It is great to see Drew's pixels, and to hear about House de la Seska and Girl. Seska - if she's in Israel and needs anything/wants to meet/whatnot, you've got my number from the last time. And this time, I'm not sick!
I was meeting with a guy in jail yesterday. His kids came here at about age 5-6. He was talking about how you can't stop them/fight their Americanization but he just wants to still teach them about their native culture. He sounded so reasonable and i could tell he had thought a lot about it. It made me think about P-C's family and his parents' struggle to adjust to their american kids
What you wrote here made me think of something, about a generation gap there's in Israel which expresses, I think, in political opinions about the occupation. A lot of people who were born before 1967 (such as my parents) say a lot of times, when they hear about what "we" are ready to give up on in chance for peace, that we have "no idea what it's like to live without a country". I can recognize that's not an argument, but they don't - and they really fear to be driven out of here, just as the grandparents generation (my grandmother was a holocaust survivor, as well as others in my more-distant family - including four sisters and a brother who survived Auschwitz). In this case, forgetting traumas - if you don't think that the moral lesson is that you shouldn't dehumanize anyone - can be useful. Susan Sontag wrote that, in a text that's been challenging me for a few years now (my translation back to English: I have a copy in Hebrew and I couldn't find the text online):
"Maybe we apply too much value to memory, and too little to thinking. Though the memory is a moral action, it has a moral value as itself. The memory, painfully, is the only possible relation we have with the dead. Therefore, the belief that remembering is a moral action, is deeply rooted in our nature as human being, who knows there are about to die... It seems that cruelty and forgetting goes hand in hand. But history rises conflicting messages about the value of the memory in the longer term of a shared past. Simply, there's too much injustice in the world. And a too sharp memory (of ancient wrongs: Serbs, Irish) causes bitterness. To make peace/amends, means to forget. To compromise and reconcile one should have a defective and limited memory.
If the purpose is to gain a space where life can be lives, it is recommended that the detailed list of wrongs will dissolve in a more general understanding, that human beings everywhere do horrible things to each other".
There is an element of forgetting in forgiving. But as someone who comes from a tradition and a religion of remembering, I can see why renouncing that seems very, very threatening. But I can also see that human life worth so much more than clinging to rigorous accounting of the past as self justification or worse, as raison d'être, or for a few meters of land. For that, I'm willing to forget.
I need to say that I know that things aren't that simple, and that's one of the reasons Sontag's text is something I'm struggling with. There's always the danger that you'll forget too much, and by that will be erased from history, from memory, from existence. But for some reason, it's the national-religious folks here, who believe in every piece of land, that have a belief in such a strength I envy. And that's not to be taken lightly, at all.
Congrats, Seska!
Interesting quote, Shir. I do too much remembering (and always have an easier time remembering negative events than positive events). Sometimes I think I'd do better if I just got amnesia and started over again. As long as I didn't get tense about being an amnesiac.
Feeling very gronky. My depression has been worse this week, partly because my hours have been turned around. I kept trying and failing to turn them back. So today I took the painful step of setting the alarm (one of the few advantages of being this disabled is not having to do a work grind anymore). I am severely tempted to just go right back to sleep. Must have coffee or something.
Today I meet a guy who answered my Craig's List ad for folks wanting to work through The Artist's Way.
The dress I ordered the other day is in. It will only zip up half way, which is disappointing.
I have much respect for (and many books by) Sontag, but I think her argument ignores the crucial importance, for society, of remembering. A couple of cases in point: the way British Muslims are being treated at the moment (and I understand it's even worse for American Muslims); the way disabled people in this country are currently being so demonized by the press and the government that I fear for people's lives in the near future if it continues. Sometimes remembering that all of this has happened before and all of this will happen again is the only way to fight human, or social, nature.
I'm developing a crush on one of the actors who's been hanging around the house. First off, she's beautiful and clever. Then she starts talking about how much she loves "Supernatural". Then she says she plays World of Warcraft and when I ask if she's seen "The Guild" she replies, "you mean Felicia Day's web series? Yeah I wan't to date her avatar." Then she asks me if I've ever seen
The Gamers: Dorkness Rising.
I think at that moment I might have blurted out how awesome I think she is. Sadly, I am far too old for her.
I have much respect for (and many books by) Sontag, but I think her argument ignores the crucial importance, for society, of remembering. A couple of cases in point: the way British Muslims are being treated at the moment (and I understand it's even worse for American Muslims); the way disabled people in this country are currently being so demonized by the press and the government that I fear for people's lives in the near future if it continues. Sometimes remembering that all of this has happened before and all of this will happen again is the only way to fight human, or social, nature.
She says few lines before the quote I brought that society should remember the big events. What I truly find interesting in this argument is the difference between "remembering" and "thinking". Of course it's not black and white situation, but there's only so much growth that can be achieved by focus on "remembering".
The book, btw, is Regarding the Pain of Others, and I still consider it one of the best (if not the best) non-fiction work I've ever read. Even if I don't agree with her on few things.
Edit: sj, sorry to hear about the dress. Do you have alternatives?
He still falls asleep mid-sentence when he takes his pain meds, which embarrasses him but I think is kind of adorable.
Ha, don't be embarrassed. Be proud of the awesome power of painkillers. What he needs to work on, is the skill of picking up the sentence when he wakes back up. That! Is true talent.
Tons of love and brackets! {{{{{ ND }}}}}
Seska, congrats on the new home! Fabulous news. Can't wait for the access aids to be installed. Very exciting.
ion, I didn't know anything about buckyballs until today.
Buckyballs are awesome. Very relaxing. I have them at my recliner. Tough day? Make some magnetic art.
ION- Handyman canceled AGAIN! Uggg. "I forgot my wife is getting baptized today..." We scheduled this time last week. We confirmed it yesterday. Why do you wait to tell me 15 minutes after the scheduled meet time? And I had to call YOU to find it out. Very frustrating.
Congrats on the house, Seska! It has a Buffista guest room, right? ;)
O-A, you need to call the landlord and bitch about this. That's ridiculous.
Congrats on the house, Seska!
I managed to mostly avoid the football traffic. The road that I usually take toward the campus isn't a main highway, and then once I got right near campus, I was going in the opposite direction from the football traffic. So I went to services, then got lunch at the mall, then went to Bed Bath & Beyond and bought way more stuff than what I went in for. But I did get a bunch of hangers, which is what I was looking for.
