Olivia
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ahto lobjakas
@lobjakas
Joined December 2009
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STICKS AND BRICKS
It’s remarkable anyone survives their childhood, I thought, as the physio barked in my face.
A year ago, and I am in the hospital gym with a bulky, middle-aged physio, a likeable man who worked well with other patients, some of whom could barely move. I am sitting on a bench, leaning over a table, making big circles with my arms as he roars at me, “Harder, harder, faster, further! Further! Come on man!”
His face is now a few inches from mine and he is shouting. The other physios become concerned as I try to match his demands. I want this to stop. I want this fucking man to leave me alone. I want to get out of here.
It is difficult to imagine a world without intimidation. We anticipate love but are born into coercion. As a child, I expected a warmer welcome, but it is our parent’s duty to teach us to control our crying, toilet behaviour, and when to get dressed and sleep. This acculturation is to our benefit, but it will be experienced as hostile and sadistic. Then we go to school.
Schools are institutions of domination and cruelty, that break pupils before sending them out to work. The teachers torture the children and the children torture one another. I remember being pursued in the lunch hour by a particularly vicious skinhead, whose mother was a friend of my mother. He would force me into the cloak room, cover me in coats, and kick the shit out of me until I collapsed.
On another occasion, I attacked a vulnerable and often-bullied pupil with a handful of berries, soiling his shirt and making him upset. I have felt awful about this incident my entire life, but guilt and remorse can be an engine for change; how else can we develop sympathy?
Reading my biography by Ruvani Ranasinha, and the material around the time of my father’s death, I was shocked to see – and she had read my contemporaneous diaries – how angry and aggressive I was with my father. I now have a mostly benign view of him; memory working to smooth out historic conflicts – but at times he could humiliate and degrade me like no one else.
The word bullying probably comes from the Middle Dutch boele ‘lover’. The original use was a term of endearment, and later became a familiar form of address to a male friend. Only later, in the 17th century, did it become what it means now.
Bullying was a central part of the relationship between Omar and Johnny in My Beautiful Launderette. If Omar had been racially putdown by Johnny, their love was an attempt to replace hate with eroticism. The bully can’t leave his victim alone, his violence a displacement for repressed desire.
The erotic games that we play are attempts to transform trauma into something pleasurable; with BDSM, participants enact polite representations of childhood horrors. Sport also, with its fetishisation of winning, intimidating and beating the rival. Humiliation is essential to competition. You might say that sport, like politics, or certain kinds of sex, is an attempt to domesticate violence.
Donald Trump is the apex bully. His jouissance, in which his acolytes share, is almost entirely to do with intimidation and humiliation. With Trump, the other must be degraded; women, minorities, and anyone he deems a ‘loser’. Some people identify with his lack of inhibition, his freedom to say whatever he likes. All of us have fantasies about punishing people, but rarely, if ever, act on them. Trump is the fantasy manifest.
Carlo was playing basketball in the park when a jacked-up man with veins in his biceps came onto the court with his little boy. The boy was meek and afraid, and the father admonished him for his cowardice, making him cry.
Carlo wondered if the father’s build was a direct result of his likeness to his son at that age. Our egos are defensive and constructed around a fear of fragility, the adult being created out of early terrors. The father might have imagined he had escaped his own pathetic vulnerability, but there it was, staring up at him with tears in its eyes.
The so-called mindless thugs out on the street this week destroying shop fronts, torching cars and attacking mosques are some of the most neglected, disaffected people in the U.K. They are vulnerable insofar as they are not integrated into the country’s economic model, having no stake in the culture, no High Streets and no future. The white working class have good reason to riot, except that their aggression is facing in the wrong direction. Without leadership or ideology, authentic desire for political representation morphs into pointless violence.
Typically the bully orients himself around a more defenceless target, whom he can persecute without fear of retaliation. Migrants aren’t, as it is often said, ‘taking your jobs’; there are no jobs. The thug is now as insecure as the migrant, they are both adrift, and it is this identification that fuels the aggression.
The rioter, like any bully, briefly buys into the exultation of power, which otherwise he excluded from. There is also a carnivalesque quality to a riot, where the usual everyday rules and prohibitions are suspended. Who doesn’t want to throw a brick through a window? But the riots are only reactionary, a purging of resentment rather than an opening up of the political field. The single progressive outcome would be for the fascist, person of colour and the migrant to organise and see what they have in common.
If you don’t succumb to the bully - becoming a bully yourself, or compliant and dominated – you can become more powerful. If you were ever a victim, you might find that creativity provides you with authority over your experience. Even now, in my current predicament, unable to use my arms and legs, I use writing as an urgent reinstatement of the self.
---
If you wish to preorder my forthcoming memoir, Shattered, you can do so by following the links provided here:
https://t.co/K3sLjLPTMs
NIGHTMARES AND KISSES
He is still asleep when she gets up to have her yogurt and honey. She likes to eat privately in her narrow kitchen without being observed. Then she returns to bed, to read the Italian newspapers on her iPad.
They are in Rome, in her apartment across the river from the Roma stadium, on the Via Flaminia. Outside the window there is a square with a newspaper kiosk, a tram stop and a taxi station. On the corner there is a pizza restaurant they often frequent.
When he wakes up, he heads to the table to write his morning pages; dreams, ideas, fantasies and notes on what he is reading. He interrupts himself to glance at the British newspapers. She makes fresh orange juice in the kitchen and brings it to him. She drinks an espresso, it’s too short for him, he prefers a longer coffee.
After a lunch of salad, mozzarella and spring rolls he announces he is taking his walk.
“Wait until six, when it has cooled down. No one goes out in this heat.”
“I’m restless now. I can’t sit down another moment.” He gathers his things. “It will have to be a mad dogs and Englishmen situation.”
She continues working and off he goes, glad to be outside. He is always surprised when he leaves the building by how quiet Rome is compared to London; not the tourist spots, of course, but the residential parts, which make the city seem provincial, from another era, at another pace.
He walks up to the Piazza del Popolo, through the busy throng into the historical centre. He ducks his head under running taps as he goes, striding right into the bustling city, crazy with tourists, just walking, walking, looking at everything, there are always surprises.
Later in the afternoon, when he is tired, she drives into town to pick him up. They sit down outside a bar and have a smoke and a beer. She likes potatoes chips.
This is her city, she went to school and grew up in the area. She is seventeen years younger than him, good-natured and optimistic. He likes to imagine her as a young person with her friends, going to gigs and parties, hanging out at bars, studying philosophy in the libraries, living out her continental, bourgeois youth in 80s Rome. He is a disturbed, mixed-raced Englishman, a vacationer, with no grasp of the language, and no intention of learning it.
The next morning, they prepare for the Amalfi coast. He writes while she packs computer equipment, clothes, a cafetiere and coffee, and food and wine for the evening.
It is a three-hour journey on the motorway, past Naples and Pompei. She drives, he is the DJ, knowing that she likes to listen to Lou Reed, Bowie and the Beatles.
“Do you remember when we went to Pompei?” he says.
“Don’t. I paid for a guide that day. You told him it was like a building site.”
“Like crossing a building site in a hundred degrees with a fridge on your back.”
“I was so offended. What’s the point in taking you anywhere?”
“You tried to run me over in the car park when we were leaving.”
“You stepped out in front of me.”
They talk all the way, stopping off at his favourite service stations for cappuccino and pizza.
Finally, they see the blue of the Mediterranean. Her mother has a little house on hill. It's an old-fashioned place with a terrace and a view of the sea and sky. Oddly enough, it is one of the noisiest places he has stayed, being adjacent to a church. The inhabitants of the little town are religious, carrying a wooden image of a local saint through the village while singing and playing instruments. All day, and most of the night, bells ring out.
In the evening, they have supper on the terrace as the sky darkens, before going back into the house to watch a TV show on her iPad.
He’s in hospital on the outskirts of Rome. She drives in at midday to see him. She’s been up and shopping all morning. Like a child sitting at the window, he watches out for her as she hurries across the grounds from the car park. He cheers up when she arrives. He likes the Italian nurses, many of whom are gay, some are even Lazio supporters, but he finds it difficult to communicate with them. She has to be his translator.
She pushes him outside to the terrace, which is filled with people in wheelchairs, their visitors and nurses. Finding a spot for him in the shade, she puts on his sunglasses and feeds him. He appreciates how difficult it is for her every morning, before coming to the hospital, to prepare both lunch and supper, bringing in something different everyday. But she does it, although he finds it hard to eat, and must force himself. She kisses him on the forehead. He likes her kissing him, his mother never did. He wants to remember every kiss she’s given him, as if every one is an affirmation of his existence, that he is wanted.
He remembers being in a hotel room in Milan in 2012, asking if she would like to be his girlfriend. His directness surprised him. She said yes and he was elated. The next day in a bar, when he was mostly silent, not wanting to spoil things by saying too much – and knowing they had to separate later when he went back to London - he asked her if she would look after him. She said yes to this too. He had no idea this request would become so meaningful.
Three years later she finally came to live with him. That night, his friends were having a party in a big house in Notting Hill to celebrate the publication of his novel. This was the first time she had met two of his children and their mother. He hadn’t worried about it so much, though he had had a bad experience in the past with regard to his children and a new partner, but now the kids were grown up, and no bother.
She had never lived with a partner, but he had, with four women since he was eighteen. He was excited about her arrival, he felt at ease with her, which meant he could carry on writing, reading, speaking, eating as he did before. They would work side by side in the same room.
He had always been charmed by her, and still is. Her presence lifts him: her voice, in particular, her accent, her noises, the way she looks, the way she does things. He watches her all day. He likes hearing what she has to say. He asks her a lot of questions, many of which she ignores. But what a thing to do, after so many years, to continue to observe someone, to want to look at them, an everchanging show. What are they thinking, what are they feeling, where is their head?
He thinks of her as a delicate, shy person, impressive in her modesty and style, not someone who speaks much about herself, unlike him. He has to observe her, to track her mood, and gauge her temperament, because she won’t open herself. He imagines that she was always, what might be called, a ‘good girl’, well-behaved, hardworking, always truthful. But she is not conventional at all; she is hard in her beliefs, and will suddenly say something he had no idea was in her.
On the terrace, in the sun, she feeds him mozzarella, flatbread, and a cappuccino from the bar, before preparing him for his physio in the afternoon. They go back to the room and she calls the nurses to insert the catheter into his penis to empty his bladder.
Since the accident, everything between them has changed. They are in an emergency. He fell on his head and can no longer use his hands or legs. She must do everything for him. This has become a terrible test and she is exhausted. She hasn’t been able to work.
She will stick with him; it would never occur to her not to. That’s not a question for her. But what does it mean, sticking with someone? Does it mean helping them organise their life for years, giving up their dreams and hopes?
It is gone, the future they had planned, the places they wanted to go, their walks and talks, it will never be the same. How do you adjust to that? But you do; in the ruins you make a life, one you had never anticipated.
At home in London, after working all morning, she comes down and makes him lunch. He has fish soup, toast, and a soft sheep’s cheese they buy from Giovanni at the market in Brook Green.
She slings a tea towel around his neck and holds the spoon close to his mouth – often too close - as he chatters away, asking her if he is her favourite person in the world. She says no; he is not even the second or third favourite. He says this is unfair, she is his favourite, the one he most likes talking to and looking at. But she doesn’t like these provocations. If only people knew how childish he really was. Playful he calls it; he doesn’t know where he got it from, his dad wasn’t like that. But he likes playful people, who see conversation as a game. After all, what is conversation for?
When he has finished lunch, and she is done working on her phone, they will go out onto the street and down the Shepherd’s Bush Road, to King’s Street, Hammersmith, where they enter Marks and Spencer.
It is not easy for him to shop with her as he is at a lower level, like a child who can’t see the higher shelves. Wearily she has to describe what is up there. After food shopping they go into the men’s clothing section. He is at an age where he can appreciate some of the men’s clothes, T-shirts, sweaters, even trousers. But his look isn’t as significant as it once might have been. He hasn’t worn a pair of jeans for eighteen months, only track pants and sweaters. Her can’t regulate his temperature, he is always cold.
Waiting for her at the check-out, he sees she is carrying at least five bags. She is thin and light and looks weighed down. He feels helpless that he cannot take some of them. He wheels away and she follows him out.
He fears he has dulled and constrained her. All day, she deals with bureaucratic problems; appointments, hospitals, medicines and equipment. It is draining and all-consuming. He wants her to have more time and freedom, to be liberated from his problems. She is less care-free now, everything is more serious. He is now her responsibility.
At six, she prepares him a Bloody Mary. At seven, he is put to bed by, as he puts it, ‘the government’. At eight, she feeds him supper. They watch television and bicker until she kisses him goodnight at ten.
He has to sleep on his back and cannot change position, which makes him feel trapped.
He has a bad night, waking up yelling from a nightmare. She comes down to kiss and calm him.
If you want to pre-order my forthcoming book, Shattered, you can do so here: https://t.co/8trVopaGSd
@CanMerey people who know more than i tell me one side exploits this situation better than the other. this is about power, even NGOs political. GD has 50+, UNM 20-25, newcomer youth 25% of the vote. UNM would not win elex, hence the streets. its abuses still rankle (look up prison rapes).
EKI-le on vaja telefoni, millele kodanik saab helistada kysimusega: "Mis ma just ytlesin?"
@POLIITIKAguru mängus on veel enam. KE oli Eesti viimase 30 aasta ainus sui generis (= toimiv) poliitilise lõimumise institutsioon. nyyd on järel yhekäeplaks. edaspidi saab kohalik venelane lojaalne olla yksnes ukrainlasena.
From File770 - "A writer for Britain’s Private Eye rediscovered Norman Spinrad’s Agent of Chaos (1967) with its prescient comments about another political leader named Boris Johnson."
Ralph Wiggum rides again
Eigentlich hätte sie ihn sofort ohrfeigen müssen.
https://t.co/ZZ34cEC4jG
Sorry, for Europeans was poking fun at this… https://t.co/a7hmvaxXPE
"Jos vaatisi Suomeen ydinaseita, olisi syvällä Baltian mallissa." https://t.co/9BZVFXNom5
AI created image from the phrase, “Jesus flipping over the tables in the temple.”
With great anger, sorrow and sadness we must inform that the great Bactrian city of Dilberjin (Persian: دلبرجین) in northern Afghanistan has been bulldozed by the Taliban terrorist regime.
Dilberjin was founded in the Achaemenid period (at least 2300 years old). Satellite image:
This thread is great
@tzaf thought thoughts
not to be unthought
any more than
the apple unbitten
the light unbidden
what’s more
not to be unlit
we’ve all been seen
(Heidegger’s coin
covers the I)
Jemand lädt auf Tiktok ein Video mit den kleinen Geräuschen hoch, die seine Katze macht, während sie Milch trinkt, ein Mann aus Usbekistan legt Musik darauf, weitere Musiker kommen zu einem unglaublichen Mashup zusammen und am Ende entsteht eines der besten Videos in der Geschichte des Internets 💜
“Ideology was light and invisible for many.” What a great description, which I think also applies to the foreign policy think tank world in which people think of themselves as “experts” who are not ideological at all.
“Showing a single digital ad to a single user involves, on average, emitting between roughly a tenth and a whole pint of carbon dioxide. … Informed estimates collected by the researcher Mikko Kotila suggest as many as 400 billion ads appear online a day.” https://t.co/61pPZhfenQ
Stalin's legacy, I suppose, must be considered one of the most enduring of the 20thC: parts of his system survive in Russia, and NATO is willing to go to a general war to defend the borders he drew.
@koerilja distsipliini & dr Vahtre koostoime osas: eesti keeles on ruumi väljendile "de-mentor."
ka nii saab: kogu loos pole yhtki numbrit (va aastaarvud)
https://t.co/Q6W6gyztzX #ERR
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