The Essay--- The Making of an Expat Part I

Discovering that you're an expat is a little how I imagine "discovering" you are gay might be. For the first portion of your life it doesn't really have any context to come up in. Sure, there might be passing remarks about gender-norms whispered with feigned concern to your mother at company picnics, but overall you are just a kid. You don't know anything about nationalism and your patriotism extends about as far as the repetition of the pledge of allegiance before school, half of which you mumble through because you never bothered to learn it. There are some kids ahead of their age bracket, "dating" or discussing "politics," but really your life revolves around climbing trees, playing with toys, and decided who and what a best friend actually is. Maybe you are an expat, but it doesn't really matter and no one knows yet, least of all you. Then, as you get a bit older nationalism becomes more central to your life. You start taking U.S. history in school, your homeroom teacher asks you to bring in clippings of current events, and you begin to actually hear the long talks about war and oil that the grown ups have been having forever. You don't understand it yet, but you are definitely aware that it is an issue salient to your life, and that some day it is going to want some sort of defining affirmation from you. Until the choice has to be made you peek in and out of the realm of politics. You try different things like fourth of July parades, dressed in red, white and blue, and you make some declarations of your patriotism, just to see if it feels true. Sometimes it does, but most of the time (and you would never tell anyone) it doesn't. Deep down, as soon as you knew what a patriot was you knew that you weren't one.

Well, maybe that isn't how it was for you. Maybe things continued on the course that they are 'supposed' to, and you felt all of the right emotions of pride and belonging, and you can sing the national anthem and hot dogs taste like freedom to you. But that is how it was for me, a slight gnawing of something not being right, followed by years of testing different things, a bit of denial, and finally the realization that I am an expatriate. Well, since I have never been a huge fan of labeling and I don't particularly like the word I am more of a never-was-patriate. 

The day that I had emerged onto the political stage and actually noticed that something wasn't quite right happened in seventh grade. We were living in New York and I had just returned to my middle school of choice after a year of homeschooling in protest of the constant redistricting of military children. I hadn't won the battle, as the entire military base had shut down and my parents just happened to move down the street from the school that I wanted to attend. It wasn't the first time that my family had lived off of base housing, but it was the first time that it was considered permanent. For the first time in my life there were no fences keeping an eclectic mix of children together, giving me a consistant source of drama and playmates. There was just a two story, rather odd-shaped home with a slanted roof and a backyard that stretched on further than I ever cared to go. 

I had always been a somewhat aloof child, and the move away from base housing mixed with a return to a school where I didn't actually know anyone emphasized the aloofness. I was not unhappy. In fact, I was perhaps the happiest that I had been in my entire life. There is something great about being twelve, and coming into your own. But I did spend a large majority of that year up in my  odd-shaped room, reading smuggled copies of Stephan King novels, and writing in my first journal. 

My writing had always been encouraged by my teachers. In first grade I was sent to the principal's office once, not because I had gotten in trouble, but to read him the story that I had written in our writing class. My passion for writing continued, and it is true that at times in my life it was the only definition that I held onto amidst the amorphous turmoil of becoming. In seventh grade I had a lovely English teacher who continued to encourage my writing and suggested that I enter the district-wide essay contest that year. I decided that I would, and went home assigned the uncontroversial topic, "What America Means to Me." 

I didn't tell my parents about the contest. I wrote a few drafts of the essay, and took a near-final version to our family friend's apartment. Pam was like a big sister to me. She took me shopping, bought me my first journal and several books, and listened when I spoke. She set me up at her computer (which we did not have at our house yet) to type my essay, and helped me to edit it. After nearly twenty years I cannot remember what I actually wrote in the essay. I suppose that I could find it in the boxes of writing that my mother kept, but the content is not really that important. What is important is that I distinctly remember crafting that essay. The prompt was, "What America Means to Me," and I wrote an essay that could have been entitled, "What You Think America Should Mean to a Twelve Year Old Girl." I added just enough angst and discontent for it to sound like it could be real, and everything that I wrote was true, but I didn't actually believe any two consecutive sentences. I was quite proud of the finished product, typed and printed, edited by an adult, and my first piece of planned, constructed writing. 

I turned the essay in to my homeroom teacher and more or less forgot about it for the next month. The writing of the essay was unproblematic. My ethical issue came when they announced the finalists for the competition and I learned that I would be asked to read my essay before a panelist of judges. No part of me wanted to read that essay out loud. My parents and teachers thought that my refusal was due to my shyness, and a projected fear of public speaking (I had never spoken in public before, and couldn't know whether or not I feared it). They encouraged me to read the essay, and I couldn't even recognize the real reason I didn't want to read the essay, even if I had wanted to explain it to them. I ended up reading the essay, the entire time my face was flushed and I tried to mumble out the words, fearful that I would be discovered, that they would all know that the essay was a complete lie. America did not mean any of those nice things that I said it meant. America meant nothing to me.

It wasn't my first lie. It wasn't the first time that I went along with what society wanted me to say and do, but it was the most public and prepared lie that I had ever committed. I was ashamed. I was even more ashamed when they sent me home with a medal. My mother insisted that I hang the essay on my wall, along with the fairy tales and pieces of fiction that I had been most proud of from my English class. She was quite proud of the whole ordeal and I didn't have the heart to deny her, but every time that I saw that piece of paper staring down at me my stomach knotted. I had won. I knew exactly what America was supposed to mean, only I had never bothered to ask myself what it really meant to me. I felt that I had committed a huge betrayal, but I could not figure out who the betrayal was against. 

Eventually we moved, and the essay came down. It got tucked away where I no longer had to think about it, but the damage had already been done. A dissonance had been discovered within me. I had emerged onto the political stage and I had declared my loyalties, but I also had learned that deep down something didn't sit quite right when I called myself a patriot. It was just the beginning, and rather insignificant in the whole scheme of life, but it set me on a path of constant questioning, and an internal confusion towards nationalism and patriotic pride. 

Prepping for Paris

Paris was not on my list of places to go. Of course, my list of places to go includes only Spain, Moscow, and Georgia (with a slightly blossoming prospect of Kazakhstan), so not many places are actually there. However, like Athens and Rome, my marathon running is taking me to a wonderfully romanticized city, and I find myself yet again considering my latent expectations for this experience.

The first thing that I am starting to realize is that Paris is huge. There is no way for me to see "all of it," or even enough pieces to cover the standard Paris-trip. My vacation is only five days long, and two of those days will be spent in Cheverny, actually running my marathon. It was a difficult decision to try a smaller marathon outside of Paris this time, but we think that the intimacy of the situation and natural environment will be much more conducive to a pleasurable run. However, that means that even though I will be flying into Paris, I wont really be going there as much as I will be stopping through. This means that those five day tours, or even weekend tours, are no good. Really, the three of us have time to build 2-4 really good experiences in Paris, and with almost no knowledge of the city I am not sure where to start constructing these experiences.

First of all, these are the things that I think about when I think of Paris: love, Hemingway, Moulin Rouge, coffee, wine, food, the lourve, notre dame, the seine, writers, cafes, artists, photography, sarte, montmarte, hot, flowers, alcohol.

So what I've got so far as ideas to make these preconceptions into experiences is:

1. Taking a river boat on the Seine. There is apparently one that stops at both the Eiffel tower and notre dame with on-off tickets. 
2. A walking tour of the Latin quarter, with possibly a few stops at cafes. 
3. A sunset picnic in a park, maybe near to the Eiffel Tower, or in the gardens. 
4. Renting a bicycle. 
5. Doing a random photo shoot, although I am unsure of what kind. 

All of the writing and Hemingway that is wrapped up in Paris for me seems like it will have to wait until I am there for a longer time. Two days doesn't seem long enough to waste hours writing in a cafe, ignoring my friends. 

So, Paris. Yet another big city. With my dissillusionment of Istanbul and my hate of metropolicity I am a little concerned for this "vacation," but I know that so far my vacations with both Jez and Nikola (Athens, Rome, Venice, Skopje, and Nis) have been fantastic, and so despite the overwhelming impossibleness of the location I expect nothing less this time around. 

Critical Success Factors

In my Business Management class we are practicing the identification of critical success factors in various markets. It is a fun exercise, to see what defines success and also how that success can be achieved, but of course my introspective self begins to apply it all to my own life. My dreams have definitely matured, and as they become more realistic they have been forced to fit into the dominant hegemony of capitalism: the measurement of success becomes money and things.

Now, I don't like to think of myself as an overly material person. Sure, I do like my "things." I have a slight scarf addiction, and notebooks are something that I don't think I could live without. I have a relatively nice computer (even though it  is starting to give up on me) and I have one of the latest tablets. In just 6 months the boy and I have acquired so much "stuff" that our move is going to be challenging no matter which destination and path we choose. I would love to stake claim as a minimalist, but I don't think that I will ever be able to. Comfort and attachment permeate my being. However, I am still not sold on the capitalistic dream of owning the means of production and basing my success on my material wealth. Therefore I think that it is important to constantly re-evaluate my critical success factors and my definition of success.

An exploration into success using Maslow's hierarchy of needs:

I do, honestly, believe that success is achieved in self-actualization. Specifically I believe that my success is measured by my ability to recognize and maintain my morality, to contribute creatively to a social network, to have and learn from adventures, to be loving and helpful to others, and to develop my spiritual nature. According to Maslow I need to satisfy all of these minor levels in order to achieve those successes.

1. Physiological: These are things that are rather guaranteed in the modern world, and I am not overly concerned for them. One thing that I do not really get enough of is sleep. Also, it is important for me to not just ingest things, but to do so in a conscious, healthy manner, which adds a layer of complexity to what was once thought of as the most basic level of needs. Whereas once the need was provoked by a scarcity of food, it is now provoked by an overabundance of things that claim to be food but are ultimately not contributing to a positive life. That is why I want to have more control over my physiological needs, including my successful life involving having my own garden and actively producing my own food. 
2. Safety: Here is where the control comes in. I have not had a lot of control in my life, and this is where I have often dwelt in the hierarchy. Not having an income, not having a domicile, not having permanent relationships. A big need in this level is family, which to me means those tight relationships that you can really depend on. I feel a great need to really redefine and cultivate a sense of family. I have family like I never believed possible in Nikola. However, the friendships that I have depended on until now are definitely struggling. I need that really close, communal feel in the same hemisphere as me, in the same country in me, and preferably in the same city as me. Secondly, I do not give a lot of importance to money, but I do give importance to property. My physical safety is measured (to me) in owning my own land, and developing that land in such a way to have minimal dependance on the "grid." That means going with alternative energy sources and having an awesomely insulated house hat I can sustain with my family. 
3. Love/belonging: Nikola satisfies a huge chunk of this category, but I also feel the need to develop other very intimate, strong bonds based on emotional intimacy. The distance thing is really starting to ache after three years, and I recognize that I have intimacy issues as far as building new relationships goes... especially in Bulgaria. I am going to have to get over that. So here I see a need to have family friends that I see often and share new experiences and an exchange of ideas with. 
4. Esteem: I feel like my esteem is not hard to meet. There are so many ways for me to achieve a sense of worth and respect. Someday I will have the role of a mother (never thought that would be on my list), but also I want to be an active community leader/member advocating and researching youth rights and issues, providing educational programing and working in the outdoor field. This is not connected to payment for me, and I would be perfectly happy to do this without monetary compensation provided I already have that house and garden thing met :)

Okay, so what does all that mean? What does my life look like if I am to consider myself successful: 

• My family owns our own property, on which we manage a large garden and have a self-sustaining home utilizing alternative energy methods such as solar or wind energy. 
• I am a wife and mother, preferably with two kids. 
• I have a very close knit group of friends within my physical community with whom I interact positively with on a regular basis. 
• I have an extended community both physically close and further away that I interact with less often but still in a meaningful way. 
• I contribute in the field of youth development and community building. 
• I contribute creatively, and maintain creative dialogues (through dance, writing, painting, film, photography etc) with people from within my community. 

That's it. That is success for me. Many, many ways to achieve it. I wonder if I ever will. 

Fight and Trust

Trust. Dedication. These are things that I thought that I understood over the years, and of course I understood bits and pieces, but now... Wowsa! Now I feel like I have the whole thing.

Nikola and I have been on a Friends binge. We are in season 3, where Ross and Rachel break up--- things get tough in their relationship and Rachel says that they need a break. Ross immediately goes out and sleeps with another girl, thinking that their relationship was over. Rachel finds out and while they are trying to figure out if they can make things work Ross points out how quickly Rachel gave up their relationship, the way that she didn't fight for it. (I wont go into how Ross failed to fight for the relationship either.) He needed to know that she was going to fight to be with him, and in the end she decided that, no, she wouldn't. Him sleeping with another girl had destroyed her understanding of him, because before she felt completely safe with him and thought of him as a man who would never, ever hurt her. After such a painful experience she could no longer view him the same and so the love had changed. Now, here I am suspending the fact that this is just a television show, and the fact that I am not really certain of the monogamy rules as the end-all of relationships to say: "I finally get it!" 

There have been times in the past that I was accused of not fighting for a relationship. Sometimes that accusation has been true. Sometimes it was, in my heart's view, unwarranted. However, whether I was fighting or not (I realize now), the fight was always on my shoulders. It was, ultimately, a question of my investment and how much I was willing to give up to be with someone. Was I willing to give up my location, my job, my school, my values? How much room was I willing to give? How much of them was I willing to take? This is not to say that there has been no give from my previous partners. The people that I have loved in the past have given quite a bit of love to me, and accepted many aspects of me. Some have been very supportive of this wandering game that I play and my thirst to find myself. Some have put up with large amounts of insanity. Some have not. Some left at the first sign of trouble, and some have stuck it out far enough to scar ourselves into a permanent remembrance. But it has never, never been the way that it has been with my husband.

 "How much are you willing to fight for us?"

With Nikola, for the first time, I feel like the question is not shooting directly towards me and only me. It is a valid question. But for the first time I feel that he trusts me enough to never ask, and I feel like I will never reach the end of his fight either. He knows that I want our life together, and I cannot question his commitment either. I have never really thought about it before, but I think about it often with him: I have a man that will never hurt me. Now, that is not to say that I will not suffer in our relationship, and that I will not experience hurt. But, that pain will never, ever be inflicted intentionally by him. I know that for sure. I know that he will support me in any way that he can and that he will always, always fight for our relationship. I can trust that. I never knew I NEEDED to trust that, but I do, and I can and it is wonderful.

I am the happiest woman in the world in this marriage.

The Impact of the Romanticized

There are people in my life that never became real, and yet I attached to them for some reason. Usually the method of attachment was standard attraction, although not always physical attraction. (I hate always feeling the need to clarify my choice of words like attraction and romance to take them out of the modern dialogue of love and sex.) I was attracted to these people because they were outgoing, or because they were spiritual, or because they had a cause, or because they had a skill, or passion. As an example I will give my co-crew leader from five years ago, Brian. My first season as a crew leader I did not have the best of luck with co-leaders. First I had Isaac who decided that the only way to bond with our all-male crew was through the objectification of women. I have no doubt that my unveiled, vehement threats of starting the process of official sexual-harassment proceedings against him aided in his decision to quit. Well, that mixed with a healthy dose of laziness that did not suit the trail-world particularly well. My second co-leader was Russ. Now Russ was a major improvement on Isaac. First of all he was my friend. Secondly, he knew what he was doing trail-wise. He had skills. But he also had anxiety issues and perfection issues and we were in rather constant conflict. I will take a lot of the blame for that one, but the fact of the matter is that I still had not had a positive crew-leader experience. Then came Brian.

Brian was like a breath of fresh air. He was professional. He had trail-knowledge. He was creative. He was absolutely positive and determined to have fun. He found ways to bond with the crew that were not based on sexuality. He was, compared to all of my experiences, perfect. He was the first real mentor that I had been given as a crew leader. We were co-leaders for about a month, and it was my happiest time as a crew leader despite a dysfunctional crew that could not be brought back from all of the mommy-daddy issues that my prior leadership combinations had inflicted on them. I am thankful for my experience with Brian because it changed many of my rather dismal perspectives about trail life and affirmed many of my life values. In a very short time he endeared himself to me as a trail-god, and I completely romanticized him.

But what exactly is the romanticization of a person? I never got to know him. There just wasn't time, and yet I filled in the blanks with all of the positive attributes that I needed to believe in. Brian became this open, vulnerable, strong person that I thought was the ultimate goal in life. These are not imagined attributes- they clearly existed in him, but due to circumstance they were all that I knew of him. We all have struggle- I am not so naive as to discount the place of humanity on earth as one of struggle and becoming- but his struggle was veiled, not through his own shame but through time and circumstance. Therefore Brian, in my imagined world, became only the romantic side of whoever he may be. Over the years I have kept up with him through facebook and the occasional personal exchange, and it is as if we know each other well. I would be hesitant to say that I do not know him, because our romantic persona is perhaps as important to the functioning of the world as our whole persona. However he is hopes and shadows and possibilities, without the muck of real-life.

Alternatively there are people who have touched my life and cannot remain romanticized despite my heart's better efforts. As an example I give Cyrano. She is an amazingly strong force in my life, from the creation of beliefs to the affirmation of others. She also started as a romanticized being. For two years she was the epitome of camp-counselors. She was forceful, charismatic, unbelievably intelligent, and with a strong sense of values. Then she became real. Our relationship was messy and I was exposed to the faults of her, and able to accept her as a full person instead of an ultimate being. To this day I have a split interaction with Cyrano- that of the romantic and that of the realistic. Every time she writes me an email or a message from her pops up I am jolted with the negotiation of my romanticized version of her against the real version, and I have to carefully choose my mode of interaction in order to maintain the depth of the real relationship that we have built together. Sometimes it would be much more simple to let her slide away into perfection, but the benefits of the reality and trust within the act of relating outweigh my laziness, most of the time.

Then there are the people who were never romanticized. Nikola did not have the time to be romanticized. He fell into my life complete and real from the first day, and even now still grows in dimension, without running the risk of being flattened by my standardized schema. My constant closeness and interaction with Nikola does not give me the space or time necessary to classify him within my standard categories. He is a constant surprise.

So there are these people- the ever-romantic, semi-romantic, and never-romantic, and the question becomes what are the effects of these people in our lives. I think that society tends to extol the benefits of 'real' relationships and so I do not have to elaborate there. But what does the romantic imaginings of a character contribute to my experience as a being? Returning to the concept of Brian I will say that he has been critical in shaping my schema. In the way that I sometimes say a sentence out loud just to see if I actually believe it, I can try on the romance of an individual to see if I actually support an ideal. Brian  acted as a sentence that I let echo- the sentence that men can be sensitive and yet strong, that leaders can be confident and yet humble, that trail work can be enthusiastic and yet serious. He was my testing of the ultimate in contradictions concerning a more rugged form of life. And the test passed, with flying colors. Yes, I do believe those aspects are worth striving for. Yes, I do believe they are possible. Yes, I do believe that they are worthwhile values to hold onto. Now, when I falter in my convictions I have that warm spring month to reflect on, and to remember my romantic notion of perfection, and all that life can hold for those that give an effort and a care. It is an important role for romance to fill, that of hope.

Real Life Friends

Since moving to Istanbul the whole friendship thing has been a little rough. I have had patches of this, off and on, for my entire life. When you are a kid making friends is easy because you have school and are assigned projects together, or you play on the same sports teams. Unless you are the military kid who is whisked in and out of classes every six months to move to a new school, town, or state. Then it is harder. Then you have college, and making friends is easy because you are all away from home for the first time and NEED friends, plus you all live in the same dorm. Then you are suddenly out in the real world and that safety net of friendship is taken away. Unless you work at a summer camp. Then it is like permanent college, with friends floating through... the same for a conservation corps. In Peace Corps you are assigned friends. Locals, fellow pcvs etc. Then suddenly you are 29 and wondering how to make new friends. You could go back to hashing, but you know the drinking isn't good for you. Everyone at the university is younger, surrounded by their own friends, and not married. Your husband is supposed to be your best friend, not your only friend. <sigh> Friendship is a tricky thing. How do you make time and invest energy into these new people? You can barely get your runs in, let alone your school work and other obligations. Is friendship an obligation?

I miss:

The parties that I hated. (And I hated them all) I miss the messiness of them, and I missed the shared guilt of them. I miss the card games and bottles of wine. I miss the support that my friends gave me in going to IBTs or Colors.

Going on play-dates. Museums, shows, concerts, frisbee in the park and a bit of steal the bacon.

Deep intellectual conversations. Books, movies, theories and such.

Trying to build a community. Orphan's christmas, sunday night supper.

People that really knew me.

Talking with one of my best friends I have to wonder... is this something that we all lose as we get older? Or is it something that my nomadic lifestyle has forced me to abandon? 

Resistance

One of my courses this semester is on social change. Our first set of readings and class discussion consisted of building a vocabulary, from an ethnographic perspective, to discuss the topic of resistance and change. I found the class very enlightening, even though it was not really in my field of passion. One of the most important aspects that seem fundamentally clear and overly simple to me is the difference between resistance and revolution. The concept seemed so basic that I would not even voice it in a senior level course. However, with time I realized that the concept is not inherently accepted by my peers. Consistently the term, "Real resistance" was brought up to qualify the difference between covert and overt resistance- overt resistance with the goal of change being 'real,' while covert resistance is considered something else, something soft. Suddenly, in that class, I understood the need for the works of Scott and Gutman that we were reading. People do privilege revolution as the only form of resistance because of its tangible, romantic outcomes. I have no doubt about the qualities of the students taking this course. They are advocates, politically active. They have a stance and they express it. They are revolutionaries. You can tell in their dress, in the dreads and shaved heads, and in the constant reference to anarchist and feminist ideas that I have somehow skipped in university. Of course I am obviously making judgements here. Put me in a line-up with these kiddos and I would not stand out. At least I would not stand out in my true direction. I would look like a leader of the group with my shaved head, purple hair, pierced nose and unconventional clothing choices. But I digress into petty thoughts of belonging and the politics of academia which are worthwhile but have very little to do with my current topic: resistance and revolution.

If resistance is so often equated with revolution it is important to ask why, to recognize the potential harms of the association, and to clearly give it a separate definition in order to progress with the concept. I believe that in sociology resistance is often confused with revolution because resistance is a more personal concept while revolution has a much more easily recognized societal field. That is not to say that resistance is not social, but revolution is entirely a social concept while resistance has some social effects and some personal effects. In many ways resistance falls under the category of psychology as it is often an internal struggle, very personal and individual and revolution is thought to be the social culmination of those internal struggles. What Scott brings to light is that revolution is not the only possible outcome of resistance. Instead, resistance is practiced socially and has measurable, visible social impacts in and of itself. The harm in lumping resistance together with revolution is that we fail to examine a significant social phenomena that leads to and supports revolution, and we fetishize revolution as inevitable and desirable at all times within the current reality. By equating resistance to revolution, or privileging revolution over resistance we greatly restrict our sociological and political imaginations.

If resistance is not revolution then what is it?
The difference between revolution and resistance is held in the goals of the two. In very goal-oriented times it is no wonder that we value revolution, because revolution is a very goal oriented phenomena. Revolution has the end-goal of change. People want to change others, to change themselves, to change the system that they live in, to change perceptions, to change the allocation of resources etc. Resistance on the other hand has to deal with a goal of un-change. Resistance is about survival, about keeping something, and protecting an individual or a culture. Often the desire to change the dominant structure (REVOLUTION) coincides with the desire/need to sustain the minority culture (resistance) and so the two are often lumped together and measured by the much easier to see and feel changes that are brought on by revolutionaries. However, it is important to begin to recognize and measure resistance separately because it IS a separate, autonomous social function that becomes more and more popular in the modern world. Sociologists need to keep in mind that the end goal of resistance is not revolution, but sustaining.