88 = 16

On June 14, my grandpa turned 88. When I asked how it felt, he said: Just like yesterday. Besides, 8+8=16 and that's how I always feel. Grandpa really is a miracle. He and my grandma (87) went to Tunisia on Friday and are going to the Canary Islands later on this summer. They have already been to France and Egypt this year and I am sure they are already scheming where to spend the winter holidays. Living by the moto - When you're our age, everything and anything is allowed - they really are an unstoppable couple. Grandpa also uses a GPS device, a smart-phone, a Facebook account, a synthesizer which he connects to a computer program through which he learns how to play, and many other gadgets too sophisticated for me to comprehend. As the years go by, he keeps getting smarter and I can see his French and English improve by the day. Every time I see him, he tells me about something he has learned browsing the internet and, more often than not, it is stuff that I have never even heard of.

Grandma is special in her own ways. Very stubborn, very opinionated, very strict. Although today she uses her age as an excuse, I really think she always thought she was allowed to do anything. Raised in a bourgeois family, she would steal skis and other expensive goods from her own household to donate for the Partisans, then a guerrilla force fighting for liberation from the Nazi's. Grandma sometimes brags in a nonchalant tone about her contributions to WWII resistance as a medical worker. She traveled on foot and on horse with her own group of all-male Partisans from Belgrade to Zagreb through wilderness and forests. She entered Zagreb on a horse, on the very day that it was liberated, surrounded by the boys that she had been taking care of. Although she supported the communists when it was very dangerous to do so, Grandma left the Communist Party in disappointment when not supporting them was dangerous. Ever since, she has been very used to disagreeing with the world and I think she overcomes it all by being convinced that she is always right.

One hot summer in the mid 50's, Grandpa was riding around with his motorcycle buddies when he noticed Grandma. She was the only girl in Belgrade to ride a motorcycle at the time and techie Grandpa couldn't help but notice that it was a nice one too. Decades after they had fallen for each other so unconventionally, they have decelerated to a more predictable life. Regardless of their plentiful travel, they do have to comply with some rules - lunch is at 12:30, nap time is from 2:00-4:00, dinner is at 6:00, bedtime at 9, etc. For as long as I have been around and can remember, they have been splitting a 0.75 liter bottle of beer for lunch. Having already had bad experience in Tunisia, where beer is very difficult to find and expensive, Grandma decided she would pack 10 0.75 cans of beer for the 10 days of their vacation, for them to split a can each lunch. Grandpa disproved, but she had decided and that was it. So, she packed 5 cans in her own suitcase and the other 5 into Grandpa's case, secretly. I can just imagine the Partisan inside her chuckle when she did this - He may be against it now, but when I surprise him with a can... heh heh.

Lo and behold, their suitcases arrived to Tunisia safely, yet completely wet. The cans exploded from the juggling and air pressure. In a very inconvenient way, Grandma was busted. Somehow, they did not have any problems going through the customs. Somehow, they survived the embarrassment of walking into their 4 star hotel smelling like two alcoholics. But when they arrived to the room, Grandpa found that even his fancy camera had gotten wet. Let's just say that I received an ample of angry text messages from Grandpa. They are not back yet but I hope that they got over it quickly and started enjoying their trip. In the meantime, I have been seriously considering being a third wheeler on the trip to the Canary Islands, if they'll have me. I am sure it would be a one of a kind adventure. Who knows what our guerrilla traveler has prepared for that episode. Stay tuned...

Our Good Friend Yugo

Maaarijaa come onnn!! Deki was yelling out to my window from the street, leaning on his white Yugo and reaching in through the window to honk, in his shiny-fluorescent-red tracksuit and rave shades, with trance blasting as loudly as it was possible with the car’s humble sound system. The tracksuit was sent from his uncle in Germany, making it very cool, regardless of the black two-headed eagle emblem, just like the one on the Albanian flag.

It was 8 AM and he had partied all night in a city in the north of Serbia but he was conscientious enough to leave for Belgrade and drive fast enough to make it in time to compete at the hair show at Hotel Yugoslavia. I was his “model”. I ran down and, before leaving, we did our usual synchronized Yugo shake – Deki stands on one side of the Yugo, I stand on the other, and we sway the car back and forth to hear how much gas is juggling inside. Yugo gas meters never worked and were impossible to repair.

We rushed over the bridge, crossing the Sava River onto New Belgrade and were in front of good old proud Hotel Yugoslavia in no time. With not as many cops and traffic on the streets of Belgrade as there are today, the Yugo was great for bringing us everywhere in time. We entered shabby Yugoslavia and walked through the dark hallways of what had been considered to be the most prestigious hotel in the Balkans, with a few shattering lights greeting us, to the room reserved for us and the hairdo. It was one of those rooms where Queen Elisabeth II, Nixon and Tina Turner would have stayed when visiting Tito’s great country in the 70’s and 80’s. It too was dark and shabby.

Deki did a few of his tricks and shortened my “model” hair even more, I painted my face with drastic make-up and we went to the show hall. As I walked the stage, everyone seemed to like my boy look, and Deki enjoyed himself mocking and making faces at me. The more I “modeled”, the more I resembled a boy, and all that seemed to matter at the time was to have fun while satisfying Deki’s strict boss, a coked out 40-something-year-old and the owner of the salon where he worked. Neither Deki or I ever earned any cash competing and presenting at these hair shows.

***

It’s 2 PM, following a successful hair show. A guy in a shiny-fluorescent-red tracksuit and rave shades and a girl with short white hair, black eye makeup and punk clothes are leaning on a white Yugo in front of Hotel Yugoslavia. The sun, fortified in the midst of New Belgrade’s communist blocks where shade is scarce, is melting the girl’s cakey and over exaggerated makeup. The guy is also sweating severely under his cool polyester outfit.

What are they scheming?

***

We decided it was useless to go home, rest until the evening and meet up again. We hopped into the Yugo, put on a psychedelic trance tape and let the fun begin. After a stop to the gas station for beers, we headed to our usual parking lot, where I would practice driving. Deki considered the Yugo to be sort of like a drivers’ boot camp. He would always say that the best drivers learnt how to drive on a Yugo and that, if I learned all of the tricks on a Yugo, it will make any other vehicle a piece of cake. We parked the car to drink a beer and relax a bit. He was giving me some pointers on parking as I noticed two cops approach us. We turned down the music. What a pain. They rarely ever approached us for something substantial and it seemed like too nice of a day to chitchat with them, especially since we were looking to save up the little cash we had for beers in the evening, not waste it on bribes.

“Good day”, they looked at us as if they were on to something. “Can we see your license and registration?”

It was a good thing Deki and I hadn’t swapped seats yet. He had me hold on to his beer as he searched for the documents and handed them to the fatter cop.

“So, what are the two of you doing here?” –the other one asked.

“Uh, you know, we just thought we’d enjoy the sun, hang out… the usual…” Deki responded nervously hoping the cop would stop gazing into the beers I was holding.

“Open your trunk.”

As the fat and the fatter cop shuffled the messy trunk, we rolled our eyes. This annoying procedure was a standard way for to get us to pay up when in hurry or simply looking to avoid embarrassment in front of a girl. This would have been the 30^th time that the Yugo was undergoing such an exhaustive search and Deki and I were too good of friends to be embarrassed by this situation so we silently agreed on not giving them the cash. 45 minutes later, the fatter cop was sweatier than polyestered Deki and pissed that we had all the time in the world for their “procedure”. His red dripping face crawled in through the window.

“Next time, take her home to fuck her. It must be rather uncomfortable here,” he said as he returned Deki's papers.

Like a pair of angry chubby boys disappointed about not getting the candy they had been anticipating, they trotted off to their Yugo 101 Skala and drove off. The finishing touch of their performance, the degrading childish line, left us in numb shock. It was the type of shock you would get from the behavior of a person, who you know pretty well but disliked, who you thought would not be able to shock you anymore than they already had, but they still manage to. Time after time.

We watched the sun set behind Belgrade, poured down a couple of more beers, and decided it was not the day for me to practice driving. “Besides”, Deki was now arguing a contradictory yet equally valid Yugo theory to the one he had been selling an hour before, “if you learn how to drive on this Yugo, you will have trouble shifting gears on other cars”. Every Yugo has its own way of handling the stick shift and, more often than not, the first and reverse gears are particularly challenging and require extra strength and special angles in entering. Every owner is the master of his/her own stick shift and it is difficult to get accustomed to others after.

***

It was finally getting dark. Our time to shine. We drove over to Ivana’s and picked her up. Now when I look back at Deki’s white Yugo days, all I remember is excitement. The night after the parking lot incident with the cops was no different, no special. We drank, laughed, talked, smoked, mocked each other, danced, stuck our heads out the windows singing from the top of our lungs (to tracks blasting as loudly as it was possible from a Yugo). It was one of those moods that would make Ivana and I blow kisses at random drivers in cars around us. Bored cab drivers, lonely men and women, other careless youth like us. Blowing the kisses seemed to have a wonderful impact on everyone, confusion and surprise on their side, fun and spontaneity on our side.

The bastardly cops, the absurd hairshows and ridiculous hairdo’s, the coked-out boss, the messed up country and the shitty car couldn’t have mixed better. It was an accidental film for us to cast in as teenagers, a film full of mistakes and adaptations. And, for us, this life worked perfectly. Just like Deki’s white Yugo.

I'll have some ash in my pancakes, please.

This week, Grandma treated me with her wonderful pancakes! The occasion? My 87-year-old grandparents have only two friends - a couple of the same age - with whom they organize Sunday lunches at each others' houses. It's exhausting, boring and often frustrating. Boba, the male friend, usually falls asleep within the first five minutes of sipping the aperitif, wakes up to groggily move over to the dining room to eat, and falls back asleep shortly after.

Nonetheless, this tradition gives my grandparents, and probably the other couple as well, something to prepare for, something to plan, and something to gossip about after.

The pancakes that Grandma spent Sunday morning making and that ended up as a treat for my coworkers were in fact intended for Boba and Jovanka. Grandma called me around noon to ask me to pick up the pancakes as there had been a sudden change in plans. The Sunday lunch that had not been skipped in a decade was not happening. Boba and Jovanka were not coming.

After a dramatic pause called for by the sudden shift in my heart from being excited for the pancakes to worrying about my grandparents' only friends, I gathered the courage to ask: "...why?"

"Boba is afraid of the volcanic ash cloud! He won't walk out of the house, you know him." - We simultaneously burst into hysterical laughter. Secretly feeling at ease, I told her I'd be there in 10 minutes.

Born in 1922 in Belgrade, my grandparents and their friend Boba witnessed a lot throughout their lives - the Nazi occupation followed by the "liberation" carpet bombing, the often kind and sometimes very unkind communist rule, Milosevic's rule, sanctions, embargo, the second highest hyperinflation in world's history, the NATO bombing, the October 5th revolution and countless additional life complications - all to be lucky enough to be healthy and alive at the age of 87.

Why on Earth is Boba worrying about volcanic ash?

The names mentioned in this blog entry are fictional based on real characters.

Knitting 101: The Product

Meet Zucha, my life-long friend, modeling the very first scarf that I knitted for my baby niece. Who is going to wait for winter to wear this chic one-of-a-kind sustainable piece of art?

And here is a better view of the stitches, loose and messy, but not bad for a first timer and the thick colorful thread allows for imperfection. Start with thicker threads!

America's Oldest Children

"My rose is that I love my mom. My thorn is that my dad got locked up." Jackson's eyes were filled with tears. Playing Roses and Thorns was a way to sometimes help the children talk about their feelings, which they rarely did. They usually took their situation - homelessness, missing fathers, addicted mothers, daily shootings in the neighborhood - for granted. Jackson is 7 years old and lives with his mother, who recently realized she was a lesbian, and four other brothers at a transitional housing program in South East D.C. The father, a homeless most of his life, is usually missing or in jail, and the few times I have seen him visit the children he would make it a point to call their mother a "dike" or to take the saved up pocket money from his sons (which usually added up to a few dollars). 

That was the most difficult part of volunteering with homeless children in South East DC, the helplessness of an outsider. Not being able to do something about the way Jackson's father talked about his mother because it was a family matter. Not being able to do anything about 9-year-old Mike's mother who was constantly drugged up on a mixture of pills she invented as a substitute for crack. Not knowing what to say when the kids called each other "nigger". I was and always would be a white privileged outsider and, despite the fact that many of the families overcame this, I am not sure I ever did. Privilege had crippled me. The thought of me proposing solutions to the problems of lives I had never come close to living began to terrify me. 

I decided to be a close friend but at the same time respect that the role of a friend, especially a child friend, is one of a listener, a distractor from daily troubles, a companion. We did many things together, from jumprope to homework. I let go of what I knew of as norms and finally began to see things with a clearer mind. My friends were children, who despite their unique lives, wanted to be treated as children - to be played with, read to, advised on girlfriend/boyfriend troubles. Many people may see this as an attempt to escape reality but no, my friends are not going anywhere, they are sitting right in the epicenter of America's problems. They are just not willing to escape their childhood because of it. 

Working with, serving and learning from DC's homeless children was the most rewarding experience in my life. They unearthed a part of me that nobody else could have. I learned to be positive and playful in all settings. I learned to use the child in me as a way of empowerment, a loll out to foolish obstacles.

The names mentioned in this blog entry are fictional based on real characters. 

Detergent Opera

Soap Operas. Think, what is the first thing that comes to your mind? Who do you imagine watching soap operas? What is their sex, level of education, age? It's fascinating how I have a very clear image of who is watching a soap opera, in terms of all three categories, even though I have never in my life actually met a middle aged housewife who spends her days in front of the television set, mesmerized by the passionate forbidden love between a Frederico and a Maria. (In my experience, these women are usually too overwhelmed with more important things like raising their children, helping their spouses balance between work and family life or looking for a job themselves to spend their days watching TV.)

And, how come they are called soap operas? I always imagined this was because all the drama, lust and passion grew exponentially, in a similar way that soap foam does when you scrub.

However, the term soap opera emerged because these shows, which came to represent the overwhelming majority of commercialized radio broadcast in the 30's, were in fact sponsored by household cleaning product brands. Opera, on the other hand referred to the portrayal of everyday life events in an opera-style, with over exaggerated drama and complex emotion.

An article about this by Robert C. Allen, intrigued me not only because the thought that soap operas could have easily been called detergent operas or disinfect operas made me giggle, but also because I have always used the term so casually, not caring enough to know its real meaning and implications.

The soap opera always has been a "woman's" genre, and, it has frequently been assumed (mainly by those who have never watched soap operas), of interest primarily or exclusively to uncultured working-class women with simple tastes and limited capacities. Thus the soap opera has been the most easily parodied of all broadcasting genres, and its presumed audience most easily stereotyped as the working-class "housewife" who allows the dishes to pile up and the children to run amuck because of her "addiction" to soap operas [...] Despite the fact that its appeals for half a century have cut across social and demographic categories, the term continues to carry this sexist and classist baggage.

This made me think... As women did not have much of a chance to work in the years when soap operas were emerging, it should not be surprising that they were the primary audience of anything that would broadcast during the day. Moreover, passing a sexist or classist judgment is fallacious as it must have been mainly the powerful prosperous men who designed the form of these shows, as a way to satisfy advertisers while meeting what they themselves decided would be the interest of the consumers. Mocking women or the uneducated as the mindless followers of soap operas is blaming them for something that others created.

I admit, I'm guilty. But I promise to work on it. And, let's all work on knowing what the terms we use really mean.

Josephus

My friend Joseph is who I want to be when I grow up. In particular, I am trying to travel the way he does. I came across one of the emails he wrote to me from Angers, France, where he was doing a semester abroad to study the language. To me, it serves as a tutorial on how to look at traveling and overall life experience.

Busy in France? More like living my dreams. French culture is invigorating. The standard is this whole subtle game thing with meeting people. Then I come on the scene. Standing on my board, kicking and pushing, then the hill drops. I lower my bag, pull a cig to my lips and bend me knees until I'm literally sitting. There is lots of traffic downtown. I whiz by listening to Crookers, thinking about how amazing it's gonna be next Friday in Paris when I see them. My new Angers/France accomplice Jennifer and I have found a couch to crash on after the show. I get to the bottom of the hill and all eyes are on me from the top to the bottom, with families and teenagers cheering with wide smiles. I'm here. Welcome to Angers, welcome to my world. I thought about it for a long time the previous night. Am I here to blend in? Or engage the new town and give them a taste of my cultural expression - goofy shades, boat shorts, a tight tee, with a flannel over it. If I am deciding to support the tourism in Angers, they may feel insecure with my privileged travel, which is why I decide to give back. Hey there, Joseph here. C'est ca se ca?

e-mail from Joseph Cutler on June 6, 2008