tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21608453678610864302024-03-13T12:48:17.602+00:00Strangers to OurselvesTrying on a new language by Andrea PisacAndrea Pisachttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12347171013426430889noreply@blogger.comBlogger25125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2160845367861086430.post-74256569726691537402014-11-29T11:29:00.000+00:002017-11-10T15:16:34.889+00:00Back to basics<div style="margin: 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0px;">
David Bowie was once asked what he does in times of uncertainty. In those times when our identities dissolve and we’re not quite sure what we’re supposed to do. He replied: I go back to basics. For him this often meant setting up a new band, like Tin Machine - remember them? Going back to basics will mean different things for everyone. But sticking to this principle reveals what it acutally is that we’re made for doing.</div>
<div style="-qt-block-indent: 0; -qt-paragraph-type: empty; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-indent: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin: 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0px;">
My time of uncertainty has lasted for a few years. And it peaked when everything seemed to be going well - al least on the outside. I had a steady academic job doing my beloved anthropology, I was writing, I was exploring different countries. What was possibly wrong with all that? It was the lack of purpose.</div>
<div style="-qt-block-indent: 0; -qt-paragraph-type: empty; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-indent: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin: 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0px;">
Many popular advice on how to achieve happiness agree on one thing: we become happy when we do what we love, regardless of pay. They say, money always follows. I’m not disputing this. But there’s one element of happiness that usually gets left out - or is merely implied. Happiness unfolds because we feel purposeful doing what we love. And purpose involves feeling connected to the world around us. If we keep doing what we love and no one relates to it, we end up happy but alone. And at that point we ask: what’s the purpose of all this?</div>
<div style="-qt-block-indent: 0; -qt-paragraph-type: empty; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-indent: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin: 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0px;">
It’s no mere coincidence that people deliberately crash their own life when everything seems to be going perfect. We recognise this as the point of excess - when we do what we love but we end up doing it for its own sake. It fills us with hollowness. My point of excess was the same: anthropology, discovery, writing - but for what purpose? For whom? Academic articles are read by a minority of colleagues. Out there, the world faces difficult questions to which anthropologists often have smart answers. But the answers are buried in obscure publications. As a fairly closed group, we speak only to each other and this is how we stop relating to the world. </div>
<div style="-qt-block-indent: 0; -qt-paragraph-type: empty; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-indent: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin: 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0px;">
The need to popularise science has been around for a while. Even academic grants now require scholars to be more aware of ways their knowledge can reach a broader public. But too often this demand has remained a formality. Too often the world simply doesn’t recognise smartness in the academic talk. Who is responsible for that? I’m not quite sure. What I’ve noticed is that non-academics are much more fluent in the worldly talk. They relate better. And then I think: what a shame for all that hard-won knowledge to go unnoticed - simply because academia and the world at large don’t speak the same language. </div>
<div style="-qt-block-indent: 0; -qt-paragraph-type: empty; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-indent: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin: 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0px;">
My time of uncertainty is almost over. I made a crucial transformation, and it has nothing to do with changing the things I love. My basics are still anthropology, writing and exploring. I just don’t do it as an academic. I’ve crossed over to the other side of the ivory tower just by changing the perspective. I’m spending most of my time in Zagreb now. Foreign friends often ask me about Croatia because they want to travel there: what’s it like, what people are like, what they’ll need to have the best time there. I listen to them: it’s how my happiness becomes purposeful. Instead of offering them factographic advice, such as 5 best coffee shops or a list of must-see museums, I put my anthropological hat on and I tell them about ‘Croatian culture’. I write about things that are usually left out from travel guides: because they are taken for granted by the locals and hidden to the foreigners. And guess what happens: I write, they read. The world and I finally speak the same language. </div>
<div style="-qt-block-indent: 0; -qt-paragraph-type: empty; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-indent: 0px;">
</div>
<br />
<span style="text-align: justify;">Are you interested in how a trained anthropologist can write for a broad public? Head over to </span><a href="https://travelhonestly.com/zagreb-alternative-guide/" style="text-align: justify;" target="_blank">Zagreb Honestly</a><span style="text-align: justify;"> and learn ordinary things about Croatia from an extraordinary perspective.</span>Andrea Pisachttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12347171013426430889noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2160845367861086430.post-41236930220099372182011-08-05T13:28:00.002+01:002011-08-05T13:31:58.254+01:00The Right Measure<div style="text-align: justify;">Let me start with a convoluted equation: we often see the same people reacting differently to the same thing. Hard-core intellectuals for example scorn the real belief in God, but when they watch the Matrix, they get all excited about the reality of illusions. They open up to new ideas. Why? Because it happens while they're having fun.<br /><br />Having fun is all about the right measure. A little bit of knowledge, a drop of challenging novelty, comfy chairs, smooth music and a popcorn. OK, maybe an open fire and a glass of wine: the choice is limitless. What does matter is channeling the frighteningly new information in a safe and fun way. Do you know which teachers people remember longest? Those who made me laugh.<br /><br />To untangle the convolution: it is always more important <span style="font-style: italic;">how</span> we do things than <span style="font-style: italic;">what</span> we do. I learned that the hard way. Not having the right measure cost me emotionally, so I learned it good. I was in my early 20s and dating a really cool guy. I like him so darn much that I wanted to pour out my soul to him straight away. Yay - talking about the right measure. So what I did was, I compared him to one of my male icons: Christopher Dean. He not only didn't know who Christopher Dean was - one of the most inspiring ice-skaters, dance choreographers and the bloody winner of the 1984 Sarajevo Olympic Games with the sexy take on Ravel's Bolero with the amazingly graceful Jayne Torvill whom we all envied - but he cringed when I proceeded to tell him. The upshot was that the conversation took place on the phone so my embarrassment was at least a tiny bit lessened.<br /><br />You are guessing that he never called again. You're right. How simple it all looks today. But back then, my mind boggled why Christopher Dean would be such a threat to him.<br /><br />I can still hear myself say it, 'you are like Christopher Dean to me', as I daydreamed of being swept away in my boy's arms, just like dancing on ice. Yikes - then the silence on the other end. The message was definitely sweet, my heart was in the right place, my boy was probably eager to know how much I liked him, but the measure, the measure was all wrong.<br /><br />Nowadays when I like a boy and hear myself say, 'you are like Christopher Dean to me', I programmed myself to hear a screech on that record. Freeze the frame. Then I ask myself: how can I communicate my message so that the boy understands it and has fun? What is the right measure?<br /><br />For Claire L.<br /></div>Andrea Pisachttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12347171013426430889noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2160845367861086430.post-35872344227404308242011-05-01T14:54:00.002+01:002011-05-01T14:55:03.403+01:00Literally<!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify">Elizabeth Gilbert had eat, pray, love as her routine to rebirth – what could I have? What could be my trinity of recovery from years spent on finishing a PhD? Trust me, I love my PhD to bits, but having 4 years devoted to reading, studying and writing, to the exclusion of any normal social life, begs for a very serious rehabilitation plan. I wouldn’t of course write a book about this (she winks). Because there is time for everything: a season to work and a season to rest. I was merely musing about the unfolding year. And I thought of this – to replenish my physical, emotional and creative self, I would do the following: rest, play, connect (in that particular order).</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify">Resting was a killer. I planned to do it for a couple of months. I had devised all kinds of strategies on how to rest successfully and tired myself out more than when I was doing <i>real</i><span style="font-style:normal"> work. Then I was struck with a bout of a deep, </span><i>inexplicable</i><span style="font-style:normal"> depression which left me so listless that all I could do was lie in my bed, sleep and occasionally watch my favourite TV shows. It felt like being Virginia Woolf, who wrote that life was ‘behind a pane of glass’ – out there but disconnected from her. Lesson learned: you can’t control the manner and amount of rest your being needs. Just go with the flow, for god’s sake, or you’ll end up deeply depressed. If this happen, be grateful – short waves of </span><i>inexplicable</i><span style="font-style:normal"> depression are a perfect way to rest.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify">As the two months of rest were coming to an end and my energy was slowly waxing, so were the worries about what to do next: how to make a living, how to put the anthropological doctorate to good use. No time for playing (around). Sure I was applying to all sorts of academic posts and sources of funding, but my heart was left untouched. I had one overwhelming challenge: how to reconcile my creative writing (play) with the serious job (work)? Wouldn’t they destroy each other? Instead of fearing this might happen, I just stuck with an open-ended question: how can I play at work? This brought about two major shifts.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify">The first one was, you might think of it as, rather sad. I lost the teenage illusion that ‘I must be a full-time writer’ in order to fulfil my life’s purpose. In a way, I relinquish the totalitarian call that there is only one way to accomplish one’s true destiny. In hindsight, I find it extremely liberating, rather than sad. But you might not believe me if you haven’t experienced it yourself. Maturity, as compared to a wild unhindered youth, has its own perks too. I opened myself to the option of actually having a job (to earn a living) instead of insisting on being a professional writer (whatever that means).</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify">Then came the second great shift. The space which I left open suddenly became filled with the most unusual of jobs. I have become a research fellow on the project about gambling at my own (very dear) Goldsmiths College. Let me remind you that gambling is really another word for playing (usually with luck). As such, it has been around for centuries – there is evidence that the cave man gambled with bones and stones. It is why human kind is called ‘homo ludens’ – the one who plays – because the capacity to play is what distinguishes us from other species. Last but not the least, I am writing a novel about a man who is a passionate poker player and who translates his gambling rules into other areas of his life. How’s that for playing at work (she smiles)?</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify">The playing season now begins. When I asked for a perfect combination of play and work, I had no idea in what form it would arrive. That’s the magic of it. For how can we desire something completely new if we are not prepared to go through the state of uncertainty? Just a word of warning though – the universe takes all our desires seriously, and very literally. I wanted to play, I got a job researching gambling: can you be more playful than that? Careful when you send your wishes to the master. Martha Beck once wrote that she put a photo of a beautifully-designed living room on her vision board because she wanted a new sofa. She failed to notice there was a golden retriever seated by the sofa on the picture. She realised it only later, when she was given a golden retriever puppy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <!--EndFragment-->Andrea Pisachttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12347171013426430889noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2160845367861086430.post-56320841874087219772011-04-16T13:37:00.001+01:002011-04-16T13:38:28.057+01:00Ignorance is Bliss<!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify">We have all heard this saying before, but we mostly think of ignorance as a choice-less state. A place which precedes knowledge and is somehow defined by easiness, light-heartedness, even a hint of (mental) simplicity. To be ignorant, one needs no effort at all. The ignorant, another preconception convinces us, feel no pain.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify">Let me show you a different side to ignorance.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify">I thoroughly believe that Socrates was right when he said that to acknowledge one’s ignorance means to become wise. To perceive ignorance is to open up questions that lead to new understandings. Quite paradoxically then, the more ignorance we perceive, the more chance we have of becoming wise. My question then is not if ignorance is worthwhile, but how easy it is to be ignorant. My guess is: it is NOT.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify">It takes courage NOT to know. It takes more courage to admit to NOT knowing. Everything we do (our daily social rituals) and every thought we think (our mental interpretation and construction of the world) is to a large extent modelled and labelled in advance: if it wasn’t, we would quickly become neurotic. Habitual, ritualistic and even mechanical behaviour has its rightful place in our lives. Good habits can save us time, contribute to our health, support and nurture social relations. The skill of brushing our teeth, the recognition of a magpie in the park, the capacity to formulate a written argument – these are all useful knowledges. And although we exerted effort in acquiring them, they soon become an effortlessly running software of our mind.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify">Recently, I have acquired useful knowledge that has to do with personal transformation. It is a model of the journey that a person goes through from point A to point B in order to achieve a goal or change. It resembles Joseph Campbell’s ‘the hero’s saga’ where a person confronts all sorts of adversities, travels through dark and unknown worlds only to reach to the other side, transformed. This journey starts with a rupture, a sudden blow that shakes the hero’s world so that every certainty and security is lost – the hero is all alone, afraid and knows NOT what to do. Models can be useful guides through what is going on inside and outside of us. They serve as points of comparison with other people’s experience so we can feel appreciated and supported. The problem with models, though, is that they label experience. For example, for a sudden chill in our gut they say fear. People then learn the word fear and use it even when they are completely disconnected from the experience. Or they might expect that every fear for every person is the same. The biggest trap with models is that they freeze the process of experience into a product of language.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify">When I learned the ‘hero’s saga’ model, believe me I was one little happy puppy. Why? Well, because I believed that from now on, just by knowing the model, there would and could NOT exist an experience for which I wouldn’t be ready. Whatever the blow life had for me, I was there, waiting, armed with the knowledge of my model of transformation. The first step – insecurity and uncertainty – was what I was certain of. The point of that first blow, however, is to create uncertainty and insecurity all over again.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify">At the moment, I am experiencing a kind of a rupture again. It came out of nowhere. One moment everything was calm, I was on the top of my world, and then WHAM, it hit me again. So what the hell is with me that I can’t learn and use the model once and for all? Why am I never ready for the breakdown?</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify">Ignorance is bliss, but it’s oh so not effortless. It takes courage and effort to suspend all knowledge and reliance on old schemes and models. The point of rupture is to break down the old. It is called rupture because we MUST NOT be ready for it. It is its purpose to surprise us, to break us down, to grind us to the ground, to take everything from us, to make us think it’s the end of the world. And the only thing that the model can teach us is precisely this: when the rupture comes, even the model is destroyed. Does it get easier with time? Yes and no. If we suspend the knowledge and consciously choose ignorance, we stand a chance to ease ourselves into the pangs of rupture. The rupture will rage on but we might find a quiet spot in its axis. If we let the limits of our old world disappear, our new dwelling might become bigger. If we forget to label the feeling in our gut as fear, we might just reconnect with experience itself. If we scrap the model for a moment, we might just enjoy the ride.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"> <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <!--EndFragment-->Andrea Pisachttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12347171013426430889noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2160845367861086430.post-82827933055400834982011-04-05T15:01:00.004+01:002011-04-05T15:07:29.602+01:00You First<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify">It really hurts when someone blackmails us emotionally, doesn’t it? When they pop that ultimatum – <i>if you do/don’t do this, I am gone</i>. And because it hurts to be in this conditioned position, we normally dig our heels deeper and disobey the demand, even if it sounds reasonably clever.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify">Emotional conditioning is not something that only happens between two people. We treat life in such disrespectful way most of the time. A good friend of mine calls this attitude <i>I’ll be happy when…</i> or waiting for a million different things, people, events or feelings to occur before we think we can be happy. This struggle with life is like rope pulling. Life to one side, you to the other – each pulling equally hard into an impasse!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify">We have a saying in Croatia: (literally translated) the clever one lets go; the stupid one presses on.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify">So imagine what would happen if you were to give in to life. If you were to let go of the force which is pulling the rope to your side but actually keeping it stuck in one place. Just imagine. With your hands off, the rope finally moves, doesn’t it? For me as an anthropologist and a writer it has taken a few physics metaphors to understand<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>basic facts about force. Using force against force usually ends with getting stuck and completely exhausted. Sure I know of all that tao/dao of ki/chi/poo/f**k wisdom. Sentences like <i>don’t swim against the current </i><span style="font-style:normal">or </span><i>what you resist, persists</i><span style="font-style:normal"> sound interesting to me, even believable. But I never truly knew what that wisdom feels like when experienced with your whole being. Many critically inclined friends might think that I am becoming a conformist when I discard resistance as futile. Especially now when there is so much to be critical about. But this is far from the truth. What I experience when I let go of the rope is that by giving up force I make space for power.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify">Force and power couldn’t be more different. The former is hard and when it hits, it breaks both the object and itself. The latter is soft, it yields into whatever comes and so sustains life. The one who lets go is not only cleverer, but also more powerful. Because it takes courage to do something that appears illogical and counter-intuitive. Courage is not a fearless state, but a state of being determined to face whatever comes, knowing that there are resources for that. Yielding into whatever or whoever comes: lover or enemy.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify">So, what does that have to do with real life, you ask me. You are pragmatic and want to know how (meta)physics can be useful in everyday life – and that’s good. Well, a friend of mine who married a great guy after a series of horror relationships told me: when you enter a room and you feel yourself drawn to that tall dark stranger, stop and turn to the other side – the quiet one sitting in the corner is your man. Do the illogical. Break your own habitual behaviour that brings you results you don’t like. Or when you put on weight and refuse to buy jeans a size larger because you are afraid it would be a trigger to go downhill. Pulling to the opposite side of your fat metabolism, starving yourself and punishing your beautiful body with denying her nice clothes – <i>no clothes before you shrink</i><span style="font-style:normal"> type of ultimatum. Stop and think again. To shift things in the desirable direction, who should let go? You first.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <!--EndFragment-->Andrea Pisachttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12347171013426430889noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2160845367861086430.post-24104952243652836252011-03-23T23:43:00.002+00:002011-03-23T23:43:54.672+00:00Chance vs Cost<div style="text-align: justify;">Have you ever had a glimpse of what your life would have been like if you had taken a different turning at some particular crossroads in your past? I had, and it made me believe in the existence of parallel universes. The vision of me following that other route that I didn’t take was so tangible that it actually continued a particular life of its own. Its purpose, I am guessing, is to ring a warning sign in my unconscious mind.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify">Let me give you an example of something that happened a few weeks ago. A simple story: I met a guy, I liked him, he liked me, we went out a few times. But, there was something that disturbed this simplicity – a faint foreboding which like a whiff of draught snaked across my skin whenever I thought about him. I took notice but still refused to give too much competence to such involuntary sensation.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify">A slight digression: this is all taking place after I told a good friend of mine that if there was anything I would want to see invented, it would be an in-built mechanism that could warn us about whether things and people were good or bad for us. She said to always watch for the body sensations! These are important because they are NOT easily manipulated by our conscious/rational mind and so might reveal something that we know only intuitively. There are other ways in which this voice talks to us.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify">It turned out quite quickly that my foreboding was well grounded: the man was hiding a rather important fact about himself, which is that he was married but pretended otherwise. At one of our dates, as we sat in a cosy Italian restaurant, I took a photo of him. I forgot about this photo and rediscovered it the other day when I was cleaning up my memory card. I looked at his deep brown eyes, little wrinkles giving away a flirtatious smile and I felt a twitch of sadness. Too bad it didn’t work out, I really liked the guy, I thought to myself. Then, I looked closer: in the blurry background of the photo, there was a green sign FIRE EXIT. It was placed in a really funny way, almost hanging above his head with a slight shadow cast over the word ‘fire’. So all I could see was this loud warning: EXIT.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify">And exit I did. Well on time this time. Could it really be that I was unconsciously giving myself a hint about which turning to take?</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify">That EXIT sign made a complete believer in the power of the unconscious mind out of me. It also resonated with a quote from the Matrix Trilogy that I couldn’t understand until just now. The Merovingian said: ‘When some see <i>coincidence</i><span style="font-style:normal">, I see </span><i>consequence</i><span style="font-style:normal">. When others see </span><i>chance</i><span style="font-style:normal">, I see </span><i>cost</i><span style="font-style:normal">. And so I follow myself in the parallel universe in which I do end up with the brown-eyed lover, and I wonder how much that would have cost me. I know the EXIT sign was no coincidence. </span></p> <!--EndFragment-->Andrea Pisachttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12347171013426430889noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2160845367861086430.post-59453409288603583002011-03-15T00:50:00.001+00:002011-03-15T00:52:35.727+00:00Whatever it takes<!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Last time I was dealing with an overwhelming issue, I was told that the change would come only if and when I commit to do ‘whatever it takes’ to confront it. I took this powerful approach very seriously and since then have solved many demanding situations. So far, it has worked unmistakingly. So far I knew exactly what that <i>whatever </i><span style="font-style:normal">was that would get the ball rolling.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">But for the last few months – ever since I finished my PhD – I have been suffering from a rather annoying little illness: a lack of purpose. I faced the problem with the <i>whatever</i><span style="font-style:normal"> </span><i>it takes </i><span style="font-style:normal">formula. I applied for jobs, investigated options of creating yet unexisting jobs, I joined the gym, pumped the iron, started going out, started (socially) drinking and basically ruined my neat but boring daily routine. All to no avail! The result: I pedalled so fast that I dug myself even deeper into the ground.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">What if now the <i>whatever</i><span style="font-style:normal"> variable is to abort all action? What if </span><i>whatever it takes</i><span style="font-style:normal"> means accepting that achieving whatever goals is not what actually makes me happy but that happiness, on the other hand, might produce some rather interesting achievements? What if the </span><i>whatever it takes</i><span style="font-style:normal"> is to BE happy NOW as if I am already whatever I am trying to be in the future?<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">There is so much talk about relaxing, deep breathing, reconnecting with the body, letting go and just stop resisting. All these words are quite meaningless without the actual experience of what they are describing. And as aggravated and irritated with the present moment as I am right now, I am the first to shirk away from these so called simple truths – heck, I will even make fun of them. Actually, if I hear another ‘guru’ telling me to relax and just let go, I will probably lose that sweet and naïve baby-face momentarily and recall some of my Aikido moves.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">What I can’t stand now is relaxing and letting go. Not doing is my worst enemy now. After producing 98,550 words of doctoral content, I can’t cope with not having any content. I dread silence, I fear void. Don’t tell me to calm down!</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">So I pedal and pedal in my little hamster wheel. Whatever it takes to avoid stillness. This is because I have wrongfully connected stillness with dullness, dullness with emptiness, emptiness with nothingness, nothingness with senselessness… you know the spiral. Actually, the other day I spent hours talking on the phone with my guru who told me to breath deeply and calm down: the answers are coming, he said. Luckily he added this bit about the answers.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">He said that presence is not some abstract tasteless void. Quite the contrary, he said. It is most of all intelligence. Intelligence means information, information means direction, direction means knowledge, knowledge means action, action means purpose… you know the spiral? So I just shut the f**k up and the answers are coming? He nodded affirmatively. Crude – but in crude times, we need crude approaches.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">So this is it. I am relaaaaaaaxingggg noooooowwww. I shall do nothing at all. Hopefully I will soon have some answers to share with you. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <!--EndFragment-->Andrea Pisachttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12347171013426430889noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2160845367861086430.post-18432484629119465452010-06-06T19:01:00.003+01:002010-06-06T19:15:15.570+01:00Are You Authentic?<!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Are you authentic? Because if you’re not, you may fall ill with a terminal disease, find yourself bankrupt, out in the street and emotionally stranded with no kindred soul to connect to. Isn’t this the message that many personal development books and courses imply when they drum about the importance of being authentic? There is a pervasive and little questioned teaching that ‘being authentic is the only thing that can make us happy’. I don’t doubt that. I doubt their definition of authenticity by which a person is supposed to ‘dig deep’ and uncover some hidden self which has lied there for centuries but too many societal rules prevented it from popping its head up. These self-help gurus are implying that there is one and only destiny pre-written for each of us. Of course, we are not to ask by whom; if we do, we will be told it was our soul or some other intangible entity. What we are meant to do in order to become authentic is to unveil this something that is allegedly purer than the shape we are currently living from. If not, well, as I said before, we can never hope to be happy. Then enter the examples: a woman was cured of her cancer when she left the man she was not destined to be with, a man earned millions when he took the risk of leaving his old job and started the business he was always meant to do… you get the gist. What I always wondered is how do you know when you’ve dug deep enough and hit the authentic self?</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>I, as a keen reader of personal development, always had a problem with such concept of authenticity. It’s not that I don’t believe there is authenticity to strive for. My academic self has helped me to uncover and challenge the pre-destined type, but it hasn’t infected me with its virus of relativity which can make everything or nothing appear equally authentic. During my anthropological research, many studies insightfully pointed to the process which produces the aura of authenticity. Certain people or things, in the right circumstances, appear more authentic. The academic claim is that nothing in itself has that quality, but is made this way through various social processes, such as persuasion, performance, supply and demand ratio etc. More interestingly, each ownership of authenticity has a specific purpose and intention and so is quite removed from being universal and pure, qualities that personal development ascribes to it. To cut the long story short, the academia is not out to unveil its authentic self but to expose the way authenticity is being sold to us as a natural state of being. A very large part of me agrees that the uncritical waving around with authenticity needs a dose of relativity. Equally, ‘deep down’ there is a part of me that believes in some sort of authenticity as a prerequisite for happiness.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Just as I was about to jump the self-help ship on this one, I discovered one of the most ingenious approaches to becoming authentic. It was taught by Richard Bandler, the co-creator of NLP and the most amazing brain scientist, to a group of battered women. After spending some time in the shelter with them, he suggested the women changed the tone of their voice when they spoke to their violent husbands: more assertive, self-confident and clear. One of the women complained to Bandler that it wouldn’t be right for her to sound more assertive because ‘it wouldn’t be her any more’. Bandler replied, wittily as usual: ‘if the new tone of voice gets you a desired behaviour from him, believe me, honey, it will feel a lot like yourself’. Why do I believe in this type of authenticity? Because it’s not pre-determined, suggesting there is only one right way to be – one occupation, one person, one country – which if left unveiled will make us miserable. This approach honours certain values in each of us, such as freedom, respect, autonomy, flexibility. Values and attitudes guide our whole life. I can be a passionate anthropologist but if I work at a university that doesn’t respect values important to me, I will indeed be unhappy. On the other hand, whatever values anthropology holds for me can be found in a whole number of different jobs. In writing my blog or having a horse farm. Authenticity which I believe in means being aligned with your core values in whatever you do. Not the ‘you were born to do this’ storyline – this is not authenticity; it’s dogmatism.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>There’s really a very simple rule that can make anyone be more authentic and doesn’t include digging and shovelling: the ‘I don’t care what you think of my authentic self’ rule.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">This is the first in the series of posts on ‘Self-help and Academia Secret Affair’<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <!--EndFragment-->Andrea Pisachttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12347171013426430889noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2160845367861086430.post-50077832313390436032010-05-22T23:04:00.002+01:002010-05-22T23:05:13.937+01:00Zero degrees of separation<!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">When I first heard of the ‘six degrees of separation’ idea I was excited because I knew there were only 5 people between me and David Bowie. No, I will not apologize for childish adoration I still have for him. We all need something that seems slightly inappropriate for our adult selves. Struck with a sudden feeling of closeness with David Bowie, the world became a much smaller place.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Last night I went out with a very good friend of mine whose husband had dinner with Madonna in her house in London. He was on the phone to her while we walked through Shoreditch. Madonna was probably a few feet away from him. Now, there is no such adoration for Madonna in my world – I mean she is OK – but it made realize<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>that the world is shrinking yet again. Or maybe we have been wrong about there being any kind of separation. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Evidence to support the zero degrees of separation is everywhere. Let’s take physics – everything is connected. Or was it social sciences like anthropology that came up with that – man shapes and is shaped by her/his social relations. Or was it religion – God is everything and everywhere. Or laws of nature – ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Or the revolutionary research in biology that claims we can change our DNA by the power of our thoughts? </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Or my bookshelves that contain books from all of the above disciplines, which happen to be connected in one thing – claiming that everything really is connected. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">You see, there is an issue with my bookshelves. Those with ‘serious’ books and hard science are displayed in my living room. My friends admire them. In the bedroom, I keep a secret library of books that I know most my friends would mock. Why? Because I read self-help. Of course, only clever self-help. And you can see now that by apologizing I am hiding them from your view again. So I will stop, because everything is connected. Self-help and serious academic research are connected. This is what I realized after that phone call from Madonna’s house. To prove it to you, in my next post, I will write about what self-help and anthropology have to say about authenticity. It’s that thing that everybody is raving about. We have to be authentic, and there’s only one way to be authentic – that old tune. So stay tuned…</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">How else I know that everything is connected? Well, I write this blog thinking that no one really reads it. But recently, several people emailed me and told me they are my readers. We are connected. It’s nice. This one is for you, guys.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></p> <!--EndFragment-->Andrea Pisachttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12347171013426430889noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2160845367861086430.post-13744605093409144492010-03-07T14:34:00.002+00:002010-03-07T21:57:01.056+00:00Fabulous<div style="text-align: justify;">I have fabulous friends. Life reveals them as such. Just this week, some got married in the most unusual of places, some got broken up with and got through it with dignity, some got to feel more at ease with themselves, some got their dream jobs, some got so<span style=""> </span>lucky with their Guardian Soulmates date that they are parents now; and some got back into my life. This week has, indeed, been quite eventful. Yet somehow I stayed put. It reminded me of the time I spent in rural Austria when in the evenings I would climb up to a wooden hide and watch the deer graze. Just watch life and its fabulousness. </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--><!--[endif]--> I also turned off unhelpful voices with supposedly important and urgent messages, such as: <i>you haven’t read enough for this chapter, you should work harder, you should get out of the house to catch some sunshine</i><span style="font-style: normal;">, and spent the weekend listening to Rachelle Farrell. Now this is the voice! A six octave range and the heart of a lioness. When she sings, I think of a wolf howling at the Moon. Not because the sound is similar to howling (though there are some vocal exhibitions that surpass ‘regular’ singing, and I mean it in a </span><i>oh-my-god-this-is-so-fucking-good </i><span style="font-style: normal;">sense), but because she sounds as if she has no other choice but to sing. Like, the Moon is out and the instinct is there to sing – she was born to do it. She is the sound of fabulousness. <o:p></o:p></span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--><!--[endif]--> Then something fabulous happened, or should I say transpired. I didn’t have to do or be anything that radiates fabulousness. This resonated with the words of my Aikido teacher who said – <i>you have most power when you don’t move at all. </i><span style="font-style: normal;">These days, he only uses his gaze to discourage whoever wants to ‘fight’ him. In this little bubble of ‘not having to’, with my hips stubbornly anchored in stillness, I sensed fabulousness creeping up on me. Now is this madness or freedom?<o:p></o:p></span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--><!--[endif]--> PS. A friend of mine watched a girl he liked for months. Every weekend, she just stood in the corner of a room and observed people having fun. When he finally got enough courage to approach her and ask her out, she turned out to be an anthropologist. <span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></p> <!--EndFragment-->Andrea Pisachttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12347171013426430889noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2160845367861086430.post-4369754716827826372010-03-03T13:11:00.001+00:002010-03-03T13:13:07.999+00:00Avocado - fruit or vegetable?<div style="text-align: justify;"><!--[endif]-->I think it is safe to generalize that during communism we couldn’t buy tropical fruit in ex Yugoslavia. So, when my Mum brought an avocado one day, we all felt pretty excited. I don’t know how she got hold of it, but I do remember that we didn’t have the faintest idea of what to do with it and HOW to eat it. Was it sweet or savoury? Should it be served with dinner or dessert? Was it fruit or vegetable? Finally, we discovered that it didn’t have a particularly strong taste so it could be served any way we wanted to. My Mum cut it in slices and dressed it with lemon juice and sugar. I thought it was weird, but I kept quiet because ‘if it was foreign, it must have been good’. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--><!--[endif]--> With the fall of communism and me travelling to the West, I discovered that avocado, though having most traits of a fruit, was actually used in savoury dishes. I fell in love with guacamole and I would always use half an avocado to spice up my salad. Often I would remember my Mum’s recipe as a ‘wrong’ way to serve avocado and I would laugh at how ‘stupid’ we once were. Until the other night when I was invited to a dinner at a friend’s house. T. suggested to make an avocado salad alongside the main dish. I thought it was going to be the kind of salad I usually make: vegetables, avocado and dressing. But he made an all avocado salad: just avocado with a bit of olive oil, sea salt and a sprinkling of sunflower seeds. Inside myself, I frowned to this ‘wrong’ way of serving avocado. But I still ate it. Tentatively to start with and then with more appetite and appreciation. It was delicious. I can still taste the nutty flavour and soft melting texture of avocado which occasionally turned almost too salty as a grain of sea salt melted on my tongue. </p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--><!--[endif]--> It was then that I stopped defining avocado. I couldn’t care less if it was a fruit or a veg, I just wanted to taste it in all its richness. So instead of asking <i>what is avocado</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> I asked myself </span><i>what does avocado do for me</i><span style="font-style: normal;">?</span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--><!--[endif]--> I am telling this story because I find a striking similarity between the avocado case and the recent ‘insomnia’ that I suffered. As long as I kept talking about my sleeping patters as ‘insomnia’ and treating it as a problem, the situation that was making me tired persisted. I complained to a friend <i>how insomnia this</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> and </span><i>insomnia that</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> and she said </span><i>how about you stop calling whatever you’re going through insomnia?</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> </span><i>How about accepting that an intense writing time might ask for a different mind-body rhythm?</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> Once I let go of the label – fruit or veg; problem or blessing – I was ready to follow the new rhythm my mind and body were synching into. I would try to fall asleep at 1am, but failing that, I would stay awake – no regret – until 6am. This was the most productive, magical and revealing time for me. I would find information on the internet or reach for a book that would never cross my path in ‘normal’ circumstances. A whole new world opened up for me as I let myself be awake during the night. The less I worried about my sleeping patterns, the easier it got to fall asleep after those magical nocturnal times. And slowly, as the structure and content for my next PhD chapter evolved, and I accepted the mysterious ways of creativity, I started sleeping. Whenever I wanted to and as much as I wanted to. </span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--><!--[endif]--> It you’re still unsure of what the message of this text is, it might be because I have become wary of labelling and defining. There is power in labelling: by naming things, we bring them to life. In case we then suffer at the hand of those labels, let’s not forget that we have the power to remove them. If you can’t sleep, how about not calling this <i>insomnia</i><span style="font-style: normal;">? How about asking yourself what your peculiar sleeping rhythm is doing for you? And how it might be valuable? <o:p></o:p></span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--><!--[endif]--> For the valuable de-labelling experience, big thanks to my friends: C, C, O, T, J and mother (as always). </p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><span style=""> </span></p> <!--EndFragment-->Andrea Pisachttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12347171013426430889noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2160845367861086430.post-91604659134551255862009-11-04T18:28:00.000+00:002009-11-04T18:29:48.035+00:00what is anthropology<div style="text-align: justify;">After having spent 3 years writing my PhD thesis in anthropology, you would think I have a pretty clear idea of what anthropology is. Never mind the troubles with posing and answering my research questions or making sense of my ethnographic data. What I should know by now is what the discipline I’ve devoted my adult life is all about. You would think that, wouldn’t you. We’ve spent all our lives living this life, and do we know what it’s all about? </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--><!--[endif]--> A word of warning: when you read a post like this one, you know you’re dealing with a writer who has been plagued with a dread of the blank page. Instead of going to my PhD supervisor who knows everything about anthropology, I choose to chat to a friend of mine who has no clue of what anthropology is. Yet, he is very curious. Everytime we have coffee, he keeps switching the conversation to the topic I fear most. He looks at me with his childish eyes and, tilting his head to one side, he asks: what is anthropology, can you explain it to me in simple words?<span style=""> </span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--><!--[endif]--> No academic talk ever satisfies him. Theories and trends in anthropological research just wash over him. He wants to know the purpose of anthropology. If anthropology is the science about man, shouldn’t I know everything about human kind? Shouldn’t I know why people behave the way they do and shouldn’t that make me wiser about my own life? It feels like explaining to a child where the rain comes from. The truth is whatever we do, we somehow always reach those difficult questions about the purpose of our endeavours. Those questions, no matter how annoying, have the power to yank us out of the blocks we find ourselves in.</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--><!--[endif]--> So I’ve realized, to finish my PhD thesis, I need two mentors: one who knows everything about anthropology and the other who knows nothing about it. This gives me the right balance between the security of wisdom and insecurity of knowledge.<span style=""> </span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> <!--EndFragment--> </div>Andrea Pisachttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12347171013426430889noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2160845367861086430.post-81529629978954344422009-10-18T19:00:00.001+01:002009-10-18T19:01:25.283+01:00Socially Inapt<div style="text-align: justify;"><!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal">When I moved from Croatia to London, I practically moved from ‘who you are’ culture to ‘what you do’ one. Social mobility back home was mostly based on who your closest relatives were: if they belonged to the right ethnic group which would subsequently give them enough social power. Stick with them, and you’re guaranteed a good job in any industry where they have connections. Meritocracy and individual talent are unheard of virtues in that context. On the other hand, moving up on the social ladder, even schmoozing around at a party, in London means impressing people with what you do. Creative industry, academia and high positions in a charitable organization are worth the loudest sighs of approval. You will know you’ve delivered a powerful self-presentation if people never leave your sight, offer you a top-up or a free joint. And if there is a polite, but undoubtedly hollow, invitation ‘you must come round to our place sometimes’ while you’re saying good bye to the guests, it means you have become integrated in your new cultural environment. If this is all there is to social life on either sides, I can positively define myself as socially inapt. What I am looking for in communication still has no clear name, but I’ll let you know when it dawns on me. Until then, I will happily stay at home enjoying solitude. <span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span></p> <!--EndFragment-->Andrea Pisachttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12347171013426430889noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2160845367861086430.post-72018639611517473552009-10-07T15:24:00.003+01:002009-10-07T15:38:50.943+01:00Dedications<div style="text-align: justify;">When you open a book, are you one of those people who closely read through acknowledgements and dedications? Do you skip author’s biography at the end of the book or are you compelled to connect their real lives to the fictional plot? </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--><!--[endif]--> Recently, I found whole studies about parts of books that I never noticed existed: there is an academic volume on footnotes, author’s biographies and introductions. I didn’t find anything about dedications. But, my own unease and even regret about dedicating my books to certain people made me ponder what that single line, placed at the opening of the story, means to the author. How is it related to the writing process and emotions that guide us when we create?</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--><!--[endif]--> When I want to be funny, I say that the safest people to dedicate your book to are your parents: they will never stop loving you and you will never fall out with them. I know this might not be the case with everyone, but it is for me. I dedicated my last book to my ex boyfriend, and I have regretted it for a very long time. We have fallen out with each other since and now his name stands there as a reminder of a broken dream. What is even worse is that I consciously decided to put this dedication when our relationship was already crumbling. It was a desperate attempt to solidify a bond that was not meant to be. And if books can be compared to children, then my act felt as if I was trying to save something that was already far beyond repair. </p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--><!--[endif]--> The complication doesn’t stop there. My book was published in Croatian, a language he doesn’t speak. His English name was written with a suffix denoting a grammatical case and his only comment when he saw the book published was that it looked ridiculous. My only impression of him not being able to understand my writing was hopelessness: there was no communication between our different worlds. </p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--><!--[endif]--> A year ago, I started writing a novel in English. When I received a grant from the organization Exiled Writers Ink and they offered to publish the first three chapters in a form of a chapbook, I was faced with choosing another dedication. I was horrified. The editor reminded me three times that I had to have a dedication, even though I tried different ways to wriggle out of it. With no choice left, I considered the safest option: I decided to honour Blake Morrison, my mentor who helped me with the manuscript, thinking there would be no way I could ever fall out with him. <i>A great teacher not only excels in his discipline, but in giving his pupils exactly what they need. To my mentor, Blake Morrison. Thank you for encouraging me to claim the English language as my own. </i><span style="font-style: normal;">I was pleased with that dedication. </span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--><!--[endif]--> You should always dedicate your book to someone who has taught you something. That might not always be your safest option: a choice which won’t hurt. But it’s the truth. Because if my mentor taught me to say <i>yes</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> to a new kind of communication, my ex boyfriend certainly taught me when to say </span><i>no </i><span style="font-style: normal;">to the wrong one. Both are my teachers. When I think about what to do for the second edition of my Croatian book, I now know that I want to keep the ‘ridiculously’ spelt English name inscribed there. <o:p></o:p></span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--><!--[endif]--> I told you: there is a story behind every part of the book that we often fail to notice<span style=""></span><o:p></o:p></p> <!--EndFragment-->Andrea Pisachttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12347171013426430889noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2160845367861086430.post-65987850241560440992009-02-02T16:53:00.002+00:002009-02-02T17:45:13.735+00:00Get Your Facts RightI am a writer – I LOVE fiction.<br /><br />For me to have to look at the facts of life is like being forced to eat dirt. It’s bland, uninteresting and too difficult. Mostly I see no sense in doing it. If someone faces me with the truth, I ask – what is it for? Why should I be able to do it?<br /><br />But here is why.<br /><br />Has anyone ever told you that happiness lies in accepting life as it is? Making peace with reality? I hope so. Because this actually is true. But, the eternal question is – how do you make peace with reality if you don’t know what is real. A change of values is needed here. Whereas fiction is beautiful, imaginative and creative and definitely has its place in novels, a reality check is a hugely underestimated but deeply rewarding pursuit. This is what I have been after recently. And with one purpose only. To learn how to accept.<br /><br />I guess you probably know that a certain situation may consist of a limited number of facts and limitless stories that we can tell about them. Two people see a glass filled up to half of its content – for the optimist, this is a half-filled glass and for the pessimist, it’s half-empty. One person will always tell you a story of their life in a heroic way, the other will moan like an eternal victim. They might have been in the same shoes, you will never know. The power of our narration is boundless.<br /><br />The point is to strip away the narration and keep the facts. This way you win.<br /><br />I want to show you a story of becoming a writer: fiction and facts.<br /><br />Fiction:<br />I am not writing hard enough.<br />My editor is putting pressure on me. <br />My inspiration sucks. I will never be a good writer.<br />If I don’t become an established writer, I am a loser.<br />The sales of my book are really low. It means people don’t like my work.<br /><br />Facts:<br />I have written 42 pages of my novel.<br />My editor emailed me 3 times to ask about my progress.<br />Last chapter of my novel took more time and effort than previous ones.<br />I write. This is accomplishment.<br />My book sold 960 copies in the last year.<br /><br />Do you notice how the fiction paragraph creates pain? And how, for some unfathomable reason, we really LOVE to wallow in it. Can you also see that it is much easier to accept the list of facts? There is almost nothing personal about it. No matter how much you resist, the truth is, life is not personal. Only the story is.<br /><br />Though I LOVE telling stories, I have decided to limit this activity for when I sit down in front of the blank screen. Don’t worry! You’ll still enjoy my pain-driven characters who run around in circles trying to figure out their lives. You’ll savour their drama, laugh at their ridiculous behaviour, fret about the outcomes of their decisions just as much as I have in the process of writing. But this is all I give of me. When it comes to life, from now on, I am getting my facts right. This is a win-win situation. Wanna try it yourself?Andrea Pisachttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12347171013426430889noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2160845367861086430.post-65192808471888321152009-01-23T23:54:00.003+00:002009-01-24T10:38:09.082+00:00When the Hell Are You Going to Be Perfect?<div style="text-align: justify;">Are you doing this to yourself as well? Beating yourself up for every single thing that you should or should not have done? Thinking that you need to live up to someone else’s expectations. Filling up your daily schedule with unreasonable tasks because you don’t believe that you are acceptable just by the fact that you exist. There is no one else there in your head. OK, there is a voice that judges you all the time – you’re too lazy, too fat, not good enough – but you don’t have to believe it. My friend calls this voice a little owl. She imagines the bird sitting on her shoulder, spitting abuse at her and making her feel worthless. One day she got so tired of the little owl making this noise so she decided to make friends with it. She smiled at it, stroked it and told it to go to sleep. When you’re trying to be perfect all you’re doing is really missing out on life as it is. I have another animal metaphor for this – the hamster in the wheel syndrome. I have been pedalling there myself. Believe me. I was in such a hurry that I got out of breath, broke my little plastic wheel, dropped on the floor and realized – wow, I am still in my cage. I haven’t moved an inch.<br /><br />I am writing a novel at the moment. It’s going to be a master piece. So says the little owl. And I usually fall for it.<br /><br />An artist asked me recently how I can sustain the enthusiasm and dedication for such a long time that is needed to finish a novel. I told him that every writer needs to believe their book will be the best ever written to be able to plough on. When I said that, I immediately went into a writer’s block. What the hell did I do wrong? I had a perfect synopsis, I believed in my idea, the characters came alive and kept talking to me in my dreams. I talked about my plot with friends and they liked it. They said – uh, this is going to be big. So I smiled smugly. Every piece of the puzzle was there. It’s just that the paper remained white.<br /><br />I couldn’t write. No word that came out of me was perfect enough. So I stopped bothering. I couldn’t even turn the computer on let alone look at the blank page. I was so overwhelmed by my doubt that I am not a real writer – real writers write, don’t they – that I managed to forget that I have actually written a few books in my life. So I started another project. Every day, I devoted some time to writing about why I wasn’t able to write, what was the point of writing, what was I if I wasn’t a writer, what would it be like when I became a real writer. The last topic brought about some pretty macabre pictures in my mind. Don’t laugh. The megalomaniac list of benefits that I would eventually reap as a real writer broke my heated wheel in which I was running myself into the ground. I remembered my grandfather’s funeral some twenty years ago. You should know that my surname in my mother tongue means ‘a writer’, which some people say is so obviously destiny at work – I just had to be a writer. I find it a joke today. Because I fell for this destiny business, and I tried too hard to justify it, the joke was on me. The little owl laughed heartily. So my grandfather Writer was buried in a small village, tucked away in the arid landscape of Dalmatian Hinterland. I was sitting on an old chair, carved from a single piece of wood, while a river of people gathered in front of the stone house. They told me these were all my relatives. And friends of the relatives. And people who were sent by those relatives who couldn’t travel from abroad to the funeral. There were more than a hundred people standing in a small rocky yard. Each came to express their condolences. Some said how I have grown since the last time they saw me and some introduced themselves there for the first time. Our family was enormous. My grandfather must have been a great man if he was able to gather so many people. A great Writer, I thought. One of the most ridiculous wishes on my megalomaniac list was to have as many people at the launch of my novel as the old Writer had at his funeral.<br /><br />Stop. You said you wouldn’t laugh. This is what it’s like when the demon of perfectionism inhabits your head.<br /><br />So the wheel broke and I finally looked up at the bars of my cage. I rested. It felt nice to stop, legs in the air. This is how I am doing my writing today. I’ve stopped believing in destiny and in master pieces. Each day, I write for 15 minutes. Sometimes, maybe half an hour if the rhythm really takes me. Whatever I put on the paper has absolutely no intention of being the best book ever written in the history of literature. Actually, when I sit at the desk, I tell myself – this is a crap draft of my novel, and I love it. Today, I don’t have to write anything better than that. And so, the little owl is finally fed and happily slumbering away.<br /><br /> <br /><br /></div>Andrea Pisachttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12347171013426430889noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2160845367861086430.post-13222221425324498212008-12-04T18:05:00.001+00:002008-12-04T18:06:11.475+00:00Traitor<div style="text-align: justify;">As an anthropologist, I should be observing the world on the basic premise that there is a cultural difference between here and there; between us and them. By saying this, I am seriously simplifying complex anthropological theories. They argue that it is more important to see HOW culture is constructed rather than compare different cultural expressions. Yet, I doubt there would be any incentive to do ethnographic research if we believed that people are everywhere the same.<br /><br />My fieldwork in Croatia is progressing comfortably well. I talk to lots of interesting people while getting smoked out in cafes and bars. I stick to coffee as my favourite drink, knowing full well the downsides of too much caffeine. Early morning beer or a shot of herbal brandy, which seem to be favourite choices of my male informants are beyond my level of fitness. I couldn’t handle those even for the sake of my PhD degree. Of course I can see how publishing, my ethnographic topic, is different in the Balkans from the one in the UK. The circle of people is much smaller and business is always done in the most informal of places. I am mostly astonished by the fact that no one is ever to be found in their offices. Instead, there is a street filled with cafes where you can find all the right people you need to get something done. And when translated into the context of a busy book fair, this means that nobody is ever at their stand, but doing business in a nearby bar or restaurant. I would say, Croatia is arguably more informal than the UK. But if I think again, this is questionable too. Why so?<br /><br />When I stop asking WHAT and start asking WHY, it clearly transpires that glasses of wine that usually accompany London literary events or business lunches that people schedule in only to keep in touch and pick each other’s brains bring both groups of publishers to the same goal – doing business in an informal way. I hate to say this, but I fear I am becoming a traitor of my own academic discipline. The only thing that I have noticed so far is that people use different tactics to achieve the same results. Does that realization undercut an a priori position of social sciences that everything depends on the specific socio-cultural context? Am I becoming some kind of absolutist who believes that there is a part of human beings which is universal and unchangeable?<br /><br />I can’t deny the evidence that prove my position, even though the academia might find it childish and obsolete. For example, a friend of mine told me that the streets of Zagreb have become extremely aggressive and dangerous. Teenagers with pent up rage scream and intimidate people on trams and the only way you can deal with them is if you firmly look in their eyes, as if saying – don’t you dare mess with me. You need a killer look, my friend teaches me. He is a Croatia’s war veteran and I don’t question his word. But I still choose the English way – look away on public transport. See? Both cultures use eye contact to achieve the same result. Here, we pierce with our eyes, there we avoid each others eyes, only to be left alone. Our basic human need is met – we have defended ourselves.<br /><br />Both friends in London and friends in Zagreb talk about their relationship problems. I listen to them with patience because I sincerely want to understand the human nature. And guess what – I see no difference. Everything has always revolved around our desire to share love and closeness with another human being. How we do it might differ but why we bond, share, argue and fall out boils down to reasons that reveal our universal human nature. When the ethnographic work is finished for the day, and I sit silently making sense of everything I have observed, I have one overwhelming sensation – I have totally forgotten where I am. Am I in London or in Zagreb? Or is it just the same? <br /><br /></div>Andrea Pisachttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12347171013426430889noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2160845367861086430.post-68954844759604156082008-11-01T19:17:00.002+00:002008-11-01T19:28:46.725+00:00In Case of Emergency, Leave Everything Behind<div style="text-align: justify;">Just before the plane takes off, I am one of those people who always pay attention to the instructions on what to do if something goes wrong. We are few – because most passengers are already busy with leafing through in-flight magazines, sending last minute text messages or just chatting to their friends who are travelling with them. Plane journeys evoke a strange emotional reaction in me. Often I even cry a little while the plane is speeding up seconds before it climbs on top of the hot air current. I am not afraid of the ‘something can go wrong’ scenario. Ultimately, I am not afraid to die. What I dread is the disconnection between my body and my soul – and this is what normally happens to me. My body crosses several thousands miles in a few hours and when I reach my final destination, I feel as if I had left my soul behind. And no matter how clearly I know that the soul has no concept of time and space, I always feel lost and incomplete when I land at the destined airport.<br /><br />As a true romantic, I believe that in the old days things were simpler. People travelled on horses or ships and allowed their emotional landscape to slowly adjust to the changes of the outside world. There was time to leave things behind, to stop thinking about everything and everyone we couldn’t take with us and they slowly and naturally merged with the new reality. Modern times create sudden and shocking crevices between then and now. We are forced to let go of our world within seconds, in those minutes when the flight attendant is showing us our nearest emergency exit.<br /><br />Modern times are crueller. We have time only to think about us. In case of an unfortunate event, the oxygen mask drops from above you. You breathe first and only then help others. Modern times force us to think about that most precious, most valuable thing without which we cannot live. What is the thing that we carry inside us everywhere we go? What should we never leave behind?<br /><br />Last time I buckled up on the plane to Croatia, I was experiencing a kind of spiritual emergency. I was leaving one life behind – a knot of sadness, regret, anger and guilt. I could sense how each emotion was holding tight to the English ground, as if connected to the air strip with heavy rings. I knew the plane was about to detach from my London home, but I still wasn’t ready to let go. The physical motion is rarely enough to untie and release the emotional ball and chain. We can travel the world and still run around in circles, going mad in the claustrophobic chamber of our tired heart. This time, I think I even overheard the flight attendant’s safety drill. I woke up when I heard her words, which I swear they normally don’t use on short European flights: in case of emergency, leave everything behind.<br /><br />Everything didn’t mean my suitcase, my sandwich or my iPod. It meant my mistakes, regrets, things and people that drain me, even desires and ambitions which tell me that I am never good enough. So, I closed my eyes and I severed those ropes that a minute ago were strong enough to take the whole continent with me. I located the nearest emergency exit and I took off. I took only me.<br /><br /></div>Andrea Pisachttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12347171013426430889noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2160845367861086430.post-58390171939407362562008-10-21T00:40:00.003+01:002008-10-22T00:11:46.531+01:00East European Peasant in London<div style="text-align: justify;">Being an East European in London, I have experienced much politically incorrect behaviour which targeted my geographical origin rather than the universal human one. I have stopped wasting energy on being hurt by racist comments in Daily Mail type articles which spread the fear that people from my region steal and eat the royal swans in this country. They say it is necessary to sign-post London canals with a picture of a swan and a raised hand denoting a stop – refrain from killing and eating – to an allegedly illiterate, non-English speaking East European.<br /><br />I have even been chatted up by a polite Englishman who, after finding out I was from Croatia, innocently commented: aren’t all women from your part of the world prostitutes? I innocently replied, thought I doubt that he understood my sense of humour: yes, I started as one as well, but now I moved on to do a PhD here.<br /><br />But when an educated Yorkshireman who used to be my partner called me an East European peasant, I decided it was time to spend energy on venting out my outrage. I wondered to myself: do we need to wait for an ‘equal opportunities’ questionnaires to introduce a category ‘East European’ for a certain number of British people to recognize their cultural abuse? When a so called innocent joke gets too close to the bone, it even stops being a mere personal insult. It becomes a reflection of a malaised society – the one which is not concerned about genuine, self-motivated, respect for cultural differences but only about ticking boxes once they have been created by outside authorities.<br /><br />The conversation was always about style. Apparently, we, East Europeans have no style in clothing, he concluded. Our jeans are not trendy enough, because we don’t spend enough money on the right brand and, by the way, they are totally unflattering to our flat enormous bottoms. Our tops are drab and unimaginative because we don’t know how to match colours – we are colour cowards – and we don’t reveal enough flesh. He said, we suffer from the lack of self-confidence so we walk with hunched shoulders and refuse to show our cleavages. When we wear turtle-necks in the winter, we are actually falsely prudish, hiding away our repressed sexuality. We should also examine ulterior motives of our need to wear warm and comfortable pyjamas during cold and damp English nights, because what is normal is to sleep naked, allowing our imperfect bodies to be sexually accessed at any time. Our worst crime is not wearing high heels which could actually help our posture look more feminine and extravagant.<br /><br />We are guilty for valuing common-sense comfort over ludicrous ever-changing trends. For that, we are accused of having values of old boring ladies. ‘What’s going to be next’, he asked me when I refused to buy shoes on the basis of pure aesthetics ‘light pink and blue, like an old granny’s autumn coat?’<br /><br />To win this argument, I even borrowed words of a famous fashion designer, one of his heroes – 90% of what you call style is personal choice and the WAY you wear the clothes you love, only 10% is trend. Style s reflected in your self-confidence, I proudly said, trying to defend my right to be different, to be me. But reasoning is the last thing on the mind of someone who has no eyes and no interest to allow your uniqueness and difference. Insisting on his own version of truth, he concluded the discussion: you, East Europeans, you don’t have any self-confidence, you grew up under communism, where there were only two flavours of ice-cream. So much about dictatorship…<br /><br />In Eastern Europe, we had three flavours of ice-cream: chocolate, vanilla and strawberry. We wear comfortable clothes and we keep warm at night. We were taught to show our bodies to our lovers and not in the street. We don’t eat swans. We can read and write. We can also talk back when we feel our line has been crossed. This is because we have self-confidence.</div>Andrea Pisachttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12347171013426430889noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2160845367861086430.post-19351031134268043432008-08-09T23:02:00.003+01:002008-08-09T23:06:13.752+01:00Who am I writing this for?<div style="text-align: justify;">Ever since I learned how to tell my first story, the wild child in me wanted to write. It wanted to play around with words, characters and thousands of different plot sequences that shape our lives as we make our daily choices. I wanted to make sense of how I experienced the world by putting together a meaningful story – an explanation of the chaos around us.<br /><br />Life is a non-linear chaos. Everything and anything is possible. It is happening right now and it is beyond our understanding.<br /><br />I take my little people and their little events and arrange them in a meaningful and comprehensible plot. The one which offers a resolution at the end, possibly a catharsis as well. By lining them up along one plausible explanation of their life story, I take away choices from them. Choices to experience the world around them in any way they want and regardless of how grave and difficult their circumstances might be. So far, my favourite character has been a woman who feels rejected by her partner and who is desperately trying to improve their flaky relationship. To be able to create a dynamic tension in the story, I need to position this female character as rejected and clingy. I also need to portray the man as a cold, evasive and emotionally unavailable bastard who is in the relationship just for the ride. I don’t even have to tell you what will happen to them. Because the moment I told you how the two of them experience themselves in their own eyes, I have denied them the choice to see their reality in any different way. They are locked in the narrative.<br /><br />Yet, they could also be a couple who is deeply in love with each other but is taking some time to concentrate on other things apart from their relationship. OK, I know what you think – there is no drama in this.<br /><br />Every narrative is restrictive. It offers explanation at the expense of multiplicity of outcomes and choices. Not every narrative is equally desirable and profitable though. Especially in this country, there are very strict poetic rules about what type of story and style of writing are acceptable and sellable. I am sitting at editorial meetings of several publishing houses and note down all the drawbacks of newly arrived manuscripts. One has too many metaphors, the other is too vague and leaves the reader uneasy. The story is either too simple or not gripping enough. Some might say that I am sitting on a golden egg here by having access to all these rules that can help me write a perfect manuscript. I have the insider’s view to what publishers want. I could write a winning manuscript!<br /><br />I could.<br /><br />Yet, I choose not to. And I make this decision after a huge anxiety attack that made me list all the expectations that publishers have of a manuscript that they would consider buying. As the list in my head frantically grew, my confidence scarily fell to pieces. I asked myself – who am I writing this for? Who is my intended audience? Who do I need to satisfy? Which mould do I need to fit? And then this desperate narrative of fitting in also cracked along the seem.<br /><br />I remembered – those who write to fit an already existing form stand a good chance of getting published. Along the way though, they risk losing their creativity by trying to fit in and satisfy the poetic trend. They will mass produce – every year one book. They will be able to call themselves full-time writers and will make a mediocre living out of it. They will call themselves successful writers but they will not feel the success in their heart. They will wake up one day and have the anxiety attack.<br /><br />I don’t know who I am writing this for – this very text. I don’t have my intended audience in mind. I know which narrative is in vogue with most publishers at this moment, but I had to give myself a panic attack to realize it’s best for me to forget about this insider’s knowledge. The more I know about expectations of my readership, the less I am in touch with my writer’s voice. With the wild child.<br /><br />Those who have written without any regard to publishers or readers have brought us the most creative and innovative stories and characters. They have given us the juicy, authentic, heart of creation. They have moved boundaries and broken poetic moulds. And yet, very often, they have not been considered successful writers in their time.<br /><br />For a long time, I have believed that a successful writer is the one who knows how to communicate their message to their audience. My definition always involved some kind of exchange and validation of the writer’s voice from outside of themselves. Now, I’ve changed my mind. The successful writer is the one who writes from and for themselves. Their voice is born out of silence and not out of publishers’ expectations and popular trends. They welcome panic attacks that bring them back to their wild child story-tellers.</div>Andrea Pisachttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12347171013426430889noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2160845367861086430.post-77473707273497382462008-07-27T15:39:00.002+01:002017-11-10T15:20:25.880+00:00We live as we dream, alone.<div style="text-align: justify;">
I came across this famous sentence of Conrad's in his <span style="font-style: italic;">Heart of Darkness</span> when I was in my late teens. It gave me a profound and painful shock, so long-lasting that I am still juggling and struggling with it emotionally in my thirties. This time, the thought is giving me a whole new ground from which to look at my life and reclaim what I have so far experienced as troublesome destiny.<br />
<br />
We often pick up interesting thoughts that are floating around us. Some come from our parents, other from peers, books and various media. Thoughts anchor themselves deep in our psychological landscape without asking for permission. We make a perfect host for them, and no matter how interesting, deep, and philosophical they may sound, many of them cause us inexplicable anguish. Take the 19-year-old me: I embraced this Conrad’s thought with ovation only to be able to justify my adolescent suffering about not fitting in with my self-centred and pretentious social surroundings. The reality, of course, was that I didn’t fit in, just as much as anybody who has grown out of the herd mentality doesn’t fit in. So, instead of looking for fresh pastures, I dressed my social wounds with the intoxicating depth of Conrad’s mind, whilst staying with the same group of horses whose unsavoury name was ‘The Bambus Clan’ – bunch of high school girls who called themselves after a drink <span style="font-style: italic;">bambus</span>, a deadly combination of coke and cheap red wine that sent us unconscious and sick every Saturday night.<br />
<br />
I would have done anything to smoothly fit in with the constitution of the Bambus Clan – anything but not care if I did fit or not. So I tossed them the Conrad’s thought, knowing how much they valued suffering as one of the ‘coolest’ things a teenager can do. They praised me for being so meaningful, for giving them the expression of their otherwise inexpressible pain and alienation. They used Conrad’s idea as a means of social cohesion – they wallowed together in the realization that understanding between people is utterly impossible. We would go out together and drink more <span style="font-style: italic;">bambus</span> to ease the pain and secure the bond. I wallowed in the same realization a bit more than them, which made me understand that I will never be able to fit in with another social group. I finally managed to scare myself to death by believing that alienation, separation and coldness are closing in on us and that this was all we could hope for in the life to come.<br />
<br />
I wrote a book about love which I called Absence and I dedicated the first story to Joseph Conrad. I thought there is really nothing to talk about in terms of love but how much it sucks when love is not around. And though I plodded through 200 pages grieving and morning the human condition, the inability of two people to be joined as one, I already sensed that this heartache might be caused by our own deceiving minds. I wrote in the opening of the book: Absence has less to do with the lack of the Other and more to do with our own disposition. I understood then that I am not suffering because of reality itself – which is that people are separate, individual beings who come together to try and share their lives – but because I have been convinced that this was a tragic and dismal destiny of our kind.<br />
<br />
Since then, there have been other, exaggerated, variations of experiencing separateness as an apocalyptic state of existence. After leaving Croatia, the ‘fear of being alone’ has mutated into the ‘fear of being alone in England’ – don’t ask me by which logic, but I was convinced that, if I went <a href="https://travelhonestly.com/back-to-croatia" target="_blank">back to Croatia</a>, I would never feel alone again. I tried reminding myself how I used to hate Zagreb for its unfriendliness and aloofness; how I would roam empty and neglected leafy paths on Sundays, grumbling about lazy Croats because nobody wanted to join me. They all preferred their family barbecues. Yet, from my London perspective, empty streets of Zagreb looked pleasingly lively.<br />
<br />
I noticed something positive about these illogical mind twists that I played on myself. I noticed that a thought that is skimming my troubled mind is the very source of my heartache. First I think We live as we dream, alone. Then I say, oh, gosh, being alone is the most horrible thing that can befall the human kind, then I continue, people are all doomed because we will never be able to understand one another and we will live and die in our isolation, and it goes on and on until I notice that my whole body is tense, my teeth are clenched, the palms of my hands are sweaty and my stomach is slowly being corroded by its own juices.<br />
<br />
Recently, I tried changing the course of my train of thoughts. I started with aloneness and I thought, it’s good to be alone because it gives me plenty of time to write. If I can’t understand myself, I will never be able to pour myself into words, and I can say goodbye to the hope of being understood by others. Hey, why do I need others to understand me? A-ha, here was the voice that changed the meaning of Conrad’s words for me so that I slowly lost the tension from my unnerved body. The more I tried to understand my own experience of the world, the less I needed others to validate and approve of how I felt. The communication and unity with the Other started to take place within me and as part of my daily experience of just living with myself. Conrad’s words are now even truer than before, even more beautiful than ever, yet their meaning has changed for me. Whatever seemed like an inherent lack within people has now become our biggest strength. Just think, being alone in your own experience of the world means that you are the master of your house. You get visitors, and if they are well-intentioned, you let them in to wine and dine together. But if they are mean, jealous, fowl-mouthed road bandits, you know how to keep your gate closed. You will never again come back home to find your house marauded by such specimens.<br />
<br />
What I mean is that too often our whole lives depend on how other people treat us and how life circumstances arrange themselves around us. Knowing that you alone are the master of how you experience these outside forces is a source of strength and not, what I used to think, a pitiable and tragic human fault. These days I need little or no understanding from others. Understanding myself and how I sail through life is such a grand task that it leaves me no time to fret about whether anyone will think what I do is any good. Once I’ve felt that strong favourable wind in my sails, there is no looking back to see if anyone is waving their white handkerchief.<br />
<br /></div>
Andrea Pisachttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12347171013426430889noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2160845367861086430.post-10089414717467841542008-05-20T13:25:00.005+01:002008-05-29T17:35:14.475+01:00Sprechen Sie Deutsch?I just got back from Berlin last night. My impressions are almost opposite to what everyone I know told me about this ‘vibrant’ city. Most of all, it was not in the least true that people spoke English there and that foreigners had no problem communicating with the locals. Before we set off, my beau asked me if I spoke any German. I said, no, of course, I don’t.<br /><br />Everywhere we went, all the information we enquired about, we got German spoken back to us. Then we would look at each other, and after a moment’s silence, I would produce a clumsy translation of what the person had said. At the end of the first day, J said to me – but you said you didn’t speak any German! And I don’t – that’s what I believe. I studied German for 4 years and I lived for a year in Austria. I measure my knowledge of German against the time spent learning it – the outcome is disastrous considering how much effort I’ve put into it. German makes me feel inadequate and linguistically thick, so I would rather forget I had ever had any contact with it.<br /><br />But J doesn’t understand my worries. Being English and wanting to fight the dominance of his mother tongue, he wants to speak the language of the locals. So I give him some basic phrases – bezahlen bitte, cappuccino ohne chocolaten pulver, ich ferstehe nicht… Like a dictionary, I provide him with phrases and translations, and he uses his mouth to utter those sentences. Together, wir sprechen Deutsch. He believes that a certain number of words and sentences makes you speak the language. He is never afraid to speak, even if he knows only a single word! I believe I don’t speak German because I am inhibited by my own guilt for not speaking it as fluently as I should have. Yet, together, we get by, determined to enjoy our stay in Berlin.<br /><br />When on our last day we finally buy <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">currywurst</span> – the German most popular fast food – J, now feeling quite comfortable with speaking German to waiters, explains that we want one with catch-up and one with mayo. He says it in Spanish to the German Turk. Uno con catch-up y otro con mayo. But the guy understands him and that’s all it matters really. We get our food, the Turk gets the money, J is pleased for not having talked in English and I finally relax about my notoriously rigid linguistic rules. At the end of the day, you speak the language if you think you speak it and not if you get an A at school. Language is a living thing – The French say <em>frittes</em> for pommes-frittes and the Germans say <em>pommes</em> for the same thing. We all know what it means and what chips taste like, don’t we?Andrea Pisachttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12347171013426430889noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2160845367861086430.post-35587443266605011732008-05-15T16:20:00.005+01:002008-05-15T16:27:19.816+01:00Five Year Sentence<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-GB">I often wonder why the line between freedom and confinement is so thin. Just recently, as the spring seeped into the sad and overcast </span><st1:city><st1:place><span style="" lang="EN-GB">London</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="" lang="EN-GB"> metropolis, I felt a strange uplifting feeling. It started in the morning as I was doing the habitual tooth-brushing, face washing and hair-style arranging. I looked at myself in the mirror and I suddenly felt in the right place at the right time. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-GB">Similar sensation would crop up from time to time before, but never lasted for long. Having got used to my London bathroom and the house in general – distinct furniture, English spoken from the TV set always turned up too loud and strange plants that grow only in this part of the world – I never minded the interiors of this new land. Well, not quite true – I still do mind the separate hot and cold taps, but I have devised the technique by which I catch water from each tap and create a pleasingly warm liquid in the palm of my hands with which I wash the sleepiness off my face. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-GB">Yet, in the past five years, since I moved to </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style="" lang="EN-GB">England</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="" lang="EN-GB">, each morning I have dreaded the moment when I look outside the window and realize that I am lost in a foreign land. The unfamiliarity of sounds – either loud screams of police or ambulance sirens or a chirp of birds different from those in my own country – smells and colours that do not connect to any brain cell, memory or feeling but just denote strangeness and confusion. I could never make peace between the serenity of my house and the lulling feeling of safeness it gave me and the harsh, utterly scary cityscape that lay outside the walls of my private confinement. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-GB">If I was ever asked why I moved to </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style="" lang="EN-GB">England</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="" lang="EN-GB">, I would say – it is because I wanted to be free. What a lie. I probably don’t know why I moved to </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style="" lang="EN-GB">England</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="" lang="EN-GB">. Maybe because I didn’t know what freedom was. So, fine, I knew I would never be hurt, spied on, bullied or discriminated against in my new country but I still kept fearing the unfriendliness and coldness of </span><st1:city><st1:place><span style="" lang="EN-GB">London</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="" lang="EN-GB">. I was free in my living room, but the prisoner of my inability to accept the city where I settled. I hated </span><st1:city><st1:place><span style="" lang="EN-GB">London</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="" lang="EN-GB"> so much, I hated the noise, dirt and rubbish on the streets, looks of people as they passed me, artificial smiles of shop assistants, I even hated everything in </span><st1:city><st1:place><span style="" lang="EN-GB">London</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="" lang="EN-GB"> that was similar to my culture. I remember, one morning I woke up and still half-asleep I heard the rustle of a chestnut tree that grows close to my window. I strained my nostrils to inhale as much air as possible. The sweet blossomy fragrant of chestnut that runs through </span><st1:city><st1:place><span style="" lang="EN-GB">Zagreb</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="" lang="EN-GB"> streets in spring. But when I woke up, I was still in </span><st1:city><st1:place><span style="" lang="EN-GB">London</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="" lang="EN-GB">. So I hated </span><st1:city><st1:place><span style="" lang="EN-GB">London</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="" lang="EN-GB"> even more for deceiving me. For giving me a hint of home and then relentlessly taking it away from me. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><st1:city><st1:place><span style="" lang="EN-GB">Zagreb</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="" lang="EN-GB"> is the prettiest city. Delicate, small, walkable. Its streets are adorned with rows of trees – chestnut or lime trees – and the Austro-Hungarian building, always neatly restored, look like biscuits that grown on the witch’s house who captured Hansel and Gretel. Creamy coloured, with beautiful shapes and curves – you literally want to eat them. In fact, </span><st1:city><st1:place><span style="" lang="EN-GB">Zagreb</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="" lang="EN-GB"> is so pretty that you would never be scared walking anywhere in the night. Nobody ever shouts there, there are no sinister corners, there is light everywhere and there are people who wash streets after </span><st1:time hour="0" minute="0"><span style="" lang="EN-GB">midnight</span></st1:time><span style="" lang="EN-GB"> so that the city can wake up in its glory. How would it be possible to feel threatened in this paradise? But stay a bit longer, and you feel that something is not quite right with this perfection. While the outdoors is pleasant and people like socializing in the open air cafes, there is something inexplicably dark simmering in people’s houses, in their minds. Cold-hearted, close-minded and most of all jealous of anyone who has nothing to complain about, </span><st1:city><st1:place><span style="" lang="EN-GB">Zagreb</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="" lang="EN-GB"> made me a prisoner with its way of thinking. It was always a perfectly polished but stone cold, jealous, step-mother to me. It never openly threw me out of its embrace, but just starved me of any human emotion, support of acceptance. If I stayed, I would have slowly died, without even realizing it. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-GB"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-GB">The morning I felt I was in the right place at the right time, I suddenly felt free both from the insularity of </span><st1:city><st1:place><span style="" lang="EN-GB">Zagreb</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="" lang="EN-GB"> people and the fright of </span><st1:city><st1:place><span style="" lang="EN-GB">London</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="" lang="EN-GB"> streets. I remembered a friend from </span><st1:city><st1:place><span style="" lang="EN-GB">Belgrade</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="" lang="EN-GB"> who told me that, wherever you go, it takes five years to make a place a home. And he was right. I came here looking for freedom, but I spent five years living in quarantine before I ventured outside of my physical space. Fear is not freedom, hatred is not freedom. This morning I put my nose outside the window and smelt the warm air full of the rushed, hectic, urban molecules. This is </span><st1:city><st1:place><span style="" lang="EN-GB">London</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="" lang="EN-GB">. I rang a new friend, a girl I only met a week ago, and arranged to meet her for lunch. I decided to give it go. To give everything a go. <o:p></o:p></span></p>Andrea Pisachttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12347171013426430889noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2160845367861086430.post-34134251853797320042006-10-16T19:36:00.000+01:002006-10-17T17:12:12.669+01:00Why does literature have to speak the truth?Last week Turkey's most renowned writer Orhan Pamuk won the Nobel Prize for literature. His name has been in the media quite often in the last year. Even those who have never read his books, will have heard his name – yes, he is the protagonist of the infamous case in which the state wanted to press charges against the written word. Pamuk wrote about the 1915 genocide against the Armenian minority in Turkey, claiming he was the only one who was never scared to bring up the taboo subject in his country. But having a troublesome relationship with certain events from its Ottoman past, the Turkish state was reluctant to call the killings of the Armenian people genocide. Thus Pamuk was accused of “insulting the Turkishness” of his home country.<br /><br />Orhan Pamuk has often been criticized in Turkey for having views which are too westernized. Even though he is now based in Istanbul, he did spend some time at Colombia University in New York in 1980s. I wonder what makes a writer belong to a particular country. Is Orhan Pamuk a Turkish writer only because he writer in Turkish? And why don´t we regard him an American writer if this is where he got his ideas about freedom of expression from?<br /><br />Literature has always been tied to a national identity more than other forms of art. Because it uses a national language as its medium, literature was rarely able to stay neutral and purely “artistic”. In crucial historic moments, there has always been a clash between those writers who support the state (even if only by keeping their pens idle) and those who speak out and bare the consequences of such a choice. Some writers fight for their right to write and then face political trials, some go into exile. But whatever the path a writer takes, the words they write are never apolitical.<br /><br />The Pamuk case was not only about the literary representation of the Ottoman past. International attention paid to the outcome of Pamuk´s plight highlighted the political dimension of literature. Thus Turkey´s commitment to freedom of expression and respect of human rights were seriously questioned in the light of the country´s application to EU membership.<br /><br />There is no doubt that the 2006 Nobel Prize went to a great writer. And forgive me, but these are my intimate musings - I wonder how healthy it is to judge literature through the prism of international politics all the time. There are writers and writers. Some may feel compelled to be politically outspoken and campaign for freedom of expression and in that course write fabulous texts. Others can produce work of equal quality and keep a very low profile. If this Prize is given for literature, my only question is if we are able to judge books purely on their literary merit. If not and if literature ends up being inextricably linked to politics and values of civil society, I fear we might risk losing this great form of artistic expression. Lastly, is truth really a prerequisite of a great piece of literature?Andrea Pisachttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12347171013426430889noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2160845367861086430.post-64765764210428425902006-10-11T18:41:00.001+01:002006-10-12T12:11:15.587+01:00Everything she wrote was on the edgeMany things remind me of the place I come from. Of the home land. I carry the feeling of belonging to a place where I am not present any more like a ball and chain around my ankle. It’s almost a nuisance to have an origin. And it’s only after I have left the hearth that I know it once existed. If you stay in one place all your life, you can hardly know you have a motherland.<br /><br />It is Monday morning and I am up late. I don’t work in the PEN office every day. Only Tuesdays and Thursdays. Still, I check my emails religiously whenever I can, which means non-stop. Most London homes have wireless connection these days and the outside world has become as accessible as the air we breathe. Obviously, only through the computer screen.<br /><br />I see Amanda’s email in my PEN inbox. She is asking if we are planning to issue a statement on Anna Politkovskaya assassination. I shudder. When did that happen? I search the BBC website and I find it there, under 7th October; breaking news from Europe, an obituary, tribute paid to Russian journalist, comments of outrage, shock and grief. I feel my throat turning dry and my fingers stiff and cold on the mouse pad. They are not moving. I remember Anna’s photo in the ‘Writers in Translation’ folder in my office – pensive but determined gaze, her short grey hair beautifully framed with the purple of her top. She is one of ‘our writers’. Her book ‘Putin’s Russia’ is proudly displayed in the <a href="http://www.englishpen.org">English PEN</a> office. We now only have one copy left with a note sticking out – please do not remove from the office. Other copies have gone missing, which is what usually happens to a good book. Book theft, though, is never considered a crime. I still cannot believe Anna has been shot dead in the lift of the building where she lived.<br /><br />‘Putin’s Russia’ – a warm but critical depiction of the country where human rights are routinely trampled upon – was the book that inaugurated ‘Writers in Translation’. Anna’s commitment to truth and free expression that she showed in her work as a journalist became the mission of our programme as well. The book was almost dropped from the Harvill and Secker publication list, but with the PEN grant, its print-run grew to almost 20,000 copies. ‘Putin’s Russia’ was available in bookshops around the UK. In duty free zones at airports, where only best-sellers are stocked. It was a recommended reading. She once said that her duty as a journalist was to write what she sees as reality. She wasn’t afraid of the risk that was part of her work. A work of a truth-teller. My professional duty was to do whatever possible to have her book published in English and made available to the world to read.<br /><br />But Anna’s death cuts deeper than that. She reminds me that I am a writer. A Croatian writer. Constantly pushing the limits of what is publicly allowed, her writing was the expression of attachment to her own country. The strokes of her pen, like a sharp knife, peeled layers of obscurity that cover people’s daily actions and experiences. Anna took the risk of telling the truth and not fleeing. That’s why she makes me wonder why I left Croatia. Why couldn’t I have stayed and written there? Why even now I write in English?<br /><br />Being a writer is not only an art form, and not only a profession. It is a state of mind which seeks to preserve boundlessness. A writers’ mind will question everything. It will turn the world upside down like a housewife doing a floor to ceiling clean-up. Even the most banal, taken-for-granted things will not escape the scrutiny of a writer’s feline curiosity. But today, I think less of the literary playfulness that governs the writing spirit. I feel that being a writer is about having an integrity. It is a risk that we willingly take each morning afresh. And a risk for which we are sometimes called to pay with our own life.<br /><br />Why do so many writers leave their countries to be able to write?<br /><br />Why are so many writers murdered in their own motherlands for speaking the truth?<br /><br />This was going to be a lazy morning with a languid cup of coffee and a few lines to write. Instead, I am faced with the death of a colleague and challenged to examine my own integrity. What would I say my duty is if asked in an interview?Andrea Pisachttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12347171013426430889noreply@blogger.com5