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TWENTYSOMETHING by Ishi Dinim
A story of thoughts from abroad
Sitting in a sauna (no, a Paris Metro) wiping the sheen of sweat and pollution from my eyebrows. Thinking about language, social order, politics, sex, basketball, privilege, food, food! I thought this was the center of good taste? Reputations only go so far. BANG! There are these little packs of hellions chucking Bastille Day firecrackers over the edge above us onto the subway platform, scaring us all. BANG! Each explosion triggers a memory of the callous murders in London, only days before.
Reading books and people. Terrorist, foreign policy, soldier, war, legal, religion, illegal, incentives, doing the “right” thing. Upside-down notions of how to deal with the enemy. Who is the enemy? Fear and alienation. Education and self-righteousness. So much I’ll never understand. This heat is oppressive I can’t think properly. Why was it that I came here again?
Originally I meant to go to France to assist my grandparents and document their stories, my history. They told me tales of resistance in the face of Nazi occupation, falling in love with each other in a refugee camp, struggling for a new life in Israel, so many riveting things. Being with my grandparents became very difficult, I won’t elaborate too much for personal reasons, but it was extremely painful and eye-opening. I learned a lot: about the aging process in a relationship, sometimes just being and not recording, and that I sure have it good in Vancouver. It is funny how one’s purpose can change part way through. You can enter into a situation or a moment with a clear intention and sometimes you decide to change it, and sometimes it changes you. Switching to a left hand lay-up at the last second, picking up the camera for something banal, or buying a plane ticket.
This trip made me think about the paradoxes of freedom. Not the-with-us-or-against-us-they-hate-our-way-of-life kind of freedom, but the differences in two G-8 societies, powerhouses in espousing their versions of free living. There are sacrifices or a give and take inherent in having certain attributes like culture, space, education, or democracy. In Paris I wandered around soaking in the architecture, the history, art, culture, energy. In Vancouver, I marvel at the open spaces, the friendliness, sky, mountains, and ocean.
Even now that I’m back and writing this, everything seems jumbled still. I don’t know how to explain it to make it sound right but things just move differently here. A familiar order. I’m habituated to this pace, these elements. I don’t have to continuously analyze new, over-stimulating, over-saturated, abundantly frenetic moments every few minutes. I feel there is a real peace here, even with all the flaws inherent in our society. I can really feel it, being home.
Links:
www.peace.ca www.novaplanet.com
Quotes:
When someone gives to you, take. When someone takes from you, cry.
- Alexandre Doubchak (my grandpa)
The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to the point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That in its essence is fascism - ownership of government by an individual, by a group or any controlling private power.
– Franklin D. Roosevelt
We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated governments in the world - no longer a government of free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and duress of small groups of dominant men.
– Woodrow Wilson
Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power.
– Benito Mussolini
Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so, whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such a purpose, and you allow him to make war at pleasure...if, today, he should choose to say he thinks it necessary to invade Canada, to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him? You may say to him, “I see no probability of the British invading us:”but he will say to you, “Be silent; I can see it, if you don’t.”
– Abraham Lincoln
Ishi graduated from Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design in 2001, with a BFA major in photography. He makes films, collects cacti, and ponders many things. Currently he is trying to figure out what to do with the rest his life.
contactishi@yahoo.ca waiting to hear echoes back.
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