created by the government to help unemployment – approached me and asked for some money.

I looked at him surprised, and shook my head, “I don’t have any change…”

“You owe me” he said his eyes menacing. “You haven’t bought me a soda or tipped me and I know you are staying at this guest house. I have seen you come and go….”

“I don’t owe you anything,” I said angrily; somehow Khosi’s story had enraged me against all men. “I don’t have a car and I don’t need parking.”

I marched up to my guesthouse door and pulled out my key. He was standing feet away staring at my back.

“Next time you better bring me something!” he yelled at me and spit on the pavement.

I turned around and gave him the finger. Then I slipped inside and shut the door, which locked behind me.

Once in my room, I sat on my elegant wooden four-poster bed, with the curtains that had little bows holding them back in the middle, looking into the golden-tiled bathroom that was the size of Khosi’s shack. I was breathing hard, trying to catch my breath, furious at the young parking punk from the street, at Khosi’s boyfriend, at the current government that left no hope and no jobs, at social workers who pretend to heal, at the god damn apartheid system who had destroyed a nation and created this mess so complicated it would take a hundred years and so much luck that I couldn’t imagine it to undo the harm that had been wreaked upon this most beautiful country.

I wanted my blessed South Africa back, the one I fell in love with. I started to cry. I was seeing South Africa for the first time and I was gripped with fear - for Khosi, for my black friends, for my white friends, for the strangers I had met, for everyone - and yes, I am ashamed to say, for myself too, because I didn’t want to become one of the twenty-five to fifty percent of the women (depending on the region) who were raped in South Africa that year when I left my gated guest house in the morning. It was easy for me, I just had to make it a few days more to get on the plane out to beat the odds of violent crime, but Khosi couldn’t escape like me. I sat there, engulfed in something I had never felt before, something that was so big, I couldn’t even name it.

Khosi and I remain friends today. She still lives in Soweto but has moved back with her daughter to live with her grandmother, mother, son and other extended family. You can read about her life on her blog here. To date, I have not returned to South Africa.

It’s been seven years and it feels like it was yesterday. 15 November 2001, the day summer became winter and day became night: that was the day I first felt the impact of crime. Things were happening to other people, and I read about terrible deaths in newspapers and saw them on television. I felt pity for them and prayed every day for God to protect the ones I love from becoming statistics.

My dad - my loving, caring, reserved, and protective dad - was brutally murdered by his friends. He was beaten and left to die in the bushes, lying in a pool of his own blood. He died a slow, painful, humiliating death. That day, I lost the only person that made my life worth living. He was everything a daughter could ever ask for in a father. A day before his death, we were tending to the garden and as we were working, he took a deep breath and said, “Girl, you know i don’t want to do this job anymore. I am so tired. I don’t have the strength and power to keep on running away from the law.” I asked him how we are going to survive. He said, “God will provide, and you know that he always has a back up plan.” In case you were wondering what kind of job he had that made him run away from the law, he was a fraud master. At times, he would spend the whole month doing a job without luck, or maybe end up in jail.

The following day, three of his friends came to our home to fetch him early in the morning and they left, same as always. But this time, something went wrong, and my dad didn’t come home that day. The following morning, my siblings and I took off to search for him with the help of one of the friends, and we found his lifeless body, face down. Most of the body was OK, but the face and head were vandalized; you could see the skull just by looking in the big hole in his head. I couldn’t understand, and still can’t, why he had to die such a horrible, unmerciful way. I remember the whole community was shaken by the news of his death… but their pain and disbelief was nothing compared to mine. I found myself wanting to know what he was doing as they were beating him. Was he crying? Was he begging for forgiveness? Or was he quiet and accepting? I wish I could know the last thing that came to his mind as he realized that he was dying and leaving his beloved. What was he thinking about before he took his last breath?

We had no funeral policy, and no money to bury him. Our funerals are expensive too: you have to cook for everyone and organize transportation to and from the gravesite. Thousands of people came to his funeral - he was a people’s man. Jennifer Fox was there for me from day one. She gave financial, emotional, spiritual, and physical support. She paid for the coffin, and the groceries with the help of Robyn, Don, and Teresa. They gave my dad a funeral fit for a king. Jen went as far as paying school fees for my sister and even bought her school uniform. Sometimes i wonder what would have done without her. Wherever my dad is, I know that he is resting in peace. My only prayer now is for the law to take its course, not only for my father’s killers, but for all who commit crime, and for our goverment to create more jobs for people like my daddy. In that way we will all leave peacefully. Jen, Robyn, Don, Teresa: thank you guys very much, may the God of love and peace bless you and give you much more in return. To you, dad: I love you and deeply miss you. Years have passed, tears have dried, but your memories remain in my heart. Rest in peace.

I was traveling to a tribal village in the heart of India when my cellphone got into range by sheer luck, and a friend called to say that Barack Hussein Obama had won. She turned up the TV so I could hear some of the speech on the phone. I have not felt so inspired in a long time. Things are so depressing and scary that it is wonderful someone can win a presidential election on the planks of hope and change!

In India, too, general elections are around the corner and how I wish we had a leader who would invite Hope and Change to come visit this side too! Don’t go by what the Bejeweled Princes of India, Inc. want to portray. Where politics is concerned, things here are pretty grim. Elections in India have always meant an escalation in violence – and this year is no exception. In the north, Kashmir is burning. Certainly no hope and no change there. There have been more bomb blasts in the past few months than we care to count anymore – Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Assam, Imphal, Jaipur, Malegaon and so on. Interestingly, a serving colonel in the army has been arrested, allegedly for teaching a group how to make bombs.

Since we are a religious country, violence and religion always go together here – a heady cocktail to start preparing for the polls. So in Orissa in the east, Hindu groups destroyed churches where some of the poorest people in India went to pray. The same thing was repeated in Karnataka - this time in the south of the country. Christians fled their homes in fear, sometimes crossing states in search of safety.

And in the west, in the cosmopolitan city of Mumbai, the commercial capital of India, we are seeing the rise of the worst fascist group in many decades. It goes by the name of Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) led by a young politician who has woven his politics around the fear that the North Indians (Biharis in particular) are going to take over their jobs and their beautiful city. From Mumbai it has spread to other towns. People have been killed and maimed, shops have been vandalised, students from ‘outside’ stopped from appearing for public exams and many ways of humiliation have been devised.

Even in its mildest form this kind of politics has opened debates about what to do with the Biharis who are dirty, vicious, perverted, criminals, hateful and here to eat our jobs! The ruling party is torn between trying to stop the violence and showing that they are better North-Indian-haters. We are living in a pool of political venom.

On any given day, India is full of groups who can’t stand each other, and in an election year, all these pet hates explode – politicians make hay while the pyres burn.

This is only the build-up to the elections. As things hot up there will be news of kidnappings and murders of candidates, rigging, booth capturing, arson, and so on. It is really hoping against hope that Hope and Change will have anything to do with elections in India.

Meanwhile, congratulations congratulations congratulations to the USA for having gotten it right this time and wishing everyone, everywhere all the best.

With fingers crossed.

Paromita

I realize that my last blog sounded somewhat bitter. Part of the reason that I write is because it is helpful to me - it helps me to put things into perspective for myself. If someone else can identify or find some helpful information for themselves from something that I have written, even better. I certainly could  have applied the truths (yes, yes - “truths” as I see them - not necessarily the facts) about parenthood that I spoke of in my last blog to people in general - not just to men, but perhaps to anyone who is a single parent or a parent sharing custody. Yes, those were “truths” that I suppose could have been applied both to men and to women.

While the tone of my writing or speech may, at times, come across as bitter and while I would say that some of the situations that I have encountered in my life have contributed to me becoming pretty cynical for my age, I like to think that writing helps me to heal - that I am able to share a complaint and move on from there after having been honest with myself (and whoever else may read) about the way that I feel.  Contrary to what I may have led readers to believe in my last blog, I do not blame entire segments of the population for the way that I feel or for things that I have faced in my life. I also generally do not attempt to categorize people based on my preconceived notions. I have noticed though that the preconceived notions that I have about people sometimes do end up to be true. At times, they may even end up being true about several people that I meet that share similar traits or characteristics.

I realize that I am as guilty as anyone of making snap judgments and coming to incorrect conclusions based on appearances or first impressions. But I have also come to some conclusions that I have found to be correct about characteristics that people possess. I do not normally attempt to classify people and to generalize. I try to avoid that. But I think it’s important to be honest with myself. I do have some preconceived notions about people. I also have come to realize that a lot of the people I have met have had a lot of things in common with one another. All of this can likely be attributed to the human condition – my habit of forming opinions and large segments of the population sharing personality traits. I do my best not to act on my preconceived notions - I do my best to not let whatever biases and opinions I have cloud my judgment. To a certain extent, though, it is important to exercise judgment- not to judge people for their decisions and to categorize them based on said judgments, but at least to judge what decisions and circumstances are or are not right for us - this is only fair.

I had a dream the other night that caused me to become very disappointed with my subconscious mind. The dream was a thinly veiled metaphor for a situation in my life that makes me feel awkward, at best, and at worst makes me feel vulnerable and violated, dirty and used. I have begun to question the nature of trust, recently. Trust suddenly seems to me far more fragile and far more powerful than I ever imagined it could be.

My ex-husband is currently under investigation and will be on trial shortly for something that I never would have imagined him capable of. But then, I never really knew him.  I feel a bit like a fraud even describing him as having been a “husband.” In retrospect, he was never my husband - he was a stranger, and what we had was not even a bad marriage - I would not not classify it as a marriage, at all… I have been contacted to give a deposition and possibly to testify against him.

While I blame myself having exercised poor judgment and for making bad decisions, I have spent the last few years doing my best to distance myself from situations that I considered bad and, I realized the other day, from the person I might have been in the past. I have been working on becoming a grown-up and have started my life anew. I am married now to a wonderful man and while we experience problems in our relationship, we have a relatively healthy relationship and he has been the only “dad” that my daughter has ever known. I just received my first promotion ever and I have now been employed by a company for whom I enjoy working for nearly two years. I am looking forward to that two-year milestone, as that will be the longest that I have ever been employed with one company.

While I want to help with this situation in any way that I can, I am not sure that I will even be a good character witness, as I don’t really know the man. I have not been acquainted with him for the past several years and furthermore, as I was being interviewed by the investigator from the district attorney’s office, I came to the conclusion that I never really knew the man. I don’t like discussing that part of my past, that period in my life because I feel that it reflects poorly on me. When I discuss it, I feel like I am confessing, not just to having been young and stupid and reckless and wild, but to having been nihilistic and to having been a bad person. I do not blame the stranger to whom I was married for ruining my life or anything quite like that. Like I said before, I consider it a setback - a mistake, a lack of good judgment on my part. But I also don’t blame myself for his actions. I blame myself for not having had the foresight to avoid ever entering into an unhealthy and abusive relationship, especially since I have always considered myself a strong independent woman, and I blame myself for not having ended things sooner and leaving the situation. I am doing my best to take responsibility for my poor decisions and for my mistakes and I have spent the past few years trying to correct several errors that I felt I made in my life - not other peoples’ errors. Yes, I was fooled and fell for things for which I should not have fallen. Yes, I maybe was not thinking at all when I made some choices and yes, maybe based some of my decisions on things that I should not have. Maybe I left too many decisions to chance. Perhaps I was self-destructive and did not think or care about the future enough to work towards goals. These are all things that I have now realized and I feel like the person that I am today is 167 degrees from the hedonistic person that I was in my teens and early twenties.

I want to do what is right for my daughter and for myself and for society in general. I want to assist in the case against this man, I do. I think that he should be put away. I am not certain I can help put him away. As I was being questioned, I felt numb and unsure and I felt like the questions were leading, which was fine - they led me in the direction of the case against him. I just realized that I am so far removed from that situation now, realistically in my life and emotionally, from the person that I was when I allowed myself to, in a sense, be a victim. I had very little knowledge of a man with whom I lived, and I am certain that I should not have allowed myself to live in such a situation. I have even less knowledge of this man now and question if I ever really knew anything about him.

I know that there are a lot of people that have faced worse adversity in their lives. I am happy and somewhat successful now. I struggle a bit, but I no longer have to worry about the things the way that I used to worry. I did not have the best childhood growing up, but it could have been a hell of a lot worse. I was raised by my aunt and uncle from the time I was nine and they worked to the best of their ability to provide some sense of normalcy in the lives of my younger sister and myself. Our parents, when my sister and I were ages 9 and 7, respectively, were still not grown-up enough to be parents. My aunt and uncle became my mom and dad. I remember how betrayed I used to feel when my aunt would share information about my background and earlier childhood with a teacher of mine and how much more betrayed I would feel when that teacher would, in turn, share that information with my classmates.

I felt & still feel that advertising adversity that I’d faced was kind of like asking for charity. I hated it. I never found a happy medium and still have not, so I think that I tend to deal with things by not dealing with them. Hence, the reason I might have sought out situations and characters that reminded me of my biological parents once I reached adulthood. Hence the reason for now trying to make amends for that and moving in a new direction with my life.

In closing, I think I am coming to a crossroad - I think that I am now trying to somehow reconcile my “past life” with my current life. I want to be able to share things with people around me about what I am going through and what I am feeling without feeling dirty or confused. I would like to be able to talk about these things without feeling like I am whining or playing the victim.  I just want to be able to discuss things that may surface from my past without apologizing or feeling ashamed ’cause while I don’t play the victim, I am not interested in suffering in silence and playing martyr instead.

I am grateful that I can share this here…

Yesterday I bought a job market paper - I wanted to try my luck.  To my surprise, there was no job I could apply for, since I don’t have any qualifications.  The only job that was available was domestic work.  When I realized that, I started crying.  I asked myself, what have I done?  Why is God punishing me?  I’ve been good to Him, I am a loving, caring, honest person, and I will always think about others and share the little things I have with them.  Then my baby girl walked in and she started to cry.   She opened her arms and hugged me and at that instant I knew I had to stop crying, to avoid her asking me why I am crying.  I can’t let my kids know that their mommy is a failure.

I had an unhappy childhood that contributed a lot to the situation I am in today.  My parents were both unemployed and uneducated and most of their off-days drowning in alcohol.  My father committed crime to at least put food on the table, and most of his other time was spent in prison.  As a result, we had to stay with our grandmother who was also unemployed and owned a shebben as a source of income.  She took out all of her stress on me, and all the beating and swearing has affected me to this day.  And now history is repeating itself - my siblings and I are unemployed and uneducated.  I sometimes wish I wasn’t born into this family.  I am going to try and give it my best, I will do it for my kids.  I can’t suffer for the rest of my life.

I’ve had so many chances, but messed them up.  I am no longer a little girl, play time is over.  I have to do this right this time, I have to secure the future of my kids.  They are looking up to me and no one can do that for them except me.

My name is Shelly and I work in Jen’s office in New York City. I came to work one day loaded with questions after I had an an all too familiar and unfavorable encounter in the subway. Seeing me visibly shaken, Jen encouraged me to write a guest entry on her blog, hoping that her wise readers could offer me insight on the dilemma I often face.

I am a twenty something, professional living in New York City. I graduated in the top of my class from the college I attended on an academic based scholarship. I believe myself to be kind, sensible and secure and yet, I somehow find myself in the most peculiar, sometimes dangerous and always avoidable situations like the one I am about to recount for you now.

First thing, last Tuesday morning I had to run to 42nd St. on an urgent errand for FLYING. After completing the task, I stood in the surprisingly quiet subway station in a not so surprisingly state of mental haze, waiting for a train to take me downtown and back to the office. An extended holiday weekend had just come to a close and my mind was still mingling with the friends that had visited me and the incredible Soy Chicken we had discovered in Chinatown. However, I was jolted back to my surroundings when a woman, similar to my age, asked for directions. We stood together at the large subway map and I began tracing the winding train tracks, directing her in which blue and orange snakes she could take to Queens. But yet another startling interruption came from a man urgently approaching the two of us asking: “Do you ladies need help? I live here. I can help”. The train was clamoring into the station and I got the feeling he was torn as to whether he should take it and not be late for work or stay behind and help the damsels find their way in this tough city. Fortunately for him, I had already given her directions and all three of us could catch our trains without further delays. I hurried to my train only to find that the man who had been trying to help us had sat directly across from me. We sat there studying each other, me trying to be a bit more discreet about it, peering at him over the top of my book. He had an open sore on his face and lips that were so dry I wouldn’t have been surprised if he had just returned from an expedition in the Himalayas. His hands were well worn with more than half of his fingers dotted with dark purple spots on his nails. His age was indistinguishable. Maybe 43 or 65 or a dirty 35? I sat there trying to guess whether he was homeless or just disheleved when all of the sudden my object of study spoke:

“That was nice of you to help that girl.”
“Oh, it was nothing”. It really was nothing.
“You work in the Financial District don’t you?” He said this as he got up and made his way over to me. Sitting down next to me, he left no room for comfort. He then said:
“I’ve seen you around down there…many times”.
SHIT! I thought I lived in New York City where all faces are anonymous.
“Yes, that’s right. I do.” The first stupid response of many more to come…
“Where do you work?”
“At a film production company.”
“What’s the address?”
“ Maiden Lane.”
“What’s the name of it?”
“Zohe Films.”
Second, third, and fourth stupid responses of the day.

But really, could it be that bad? He was just a lonely old man. I was bringing him joy. And I have always had a place in my heart for old men. It was a harmless conversation.

(more…)

Okay, it is eight o’clock at night. I am sitting outside the DAY GLOW Sushi Restaurant on Montana Avenue in Los Angeles…. I am eating tuna sashimi, drinking miso soup and typing on my Mac laptop. Across the street is the Aero Theater. On the Marquee, in big letters it says “FLYING: CONFESSIONS OF A FREE WOMAN”, Wednesday Night at 7:30pm. It is Wednesday Night, it is past 7:30 pm, and inside that building sit a crowd of people staring at a large screen watching my film, meanwhile I watch the building from outside, like a lioness, jealous, pacing, protective, wondering how they are receiving my story.

In two hours I will return inside, stride to the front of the stage and find out what has happened. In the meantime, I am in self-imposed exile. It is one of the ironies of being a filmmaker, that I cannot watch my film once it is completed. To look at it is to writhe in agony: I hate every word, I hate every image: “STUPID! STUPID! STUPID!” I think and imagine myself sinking through the floor of the cinema into the dark earth, propelled to the center of the planet, to some molten hell that reads “assholes only.” But these feelings are not new to me. When I made my first film in the eighties, “BEIRUT: THE LAST HOME MOVIE” and had no experience, I forced myself into a seat in the theater, festival after festival, thinking that I should, I must. And after each screening, I would make it through the inevitable question and answer session and then escape to my hotel room where I would burst into tears. Not a few light, ‘spring rain’, tears. No! Big torrential ‘monsoon tears’, that lasted more than an hour and left me pale and shaking, barely able to speak. Tears that scared the hell out of my then Italian boyfriend, accompanying me on what he thought would be a “fun, cool, movie tour!” (No surprise that relationship didn’t last!)

…And “BEIRUT” was a film that won every award in the book, including Sundance Film Festival and was put on many critics ten best lists, so it was not that the audience booed or the press was bad. It is not about what the outside world thinks. Even then, in my twenties, I knew that. It has something to do with what I call “the blood on the wall” effect. All of that emotion that can never be expressed along the way of making the film: the years of fourteen hour, seven days a week labor; the vacations you don’t take, the birthday parties you miss, the friends you don’t have time for; the meetings with smiling money people who inevitably apologize, politely, ‘it will never work’, and walk away; the looks of friends, family, and lovers who eyes say, ‘Why? Why do you have to do this?’; the fear that eats at you, calling your name, saying, ‘maybe they are all right, give up you fool!’ All of those moments when there is not time to scream or cry because it would be too dangerous, it would not get you where you want to go, or worse, it might stop you in the path. When the film is finished, all of that emotion gets unplugged in a torrential downpour. And then there is the secret part we never admit to anyone, not even ourselves sometimes: the film never – and I mean never – stands up to your own original vision of what it could be. I always know what I failed at achieving; I always know the story I imagined that the audience will never see or even miss. And yes, finally I have to grieve that child that will never be born; that child that by necessity had to be abandoned along the roadside so at least its twin could survive….

So, after a while I learned. Don’t watch your own film. And slowly I found out that other filmmakers couldn’t watch their films either – and at least I felt normal. A year or two after the film is finished; you can look at it, but not right away. That was 20 years ago. Now I don’t even try. Now I am seasoned; I am an old timer. I do a quick introduction and slip out of the room into the dark night once the movie starts. I know how to grieve. I accept it. And for two hours or as long as the screening lasts, I am free.

Tonight, I watch the theater from a safe distance behind my chopsticks and seaweed salad. Already across the street, a man climbs a ladder, leaning up against the marquis and begins to remove the letters, one by one, “F” comes down and then the “L” and the “Y” and on…. They will put the marquis up again next week because FLYING will play again the next two consecutive Wednesdays and afterwards, two weekends, one at the Aero Theater and one at the famous Egyptian Theater on Hollywood Boulevard. This month I will commute back and forth to LA to support the screenings. But right now I am waiting for its first test in this city.

I listen to the people at the table next to me, a couple who are in the film business. Words like “ camera”, “Grip”; “It’s gotten worst since Time Warner…”; “He’s smart and so creative…”; “I watched that footage….”: “She got trashed and was being the biggest brat…” float by me but I can’t grab on to anything substantial. I am a big ease dropper. I love listening to people talk and making up stories about them, their families, what’s going on in their relationship, their future happiness or divorce. But tonight I don’t hear anything interesting that I can fantasize about. I am a fisherman, with nothing biting except for the kind of stuff you have to throw back like eels: “We don’t have a release from him, he has to see it…” “Well obviously he doesn’t want the sex stuff in….” I am bored with their conversation and feel they are failing me. I came to have sushi to get away from my business and it has followed me here. I wondered if this is life in Los Angeles? Finally the couple gets up and leaves, her jumping on a bike, him walking besides her talking about “digitizing footage”. I am happy for the silence, to go back to my own musing.
(more…)