Tents everywhere - winds of change

Waking up, waking up. The burnt-out middle-class is finally waking up. Tents set up all over the country. And I mean – all over. Not just in the central cities. But in the periphery as well. And in Arab towns.

We’ve known all too many strikes throughout the years, but it’s always been one specific group or another. Now, we’re finally beginning to feel something in the air. Thousands are out in the streets: doctors, young people, workers, parents to small children. Fighting for a welfare state. Finally beginning to make the connections between the different struggles.

Yes, much is still lacking. They’ve not made the conscious connection to the conflict – yet. Most of them perceive the struggle as not political. One of the leaders of the “baby strollers” protests stressed the fact that it is not a political protest, yet she contradicted herself by saying that their main demand is that education come before security, and that they see themselves as a social movement for change. Now this is as political as it gets.

I am optimistic especially because of her reference to security. Israeli society is beginning to see the cost of the conflict. Beginning to see that it’s affecting their personal lives. This is what feminist organizations have been pointing to for years, but the public has always been blind to this. Everything was always marginalized in the name of security.

I am optimistic. I don’t think there ever was such a wide struggle, uniting so many groups. Yes, I know I said that I’ve reached a saturation point – but I’m positive that you’ll find me out there on the streets soon – marching, protesting. Winds of change are blowing and I can feel them.

Saturation Point [?]

I feel that I have reached my saturation point with the conflict. It breaths through me, it invades my dreams, it passes by me on the street and it sits next to me on the bus. As strange as it may sound, it has become closer to me than a lover – in certain ways. This blog is about my personal experiences as related to the conflict – and its different elements and layers. The main theme running through my novel is the conflict. Even the contents of my paid work include the conflict. Almost everything in life becomes marginal as the conflict digs in further and deeper into my bones.

So – do we not also reach a saturation point? I wonder. Since last September, I’ve been going through a long process of distancing myself from the conflict in different ways. And now I see that this has become something systematic, and indicates a turning point. A turning point which also requires taking time to think.

So, what happened in September that initiated this process? I participated in a seminar on project planning, organized by a Swedish foundation. From inside Israel, we were four women – two working at Palestinian feminist organizations in Israel and two working for mixed Palestinian and Jewish organizations. The first two days of the seminar went by smoothly. On the third morning, one of the Jordanian participants stood up in front of the whole group of about 20 participants, and said that she is withdrawing from the seminar because there are women from Israeli organizations at the seminar. She claimed she didn’t know this beforehand (although she received a participants’ list with our organizational affiliations, and I introduced myself on the first day as a member of a mixed organization). She was only referring to me and the other participant from the mixed organization. Her claim was that this was a normalization of the occupation and thus she will have no dealings with any Israeli organizations. Her last sentence almost knocked me off my chair. She said: “It’s nothing personal.”

How dare she tell me that it’s not personal when it was my very personal decision to work at a mixed organization? This was a big trauma for me, the story of course doesn’t end here, but it just gets too complicated to write about.

Anyway, this is where the current phase started for me. Up until then, I was still in the steering committee of Isha L’Isha’s Women, Peace and Security project. When I returned from the seminar, I took a break from the steering committee, thinking that I only need some time off my activism. Well, I’m still on that break. Many activities have been going on since then – there was a learning group on citizenship and feminism, of which I only attended the first meeting. Now I hear about plans for a weekend retreat to work on a feminist vision of citizenship. I was excited at first, and was even looking forward to participate. Now I’m hesitating again. Isha L’Isha was also just approved a big grant from the EU for the Women, Peace and Security project, and I got excited and thought to come back to the steering committee. But nothing happened and I am still not back.

I’ve been preoccupied by this process for the past few weeks, feeling that something is not right here. How come I am applying so much resistance to going back? What is it I fear? Yes, the contents are difficult to cope with, but I have a community of supportive friends who make the burden bearable. Or have I just reached a saturation point? I even went so far as calling the coordinator of our Women and Medical Technologies project, telling her that I’d love to become more active and volunteer in the project she’s coordinating.

But today I stop to write. Today I stop to think. Putting thoughts into concrete words on the page helps to make things clear. It helps to see the process. In the past years, I’ve had my “vacations” from the conflict – short two-three month breaks to get some air and then go back with renewed energies. This time, it’s been almost a year. I still do write about the conflict on my blog, and it still takes up the bulk of my novel. But no actions. Only words.

And when I think of the saturation point, I get scared. Because do I have the moral right to turn my back on the conflict? Tutu’s sentence keeps popping up in my head: “If you are silent in situations of injustice, you have taken the side of the oppressor." Does this mean that if I go on to pursue other things and become active in other, less “urgent” issues, that I have taken the side of the oppressor? And then, who is to decide what issues are more urgent than others?

I’ve read something that Talma recently wrote. She wrote that her mother told her to do anything she wanted, as long as her reflection in the mirror was clean. I think I will adopt this sentence for myself. It is such a simple yet strong image. And I know that I want to see a clean reflection of myself in the mirror. Clean and clear.

No. I don’t have an answer. The writing of this is only part of the process, and I guess I will continue to think it over. Fur now, I am at the stage of saturation. But then, things change all the time. One thing I know for sure: that the conflict will keep getting into my bed at night, if only as a dream. It will keep occupying a central place in my life, even if there will be long periods of time where I am not active in any physical sense.

Tomorrow is a new day.

Yes, even Capital Letters can be Political

ok don't take this post too seriously. It's something I've been playing around in my mind with.

So I've dropped the caps from my name. This was after I've dropped all but the first letter of my family name [but that's in another post] I'm no longer Khulud Kh. I am khulud kh.

Why? No, not for the same reason that bell hooks dropped her caps.

It's for a much simpler reason - my name in its original language - Arabic - is خلود.
No caps. And since it's an Arabic name, why should it be Englishized or Anglicanized (yes, I'm making up words along the way) or Westernized?
I realize that many languages in the world use caps - and for good reasons. But there are many other languages - Arabic and Hebrew just two examples - that don't have caps, and don't see any reason for using caps.

My Arabic name doesn't have caps, and therefore, it will not have caps in English either.

I've been interviewed by a German friend for a German newspaper for a theater-festival. I've explicitly asked her to make sure that my name appears without the caps. The editors refused to drop them, claiming that "nobody would understand that this is an artist name." So I was once again Khulud Kh. But this is not my "artist name." It's MY name. And I think that one of my very basic rights is to decide how I spell my name.

No - I'm not making an issue of it - as I wrote in the beginning, no need to take it seriously. These are just my ramblings at a late hour of the night. Sometimes I laugh at this, but sometimes it does annoy me. This invasion even of my very name and my ownership of it [not to mention ways of spelling and why I spell it with a "kh" and why there are no "o"s in it].

Is there still Hope? - The Hebrew Version

Photograph by Sam Contis who also owns the cactus, which is a piece of art by Naomi Safran-Hon. The text in the image is by Hannah Safran. All rights reserved.

And so tonight I received a follow-up email from my friend Hannah Safran, with the Hebrew version of the cactus this time. In Hebrew, the words are different. It says: "and when they torture him, he will multiply and he will erupt." There is use of the affirmative in the sentence, stressing the act of multiplying and erupting. Thinking about it, the language is archaic and it may be something from the Torah.

Anyway - the Hebrew text only reinforces my second interpretation about the hope. That the desire of this cactus to live is so strong that it will even break through cement.

Is there still Hope?

Photograph by Sam Contis who also owns the cactus, which is a piece of art by Naomi Safran-Hon. The text in the image is by Hannah Safran. All rights reserved.

I received this photo today by email from a good friend of mine, Hannah Safran.
In the subject line, she wrote: "44 years against the occupation."
In the body of the email, she wrote: "the cactus grows inside the cement. is there still hope?"

The picture and the words can be interpreted in two contradicting ways.
When I first saw the picture and read the words, I felt sad. Something heavy settled in my stomach. Why? Because cement in this context connotes death for me - the solid end. And for a cactus to grow inside the cement - well, I thought to myself, it must have been out of desperation.

Then I closed the computer, went to bed, couldn't sleep, came back here, opened the email again, and read the words once again:
"the cactus grows inside the cement. is there still hope?"
I lingered on every word. The cactus is growing. It's growing. Yes, it's growing in the cement, but growing. Meaning that the cactus has not lost hope. On the contrary, this is one hell of a cactus! Won't give up! Life is so precious to it that it makes roots even in cement! It's rootedness - what we call SUMUD.

Then the other part of the sentence, "is there still hope?"
Well, let me tell you something! I have plans for a better tomorrow. If I didn't have dreams of a better tomorrow, then there would be no reason for me to be here.
And what is the alternative, anyway? To lose hope? Now that's the scary part. I don't even want to imagine what would happen if we do lose hope...

forgetting the political for a moment

(c) copyright khulud kh

yes, I know. This blog is supposed to be about the political constantly forcing its way into the personal, fragmenting my life. But not always. There are many unfragmented moments of joy in life. So here's something small I wrote on the go.

On my way home from my parents
Sitting on a bench, the sun boiling my back into something crispy. In front of me, a thin long strip of yellow daisies. Deep yellow. I feel like I want to taste this color yellow. A car stops right behind me. The sky is clear. Not one single streak of a cloud. It looks as if sleeping - no moving clouds. The horizon is blurred - the colors are swimming one into the other - from light blue to gray to dark blue of the sea.

The car is still behind me, standing but motor running. I don't look back at all. Three birds are chasing one another in the wind. Or the wind chasing after them. Along the sidewalk, baby trees are trapped in dark green metal cages. Lest they take off with their roots and move down the mountain and walk right off into the wild. Have to tame them. The white car is gone now. My shoulders are on fire. Time to go. It was a moment of a pause - short - from life. Only a moment.

"How Arabs Stole Jewish Property"

Riding the bus this evening from the office, a man in his fifties sat across from me. He had a blue folder, and when he opened it, I could read the title "money" in big letters. I tried to think of what he does - is he a student? Or maybe a business man trying to learn how to make more money. He closed the folder. A few minutes later, he opened it again and flipped to an English article with the title "How Arabs Stole Jewish Property." Underneath, I could only vaguely glimpse the years 1946 and 1948. With this new knowledge of the material this man was reading, I suddenly became aware of my national identity, which minutes earlier was very much asleep. And I looked at his face, and all of a sudden it seemed somewhat different. The contents of the title of that article were somehow reflected in his eyes.

For Juliano, life was art and art was resistance

Again, tragedy strikes. Again, I am struggling with words. And again, words are failing me when I most need them. Because what words can be used to describe feelings beyond pain, agony and desperation? Words seem too shallow for the emotions lodged somewhere inside of me, refusing to budge. But then, I chose words as my medium, so for me – what else is there other than words?

I received the news of Juliano’s murder from my father – his voice had urgency in it. He spoke in rapid words, “hada takhu la Juliano” (they shot Juliano) First, disbelief. Then, deeper disbelief. I put the phone down, my brain in chaos. No. My father must be mistaken. It just can’t be. But then reality hit me in the face – of course it can be! After all, we live in an armed conflict zone. Where life and death are interconnected and tragedy can strike at any moment. Though I know this, every time it succeeds in astonishing me and in disturbing my mental and emotional balance.

A chaotic evening followed – phone calls, chat, emails… And when I couldn’t stay with it any longer, I went to a café and had two badly needed glasses of wine. A close friend contained me with all my sadness and weakness, not letting me fall apart and shatter on the ground into fragments. And when I came back home, I collapsed into my bed, thoughts of Juliano again taking up all the space in my brain.

Juliano Mer Khamis, son of a Palestinian father and a Jewish mother. In a land torn between two peoples, he at once belonged to both and to neither. In a land where national and religious identity is central to most, he transcended to a place beyond – for him, life was art and art was resistance. For him, there were no distinctions between these three separate concepts.

A one-of-a-kind artist and political activist, Juliano was wholly dedicated to fostering a new, young generation of Palestinians with a vision of reaching freedom through artistic, non-violent means. Juliano wanted to reconstruct and rebuild that which has been destroyed. He wanted to give the children of the Jenin refugee camp hope – and for that he was murdered. He wanted to give them creative tools so that they can stand up with their head high and struggle for their freedom and their rights with art – and for that he was murdered.

The murder hit close home because we have something in common yet different – the use of art as a means of political action and resistance. But whereas I walk carefully between the drops of rain, making every effort to avoid getting wet, Juliano stepped into the puddles. He was true to himself as an artist, true to himself as a human being, and true to his values. His art was above and beyond his fear for his personal security. His was fearless commitment with no real regard to consequences, whereas mine is muddled with rational thoughts of “what ifs.”

And this takes me back to a thought that takes up much space in my personal writing: “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.” (Desmund Tutu)

There are many things I fear writing about publicly. I fear for my own personal safety and for the safety of my daughter. And thus much of it remains in my private collection, not seeing the light and not reaching readers. This is what bothers me most – how true am I to my values of justice? To what extent am I willing to step into puddles and not avoid the rain drops? To what extent am I willing to merge my writing – my art – with my resistance? Where are the boundaries and to what extent do I stretch them in the name of…?

What I do know for a fact now that Juliano’s murder opened up this space for me – a deeper crack to examine my writing and the issues I avoid writing about for fear of… because for me, there’s no point in writing if it doesn’t serve a higher purpose and the values I believe in. If it doesn’t strive to make structural social change…

my private revolution

sunrise in Uganda. photo by khulud kh. All rights reserved.

There are grand revolutions that affect the future of whole nations, such as the one we recently witnessed in Egypt. And then there are calm revolutions that sometimes happen without us even noticing. Mine is one such calm revolution but which affected my life tremendously. Becoming part of Isha L’Isha’s supportive feminist community has changed me immensely on many levels. One major impact directly related to Isha L’Isha is the development and rise of my political voice. I live my life through words, but for the most part they have been hidden in the folds of my private life. With the support of my feminist friends, and the feminist outlook that the personal is political, my small revolution began taking root. Today I feel that my own personal experiences have the legitimacy and the right to take up space in the public sphere. Today, I am no longer intimidated to make my voice heard loud and clear. Today, I no longer have doubts about sharing my personal experiences and connecting them to the larger socio-political reality. For me, this is a tiny revolution on a major scale, and it has affected my development as a writer. For this, I will always be grateful to the supportive and empowering feminist women of Isha L’Isha.

Preventing Assimilation in the holy land

Let's try to imagine the following scene:
You are walking in a major city in the United States. The year is 2011. You walk into a nice restaurant, and settle down with the menu. As you look around you on the pictures hanging on the wall, you see a certificate close to the bar. You want to know what kind of a certificate this restaurant received, so you walk over and read the following: “This is to certify that this business does not employ Blacks.”
Or does it say, “This is to certify that this business does not employ Jews.”
So, is this racism? I don't think that there is one person who would argue otherwise.

Now let's switch to Israel 2011. “LEHAVA – Preventing Assimilation in the Holy Land” recently convened a conference in Jerusalem, where they launched their new campaign for “Preventing Assimilation in the Holy Land.” The idea is to issue certificates to businesses who commit to not employing Arabs. The certificate reads “this is to certify that this employer employs Jews and does not employ enemies.” In a news item, one of the business owners proudly said, “I'm not a racist. I just love Jews more.” And I am wondering... how many people are still blind in this country? And how far can this insane racism go?

"Security" everywhere

You can’t go anywhere in Israel without being searched – your bag, your car, your body. Security guards lurk everywhere – coffee shops, shopping malls, schools, buses, businesses. Their metal detecting machines are ready to slide down your body ever so slowly, revealing those hidden secrets in the folds of your dress.

I try to avoid shopping malls as much as possible. But today I had an errand – Ziyad’s phone was dead and the cell-phone company’s service center is located in the Haifa shopping mall. So I had no choice.

We passed the first security guard – he was sitting on a chair, looking decidedly bored. He thought we were not worth a second glance. A young woman behind the wheel with an unshaved man sitting next to her. Ziyad’s unshaven beard has become his unequivocal stamp: his statement to the world. Not that he needs it, with his dark complexion he undoubtedly looks the part. Now if he were driving, the security guard wouldn’t let us pass so easily. But I guess he only saw me, it was already getting dark, and it was probably the end of his shift and all he wanted was to get the hell out of there – out of his security guard role for the day.

The second security guard stopped us. He opened the back door, making small talk. The “good evening how are you” is meant to identify the distinctive Arabic accent. We had some papers strewn on the back seat, and the guard asked if they were business papers. He then asked me to open the trunk of the car. And that’s where it all began. For some reason, I couldn’t open the trunk. Ziyad came out of the car, tried to open it, but still it wouldn’t budge. Ziyad’s irritation began to surface as he talked to me in Arabic. The guard studied us, still calm. But when Ziyad told him “the trunk won’t open, what’s the problem just let us go,” he began showing signs of distress. He got on his communication radio and reported to a more senior guard “come quickly, there’s a man here who won’t open the trunk for inspection.” I knew that was what Ziyad needed to hear to lose control. “Why did you lie?! Can’t you see I’m trying to open the trunk?! What do you want me to do, it won’t open!!” They exchanged some words, all the while ignoring me. I said to the guard, “listen, friend, the car is mine; I’m responsible for opening the trunk, so you deal with me. And you, Ziyad, get in the car and be quiet.” Ziyad shot me a dark look, telling me “get inside the car and shut up!”

Then another guard appeared, the one summoned. He was calm, I could even see a trace of a smile on his face. “What’s the problem?” “The problem is that your guard here is a liar. The trunk won’t open, and he says that I refuse to open it for inspection.” I tried to make myself visible again, “the car is mine, I’m responsible for it being opened for inspection. The trunk won’t open.” “Shut up,” Ziyad shot at me, this time with a wicked smile. “See how he talks to her? She is so polite, and look how he is behaving,” the first guard tells the second guard. The second guard smiled at me and asked to see my ID card. I handed him my driver’s license instead. “Have a good day,” and he let us go.


Looking back at the incident, I see at least three levels of interaction:
(1) The most obvious one is the “security” issue. Ziyad looks the “terrorist” part: his heavily-accented Hebrew, his agitated mood, unshaven beard and dark skin. He fits the profile security guards are trained to immediately identify. An all too familiar scenario must have run through the guard’s mind: Ziyad was using a “clean-looking” woman as a distraction; the bomb was hidden in the trunk. At a certain point I could see the flash of horror in the guard’s eyes – the bomb would go off, killing us all on the spot. A scenario he got drilled about during his training period, but he never actually imagined he would have to cope with it in real life. Until this moment, it was just theoretical matter he had to study in order to get his gun.
(2) The second level has to do with the politics of identities and ethnicities. The security guard was an Ethiopian immigrant. Ethiopians have been placed by Israeli society at the bottom of the social ladder, even below Arabs. So this was a contest between the two men, each making an effort to make himself look superior by crushing the other into that low inferiority.
(3) The raw, primitive form of male dominance. Each of them tried to prove that he is the “man” and has the final word. I don’t need to go into this – it’s the same old battle of men since the beginning of history.

I’m sure this list is incomplete, and upon deeper examination, additional layers can be revealed. But this was my own personal-political experience, yet again proving that the personal is indeed political.

leave the back door open

So… what can I tell you…
I’ve been trying to get closer to you,
I’ve tried so many paths – unused and new.
But each time – you slam the door in my face!

So… what can say to you…
I am not a woman of games.
This labyrinth is not for me – anymore.
Not at my age.

So… what can I ask you…
Maybe you could just once –
Leave a door open…
I’ll settle even for that rusty old back door.
And we could just pretend – that you forgot to close it… once…

taking pain, sadness and grief for a walk in the rain

(partial post - to be continued later)


So I admit. Not everything has to be connected to the conflict (although if I dig deep enough, I’m sure to find the connection). I’m making an effort here to avoid making this post a cliché, but I guess it’s unavoidable in this case.

Walking in the rain without an umbrella.

There comes a time in life when all there is left to do is let the rain soak up the body to the bone, hoping that from this place we can only grow.

Pain becomes a physical entity, first lodging itself in the throat, refusing to come back up with a cough, yet determined not to slide down either. But slowly, the body makes an opening, letting the pain glide down. (this process can take up to two weeks).

Upon reaching the stomach cavity, the pain is joined by sadness first, and then by grief. Together, they make a comfortable home for themselves in the stomach – dragging in heavy furniture and thick blankets, for they are planning to stay the winter.

And so I walk around with them inside me. They feel very heavy in there – what furniture they brought in! And when I almost gave in to them, it started raining. Being a woman of the winter, I grabbed my heavy fleece coat, put the hood over my head, and took my pain, sadness and grief for a walk in the rain. Without an umbrella.

Militaristic Discourse like a Raging Fire

photo taken from israblog nana.

The Carmel Mountain burned for five days, and the all too known militaristic discourse which controls the consciousness of Israeli society, and constitutes the artificial glue holding everything together, reached new heights.

I didn’t follow the discourse closely, but there was no need to. There’s no need to search between the lines for this hard-core militaristic discourse. It stood out – there was no need to make extra efforts to notice it. I got updated on the news like any other citizen – about twice a day through online media, I read the Friday print-edition headlines and that’s pretty much about it.

So what did we have? Yes, I am well aware that when it comes to fire, there’s no way of avoiding the use of some language of fighting, like “fight the fire.” I’ve followed wild, raging fires around the world, but everywhere it was just a fire – nothing more. No government or media have ever made the fire serve a different cause. But of course in Israel, everything is looked at from a different perspective. Those in power (government and media) look for the hidden potential in everything; a potential to serve their own agenda. And the main agenda in Israel is to keep feeding the fear of society.

So what language did we have during and following the fire? Here’s some of the language. I didn’t write the expressions down, this is what I remember right off the top of my head, but there must be more. It would be interesting to take a sample of media items published during this time and make a research of the militaristic discourse used and the context in which it appears.

 “The Five Day War” – which immediately calls into mind the Six Day War of 1967.
 “An Environmental Holocaust” – no need for comments.
 “We don’t have another country, and it’s a very small country” – Netanyahu, Israel’s Prime Minister said this when asked how come they were able to put the fire out in such short period of time.
 The word “battle” instead of “fight.” In Hebrew – at least this is my own feeling – the word “battle” (krav) is a very strong word, reminding war.

Other than this, there were radio stations which broadcast 24/7 news of the fire. Updates, correspondence from the site, all kinds of interviews with fire experts, trauma experts, representatives from local municipalities, government officials, men from the military, police officers, people who had to evacuate, people whose houses were burned, you name it. And when they exhausted everything, it started all over again. This is the culture of war. This is what we have when there’s war, and the media reproduced it.

I don’t own a television, but when I was at my parents’ house, I saw the same thing on TV. At least a couple of channels were broadcasting issues related to the fire constantly.

These are my reflections on the discourse during and following the fire. They are not some subtle issues under the surface – this reproduction of the militaristic discourse was too strong to be ignored.

"You can't join the group because you're not Palestinian"

“You can’t join the group because you’re not Palestinian.” It was said as a joke, and she of course didn’t really mean that I couldn’t join the group. But it was a shock to me nevertheless. It’s been a while since I felt an outsider, not belonging to either culture. I remember myself as a child – always somewhere in the corner, never belonging. I was the “foreigner.” I tried hard to fit in, but never quite succeeded. Something was always somewhat off; things never fit exactly into their neat slots. This feeling accompanied me throughout my adolescent years in high school. As an adult, I came to terms with my bi-cultural background and found my identity. Yes, I come from two cultures. But today I feel that my identity is much more closely connected to my Palestinian side than my Slovak. It might be because I left Slovakia at the tender age of eight. It might be because I know almost nothing of Slovakia’s history or literature. It might be because I was searching for roots for so long and when I didn’t find any, I sprouted some here on the slope of the Haifa Carmel Mountain. I don’t know the exact reasons why, nor do I feel any need for them. But I know that I am a Palestinian. Is there a need to explain why? No, I don’t think so either.

Whenever I am asked to present myself, somebody always reminds me in one form or another that I am “half-and-half.” I wonder why they feel this need? What, am I less of a Palestinian because I have foreign blood in me? I don’t want to be looked at as a foreigner anymore. I had been a foreigner – an outsider – most of my childhood years. No more! I am not “half-and-half.” I am a whole. And it is up to me how I present myself to the world. If I feel I am wholly Palestinian, then I am wholly Palestinian, and nobody has the right to take this identity away from me.

So when she said the words – even though jokingly – I felt again my identity is being questioned. But it wasn’t only questioning my identity, but my very belonging to this group of feminist activists, with whom I struggle daily for justice. Suddenly, my very right to stand by her side and to struggle along with her was undermined. Because I am not a Palestinian. Her words threw me again into a turmoil of representation and how I am perceived by my colleagues. Am I still perceived as an outsider? Do I not have the same claims to make my voice heard as they do? Only because my blood contains foreign blood-cells? I stand up and I refuse this label. I am not an outsider. I am not a foreigner. I am Palestinian.
Afterthought: No, being Palestinian of course isn’t my sole identity. I have a plethora of other identities which together compose my whole person. I’ve written about this in the past, for example in the post I am.