my friend the sarkozyste

In a serie of unexpected "my friend the..." (I might do one on "My friend the materialist", but I don't feel I have enough material), let's look at A, a co-worker of mine, whom I wouldn't really describe as a friend at all actually, but whom I appreciate all the same.
A is a weird character through and through. He has a peculiar look - greasy heair, shoulders covered with dandruff, suits that seem to come from a second hand shop and usually don't fit expected colour schemes, and sports shoes. He talks funny, because he's austrian, and from the centre of Vienna at that, and he treats people with instinctive haughtiness - although I still haven't figured out if it was instinct or acting. He can be absolutely rude and disagreeable - but I have no problem with that, because I know that I can be absolutely rude and disagreeable with him in return. He came to my desk this morning, smelling a little funny, and explained he'd just been woken up and had spent all of Sunday at work and slept in the conference room on the sort of shrink's sofa that was recently aquired for our pregnant ladies to settle down on. We've just spent a month working together on a study for the French ministry of ecology, and today was the last day for this project - as well as for another project I worked on with my supervising researcher, E. There was still plenty to do for both projects, and my day was pretty full - as has been the whole of April, really. In any case, it's over now and I'm taking a lot of time off.
But as I was reading the last of the study for the French people, A came to me and handed me the book he had kept under his eyes while writing the study over the past couples of weeks. I couldn't imagine how he could work with this photo glaring at him at all time, but he did. And now, he passed it over to me. I'm still not sure if he meant it as a thank you for helping him with the project, or as a joke, or simply because he's finished reading the book and has no use for it anymore. In any case, I asked him why he was so fascinated with Sarkozy and how come he was right wing. I said he wasn't right wing, but France needed a strong authority to take care of it. I'll have to discuss at another time what exactly isn't right wing about him then, but I was interested by the simple division over the same person - he would see him as a solution to unruly revolution-longing france, I see it as the source of provocation and trigger of rebellion. I AM starting to see though how some people can be so positively fascinated by the guy.

J. called me this morning to ask whether I could take his procuration and vote for him on Sunday. I didn't think it would work, seeing as he's on the lists at the Düsseldorf consulate, and indeed the attempt failed. One less vote for Royal.

red light

Sometime in late winter, two girls moved into the flat across from my bedroom window. They suddenly appeared and spent a few days cleaning - the floors, paint brushes. And sorting out. Emptying boxes. Then they'd settled down.
I saw one of them cooking in the kitchen wearing her pyjama bottom and a bra. I saw them getting ready to go out, all made up with dangly things in their hair. The boyfriend came and also helped preparing various foody stuff at late hours of the night.
But for the past week, whenever I've looked across, all I've seen is the red light in the bedroom, on. No life, no movement. Just the red light.
Which, by the way, stroke me as particularly noteworthy after having seen the last david lynch film.

privileges

The morning at uni started a little strangely. I was expecting to see a bunch of people I knew in the class I was going to, but all the faces that came were entirely unknown, and I got the feeling my institute's student population had been entirely renewed and the older generation - which I now belong to - completely eradicated. It wasn't a comfortable feeling. I waited on the grass in the sun after the class for K (not ex-boyfriend K, a German K) to have lunch with him like last week but felt isolated on an island of young nameless faces.
When K eventually arrived, we started walking towards the cafeteria and on the way bumped into J, whom I basically know since the beginning of my studies, and M, who was in my project class last year and whom I recently bumped into in the metro and had a good chat with. They were with a third guy, and we all set off for the cafeteria together. It was a relief to have bumped into known people after all.
It felt like an insanely privileged situation - to have a long leisurly lunch on the top terrasse of the cafeteria in the sun, chatting, and then move on to our institute's autonomous café for a coffee, sitting on the lawn for a long while and discussing dreams, plans for one's future, their meaningfulness or not.
How many years since I last took time to leisurly discuss anything on a lawn with a bunch of people? Ages. It's pretty sad to think I've spent most of the last fives years hectically rushing through a self-centered life with little social contact. But the only reason I can allow myself to take leisure ("Muße" in German. Pronounce Moooossah, sort of) is that I'm not taking any classes for credits this semester. I'm a lot freeer. And self-determined free time tastes particularly good after one has been deprived of it for a while.
(Not that this should serve as justification to deprive people of their freedom to enjoy time with no work.)

mixed confusion

I set off on my flatmate's bike early-ish yesterday morning and arrived at the embassy around 10. There was already a fairly long queue inside the lobby, and a lot of activity - people coming in and out and parking their bikes and taking their kids in. How strange to be surrounded by all these French people - a large number of them sending off the image of the typical Francais Moyen, grumpy and not particulary friendly nor bright. I was wearing my most colourful clothes for the clowing workshop and kids looked at me with obvious sympathy.

There were three queues for the embassy people to check our documents, sorted out according to family name. A to F here, F to M in the middle, the rest on the right. Surprise surprise, 80% of the French people there had names starting with anything between A and F. There was only one person ahead of me, and I went in to the voting room fairly quickly.

Here they were, the twelve piles of white papers, each with the name of the candidates. I picked three pieces up, just for the hell of it - besancenot, royal, bové - and as I did so, I managed to shuffle lots of the piles and make a mess of it. The woman at the end of the table checked my passport again and gave me a small blue envelope. I disappeared behind a booth, trying to make sure not to step right into the one occupied by the woman ahead of me. So, which paper should I use? No time to rethink my decision, I stuck Olivier in the envelope and made sure I was doing it all right. I came out and followed the woman who had arrived before me. As the embassy functionary shouted her name and then "A voté!", I realised she is a teacher at my uni - she does law and used to give French for political scientist classes. I didn't know her face though.

My name was joyfully mispronounced a couple of times in a loud fashion, and then I too was allowed to stick my envelope in the Urne and sign the register. I passed the long queues of French people with names starting with letters A-F and stepped back out. There's something slimy about being surrounded by expats.

I pedalled to the open university (the name of the autonomous, student managed university where the workshop was taking place), got a little lost, and eventually got on the lovely green campus. M and I had agreed to meet early to do some of the washing up. I was alone though, and started. The light and sound of birds coming from outside, the general chaos of the house, all made me feel like I was on holiday. It was a nice feeling.

Eventually the others arrived, all so slowly, with food, and we started brunching on the lawn in the sun. We spent the afternoon playing and training again, and put clown make up on.
At the end of the day, we were all absolutely exhausted. I took of bunch of people with still traces of make up on their faces to the bar where the results of the elections were to be shown live, and was glad not to be with a bunch of French people there - the bar was packed with all these french people, there were French people on the street, french people everywhere you looked. They boo-ed when Sarkozy or Le Pen came on TV, they clapped for Royal and Bayrou. They clapped when the participation rate came up and congratulated one another. I was trying to explain all I knew about the elections to my German audience, which included one half-French guy, J., who hadn't voted. My friend D also came up, which I was happy about. And I accidentally saw U, whom I'd met in the commune in southern France last summer and had been sort of expecting to meet by chance back in Berlin. The moment had come, we were both glad about it. She's gone back there often, it seems. Now that we have one another's contact details, we'll meet up soon.

Eventually the count-down came, and there was tension everywhere. What was it going to be? Sarkozy le pen? When Royal's face came up on the screen, there was intense rejoycing, clapping, screaming, woo-hooing. I shared in for a half minute until the bitterness of it all hit me. Not that I was surprised about her score - honorable, and better than a lot of previous socialist candidates in previous rounds. But Sarkozy was way head - and the Real Left hadn't gotten the votes it should have had. And 18% for Bayrou? Hello? The post-result gloominess hit, and my bunch, including U who had by then definitelly joined us, and I left the french people behind to find a place with cheaper beer. It was already fairly late, and I eventually pedalled to Kreuzberg with half-French (but very German) J. , who happened to be the maddest bike driver I'd ever seen. He did warn me: "I ride chaotically and fast". And then he zigzagged between cars before I finished uttering that I was concerned about my security. He later said he'd never had any accident and used all advantages of the bicycle. The irony of it all would hit me later.

Once home, a little light headed due to the sunshine, the exercise, the beers, I called M who was planning a night-action, and decided to go back up to the north of Berlin to be with them. We did a little bit of anti-G8 planning, and around half past 2 was back on my bike heading south with a much calmer bike driver than the previous one, T, who is a friend of M and whom I also know from my institute. Funnily enough, I missed one red light and a green van saw me, turned round, and stopped before us. I thought the policemen would be pissy with T, who didn't have any lights, but they were only interested in me having passed the red light. They checked my passport, said I could be given a heavy fine, and then let us go. I told T I'd been a good diversion from his lack of light. Why don't these things happen to chaotic-fast J. though? The irony of it all.

We reached Kreuzberg and talked for a while longer before I got home at around 3 and checked more results on-line. I had to go to bed to get up for work the next day though. Haha work, haha work!

Beautiful day!

I've just come home from a gorgeous day out - and the gorgeousnessity of it hit me as I stepped back into the flat and realised I had been outside in the sun all day, playing on the grass being a kid all over again. I spent no time at my desk, no time on the computer, no time in-doors - all these things that usually take up most of my days. And it was all play and fun, although of course for a serious matter...
I and some twenty other people trained to become Rebel Clowns... My friend M was there, and a bunch of other people I knew and was surprised to see there. We started at 11 and the agenda that our main trainer B wrote on the flip chart looked something like that:
- presentation
- games
- break
- games
- rebel clowning theory
- pause
- games

And so it went. We played monsters, we played silly walks, we played building human machines, we sang and screamed and ran and shouted and mimiked and danced and got out of breath and laughed. Then we had breaks, we ate and drank and talked. And then it started all over again. After that, a bunch of us went off to have a beer on the canal to get the last of the sun - and it felt nice to have a different entry point into people I got to know in serious contexts. It's a lot easier to feel comfortable with people after you've spent an afternoon playing kid with them. We all wondered why we didn't play anymore, why we usually met up in cafes or bars and talked instead.

It goes on tomorrow. I'm feeling super exhausted already. Mustn't forget to go vote before.

stalker

It seems I have my own personal stalker. A pretty pathetic story, but I can't help being slightly amused by it. So here goes:
I got a message on my mobile on Tuesday, a man whose voice I couldn't quite recognise, saying in French "Ah, the number is working, I'll try again later". He signed off saying he was Jean something. I assumed at first it was K's friend who had left the week before and immediately erased the message without thinking much about it. I did wonder why he would try to call me. But then I realised it hadn't been JC that the guy had said, but rather JL. JL? And I suddenly remember something I'd totally forgotten.
Sometime in Autumn, I got a little scribbled note in the mail. It looked like it'd been written in a hurry, on the corner of a table, in hushed secret. It came from JL, who had gotten the address from mum after unsuccessfully asking for my email. Yes, the Brittany neighbour. The note could have come from a 13 year old, as it betrayed a rather unexpected dose of immature fantasying. It said something like "I dreamed of you, then opened my eyes and you were gone. Since then I've been looking for you. I'm waiting for you" and giving details of ways to contact him. I was shocked and amused, tore the piece of paper up and forgot about the whole thing - until the phone call earlier this week.
The phone call was followed by a series of sms and probably another message on the voice mail I didn't listen to, declaring feelings in the saddest of ways. He seems to have constructed an image of me that can't have much to do with the actual me - but he's far into his constructed fantasy and doesn't realise that I've nothing to do with it. I feel sorry for him - but most of all I'm disturbed and annoyed.
Disturbed because I am planning on going to Britanny this summer. So far I've ignored all his attempts so as not to reward him. But once I'm there, it'll be trickky and I have little enthusiasm for the prospect of explaining to this poor guy that he can just forget about everything (eeeew). And annoyed because I don't know how he got my number. Mum's there right now, but I can't imagine her giving my number away. So did he look into her booklet while she wasn't around? I feel he needs a good slap in the face to wake up.

In any case, as I told friends and close collegues at work about my stalker, it turned out that they also had stalker stories. When S was 19, a university teacher of hers had taken a liking to her and left notes on her bike, called her, checked what bus she took and where she was. It sounded really bad. I don't know how that ended. As for R, he recently ended up hassled by a girl he'd (unsuccessfully) asked on a date nearly 20 years ago and hadn't seen or had contact with in ten. For some unknown reason, she remembered that he'd had asked her out and tracked him down, accusing him of still loving her and insulting him for having left Chili without telling her.

And to conclude this entertaining piece, let's see what wikipedia has to say about stalkers:

"In "A Study of Stalkers," Mullen et al (2000) identify six types of stalkers:

• Rejected stalkers: pursue their victims in order to reverse, correct, or avenge a rejection (e.g. divorce, separation, termination).
• Resentful stalkers: pursue a vendetta because of a sense of grievance against the victims - motivated mainly by the desire to frighten and distress the victim.
• Intimacy seekers: The intimacy seeker seeks to establish an intimate, loving relationship with their victim. To them, the victim is a long sought-after soul mate, and they were 'meant' to be together.
• Eroto-manic stalker: This stalker believes that the victim is in love with them. The erotomaniac reinterprets what their victim says and does to support the delusion, and is convinced that the imagined romance will eventually become a permanent union. They often target a celebrity or a person of a higher social status (though it is important to note, not all celebrity stalkers are erotomaniacs).
• Incompetent suitor: despite poor social/courting skills, possess a sense of entitlement to an intimate relationship with those who have attracted their amorous interest.
• Predatory stalker: spy on the victim in order to prepare and plan an attack - usually sexual – on the victim."

Ah well, knowledge is reassurance. I already feel a lot better.

home alone

K has now definitely moved out. We'll still meet, we're still friends, but it's all a little bit strange. I think I'll try to stay single for at least a year now. I've been in relationships of various sorts nearly constantly for the past ten years, I need to rediscover myself as a non-couple entity.
Which is a funny thing to say. I remember my German friend A who lives in Paris, telling me five years ago, after her split up with the boyfriend she'd been with for three years, that she was planning to stay single for two years at least. Back then she was 27. I couldn't understand that anyone would want to plan not to fall in love. It sounded like a totally absurd decision. But here I am now, reaching the late twenties' wisdom (probably).

democracy and responsibility

I still haven't come up with a decision for the first round of French presidential elections. Ten days left and I still don't know. Can I definitely take the decision following a "rational" process? I doubt it. On the contrary, it is fear that is giving me doubts. Rumors are getting more insistent that the probability for a second round with one eyed vs. two eyed evil is high. I rationally know though that these rumors are thrown around to get exactly this result: fear and a vote by default for royal. Is that what a supposedly democratic election is about? Letting fear guide my choice?

When I say I haven't come up with a decision, it isn't quite true of course. My first choice is and remains Olivier Besancenot. But let's say I vote for him. And then let's say royal doesn't make it to the second round. In which case, whatever happens, I would be unable to vote for any of the candidates on offer. So two-eyed evil would be president: This would leave me with the responsibility to go back to France - as paradoxical as it all is - to participate in the movements that will fight against the destruction of social protection.
But then, why not, I guess?

this other world

Preparations for G8 have entered into hectic phase as we can start counting the days to the summit that will take place in north Germany. Groups from all parts of extra-parliamentary society (help to asylum seekers, anti-racist groups, migrant groups, feminists, the whole Freedom of Sexual Orientiation gangs, agriculture groups, anti-war groups etc etc etc) are preparing marches, sit-ins, workshops, and further political activities to take place in parallel to the summit in early June. As I'm closer to such networks than to technocratic ones, I tend to forget how in spite of all protest actions the self-named leaders of the world will meet up and have garden tea parties and not really perceive any of the hectic. A look at Berny's photo album for the last G8 in St Petersburg suffices to get it all into perspective. Your life, their life, and how boring much fun being a first lady must be.

A friend of mine originally comes from near Rostock, and apparently her parents are horrified by the money lavished on demolishing national trust homes (because they are too close to the hotel where the summit will take place. Old villas, precious architecture. Worry not! An exact copy of the villa will be built again at the same spot once the summit is over! Cost: ? million Euros), renewing and widening roads that had just recently been renewed and nobody uses (cost?), setting up a gigantic fence around the kempinsky hotel (Cost estimated at around 12 million). Boy what fun.

the long march to emancipation

Trying to free one's self from the overdomineering market structures is a long and complex process. It starts with a moment of criticism linked to a particular sector or product. Some examples one can take as a starting point of unhappiness with the market could be

• Software: "I dislike Windows because they've systematically and unfairly gained a monopolistic position leaving millions dependent from them";
• Food production and distribution: "I dislike large supermarkets because they use their overly powerful position to force the agricultural sector to move towards gigantic farms, pushing prices down and buying only large quantities, disregarding environmental and social consequences";
• Labour market: "I dislike the labour market because I am made to compete with others in order to sell my working force and my time for absurd activities that I often do not find relevant, or even positive, for society."
  

Other examples could include more generally political institutions, hierarchies at the work place or else where, the production of clothes and other consumer goods, electricity production etc. - anything that we are made dependent of but have negative social and/or environmental impacts.

From then on, if the person formulating the critique wants to live according to their ideas, there starts a long process of emancipation. As I'm experiencing it, it is a Very Long Learning Process. The first step to this emancipation starts within: Deciding and slowly accepting which goods and which habits one can do without. I suppose most people have a lag like I do, a lapse of time of varying length separating the moment of realisation (I shouldn't buy that much meat, it contributes to deforestation and supports industrial food production) and the moment when the perception of the problem has been internalised so that the decision can actually become a personal priority, destroying the original perceived need (in this case moving from "I shouldn't" to "I don't even think about buying meat").

My march to emancipation is slow but has been making steady progress, especially in the area of consumerism and waste production. I not only do not buy meat anymore (or on those super rare occasions I do, it comes from regional organic farms), I've stopped eating meat outside of my flat as well (I had absurdly continued to eat meat at the Uni-cafeteria or whenever I ate out - meat that was sure to come from damaging industrial production). Nor do I eat fish. I've stopped buying anything that came in overly excessive and unnecessary packaging, such as sweets, yoghurt pots (I buy yoghurt in re-usable glass jars or even in re-usable glass bottles), pre-packed vegetables. All drinks (juice, milk) come in re-usable bottles. I obviously do not use plastic bags to carry my shopping home (my organic shop doesn't have any, one has to come with one's own cloth bag). I have stopped buying products that have travelled half the world. I've been getting electricity coming from renewable, non-nuclear, non-coal sources for the past two and a half years. And now that I'm joining the food coop, I will use own containers to get detergents and cleaning products as well.

It did take me several years to reach this point but I have internalised all decisions so that I can count on the sustainability of my new habits. But there's still loads I could and can and will do. I've been trying to install Ubuntu on my computer for the past several weeks (unfortunately my CD-drive started malfunctionning just as I got the idea, so I've not been successful so far), and I've only now started to be more consistent about using OpenOffice instead of word. Working with the group for regional agriculture is also part of these efforts - it's obviously a lot more demanding to try organise alternative logistical structures for food distribution than just rely on those that already exist. But that in itself cannot be the justification for not doing anything (to get back to the slavery example - it was a lot easier to rely on the economic system functioning thanks to the slave trade rather than try set up something else). I've decided to be a lot more stringent as regards avoiding planes and planning my travels. And then there are all those other areas I need to free myself from, such as the unnecessary and counterproductive job, but also all the knowledge I need to gather in order to be more independant from anonymous opaque structures - repairing, doing, producing. Not that I want to be able to do everything that I need myself, or that I find dependence in itself bad. As I said before, I'm perfectly fine with labour repartition - but I'd like to have some links, non-anonymous ties with the networks that are in charge of producing what I use.

And why did I write all this? Not because I want everybody to feel guilty about their waste-producing, environmentally and socially destructive behaviour. I'm in it with you. If everyone lived like me, we'd still need 1,4 planets. But I do want to push people to reflect just how much destruction they are willing to accept as being done on their behalf, and just how far they are willing to go to bring their acts closer to their ideas. And then we can perhaps swap tips...