Author: Josh Philip Ross

Posted on

[swastika hysteria]

Fashion house Zara has gotten itself into trouble by accidentally selling purses with swastikas on them in the UK. Denis Fernando, national secretary of Unite Against Fascism, responded forcefully: “Fascism and racist symbols are sometimes legitimised in popular culture, this is one of those times.”

Except it’s not. As a nice Jewish boy with a swastika on my living room wall, I’d like to explain.

Like most people in the West, I grew up associating the swastika strictly with the Nazis, and I was appalled by any display of it, in any form. It had a kind of radioactive power that compelled disgust — an entirely appropriate response to any attempted glorification of Nazism, however crude. When my German-descended high school classmate drew them on his desk (in pencil, crookedly and backwards), I took it as a personal insult, and that’s how it was intended.

It was my trip to India in 1997, just after college, that changed my perspective on the swastika. Again and again during my four months in the Subcontinent, concepts I had never thought to question turned out to be completely contingent on cultural context, and swastikas were no exception. In Nepal, I was amused to find that the swastika was included with the hammer and sickle in a pro-communist graffito, a juxtaposition unimaginable in the West. In India, I saw swastikas branded on camel’s butts, put on goofy stickers for kids, painted on people’s faces. I even saw snacks arranged into swastikas. Three years later, in Korea, I became even more used to the ubiquity of swastikas, which tended to mark Buddhist gathering places or shamanistic fortune tellers’ shops in otherwise nondescript streets of three-story brick suburbia.

The swastika on my wall is on the palm of the Hindu god Ganesh, in one of four extraordinarily beautiful posters I picked up for a few dollars on the street in Mumbai back in 1998. It’s a symbol that can mean death, horror and destruction, but also means welcome and good luck to millions upon millions of people in our world. (In this respect, it’s not unlike the cross or the crescent.) Ganesh’s swastika is not the Nazi black outline on a white circle in a red field. It’s red, trimmed with gold, hand-painted with affection. Likewise, the Zara swastikas were a cheerful green, enclosed in a red sunburst.

What interests me in all this is the way this fundamental shibboleth of Western culture makes absolutely no sense in the context of a globalized world. This won’t be the last time some Asian swastika sneaks its way into the West. At the same time, the whole Danish-Muhammad-cartoon crisis makes it clear that these kinds of misunderstanding can run in every direction. What is necessary on all sides is a ratcheting down of the knee-jerk rhetoric, a consideration of context before the declarations of outrage.

I recognize that this won’t be easy. Some jackass is always willing to scream bloody murder just to get attention. But we should remember that any symbol sent from one culture to another is in need of translation. A swastika from India is no more an obscenity than a Vietnamese person named Phuc.

Posted on

[don’t forget congress]

There’s a lot of attention already being paid to the 2008 presidential election, but let’s not forget about Congress!

In 2006, I campaigned in New York’s 13th Congressional District to support Steve Harrison’s scrappy but unsuccessful bid to unseat Conservative Republican Vito Fossella.

Now that I actually live in the district, I’m even more anxious to see Fossella taken down. Steve Harrison has announced he’ll run again, but the New York Times mentions three other potential candidates: City Council members Michael E. McMahon of Staten Island and Domenic M. Recchia Jr. of Brooklyn, and Assemblyman Michael Cusick of Staten Island.

I know next to nothing about any of these guys, but in the coming weeks and months, maybe one or more of them will declare, and it’ll be time to do some research.

Meanwhile, a friend of mine is backing a friend of his, one Tom Perriello, in a campaign to unseat Virgil Goode in Virginia’s 5th CD.

Goode is a former Democrat who voted for three out of four articles of impeachment against Clinton, then became a Republican in 2002, becoming the first Republican to serve in the district since Reconstruction. He came to national prominence by loudly criticizing Muslim Congressman Keith Ellison’s to be sworn into Congress over a Koran rather than a Bible. (In a delicious irony, the Korean Ellison used was once owned by Thomas Jefferson, whose Monticello home is in Goode’s district.)

I don’t know much about Perriello yet, but I’m going to a fundraising party tomorrow to find out more. What I do know comes from his Res Publica profile:

Before co-founding Res Publica, Tom served as Special Advisor to the Prosecutor of the Special Court for Sierra Leone, a United Nations tribunal, and as a Yale Law School/OSI Teaching Fellow in West Africa. He has worked for the US State Department, the International Centre for Transitional Justice and others on human rights and legal reform efforts in Afghanistan, Sudan, Kosovo, Argentina, Chile, India, and the United States. Prior to law school, he worked as Assistant Director of the Center for a Sustainable Economy (now part of Redefining Progress) and as a consultant on youth and environemental campaigns … Tom is also a founder of the Catholic Alliance for the Common Good. He holds a BA in Humanities from Yale College and a J.D. from Yale Law School and is a member of the New York State Bar.

It’s all good stuff, but not exactly the kind of good stuff that’s going to wow Virginia voters. Hopefully there’s another side to his story. I’ll keep you posted.

Posted on

[mattress purchased]

As an update on the mattress situation, I took the plunge and bought a Sealy Posturepedic something-or-other from Sears online for what seems to me a not insane price (Labor Day sale, comparison shopping, testing beds at Macy’s, etc.). Of course, it’s impossible to know whether the thing I bought cheap from Sears is or is not the same as the thing I tried out at Macy’s, but what the hell. It appears to be flat and full of springs and I can sleep on it. And it’s not one of those obnoxious pillow-top dealies, which inevitably wind up with divots. If I want cushions on top, I can put cushions on top. And then, when those cushions get compacted or stanky or whatever, I can take them off again, and replace the $30 foam instead of the $400 mattress. Genius.

It’ll be delivered next Saturday, and I will sleep on it.

Oh, and thanks, Miriam, for the suggestion on an organic mattress. I would’ve considered it seriously if I hadn’t already made my purchase, but now I just hope it’s something I have absolutely no reason to think about for a very long time.

Posted on

[birthday blues]

Tomorrow is September 8, my birthday. It’s been a very tough year, to say the least. I’ll try to think of this as a new beginning. Another year, and life goes on.

Posted on

[mattress blues]

I just want a damn mattress.

Right now I’m sleeping on an AeroBed, and it’s actually not bad, but it’s not great either, and I’m not too keen on having to reinflate my bed every night. What if there’s a power outage? Will I have to sleep on the couch?

But then the question of buying a mattress looms, and I am overcome with the horrible complexity of it all.

Just over a year ago, Jenny and I paid a fortune at Sleepy’s (probably not a good place to shop, but oh well) for a mattress I never really liked all that much. It had a pillowtop, which sagged into divots just like I feared it would.

What I want now is a firm mattress without any stupid memory foam or air chambers or anything else freaky, and without excessive cushioning on the top that will sink into a trough within a year. If I want to put foam or a featherbed on top of my mattress, I can. Then I can take it off again when it gets grungy or saggy or whatever.

But where do you even go to buy a mattress? Sleepy’s has a terrible rep. Is 1-800-Mattress any better? And how do I even begin to compare all these confusing features? How do I not get stuck with a sagging beast?

GAH!

Posted on

[moved]

It’s done.

After six years together, four of them married, Jenny and I are officially living apart. This hurts more than I can say.

Granted, we had been moving apart for a long time. Jenny’s consulting job kept her away for long stretches, and then, after the rupture point about six months ago, she took the gig in Chicago and was home only on weekends. And once we reached the point of recognizing the marriage as over, Jenny stayed with friends, and took a sublet for the month of August. So this is just one further step apart — but for once, it’s my step, not hers. I have moved.

As far as the actual mechanics of the thing, all went relatively smoothly. The moving team from Flat Rate was efficient and friendly and led by a man who had come to New York to work with a friend of his who happens to be the ambassador of Bosnia-Herzegovina to the United Nations, but somehow ended up hauling boxes and furniture instead. Over the course of an exhausting Saturday, the bed delivery, the cable guy, the AC installer and FreshDirect all showed up at their appointed times and did their appointed business. So did my friend F, who had offered to go to Ikea and pick up furniture for me in his minivan (minor snafu: he bought only one bookshelf, not the five I need). By the end of the evening, with the help of still another friend from recovery, I had a working computer and a working TV stand with a working TV on it. Oh, and Jenny helped too, particularly with putting up the curtains so I could have some privacy, though it turns out my windows face out mostly towards brick wall and sky (you can see the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge from my bathroom window).

Daniel came by on Sunday for more furniture assembly, and he displayed his considerable box-bundling prowess. By the end of Monday — which involved taking the subway up to the old neighborhood to get the car, then a drive to a Wal-Mart in deep Jersey for some $600-odd worth of exciting items like a dish drainer and a kitchen drawer organizer — I had cleared away a fair amount of the wreckage and established a basically functional home in which I could shower and shave, find my shoes and my keys, make my morning tea, check my email, and get out the door, and then come home again, order in some dinner and watch some TV. There’s still a ton of work, but it will happen.

And there are good aspects too. There are advantages to living in a real apartment building again: an incinerator chute (to a bin, not to an incinerator) and recycling room where I can take my trash any day of the week, a full-time super, laundry in the basement, an elevator, a buzzer to let in guests and delivery guys without having to find my shoes and trudge downstairs. My location somehow allows me excellent FM reception for WFMU and WKCR, which is nice. And there’s a ton of shopping and restaurants to explore in my new neighborhood — just last night I found an excellent kebab joint. One day I may even stop feeling sad about living where I do, and about living on my own.

Posted on

[choices]

I have a lot of free time at work, and what with the upcoming move and the general stress of pulling my life apart, I haven’t been able to devote myself to one of my productive intellectual projects — studying Korean, reading East Asian history, attempting to write a novel, etc. Instead, other than trolling for jobs, I have been filling my days with video games.

I don’t consider myself a gamer — the only console system I ever owned was a Nintendo Entertainment System — but I have in fact devoted significant chunks of my life to video games, most prominent among them the Ultima series. I feel a certain amount of shame around my gaming, maybe because it feels uncomfortably compulsive, and also because it’s really not what one is supposed to be doing at work (although, to be fair to myself, I do work hard on everything I’m expected to, and have gone well above and beyond expectations generally).

Nevertheless, with a gaping afternoon of empty hours and a head full of emotional disaster, I have gratefully turned to Jay is Games, an excellent blog and website devoted to “casual gameplay” and the wonderful world of Flash-based gaming.

I’ve discovered that I’m partial to the point-and-click subgenre, whose games are forgiving of sudden pauses for work, don’t call upon too much hand-eye coordination, and give a sense of progress and completion. Favorites include the Hapland, Submachine and especially Samorost series, but I was particularly struck by the intriguing beauty of the Chinese game Choice. It won’t take you long, and it really is quite lovely. It helps me get through my day. Maybe it’ll help you get through yours.

Posted on

[renewal]

Sunset over Pushkar, India.


I am at an ending, and also a beginning.

On Saturday, I will move out of the apartment I have shared with my wife, Jenny, for the last two years, and move into a new apartment on my own. There are all kinds of reasons to feel sad about this transition, and I do, but for the moment I don’t need to rehearse those reasons one more time.

On Monday night, feeling overwhelmed by all that lay ahead of me, I had a flash of insight. I was feeling grim about yet another company that decided, after several interviews, to turn me down for a job, and I was contemplating what, in an ideal world, I would do for a living. What I came up with was no surprise to me, and it’s probably no surprise to you: my ideal job would be quite similar to the one I have now, providing me the opportunity to hang around with diplomats and contemplate international affairs and foreign cultures on a leisurely schedule, but it would also put me in exotic locales and give me excuses to get involved with the local people so that I could write about the whole thing, much as I did in Korea. That job, as I have known for quite some time, is Foreign Service Officer.

Now, I’m not about to go running off to the Foreign Service just yet. “No big changes in the first year” is a recovery slogan, and outside of getting a divorce, a new apartment and a new job, I plan to stick to it. I need to piece my life back together before I go off to serve my country in uncomfortable and disorienting places.

But it helps to know that whatever is coming next, it’s temporary. My thought at the moment — subject to radical revision, of course, particularly considering the circumstances under which I’m writing this — is that I will devote the next two years to recovery and personal growth and apply for the Foreign Service by my 35th birthday, two years from next Saturday. Between now and then, I will need to learn how to live alone, how to survive without relying on some other person to sustain me and give my life meaning. I will need to clear away the wreckage and stand confidently on my own two feet. And I can do those things: I have help and I have faith.

And now I have a goal towards which to work, a dream for my life that resonates. That’s something to be grateful for.

Posted on

[yesterday’s news]

Today the first of my purchases from Thriftbooks arrived: the 1996 edition of the Lonely Planet India, complete with a business card for Ashoka Arts of Udaipur1 (which I have visited) and someone else’s notes on when to go see the Taj Mahal.

Now, why would anyone want an outdated travel guide? Simple: to reconstruct a journey taken in the past. The 1996 edition differs considerably from later versions, and it’s the one I hauled around with me during my baffling, overwhelming, life-changing slog across the subcontinent back in 1997-98.

Ever since that trip, I’ve wanted to write about India in one way or another. I have taken a number of disappointing stabs at an India novel, but I think that the processes I’m going through in my life right now — the hard struggle to face my fears and my shame squarely, to take a rigorously honest look at myself and my life — may open the door to better, truer writing.

India will almost certainly be a part of that. It has to be, I think, considering its importance in my life. And so will Judaism. I remember Björg, my Faroese traveling companion through Rajasthan, telling me she’d never heard anyone talk so much about being Jewish. Why was it that after four years of going to college three thousand miles from my parents and sleeping with exotically Scandinavian-named women, I still felt it necessary to go on a Grand Tour of a country that celebrates exactly the kind of idol worship Abraham found objectionable? And why, once I was there (and in the company of another Scandinavian), could I not stop talking about what it meant to me to be a Jew?

These are questions I wouldn’t even have been able to pose until quite recently. The whole Jewish thing, wrapped up as it is with all my parental angst and fundamental sense of dislocation and alienation, was simply too frightening even to look at. That may sound silly, but there it is.

And so I’ve decided to get myself copies of the Lonely Planets that guided me through that journey: not just the India guide, but also the one for Nepal, and for trekking in the Nepal Himalaya. If nothing else, this new-old Lonely Planet has confirmed for me the existence of the Peacock Hotel in Pushkar2, along with its location — issues that remained vague for me even though I stayed there, no doubt because of the bhang lassis I consumed each night during my visit to that pleasant little town.
—
1. And I quote, all sic:

Mfrs. & Exporters of : Painting on Silk, Wood, Paper and Marble
96, Patwa Street Near Jagdish Temple
UDAIPUR-313 001 (India)
We Accept All Credit Cards & Foregin Currency


Ashoka Arts A Mile Stone in the Field of Paintings.

  • See How Artist Make Paintings with Natural Colours.
  • A Co-operative Orgnised by the Artists.
  • A Reflection of Indian Culture & Historic Background.
  • Most Economical & Best Quality Painting on Marble, Silk, Paper on wood.
Ashoka Arts
Best Miniature Paintings,

2. “On the outskirts of town is the Peacock Hotel, a good choice despite being rather far from the lake. The rooms surround a large, shady courtyard, and the swimming pool and jacuzzi are a big drawcard. Singles/doubles cost Rs 50/80 with common bath, Rs 120 for a double with bath attached, and there are more upmarket rooms at Rs 300/450.” I remember neither pool nor jacuzzi, but then, it was seriously cold during my visit.

Posted on

[creative visualization]

Now that I’m preparing to move into a new apartment, I am of course obsessing over which furniture goes where and what needs to be purchased from Ikea or elsewhere. This whole process is additionally complex because I’m not simply taking all of the furniture with me, and because Jenny isn’t sure what to keep because she isn’t sure whether she’ll be living in our old apartment or in the apartment upstairs (currently shared by Robert and Lydia), and she also isn’t sure which furniture, if any, Robert might leave behind if he moves either downstairs (into what is currently our apartment) or somewhere else.

Have I mentioned that my life is kind of complicated these days?

Fortunately, Lifehacker has linked to an excellent tool for visualizing an architectural space, complete with furniture: Floorplanner, which lets you put in walls, windows, flooring and furniture, change the colors, and get an overhead sense of how the room will add up.

Now, of course, I’ll have to get back into the new apartment and obsessively measure every distance — not to mention every item of our furniture &mdash but I’d actually love to get a realistic recreation of the apartment onto Floorplanner.