…there is no other shelter hereabout: misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows. I will here shroud till the dregs of the storm be past.
— Shakespeare
They couldn’t be stranger bedfellows.
They couldn’t be more different — in Temperament and upbringing.
But there they were. Bound together in tragedy and purpose, at this point in time.
They needed each other, and they wanted each other’s help.
She finally was able to accept that prize: Saturday, June 16, 2012 in Oslo Norway. She was awarded the prize in 1991, but couldn’t accept personally, she wouldn’t be able to get back into Burma.
The prize she has worked for most of her life is: free speech, democracy, and peace in Burma. However, she says that are still prisoners of conscience, and as long as there is one prisoner of conscience, despite that she has been released, one too many.
No, her work is not done. There is no peace, free speech, and democracy in Burma — but things are progressing, slowly.
He had written poetry, plays, and several books. Even worked in a beer factory, under duress. He wasn’t a politician.
On the other hand, he had been in jail multiple times because of “political activity.” Many years in jail, for his writings. He would hide them in all kinds of places: even in plain view, as plays. You know, in that double meaning or even triple — in that abstract metaphoric way. Pushing the limits — against the banal evil. They would catch on occasionally — back to jail.
1989. Into the Theatre of the Absurd. Reality — There were challenges of governing a nascent democracy, when things mattered. No jails to be had, except, maybe, the jail of power. With the breakup of the Warsaw Pact, the Soviet Union finally disappeared in two years time. That banal Communist bureaucracy crumbled.
“In this postmodern world, cultural conflicts are becoming more dangerous than any time in history. A new model of coexistence is needed, based on man’s transcending himself.”
He didn’t want to. He knew. But he was elected to do…
She demanded of her future husband: “I only ask one thing, that should my people need me, you would help me to do my duty by them.”
And they and her mother did need her, so she went back… and was put under house arrest because of her political activism.
She was offered her freedom, if she left… But she is a Diplomatic Contender, and
“… Contending entails competition. Thus to contend with another’s work one must hold one’s ground, hang onto one’s position, stick to one’s intention, tend to one’s business, stay the course, in a word, betenacious. It is not so much that one is bent on overtaking or outdoing others, as it is having one’s way. Contenders will have their way if at all possible.” Personology, page 77.
She has had a quite interesting journey in her life so far. A privileged and mostly ignored daughter of one of the most famous actors and a suicidal mother, she grew up not knowing herself. This is a tragic situation for an Idealist, for she hid her excessive Idealist’s guilt and naivety with eating disorders and marrying three times. But, she slowly kept trying to understand herself, as Idealists are wont to do, finally doing so after 60 years. One of the most intriguing parts of this search was it took the frantic and opulent life of Ted Turner, an extremely extroverted and peripatetic Artisan, to make her finally need to say *stop* — “slow down” and then take a good look at herself. It took her almost a lifetime to find her voice and calling: teaching women’s issues — teaching the stuff — Jane Fonda actually experienced and conquered — rather than the political knowledge that she naively tried to pass off as her own, using her fame, and Idealist credulity, as an activist in her younger, reluctant-phony, days.