These are dangerous days
03/23/2003

I thought I might like to make resolutions for my new year, my 28th.

I want to reconnect with people. I don't really know how to go about doing this. I am so lost, and it makes me sad. I have been disconnected from some of the faculty members -- I have to admit that the disconnect might have been purposeful seeing that I am mostly disconnected from the younger faculty. It's time to come down from my high and mighty throne and make an effort to do stuff with them. I have to admit an ulterior motive here. "Kierkegaard" (S.) is coming back to Urban to teach. And things are so different now. I think the distance between us is still there, but maybe this could be a new beginning - maybe we could be friends again even if not as close as we had once been (and I had not realized - until I lost the friendship with my big mouth).

I want some tea. Weird.

Yeah, I have been feeling disconnected from people, including students sometimes. Sometimes I just go through the motions; even while I am having a personal conversation with a student (rather, listening to a personal conversation), sometimes I realize this is a connection we are sharing, but I don't really feel it because I don't slow down all the things running around in my head for that feeling to last its while. I need to slow down and enjoy the moment. I keep telling myself that, but the logical can't convince the emotional actuality sometimes. I am busy. I am working for grad school. There is always something I should be doing. I do give myself permission to slow down sometimes, and it's good, but it turns out I have to speed up the following days all the more because I took a break. I hate the American pace of sink or swim. I want neither sometimes. I want to be in the Aegean and just float, not even swim. I want to just be. So I know what I want to set as a resolution (SLOW the fuck down), but I don't really know how to do it in a way that I can sustain. I will keep trying though. I think it is just a matter of remembering to be present in the moment.

I am feeling disconnected from close friends, too, oddly. Lucci and I are so distant right now. I think partly the distance results from the war and her ceaseless activism. It started around the height of the Israel/Palestine conflict. She started attending meetings and demonstrations, and I felt that she was starting to get preachy, telling me how to view the whole thing, how I should think about it, etc. I, on the other hand, come from an emotional place around the conflict, knowing each nation deserves a land, and Israel does some horrible things, but also knowing that I care about the horrible deaths of Israelis, too, especially when I have family in Israel. So I could not digest Lucci's implications of the Big Bad Israel even if they were right on. I told her I was not ready to partake in meetings and demonstrations, and she kept suggesting other ways I could get involved, not getting the point that I was not emotionally ready to get involved. I was all mixed up inside, and I didn't want to be a part of anything about which I did not have my own clarity.

Then, the war started. I joined the masses in a walk out on Thursday around 11 am. Lucci had been there since 7 am, blocking key intersections. She is so active and vocal about it all, and it is admirable, but I need it quiet so I can be in touch with what I think and what I feel sometimes. So after a few hours of being downtown, I decided that I needed to go home and remind myself why I protest. When you go to a demonstration, there are all these speakers, chants, picket signs, banners that say all these different things that have nothing to do with why I am there. I go because I supported the decision Turkey made against letting the US use the Turkish air bases. I don't care that US bullied Turkey into letting them use the airspace later on (and not for the initially promised money either). What I care about is that Turkey (even if not from a concern to do the morally right thing, but from the vantage point of what was expedient) did make a sound decision at first. I want to be at the protests as a Turkish woman against Bush's single-handed declaration of war with unjust and disingenuous causes.

The point is, though, Lucci and I are losing each other. I probably lost her, and she is losing me now. The night of my birthday was the first time in a long time that I talked with her. Even then, I had to pry what she had been up to, where she had disappeared to out of her mouth. Probably because she no longer relates to me because she thinks I am not active enough. She may be right, but this is where I need to be for my own sanity. I respect her decisions, but my sense is that it is hard for Lucci right now to remain unjudgemental about mine (and about others' who are not as actively against the war). Lucci may someday read this. And that's OK.

I am selfish, and I see something sensible in that if being selfish can help me sustain my sanity so I can keep trying to teach my privileged students compassion. So I am selfish, and I am upset that Lucci did not RSVP to my invitation for yesterday's get together I held for all my friends and coworkers for my birthday. She never gave me a solid yes or no when we talked. So I heard from Em that they were both planning on going to the protests first, then come over. Long after my shindig was over, there was still no message in my voice mail box. I called Lucci and she was home. She answered casually, no apology necessary even when I told her I was worried about them thinking they might have gotten arrested. It felt like a break-up conversation on the phone (I am going to imagine some people are reading this entry other than me and assume that some of them might actually know exactly what I am talking about). So unemotional, disappointed, dry, and a conversation with a nearly tangible sense of loss. Something is going to have to change if we are going to come out of this as friends. Maybe I tell her everything I have written here when it is all over, when I trust that she can listen to be more objectively. When I trust that I can hear her without thinking she is not objective in listening to me.

Maybe our friendship did run its course? I don't believe so, but if that is the case, I can do nothing but accept it.

So I guess this entry did not yield to any specific resolutions. But I can at least be more mindful of having to slow down and connect, and realize the connection as it is happening.

"These are dangerous days

to say what you feel is to dig your own grave." (Black Boys on Mopeds)