A good chunk of public life in this place is concentrated on Pacific Ave, the one main street in town where most of the shops, a number of restaurants and bars and two cinema theatres are located. Pacific Ave on a Friday night is to be avoided, if one doesn’t appreciate a kind of compulsory small town “it’s time to go out and have fun” atmosphere. Too familiar from those American movies and series that actually make you happy you didn’t have to grow up in that place (oh mama, now i want to know why precisely you decided we shouldn’t grow up in the U.S. and move back to Belgium? will you tell me?), and too familiar from growing up in the village, where that kind of Friday and Saturday night entertainment was definately greatly aspired by the bored-to-death teenagers, an aspiration which couldn’t be met in our small village (with its public space limited to a grocery shop, a bakery, a school, a church and a cafe, and the youth movement house) and which took the kids to neighboring bigger villages.
Do you remember that you didn’t let me go out till i was 16, mama? And of course i wanted to, “going out” (from that place) sounded so promising. Did i ever tell you the truth about that first time that i could go? That i found it so stupid, so senseless, such a waste of time. That, if anything, this rural discotheque was village stupidity and boredom larger than live; it was by no means going out, rather falling deeper into it. Of course, i couldn’t tell you then, after having put up the “why can everybody go except me” routine for a while, but i stopped wanting this “going out”. Would only be satisfied with a “going (getting) out” of a more radical kind (remember the episode when i desperatedly wanted to go to school in New York…) Anyway, my first friday evening downtown in Santa Cruz, back in February – while i was walking home between the loud, drunk, behaving stupidly and vomitting teenagers (and students no doubt, they’re beginning to look so young…) – represented one of the moments of lucidity in which i knew i couldn’t stay in this place. Yesterday evening i walked on Pacific Ave again, on my way to Berna and Feza. It was early in the evening, just after dusk. I had a six-pack of Corona and a big bag of blue tortilla chips in my hands (an evening of movies!) and was addressed pretty much the whole way down the street, by underage kids and the homeless, begging for one of those bottles of beer…
We started off watching a Belgian movie, Everybody’s Famous! I hadn’t seen it before, didn’t think it was a good movie, but Berna and Feza had heard good things about it. And it was sweet, and interesting from a Marxist analysis, in which we indulged ourselves – its represenations of a post-industrial context and of class (heavily marked by differences in a spectre of Flemish and Dutch accents, which totally got lost in the subtitles of course…). And one scene made us laugh so much we almost rolled out of the sofa… on the basis of an eye-witness of one of the kidnappers of the famous singer the police makes a profile that is subsequently distributed, and according to the profile the kidnapper (a white guy with blond hair and blue eyes…) is… Moroccan. Before watching the movie we had a whole session on the recent “events” in Belgium of course – the stabbing to death of the 17 year old Joe Van Holsbeek some weeks ago which initiated an intense scapegoating of the Moroccan community until (and still after…) it seemed that the perpetrators were Polish kids, and the rambo-style action of taking a gun to the streets and killing non-white people (women and a girl basically) by an 18 year old white boy (who happens to be the nephew of a Vlaams Belang politician) in Antwerpen and the current discussion whether this is a racism or an disturbed kid (who actually declared that his mission was to kill as many non-white people as possible, but you see, he might be so disturbed that he is deluded and even if he proudly claims to be a racist, it might actually not be appropriate to speak of racism in this case, cause he’s a disturbed individual and Belgium is not really a racist society and the earth is oh-so-flat – do you understand? But i shouldn’t get on my horse now, saving the AAA (Anger, Analysis and kicking-Ass) for the Flanders blog that Nadia and me are starting soon… What was i writing about? Movies (and i had brought Yes; friends, i really want you to see Yes!) and companionship and sleeping over and making pancakes in the morning. And so today I was walking down Pacific Ave again on my way home, and all of sudden i saw and heard this bunch of old grey ladies who squatted – with a little table and banners and their somewhat fragile but impressive selves – in the middle of Saturday afternoon (shopping) business.
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Armed with aprons and kitchen utensils, they were singing popular and American folk songs with modified lyrics – one of songs they had aptly entitled “The Raging Grannies”. This one i heard a couple of times (to the tune of Country Roads):Bring ‘m home, bring ‘m home To the place, where they belong There are children, stop the killing, Bring ‘m home |
They were from the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom; they even looked as if they had been part of the league since it was founded. More than that, they looked determined, “still standing”, and not planning to go anywhere else soon. Their leaflet reads: “It was the wisdom of our founding foremothers in 1915 that peace is rooted not only in treaties between great powers or even in ending the arms race. They understood that peace can only flourish when it is planted in the soil of justice, freedom, non-violence, opportunity and equality for all.” They were collecting signatures against the war in Iraq to send to senators (“Can i sign, i’m not a U.S. citizen?” “Of course, my dear, they won’t really know, will they?” she giggled. “The more post-cards we send to our senators, the more pressure they will feel.”) And they were giving out cards for Mother’s Day (“What about giving this card to your mother instead of shopping for a present?”). I’m sometimes troubled by peace-activism so rooted in a certain notion of motherhood. But not on Mother’s Day, and not here in Santa Cruz where i wished more of the students would continue to struggle and organize against the war their country is waging. And i wish i could give you the card the raging grannies made, mama, but it won’t cross the atlantic in time. So i copy the text below for you. En ik wens je fijne moederdag, mama, van ver weg, maar toch ook weer dichtbij! dikke kus, sarah
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Mother’s Day began with a woman named Julia Ward Howe,
who nursed the wounded during the American Cival War. In 1870
she started a crusade to institute a Mother’s Day as a Day for Peace.
Here is her Mother’s Day proclamation:
Arise, then, women of this day! Arise all women who have
hearts, whether our baptism be that of water or of tears!
Say firmly: “We will not have great questions decided by
irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall not come to us,
reaking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons
shall not be taken form us to unlearn all that we have been
able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.”
We women of one country will be too tender of those
of another country to allow our ons to be trained to
injure theirs. From the bosom of the devasted earth
a voice goes up with our own. It says: “Disarm, Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.”