this blog was supposed to be about camel rides

i really should be preparing my islam presentation right now, which i a. have not started and b. will be presenting in t-minus-3 hours.

oh well.

i think this place is making me crazy. i can't write in anything but poetry circles anymore. maybe it's the argeelah, smoke makes me thoughtful. maybe it's the sunshine. maybe it's the rain. maybe it's the leftover damascus, i don't know.

i hear in my mind all this voices
i hear in my mind all these words
i hear in my mind all this music
and it breaks my heart- it breaks my ha-aha-aha-ahahahart.

we will start with real things, which are less real actually than unreal things, but everyone says the opposite. so i will concede because i am a language descriptivist, and i will say that real now means unreal and unreal is the new real.

you can't argue with language.

last weekend we went to the desert, to wadi rum. it was beautiful. and even that one, my most beloved of words, means nothing there. it is a red sand desert, with flat land and dunes and towering, impossible-looking giant red and gold things that are somewhere in between mountains and just really, really big rocks. maybe they are baby mountains?

and we took a bus there, and we found a new captain whom we love. and he told us from memory stories about lawrence of arabia and how he fell in love with wadi rum, and how the bedouins have lived in wadi since forever.

we got out of the bus 4 hours later, piled into truckbeds of "jeeps" aka toyota pickups with cushions in the back. and we were probably 90 of us, 6 in each jeep, and we drove into the desert. we really just tooled around on the sand dunes, there were no roads. we just drove. and fast, there were dust clouds and races and trashtalk as we'd race by another jeep. i sat on the side rail or stood most of the time; it was glorious.

and i have dreams of orca whales and owls, but i wake up in fear that you will never be my fool.

we stopped a couple times to climb mountain-rock things- i think i forgot the extent of my love for climbing on things. it is a very, very, very great extent. and we stood on baby mountains and shouted to the wind and watched the clouds. you can see them better from up there.

we tooled around on sand dunes for about 4 hours, stopping every once in a while to climb a mountain or look at a rock painting centuries old. we came to our camp, which was ridiculous. we thought we would be sleeping in tents- no, these were tourist-friendly houses made of cloth, with foam mattresses on beds and pillows and blankets and candles since there were no lights. (also, please picture the face i just made when i typed the words "tourist-friendly"). and that night we ate bread and kabob and rice and tabouleh and hummus and some spicy thing i am obsessed with and apples and honey and i cannot describe how good the food was. and there was music, a few beduoins in the dining tent with instruments. and we danced and people belly danced and they tried to teach me to belly dance and i think we all know how that went. and there were lanterns and bonfires and sand and stars and someone played the ukelele and i felt like home. and i would close my eyes and feel the sand in my toes and hear the music and smell the fire, and then i would look up and watch the falling stars and i had no no no idea where i was. and we smoked argeelah by the fire and talked and laughed and my friend whose name means happiness in arabic tried to teach people dubka (not spelled right- do people spell that in english?) which is a traditional dance. and they held hands in a chain and raced around us all sitting at the fire bringing their music with them, so that every 45 seconds a few notes of traditional arabic music would overtake the ukelele, and then disappear again.

and there were so many stars, and so many falling ones, and we watched the moon come up and chase the stars away and i thought i was hallucinating. we sat by the fire until it was late, and i wanted to explore because i love deserts in the dark. so a friend who is not yet named in terms of flowers but whose couches we sleep on more often than ours came with me, and he and i walked out to not the nearest baby mountain, but the second nearest. and i brought an apple in my pocket to roll in the sand, which i did. we walked not far, just to the top of a dune, and watched all the unexpected lights. there was our camp, and a few bedouin camps, and a car which was obviously inhabited by a teenage couple that needed some space from their families for a while. they were too far away to see or hear, but their existence made me happy.

i love seeing couples here. young couples in cafes, or at UJ, almost holding hands but not quite so you know they're not married yet. everything means so much to them. eye contact and voices are all they'll have of each other until they live together. no holding hands, no kisses, no tackling each other on muddy hills. i don't know, i think someone's reaction when you tackle them on a muddy hill is a very serious factor when considering marrying them. maybe that's just me. actually i'm almost sure that's just me. most things are.

and dating is strange here, mostly because the barrier between men and women here is so massive. the word, i believe, is alienation. and boys are told what boys should be, and what girls should be, and they are exactly the opposite, like puzzle pieces. as if there was only one of us who could be powerful, only one of us could compromise. and it's always zero sum, always all-or-nothing. if one of us is powerful, the other is somehow necessarily less powerful. it is as if there was a limited amount of control, and if she has it she has it all. which is maybe why, more often than not, she has either none or a thoroughly unthreatening amount.

as if people were puzzle pieces, and opposite ones. she is the opposite of him. maybe we are trying to make some sort of perfect whole? like a yin yang but more complicated. that may have something to do with religion, i think religion in general makes people think that they have to be some kind of perfect shape, and color inside the lines, and all of that. it makes people into ideas- he is uncompromising will, she is submission. he is power, she is weakness. he is reason, she is emotion. he is red, she is blue. as if they could never mix? as if the walls were so thick and so high that we could never share anything again. it is so strange. and so formal. and so public. and such a strange sort of love. it is like if a yin yang was combined with cold-war berlin, so we had black and white at definite but very quiet war with each other, and a giant wall down the middle keeping the two apart and probably making kissing very awkward.

i'm just saying.

so boys here have no idea how to talk to women, how to deal with women. they've no idea what we are. and i think, on the whole, that is true most places- that i've been at least. after centuries of female subjugation, we are still taking tentative baby steps toward actual equality. it means breaking down far too many myths to happen quickly. this i understand. so now, the reconstruction of the female- the breakdown of the cult of domesticity and the recreation of woman as an agent, on her own terms- means that of course the female identity is a source of confusion. this i also understand. but here, here is different than any place i've ever been. boys not only shout out car windows at us, they pull over, stop the car, and shout hellohellohellowhatsupyourecutehelloyoulooklikeamoviestarwhatsup until i'm out of earshot and it is clear that i am not interested. i mean, i thought it was clear that i was not interested when i ignored their shouting the first time, and walked as far away from their car as i could, and made no eye contact, and put on my pissed off parisian face. but what do i know?

i've had cars drive around the block i'm walking on 5 or 6 times, slowing down to my walking pace every time and trying to "give me a ride". i've had phone numbers scribbled onto pieces of paper and thrown at me multiple times. as if the fact that i didn't call you the first time didn't do the trick? you still think i'm into you? really? i've had marriage proposals- love at first sight, perhaps? and i don't make eye contact with anyone anymore unless i'm ready to ask them what their problem is, because looking at someone means maybe i would like to go home with them? and it's sad. i feel sorry for them. because it's not because they are bad people, it is certainly not that the entire male population of jordan is obnoxious catcalling construction workers looking to take a girl home for an hour or 2. really that is so not true. but they do not know how to talk to women. once you get to know them, you are confused- because they speak respectfully to you, and seem really sweet. and it's because they don't understand how to interact with girls; they're never taught what we like, or what we think is creepy or gross, or even how to go about thinking about what we might like. our worlds are so separate here, ours and theirs. and they don't know how to bridge the gap.

i should start holding seminars or something.

anyway that was long. but it's a really big part about being here. i think, if asked about jordanians, that the boys in our program would have a totally different story than i would. one of my closest friends here told me the other day that basically we invite the harrassment we get because we aren't conforming enough to the culture. and that we should either conform more for the short time we're here, or we can't complain really about the consequences.

and i adore him. like really he's amazing, he's one of my favorite people here. but i had absolutely nothing to say.

when he said it, we were walking home, and i just studied the buildings that we see twice every day, very purposefully not looking at anything in particular. and he asked if i was pissed at him, and i said no because i wasn't. and he asked me to say something. so i told him that he is right in the sense that there are things i could do. i mean, i could wear a head covering- i'm blonde, it would make a big difference. and i could not walk on the street ever. and i could go buy some brown mumus to be as inconspicuous as possible. and i could not go out at night, and i could not drink ever, and i could not hang out at the american bars we go to sometimes. and i could only ever walk around with a boy, and i could never look at anyone and i could never smile, and i could... i don't know refuse to speak in public or something. like i said, there are things i could do. but as i have mentioned before, there is a limit to the amount of things i will compromise. and in order for my time here to be my experience, to be laura + jordan = some unknown chemical (which probably will result in multiple explosions and serious damage to whatever chemistry lab has the misfortune to house this experiment), i can't do those things. this is a clash, that's why i'm here. i am here to run into things that make me angry and frustrated and i'm here to bash my head against them. i am not here to make myself into something that fits perfectly here- because i LOVE this place, and because i want to learn how to LIVE here. i want to learn how to compromise just enough of me and just enough of it that we could maybe make this work. and if i just pretended i was someone else for 5 months, i'd never know how it would be for me to live here. i already know how other people live here; i see them every day. i want to know how i can live here. because i love it here. and because i am an optimist.

but walking home that day, of course i didn't say any of that. in regards to conforming to local culture, i said very truthfully, that to an extent i have, and to an extent i will.

i think it does interesting tricks to your brain to be a female. and i like it.

on a slightly unrelated but not really note, i've decided that i'm going to shave my head.

not now. maybe not this year even. but sometime, i don't know when, i've resolved that i'm going to do it. and you all think i'm really silly, i know, because i love my hair and i'm really attached to it. it is one of the only pieces of my identity that is physical. i think as far as physical things go, my body is first. i am a good size, i think, not big but not tiny, and generally very in shape. that is important to me, and is probably the biggest physical piece of my identity. but after that is my hair- because i love it, because i like its personality. it is wild and it is a crazy color and it knows it, and if it doesn't want to be in a braid you'll know it. because there will be no braid, no matter how hard i try. and i like that. i like that it is stubborn, and wild, and extremely low maintenance, and i like that i don't really brush it (shhh don't tell).

and i have been thinking lately, and have been noticing that it is a good-sized piece of my view of myself, as a human being and a woman and a young person. which may sound like a ridiculous reason to shave it, but that is the reason. i would like to stretch my brain out a bit, and challenge the hair-based portion of my identity, and live without it. i am all about branching, and recreating, and stretching, and expanding. and i think that the physical act of shaving my head would be really interesting for my brain to deal with, as well as the subsequent mini-crisis i would probably have about feeling like i had amputated some part of myself, as well as challenge and recreate my ideas about beauty and femininity and all of that with regards to me. and i wonder how long it will take to grow back, which is a bit of a scary thought. this convinces me even more that i need to do it. i am scared of it not growing back for a while? that is silly, laura. you are you, hair or not.

mom i know you won't go anywhere with me if i "randomly" shave my head. that is ok. i understand. haha.

anyway i'm gonna go, this has been a ridiculous blog. and if i don't leave now i will start writing about religion and words and divine inspiration and ideas and faith and translation and prophets and why i will have a really hard time explaining to my kids what mommy thinks about god. so we'll leave it here, i think. that is for another time.


you are my sweetest downfall- i loved you first.

i loved you first.