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the moon is amazing tonight. as if i see her for the very first time, no i’ve never saw her like this before. a hugh ivory nocturnal sun. sahar and i walk by the beach. that’s where to approach her, just besides the ocean. the waves bring sparks of the glistering silvery light to the shore. it is 6 months ago today that we set foot on this continent.

after enjoying a family meal in our house and a walk on the beach, Pacific Avenue is quite desolate on a monday night. as eating and drinking places are closing, our plan to raise glasses on this anniversary, which seems more bitter than sweet, can only be done in Lulu Carpenter’s – cups of hot chocolote. but this is one of the places i like in this town, and in our sweet home the brandy awaits us. thanks sahar for being here.

Imagine: i got some beers in the supermarket today and was asked to show identification – i’m 35 today. And imagine the coincidence: Leta and i have our birthday on the same day. We weren’t actually born on the same day, i’m a year older than she is. And when she was born it might actually have been the 7th of june where i was born. But still the coincidence is amazing.

Leta was born in Saigon, airlifted out of the place soon before the U.S. army withdrew completely from Vietnam. A war time baby, put up for adoption to an American family. Some years ago, i think for the 30th birthday of that war time generation, Time magazine did a reportage with a group of young Americans going back to the place they were born. The coverage included accounts of life in Saigon 30 years ago, and one day Leta found herself opening Time magazine and reading a detailed eye-witness report by an American soldier or journalist or observer of some kind of the morning of the 8th of June in Saigon. A cloudy sky, raining bombs and artillery. A strange read when you know that at the very same time, under the very same sky, in some house in Saigon you were born, Leta added.

Some years ago she travelled to Vietnam, to Saigon, to seek that house where she was born. Finding that house shifted the story she had constructed for herself up till then. Who was giving up children for adoption at the time? Vietnamese women who expected a baby from an American soldier. And then it seemed that her biological mother was not Vietnamese, but a Chinese migrant into Vietnam. And that her biological father was not American, but French. A different story all together, which Leta still wants to pursue (the neighbors told her that her mother moved to Australia many years ago). Easy to get dizzy when one begins thinking about all those billion stories that weave connections between people and places and how they meet, in such ordinary things like a house or on a birthday.

Today was Leta’s Santa Cruz b-day thing which i eagerly joined: a bonfire on the beach. My first one since i’m here actually. We went out early to get ourselves a beautiful spot on the beach, and installed ourselves with food and drinks (alcohol must be hidden) and a cake for the evening (hm, till 10 pm, when the police comes to stop the fires). I had expected the sunset to be really something, but it was nothing compared to the rising of the moon (not so far from full) and her pearl-like pale light playing on the waves of the ocean. What a beauty just to watch.

A brief homecoming at Berna’s place after leaving the bonfire crowd (always a good idea for me when i’ve passed hours in an American-only crowd). You smell of bonfire, Berna laughed when i greeted her, and as i wrap my black woolen shawl around me while i’m writing this, i hope the scent stays with me for a while.

By the time i met up with Berna on campus there was a full moon (almost), high over a couple of pink magnolia trees near her office, in a sky that was still blue and only slowly turning to dusk. On the other side of the horizon: an ever-so-slight fog lingering in between the trees, with golden rays of sun playing around in the forest. Beauty for Berna’s birthday.

We met Feza in a restaurant downtown. I was so happy to see both of them. Berna full of stories of the May Day march in Santa Cruz. This is how Feza wants to remember Santa Cruz, she said. Feza looked radiant. When i asked him how he was, after all this time, he laughed: “Good. I’m going back to Turkey in three weeks.”

He couldn’t believe i actually went to the European Social Forum, and he was still full of the “banner incident”. The huge MLKP banner (Marxist Leninist Communist Party of Turkey/North Kurdistan) at the main entrance of the ESF, which was at some point torn off by participants who didn’t want the faces of the holy trinity, and particularly Stalin, to be watching over the forum. This was deemed as “very anti-democratic” by the dogmatic Marxist forces that were strongly represented in the forum and in the organisation committee in particular. Those trying to tear the banners down were subsequently labelled “Trotskists”. Ah, the fossilised slogans, heros and tribal wars of the left – very tiring and this year, with the luxury of not being involved in the organisation of the forum, to be ignored all together. Feza lamented the pathetic state of the left in Turkey, that it was no coincidence that it had to be a Turkish banner with the face of Stalin, that Istanbul indymedia is totally in these dogmatic hands, etc. Hm, yes, of course the left in Turkey is very broken. But i’ve been seeing, much to my dismay, posters of Stalin at the other social fora, where the Turkish participation was not so marked. And what about our friends of the Socialist Workers Party, so strong in the UK and Greece? And let’s not forget how Indymedia in Belgium is in the hands of the stalinist left as well, with no other way of cutting through this dominance than starting up other indymedias – we have about 4 or 5 indymedias in the tiny space of Belgium by now, with different cities names masking different political tendencies. (So indymedia Ankara as the answer to indymedia Istanbul!) A wide-spread symptom, i’m afraid.

Anyway, it’s nice when Feza gets upset, cause then he writes an opinion piece about the sad state of the left (in relation to the EU process this time) and gets it published in Radikal Iki. For the friends who read Turkish, look here.

A sweet birthday dinner, with one story in particular i want to write down here as it made everybody laugh a lot (and me blush). With Berna and Feza leaving Santa Cruz soon, Bettina is looking for new house-mates. When one woman came to visit and they realized that she was living in the Chavez coop, they asked her whether she knew me. “Oh yes,” she responded, with a sceptical smile as Berna told the story, “she made an impression…” It seemed that a number of people in the house had a crush on me during the interviewing process, and so some of the boys in the house were all of a sudden – at least for the time of the interview – talking about feminism-this feminism-that… [ah right, i remember the particularly cute punky-anarcho boy who kept on asking questions about feminism…]. It still made people at the table laugh a lot, and while i was blushing it striked me again what a tiny place Santa Cruz is…

At night in my bed, in my room veranda room with all those windows, the moon was impressive. In a more down-to-earth mood of the night before – no good company to have dinner with, no laughter and wine – and having already taken my lenses out, i remembered thinking: “Why did Leta install a new lamp that shines right in my room at night? If some place needs extra lightening it’s the street and not our backyard.” Ah, it was the moon, and she’s doing something powerful here these days and nights. Giulia, il faut qu’on comprenne mieux: quand la lune est pleine ici, elle est comment où toi tu habites?

Diana and Andrew getting married on Treasure Island, San Francisco.
(photograph by Natascha)

My thoughts kept on taking me to Borgerhout today, where dear friends were (ah, those 9 hours of time difference so difficult to manage…) creating and inventing their resistance against the declarations of war started by the Danish right-wing newspapers. As Donna said the other day: “Do you believe this is an issue of the freedom of press? I don’t believe it for a second. And I am bewildered at how many dear colleagues in Europe draw upon anti-migrant rhetorics, in a way and to an extent that would be unthinkable here in the U.S., and we all know how racist the U.S. is.”

The feminist power of dislocating the debate, dislocating the framework of war, and starting to prepare the grounds to talk and relate in a different way. “Because in the current macho-discussions our voices remain unheard, and because we’re not exactely planning to wait till they listen to us, we are organizing our own meeting.”
I can imagine them/you so-well in ‘t Werkhuys, i hail them/you, and hope to hear more about this beautiful meeting soon.
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