britney spears afghanistan
Flew out of Newark last night. Familiar floaty feeling in international airport terminals late at night, quiet but for the swish of mop and click of high heels & dull but for the colorful ascots and the charm of the marquee at each gate: LIMA 6:45 HONG KONG 8:40 TEL AVIV 6:20 QATAR BUDAPEST and so on. There's something about the nexus of repetitive infrastructure (magazines, bathrooms, over-priced pretzels, repeat) and Narnia-like possibility (behind the locked double door of each gate, an adventure). In such a stale smelling playground it's hard not to ask myself why I'm going back to Afghanistan for the third time.
I'm aware of the importance of this question. I can hear the fear in my mother's voice. We're not an I love you kind of family but she just said it to me on the cell before I checked through security. Still I find myself unable to think about this important question and instead pick up an airport copy of US Weekly, where I read that Britney Spears is showing increased signs of mental illness. exclamation point. The article by Kevin O'Leary recounts a "harrowing delivery of clothes" by an unnamed source to Britney's Four Seasons hotel room: "When we walked in, she was on a towel in the center of the bed, lights off, eating cheeseburgers. The room smelled so bad, like stale fries."
So, my sympathies are with Spears on this one. We've all had our cheeseburger-on-the-towel moments, awful enough without worrying that we're traumatizing the delivery boy, who ingratiatingly patters past our vacant depressed stare while he mentally bottles the stink of our stale fry farts for the tabloid reporter lurking downstairs. My friend Jake Halpern did a lovely piece about celebrity narcissism disorder that I'll try to find a link to. (As I'm writing this I'm in a plane over the Caspian Sea.) Until I heard Jake's essay on NPR I'd never heard a piece so empathetic to michael jackson. But what must it be like to live as a person who the world is watching? Who wouldn't go crazy under that pressure? When your every move really is being broadcast on prime time TV, it's not paranoid delusions. It's your life.
Call it perhaps the Britney Spears Theory of International Relations: some countries have more celebrity status than others. Afghanistan is one of the few places in the world that Americans seem to want to know about. And visiting Afghanistan these days can feel kind of like visiting Britney Spears' bedroom: you're horribly fascinated at the same time endlessly wondering why you've come; you want to stay to notice everything and you want very much to flee, you feel unprepared (you can't be otherwise) and the wider you open your eyes the less clear it is what's actually going on. The only thing you understand is that whatever is happening seems to have very little to do with the half-naked girl on the bed littered with fast food wrappings. She's only the mouse in the experiment. In the same way, and if you'll forgive the tabloid metaphors running through my airplane brain at the moment, but in the same way when I travel in Afghanistan I feel like I'm actually getting to know America, in a way that doesn't always smell super wonderful. And I'm tired of having only the delivery boy's version of events.
So. Here's my promise to you folks for the next month or so that I'm here. I will tell the truth as far as I'm capable, stale winds and all. I will probably not do it every day, but will go as far as my discipline and my electricity will allow. And I will try to include a little more news context, but don't expect details on the latest bombing, because I'm not interested in that, unless I see it myself.
Finally, I'm going to try to provide links to the things that my friends are involved in, even if it's not directly related to Afghanistan, because it occurred to me these past months in NYC how many amazingly cool are the things my friends are doing. And they inspire me and in general fill my brain with interesting colors not found in nature. And because it's nice to have food for one's inquiries besides tabloids and tribal beefs.
I'm aware of the importance of this question. I can hear the fear in my mother's voice. We're not an I love you kind of family but she just said it to me on the cell before I checked through security. Still I find myself unable to think about this important question and instead pick up an airport copy of US Weekly, where I read that Britney Spears is showing increased signs of mental illness. exclamation point. The article by Kevin O'Leary recounts a "harrowing delivery of clothes" by an unnamed source to Britney's Four Seasons hotel room: "When we walked in, she was on a towel in the center of the bed, lights off, eating cheeseburgers. The room smelled so bad, like stale fries."
So, my sympathies are with Spears on this one. We've all had our cheeseburger-on-the-towel moments, awful enough without worrying that we're traumatizing the delivery boy, who ingratiatingly patters past our vacant depressed stare while he mentally bottles the stink of our stale fry farts for the tabloid reporter lurking downstairs. My friend Jake Halpern did a lovely piece about celebrity narcissism disorder that I'll try to find a link to. (As I'm writing this I'm in a plane over the Caspian Sea.) Until I heard Jake's essay on NPR I'd never heard a piece so empathetic to michael jackson. But what must it be like to live as a person who the world is watching? Who wouldn't go crazy under that pressure? When your every move really is being broadcast on prime time TV, it's not paranoid delusions. It's your life.
Call it perhaps the Britney Spears Theory of International Relations: some countries have more celebrity status than others. Afghanistan is one of the few places in the world that Americans seem to want to know about. And visiting Afghanistan these days can feel kind of like visiting Britney Spears' bedroom: you're horribly fascinated at the same time endlessly wondering why you've come; you want to stay to notice everything and you want very much to flee, you feel unprepared (you can't be otherwise) and the wider you open your eyes the less clear it is what's actually going on. The only thing you understand is that whatever is happening seems to have very little to do with the half-naked girl on the bed littered with fast food wrappings. She's only the mouse in the experiment. In the same way, and if you'll forgive the tabloid metaphors running through my airplane brain at the moment, but in the same way when I travel in Afghanistan I feel like I'm actually getting to know America, in a way that doesn't always smell super wonderful. And I'm tired of having only the delivery boy's version of events.
So. Here's my promise to you folks for the next month or so that I'm here. I will tell the truth as far as I'm capable, stale winds and all. I will probably not do it every day, but will go as far as my discipline and my electricity will allow. And I will try to include a little more news context, but don't expect details on the latest bombing, because I'm not interested in that, unless I see it myself.
Finally, I'm going to try to provide links to the things that my friends are involved in, even if it's not directly related to Afghanistan, because it occurred to me these past months in NYC how many amazingly cool are the things my friends are doing. And they inspire me and in general fill my brain with interesting colors not found in nature. And because it's nice to have food for one's inquiries besides tabloids and tribal beefs.
posted by gregory arthur at
23:40
2 Comments:
cuz, your skill with the pen is enviable. anyone who can compare the dull grey of the airplane gate to Narnia, and the stale wind of fries long-gone in the GI tract of a celebrity nut job has my vote.
team cuz.
Wow...I wondered what kind of writing you were doing these days so I googled your name. Glad I did. This piece is both disturbing and gorgeous....the kind of writing I love. Good luck figuring out what you're doing in afghanistan.
Sharon Oosthoek
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