The only gay-lesbian bar in Jerusalem

Yesterday I went to see a film called "City of Borders" by Korean/American documentary maker Yun Suh. It was about a bar in Jerusalem, a gay-lesbian bar where people could celebrate their identities without fear.. including Palestinians.
One drag show was of an arab in what I think is typical saudi headdress singing about his love, and who he is really singing to is his arab girlfriend. The male singer is, of course, a woman, and his "girlfriend" a man. Both palestinians, the woman an israeli palestinian and the other from Ramallah, who risked his life to journey to this one bar in perhaps the entire region for people of other sexual and gender orientations to dance together, drink, enjoy eachother and perform. It follows this one palestinian, Boody, who claims to be the first Palestinian drag queen. His stage name is "Haifa". Towards the end of the film, it is revealed how many death threats and problems he has in his community and he eventually flees to the US, where some relatives are living in Connecticut. He eventually finds "the love of his life", a Lebanese American guy, in Cleveland.
I do not feel like going through all of the characters, but there were a few aspects that really stuck out at me.

See: http://www.cityofborders.com/

while reading Anti-Oedipus

The desiring-machine Deleuze and Guattari describe is what, looking at myself, I am. No in the consumer sense, but in an emotional, creative sense. But, I go against the theory as I do not produce (much) despite this desire-production. Only dreams, ambitions.
No matter how I may agree with the anti-fascist mandate, agree that psychoanalysis is more destructive than "productive" and ___, I still have a tyrant inside of me, some fascist dictator of an ego; not just a part of a personality, but a preeminent reflex toward all I encounter. I always ask myself: Is this due to my background (WASP, American, Tenn.(but does it matter which state?), Puritan source of American pietism, drugged on anti-psychotics)?

"Do not demand of politics that it restore the 'rights' of the individual, as philosophy has defined them. The individual is the product of power.
What is needed is to 'de-individualize' by means of multiplication and displacement, diverse combinations. The group must not be the organic bond uniting hierarchized individuals, but a constant generator of de-individualization." (Foucault, in the Preface)

Cars as catalysts for relationships / ____-furthering spaces

In the US, the automobile as a place for sex is nothing new. From the 1950’s on, or earlier, kissing, petting, and snogging in the backseat at a drive-in movie theater was a rite of passage. Now we have the massive, tinted-windowed SUV’s with descriptive language about what sexual adventures may/could/do go on in their backseats.
However, there is also an extensive use of the car that I now only realize in a place where few people drive as often as in the US, and where people use public spaces for these same activities Americans may use a car for.
As soon as I was old enough to have friends who drove cars, it was very clear how the space was personal, completely separate from what was going on outside (only separated by thin plastic glass and fiberglass, but it FELT separate).
The freedom of screaming, playing whatever music, while watching things go by at whatever speed. The car also became, as I discovered I wanted space alone with boys, a place to secretly fondle and figure out if I liked someone “that way”. From my first boyfriends, one who was very respectful but randy, the other a true punk asshole who tried to get me to JUST go hop in the truck while my friends were eating at a diner after a Cure concert and have a quickie, I knew what possibilities existed (cars meant freedom, and also could be threatening… I had difficulty saying no… What, indeed, was a “good girl”?!)
Illicit relationships were possible in the back of the minivan I drove after graduating from Chicago, back in Memphis, and more or less feeling shiftless and without a clear path. The minivan’s size made many things possible, like full, exploratory sex. Cheating on my boyfriend at the time with a married man was the excitement I could handle, for a time, and this man and I managed to further the relationship in both his car and mine and, depending on the location where the car was parked, I became very aware of what in reality was rather quick or fleeting, mundane or unsatisfying.
I realized that often fantasy was better than me simply doing what I could in the car… Sometimes I should have let sleeping dogs lie… seat belts, material of the seats, the distance between the driver and passenger seats, the tint of the windows or lack thereof, and questions: Which places would have fewer pedestrians (many possibilities in a car-bound city like Memphis) and a view (when one wanted some romantic aspect)? Could we please have a NICE view?! Play music or were we environmentally aware and not wanting to leave the car battery running?
One can go so far in a car in a very short time…in terms of distance…around and around, south and north, blowing wind, over-air-conditioned or not, music blaring to cause/create a mood of wistfulness.
The wanderer in the American psyche, the American tradition of riding into the “unknown” and uncharted lands (of native peoples), the “road trip” odysseys of American youth… It was all possible in the car.
And whoever’s car it was had the upper-hand in deciding where to go, in theory. But, I never had the experience that anyone knew where they wanted to go. Just start driving, and we will think as we go. What freedom! And what gets done in the car does not seem to leave the car.
When one leaves the car, especially if it is someone else’s, one leaves the place of action; one can forget what really happened. A privilege, and a distancing element or method. What gets done IN MOTION of the moving automobile? Where was it done? Will one visit the place ever again?
How disjointed an automobile can make me feel now, after not driving for months on end.

THE BLUE FOOT continues

Now I want to interact with it, as if it were a being. I created it, and it feels now real as a performer, not just a prop.
Grotesque and shiny-blue, I want to hug it. As I moved it from the "studio"/guest room, I felt its size and weight...thinking in more intimate terms.

The inappropriate (mothers and fathers)

I see parents in the park with their children. The fathers and mothers; fathers in one area, mothers in another. Collective segregating..momentary but subconscious or not?
How much do they interact, if they do indeed interact? How is this seen from their perspectives?
What IS the idea of mother and father, when one actually becomes one? How does this get acted out for each individual trying to do the best…their best for them? The children?
What interests me more is the idea of attraction between/among mothers/fathers of different children. Is the erotic still there for many? How is erotic love seen and acted out? How does the child come or not come between adults and pleasure? How is desire for egoistic exhibition or lust hindered, encouraged, aggravated or deadened?
These boundaries are not so strong in my mind. Surely, they cannot be. Love for a child or love for a woman or man or erotic love for the friend or lust for the stranger… are there not elements of all of these feelings within each other? Can they possibly function together? (All the questions are for me or rhetorical.)

Bucharest, Budapest, Györ

“...if we can ‘look the negative in the face and live with it

“...if we can ‘look the negative in the face and live with it,‘ then we can achieve a truly magical power“ and “convert the negative into being…“
(Marshall Berman using Hegel in New York Calling: From Blackout to Bloomberg)
What this says to me is that it refers exactly to what happens when one searches for ways to overcome depression, mania, intense feelings that drive one into a silent, internal frenzy. After years of flirting around with the concept of somehow “becoming” a productive citizen that fits a profile, I give up and become myself by looking directly at my obsessions and hang-ups and now desiring to lay them out completely.
I have scenarios ready to enact, artwork ready to be presented spontaneously, and questions I am dying to ask people around me. But, this is no change in me. I have always had these sensations. I have just now built up enough examples of things going my way when I am honest and direct with people around me…especially when I share with people—my opinions, my life experiences, my worries…
INSIDE What this means for me, what can I “look in the face and live with”? I can look at my past really clearly, as clearly as any person can self-reflect with time. I can see how fragile I was, so shy, so self-protective, and non-communicative with people. I did not know how to love people, and I think sometimes I still do not. Only now can I sit back and let things happen between me and those I love, instead of orchestrating or bulldozing over what they might say. I do not want to cower behind the idea of being mysterious (read: unknown) to others.
So, the entrenched second language has done me in, taught me a lesson. Now I am desperate to be understood in German. Not just to be understood, I also long for my personality to come through. I face the negativity of being an outsider in a country I expected to fit in relatively easily. I have had to see directly what I did not communicate well, and watch as others do it better. But, by facing this challenge and learning, not being discouraged, I realize after all that no one has been saying what I have wanted to say. No one can say what I want to say.
OUTSIDE Around me, what can I look directly in the face and live with? “Live with” is, for me, to accept that certain things exist and occur, but I do not accept them in and of themselves. I do not want to be separated from what is around me. I cannot live in a walled community and I cannot have only friends who fit my background and up-bringing. This is a perfectly liberal thing to say, but I do not want to exercise the right of choosing and preventing anyone from anything (in practice this is perhaps not easily done, but I hold onto the idea, the spirit).
But, there is a radical point, I believe, to which this idea should be taken. It should be taken with a gender studies-like flexibility. Flexible judgments without conclusions that limit interaction and catharsis.
This quote is one that I can remember thinking already while walking down a street anywhere. From the days of feeling extreme agoraphobia, until now when occasionally I will be hit with the notion that anything can happen to me now, in “public”. On the street, in the dark, on a train. Anyone sees me; I also see anyone who I chose to stare at. (I must insist on seeing more often.) Anyone can hit me, can touch me, can yell at me. Alternatively, anyone can hand me a flyer, kiss me, smile at me.
Every action has its ulterior motive…and this is one negative that one must accept.
I accept that anything can happen. I accept that terrible things go on in the dark. What I mean by “accept” is that I can acknowledge their existence without simultaneously trying to banish them from my thoughts.
Strength, this “power” IS to know what is going on; to know as much as possible about what is “going on”.

Budapest Vermisst

These crazy memories in my mind..Budapest, Pannónia utca 34, rented bed, precious alone, self-pleasing, fantasies, and pretend. Foreplay around in my mind...
It's what I had/have in me...not so much the environment, the people, although they certainly play a role. My imaginings are better than reality? "Reality" eventually becomes mundane and belabored...

Now, trying to convince myself of my instincts--trust and producing.

Making conscientious blotches of ink in my notebook reminds me of college, Memphis. Mesmerizingly appalling or appealing? To the senses, to the loins. The things I used to write, confused and melodramatic...were they even honest? (Growing up in the music video culture, one never can be sure.)
So unknowing of my "place" or my needs, my body, my relevance. My relevance remains in question.
But, now I feel free... at least I trust myself against others.

Gargantua!!! The big blue foot in progress.

Appealing to the senses...parts, colors, a puzzle of signifiers. Badness, naughtiness are in me, but I am not a bad person. If I can create delight, I contribute to society. Baby steps, foot steps.
As we had the decision to either stay here or move to Saarbrücken, I realized that the only reason I wanted to move was for the sake of moving. I wanted to be replanted, even though I knew it would be difficult to "start over" and find myself in the new context again. What I have built here in Hanover took a lot of energy and desire, emotions, cursing.
I realized around this time every year, for the last three, I have moved. It's the season for moving. But, I want to stay in one place for now.

Big Blue Foot

I am making a big blue foot.
Chicken wire and papier maché.
Giant body parts scattered throughout the landscape. Bahktin made some amazing observations. Bodies, dismembered, it's not so different from how I actually feel in my own. Distractions, and then self-awareness. Ecstasy, hysterics, panic, needs...all of these are needed.
I will play with big body parts. Still have to make a big nose, a big ear, a big hand. Perhaps more. And then I must forge a relationship with them--the large body pieces, for they belong somewhere.

January 5

Alone now - Anne is gone --what it means to me.
As everyone leaves, what does it mean to me? Jena, Omar
Feeling empty, no panic, no violent sadness.
Problems outside of me swirl around us all, and some of us have convinced ourselves of responsibility (a selective responsibility)
Perhaps the decadence of "industrialized" "first-world" societies (more specifically (primarily) white, inheritors of the "enlightenment") causes no inner peace for postmodern "man" because of the build-up of past atrocity, the realization of it (North American, Western European, but the power struggles have obviously been everywhere among all peoples, but I can only speak with some confidence about the American/W.Eur. one).
Some of us/them (those Americans, for example, who believe the doctrine of Manifest Destiny of the USA to better the world through our example) see how we (US with its Marshall Plan, Europe with its colonial legacies) have bettered the world and those we have dominated.
The rest of them/us may see how we have demolished customs (controversial customs or not), squandered diversity of thought and approach. "Diversity" of meaning for others, the ways and methods of indigenous peoples, alternatives to this existence of capitalist consumer-based cultures.
We have placed these alternatives within the framework, the grand narrative of "industrialization" and the "progress" of humanity, and judged them as "outside" at best and "deviant" (militant and threatening) at worst. Alternatives WERE foreign (to usUS/them) and demonized on "difference" grounds.

My "reality," as I evaluate it now, is checked by the assumption I have about constant change, usurption of previous goals and "values" by others. A frivolity in morals, in goals.
But, I know I must have some constant and enduring goals and causes and beliefs. Not just for a right or "just" cause, but also for my sanity.
So, do I think I must believe in something? Is there not a power in not comforting oneself with a "belief system"? Does this allow for a more open mind?

At Quetzal

The struggles of different people.
I watch the traffic - the struggle of conveyence, of mobility.
The cars go by on Union Avenue.
Stopping and starting.
Through driving, people communicate their emotions and needs.
Use of technology to augment human communication and interaction...
Find expression through every object...