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narrans · 3 years

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Everyone needs a little Hero | Rings and Memories

The apartment complex wasn’t the newest and had few features that could be identified as the “latest and greatest.” Sometimes there were problems with the water and sometimes the lights flickered at odd times of the day and night. Every so often, things would go missing or just get misplaced.

One thing this apartment complex did have, however, were stories. Each of its dozen floors held people from different places and backgrounds. Some people were thriving, others trying to make their way. Some were going through hardships and a few just need a friend – someone to talk to.

One other thing this place had among its labyrinth of walls and wires was a whole other world – a smaller world consisting of dozens of families. Some of them big, some of them small, but all of them little – these were the Borrowers.

The four-inch folk live in quiet solitude, surviving by taking what they need in pieces, parts, fragments, and segments. Rarely did something of significance go missing and, even then, it was the humans’ fault for being so clumsy.

There were rules for keeping themselves undiscovered by the humans and, for the most part, these rules were upheld. There were times where humans spread rumors or asked if there were mice and such in the building. Thankfully, the Borrowers had managed to steer clear of the exterminators and their traps.

It was one of their biggest fears – to be seen and caught by a human.

Hero grew up with two older brothers, an older sister, and a younger sister. He also had his parents, grandparents, and even a great-grandfather. His family had never immigrated, a rarity among their kind, and had always been careful. Subtly, the young Borrower with sandy brown hair and bright green eyes had always feared the humans, but also found them fascinating.

Humans were dangerous, yes, but were also ingenuitive and forward thinking. They had creativity and passion as well as the means to do so. Hero knew they had the ability to do horrendous things, but they also had the power to do good.

Every once in a while, he would venture through the walls and listen to the humans watching that big flat thing called a T.V. or a screen. They watched scary things, but the thing Hero was fascinated with was the show about villains and, like his name, heroes.

These heroes had powers and would fight against injustice, whatever that was, and the bad people hurting other people. Some could shoot lasers while others could fly. Some were strong. Some could use their hair. One thing that hero noticed about all of these people was that it didn’t matter who they were or what they looked like – they were all heroes.

Some of them, he noticed, didn’t even have powers. There was one boy who was drawn with green hair and cried a lot that talked about what it meant to be a hero – and somehow the young Borrower found this inspiring. He knew from that moment on he had to live up to his name.

Now, how he was going to go about this he wasn’t sure. He had only just had his thirteenth birthday and was three or so inches on a good day. Needless to say, height was going to be a slight issue, but it wouldn’t stop him. According to some people on a thing called the “inner-net,” you didn’t need to save lives or stop buildings from falling down to make a difference in someone’s life.

This is the notion that Hero clung to one night as he debated for the hundredth time with himself. He didn’t need to be big to make a difference. In fact, some guy by the name of “Gamdalf” said that it was the ordinary actions of small folk that made a difference.

It was settled – and Hero knew who he wanted to help first.

On the third floor, there was an elderly couple who loved each other very much. Hero liked going down and listening to them talk. They were hilarious, mostly because they were forgetful from time to time and would move things without telling the other.

“Where are my glasses?” asked the woman. “Well, I don’t know dear. They were on your head. Did you check there?” the man would respond, all the while wearing them on his head because he thought those were his glasses.

Hero could watch them for hours and be amused. There were a few times, accidentally, where he was laughing so hard that they stopped and looked up at the trim near the ceiling. “Those neighbor kids must think something’s pretty funny.” A handful of those comments made Hero well aware he needed to be careful even when they had a hard time remembering.

The final straw in his debate on helping them first in fact came from the saddest of events. The elderly man, on night, had fallen and went to some place for him to get better called a “hospital,” but that didn’t happen.

The woman came back so very sad and Hero wanted nothing more than to cheer her up. He had to come up with something, and he had to do it quickly as he began to hear rumors that she was immigrating and could see boxes being loaded up.

It was just after dinner and his siblings were out borrowing except for his younger sister Winnie, who was far too young to go borrowing being only six. Hero stood in his room with all of his necessary supplies laid on his bed.

He had a fishing hook, a safety pin, one band-aid, a pin, battery lamp with a new borrowed bulb, a piece of razor, and a strong line which he had checked a dozen times. There were a few moments where he paused to breathe, staring at his muddled reflection in a piece of tin foil he kept in his room.

“Heroes usually have some kind of outfit or a cape. Do I need a cape? I don’t know. Capes get in the way. What about a mask? Naw, that won’t work. It might get in my eyes. This is fine for now.” Hero puffed out his chest, grabbed his backpack of supplies, and headed out through the halls.

He made sure to wave to his grandparents as he ran past their hallway. His little legs carried him at a steady pace past the pipes to the wires he had to lay on to cross from one wall joist to the next. The drop was at least a floor and would certainly be a problem if he were to slip, but the wires were coated with rubber and were nice and thick. Hero had also learned the pro-tip from his oldest brother, Atlas, of hooking the safety pin from his backpack onto the line. Since it was strapped to him, it added an extra safety measure.

Hero slowed his jog to a brisk walk as everything began setting in for him. Was he ready for something like this? He was only 13 after all. He had been borrowing on his own, but this would be different in that now he was going to purposefully move something for the human to notice and become curious about.

Hero cupped his palms and smacked his face lightly to snap himself out of it. It wasn’t like he was going to be seen or anything. Plus, the elderly woman was forgetful. Even if he were seen, she would most likely forget. Right?

The labyrinth of walls passed by quicker than expected. Before the young Borrower knew it, he was standing above one of the ceiling fan tiles that they used to observe. He could already hear the daughter and the older lady talking.

“Mom, what are you looking for?” asked the daughter.

“I… well… I’m sure I saw it in here somewhere,” the older woman replied.

“Dad’s ring?” prompted the daughter. “Mom, you looked in there already. It’s been lost for years.”

“Pish posh I remember seeing it just the other day,” the mother responded as she continued to rummage through the next box. She started taring the tape off of another when the daughter intervened.

“Here, mom, why don’t you check this box,” she suggested, but the mother shook her head.

“No, I distinctly remember seeing it by the couch. These boxes must be on top of it.”

Hero listened for a few more minutes, saddened by the encounter, now knew what he had to do – he was going to find that ring. He pulled himself from the ceiling tile, ensuring it was secure, before heading for the nearest wall that could take him to the ground, which was not a far walk. The path to and from this apartment was well used and so had a permanent line anchored to it.

The sheer drop down was enough to makes his knees weaken and his head spin with vertigo. Heights weren’t always an issue, but that little bit of nervousness was something Hero took as a good sign. If he weren’t nervous, he might miss checking something before climbing the line. There was darkness below where there was usually light. Must be a bad bulb. He wrapped his hands around the line, checked his footing, and descended the line knot after knot.

It took some time, but he finally reached the ground by the floorboards. The walls absorbed the light on his hip lamp. Small dust particles drifted around in the air, lingering as the footsteps above knocked them loose. The Christmas lights which usually illuminated most of the main hallways they traversed were still hanging on the walls on top of the thumbtacks.

Something about the air didn’t set right with Hero. There was an eerie stillness under the floorboards of the older woman’s apartment. Hero felt himself freezing. There was a nervousness in his chest. His heart was beating so incredibly fast now. When did that happen?

The determined boy couldn’t let these things bother him now. He puffed out his chest with a deep inhale and stepped further into the darkness. The joists towered above him at a whole seven inches and effectively had him surrounded on his left and right. Hero began walking up and down the floor joists, starting where he was at the entrance and working his way to the sitting area.

Hero knew where the old woman’s couch was in the apartment; and he also knew there were several wide floorboards and some holes the other Borrowers had left in case they needed to make a hasty exit. Maybe it was unlikely, but Hero suspected that if something had been knocked into the floor, it could have fallen through one of their hiding holes.

He passed by a few more unilluminated lights and noticed a few of the wires were exposed – chewed through. Suddenly, his keen ears picked up something. If he hadn’t been on edge, he might’ve missed it. The light on the hip lamp only illuminated a foot or so in every direction, but sound didn’t need the light to be heard.

A skittering sound of clawed feet scraped just on the other side of one of the joists. It stopped. Then it started again. Immediately, his heart leapt into his throat and the Borrower boy stopped dead in his tracks. Hero instinctively pulled his pin from his side and held his hip light in his right hand.

He peered around the corner and could see with his bright green eyes the small tail of a mouse skittering away from the little bit of light from Hero’s lamp. He exhaled shakily. Maybe he wouldn’t need to fight it today. He glanced down the passage and decided to follow behind carefully.

Cautious step after cautious step, Hero eventually heard the mouse head back down through the walls as he turned down the next corridor. Sadly, there were only three left for him to check.

As he walked down the next hall feeling discouraged, he realized that there was a slight glint up ahead. Still brandishing the pin, Hero stepped forward with the light extended until he recognized the shape of a circle – a ring. He had found it!

The tarnishing silver ring was thick and heavy with writing Hero didn’t recognize. Reading was something his parents insisted that he learn, but even that didn’t help him with these words. There was also some kind of glittery rock in the middle. Now all that needed to be done was get it to the humans without getting caught. This was going to be interesting.

First and foremost – move it. It took some time, but the ring was eventually wrestled into the borrowing bag. The weight was significant and made normal borrowings feel light as a feather. Still, this would not stop the mission.

Hero now had to determine where to put it. Both of the humans were still at home and, from the sound of it, things were being moved around. Hero was usually very dexterous and quick, but he was incumbered by the weight. So, going up right then and there was out of the question.

While he walked back through the halls, he made his decision. He would wait until nighttime and put it in the woman’s bedroom where he knew she could find it – her bedside table. The thought of being so terribly close to a human made his insides flip anxiously. Still, he knew he had to persevere.

The trek to the elderly woman’s room was a long one and one that was taken with caution. That mouse was still roaming around and the last thing that Hero needed was a confrontation when he was debating how to get on top of the table with the ring in tow.

While he walked, he thought of scenario after scenario. I could climb it, obviously, but the weight on my back may make me tired before I reach the top. I could try to pull it up once I climbed to the top, but that leaves me on top of the table for a bit longer than I would want. I could try and tie one end to the ring and one end to me, jump, and have it slingshot up to the top.

Before he knew it, he was under the floor of the bedroom. Hero let his pack slump off of his shoulders and onto the ground, rubbing the aching muscles and tendons in his shoulders. Up above, he could hear the sounds of feet shuffling against the ground. She must be getting ready for bed. Earlier than normal.

The teen waited until the shuffling stopped to make his move, which he finally figured out. He was going to pull the ring up onto the desk. Climbing would be too tiresome and he weighed more than the ring, even if his shoulders argued otherwise, and couldn’t control the descent.

The pack was back on his shoulders again and he was on his way. Up through the opening in the baseboard under the bed, Hero tread lightly up to the immense bedside table, extinguishing his light before arriving. His keen ears picked up on the light sound of breathing just above him. Perfect. Completely quiet.

He tied the line onto his bag tightly before removing his hook. Pause for a breath. Aim. Swing. Swing. Hero let the hook fly from his hands and heard the hook sink in with a firm knock. Perfect. He shimmied up the rope in no time, glancing over to see the sleeping woman barely two feet from him. A shiver ran down his spine. It was completely involuntary and it was only then that Hero realized this was the closest he had ever been to a human before.

Everything about them was so much bigger than him. Their faces. Those eyes. It made his head and insides flip and swirl at the very notion of their hands. Don’t think about that now. You need to get the ring back on the table. He began pulling his bag up with the line. It tapped the table a few times on its ascent, which made him freeze and watch. Not a single stir.

It wasn’t until Hero had pulled up the bag and began pulling out the ring that he heard the older woman stir, shifting under the sheets that could easily smother him. His heartrate spiked, forcing him to swallow dryly as he finished pulling the ring free from the satchel.

The ring was right there in view next to the clock and the lamp. It wouldn’t be hard to find. Hero had almost reached his line when he heard something.

“What the… what is…” the voice of the elderly woman, still saturated with a groggy tiredness. Hero’s breath hitched in his throat. Every impulse shrieked. He almost threw himself off of the table when he saw a hand beginning to emerge from beneath the quilts and covers. Instead, he threw his bag over one shoulder and grabbed the line.

The rope burned his fingers and palms and he landed on the ground with a definite thud just as the light came on. There was no time. He back peddled as fast as he could from the line, regretting using his best hook. He was halfway to the hidden entrance when he heard her speak again.

“Oh… my… Stuart’s ring…” Hero stopped in his tracks. Stuart? Was that his name? The older man? “Oh… thank you little sprite.” Hero’s breath stopped completely. Was she able to see anything? Would she look?

All he knew was he heard the clattering of his hook on the ground, a sniffly sob, and then the lights turned out again. It was a risk, but Hero needed his hook. He quickly darted back and retrieved the hook; however, just before he left, he uttered the smallest “you’re welcome” before darting back into the cover of the walls.

Mission – success! Maybe he was seen. Maybe the old woman believed in such things. He didn’t know. What was certain was he had made someone’s day a little better; and that’s all that really mattered to him.

~Thanks for reading. Have any humans Hero needs to help? Suggestions and prompts welcome down below. Stay awesome!

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wearejapanese · 6 years

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By Emily Yoshida

When the first trailer arrived for Isle of Dogs last fall, I had three immediate, consecutive reactions: One: Oh, no. Two: Wait, I take that back. I’m going to be a good critic and reserve judgement until the week of March 23. Three: This is exhausting.

In the week since Isle of Dogs’ initial limited release, a measured, varied, and nuanced discussion about Wes Anderson’s use of Japanese culture — and other cultures in general — has happened in fits and starts. It’s not a new conversation; it’s been happening over the course of Anderson’s filmography, probably starting in earnest with the India-set The Darjeeling Limited in 2007. What’s louder to me, this time around, is the contingent of people seemingly broadsided by this conversation, and furious it’s even taking place. Justin Chang’s review for the L.A. Times in particular asks more questions than it answers, but thanks to the diligent coverage of everyone from Entertainment Weekly to Fox News (when was the last time Fox News cared about Wes Anderson’s honor? I’m guessing never), it became the central proof that the PC police were out to get America’s most symmetrical auteur.

I’m of the belief that the phenomenon commonly known as cultural appropriation can be benign, even illuminating in the right artist’s hands. The thing is, Anderson hasn’t done anything in a while, if ever, to convince me that those are his hands, but I like to think I’m always down for a pleasant surprise. Darjeeling, which somehow managed to turn an entire country and culture into a prop for white enlightenment, and look really chic while doing it, was a bad example of such appropriation. But for those of us who reluctantly still keep a candle burning for Anderson’s early filmography, and love adorable dogs, there was reason to hope that Isle could do better.

Still … those Japanese-people puppets. And the largely non-Asian voice cast (Yoko Ono was one of a few exceptions, and an extremely Andersonian one at that). American cinema, from schlocky action to critical-darling indies, still has a long way to go when it comes to depicting — or not depicting, as the case may be — Asian people and cultures. It had been half a year since we did the Ghost in the Shell outrage shuffle, but the dots were failing to connect to Anderson’s highbrow doggy-puppet movie. That’s where the exhaustion kicked in.

As it turns out, Isle of Dogs is a kind of perfect artifact for our current-day conversation around cultural appropriation, if it can even still be called that. It’s hard to call it offensive, exactly, and yet, it’s not devoid of a kind of opportunism. It’s not a crime, but it’s certainly something to unpack. Anderson self-consciously uses Japanese-ness — a very curated, Showa-era version of Japan — as a kind of costume, and Isle of Dogs depicts a heightened essence of the Japanese culture as filtered through a Western understanding, the sort of thing your grandpa or Neal Stephenson would call “Nipponese.” (Kurosawa! Sumo! Taiko drums!) There’s a creakiness to its appreciation, but it feels self-aware about the limits of its references; at no point do I think that Wes Anderson is suggesting that his 2028 stop-motion version of a fictional city represents anything real or accurate about Japanese culture. It’s a look. You could swap it out for, say, Finland, and not much would change. If I’m playing cultural-appropriation cop (a terrible job, please don’t make me do it), I’d file it under benign. Maybe too benign! (Spoilers Below)

The exception is the film’s use of Japanese language, which felt bizarre to me, even as a nonfluent (seriously, the opposite of fluent) Japanese speaker. Human characters speak Japanese throughout the film, but it is almost never subtitled, just occasionally translated by Frances McDormand’s interpreter character. It’s clearly meant to echo the fact that the dog characters can’t understand the human characters, but I wondered: What is the experience of watching the film like for a person who can speak and understand Japanese? Is the metaphor just not made for you? Is the film not made for you? Is there a hilarious, enlightening parallel movie happening in the Japanese dialogue, or is it, like Anderson’s painstakingly crafted little shoji walls, punchably paper-thin set dressing?

It was hard for me to answer these questions myself, given my pathetic grasp of the language of the country I was born in. (Sorry, extended family.) So I reached out on Twitter to a handful of native and/or fluent speakers of Japanese who saw Isle of Dogs on opening weekend, to get their impression of the film’s use of language. Their observations were fascinating and occasionally conflicting, as were their critical opinions of the film. What I found, even in this small sample size, was a similar dynamic I’ve seen before in debates about Asian culture as reflected by Western culture — perspectives can vary wildly between Asian-Americans and immigrated Asians, and what feels like tribute to some feels like opportunism to others.

Who I spoke to: Anthony, a Japanese-American translator for a Pasadena tech start-up, who was born in L.A. and grew up bilingual in Tokyo. Lisa,* a Japanese woman working in the entertainment industry, who grew up in Japan and has lived in the U.K. and U.S. as an adult. Beam, a Thai culture writer living in San Francisco, who is fluent in Japanese and lived in Tokyo for five years.

*not her real name

(It should be noted that finding people to talk to was a task in and of itself. The film just opened in select cities this week, so the pool was already small. But several people mentioned to me on social media that many of their Japanese friends living in the States didn’t even know about the film, much less have passionate opinions on its treatment of their culture. Just something to take into account.)

The spoken dialogue is fine. If you’ve ever watched a foreign film in which an “American character” makes a cameo, you know it can sometimes be unintentionally jarring. (My favorite, extremely goofy recent example is in Hideaki Anno’s Shin Godzilla, in which Satomi Ishihara plays the half-Japanese daughter of a U.S. senator, who is the singular embodiment of a trope you rarely encounter in English-language film: Sassy American Friend.) All three people I spoke to said this was not a problem for Anderson’s film. “For what it’s worth, the spoken Japanese made complete sense,” Anthony told me. “There was no accent or awkwardness.” Isle of Dogs employed Japanese voice actors for many of its non-starring roles, and Japanese writer and DJ Kun Nomura, who voiced Mayor Kobayashi, has a writing credit, which probably helped Anderson and co-writers Roman Coppola and Jason Schwartzman avoid such basic faux pas.

But it’s not really meant to be heard. Anthony reported that there was a muffled quality to much of the Japanese dialogue. “It was very hard to hear — it kind of sounded like they had put cotton balls in their mouth,” he says. “It was distracting, because I wanted to hear what they were saying.” Lisa didn’t quite have this problem, but found herself ignoring much of the Japanese dialogue anyway. “I didn’t exactly find it hard to hear,” she says. “But I didn’t care much about it; I knew it didn’t have much meaning.”

Shocker — there’s some stilted dialogue in a Wes Anderson movie. While Lisa agreed that the Japanese writing made perfect sense, some of the performances, including Koyu Rankin’s performance as Atari, struck her as a little unnatural. “The main [Japanese-speaking] characters, or anyone with relatively more dialogue, like Atari or Major-Domo, sounded a bit weird,” she said. Lisa thought that Nomura’s performance as the mayor worked, but she sensed that the dialogue had been written differently for other characters. “They didn’t try to speak Japanese precisely,” she says of Atari and Major-Domo. “But they had a Japanese ‘cultural effect.’ So it was kind of caricatured.”

Beam also observed a kind of “Japanese affect” that he suspected was intentional in its stiltedness. A scene he liked in particular was one in which the scientists working on the Dog Flu serum make their discovery and cheer their victory with a unison “Kampai!” “It’s what you really see Japanese people do in real life — they’d drink, cheer, congratulate, and say thank you to each other,” Beam says. “It’s slightly robotic which is kind of cute and comical at the same time.”

Tracy is definitely a problem. The lack of subtitles for the Japanese characters is one of the more controversial aspects of the film. While Beam enjoyed the film overall, his biggest gripe was with the film’s use (or non-use) of subtitles, and he felt that the treatment of Greta Gerwig’s American character Tracy provided an instructive contrast to the Japanese characters. “I feel like it uses its self-imposed rule to not use subtitles as an excuse to make that character white, because someone needs to speak English in Megasaki City,” he told me. “Without that rule, the character might as well have been a plucky Japanese schoolgirl and it would have made equal or more sense (or like, just cut her character out entirely).”

The written language is a little spotty. Both Lisa and Anthony noted that the written language, as it appears in the art direction and onscreen text, stood out more than the un-subtitled dialogue. “A lot of it was an awkward, kind of choppy phrasing,” Anthony said. “It kind of made me think that someone had thrown these English phrases into Google Translate. The [characters] weren’t the exact characters you would use in that context.” One example he gave was with the drones that appear in the film, which were referred to as mujinki (literally, “machine without a person”). “People today wouldn’t use the literal translation of drone,” he says. “Most people would just say du-ron. It just makes more sense.”

Lisa also says that the written-out “Megasaki City,” a fictional name which doesn’t mean anything in Japanese, contains a fictional nonsense kanji character presumably made up by the art department. Anthony’s sense was that the art department and graphics department perhaps didn’t consult as much with native Japanese speakers as the writers did. “When something was handwritten in the film, it looked perfect. It was just the graphics that were off.”

There are pretty much no Japanese Easter eggs. I was also really curious about any hidden jokes or gags in the script’s Japanese, but all three viewers agreed that the dialogue, for the most part, is purely utilitarian; when it came to playing to the Japanese speakers in the room, Lisa says, “It didn’t seem like they really cared.” She adds, “There were no hidden messages, [the language] just there to make an atmosphere, like ‘It’s Japan!’”

The exception is the title of the film, which in Japanese is Inugashima, which Lisa says will read to Japanese viewers as a direct reference to the folktale Momotaro (“peach boy”). In the story, which every Japanese child (even me) knows from birth, Momotaro travels to the island of demons, or oni, which is called Onigashima. The parallels end there, but the name will lend a mythical feeling to the film for viewers who grew up with the story.

The reviews are mixed to positive. “All in all, despite a few things that are tone-deaf, I think it’s quite a respectful depiction of Japanese culture,” Beam says. Even when some of the language quirks stumbled, the essence of the film felt particularly Japanese to him. “I love that Atari, a Japanese character, is portrayed as an ultimate hero who values friendship more than anything, which is the same concept (‘nakama’) as what most Japanese animes/dramas, old or current, revolve around.” Lisa also really enjoyed the film, and thinks it will go over well with Japanese viewers when it’s released there in May. “It’s not an accurate reflection of Japan, but it’s based on Japanese fables and a Japanese point of view, and Japanese problems. And we love dogs.”

Anthony, meanwhile, has more misgivings. “There’s a kind of disconnect with the Japanese-ness, which made it feel like Japan was just a backdrop to tell this story,” he says. Then there’s the question of intent vs. reception: Watching the film at a theater in Pasadena, as the only Asian person in the audience, couldn’t help but affect his viewing experience. He described inexplicable laughter from the crowd every time a Japanese character reacted to something in Japanese. “It made me think, What are they laughing at? The fact that they speak a foreign language?”

Still, as someone with a foot in both cultures, he’s been tracking the film’s reception on both sides of the Pacific, particularly the hype on Japanese Twitter. Much of the anticipation revolves around the appearance of Yojiro Noda, lead singer of the rock band RADWIMPS, as the voice of a news anchor in the film. But there’s also a general eagerness to see it. “People are like, ‘I know he’s going to respect Japanese culture,” Anthony says. “Japanese people love Wes Anderson.”

#isle of dogs #cultural appropriation #wes anderson #japan #movies #japanese american #emily yoshida #review #spoilers

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joannechocolat · 7 years

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On Ghostwriting, Celebrity and That Guardian Review.

Yesterday, some of you may have noticed this review in the Guardian. It’s a review by Jenny Colgan of The Secret Lives of the Amir Sisters, by (according to the title page) Nadiya Hussain and Ayisha Malik.

Now, being one of those freaks who doesn’t watch GBBO, I have only limited knowledge of Nadiya Hussain is. I do know of Ayisha Malik, though. She’s a writer, a good one: and from that it’s pretty easy to guess that she’s Nadiya Hussain’s ghostwriter.

So what? Becoming famous in one area (be it sport, politics or baking) does not magically transform someone into a writer. Of course celebrity authors need ghostwriters to help them: that’s why their novels and autobiographies are generally clear, interesting and competently-written. And Nadiya even credits her ghostwriter; not all celebrity authors do. (Some even make them sign non-disclosure agreements, in the hope that the general public will really believe they wrote the book.)

However, having noticed all that, Jenny Colgan (whom I’ve met several times; she seemed like a nice person, though even nice people can be wrong, and in this case, I think she is) still proceeds to make her review all about her dislike of celebrity novels, and how this somehow cheats “proper writers” out of the shelf space they’re entitled to.

She begins with a description of two little girls, one in a library, dreaming of being a writer, and one in a kitchen, dreaming of cakes. You don’t have to be a great brain to understand that the little girl in the library is Jenny Colgan, and that the girl in the kitchen is Nadiya Hussein, who somehow in real life gets to be a baker and a writer too, thereby (it implies) cheating the first little girl out of her dream; as if baking and writing were two kinds of cookies, with limited numbers to go round.

Does she really need to put her name to a novel, too, (writes this successful writer of the first-time author) when there’s only so much shelf space to go around?

It feels greedy.

Well, maybe it would, if writing and baking were cookies. It might be, if we lived in a world in which someone who was good at baking wasn’t allowed to write books. It might be, if publishing were a charity, fairly and evenly distributing its attention to everyone who needed it.

But as it is, no. It doesn’t feel greedy. It feels as if someone is feeling insecure and resentful, and that comes out as sounding plain mean.

Don’t think I don’t understand: I do. Being a writer is a risky business. It’s getting harder and harder to make a living as a professional writer. And now we seem to be overwhelmed by politicians, and TV chefs, and comedians, and musicians, and actors, and pop stars and people from reality shows all wanting to be authors, hogging the limelight and making it look as if anyone can write a book...

Yes, it sometimes feels unfair. It can sometimes seems as if being a celebrity comes with a special, free “bestselling author” card: a card that most authors never get to play. And yes, authors often feel jealous, resentful and scared that their livelihood is being eroded by people whose status as celebrities earn them special privileges. I’m as guilty of this thinking as anyone. You’ve heard me rant about Morrissey, who used his special status to get his ridiculous novel published by Penguin Classics – Penguin Classics, for pity’s sake, next to Shakespeare and Homer. I’m still dismayed that Penguin could do that – to themselves, and to us – for the sake of a piece of piss-a-bed prose that even his fans couldn’t read. And for what? Sales. So I get it. Yeah.

I’d also like to take a moment to mention the editor who commissioned the Guardian piece. My strong suspicion is that he or she knew perfectly well that Jenny Colgan’s review would raise hackles (and, of course, sales). Clickbait is synonymous with journalism nowadays: but if they’d had any kind of integrity, they would have given Jenny Colgan a kind and quiet warning, telling her just how badly she was exposing her prejudices, instead of throwing her under the bus. Because that’s just what the Guardian did, in encouraging her to voice her ignorance and insecurity in a way that would provoke debate. She got the flak: they got the sales. That word again. Sales. Hm.

However – let’s get to the review, and why Jenny Colgan and the Guardian ought to think long and hard about the toxic and damaging messages they are putting out.

First, let’s start with the fact that the book is “perfectly competently-written.” As well it might be; it’s by a perfectly competent writer. It will sell “like hot cakes”. As well it might: it looks like it might be fun, and lots of people have heard of Nadiya Hussian, whose TV presence (by all accounts) is delightful, warm and appealing. But, for some reason, we still shouldn’t buy it. Why? Because it’s ghost-written? The reason for this becomes increasingly unclear and illogical.

If you want to read warm-hearted sagas about second-generation immigration, Meera Syal is a wonderful novelist. If you want to read a brilliant book about four sisters, Little Women is still in print. If you like sisters and cooking, try the marvellous Like Water for Chocolate. Or read Ayisha Malik’s book: it’s huge fun.

Hang on – isn’t The Secret Lives of the Amir Sisters Ayisha Malik’s book? Or does she mean a different book, with Ayisha Malik’s name on the cover? In either case, we know that the book would be perfectly competently-written. So why does it really matter to Jenny Colgan which one of Ayisha Malik’s books we read?

Surely it can’t be just because the book is ghost-written. Ghost-writers are excellent writers, and they work hard for their shelf space. Their work is the reason “celebrity books” meet the high standards readers expect. No, it’s because the book will “sell like hot cakes”. Sell better than books by other, less visible authors, who also write about relationships, and families, and baking.

This surefire seller, promoted at every literary festival you’ll attend this year, just feels like yet another chance snatched away from that kid whose library is closing down.

Except we know who that kid really is. It’s little Jenny Colgan, working hard to write her books, while TV celebrities are ushered past her on a red carpet that’s cordoned off from ordinary people.

But here’s the thing. Jenny isn’t a little kid. No-one’s snatching anything. She’s a high-profile, well-established white author, begrudging a Muslim woman “shelf space.” And that sounds pretty greedy, coming from someone with 27 books already in print. In fact, it sounds not entirely unlike “foreigners stealing our jobs.” or “get back in the kitchen.” Not a great moment for Jenny (or indeed, for the Guardian).

Moving on to the actual book review part of the piece, we encounter my next problem. Having pointed out the cosmetic similarities to Little Women, Jenny says:

I was hoping for insights into a culture I don’t understand as well as I’d like, but the main thrust... is that big noisy religious families are all more or less the same, which, while undoubtedly true, didn’t add much....

Now whether she meant it or not, that reads as if she is complaining that the Muslim family in this book isn’t different enough to be interesting. Muslims in fiction should be exotic. They shouldn’t try to be like the rest of us. They shouldn’t take inspiration from Little Women. (Remember how Monica Ali was lambasted for daring to write about Princess Diana, instead of staying in Brick Lane?) Reading about people of other cultures should add something (to the experience of white people). It’s a perspective that fails to take into account the fact that a book authored by a Muslim woman, ghosted by a Muslim woman, about Muslim women may not be aimed at white people at all.

So hang on, I hear you asking. If Jenny Colgan didn’t like the book, is she not allowed to say so?

Well, yes. Of course she is. But in her review, she didn’t suggest that she disliked the book. Instead, she used her review platform to make a statement about “greedy” celebrities. Again, she had every right to do this. But was it really appropriate for her to do it as part of a review (and therefore target one writer only), rather than write a general piece, in which she could have mentioned any number of (white, privileged) celebrities?(Morrissey, I’m looking at you.)

And at best, it sounds as if this white author doesn’t understand how little representation Muslim girls have – in the media or in publishing. It sounds as if she has allowed her personal insecurities to cloud her objective judgement. A book reviewer reviews the book, not the author photograph. And in a world dominated by white celebrities, white authors, white reviewers, is it really too much to allow Muslim girls this one successful role model?

Muslim women have little enough of a platform – be it on TV or in publishing - as it is. They do not need to hear that one of the few Muslim women recognized as a success outside of the Muslim community is taking up too much space. And in the past, Jenny Colgan has given glowing reviews to books by (white) celebrities (who didn’t happen to be writing about women, and love, and baking).

Now I'm not a great fan of celebrity novels either, although I do think ghost writers do an excellent, and very underrated job. But in some cases, the value of giving a high-profile role model to (for instance) Muslim girls is more important than literary snobbery, or even the hurt feelings of an author who feels threatened.

Books are a zero sum game, she says. If you’re reading one, you can’t be reading another.

Not so. Books are stepping-stones. One book leads to another. People reading Twilight sometimes go on to Wuthering Heights. People reading The Secret Lives of the Amir Sisters might well go on to read Little Women. And people being told not to read it may just end up not reading at all. Whether we like it or not, there are people who never read books unless they have a TV or a celebrity connection. Those people feel so disconnected from the world of literature that, unless given permission to read by someone they know from TV, they may never reach for a book at all, let alone Little Women. Are we to ignore them, just because we, as writers, happen not to understand?

Books are for readers, not writers. And if even one non-reader reads a book because of a TV show about baking, then that book will have served its purpose. And if one Muslim girl sees Nadiya Hussain on the cover of a book and tells herself “I could do that,” then once more, it will have served its purpose.

As writers, we are all subject to fears and insecurities. But we’re not in this business to score off readers, or sneer at their choices, or deny role models to those who need them. That kid in the library needs to learn that no-one owes her shelf space, or column inches, or sales, or cookies. As writers, we ought to care about literacy, and empathy, and the good that books – that all books – do. And that means looking at what readers need. Because we’re not children any more, even though sometimes, we feel that way.

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peterhongwrites · 7 years

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The Ultimate Super-League of Fantastic Heroes: Tales from Fanta-City!

Paper-Towel Boy

For years, he had always been ashamed of his secret power to freely manipulate super absorbent paper towels. But now that the greatest juice spill in history had just happened, he suddenly felt he had found his calling.

Consequences

After a fateful encounter with a puddle of radioactive waste, Jimmy gained a startling new power-- the power to punch anyone or anything without any consequences!

At first, Jimmy was hesitant to use his incredible power. He only punched the occasional person, and one or two things, and only when he was sure it would make things better. But after punching a guy he didn’t like, he felt liberated. Afterwards, he punched all the guys he didn’t like. He started on a life of punching. He woke the next day and punched the people in the morning. He punched everyone on the way to work. He punched everyone at work. And he didn’t stop when he got off. He just kept punching. Anyone he didn’t like. Anyone who got in his way. And a few-- because he could. And it was okay. It was (somehow) entirely, morally sound. Even the Morally-Sound Justice Man agreed.

“I feel I should really find fault with this,” said Justice Man, looking on Jimmy’s path of destruction, “and yet, this is all inexplicably fine.”

Jimmy continued punching. He was set on a reign of destruction, armed only with his two, medium-sized, repercussion-free fists. No one could stop him; even the law was nothing to him. He would punch anyone and anything he wanted: enemies, friends, landmarks, world leaders, treasures, heroes, villains. He would never face punishment. No one would ever retaliate. Jimmy’s fists were absolute: one punch finished with one punch. And it was right. No one could disagree.

Asian Pacific-Islander Woman

Asian-Pacific Islander Woman takes in the stereotypes

Lair

Years ago, the old Overlord went down to the land, and built himself a lair up over the bare earth. The Overlord worked tirelessly and carefully on his lair; he was set, as villains often were, on constructing the perfect evil stronghold, and laid down each brick one-by-one until his perfect visions were finally realized. The lair would be impenetrable. Enormous. Treacherous. Terrifying. A five-hundred foot monolith of steel and stone designed to trap and snare anyone that dared approach it. And at one time, it was. The Overlord built it exactly as he had envisioned it.

But now, with each passing night spent alone in his fortress, he was learning just how imperfect it had been. The empty spaces of the lair loomed against him. The dark corners were hard to find your way around at night. All the traps and snares he’d set only collected dust over the ages.

It wasn’t always like this. Once he had a hero, and everything made sense: the cannons in the walls, the trapdoor basements. It was like a game. They were only children back then; he was the villain, playing with the hero. And the lair was just a bedroom fort, made from sheets and pillows. But that was a long time ago. The hero was gone. He wouldn’t be back.

Pillow pillars and blanket walls, he thought, as he tiptoed through the minefield in the kitchen. Pillow pillars and blanket walls.

Stargazer, oh Stargazer

Starla Sunderson is an ordinary young woman by day-- but by night, she becomes the Dazzling Stargazer, Speaker of the Stars!

The moon rises in the city. The Stargazer gazes down from the sky, at the denizens of the Earth. The people are leaving their homes. They walk to their altars. It is time for the ritual.

Each person rings the bell once. They let the sound fall. Then, they pray. They call to the Dazzling Stargazer, their hero. They each light a candle for her, every one shining their single points in the dark.

“Stargazer, oh Stargazer, give us fortune,” they call. “Stargazer, oh Stargazer.”

The Dazzling Stargazer looks down from above the sky. She sees their hundreds of candles glowing from the surface of the Earth. Each point of candlelight links into the outline of an earthbound constellation below. Looking on this, the Stargazer nods. It is right. The Stargazer sheds her cosmic grace over them. Starlight blessing rains down, down, down on the people of Earth.

Night soon ends. It is time for the Dazzling Stargazer to go back home, to her apartment. She walks into bed. She sleeps. In the morning, she wakes again-- but as the ordinary working girl, Starla Sunderson!

“Oh no!” Starla shouts, rising from her bed. “I’ve overslept from last night!”

In a flash, Starla readies for the day. She has many ordinary, human being things to do today.

She goes to her ordinary office job. It is busy today! She files many papers. She takes many calls. It is tiring work-- but Stella manages.

After that, she goes out with all her ordinary friends (Jenny, Tasha, Carol, Esther). They take a trip on the town. Their arms linked together, city wind billowing between them.

Finally, and best of all, she has a candle-lit dinner with her ordinary, wonderful, ordinary fiancee, Jake. But as Starla twirls a noodle of expensive linguini into her fork, she hears the prayer:

“Stargazer, oh Stargazer, give us fortune. Stargazer, oh Stargazer.”

“Oh!” She cried. “Why does it have to be so hard being a superhero,” she lamented, “while also being a normal girl?”

Thoughts were bubbling in her skull, as she changed into uniform. She wondered-- was her double life impossible? Could she really live as a superhero AND an ordinary woman? Doubt seized her. She thought for a moment of abandoning the people, leaving them to themselves.

The thought died quickly. She had already taken their prayer, their offering, their constellation. That was a binding. and she could not break it. She took to the sky again that night, gazing down on the Earth. The dinner candle on their dining table, one of millions.

Origins

Starla was an ordinary girl, until one day, she wasn’t. That was when she became Stargazer, the Dazzling! Speaker of the Stars!

After an experiment gone awry, Sun-Kyo emerged as the Savage Toxo! Toxo went on to spread awareness on laboratory safety across the globe: sharing his story from school to school, saving the day with the example sculpted into his flesh.

Anthro-Man was attacked one night by a stray concept-- and soon gained its incredible, intangible power!

Dev #3 was born in the 21st Century as the next evolution of mankind. She hid away in the shadows, waiting for the day humanity would become like her. She watched over the rest of her kind, with many eyes.

Animan thought of the name first, and the powers happened to come around later.

In the ancient ruins, Mei discovered a hidden magical artifact-- and became the Woman of Mystery, the Rune! The field of Heroic Archaeology was revolutionized by her contributions. The rest of her life was littered in (perhaps, unfairly gained) Nobel Prizes.

One day, ULTRA-GIGAMAN emerged, at the same location all the other Gigamen arrived from, at the same time. Nothing had been the same since.

In a metaphor for immigration and society, L’relia arrived here on Earth from a distant planet, following its destruction. She changed her name, her face, everything for her new home. She would defend it-- she would become the champion of a planet who could never know her.

The Morally-Sound Justice Man told himself he was right, and he was.

Violence Man

No one was a coincidence, Violence Man understood. Every person had a reason-- everyone had been shaped into themselves by the prior incidents and tragedies of their lives.

Violence Man did not know what his own reason could be. But he was certain, he would decide someday. That day hovered often over Violence Man’s thoughts. Once the fateful time came, Violence Man would understand. He would wake up, know who he was, why he was, every sunrise of every single morning of the rest of his life. But patience. He needed time still to determine the rest of his life. Nothing wrong with that. In the meantime, he was open to suggestion.

Home Sweet Home

L’relia (or Extraterrestri-gal, they called her) was determined to never let the Earth face the same fate as her departed home. But she could see the signs: the similarities between her people and Earth’s, the curves matching in their outlines, their tongues cut from the same stencil. Home was here, she thought. Home had never left her. It was a warmth she felt within her. It was still breathing in her lungs.

She could run from it. She could find a new planet. But how? How could she leave home again?

#writing #prose #flash fiction #the ultimate super league of fantastic heroes

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psychotherapyconsultants · 6 years

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A Barbie in Paris

Barbie girls do not visit my therapy room that often. This one was from a Fashionista kind – perfectly blond and dressed up for a lunch in town with her equally well-groomed girlfriends on stilettos. This is the unkind thought that crossed my mind as I opened the door and greeted her. I felt bad; a spark of shame made me smile a bit more broadly to her than I would usually do. How could I reduce this person to a soulless doll? Nadia (no, she was not called Barbie) was probably suffering – otherwise why would she be here? She was a Russian-American living in Paris. Her parents had immigrated to Texas when she was eleven; and this is where she had grown up – she stressed at the very beginning of our session. She felt American and preferred to speak English with me, if I did not mind. I did not. Her English was perfect indeed, with a subtle Southern twist. Ignorant of my inner thoughts about her, she sat down, crossed her long legs and kicked off: - I hate everything here. This was a rather unusual beginning. My American clients are typically fascinated about Paris, though, sometimes, this initial idealization turns into disillusionment or frustration about the French administration or widespread snobbiness.

- Everything? - Yes, I hate French people, I hate French food… - Is there anything you might like about Paris? - Nope.

She sounded certain; the frozen frown on her perfect face confirmed this commitment to disgust. I believed her feeling. She looked fed up with trying to fit into a place she did not belong to. The only reason Nadia was still living in France was her French boyfriend. At first she had found the idea of following this Frenchman to Paris rather appealing. Her Texan girlfriends were finding it exciting, they could not hide their envy. This sat well with her – she was into fashion, and Paris was the place. She could picture herself working for one of the luxury brands, wearing a Chanel jacket and some fine jewelry… Who was this man? How did he connect with her? What did he appreciate in her apart from her looks? I did not get much out of her: he was rational, well-organized and made good money. Is it ever possible to love someone and completely dislike the culture this person belongs to? Having loved France and a French man for twenty years, I naturally doubted that, but Nadia’s story was different: they had met in her step-motherland, the US, and her knowledge about France was limited to Hollywood movies and her mother’s dream to visit Paris, an impossible fantasy during Soviet times. But Nadia was not interested in philosophical questions. She made it clear – she just wanted me to tell her that “her feeling was normal” and would pass with time: should she stay and give France another chance, or return home? She was desperately homesick. Was this place rejecting her? Probably. This had been my first reaction after all – Paris is not to welcoming Barbie girls – its well-known lights can be disappointing and lack the promised glamour. My own Frenchness, acquired through hard work, had rejected the way she was exhibiting herself. She stubbornly rebuked my attempts to enquire into her relationship with her original home, Russia. She did not have much recollection from her first years of life there, and had never given it much thought. She insisted on being happily American. Could it be that her current exposure to another strong culture was threatening her American identity? Working on this is possible in long-term therapy and can be painful at times. I suggested that, as long as she was ready to commit. Nadia was resisting taking any responsibility for the flaws in her relationship with France, she just could not do anything else than hating the country, the people, or the food here. After going in circles for an hour, we did not manage to move an inch beyond this initial point. I sat there in front of her, moving closer to the realization that I could not help her without her cooperation. When I finally closed the door behind her, I felt exhausted and relieved. My guess was that she would not be coming back. I felt used by her, and as result mildly ashamed. Shame is a tricky but always informative feeling. What was it about? Maybe this shame was something Nadia was experiencing deep down under her tight red top, under her perfectly tanned skin? Reflecting on our session, based on the very little she had shared with me about her past, I could imagine the young Russian girl brought by her parents to a new and probably alienating place. She had mentioned that the first year had been hard – children at school mocking her for her wrong clothes and wobbly English. But she was a tough kid, and soon enough she had joined the group of the ‘popular girls’. This had come with a cost – losing weight and learning how to play totally new and strange sports among other things … Thinking about this teenager dealing with her new immigrant condition that she had not chosen, I could finally feel some compassion. Here in Paris, the adult Nadia was certainly feeling as inadequate as the younger Nadia during her first years in America. The fact that this time she was the one making the choice to move did not make it any easier. My intuition was proven right – Nadia never came back, neither did she follow up on our unique encounter. This happens rarely, and every time it does I am left with more uneasy questions than answers. Did I fail her somehow? Should I have done something differently or was I simply not the right therapist for her? Even now as I am writing about Nadia, I feel an uneasy feeling, a mild embarrassment about failing to connect with her, to feel for her more in the moment. Had I been able to connect with the young Russian girl, ridden by the feeling of being too different from other truly American kids, would it have gone any differently? Perhaps her Barbie-like façade was the only way she had found at the time to fit in, to belong. How desperate she would have been to fit in to adapt her own personality to this caricature of a perfectly American girl. Had she played with foreign-looking Barbie dolls as a little girl back in her native Russia? Most probably I will never find answers to these questions, and as any other therapist, I had to learn how to deal with such frustrations and uncertainties – they are part of my job. I hope that one day Nadia is safe enough to get in touch with her shame about her imperfect origins. After all, she chose to contact me – a Russian become French, rather than one of the many American psychotherapists in Paris. Maybe a well-hidden part of her wanted to connect with her ‘shameful’ roots; but for now this part was too small and too insecure. I had to accept that and hope that in the future she will give therapy another chance… from http://www.psychotherapy.net/blog/title/a-barbie-in-paris

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fadingfartconnoisseur · 6 years

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How to Use Your Social Network to Travel the World

One of my favorite websites is Couchsurfing. This website allows you to connect with locals abroad and get a place to stay, a friend to show you around, and local information. I remember I used it when I was first traveling and stayed at this lovely home in Athens. I’ve grown to love it even more since they have a “who’s nearby” feature on their app, which I heavily used in France last year.

Celinne, on the other hand, created – and used – her own personal social network. She traveled the world only staying with friends and friends of friends. She reached out on the web and found strangers will to open their home to her. Not only did this help her lower her travel costs, it allowed her to meet wonderful, fascinating, and kind hearted people. To me, travel is about the human connections we make – and she found a way to make some great ones. Here’s her sharing her story, what inspired to do this, and what she learned along the way.

Nomadic Matt: Tell us about yourself. Who are you? What drives you? Celinne da Costa: My love story with travel dates as far back as I can remember: I was born in the heart of Rome, Italy, to an immigrant Brazilian mother and a German-raised Italian father. Since leaving Italy, I’ve gone from living in the quintessential suburbia neighborhoods that American dreams are made of, to frenziedly exploring Philadelphia while balancing my studies at University of Pennsylvania, to adventuring my way through every nook and cranny of New York City. Last year, I left behind my corporate advertising job in the city to design my dream life from scratch. I began with a journey around the world, in which I harnessed the power of human connection and kindness to stay with 70+ strangers in 17 countries across four continents.

Eighteen months later, I’m still traveling full-time and writing a book about my experience circumnavigating the globe by couchsurfing through my social network.

What fuels your passion for travel? Travel accelerates my personal growth and challenges me to become the best version of myself. There are so many beautiful places in the world, but after a while, they begin to blend into one another. What truly makes travel valuable is the lessons it can teach you, if you are willing to be present and pay attention to your environment.

Travel has helped me develop the humility and goodwill to learn from people that I meet along the way. It has pushed me to understand my insignificance on this planet, yet still take actions that will positively impact others. Most importantly, it has challenged me to open my heart to others and live in the moment. Ultimately, travel is not a matter of what I see, but who I become along the way. I don’t need to see the entire world. I just want to feel it run through my veins.

Tell us about this long adventure you were just on. How did you think of it? How long did it last? Where did you go? What did you do? I didn’t want to just quit my corporate 9-5 job on a whim and travel the world without a plan. I wanted to make travel into a lifestyle, not a sabbatical, so I decided to design a project that would 1. incorporate my main passions (travel, writing, and making connections with interesting humans) and 2. create opportunities for a lifestyle change once I was done. I challenged myself to design my dream life, attempt to live it out for six months and re-evaluate once I got there.

That’s where the idea of my social experiment came from: I circumnavigated the globe by couchsurfing through my network. I wanted to reincorporate real human connection back into my life. I never used the Couchsurfing website since everyone who hosted me was connected to me somehow (friends, friends of friends, people I met on the road).

I ended up being on the road for nine months for this project, and having 73 hosts in 17 countries across 4 continents: I passed through Europe, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, Oceania, and the US.

How did you actually find hosts to host you? How far ahead did you know where you were going to sleep? There were no websites involved! Only sheer human connection. All the interactions were initiated by me and were enabled by my phone (texting, voice notes, calling) and social media (mostly Instagram and Facebook).

I reached out to everyone I knew telling them about my project and asking whether they knew someone they could connect me with. I kept moving from one connection to the next until I found someone willing to host me. As my project grew and people started finding out about it, hosts started to reach out to me through Instagram.

I only had a one-way ticket to Italy (where I’m originally from) booked – everything else was on the whim. I had a general trajectory of where I was going, and I would add or subtract places depending on my hosting situation. There were places I wanted to visit no matter what, so there were often times when I was down to the wire and didn’t find a host until super last minute. Other times, I had hosts lined up months ahead. It always worked out – I was only left without a host once, in Dubrovnik, Croatia. I ended up renting a cheap room last minute, but luckily, I did make some local friends on that trip so I’ll have a place to stay if I return!

What was the furthest connection with a host that you stayed with? How did that happen? My furthest connection was seven degrees in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. It was: my mom’s friend’s girlfriend’s client’s client’s co-worker’s friend. It was crazy how it happened. I kept struggling to find a place, and each person would pass me along to someone else they knew until eventually, someone was available and willing to host. This happened several times during my travels – I also had plenty of five- and six-degree connections. I was taken aback by how dedicated people were to finding me a place to stay.

Did you ever meet someone on the road and stay with them? Or did you strictly stay with friends of friends? Yes, all the time! There was never a point when I had all my hosts lined up – I usually had my next couple of destinations planned, and everything else up in the air. I was constantly meeting and befriending travelers on the road, and upon hearing about my project, a vast majority would offer to host me without me even asking.

For example, I met an older gentleman for all of 30 minutes as I was leaving a meditation retreat in Nepal (which, funny enough, was also part of my project: my Kathmandu’s cousin worked so I was his guest). Despite knowing me so briefly, he offered to host me in Tasmania. I ended up visiting his and his wife’s farm (located in the middle of nowhere) six months later with another host, and it was amazing. Four complete strangers ended up spending an entire evening sharing stories about our travels and philosophies on life over a feast of freshly caught crayfish and vegetables picked from their garden.

Tell us a few host stories that completely surprised you when you were on the road. If there is anything I learned from meeting hundreds of people during my travels, it’s that there is so much more than we could ever fathom going on below the surface of a human being. It is our nature to categorize things. With people, it tends to be by culture, race, geography, religion, etc. If you make an active effort to put these categories aside, sit down with locals, and demonstrate some basic interest in their lives and stories, you’ll find that each person is their own universe. In fact, the most incredible nuggets of wisdom I’ve gotten came from people who didn’t even realize their own brilliance.

One of my favorite encounters was with Maung, an older gentleman that I met who was a hotel manager in Myanmar. After some conversation, I found out he smuggled cows to Thailand for a living when he was younger, and was a commander in the guerilla fighting movement against the oppressive regime alongside a monk who later became famous for his humanitarian efforts towards orphaned children. What a story!

Then, there is Adam, the Italian-American host I fell head-over-heels in love with (spoiler: we broke up). We grew up less than an hour away from each other in the US yet I found him while he was living in Australia.

Lastly, I’ll never forget asking my host Anna in Bali whether she knew of a spiritual healer and her telling me that she lived with one. That week, I spent most of my evenings sitting on their porch in an Ubud village, discussing the meaning of love and happiness as they proceeded to school me on life with their wise Balinese philosophy.

What challenges did you have couchsurfing around the world? How did you deal with them? I could never predict the comfort or location convenience of my accommodation, so I really had to learn to go with the flow and not set any expectations. I’ve stayed in penthouses with my own private room, bathroom, and maid, and I’ve also stayed in cots on the floor of a village with a hole for a toilet. It’s funny because some of my most “uncomfortable” hosting accommodations ended up being my richest and best experiences, and vice versa.

Also, “reading” my hosts was a challenge. Their reasons for hosting me were so different: some wanted to pay it forward, others wanted to actively show me their city and pick my brain, others were only offering a place to stay but didn’t necessarily want to socialize. I had to sharpen my people skills so I could stay respectful and intuitive to people’s boundaries (or lack thereof).

What are your tips for people who are inspired by your story and want to do this on their own? What are some great resources you suggest to use? Identify what you are passionate about, and try to build your travels around what works for you. My project was successful because I tapped into my strengths and passions. If you’d like to create a project around your travels, I suggest you customize it around your preferences: if you are an introvert and hate talking to people, for example, spending hours a day chatting with people and asking them to host you may not be the best idea. Make your journey fun by catering to what you realistically feel comfortable and happy doing, and make sure you do some planning ahead of time.

My best resource was fellow travelers who had also done round-the-world trips. When I was thinking about doing this trip, I reached out to full-time travelers on Instagram, asked friends if they knew people who went on long travel trips, and did a lot of “blog surfing.” I had so many Skype calls with strangers who had just finished round-the-world trips before I left for my own. Talking through my doubts, fears, and confusions – and being reassured that I would be okay – made me so much more comfortable with leaving.

Specifically, my trip was inspired by one of my mentors Leon Logothetis, who is the author of book (and now TV show) The Kindness Diaries. He traveled the world on a yellow motorbike relying on people to offer him gas, food, or shelter, to prove to himself and to others that humanity was kind. Other books I also read that prepared me for the trip were Vagabonding by Rolf Potts, The Art of Travel by Alain de Botton, and A New Earth: Awakening To Your Life’s Purpose by Eckhart Tolle.

How do you make your money last on the road? What are some of your best tips? My top tips for people trying to make it work financially on the road:

Know your weaknesses, and plan for them. I’m terrible at numbers and never budgeted before, but I knew I would have to if I wanted to make this work financially. I created an excel sheet and for the past 18 months, have been documenting and categorizing every single expense so I can track where I need to cut down if necessary. I also knew I’d go crazy if I didn’t occasionally treat myself to something I liked but wasn’t necessary, so I gave myself a monthly “frivolous stuff” allowance.

Always remember that you can barter or negotiate. Traveling and negotiating on the road taught me that currency is not only monetary – it is social as well. I did not have abundant funds, but I did have a skillset: I am a brand strategist by trade, as well as a writer, social media influencer, and content creator. When negotiating with dollars didn’t get me anywhere, I would offer my services in exchange for goods or services of similar perceived value. In many areas of the world, people respond favorably to a favor exchange. If marketing isn’t your skillset, that’s totally ok too! I’ve seen people barter all kinds of skills for experiences of places to stay: for example, exchanging farm work or teaching English for room and board, helping a small business with coding a website in exchange for free tours, etc. The possibilities are endless!

Embrace the minimalist lifestyle. When I’m on the road, I live a very minimalist lifestyle. I only travel with a carry-on to keep my belongings to a minimum, I hardly buy souvenirs or clothes, I walk or take public transportation whenever possible, and I buy most of my food at the grocery store. I normally don’t pay for culture and history-related activities or tours; I email places ahead of time, tell them about my project and that I’m a writer (in addition to having my own social media following, I also write for some major publications… both which I achieved by creating this social experiment). Since I stay with locals, I don’t pay for accommodation, which helps tremendously.

Were your family and friends supportive of your traveling adventure? Surprisingly, yes. I was originally nervous to tell my family and friends about my plan to quit my job to travel around the world by sleeping in random people’s homes – I really expected them to try to talk me out of it. Although a handful of them did, the vast majority had a response along the lines of “Yes! You need to do this!”

I was overwhelmed by the support, how much they believed in me, and how they supported me along the way, emotionally as well as by connecting me to potential hosts. I couldn’t have made it without them!

What’s on your bucket list? Oof, am I allowed to say every country in the world? If had to narrow down to five places that I’m itching to see, they are: Peru, Bolvia, Antarctica, Japan, and the Philippines. Now I just need to find hosts there!

Do you have any advice for people that feel like Couchsurfing is something dangerous that they could never do? Yes! The first rule is probably the hardest to internalize: you have to trust people. We live in a world that is constantly inundating us with news of what terrible humans we are, but that is not the case at all. I found all over the world that most people are good, and want to help. I have enough stories about people who went out of their way in kindness for me to fill a book (and that’s why I’m writing one!).

Of course, there are exceptions, and that’s where my second piece of advice comes in: trust your intuition. Western society particularly values mind over heart, and that’s something I learned to question during my time in Southeast Asia. It’s important to use rationality and logic when moving through life, but there is something about intuition that just cannot be quantified. Listen to what your gut tells you – if something is off, remove yourself from the situation, no questions asked.

Overall, I’ve surfed over 100 couches in the past couple of years and I’ve only had one bad experience which I quickly removed myself from before it escalated. Statistically, that’s a 1% weirdo rate. Believe that people are good, and that’s the world that will manifest for you!

Celinne da Costa left behind her corporate advertising job in the city to design her dream life from scratch. She began with a journey around the world, in which she harnessed the power of human connection and kindness to stay with 70+ strangers in 17 countries across four continents. Follow her journey at The Nomad’s Oasis as well as Instagram and Facebook or pick up her book of short stories, The Art of Being Human.

Become the Next Success Story

One of my favorite parts about this job is hearing people’s travel stories. They inspire me, but more importantly, they also inspire you. I travel a certain way but there are many ways to fund your trips and travel the world. I hope these stories show you that there is more than one way to travel and that it is within your grasp to reach your travel goals. Here are more examples of people who overcame obstacles and made their travel dreams a reality:

Reader Story: How Angela Travels the World as an Au Pair

How Oneika Gets Teaching Jobs Around the World

Reader Story: How Helen Successfully Traveled and Volunteered Around Africa

Success Stories: Why Trish Sold Everything She Owned to Travel

An Interview with Lee Abbamonte, the Youngest American to Visit Every Country in the World

P.S. – I’m having a meet up on January 23rd in Queenstown. You can sign for that by clicking here! Come join the fun! Location TBD!

The post How to Use Your Social Network to Travel the World appeared first on Nomadic Matt's Travel Site.

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touristguidebuzz · 6 years

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How to Use Your Social Network to Travel the World

Eighteen months later, I’m still traveling full-time and writing a book about my experience circumnavigating the globe by couchsurfing through my social network.

I ended up being on the road for nine months for this project, and having 73 hosts in 17 countries across 4 continents: I passed through Europe, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, Oceania, and the US.

How do you make your money last on the road? What are some of your best tips? My top tips for people trying to make it work financially on the road:

Become the Next Success Story

Reader Story: How Angela Travels the World as an Au Pair

How Oneika Gets Teaching Jobs Around the World

Reader Story: How Helen Successfully Traveled and Volunteered Around Africa

Success Stories: Why Trish Sold Everything She Owned to Travel

An Interview with Lee Abbamonte, the Youngest American to Visit Every Country in the World

P.S. – I’m having a meet up on January 23rd in Queenstown. You can sign for that by clicking here! Come join the fun! Location TBD!

The post How to Use Your Social Network to Travel the World appeared first on Nomadic Matt's Travel Site.

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theladyjstyle · 6 years

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Eighteen months later, I’m still traveling full-time and writing a book about my experience circumnavigating the globe by couchsurfing through my social network.

I ended up being on the road for nine months for this project, and having 73 hosts in 17 countries across 4 continents: I passed through Europe, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, Oceania, and the US.

How do you make your money last on the road? What are some of your best tips? My top tips for people trying to make it work financially on the road:

Become the Next Success Story

Reader Story: How Angela Travels the World as an Au Pair

How Oneika Gets Teaching Jobs Around the World

Reader Story: How Helen Successfully Traveled and Volunteered Around Africa

Success Stories: Why Trish Sold Everything She Owned to Travel

An Interview with Lee Abbamonte, the Youngest American to Visit Every Country in the World

P.S. – I’m having a meet up on January 23rd in Queenstown. You can sign for that by clicking here! Come join the fun! Location TBD!

The post How to Use Your Social Network to Travel the World appeared first on Nomadic Matt's Travel Site.

How to Use Your Social Network to Travel the World http://ift.tt/2Dp6k0N

#Travel Blog – Nomadic Matt's Travel Site digital nomad

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tamboradventure · 6 years

Text

How to Use Your Social Network to Travel the World

Eighteen months later, I’m still traveling full-time and writing a book about my experience circumnavigating the globe by couchsurfing through my social network.

I ended up being on the road for nine months for this project, and having 73 hosts in 17 countries across 4 continents: I passed through Europe, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, Oceania, and the US.

How do you make your money last on the road? What are some of your best tips? My top tips for people trying to make it work financially on the road:

Become the Next Success Story

Reader Story: How Angela Travels the World as an Au Pair

How Oneika Gets Teaching Jobs Around the World

Reader Story: How Helen Successfully Traveled and Volunteered Around Africa

Success Stories: Why Trish Sold Everything She Owned to Travel

An Interview with Lee Abbamonte, the Youngest American to Visit Every Country in the World

P.S. – I’m having a meet up on January 23rd in Queenstown. You can sign for that by clicking here! Come join the fun! Location TBD!

The post How to Use Your Social Network to Travel the World appeared first on Nomadic Matt's Travel Site.

from Travel Blog – Nomadic Matt's Travel Site http://ift.tt/2Dp6k0N via IFTTT

#IFTTT #Travel Blog – Nomadic Matt's Travel Site

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trendingnewsb · 7 years

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As chaos mounts, are the grown-ups reasserting themselves in Washington? | Geoffrey Kabaservice

Its not yet clear if Trumps presidency has suffered a mortal injury, but its credibility has taken a big hit

Republicans are not much given to quoting Lenin, but they might be in a mood to sympathise with his supposed observation that there are decades when nothing happens and weeks when decades happen.

It feels like a decades worth of misery rained down on Republicans in Congress and the Trump administration last week and theres no telling whether this week will bring a respite or more of the same. The damaging stories have come so thick and fast that there has hardly been time to take in one before the arrival of the next.

Donald Trumps firing of the FBI director, James Comey (perhaps to quash Comeys investigation of his campaign), was followed by the news that Trump had divulged highly classified intelligence to the Russian government.

Then it was off to the races with the Comey memo (apparently alleging that Trump tried to get the FBI director to call off his investigation into former national security adviser, Michael Flynn); revelations about Flynn having been in effect a foreign agent of Turkey, news of previously undisclosed contacts between the Trump campaign and Russia; the appointment of a special counsel to investigate Russian meddling; and on and on and on. Rumour has it that firings of top aides are imminent, while others in the administration are said to be polishing their CVs or putting pen to tell-all memoirs.

As I write this, the New York Times is reporting that Trump told Russian officials that he fired Comey because he was crazy, a real nut job and that his removal had taken away the great pressure Trump faced because of Russia. Who knows what revelation tomorrow may bring?

Its too soon to tell what the long-term impact of all of this upheaval will be. Many historical-minded commentators have suggested parallels with the Watergate scandal that brought down Richard Nixon, while others have pointed toward the Iran-Contra affair, which ultimately didnt detract from Ronald Reagans popularity. The possibility of Trumps impeachment, once discussed only on wild-eyed, leftist websites, is now a matter of serious consideration in the media and some Democratic circles.

At this point, the major similarity to Watergate is that a lot of Americans who in years past never talked about politics now talk about it all the time and in settings where politics rarely used to come up. Politics, its said, is displacing talk of sports and sex in such unlikely venues as bars, nail salons and strip clubs. The American Psychological Association recently warned that people increasingly feel stressed and cynical on account of political arguments in the workplace, sapping employee morale and performance.

On an anecdotal level, politics seems to be sundering friendships on social media platforms such as Facebook as well as in real life. Dating websites also report that fewer people are willing to consider relationships with people who dont share their political beliefs. On Match.com, 60% of singles said they were less open to dating across party lines than they were two years ago. One woman interviewed by a Washington, DC, radio station insisted that she couldnt date a supporter of the opposing party because when somebody has beliefs that you think are just morally wrong, it feels like a personal attack on you.

The phenomenon of political polarisation predates Trump, of course. In many ways, it goes back to the Nixon administration, when conservative aide Patrick Buchanan recommended that Republicans exploit tensions of race and class and use controversial social and cultural issues such as abortion to split the Democratic coalition. Such tactics could cut the Democratic party and country in half, he wrote to Nixon in 1971, and we would have far the larger half.

Another Nixon adviser, Roger Ailes, who died last week at age 77, also contributed to polarization by creating Fox News as a conservative counter to the mainstream news networks that took pride in their objectivity. More and more Americans now get their news from nakedly ideological outlets, which makes it less likely that theyll encounter opposing views or be able to distinguish truth from falsehood.

Trump ran a more divisive campaign than Nixon ever contemplated and, indeed, turned it into the sort of reality-TV spectacle that has driven all of those shouting matches at the office water cooler, Facebook unfriendings and failed first dates. Buchanans prediction has proved true: Republicans have cut the country in half and ended up with the bigger piece, as they now control a majority of both houses of Congress and governorships as well as the White House.

The continuing benefits of polarisation for Republicans have been evident even during the past difficult week. A recent poll shows that even as Trumps overall approval rating continues to slide, 84% of his supporters still approve of the job hes doing (although the share who strongly approve is waning). Many of his adherents simply dismiss the damaging stories about Trump as fake news purveyed by a biased liberal media. Theyre likely to continue to support the Republicans so long as they believe that Democrats represent a diabolical threat to the nation.

Many Republicans also point to accomplishments that wouldnt have happened under a Hillary Clinton presidency. Foremost among these is Neil Gorsuchs confirmation as supreme court justice, restoring the conservative majority. Trump voters, whose primary issue was immigration, are heartened by the news that arrests of immigrants have soared even as crossings at the Mexican border have dropped. And Trump signed more executive orders in his first 100 days in office than any president since Franklin Roosevelt, although most of those orders signalled Trumps intention to reverse President Obamas legacy on the environment and other issues.

Ousted FBI director, James Comey. Photograph: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images

But it turns out there is also a political cost to dividing the American people into hostile and mutually uncomprehending tribes. The Republican decision to lead off the legislative year by repealing the previous presidents namesake healthcare reform galvanised a sort of Tea Party movement of the left, making it unwise for Republican legislators to attend town hall meetings with their constituents or for Democratic legislators to co-operate on significant legislation.

For most of American history, major bills passed Congress thanks to a coalition of moderates from both parties. If bipartisanship is now dead, Republicans will need just about every vote from their own ranks to pass anything consequential. This has handed effective veto power to the House Freedom Caucus, a group of 30-odd Republicans (all men) on the far-right fringe, who have trampled party norms by voting as a bloc. They opposed the first iteration of the House healthcare bill as not going far enough to repeal Obamacare. When provisions to appease them were inserted into the second iteration, it nearly failed by going too far for the remaining Republican moderates. This dynamic, combined with chaos and incompetence in the White House, now casts serious doubt on the more ambitious items on the Republicans legislative wish list, including tax reform and infrastructure repair.

Traditionally, it has been seen as the presidents job to work with his own party in Congress as well as the opposition to form the majorities required to pass legislation and then to sell that legislation to a majority of the public. Trump signally failed in this responsibility even before this week of troubles and his job will be much harder now. Theres no way of knowing whether the newly appointed special counsel will find a smoking gun that will completely unravel Trumps presidency, but his credibility and standing as a party leader have both surely taken a big hit.

Like Miltons Lucifer, politicians would rather reign in hell than serve in heaven. Republicans in Congress still have the majority. Theyre likely to stick by Trump, even if the scandals hanging over the White House worsen, unless his unpopularity seems to threaten their own re-elections. But it does appear that whatever coat-tails Trump once possessed have vanished. Certainly, Republicans are ducking out of once-coveted television appearances for fear of having to defend the president, while few are lining up to have him come speak in their states or districts. The Trump presidency may have taken a mortal injury or it may turn out to have been merely a flesh wound. What seems more probable is that last week marks an end to the collective delusion that government is somehow unlike other highly technical fields of human endeavour, so simple, despite its apparent complexities, that even a child could run it.

The laws of political gravity may now begin to reassert themselves. White House officials may once again understand that gravity, prudence, probity and diplomacy are valuable and essential qualities in a president. Legislators may remember that super-majorities are aberrations rather than the norm, and cross-aisle co-operation and compromise are essential to the legislative process rather than base treachery. Voters may wise up to the hucksters who try to persuade them that everyone who supports the opposing party is Evil Incarnate. They may come to prefer the passage of modest but sensible legislation to the promise of future utopias and government that is boring but functional to cant-miss-TV or gladiatorial entertainment.

Then again, these lessons may come too late for Trump and for the rest of us.