Bubbling Intentions

Champagne bubbles cling to my rigged plastic cup, lifting one by one to the orange surface. Everyone seems to have finished theirs for as I look around, I see nothing but empty white plastic and some ubiquitous paper cylinders whose content remains a mystery, but I want to savor mine. It’s not often you get to drink a mimosa during a lecture.

Ah, a lecture. We sit seriously—some more than others—papers before our torsos, pen in hand, wide-eyed, half-open, and all the way shut. Our clothing ranges from tank tops to belly shirts to Joe’s hot pink New Kids On The Block jacket; an audience wouldn’t be able to deem what the temperature is. Neither can I. As Markus speaks with us about borders, I fidget with frustration to establish a better temperature than the one before. Sweater on. No, off. No, just off my shoulder… but there seems to be no refuge until his words link my interest.

“Here are the negative components of borders,” he says, pointing to a list beginning with Xenophobia and ending with Segregation. Nationalism, War and Militant Conflict, and Totalitarianism were found in between. “Here are the few positive:” Welfare State, Identity or Definition, and Protection. He mentions hybridity and mixing, but I can’t seem to figure out which list he sees them falling into.

Listening to this, I consider that a border is the promotion of ignorance and racism and other discriminatory outlooks on the Other. It promotes barbarity. It feeds misconceptions. However once these misconceptions are built, can they really be taken down? What happens when we stay separate and what happens when we share? “Crossing borders/transgressing: Good or Bad?” I’m not sure if there is an answer.

While this lecture is absolutely not making me happy, it is fueling me to do my research as it is also reassuring me of my interests. I am so sure this is what I want to study. This is people. Identities. Culture. This is intriguing stuff. How do we come to see one person as a best friend and another person as the most terrifying person on the planet? How to we come to re-appropriating derogatory words such as queer, Chicano, and nigger nevertheless having them in the first place?

Fears. Prompted by stone, brick, wire, or air. Promoted by walls. Predicted by borders.



I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the walls that we put up and how those walls define us—or, better yet, how we let our definitions change in relation to how removed we remain from the world and other people. I’m excited that social borderd is what I’m studying and speaking with Markus tomorrow over dinner should prove effective.