Rebecca Fisseha's Blog, page 2

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The very first thing I ever wanted to be was a prisoner. But that’s a story for another day.

The second thing I ever wanted to be was a flight attendant. And not just any flight attendant. But an Ethiopian Airlines flight attendant. Well, when I was little, there was no other kind, just like there was no other airline other than Ethiopian Airlines. I was too young to know that every country had one of those – airlines, that is, and the pretty ladies that went along with them, not to mention the dashing pilots. I was too young to even know that there were such things as other countries. There was Ethiopia, that was that. That was the world.

Vaguely, though, I was aware of another place. Outside this country. Which in Amharic was literally called ውጭ አገር, outside-country. That was where some very special people went, my dad and a pilot uncle among them, accomplished unknowable things, and came back with exotic stuff like apples, toiletries and cosmetics that smelled so good you wanted to eat them (and I sometimes did, much to my parents’ annoyance), school supplies you had to handle like precious objects, and dolls.

Oh the dolls.

This is where my life’s desire came in. Sure, I got the regular sized ones from outside-country, ones that fit perfectly in the crook of my arm and whose entire wardrobe I could wash and hang to dry in one afternoon without exhausting myself. But, as humans will, I wanted more. Specifically, I wanted one of those large-as-life dolls I saw in clothing shop windows. And there was no way I was going to get my parents to buy me one of those. I wouldn’t get my hands on one of those unless I went to outside-country myself. And the way to go to outside-country as a girl was obviously by becoming a hostess (i.e. flight attendant). Unfortunately, my master plan did not include exactly how I would go about accomplishing this, since everyone knew that to be a hostess you had to be tall enough to touch the ceiling of a plane. So for the rest of my childhood I had to make do with regular sized Heidis.

But the fascination with hostesses never went away. Until air travel became as routine and as complained-about as taking a bus, they remained exotic, enviable creatures of glamour; the personification of the jewel in the Ethiopian diadem that is Ethiopian Airlines. Now, for many, becoming an EA hostess is a stepping stone to the good life. Back then, it was the good life. As for being a pilot, well you might as well be God’s deputy!

If you were a beautiful and tall woman, you had to audition to become a hostess at least once. One of my aunts went for it, and I remember the days leading up to her audition as being one of held-breath excitement and hope of what this could mean for her life, for all our lives. Alas, she didn’t get the gig. I never became that girl who had a hostess in her family, who could go on and on at school about her mom’s/sister’s/aunt’s beauty, her grace, all the things she brought from outside-country and, eventually, her upcoming marriage to a pilot.

I’m not surprised that a flight attendant has been a part of ‘Daughters of Silence‘ from the beginning. Initially, she was a peripheral character, a European woman, whom the main character encounters on her flight in and out of Addis. Eventually, the main character herself became a flight attendant whose professional life and her attitude to it reflected some of my thoughts about flight attendants, which thankfully had gotten a bit more sophisticated since I was a kid.

My childhood fascination with the figure of the female flight attendant morphed into an ongoing curiosity about how she is supposed to be the face of her nation. Its best face. Women dolled up in the national garb are the lure which practically every country uses in its campaigns to attract tourism or other kinds of business. Flight attendants are an aspect of that, perhaps its most lucrative one. Once upon a time, airlines used to only hire the country’s best looking female nationals. Maybe for that reason – the job is a sort of informal ambassadorship. But also once upon a time, ‘nationals’ automatically meant people who looked a certain way. But ‘nationals’, whether naturalized or native-born, no longer automatically look a certain way. Aha, the plot thickens. So how do airlines hire who best should be the window-dressing for their country now? Well, one solution is to base their hiring decision on the routes they want to book the gals on. You got a German of Ethiopian descent who applies for a Lufthansa job? Well, stick her on the Africa flights!

I met exactly such a woman, I can’t say with 100% certainty but I think around the time I decided to make the main character a flight attendant. I was on a Lufthansa flight to Addis. One of the flight attendants was obviously a habesha woman who was either an immigrant to Germany or first generation German. Until then, whenever I flew (this is after starting work on the novel), I used to just spy on every move of the flight attendants and make notes on the sly. I had never worked up the nerve to interview them. But this time, I waited for (what seemed to me) an ideal time during the flight and told this German-habesha flight attendant that I was a writer and could I email her some questions about being a flight attendant so I could get details for my story? She was very friendly and gave me all her deets. Shortly after, I emailed her about a dozen or so questions. Alas, I never got any response. I did get one email saying she was working on the answers. Then, crickets. I chalked it up to hereditary traits and moved on.

Luckily, through a friend whose bff is a flight attendant, I later did get all my questions answered. But I came across this exotic creature of an African immigrant/first generation working a Lufthansa flight to Ethiopia again recently. This was after I further developed the idea of Dessie’s complicated professional identity of being a flight attendant for a nation she’s obviously not a native of. By that time though, I was nearly done with the edits for the novel, so I left her in peace.

So I remain with my ‘conspiracy theory’ about which routes airlines hire visually-non-conforming nationals, or even non-nationals, for. They hire them (it seems to me) specifically for the routes with the most passengers from their native or native-adjacent country. Just one of those things that make you go hmmm. I’m pretty sure neither of those two East African-origin Lufthansa flight attendants I came across (one habesha, the other I’m not sure) don’t get booked on, I don’t know, Latin America or Asia routes. Hmmmm.

Neither good nor bad but thinking makes it so, etc. Just hmmm.

Anywho, all this to share the interesting origin story and real-life overlaps of the how and why Dessie, the main character in ‘Daughters of Silence‘ is a flight attendant and the intersection between her wobbly cultural identity and what her job represents, or at least used to.

Dang, this turned out to be a rather long-haul of a post. Never mind, smile!

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Undercover Undertaker Writer Spy

Early on in my writing of what became DAUGHTERS OF SILENCE, long before I developed the confidence to flat out tell people that I was working on a novel, I used to call up funeral homes under the guise of being a potential customer and ask them detailed questions about exhumations and body repatriations.

This was when the plot of the manuscript was mostly about a bereaved family returning the remains of a loved one from Canada to Ethiopia, or trying to. Until I had an actual published book to show for myself, I didn’t feel that I could go around openly asking busy people to answer research questions for a mere computer file that may or may not become a book someday.

I’ve forgotten which funeral homes I called (meaning, I can’t be bothered to dig through my old notes now), except one, which I clearly remember because it’s the only one where I went in person. (The place has since closed. That location is now an animal hospital, with bees.) I went in there because I’d passed it by a million times, on account of a favourite bookstore being down the block, and a favourite park across the street.

So one day I finally worked up the courage to go in. The funeral director, after whom the one in DAUGHTERS OF SILENCE is partially named (and whom I forgot to add in my Acknowledgements page, apologies Mr. S! Let this post be my thank you for your unwitting involvement in my writing process), was very friendly and informative. I remember I was so nervous I wouldn’t even sit down in his office so we talked in the lobby. I pretended to be asking questions on behalf of an Ethiopian family that had recently lost someone and wanted to take them to Ethiopia for burial. The complication was that they were already buried in Toronto.

Of the many interesting details Mr. S. told me about the process of exhuming and returning a body overseas, one that struck me the most was that repatriation of remains to the home country is not an issue just at the time of an immigrant family’s bereavement, but rather it can be a long-held dream of the bereaved families. They may want to return the remains to the home country at the time of death, but are unable to for political reasons, in cases of war, complicated border situations, or flat-out unavailability of flights as a result. Mr. S. was familiar with this issue within the habesha community. In such cases, the burial is considered temporary. The family will return the remains when conditions become favourable, when peace returns, even if that is decades later. He had worked with families who had done just this, of late mostly to Eritrea.

I stopped just short of asking him for their contact information.

Fast forward several years, to last summer. I have landed a publisher, and I was waiting on the first set of notes from my editor. A friend tells me that while she was attending a funeral recently in a cemetery in northern Toronto, she saw some graves with Ethiopian writing. Right away my interest is piqued. I want to see them. The fact that she saw multiple such graves, that they may be in foreign soil but they had each other at least, unlike my mother’s solo habesha grave in a European cemetery, was what pulled me.

So, on a very hot July day, I rode the subway the farthest north I’d gone in years, in search of a stranger’s fresh grave, so I could see for myself the habesha ones around it. Thankfully the cemetery was within minutes of a subway stop. I wandered in with no clue where that stranger’s grave was, hoping to just stumble upon it. Because it’d been only weeks since the funeral, I knew it would be just a mound of earth, most likely with a cross in it. The individual was a Jamaican of Ethiopian Orthodox faith. That had been why his family was so happy, on his behalf, that in his time of rest, he would be surrounded by habesha people.

I wandered through the vast cemetery for almost an hour, under the scorching midday sun, looking no doubt very suspicious to the attendees of the few funerals that were being held, even though I tried to walk a wide circle around them. This was not one of those cemeteries that practically doubles as a public park. It’s out of the way. No one lingers. If they do, it’s in one spot. To look at me, you’d think I had dropped something, many somethings, all over the place.

Finally, tired, thirsty, and exhausted, I headed towards a building which I hoped was some type of an office, because I was too tired to head back to the entrance where I knew for sure there was a main office. Alas, it was the mausoleum building, and locked. So I finally gave in and called the cemetery’s main office from my phone, and asked where is the Orthodox section. They’re scattered all over, I was told, there’s no specific Orthodox section. I gave them the date of the funeral and the last name of the deceased, giving the impression that I missed the funeral and was paying belated respects (I think I might have an alternate career option as a spy or private detective!) After a bit of searching, they told me the exact row and lot number of the grave.

I was too tired to walk past even one lot to see if I was heading in the right direction, so I intercepted a groundskeeper passing in his little groundskeeping golf cart and asked the way. He told me and, would you believe it, drove away! No offer of a ride, when it was the one time I’d have happily gotten in a stranger’s vehicle.

Finally, I found the plot, a mound of earth as I expected, but no cross. I stood over it and said abaatachin hoy under my breath. I didn’t know the person but it seemed the polite thing to do. Then I looked around for what I was really there for. I found one habesha grave with a flat tombstone, in the opposite row, and another a few spots over. That’s it?? My disappointment felt weird even to me, but that didn’t make it go away. I wanted more. More…company, for that stranger.

So of course I wandered in the vicinity, willing there to be more of them, together in death. Sure enough, there were! In the next lot, several rows, almost exclusively habesha, almost every single one with a flag stuck into them, mostly Eritrean flags. A bit far from the stranger, I thought, and maybe only temporary, but yes, good neighbours just the same.

Then, I went in search of my own rest.

[image error]from DAUGHTERS OF SILENCE

Books & Bombs

Two days ago on June 10th, I officially spoke about Daughters of Silence in a public setting for the first time. Of course I’ve chatted with people about the book pretty much since I admitted I was working on one, but it’s always been in safe private scenarios, with no more than a bunch of people present, at most, or just in casual conversation. But this was my first EVENT. Ever. The occasion was the London Bookfair, in London Ontario (about two hours west of Toronto), which is attended by booksellers, librarians, etc. from throughout Ontario and organized by the Hornblower Group.

Basically it is a sales shindig. I was one of three authors who were present to give a short 5 – 10 minute talk about their upcoming book, not so much what their book is about as the ‘behind the scenes’ of what inspired it, its personal significance to us, real life influences, and so on. The idea is to entice the gathered buyers to not only grab the advance review copies available for the taking, but also read them, then be compelled order the book for their bookstores, libraries, etc. afterwards.

No small stakes those! And all I had to do was summarize a nearly 10 year creative and personal journey into minutes.

So, being incapable of going unprepared to almost any situation involving ‘the work’, and being of a theatre background as a writer and an actor (plus dabbling in stage managing), I rehearsed the shit out of my bit. I whittled it down to five key points I wanted to hit, and I had it down, the order, the key words, the accompanying anecdotes, etc. I rehearsed it in my sleep, in the shower, while cooking, etc., etc.

As the room filled up with potential buyers and the moment of speaking drew near, I remembered to breathe, feel my feet on the ground and more or less the rest of my body above, and most of all to focus on what was going on at present, not what I would have to do minutes from now. Oh, and I mentally patted myself on the back for accepting only water to drink until after my talk. I actually said no to wine. Hello, maturity!

First author spoke, a very well-known author who clearly had done this plenty of times, then it was my turn. I got up there and the moment I saw the roomful of faces that looked nothing like me, not in my peripheral vision anymore but all looking directly at me, the silken flow of words I had planned to say flew out the window.

And out came one completely unplanned bomb of an opener.

Which was understandably met with an awkward silence. CRICKETS.

Short-lived crickets, thankfully. I recovered within moments, and salvaged what was left of my little spiel, and even lived to genuinely listen to and enjoy the third author’s flawless presentation. Because the ‘me’ of a few years ago would have beat myself up over my having given a less-than-perfect performance, over my failure to think while a couple dozen people watched me expectantly. But I know that, given that it was my first time out, I didn’t do that bad. Thank you, therapy!

If nothing else, my opener (which shall forever remain unrepeated, by me anyway), was certainly memorable. I thought of how comedians bomb over and over again before they start to hit the sweet spot. (Let’s overlook the fact that I am not gunning to become a professional comedian!) And I thought also thank God there’s no videographic evidence! So what if I had a bumpy takeoff in perfect weather? Buyers still took all the review copies and asked me to sign them, and I had great conversations that indicated to me that people related to what I said after all – about webs of silence, about regaining one’s voice, about all the pain and secrets women take to their graves, about the mystery behind their life “choices”, and about parts of my personal history that I shared which I was afraid had been TMI but I guess it wasn’t. Chalk that up to habesha-ness. Our TMI meters are way on the side of TLI.

Lessons learned? Don’t change the game plan at the last minute based on what someone else is doing! Stick to what you have prepared! Don’t suddenly decide to improvise, this ain’t SNL! And, go all out and be a gleeful geek until your book is old news. Stop caring how you’ll look. Stop trying to play it cool. You ain’t no cucumber. You’re a pot of popping corn (notwithstanding your tendency to start fires whenever you try to make popcorn). Enjoy this time however you see fit! First-book-time will only come around once in a lifetime, like first love, first marriage, first flight, first dentist visit, first food poisoning, first high, first pap smear, first earthquake…

Hey even the Raptors missed glory by one point that night.

In closing, if you’re looking for me on a Monday night from now on, you’ll find me at a Toastmasters meet!

Episode 8 |Intercultural Couples, Interview with “Kidist & Dudley” (Ethiopian and Jamaican)

Hyphenation

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Prompts: August 2017

More Notes from the Canadian honey jar…

#43: August 1, 2017

IDEA for setting: an Ethio soccer game week! (genesis of the story)

The street busker, black contortionist in neon green leopard print bodysuit, who could fit himself into a box. Maybe I could use that…? Seems ripe for metaphor-izing.

The giant statue of ‘American Gothic’. We posed in front of that. What that iconic image represents, any parallel to our own immigrant parents?

For us, a big part of the sightseeing pleasure is looking at the African American men (just like at Caribana). We sexualize, fetishize them just as bad as whites do! (and just as much as ‘ethiopian women’ are fetishized by them.)

So basically our days consisted of sightseeing/touring in the daytime, partying at night, sleeping, eating out.

So that’s what the main theme of the ESFNA experience is: relationships, new and old, and the keeping up of ‘appearances’, taking on of ‘personas’ that may/may not have anything to do with who we really are in our daily lives. Kind of like being at an all-inclusive resort, or being at Vegas (not that I’ve ever been). You’re supposed to leave everything there, and resume your  regular life, and your regular persona, when you return to your home city at the end of the week. But for that week, whatever city the event is being held in is ‘paradise’, and whoever you are during that week is your most impressive, nicest looking, self…

#44: August 2, 2017

For today, tizita! Beginning with, Mahmoud! (note: he repeats every lyric twice, I wonder why? I want to say it’s like a dialogue, except both speakers are saying the same thing to each other, and both speakers (the lover/beloved being absent) are just the one person, talking to him/herself in a way while also addressing/speaking for the absent beloved)

MAHMOUD:

Tizitash zewetir wedene iyemeta: ‘tizita’ is personified, it’s masculine, it travels, it is drawn to the speaker.

Efoy yemilibet, hiwotey gize ata: ‘efoy’ is exhalation, it a verbalization of exhaling from relief, rest satisfaction; the ‘tizita’ denies the speaker this exhalation (makes me think of Waiting to Exhale); the speaker is denied the time to exhale, this implies a kind of relentless nature to ‘tizita’, it gives one no break, no respite, it’s constantly, always there always arriving.

Yetizita simet, lib lay nedaji: the feeling of ‘tizita’ is like fuel (combustible fuel) on the heart. Makes me think of the speed with which flames leap from gasoline, the way it rushes in the path of the gasoline, almost as fast as light; that rush of flame. Except here in this lyric the flame has not been touched to the fuel yet, but it’s there, sitting with the potential to be ignited. A feeling that is dormant, just waiting for the spark.

Aytefam mingizem yidafenal inji: exactly as I said, it never goes out. This lyric implies more the idea of hot coals covered over with ash, ‘muted’, in a way . Note that ‘gize’ is mentioned twice already. From previous lyric, which implied fuel, there is a change now to coals, which is a kind of fuel too I guess. But it’s a bit of a mixed metaphor situation!

Endalangoragur miye tegeziche: no idea what this means. The speaker is prevented from speaking/murmuring/lamenting because of some oath/vow. Seems religious somehow. I don’t think he literally means he’s been paid to keep silent. gizot is the noun form, I guess, hence tegeziche. What does gizot mean? I’m thinking ‘exile’ but not sure…according to online dictionary, it means abandonment, exclusion, banishment, dungeon

So speaker is silenced by some kind of abandonment/banishment (I was right re: exile!) and also a vow…?

Tadia indet yaschilegn, tizitan semichei: hmmm, and yet the speaker is finding it hard to keep this (vow?) of (silence?) because the (sound of?) tizita is so strong. Here the tizita is farther away, heard from afar, instead of an arriving force.

Yihen chewatayen, indet lasamirew: ah the concept of ‘chewata’, literally: play, but what’s meant is conversation, pleasant, engaging conversation. The speaker is wondering how he can ‘beautify’ his conversation, how he can make what he’s talking about more appealing (for who?)

Keftogn aydelem wey, yemangoragurew: oh, nevermind, I don’t think he’s actually trying to find a way to make his conversation appealing, he’s saying ‘how can I make it appealing when the reason for my speaking/lament/humming is because I’m feeling bad. So not only can he not be silent, but he can’t help making sounding unappealing.

Esti belu ingidih, derdirulign krar: putting out a summons to the listener to prepare, set up a krar, since he’s about to get into it. This is the first time the speaker is speaking to an imagined audience. Only the first line directly addresses the beloved who, being absent, forces the speaker to turn to others, despite the risk of dampening their spirits with sorrowful talk.

Mechem teqorantognal, tizita kene gar: tizita has bound/attached itself in the speaker (it controls him). ‘gar’ implies less of a control, and more of a co-habitation arrangement!

Yehasabu menga, libe yetagorew: there’s an army/mob/horde of thoughts stuffed/stored in his heart.

Bewota biye new yemangoragurew:  song without uttering words, humming song, song of sadness, low spirits

He’s singing that song on the chance that maybe it will release all those thoughts

Endiyaw amehagnto, asabo be-krar: using the krar as an excuse…

Yawezazwizugnal ketizitaye gar: makes me sway with my tizita…

Erikalehu bilew menorian bileyu: one can decided to distance oneself by living apart…

Yemital tizita, wosen akalayu: titiza will still come, (something about) borders…

Aserku atebekut, zegahut silewu: I though I had tied tightly, closed…

Minew yehe hoden, dinget kifit alewu: how come my stomach feels bad all of a sudden…

Tizitan siquagnut, yeweregnal derso: when tizita is viewed, (no idea…)

Yimelesal libe, agerun adarso: my heart return after having roamed the whole country…

Krar sidereder yirebeshal hode: when the krar is played, my stomach is disturbed/troubled…

Masinqo simeta, yirebeshal hode: when he masikno is played, my stomach is troubled…

Betizita mezez, idayweta gude: so that because of tizita(‘s provocation) my business does not come out…

Tizitaye, tizita: addressing tizita as a person again, using the term of endearment…

Tizitaye, tizita

Tizitaye, tizita

Tizitaye, tizitaaaa

I want to do the same deconstruction/translation of Bezawork’s version (idea: Bezawork and Mahmoud as a couple…)

On first glace, hers seems much more complex, the meaning much harder to decipher, and not necessarily about love, but more about the nature of memory in general. That’s the thing, ‘tizita’ can be about anything really, as long as it is in the past and doesn’t let one go. Only when it is personified as a she/he by a singer of the opposite gender does it become about love. I think Bezawork’s tizita is about that general meaning of memory, its nature, its traits, etc. Perhaps that’s a path I could follow. Instead of zoning in on the 4 forms as different facets of love, just look at the broader interpretations (memory, betrayal, joy, lack, etc.) that the songs could have, the wider theme of the song, which happens to be expressed in a romantic context.

#46: August 8, 2017

…in the mind of such a man, there’s a very clear difference between who he is as a man and who he is as a father, totally separate sets of values that don’t touch. [I’ve often wondered this about all our fathers. We think of them as asexual in a way.]

#50: August 23, 2017

What the dads say to their daughters: bring me any son-in-law but [insert ethnicity/religion].

Not feeling this prompt-writing today. I really hope it all adds up to something when it’s all done in…fifteen days. Not fifteen consecutive days, of course! But fifteen more of these sessions where I sit and stare at the strip of paper with the prompt on it and think “fuuuuck” and then I start typing anyway and almost always something emerges which I had not anticipated. I’m looking forward to reading all sixty-five of them when I’m done! And seeing what kind of story emerges. It won’t be predictable, that’s for sure. Sometimes I wonder if I’m really going to write it in the format that I’ve said I would in the grant applications. Answer to that: doubt it! But who knows…Sometimes I think I should just drop it with all the complicating (ballad forms, etc.) and just tell the damn story, whatever that is!

Now I’m wondering if they know, and that was their roundabout way (as that generation do) of telling us don’t even think about keeping those boys or considering them for the long term, as in the permanent long term a.k.a. marriage. Don’t even think about bringing those home to me. (technically, it would be their representatives). That’s not a farfetched possibility. The parents know us and what we’re up to way more than we think, just as much as they have no clue about certain things, because their minds absolutely refuse to associate us with those certain things (see also: my writing about how we kids also refuse to associate our parents with certain things, like sleeping with or even desiring someone other than our mom/dad, whether they are widowed or not).  What we forget is that they were young once too, and hiding their own things from their parents.

So maybe they don’t feel that they can out-and-out confront us, forbid us, but they also want to us them know, gently, that what we are doing is not okay. As well, they don’t want to discourage us from dating either, because what they ultimately want for us was to find someone to take over the responsibility for them? Despite the acquiring of university education, it seems to me that what we’re being groomed all along for is marriage. Not in a blatant, last-century kind of way. But the education really is a stepping stone, the means to an end, the end being married life (double security).

The irony is that the husbands who turn out to be a shit-show, a total failure and disappointment, are the ones that would have passed with flying colours on paper…Which goes to show you that all these arbitrary conditions we place on who is ‘suitable’ and who is ‘not suitable’ are just that, arbitrary, bullshit. There’s no predictor of the future, how someone will turn out in the future…than the future!

#52: August 25, 2017

My thoughts while visiting AAU campus this summer

What I mostly felt was sadness, deep nostalgia. I felt like I was walking through history.

The trees were what struck me the most. The sheer size and age of the trees. They represented…everything. They had seen it all, from the beginning. The love stories, the political stories, the day-to-day happenings.

That campus seemed just soaked in history, ghosts.

And it also looked so old, so in need of renovation. It was hard to believe, coming from the spick and span look of universities in the West, that actual higher learning that could be actually applicable in the world, could take place in such run down areas.

More than the buildings, it was the grounds, especially the trees, that seemed majestic, so full of story.

I just kept thinking ‘he was here, she was here, he was here, she was here’ over and over.

It just felt like I was walking (wading?) through layers of history: the country’s (esp. the emperor) recent and past history; and my family (my parents); and mine (the times I spent at the library when I was young, and the time my mother and I visited when we were in Ethiopia for holiday). I felt like I was adding my own few little paragraphs to the history of this place, returning as the grown product of two people who spent so much of their time and of their early life together here.

We always think history began with us. Just like kids who think their parents began when they became aware of them, recognized them in our consciousness as a separate consciousness. As if we created them and not the other way around!

#53: August 29, 2017

In the end, everyone settles, I guess. Everyone weighs the positives against the negatives and if the former outweighs the latter, they shack up! If it goes bad, then something good will also have come out of it. Like a couple of kids, property, a story to rehash over wine.

I want a world without mistakes, maybe that’s it. I can’t stomach the idea of such a big decision being a mistake, because there’s no time for a do-over! Then again, there’s also no time to get back the time you spent rejecting options!

Mistakes. That’s it. I can see so clearly the mistakes that were made, are about to be made, will be made. To avoid mistakes you have to do nothing.

It’s all a jumble of hits and misses and hits and misses. Just some misses have a bigger impact than others and that’s scary.

#54: August 30, 2017

*random idea! One of the characters (habesha female) is dead set on marrying a Nigerian because they are go-getters and globally successful in just about every field.

There comes a point in a friendship (sistership) when, depending on your history, when you know that no matter what happens (that person does or says, or you hear they said or did) you’ll always give her the benefit of the doubt. No matter what. Of course, the opposite also applies. You also reach a point when you know that you won’t give her the benefit of the doubt anymore. She’s one strike from being out, just doesn’t know it.

It is all about the benefit of the doubt. You are benefitting from the fact that I have doubt. Doubt that is in your favour. Doubt that you would do me wrong, say something bad or incorrect about me, harm me – all of these intentionally. That’s the key thing. Intent.

…when it comes time to exercise that ‘benefit of the doubt’, it’s those differences that we jump to immediately as explanation for the action or behaviour that is forcing us to exercise that benefit of the doubt. The inner monologue goes something like this “I knew that [insert the thing that is different] would one day [insert the alleged crime] to me.” It could be ethnicity, or class, or faith. So “I knew that Muslim/white/spoiled brat would one day say such and such about me/do such and such to me.” The main area of difference might have been the thing that made the friendship possible in the first place. It may be what gave it its ‘zing’ all along. It may also be the thing that lay just under the surface, buried in wait, liable to surface/detonate at just the right ‘doubt-inducing’ incident. Like a weapon just hidden out of sight for the time being.

Prompts: June 2017

More Notes from the Canadian honey jar…

#22: June 06, 2017

…She’s the one who wants to ask the deep, probing questions that go to the heart of the matter, forgetting that it is because those questions have been asked, and answered, many times and in many ways, and in the privacy that is appropriate to them, for us to reach this point, be where we are now, celebrating.

…the fact of the gathering and celebration is evidence/proof that there’s only one question left to ask (“Do you take…?”) and its answer is a foregone conclusion. It’s more of a ritual back/forth, call/response than a true inquiry.

Funny that it’s asked by a third party! (In a way, it’s already been asked/answered during the proposal.)

(willingly?) forgetting all this, she asks all those questions at the wrong time/place, as if she’s the only one privy to their importance.

(the filmmaker character)

…everyone indulges her, because fact is no one actually asks them these questions apart from each other, and it’s a novel experience. Amusing.

When you already know the answers, the questions aren’t challenging. Just rote.

#25: June 12, 2017

‘But the wedding took SO long!’ It’s pretty funny, but also so true. We spent so many days together in the lead up to the wedding, the wedding itself, (less so after the wedding). That’s often what comes to my mind when I get nostalgic about it. The days of the wedding. It was almost like a season. A season that will never return. Probably that’s the same for everyone affected too. We have nothing else to look back on. The other memories of the relationship belong to the couple alone. The wedding is the shared memory.

…Start each story at the defining moment of the relationship. By ‘defining moment’ what I mean is, those points at which the relationship could have ended instead of going forward. (Those times when each of them had to decide ‘no I’m going to stay in this, stay with her/him’.)

– first true insult/hurt/disappointment/broken promise
– first appearance of viable alternative to that person (opportunity not pursed though)
– first time acted on that other attraction, but decided to end it/go no further
– first time the person really really really pissed you off
– first character trait/habit that you knew would get on your nerves and you’d have to just put up with

#27: June 14, 2017

[image error]the saying that love feels like/should feel like when you take out your cornrows (shurruba) (but I think of all the pain that comes before, when getting them done-riff on this)

The first time I came across this expression was on the habesha blog seleda. It was a really great blog that ‘authentically’ showed the diaspora habesha perspective, mixing Amharic and English, etc. but it doesn’t seem to be online any more. Too bad! Of course the people behind it are a mystery too. No photos, no names. Typical habesha cagey-ness. Ugh.

So anyway, it was on there that a woman wrote about how being in love felt inside like that relief deep deep relief of taking out your shurruba. It was the best expression I’d ever heard. Once upon a time it would have only been girls who would have understood the reference, but now of course a guy can get it too, since they wear shurruba as much as if not more than girls.

But the reason it feels so good is, of course, because it was so tightly done to begin with, so that it wouldn’t mechebrer too soon, so that it would last as long as possible. The longer it has lasted, of course, also mean the more dirt has accumulated in there.

(What about the kind of love that feels like weeks-old, dirty shurruba then? How awful!)

And before it was so super tightly done, it had to be combed, washed, divided in rows, oiled, etc.

Depending on the hair type, all these steps would have been equally painful.

So all that pre-shurruba process, what’s it an equivalent of, and the shurruba itself? Life? Single life? Haha maybe! That could be an interesting metaphor for it.

Yeah, shurruba as a metaphor for all the things we keep tightly coiled inside, and that have caked and knotted in on themselves (the dirt, the oil, etc.) and falling in love as a chance to let all that go.

Of course when you open it up it’s kinda ugly, kinda stinky and more than a bit gross. You feel great but the person who has to watch it may not feel so great about it.

It’s the undoing of the shurruba but also the massaging your head afterwards that feels very good. Massaging it yourself or having someone massage you.

Sometimes it gets knotted and you have to tear away at clumps of hair.

Sometimes you can just pull at one length of the three that make the braid, and undo the whole thing in one stroke.

Or you go coil by coil.

The tips, it’s hardest to start undoing it from the tips if they have been braided right to the very tip. You can spend time trying to split that open, or you can just tug at a bit of hair midway up and get it to come out easier that way.

Who wears shurruba anyway?? Unless it’s to go with habesha kemis! Or to go to bed and to open up the next morning to have that ‘wavy’ looking hair (either because that’s the only way you can get the look, which ferenjoch call twist-out, or because you don’t want to wet your hair).

Clearly there’s a lot to riff on. I haven’t been very focused on writing this prompt today. But I do make my hair in braids a lot these days so I’ll make sure to pay attention to what else pops up in my head while I’m cornrowing it!

#30: June 20, 2017

The old folks will tell you you don’t know the meaning of tizita/true tizita until you’ve buried your beloved. (didn’t say goodbye, there’s something only the two of you know one of you has yet to be forgiven for)…

..Before that, maybe both him and her got it from the perspective of remembering their young love, before marriage and before children and before political changes changed every aspect of life.

…Just as with books, one’s understanding/how deeply one can feel a song also changes depending on at which point in one’s life one is listening to that song.

So it’s not that the old folks would say you don’t know love or tizita until you’ve buried your beloved. It’s that they would realize it themselves for the first time only later on. They don’t know it themselves until life makes them feel it.

Must check the lyrics. From what I remember, though, the beloved in tizita is forever out of reach (except in the Bezawork version, which ends on ‘yesew nehina min yideregal’ = the guy is taken! Was he taken when they had their relationship or did he get taken after?)

…But it never occurs to me to think of the romances of my grandparents! Was there ever any romantic moments between them?

…it’s hard to imagine my grandmother now having romantic tizita. But maybe she does. And maybe it’s not even about my grandfather, but about some youngster that she had her eye on when she was very young. She was 16 when she married, I think. Hell she might have even had her eye on other young men after she got married. Why not! But it’s easier for me to think of her having tizita for her children, the ones that are gone (from life) and the ones that are gone (from Ethiopia), and maybe less so for her grandchildren. I’m projecting, of course, romanticizing. But in those quiet moments at night or in the afternoon or at any time really, who sneaks up on her mind? Her departed children. That is my safest guess.

…So what does his tizita for her consist of? Does it bring him joy or sorrow? Is it a collection of regretted moments or cherished moments? What else is there? Conversations, I guess.

…Is that all tizita is? A one-way conversation?

…Anyone permanently lost – that’s the best candidate for tizita. Failing that, anyone extremely out of reach. So extreme that it feels permanent.

…between Bezawork and Mahmoud no one else existed – a match made in heaven? I hadn’t thought of that until now. Maybe my main character considers them her spiritual mother and father. Well no not ‘spiritual’ but her ‘love gods’? Her spirit-guides in matters of the heart? Now we’re getting somewhere. Others might think of different pairings, like Aster and Tilahun, or Neway and Kuku, etc. etc.

What else when I think of ‘tizita’? Great distances, long distances like the kind I ‘cross’ in my mind when I see a picture of a rural landscape. Moments like those that remind me of how vast the earth is, how vast even just one country, when one small corner of it could be so huge, so uncrossable except by sight. How easy it is to cross vast distances, entire valleys and mountain ranges, simply by sight! You can see a whole region in a matter of seconds! So it’s those distances that come to mind when I think of tizita, as if the singer is here wherever I am when I’m listening to the song, and the subject of the song (‘subject’??), the beloved, is on the other side of those kinds of distances, where only intangibles, like vision and voice and thoughts, can reach. Not least because the tempo is so slow!

 

New Hyphenation episode!

I’m happy to announce that the podcast Hyphenation has a new episode out! Here is what ‘Fresh Daze’ has in store for your hungry ears:

It’s a fine line between culture shock and “FOB” moments. What was confusing and painful in the moment– whether that’s mishaps of language, cuisine, hygiene, or social etiquette–becomes, in retrospect, a hilariously cringe-worthy anecdote. We have collected some of these for you in our fifth episode. Our own stories and those of contributors who, understandably, prefer to remain anonymous!

Music by HookSounds.

Prompts: May 2017

More Notes from the Canadian honey jar…

I really dropped the ball on this honey jar business! It’s been so long that it’s lost its ball-ness. Time to play catch-up, which on my planet means cramming multiple posts worth of prompts into one post! This selection contains my musings on the similarities between heartbreak and pins&needles; and the concept of letting someone “into your life”….

Prompt #8: May 11, 2017

Breakups: like when your leg reactivates after it has fallen asleep. Who’d think that reawakening/coming alive/the blood returning would be so painful?

The reason the leg or the arm fell asleep in the first place is because you left it in one position too long. To my knowledge, no other parts of the body have this tendency to “fall asleep”.

And the reason you left it in one position too long is because it was initially comfortable (unless you were stuck in that position and had no choice), or someone else was comfortable because of your position, and you didn’t want to disturb them so you stayed in that position too long. So either you were comfortable, or someone else was comfortable – that’s why the leg or arm was left in a certain position too long. Also, you just fell asleep yourself in a certain position. But that falls under the category of ‘left in a certain position too long’.

There is a parallel to relationships in this. You get comfortable with someone, whether or not it is the right person (whether or not you know this or not), and go ‘numb’, all the while (mistakenly) thinking that you are just fine/doing well. Only when you have to ‘shift position’ (i.e. the relationship is not going well) do you realize how long you’d been ‘stagnated’ in that state. And so it hurts to ‘come alive’ again, to feel new blood rushing into/old blood rushing out of a ‘dead zone’.

The most exquisitely excruciating aspect of it is that push/pull between what you want to do more than anything in the world in that moment, which is move, and the one thing you know you must not do if you want to avoid the pain, which is move. The pain makes you desperately want to move, but movement is also the one thing (the one choice) that will cause you additional, agonizing pain. Better to ride the pain that you do have, than move a muscle and bring on a whole new wave of even more intense pain.

Kind of like when a muscle cramps? (Charlie’s horse?) You clutch that muscle (calf, toe) and just have to ride it out. Just sit in it, become as still as you possibly can, surrender to the pain, etc. etc.

What’s the worst physical pain you’ve ever felt? What did you do?

Just sitting in the pain, in the discomfort, because you know that eventually (a few minutes from now, a few months from now, it will go away.)

End of relationships, numbed limbs, all the same! You become aware of/present in that aspect of your body like you never are at any other time! (imagine walking around with that much body awareness all the time!!)

I wrote out this prompt recently, so something in my recent experience must have come to mind when I had a foot falling asleep/waking up moment like that.

WHAT DOES SCIENCE SAY??? Hmm let’s see!

a.k.a – pins and needles/tingling hands & feet
that part of the body “feels foreign”/ “paralyzed”
transient paresthesia, and it’s what occurs when there’s sustained pressure placed on a nerve, causing a burning or prickling sensation that goes away soon after it’s relieved (ah so it has NOTHING to do with backed up blood haha!)
“Honeymoon” parasthesia, which occurs when a similar peripheral nerve is compressed, happens when someone’s sleeping on your arm all night.
The briefest, electric shock type of paresthesia can be caused by tweaking the ulnar nerve near the elbow. (“funny bone”)
The signal from the nerve is interrupted, disrupted, so strange/erratic signals ( = pins and needles sensation). The blood flow is never interrupted though!
Because the signals are not traveling effectively, you lose the sensation of that part of the body, or get weird sensations (excessive firing of nerves)
“superficial” = close to the skin (like nerves in arms and legs)
if the nerve was compressed too long, can take months to get the sensation back (oh this is deep!)
the pins & needles sensation is good, otherwise you wouldn’t know that the nerve has been pressured

Prompt #10: May 17, 2017

…All my dad said was that knowing someone for a year doesn’t mean anything, you hardly know them at all. Funny, the boy was a perfectly good guy, but my dad’s automatic reaction to him was as if he was a predator, going to get me pregnant and ruin my future.

…So, it turned out that that front desk guy had long noticed that the boy was not worthy of me. But of course he couldn’t say anything. He could only make his life difficult in small ways, like always asking him which apartment he’s going to, etc. even though he came frequently.

But after he was out of the picture, the day I returned to my condo after he had cleared it of his junk, (and junk it was; one more day and i would have called 1-800-junk) he said to me that he knew the guy was no good. He drove some old-ass Honda (which I had been so grateful for because at least it wasn’t what the previous guy drove; it’s funny what we consider ‘an improvement’) but had designer clothes (actually it might have just been a designer belt, Gucci?), and in his wallet were too many credit cards. From these pieces of information, the front desk guy concluded that this guy was no good. That he was ‘one of those’ who project a false image, live beyond their means, etc. And that was why he said to me, be careful who you let into your life. I never thought of it that way before. My life/access to it as a privilege, as a specific zone/area, etc….how novel it felt to have a man not only look out for me but actually speak to me, give me advice about relationships, good solid advice. It had been a while.

Prompts: September 2017

More Notes from the Canadian honey jar…

#55: Septemer 5, 2017

Certain moments in her life she’ll be eternally proud of: leaving that hotel room before he woke up (ESFNA), tiptoeing down the corridor holding her heels in her hand…

That will go down in her personal history as a ‘flash of self-worth’ moment, one of those times she acted in a way that maintained her dignity, self-respect, etc. Never mind that everything she did up to that moment was beneath her. But somehow taking herself out of that room before he woke up was pure genius. Now if she had managed to end the affair at that, that would have been even better, but oh well. It’s not called a ‘flash’ of genius for nothing. Everything that precedes and follows it is mostly darkness.

…it lingers in her mind because she wants somehow to let it be known that that’s not me, that’s not who I am, I am not one of those skanks who sleeps around at ESFNA. Except that’s exactly who she acted like: a skank who sleeps around at ESFNA. And the reason behind her effort to turn it into a relationship afterwards can all be traced to that desire to prove that see, I’m not a skank. This is a real connection, this is a real relationship. We had such a strong chemistry that we couldn’t help but fall into bed within days of meeting each other. But it wasn’t, and they didn’t have any such connection. It was just as tawdry and embarrassing as it looked. It was exactly what it was. She just has to accept that even the ‘best’ of us have moments of sinking that low.

#57: September 14, 2017

The artists: Madonna, Marvin Gaye, (Michael Jackson?), (Lionel Richie?).

The songs: Like a Virgin, Lucky Star, Material Girl; Sexual Healing; Bad; Dancing on the Ceiling

I don’t know where they came from. They were likely recordings made for my parents from people they knew who lived abroad or who travelled abroad.

I don’t know if they would have been considered illegal, or contraband.

I wonder why they were given to or made for us. And by whom.

Did we know that the songs were about love?

Well, I remember thinking it had something to do with men and women relationships.

I got the ‘general gist’, from the sensuality, the movements, the gestures, and the facial expressions.

I was more interested in the videos and songs for what they showed me about life in outside-country. The settings, the fashions, how ferenjoch behaved. It was an all-around experience. I don’t think I dwelled too much on the meaning of the song. I definitely didn’t understand a word of the lyrics.

#58: September 15, 2017

Late in life fondness for old ballads.

He claims it isn’t. that he has always listened to tizita, practically on full blast, in the bedroom while falling asleep & waking up, and in the living room whenever. But I know for a fact that that has never been the case

If there has been a single soundtrack that ran through my entire life at home, it is the soundtrack of the news. CNN, BBC, more recently Al Jazeera.

Isn’t the theme of most of those ballads regret? Let’s look up the definition.

1. to feel sorrow or remorse for (an act, fault, disappointment, etc.)
2. to think of with a sense of loss
3. a sense of loss, disappointment, dissatisfaction, etc.

Synonyms: deplore, lament, bewail, bemoan, mourn, sorrow, grieve.

Regret, penitence, remorse imply a sense of sorrow about events in the past, usually wrongs committed or errors made. Regret is distress of mind, sorrow for what has been done or failed to be done: to have no regrets.

I think one of the biggest lies people tell, one of the most common lies, the lie everyone tells, is “I have no regrets.” Bullshit I say!

The talent for spinning every situation to make oneself appear in the best light, in the winning light, no matter the facts of the situation (you fell flat on your face), is one hell of a talent indeed.

I think the idea of having no regrets is very appealing. And the vision of oneself as one such person is very appealing. To say you have no regret is to say you think every decision you ever made is the right one? Not at all. Only that you are okay with the wrong ones and the right ones too. And who’s to say all the wrong ones will not turn out to have been right all along and vice versa. As he says, we can never know what was for good and what was for bad, not truly, until the end. How something seems now is only how it seems now, not how it will seem in the future.

I feel like looking up quotes about regret.

Favourites:

The regret of my life is that I have not said ‘I love you’ often enough.

Yoko Ono

Always Do Your Best. Your best is going to change from moment to moment; it will be different when you are healthy as opposed to sick. Under any circumstance, simply do your best, and you will avoid self-judgment, self-abuse and regret.

Don Miguel Ruiz

Make the most of your regrets; never smother your sorrow, but tend and cherish it till it comes to have a separate and integral interest. To regret deeply is to live afresh.

Henry David Thoreau

My one regret in life is that I am not someone else.

Woody Allen

Regret is the worst human emotion. If you took another road, you might have fallen off a cliff. I’m content.

William Shatner

A great source of calamity lies in regret and anticipation; therefore a person is wise who thinks of the present alone, regardless of the past or future.

Oliver Goldsmith

People always tell me I’m going to regret not having kids. But what if I have one and then I regret having it? Has anyone thought of that option?

Karl Pilkington

In history as in human life, regret does not bring back a lost moment and a thousand years will not recover something lost in a single hour.

Stefan Zweig

The man who insists upon seeing with perfect clearness before he decides, never decides. Accept life, and you must accept regret.

Henri Frederic Amiel

#60: September 18, 2017

the back of this PROMPT says: ‘The conspicuous absence of wedding photos at their house. How it was confusing because there was no other narrative that we could conceive of for a man + woman getting married & having children without having a wedding.’

…probably because we didn’t know about sex lol! As if a wedding literally had to happen for children to be possible. At least that is how it looked all around. No one who wasn’t married had children. That we knew of, of course.

So yes, the mystery of why there were no wedding photos. (Wedding photos were a standard piece of decoration in every married household.

Reminds me of those pieces of paper that used to be pasted up above the doorways of every house, some kind of registration. For what? Just like that, wedding photos were there too, like the official document of belonging to an institution. Welcome to the Institute of Marriage #123 in the Municipality of Addis Ababa.

No one ever asked. That’s the thing. True to our cultural conditioning. No one ever asked why there are no wedding photos at their house.

So, no one ever asked but the story came out in bits and pieces. To this day I don’t think the full version is known by anyone other than the two involved. That’s the thing having a wedding entitles you to: a story, a tale of just you and him/her, that you are free to tell as many times as you want in whatever company you want, that you are free to possess a treasured photo album of. But if you’re a pair who just eloped, or shacked up, it doesn’t matter if your love was truer, your union happier than the married pair’s, you don’t get a story. You do have a story, of course. A more interesting one, for sure. But you don’t get to tell it to anyone other than yourselves (if you’ve privately thrown off the shame everyone wants you to feel about it), and maybe your children. Hopefully your children. The story will out, eventually, in bits and pieces, here and there, never fully complete or fully accurate. You could set the record straight, of course, but you can’t because you’re not supposed to/allowed to talk about it.

Oh if only someone would! Maybe that’s part of the book? An elderly former eloper (widowed or not?) decides to tell their story fully out in the open, fed up with all this ‘properness’. The ‘proper’ way to fall in love and set up a life together, etc.

Yes maybe a contrast of 2 weddings? One “traditional” one (but of a diaspora couple), one “retroactive” one (of an elderly couple who never had a real one, because they had eloped). But what about the elderly couple who reunite late in life after having had their love interrupted at a young age? Well it all depends on what I’m trying to say with all of it. What’s my ultimate position. What am I saying about love, weddings, marriage? Whose pov is it? Is it 1st person (a serial bridesmaid? A divorceé?) or multiple povs? I like the multiple povs better. As an artistic challenge to myself and also because it allows for more stories to be told. Hmmmmm.

that’s the story I’ve always wanted to hear, the full version, then maybe that’s the story I should write! Contrasted with the ‘approved’ kind of wedding. Maybe the book is written in 2 time periods? Interrresting! How about: in the present day version, a diaspora couple is getting married, but there’s also a anniversary-wedding in the works (maybe it’s an annoyance to the families of the diaspora couple? There’s a family connection between the two weddings. Hello conflict!). So there’s a lot of gossip flying about re: what really happened ‘back then’ between the older couple, and there’s ‘flashback’ sections that show what did really happen, and there’s the present day progress of the two weddings.

Sounds pretty dense, with potential to get complicated/out of hand, but at this point I like!

#61: September 19, 2017

 For the record, the whole “let’s have sex first before we get serious” thing has never sat right with me. It’s the most FOB part of me I guess. I just realized early on that I have to get with the program (Rome/Romans) if I intend to have any kind of dating life in this generation.

When did I first realize this, you say? Well I’ll tell you.

. It was in the basement of one very cozy family home in the Versoix district of Geneva, sometime in the spring of 1998, in the middle of a makeout session with my boyfriend at the time. I forget how he asked about sex. I just know it was very nicely, very respectfully, but also very like “um so when are we going to do this?” it was very clear that for him it had been a given. Something natural to want to do. A ‘when’, not an ‘if’. Whereas I had not even thought about it. At all. I hadn’t even thought about his private parts, as if he was a mannequin…Looking back, I realize it was the longest I was in a relationship before sex entered the picture. About 4 months. Now I think wow! I can’t even imagine getting the chance to be in a relationship that long without sex even coming up! Sounds like a dream. Without intending it, I had practiced that ‘3 month rule’! Of course, at the time it did not feel nearly long enough…Back then, I was doing what I saw other people around me doing. And I’ve continued the same pattern since. Or being influenced by offhand comments/expectations of other people…My 16 year old self had more in common with my parents than I’ve ever realized…I really had no other blueprint for relationships than my mother and father. And whether it was explicitly known or not, the story of their relationship was that they were the only people that they dated. They had never been with anyone else, nor would they ever. So I thought this is how all relationships go. You stay with the one you pick first.

#63: September 21, 2017

…his attention on me was like oxygen. I only thought I’d been breathing before

That’s pretty much it! I’d never felt that way around someone before, and I haven’t since. But I know now that’s not necessarily a good thing, it doesn’t mean that you should be with a person. Actually it’s a dangerous thing! To be at someone’s mercy for your oxygen!!…That’s pretty interesting. How you can be totally indifferent to someone at one point in your life, and that same person, at another point, feels like a soulmate, the love of your life, like someone around whom it even feels easier to breathe for chrissake! What’s different between who you were then and who you are at that moment?…This could be an interesting development for the relationship between two characters in the book…looking back on a crush, essentially, a looooong crush more fondly than any hookup or relationship that might have been but never was.

 

Prompts: July 2017

More Notes from the Canadian honey jar…

#35: July 17, 2017

…she’s the necrophiliac of the group, digs up the corpses of old boyfriends and tries to dance with them (get them to dance with her) again. Rather than start new relationships, that is. Not that she intentionally ‘started’ the previous ones. She ‘fell into’ them, though not into love. Not that, ever. So far. One has to be capable of it?

…It’s easier to just let one thing lead to another, on the way into it, and one thing lead to another, on the way out of it. And easiest of all is the ghosts of relationships past, the ghosts of exes. They are so agreeable. They don’t say much, they don’t contradict, they make no demands, they come and go as required, and they listen for as long as you’ve got something to say, and when they do respond their response is exactly right. Hence why the relationships with the ghosts is the one she pursues long after their death. The surest way to stop this dance with ghosts is to bring in a new, live one whose reactions, responses, etc. can’t be as easily anticipated or controlled. Maybe it’s the ‘tizita’ in her genes that makes her prefer the dance with a ghost over the dance with a live one? Must be!

#39: July 22, 2017

The ‘tizita’ painting by Afewerk Tekle

The distinctive thing is that she seems to have a veil on. A black veil. Veil supposed to represent the past, looking into the past? She has the ‘typical’ face, of course: heart shaped, big almond-shaped eyes, long straight nose, and small but plump (what would be called ‘rosebud’?) mouth. I’m noticing now that her ear seems to hang rather low! And her neck is VERY long. The hair is in a kind of pile-up/up-do.

The most obviously noticeable thing about this painting, aside from the black-veil, is that she’s crying. Not the ‘ugly cry’, but one of those ‘expressionless’ cries, where you’re ‘somewhere else’, staring/gazing off into the distance, and the tears well up and tumble down because you’re so ‘not here’ that you don’t even squeeze your eyes to wring out the tears and see again. Looking back/remembering through the blur of tears. The veil is parted but the veil of tears has replaced it.

For someone who doesn’t know what ‘tizita’ is, it just looks like the painting of a pretty (beautiful) but very sad woman.

Ok so the bottom line is that this painting leaves me uninspired. She’s glaringly beautiful, glaringly sad, glaringly crying.

Beauty in sadness, the beauty of sadness.

He is known for painting Ethiopian subjects & themes, and I guess it’s proof of how major a theme ‘tizita’ is that he made a painting about it! I’m surprised it isn’t a whole series! Idea: look up what other paintings titled ‘tizita’ are out there!

#41: July 25, 2017

What if the songs we grew up listening to, heard over&over even before we knew what music or words or love were (though we felt love) what if that “marks” us & determines how we approach love later on? Doomed! Considering the tizita, etc. lyrics! (structure idea: each character grew up listening to a certain type of song = marks the characters of their relationships! I like!) What was playing in the 80s + 90s?

Hm, I’m not sure I buy it. I don’t think SCIENCE supports it! According to science, it’s the relationships we see growing up that influence the ones we have when we grow up. And in a ‘traditional’ family at least, it’s the dynamic between our mothers and fathers that we replicate…sort of.

A couple ‘communicating’ by their choice of music. Not when they’re first getting together, dedicating songs to each other, etc. But when things aren’t going well, maybe when they are not even speaking to each other. What each person chooses to play loud enough for the other one to hear. This could be a creative way to incorporate the music into the stories.

#42: July 28, 2017

…yelping her husband’s name when frightened. How did that habit begin? Who started it, and who picked it up? Or was it just something everyone did back then, like a fashion? The way certain slang terms go in an out of fashion. There was a time when using your husband’s name as an exclamation was in fashion, was the slang of the day!

Comparable today would be yelling random exclamations that have nothing to do with the situation, like a celebrity’s name or an improvisation on ‘Jesus!’ One way this could be adapted into the story: a character consciously chooses to develop this habit, only the name she exclaims with is the name of a singer, like Mahmoud. Only, in the current climate, that could cause problems! But if you think about it, people exclaim ‘God!’ or ‘Jesus!’ all the time, so why not ‘Mohamed!’? Could be a nice opening section “…she had taken to exclaiming ‘Mohamed!’ whenever something surprised or frightened her, the way her mother and aunts used to ‘summon’ their husband’s protection by exclaiming their names when she was growing up, only in today’s society, that got her in trouble, or at least some strange looks, more than once. But why shouldn’t she be able to summon her beloved?”

What was their intention in gasping their husband’s names, I wonder. Why was the man’s name the word that came to their tongue in those heightened moments? It’s a summoning, an appeal, as if that person could protect you from what was about to happen or you thought had happened, etc. As if that person could avert fear or disaster. Rather than the name of God, it’s his name I call when I am in need of assurance or aid. There was no cooing ‘I love you’ between them, never heard that, but that habit of theirs speaks volumes about the place their husbands’ held in their hearts and lives. Of course, if the man wasn’t there, there’s nothing he can do, but just the voicing of his name was appeasement enough.

And what did the husbands feel about it? Never considered that side! What could they feel but good, needed, important?

It was a time when a woman’s depending on her husband for safety was nothing shameful. It was considered natural, normal. That was their job. The woman expected it, the men provided it. Men = protection.

#34: July 5, 2017

…a sense that things would always be this way. We would always be this cool, have this much fun together, be this open and frank with each other. Even though marriage and kids were coming this dynamic would remain unchanged…couldn’t imagine any of us taking offense at another to the point of barely speaking anymore…couldn’t imagine camps with different loyalties being formed, situations where so-and-so would avoid so-and-so, or where relationships would have deteriorated so much that everything would have become just surface politenesses. In a word, couldn’t imagine that we’d ever become like our parents, holding grudges and silences for decades, secrets, appearances, etc…thought, we’re a different generation, we do and say what we mean, we keep everything authentic and uncomplicated, real, so that will never be us. That will never be us.

…been humbling to learn that we are not so different from those who came before us after all, that when the pressure really sets in, the traits that surface in us are the same ones as theirs… realize that they didn’t start out the way we know them now. They too started out all on good, or at least uncomplicated terms, and had no idea of the fault lines that lay just under the surface of their relationships and would become wide gaps as life became complicated due to shifting loyalties (kids, spouses, politics, etc.)