SNOW!
the first snow (post summer)!
window out backyard garden color covered, gone
white soft and cold and white.
what unexpected winter
22. November 2008
17. November 2008
I've never been in love before...
15.11.08
I went to see a fully Germanized version of guys and dolls, the musical. Great singing acting and blocking aside, I fell in love with the mondrian like set: a criss-crossing of blue or red beams, gray and black lines, and see-through squares of whitelight. The people ran around in bright 40s era comic-book colors, looking like live Lichtenstein characters navigating a subway map schematic. I went with ding ding, miss shanghai from my german course, and we happened to catch the after-show discussion session with the actors. It was hours and hours, but the weather outside was too rainy and depressing not to do something. Its in that kind of weather that staying home just kills you.
But even more stunning than those hypnotically transforming set pieces is what I accidentally discovered when looking for original clips of the guys and dolls movie songs on youtube. No, its not what you think; I came up with no results as questionable as one might expect a search for ‘guys and dolls’ on google to return. But…right at the top, a documentary about guys who carry on relationships with ‘real dolls’. What?
Yes, real dolls. No, I don’t mean blow up blow me sex toys, but life size realistic-ish rubbery Barbie puppets with exchangeable tongues with whom (on whom?) some men not only carry on a physical relationship but construct an entire psychology and emotional connection to. Beyond Stepfordesque.
“we just spent this morning laying in bed; I think she may be sleeping it off” says one man as he opens the door to let the cameraman into his room. “Virginia” slumbers half covered by the sheets, a delicate cross on a gold chain resting askew on her elegant plastic neck. “Yes, its just as I thought” he continues.
Now, it's not an unfamiliar idea to me that many people find plenty solace in plastic plus imagination, but this feels like a step too far. Like when one man speaks lovingly of how "Jeeshan" gazes into his eyes as he carefully massages her malleable feet. ‘what’s most important is how I know we’re really there for eachother’ he sighs.
Alarm bells explode in my mind.
Ok, so Yes I played with dolls as a child, and yes, many had a constructed inner consciousness (some several) with which they could connect and interact with other dolls and people, including myself. But even I (who many a time poured out childhood woes to a stuffed lion) find myself….taken aback. Wasn’t this pretending just practice so I could then better relate to people who ‘actually’ have individual minds; beautiful, complicated, unpredictable and (for the most part) not in my control?
I like pretending, I’m all for it. I like to dress up and costumes, I like games, and a little self-delusion, but all within reason. (But then who am I to assess what is in reason?) This frightens me but I find it difficult to pinpoint exactly what unnerves me most about it. Its not that I find the people creepy, the problem is that I half understand: the need for human (or half human contact) is so strong that no price is too high (or form too strange). But are people so uncooperative that extra forms of beings (dolls) have to be created in order for a need to be fulfilled. Or is the idea that someone would instead enact a doll desire on a human person creepier? I mean, which is creepier: treating a doll as though it’s alive or treating a human like plastic?
I am trying to be open. People have needs and its disappointing world for many. besides these people aren’t hurting anyone (real) directly. (Although, on second thought maybe this is a perpetuation of a system of abstracted human contact. Where our ideals and expectations are developed in disjunction with the real people around us.) Why can we relate better to things than others??? Sorry. My thoughts on this are not quite fully formed yet, there’s just a justifying rational struggling with gut repulsion. meanwhile, im rubbernecking it like a car crash.
I went to see a fully Germanized version of guys and dolls, the musical. Great singing acting and blocking aside, I fell in love with the mondrian like set: a criss-crossing of blue or red beams, gray and black lines, and see-through squares of whitelight. The people ran around in bright 40s era comic-book colors, looking like live Lichtenstein characters navigating a subway map schematic. I went with ding ding, miss shanghai from my german course, and we happened to catch the after-show discussion session with the actors. It was hours and hours, but the weather outside was too rainy and depressing not to do something. Its in that kind of weather that staying home just kills you.
But even more stunning than those hypnotically transforming set pieces is what I accidentally discovered when looking for original clips of the guys and dolls movie songs on youtube. No, its not what you think; I came up with no results as questionable as one might expect a search for ‘guys and dolls’ on google to return. But…right at the top, a documentary about guys who carry on relationships with ‘real dolls’. What?
Yes, real dolls. No, I don’t mean blow up blow me sex toys, but life size realistic-ish rubbery Barbie puppets with exchangeable tongues with whom (on whom?) some men not only carry on a physical relationship but construct an entire psychology and emotional connection to. Beyond Stepfordesque.
“we just spent this morning laying in bed; I think she may be sleeping it off” says one man as he opens the door to let the cameraman into his room. “Virginia” slumbers half covered by the sheets, a delicate cross on a gold chain resting askew on her elegant plastic neck. “Yes, its just as I thought” he continues.
Now, it's not an unfamiliar idea to me that many people find plenty solace in plastic plus imagination, but this feels like a step too far. Like when one man speaks lovingly of how "Jeeshan" gazes into his eyes as he carefully massages her malleable feet. ‘what’s most important is how I know we’re really there for eachother’ he sighs.
Alarm bells explode in my mind.
Ok, so Yes I played with dolls as a child, and yes, many had a constructed inner consciousness (some several) with which they could connect and interact with other dolls and people, including myself. But even I (who many a time poured out childhood woes to a stuffed lion) find myself….taken aback. Wasn’t this pretending just practice so I could then better relate to people who ‘actually’ have individual minds; beautiful, complicated, unpredictable and (for the most part) not in my control?
I like pretending, I’m all for it. I like to dress up and costumes, I like games, and a little self-delusion, but all within reason. (But then who am I to assess what is in reason?) This frightens me but I find it difficult to pinpoint exactly what unnerves me most about it. Its not that I find the people creepy, the problem is that I half understand: the need for human (or half human contact) is so strong that no price is too high (or form too strange). But are people so uncooperative that extra forms of beings (dolls) have to be created in order for a need to be fulfilled. Or is the idea that someone would instead enact a doll desire on a human person creepier? I mean, which is creepier: treating a doll as though it’s alive or treating a human like plastic?
I am trying to be open. People have needs and its disappointing world for many. besides these people aren’t hurting anyone (real) directly. (Although, on second thought maybe this is a perpetuation of a system of abstracted human contact. Where our ideals and expectations are developed in disjunction with the real people around us.) Why can we relate better to things than others??? Sorry. My thoughts on this are not quite fully formed yet, there’s just a justifying rational struggling with gut repulsion. meanwhile, im rubbernecking it like a car crash.
9. November 2008
FAQ's
I have been reminded again that when I tell one friend about what is going on in my life—how I’ve been and what I’ve been doing or not doing—this does not automatically update all my acquaintances through a universal elen-centered connected consciousness. OK, so for all of you whom I have not spoken to in the last few weeks (or more) and for those I have, here is an attempt at some less-abstract, more informative, less pretentious paraphrasing of this, my life.
I have chapterized it as well for easy listening.
Where
I am in Germany. At the moment I live in Bielefeld in my dad’s sparse but sleekchic white and blue house—the former family house that he grew up in and which I remember from visits in my childhood—on Karolinenstrasse. The burst of autumn reds and golds is unfortunately just at its end and the last few burning leaves cling shivering on the birch trees, or release sighing to the damp grass.
Why
TBD
What
I have been attending a german class, german for foreign speakers. My classmates are two men from korea, one from taiwan (Strangely all three seem to be pastors and married with children) none of them have names which I (or anyone else, including the teacher) can correctly remember or pronounce. This is shameful, i know. Then there is Ding Ding, a woman from Shanghai. Ossman a Turkish guy with a good sense of humor, Raoul from the D. R. who never stops grinning but also never comes to class, and three Russians, Euvgeny, Tania and Olga. The girls are both early twenties, bleach-blonded and super nice.
It’s strange and disorienting for me to learn geman as a foreign language in this class setting. when you learn something from the ground up, there’s the understanding that you don’t know anything and of course things will be frustrating. You can also add elements one at a time so that, hopefully a semi-sensible structure will emerge. But I am, and have been, already ‘in’ german. I speak it, however bumblingly, my accent is undetectable so that most people assume I am native right away. I can read and I understand most of everything that people say. But when it comes down to writing, I actually have no academic or instinctual sense of when to use what article and why.
Der, Die, Das,…(small tangent on german grammar)
In german, nouns are gendered, and not just male/female but neuter as well. The system of gender has nothing to do with logic, with culture, or even with word ending. There are generalities but always exceptions. It’s the (she) fork, (he) spoon, (it) knife. It’s the (she) city, (he) land, (it) village. It’s the (she) wall, (he) graveyard, (it) mausoleum.
The problem continues because the articles decline, that is, they change according to the case of the noun. If I am looking at the (der) mann, then he is not ‘der’ mann, but ‘den’ mann. And if I am showing something to the man then he is ‘dem’ mann. And if I am taking something that is the man’s (of the man) then it is ‘des manns’. The theory behind all these changes might be familiar, as it should be to anyone who has tried to learn Latin or any latinate language but the actual implementation, on the other hand, takes training. For which I find it hard to have patience. Oh yeah, not only that, but adjectives change in the same way, and even prepositions take certain cases.
Anyway, this is probably boring but I could chatter forever about it, so, onward to the next subject.
Who
This is me now, somewhat. I am somewhere in the middle of being German and American. I am sort of a student at the Bielefeld university. I have been sort of productive cooking pumpkin soup and baking lots of pies with the thousands of apples we have picked around the roof.
Whom
I spend a lot of time with my rugby team, which is not exactly my rugby team because there is only officially men’s rugby here, so though we are trying to start a women’s club for the time being I train with them. There is one other girl, Anne-Marie who comes regularly and now Sandra, married to one of the players, is going to show up, but there have been quite a few trainings where it was just me and, well, a bunch of people considerably larger and male-er than me. This, as you can imagine, leads to some interesting situations as we all try to navigate the gender (and size) dynamics of co-ed rugby.
Ok, that’s a general outline. Now i promise promise to try and actually (small things) at least once a week.
I have chapterized it as well for easy listening.
Where
I am in Germany. At the moment I live in Bielefeld in my dad’s sparse but sleekchic white and blue house—the former family house that he grew up in and which I remember from visits in my childhood—on Karolinenstrasse. The burst of autumn reds and golds is unfortunately just at its end and the last few burning leaves cling shivering on the birch trees, or release sighing to the damp grass.
Why
TBD
What
I have been attending a german class, german for foreign speakers. My classmates are two men from korea, one from taiwan (Strangely all three seem to be pastors and married with children) none of them have names which I (or anyone else, including the teacher) can correctly remember or pronounce. This is shameful, i know. Then there is Ding Ding, a woman from Shanghai. Ossman a Turkish guy with a good sense of humor, Raoul from the D. R. who never stops grinning but also never comes to class, and three Russians, Euvgeny, Tania and Olga. The girls are both early twenties, bleach-blonded and super nice.
It’s strange and disorienting for me to learn geman as a foreign language in this class setting. when you learn something from the ground up, there’s the understanding that you don’t know anything and of course things will be frustrating. You can also add elements one at a time so that, hopefully a semi-sensible structure will emerge. But I am, and have been, already ‘in’ german. I speak it, however bumblingly, my accent is undetectable so that most people assume I am native right away. I can read and I understand most of everything that people say. But when it comes down to writing, I actually have no academic or instinctual sense of when to use what article and why.
Der, Die, Das,…(small tangent on german grammar)
In german, nouns are gendered, and not just male/female but neuter as well. The system of gender has nothing to do with logic, with culture, or even with word ending. There are generalities but always exceptions. It’s the (she) fork, (he) spoon, (it) knife. It’s the (she) city, (he) land, (it) village. It’s the (she) wall, (he) graveyard, (it) mausoleum.
The problem continues because the articles decline, that is, they change according to the case of the noun. If I am looking at the (der) mann, then he is not ‘der’ mann, but ‘den’ mann. And if I am showing something to the man then he is ‘dem’ mann. And if I am taking something that is the man’s (of the man) then it is ‘des manns’. The theory behind all these changes might be familiar, as it should be to anyone who has tried to learn Latin or any latinate language but the actual implementation, on the other hand, takes training. For which I find it hard to have patience. Oh yeah, not only that, but adjectives change in the same way, and even prepositions take certain cases.
Anyway, this is probably boring but I could chatter forever about it, so, onward to the next subject.
Who
This is me now, somewhat. I am somewhere in the middle of being German and American. I am sort of a student at the Bielefeld university. I have been sort of productive cooking pumpkin soup and baking lots of pies with the thousands of apples we have picked around the roof.
Whom
I spend a lot of time with my rugby team, which is not exactly my rugby team because there is only officially men’s rugby here, so though we are trying to start a women’s club for the time being I train with them. There is one other girl, Anne-Marie who comes regularly and now Sandra, married to one of the players, is going to show up, but there have been quite a few trainings where it was just me and, well, a bunch of people considerably larger and male-er than me. This, as you can imagine, leads to some interesting situations as we all try to navigate the gender (and size) dynamics of co-ed rugby.
Ok, that’s a general outline. Now i promise promise to try and actually (small things) at least once a week.
6. November 2008
Abonnieren
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