so here’s what happens when you plan a holiday around sun and beaches: it rains.

it rained nearly every single day of my vacation.  and yet somehow, through the unfailing optimism and hilarious good cheer of my travelling companion, (and copious amounts of beer), it was all okay.  everything we did, was “perfect”.  everything that was even moderately successful was “meant to be”.

i was, as tourguide, overcome with the realisation of just how different i am from the person that lived in boston 6 years ago.  the paths and places i’ve forgotten, the words that tangled up my tongue.  while there are bits and pieces that remain as intimately known as the back of my hand, more and more, each visit back represents snapshots of a life that is more different than i ever remembered, and all the unseen shifting that happened when i wasn’t looking.

time marches on, of course.  would that i could freeze people, come back to exactly where they were when i left, slide right back into my slot, take up my place seamlessly in everyone else’s lives and times.

but i can’t.  and the changes seem more and more pronounced each time i try to pick up where i left off.  i cannot, it seems, expect to indefinitely straddle two worlds – at some point, they drift too far apart.

these observations are not new, of course.  i’ve made them many times.  what was new, was the realisation that it doesn’t really sting so much nowadays.  i kinda wish it did.

other things of note:

• i have a new nephew! will get to see him in a few weeks when i’m at my brother’s wedding
• my nephew had swine flu. yes, for real
• my other sister is also having another baby! due sometime in november
• i don’t miss getting wound up by the ridiculous media in the u.s.,  at all.
• lucky charms have inexplicably shrunk their marshmallows and now call them “mini-charms”
• i may get lost driving around, but i can still home in on the beacon of any dunkin’ donuts within a 5 mile radius
• customer service, while sometimes verging on the sycophantic, overall remains a far better experience in the u.s.
• i hate getting charged for using an atm machine
• boston is actually not a bad little city
• people in the u.s. are starting to use british slang. i heard “knackered” and “wanker” used. for some reason, this annoys me greatly.

a few photos (more here):

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so much to say – about iran, about rape in south africa, about the vagaries of life.

but for now, it will have to wait.  i’m off for a 5 day boston blitz holiday with my friend suzanne.  we’re storming boston, cape cod, and martha’s vineyard.  a date at fenway park is in there somewhere too.  the weather forecast is none too promising at the moment, but i’m ignoring that in favour of blind optimism.

til then, ciao ciao!

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i’ve been following the happenings in iran very closely over the last few days, amazed at the incredible scenes of both violence and courage.  i’ve been keeping up with all this via youtube video and blogs and some mainstream reporting, but most obsessively via twitter.

lots of people have derided twitter, and lots of people still don’t get it, but for the people of iran today, it is the single most powerful tool they have in their struggle.

there is something about the immediacy and connectivity of the medium which simply cannot be brushed off.  i first became aware of it during earth hour (#earthhour), when watching people send picture after picture of darkened cities in domino fashion across the time zones of the globe, was simply mesmerising.  it was brought home to me even more so during the aftermath of dr. tiller’s murder, when it was personally comforting to see thousands of people mourning together, and honouring him in ways big and small (#tiller).  during the european elections, as the results rolled in late into the night and i was alone in my lounge with my outrage over the bnp,  there were others on the other end of the network, screaming along with me in unison (#notinmyname). and when the california supreme court upheld proposition 8, there was a virtual outpouring of support for those left disenfranchised by the ruling (#civilrightsfail).

those were all fascinating and powerful moments, but they’ve been thoroughly eclipsed by the aftermath of the iran election (#iranelection).

and in these past few days, when the state-ruled media has been trying so desperately to squash the dangerous truth of what’s happening on the streets of iran, when the reporters are being arrested, when protesters are being beaten and shot, when the hundreds of thousands are turning out in stark and silent declaration, when texting and internet coverage has all but been banned… it is twitter that they are turning to.  what used to happen largely unseen behind the iron curtains of oppression, is now happening in front of the whole world.  and the whole world can let them know they are watching, witnessing, expressing solidarity, carrying their voices and pictures into the light of day. it is an amazing and sobering phenomenom to behold.  reading the tweets of people who are *there* hearing the gunshots, or trying to locate their families, or gathering in the streets… there is no filter, no cautionary analysis, no measured response.  there is only anger and fear and pain, bleeding raw across the screen.

go. see for yourself. if you didn’t get twitter before, you will now.

(eta: last night the *state department* asked twitter to delay its scheduled downtime maintenance.)

things may or may not change in iran, for better or for worse – but if they do, i’ll be watching history happen.

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a life and a past that was another person, an earlier version of self, no matter how long ago or far away…every once and again it can blindside you with unexpected emotion. leap up from your stomach, grab hold of your heart and give it a good hard squeeze. leave a lump in your throat that no amount of swallowing will clear.

once upon a time, i walked through long grasses, wearing a white dress, coloured lanterns swinging gently from tree branches. i looked up, you were there waiting for me, and i thought it was the beginning of forever.

in the blur of so many years and so much experience since then, we became separated by an ocean much deeper and wider than that which separates us now. our intimacies turned us into cordial strangers somehow, and over time, the cordiality became less strange. slowly, inexorably, our lives disengaged – no longer orbiting in the same plane, but every now and then intersecting paths, wishing each other well.

so it caught me off guard to find myself teary today, your wedding day. as happy as i genuinely am for your happiness, i guess some part of me will always be sad for the happiness we no longer share, the promises that didn’t pan out, through no fault of our own. i know this is all rather self-centred. i know you’re not thinking of me today, just as i was not thinking of you when i remarried. it sounds harsh, but it’s true – the protective bubble of love does that to you.

but i think i also know what your fiancée will see when she walks down the aisle today, and looks up to see you waiting there for her. you there, with your heart on your sleeve and your soul wide open, grinning wide as the sun with the promise of forever in front of you. she’ll think to herself, how lucky she is. and she is.

and though it makes me cry, it also makes me smile.

i wish you joy.

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8 years living in nyc. number of subway strikes during my residency? zero

21 years living in boston. number of subway strikes? zero

2 years living in montreal. number of subway strikes? zero.

6 years living in london. number of tube strikes? not counting the one that began today and runs to thursday? i seriously can’t even remember, what with the constant strike threats and partial strikes and strike balloting and full-scale strikes and narrowly averted strikes… think i’m exaggerating?  well let’s just see…

since march 2003:

what a fucking joke.

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it’s official.  the nazis bnp have won two seats on the european parliament.

jonno refuses to share my outrage and indignation. “it’s only two seats. this is a democracy.”

don’t forget: the original nazis were democratically elected too. this is the same party that wants both me and you out of the country as immigrants. the same party that calls for “voluntary repatriation” of non-whites.

this is not democracy. this is fucking repugnant. this is voting from a place of hatred and fear. has history taught us nothing about the pitfalls of that? the bnp are fascist, racist, nazi sympathisers. we’re talking people who burned synagogues, and participated in the national front. the news keeps calling them the “far right”. calling the bnp the far right is like calling the titanic a naval mishap.

dress it up any way you want – we’ve sent nazis to represent us in the european parliament.

and i, for one, won’t stop being fucking disgusted, fucking outraged, screaming at people to wake the fuck up.

i’m getting the fuck outta here.

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remembering the tiananmen square massacre anniversary yesterday – where hundreds, perhaps thousands died…

many were summarily imprisoned or executed…

and where today there is still no democracy.

(more incredible photos at the big picture and time’s photoessay “photographing tank man”)

the grief, the exile, the international outrage.

did it matter?

those who were born after – for whom the media memory has been wiped clean, erased from the page, the history scrubbed clean of bloodstains – do they really know what any of those students died for?

i wish i knew.

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i talk a lot about being staunchly pro-choice on this blog.  in thinking more about the post i wrote the other day, about the primacy of a woman’s right to always have control over her body, including complete control over reproduction, i realised i’ve never fully articulated here just why i believe what i believe.  it may not be of interest to many of you, but it’s important to me to establish here the context in which i have chosen to support abortion rights.

there are, to my mind, two factors in every pregancy – the existing, external life of the woman, and the *potential*, internal life represented by the fetus.  i believe that if at any point those two interests come into conflict, the established rights of the existing life must always take precedence over the potential rights of the potential life.

there are many who would argue that the point at which that potential life can survive outside the womb (around 24 weeks, currently), that it should be legally treated as a baby, and granted all the same rights as babies inherit when they are born, i.e. recognised as an existing life.  i disagree.

i think of it this way:

this is an egg.  this egg may be fertilised.  it may not.  it may, in fact, have a nearly fully-developed chick inside it. but its essence in its *current state* is that of an egg.  it is an egg.  for purposes of decision-making based on what it is right now, it is an egg.

this is a chick.  it still looks a lot like an egg, and could easily be the same egg from the above picture, but its principle nature has changed.  it is no longer an egg, but a chick being born.  there’s no rationale for calling it an egg – it is clearly a chick.

that is to say: in my mind there is something about the act of being born which changes the fundamental status of a thing from a *potential* life to an *actualised* life, and therefore (i would argue) changes the essence of how it should be recognised.  it is no longer in the internal world of things which, (no matter how likely, no matter how close), *might one day be* born as a chick, and joins the external world of the *chick which is*.

so if, in a pregnancy, there must be drawn a bright line of demarcation between whose interests must be considered paramount, whose health and well-being must take priority, whose needs must be met more, the line between being born and unborn is mine.  an existing life takes precedence over a potential life, and the difference between potential and existing is the act coming into being in the external world.

this is not, of course, by any means a perfect analogy.  in fact, it’s not an analogy at all – simply my attempt at representing the way in which i have chosen my beliefs in a world where there is no objective certainty, no absolute moral rectitude.  in a world where one must weigh up all the science, laws and politics, and somehow integrate that with one’s beliefs about things like spirituality, conscience and relationships… in a world in which we are required to choose sides, i choose the woman.  i choose her right to an abortion up to the point of birth.  i choose her needs, her health, her best interests first, foremost, and above all others.  and i choose to support choice – always.

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i’ve been thinking a lot about the murder of dr. tiller today, and the kind of courage of one’s convictions it must take to go to work every day in the face of attempted assassinations and persistent acts of terrorism.  there are few in this world who could do it, i’m sure.

dr. tiller performed late-term abortions – that moral gray area that even many pro-choice voters have twinges of unease about.  the kinds of abortions that are so highly charged and emotive (even being called “partial-birth” abortions) because they stray into the murky areas of “rights”, elusive definitions of “life”, and all sorts of other sticky stuff that ethicists and the law have not yet been able to agree upon.

the reason i bring this up, is because thinking about dr. tiller’s death today, has for me, solidified some views i didn’t even know i had, and made me examine the logic of my own beliefs – with some surprising results.

in thinking about why his death outrages me so, i realised it’s because i think that women *must* have access to abortion up to the point of birth.  i know that’s not a very palatable opinion for most, but i fervently believe that women must have complete and total autonomy over their own bodies at all times.  i believe that until women everywhere have this autonomy (in the forms of contraception, health care, and abortion, *as well as* freedom from all forms of physical and sexual violence or coercion) there will never be true equality for women anywhere.

but in pondering that, i began thinking about the true meaning of autonomy – and that’s not just the ability to be free from harm, but also the ability to use (and even exploit) one’s own body.  which lead me to the first surprise realisation of the day: i guess that means i believe women should have the right to sell their own bodies for others’ pleasure – even if i believe that it undermines other women’s efforts to be free of violence or coercion.  i’ve never been for the legalisation of prostitution before, and never quite grasped the concept of legalising prostitution as a means to empower women.  much like some kinds of misogynistic porn**, i’ve always deplored the fact that there is a market for it, but been resigned to its existence.  however if i truly believe that women should have complete autonomy over their bodies, then that means *i* don’t get a say in what they do with them either.  and further, (following on from my own logic above) in a world where there is true autonomy for all, there will be true equality, and therfore prostitution/stripping/porn will only be entered into by individuals out of genuine free will, and will no longer be acts which demean and objectify people on the wrong side of a power imbalance.

wow.  colour me surprised.

secondly, i was thinking about the characterisation i’ve been reading in some blogs, of anti-abortion groups (such as operation rescue and their ilk) bearing much of the responsibility for dr. tiller’s death.  the argument being, that such groups have deliberately used seditious rhetoric as a means to garner support for their actions, and that by fanning the flames, they incited this man (and other recent shooters) to murder.  they decry the lukewarm disavowals by such groups of dr. tiller’s killing, as being tacit condonation of his murder.

this whole argument puts me in mind of those who, after the london bombings, said the “moderate muslims” did not come out strongly enough against what had happened, or hadn’t done enough to stop it fomenting in the first place.  and as i wrote here before, that just puts a bad taste in my mouth.  i don’t think that people who just happen to be from the same largely-peaceful religion bear *any* responsibility for the acts of a small handful of nutters.  that’s like saying that all christians should bear some responsibility for the the actions of timothy mcveigh – they should have cried out more against his horrific actions, or done something more to ensure he would never kill anyone in the first place.

i just don’t think you can apportion blame solely based on commonalities with someone who clearly has mental health problems.  and that’s what this boils down to: someone with mental health problems made the completely insane connection between their stance on abortion, and gunning down someone they disagreed with.

a sane person, no matter how het up over the abortion issue, could never be goaded into shooting dr. tiller in broad daylight.  and a crazy person who thought they *had* to kill him, could never be dissuaded.

so while it might make me, in a fit of intense frustration and despair, feel better to tar and feather all anti-choice groups with the same bloody brush, it simply doesn’t make sense.  no matter how vehemently i believe their clinic-blockading, abusive tactics and scaremongering to be wrong, i cannot lay dr. tiller’s death at their feet.

and there, in a nutshell, is surprise number two.  i can’t be angry at the pro-lifers over this one.

** i don’t by any means believe that all porn is misogynistic or harmful to women.  but far too large a proportion of it is.

i’m not engaging debate on this one, i’m afraid. i’ll leave comments open for the time being, but reserve the right to delete at my discretion, because i don’t believe this is a topic where anyone’s mind will be changed. certainly not my own.

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