More Drakulic

"Individualism is flourishing in one respect in Eastern Europe: It is visible only in the ruthless accumulation of capital. Perhaps a chance to make money, a chance those people never had before, is indeed a condition to developing the first-person singular. Why, then, have I used 'we' and 'us' so frequently in this book? Because a common denominator is still discernible, and still connects us all, often against our will. It is not only our communist past, but also the way we would like to escape from it, the direction in which we want to go. It's our longing for Europe and all that it stand for.

Or, rather, what we imagine Europe stands for. I believe you can see this common denominator if you take a close look at the price of bananas, at our bad teeth and public toilets, or at our yards on the outskirts of big cities. Indeed, you can see it merely by taking a walk on any boulevard in any capital, be it Tirana or Budapest, Prague or Warsaw. Somewhere there will be a hotel, a cinema, a bar, a restaurant, a cafe or a simple hole in the wall, named, for our desire, Europe."

Drakulic, Slavenka. 1996. Cafe Europa: Life After Communism. New York: Penguin. Pp. 4-5.

Laundry

I've been reading a book that was given to me before we came, titled How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed, by Slavenka Drakulic (Harper Collins, 1991). Drakulic is a Croatian journalist; in this book she reflects on the transition from communist totalitarianism to free market democracy, particularly for women. Although Croatia was part of Yugoslavia and politically separate from Albania, a lot of the things she describes apply equally well here. I tried to tell Shpresa about the book (she would have been in her early 20s when the transition happened here); she well recalls the food shortages and other problems people experienced in their daily lives.

One passage in particular caught my attention because it still applies here, from the chapter on laundry - Drakulic could have been describing Tirana in 2010:

She lives on the third floor, and because she doesn't have a balcony to hang her clothes on, she has a device that I've seen so many times, on so many windows: two metal tubes fixed either under the window or on the window frame itself, with rows of lines between. The laundry hangs above the sidewalk water dripping on the heads of passers-by.... This, I think, looking down from Blaga's window in Sofia, is what makes our cities so specific, so unique - balcony dryers....

Perhaps you don't notice it at first, in the center of the city and on the main streets. But as soon as you enter the side streets, hanging clothes flutter like flags of another state, announcing that you are entering a different, female territory. Clothes dangle on the wind under the windows, on balconies and terraces, in backyards, in narrow streets stretched between houses, even high up on skyscrapers. Socks, pants, shirts, diapers, dresses, aprons, handkerchiefs, slips - they make a foreign city all of a sudden look intimate, friendly, familiar to me. (pp. 51-52)

It's something I noticed right away here, but that soon began to fade into the background. Whereas in the US there are homeowner's associations that ban line drying clothes in the front yard - or at all - here it's just part of the legacy of privation. People just didn't have dryers, and very few had washing machines. So it's built now as part of how you do your laundry. (Most have washers now so the heavy work at least is done by machine.) What struck me about it here was that even the most posh apartment buildings facing major upscale boulevards have lines of laundry hanging out for all the world to see. I kind of like it.

Halfway Down the Stairs

Halfway down the stairs
is a stair
where I sit.
There isn't any
other stair
Quite like
it.
I'm not at the bottom,
I'm not at the top;
So this is the stair
Where
I always
stop.

~ A. A. Milne

The toothbrush has become a near-constant fixture in her hand or in her mouth. It's her new comfort object; she usually falls asleep clutching it in one hand. It's a bit of a challenge maintaining hygiene but it's also kind of hilarious.

Quote

As a fledgling anthropologist, this thought struck a chord with me - Pam writes about the commodification of "traditional" or "native" cultural practices:

"I have to believe that the difference between exploration and exploitation is the heart that we bring to the experience, the knowledge and respect."

You can read the full post on her blog, Blood Signs.

Dialectic

"Both child and adult are engaged, shaped, and reshaped in an ongoing interplay – a continuous process, a continuum of existence within the everyday world. Both are shaped by mutual actions and reactions, utterances and replies, verbal and nonverbal cues, modifying and being modified at each interactional, affect-laden node."

~ Norma Gonzalez, I Am My Language: Discourses Of Women and Children In the Borderlands. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, p. 62.

This could be a comment on my approach to sleep training

"Predictably, the revision of analytic frameworks and the development of new theoretical perspectives have tended to lag far behind the sheer restlessness of life."

~ De Genova, Nicholas P. (2002) "Migrant 'Illegality' and Deportability in Everyday Life" in Annual Review of Anthropology, 31:419-47.

Quote for the Day

"It's been known for many years that the effect of lost sleep accumulates over time...If the sleep disruption is repeated night after night...there is an accumulation of sleepiness that produces in adults continuing increases in headaches, gastrointestinal complaints, forgetfulness, reduced concentration, fatigue, emotional ups and downs, difficulty in staying awake during the daytime, irritability, and difficulty awakening. Not only do the adults describe themselves as more sleepy and mentally exhausted, they also feel more stressed. The stress may be a direct consequence of partial sleep deprivation or it may result from the challenge of coping with increasing amounts of daytime sleepiness."

~Weissbluth, M. (2003) Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child: A Step-By-Step Program For a Good Night's Sleep. New York: Ballantine Books, p. 54.

Remembering Aaron

"The heart of him who truly loves is a paradise on earth"

Hiccups!

Last night when I was settling down for bed, I realized the baby had hiccups!

I'd read about this, but this was the first time I felt it:
"Besides the kicks and shiftings you love to feel (though not necessarily at 3 a.m.), you may notice fetal hiccups early in the third trimester – short, spasmodic blips in your lower abdomen. Hiccups are usually short-lived, so by the time you've hollered for your mate to "come feel this" and he finally gets there, they will probably have stopped. Hiccups often occur around the same time each day, so you may be able to catch another performance soon. These sudden new twitches may take you by surprise, but they don't bother baby, and most mothers just think they feel funny. "