7 (HUGE!) REASONS TO SLOW DOWN: How "BUSY” Stimulates Addiction, Anger, Aggression & Anxiety …3/29/2014
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The architecture of how we live our lives is badly in need of renovation and repair. What we really value is out of sync with how we live our lives. And the need is urgent for some new blueprints to reconcile the two (ARIANNA HUFFINGTON) FASHION, CULTURES & MEANING: Designer Camelia Skikos Recreates The Streets of San Francisco3/24/2014  Everybody comments about fashion industry being very competitive. However, what will always prevail is the designer's ability to connect his/her work with something deeper.
CAMELIA SKIKOS has been consistently able to deliver creations that go beyond glamour, connecting and uniting cultures into a meaningful image. Camelia's previous Fall Winter 2013-2014 collection was inspired by her culture of origin, as masterfully represented by the world renown Romanian sculptor Constantin Brancusi. And for the Fall-Winter 20014-15 collection, Camelia aligned several multicultural motives with nothing else but THE STREETS OF SAN FRANCISCO.  6 years old Alejandro learning the alphabet. We all need symbols and signs to help us orient ourselves in an unfamiliar culture or a multicultural environment: symbols of social and economical status, or signs that someone is kind, indifferent or aggressive. We also need quite often, within our social and cultural system, an "object" upon which we project our fears, insecurities and anxieties. In the so-called civilized societies, these show-offs and projections are many times very subtle, due to self-censorship. The following true story is an example of what happens when that censorship does not function. I live in the highly liberal, multicultural and all inclusive San Francisco Bay Area, but my own darker skin had sometimes stimulated the clichés, and the cultural and emotional illiteracy of some of my fellow Americans. The following conversation, between me and a white skin, blonde woman in her 30s, occurred in front of a high-end hotel & restaurant where I was invited to a party. I have to specify first that in San Francisco the Limo driving industry employs mostly people of Middle Eastern origin. Woman: Do you have a cigarette? Are you a driver (low voice, almost mysterious).
Me (offering her a cigarette): Do I look like a driver? W: Well ... I was just asking. Are you? Me (with a joking tone): In what sense you were "just asking"? Why didn't you ask me, for example, if I am a lawyer? W (puffing with disdain): Because I am a lawyer, I know you can't be a lawyer. So, are you a driver?.. At this point I want to believe it is a misunderstanding, but there is no doubt whatsoever: she judges me by my arab look and assumes that I am a limo driver. I don't answer her question and decide to giver her another chance. Me (laughing, referring to the fact that she seems to have been drinking a little too much and had no intention to stop): I think you definitely need a driver! It seems, however, that the length and complexity of our dialog have fatigued her, because she turns her back on me, smoking, forgetting to say thank you for the cigarette I just gave her. Suddenly she remembers her mantra and throws over her shoulder: W: Tell me if you are a driver. We need a driver! Me: No, but I'm something you desperately need. W: Really?!. What? Her sarcasm is reaching a climax right there. Me: A Cultural Intelligence consultant. I am a Cultural Intelligence consultant. |
Cosmin Gheorghe"You never draw out of the deep of yourself that which you want; you always draw that which you are." Archives
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