Holiday of the Melon

What a week politically! First the death of Anton Balasingham, which will have far-reaching changes in the political leadership and strategy of the LTTE and now Niyazov, the head of state of Turkmenistan, a brutal dictator by all accounts but a most unexpected death and a very uncertain future ahead for that country

in?

Crossing various seas soon, the atlantic in a few hours and then the pacific. In today's world, if we are to be explorers, we must traverse the frontiers of thought geography, those boundaries where convention stands on one side, and the unproved on the other. And in crossing those frontiers, we become necessarily changed. I know all this and I can't help but go forward, trusting. Are you in or not?

exams

12 more hours exactly until my last exam and straight to the bar thence. Begone ye ghosts! I was in the library for 12 hours today. It's been 4 and a half years since an event like that has happened. Like Haley's comet, it'll probably be as long until next!

barack

Did you know that Barack Obama's middle name is Hussein? Jesus Christ. I wonder why we haven't heard that wonderful morsel of news in the mainstream liberal media (god love 'em) yet? You gotta laud the guy just for making it through politics and thinking of running, with a name like that.

Talking to a law professor, whose student Obama was and who genuinely thinks that he's brilliant off-the-charts. There's a lot of desire in the Harvard establishment to see a mixed-race kid from the wrong side of the tracks, with an A-rab middle name, anointed.

Live life as an epic adventure

The last lesson of a Professor whom I have adored and for good reason too. I can’t explain all the emotions that arose, but he delivered a stunning lecture today and was rewarded with a standing ovation at the end of it. The class is a development economics class, but it ended with the best leadership class I have ever been in all semester- he said cut the crap about what you think you want to do. If you’re white and want to work in a developing country, don’t look at them as locals and you as American, don’t act out of guilt in having had a good life and wanting to give something back. If you're local, they're going to look at you different, 'cause you speak English and are foreign and wealthy and they think you want a job in the World Bank or Wall Street after that. Forget it. Cut that crap. Do what you have to do well. Be a Hero, Not a Victim. Experience is what you do with what happens to you, not what happens to you. Don't say you couldn't pass that policy because of x, y, z. Make a mark. Leave a Legacy and Live life as an epic adventure. And take yourself seriously because no one else is going to if you don’t. And even if you fail, at least you’ll have had fun. Coming at the moment it did, as I had been reevaluating what to do going forward regarding a certain project in Sri Lanka, it was a call to arms and many responded as such. Dammit, I hate to say it, but I think I’m starting to fall in love with this place.

Go Big or Go Home

Years later, when I have finally become all that I want to be, and a successful film maker and author, I will look back and give interviews. Here are some choice quotes and things that I plan to let the world know about my life:

Dedication upon accepting the Nobel Prize for literature : As George Orwell said "The aim of great art is to be imaginative in its craftsmanship and politically committed at its heart". I dedicate this prize to the thousands of aid workers, toiling away in remote lands, away from those that are dear to them, materially unrewarded, at risk of life and limb, in the service of humanity. To you, to the lamplighters of Florence Nightingale, I am humbled and proud.

"I chose to start expressing with film, because I didn't have the discipline to start with writing. Writing is far more unforgiving of mistakes and unsuccessful experimentation, perhaps because of the long tradition behind it, and because all you have is a series of words. One more, or one less, and the whole thing falls apart. Film on the other hand, there are so many rescue mechanisms within it (sound, lighting, characterization, acting, tone), that its easy to start with because hardly anyone ever gets it all right. Writing on the other hand, is the higher art, and having been somewhat trained in the tradition of literature, as Byatt says, I approach the task of entering the canon with far more fear. "


(I say: GO BIG OR GO HOME)

whimper

This week is the last week of classes. To two particularly brilliant, engaged, charismatic professors, I salute you. And now, the ramp up for finals and then a flight out of these frozen climes to the tropics almost immediately afterwards. More discussion involving the limits of violence as well as the growth constraint facing China ("The answer is" the urban-rural gap). Two more massive papers to write through the break, applications, and a large project that will probably take over my life should I think about it. But until then a quote from T.S. Eliot will suffice :"This is how the world ends. Not with a bang, but with a whimper".

Another interesting fact I learned today: that it was the First Council of Nicaea, convened by Constantinople in AD 325 that led to the formation of a universal standard Christian doctrine.

dinner out

Talking about civil disobedience was quite emotional. Was the first time in weeks that I had done any reading for Ethics and only because it was Martin Luther King assigned. He said that we must confront the community, and if it does not want to negotiate then we must take to a program of direct action, by which he meant a nonviolent protest of civil disobedience (of breaking the law) and yet subsequently submitting to the law willingly and its penalties. And that that in reality would be expressing the highest respect for the law. But what does a group do if the community that it wants to confront simply does not want to negotiate and if a nonviolent Gandhian movement does not succeed? I want to believe what Gandhi said, which I do believe sometimes, that in the end, the way of love and truth will triumph every disaster but what if I , or others can't wait that long? And a state has violence, a monopoly on violence which it can legitimately (in the sense, electorally justified) use, and what of groups that do not? and what of those that say that war is an extension of politics by other means as Bismarck did? and yet I would not want to go so far as saying violence should be used by those who cannot achieve their ends by other means.

also had dinner yesterday with an ancient civil rights professor of law who's taking a lot of heat in the national press for his support of the use of torture in qualified situations and who really loved the sound of his own voice as well as dinner with Arthur Golden, author of Memoirs of a Geisha who sadly had nothing interesting to say.

reconciliation

I had a class yesterday on the justification and limits of civil disobedience and after that I was talking to someone last night about truth and reconciliation and it made me pause and reflect about the nature of conflict. X said that in south africa for example, he had lived through apartheid and seen the violence and abuse perpetrated by a system against its own people. If you had asked him 12 or 15 years ago whether he was proud to be a South African, he would have said no, but today he is. Yet, he won't sing the whole anthem (which has three different verses from Afrikaans, Xhosa and another dialect I believe) and believes that the truth and reconciliation commission has a lot to answer for, for it let a lot of white perpetrators off with amnesty yet did not include any modicum of financial reparations. He said he was denied his identity for so long that he would never surrender it again. War may be political but first and foremost it is always a human experience; it tears the heart out of memory and experience, leaving one with scars that run deep, perhaps never to be healed. He said that all the young, we, can expect from the old generation is tolerance and that they would come together but never forget the scars of the past. And it made me sad to think that there were some things that we would always be imprisoned by and that the past could never be wholly cleansed.