Introspection

Take a good look at yourself in the mirror. You might try washing it once in awhile; I know you’re busy, but it’s hard to get anything useful out of a mirror if you have to spend twenty minutes scrubbing a brown spot off of your face only to ascertain it was dirt on the mirror all along. Go on, stand there properly. And stand up straight, you’re slouching and you know it.

There, that’s better.

And what do you see? What do you notice? Well, if you don’t see it I’m not going to tell you. Look closer. No, don’t fidget, don’t change anything, you’ll spoil it. Closer, closer. There. See it?

That’s you. If you squint you can see past the clothes and the hairstyles, past some of the masques you put on when you go out, past your worries, your stress, your hopes or fears, past the fact that you didn’t sleep much last night, what you had for lunch and what you’ve planned for next week. Sometimes you really have to squint hard. Some people are really tricky. Try for the eyes if you’re having trouble; it may be hard to get a glimpse. Most people don’t often look other people in the eyes, so good luck trying to look yourself in the eyes. They say the eyes are the window to the soul. If we have a soul. Except windows don’t get shifty and blink a lot. Whatever it is that’s in there, you can see it through the eyes. Or so they say.

How much of you is left, when you strip off all the layers of other people you carry around with you? Their expectations, their preferences, their opinions—worst of all—tend to collect in the forgotten corners of you. Can you define what percentage of your behavior is pure you, unconstrained, uninfluenced by other people? Quantitatively or qualitatively?

Does your speech change, depending on with whom you are speaking? Does your manner change, depending on with whom you are? And who are you, when you are alone?

But don’t just stand there looking in the mirror all day. Narcissus died of that, or something similar, and anyways too much introspection is bad for the complexion.

It was a dark and stormy night...

It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents--except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803 - 1873), Paul Clifford (1830)

My windows are shaking. If I turn off my music I can hear the wind howling, the pained wailing punctuated by banging doors, the spare trashcan skipping like a tumbleweed in the wind. More worrying is the distant strains of the doppler effect, the sound the sirens here make that are so different from American cop cars. The joy of living in the fourth floor in the corner appartment is that the wind seems to take extra joy in tugging on our house as it passes, the rows of houses funneling and concentrating the air into buffeting gusts. The building doesn’t shake, for which I am grateful, but the dull roar sounds sometimes like a waterfall.



The storm isn’t too bad here, compared with other parts of Germany. The entire long-distance rail network has been shut down, and there are probably plenty of poor souls stuck somewhere they don’t want to be, waiting for trains that won’t come. It’s like Waiting for Godot plus The Tempest, without the silly tights. Nine people have died so far, either from trees or doors, come uprooted or unhinged. It’s strange in such a storm; everyday objects, objects of utility or beauty become dangerous, menacing, posing the greatest risk to us is our very environment. It makes you jumpy, wind saws on the nerves like hyperactive kids when you have a headache. A dull thump echoing from a block away tells me something has broken loose.



I love a good storm. Taking shelter, nothing is more spectacular than a fantastic lightning storm, the kind best watched from the back deck looking out over Green Valley of a summer evening. Exposed, nothing is more dangerous than a bolt of lightning on a tree-lined ridge, nothing more terrifying than being abord a ship buffeted by winds on an open sea. It’s exhilirating and frightening, exposed before raw power and forces I cannot even begin to comprehend.



Global warming has gone from far left field to mainstream, to mix metaphors; it is a phenomenon either created or abetted by human folly and greed, making these storms, ice storms, snow storms, droughts, hurricanes, floods, and any other natural disasters you can dream of even more a part of our daily life and, hopefully, our consciousness and conscience. I don’t know if there is anything to be done to prevent the increasingly inevitable; undoing the mistakes of the past—particularly in light of the sheer magnitude of human presence, in numbers and in effect—may well be beyond our control, and avoiding the mistakes of the present and future—as elusive as even this prospect may be—may well not be enough. As a friend of mine once wrote in a song, as we sat on his couch listening to the wind howling: "You can't fight the weather, 'cause you will always lose..."

Socialism failed because it couldn't tell the economic truth; capitalism may fail because it couldn't tell the ecological truth.
Lester Brown, Fortune Brainstorm Conference, 2006

That is what scares me—as I sit and listen to the wind, enjoying the tingle down my spine—that my seldom glimpse of natural violence may well become my daily fare. Who needs terrorism when an unsecured door can kill you, when everything burns, when the wind and weather tear your house to pieces?

Are you sure you don't want to quit?

Anybody who accepts mediocrity - in school, on the job, in life - is a person who compromises, and when the leader compromises, the whole organization compromises.
Charles Knight

"Are you sure you don't want to quit school and come work for us?" one of my bosses asked. I was in the middle of donning my coat, gathering my stuff and getting the hell out of dodge. As much fun as that would be, I don't think I'd get too far without an education of the signed-stamped-and-sealed kind, so, no.

Monday saw me sitting in my corner, reading texts for class, doodling around on the internet and not doing much that was productive. I corrected the occasional text sent my way, perused the filing system and wished I had brought more stuff to read while repeatedly and unsuccessfully seeking my boss for an undetermined assignment. "This is only temporary," someone told me. Yeah, okay.

It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do.
Jerome K. Jerome (1859 - 1927)

And it was temporary.

The conference has forty sessions, each with between three and five presenters. Each presenter has an abstract which, in addition to the session description, needs
to be proofread by me, and then an invitation letter and a registration form for each presenter needs to be drafted via a template. I am responsible for all of the steps for only some of the sessions, but I am responsible for all of the proofreading as well as correcting random texts from other people, anything from resumes to
business letters to funding proposals. It's lots of fun, plenty to do and the time just flies by.

I am also increasingly impressed with the organisation itself. Today was Team Meeting, which involved representatives of all departments and most of the 30-odd staff of the European Secretariat. The meeting was relatively short--one hour--has rotating chairmanship, and allows for the director and each of the team leaders to update the others on current projects. Many of the reports focused on which team leaders were attending which conferencs in which far-off and lovely-sounding cities, in Italy, in Spain, the Canaries, Nairobi, what have you. Sign me up, please.

Meetings are an addictive, highly self-indulgent activity that corporations and other organizations habitually engage in only because they cannot actually masturbate.
Alain van der Heide

Our team meets weekly on Mondays; the meeting is conducted while standing to keep it from getting long and is run from an agenda to which each team member is encouraged to add. Each person has initials, and the person in question is listed under the respective agenda item for which they have responsibility, and the entirety is formatted in terms of specific tasks relating to a certain item. So, speaker invitations--our project this week--has a list of what things need to be done and by whom. What seems to be crucially important--and what continues to impress me--is the development of process. Things aren't done haphazardly; they are considered and a process is developed before anything gets done, sort of a checklist. The filing system is immense and the entire project works off of several enormous databases with more functions than I could possibly dream of, so it is important to keep things straight and not muck it up. The creation of theses processes, however, has been whittled down to a science such that it is not complicated to draft an instruction sheet for creating invitations or updating this or doing that; instructions are often written out; paper drafts are kept and organized and filed. It's efficient, transparent, and simple. Everyone knows what they have to do, how to do it, whom to talk to when something goes wrong or is unclear.





In high school I always loved correcting texts; my friends called me the "editor from hell" because of my love of the red pen. Now I have a red pen and a green pen and couldn't be happier--subtle symbols of my power. I love languages, I love how they work and how they sound and how they flow. Of course, making sure items in a list end with semicolons instead of commas is not necessarily my idea of a rowdy good time, but I generally enjoy it. Many of the texts--almost all, excluding some session abstracts--were written by non native speakers of english. This means anything from overenthusiastic use of commas to having to find a Spanish or Italian colleague to translate the original document because I can't make sense of the English. One of the worst texts I corrected, however, came from Scotland (no cultural inference here, just an observation). Correcting these texts also differs from correcting someone's creative or academic prose--in this example, it is not about keeping someone's "voice," helping them learn from mistakes or merely pointing out poor style, but rather that myself or someone else will enter my changes in exactly as I have written them, and this document will be sent to quite a few people so it had better be correct.

The quality of an organization can never exceed the quality of the minds that make it up.
Harold R. McAlindon

The informal environment also makes it particularly enjoyable. The staff are young and international, but we are all on a "first name basis", with all of the German cultural connotations that implies; the policy is "open door". Everyone has gone out of their way to get to know me, who I am, where I come from and what I am doing there. With my inability to remember names I am having a bit of a trick keeping it all straight, but as soon as I can connect a story to a face I am in the clear. In mixed company the language is English but often devolves into other languages according to those present. And besides, they offer me all the Fair Trade tea and coffee I can drink and have an international book exchange (source of the Isabel Allende novel I picked up and have not read).



They asked me if I could come in on Friday for some meetings and training, but I would have to miss a seminar and I need to be clear that this is not going to take over my life just because there is lots of work to do. With that in mind I have been resolutely pursuing the rest of my life, so except for an occasional sleep defecit it couldn't be better.

Denglisch

Denglisch

The Academie Francaise exists to protect and preserve the French language. Americans find the institution peculiar, and describe it with the typical and unconscious slight derision arising from the mutual loving animosity which has marked historical Amero-French relations: “That’s a French thing,” or “well, the French do that sort of thing”. English now has “to google” as a verb, has adopted and bastardized most other languages in adaptation of words like ‘savoir faire’, ‘hinterland’, ‘doppelgänger’, ‘hors d’œuvre’ and others whose original context or usage has been lost or forgotten. And we’re happy about it. We like our mutt-language, just as we like our mutt-culture, just as long as it doesn’t become too inconvenient or too specific.

As I was learning German, I resolutely determined to speak no English, to learn the German expressions and use them. The more I learned, the more I realized that if I wanted to sound like a German, I would have to incorporate English expressions. ‘Feiern’ means to party, but many say ‘Party machen’. ‘Coffee to go’ may be found everywhere, even though ‘Kaffee zum Mitnehmen’ is a perfectly good expression. If I’ve noticed something, it is something I have ‘gecheckt’.

The field of politics, particularly of development, is particularly full of these Denglisch words; in some cases because no German expression exists, in others because the English is more fitting, more widely used or shorter. Consider the following example, from an article on Yemen’s educational policy from InWent, a government-affiliated organisation: (Denglisch in bold)

Top-down-Bildungspolitik gescheitert

Diese Einsicht war auch Ausgangspunkt eines Prozesses in der Republik Jemen, der in die Entwicklung einer Grundbildungsstrategie durch die jemenitischen Stakeholders im Erziehungswesen mündete. Angestoßen wurde der Prozess durch die Erkenntnis der „Modernisierungsfraktion“ im Erziehungsministerium, dass die überkommene top-down-Bildungspolitik im Jemen trotz erkennbaren Engagements der Bildungsplaner nichts mehr war als ein fallweises und kurzatmiges Krisenmanagement. Weit entfernt von der Lebenswelt der Schüler, Lehrer und Eltern, schien das ministerielle muddling-through unbeabsichtigt mehr Probleme zu schaffen als zu lösen

Source: http://www.inwent.org/E+Z/content/archiv-ger/05-2003/schwer_art1.html

Seriously, what is this?

January thoughts

Today's webcam bild. Am Schwabentor.

It's an odd thing, sitting here in January, listening to the birds chirping and discovering the tiny little flowers blooming guiltily amongst stems of grass. The sun is shining and the world seems brighter, more vibrant somehow. Goes to show I'm solar powered. Or perhaps it's just a lack of sleep.

I haven't decided if I like the weather. The part of me that needs to be outside all the time, the part of me that likes running and hiking, the part of me that is solar dependant, loves the 50-degree weather, the sunshine, and the budding trees. The part of me that is somewhat attuned to natural rhythms, for example, thinks this is just pretty damn weird. Or is it wierd? (I never know). Some small part of me hopes for snow, (yes, me...snow...and no, I haven't suffered a recent head injury) at least to try out cross country skiing, which is apparently quite fun. I'd just be happy with more daylight; I don't like the fact that the 'day' doesn't start till about 8 AM.

A conversation with a friend recently gave me the solution to my time-wasting problem. I tend to spend far too much free time screwing around, surfing the 'net, not researching, not writing, not doing much of anything productive. So I unplugged my internet, told myself I could have it back in an hour, which turned into an hour and a half, and got more done in that time than I had completed in five hours the day before. Amazing. But now that my time is somewhat constrained by my internship I actually have to plan ahead again and actually get to work during the time allotted.

But enough about me. Let's talk about you. What do you think of me?

No, seriously, subject change. Forgive me if I become somewhat philosophical, or at least reflective. My aspirations tend more towards the latter; even your grandma knows I'm no philosopher.

Why are we here?

No, too philosophical.

The pressing question (here I imagine the question as a giant airbag, laden with implications, seeking to physically push me into the ground. Perhaps other people have hard questions, but I like mine squishy) is, what makes people the way they are? It is my favorite question to ask people, ask them where they came from, how they came to be doing what they are doing, why they picked this or that subject to study or none at all, how they came to be florists, dentists, why they dreamed of being an electrician and why they now design paperweights, how they met their significant other. I try to imagine what the perspective would have looked like--how much of the decision was intentional, how much accidental? Some people, I am pretty sure--after being unable to discern any intention or direction whatsoever--just "end up" somewhere, doing something. Sometimes they are happy, sometimes they are not happy.

Stories. Personal histories. Choices. Lack of choices (the worst curse). Alternatives. Hope and enthusiasm. What happens when you have a dream? How does that change you? Are you afraid?

Let's change the subject. Hypothetically, if you were sitting on a public bus, if you were the only passanger seated next to the window, and someone got on.... and instead of sitting in one of the myriad odd free seats--using the normal calculation: distance from person seated to door, divide by half if you don't want to sit in the front; or, more simply, seating yourself at approximately one-half-bus-length from said person, wherever that puts you--instead of doing that, this person sits down *right next to you*.

What would you do? What do you think about that? Would it bother you?

Tell me. I want to know.

Where do you see yourself...

1. in ten minutes?
In front of my desk, writing a paper on Kafka and wishing I were hiking or playing guitar or something.

2. in ten hours?
Eating dinner? Jamming with friends, perhaps.

3. in ten days?
at my internship, trying to explain the difference between federation and confederation (if you want to know, confederation is a looser bond than federation among independant actors).

4. in ten weeks?
In France? Hopefully. Yay.

5. in ten years?
Driving a desk. Sunbathing on a beach. Running an orphanage in mongolia. Trying to teach my kid not to throw food. I have no idea.

Miscommunication

My main resolution for the coming year--my only one, actually--is to be punctual. Germans love their Pünktlichkeit, and though there seems to be two categories of Germans, those who are exquisitely on time every time and those who are not, it is in quite poor taste to show up anywhere anything but precisely on time. Appointments are to be kept. In some Latin American countries--this rumor is from a Peruvian friend--if the invitation for a wedding says 10.30 guests won't start showing up until 11, and the wedding itself won't start until 11.30. My incapability to be punctual, or more accurately expressed, my laziness towards punctuality where meetings with friends are involved, has strained my relationship with some people unnecessarily. My one and only fight with a good friend was actually a miscommunication that became 'fatal' when it was attributed as a further example of my habitual temporal imprecision. I don't want to repeat that. If I can dress like a German, talk like a German, and forget basic English grammar like everyone else who lives here for a long time, the least I can do is acquire the German punctuality. Thus: resolution.

On another note, you should go see Babel. It's fantastic. I would subtitle the film 'miscommunication' because it is basically a series of linked stories whose entire plot depends on crossed signals, translation problems, inability to express oneself and chance. Fantastically well-made and enthralling.

Ohje...

I've had, at the maximum, about an hour a day this week to sit, drink my coffee, answer emails, etc. Otherwise, I've been on the go; I leave my house at 9 AM and come back at 1 AM the next morning. And I love it. Except I've got no food and don't know when I'm going to be able to go shopping.

I started my internship on Monday. The organisation is an NGO working on climate protection and sustainable development. They work on various projects supporting green procurement and the implementation of the Local Agenda 21 and Aalborg commitments. They also have a department which plans conferences, including one in Spain in March, www.sevilla2007.org . This is my new department. I am the new go-to person for anything involving English, the working language, and will probably receive other tasks as time goes on.

Of course, right off the bat I was introduced to the thirty-odd people who work there, and I am trying my hardest to remember who each of them is and what he or she does. It's not easy. As a whole, the group may be summarized and generalized by saying that they are exceedingly international and on average quite young. I would judge most of them to be around 30, with the few slightly elder balanced out by the multple mid-20s-employees and interns. My new office is shared with two italians, a german, a german/spainiard, and me. There are canadians, mexicans, dutch, belgians, people from all over Europe, one british guy, and me. Everyone seems to speak four or five languaes. I wish I could.

I've been sitting in on meetings, trying to follow what is going on and how it all works. It's quite a dynamic group, and my impression is that they help one another out. Communication is clear and frequent; goup tasks and projects are openly discussed and shared. I proofread the website and learned how to work their web editor, so I can apply my changes.

Mainly I am fascinated by what it takes to put such a conference together. It's the same sort of thing we did back at CU for our Darfur events, except on a much larger scale. 1,000 expected attendees, 40 panels, roundtables, four plenaries, four days, six or eight partner organisations and the whole thing takes place in Spain. I can learn a lot.

And after 'work' each day I go to class, which is the same as it has always been, except my evening class has finished. We ended with a four hour session followed by a small party. I'll be sad to see it go. I hope we can keep some portion of the group together, but you never know.

In the meantime I will be eating canned peas and dumplings until I can go shopping again, and save my sleeping for the weekend... :)

Turn the corner

Breeching from the U-Bahn, escaping the underworld with its damp and consistent odor, seeking fresh air and instead finding war. Smoke filled the air and drifted in rivulets across the barricaded streets, swirling around us, turning the unknown into the unforeseen. Remnants of the wall, spray-painted memories of a terrible time, huddle among the glass facades of Potsdamer Platz, looking out over the Holocaust memorial. The sound of shattering glass, the crack of firecrackers like gunshots, vaguely visible figures dodging in out of the mist, the smell of alcohol almost tangible in some corners, the street littered with remnants and rubbish, all ghosts of a past not long ago and not forgotten.

The crowd--the living, breathing, drinking, pushing mass--sweeps the streets. Any and all in its way are swept up in the current until a police barricade halts the flow. Firecrackers ricochet from the buildings and smolder sullenly in the gutters along the road. Unofficial launch pads dot the streets and the crowd keeps a respectful distance. The country mouse startles at large cracks, clutching purse and sister, towed along until there is nowhere else to go. The anticipation is almost tangible, though almost overwhelming.

No one is exactly sure of the time, until about the last twenty seconds and someone begins counting. Across the street and above the trees explode the first of the official fireworks. Cameras and cell phones are held above the masses, seeking to document, swaying like peculiar antennas, feeding the new YouTube. Lovers kiss, friends hug and wish one another a happy new year, the couple behind us bickers about his cell phone, some kids behind us begin to sing, swaying arm in arm, and someone sprays champagne through the crowd. Fireworks rocket around us like good wishes and we stand arm in arm, bouts of fire reflected in our shining eyes.

The crowd dissolves into chaos, singing, dancing, spraying champagne and tossing crackers into the cleared streets or air. Slowly; walking normally is possible if hindered by the bottles littering the street but we make it more or less back to the station and buy some glasses of champagne and some roasted almonds, watching the tourists stagger and take pictures with sparklers. The street acts as an acoustic chamber, amplifying the cracks and bangs of the rockets shooting out of the crowd. Debris rains down; a gap in the crowd is an invitation for black cats or other small diversions and we jump aside to avoid a small lump of red paper, which suddenly springs to life and began to spin and glow with green fire. The first of the sirens wail in the distance, trying to force their way through the crowds towards the first of the unlucky or careless.

Near a million people were expected, with a two kilometer party mile between the Gate and the Victory Column, though all intermediate streets were equally full. We’d gotten in just under the wire, having spent the evening with K.’s school friends and family, and had no chance of getting to the gate itself but it didn’t matter. The party mile, for those who wanted to come earlier, was the site of several stages and performances, and turned into an open-end disco in the New Year. Over 500 people injure themselves every year and the ambulances frequently shove their way through, but the atmosphere is always positive. Strangers wish one another well, children are towed along by their parents, the crowd itself a celebratory beast, enjoying living, enjoying being where they are.

The New Year has come, for better or for worse. But somehow, standing arm in arm, watching the fireworks bloom above us, it’s hard to believe the next year will be anything but good.