Magical Realism at the Polls

The Maltese elections provided a surreal backdrop to more important things happening in my personal space. The intersection between timelines was interesting, with the circus I had to follow as a journalist and commentator bordering on magical realism. Some of the proposals were worthy of a José Saramago or Gabriel García Márquez novel. Unfortunately, it was not like in Seeing, where a sham democracy collapses under the weight of an abstention epidemic, but more like the gypsies selling extraordinary wares in Macondo. In such circumstances, although I am probably voting for the Greens, I am appalled by platitudes about the virtues of voting, and it is worth recalling Saramago’s line in Seeing that “by casting a blank vote, you're saying you have a political conscience but you don't agree with any of the existing parties.”  

The reality is that real social battles are rarely won in elections but through communities, unions, activists, and everyday struggles. The rest of politics is an amusement park. Still, unlike the gypsies in Macondo, our politicians are here to stay and, to win favour, they insist on restricting the goodies to the natives. But wait for the shit to hit the fan. Eventually, at this rate, like the dictator in The Autumn of the Patriarch, they will have to sell the sea to a consortium of foreign businessmen.

Moving Trains / Crossing Timelines

You can never cross the same river twice because it's not the same river and you are not the same person. So it follows that you can never meet the same person twice. Of course there is familiarity, character traits, ideology, heritage, roots, accumulated knowledge, ephemeral impressions, and looks, but whenever people meet they are like moving trains. Even faces change. So does the gaze. Sometimes the trains move so fast that meeting someone again feels different. Intersections and collisions can happen in different timelines. That is why true friends talk about each other.  In so doing they define themselves through each other's words and gaze. Yesterday I felt so good talking and drinking wine with my buddy because we did so.

The senior journalist

At work today, a colleague asked for my designation to put under a caption and another colleague loudly replied: senior journalist. I could not help but laugh at the sound of it. I have been designated as “senior” for the past decade or so, but today it came across as a reminder that I am in the autumn of my life.

Well, since last year some gentle Indian souls have started offering me their seat on the bus, I guess out of respect for my not-so-venerable age of 51.

I am not the type to worry about age. In many aspects of life I feel younger than I was twenty years ago. In many other aspects nothing much has changed since I was 16. Teenage Kicks by The Undertones remains a sort of anthem.

Of course, back in my younger days I imagined myself ageing gracefully, surrounded by loved ones and respected for my wisdom.  

Now, on most days, I sleep and wake up alone, spend a lot of time talking to and being with myself and, of course, still have loved ones with whom I like to share time.

Perhaps I am still wise, but perhaps a bit cranky too. In a number of situations I get confused about how I am supposed to act, which creates a certain awkwardness even in pretty normal exchanges.  

Funny that this reminder of my biological ageing process came after a sort of awakening from two or three years of emotional numbness.  Fuck! I could have made better use of that time.

I do not want to process, plan and zone everything. I am in between places, in a present carrying a lot of past and a little less future. I want to let my multitudes run amok a bit, simply for the sake of celebrating my presence here.

Let’s see how that goes — and how many pineapple cans I buy before they expire.

Schrödinger's wallet

One of the persistent thoughts I had as a child was that reality did not exist but was merely conjured up either by my brain — which I found distasteful and egocentric — or that I might just be part of someone else’s dream, which was even more problematic because the person dreaming might suddenly wake up and my life would simply vanish.

I eventually grew out of this and evolved into a materialist, albeit one who still believes in magical realism. Extraordinary things happen in the here and now, not elsewhere. But by my late teens I had developed another fantasy: that I could somehow slip from one timeline or universe into another. Once I even felt I experienced this. I was about to kiss a girl I was certain wanted to be kissed and the next thing I remember was her telling me not to stare at her. Heaven had been so close that it simply slipped away. Hardly the best example to prove the theory. I later experienced a similar sensation when I actually did kiss someone some months later.

In truth, the thought itself is pointless and can even become dangerous, because it can legitimise wrong choices by imagining they might have been the right ones in another realm. Still, sometimes the feeling of existing between worlds is intoxicatingly real, especially when it feels like being sucked into the void.  I still find the theme fascinating and am currently re-reading Murakami's Sputnik Sweetheart.  I love this quote from that book: “We're both looking at the same moon, in the same world. We're connected to reality by the same line. All I have to do is quietly draw it towards me.”

A few hours after writing this,  a curve ball was thrown at me by the universe.  Just before sleeping, I realised I might have left my wallet — with all my cards inside — at the office, but I could not be 100 per cent sure. This triggered my anxiety.  I had a panic attack because I had to wait until morning to know. It felt like a Schrödinger’s cat scenario: the wallet was both lost and safely on my desk until reality revealed itself.

What made it worse was that I had a radio show to face before I could even go to the office to check. I tried distracting myself, but my fallback  was another loop. Eventually, I stopped trying to solve the uncertainty and reminded myself instead of the good things already present in my life. I slept soundly.

I woke up at six without any hint of doubt that the wallet was 'alive', had a joyful breakfast with my son, enjoyed the radio programme, and later discovered the wallet sitting safely on my desk.

Maybe that is the answer to these loops. Reality is anchored less by certainty than by the small rituals and people that pull us back into the world. And the magical part is that uncertainty and failures are just part of living — not departures from it.  As Bob Dylan wrote "there is no success like failure and failure is no success at all."

The circus is in town

General elections in Malta have morphed into a circus of competing gift-giving — a kind of potlatch financed through accelerated economic growth that, in turn, opens the way to ever more get-rich-quick schemes. It is dizzying, yet strangely plausible.  

Foreign workers, on whose labour this temple was built, are weaponised in a battle where both sides accept their necessity while competing over how much to exclude them from sharing in the wealth they helped create.

There is no ideological battle for the soul of the nation.  There is just an auction to be paid from the proceeds of economic growth generated by profit driven capitalists.

Sure, I have a love-hate relationship with the modern, post-2013 Malta. I prefer living here now than I did 20 years ago. It is a more cosmopolitan place, even if it remains limited and unsophisticated in many ways. But I resent the incestuous relationship between the state and big business, the erosion of public spaces, and the Disneyfication of others. There is now a clear convergence around what increasingly resembles a country that has struck oil without ever having found it.   From my angle, the opposition will only aggravate matters through its socially regressive fiscal policies.

All this said, I do not see much hope.  The only fun aspect is the anthropology of it all.  Someone should really write about how masses are mobilised and energised in a situation where they are clearly being used to prop a benign regime composed of two rival branches.  Still must admit that I have a soft spot for conviviality, albeit one colonised by dominant elites.

 Given my line of work, I cannot really escape it. But in times like these, one comes to appreciate more joyful subjects and encounters. For the first time, I am considering political disengagement a sensible option — albeit one that would regrettably reinforce the status quo.   Still most civil battles are not won in elections but in the streets. 

Random reflections

 

2.The 'conversation' is an end in itself. It exists in a different realm, an enchanted one, creating a connection between different universes and the multitudes inhabiting them. It is alchemy, not the sort which seeks to create pure gold, but which one which thrives in imperfections.  Feels like being in a good existential French movie.  

5.The modern Malta I love: a Brazilian, an Argentinian, a Romanian, a Serb, a Latvian, and a  Maltese sitting around a table celebrating Orthodox Easter and talking about the good things in life. Feels like being in a good Spanish  (Almodóvar like) movie.  The good things in life.

7. Spending time with a dog is a wonderful learning experience. I never had a dog. When I was a child used to be scared of them.  I am also told that as a baby an over enthusiastic dog called spotty had jumped on me.  What striked me most about this experience is that dogs have a personality.  They have their own networks (of smells) and they have  more comfortable  relationship with shit and corporal smells.  They also communicate emotions and affection, which may be for purpose of a reward but how delighted I was when Asti came next to me in the middle of the night.  Then there is the sociological aspect; how dog people interact in parallel to dog interactions.  But the most surprising thing is that you can talk to a dog.  Not that the dog understands human language.  But neither does the dog ignore it.   In some instances you get the sensation that the dog is responding to your thoughts and feelings. Then finally there is the leash. Can't but admire the rare moment of anarchistic refusal to follow the lead. Of course part of it is human projection.  But there is something beautiful in the relationship, the tensions which underline affection, protection and freedom....of course not dominance in my case, pity the dogs owned by bigots and fascists.  

12. Schrodinger's cat in an inbox on an iphone. 

13. "In Between Days” and in between things. Love that song by The Cure. I have always felt drawn to stand in between things. The ambiguity of that space is challenging and intellectually stimulating, especially when you are at intersections pregnant with possibilities, points where life branches out like roots and mycelium. Even in politics, I have always liked that in-between space between socialism and anarchism and their various derivatives.  And while I can feel passionately about my beliefs, i always start from self doubt and irony.  That is also why I see friendships and romance as a spectrum of different ways of togetherness and that every meaningful relationship is a world of its own.  The same applies to sexual identity. There is a whole spectrum even within being heterosexual and having a penis, apart from the fact that 'heterosexuality' and 'maleness' are socially constructed, while being me cannot be reduced to being a male who is attracted to females, apart from the fact that attraction itself is a rainbow.  

15. Chunking Express  (1994) is a cinematic embodiment of Zygmunt Bauman’s concept of "liquid love"—the idea that in modern, fast-paced, urban environments, human bonds become fragile, ephemeral, and easily replaced. But it touches another level; the value of ephemeral connections.  Wong Kar-wai finds a strange, melancholy beauty in liquidity. He suggests that if everything is destined to expire (like pineapple cans), then the briefest moments of kindness and connection carry an almost magical weight.

18.I think the most radical choice in life is to be real in all circumstances. But I am aware that the borderline between the act and the real is blurred. In a way, authenticity can be the most deceptive act. We have seen this in far-right politics, where ignorant bar talk becomes a badge of authenticity. Bashing intellectuals as elitist is part of the game. It is because sophistication, intellect and good taste can be threatening to people living very dull lives. Theirs is not rebellion; it is just angst.

Sure, it becomes even more difficult to strike an elusive balance between the real and the act when you have some sort of public persona to keep up, and you are perceived by others on the basis of what you write, sometimes on matters about which you have absolutely no strong feelings (for example, Maltese politics). Moreover, what does it mean to be real and authentic, especially considering that I am a multitude of contradictory things? How can you convey authentic feelings when you lean towards the in-between, the complex and the undefined?

One can say that authenticity boils down to actions, not words. True, but actions are also part of the act. This brings me to the question of how to cope with the dissonance between the self with which you are most at ease and the other aspects of life you perform to survive. There is also the problem of which self to show to different people.

There are some people with whom I instinctively show the side of myself with which I am most at ease. That feels great, even if it does not come without problems, because it means exposing my awkwardness. So, to some extent, solitude provides a comfort zone. But since the shrink told me to get out of my comfort zone, I am a bit lost.

31. There are mornings when you wake up with a different kind of lightness, one that comes from self-awareness and submission not to self-imposed rules but to life itself — a slow lightness that does not yearn but simply feels: a gentle melancholy. 

Genocide, Blood libel, and the Misuse of Antisemitism

'Blood libel' depicted in this scene was based on a fabricated lie that Jewish people used the blood of Christians in religious rituals, especially in the preparation of Passover bread which served as a pretext for pogroms and persecutions.

The terror attack in New York targeting two Israeli diplomats must be condemned as an act of political violence that has no place in democratic societies. What follows should not be misconstrued as an apology or justification. But such acts occur within a context that needs to be understood.

It is not antisemitism that fuels these heinous acts of terror, but the genocide itself—which has also endangered the lives of Jewish people. The scenes from Gaza are stomach-churning. The impact on the mental health of people—not necessarily Arabs or Muslims—who feel helpless in the face of this horror cannot be underestimated.

Yes, the Holocaust and the fight against antisemitism should define our political struggles. That is precisely why Israel must be stopped. Using this case to criminalise opposition to genocide only rubs salt into a festering wound. What is antisemitic is to conflate Jewish identity with support for genocidal and apartheid policies—a conflation particularly common among elements of the right who support Israel. As a historian am also appalled by Netanyahu attribution of the terror attack to “blood libels against Israel”. Am offended because a heinous anti semitic crime whose victims deserve respect is being invoked to justify a clampdown on critics who are denouncing a real crime.

My fear is that the genocide is triggering both antisemitism (which remains alive and well, even among those who claim to hate Jews but support settlers and colonists) and other, harder-to-define forms of political violence. Genocide without a response can also distort our moral compass, creating a misguided imperative that, while not necessarily antisemitic, can still be deadly. Of course, latent and subtle antisemitism can also be at play, which is why the pro-Palestinian movement should confront this issue head-on, showing zero tolerance towards any sign of anti-Jewish hatred.

I say this because the term antisemitism is being misused—exploiting a heinous act committed by an individual with tenuous links to left-wing organisations—to criminalise an entire movement. Genocide is not a word to be taken lightly. Accepting that it is happening without responding to it creates a profound crisis, including serious mental health struggles for those watching these events unfold on their screens.

That is why, in the initial stages of this war, I was reluctant to use the term—fully aware of its gravity. Yet with 54,000 people massacred, clear signs that mass starvation is being used as a weapon, and an evident intent to displace an entire population, one cannot escape the conclusion that the State of Israel is committing a crime against humanity.

Over the past decades, wars and bombardments have been justified under the pretext of humanitarian intervention—not only in the face of genocide (as in Kosovo), but also to prevent it (as was the case in Libya). The contrast with the Western response to what is unfolding in Gaza is so stark, it is mentally disturbing.

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