Author Archives: ofurhe

Framing the Conversation

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I arrived in Kabul this morning. Two days ago I was in New York staying with a friend from high school. He is a highly skilled craftsman who makes, among other things, gorgeous wooden frames. He recently found a rare New York apartment that let him set up a small woodworking studio downstairs and he’s saving up for a bandsaw.

Today I visited another place that makes frames; Golestan Sabak. This school, run by a wonderful widow named Fatima Akbari, teaches women and children. The students learn not just literacy but also vocations like embroidery and carpentry. In particular we visited the workshop where disabled people learn woodcarving, calligraphy and frame-making. 3 weeks ago a big snow dump caused her tent to collapse, destroying their electric saw.

Another recent New York conversation echoes in my head. My friend and I were eating lunch at Columbia where some students were protesting the settlements in Gaza. I asked my friend how he felt about the protest and he said essentially ‘Think Globally Act Locally’ that there are plenty of problems to deal with in New York. But one of the problems is misinformation. People just don’t know about the settlements or about women’s carpentry workshops in Afghanistan. Well maybe a couple people do now.

Update (excuses)

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Apologies for not updating last week. Between packing, traveling, and finishing up all those letters I’ve been pretty busy. The power is not consistent here in Kabul but I will try to update when I can. I’ve been taking pictures but I probably won’t be able to upload them until I get back, I’m writing from my iPod touch so forgive the spelling and formatting.

Valentine’s Day is Wack

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Wiggity wack? No, just regular
–teen girl squad

Of all the prejudices I come up against every day the most obnoxious, lately, is the simple, pervasive assumption that as a woman, I won’t be satisfied without a husband, 2.5 kids, and a house in the suburbs. When I say I don’t want this, people make another set of assumptions;

A) I’m lying
B) I’m a lesbian
C) I’m in denial
D) I had a bad breakup
E) I don’t know what good sex is like
F) I’m cynical because I come from a broken home
G) I just haven’t found the right guy

Maybe they’re right, or perhaps I’d enjoy one of the more alternative, unmarried relationships recently described in this Atlantic article or this hairpin piece from a few years ago. A relationship with separate beds, or separate rooms, or separate wings (like Beauty and the Beast), or separate houses (like Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera who had adjacent houses joined by a walkway) or maybe even (gasp!) not a romantic relationship at all. Maybe as a child, I didn’t dream of a house with a husband and a white picket fence and a bunch of kids on the lawn, I dreamed of Ms. Honey’s cottage in Matilda (except, SPOILER ALERT; I wouldn’t have adopted Matilda at the end because I don’t like kids).

In writing all these letters for my month of letters I’ve been out shopping for cards and postcards, only to be reminded that it’s Valentine’s day next week and they’ve replaced all the good cards with red and pink hearts. I don’t hate Valentine’s day (who could hate this old school Outkast jam), but I hate the look of pity people give me when I say I’ve never had a date (this fact is true every day, not just Valentine’s day, but somehow people feel more sorry for me on Valentine’s Day). Valentine’s Day celebrates one particular type of romantic love, but as Jane Austen says in Mansfield Park:

“There are as many forms of love as there are moments in time.”

Here’s Steinbeck in a letter to his son:

“There are several kinds of love. One is a selfish, mean, grasping, egotistical thing which uses love for self-importance. This is the ugly and crippling kind. The other is an outpouring of everything good in you—of kindness and consideration and respect—not only the social respect of manners but the greater respect which is recognition of another person as unique and valuable. The first kind can make you sick and small and weak but the second can release in you strength, and courage and goodness and even wisdom you didn’t know you had.”

There is a good quote from Infinite Jest that I want to share, but it’s about 6 pages long. In it David Foster Wallace writes about a paraplegic who made a choice to love without pleasure; to love a woman with no skull, who leaks spinal fluid, has a hook for hands and is in an irreversible coma. To me, this passage made the entire 1000 page book worthwhile.

There is the love between you and your best friend, the love between you and your family, the love between you and your neighbor, anon. How is this love less significant than the love you have with your lover? In a way, the childrens’ version of the holiday is better at celebrating the different forms of love since you have to give cards to everyone, not just the boy you have a crush on.

What other holidays apply only to a certain subset of the population? (Some are religious, but we all get the day off for Christmas)

P.S. Another great post by ehs dub at I’m Revolting, whose birthday is today. You win, all hail the queen.

UPDATE 2/14:
Ryan North stole my idea! JK, only love for Dinosaur Comics.

Patterns

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While I was in Atlanta last week I found myself looking down at the ground a lot, with new terrain I’m always afraid I’ll trip on an unexpected bump and I was afraid to look up at the buildings because people would think I was a tourist (turns out I gave myself away by calling it ‘Hot-lanta,’ like the small town jokers in Young Adult who refer to Minneapolis as the mini apple). Looking down turned out to be great though, I started to notice patterns in the sidewalk. Sidewalks aren’t the same everywhere, we walked in a neighborhood with big hexagonal tiles instead of rectangular cement, some driveways are brick, others downtown were that unmistakable chevron pattern (chevrons always make me think of friendship bracelets and gas stations). The houses seemed to have thin walls, which made them look naked, like houses in New England with their small windows that make it look like they’re squinting. Though the patterns of the sidewalk were familiar, they were not the same.

When I came back I started to look for other patterns that were similar in California and Georgia. I saw a lot of chevrons, stripes and bricks. These are the building blocks of a city. Cubes are made of lines which are made of dots, so really the most fundamental pattern is the polka dot. There’s been a lot of fog in the bay which seems to diffuse everything and break it up into it’s fundamental component; water droplets. This screen is made up of tiny pixels. Not to sound like a total stoner, but patterns are everywhere.

Especially in our behavior. A friend is trying to change the pattern of a dysfunctional relationship, another friend is trying to kick a habit, a pattern unchecked will continue forever.

How many repetitions of something does it take to make a pattern?

P.S. The Simon and Garfunkel song Patterns has been stuck in my head all week, well the entire Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme Album. Classic.

The pen is mightier than the keyboard

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I’m out of town for my brother’s graduation, which hasn’t stopped me from participating in a month of letters. I’ve said previously that I like letters best. And it’s true, I love stamps, and fountain pens, calligraphy, stationary, envelopes, and as you probably know by now, babbling about minutia. Letters are one of my favorite types of future garbage. I’m not going to rant about how kids these days can’t write in cursive, or how sad it is that the USPS is going out of business (oops, too late?), I just hope the letters speak for themselves.

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Access to Education

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Lately I’ve been thinking about education, the Russian and I had a heated discussion this weekend about it, she’s starting school again after winter break and I’m applying to a masters program. Also, it has been in the news because of President Obama’s recent State of the Union speech. Lack of access to education, I feel, is one of the biggest global problems. I don’t have any solutions right now, but I wanted to express my gratitude towards the people and institutions who contributed towards mine:

My mom is the one who filled out all the financial aid forms growing up, and taught me how to make the system work for me. She has worked, and continues to work tirelessly to make sure her children get the chances she didn’t get. My mom’s (now) husband started this blog for her which is probably worth checking out (if you didn’t grow up within earshot of my mother): Zen of Folding

The branch of the Oakland Public Library by my house was influenced by the Black Panther movement and the Black Muslims in the neighborhood. Without all those books about little black girls I am sure I wouldn’t have the confidence to achieve what I have so far. (Bill Cosby explains what can happen when you don’t get this kind of enforcement: A Boy Like Me)

Addendum 5-27-12: This branch was the African American Museum and Library which later moved to downtown Oakland. Explains a lot.

The Crowden School was my first summer camp. I met the Russian there and I learned that I could make music too (it wasn’t just for big kids like my brother).

A shoutout to A Better Chance (ABC), for paying for my testing, my first trip to a college campus (USC), and helping students of color get a fair shake.

The East Bay French American School
 was where I learned the French language, French culture, and as my mother says, where I learned to hate French people.

Head-Royce
 Middle School sucks. It sucked for me, and it sucked for a lot of others, but without it, none of us would have any soul. And if I hadn’t hated middle school so much I never would have ended up at my high school.

Interlochen Arts Camp
was awesome, my first sleep away camp. I won the ‘Honor Camper’ award and played in piano quintet, piano for 10 hands. My first experience of a humid summer where I got stung by all manner of mosquitos for the first time. My scholarship there was sponsored by Kellogs. Thanks for the corduroy knickers!

Walden
a music composition camp in New Hampshire. I got the best music theory education, made some great friends and wrote a couple pieces of music. Not bad for a 12-year-old.

Putney
little Putney, my hippie farm school. When I heard that Seventeen Magazine came to do a profile on the school and the students protested their body image perpetuation, I was sold. I couldn’t really have gone anywhere else.

Center for Talented Youth
really should been called Center for Privileged Youth, if I remember correctly you have to take a pretty expensive test to get in. But the scholarship I got there was all-inclusive, they told me if there was a pair of flip flops that everyone had, and I couldn’t afford (Havaianas anyone?), that they would help me pay for them. I had been at Putney for a few years though, so I was pretty anti-consumerist.

Summer Intensive Language Study
 (SILS) at Northfield Mount Hermon; it looks like this program is now defunct, which is a bummer. By now you can probably tell that my mother believed that summers were a time for learning, not lazing. If we weren’t taking a class over the summer, we were supposed to get a job.

University of Chicago
Where fun goes to die. I was cold, miserable and well educated.

Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship
When I went in to interview I went on a long rant about how I didn’t believe in affirmative action and I hated teaching, how did I get this fellowship?

After finals in Chicago I began calculating how much money I had been given by these institutions over the years and it came out to over $500,000. I don’t have enough money to pay it back yet, but hopefully the things I learned will help me earn enough to pay it back soon.

There are many ways we rationalize the bounty we all receive in our lives but first and foremost I’d like to say just say “Thank You”. I feel very lucky to have had these opportunities.

That said, I hope these institutions feel lucky to have had me as well. All that money I got for being a poor black girl doesn’t negate the fact that I am a poor black girl with all that entails (though I’m working on the poor part). A friend once suggested that I’ve repaid the money I was given in unpaid diversity photo-ops and other marketing. In addition, I worked hard for my scholarships, maintaining a GPA, trying to be a model minority since I was the only black person for miles, and being the only black person for miles, these tasks aren’t easy for anyone, especially a young person.

I tend to think that someone’s sex, race, socio-economic background, religion, age, etc. is about as important as their shoe size, but I wouldn’t think this way if it weren’t for my education, which I got because people thought otherwise. We should live in a world that doesn’t need affirmative action, but we don’t.

p.s. I also like to think I got into some of these places because I’m smart, but who knows.

10 posts

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Congratulations to me! I’ve lasted for 10 posts! I once read an article about all the blog posts that begin with ‘sorry it’s been so long since my last post.’ I’m going to take a second to pat myself on the back for 10 weeks of consistent blogging. In the past 10 weeks (in chronological order):
-I was burgled
-I lost touch with a friend (z) and found an old one (a)
-I celebrated 3 winter holidays with my family in unconventional ways
-I came close to solving a lifelong ailment
-I was generally preoccupied with the failings of others (punctuality, decency, and reciprocation)
-I started an online Java course (learned about bits and bytes)
-I was laid off
-I participated in an anti-SOPA protest (using this very site)
-I endured

In the next 10 weeks I will finish my application, watch my brother graduate, visit Afghanistan (after 8 years of thwarted efforts), apply for work and unemployment, and I will finish my course and start another. I may have a new roommate, I may finish my book, I hope to fix some bugs on the blog and successfully plunge myself into the future.
Here’s to 10 more weeks.

Visages

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I’ve been reading a book about provincial life set in the mid 19th century and became curious about the descriptions of peoples’ faces. To me, Byronic locks and a noble chin don’t give me a good picture of someone at all. Maybe that’s because I grew up in a world with pictures and movies and internet and I’m not used to using my imagination. Maybe words are just not the best medium to describe the human face. Maybe it’s because there is more variation in face shape in 21st century California; in 19th century England, most people looked fairly similar, so a description could easily conjure up the type of face that this person might have. But lately I’ve been toying with the idea that description says more about the describer than the described.

To a disturbing extent we see what we want to see. In college I took a class in which we talked about the Portuguese discovery of Africa and America. The most advanced maps that the Portuguese had were based on world travelers, who were fairly accurate about the places they were familiar with, and less accurate about the communities on the periphery. The borders of these maps were full of fanciful monsters (one of whom used his extra large foot as a parasol to shade himself from the African sun). The explorers were so willing to believe that Africans and Native Americans were not human because they were expecting monsters that when they found people who didn’t look like them, they assumed that they must have found these monsters.

On this week’s Culture Gabfest, Stephen Metcalf recommends a genre of poems where the narrator is a person who sees someone else and fills in what they don’t know about them with their own imagination.

What is the best way to describe someone’s face? How do we use other peoples’ faces to project our own beliefs?

“Language gives a fuller image, which is all the better for beings vague. After all, the true seeing is within; and painting stares at you with an insistent imperfection. I feel that especially about representations of women. As if a woman were a mere colored superficies! You must wait for movement and tone. There is a difference in their very breathing: they change from moment to moment.—This woman whom you have just seen, for example: how would you paint her voice, pray? But her voice is much diviner than anything you have seen of her.”
–Middlemarch, George Eliot

“You see us as you want to see us, in the simplest terms and the most convenient definitions.”-The Breakfast Club, John Hughes

Update 1/28: a great description of a face

“To superficial observers his chin had too vanishing an aspect, looking as if it were being gradually reabsorbed. And it did indeed cause him some difficulty about the fit of his satin stocks, for which chins were at that time useful.”
–Middlemarch, George Eliot

Update 2/4

more monsters

Social justice

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In my constant struggle for moral clarity and social justice, I have lately been reminded of a troubling fact; justice is as much about lifting people up, as it is about putting (or pulling) people down. It’s not all about rising tides lifting all boats, and bringing people up to the tall bridge (Hanna Rosin’s version of the glass ceiling), it’s also about yanking people down from their pedestals and reminding them what it’s like to feel pain and to be hated just for being who they are.

Obviously you don’t need to be a minority to know what it feels like to be ostracized, we all went through middle school. In adolescence, it seems like everyone’s unbalanced, and sometimes the way you are unbalanced exacerbates someone else’s imbalances. But you can’t seem to help it. Life isn’t fair, and neither is divorce, or sexual harassment, or war, or poverty, or racism, or addiction, or psychosis. It’s not fair that some people are beautiful and others are ugly, that some are born rich, and talented, when the boy you like likes your best friend better, when you’re fired due to budget cuts, when you can’t seem to find the words to say what you want to say, and everyone seems to be speaking a different language altogether.

Everyone feels this, including white people including the beautiful and talented (like Joan Didion), including the 1%. Sometimes I think the occupy movement is mostly about revenge. As much as I crave revenge, there is a certain amount of injustice we just need to accept. And acceptance takes time and patience. And some pain will never go away.

Scattered

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I try to write a new post every week, to keep me in the habit, but I don’t really like writing blogposts, what I really like writing are letters. Today, instead of writing this post (or working on my personal essay for grad school) I wrote 4 postcards using my new christmas gift from the Russian (Pantone postcards) and a letter using stationary I made in a workshop taught by Barbara.

Here is a piece from the notes for my personal statement:

I once got into a debate with a friend at the University of Chicago, he was a couple years younger than i was and deciding on a major. He said he had decided on economics because it helped ‘explain the world’, I laughed and said, George, everyone says that about their major, you talk to a French lit major and they’ll say, ‘I really think French literature is the best way to help explain my world’. My mom used to say ‘it all comes down to Geography,’ but after studying it, I disagree. You can’t tell everything about a person by where they come from (I’m not a huge believer in the idea that Californians are lazy and dumb), but it does explain a lot. Tobler’s first law of geography, that everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things does still seem to have many applications.

Can someone tell me if there is a second law of geography?