Tuesday, January 03, 2006

From Europe with love



Lots to write about. Don't think I'll write about any though.

Clash of cultures, this does really exist, as long as you try to integrate them. We are really different, us and them. We can play friends, try to understand and accomodate, but it takes a while to know where we're coming from. Lets accept our differences, but how can it be part of my intimate personal life? I've never been part of another culture, yet I've never accepted my own culture, but I've been comfortable with it. Now how can that other culture be part of my life? and me be comfortable with it?

Someone told me I try to know in order to be in control, have to get all the info. I feel lost with so many unknowns. Don't even know the language. I'm actually missing, not Egypt, but Canada here. Tonight's bar tender in the Irish pub was a Canadian girl, from Toronto, and this made me feel at home! finally someone speaking proper English.

Sex, a simple word, yet I'm realizing its complexity. I thought I knew a thing or two about it. Why is it taken so lightly by many?! Am I really complicating it, or is it a complicated topic? Another cultural difference, isn't it? People are different, genders are different, I am different. Another thing I can't comprehend or accept here.

She either wants to be controlled, or wants to control. why not just live and let live? Though its hard for me to do that too. One thing is for sure, I don't understand a thing, and that makes me lost.

I need a big goal to work on. Someone told me once, why not start small? That's a good advise.

5 comments:

Cliche~ said...

You're not over complicating sex, and they're not over simplifying it. Because even though sex might sound like a concrete concept at face value in reality its a subjective reality. So, ur complicated regard of sex is subject to your own individual perspective, which is ofcourse to an extent affected by culture, but it doesnt simply boil to they see it as simple and we see it as complicated. I mean ofcourse, the fact that they can "get some" easily, while (most of us) spend a lifetime anticipating what its like before doing it, adds a value to what we're doing. Yet still that difference in cultural constraints interacts differently with each individual, and i still think personality is the main component. Its like culture is ur paint brush,,,,but at the end of the day u will paint it ur own style...

Alina said...

I think I am basically shaped so that I can adapt to almost any type of culture, adapt here meaning to accept it to some extent and learn to live with it. But I guess this is still part of my own culture. Us Romanians, over many centuries, learned to deal with so many different nations from different continents. Actually I think there is no Romanian nation on its own, it is just a mix of others, a bit like Americans, only with a way longer history.

As for sex, it is really complicated. Talking about it, having it, understanding it where others are concerned! I think the only mistake we could make would be not giving it the proper importance, no matter how we call it or feel it - sex or making love.

Happy New Year, Mo, and welcome back, I hope...

melisah said...

nice blog here!

MoonLightShadow said...

The last thing I expected when I was visiting your blog was to find a new post!

Clash of cultures certainly exist. Haven’t been through any though.

BTW, that Tulip flower is amazing.. I love it.

Anonymous said...

Dear Mo,

Im wondering why this last post from you made me so angry.
Usually I love your writing.
I discovered it some time ago and was "believer” for quite a while. You are so witty, so at ease with words and thoughts, you seem(ed) so open…
And now suddenly…
I ask myself “what is it?”
(Maybe your horoscope changes so much when you change ur location??)

You seem so patronizing, so intolerant. Are you?

(…) their pragmatism, easy life, and lack of His control might be of the reasons for their achievements. The strength of faith, strength of my principles, and strength of my values (…)

Why you make such generalization? Are WE ALL LIKE THAT? Do you know us all??
Is the life so easy here? How do you know
(I say here, maybe u meant England//Ireland, and Im from Poland, but I took it so personally. Its Europe. And suddenly I want to defend it :-))Its my culture, my mentality, whether I like it or not)

And I don’t see my life easy. I was born in poor communist country strongly stigmatized by Catholic church. Now we have democracy and “freedom”, but its not so easy to survive. Today in my city temperature is almost -20C (minus)and my bill for heating will eat most of my salary.
Maybe it doesn’t seem such problem for you, but I spend about 6months of a year trying to survive the weather of my city. Its definitely not easy for me.
I don’t want to tell “my story” here, but I want tell you that I felt somehow offended.

Maybe problems are different in different places but I dont thing anybody, any nation has monopoly for easy//or difficult.
Every person has his/her own reason "to be here" and this life is just a struggle, no matter where you were born.

I realize that Im more interested, in the answer to “why I feel so angry” than in answer to “what made you write what you wrote”.
But I will still express a little more of my "rage".

[Sex, a simple word, yet I'm realizing its complexity. (…) Why is it taken so lightly by many?!]
How do you know how “they//we take it”?
It was Egypt where almost every man I faced asked me about my marital status and seemed to mean definitely more. This seemed for me quite “taking it lightly”.

Or:
[Can't help but have this internal sarcasm when she refers to God]
I imagine its just an expression, expression (“My God” or many others) that you hear constantly growing up here, that you just soak with and later you keep on using it the way everybody does.
Does it make us less religious. I imagine you being simply silent doesn’t make you a great believer.

I feel my anger so alive. Its quite fascinating.

Especially that in general I declare NOT TO LIKE my culture, our religion, our life style.
But I "am allowed" NOT TO LIKE them because they are mine, because I know them, because they under MY skin and I have to fight THEM in my mind every single day.

But I don’t like you - being a stranger - doing it.

I do try to understand your culture, your religion, your lifestyle, though I have a strong impression that its not possible. EVER. That my perceptual-cognitive apparatus has been created to understand my world, and the structures to understand YOUR WOLD have no chance to be developed.

But I still CAN LOVE your culture...
For, as I once heard,

WE CAN LOVE COMPLETELY
WITHOUT COMPLETE UNDERSTANDING.
BECAUSE EVENTUALLY ALL THINGS MERGE INTO ONE

woooooooooow, i like that

love Mo