I rarely check this blog anymore, but today I did. If you've try to go to my political blog, I have closed it off to private. It just wasn't me. I dabble in politics some, but it's too draining for my tastes. I'm more of a historical, art, music, a cultural person.
I decided a short time ago to start a blog on something I'm really passionate about, and for a change it will deal with ONE area: the nation of Turkey. I've been there six times, and the bug has gotten me. I plan to perhaps go back. A friend and I were talking just this week about his plan to also go back since he misses his Turkish friends very much and enjoyed teaching there despite all the hardship he faced.
I'm a Turkophile; someone who loves and admire Turkey things. It makes sense to blog about it. Last month I started Turkish Tales and Other Wondrous Things. I've been slow about trying to get traffic moving to my new blog. I will increase it here a little, I hope. Come on over and learn about my adventures in Turkey, a very unique country.
Friday, May 7, 2010
Friday, February 19, 2010
A New Direction With a New Blog
This will be my final post on this blog. For the past two months I've been trying to decide whether to write here again. There are plenty of ideas to pull about art, culture, and history for this kind of blog. I had ideas, but I lacked the passion even more than I lacked the time to post them here.
I continue to work on my book, and I'm still trying to get into the freelance writing business. If problems don't overwhelm me in my personal life and I can get my foot in the entrance to the paid writing world, juggling and arranging words in an aesthetic and educated manner will be for the remainder of my lifetime. I have books and articles inside me that I want to share that need to be written. A quote from Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison is "Everything I've ever done, in the writing world, has been to expand articulation, rather than to close it." I want to expand articulation as well. Too many have constricted and restricted it today by mediocre writing masquerading as art. Another Toni Morrison quote says, "If there's a book you really want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it."
It takes guts and talents to write art not rubbish. I have the guts, but do I have the talent? I truly hope so. I went through a sentimental phase as a writer. I also lost my confidence for a time, but it came back. Since I've been blogging beginning in 2005, I've had seven blogs. I deleted two. Two others were hacked into and deleted by someone I know. Blogging helped me to gain a lot of confidence in my writing. I even went through a period when I held blogs in contempt even though I was blogging. I felt it was vanity publishing, but blogging has become more to me than that.
Besides the experiences I've had in the last several years, blogging brought my dream of really sitting down to write a book to fruition. This is where I practiced. Readers feedback encouraged me to really go out and tackle the freelance writing business. Since my last post I have proposed an article to a children's historical magazine, and though my idea was rejected the editor sent me a personal note and told me that she found my idea interesting, however she couldn't use it for that particular issue. The rejection did not bother me because I didn't get a generic rejection letter. I got the personal touch. The EDITOR wrote me a handwritten note and found my idea interesting! There are possibilities.
Writing is a lonely business.
So much is happening here and now that needs to be addressed. I decided to started a new blog so that all of my long writing will not be in isolation. That blog is An African Woman Lost in Exile. In the last 6 months I have really gotten into Twitter, sometimes at an addicted level. There are some politically and socially aware bloggers that I follow on there. With so much going on in my life and in all of life today, I decided to start this new blog. A Very Fine Romance Redux was my baby for awhile, and I was a proud mother of it, but babies have to be let go of at some point so they can toddle on. I will look on this baby with fondness, but I have to let her go.
My new blog will on occasion feature art or some politically relevant historical figure, but this will be a political and social blog more than anything else. It will talk about hard acts that many people cannot deal with: racism (in all shades), war, religious bigotry, sexism, whatever pops up on the horizon or flies into the world's face or my face that I feel is worth commenting about.
An African Woman Lost in Exile is not about escapism. This is about the good, the bad, the ugly side of life here and now. So I encourage you to follow my new blog. Read it, get angry, weep, and learn.
I continue to work on my book, and I'm still trying to get into the freelance writing business. If problems don't overwhelm me in my personal life and I can get my foot in the entrance to the paid writing world, juggling and arranging words in an aesthetic and educated manner will be for the remainder of my lifetime. I have books and articles inside me that I want to share that need to be written. A quote from Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison is "Everything I've ever done, in the writing world, has been to expand articulation, rather than to close it." I want to expand articulation as well. Too many have constricted and restricted it today by mediocre writing masquerading as art. Another Toni Morrison quote says, "If there's a book you really want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it."
It takes guts and talents to write art not rubbish. I have the guts, but do I have the talent? I truly hope so. I went through a sentimental phase as a writer. I also lost my confidence for a time, but it came back. Since I've been blogging beginning in 2005, I've had seven blogs. I deleted two. Two others were hacked into and deleted by someone I know. Blogging helped me to gain a lot of confidence in my writing. I even went through a period when I held blogs in contempt even though I was blogging. I felt it was vanity publishing, but blogging has become more to me than that.
Besides the experiences I've had in the last several years, blogging brought my dream of really sitting down to write a book to fruition. This is where I practiced. Readers feedback encouraged me to really go out and tackle the freelance writing business. Since my last post I have proposed an article to a children's historical magazine, and though my idea was rejected the editor sent me a personal note and told me that she found my idea interesting, however she couldn't use it for that particular issue. The rejection did not bother me because I didn't get a generic rejection letter. I got the personal touch. The EDITOR wrote me a handwritten note and found my idea interesting! There are possibilities.
Writing is a lonely business.
So much is happening here and now that needs to be addressed. I decided to started a new blog so that all of my long writing will not be in isolation. That blog is An African Woman Lost in Exile. In the last 6 months I have really gotten into Twitter, sometimes at an addicted level. There are some politically and socially aware bloggers that I follow on there. With so much going on in my life and in all of life today, I decided to start this new blog. A Very Fine Romance Redux was my baby for awhile, and I was a proud mother of it, but babies have to be let go of at some point so they can toddle on. I will look on this baby with fondness, but I have to let her go.
My new blog will on occasion feature art or some politically relevant historical figure, but this will be a political and social blog more than anything else. It will talk about hard acts that many people cannot deal with: racism (in all shades), war, religious bigotry, sexism, whatever pops up on the horizon or flies into the world's face or my face that I feel is worth commenting about.
An African Woman Lost in Exile is not about escapism. This is about the good, the bad, the ugly side of life here and now. So I encourage you to follow my new blog. Read it, get angry, weep, and learn.
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Posting Only Occasionally
Dear Readers,
The last year has been hectic and at times very traumatic. I left Turkey reluctantly after quitting one of those nightmarish employers that I had heard other foreigners in Turkey warn about online and offline. I faced what I thought my own honesty and professionalism would protect me from: promises, broken promises, lies, incompetence, and skimming off of my pay without explanation. My resignation severed me from students that I was close to and my Turkish boyfriend, who has drowned in his own despair about his future and his country.
Even after I came back in March, the ugliness of what it actually meant working for that school came back in glaring detail when I learned that my British friend and colleague who had tried to hang on and work for those people had suffered a heart attack. Though the boss and his wife cared nothing for his welfare, some of my students showed the kind of compassion and concern that I had gotten used to and which never really came from my boss and his wife, the manager. My poor friend and I had been a team, and he was treated even worse than I had. Throughout the summer, he lived alone in a shabby apartment recovering from surgery on his heart.
I learned last week that they have now reneged on their promise to pay for his operation and has reduced his pay
to about $400 a month. My boss and his wife's chief aim was making money at the expense of their students and the teachers. Neither my students nor my boyfriend wanted me to leave. The experience left me tired, struggling not to be bitter, angry, on the brink of despair, but firm like others who have gone there before to never work in Turkey again.
However, the drama and the trauma of the last year has had a positive effect. Not long after Michael Jackson's death I started writing a book. His death and the all that I had gone through beginning on the day I set foot in Izmit, Turkey on October 3, 2008 made it a fertile time to finally go after my dream of trying to become an author. This is a dream I've had since I was 18. I have been encouraged by professors, family members, and friends. I write nearly everyday now, and I watch and ponder with wonder the evolution of me becoming a writer. I keep a notebook too, and whenever a description or a phrase pops up inside my consciousness, I get out my notebook and write it down. I've read of other writers doing this, and now I do. Most of what is written in my notebook are verbal supplies left for my book.
The freelance writing business has also become an area of study for me since the summer too. I am hoping that I can eventually make a steady income from magazine writing. Then maybe I can move back to Turkey or somewhere in the Near East and make a living with my pen without depending on a Turkish boss.
Since I am trying to edge slowly into the writing world, I will spend less and less time here. I'm not going to let my blog completely die out though. There will be occasion posts, but I don't want to specify any days or dates. On up the road I hope to have my blog linked to my own website along with other examples of my writing.
I have set a date for the completion of my book which is an autobiography and stories of my parent's families. I hope to have it completed and maybe edited by February 2011. The book is not an instrument to get fame or big money, but it is an artistic project, a means of therapy, of asking questions, piecing together a puzzle, understanding myself, my family, and humanity. I am going to go after a real publisher. There will be no self publishing for me.
My book is a quest. Yes, I want to be an author who is paid for her work more than anything in the world. I feel I have a lot to say and share. Nevertheless, I don't think like many in this age of quick monetary gain and scrambles for celebrity. I see things in the tradition of the great and good writers before me. Writing is art, and writing is about life. I live to write. I write to live.
My friend in Qatar has asked me, "Do you want to be a famous writer or a good writer?" I told him, "I want to be a good writer. If fame comes, fine." Fame today often does not mean greatness or worthiness in the society that I live in. I don't want to be a part of that community.
If something inspires me or is very special, I will be posting. Keep checking back.
The last year has been hectic and at times very traumatic. I left Turkey reluctantly after quitting one of those nightmarish employers that I had heard other foreigners in Turkey warn about online and offline. I faced what I thought my own honesty and professionalism would protect me from: promises, broken promises, lies, incompetence, and skimming off of my pay without explanation. My resignation severed me from students that I was close to and my Turkish boyfriend, who has drowned in his own despair about his future and his country.
Even after I came back in March, the ugliness of what it actually meant working for that school came back in glaring detail when I learned that my British friend and colleague who had tried to hang on and work for those people had suffered a heart attack. Though the boss and his wife cared nothing for his welfare, some of my students showed the kind of compassion and concern that I had gotten used to and which never really came from my boss and his wife, the manager. My poor friend and I had been a team, and he was treated even worse than I had. Throughout the summer, he lived alone in a shabby apartment recovering from surgery on his heart.
I learned last week that they have now reneged on their promise to pay for his operation and has reduced his pay
to about $400 a month. My boss and his wife's chief aim was making money at the expense of their students and the teachers. Neither my students nor my boyfriend wanted me to leave. The experience left me tired, struggling not to be bitter, angry, on the brink of despair, but firm like others who have gone there before to never work in Turkey again.
However, the drama and the trauma of the last year has had a positive effect. Not long after Michael Jackson's death I started writing a book. His death and the all that I had gone through beginning on the day I set foot in Izmit, Turkey on October 3, 2008 made it a fertile time to finally go after my dream of trying to become an author. This is a dream I've had since I was 18. I have been encouraged by professors, family members, and friends. I write nearly everyday now, and I watch and ponder with wonder the evolution of me becoming a writer. I keep a notebook too, and whenever a description or a phrase pops up inside my consciousness, I get out my notebook and write it down. I've read of other writers doing this, and now I do. Most of what is written in my notebook are verbal supplies left for my book.
The freelance writing business has also become an area of study for me since the summer too. I am hoping that I can eventually make a steady income from magazine writing. Then maybe I can move back to Turkey or somewhere in the Near East and make a living with my pen without depending on a Turkish boss.
Since I am trying to edge slowly into the writing world, I will spend less and less time here. I'm not going to let my blog completely die out though. There will be occasion posts, but I don't want to specify any days or dates. On up the road I hope to have my blog linked to my own website along with other examples of my writing.
I have set a date for the completion of my book which is an autobiography and stories of my parent's families. I hope to have it completed and maybe edited by February 2011. The book is not an instrument to get fame or big money, but it is an artistic project, a means of therapy, of asking questions, piecing together a puzzle, understanding myself, my family, and humanity. I am going to go after a real publisher. There will be no self publishing for me.
My book is a quest. Yes, I want to be an author who is paid for her work more than anything in the world. I feel I have a lot to say and share. Nevertheless, I don't think like many in this age of quick monetary gain and scrambles for celebrity. I see things in the tradition of the great and good writers before me. Writing is art, and writing is about life. I live to write. I write to live.
My friend in Qatar has asked me, "Do you want to be a famous writer or a good writer?" I told him, "I want to be a good writer. If fame comes, fine." Fame today often does not mean greatness or worthiness in the society that I live in. I don't want to be a part of that community.
If something inspires me or is very special, I will be posting. Keep checking back.
Interesting Find: Gondolas in Qatar
Gondolas in the Desert from qatar visitor on Vimeo.
Qatar (pronounced a little like cut-TER) is a country in the Middle East that is on the northern border of Saudi Arabia. The country is a peninsula on the Persian/Arabian Gulf. Qatar is an emirate that is ruled by an emir, which in Western terms is similar to a prince. What got me really interested in Qatar, besides the fact that while just about everyone is suffering from the global economic crisis and Qatar is not is a video I found a few weeks ago. The clip is above and was taped inside Qatar's best and most interesting mall: Villagio. One of my blogger friends also lives in Qatar. I asked him some questions about the country also because he has invited me to come there to possibly teach or to just travel around. I am also a fan of Al Jazeera English which comes out of Qatar's capital, Doha (pronounced doe-HA). When I get frustrated with our slack attempts at journalism here at home, I sometimes joke that I have to travel to Turkey to get real news on the Al Jazeera news network which is shown there and which not a Turk I know of will bother to watch. I encouraged my Turkish students to watch it to help with them with their English, but I think that most of them ignored my suggestion. There have been plenty of accusations of bias, but I think Al Jazeera does a much better job at interviews, exposes and documentaries than anything we have here in the US outside of 60 minutes. It is in the same league as the BBC and CNN International.
I asked my friend about Villagio and the most he said about it was that it is the classiest and most expensive mall in Qatar. I learned from my own reading that besides the gondola rides, the mall also has a ceiling that is a replica of the sky. It looks so realistic that you cannot tell if the mall is without a ceiling and if you are truly looking upwards at the sky.
My friend did give me some general information about Qatar. He told me that Qatar now has the world's fastest growing economy and the highest gross domestic product (GDP). Unlike their neighbor, scandalously surreal looking Dubai in the United Arab Emirates and which is experiencing debt woes , Qatar's economy has continued to boom. My friend says that no banks have collapsed unlike our 120 or so here. None of Qatar's building projects have had to be suspended as is the case in Dubai. However, like Dubai, Qatar's close to 2 million residents are mostly foreigners who in their own way aid the growth of the country and its educational system. Most have come to Qatar because of its petroleum and gas industry. Qatar has 13% of the world's gas. The emir of Qatar's second wife, the remarkable Sheika Mozad al-Missned, has worked passionately to promote education and reform in the country. According to my friend, most Qataris in their 20s have studied abroad at universities in the United States, Canada, England, France, Australia, Malaysia, and Singapore.
I also found this video (below) of traditional Qatari music which to me sounds very similar to some forms of traditional African music. Qatar has experienced cross pollination of cultures over the centuries from the Middle East, Africa, South and Southeast Asia.
Black Qataris were brought to Qatar a few centuries ago to be work as domestic servants. They have Arabic names. There are some mixed race Qataris with Arab and African lineage. My friend remarked that he thinks their complexions are not attractive like the mellow, coffee and cream brown of say someone biracial like Halle Berry. He says their skin have a bluish or greenish.
Qatari society is a mixture of the traditional and modern, East and West. Many young Qatari men and women go out to nightclubs and drink alcohol. Others are conservative. Many of the veiled women that are seen on the streets and malls of Qatar are not Qatari but Pakistani. My friend says these women wear the veil so they are not looked down upon as low class because of their ethnicity.
There are also Persian Qataris whose ancestors came from Iran. There is often distrust and dislike between Qataris who are Persian and Arab, Shiite and Sunni Muslims respectively. Though many of the Persians are Shiite like the people in Iran, there are some who are Sunni. My friend told me that the Persian Sunnis dislike the Persian Shiites just as vehemently as the Arab dislike the Persians. If this true, it is not surprising. From my travels and being African-American I've seem that people everywhere have some group they dislike, hate, and distrust. Outside the US where skin color is not as big an obstacle in some places, turmoil between peoples usually runs across religious and ethnic lines. Well, humanity for me--who tries to rise above the bigotry--can be tiring.
Notwithstanding, Qatar sounds and looks like a fascinating country. I have read some comments online by expatriates living there and their comments range from Qatar being a little boring because so much of it is newly constructed to it being a nice, peaceful country that they are proud to live in. If it is true that Qataris do not have to pay taxes, then that little bit certainly makes it a very nice place. I would like to visit Qatar someday, inshallah (Arabic for "God willing").
Links to Qatar:
Qatar Visitor
Qatari Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Qatari Statistics Authority
Qatari Coins and Rulers
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