Art

I received the following in an email from a good friend and lover of the arts.
I wanted to save it, and thought my blog the best place to keep it safe.
Good stuff.

WELCOME ADDRESS TO FRESHMAN CLASS AT BOSTON CONSERVATORY

given by Karl Paulnack, pianist and director of music division at
Boston Conservatory

"One of my parents' deepest fears, I suspect, is that society would not
properly value me as a musician, that I wouldn't be appreciated. I had very
good grades in high school, I was good in science and math, and they
imagined that as a doctor or a research chemist or an engineer, I might be
more appreciated than I would be as a musician. I still remember my mother's
remark when I announced my decision to apply to music school-she said,
"You're WASTING your SAT scores." On some level, I think, my parents were
not sure themselves what the value of music was, what its purpose was. And
they LOVED music, they listened to classical music all the time. They just
weren't really clear about its function. So let me talk about that a little
bit, because we live in a society that puts music in the "arts and
entertainment" section of the newspaper, and serious music, the kind your
kids are about to engage in, has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with
entertainment, in fact it's the opposite of entertainment. Let me talk a
little bit about music, and how it works.

The first people to understand how music really works were the ancient
Greeks. And this is going to fascinate you; the Greeks said that music and
astronomy were two sides of the same coin. Astronomy was seen as the study
of relationships between observable, permanent, external objects, and music
was seen as the study of relationships between invisible, internal, hidden
objects. Music has a way of finding the big, invisible moving pieces inside
our hearts and souls and helping us figure out the position of things inside
us. Let me give you some examples of how this works.

One of the most profound musical compositions of all time is the Quartet for
the End of Time written by French composer Olivier Messiaen in 1940.
Messiaen was 31 years old when France entered the war against Nazi Germany.
He was captured by the Germans in June of 1940, sent across Germany in a
cattle car and imprisoned in a concentration camp.

He was fortunate to find a sympathetic prison guard who gave him paper and a
place to compose. There were three other musicians in the camp, a cellist, a
violinist, and a clarinetist, and Messiaen wrote his quartet with these
specific players in mind. It was performed in January 1941 for four thousand
prisoners and guards in the prison camp. Today it is one of the most famous
masterworks in the repertoire.

Given what we have since learned about life in the concentration camps, why
would anyone in his right mind waste time and energy writing or playing
music? There was barely enough energy on a good day to find food and water,
to avoid a beating, to stay warm, to escape torture-why would anyone bother
with music? And yet-from the camps, we have poetry, we have music, we have
visual art; it wasn't just this one fanatic Messiaen; many, many people
created art. Why? Well, in a place where people are only focused on
survival, on the bare necessities, the obvious conclusion is that art must
be, somehow, essential for life. The camps were without money, without hope,
without commerce, without recreation, without basic respect, but they were
not without art. Art is part of survival; art is part of the human spirit,
an unquenchable expression of who we are. Art is one of the ways in which we
say, "I am alive, and my life has meaning."

On September 12, 2001 I was a resident of Manhattan. That morning I reached
a new understanding of my art and its relationship to the world. I sat down
at the piano that morning at 10 AM to practice as was my daily routine; I
did it by force of habit, without thinking about it. I lifted the cover on
the keyboard, and opened my music, and put my hands on the keys and took my
hands off the keys. And I sat there and thought, does this even matter?
Isn't this completely irrelevant? Playing the piano right now, given what
happened in this city yesterday, seems silly, absurd, irreverent, pointless.
Why am I here? What place has a musician in this moment in time? Who needs a
piano player right now? I was completely lost.

And then I, along with the rest of New York, went through the journey of
getting through that week. I did not play the piano that day, and in fact I
contemplated briefly whether I would ever want to play the piano again. And
then I observed how we got through the day.

At least in my neighborhood, we didn't shoot hoops or play Scrabble. We
didn't play cards to pass the time, we didn't watch TV, we didn't shop, we
most certainly did not go to the mall. The first organized activity that I
saw in New York, that same day, was singing. People sang. People sang around
fire houses, people sang "We Shall Overcome". Lots of people sang America
the Beautiful. The first organized public event that I remember was the
Brahms Requiem, later that week, at Lincoln Center, with the New York
Philharmonic. The first organized public expression of grief, our first
communal response to that historic event, was a concert. That was the
beginning of a sense that life might go on. The US Military secured the
airspace, but recovery was led by the arts, and by music in particular, that
very night.

>From these two experiences, I have come to understand that music is not part
of "arts and entertainment" as the newspaper section would have us believe.
It's not a luxury, a lavish thing that we fund from leftovers of our
budgets, not a plaything or an amusement or a pass time. Music is a basic
need of human survival. Music is one of the ways we make sense of our lives,
one of the ways in which we express feelings when we have no words, a way
for us to understand things with our hearts when we can't with our minds.

Some of you may know Samuel Barber's heart wrenchingly beautiful piece Adagio
for Strings. If you don't know it by that name, then some of you may know it
as the background music which accompanied the Oliver Stone movie Platoon, a
film about the Vietnam War. If you know that piece of music either way, you
know it has the ability to crack your heart open like a walnut; it can make
you cry over sadness you didn't know you had. Music can slip beneath our
conscious reality to get at what's really going on inside us the way a good
therapist does.

I bet that you have never been to a wedding where there was absolutely no
music. There might have been only a little music, there might have been some
really bad music, but I bet you there was some music. And something very
predictable happens at weddings-people get all pent up with all kinds of
emotions, and then there's some musical moment where the action of the
wedding stops and someone sings or plays the flute or something. And even if
the music is lame, even if the quality isn't good, predictably 30 or 40
percent of the people who are going to cry at a wedding cry a couple of
moments after the music starts. Why? The Greeks. Music allows us to move
around those big invisible pieces of ourselves and rearrange our insides so
that we can express what we feel even when we can't talk about it. Can you
imagine watching Indiana Jones or Superman or Star Wars with the dialogue
but no music? What is it about the music swelling up at just the right
moment in ET so that all the softies in the audience start crying at exactly
the same moment? I guarantee you if you showed the movie with the music
stripped out, it wouldn't happen that way. The Greeks: Music is the
understanding of the relationship between invisible internal objects.

I'll give you one more example, the story of the most important concert of
my life. I must tell you I have played a little less than a thousand
concerts in my life so far. I have played in places that I thought were
important. I like playing in Carnegie Hall; I enjoyed playing in Paris; it
made me very happy to please the critics in St. Petersburg. I have played
for people I thought were important; music critics of major newspapers,
foreign heads of state. The most important concert of my entire life took
place in a nursing home in Fargo, ND, about 4 years ago.

I was playing with a very dear friend of mine who is a violinist. We began,
as we often do, with Aaron Copland's Sonata, which was written during World
War II and dedicated to a young friend of Copland's, a young pilot who was
shot down during the war. Now we often talk to our audiences about the
pieces we are going to play rather than providing them with written program
notes. But in this case, because we began the concert with this piece, we
decided to talk about the piece later in the program and to just come out
and play the music without explanation.

Midway through the piece, an elderly man seated in a wheelchair near the
front of the concert hall began to weep. This man, whom I later met, was
clearly a soldier-even in his 70's, it was clear from his buzz-cut hair,
square jaw and general demeanor that he had spent a good deal of his life in
the military. I thought it a little bit odd that someone would be moved to
tears by that particular movement of that particular piece, but it wasn't
the first time I've heard crying in a concert and we went on with the
concert and finished the piece.

When we came out to play the next piece on the program, we decided to talk
about both the first and second pieces, and we described the circumstances
in which the Copland was written and mentioned its dedication to a downed
pilot. The man in the front of the audience became so disturbed that he had
to leave the auditorium. I honestly figured that we would not see him again,
but he did come backstage afterwards, tears and all, to explain himself.

What he told us was this: "During World War II, I was a pilot, and I was in
an aerial combat situation where one of my team's planes was hit. I watched
my friend bail out, and watched his parachute open, but the Japanese planes
which had engaged us returned and machine gunned across the parachute chords
so as to separate the parachute from the pilot, and I watched my friend drop
away into the ocean, realizing that he was lost. I have not thought about
this for many years, but during that first piece of music you played, this
memory returned to me so vividly that it was as though I was reliving it. I
didn't understand why this was happening, why now, but then when you came
out to explain that this piece of music was written to commemorate a lost
pilot, it was a little more than I could handle. How does the music do that?
How did it find those feelings and those memories in me?

Remember the Greeks: music is the study of invisible relationships between
internal objects. This concert in Fargo was the most important work I have
ever done. For me to play for this old soldier and help him connect,
somehow, with Aaron Copland, and to connect their memories of their lost
friends, to help him remember and mourn his friend, this is my work. This is
why music matters.

What follows is part of the talk I will give to this year's freshman class
when I welcome them a few days from now. The responsibility I will charge
your sons and daughters with is this:

"If we were a medical school, and you were here as a med student practicing
appendectomies, you'd take your work very seriously because you would
imagine that some night at two AM someone is going to waltz into your
emergency room and you're going to have to save their life. Well, my
friends, someday at 8 PM someone is going to walk into your concert hall and
bring you a mind that is confused, a heart that is overwhelmed, a soul that
is weary. Whether they go out whole again will depend partly on how well you
do your craft.

You're not here to become an entertainer, and you don't have to sell
yourself. The truth is you don't have anything to sell; being a musician
isn't about dispensing a product, like selling used Chevies. I'm not an
entertainer; I'm a lot closer to a paramedic, a firefighter, a rescue
worker. You're here to become a sort of therapist for the human soul, a
spiritual version of a chiropractor, physical therapist, someone who works
with our insides to see if they get things to line up, to see if we can come
into harmony with ourselves and be healthy and happy and well.

Frankly, ladies and gentlemen, I expect you not only to master music; I
expect you to save the planet. If there is a future wave of wellness on this
planet, of harmony, of peace, of an end to war, of mutual understanding, of
equality, of fairness, I don't expect it will come from a government, a
military force or a corporation. I no longer even expect it to come from the
religions of the world, which together seem to have brought us as much war
as they have peace. If there is a future of peace for humankind, if there is
to be an understanding of how these invisible, internal things should fit
together, I expect it will come from the artists, because that's what we do.
As in the concentration camp and the evening of 9/11, the artists are the
ones who might be able to help us with our internal, invisible lives."

The Gift of Time

It is an unfortunate fact that could all very well end up disgruntled septuagenarians. We might end up angry at the world, angry at ourselves, outraged at our own lack of ingenuity, creativity, inspiration, and daring. We may look back on our seven decades on Earth and think, “I fucked it up.” We could realize that most of the choices we made were royal mistakes, decisions made without prescience, without passion, and without purpose. We will then have to live the rest of our days with the acknowledgment that we wasted our lives.
Each of us has only one life to live; we are bound by the constraints of time. Time is our scarcest, most precious resource. Pithy adages tell us that time is a terrible thing to waste, and to seize the day (carpe diem!), reminding of the fleeting nature of time. Trite and cliché though they may be, they are truisms too often neglected in higher education, and so on into life. Not until my senior year at my liberal arts college was I pressed to consider that I may be wasting time, frittering it away with trivialities and concerns of no real significance. It was a painful idea to test.
But test it I did, or at least, I have tried. As time ticks away - I graduate in six months – I’ve undertaken the project of critiquing the years I have spent at college. Thus far, the process has been enriching, but tinged with regret. At times, I have been mindful in my decision making and conscientious in my use of time. Other times, I have either lazily wasted away hours or I have been in an all-out war against the clock. How I could have better spent my four years at school? What questions could I, should I, have asked? What efforts could I have made to improve, in so many academic and extracurricular areas? What would I do differently if I could begin again? I am more thoughtful, more deliberate, and more discriminating than I was at eighteen, but I am just as apt to make detrimental mistakes as ever. How am I now to best plan for my future? What sins of omission and commission can I prevent for myself, and for anyone else who cares to listen to the musings of a college senior?
When I was a first-year student, I idolized the seniors. They seemed so worldly, so self-assured, so adult. Now I stand in their shoes, and as ever, I realize how severely I misinterpreted things. The proverbial grass is always greener…and smarter, more confident, more knowledgeable, more responsible, and on and on. I cannot claim to be qualitatively different or better now than a year, two years, or three years ago. However, I believe I can accurately claim to have learned some things these past few years. If any underclassmen have stumbled upon my soliloquy, I hope that they do not view this as an accusatory sermon. I write as an injunction of myself, hoping that my readers might glean some wisdom from the lessons I am learning.
I have composed a list of thou-shall’s and thou-shalt-not’s, both addressed to my present and future self, and with an audience of liberal arts undergraduate students in mind. Regardless of where a student chooses to matriculate, he or she may harbor some aspiration to a liberal education, so a definition of such an education begs mention. In my humble estimation, liberal education is complex, and not all institutions that proclaim to offer a liberal arts education have a clear definition, shared by faculty, administration, and students, as to what a liberal education is and what it entails.
I propose that a liberal education is not limited to four collegiate years; neither is it only attainable at “liberal arts” schools. Liberal education is a lifelong arduous academic and personal process, an engagement of the whole being in the development of identity and self-hood through the rigorous study of the breadth and depth of human ideas. It is not complete if limited by a predilection toward a particular culture, location, religion, philosophy, or epoch. A student limited by his or her, or his or her professors’, biases toward experiential particularities (i.e., the Western world, Western literary tradition, European history, Christianity, etc.) will have considerable difficulty attaining a liberal education, as I have defined it. A student negligent and wasteful of time will likewise face obstacles on the path to becoming liberally educated. A liberal education requires that those who desire it recognize the value of time, and the value of events and relationships that occur within its constraints.
And so, I give a time-focused “ten commandments” for liberal arts learners. It is a list of things I wish I had been told prior to beginning my liberal education process, a list which I hope can engender in readers a sense of the responsibility and duty that are incumbent upon those who aspire to be liberally educated. [It asks that individuals question themselves and their worlds. Time is best spent in such endeavors].
1. Liberal education is not truly liberal unless it eliminates the human tendency to hate and mistrust. If an individual is able, at the end of his formal education, to reason his way to hatred of another individual or collective, then he is guilty of having misdirected his efforts and he has not been liberally educate. Liberal education debases any justification for hatred, it renders mistrust unjustifiable. It would behoove the liberal arts student to enter her education with a critical eye on her own biases. It is a waste of time to spend the collegiate years rationalizing one’s bigotry. Liberal education is only liberal if it breaks dismantles the penchant to prejudge.
2. Time is often best spent in a state of discomfort. Out of discomfort arises a need to search, to question, and to learn. More often than not, liberal education should make its students uncomfortable.
3. Similarly, liberal education, if thorough, should make one feel marginalized. An understanding of the spectrum of human experience is unattainable unless one learns what it means to feel outcast, ostracized, and forgotten. A liberal arts learner must try to discover what it is to be marginalized. He cannot presume to call himself liberally educated if he has not.
4. Moments of clarity and confidence should be followed by periods of self-doubt. Time is well-spent by the individual who faces a torrent of questions, a deluge of ideas that necessitate self-analyzation. The one who extends her academic queries into all areas of her personal, relational, and spiritual life is engaged in a genuine process of liberal education.
5. A liberally educated student engages in a unique process such as few people will ever think to commence. It is oftentimes a harrowing path, the obstacles of which, when surpassed, are able to make one feel proud. Time is misused if spent wallowing in self-importance. The liberal arts student must realize that he is, in fact, small. He is one human being with many rights as any other. To avoid developing a big head, it is important that circumstances sometimes make him feel insignificant and inadequate. Time is best spent in humility.
6. In humility, one develops an appreciation for her ignorance. The liberal arts learner experiences an indirect relationship between the amount of time she has devoted to study, and the amount of things she feels she knows. Rigorous study teaches humans of their own ignorance. A humble acceptance that one may not know everything is crucial for respectful engagement, especially with those with whom one may thoroughly disagree.
7. Learners must be willing to be hurt, and must develop strong self-reliance in order to ‘pick up the pieces.’ A liberal arts student doesn’t run from trials, but should go sprinting headlong into new, different, and difficult situations. Profound learning happens through suffering.
8. As with an understanding of one’s own ignorance, liberal education can sometimes lead to self-dislike. Students mustn’t be afraid of this, but should also determine when such dislike is appropriate. When one realizes one’s own lack of compassion, lack of honesty, lack of motivation, lack of discipline, it is justifiable that one will experience a phase of self-hatred. This is good, for self-hatred is the closest thing to self-love. If one doesn’t, at times, dislike oneself, then she probably doesn’t like herself much, either. Scrutiny indicates a deep caring for one’s self and one’s soul.
9. A liberal arts learner should yearn for situations, places, and peoples who are wholly outside the realm of what is comfortable, safe, and secure. Radical self-development can occur in places and conceptual frameworks least like home. A student should occasionally force himself away from home.
10. One engaged in a process of liberal education must never remain in a state of “arrival.” If one feels he has “arrived,” and never decides to leave, the dynamic wondering that fundamentally characterizes liberal education ceases. True liberal education is as active of an endeavor as can be found. To passively sit on one’s laurels, clinging strongly to ideas without thought of transformation, is antithetical to the liberal arts ideal.
Liberal education is a process without an end. To engage in it, one must have courage, discipline, fortitude, and a deep care for oneself, one’s family and friends, and for those he or she has yet to or may never meet. It is an individual commitment: to be responsible, to be watchful, to be disciplined, to be gently forceful. No institution can provide a liberal education; no one person or entity can presume to develop another’s soul. Liberal education is a deeply personal, transformative experience not contained to four collegiate years. A liberal arts learner never stops learning, never stops seeking, and never stops questioning.
“Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that the stuff life is made of.” –Benjamin Franklin
Liberal education engenders love of life, and implores people not to squander their time. My collegiate experience has taught me how my time will be best used. I shall spend my days in curiosity.

The Newspaper version of "What's in a name?"

What’s in a name?:
The Dangers of Historical Irresponsibility
Shortly after September 11, 2001, President called the impending war on terror a “crusade”. Across the world, people reacted to his poor choice of words. The Christian Science Monitor reported on Sept. 19, 2001: "President Bush's reference to a "crusade" against terrorism, which passed almost unnoticed by Americans, rang alarm bells in Europe. It raised fears that the terrorist attacks could spark a 'clash of civilizations' between Christians and Muslims, sowing fresh winds of hatred and mistrust."
“Crusade” is significant: it recalls the historic crusades initiated by Pope Urban II in 1096, and to many non-Christians it represents the worst of Western and Christian colonialism and expansionism. The term “crusade” separates the world into one group who thinks itself superior, and all the rest who fall short.
It is problematic for interfaith relations, and presents an obstacle to genuine dialogue about faith. The word is not only offensive to the Muslim community. History reminds us that Pope Urban called the Crusades in effort to unite the warring princes of Europe and to end the division of the Church; he chose to make war the vehicle for unification. As the crusaders marched to the holy land, red crosses of Christ emblazoned on their chests, they destroyed Jewish communities and massacred thousands of Jews. Muslims in Jerusalem were brutally slaughtered. Greek Catholics and the eastern Christians in Constantinople were tortured and killed on account of their different interpretation of the Nicene Creed and theology of the Holy Spirit. The Crusades were an unprecedented unleashing of ethnic and religious hatred, all in the name of Jesus.
I caution Christians against labeling themselves “crusaders”. I caution the international organization Campus Crusade for Christ against the use of the term in its name. The crusading concept is dangerous, as it holds one group to be superior to others and one way of experiencing the divine to be true and all others to be false. It impedes attempts to create relationships based on respect of diverse traditions, ways of living, and ways of encountering the holy. Alliteration is nice, but relationships built on mutual understanding and love of neighbor – absent desires to change or convert that neighbor – are far better.

What's in a name? The Dangers of Historical Irresponsibility

I am currently doing an Independent Study in Jewish-Christian Relations with Dr. Paul Jones at Transylvania University. The sole purpose of the IS is to improve my writing. Every week, I turn in a piece of prose, and Dr. Jones and I tear it apart. This week I wrote on the word "crusade". I welcome any comments anyone may have; I need all the help I can get.
-------------
A Contemporary Appearance of an Old Fear
Shortly after September 11, 2001, President Bush gave a speech that alarmed people across the globe. In a moment of gross historical insensitivity or ignorance, he referred to the impending war on terror as a "crusade.” The Associated Press and the Christian Science Monitor reported on the global reaction to Bush's poorly worded call to arms:

'His use of the word "crusade," said Soheib Bensheikh, Grand Mufti of the mosque in Marseille, France, "was most unfortunate.” "It recalled the barbarous and unjust military operations against the Muslim world," by Christian knights, who launched repeated attempts to capture Jerusalem over the course of several hundred years.' (Europe cringes at Bush 'crusade' against terrorists; by Peter Ford; Christian Science Monitor; 9/19/01)

"U.S. leaders should be especially leery of anything that hints at a holy war, many said, because it plays into the hands of Osama bin Laden, who has said he wants the world to plunge into a war, or jihad, between Islam and Christianity. 'It's what the terrorists use to recruit people -- saying that Christians are on a crusade against Islam,' said Yvonne Haddad, a professor of the history of Islam at Georgetown University in Washington. 'It's as bad to their ears as it is when we hear 'jihad.'" (Bush's use of word 'crusade' a red flag: Muslims link it with invasion by Europeans; by Sally Buzbee; Associated Press; 9/18/01)

"President Bush's reference to a "crusade" against terrorism, which passed almost unnoticed by Americans, rang alarm bells in Europe. It raised fears that the terrorist attacks could spark a 'clash of civilizations' between Christians and Muslims, sowing fresh winds of hatred and mistrust." (Christian Science Monitor 9/19/01)

"...to many Muslims, the Crusades represent the worst of Western expansionism and colonialism, said James Lindsey, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution." (Associated Press 9/18/01)

"It is their support [that of moderate Muslims] for Washington's war that could be undermined by the sort of language on the president's lips, warns Hussein Amin, a former Egyptian ambassador who now lectures on international affairs. 'The whole tone is that of one civilization against another,' he finds. 'It is a superior way of speaking and I fear the consequences - the world being divided into two between those who think themselves superior' and the rest." (Christian Science Monitor 9/19/01)


In the aftermath of the President's speech, the press found that the word crusade could sow "fresh winds of hatred and mistrust" in Arab-American and Muslims-Christian relations; that the use of the word indicates a "'superior way of speaking and ... the consequences... [of] the world being divided into two between those who think themselves superior' and the rest" are to be feared; and that "to many Muslims, the Crusades represent the worst of Western expansionism and colonialism."
Benign words do not receive such lengthy treatment in press releases. Benign words are not given consideration. The word “crusade” is more than a combination of letters; it is a word laden with significance. The Oxford American Desk Dictionary and Thesaurus, as well as most online dictionaries, define "crusade" in several ways - but the first listing in any entry points to its history: "any of several medieval military expeditions made by Europeans to recover the Holy Land from the Muslims" (Oxford).
The Crusades were initiated in 1096 after Pope Urban II called all Christians to a reconquest of Jerusalem, to retake it for Christianity after it had been held for years by Muslims. "God wills it!" was his cry. "A hundred thousand people dropped everything to... 'take the cross' (Carroll, 239)" and march on Jerusalem. However, the Crusades were far more than any simplified dictionary definition would lead one to believe. Beyond what the Crusades were, it also must be noted why the Crusades occurred at all. James Carroll writes that "the pope's impulse was to unite the warring princes and the divided Church" (241). He did this by calling them to band together "against a common enemy outside Christendom" (241). The drive to unify the Church was realized not by uniting Christians in common love of neighbor, or help of the poor, or Christ-like compassion, but in bloody brutality against outsiders. Carroll notes with sorrow that the unification of Christendom was both the cause and result of an unprecedented unleashing of horrific "ethnic and religious hatred,” and to the massacre of tens of thousands of dissenting Christians, Muslims, and Jews.
While the most basic definition mentions Muslims as the prime target of crusading fervor, the Crusaders impacted the lives of far more people. A firm theology of anti-Jewish, anti-eastern-Christian, and anti-Muslim hatred fueled the crusading impulse. In Mainz Anonymous, a surviving chronicle of a German Jewish community's experience of 1096, the author writes his understanding of the Christian crusading mindset: “We take our souls in our hands' in order to kill and subjugate all those kingdoms that do not believe in the Crucified. How much more so (should we kill and subjugate) the Jews, who killed and crucified him (Jesus) (Carroll 238).
Western European Christianity was unified by that mindset. Murder was sanctioned and sacralized. "To rescue 'captive Jerusalem' was to rescue a kidnapped Jesus" (253) who was being blasphemed by non-believers. Theological and religious outsiders were victimized; communities were exterminated. In Trier, Germany, crusaders attacked the Jews, destroyed the Torah scrolls, and forced baptisms upon unwilling and terrified people. As the Crusaders marched toward Jerusalem, they repeated the Trier incident in numerous Jewish communities. Europe's first large-scale pogroms against Jews occurred during the Crusades. Christians were also targeted; both Greek Catholics and the eastern Christians of Constantinople were tortured and killed on account of a different reading of the Nicene Creed and theological interpretation of the Holy Spirit (241). Similar destruction befell the Muslims in Palestine.
The history of the Crusades is a tale of bloodshed and death. It is the knowledge of this history that rang alarm bells of fear and suspicion among Europeans and Muslims when President George W. Bush employed the word. And it is with knowledge of this history that I make the following statement: that the decision to use the word "Crusade" in the title of the organization 'Campus Crusade for Christ International' was an act of gross insensitivity, a decision highlighting great disregard for or ignorance of both history and non-Christians. Further, the use of the word crusade blackens what many see as caring motives behind the group's proselytism. As a Christian, I have great difficulty looking on the evangelism of Campus Crusade for Christ International and thinking pleasant and delighted thoughts. Instead, I see the word "crusade" and fear that the original crusading motive may come again to fruition - not in bloody war, but in cultural and religious annihilation.
Crusading for Christ is, in essence, finding fault and error in other religious expressions. The project of evangelizing is to save the unsaved, to win souls for Christ -- to convert individuals to Christianity. This necessarily finds other forms of religious expression to be, at best, disingenuous, incorrect, and improper ways to behave in relation to God. At worst, proselytism sees members of other faith traditions as on not only the wrong path, but on a path that can only lead directly to hell. Thus, the call is to Crusade for Christ to save individual lives and souls from what is believed to be a disastrous end. The business of saving souls, however, is also the business of finding all other cultures and religions categorically wrong and illegitimate. It is a program whose logical end would be the annihilation of all non-Christian cultures; the cultural and religious genocide of those considered to be "outsiders.” Under modern proselytism, lives are not lost, but priceless ways of life are. Just as the Crusaders of the first millennium found non-Christians unfit for life due to their lack of belief in the Crucified, second millennium Crusaders find non-Christians categorically wrong in their ways of living. Proselytism does not seek to end lives, but to end ways of living that are deemed incorrect, or "on the wrong path."
Is this the image that a Christian organization would want? Is the historical irresponsibility of using the word "Crusade" to be condoned with a simple brushing aside of gravity of the matter? In a world divided by misunderstanding and suspicion, is it wise for Christians to be ignorant of the history of their faith and the history of the followers of Christ? No, no, and no. Because of such ignorance on the part of my co-religionists, I am embarrassed to identify myself as a Christian. It is for such boldness and blatant disregard for those with whom we share both the world and God Almighty that I am outraged. This is not what Jesus of Nazareth could have envisioned. In no place in the canonical Gospels are we called to Crusade - bloody or ideological. In no place does Jesus call us to remove from human beings their cultural and religious identities - to erase their sense of being because we think it to be wrong.
"Crusade" must be seen for what it is. When President Bush used the word, he invoked memories of horrific destruction and extermination in the name of the Cross. Campus Crusade for Christ International does the same in its self-identification. Is this what Jesus would have wanted of His followers?

Second to last night in Cairo

“I let Kathryn take a fat kid picture today. And in my head I was like, ‘That’s a fat kid picture. I’m not gonna tell her.’”

- Allison Ray

“And in the first century, the Jews and the Jesus followers were all in this one group. And the Jews were like, ‘Your messiah sucks. He died. That doesn’t work.’ And the Jesus followers developed into a distinct group and the Romans got that they were different, and the Romans were all angry, and the Jews were all angry, and the Jesus followers were all like, ‘SHIT!’”

-also Allison Ray, in a brief summary of first-century Roman Jerusalem

Went to see the Great Pyramids today, and the Sphinx, and lots of impressive old statues.

Two days ago, I woke up at 1:00am to hike up Mount Sinai. Three hours, and over a mile and a half of intense uphill climbing. The sunrise was beautiful, but obstructed by a little cloud cover. The hike down took about two hours. Then we went to visit St. Katherine’s Monastery and met a cool American monk named Father Justin, and were given special access to the Monastery’s private library. This monastery has the second largest collection of manuscripts and icons in the world – second only to the Vatican.

Father Justin spoke to us for about 20 minutes, and at the end of his talk, I walked away from the group, stared at a bookcase full of some of the oldest known printed books, and cried. I still don’t know why.

I didn’t eat until 1:00pm (after about seven hours of hiking, walking, and jogging, by the end of it all), and didn’t sleep until 1:30, with the help of sleeping pills.

Tomorrow’s the last day. The trip has been such a whirlwind, I don’t think it’s intensity will hit me until much later, when I break down into emotional overload and realize what it is I’ve seen, what it is I’ve said, and who it is I’ve met.

Nearly onwards to Morocco.

Qumran and Beth Shean pictures

I think I neglected to mention a visit to Qumran, a site in the desert near the Dead Sea. It is the site where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered on accident by a local shepherd; that discovery led to the excavation of a first century BCE-first century CE settlement that was most likely inhabited by an ascetic and separatist group of Jews known as the Essenes. They're cool, and John the Baptist could have either spent time with them, or at least have known of their teachings. The discovery of Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls revolutionized study of the Second Temple Period (20BCE-70CE), of New Testament texts, of the development of the Hebrew canon, and of the development of Judaism during that period (and thus its effects of the Judaisms to come).
It's important.
And above is a picture of from the top row of seats in the theatre in Beth Shean/Scythopolis. This site topped almost every site I saw in Turkey and Greece. The preservation of the Roman period buildings here was remarkable, and standing on the top of the tell (the hill in the background left of the photo), you can almost see the grandeur of Rome come to life. The might and genius of the Roman empire hits you upside the head. (Josh Wenta and I had similar feelings and words to describe it).

Oh, and that wooden stage in the foreground of the picture---- I danced on it. It was requested, I obliged. I never pass up an opportunity to be one of the only people to do a jig in a Roman theatre.

Jerusalem, Days 1-3

This will be a sadly short post, entirely inadequate to describe the past few days. It's late, it's been a long day, and tomorrow will be longer still. A short post will suffice for now.

In Jerusalem we've explored the excavations of the Temple Mount (Robinson's Arch, the Western Wall tunnels), ascended the Mount (al-Aqsa Mosque and the breathtaking blue and gold Dome of the Rock), visited numerous churches (the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem [the oldest church structure in the world; constructed in the 320's by Constantine per request of his mother], the Church of Pater Noster [where Christ is said to have taught his disciples the Lord's Prayer], the Church in the Garden of Gethsemane, the Church of San Pietro Gallicanti [I got the name a little wrong, I know, but this is the church where Peter is said to have denied Christ three times], and a Church [name I cannot remember] where Christ mounted the donkey on 'Palm Sunday' and rode into Jerusalem.

We visited today the Shrine of the Book (a museum housing the Dead Sea Scrolls and other important scrolls and codices--- probably the most enthralling site for me, thus far), and cross several checkpoints on our trip into the West Bank to visit the aforementioned Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, which is in the Palestinian Territory.

I've seen lots of guns and lots of soldiers. A soldier boarded our bus today on our first checkpoint stop. I haven't yet been scared or found this out of place. Some of my friends are incredibly disturbed and anxious when guns are around, but I haven't been. I can't figure out why.

I had a three hour conversation with Dr. Russell last night about traditionalist Christian traditions, gods, Vatican II, conceptions of the holy, cultural clashes, John Paul II and Benedict XVI, abrasive and ignorant Americans, Morocco and Tunisia, theodicy and not liking God, fearing God, believing in all the potentialities and possibilities that exist. The discussion began after he and I explored St. George's Cathedral at dusk while the organist worked on tuning the organ. I cried in the church, the first time I had really shed some significant tears. (The Sea of Galilee, comparably, was more like a lone tear rolling down my cheek). I was emotional at various points throughout our conversation, at more or less appropriate times. I apologized for my melodrama, but the timbre of the conversation was so intense and heightened -- on another plane -- that the apology was unnecessary.

I had a likewise intense conversation with David Clifford tonight about Poland. He and Dr. Jones and I are doing a short 'presentation'/preparation for the group before we set off for the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum. We spent three hours pouring over ideas as to what to say, and went off on numerous tangents about death camps, theodicy (a recurrent theme in my conversations, apparently; which is strange, because this doesn't figure nearly as prominently in my thought processes), horses with blinders, naivete, and silence. Towards the end of our planning, Dr. Russell joined us for a recitation of our planned presentation, and for a crash course in the history between the years of the First and Second Jewish Revolts against Rome (66-73CE, approximately, and the later 132-135CE). I have a long reading list and a new academic pursuit for the summer.

Developments: I want to learn Hebrew, I might take Greek, I'm worried about taking Arabic, I am fascinated by Jewish history and can't seem to shake it (that's not new), I love the Middle East, I feel drawn to studying ancient, old, and dusty or destroyed things.

And I miss Irish dancing, even though I attempted it in the lobby tonight. Made it through my slip jig and treble jig, and could do no more, as I had gained an Arabic-speaking audience, and who can pass up a chance to learn some more Arabic?

Love.

Tiberias, Night 2

I'm exhausted, along with everyone else on the trip. We did a lot today, in the hot sun.

8:30 am: boat ride across the Sea of Galilee from Tiberias. Dr. Jones, in lieu of a worship service, decided to 'open up' and tell us how it is that he can exist as a religious person and a scholar of religion. It was much enjoyed and appreciated by religion majors and those who have had several religion classes and traveled with Paul, but fell on deaf ears for some of the freshman. Most of us, I think, acknowledged the importance of the words and the fact that he chose to say them. Some freshman unfortunately snoozed off. Oh well. Shane, Logan, David, Andrew Bramblett, myself and several others sat raptly, and emotionally. A few of us cried. After he finished his talk, he requested that we all join hands in a circle and stand in silence.
The circle broke up a few minutes later after "Shalom, salaam, peace", and then our well-intentioned tour boat drivers turned on "Lord, I lift your name on high" and other various praise songs. We all groaned. The music was inappropriate, abrasive, and incongruent with a boat ride across Galilee. Oh well. They meant well. (They had also meant well when they played the Star Spangled Banner upon our entry to the boat. We all had to stand with our hands over our hearts, trying to display the same decorum of the Israeli flag-raiser himself. hmmm......)
We landed near the Kinneseret/Gennosaur Kibbutz with the American flag flying and gospel music blaring. Hallelujah, praise Jesus.

10:00am We visited the "Jesus Boat" museum near the Kinneseret Kibbutz. The boat has been dated to the first century CE, and was discovered in the mud on the shore of Galilee during a drought. After twelve years of meticulous preservation, ít has its own museum, documentary, gift shop, and food vendor. It was really cool. There's no way to know if Jesus ever rode in this boat, so the "Jesus boat" title is more of a tourist gimmick than anything else, but it was still fascinating to learn about the preservation process for such ancient pieces of water-logged wood. Cool.

11:30am This trip is break-neck paced, so we unfortunately didn't get to spend too much time at Capernaum. The site was fascinating, though, with well preserved first and second century homes, and a fourth century white marble synagogue (possibly built on top of an earlier black basalt synagogue that could have stood when Jesus lived, and thus been a synagogue he would have entered while in Capernaum). The best part of the site is a modern octagonal church built on top of and surrounding a 1st century home, which is enclosed by a fourth-century "house church", and fifth century Byzantine church. Because of an inscription found within the house, and the church building tradition that centered on that exact site, scholars can agree that the house was probably the home of the disciple Peter. The "on this rock I will build my church" Peter. It was awesome. We only stayed at the site for about 45 minutes, but David Clifford and I at least wished we could stay much longer.

We took a quick detour to the hotel after Capernaum and picked up Josh Wenta and Kathryn Welch, who had been sick and throwing up earlier. (I think since we entered the Lexington Airport we've had about eight people sick. I don't know if it's contagious or just mass hysteria, but it's spreading).

3:30 We visited the site of Sepphoris, or Zippori. The city was major and large, nearby to the small and backwater Nazareth. Only about 200 people lived in Nazareth in Jesus' time, according to some scholars, so some have proposed that Joseph would have done most of his carpentry work in Sepphoris, and would probably have taken Jesus along to work with him. The city was pretty massive for its day. The homes we saw were huge and extravagant, covered in intricate mosaics and marble. The city also had a large theater, many synagogues, and in the later Christian (Byzantine) years many churches.

I could definitely type and talk more, but my time at the internet cafe is running out and I need to run back to the hotel.


Much love. I'm gonna hopefully get more dancing done before I crash for the night. 6:00am wakeup call tomorrow. Ack.

Tiberias, Israel

Globe-trotting again. We just got in from a day at Caesarea Maritima, Megiddo (from which we saw Mount Carmel, Mount Moreh, Mount Gilboa, and the Samaritan hills), and Nazareth. I had a great meal at the hotel (all the hummus I could stand), and then practiced dance for a while near the elevators on my floor. Two little Israeli boys sat on chairs and watched me dance for about 10 minutes. They kept trying to talk to me and couldn't understand why I didn't speak Hebrew. They giggled a lot.

Best parts of the trip: being able to read Arabic signs. I can't understand all of it, but I can read it. And at the Basilica of the Assumption in Nazareth (grotto church where the angel supposedly appeared to Mary, competing with another site at the Greek Orthodox Church of the Assumption) I could understand a good bit of the Arabic translation on the informational sign near the entrance. Pretty cool. I'm having trouble speaking, because the colloquial is so different, but I can communicate like a 1st grader now, as opposed to a kindergartner.

Wish I knew Hebrew, love the Arabic. And the historical/archaeological sites are incredible. Tomorrow we start on a boat across the Sea of Galilee, and end up in Capernaum, and Sepphoris, a town neighboring Nazareth where Joseph and Jesus probably worked as carpenters.

Tonight several of us are going to pour through the books of Kings and Chronicles to figure out exactly what is said to have happened in the sites we visited. So much to learn.

Having a great time. Love and miss you all.

I've been home for two weeks now...

And I'm happier than a clam.

I'll try to post a "debriefing" on Morocco sometime. I'm busy seeing people and spending time with the loved ones, currently.

For those of you who took the time to read everything I wrote in Morocco---- geeeezzz. Didn't you have anything better to do with your time? Thanks for suffering through all of it: the intestinal difficulties, the tears, the sappy silly stories about the boyfriend. Sorry you had to read a lot of what I wrote. I didn't know I had many readers... I just posted whatever I wanted to say. I'm sorry if I offended or bored, but it was my place to say things, good, bad, or infantile.

I hope everyone had a good Christmas! And an Eid al-Kebir Moubarak, which was December 20 for all my friends in Morocco.

Ready to come home

December 9

2:30pm

It’s difficult being here in Morocco now because there is nothing left for me to do. I’ve never done well with idle time, as is evidenced by my non-stop American lifestyle, driving from one job to the next, to meeting, to rehearsals, to dinners and coffee shops with friends. I don’t like to stop moving. When I do, I become despondent. Such is how I feel now. I feel fat and lazy because all there is to do is sit in my hotel room and read a book. And type. And listen to music. I have done way too much of all of those things in the past month. I am ready to come home.

I want to practice piano. I want to go and spend hours at the gym, lifting and lifting and running and running until all my muscles give out in sweet blissful exhaustion. Then I’d go home and curl up and read a book, confident in the knowledge that I had done some good for my body and now could justify doing something good for my mind and intellect. I can’t wait to put on my dance shoes and beat my body into submission, forcing it to jump high and stretch far and point with unbeatable accuracy. I’m afraid of what my dancing will be when I get home. I might not watch myself for weeks — watching myself dance has always put a halt to any aspirations I have to actually be good again. Every day I’ll run for miles, stretch and practice piano, then trudge down the steps to the basement or drive across town to one of my students’ studios to dance. I need to dance. I’m itching to dance. I want to get the hell out of Morocco.

At this moment, though, I am actively trying to convince myself of the importance of these last few days here. I could finish The Poisonwood Bible, although I probably won’t, because it makes me depressed and want to leave here even more. I can go to the internet café and research Patrice Lumumba and Zaire, the former the first prime minister of the Republic of Congo, and the latter the former name of the current Democratic Republic of Congo. The only importance Zaire held for me as a child was that it was one of the cool countries because it’s name started with a Z. The name changed, and then I had to learn the mouthful “Democratic Republic of Congo”. I still have no idea how the change occurred — what political and social strife the country may have undergone in this supposed move to independence. So now I feel stupid and ignorant and I’m going to find out whatever happened to Zaire. I am ethically obligated to do so.

As I am ethically obligated to do a great deal many things when I get home. To say a great many things to a great number of uninterested people. That there exists a people here in Morocco who have been here since the beginning of time, a people who are stripped of recognition and rights by the Arabs. A people who wish to proclaim to the world that Morocco is not an Arab, Islamic country, but that over half the population is Amazigh. That the Arabs are ethno-centric and racist, that the original people of Morocco live with daily discrimination. This is something I need to say.

And I also should comment on gender relations in this country, on the difficulty of being a young, foreign and painfully blonde woman. This is what I’m most happy to leave — the oppressive and constant attention I get just for looking the way I do. I can’t wait to get home and blend into the background of my generally monochromatic life. America is too white, which is obnoxious because of fabricated politics of race and white superiority = complete bullshit, but which is partially why I’ve loved Morocco. Morocco is beautiful because of its wide and varied spectrum. But I’ve never fit into that spectrum and never will, and now I feel that my whiteness is oppressive and a burden. Even if I had worn a hijab or burkah, my skin and eyes would have given me away as something different. I don’t fit into Morocco’s spectrum. I’ll be glad to be home and to forget that I was remarkable.

It’s appropriate now to place a caveat at the end of this piece, because any American reading this who has not experienced Morocco or does not know how it is that I experienced it may well walk away thinking that Morocco is the last place in the world one might want to visit. This is not true. I love Morocco. I have friends in Morocco. I feel entitled to complain about Morocco because I, for three months, endeavored in earnest to make myself a part of Morocco. And I think I succeeded, to some small extent. I can exchange pleasantries, haggle in the marketplace, reserve rooms in hotels, talk about myself, my beliefs, where I’m from, where I live, and what I do. I made friends with taxi drivers, became a regular at a few cafes, went out at nights with Moroccan friends and was invited to several homes for couscous. I’m frustrated at my general inability to converse at great length in the dialects of this country, but I am returning home with Moroccan and Standard Arabic textbooks under my arms. I will, one day, return. Perhaps for a lengthy period of time, perhaps just to travel. Either way, I will be able to communicate with the people of this land. It is my goal.

I love Morocco... I’m just ready to come home and get back to life. There is so much to do, I’m stressing about it already, because I’m not doing it. I need to be home, and doing. But more than that, I need to learn to be patient and live in the moment and enjoy where I am, whenever I am. To a small degree, I have improved upon those anxious parts of my personality while I’ve been gone. But really, people never change the fundamental parts of themselves. I’ve worked to control and overcome certain disagreeable parts of my self, but even after three months abroad, I’m still me. Only now, I can say a few things in Arabic and have eaten enough Moroccan cuisine for a lifetime.

I’m getting off my bum and heading to Hilton Park in about an hour to do some long distance running. Maybe today I’ll push past my maximum of six miles. Smile. I can say that, too. In Morocco, I learned to run. I loved to run. I ran dozens of miles, hundreds of meters.

December 2

6:30pm

We are going crazy.

I am sitting in the entryway/bathroom of our hotel room, smelling the lovely odorous toilet. I can’t think, I can’t write anything intelligent, I don’t know what to do with my project.

I am distracted by Carly, who is sitting on her bed conducting “science experiments”: cupping her hands together and clapping spastically in order to determine “if my hands are louder when I cup them and clap the air.”

I laughed.

We’re stressed, we’re pissed off, we have inactive academic directors, laissez-faire (me) and micro-managing project advisors (Carly), our projects are entirely different from what we’d originally intended, my questionnaire subjects go on strike at their universities so I can’t interview them, Carly has hours of interviews to transcribe and edit, we both have to figure out how to structure our work, we want to go home right now but we don’t really want to leave Morocco, we want our projects to be over, we want to see our families...

and we’re conducting science experiments and listening to country music to quiet the demons in our heads.

In other news, I’m a bad-ass. I shoved a guy last night. He was harassing me and wouldn’t stop following me after I’d asked him repeatedly to go away, so I let go of Carly’s hand, and shoved him. He almost fell backward into a fountain as I yelled at him, “No! Go away,” in the fiercest voice I could. He was stunned and it took him five seconds to recover and start calling me a whole slew of derogatory terms in French. I didn’t care. He stopped following me, and that’s all I wanted.

I’m loaded up on caffeine (three café au laits), and I’m currently nursing a Coca-Cola Light. I plan on being awake, sitting near our damn toilet that won’t stop running, until I get somewhere with this ridiculous project.

I hope Carly keeps experimenting. It’s funny.

Happy birthday, Mommy.

“I thought if I cupped my hands together and forced the air out,
it would sound like a sonic boom.”

Rachid

This may or may not make it into my ISP.

I'll have to do some academic-type analyzation of it, if it is to be part of my project.

Whether or not it makes it in, it's kind of funny all the same.

---------------------------------------
“Guess who just passed us without saying hello?” Carly asked in a disgusted tone of voice used only when speaking about Rachid.

* * *

I met Rachid my second week in Rabat. He complimented me on the djellaba I was wearing, which wasn’t a djellaba at all, only a dress. He tried to woo me with his English and his charm; I don’t know why I gave him the time of day. I guess I was just in a good mood that night, and decided that I wouldn’t ignore this street harasser. Now I kind of wish I had.

After meeting him, Carly and I saw him and his various Italian-speaking friends a few more times. He knew that Carly spoke Italian, so whenever he wanted to meet up with me, he’d be sure to bring an Italian-speaker along. I wouldn’t go anywhere without Carly, and he wanted to see me, so there would always be another awkward Moroccan in tow. We made a strange quartet. Carly and I were never really interested in the guys, and Rachid always made his pre- and mis-conceptions of American women and us in general painfully clear. We would always have to “go Skype our families” or “do homework.” “Can we have coffee later?” we’d smile. Each and every time we avoided a coffee date, we thought that Rachid would get sick of our annoying and mischievous ways, but he never seemed to.

Once, we saw him in the medina with another white foreign girl, and he didn’t even have the courtesy to say hello. After he had walked past us, ignoring our existences, I text messaged him. “Better luck this time, insha’Allah.” It was a bitchy thing to say, but sometimes acting like a fifteen year old feels good.

* * *

Carly whispered to me, “Guess that text message worked.” I laughed under my breath, and then, who should walk up behind us, but...

speaking of the devil.

“Hi,” Rachid said. “Oh, hi,” I forced a smile. He was both sheepish and pissed — a combination I couldn’t pull off if I tried —, acting like we hadn’t wanted to say hello. “You didn’t have to walk by without saying hello.” “What? Us not say hello? You were passing us by.” Carly brought up the time in the medina when he had ignored us while he was with another girl. He denied all accusations.
Seeing an opportunity to use him as a research subject, I smiled coquettishly and apologized for the mean text message I had sent. While he said, “No, I liked it. It was cynical,” he kept referring to it and treating me like I was just-like-all-the-other-obnoxious-two-faced-American-girls. At least he got that right. I was being a two-faced American girl, but I found no ethical problem in this. He had been “shady” ever since we had met him, making fun of how we talked, our American-ness (which we tried to shed in no small way while attempting to assimilate into Morocco), and the 8:00pm curfews which our host families had imposed and to which we held strongly. We weren’t going to break our families’ rules just to have coffee with some mean, macho Moroccan. Sorry, Rachid. It wasn’t gonna happen.
He remained cynical the entire time he was with us. If he was still mad at me, why would he want to follow us to a café? “We’re going to this café to do homework,” I said. “You don’t have to tell me you’re doing homework,” he spat. “No, really,” Carly said. “We brought our computers so we could steal the wireless and do research on the internet.” He complained about never having coffee with me. “You can come, if you want,” I said, trying to smile against near impossible odds. “We are going to be working, but you’re welcome to come.”

The things we’ll do to obtain information for our ISP’s.

I tried to make small talk with him about his family, his life, his trip to the south. I asked him about his mother and brothers, to which he responded,
“What. First you send me a nasty text message and now you’re asking about my family?”
“I’m trying to be friendly,” I said. “If you don’t want to talk, I’ll do my work.”
“No, it’s fine,” he wasn’t even trying to be convincing. “It’s fine.”

He asked about my research, and I delighted in making him uncomfortable when I used the word “sex”. “Sex” is the same in French and English, so the people working and sitting in the café knew what we were talking about. Didn’t bother me to use the word, but his moody went from sour to bitter.
I told him I was originally interviewing young women, but decided that I needed young men’s opinions as well. “Well, you can ask me,” he said. “Are you sure?” I smiled. “Yeah, it’s fine.” Yes, I thought. I had my “in”. All I needed was his permission.
I showed him my questionnaire, and when he read the question, “Do you flirt with women in the street? Do you try to get their attention?”, I told him about how offensive we American women found street harassment.
“Why do you think Moroccan men do that?” I asked, in the most non-accusatory voice I could muster. “I mean, some of it is fine, but then there are the times when they grab us by the arm or step right in front of us, and that’s really offensive.”
“They do it because they want to pick girls up. Moroccan women like it,” he said, matter-of-factly.

I could hear Carly holding down laughter. She kind of snorted. I kept my eyes locked on him, and somehow managed not to laugh myself.

“Really? They like it?” I asked.
“Yeah. They don’t want to get picked up in bars, so they like to get picked up in the street. They’re just playing hard to get.”

In my head, I both chuckled and struggled to hold down the vomit. Ewwww, I didn’t like him.

The “interview”, if one could call it that, ended with him again questioning my new-found friendly feelings towards him. (At least he’s smart in that respect). I thanked him for spending time with us, and he glared at me while he said, “Everyone knew what we were talking about.” “Oh well,” I smiled back.
He went to the waiter and paid for his coffee (the waiter looked incredulous when Rachid didn’t pay for kulshee — all — of the coffees), and high-tailed it out of there.

I don’t think I’ll see him again. But at least now I know why some Moroccan men won’t ever stop harassing women in the streets:

“The women like it.”
Right.

November 29

November 29. 3:30pm

I rang the doorbell of the CCCL, and was let in by the nice lady at the front desk. I said “Salaam,” and made my way up the staircase.

Just as I’d started up the very first flight, Badrdine, my “bro”, bounded down the second flight.
“Bro I’m so glad to see you ”
“My sis,” he said as he extended his right arm to hug me. “How are you?”
“Kulshee mezyaan (everything is good),” I responded.
“How is ISP?”
“It’s great.”
“You’re making progress.”
“Yes.”
“I can see it in your eyes.”

‘You’re making progress.’ I wish I knew. I guess I’m making progress on my ISP, but as I write more and the days remaining in this research period decrease, I feel like I’m falling behind.

It’s almost harder being in Morocco now than it has ever been. I had awful boughts of “let me leave now ” all throughout September and October, but through them, I knew I wasn’t going anywhere for a while. I just learned to become part of Morocco.

Now, I am finally happy living here. I passed my friends Abdullah and Yassine while walking to the CCCL, and I was so glad to see them. Almost immediately after I entered the medina, I ran into Fati. I love seeing my Moroccan friends, because it makes me feel like I really do live here. Like I could belong in Morocco. I’m a regular at several cafes. I don’t even have to order in one of them; the waiter just brings me a café au lait.

I know my way around Rabat. I know the best grocery stores; I know where to buy expensive and cheap clothes. I know where to get the least expensive meal, the best coffee, the most amazing gelato. Hilton Park is my place to run, to walk, to exercise, to think.

I’ve run countless miles in Rabat. It’s home.

And I’m leaving my new home in 16 days. I miss Kentucky, but I’m already dreading the day when I leave and won’t see Badr, Nawal, Nabil, Rachid, Doha, Fati, Brahim, Carly, Zainab, Ikbal, and Asmaa... if not for ever, at least for a long time. Even when I return to Morocco in May, things won’t be as they are now. I might be setting myself up for a huge disappointment in May. I might expect too much out of my visit. I’ll never be able to recreate my SIT experience.

I’m determined to enjoy my last two weeks in Morocco. I just have to push the sadness of leaving Morocco out of my head and enjoy it while I’m here. Now.

“I’m alive,” he said to the boy, as they ate a bunch of dates one night, with no fires and no moon. “When I’m eating, that’s all I think about. If I’m on the march, I just concentrate on marching. If I have to fight, it will be just as good a day to die as any other.
“Because I don’t live in either my past or my future. I’m interested only in the present. If you can concentrate always on the present, you’ll be a happy man. You’ll see that there is life in the desert, that there are stars in the heavens, and that tribesmen fight because they are part of the human race. Life will be a party for you, a grand festival, because life is the moment we’re living right now.”
The Alchemist, 85. Paolo Coelho

stuck in grey Rabat

I was supposed to go to University Ibn Tofail in Kenitra today, but my advisor text-messaged me to say the students were on strike. She didn't think there would be anyone in her class for me to interview.

So, I have lovely men and women's questionnaires, uncompleted and lonely in my hotel room. I'm back at my new favorite cafe stealing wireless and drinking 'atei b naanaa', mint tea.

Hopefully I'll get some answers from students someday soon.

I like those Kenitra students. That's gutsy--- to strike during exam week.

a section of my ISP

Women like to talk. We like to talk about ourselves, our lives, our problems; about our friends, their lives, and their problems. We like to tell stories — the juicier, the better, and the best when they are about someone else.

“I have a friend who is having sex with her boyfriend, but hasn’t lost her virginity.” “I know someone who is a virgin, but is pregnant ” “No one would tell you that they’re not a virgin, but most Moroccan girls are having sex.”

These are the things I hear. They are the sweet, innocent kind of gossip that add layers to my understanding of how things work here in Morocco. I know secrets, but I don’t know names or faces, so I can’t hurt anyone. This gossip is about as harmless as it comes.

But then there are the stories that are harder to swallow. The stories about women brutalized and beaten, and Moroccan women looking on because they both think it’s the victim’s fault and know that the police won’t do anything anyway.

A close friend told me this story. Good or bad, women will tell each other’s stories. It is what we do.

‘An SIT friend of mine lived with a Moroccan family near the large cemetery by Rabat’s beach. One night she and her older host sisters heard a woman screaming, and ran up to their roof to see what was happening. There was a group of eight to twelve Moroccan men in a group off in the cemetery. From what could be seen from the roof, they were raping a woman, who presumably lay screaming on the ground, hidden by the gang of men. The SIT girl asked her sisters, “Isn’t there anything we can do? Shouldn’t we call the police?” “The police won’t do anything,” the sisters replied. “Besides, it’s her fault for being out past 9:00 at night.”’

Her fault.
Not back at home.
Our fault.
Because what can we foreigners possibly do about it?
Their fault.
Demons.

Days of discovery...

[a picture from my first protest. On Sunday afternoon, a crowd of about three hundred gathered in front of the parliament building to protest the government's refusal to acknowledge the Amazigh people and their culture. The Amazigh people are the native people of Morocco, and their history has been erased, and their language isn't acknowledged in the constitution of Morocco. History begins in school textbooks with the Arabs conquering North Africa and setting up their empire. Amazigh (Berber) history is not taught, and the language is only marginally taught, and poorly, at that. So, I joined Carly, my roommate and dear friend, and helped her gather information and interview people at the rally. She's researching Amazigh identity politics.

It was a great day. I want to protest more. ha.]


What a cliche title for an entry. It sounds dumb.

Oh well.

Morocco continues to be wonderful. I'm sitting in a nice cafe in central Rabat right now, stealing wireless from who knows where. I love when people don't "lock" their wireless, and I can use it. God bless them.

"Research" is going well, if you can call it research. Really researching the sex education of young women would take months, if not a year, so now I'm writing a paper of short essays and vignettes about my observations of Morocco. So far so good. I'm enjoying writing; I write when I have something to say, and usually I turn out well-worded and thought provoking pieces.

My paper won't be "academic" in its flavor (not your normal research paper), and I'm glad about this. When else will I have the opportunity to write 15-80 pages of whatever I want, in whatever form I choose? So, I'm just having fun with it. I'm telling stories, writing prosey poetry, analyzing popular opinion in Morocco, looking at the difference between Morocco's Islamic culture and America's culture which is only marginally influenced by Christianity.... and on and on. I'm taking photographs, waking up at four in the morning to watch street fights over prostitutes, attending protests, and drinking lots of coffee. And running. I like to run, now.

I don't know where I'll be tomorrow, who I will interview, who will return a questionnaire, what other thoughts I'll have about this country and it's "hush hush" world of sex, virginity, and illegal consumption of alcohol.

ISP is fun. And it's spoiling me. I have no idea how to be a college student anymore.

My Moroccan Thanksgiving

(warning... I don't use any bad words in this entry, but at the end I do give some information I've uncovered in my research. I'm researching sex education, so moms, don't let your young girls read this until you approve it...)

My Thanksgiving Day began with moodiness, and ended in one of the happiest moods I've been in here in Morocco. I ate an American Thanksgiving meal in the home of Jack Wald and his wife Annie, Bostonians who have lived in Rabat for 8 years. I met their friends and new acquaintances -- all ex-pat Americans -- and I felt at home.

They were welcoming. They were warm. Their home looked like America.

After turkey and pumpkin pie, I got to Skype call my family in Kentucky and see all of their lovely faces. It was great to see everyone on Thanksgiving day. And it was strangely comforting to see the kitchen at Mom's. I don't know why.

I loved being "carried" around by my mom and dad to see the kitchen, the turkey, the family and friends.

Thank you for that, family.

The picture proves how happy I was, come the end of the day. It was wonderful.

It's raining in Rabat today--- a cold, unrelenting downpour. Carly and I will search for soup and hot chocolate for dinner... hopefully somewhere near our hotel. I might need to buy some winter clothes, because each day gets colder and colder.

Research drags on. I had a wonderful interview with a young woman from Mohammad V University the other day, and it was the saving grace of my research. I have somewhere to go now, something to build on.

An interesting tidbit of information that I hope to learn more about:
1. According to Moroccan perceptions, if you use tampons, you'll lose your virginity.
2. If you have sex, you could still be a virgin.

I cock my head to the side and ask, shnu? (What? in Moroccan Arabic).

hopefully this weekend I will discover how this incoherency works....

Insha'allah.

Early on Thanksgiving Day

bad words.... sorry!

“It’s November 22...
Can we go home now?”

“I fucking hate myself. Rather, I fucking hate that I’m never happy where I am.”
--- setting the mood for Thanksgiving day.
Quotes from my friends.

I woke up this morning at 8:30 and ate breakfast. I saved my UHT milk for today and enjoyed some rather tasteless corn flakes with milk. You wouldn’t recognize this as out of the ordinary, but pause for a second to remember that Moroccans don’t know what cereal is, and if they do, they don’t put milk on it. I haven’t had cereal and milk since August. This morning, breakfast was as exciting as it was unpalatable. You don’t complain about the flavorlessness of cereal when you haven’t had it for three months.
After breakfast, I broke. Feeling the full pressure of missing Thanksgiving in Kentucky weigh upon my soul, I gave in. I turned my computer on and started washing the breakfast dishes with pink hand soap. When the computer had loaded all its applications, which takes something like ten minutes now, I anxiously clicked through the menus of Windows Media Player and located my prize: Celtic Women’s A Christmas Celebration. It’s not that their Christmas album is better than others... quite the contrary. Their sweet soprano voices can grate on the ears after a while, even though their sound is probably the closest we’ll ever hear to the heavenly host that visited Matthew’s shepherds. (Or was it Luke? I just ran around my hotel room chanting “Where’s my Bible? Where’s my Bible? Where’s my Bible?”, much to my roommate’s annoyance. “Why do you need your Bible?” “I can’t remember where the shepherds are ” I cried. “They’re either in Matthew or Luke, but not both... and I can’t remember ” If any of you reading this know the answer, please enlighten me).
I melancholily (wow that is a word) returned to my task of dish washing and hotel-room arranging, listening to O Holy Night and The Little Drummer Boy and dreaming about the turkey and stuffing I’m missing.
I have no complaints (well, at least not big ones) against Morocco. I’m even entertaining the idea of returning here after graduation to teach English for a year. However, I’d be lying to myself and everyone who reads my blog, though, if I didn’t admit that it’s difficult here sometimes. It’s hard to miss out on beloved annual traditions. This morning I was craving the sight of a Santa Claus or a holiday wreath They’re out there in America now, I know.
My friend Rebecca walked into the room about fifteen minutes ago and saw me crouching over my computer, clicking through other music selections. “Whatcha doin’?” she asked. “Listening to Christmas music...”. She laughed. “It’s November ” she said. I stood up. “Yes, and in America there are Santa Clauses and holiday lights and they’re going to light the Christmas tree in my hometown,” I only half-faked the whimpering. She laughed as she walked back to her own room.
So, stateside readers, whenever you are pissed off by the oppression of the American Christmas, remember that you might miss it dearly if you didn’t have it. I too hate that Fayette Mall is transformed into a reindeer’s playground the day after Halloween, but today I also wish I could see some red and green garland— that I could smell Christmas cookies baking.

Enough of missing America. There are so many things for which I’m thankful here in Morocco. First, I love that my friends and I have transformed this hotel in central Rabat into a regular dormitory. This morning I walked to TaReva and Miranda’s room to retrieve my detergent, and after TaReva answered the door, entered a hotel room turned comfortable dorm room, with half of the room looking like a kitchen/dining room, the other half looking like a bedroom and bathroom. They have a beautiful view of the café below us, and of the grassy boulevard/park in front of the Parliament building. TaReva and I talked about our evening plans for Thanksgiving (we actually get to go to the home of Rabat’s lone Protestant pastor for turkey ), and as I walked back down the hall and stairs to my room, I smiled and was thankful for all of my American friends stuck with me in Morocco. It’s much better to have friends with whom to laugh and commiserate about missing Thanksgiving than it would be if I were traveling and researching by myself. So, I’m thankful for friends and for small pieces of American-ness wedged between constant and intense experiences of Morocco.

And now I’m going out with Carly and Rebecca to our favorite pricey French restaurant where I will enjoy a goat cheese salad, olive pate, and Coca-Cola light with ice. It is the Coke with ice that I am most excited about. Ice just doesn’t exist in Morocco, but it does in this little piece of paradise.

More thanks to be written and given later.

Mom and me, November 20.

Nov 20
“I’m gonna brine the turkey.”
---Mom.

Oh my God I’m eating peanut butter.
---Me.