Kristeva moments

Julia Kristeva came to the Outpost to receive an honorary doctorate by the Outpost University. The ceremony took place yesterday and then the potentates posed for an official photo, which is how I shot mine:

Now, Kristeva being an institutional celebrity intellectual, a mandarin of Thought from within the larger circle of obfuscators (Derrida), misreaders (Barthes), sophists (Baudrillard) and clueless terminology-abusers (Lacan, Deleuze) known as the postmodernists, or deconstructionists, or simply theorists, there was a certain dark horizon of expectations to be entertained.

However, Kristeva came out as a very warm individual, low key (considering) and forthcoming. Her address was clear and straightforward – at times demonstrating profound insight into matters of human psyche, society and the interaction (or ’struggle’?) between the two. At least in her address, rather than restating the obvious in pompously impenetrable verbiage, as some of the aforementioned would happily do, she gave an outline of her work and thought with an interesting touch of autobiography — surely a legacy of her involvement with psychoanalysis.

Jod insists the simplicity of her address — besides due to her having been asked to speak in English (!!!) — reflected her own expectations regarding the place and the audience: the University is less than 20 years old and the Outpost is not exactly famous for its intellectuals, artists and scientists (a situation I hope will very soon change). Moreover, the actual audience did contain its fair share of diplomats and the usual movers and shakers (i.e. those who decide to leave their seat, getting everyone in the row to stand up, roughly 4 minutes before a speaker finishes only to return to it 2 minutes later). So, Jod argued, she basically talked down to us: “Kristeva would not normally spend 5 minutes of a talk to explain both what intertextuality is and the necessity of looking into it!”, she said.

I think I agree, if I judge from the almost permanent look of bewilderment on her face – a look she however managed to conceal quite effectively, with a little help from good manners and what seemed like ‘good nature’ on her behalf. After all, one thing French intellectuals, even the haughty and pretentious ones, possess is manners (which brings them in stark contrast with certain American characters). Yes, but why bewilderment? Well, there were indeed moments where one had the feeling of attending a visit of the Queen to the Channel Islands or the Isle of Man, something along these lines. Anyway.

We afterwards had dinner at a very expensive restaurant, with tables arranged as if for a wedding banquet (so, about half of us ate with our backs turned to the guest of honour). One of the waiters sported an untucked shirt. The chardonnay smelled like Gizmo piss. The food was right but flavourless. Anyway (again).

This American rice is not American

Because of the Outpost’s geographical location in the Middle East, we often get globalised products, like Kit-Kat, Colgate, Andrex or what have you, with their brand names transliterated in Hebrew and in Arabic. I think that relevant to the above is what I saw today: non-American ‘American’ rice (pictured), fit for consumption by anti-americanists and those boycotting the Great Devil.

and of course…

Of course.

Music for my ears

My new workplace is a 15-minute walk from where I live, and I cover the daily distance with earphones plugged in my ears. Walking home minutes ago I realised that these contraptions are made for walking in cities with pavements to walk on, not the streets of Outpost Capital. The general lack of pavements and the abundance of parked cars entails that I sometimes have to walk close to the middle of the street, just in front of cars manoeuvring their way past both parked cars and pedestrians oblivious to the world — just like me (granted, pedestrians are rarer).

Sometimes, the moments Shuffle can create are worth the risk, as when the afternoon light falls from a particular angle to coincide with Philip Glass: for a moment, I am able to dream again.

Is the winter any closer, at last?

Let me be the only one to keep you from the cold

Shortbus

By the way, if you haven’t seen Shortbus yet, don’t bother. Really.

It uniquely achieves talking about sex in a spectacularly tedious way: I gave up at the one-hour mark a week ago and only managed to pull myself together to watch the remaining thirty-something minutes while lunch was cooking today. The film also features some monumentally irritating characters, with gay men being drama queens or shallow and straight men being scummy, while women — both lesbian and straight — are lovingly portrayed in an almost old-fashioned misogynistic manner. Actually, only the maitre d’ of Shortbus is endearing and engaging.

Why, oh why, is it so hard to talk about sex?  :-p

Seven chances

Before Romero’s zombies, before Jackie Chan, before Ben Stiller, there was Buster Keaton’s Seven Chances (1925). I saw it minutes ago.

Aneboda

Happiness and bliss have slowly subsided since we came back; we are again angry and frustrated at being bored and out of options, at all the little petty stupidities I have long time ago stopped reporting here, at having nowhere to go for a stroll on a Sunday night — the usual stuff.

Lately it has also been oppressively sultry (not in the sexy sense). Yes, Great Westphalian insists that this is nothing compared to sweltering Washington DC. However, I am not sure I would live in DC, either. And I am not sure it is such a chronic problem there as it is here: from mid June to mid October every year. Thankfully, I’ve got my job. My new one, that is. Right on time.

Whatever. Nobody cares. People think I suffer from acquired whining, anyway. So, change of tack.

 IKEA is opening in three days in the Outpost. All the customary cataclysmic side-effects are expected here as well. Jod went shopping there last Saturday, during a VIP sneak preview (courtesy of One of the Seven). She brought back less than I hoped for. Among them was Aneboda, which is just a flat-packed (obviously) chest of drawers (but don’t you just love those lame pseudo-Swedish names IKEA products have? I mean, one of their lines is called ‘Malm’ for X’s sake; they probably pay linguists or branding specialists or what-have-you to come up with them).

The IKEA pioneers met me outside for a coffee. I was in a stinking mood. I still had this thing Jod had said earlier wedged in my head: “We have wasted our best years in the bloody provinces: five years in the Market Town, five years here”. Something I have thought about over and over again but never had the guts to spell out myself, not even to myself. So, we came back home and I sank into a deep sleep, dreaming of publishers rejecting my manuscripts and trying to convince them to think twice: this is what happens when you read McInerney’s Brightness Falls before siesta.

However, I woke up happy and eager to assemble Aneboda. Which I did, diligently: my own Anatevka moment, which I was humming throughout the two-hour assembling of the chest of drawers: I have grown rusty, as it’s been a year or so since I last assembled a flat-packed piece of furniture. So, Aneboda led me to Anatevka, which is what happens when your father frequently listens to the Fiddler on the Roof soundtrack when you are child.

We had of course nowhere to go on a Saturday night, so I made tacos and we watched DVDs and drank beers instead, secure under the air conditioner.