All posts tagged: sandra cisneros

So you quit your job to travel the world?

Quitting my job to become a traveling writer was not easy. While determining my premeditated roaming as yearlong provided some sort of framework, truth be told I was freaking the hell out until I finally bought that first ticket and left Israel. At this point my neurosis didn’t necessarily subside but just looked better under a tropical sun. Looking back, I think my psychological trajectory from the day I resigned until I finally became a real-life traveling bum had various clearly defined stages. The Four Stages in the Psyche of the Unemployed Traveler The state of ecstasy. That’s the moment right after you hand in your resignation letter and sit at your office desk looking at Google images of the beaches you will be lounging at and mountains you will be climbing. That is after 1-2 months, during which you must continue coming to the office and pretend to care about the job you just quit. When that sinks in begins the second stage: impatient annoyance. Things that never bothered you before like the lady that tells you …

Love as Understood through Mexican Telenovelas, Turkish Movies, and Colombian Chickenshit

Sometime in the last decade Turkey became the world’s second largest exporter of television shows, particularly soap operas. According to a report Turkish soap opera exports went up from only $10,000 in 2004 to $200 million in 2012. Many people I meet around the world ask if I know this or that character from a Turkish soap that I’ve never heard of. I once tried to watch the Muhteşem Yüzyıl, (The Magnificent Century) about the life of Sultan Süleyman, the greatest ruler of the Ottoman Empire. Its episodes, which often last over two hours, feature many scenes where two lovers stare at each other for minutes on end to melancholic music as palace rules prevent them from expressing their love through touching. As Turkish soaps become the talk of the world, academics argue the extent to which they increase Turkey’s soft power in the Middle East and the Balkans, where the shows have been particularly popular, though I wonder how much influence can bad actors staring at one another have even if they are popular. …