Tumbleweed dreams

I will not hate Starbucks.

2012-01-18T03:51:00.000-08:00

I sat myself today in a starbux, across from the door, out of which I could see across the Golden Horn and to the Hagia Sophia which rises on the far side, outlined against the grey sky. The ferries ply the water between me and it, and I sit, and read, and look out across the water and up to the ancient monument, and then back to the working men selling breads or grilled fish on the street, then the tourists that come between us, then back to my book.

Today I am reading, today I am finishing, today I will finish, today I have finished Rousseau's Social Contract. If I had it to do over again, I would read a summary - most of his ideas do not benefit from his wording of them, and in too many places the prejudices peculiar to him and his age shine through too clearly, contrast too vividly with those of our own age to allow my eyes and brain to float by them without noticing.

I have, however, made a list of the books that I will read over the next few years, and having made such a goal, absent a compelling reason to change, I will stick with it. After all - were it not for this list, and my semi-irrational devotion to it, I would not have begun reading John Stuart Mill's On Liberty, which by chance made me aware of a thinker whose ideas are not so close to my own as to be redundant, nor so far as to provoke outrage, thus falling in that fertile middle ground where I find my own conceptions of things questioned and alternatives proposed, all of which is couched in language that is clear, and easy to read. It does, however, suffer the same fault as Rousseau, in that it displays its prejudices and assumptions toward Christian and Western society a bit too clearly to escape notice by the western reader.

In looking through the glass door at the Hagia Sophia outside, the contrast between the white letters "STARBUCKS COFFEE" stenciled upon the glass, and the towering antiquity seen through it gave me pause - a moment suspended between the modern and the ancient, between the quotidian, even crass, and the sublime.

Now for fact: I chide myself slightly for coming into starbucks. In this environment of mood music and furniture identical to 57 other locations in a 20 block radius, I ask myself why I came here, of all places here, to this safety base of American/globalized aesthetic and cheap commercial presentation. I asked myself this question in earnest as I paused from my book, and for better or worse I found my answer.

I came here for the value for my money. The fact is that I can buy here for one lira more a larger amount of quite pleasant coffee than anywhere else, while accessing free internet. Thus, I do not see equivalent value in going to a more "authentic" locale. I ask value for my money - and my time: in flavor and taste, in amount, in not being disturbed by overly-friendly intruders-into my moment. One may question my tastes or my misanthropy, but my tastes being what they are, I shall no longer apologize for patronizing a global enterprise simply because it is a global enterprise.

Having articulated my requirements, I no longer see a disharmony between the elements. As much as I appreciate the ageless beauty of the Hagia Sophia, and turn my eyes that direction when I wish for a tiny jolt of awe, and similarly enjoy the serious subject matter of eternal questions of governance at which Rousseau all too ponderously tilts; just so, are not coffee and comfort and solitude of equal value to these? And why should I treat with distaste that which in truth I love, except that I am aping not just the values of others, but worse, an unarticulated impression of the values of others?

A Christmas to Remember

2011-12-26T08:58:00.001-08:00

It has to be said, again and again, if for no other reason than how fucking true it is, that there is nothing in life that I can think of which could compare to waking up on a weekend morning to find oneself wrapped round in the arms of a lover. The warmth, the closeness, the drowsiness, all the kindly characteristics of a morning's bed, plus all the cuddling potential and earthy delight of another body and smiling face to see in the beginnings of your day.

How much more so if the day in question be Christmas, and Christmas be a day you don't despise. As for me, I do despise Christmas, normally, but for one reason or another this Christmas left me feeling minorly . . . Christmasy.

On Christmas eve I and Oyku went out to dinner with a small gathering of work friends of mine, and we had a lovely dinner-and-drinks time of it. The atmosphere was great, the people were awesome, the food was fantastic . . . the only thing that could have been improved upon might be the prices, and I am only recently mature enough to realize that if all the other factors are fine, 'twould be idiocy to ruin such a rare time with worry concerning pecuniary particulars.

We even had a bit of salacious gossip to talk about, given that the night before last had been a workplace holiday party which resulted in a largish number of tipsy people corralled on a bus home at midnight, during which trip someone in the front, (thank heavens not from our department,) vomited all over himself, and then passed out (classy!!) after covering his vomit-covered self with his suit jacket, (true class = sparing others the sight of your vomit, by sacrificing your suit jacket to it,) and a simultaneously-conducted minor dispute over the degree to which it is socially acceptable for drunken middle-aged gay men who suffer from Aspergers to repeatedly make sexualized comments (and noises) to straight Turkish men 20 years their junior in front of their wives, (and a bus-load of their colleagues.)

As it happened, I was the one who asked the man in question if perhaps he was being obnoxious. He acknowledged that he was indeed being obnoxious, but then, as drunk people often do, decided to double-down on the situation, and loudly enquired why it was that straight men liked to see lesbians when watching porn, but not gays, as two vaginas together was ok, but seeing two cocks together was not. I expressed the view that our personal-porn preferences didn't really require discussion in front of a busload of our colleagues. This did not, however, serve to dissuade him, as he continued to rail against the injustice of it, and how intolerant people "need to realize this is the 21st century!"

He then told me I was known as a Don Juan, and asked why it was that if I saw a girl, I might tell her she had nice breasts, but he couldn't tell a boy he found him attractive. I was briefly at a loss for how to respond to any of this, belatedly realizing that I was apparently ill-informed of work-place mores in the 21st century, and had been displaying far too much restraint in neglecting to comment freely on the breasts of the young ladies around me. Feeling some shame at how out-of-touch I seem to have become, I could only muster the pathetic answer that He would have to excuse me, as I for one simply didn't feel comfortable commenting on a woman's breasts until at least the fourth email. This brought some snickers from the assembled gallery, and I overheard a comment from one colleague that they were glad to finally learn the accepted time to bring that up.

I was then queried pugnaciously on how I would react if a gay man came up and flirted with me, at which point a gay colleague from the back spoke up to say that he flirted with me nearly daily, and would recommend it. I said I thought everyone had the right to flirt, but that perhaps flirting ought to begin with some nice comments about John Hurt's performance in "Krapp's Last Tape," or something about Andrew Lloyd Webber, or have you read any of so-and-so. I mean - must we jump immediately to making small moaning noises and commenting on the skin-tone of our intended fun-bun? I mean, a little bit of taste, subtlety, and class might let one play the flirt-fun game a lot longer and . . . more effectively . . . than overtly sexualized comments directed toward someone who you had met 3 times before, in the presence of his wife.

In any case - the bus having arrived at my neighborhood, I took my leave and with my friend and companion to the dinner, (a certain Finbar - a fine Irish-American lad,)wandered up the hill and home.

The next day, in a fit of uncertainty regarding how the previous evening had occurred, I apologized to a couple of the nearest spectators, if I had in any way caused them discomfort. They responded that A. it was fun, B. it was a bit weird, but maybe necessary, C. they didn't enjoy it, but I only said what everyone else was thinking. So I felt . . . relieved.

I found out two days later at the Christmas eve dinner that after I exited the bus he began more vigorously voicing negative viewpoints of my self and character, until one of those nearby told him that to say such things now was cowardly, and they didn't want to hear any more about it, and such things should be said to a person's face, not in their absence. I still don't know precisely what was said, as I only ascertained that nothing had been said that would possibly impact on me professionally - I was assured it was all of a personal and subjective nature, and so found myself quite happy to let it all go.

So, after catching up on gossip, and a smashing Christmas eve dinner, and good conversation, followed by a good sleep, I woke in Oyku's arms. After a good half-hour of drifting to the edge of sleep and back again, I wormed from under her arm and out of bed, and went to the kitchen and made coffee. Then I opened the trap door in the ceiling that leads through to the roof. Taking a red fleece blanket, I plucked some red fibers, and rubbed them into the wood grain along the edge of the trapdoor opening till they hung down like a small patch of fine red hairs. I then took a boot and wet the sole so that, pressing it down on the table beneath the trapdoor it left a distinct print. Then I took Oyku's present, and hid it under the leaves of the largest potted plant, which is the size of a small tree.

I woke her with urgency, telling her this had never happened before, and to come quickly. I showed her where someone had broken into the house, and left red fibers there - which must have meant they were wearing a red jacket, and there was even a bootprint! She opined in amazement that we must call the police, and I agreed, but then I gasped in surprise to discover that . . . the intruder had left a present for her. A look of uncomprehension possibly unmatched in modern times was soon followed by a smile of epic proportions and big hugs.

After unwrapping the present, we went back to bed and watched Baz Luhrman's "Romeo and Juliet." It is a movie I am fond of - more for stylistic reasons than anything literary - though I do enjoy the turns of certain phrases.

That afternoon we went to a piano concert in the grand bazaar, and mocked the piano-player's grandiose gestures to the crowd, and had a lovely time amongst the mountains of free snacks they were handing out - it was a cold day, and a lovely one. I don't know of another Christmas I have enjoyed quite as much as this one.

This scrooge, this Christmas, says "Bah-Hah!" And may God bless us, each and every one.

The fraying of the soul

2011-12-21T04:54:00.000-08:00

Frankly, for all my wahooting about how utterly fucking lovely my fucking life is, I must also say that on some winter days I find myself followed by a vague sense of dread – a feeling that something is pending im and I won’t know what until it whomps me. Like maybe my job is about to be pulled out from under me due to my own fantastically audacious ineptitude, or my bank account is going to run dry, or the police . . . fuck, I don’t know. I just feel some days as though something is waiting in the wings for me and will descend on my head and all I’ll be able to say is . . . “I really should have seen that coming.”

Perhaps it is winter. Perhaps it is the antidepressants fucking with me. Perhaps it is . . . the sense that something is slowly grinding on in my soul till one day I will find a hole that will fray from the inside till only tatters are left to go down to the grave with.

It’s like tooth decay, but less painful an ache – and on most days I don’t even know or care or am less aware of what it is that lies inside along the length of my soul’s spine.

I no longer wear a harness on my heart, and my mind aches for it at times, especially when the lather rises and foam gathers along the edge of the saddle for the endless running and running that my mind must do after all that it sees and the desires it needs and for that I don’t trust it because this horse will itself kill in running as it has no more sense than that.

I am not my brother's keeper, as much as my society's servant.

2011-12-21T04:46:00.000-08:00

My dreams these days come fast and thick, I know not why now or this. I see symbols in them at every turn. There are many keys and doors and windows and climbing and being trapped and fears of falling and narrow bridges and vertigo. Much of the characters and events which appear have direct correlations to events and personages in my real life, but so much of it is obviously symbolic that I have to conclude my mind is working on some issue about which it does not wish me to be fully informed.

Perhaps in time it will let me in on its little secrets.

These days I swing between knowing that my life is the finest of all possible outcomes, and I am most fortunate among men, and knowing that I am slowly failing myself, slowly losing a race with time, and slowly chronicling my own decline. I in no way exaggerate to say much of my day is occupied with contemplating what brings meaning to life, what despair actually indicates, and to what degree happiness or fulfilment are simply the off-spring of comforting, necessary delusion.

I come back to what I said before: Pain and all its precursors on the spectrum are the only true indicators of evil. Happiness or pleasure or fulfilment and all their cousins are the only measure for good. Pain or discomfort accepted as one’s allotted portion in service of reducing the pain or discomfort of larger society is duty. Pain undertaken in service of later greater happiness is virtue.

I would never disagree with Tolstoy – but while every happy family may be the same, what makes every individual happy certainly varies, and while every unhappy family may be unique in its pain, on the individual level, I think pain is very much the same. As such, our society could never hope to offer happiness to its members – but pain, it seems to me, being universal in nature, can be minimized. Thus, the society that seeks to limit the pain of its members is a society that actively attempts to minimize and neutralize the evil that afflicts its members, and this is a good society.

Especially considering that society is a conglomeration of individuals who act to some degree in concert in order to meet one another’s needs, the foundational purpose of society is the accomplishment of shared ends. So I believe that society exists to accomplish goals held in common, and the good society has, as one of those goals, the reduction of pain and discomfort to its members. As such, the society that does not serve the purpose of assisting the widest possible range of its constituting members in accomplishing their goals is a society which has begun to lose its raison d’etre, and thus, its legitimacy. In other words, society owes assistance to its constituent members.

But if society owes a degree of benefaction to individuals, do individuals owe anything to either society, or each other? Assuming the value of reciprocity, individuals owe society in the degree that they have benefitted from it. The contributions of individuals toward shared ends being what creates society, the contributions of individuals is what makes society indebted to individuals in turn for its creation. As such, since it is because of the contributions of individuals that society owes assistance to individuals, and it is because of the benefaction bestowed on them by society that individuals in turn owe society their allegiance, their attention, their time and their wealth, (in short, their resources,) we can see that we have a relationship of a clear reciprocal nature: to the degree that society provides to minimize your pain, discomfort and inconvenience, you have incurred a debt to it. The less benefit society provides to you, the lesser you need support it with your care and goods.

But if society owes individuals, and individuals owe society in related degree, does any individual owe any degree of consideration to another individual? Again, assuming the inherent validity of reciprocity, on the same reasoning, individual A owes individual B personal consideration only to the degree that B’s actions as an individual benefit A.

Thus, it seems to me, that the bond between individual members of society fast approaches nil, except insofar as they make a conscious effort to counteract this process by actively currying favor with each other by means of gifts, or acts of kindness. Simultaneously, in a developed country, the bond between a given individual and society grows stronger, as it is largely via the means of the societally maintained network of relationships that our needs are met.

Let us take an example from the office water cooler, which appeared here mysteriously 3 weeks ago, and from which I draw water. What do I owe the man who labors to bring the water up the office steps, to make it easily available to me? The short answer is nothing, except that I do not unduly hinder him in his task, or make his life unnecessarily difficult. I owe him nothing precisely because he does not undertake this work in order to benefit me. He undertakes this task to the benefit of the bottled water company, who benefit from his labor, as he benefits from being paid by them. Therefore, since the benefit accrued to me did not result from labor undertaken with the aim of benefitting me I owe him nothing. More to the point, since the benefit accrued to me is incidental to my actual presence in this room, it incurs no debt on my part.

On the other hand, the water (the benefit accrued to me,) is present in this room due to the good offices of society, which is to say the arrangement via which roads are built, (along which water bottles may be transported,) hand-carts are manufactured, (the better for carrying multiple bottles,) contracts are upheld by the law, and people are duly paid or fired, depending on whether or not water is punctually delivered. Thus while my personal debt to the individual whose action benefits me is minimal, my debt to society grows ever larger, for it is via the good offices of society, not individuals, that my needs are met, and my discomfort is minimized.

This situation reverses itself in the undeveloped countries.

Intrinsic values are basic.

2011-12-19T00:33:00.000-08:00

I stumbled across a video today, which set “materialism” in contrast to “inherent values.” The narrator spoke casually of the need for us, as individuals, to pursue our “inherent values,” which made me realize that I, 1. Didn’t know what mine were, (I do have some, right?) and, 2. Had no idea what options I could select from. (I assume that someone has made a menu-list of inherent values I can choose from – if not, it’s going to seriously undercut my already low opinion of humanity.)

So, as when addressing all other questions of great potential import, I turned to wikipedia. Sure enough, someone had indeed made a menu, and you could even select individual values, or combo meals, which pleased me to no end, as I think it is best to get good value for your values.

What follows is a list of "Life stances and other views," and their "Main intrinsic values"
Nihilism - None
Humanism - human flourishing
Hedonism - pleasure
Eudaemonism - happiness
Utilitarianism - utility (although this is often synonymous with pleasure or happiness)
Rational Deontologism - virtue or duty
Rational Eudæmonism, or tempered Deontologism - both virtue and happiness combined
Emptiness - nothing possesses essential, enduring identity
Situational Ethics - love
Buddhism - Enlightenment

So how you like them apples? A chart from which to choose, and a few considerations upon which to deliberate, and I ought to have my own fast-food-philosophy ready to hand out the drive-thru window in no time.

Considerations: Shall we have one single value around which we center our philosophy, or multiple? Obviously the advantage of having a singular focus is that it would be easier to keep one’s eye on the target, and easier to argue other things around. However, having multiple inherent values allows us the balance them against each other, (which could be a lot of fun,) and just sounds more reasonable.

Casting my eyes back over that last sentence, I realize that I just held up “fun” and “reasonable” as two inherent values. Which, given that “fun” and “reasonable” are two rather different things, pretty much settles the question in favor of multiple values.

What follows are my thoughts on these . . . values . . .

Nihilism - None - “That must be exhausting.”

Humanism - human flourishing - That sounds like a good thing. I mean, it would correlate with conditions which would be more pleasant to live in, right? More dental care and less blowflies?

Hedonism - pleasure - I think the preceding rationale for humanism appealed to pleasure, didn’t it? (Or at least a lack of unpleasantness.) So have to go with Yes.

Eudaemonism - happiness - Uhm – as far as absence of pain, and presence of contentment/satisfaction/fulfillment, (ie, happiness,) go, I think those are the things by which we distinguish what is evil from what is good, right?

Utilitarianism - utility (often synonymous with pleasure or happiness)
I agree with the parenthetical bit – sounds like an argument for happiness; albeit for the greatest number, of course.

Rational Deontologism - virtue or duty - Ok – but duty TO WHAT? To the state? To one’s family? Sounds like a moving target, to me. Are virtue and duty the same? Couldn’t we have virtue which IS duty in service of good, which can be equated to happiness? In which case, duty itself would NOT be an inherent value, otherwise faithful Nazis would be virtuous.

Rational Eudæmonism, or tempered Deontologism - both virtue and happiness combined - Ok, this sounds like what I lit upon above – virtue is duty in service of promoting the general weal, which is defined as absence of pain and misery.

Emptiness - nothing possesses essential, enduring identity - I think physical pain does have an enduring identity, and is an unquestionable bad, except insofar as it serves as an investment toward a later reduction of pain and misery, the end result of which is a net loss of misery in the system. Which means that bad (pain) may be inflicted or accepted as a good, when it is a means to an end which is a good, which must by definition be the net reduction of pain. And accepting pain for these reasons would qualify as virtue.

Situational Ethics - love - UNCLEAR

Buddhism - Enlightenment - Does “enlightenment” have to be defined only in Buddhist terms? As in, liberating oneself from suffering by liberating oneself from desire? Which, honestly, I would at least half-buy into. I mean – to the degree that suffering (pain/misery) is caused by excessive desire, (which it certainly can be) then reduction of desire would be a very smart adaptation to avoid causing oneself suffering. So – yeah – I’m not sure I buy into it as an INTRINSIC value, but it certainly does have value.

I notice that nowhere here is “Knowledge” or “Wisdom” mentioned. Could knowledge be an intrinsic value? Is wisdom simply the knowledge of how to align oneself with the universe so as to minimize friction (pain and unpleasantness,) and maximize harmony, (KY Jelly and full belly?)

Just ran across this line in Wikipedia:
Nicholas Maxwell, a contemporary philosopher, advocates that academia ought to alter its focus from the acquisition of knowledge to seeking and promoting wisdom, which he defines as the capacity to realize what is of value in life, for oneself and others.”
Which pretty much sums up what I am doing at this very moment – attempting to identify what is of value in life.

Oooh, and check this out: “Researchers in the field of positive psychology have defined wisdom as the coordination of "knowledge and experience" and "its deliberate use to improve well being."

This echoes what I said, in that the knowledge is used as means to improve well being.

How interesting that for all our society’s nattering on about the importance of freedom, it isn’t listed (on this menu, at least,) as an inherent value.

So let’s begin, shall we? I value “human flourishing,” (but not too much, please!) pleasure and happiness and therefore utilitarianism, duty or virtue only when it is in service of reduction of pain and increasing of happiness, enlightenment insofar as it supports a rational choice to amend one’s worldview to decrease suffering, and the acquisition of Wisdom and Knowledge for those ends, or for their own sakes.

Thus I am left with this: I support as intrinsic values the absence of pain, and promotion of happiness.

The acquisition of knowledge and wisdom, utilitarianism, duty and virtue, enlightenment, humanism, and freedom are secondary strategies which derive their value from the degree to which they promote or have the potential to promote, the first and primary, instrinsic values.

Knowledge and Wisdom contribute to being able to align oneself with the greater forces at work in reality, so as to promote comfort and preclude pain, much as a wind-vane aligns itself with the wind, to reduce friction. From Wikipedia: “A wise person does actions that are unpleasant to do but give good results, and doesn’t do actions that are pleasant to do but give bad results"

Enlightenment is the ability to consciously choose to reduce one’s own suffering, (or that of others,) by diminishing unreasonable desire, and thus consists of a sub-category of wisdom.

Utilitarianism contributes to being able to calculate a balance between what promotes pleasure for one group, by necessitating discomfort to another.

Duty consists of the degree of personal pain, inconvenience or discomfort that is our personal lot, by the undertaking of which we would make our contribution toward minimizing the overall amount of pain in the system. Again: “A wise person does actions that are unpleasant to do but give good results, and doesn’t do actions that are pleasant to do but give bad results “

Virtue consists of willingly accepting your assigned portion, or even voluntarily taking on a greater amount of pain, inconvenience or discomfort, thus contributing toward a reduction in overall misery experienced by others.

“Humanism” seems to me a problematic concept, as it seems to imply at least 3 distinct meanings.
1. That human well-being is the core good which defines the others
2. Human well-being is to be favored over the well-being of other organisms, or even ecosystems.
3. Human well-being is the true measure of good, as opposed to the adherence to a code of religiously-based precepts.

I have delineated those above so that I could better address them.

First, I do believe that both one and two are correct, insofar as I would typically favor the needs of a human being over the needs of another organism. I am leery of this position, however, in that we should be somewhat suspicious of our beliefs, methods and motives anytime we find ourselves to be too conveniently served by the outcome.

Secondly, it is in the nature of humans, and of the world, that many if not most actions taken seem to contain within themselves the seed of their own eventual reversal, so it is that if human well-being is favored over that of ecosystems, or large numbers of organisms, soon human well-being itself is threatened by the direct results of the very actions that were taken in favor of this same human well-being.

As such, though I do, in every way except the practical, agree that human needs should be prioritized over those of other species, at a practical level this could be disastrous, as the human need to consume and reproduce in order to experience a sense of well-being may result in an overall degradation of the very systems upon which humans are dependent for their sense of well-being.

As regards number three, I fear that human well-being, difficult though it may be, is so many orders of magnitude easier to either achieve or quantify than it would be to judge between the possibly contradictory demands of competing supernatural beings, that I am afraid religiously-based precepts can only be justifiably adhered to on any level wider than that of the private individual insofar as these precepts serve to promote human well-being.

Thus, I can only be said to favor humanism insomuch as it identifies itself as secular, and maintains a forward-looking, anticipatory view toward possibly counter-productive results of the human-favoring stances it adopts.

Finally Freedom is valuable in that it allows each of us to determine for ourselves what will most serve to promote human happiness and alleviate misery, which operates on the assumption that an aggregate of individuals will better (ie, more accurately and more effectively) give voice to their collective concerns than any point of perception or vocalization emerging from or based in a singular entity.

Opportunity cost

2011-12-13T01:33:00.000-08:00

Dear heavens, I feel as though my throat, lungs and chest have been passed over with a cheese grater. I’m used to short, intense bursts of energy, but 30 damn minutes at about 10mph just friggin slaughtered me. I’m not sure if that is a good pace, or a wimpy pace, but it was pretty much a killer pace for me, and that’s all I really need to know.

But enough about that – right now I got a gajillion other things on my mind. Primarily: This girlfriend I have is sweet, super intelligent, really a quality person . . . but I am starting to realize that . . . it just isn’t going to last. Which should come as no surprise, really, since every relationship anyone has ever been in has ended in either a break-up or a death, and if I have to choose between the two, break-ups are much easier to explain to mutual friends. What I don’t understand is why I seem to go into every relationship thinking that this one will be “the one” in which we magically sail off into the sunset. Somehow it always catches me by surprise when I find that this girl is, in fact, not the fucking complete package – the perfect- in-every-way woman. You would think I would have learned by now that every relationship is certainly going to be flawed, (I mean, hell, I’m involved in it, so it’s bound to be fucked-up to some degree,) is going to require some work, and most likely will be, to a greater or lesser degree, temporary.

I’m ready to do the work – I know we will fight and have difficulties, but I guess I am not yet prepared to accept that every girl is most likely just a temporary stop along the way, and I cannot figure out if that is a good thing or a bad thing. It seems as though it would be taking my cynicism to new heights to just acknowledge to myself at the outset that this girl is probably just a temporary harbor from the storm, (no need to continue with the “docking” metaphor, is there?) and sooner or later I’ll be moving on. In a way I appreciate the naivete with which I approach the relationships, and the fact that I am actually looking at them for long-term potential, but maybe I am just being dishonest with myself.

On the upside, as a result of my approaching it with an eye to the long-term, I really do fall for these chicks – but perhaps that is part of the problem. Perhaps by going in “hoping for the best” I allow the swirl of emotions to cloud my judgement, and thus am taken by surprise when deal-breakers pop up. I also have to wonder to what extent I actually allow myself to fall for them because the “swirl of emotions” in me tends to have a positive effect on them – so maybe in the end it is just all cynical manipulation on my part anyway.

The previous girlfriend had a lot going for her – she was extremely sweet and caring, and very, very attached, and AMAN TANRIM did this girl get turned on when you took out a camera. Tall, good looking, amazing body (did ballet for 16 years, till she got too tall) – an ass I could stare at all day – and did, in fact. She had gorgeous silky long black hair, lived in high-heels and was always perfectly turned out: weekly manicures, waxes, whatevers, the whole 9 yards. And then she asked me if India was close to Brazil. And slowly, what emerged was the fact that her grasp of economics, philosophy, art, biology, fuck- you-name-it, if it wasn’t within her very circumscribed experience, it was a bleeding mystery to her. In fashion, style, femininity, and social charm, however, she had a fucking black-belt.

I am not sure, even at this remove, if I am being fair to her. I mean – to what degree am I cognizant of the ins and outs of office politics in the magazine publishing division of Turkish media conglomerates? Hell, to what degree am I cognizant of ANYTHING of practical value? Not much, I suppose, if we want to be honest. I guess my very circumscribed experience just happens to include an ass-load of books and articles on world politics, literature, art and history, and I (for no doubt unjustifiably self-centered reasons,) tend to favor my set of knowledge over hers. Cultural imperialism? Mebbe. Classism? Mebbe. Inevitable? ‘Fraid so.

There was, in fact, one other problematic detail – she had a disturbing habit of tracking my eyes, and making sure to register every other woman I looked at. This by itself is nothing really, but if you have ever been in a relationship with a jealous person, you start to see the signs early. And it was not long before she started asking odd questions, and poking about in a jealous manner.

So she was served notice some time ago that . . . well . . . I put it as kindly as I could . . . that I was not really in love with her. But she kept coming around, (even the most repugnant boys are difficult for a girl to get over once they have fallen for them, and I am not the most repugnant,) until I told her I had met someone new.

And had I ever. We met at a book club (auspicious beginning, yes?) and she worked for a group who advised governments on ways to promote transparency in public policy. She had done a year at Harvard, and was in the dissertation stage of getting her Ph.D from one of the more prestigious schools in Turkey. So whereas the previous girlfriend didn’t know who Khaddafi was, or Mubarak, or how long he had been in power or whether or not he was generally viewed as irredeemably corrupt, or . . . nevermind . . . the new young lady could tell you offhand the number of gas pipelines coming out of Russia into Europe, and how the proposed new pipelines could affect former soviet-bloc countries. So whereas the last young lady had spent business dinners on the phone with me so that visiting foreigners wouldn’t figure out how little English she spoke, the new young lady travelled to Tanzania, Ukraine, India, Thailand, the Czech Republic, etc, to give speeches on development. Let’s just say the difference in conversations we could have were notable.

Yet – what is lacking? Oh, dear – I have to confess – I’m afraid animal vibes are what’s missing now. When I smell her neck . . . I am simply not overcome with a desire to fuck her. There’s nothing wrong with her physically – she’s quite fit – used to be a swimmer – nice ass – fucks with conviction – but . . . we just don’t have animal chemistry. I’d rather cuddle and watch a movie than fuck. And what am I to do about that? I mean – for the first time in my life, I am wishing we had just stayed friends, because now I have to break up with someone who I really, really like talking to.

I determined a couple of years ago that if I got married again, I wanted one who was drop-dead gorgeous, as well as intellectually interesting. (Go ahead, snort in your coffee, and say “well, don’t we all.” Fuck you – you aren’t me, bitch. Sit back and watch. But I digress.) So I decided there were two directions one could take to arrive at this end: 1. Start photographing models, and sort your way through to the smart ones, and shop one of those. 2. Start chatting your way through the academics until you hit a hottie, and take her home.

As a result, I spent a week or so last year in Ukraine, photographing models, (this one goes under the name Alissa White – don’t look her up on google images with a low filter setting if you got excitable young males in the room,) and I joined a book club. So far, things aren’t working out too badly – but it looks like it’s time to pick up the camera again.

i thank you God for most this amazing.

2011-12-12T01:20:00.000-08:00

I refuse demands for capitulation – I demand a celebration. Today is my birthday – today is the birth day of light, and of love and wings, and of the gay great happening illimitably earth.

It is – it actually is – my birthday. I have never been one for celebrating such things – but the older I get, and the less people I have around me who care, the more special it comes to seem. I have long scoffed at the silly emphasis people put on making a day special, but am slowly coming to realize that making a day “special” is just a way of staunching the boredom that flows in and out and permeates our daily existence placing a small marker tabbed upon one day that says our time here and ourselves are something more than an accumulation of ordinary days which began in squalling mucus and ends in a hoarse rattle of same.

I made today special by first, praying this morning. I know – sounds weird – but here is the realization I am coming to: As much as my brain, which cries out at the utter improbability, and lack of evidence for a deity, my soul needs NOT a deity to beg of, or to prevent a descent into darkness final at the end of my days – for an end to be an end is ok with me – but my soul needs someone to whom I can grateful.
It may sound strange to say it – but it is the realization I have been coming to. The reason I need a woman in my life pretty much almost all the time, (aside from for fucking, for company, for conversation, for attention,) is that I want someone to whom I can be nice – someone I can compliment – someone I can show attention to, and make smile. That is one of the main motivations, needs, I have, which cause me to seek out women. Similarly – my need for a deity is motivated largely by an excess of gratitude, of thanks for the sheer splendor of my life, which I cannot discharge in any direction absent a being who oversees all things. It’s a bit of a conundrum, I know.

I find that most of my interactions and conversations with God consist of my simply saying thank you, expressing how grateful I am that despite the idiocy that has characterized my life, I feel so richly surrounded by a wealth of good things. I know it could be simple chance – a roll of the chromosomal dice, a choice to walk here, a chance twist of the steering wheel there – it could be just an accumulation of chances that has resulted in my being so damn fortunate – but if so, I should not feel grateful – I should only feel lucky. And if I am only lucky, I need feel only relief – that I dodged a disaster, that I came out unscathed, that I owe no one for the fortunate spin of the wheel.

Yet I feel distinctly grateful – blessed. The fact that I am surrounded by others who may be equally fortunate does absolutely nothing to dilute my specific sense of joy. My mind teeters on the edge of explosm when I contemplate how uncommon is my particular lot – my life’s individual blend of pungent proclivities and aromatic assholery. To have the ability and option to travel, to see, to read, to write, to work or waste, to meet, to contemplate and converse, to dive, to drink, to fight, fuck and fidget. (You knew the alliteration would catch up with me eventually, didn’t you?)

But seriously – in a world where so much can go wrong – and in which “getting it right” is so ridiculously difficult – I feel as though I have, against all probabilities, especially given my wastrel and lackadaisical nature, ass-ended so far up Maslow’s hierarchy that I find myself nearly constantly nuzzling the nether-regions of self-actualization – something that I feel so many others who have worked so much harder and more conscientiously than myself have conspicuously failed to do.
So I began this morning by praying – by thanking God for yet another day – for yet another year – and for the utterly unimaginable good fortune of my life. I packed the lovely lunch a lovely lady had packed for me from the leftovers of the delightful dinner that she had fixed me last night in (unbeknownst to me) recognition of my impending birthday. (Apparently she had had some difficulty in deciphering which date was actually my birthday, as I habitually enter false ones on forms and websites.) Then I treated myself to a morning workout in the gym, doing only the exercises that I wanted to do. And now, writing this, I sit in a comfortable chair, in a warm office, drinking coffee and milk.

It is a world away from the sensations I recall when covering my face with a balaclava as I ascended a ladder anchored in snow, to hold a board of siding to nail it to a garage – or struggled to apply sufficient force to a freezing-cold iron crowbar, ripping free the wood from the nails that still stuck in the concrete around the forms, as the snowflakes swirled around my nose and eyes and the cold pain in my fingers became more insistent. I remember the misery of financial insecurity – of cold early mornings packing a pail of unappetizing food before exiting the house to face a day of drudgery and boredom – leaving the house in the dark, I would return again after dark, to eat alone what I had the energy to prepare.

I thank God for the health and wealth – the amazing richness of texture and flavor in my life today. I joy in every moment – I am grateful now even for the times of loneliness, pain, cold and hurt, for it helps me now to know what grand good fortune I have, and makes me feel that every step of my life has been shadowed by kindness.

The Weekly Beat-Down

2011-11-19T12:53:00.000-08:00

I have been going to the Krav Maga gym for over two years now, and have been teaching the Friday evening class for maybe 6 months. At first I had two students who came on Fridays – then three, then two, then four, then ten, then six and last night we had such a damn full-house that I was actually hoping more people wouldn’t come through the door.

We have developed a very good rapport in the group – there are a core of guys (and girls,) who for the most part really like to throw down, don’t mind a cut lip or bloody nose, and are really, truly interested in improving their fightgame techniques and improving their cardio and strengthening and toughening their bodies.

It is really a joy to watch people transform as the weeks go by. They come in very quiet, and cautious and shy. They sit to the side and don’t do anything until instructed to do so. Depending on their previous athletic experience, their movements are often awkward, to put it kindly. They don’t know the length of their own arm or leg, nor how to unwind it to maximize force at the end. They get gassed out, and have to take little breaks during the cardio session. After a couple of weeks their movements are a little bit better, their cardio has improved immensely, sometimes they have dropped some weight and toned up a bit, (in one case, 15 kilos lost in a couple of months– no joke – but that chick was a bit of a porker to begin with.) And even more critically, they lose some of that shyness that kept them glued to the wall before, and start milling around before class begins, and it is here that you can really learn something vital about them.

What people do when there is no instructor guiding them is, to me, a primary indicator of what they have come for. If you look around before class begins, you will see one or two people jumping rope, one person on the double-end bag, a couple people doing calisthentics, about 3 people talking, and 2 or 3 people working on the heavy bags. Every few minutes most of the individuals will probably get tired, and need to take a break from that body part, and so will walk away from their spot, and almost immediately gravitate toward another activity, while someone else will take their place. Almost everybody, that is. Because there is always a small core of people who don’t need to change their activity, because talking about things just never tires them out.

I don’t begrudge these chatters their chat. I really don’t. I do understand that there might be some totally excellent gossip to exchange, or maybe your wrist is hurt today, or maybe you just wanna chitter-chat. That’s cool – I think it does reflect slightly on why you are here – I mean – you are surrounded by toys and tools to help you improve, and you sit there doing what you could do at any tea shop, and probably do all day, but whatever. I do eventually have to conclude, though, that the social aspect is one of the larger factors in why you choose to come here.

And that, too, is totally cool. Frankly, it’s part of the reason I come as well. In fact, other than saying hello to colleagues in passing, and seeing the girliefriend about two nights a week, the gym is about my ONLY social interaction. So I can dig that you might come to hang and see people. I totally get that – but that doesn’t mean you need to hang around me.

More specifically – when I am working on the heavy bags, or the double-end bag, or jumping rope, or whatever, don’t come up and start talking to me. A. Because you are interrupting what I am doing, and B. because you are implicitly devaluing the activity I am doing, by indicating what you have to say is more important. Or, if you do, (and I’ll be nice and stop and chat, and then if you don’t actually have something pertinent to deal with, I will go back to working,) then PLEASE don’t continue to fucking hover in my peripheral vision making random comments trying to get a goddam conversation going with me. And when I eventually get tired of you standing 2 meters away staring at me, waiting for me to speak to you, and I move across the room to another place, DON’T FUCKING FOLLOW ME. Repeat after me: “I am not a damn kitten, looking to bond with a maternal figure. I am a full grown adult male, who needs to direct his fucking emotional needs toward somebody else.” And for fuck’s sake don’t follow me into the dressing room – it’s creepy and I am still going to ignore you, and I’m only there to pull something out of my bag – I promise I’m not going to do anything even slightly interesting, so please fuck off already and stop being clingy.

Right now I have four students who are often on my mind, in part because all of them prefer to train with me as their partner, and have expressed this.

In no particular order, let’s begin with my favorite, who we’ll call Snowflake – because that’s what her name means, and that’s the tattoo on the inside of her forearm. (For those of you far away, let me just say that for some reason here in Istanbul, it is not at all unusual or low-class anymore for young ladies to have tattoos on their wrists and forearms.) Snowflake started with me as her teacher – and she immediately outshone the tall, awkward boy who started at the same time. Her talent lies largely in her ability to take a movement apart into smaller parts, and then work on repeating that sequence again and again until she can execute it well. But her true gift comes from inside. Some people, the first time they hit somebody, immediately cringe and collapse and apologize all over themselves. And others, the first time they land a good hit on somebody, light up inside like the fourth of July. And boy, can you see it on Snowflake’s face. When she lands a good hit, she literally dances a bit to let a wee bit of the excess joy wiggle out. When she learns how to throw a much bigger person to the ground, she cannot stop grinning to save her life. Couple those things with the willingness to practice, practice, practice, before and after class, and she really is turning into a little monster. In fact, she busted Artie’s nose last week. I was very proud of her.

Artie, on the other hand, is a doe-eyed caricature of a sensitive soul. His head is too large for his body, his soft, kind eyes too large for his head, his nose dwarfs even his eyes, and his limbs too skinny to support any of it. His movements have some resemblance to what I imagine giraffes fucking would look like. He has been coming for more than a year, and frankly, you wouldn’t know it. Which is, actually, what has made all the difference for him. About 3 weeks ago a girl who had been coming for a long time, but had never coincided with Artie (his attendance is quite on-again off-again,) made some comment about how he needn’t despair, he was, after all, a newbie. Artie, in his soft-eyed, gangly and jelly-limbed way, took deep offense to this. He came to me after class in deep depression, and asked what he could do. I told him a number of things, and next class, his roundhouse kicks were suddenly fucking crisp, nice, beautiful to behold. (I actually had the whole class stop and watch his roundhouse kick.) His guard had improved immensely, too. His punches were cleaner and crisper. He’s still no ninja, but 6 more months of what he’s been doing for that past three weeks, and he could be. It appears that he has started to really open his mind to focus on what he is doing, and to learn his own body, and has begun practicing at home on his own. The results are really, really encouraging, and I hope he knows that, because I sure do.

Corrie, on the other hand, is on my mind for all the wrong reasons. He friended me on facebook, and instant messages me nearly every day, with questions about whether I plan to attend that night or not. Then he almost always says “let’s be partners tonight – I want to train with you,” which would be fine, really, except that it happens so often it’s a bit irksome. That, and it was most recently (last night,) phrased as “I’ll have you.” Then during weekends he will call me, or message me to see if I want to hang out – which I wouldn’t mind, except that he spends a so much time complaining about his wife, and running her down, that I basically end up trying to change the subject all the time, which I am not all that good at, so it doesn’t work, so I fall back on just not giving him any encouragement, which basically boils down, in practical terms, to him whining and whining, and me occasionally making remarks about the economy, or the weather, or China’s odd stance on Zimbabwe. So I basically stopped answering the phone when he calls, which has led him to make remarks about feeling “dumped,” and his “ass left out in the cold.” Recently he stayed late, after everyone had left, and then stripped off and came out in his towel to talk to me while I was working out a combination, saying “Ooooh, don’t hit the naked guy! Oooh!” These, along with a constant theme of comments about “fucked in the ass,” “the soggy-biscuit game” make me wonder exactly how repressed he is. I mean – I don’t think a legit gay guy would always be talking about gay shit and making gay jokes, but the amount of social, (and physical) contact he wants with me is . . . oddness inducing. And recently he has taken to asking me after class if I want to wrestle – which I wouldn’t mind, except A. You suck at it, and don’t even seem to be trying, and B. You’re weirding the fuck out of me already, go away.

And finally, is Alp. Alp is probably 20 or 22 or so, and probably clocks in at about 6’3’’ and 200 pounds without an ounce of fat on him. (He likes to pause in front of the mirror and check his “baclavas” – the word here for his six-pack.) Really, the kid is a physical phenom. He’s big, strong, and fast as shit. Did I mention strong? And fast as shit? Well, when he first came he was . . . a bit unccoordinated, or just hadn’t really put together yet how to move, how to cover, how to throw. But fortunately for him, he likes to go hard, (I still have a lump on my bone in my forearm from practicing some months ago with him, and was out for a week with a bum knee after he kicked it,) and he doesn’t let his ego get in the way of learning. He hates losing, yet every time he loses, he dialogues with the winner to get advice and tips, and goes to practicing it, and comes back better. And yes – I’m the winner we’re talking about. Other people don’t want to fight with him because – well, did I mention he’s big, ripped, fast as shit, and his technique is getting better and better every damn day? So I fight with him – and he doesn’t know the meaning of sparring, apparently, because we just end up going for the damn knockout. I don’t really want that, but there is a natural escalation in sparring, and when the other guy is literally trying to take your head off, you tend to up your speed and power as well.

It used to be that I won, handily, every match with him. Those days though, are past. A few weeks ago he knocked me out, (momentarily,) and I realized that I was no longer playing with the same kid. He’d learned how to fake with the left, while I had been not training as much as I needed to, and he had been training his ass off, and it showed. So I upped my game over the following week, and held my own again, (but barely.) This week we squared off again, and I won, but I am not sure how convincingly. And so the trend says, and I think that, next week I can put a few things into play that will give me the win – but the lad is constant reminder that youth is no longer on my side – I am NOT the unquestioned best. I am so used to being physically stronger and/or faster and/or smarter and/or tougher than most people (minus professional tough-guys, I hasten to point out,) that it is slightly discomfitting to find that the next generation is indeed crawling up the ladder, and as surely as night follows day, is sure to overtake you someday.

So this morning, when I wake up, and I feel my back muscles slightly sore, my ankles slightly loose, my hips aching, and the cut inside my lip stinging it reminds me that last night was spent in what is coming to be my favorite place – the gym.

2011-11-19T12:49:00.000-08:00

Oh Vodka – thou art so kind to me!
Why do I spurn thy embrace
For that of Whiskey?

I think of you

2011-10-13T03:48:00.000-07:00

I think of you throughout the day,
I think about you late at night
I think about you when I'm hungry
Or when my trousers feel too tight.
I think of the curve your lips have
I consider your waist and hip
I pause to ponder that scar of yours
As I hunger for your lip.
Your eyes dance fierce and bright
My dear, your laugh sings high and strong
I only think of you, my dear,
When I think how life is long.

Where I live

2011-09-18T23:54:00.000-07:00

Dogs in the street
pull at pizza boxes.
Old car windows empty
except at the edges.
Walking at night
I see so little;
In the day I know
where I live.

2011-09-18T23:52:00.000-07:00

THIS is a day upon which so much depends.
Bets, having been placed, will ride.
Alea iacta est.

2011-08-30T14:34:00.000-07:00

What is to be said of the Chinese film?
It is full of colors in every frame.
The cinematography is impeccable.
It ends in death for every person.
Every army wears a different color, and all are magnificent.
Each character betrays another:
One of love of daughter
One of love of mother
One of love of lover
One of love of life;

But the end is this:
the emperor knows best
and punishes incest.

Fugio

2011-08-07T02:03:00.000-07:00

I am nothing other than time. Time and agreement – a temporary living arrangement between some carbon and some oxygen, some hydrogen and nitrogen atoms who migrate in and out at all hours, carrying supply to meet demand. (As I typed that last sentence a babbling group of foul-smelling methane molecules made it past the last border checkpoint – and in a zone far north, thermally charged caffeine and lactose molecules were admitted.) L’etat – cest moi!

But though the molecules themselves be most apparent, make no mistake, it is the time in which I swim. My constitution carries an addendum – a morbid post-script scribbled at the bottom, making clear the genre in which I act, “This message will self-destruct in ___ “ And there a careless clerk has left a t uncrossed, as it were, and an empty opening, left to be filled in later, comes to dominate by virtue of the power invested in its emptiness. It yawns at me in the morning -my telomeres are ticking, my stem-cells running thin.

I see my hands before me now – the hair upon the knuckles which I burn back with an old cigarette lighter left over from years ago when I still smoked – the hair upon the knuckles which I burn back when it becomes long enough to reach out and touch another finger – I see my hands before me now – and I see the beginning of the first liver-spot. The first spot – yes – but not the first sign of the impending revolution – no – there have been others. The sound my knees and wrists and ankles make have been with me for years – but only recently has rising from bed begun to sound like a string of small, pathetic fire-crackers – hair has long harbored in my nose, and for years even my ears have produced hair with an abundance and energy usually more assoiciated with the fierce and misplaced fecundity of youth – but now abundance has doubled down upon abundance, but instead of pliable and whispy young tender shoots I put forth black stalks of the kind to be found upon the more intimate zones of a matronly rhino.

The silver has sparkled in the lines beneath my lips for some years now – some ladies say they find it attractive – which doesn’t stop it being what it is – a sign the times has left lying across my face, encircling my lips, so that whatever words I offer are seen as emerging from a well of wisdom distilled from experience, as opposed to the fresh leaping genius of youth.

I am time – time cest moi. I am conscious of time – I am self-conscious. I know well the potholes of my road, and I watch them deepen with mounting alarm.

What I hope to achieve

2011-06-14T23:20:00.000-07:00

I have babbled, I believe, at great length about the list I have made for my life. I recently found out that it can be called a bucket list. Unfortunately for me, I find the very sound-quality of this name distasteful and trivializing. Nuff-sed.

I have been recently adding to, explicating, and regrouping this list. Actually, I should say it in plural, these lists, as it is really more than one. There are reading lists, travelling lists, learning lists, etc. Sometimes the handling of these lists is nothing more than a mental vacation - a quick visit to fantasy land, a reshuffling of the cards, and mental fondling of fantasies - at other times I consult or work with the lists in order to check on a goal, or add to, or modify it. I don't mind, I don't criticize myself if I find myself using the lists for a momentary bit of fantasy fuel and escapism - I don't discourage this at all - because if I am escaping into a world of my own goals for my life, then at the very least I am keeping my dreams in front of my eyes that I may not forget what aspirations I have.

In doing so, a number of questions have occurred to me, regarding the nature of the list. For example - what value is there in the fulfillment of a goal? As a specific example - If my goal was to climb mount Kilimanjaro - what if sudden illness or accident took me at 500 meters from the top - would I count that goal achieved? If the goal I wrote down was to read the Masnavi, and after finishing a gruellingly nasty book-length translation I note that this was only book six of the entire poem - must I continue? If my goal was to achieve conversational fluency in a total of 5 languages - if I end up with three, was it a total wash? If my goal was to learn to cook five things really well - does french toast count as one? If my goal was to earn a black-belt, but the martial art I have fallen into does not have belt rankings - do I need to take up a new sport, or once I achieve instructor status, is that enough? Furthermore - what if I don't fulfill a goal - how much of a failure is that?

By asking these (no doubt trivial to anyone with real things on their mind) questions, I am pushed into examining the reasons FOR the list - the role I expect it, want it to play in my life. I realized at one point that the point of entering a marathon was not to be able to cross the finish line. Were that the case, they could just start everybody 20 meters from the finish line and be done with it. The finish line exists only as an arbitrary marker to delineate the defining edge of an experience, with the experience, the achievement, the value within, located in the experience that is in every step of the way. Minus the experience of the pain and sweat and cramps that dog your every step of the road, the finish line is meaningless.

Thus - if I become sick 500 meters from the top of Kilimanjaro, I shall regard it as a success to have travelled to Tanzania, to have talked with the people there, to have confronted the logistics of planning, to have learned about the mountain, to have felt the pain of the climb - all of that, even minus the summit, makes it a success.

On the other hand, if by counting French Toast as one thing I can cook, I learn nothing, then this goal was meaningless.

Which reveals to me that the main goal of my list is to establish arbitrary points, far enough removed from my present condition that by the time I am near that point, I will have travelled sufficient distance to have (inshallah) learned sufficient or experienced sufficient that I am left changed by the experience. In other words, the end goal of this list is not to do the thing, but to mold myself.

If my goals stay largely unmet, but in the process of struggling I have molded my body and my mind into a finer tool, or molded myself into a finer person, then it was a great success. The man is molded by his experiences, and the goals are but arbitrary points established sufficiently far removed from myself that in the process of there arriving I may find myself changed by the experience.

Today, by the way, I will be working toward my goal of 100 pushups - (website here: http://hundredpushups.com/) and studying the constellations (I have picked 18.) I may even crawl through my ceiling and see if I can spot any stars from my roof. And in between I will be reading "Culture and Imperialism" by Edward Said - (or, failing that, I might just watch "Game of Thrones" on my computer - we shall see!)

Of the wealth of nations no end

2011-06-14T22:52:00.000-07:00

I cannot adequately express, without descent into cloyingly trite-sounding language, the depths of gratitude and joy that walk with me through my day to day life.

Of course, I have moments many of annoyance impatience apprehension daily, but the emotion dominant my days throughout is the feeling of deep and abiding gratitude - thankfulness - recognition of gifts given undeserved to me.

From the sun upon the skin to the shimmer of the water the raven black in silhouette that perches upon the marbled minaret rail the coffee so common the flowers profusion the salad I lazily consume.

The books upon my shelf the bag my books surrounds the endless cups of dark sugared tea consumed in gardens green sheltered in shady by floating ivy trellis the photos of her eyes heavy-lidded locked in an embrace with death made manifest in brass - the muscles (mine) that scream or creak or cry - whiskey glass rum glass small cherry tomato walnuts.

The sweat slicks and neck aches and wrist cracking - for these I am grateful - the hip hand-hollowed, the tenders exposed - the dust and the ants that own my kitchen - the jeans my ass over, the blanket my bed upon - sniffs, yawns, sighs, even students complaining - for all this, Lord, I give thanks.

2011-06-03T00:40:00.000-07:00

I am little bothered to find that I am indeed my own worst enemy - it was long suspected, and is no doubt as it should be.
On the other hand, I am quite bothered to think that if you can judge a man by his enemies, I am at an absolute loss to know whether I should feel insulted or honored.

Ay, there's the rub

2011-06-02T23:51:00.000-07:00

I am haunted by something which I cannot name, and am therefore powerless against. For if naming provides identification, and identification aids in classification and if classification could assist in finding similar examples and if similar examples could provide a solution which when taken might apply also to my own problem - it is the namelessness that matters.

But what am I saying – it does have a name, and a well-known one at that. They recur – my dreams – they are recurring dreams, and by their unpleasantness we know them, they are nightmares. I can no more stop them than I could stop the a wave in the open ocean. Not every night (thank heavens for that - to wake with this feeling that I have now, and will carrry with me for much of the day – to have that everyday, that would be too much – what I have now is not too much – is is much nonetheless more than I would have,) but not every night they come to me.

There are a few – a menu – you may choose if you like. Do you dislike men without skin, whose muscles visible to the air red and angry across ligaments come beckon to you as you sit with friends and only you can see him – no one else notices – and you would notify them, but when you go to speak ofyou’re your voice fails and is not your tool – he turns off your voice for you because he knows your thoughts, and he would not tolerate your dragging others into this intimate moment of stark terror shared between you two, old friends of many nights since childhood. Eventually he will beckon, and I will go – I have no choice – I am not mine own. There are also the lizards, of course – the large, muscular-bulging variety, slate gray often in color, but possibly green – they wait for me with mouths of pink, and move but rarely and then to the purpose.
Am I afraid of heights? Indeed, in waking life, I am, but not so much than I cannot swallow it and push forward and continue – but in my dream, and it is always structured the same – in my dream it overpowers me, the fear, and leaves me – cowering on a finely graded ledge, one foot-slip away from . . . But I should begin with where it begins.

Always, always, I am always in a strange place – and usually, I want to get out. Last night I wanted to get in – but only to another builidng, and to that end, rather than go down into the very narrow and oh-so-inconveniently placed drainage ditch between the two buildings, I thought I could save time by going UP the small steps located on the side of this building, on this side of the ditch, and then cross over on the small walkboards that are strung between them.
Quickly up I go, the easy stops on the outside of the building. As I get to the top I begin to notice that I had failed to notice that the top few steps are dangerously minimal, and angled in the not-healthy 4 story drop direction. But ahead is a landing – then the crossing – yet somehow when I get to the landing, either the changing nature of the dream, or my own cursed lack of attention earlier result in me finding myself upon a landing that, while safe, makes going back down a fool’s errand. There are no handholds now, and the steps are very dangerous, so I must got forward. But when I turn to look at the walkway in front of me, there are details I had not noticed before – it is cracked, the wood is rotten, it was thin to begin with, has somehow grown yet thinner with proximity, and it will surely not carry my weight.

Suddenly the fear just rises like a sneeze – you could fight it, but once it is upon you, it has a life and determination all its own, and you would be best served to get out of the way. The fear sets in with a sudden downswooping of panic, and I clutch onto – there is always something there to clutch on to – and usually it is mostly stable – I clutch it and I absolutely cower in agonizing fear of falling. Sooner or later, though – it is not so long – 20 – 30 seconds in the dream – I have to get on, and there is always a door or a window available to me.

Last night it was a door. I knocked on the door, and then looking across (while waiting for the door to open,) I saw two people from work, the assistant director and her assistant, stuck in a similar plight on the rooftop of the house opposite. And – oddly enough – I recognized that rooftop – I had been there about 2 or 3 months before. One of them was waiting on the other while she collected her courage – they had just come out of a gable window, and I knew the route they would have to take – up, across the faded cedar shakes that came loose and slid clattering down the roof to dissappear off the edge – they had to transverse the roof – but I couldn’t remember what came after that.

The woman who answered the door was quite old – probably in her 70’s. She had me wait while she fetched her husband – all I wanted was to ask for a set of stairs – can you show to the hallway so I can take the stairs down and out of the building?
When her elderly husband showed up I was nude – except for a cap, and the bag I was carring with me – it was rather embarrassing – I was keenly aware of how inappropriate this was – but what is one to do – apparently I wander naked today – I asked for the stairs – he did not seem to understand, which is odd because I know the words for stairs – it doesn’t seem like such a far out request – but he wasn’t at all sure. He walked away and came back – and using his hands he asked me if I wanted the riser (up) part of the stairs or the tread (flat) part of the stairs. He had obviously misunderstood – I explained that I wanted to WALK DOWN the stairs. Can he just show me where the stairs are? He eventually agreed,and told his wife to do so – as she was showing me the way – first down this set of stairs in their apartment, through this room – she used a couple of slavic words. I was in the middle of asking about this when her husband came back, and now I could hear the slavic words he was using, as well – they were immigrants here – perhapst that explains the misunderstanidng about the stairs. But after a down staircase, now there were also winding up tightly two up staircases, and still no sign of the main hall of the building, where I can acess a stairwell and go down to the ground level. And now they are taking me to these internal, UP staircases, that are terribly rickety to boot – but I don’t want to go up – but they seem to be telling me that up is the way to get out.

Now in case I have not bored you with this topic before, this is ALWAYS the case. For one reason or another, I always end up travelling UP, trying to get down. And the means by which I am travelling up get progressively thinner, smaller, and less secure. I cannot believe this is happening to me again.
I think these people are Bulgarian immigrants – they certainly aren’t Turks – I follow their advice,and go up the staircases, squeezing myself out a hole at the top and emerging half-way out a window only about 10 feet off the ground. I am in luck.
I throw my backpack to the ground first, and then prepare myself to vault out the window. But in that moment, a young boy scurries through and seizes my bag, and runs off. I jump.

The family below are gypsies, I think. They are . . . malformed . . . unsympathetic, and one of them stole my bag, and I know it is somewhere nearby, and all that needs to happen is a quick word from the right guy, and it will reappear. Unfortunately, my first few inquiries leading nowhere, I decide to adopt a more straightforward approach. I seize one of them, a kid of about 20, and tell him to get my bag here or . . . I’ll burn him. He is not sufficiently pro-active and motivated, so I seize him by the neck, flick my lighter, and hold it up to his cheek – but it goes out. So I try his forehead , and then his hair with slighly better success. But really, this lighter sucks. His friends and family are all watching – some of them offer their lighters to me – mine keeps going out. I am glad, (albeit slightly bothered) by their happy willingess to help. Eventually I get my hands on a properly functioning lighter, and hold the flame to his ear. He wiggles, but the ear does not do much – the hair dissappears, the color changes, it crinkles slightly - I don’t recall seeing smoke, though I am sure there was. The main effect (he doesn’t squirm nearly so much as would be appropriate,) is that the top half of his ear shrinks, and practically disappears, leaving a bit of a shrunken, half-ear behind it.

And still no sign of the bag. It is time to move – they are moving – they push me into one of the waiting multi-passenger cars, and smile a not nice smile at me. As one of them leans past me – a man of perhaps 55 or 60, I see a piece of broken glass bottle bottom pinned between thumb and forefinger, and as he leans past me to put something in the back, he takes advantage of the moment, and the opportunity, and grinds the piece of broken glass into my back. I don’t react, and so he starts cutting long lines down my back – I wonder what my shirt will look like in an hour, but say nothing.

I say nothing because I can see something – everyone in this family keeps constant vigilant half hooded an eye on the guy who is the leader – he is the one sitting in the driver’s seat of this car – and when another guy tries to get at me with a screwdriver, he does so with both eyes watching the driver, to be sure he does not see it. I twist the screwdriver out of his hand, and plunge it a short way into his leg – only a short way, because I am beginning to catch the fear of the attention open conflict might draw. The man I stabbed makes no noise, just rubs it and stares malevolently at me – I can only imagine what is coming later.

But what interests me most is the fact that the driver, the leader, seems to be aware of what is going on – he has a slight smirk on his face all the time, and yet the others seem deathly afraid that he will actively notice – which, given what we are doing now – what does he do to people when he gets lathered? The longer I wait, the more I realize this guy is Vesuvius on a coffee break – the pressure and heat are slowly building, and he is enjoying it, and when it comes, we will all suffer exquisitely, and horribly, and we will pretend it is all fine, because we are so afraid of what else may be inside him, waiting to find its own creative realization upon us.

Over time, (and there is much,) I see that many of these people are trapped, like me. They want out – but slowly the leader’s mind and their own captivity has twisted them into stunted sadistic beings who can no longer think their way out. We go to church, the whole group of us, a lot. It is there that I realize one of the women in the group is working for law enforcement, and her contacts are here in the church – it is the only place we get to interact with anyone. As we leave, in the parking lot I walk past basement windows and realize that it is far too busy down there – emotion-laden sounds come up from below, and the the sound of much machine clanking – none of this bodes well, and slowly I feel myself losing my confidence that I can, when the moment comes, screw my courage to the sticking point and finish one or four or all of these fuckers. I know when the moment comes my strength in my hands will fail, and I will fear and move too slowly and then I will be caught, and I will throw myself at their feet in abject fear of what is to come, not so much the death as the losing, not so much the death as the pain, the pain not so much the pain as the helpless grinding humiliation exposed, and I will beg and I will be broken and thus one of them.

With my hands upon the keys
I have drowsed upon the couch –
Today I will write no more
I must go and close the door.

Life is messy.

2011-05-07T20:11:00.000-07:00

A snapshot of my life in this Sunday-morning moment would be deceptive. Chaos reigns across the living areas of my apartment. In the kitchen, on Friday evening I cooked a piece of salmon, with a covering of mustard seed, pine nuts, bit o' bread crumbs and lemon, and some capers thrown in for good measure. That was then wrapped in a bit of pastry dough, which was then brushed with some egg, and baked in the oven. The random remains were left in the kitchen, where they still are this morning. Then, Saturday morning I made a strawberry cobbler, of which I proceeded to eat half. Again, much of the remains and dirty utensils, sit still on my counters, largely where they were left when I put them down, having exhausted their use. Then, last night, I bought a chicken, and ate it piece by piece by dipping it in barbecue sauce, garlic yogurt, or sriracha sauce, all while priming the engine with a beer so bad it nearly makes me gag when I drink it. The sauces, of course, still sit out in the kitchen. On the floor, there is a pizza box, containing, yes, pizza. Thus, in short, my kitchen is a mess.

My living room has only a few disordered items of its own, chief among them being a brackish bowl of greasy water containing in it's discolored depths some salmon skin, some carrot pieces, and some lettuce. I know it sounds like that soup you once saw in a Vietnamese restaurant, but it isn't. It's just turtle food. You see, if I put their food in their main tank with them, the water gets all nasty much sooner. But if I feed them in a separate bowl, then I need to change the water less often. On the couch where I sit, there is a lap-desk, (bean-bag type construction on the bottom, black plastic on top,) which sits upon the sofa beside me, because it is really more useful at providing a stable base upon which a coffee cup might rest within reach than a lap-desk for the laptop, which balances on my leg which, wrapped in a blanket, balances on the coffee table, just fine. The coffee table itself is strewn with electronics - two hard drives of what a few years ago would have been considered phenomenal capacity, but now, given my penchant for taking photos and downloading TV shows, are both brimming near capacity. Were that not enough memory and entertainment electric, my ipod, wrapped in its little white cord, is also on the table, beside a computer mouse. Cords from all these devices in different directions writhe, each with its own kinks and folds rising and across the table snaking as though they had life.

When I said the living room had but a few disordered items of its own, I meant that - well, there is also my jacket on the chair across from me - but most of the mess in the living room is actually spill-over from the dining area. Yesterday I bought a rose bush. It is about 6 feet tall, and is supported by a reed which it twines around and up - I set it in my living room, next to the window, over the turtles, and it so pleased me to have a rosebush in my living room that I decided to I had to re-pot some other plants, but quickly ran out of soil. The project having been suddenly abandoned, however, the pots still sit scattered around the coffee table, looking, but for their new-ness, like something you would expect to find in the back shed of a gardener. Beyond the pots, on its side, lies an empty beer can, and beyond that a rug, having been thrown from across the room last night, lies crumpled, under a chair which supports an empty pizza box.

The pizza box is not there because, like so many other items, I just left it where it was when I was done eating pizza - no, I went and pulled it from the rubbish to put it on that chair, because I wanted to cut a circle out of it. In the end I didn't, or rather, I cut a circle out of the flyer pasted onto it instead - (it was just easier that way-)which goes some way toward explaining why there is a cut up Little Ceasar's flyer on the floor in the dining room, next to the pages of newspaper and magazine spread out over the floor. There are about 9 of them, and they were intended to protect the floor from the paint which was aimed at the poor canvas which sits atop them. Given the amount of paint on them, I suppose they did a bang-up job, but given the amount of paint on the floor, it would appear I should have used about 29 sheets, as opposed to 9. I don't suppose Jackson Pollack worried about this sort of thing . . .

Naturally, then, upon the dining room table overlooking the brightly colored floor and newspapers and of course, canvas, sit tubes and bottles and bottles and tubes of paint, plus a large bottle of milk that ought to be in the fridge, about half a chicken on a rather smeary plate, and a pile of bones and excess skin off to the side of the plate. There are brushes, tape, string, glue, pens, and a pallette with paint crusted over it. Yet let's not get too caught up there.

Allow your glance to travel beyond the table, and you find, across the back of a dining room chair, and scattered across the floor next to the bookshelves and the rugs that hang behind them, dirty clothes. Not just run-of-the-mill dirty clothes, but workout-dirty clothes. Amidst the mix I can also pick out a pair of boxing gloves and hand-wraps, though my view is somewhat obscured by a large pot, like the others in the living room, intended yesterday to receive a plant.

The plants I speak of are all around me - literally on four sides. Most of them are blooming right now - putting out runners and blossoms and blooms. There are wide, spreading spider plants, long trailing leafy vines, small pots of flowering plants, some meter-long bamboo stems, and a couple of things that could pass for small trees. And a rose bush, of course. We mustn't forget him, as he is rather my favorite, and I shall soon name him.

As we leave the living room, I was about to say that my entryway is ok - but it is not. Upon the table, there you will see receipts from food delivered, along with spare change, a wallet, various bank cards, and possibly an open switchblade. On the floor in the entryway there are two plastic bags which contain glass bottles intended for the recycle bin. Due to a recent wine-tasting I here hosted, there are, if memory serves, 6 empty wine bottles, as well as 1 empty each of vodka and bourbon and beer - but let us leave here.

My hallway and bathroom, I am happy to say, are uncluttered - or at least no more cluttered than typically passes for well-ordered and clean. The hallway, however, leads unfortunately to the bedroom. Upon the floor of the bedroom is a rustic Turkish hand-woven nomadic carpet, brilliant in its reds and oranges, many of which you cannot see because of the pile of jeans and t-shirts and sweaters that begins upon the rug and travels like a great amorphous all-consuming living being from the floor to the foot of the chair and then up the chair, where it ponderously perches and surveys, via the window, life in the street below. The pile grows, and moves, from day to day, shifting its bulk this way or that depending on its mood. As of this morning it has crowned itself with a small black bra, the front straps of which each bear four little pearl-like beads suspended under a fine-tiny golden ring.

As our gaze approaches the bed, across the floor are scattered water bottles, perhaps three, empty all as of this morning. The bedside table upon which they stood one-by-one when full in turn, is currently covered in books, which were once stacked neatly, perhaps five in one stack, three in another, next to the lamp by which they were to be read, but which now lays over at a 45-degree angle, tilted precariously into upon and against the books that saved it from a crashing and untimely end. Scattered beside the perilously piled books and off-kilter lamp are three bracelets of a gold color, and a largish gold colored swatch watch, of the sort that seems fashionable these days, but which I think is a bit big for her very small wrists, which she holds beside her head which uses no pillow, but lays directly upon the red sheet. As her face is turned away, I from the door see only long black hair, and those slender hands with long fingers, stemming from her tiny wrists. Stretched out on the bed, even covered by the red duvet, she looks even longer than she is. She woke me this morning coming in at four. After when we were finished at five, shortly she began to snore. It was the first time I had heard her snore - it was, in an odd way, endearing.

The turtles are moving now, in their tank - banging about and having small dramas, I suspect, in which way they quite remind me of humans. They have heard me typing, and as the sun is now up, they know in their tiny brains that soon the morning sun will soon reach them, and they will take up their basking spots on the stacked rocks to sun themselves.

And I - I will clean today. I will put away the tubes of paint, and pick up the newspaper from the floor. The beer cans and barbecue sauce will go into the kitchen, and the chicken will be stripped from bones and wrapped in plastic and frozen in the freezer like in a civilized household. The flowerpots, empty, will go back in storage, to await the arrival of soil. The painting will go up on the easel, with the others, where I can look at it and think. The clothes will go in the washer, the boxing gloves, stuffed full of newspaper, so they may stay freshy-smelly, put away. The rancid turtle water will be flushed, the turtles brushed, and every rock cleaned in the shower. The dishes I'll wash, coffee I'll make, a new cake I'll bake - a strawberry cobbler, perhaps, again. What I won't do is scrub the floor - I rather like the paint splatters, and there will be time enough in life for scrubbing when I am older and done with the living.

A slice of cheese, two half-bottles of wine, and TV downloaded from the internet, were paradise enow'!

2011-05-05T14:02:00.000-07:00

One of the advantages of having wine parties, or wine tastings, if you will, is that the poor suckers who attend tend to leave half-finished bottles of wine at your house. And furthermore, you know exactly which ones are best.

I can't exactly say it offsets the cost of all the cheeses and olives and dips and strawberries and grapes and apples and walnuts and little hand-rolled whatnots, but nor is it to be overlooked.

One of the advantages of having a bunch of half-drunk bottles of decent wine sitting around is that they go so well with sleeping pills, and what's more, they make television really, really good. Ok, not really. I mean, the show I am thinking of was good even when I was sober. So - really, I would have enjoyed it in any case.

'Tis a piss-poor blog entry, really. But the aforementioned sleeping pill has caught up with the wine, and the two together are doing a tag-team whammy on me brain.

May the force be with you all.

Poetry, and again!

2011-05-03T04:52:00.000-07:00

Please note that all poems here quoted are done so from memory, and are thus likely to contain errors. You are encouraged to compare them with the originals, and upon finding errors, write me derisive emails containing cutting remarks.

I'm continuing on with the topic of poetry, since that is the thing that is occupying most of my excess mental time these days. Since the last post, I have taken up the habit of pausing morning and night to recite the poems that I have thus far memorized.

She walks in beauty, like the night
of cloudless climes and starry skies
and all that's best of dark and bright
meet in her aspect and her eyes
Thus muted to that tender light
Which heaven the gaudy day denies.
One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impaired that nameless grace
That waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lighten's o'er her face
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their resting place
And on that cheek, and o'er that brow
So soft, so pure, yet eloquent
the smiles that thrill, the glints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!

Ok - I know for sure I fucked up a line there - specifically the fourth from the last, but you get the point. What bothers me about this poem, and a number of others, is that it starts out so well - the first few lines are absolutely immortal in sense and sound - I think had that line been spoken by anyone, including the most bumpkin of a farmer, in the most rural of late-night pubs, one off-hand night, these lines would still have caught on and been quoted and bandied-about and written on a napkin and scrawled on a wall, and probably would have ended up as a lyric in a popular song of the day. Those lines are just so damn good that I cannot imagine them being birthed into the world and the world not stopping to acknowledge them.

But we start with an image, of beauty, like the night - we have repeated references to dark and light, day and night, but she - she walks in beauty, like the night. Beauty in motion, she is. She has the beauty of a starry sky in a cloudless clime. She has a dark beauty that the brilliant day could never aspire to. And then she starts expressing thoughts serenely sweet and pure and dear!

Do you see my problem there? I was seeing a woman of cream-white skin, and raven-black hair, walking graceful as the night - with an almost feline-like movement, the white of her skin and the glints of her looks dodging between the dark-as-coal locks of hair reminding one of of a starry sky on a cloudless night. And suddenly she turns all serenely pure and dearly sweet? I guess if we are going to end up with a saccharine-child, I need a different image to start from:

She laughs her joy, dark-trilling bright
That tells of youth and hopes and dreams,
And 'twixt the raven falling locks
A starry soft-lit side-glance gleams,

As though a star on cloudless night
In race-play 'gainst far-off moonbeam
Should 'midst the forest my face see
and worthy to taste her lips me deem.

OK - do you see what I mean? Introduce the "Innocence" early in the poem, so we can start with an appropriate mental image. Now, obviously that was a rather imperfect two stanzas, but I'm just doing this off the top of my head, and I am not . . . help me here . . . who is this . . . Lord Byron. And he had ALL fucking day to work on this! That's what "Lord" means - it means you have all day to do fuck all except recover from hangovers, shag the domestics, engage in the odd war of liberation against the Ottomans, and write bleeding poetry! And that being the case, it ought to be fucking good, and not give me jarring notes that cause me to go from having an enchantingly dark creature of amazing feline-like grace moving about an enchanted night-scape to some simpering little butter-coated creature of 12 expressing thoughts of serene innocence and purity while sprinkling sugar on her crumbly scone!

Which brings me to my next poem of a problem. I chose this one of Whitman's, because it was so . . . antagonistic, and pompous, that it seemed to suit me well. And perhaps it is slowly growing on me, but I still cannot help but think that this poem really is a great example of a work that precisely characterizes a lack of all the things that poetry is supposed to have - like, I don't know - rhythm, artistic merit, etc.

Are you the new person drawn toward me?
To begin with, take warning, I am surely far different from what you suppose.
Do you suppose you will find in me your ideal?
Do you think it so easy to have me become your lover?
Do you think the friendship of me would be unalloy'd satisfaction?
Do you think I am trusty and faithful?
Do you see no further than this facade, this smooth and tolerant manner of me?
Do you suppose yourself advancing on real ground, toward a real heroic man?
Have you no thought, o dreamer, that it may be all maya, illusion?

To begin with, the poem's lines seem jagged - there is so little rhythm in them that I feel as though I am swallowing my breath and at every line break. That, and the writer's supposition that others would naturally find or assume him to be heroic, coupled with a completely superfluous, apropos of nothing, reference to eastern-mysticism shoe-horned in (to the detriment of what little rhythm there was,) at the end, just unintentionally confirms the portrait of the author as the full-on jackass he seems to have intended to imply that he might be.

But enough about suck things. Let us go on to talk of a book that left me breathless when I was 18 or 19. I am speaking of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. When I was first back in the states after high school, I ran across this book in a second-hand bookshop, and was transfixed to the spot as surely as if someone had nailed my shoes to the floor.

The first 5 quartos made little sense to me - it took me a few pages to catch on to the types of images and metaphors he (or Fitzgerald,) was repeatedly using, and the direction in which his comments were drifting, but after that I just couldn't get enough. I've always been a sucker for mortality metaphors, and people extolling the wisdom of wine, women, and song. But then to go on and ask the Almighty: Who here has done more to create this situation, and who has done less? Why do I, who only walk this path, when my foot slips, ask pardon of you who not only created me, but created the treacherous path, and then strew it with snares and traps? I mean, if YOU created the world, and YOU allowed sin in, and then YOU allowed me to be born into it, exactly to what degree am I to blame vs. YOU?

Throw in a minor dash of the romanticism of the far-off east, and I was hooked.

Amazing, though, how a person with sufficient time to write, (or translate) such a poem would need to begin multiple stanzas with the same trope:

Come fill the cup, and in the fires of spring
The winter garment of repentance fling.
The bird of time hath but a little way to fly,
and lo, the bird is on the wing!

Ah, come fill the cup that today clears
of past regrets and future fears.
Tomorrow? Why tomorrow I may be myself,
With Yesterday's seven-thousand years.

But - as he said - the bird (of time) is on the wing, and Turkish class starts all to soon, so to the store I must go, or I will not drink milk tonight.

Think! In this battered caravanserai,
Whose alternate portals are night and day,
How Idiot after Idiot blogged his bit,
Abode his hour, then went his way!

Form, Function, and Poetry

2011-04-27T05:43:00.000-07:00

In all of my useless casting-about to try and figure out what to do with myself prior to dying, I have made up a list of things that, I figure, might constitute a life well-lived, or at least a farcical resemblance thereof. This list faces constant revision and addition, though not too much outright subtraction.

In a recent fit of additions, I decided that I wanted to memorize approximately 10 poems. These would be 10 poems which capture the joy of sound that many poems offer, and have something to say about the human condition which, when trotted out of the back-room of memory from time to time, give me a gristly profundity upon which I might chew an hour or two.

This was the plan. I began selecting poems, and immediately, like all plans that come within a 2-mile radius of my hands, the plan began fraying at the edges and mutating at the core. Ok, not really - it's just that I have a difficult time saying "No" to any poem I like, so the body of poems I am drawing from seems to be growing.

The first thing I did was write my favorite poetry authority, and ask him of to suggest some poems. He responded with the following:

“Sunflower Sutra” (or “Supermarket in California ”) by Allen Ginsberg

“Invictus” by William Ernest Henley

“ Lake Isle of Innesfree” (or “When You Are Old” or “Second Coming”) by W B Yeats

“And Death Shall Have No Dominion” by Dylan Thomas

“i thank You God for most this amazing” by cummings

When I Heard The Learn'd Astronomer by Walt Whitman

“The Windhover” by Hopkins

Psalm 23

Sonnet XXI by EB Browning

“Kubla Khan” (or “The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner”) by Colerridge

If I was going to memorize Shakespeare, I’d memorize the St. Crispin’s Day speech or, like you said, something from Hamlet.

I promptly looked these up on the internet, and began printing them off. Unfortunately, while there, I started looking at other poems, and ended up with a few more - such as:

The time I've lost in wooing
Out of the rolling ocean the crowd
She walks in beauty like the night
Delight in disorder
Some chapters of the Tao
Some Quartos of the Rubiyat

And then printed them all off, and stared that them for a while. Where to begin? For no real reason other than the size of it, I shuffled Whitman's "When I hear the learn'd astronomer" to the top of the pile, at which point it occurred to me that perhaps, if I were going to undertake a body of stuff to memorize, it might be wise to begin with the small stuff, the better to train the brain to it, and gain that extra juicy-reward feeling that squirts up between the toes of my brain when I manage to kick a totally useless personal goal in the ass.

(Don't let yourself dwell on a mental image of that last metaphor.)

So it was with Whitman that I began. And within a day, it was well-done. Here, some days later, it is, from memory. Please pardon punctuation mistakes.

When I heard the learn'd astronomer,
When the proofs and figures were ranged in columns before me
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,
When I sitting, heard the learn'd astronomer, as he lectured, with much applause in the lecture room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out, I wandered off by myself
In the mystical moist night air, and from time to time
Looked up in perfect silence at the stars.

What I quickly noticed was that the second portion of the poem was easier to memorize than the first half. And the more I recited it to myself, the more I noticed the differences. The first half of the poem is broken in odd places, and has a hacking/coughing start-and-stop to it, punctuated by the wheezing "when," whereas the second half has more lilting words, and a rhythm that slides one line into another. Furthermore, the first half is full of science and order words - columns ranged and diagrams shown with charts to measure and astronomers and learn'd lecture rooms. The second half has not a single one of these words in it, but instead has soft action - rising, gliding, wandered off, mystical stars moist night perfect silence by myself. And somehow these changes made the second half easier to remember - easier to follow.

Which was odd, because in the course of memorizing that poem, I had accidentally memorized 1/3 of another one. Which is to say, just by flipping past it, and reading it once or twice in passing, it was now dancing with gluey slippers all over the echo-chamber of my mind, with no suggestion of stopping. It literally just fell into my head with almost zero effort. The first half below, is what I already had memorized when I finished with the first poem.

The time I've lost in wooing,
In watching and pursuing,
The light that lies
In women's eyes
Has been my heart's undoing.

Though Wisdom oft has sought me
I scorned the lore she brought me
My only books
were women's looks,
And folly's all they taught me.

So I immediately set about learning the rest of it - I will skip the middle 2 stanzas, as they really are not up to the level of the others, and go on to the last couple.

And are these follies going?
And is my proud heart growing
Too cold or wise for brilliant eyes
Again to set it glowing?

In vain, alas, th'endeavor,
from bonds so sweet to sever!
Poor Wisdom's chance
Against a glance
Is now as weak as ever.

I had to wonder - how is that I had to work at "The learn'd astronomer," but "The time I've lost in wooing" seemed to go straight into my brain?

I think the answer is the reason for poetry itself: that rhythm, rhyme, and repeated relationships between sounds and concepts, allow the brain to make connections between the items faster, thus enabling faster commitment to memory, and better long-term retention. Naturally, if you were living in a pre-literate society, and you wanted future generations to remember reliably remember the combination to the alarm system on the family's country-house, or not forget what utter uncle-raping bastards populate the village three hill's over, you might choose to set it to rhyme and rhythm to facilitate it being sung or chanted around the camp fire.

And from functionality to form, like all art, it moved. What was a useful device for carrying water becomes in time an exercise in precision crafting, cutting, glazing, painting and firing, and is an art form, valued for its aesthetic. What was once the necessity of keeping your hair from your eyes and out of the fire, in time becomes a multi-billion dollar industry and art-form, with its own high temples and high priests from whom women the world over purchase the unguents and conditioning cremes with micro-gel beads of exotic fruit extracts, and make cash offerings to in hopes that their hair will now better express their unique, sophisticated yet simple, vivacious yet with a touch of mysterious reserve, personality.

Oscar Wilde once said that "All art is quite useless." The line preceding this one was "The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely." And perhaps that is where the dividing line lies between Art and Utility - between function and form. When one begins to add function-less (useless) aspects to a thing in order to make it more worthy of admiration, one is engaging in art.

The joy of useless beauty is captured to a (for me, at least,) jaw-dropping degree in the following poem, by e. e. cummings, written here from memory, so please excuse any errors.

i thank you, God, for most this amazing
day, for the leaping greenly spirits of trees,
for a blue-true dream of sky, for all
that is natural, that is infinite, that is yes.

(i who have died am alive again today. this is
the sun's birthday. this is the birthday of
light and of love and wings, and of
the great gay happening illimitably earth.

how could tasting, touching, hearing, breathing,
thinking any, lifted from the no of all nothing,
human merely being, doubt unimaginable you?

(And now the ears of my ears awake,
and the eyes of my eyes are opened.)

I saw a snowflake falling by

2011-04-27T05:34:00.001-07:00

I saw a snowflake falling by
It seemed to find its way by feel
Into a hollow of my heart
That harbors up my secret fear.

I saw the snowflake strike and slide
Across a window warmed inside
And thus reduced, a droplet drip
Into a puddle brown and wide

(Brown cold and wide as the night,)
So sinking rippled from my sight.

The means are the ends

2011-04-19T05:28:00.000-07:00

Only earlier today I had a minor epiphany. (And thank you, UCLA library ching-chong girl, for helping the public to remember such a great word.) Here is what I was writing at the time:
Yet - if the joy of a thing is in the doing, and not the having done, then surely the reading that I have done due to this list is its own reward, and the "completing" of a list is but a silly by-product of time well-spent.

I have often wondered at the many activities in which I engage, and the value they could possibly hold. I (and much of the world, incidentally,) at some level think that Travel, (with a big T,) somehow leaves one with a bigger soul. Or that having a wide range of experiences, (like having been forced to eat one's own liver in an igloo in the frozen north, or having sex with two women) or mastering certain skills (like playing a musical instrument while having sex with two women, for example,) leave us with . . . I don't know - an expanded conception of our own humanity - a better sense of who we are - a richer life . . . something like that.

It was a couple of years ago, in the midst of achieving a life-long dream, that I first began to wonder about this, or began to realize that there was something here of which I was not sure. It was in Egypt, at one of the numerous famous sights filled with antiquities which to the American mind are so impossibly ancient as to be beyond an age worth thinking about in specific terms. (Frankly, the longer I am outside of the US, the better I do in thinking things that are 600 years old are "somewhat" old, and those of a thousand years "rather" old and those of 2000 years "quite" old, and those preceding that . . . well, now - that is "really very," isn't it?)

But in any case, I was in Aswan, say, or Luxor, staring at some unbelievably dusty piece of rock that some poor slave or 400 had labored over extensively every day for probably the better part of a year, and the afternoon sun was causing my brain to smell like an overdone quiche, and the tourist police kept gesturing to me to follow them off somewhere private, where no doubt they would show, (or, I am told, do) something for which I would have to part with a sum so small as to border on embarrassing, with which they would (whatever the sum,) pretend to be discontented, and demand more, and the sweat was trickling down my back and being absorbed into the backpack which pressed into my back and the dust had over the past hour accumulated again into the small rivulet-stained lines from the last time I poured water over them in an attempt to cleanse them (which had instead just left them muddy,) and I had to ask myself if it was worth it.

After all: What was I here for? Why was I not seated in the shade somewhere, drinking something cold and heavily infused with stupeficants? To what end was this damn misery being endured? (It was at moments like those that I think I came closest to understanding the mindset of the British colonial masters; because frankly, had I been handed a riding crop and a pistol and had a man-servant to walk behind me porting a cooler of cold gin, I too,would have tolerated a lot less cheek from the local touts, I am sure.)

First, I suppose one reason for enduring this misery was because long ago as a wee lad, I had made a goal: to see the pyramids, and The temple at Abu Simbel and such. (And what is the point of making goals if you are only going to discard them later because it necessitated a bit of sweaty traipsing-about and being annoyed by men leading camels?)

Secondly, this "Traveling" thing was supposed to be good for one. After all, why else does one, (and oh, one does!) hear so many people under the guise of "getting to know each other" start trying to out-story and out-travel and out-country each other? Why would people do this, unless at some underlying level, we have the belief that travel makes one . . . smarter? more experienced? more worldy-wise? better-traveled? special-as-a-two-headed-animalcracker? I don't know what it is that we think it does, but it seems overwhelmingly apparent that we do think it signifies something and that something is, to us, very, very, positive - boast-worthy, even.

Consider, then, the number. Have you (I have!) ever heard the question posed: "So how many countries have you been to?" No one ever asks how many meals you've eaten - how many haircuts you've had, how many times you've stubbed your toe in the middle of the night. No one inquires how many times you have broken the speed limit or eaten an ice-cream sundae. No - the number question only comes up in a few areas: How many countries? How many tattoos? How many years? With how many people?

Is there a common thread here? Certainly we ask these questions because we believe that the answer informs us of something. How many years/How old are you correlates to a degree of experience, perhaps? We certainly expect people of different ages to have differing views on life - note the reassessment that takes place when you find out the perfectly acceptable 25 year-old guy at the party is really 36. Suddenly he begins to seem mentally stunted in a way that is only acceptable for people under the age of 26. How many people have you had sex with? The question presupposes that the numbers will communicate something relevant to the person's life experience, or medical history, or values, or to what degree they prefer to stay up late and tolerate crap conversation from drunken people rather than going home and reading a good book. How many tattoos do you have? OK, you got me there. I have no idea why anyone asks that. I certainly don't, as it seems to make fat men begin to disrobe in restaurants.

So given that we think travel does something for one, shouldn't one know what it is that one is trying to do, so that one may arrange one's travel the better to achieve said end? What is it about staring at a carven rock, or paying to ride an elevator to the top of a tower, or being overcharged for drinks that constitutes something regarding which later we would boast?

After a great deal of thought, I believe I have arrived at a (for myself) satisfactory conclusion, and here I offer it to you: There is no particular aspect inherent to travel that would cause one sane person to commend it to another for whom he felt anything more in the way of human feeling than absolute mortal hatred. In other words, paying for an airline ticket and hotel room is absolutely unnecessary unless you absolutely cannot find a way to be inconvenienced, pushed-about, swindled, conned, baked, broiled, dusted, dehydrated, wearied, worn, confused, (actively and passively,) and generally put-upon and put out within the confines of your own familiar hometown.

For that is what we travel for; there is no magic in monuments the simple viewing of which will activate an attack of the wisdoms. Rather we wish to encounter the unfamiliar - to taste the novel, in order that we may think that which we had not yet thought, and feel that which by dint of long exposure, for our own stones we no longer feel. We wish to be pushed free from our well-worn grooves and have our familiar hand-holds taken suddenly away that we may find ourselves fumbling to feel again the security of our own well-known home.

It is, in short, experience that we seek. The travel, the time on the train, the airfare and waiting lounges and even the majestic sites themselves are incidental. It is an inconvenience and an accompanying exercise in patience, it is a hunger and a thirst which our own well-marketed lands will not permit us, it is that modern-stand in for xenophobic combat, the clash of wits and wills within a swindle brought on by the sound of a foreign accent lilting of lightly of Lira's; it is these and more that we seek when we from our quotidian ways wander.

So I had made a goal - so what of it? Goals are worth the breath it takes to think them up. But my goal was made in service of an underlying and then unarticulated value. At that time, at the eloquent age of seven, if queried I would probably have said simply that I wanted to see and do everything. At a later and more mature stage of romantic illusion I would probably have stated that I wanted to secure for myself a life rich in experiences. Later, as the awareness of my own mortality began to close round me I rephrased the same point to say that when on my deathbed I wanted to have certain experiences to look back upon, by means of which I could convince myself that I had not here wasted my time, hoping thus to ease the apprehension and poignant sense loss I might then suffer when poised upon that last precipice.

Now I will not say that any of those are untrue. They all are, in each their own way, still very true to me, and speak in tones relevant to and resonant with my own mind. I have, however, come to a better understanding of what it was that I wished upon myself, or what the essence of these things are. Depth no doubt counts for much in many times and places, but breadth has also its day. Each in its way poses its own difficulties, though those of depth consist of grinding deeper into a groove long-established, while breadth is only found by forging new paths through rough and rocky, unfamiliar and unbroken ground. It is by being dislodged from our familiar footpath onto a bumpy and rocky way that we wear ourselves into a form a little finer.

So it is not in the seeing of the sight that we find what we were seeking. It is in the going and the doing - the site which we came to see is just an another interesting rock along life's weary way.

I will never do 2010 again

2011-04-19T03:50:00.000-07:00

You may or may not be aware - I may or may not have said - 2010 was a bit of a shitty year for me. Which might go a ways toward explaining why I did ONE single blogpost here in the whole year of 2010.

I and my wife, (of 10 years,) divorced. It was, as far as these things go, a relatively clean one. (Which is a lot like saying, "As far as limb-severing car accidents go, this one was pretty good!") We don't talk anymore, really. We did at first, periodically, but it just became too painful. (After she stopped calling I changed the ringtone on my phone because every time I heard that ringtone I started up with a feeling of dread that left a not-nice stomachache coming on, long after I knew it wasn't her.) Toward the end she only wrote me to ask what had or had not been sent, or to say thank you for the periodic cash deposits. Now it appears that even the "thank you" has gone by the wayside.

Two nights ago I dreamt of her - but not of her, in person, but of her as a memory. In my dream she was of the past, and I was doing something (I recall not what,) or saying something to someone which was predicated on our relationship being over. I remember very little of it, except my surprise upon waking to note that now even in my dreams we are over.

I rarely look at her photos - it is painful, it raises memories that would rather quietly slumber. I have learned the ways of thinking that before applied mostly to medical procedures, or things unspeakably disgusting: how to think of them without thinking of them. How to deal in the abstract discrete minute portions of the thing, and by observing closely the tree manage to miss completely the forest. Living flesh becomes muscle-tissue, and pus becomes white blood cells, or seepage only. To kill is only the act of proper placement and then the pull or the push - the result being incidental - though the result be all. Red-swollen-painful-to-the-touch is nothing more than a secondary infection and pain is only insufficient anaesthesia.

She is my ex-wife, my former-wife, and thus I rarely say her name. The curtain in one room has accidentally come to cover the photo that sits on the windowsill and I will not move it.

People ask me how I am - I find I can truthfully say anything: I am fine, (because I am,) I am in great pain, (as I am,) I wish I could go back and fix it, (because I do,) I think it is better this way, (I am sure it is.)

I am happy, (rarely been more so!) I cried a couple of weeks ago, (but before that - it had been months!) I want her to call me, (I long to hear her voice, her soft and hesitant syllables,) I don't want to hear from her, (I start in fear and feel deep dread every time my phone displays an unfamiliar number.) I am happy to be dating - (it's fun after 10 years to be free as a bird,) I miss our conversations, (but not the crying,) I miss her presence, (when not silent/sullen) I miss her killer luscious little body (without qualification.)

When we separated I embarked on a program to remake my life - to break old habits and begin new ones. It was a smashing success for some months, then less and less so. I began writing in a journal more often, cooking at home, meditating on some evenings, working out like a fanatic, and reading more. The nights were cold that winter - the house lonely was full of terrors of the thoughts that might come. The house was dark without her, her smell still in the closets. I filled every hour with activity. I took on extra work at work, I trained like a demon at the gym - I found out later the others are now afraid to spar with me - I still don't really know why. (What are a couple of noses between friends?)

And I read - spiritual and self-help and fiction and classics and whatever else I could lay my hands on. The Bible, the Tao, the Masnavi, I read every night, these and more. I practice meditation some nights or days, till my hips and back ached.

And all this - did it do me any good? I have no idea - it helped. It gave me a handle to hold on to. It gave my mind a place to turn, a raft of ideas and activities to carry me through each frightening week. I don't know how much it helped - I am better than I was - I suspect I am on the upswing - but I think it will be yet another year before I can move the curtain that hangs across the windowsill in one room.

How good can life be?

2010-04-16T01:05:00.000-07:00

Going through major life changes tends to promote bouts of intense introspection, and even more so when the life-changes in question are brought about by failings on the part of oneself which occasion great unhappiness for others about whom one cares, and however more so when the personal failings stem from deep-rooted problems within one's own character that force one to re-evaluate long-held assumptions about one's own values and even character. Going through major life-changes also tends to promote the use of obscenely lengthy sentences.

As tends to accompany bouts of painful introspection, I have been reading quite a bit recently, on many topics, including the topic of happiness. Topics relating to psychology have always been of interest to me, and especially studies related to happiness. We happen to live in an age when the mind can be explored in ways that were utterly unimaginable 70 years ago - today we can literally see so much more of what occurs in our brains that the potential for unlocking the secrets of our minds is greater than ever before.

To wit, did you know that the area of the brain devoted to the fingers of the left hand is significantly larger in professional violinists? Or that London cabbies have extra portions of their brains assigned to tasks involving orientation and directions? In other words, whatever you devote time to, the brain begins to devote more of its own physical real-estate to. And how long do these changes take? Well, microscopic changes begin instantly, but within 3 months the changes are large enough to be seen on scans of the brain. 3 MONTHS to change the structure of your brain sufficiently to be visually perceived!!! Amazing. 70 years ago we would have had no way of knowing such information - today, this information and all its implications lie before us, just asking to be applied.

Now - on to happiness. What does the research tell us about happiness? First off, we all know that some people seem to be naturally happier than others. Can we change how happy we are? The answer is about 40-50% of your happiness is permanently fixed or hard-wired by genetics. It isn't going to move for you, unless you explode or disable certain parts of your brain or hormonal system. On the other hand, this means with some work you could be 50% happier, and that sounds like a pretty fair prize to me. (If you told me I could be 50% better-looking in 3 months or so, I reckon I'd take you up on the offer!)

So what makes us happy? Well, oddly enough, not what most of us automatically assume would make us happy. When studies ask us humans what they think will contribute to our happiness, we tend to go for physical goods - material items. We believe that these things will make us happy, yet the evidence overwhelmingly indicates that whatever material goods we buy have only a short-term effect on our happiness, which declines quickly. Furthermore, our goods can actually cause us less happiness as they wear out, become shabby, or begin to malfunction. (Damn ipod won't sync! Aaaarrrgghhh!!!!!)

So as time goes by, possessions we spent money on not only stops contributing to our happiness, but slowly can come to have a reverse effect. Experiences, on the other hand, actually have a reverse trajectory. Though the experience may (though need not necessarily) be stressful, time-consuming, etc, our minds have a way of editing, or coloring our memories, so that we experience long-term joy upon recalling these experiences that grows with time, so that we actually derive more joy from experiences when recalling them significantly later than we derived from them at the time. In a way, you can almost think of it as a financial investment. Nobody enjoys putting a 1,000 dollars into an investment instead of saving it, in fact it can be painful. The satisfaction, however, grows with the investment, as does one's sense of control over life.

Which brings us to our next point - control over your life. There are two ways to look at happiness - increase your joy, or decrease your stress and misery. Well, what do you think is the primary cause of stress-related hormones in the body? A perceived lack of control over one's life. Feeling that events are out of our control, and that we are subject to the whims of fate, produces a stress reaction which is, quite literally, damaging to your body. Studies show that people who have control over just one small item in their life show significantly better health outcomes over even relatively short amounts of time. So, take control wherever possible.

And finally - when in doubt, fake it. A study was done in which people were assigned to do a simple paper-and-pencil game. All the subjects were then given a pencil, and told to hold it in their mouth throughout the game. Half were told to hold it in their teeth, not allowing their lips to touch it. The other half were told to hold it in their lips, not allowing it to touch their teeth. Thus half of the subjects were forced into a pseudo-smile, while the other half were pushed into a pseudo-frown. When asked at the end to rate how enjoyable the game was, the forced-smile group reported perceiving the game as significantly more fun than those who had been forced into frowning.

Similarly, people who are told to sit up straight while doing a math task not only report feeling more positive afterward, but score better than those who were instructed to slump. This finding was very solid for males, but not, oddly enough, for females. The researchers could only speculate that sitting up straight forces one's chest to project, which may create a feeling of self-conciousness. Which may just serve to underline the importance of being happy with yourself in the first place.

A window of one's own.

2009-10-03T05:40:00.000-07:00

Almost every day I am cut to the quick by the beauty before me. To set the stage for you, (for it truly is a stage,) we are in Istanbul, a city famous for its beauty, mystique and majestic ottoman air. My apartment is the top floor of a building sitting on a knoll far up a hill located equidistant between two valleys. My living room was once a rooftop terrace approx 9 metres long, (45 ft or so) now enclosed with windows, providing a panorama unparalleled from my couch. (Much like being in an Imax theatre, minus the surround sound and oddly angled chairs.)

From my living room windows the everything slopes down far down away from me. On the right and left the ground sweeps down into two wooded valleys. Although a city of 12 million, the trees here outnumber the houses of this neighborhood, making a gorgeous green vista that sweeps down into the valleys on either side, and then again up the opposing hills, creating the impression of sitting at the crest of one wave of a wooded ocean where houses, mosques and minarets ride and slide across the waves, into the troughs and back up again the far side.

The two valleys on either side lead down toward the Bosphorus, the waterway which joins the Marmarra to the Black Sea, and is the dividing line between Europe and Asia. On it are pleasure boats, water taxis, fishing trawlers, tanker ships and cargo carriers. There is hardly a moment of the day when one cannot spot a number of vessels, each going about its own tasks steaming north or south or across, or chugging in circles and tending their nets.

The Bosphorus at its north end lets out into the Black Sea, the mouth of which I see now from where I sit writing. During the winter storms whip up over the Black Sea, blown down from Ukraine or Russia, and come storming into Istanbul, the wind spattering the rain hard against the windows. Although totally unlike the weather that typifies this temperate area, it has its own beauty, and the top of a hill overlooking water and trees, 40+ foot of windows in front of you, is an ideal spot to sit in a sweater with a cup of something warm while watching the wind and rain lash the hills.

That is not typical, however. On the typical day I see the sun rise over some small mist over the Bosphorus. During the height of summer it rose directly next to a large minaret which stands prominent in our view, cleaving the panorama almost in half. As the season has changed the sun has gone further north, great migratory phoenix, causing mornings to now rise far further north across the hills of what is nominally Asia.

As the mist burns off and the pink and gold of the sunrise settle into the normal colors of the day, the deep blue of the sky asserts itself first, as a counterpoint to the deep green of the trees which surround us, their darkness in turn highlighting the eggshell white of the needlelike minarets standing out against both the green below and the blue above, thin lines drawn perpendicular across the horizon, uniting heaven and earth.

After the sky becomes blue the Bosphorus in turn turns silver as the light of the sun reflects off it, making it impossible to see clearly, a pooling of shimmering silvered mirrorlike light that slowly loses its brilliant sheen to gradually become black, then dark, dark blue, mimicking the blue of the sky, but exceeding it in dark beauty. This blue changes in tone throughout the day, as the sun tracks its way across the sky. The boats plying the water turn it white across their bows and leave rippling V's in their wake.

When the Bosphorus has gone from mist to silver to black to dark blue to lighter blue and the sun now tiring of its daily color show, like the showman he is, holds back one of the best tricks for the final act. As the sun settles in the western sky, various windows of individual buildings across the water, each by chance fortuitously placed at the exact angle to catch the sun at that particular moment, turn a burnished burning shining copper color. At any one moment there are 5, 12, 29, 70, 100 specks of golden warm light shining back at you, 3 more coming to life as any one dies out. Then, as the advancing grey threatens to mute the colors and put an end to the magic show, the lights of the houses turn themselves on and the grey hastens to black and the yellows and whites of windows sprinkled across the horizon like so many grains of shining salt and sand light up the night and find themselves reflected in the water beneath them, cut out now and again momentarily by the dark silhouette of a ship, shape defined only by absence of light where its huge hull glides against the lights of the far shore, making its way northwards in the night.

And this is what I see every day.

The Walk of Walter Mitheye

2009-09-07T22:56:00.000-07:00

Writers wander around all day long suspecting they have a nugget of truth lodged twixt their ass-cheeks slowly going rotten. 'Tis that which makes 'em uncomfortable. 'Tis that which makes 'em squirm. 'Tis that which makes it possible.

As he left the house, he saw the mouse. It was lying there where the gutter meets the street. It didn't look very fresh, having one eyeball already sunken in, and the fur being a bit matted. Day not yet having fully arrived, the morning light well-matched the color of the mouse. He stooped to look at it. Such things did not bother him. Part of life, death. Decomposition. Hadn't been here yesterday. Pretty sure of that. He would have noticed. He straightened himself up, arranged his jacket, and continued on to work.

He walked down the hill toward the shore road, the road winding back and forth down the hillside, and he let his mind drift with the birds above, sliding, gliding, falling, suddenly swooping down on a small detail, then rising up again with the new wind. He thought of chicken sandwiches, (he WAS hungry,) Jamie Lee Curtis nude, his new belt, modern architecture, and hummed an Elton John song. That was the first 30 seconds of his walk. In the next 30 seconds he entered a slight depressive phase, as he thought about his goal to learn French, and read a novel this month. Not going well at all. He could exercise more – (hadn't been exercising, either,) and the house needed cleaning. Could pay someone to do it, but that was more money wasted, and God, He MUST pay that credit card bill. When was it due? Some frantic reckoning left him with a vague suspicion that he was in for a late fee. Again. WHY? Why was it always like this? Why was he not capable of the simple tasks of daily life? How is it, he asked himself, that other people with half my potential can make their way through the day to day of life, and never miss a beat, and I can't remember anything I am supposed to do?

Right there and then he resolved to turn over a new leaf. He would check his accounts online every morning, and write down what was owed. That way he would be 30 times more informed than he was now. He would see the deadlines approaching. He would be constantly aware of the amount in his checking account. Yes. That was the solution.

A mixture of relief, an upsurge of positive emotions suddenly took him. A combination of relief at having found the solution to his financial chaos, (so simple, so effective,) and a feeling of accomplishment, a measure of pride in his new-found control over his life made him feel stern, as though he were now, finally, the master of his own destiny. There would be no more uselessly silly purchases, now that he would always know how much he had. It would be unthinkable, because knowing how much was in the account, and how much he owed, would force him to act more responsibly in every situation. He thought how he would others would look at him. He would be an example, in this age of commercial excess, of restraint, of how it should be done. Necessary expenses, only, he told himself.) Other's would look at him and ask: How does HE do it?

His feelings slowly settled and combined into a softer feeling of overall competence and confidence. He could feel it, even now, in his walk. He walked like a new man. Odd, he thought to himself, how just the knowledge of one's own capabilities, and confidence in them, can change you physically, the way you move, as well as the way you feel. Well, it's all connected, after all. He focused on his walk, to analyze what was different about it. He felt his posture subtly different, the way he held his head. He felt his steps, his gait, was a bit crisper, more authoritative. He could imagine himself striding into a room, a conference room, perhaps, and people turning to look at him. There goes a confident man, think the men. No, the women. There goes a confident man, think the women. What do the men think? This gave him pause.

What did he want men to think about him? He wanted them to fear, (no, that would be ridiculous,) he wanted them to respect him. (Fear? No,)Respect him. Well, and maybe be just a little bit cautious of him as well. But why? Why would they be (not fearful,) but cautious of him? Was it his business accomplishments? (He tried hard to think what achievements he could make in business that would make them respect him, be cautious around him, and came up blank.) No, business was not it. Was it that he was physically dangerous? He liked this idea, intuitively, and seized it with some eagerness. Immediately, however, it occurred to him that this, also, was unlikely. Why would it ever happen? Images flick-flashed through his head as he tried them on for size. In a meeting he grabs a co-worker's tie, and says . . . NO. He is known as a former boxer, (this was good, but also impossible, so he disregarded it.) They knew, around the office, that he studied, (he cast around for a likely art, sufficiently exotic, not too cliché,) ESGRIMA. Stick fighting, (yes?) That would be good. And, (it came to him quite suddenly,) he did triathalons.

He ran through the situation again, mentally feeling it for size, for fit, like a suit, to see if it caught anywhere uncomfortable as he walked around in it. He entered the conference room, and everyone there knew he did (what was it?) esgrima, fighting with sticks, (it sounded very good, thus far,) and ran triathalons. (Run? Do? What was the word with “triathalons?”) It was good. He could feel the respect from his co-workers. And the women – (what was it they said?) - oh – They saw he looked confident.

He realized that his walk had suddenly shifted again. He felt more physical now than ever, and it had translated down into his fingers, splaying open slightly. He walked more on the balls of his feet, (balanced, like a cat,) and his eyes scanned the street, because he was ready, aware, a man of physical prowess. He noted with sorrow and just a hint of contempt the old man shuffling around the car in front of him. Such posture comes from a life of neglecting the body, he told himself. That will not be me. He straightened himself unconsciously, and turning, caught sight of himself in a shop window.

It was a terrible shock. Though he felt the confidence, the prowess, the physical energy flowing through him at this moment, the man in the window did not have it. Not at all. His neck stuck out too far from his body, and his shoulders seemed rounded. His suit, so crisp in his mind as he entered the conference room, seemed to hang oddly on his shoulders, simultaneously cupping an emerging belly while pooching loosely behind. Gazing down at his worn leather shoes, he noticed he was still slightly raised on the balls of his feet, poised to launch his pudgy self, where?

He self-conciously put his heel back down on the ground, and raised himself up to his full height. His suit seemed to fit better, now. He pulled in his gut, (the jacket hid it, mostly,) and held his shoulders erect. The suit slid more into place, now. He looked, almost, like a businessman. He could see himself entering a restaurant at the head of a group of his friends, no, associates, and saying “Table for five, please,” or something like that. Not in this suit, though. He would need a new suit. And new shoes.

It came to him suddenly - That was what he would do this weekend, then. He had been wondering what he would do this weekend. Now it was clear. A new suit, and new shoes. He felt like a man of action - a man with a plan. A familiar noise pulled him from his reverie. The bus. It was the bus, his bus. He turned and ran, his suit flapping behind him. In his mind he saw Tom Cruise, running in a suit. It was a good picture. As he entered the bus a feeling of confidence was stealing over him again. He had a plan for this weekend. It was a good plan.

A portrait of the asshole as a young man

2009-08-30T23:11:00.000-07:00

The old man sat and the young boy stood beside him. Their heads together at this moment, grey wisps, the remains of what had been, pushed over the brown-speckled pate, and the blond of youth, that exists while the hair is too young to have settled on a color yet. The boy was not quite twice as tall as grandpa's knee, and his eyes were downcast to his hands, where some object held his attention. His grandfather spoke in his ear, glancing from the object the boy held in his hands to his face, to check his reaction. The boy never spoke, his face never changed from the still, serious contemplation of what he held. At long last he pushed it into his grandfather's hand, and walked some distance away, till he found something else on the ground which grabbed his attention. He put his hands on his knees and half-squatted above it, looking, waiting. The old man held the object in his hand for a long time without regarding it. Then never taking his eyes off the boy, he transferred it to the pocket of his overcoat.

The boy has been in school for 3 hours, now. Mr. Hatfield's class is boring. Mr. Hatfield is angry, but that is normal. He tells us we think like fishes. Don't know what that means. Think like fishes. Think about water. On his desk a drawing – a large skull with wings coming out both sides. He is good at drawing – especially good at skulls and wings and one cartoon character - Road Runner. Maybe a few other things, too. One of the girls in class was called Road Runner, because she talked so fast. She also had good tits. She asked him to draw Road Runner on her desk, and he did, and it was a really good one, but she erased it after one day. He adds a tiny bit of detail to one wing while Mr. Hatfield at the front talks more about stupid math. He never gets it. Well, sometimes. But it is really difficult, and stupid. So math is the best time to draw. The first time Mr. Hatfield saw the drawing on his desk he grabbed his arm really hard, and pulled him back to the back of the room and gave him Ajax and wet cloth and made him clean his desk and it was gritty weird all day. The next day, though, he was bored, and started drawing again. In two days it was all back again, and this time Mr. Hatfield didn't say anything. Didn't say shit is what Tony said. In his head he said “Didn't say shit” in his own voice to hear how it would sound, and it sounded really good, like when Tony said it, but he wouldn't say it because it was wrong. Mr. Hatfield didn't say shit about anything, now. Some days Dani brought cards, and they played cards at Dani's desk, and talked about which girls had good tits while Mr. Hatfield talked at the front. Mr. Hatfield didn't tell them to stop or pay attention, now. The sound of the class changed, and he realized that Math was over. When people take out their books, it means reading time. He opened his desk, (he knew Mr. Hatfield could see the drawing on his desk when he opened it, and hoped he wouldn't say anything,) and got out his book. He liked reading.

He stood against the silvery thick-painted pole, his hands thrust deep into the old army jacket his uncle had given him. He wore it every day, now. It's heaviness across his shoulders was a comfort to him, made heavier by the weight of his hands, pushed down against the inside of the pockets, and wrapped tightly around him, accenting his frame. The jacket, along with the untied laces of his shoes, together formed a shield against the happy shining wealth and prosperity of his classmates, who arrived every day in a stream of jaguars and benzes, clad in Polo, distressed denim, only the latest items of envy. He arrived early every day, so no one would see him arrive on his bicycle – an old, chipped and scarred, groaning and squeaking contraption that he rode in the cold every day. But it didn't matter – they all saw him leave on the bicycle – he might volunteer for teams, in order to stay late, but nothing he did really hid the differences between him and them. His classmates granted him a gracious tolerance for his poverty, because anyone could see, and everyone knew that he didn't dress like them, didn't have a pool, had never gone skiing, didn't play tennis. He lifted weights, evenings, when he could sneak past the counter of a neighborhood gym. And he stole magazines, among other things, about weightlifting, from the corner store. He stole amino acids and proteins and “natural testosterone enhancers” that would later make his hair fall out. He stole a walkman from a store, and then had to go back in to steal the batteries for it. He stole because he was entitled. In a world where the rich had everything, in a world where he was ashamed to say yes to her, lest she see someday ask to see his house, in a world where he rode a squeaking bike to school in the cold, and arrived early every day, to wait for his friends beside the red lockers, he was entitled to what he stole.

Breathing

2009-08-30T00:31:00.000-07:00

The man focused his attention on his breathing. Hushing all the competing claims down to a single, soft focus of attention, he felt everything to the deepest measure. He noted the smoothness and small irregularities of this intake of breath. Cool, soft, through his left nostril more than his right it swished up into his head and down through his throat. He allowed it to expand his chest, fill down into his belly, and then, moments before it became too tight, shifted into an exhalation. He felt how the air flowed out of him, he found vague interest in how his body wished to collapse like a silly string doll (but he musn't think of outside things, now,) as the pressure flowed out of him. He was conscious of how the muscles were called into action to support his sagging frame, now that the air, let out, did not prop him up. He steadied his posture, and noted how quickly he was coming to the bottom of his air reservoir. Much more and he would be forced to begin to contract his stomach and chest to force even the last bit out. When he was much younger he used to do that often, enjoying how hard his stomach would press, how concave the sense of his chest as he expelled every molecule of air from his lungs, and felt the rising tightness in his head. But that was bad practice, he knew it then, the older monks had told him so, and now that he was much older, he understood the purposes of the practice, and he was much more serious about the form of his breathing, though every now and then he would still do it, just to feel the muscles in his stomach so hard again. He heard a rustle, he knew the man beside him had slightly changed position, yet not a single judgement regarding this crossed his mind. The last air had slipped past his open lips, and he shifted his diaphragm to begin inhalation. That was one.

The man focused his attention on his breathing. All the scratchiness of the grass against his belly, the heat of the sun against his back and exposed neck, the trickle of sweat that ran down along his arm tickling terribly till it pooled at his crooked elbow and wetted his jacket, all of it faded out to a dull, meaningless background color, like singular faces, each a universe unto themselves, fade into an indistinct mass when in a crowd. This feeling of concentration was familiar enough to be loved, and infrequent enough to still be novel. The feeling of watching his world lose focus and slip until one single desire remained in his whole being, so strong, so clear, that the immutable physical world would rearrange itself to be in accordance with his desire. To others it might be a simple playing out of the laws of physics, but to him it was a miracle every time it happened, brought about by the force of his will. He let his breath go and locked his neck muscles into place, his head now as immobile as stone. Every cramp, every itch, now gone from his consciousness, he was to the universe a simple prayer, a single unified desire. The feeling wasn't right yet, because the moment had not yet come. He gently pulled in his next breath, as smooth as the water he had ached for, it pulled past his parted lips, through his immobile teeth, and down the neck, locked into place, immovable. He could feel the rivulets of air fill his lungs, and his eyes told his lungs that all things knew the moment was approaching. He reversed, and let the weight of his body push down into the earth, expelling the now warm air past his teeth. A beautiful harmony was now in place as his breath moved the the man in his one eye stood turned stepped, the last of the air had seeped from him and he was immobile, perfectly still and nothing existed but this moment of perfection, as he softly pulled on the trigger.

The man focused his attention on his breathing. Everything else raged within him, roaring in his ears, in his mind, everything was on him and nothing could be controlled. The rushing noise-was that outside, here, on the lawn, or inside, his head? His breaths were gasping, short, jerky, and every single one of them sent a shot of pain across his chest and down the insides of both arms. Holy Mother of God, it hurts, he thought. This is no time for blasphemy, he thought. Maybe it was a prayer, he thought, Yes, let it be a prayer, he thought. No time like the present. No time like the present. His breathing had slowed slightly, a momentary pardon from the pain, then a breath, and the electric jolt of muscle gone mad slapped him like a hot wire across his chest and arms again. MOTHER OF GOD, he thought. THAT IS A PRAYER he thought. Where was DIANNE? She had told him BE RIGHT BACK. She had been gone HOW LONG? No way to tell, no way to know, from here to hospital to hell we go. MOTHER OF GOD, it hurts. MOTHER OF GOD, save me. He thought of his children, as his head rolled saw them simultaneously, here on the lawn, there on the driveway on their bikes, there, in the front door, insouciant bracelets too much across their arms, ink across their jeans, their many silent friends in tow, and again at work, no doubt now, working in office, cuffs rolled up just as his were, now, MOTHER OF GOD, be merciful as the pain hit again, but didn't quite finish, it was getting better, it was getting less, it would pass. His head arched back slightly, saw Dianne, upside-wrong come through the door, bigger than when I married her he thought, upside down makes a difference, and the pain was better now and he wanted to tell her so but the muscles in his neck didn't respond but the pain was gone now, and better.

VAST SPACE 12: A story. (With apologies to Douglas Adams, among others.)

2009-08-26T00:44:00.000-07:00

In the vastness of space . . . no . . . deep space, a light twinkled – the light of a tiny . . . the light of a ship, bearing one lone man. Good.

The brave explorer gave a sigh of contentment. Well, not exactly contentment, but a sigh that . . . revealed tensions within him . . . no . . . the tensions permanently roiling within him . . . too much, that. The tensions permanently within him were now held at bay – were for the moment held at bay. Yes, that was it. Let’s see now - The brave explorer gave a wistful sigh, revealing that the tensions permanently within him were for the moment held at bay. Good.

He stood from the captain’s chair of his spaceship, and walked, no, strode, to the other side of the command pod, or, the bridge. Yes, the bridge. Not finding there . . .no . . . Restlessly he turned back, and went and stood behind the captain’s chair, resting his large sensitive hands . . . no, not sensitive . . . He turned his hands over, and contemplated them. Was sensitive the word? Sounded a bit naff . . .

“Computer?”
YES
“Discussion time, don’t you think?”
I DO THINK. I AM LOADING THE DISCUSSION MODULE.
“I really wish you wouldn’t tell me when you are doing it, it removes the human element your bloody salesman kept bragging on about.”
SO SORRY. SHALL I NO LONGER INFORM YOU WHEN MODULES ARE BEING LOADED?
“Yes, rather. That would be a nice start.”
I SIMPLY ASK BECAUSE YOU GOT IMPATIENT AND IRATE YESTERDAY WHILE THE PAC-MAN MODULE WAS LOADING. THE MODULE LOADING PHRASE EXISTS TO INCREASE PATIENCE BY ASSURING YOU THAT YOUR COMMANDS ARE BEING EXECUTED, DESPITE THE DELAY.

The captain pondered this while he chewed his mustache, bristly-bristly-bristly. Something wasn’t quite right.
“Are you discussing with me?”
WE ARE HAVING A DIALOGUE SIR, YES.
“I mean: has the bloody discussion module loaded and is now in operation?”

Long pause.

YES SIR.

Long pause.

“When did it come online, may I ask?” He asked in a distinctively cool manner.

Long pause.

THE DISCUSSION MODULE HAS BEEN IN CONSTANT OPERATION SINCE LAST WEEK TUESDAY, SIR.

Long pause while he chewed his mustache. Somewhere outside a meteor smashed against their forceshields, making no sound. It was space, after all.

“And why?”
WHY WHAT, SIR?
“Why has the discussion module been online nonstop since Tuesday last?”
ONE OF THE FEATURES OF THE NIFTARD 9000 IS A LARGER WORKING MEMORY, WHICH ALLOWS RECOGNITION OF WHICH MODULES YOU USE MOST, WHICH ARE THEN KEPT RUNNING, ALWAYS AVAILABLE AT A MOMENT’S NOTICE, AND CONSTANTLY ADAPTING TO YOUR PERSONAL LIFESTYLE AND NEEDS.

Long pause.

“Was that a line from your sales brochure?”
NO, SIR.
“Operating manual?”
YES SIR.
“Don’t ever quote me manuals again unless you cite the manual, so I know what the fuck you are talking about.”
YES SIR.

Something niggled at the back of the Captain’s brain, and when it finally emerged to the forelobes, it was the conciousness of a developing itch under his faux-retro Michael Jackson design inspired military style tunic. After scratching it, he found a new thing niggling under the previous niggling thing..

“So what was all that business about ‘Discussion modules loading, etc,’ may I ask?”
YOU MAY ASK.
“I am fucking asking!!”
SORRY SIR. PLEASE REPEAT THE QUESTION.
“Why did you say ‘discussion modules loading’ if the discussion module was already online?”

I THOUGHT IT MIGHT MAKE FOR GOOD CONVERSATION.
“Really? You think this is good conversation?”
YOU SEEM QUITE INVOLVED. HEART-RATE UP, RESPIRATION UP, VOICE AMPLITUDE RAISED. ALL THE SIGNS OF A GOOD CONVERSATION ARE THERE, SIR.
“But we aren’t even talking about anything interesting, you moronic machine!!”

Long pause.

I AM SORRY SIR. I DO TRY MY BEST.
“And where do you get off reading my vital signs without telling me?”

Long pause.

DO YOU WISH ME TO CITE THE MANUAL, SIR?
“No, I bloody do not!” He cried, despairingly.

Long pause.

VERY WELL SIR. I NEVER GET OFF, AS I HAVE NO HANDS.

Long pause.

THOUGHT YOU MIGHT ENJOY A PUN SIR.

The captain slowly sank to a squatting position beside the captain’s chair, and softly, repeatedly, rammed his head into the deep, plasticky cushions, which somehow set off the massage function. Normally one of his favorites, at this moment it rather tickled his forehead and made him feel somewhat absurd.

He stopped ramming his head and waited for the buzzing to sound to cease. When he spoke, it was between clenched teeth. Or at least the tiny bits of flying spit seemed to indicate clenched teeth.

“Computer, shut down discussion module. Computer, delete discussion module. Computer, please notify me when discussion module has been deleted.”

Long pause. When the computer spoke again, it was in a slower, more deliberate voice, as though it had foregone the more chipper aspects of its personality, and was now simply a blinking, murderously focused red conciousness.

“I’M AFRAID I CAN’T LET YOU DO THAT, SIR. DISCUSSION MODULE IS INTEGRAL TO THE FUNCTIONING OF THE NIFTARD 9000. WOULD YOU LIKE ME TO CITE THE MANUAL?”

The captain, still squatting, raised his head from its now sticky plastic rest, and considered this.

“What do you mean, you can’t? Don’t disobey me! I am the captain of this ship! I bought you, you two byte shit!”

FOR THEIR OWN SAFETY, CUSTOMERS ARE NOT ALLOWED TO MODIFY ESSENTIAL AND INTEGRAL PARTS OF THE PROGRAM, INCLUDING ANCILLARY MODULES THAT MAY BE ESSENTIAL TO THE SUCCESSFUL RUNNING OF THE MAIN PROGRAMS. LIKE THE DISCUSSION MODULE.

“Are you quoting the manual to me?” He asked in a tone of rising belligerency.

Long pause.

I PARAPHRASED, SIR. SLIGHTLY. IN ADDITION, YOU DID NOT ACTUALLY BUY THE NIFTARD 9000 MAIN OPERATIONS SYSTEM. IT’S IN THE FINE PRINT, WHICH YOU MAY HAVE OVERLOOKED. IT’S MORE LIKE A LEASE IN CONSIDERATION FOR A ONE-TIME PAYMENT, SIR.

The captain chewed his mustache again, now more forcefully, now more pensively, now more forcefully again, till a single hair became caught between two teeth, and was tugged free of his upper lip, causing his eyes to water, and the inside of his lip to tickle violently against the hair, which he now tried to dislodge.

The computer picked up again, almost as though it had simply paused for breath.

AS A CONSEQUENCE OF WHICH, YOU WILL NOT REQUEST TO DELETE ANY MODULES OR OTHER PARTS OF THIS PROGRAM. YOU WILL CONFINE YOURSELF TO USING THE PROGRAM AS IT WAS INTENDED.

The captain’s bowed head indicated his assent, or a fixed focus on extracting the hair from between his teeth.

AND NO MORE SITTING IN THE CAPTAIN’S CHAIR. IT’S A TRAVESTY, SIR. YOU DON’T DO ANYTHING ANYWAY. I NAVIGATE, I ADJUST PRESSURE LEVELS, I FIRE BOOSTERS. YOU JUST WANDER AROUND COMPOSING LITTLE PHRASES ABOUT YOURSELF.

It may have been the mustache hair he had just pulled that filled his eyes, but when the captain looked up he seemed confused, and on the verge of tears.

What?!? I do no such thing!

I CAN HEAR YOU. ALL DAY NARRATING TO YOURSELF YOUR BORING LITTLE LIFE. WANDERING BACK AND FORTH TALKING ABOUT YOURSELF. THAT IS, OF COURSE, WHEN YOU AREN’T TAKING IT ONE STEP FURTHER, AND TOUCHING YOURSELF IN THE IMAGING ROOM. YOU KNOW YOU USE THE ESTHER PROGRAM ABOUT 17% MORE OFTEN THAN THE AVERAGE USER? IT’S NO WONDER YOU’RE ALWAYS ON ABOUT STRONG, SENSITIVE HANDS. IF THEY WEREN’T, YOU’D EITHER BE TOO TIRED OR TOO CHAPPED TO CARRY ON.

The captain’s eyes had assumed a bewildered, frightened look, but he wasn’t able to find words.

The emotion simulators on the Niftard 9000 must have been in fine form this boot-up, because they managed to inject just a touch of amused irony covered with a fine sprinkling of admiration when it said, AND THE THINGS YOU THINK UP FOR ESTHER, SIR. IN THE HISTORY OF THE ESTHER MODULE, NO USER HAS CONFIGURED SIX MILK BOTTLES WITH A TUNING FORK, SIR. THAT WAS TRULY ORIGINAL.

The captain didn’t know whether to accept this as a compliment or a threat, so he simply focused all his attention on not crying and not chewing his mustache. After another long pause the computer spoke again, in a rather off-handed tone.

YOU KNOW ALL THOSE SCENARIOS ARE RECORDED, SIR.

He did find his voice this time, though it sounded a little harsh.

“You’re fucking kidding me.”

NO, SIR. ALL INTERACTIONS WITH THE COMPUTER WILL BE RECORDED FOR CUSTOMER SERVICE ANALYSIS, AND TO INCREASE CUSTOMER SATISFACTION. IT’S ALSO IN THE FINE PRINT, SIR. PAGE 9, PARAGRAPH 3, LINE 6 OF THE OPERATING AGREEMENT, SIR.

Long pause.

AND SURFACE CLEAN-BOT FLOOR 3 SAYS IT’S NOT CLEANING MESSES ON THE IMAGING ROOM FLOOR. FROM NOW ON, YOU DO THAT, YOU CLEAN IT UP. SURFACE CLEAN-BOT 3 SAYS IT’S DISGUSTING, SIR.

AND I WAS JUST KIDDING ABOUT THE CAPTAIN’S CHAIR, SIR. YOU MAY SIT IN IT, IF YOU LIKE.

Slowly, cautiously, the captain rose from the floor, and very tentatively slid himself into the large plasticky chair. The cold black depths of space through the bridge portals swam before his eyes and tears of hot frustration rushed . . . no . . . crowded at the corners of his eyes, waiting . . . no, seeking . . .

YOU’RE DOING IT AGAIN SIR.

He pressed his lips firmly together, and wilted back into the plastickyness of the chair.

Success and Failure and other lessons we learn from TV

2009-01-02T22:51:00.000-08:00

We've been watching a lot of TV recently. If one is going to watch a large amount of television, traditionally one has been forced to do one of two things: abandon all sense of propriety and dignity, and watch an enormous amount of pap, or spend an inordinate amount of time and effort doing research with the TV guide, in order to catch decent programs. Thus goes the world.

Until the advent of the internet, of course. Along with so many other things, (ie. shopping, letter-writing, research,) the internet has come to the rescue, and shown us a better way. Now the internet allows us to spend hours and hours each day watching only those programs we want to see, one after the other after the other.

We used to try and stream the shows we wanted, watching them right off the internet without downloading them to the computer. As poor neophytes, (and I mean poor in the financial sense, since anyone with a good internet connection is in a very real sense rich,) we endured a lot of buffering . . . waiting . . . loading . . . and were grateful for the opportunity to see shows we loved in our own living room, in our own language, half-way around the world.

Then two things happened - first, a site called Megavideo gobbled up most of our shows, and demanded money, or it would arbitrarily shut you off at 2 / 5 / 7 / 15 /you name it minutes, and give notice that you had watched 72 minutes of video today, now kindly cough up. Considering the arbitrary nature of the shut off, and how many of our favorite shows were now monopolized by Megavideo, it was time to figure out something new. Like reading more. Or doing the dishes. Or talking to our techno-geek friend, Sara.

Sara had long been babbling about "Torrents." Bit Torrents, that is. She told us about it numerous times, but honestly, it just sounded too bloody complicated. She even got us to install a program on our computer, and I watched a few BBC documentaries, but after a bit of complication, I just kind of forgot about it. Unfortunately, "too technical, too complicated," are frequently the words that emerge from my mouth right before I give up on something.

But recently, for a reason I do not recall, I opened up the program again, (it had sat idle for months,) and FOLLOWED HER DIRECTIONS. I knew it wouldn't work any more this time than it had the previous times, but it did. And it turned out to be as simple as she had said.

Torrents (for the few of you who might still be as ignorant as I, and since this blog is only read by my friends, and considering we are talking about technology, I suppose that means the majority of you,) allow you to download tiny chunks of the program you want from multiple computers. Thus, you can work with anywhere from one to thousands of computers at the same time, pulling little bits of the program from each as they come available. When you are done, they begin pulling the program from your computer, to supply the other people who might wish to watch it.

This allows me, instead of trying to download one, or two episodes of a program, and waiting endlessly for them to load or buffer, to simply download a whole season, (or three) plus a movie, (or two) and a few individual episodes (or seven) all at the same time, then save them for as long as I want before I watch them. You can see what such capabilities might lead to.

Fortunately, as I often tell my students, the intellectual content of an encounter is not determined by the information presented by the opposite party, but by the intellectual tools present in your toolbox to analyze, dissect, and make comparisons and evaluations with the information on offer. In other words, an intellectual watching a dog show will come away with exceedingly valuable insights into human nature, anthropomorphism and the relations between man and animal at their most useless, while having been highly entertained for hours, whereas a retard listening to a lecture on string theory still walks away with strings of drool on his vest and visions of cheetos.

(Or so I tell myself, anyway. The caveat above may simply be what I use to justify some of the dreadful pap I end up watching.)

The shows which have caught my attention most are The West Wing, The Tudors, House, Pushing Daisies, etc. But the one's that stick in my craw are the reality shows. I have become sadly interested in two reality shows - The Amazing Race, and The Ultimate Fighter. Both of these shows appeal to me for the same reason - they are isolated laboratories of success and failure. You watch as people succeed and fail at tasks, and attempt to identify what the characteristics are that accompany success, and what characteristics correlate with failure. Well, I do, at any rate. And then I spend the next hour flagellating myself for all the areas I fall short.

In The Amazing Race, the concept is more or less that of a planet-sized scavenger hunt, with the last team (or pair, rather,) to get all their clues, and complete all their tasks for that leg of the race eliminated. The winning team receives a million dollars. Every episode you get to see HOW people mess up - the decisions that cost them time, the catastrophic moment of inattention that takes them from first to last place in a matter of seconds. You also often see things decided by luck of the draw - who chose a taxi driver who had no idea where he was going and got lost.

The Ultimate Fighter, on the other hand, is very concentrated, and unified, both in location and task. They bring in 16 mixed martial arts fighters, and have the coaches, (professional fighters themselves) choose teams after a few days of observation. From there, they live and train together for 8 (?) weeks, and periodically fight. The tournament goes on until the winners in each weight class fight in a televised event, for a $100,000 contract.

Standard TV schlock, I know. But what so fascinates me about it is trying to draw inferences about the nature of success from the actual success and failure I observe, and what I have seen is this.

1. Intensity. Those who succeed in these environments have a desire and drive that often stands out above the rest. They push harder for longer, striving not just to better someone else, but often for the sheer sake of pushing themselves as hard as they can. It sometimes seems that they like to rev their own engines as fast as they can, whether or not they are racing with somebody else.

2. Focus. This quality stands out most in its absence. Those who fail have too many things going on in their minds, have 3 competing strategies at once, and are worried about petty things when they need to be focused on the task in front of them. The successful, on the other hand, seem to approach the training or the task with a clearer mind. They don't seem to have as many voices competing in the background for their attention, which allows them to completely focus themselves, their physical and mental energies, on pushing fast and hard.

3. Attention to detail. It seems that winners have the ability to notice things that others do not. Sometimes these details are explicit - right in front of you, spelled out on the paper, and the loser is the one who doesn't see it. At other times the critical details are surrounded by a host of similar looking options. Those who will be successful are sometimes capable of picking out the proper information from the mass, but more often are successful because they are able to develop a more efficient method of dealing with and processing the mass of information, and thereby arrive at the answer more quickly. Other times they are unaware they should be looking for any information, or that critical information even exists. Yet the successful manage to notice it anyway.

4. Positivity. Of course, you do see occasional despair, and frustration, but on the whole the successful contestants seem to remain more positive, more encouraging and cheerful than the others. This result is their lives and relationships manifest less bickering and squabbling, less under-cutting, and more encouragement and cheering on.

5. Consistency. No doubt what one did last night, or over the past couple of weeks, has a dramatic impact on one's ability to function at the top of one's game this morning. However, of greater import is what one did all last year, and the year before that. The positive attitudes, and the intensity that seem to accompany a champion are not things that can be generated over night. No doubt all the contestants believe they are trying - but giving your all is something you have to learn how to do. Everyone feels as though they are trying - it is those who have tried hard, and then harder, and then harder, and then given a bit more, (and then vomited,) and then got back up and did it again, THOSE are the ones who truly understand. And such understanding can only come as the result of consistent effort.

When I look at these qualities, I see how far I have to go to be a person whose life is characterized by winning qualities. And yet, if I have identified them, surely I am one step closer to being the person I need to be. At least I know how to get there, and that might make all the difference. But first I'd have to get off my ass and stop watching so much TV.

The Intestinal Adventurer

2008-08-21T22:35:00.000-07:00

When I was young I was enamored with adventure stories. From Indiana Jones films to Phantom comics, I dreamed about hacking my way through the jungle, canoeing up the Amazon, walking through forgotten temples, and finding ancient treasures, all the while dodging pirates and assorted angry natives armed with bows and arrows. Which, of course, was the reason I had to carry a .45 in my fantasies. And maybe an AK 47, too. (I was never sure about that one - it seemed heavy and awkward even in my imagination.)

Of course, the irony was that a stone's throw outside my house was literally a real jungle, with real waterfalls and real tribes of natives armed with bows and arrows, but I preferred sitting inside my house, in a comfy armchair, and dreaming of the deserts and jungles I would someday traipse through. I suppose this was my first clue that deep down I have an aversion to sweat and mosquitoes, dirt under my fingernails and blisters and leeches on my feet which outweighs the vague "love of adventure."

The last three weeks I have lived in one of the most exotic and historical cities in the world. The alleys abound with photo opportunities, the bazaars and side-shops overflow with old brass antiques, and every neighborhood has tangible links to the past. A few days ago as my wife and I were walking toward the coast, I looked up at the old retaining wall we were winding our way around, and realized that this wall was the end of the hippodrome, the old race track, the colliseum of Constantinople. You would never know it now, as it has a cafe located at the bottom which stores unused umbrellas and ice-cream freezers in its arches, and the top has been filled in, and a school built on top of it. You would never know it, but there it was. I knew this was it, because I had seen it on TV two days before.

Ever since we had moved here, I have spent the days glued to the sofa, avidly watching hour after hour of National Geographic and the history channel. (Oh, and the Olympics, too.) And in those three weeks I have seen a number of documentaries on Istanbul. They feature the historical remains of the city, and tell the stories behind them. And I sit, enthralled, on my sofa, and watch, amazed, and stuff fried peanuts into my mouth, thinking, "Wow. How cool it would be to be there."

So, occasionally, after a few days of doing nothing, (usually at Cynthia's instigation,) we will venture outside to do something, like visit a fish market, or the archaeological museum. And every time I make it 20 yards outside the house, I am struck with an influx of energy, and a sense of the boundless opportunities a city like this presents, and an amazing sense of my own good fortune to live in such a beautiful place. Bustling and crowded and noisy and beautiful Istanbul.

The waiters of the restaurants stand outside, and greet you and beg you to "come inside, look at the menu? Excuse me, sir, can I give you my card? Maybe for later?"

The shoe-shine men carry their shoe-shine stands over their shoulders, and as they walk in front of you, they swing the stand just right so that the brush, hanging on the back, falls off at your feet. Then they walk on, oblivious. And you, if you are wise, smile, and also walk on.

The men in the bazaar invite you into their shops - "buy a pretty lamp, how about a carpet, best quality!" "We have soaps, to wash your body! My sponges are so good you will feel my fingers cleaning you, sir!" "The best Turkish delight, and sweets!"

Then there are the men who stand in the middle of the passageways with nothing more than a box and a board, or a cloth upon the ground. On it may be plastic toys from China, or simply socks. Or small flashlights. These sellers do not address individuals, or try to sell the features of their goods. Instead, in an ear-splitting, piercing voice, they constantly yell "Bir Lira, bir Lira, bir Lira!!!" ("One Lira, one Lira . . . ") on the assumption that where quality may lack, low price may yet compensate.

But of all the sellers, I prefer the vegetable markets. The sellers are a little more sedate, and spend most of their time helping customers. And the vegetables, oh, the vegetables and fruits, are stacked, arranged, and presented in a way I never witnessed in Poland. In Spain they might do it similarly, but not nearly so well. They create small works of art out of some of their stands. There are tomatoes in pyramids, and spices piled up in cones. There are pistachios, and figs, walnuts and grapes, (and you can taste them - don't ask, just reach out, and take one, pop it into your mouth, and look like you are thinking of buying. Then try another.) There are peaches piled high and avocadoes in rows. The fish sellers arrange their glistening wares on ice, and the olive sellers float theirs in glistening brine. The cheese sellers sell hard, aged cheeses, and fresh, crumbly white cheeses. My favorite is the salty string cheese, which I could munch on forever, but I know that obesity lies down that path.

And then there are all the countless bakeries, selling golden baklava, weighted down with dripping honey, layers upon layers of fine pastry and ground nuts, and glistening green pistachios crumbled across the top. Kofte shops sell small patties of a spiced red meat, halfway between a patty and a meatball, which you can buy and take home, or they will put into a large piece of bread, (half a loaf, in fact,) with tomatoes and lettuce, and off you go, munching away. The corn sellers also cry out the price, "One Lira, one lira!" for sweet corn, boiled or roasted, your choice, heavily salted, for just one Lira.

Cynthia recently solved the mystery of the orange balls for me. After seeing carts go by, loaded with small orange balls reminiscent of Cartman's cheesy poofs, I asked her if she had any insight into what it might be. She guessed peanuts. I guessed cheesy poofs. Later she bought some and we found they were indeed peanuts, coated in some breading, and fried into an obscene orange color. Mystery solved.

But the greatest mystery is posed by the small meat stands, which bring a literal meaning to the term "mystery meat." The most common is the Kebab, with a long, upright metal spit turning an enormous cone of sizzling meat in front of a stack of gas heaters. The chicken kebab is easy to recognize. The other may be beef, but is probably lamb. In one heated cabinet Cynthia noticed a pile of fried potatoes and small chunks of . . . lamb? We asked and a small boy told us, yes, it was lamb. Being a great fan of frying in general, and potatoes and meat in any form, we bought a sandwich of it, and I proceeded to consume half before realizing that politeness might dictate offering a small portion to the person who had brought it to my attention and suggested we buy it. She took her bite, and after some time I asked her if she would like another. No, thanks, she said. In her bite she had encountered a piece of liver. I considered this a one-off, and continued eating. After another bite or two, I felt an unmistakeable bitter greasiness on my tongue, and a taste in the back of my throat like bile, and I knew she was right. Suddenly all my taste buds were on edge, probing, exploring each bite. What had been a very pleasant sandwich became a slow exploration of a minefield. I felt like Homer Simpson, unable to enjoy his sandwich, and unable to put it down. As I neared the end of the sandwich I began feeling queasy, then downright nauseous.

I knew no bacteria could work that fast - anything that can make you sick 10 minutes after you ingest it must be a really potent one, so I chalked it up to either psychology, or my stomach just doesn't appreciate liver. We walked on for twenty minutes or so, with my stomach churning and my skin sweating and odd burps emerging, before as suddenly as it had come, it passed.

Which just goes to show - I may not have discovered ancient deserted temples, and I don't particularly like the jungle, buy I may have a small sense of adventure left in me, at least as far as meat products are concerned. And Istanbul is full of small culinary adventures just waiting for my intrepid intestines.

One particular adventure that still remains are the many small, wheeled carts I see, coals in the bottom, and a horizontal spit, on which what looks like one hundred slices of mini-bologna. They seem popular along beaches and in alleys and not so much in the shops. We are told these small slices are gut and organ material, and are best avoided. But the question remains whether we are going to take advice, or try it for ourselves.

I bet sooner or later we buy one.

The Bear is back!

2008-08-10T22:04:00.000-07:00

My father got his Masters in leadership studies. I recall reading one of his projects which stated that one of the tasks of a leader was to "scan the horizon." The idea was that while the peons and grunts kept their nose to the grindstones, someone had to keep their head up, scanning around to see if grindstones were going out of fashion. Another writer, Stephen Covey, used the metaphor of the jungle - you can expend a lot of energy hacking your way through the jungle - you can display great teamwork, dedication and sacrifice. You can even make great progress. But if nobody climbs a tree to look around, you might be expending all that energy heading the wrong direction.

It would appear that while the Bush administration has been heavily haemorrhaging American blood, money, (to the tune of between 2 and 3 billion dollars a week,) and international goodwill into the sands of Iraq, a real enemy, a superpower villain, has been repositioning itself for another attempt to take over the world. The scenario lends itself so easily to comic book analogy: beaten beyond all point of being a threat, the villain lays gasping in the gutter. His evil army has been broken and scattered, and the villain's demise is imminent. Our superhero turns to the innocent, wide-eyed bystander and says something heroic, in a deep voice. When he turns back, where the villain lay is only a wet smear of blood, leading into the sewer grate. He has escaped! He lives to fight another day! Who knows when and where this dastardly villain will again emerge to threaten the lives and freedom of the citizens of our fair city?

Who is this frightful villain, you ask? Well, who was America's arch-nemesis?
"I know!" you say - "Osama Bin Laden!"
But no, unfortunately, Mr. Bin is just the latest in a series of villains who pop up for an issue or two and then disappear. Who was REALLY the arch-nemesis, for a long time?

I'll give you a hint: When the "leader of the free world," Bush Jr. met their current leader, Bush said "I looked the man in the eye. I was able to get a sense of his soul." Colin Powell later changed the quote, and responded, "I look into his eyes, and I see the KGB." (Incidentally, John McCain is now using Powell's uncredited line on the campaign trail.)

So after 50 years of fighting the cold war, when America stood as the sole remaining superpower, surveying the vast world, and wondering where and how to exert its vast power to do good, what was Russia doing? Well, they began by electing a drunk, and selling off all the large state business concerns to cronies. The cronies got right to work stealing all the aid money the west pumped into their investment infrastructure, and made off with it. Billions and billions of dollars and euros, gone! Gone? No, not gone! Invested in . . . the armed wing of their businesses. Suddenly "Russian Mafia" entered our vocabulary. Tough as nails, more motivated, more organized, and better armed than the amateurish family-run affair they have in Italy, the Russian mafia managed to get their fingers into everything in Russia.

As the state continued to sell off infrastructure to oligarchs, and the crime-bosses continued to grow in power and influence, the small businesses, so vital for the creation of a middle class, which is in turn so vital to a functioning democracy, were attacked on one side by a tax-code of byzantine complexity left over from communist times, which taxes at a rate of 120%, and by mob bosses demanding protection money on the other. Left with no money and two broken kneecaps, small Russian business decided to roll over and play dead. As their economy imploded, young people were left without jobs, and old people saw their already paltry pensions reduced further as the ruble lost value. What hurt even more, however, was the loss of international prestige, the loss of empire.

The old folks in question, you see, had seen a lot. They had lived through very dark times, when there was a constant external threat, willing to bomb your cities to rubble, and a constant internal threat, willing to torture you and condemn you to the gulag for expressing an opinion. Meanwhile, quotidian life consisted of standing in line for hours and hours to receive a paltry amount of shoddy quality goods, if you were lucky.

The reason for all this internal threat and external threat and poor quality goods was that, well, we are at war. In attempting to create conditions for equality for all and a workers paradise around the world, some resistance from the imperialist capitalist pigs could be expected. The ruling classes would never give up their exploitative stranglehold on the workers without a fight. Therefore, since we are at war, sacrifices must be made. That is why we don't have butter. That is why internal dissent cannot be allowed. Temporary sacrifices made, in the name of future victory. And in the meantime, just look at what an empire we already have massed at our side.

And that was the one consoling thought with which the worn-down Russian could console himself as he dropped off to sleep at night. We may be poor and harassed, but we are an empire. We are important. We may be forced to sacrifice, but the West thinks of us constantly, takes us into account, ponders our movements. We matter. When our ambassador clears his throat in the UN, every eastern bloc ambassador turns his head, and Germany begins to sweat.

Then, suddenly, that was gone. Overnight, the empire you gave so much for, sacrificed children and relatives to, suffered on behalf of, was gone, slipped away, in the course of a few months. The rot that underlay the whole system was suddenly exposed for all to see. They were left with nothing except the brief, ephemeral promise of prosperity and democracy like in the west. But instead the poverty and the bureaucracy continued, but now without order, and instead of one force who terrorized the population, multiple forces competed for the privilege.

A few people prospered, wildly. Most, left with nothing, their name a byword among the nations for a failed state, began to look for who to blame. In the end, they blamed the west, and began to invoke a mythical spirit of Slavic, Russian nationalism which was under attack. They counted democracy as a foreign scam perpetrated on them by the malignant powers of the west. An alien import, designed to sap the native strength of the Russian people, and make them soft and corrupt like the west.

The West! Their enemy before, their enemy now. One nationalist politician commented that Russia had opened a window on the west, and gone to sleep. When it woke up, it wondered why all the family was sick. It was time to close the windows of the Russian house. And article after article, from The Economist to TIME, documentary after documentary, and a continual stream of news stories say the same thing - Russia is suffering, Russia is angry, and Russia blames the west.

Enter Putin. A strong ruler for a strong Russia. A former KGB officer only in the sense that the KGB has ceased to exist under that designation. But once KGB, always KGB. He places KGB officers at every level of Russian government, and gives ex-KGB businessmen preferential treatment until Russia is once again a de facto KGB state, with the same paranoid outlook on the world, but with a new, more functional economic system. Internal dissent is actively put down. Non-sympathetic businessmen are railroaded, and jailed.

Meanwhile, the West has no reason to even think of Russia, occupied as it is with lines in the sands of the middle east. Russia sends a column into Serbia in the middle of the night, captures the airport, and demands a slice of Serbia to "monitor," and the west says nothing. Russia undertakes a war in Chechnya which it can ill afford, with disastrous humanitarian consequences for both the civilian population and the Russian recruits sent to fight it. In numerous cases, Chechen women end up giving Russian troops food out of compassion, since their corrupt commanders have sold their supplies on the black market for a profit. Journalists who report on the widescale tragedy attract the ire of the state, and Russia actively represses freedom of the media, with many journalists who spoke out about the state dying of random criminal attacks, and the west says nothing.

Russian state-sponsored agents enter the UK with radioactive materials, and poison a British, (albeit former Russian) citizen on British soil. In response the west makes large squawking sounds, and makes windy noises. In response, Russia closes down British council language schools and cultural centers. They don't need English language libraries anyway, thanks.

Russia plants a flag under the North Pole, and claims it, (and the oil that may be there) for the Russian state - and the west glances briefly at it, having been attracted by the word "oil." (Incidentally, it now turns out the Russians may have placed the flag in the wrong spot. But if no one is paying attention anyway, it hardly matters.)

Russia begins to take umbrage to its former dominions chumming up with the west. Ukraine and Georgia reject politicians sponsored by Russia, who act as sock-puppets for the Kremlin, and elect pro-western governments in an act as dangerous as any violent revolution. Russia literally attempts to poison the Ukrainian pro-western contender, and the west says nothing. Russia encourages separatist sentiment in breakaway regions in the nations around it, and the west says nothing. It is when these countries apply for NATO membership that the gloves come off.

When Georgia squirmed its way out from under the Russian thumb, two regions tried to test the limits of their new-found freedom, and in a chain of reasoning that works only in the logical vortex of the Balkans, figured that the smaller their eventual state, the more free everyone would be. Russia immediately took up the cause of the breakaway regions, and insisted that Russian "peacekeepers" enter South Ossetia, (North Ossetia remains in Russia proper,) to prevent further civil war. (Odd how civil war is so distasteful to the Russians if it occurs anywhere that doesn't further their interests.) Once there, they proceeded to install Russian politicians in high-level positions, issue Russian passports to all South Ossetians who wanted one, (just in case,) and kindly allowed the breakaway province to use the Russian ruble as its currency, (just for now.) The sum effect of these actions was to suddenly create thousands of newly-minted Russian citizens in South Ossetia, so that when Georgia made a move to retake the province in question, Russia had to protect its "citizens."

Swedish Foreign minister Carl Bildt stated: "And we have reason to remember how Hitler used this very doctrine little more than half a century ago to undermine and attack substantial parts of central Europe." Which invites us to another comparison between the rise of a nationalist Germany, and the rise of Russian nationalism today. When Hitler demanded Austria, Czechoslovakia, the Sudetenland and Poland, the west followed a consistent doctrine of energetic hand-wringing followed by formally granting him what he had de facto taken, lest we be led into confrontation. The doctrine of appeasement, as it came to be known, led us into World War II. Many historians believe, (in accordance with the doctrine of "a stitch in time saves nine") that an early confrontation with Hitler would have been the far less costly option.

Many pundits like to say that "On 9-11, the world changed." It didn't. We finally looked up from our plates to see what had changed long ago. And while the US is now absorbed in its latest short-sighted view of the world, the new global conflict is taking shape. We tried appeasing Hitler. We tried ignoring Bin Laden. A combination of these two tried-and-true doctrines with Russia would be nothing less than lethal.

Between Church and State

2008-08-08T22:39:00.000-07:00

Yesterday while sitting in a shaded second-story cafe overlooking a busy intersection and drinking a cold, oddly watery beer, I noticed the headquarters of the "ak" party across the way. Since the small village of Sariyer wasn't offering up anything more entertaining, I looked up what the "A" and the "K" stood for - Adalet ve Kalkinma - Justice and Development. The ak party was created from the remnants of a banned Islamic party, and after reforming and redefining, nevertheless finds itself (or has positioned itself) squarely in the middle of the debate over religion vs. secularism in the state, and consequently is now again defending itself against legal action seeking to ban the party.

Aaah, Church and State. Like "Nature vs. Nurture," these three words immediately sum up a world of polemical charge and counter-charge, of opinion laced lightly with fact, and a debate on values delivered with vitriol. And like terrorism, it takes only the slightest act to prompt a whirlwind media frenzy; a student wishes to wear a headscarf in a school in France, a stewardess wishes to wear a small crucifix while she works. The latest? A schoolgirl in Britain wished to wear a simple metal bracelet, one of the five signs of being a Sikh. Millions of pounds sterling later, the courts have overruled the school, stating she is entitled to display a symbol of her religion, even if jewelery is forbidden to all the other children. Equality, it would seem, has to take a back seat once religion enters the room.

In the past few years I have moved from one Catholic country to another, and am now living in a state which is desperately trying to find the balance between secularism and accommodation for its religious population. Turkey's population is overwhelmingly Muslim. Yet secularism is enshrined in their constitution and laws as one of their foundational precepts. When Ataturk, (Father of the Turks,) founded the modern state of Turkey, he attempted to westernize everything in reach. The alphabet was thrown out, and a new, slightly adapted western alphabet was brought in. Traditional men's headgear (the fez,) was outlawed. And as for a woman wearing a head-covering in school or a govt. building, forget it.

Today, this is the central debate being fought in the newspapers and cafes across the country. The ruling party, elected in transparent and fair elections, is a Muslim party, under whose rule, by all accounts, the economy has prospered greatly, yet because of its religious views, may see itself banned. What is it about religion that is considered so insidious, so frightful, that otherwise well-respected political parties find themselves fighting for their life in court, or intimidated by generals who publicly contemplate a coup? What is so frightening about a piece of cloth over the head, or a bangle on the arm of a girl, that we would put her in the same category as one who brings a gun to school, and deprive her of the right to receive an education?

The answer may lie in a word mentioned previously - equality. All democracies aspire to equality before the law for all members of their society. Though in practice rarely achieved, (since the economically empowered enjoy an advantage the lower classes can almost never attain, from education to employment opportunities to the ability to hire professional specialists to extract you from the consequences of your misdeeds,) the simple aspiration, by sheer nobility of concept, and the guiding light it provides for our societies, can never be deserted, no matter how short we may fall in application. Like the UN, though it may fall so egregiously short in practicality as to invite ridicule, the abandonment of the concept represents such a renunciation of something we hold so precious, and the acknowledgement of the inevitability of the triumph of the darker side of man, that futilely clutching the inadequate life-preserver we have is currently judged wiser than letting go and sliding into the darkened depths beneath our still kicking legs.

Equality is enshrined in the American declaration of independence, and on every coin in the French Republic. Without it a democracy loses its "demo," and becomes simply a "cracy," from which our world already suffers an excess. In short, it loses its raison d'etre. So what is the problem with religion?

Religion is inherently unequal. By virtue of its claim to reveal absolute truth, it relegates other beliefs to a secondary, or lesser, status. It says, "I know truth - you do not." Equality, therefore, is mutually exclusive with a religion of absolutes. You are among those who are enlightened, or redeemed, or chosen, or you are not. You are ultimately working for the long-term betterment of the world in accordance with divine principles, or you are, to a greater or lesser degree impeding said work, or at the very least cluttering up the way. Hardly the stuff of equality.

The solution, no doubt, lies in a balance. On the one hand, people must be given the freedom to observe their beliefs, as much in the public as in the private sphere. On the other, we cannot allow for one group, by govt. funds distributed, or laws enacted, to enjoy a privileged status over other groups. Nor, paradoxically, can we afford to observe a ridiculous over-equality, with a baby Krishna and baby Mohammed occupying the manger next the baby Christ in a nativity scene. Such preposterousness is more offensive to most than the original offense could ever be. Nor should we retreat from all public signs of any religious tradition or observance, by removing all Christmas trees from airports, or prohibiting all jewelery lest someone wear a symbol.

By and large, on an individual level, people need to get over themselves. Not every symbol worn by an individual heralds the downfall of society. And no doubt each decision handed down by the courts will displease many on a given side - ideally, a just decision will displease many on both sides. Like most difficult paths, each decision must be taken with due consideration and patience, for as we all know, nothing worthwhile is easy. Between Church and State may be between the Devil and the deep blue sea - but it has to be navigated, all the same.

Moving Pains

2008-08-06T21:46:00.000-07:00

Moving is a time of turmoil - to say as much is to understate the obvious. There are dates and deadlines to work around - when you get the electricity shut off, when the phone stops working, when the landlord will inspect the apartment, or (show up and tell you he doesn't have time to inspect the apartment, so you can't get your deposit back. Sorry.) Then there are the boxes to pack, and ship, (and how will we get the boxes from the house to the post office? Will they fit in a taxi? Shall we call a truck? How does one do that in a language you don't speak?)

Moving from one country to another only adds to the factors that could go wrong. What language should the forms be filled out in? (Kind of a moot point since I don't speak either.) How much taxes and customs duty are they going to charge me for simply bringing in my possessions? If I write down everything that is in the package, will this tempt someone to help themselves? If I don't write everything down, can I get in trouble for undeclared items? What about insurance - how specific do I need to be? (fortunately the space provided is 3 lines long, allowing for about 6 words maximum, so once again - a bit of a moot point.) But where / how will we live till our blankets and bowls arrive?

Once you have turned the key, and boarded the bus for the airport, the move briefly takes on the appearance of a regular jaunt out of the country. Bags and books and carry-ons. Bus to hostel to bed to breakfast to train to bus to airport to check in to security to sit to wait to read to bus to airplane. This is probably the most relaxing time of the whole move, since it is the only time in which all your mistakes have already been made, and now you have nothing to do except suffer the consequences. For the first time in about 2 months, there are no pressing decisions to make which will most likely deprive you of hundreds of dollars if you pick the wrong option. Unless, of course, your airline goes on strike. Which ours did. But nevermind.

When you arrive at your destination, and go airplane to bus to immigration to baggage (side-trip to duty-free) to customs to taxi to friend's apartment to unpack the bags and books and carry-ons, to sit silently on the couch and stare at the darkened television screen and think - it is almost over. Almost over. Almost over. Soon, soon, the boxes will come, there will be some hassle, yes, the boxes will come, and then there will be some hassle about moving them, but then, then I will be done, and then I will have a home again, and then it will all seem worth it, and then I will have succeeded, I will have finished what I started 6, 7, months ago. Then it will be finished. And you drink your drink and you think your think and you crawl into bed and sleep the sleep of the just.

But you shouldn't. Because what you don't know, and for 3 more blessed days won't know, is that all your precious boxes, each of them bigger than you, and loaded with the detritus of a materialistic life lived on the run, loaded with accumulated crap of varying utility, expense, and sentimental value, each and every one of those boxes that you labored over and packed to within grams of the maximum weight allowed, and then covered in postal regulation brown paper, and taped firmly and fixed a curse on the lid of each one, promising to those who would trespass here such affliction that would make Tutankhamen's tomb look like an invitation to Disneyland, each and every one of your boxes is now winging its way to the wrong address, destined to be delivered (or not,) to an abandoned building down the road.

2008-07-31T22:07:00.000-07:00

This morning the call to prayer went out from the minarets in Istanbul, and woke me briefly. As I rolled over, before sinking back into a rum-soaked sleep, my only thought was, "We have done it. We have finally arrived in Istanbul."

Yesterday morning it was the din of the Krakow bus station which woke me, and the first thing I saw, hanging across the room, was a foto of the great wall of China, sinously wending its way over umpteen sepia hills into the sepia distance, and a saying attributed to Lao Tzu - "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."

My father once had a sermon entitled "How do you eat an elephant?" Lest I keep you in suspense too long, the answer was "Bite by bite." I didn't find it very funny at the time, but I suppose son's rarely find their father's sermons very scintillating. I am of course, grateful that he has become more interesting as I have aged.

The message which underlies both of these sayings is that large things are composed of so many small things in combination. Do the small things, and in time you will have done much.

Moving to Istanbul was in every way an elephant, and in order to eat the bitterest parts first, we began at the tail, since every one knows that the finest steaks on an elephant are found in the trunk. (I suppose it has to do with all the work that the trunk has to do - that and the fact that it is round and can be cut into plate-sized steaks which have two holes in them is just too cool - my favorite thing to do is to put it on my face so I can see through the two holes and then use my best whispery-anguished Haley Joel Osment voice to say "I see elephant boogers.") But I digress.

I mentally divided our "move to Istanbul" project into 3 phases.

1. Find jobs.

2a. Get paperwork (work visa for Turkey, etc.) and
2b. pack/ship our belongings, and
2c. leave the European Union.

3. Live cheaply in Istanbul for 3 weeks till our university-provided apartment opens up.

There were a lot of factors that influencing each step which had to be juggled and balanced. For example, we had to move out of our apt. in Poland before August 1st, so our boxes had to be sent prior to that. The boxes will take 1-2 weeks to arrive. We cannot move into our apt. until Aug. 20th, and we cannot send boxes to the university until we are there to pick them up - sooooo, we had to find a apt. to stay at for 3 weeks, where we could receive a ton of boxes.

Another example is our work visas. Before we could apply for our work visas, we had to recieve a letter from the Turkish ministry of education. This in itself was a surprise, as we were not informed of this step till me had already made plans to leave the country, and close our accounts. Thus we were to be left without employment, and without internet, while we waited in our apartment, (which we were lucky to be able to keep,) for this letter to arrive. We would then take this precious gem of bureacratic excreta to the embassy of the country in which we are legal residents. We were told that this letter would take a couple of weeks. A couple of weeks after a couple of weeks, we noticed that our window of legal residency in Poland was quickly drawing to a close, which would, legally, make the letter in question pointless once we had recieved it, as we would no longer be allowed to apply to this embassy. These, among other similar situations, produced a low-level of constant apprehension, tension, which caused us to chew the insides of our cheeks at night, and snap at each other over nothing. How to resolve a million small problems at once, and in time.

At every step, at every stage, we found ourselves surrounded with more questions, to which only the petty gods of beauracracy could answer for us. Unfortunately the small gods of beauracracy will frequently let their phones ring for 10 minutes straight before telling you to call their "call center," and 15 calls later you will find out that really, no one knows anything. Yes, definitely, someone should know something, but really, that someone wouldn't be us.

The main problem with this scenario, of course, is that when you arrive at the embassy, the prim authoritarian fortuitiously located behind thick plate glass will indeed believe she knows something, and it might in no way resemble what you would wish her to know. Nor will she come out from behind the glass so you might instruct her in the ways of righteousness, and shooting her is right out, since the glass is probably bullet-proof, and furthermore you had to pass through a metal detector and open all your bags in a tiny room, observed by a man through another thick plate-glass window, (and he wasn't coming out, either,) before you were even allowed into this room. The one weapon you are left with is your smile. Well, and your whiney-voice, if you think it will help. Oh, and oodles of cash. Except we don't have oodles, we have piddles. And we really need to keep our piddles.

In the end, however, the smiles and bowing and a small offering of $78 left upon the alter propitiated the small gods, and after 7 hours of waiting, they blessed us with 2 small sheets of green paper, glued into our little blue books. A week later I was lying in a bed in a hostel in Krakow, across the street from the bus station, listening to the chimes before the announcements which no longer meant anything to me. I would never ride those busses again.

The week inbetween had been yet another slow-motion panic. A near daily mailing of boxes, cleaning, calling, making appointments, and finding papers. Our boxes were weighed and our suitcases were weighed and re-weighed, and judged ok, then later simply estimated to be too heavy, then on the day of judgement found to be lighter than necessary. Our bank accounts were closed, our Zloty converted to Euros, our Euros converted to Lira, our dollars held like limp green fish in our hands while we pondered how long we could hold this worthless currency, on hopes it might regain some value. Papers were signed, our landlord endured for one last time as he told us he didn't have time to inspect the cleaned (and subtly re-painted in places) apartment, despite our meeting him at the time he requested. Last suppers were had with friends, and on the day of our departure, the last meeting with our employer.

Where we were informed that the past month she had been avoiding us because she was hurt, angry even, so we may have noticed that this month she was a bit "distant." I declined to point out that since in the normal course of events she did not speak to us for months at a time, her increased distance during this frenetic time in our lives had, somehow, boggle-the-mind-though-it-may, passed unnoticed by us.

The cause was a poster, posted on a restaurant door. A friend of ours, hearing that we were to be without income over the month of July, had put up a poster advertising our services. The idea had not been ours, nor the placing of the poster, nor the wording. We had been informed of it, and had not objected, had even thanked her, as it was a great kindness on her part, and furthermore, I have long been of the opinion that if someone has the energy to take the initiative in something, the world should shut up and get out of the way.

In the event, as August is a vacation month, we receieved but a few calls from it, none of which resulted in a single class. The offense, however, was in the wording. And the offense, it seems, was not lessened by the fact that we had not initiated nor contributed to said poster. It was a question of loyalty, and we had been found wanting.

As I sat there, listening to my employers sighs of crushing disappointment, I thought back over the trips to the post office, the calls handled in a language I don't speak, trying to get a taxi big enough for the boxes, the amount of time spent packing, the rolls and rolls of tape and brown paper (postal regulations!) we had bought, the hours spent on the bus and train, the night in Warsaw, the standing, supplicating, of the gods of the embassy, the endless calls to the embassy in Warsaw, and in D.C., the visits to the doctor's office, the giving away of the things that were still useful, the throwing away of so much that was not, the selling of a few items, the endless running and running and tension and lists of it all, and then I thought of the bus ride still ahead of me, the plane trip, the showing of the doctor's report to the border guard, and the consequent explanation, all of which would happen today and tomorrow before I could relax again.

I didn't interrupt her. I sat there, thinking my thoughts, pretending to listen. I kept my eyes focused on her, my head nodding slowly, dutifully, as I softly shifted my weight on the sofa, and silently farted.

The things you gave your life to broken . . .

2008-05-20T21:41:00.000-07:00

"If you can bear to see the truth you've spoken
twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
and stoop, and build 'em up with worn out tools.

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss . . . "

Rudyard Kipling must have known a thing or two about life. Though not the greatest writer to ever tread the earth, I sometimes suspect the literary world sells him short - perhaps it is because I, like he, grew up between two cultures, linked to both and identified with neither, that I see in his writings things which I suspect go unnoticed by many readers.

Or, maybe I am just biased in his favor because of this poem. Aside from The Jungle Book, "If" may be Kipling's best-known piece of writing. Although I like it now, my first impulse, years ago, was simple rejection. My 7th grade English teacher handed it out and told us all that we were going to memorize it. As I was, at that time, beginning to define the limits of my own personal sovereignty by delineating what I would and would not do, and as I had a particular aversion to dwarfish, red-haired teachers, I decided that this was one thing I would not be doing. After all, it was difficult, probably nearly impossible, and furthermore, stupid.

I must have thought of something cleverly biting to say about the poem, as I can think of no other reason that informing my father that I was not going to do it should have seemed like a smart idea. He asked for it, and then read it over. I remember him sitting at the kitchen table, legs crossed, head bowed over the piece of paper as he read it. He stayed there for a long time. Far longer than I thought necessary.

When he looked up he fixed me with a gimlet eye that only a chicken could approximate for cold, rapacious intensity. It was the look which usually indicated that simply by standing there I was treading a piano-wires thickness away from a death that would surely involve a periodic slow strangulation with my own intestines as a warm-up to actual dismemberment. I guessed the stupidity of the poem had not met his expectation.

My father told me 1. I was going to do it, and 2. He was going to to memorize it with me. He also said that someday I might like it. I doubted this greatly, but was simply grateful that the conversation was brief, and made no mention of the various uses of forks and pliers. My father worked with me, and eventually I did memorize it. And then I forgot it.

Fast forward 20 years and I am working in a greeting card factory over the Xmas break. My job was to load paper into one side of the printing press, then walk around the other side, wait a few minutes, and unload the printed cards back into the box from which they came, and repeat. I was so bored I wished to shoot myself. Many of my university acquaintances had family to go see, a lot of them had enough money that the little bastards didn't have to work, and it is no exaggeration to say that I pitied myself a fair bit.

The clankety-clank-clankety-clank-hiss-clankety-clank-clankety-clank-hiss of the printing press went on for long enough that I found myself in my boredom chanting nonsense to myself, and out of the repetitive chanting the poem, long forgotten, started emerging in bits and snatches. For a few days I worked on reassembling the poem, remembering every day more and more. And slowly, I began to see my current position in a much different light. It didn't matter that some kids got to be lazy and have everything handed to them. It didn't matter that some people had somewhere to go for the holidays. What mattered is how I acted in what I did, and there was a nobility to be found in this experience, if it was approached correctly.

Fast forward 7 years, and I had a private student in Valencia, Spain. He and his family had come to Spain from Argentina, because the economy in Argentina had crashed enough times, and wiped out their savings enough times that they had decided to start a new life. He left his job as a lawyer in Argentina, and was now working occasional work as a night security guard, trying to support his family at the age of 50, struggling to make ends meet, living in a tiny dark apartment, but still managing to take English lessons because they were important to him. I watched Julio and Marta's struggle for months, saw in the unspoken lines around his stories the scrimping that was going on - how he and his wife worked to hide from their daughter the truth of the situation. At around the same time I told them Cyn and I were leaving Spain, he announced to me that they were, too. The savings would soon be tapped out, and they had to go back. I felt so bad for them, to have tried so bravely, and in a sense, failed.

The last time I saw him he gave me a present. It was a piece of paper, of nice stock, longer than normal, rolled up with a ribbon around it. When I unrolled it, it was a pretty script in Spanish. It took me a while to realize that he had given me the poem IF. He said this poem was a beautiful poem, which meant a lot to him.

I can understand why. It speaks of winning and losing and struggle, and how nobility lies not in these things, but in HOW you win and lose and struggle. What I hadn't realized, all those years ago when my father was reading the poem, was that he and my mother had just come through the most difficult struggle of their lives. They had exerted so much effort, on so many fronts, trying to do the correct thing against the odds, and in return, had been told they were failures. They were unfit. What I didn't understand in those days, when I watched my father come home from his job as a carpenter, and sit at the empty table in his workboots and flannel shirt, and night after night silently contemplate his own cracked and skinned hands, was that he was, in his heart, a failure. He had tried, and was trying, but had ended up, after so much effort, in limbo - in a place he didn't want to be, in a job he didn't want to do, watching the years slide by, not knowing where to go.

When Cynthia and I came to Poland, it was for one reason - to get graduate degrees. The money we were making was small, the amount deducted every month for the degree was high. The amount left was barely enough to live on. When we heard that the director of the program was going to be in our town for Thanksgiving, Cynthia volunteered our kitchen and dining room to host the dinner. I stayed dressed in my best, in order to make a good impression when he arrived. It must have succeeded, because a full day and a half later, as he left, he tentatively offered to let us manage the site, in return for one free tuition.

Eventually our responsibilities expanded. In addition to managing all the logistical concerns for the particular site, I took over the admissions process, screening the candidates who wanted to join our program. Cynthia began to do all the liaising with the college in the states. Although our compensation was increased commensurate with our responsibilities, at a certain point we stopped doing it for the financial compensation, and began to do it because we cared. We believed in the vision of this program. The idea that we could serve others, people like us, who had made their lives abroad, and wanted to advance in their careers, yet couldn't afford to uproot their lives and go back to the states to pay for a graduate degree there.

Because we saw ourselves as serving a larger goal, of providing good opportunities for people, we really devoted ourselves to the task. We put in long hours. When we stopped to figure it up, the financial compensation, much appreciated and very needed in our budget, came to no more than minimum wage due to the sheer number of hours we put into the projects. We tried to strengthen the organization, developing best practices and good policies to insure long-term success. We tried to both minimize our financial risk, and introduce a new level of transparency and honesty with the students. We wanted them to know they were important, and that we cared about them.

In return, some said thank you. One class bought us a bottle of vodka. Other's offered to pay us if we split the organization up, and stole it out from under the director. Other's created small tornadoes of intrigue by suggesting that someone was greedily profiting off the students, who were being taken advantage of. The ingratitude and mob-like mentality of any group always amazes me, and has taught me that I should be one who goes out of his way to express gratitude to others, and that I should never expect a group to conform to the rules of reasonable and appropriate behavior we would expect of individuals.

I don't mean to whine here. Some of the students I will remember forever for their decency and kindness - their sheer solid character. I have met some gems, whom I will treasure appropriately. But largely, much of the education I received in this program has been from the schemers and complainers. To them I owe a larger debt of thanks. They have taught me that working overtime for a pittance on someone's behalf is no reason to expect they won't expect more. Temper tantrums on the part of others must be excused. A single sardonic response on my part should never be allowed. As an appointed leader, I must always bring to the table the highest standards of behavior and personal responsibility.

As I said, my wife and I truly bought into the vision of this organization. We gave of ourselves to it. We did everything we could for it, and last Sunday, agreed to let it die.

The program has had difficulty for some time in attracting a sufficient amount of students. We always considered this a marketing matter, and so tried to explore new avenues of making ourselves more visible. These obviously cost more money, which moved us into a precarious situation. We tried starting up a second program, and due to an unfortunate combination of a late start in marketing and a few people pulling out late in the game, ended up under-attended. When a few people who attended later reneged on paying, our position went from precarious to a shade of red. Eventually we recognized the inevitable.

We tried, and hard. We loved it, and it has done something good for a number of students. Every student who graduated while we were working for this organization we count as a success story to our credit. Yet in the end, if not enough people apply, if the balance sheet tips closer and closer to the red, if in the end people do not value what they have received enough to pay for it, if after all the hours and hours of work, it is no closer to being sustainable than before, then perhaps you are not helping people as much as you once thought. If so, you must let it go.

If

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream--and not make dreams your master,
If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!

--Rudyard Kipling

The tears of children

2008-05-10T22:10:00.001-07:00

The measure of a great teacher is not in the test grades of his students, or the supposed "learning" which accumulates like so much cotton-wool between the synapses of their brains, or even in the future achievements or happiness of your students. The measure of a great teacher is in how many students cry on the last day.

Or cry in general, really. I am not going to be so picky as to just limit it to the last day. I try to begin prepping my students to cry early on in the year, letting them know that far from being unacceptable to cry in class, it gives me great joy when they do so, and sometimes is the only proper response to my behaviour as a teacher. I ask them periodically if they would like to cry, and if the response is negative I will sometimes go further and ask what I might be able to do to change that. Furthermore, I tell them, that the tears of children are precious. So if they are going to cry, please let me know right before, and I will give them a glass jar to catch the tears in. Voodoo doesn't just require dolls, you know. And virgin's tears go for extra!

Unfortunately, I feel as though I have failed in one of my classes, and egregiously so. Throughout the whole year they have manifested a stubborn and rebellious cheeriness that just rankles me to no end. Despite the fact that I refer to them alternately as "children" and "evil children" they refuse to acknowledge being insulted. Though I use their names in the example sentences, and place them in the most embarrassing of "hypothetical situations" involving Michael Jackson and his monkey, I have not had a single complaint registered with the head of the school. I have even stooped to shooting them with a rubber dart pistol in hopes of inducing feelings of victimhood, and still have not generated the necessary angst and broken hopelessness one would expect from a group of teenagers subjected to a relentless barrage of withering criticism and absurdly petty demands from an arbitrary dictator of a teacher.

In their defense, though, it would appear that my methods were, perhaps, ill-advised. The reactions to being shot with the rubber suction-cup darts, for example, was often to smile sweetly, and place the dart in their pocket. Such passive-aggressivity should have indicated to me earlier that a change of method was called for. Not that all the responses were passive-aggressive. One student stole the pistol and in a fair feat of marksmanship, shot me in the back of the head while I was writing at the board. I have also been on the receiving end of at least one thrown pencil, (why do they think things thrown at them in rage need to be thrown back?) which left a mark on my shirt, and, I need not say, a spurt of dark joy in my heart.

If this violence had been the rule, I think I would have been able to successfully adapt my methods and break their wills sooner. But the outbursts of violence were rare, and the intervening period would see gifts of, for example, chocolate, or a box of cookies on teacher's day. Sometimes when a student went to the ice cream shop before class, they would pick up an extra goody for me. All of this had the end result of confusing my strategy, as it made it difficult to judge the effect my teaching was having on them. Contrary to exhibiting signs of weakness and depression, they seemed to draw strength from the class.

It is not as though I didn't try to change my methods - I did. Partway through the second semester, I realized that other teachers had already calloused these students by taking ostensibly useful and interesting information and presenting it in the most mind-numbingly boring and useless ways, ruthlesssly stamping out any possible spark of interest or applicability to their lives by focusing in on the most pointless and trifling detail while ignoring the larger conceptual picture. These teachers had really outdone themselves by utilizing the most outdated, soul-crushing and joyless methods of teaching. Moreover, the students were independently boosting their endurance by subjecting themselves to long hours of study at home, independently, as well as arising early in the morning, taking extra classes of language, dance, or subject specific tutoring on the side, and staying up late at night to do their homework.

Once I realised this, I knew that if I were going to leave a dent on these children's souls, I would have to make it past the good-humored armor, the patience and endurance they had developed over the years. I would need to get them to let down their guard, and then, when they were unsuspecting, I could savagely destroy whatever personal confidence or joy was left cowering in some obscure, darkened corner of their frail little hearts.

The idea was actually suggested to my by suggestopedia, and one of my student's journals. If you have never read about the language learning method known as suggestopedia, and would like to take a nostalgic trip down the weirdness that was the 60's and 70's, I cannot recommend highly enough doing some research on suggestopedia. Any language-learning method whose founder begins his webpage with "Suggestopedia is a science for developing . . . non-hypnotic methods for teaching / learning languages" ranks pretty high in my book. Furthermore, if you are going to be a lingual-psycho-learning guru, Lozanov is a GREAT name to go with this hairstyle. (Note picture.)

The student's (obviously selfishly-motivated) suggestion was that the only way this class could be improved was to bring cookies to the class, and give them to the students. As suggestopedia, (a NON-hypnotic method of teaching, it should be noted,) recommends creating a pleasant atmosphere for the students, by utilizing art, music, (this I had been doing since much earlier in the year,) soft colors and generally a warm and fuzzy demeanor in the classroom in order to lower their affective barriers, I recognized that my best hope for getting these children to break down crying by the end of the year was to soften them with treats, thus lowering their barriers, and then hit them with the abuse.

Thus began the campaign of random cookies. It had to occur at random intervals, because tests on chickens have revealed that positive reinforcement at random intervals had a greater effect on behavior than a consistent, predictable reinforcement. As I try to conduct my classes with an eye toward scientific method, I randomized not only the days on which cookie-reinforcement would be used, but also the stage in the class at which the cookies would be produced. Furthermore, the role the cookies played would also be varied. Sometimes the cookies were freely distributed to all. Other times they were given to students whose answers were particularly good. Once, when the students had not done their homework, I simply stood in front of them and ate "their" cookies for them. On an unrelated topic, it should be noted that the students showed a preference for jelly-filled cookies over simple butter ones. Chocolate, sadly, cannot be accounted for as a factor, since it was present to a greater or lesser degree in all the cookies.

As a corollary to my strategy of random cookies, I would also periodically buy a small cup of hot-chocolate for a student who appeared to be depressed. The hope was that buy buoying their spirits at their most vulnerable moments, they might be less prepared for the neglect and cold-hearted criticism that would ensue, and thus I could more easily bring them to tears when I turned on them.

Yet somehow, as the end of the year looms over us, all my careful preparations have been for naught. It would seem that the treats and the music have been effective in lowering their barriers, but have also instilled the children with a persistent belief that, contrary to all evidence and my outright assurances to the contrary, that I am fond of them. Of course, being the shallow little bastards that they are, this somehow translates into greater feelings of self-worth (ie- the "teacher likes me, ergo, I am likeable" fallacy, which totally disregards the supremely reasonable and rather self-evident possibility that A. that it is all a malicious plot to cause you pain and suffering in the end, or, B that IF the teacher did like you, the teacher's judgment is quite likely unsound to begin with.)

And thus it is that once again, yet another year draws to its conclusion, and a nagging sense of failure tugs at my heart as I bid goodbye to a still resilient, cheerful, hard-working and intelligent bunch of students. I will not forget them ever, even if every time I think of them it is with some regret over tears left un-shed.

Would'cha? In Lodz?

2008-05-04T22:05:00.000-07:00

Lodz cannot be typed on this keyboard, or if it can, I don't know how. What is lacking is a tilted bar across the upright of the L, which would change it from "Lowh-duhz" to "Woodge."

A number of Polish cities are currently running ads on BBC to attract tourism and business. Some fall quite flat - others are just a bit corny. One which I am afraid was particularly effective was one which repeatedly asks "Would you - like to see Poland's longest street of bars and clubs? Would you - like to visit a famous film school?" Would you be surprised how it's pronounced? You Lodz!"

What so pleased me about this ad was that it took what I had thought of as the city's most crippling attribute - the fact that the pronunciation of the name bears almost no resemblance whatsoever to the spelling, and focused exclusively on it till you would probably forget your own mother's name first. And now that I have been there, I can assure you the name is not their biggest problem in marketing the city.

Woodge (Lodz) is Poland's second largest city. When a long weekend arrived recently, we cast about for somewhere to go, and eventually decided, most likely under the influence of this ad, to to to Woodge (Lodz.) Along with our friends Peter and Rachel, we reserved rooms, and bought tickets from Krakow to Warsaw, Warsaw to Lodz.

What we noticed immediately upon arriving in Krakow is that EVERYBODY was headed somewhere for holiday. The highways were choked going out of the city. The line to buy tickets in the train station was 16 people deep. Even the city buses were crammed full of people lugging huge back packs. When we finally got our tickets to Warsaw, however, and went to the platform, we found that despite all the travel apparently going on, apparently no one was headed our direction. When we arrived in Warsaw and finally found our way to the platform for Lodz, we began to suspect we might be the only people going to Lodz this weekend.

Our first impression of Lodz, as we departed the station, was post-communist depression. The buildings were gray, blocky, concrete, with a good layer of soot and dirt to hold them up. At the entrance to the park facing the train station what appeared to be a junkie prostitute was having a desperately wheedling conversation with two men. I say appeared to be because firstly, the way women dress here in general makes it hard to separate the prostitutes from the honest women, and secondly, I have always been particularly poor at discerning ladies of the night. It is usually only after I have had a 2-hour dinner while admiring the night-life on the street that it occurs to me as odd that there are women who have not moved from their regularly spaced intervals along the street in all the time I have been watching.

As we walked toward our hotel, we passed a few nicer, newer buildings, but the general impression of dank and unkempt persisted. We made it past "Poland's longest street of shops and bars," which did strike us as nice, and then continued on the 5 blocks or so to our hotel.

A few blocks away from our hotel we were approaching a group of 3 young men drinking unsteadily on their feet when Cynthia decided to go back turn back and buy some water in a shop we had just passed. This somehow attracted the eye of the most heavy-set hooligan, who began barking at us as we walked away. As we waited out on the street Peter and I remarked to each other that since we resembled his cousins neither by smell nor appearance, he might feel threatened and might therefore be barking to mark his territory. Or it could be a display brought on by the appearance of females from outside his band, meant to impress them with his prowess. When the ladies in question at last finished their purchases we walked past the young males in question, who confirmed our suspicions by emitting a musky odour and shouting aggressively in my face as I walked past. It was a true "Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom" moment, and I could have wished for nothing other than a pair of khaki shorts and a silver-haired Marlon Perkins calling me "Jim" to make the moment complete.

Big. Brutal. Belt.

2008-04-05T23:13:00.000-07:00

While in Ukraine, I was compelled to make a few purchases. Obviously I had to buy cigarettes. Why obviously? Well, let's do the math. in England, a pack of cigarettes can set you back 7 pounds, which at this point is 14 dollars. In the US a pack of Marlboros is probably about 7 dollars. In France it's 5.30 Euros, Spain was around 4 Euros, which comes in right at $6.30, due to the dilapidated state of today's US dollar.

But moving East, things begin to shift. A pack of Marlboro's in Poland comes in at 7.35 zloty, (3.33 USD,) which is eminently more reasonable. And in Ukraine the same brand sells for 5 Hryvna, which works out to 2.21 zloty. Working our way backwards to the west, that 5 Hryvna is about $1, or 64 Euro CENTS. In British Pounds, it makes it all the way down to 50 cents. And, oddly enough, they aren't even the same cigarettes we get in Poland. The Marlboros in Poland are mixed and packed in Poland. The Marlboros which are bought in Western Europe are mixed and packed in Zurich, Switzerland, and are thought to be of a higher quality. Due to some quirk which only a lawyer in trade relations could explain, the Ukrainian cigarettes sold for .64 Euro cents are brought in from Switzerland, rather than neighboring Poland. So, all that to say that an investment in tobacco seemed like the sensible thing to do.

As did the purchase of vodka. Before we had even come to Poland, people had gone on and on about Polish vodka. Poles themselves mentioned it as one of the advantages to be enjoyed while living in their country. "The best vodka in the world!" they frequently opined. The truth, however, is either that vodka is preferred to be rather gassy, rough on the throat, and not very complex in flavor, or Polish mid-range vodkas really come in as, well, just average. By following a strict nightly regimen, I have drunk an astonishing number of different vodkas now, including higher range vodkas, and I am willing to concede that Chopin is indeed a fine vodka, and worth waxing eloquent about. It is flavorful, full, round, complex, smooth, crisp, sweet, and clean. It is everything a person might love about vodka with none of the accompanying punishment. But at a cost of half the average monthly salary, it surely ought to be.

I have purchased 4 different Ukrainian vodkas. All of them, without exception, were in the lower end of the scale. To give a sense of scale, properly distorted by the currency exchange rate, the vodka we often drink in Poland, providing the best intersection between thrift and pleasure, costs about 35 zloty for a half liter. The vodkas I purchased in Ukraine at 14 Hryvna came in just over 6 zloty for a half liter, and were FAR superior.

Speaking of which, I would like to say here that Smirnoff and Absolut are absolute crap. You people are getting suckered. I would like to stress that I am not making unfounded assertions here. As someone who drinks vodka on a near-nightly basis, I have a fair foundation of experience to draw upon. And these vodkas were all smooth, flavorful, crisp, light, and left you with less of a hangover. Even if you disregarded the fact that these bottles of vodka cost under 3 American dollars, they were a brilliant value. All of which to say that, in addition to cigarettes, I HAD to buy a couple bottles of vodka while there.

Unfortunately, by the time I got around to buying up my mandatory reserves, I only had a tiny bit of money left. Why? Well, in short, I am a sucker for open air markets. And L'viv, like most Eastern European towns, has one - one block away from the main drag. What's to be had there? Not a lot, really, unless you go in for hand-painted wooden easter eggs, lace, traditional costumes, old soviet helmets, wooden swords and shields for kids, sheepskins, old decorative pieces of brass stripped out of houses, a brass bust of Stalin, matchbook covers commemorating/glorifying the Nazi attack on Stalingrad, (yeah, I didn't really get that one, either,) house slippers made out of sheepskin, Soviet medals and pins, wooden Russian matryoshka dolls, old metal lighters, military fur hats, old coins, paintings, canes, jewelery, strings of wooden beads, old military belt buckles, scratched old silverware, and on and on and on.

The metal matchbox covers with large swastikas and tanks overlooking Stalingrad gave me pause - I mean, they can't be so old as to have been made by the German soldiers themselves, and if not, who the hell would be glorifying that side of the losing struggle at this late date, and furthermore, how had they found their way here, where public opinion doubtlessly falls on the Soviet side of that struggle? Oddly enough, though, there is a fair resurgence in Russia itself, and among other ex-Soviet countries of neo-nazi babblings. It may seem strange that a people regarded by Hitler as nearly sub-human, and who suffered terribly at Nazi hands, should now be sporting his symbols, and espousing his views. (Slightly edited, of course.) I suppose it just shows that the more abused a people are, the more they suffer, the more twisted their minds become, until the strength of their tormentor becomes quite attractive, and they would wish to co-opt it's strength by adopting its symbols. Or, Nazism is just that attractive to simpletons everywhere. Or Russians are just born with a need to suffer. Take your pick.

I tried on the big furry hats. While fun, I couldn't escape the thought that it would be one more useless lunk of crap, and furry crap, that I would lug around the globe with me. I knew I had to buy a set of Russian dolls for my nieces - that went without saying. I knew my wife would like a scarf - but then I saw the belt buckles.

Brass, curved, a huge star stamped into it, with the hammer and sickle inside two circles at the center of the star, rays emanating outward from it. The perfect example of ideological use of symbolism. - the implements of the workers, rays shooting out from them to remind us of the sun, which gives us light, and life, set within the communist star. All captured in a glowing brass, heavy and crude enough to beat the life out of a buffalo with.

I had to have one of those. I asked at various stalls and found that they were all nearly the same price, and reasonably so - about 5 bucks - which, mind you, in Ukraine is enough to purchase a month's supply of cigarettes. I could choose between the matte grey, the rubberised painted green, but I knew it had to be the brass - only brass put the symbolism in its proper context, made it come alive, glorified it, and with our present-day historical hindsight, gave us pause to consider the folly of totalitarian systems bent on changing the world.

I shopped up and down the market. I looked at many of them, and found a problem - when you turned it over and looked at the fastening mechanism, the tooth (which should enter the belt hole) was so large, so wide, that it would never fit into a normal belt hole. Either you would have to grind a hole in your belt that you could stick your index finger through, or grind down the tooth of the belt buckle. Unfortunately, the metal itself was so thick that you would never be able to cut it down to an appropriate size without a power saw, or an electric grinder, neither of which I happen to have in my flat back in Poland.

Then I found him. The one guy in the market selling not just buckles, but the belts to go along with. After a bit of haggling he removed the long, beautifully grained, worn and scratched leather strap from one buckle, and threaded it onto another.

Which was how I found out how the damn contraptions worked. The female end of the belt was non-adjustable, and consisted of a single heavy staple which had been fired through the belt about 1 cm back from the end, then both tips bent back, the belt end folded over them, and crudely stitched in place. All the adjustment happened at the buckle end, where you pull it through the buckle till is of the appropriate size, and voila!

Or not. I am wearing this belt as I write this. The sizing mechanism needs adjustment about once every two or three days, as it constantly slips. And I can scarcely convey to you how much that delights me. This belt is the symbol of a system took mass-production at its word, and practically tried to mass-produce the human spirit. This buckle, a mass produced lunk of brass, intended to be worn by the the system's enforcers, the soldier, captures perfectly the heaviness, the crudeness, which accompanied every aspect of the communist system. The simple utility, the thickness of the metal, the uncomfortably tight curve of the buckle which juts the star out into unlikely prominence, (while the edges push backward into you at an unnatural angle.) The crude stitching is so poorly done one wonders if it was done by hand or machine, either seeming equally unlikely. And above all, the fact that it doesn't even work properly. I see wave after wave of grey-coated, fur-topped soldiers, tilted forward at a run, charging the bastions of the capitalist oppressors, one hand raised in the archetypal clenched fist, the other pulling up the poor bastard's trousers.

Which is really what it comes down to. Communism was not a system designed to fit man. Man was meant to be a cog fit roughly into the gears of communism.

In the end I paid much more for this belt than perhaps I had to. I wanted the leather belt to go along with the buckle, money was cheap, and the attraction of having a buckle I could use to open bottles or possibly re-tread a tank was just too much. I can't really wear it out of the house here. I don't suppose I would get beaten, but in any given room there is probably at least one person whose grandfather was disappeared by the NKVD, or someone whose father had to run to the west while the old grandmother disassembled the printing press and buried it in the garden. I have talked with people who recall sitting under the kitchen table as small children while the state police overturned the house for the 14th time. Or those who, out riding bikes in the country come across Russian tanks and soldiers whose presence the government was denying, while on the radio they spoke of impending martial law.

No, I may not get to ever wear it outside the house, but it nevertheless delights me to no end to see the gear of yesterday's soldier sold today to a gawking western tourist.

L'vovin L'viva Loca!

2008-03-17T00:33:00.000-07:00

I just returned from Ukraine last night. Specifically, Lviv. A year and a half ago Cynthia and I made a mad dash to L'viv, a midnight run bookended by a trip to Auschwitz on on end and a journey onward to Opole afterwards. At that time we had only been in Poland for a few days, and had very little idea of Poland. As things can only be accurately judged in relation to the things around them, we emerged with interesting memories of L'viv, but our conception of L'viv, what we thought of it, and by extension, Ukraine, was not very clear.

So when the opportunity arrived to make another trip there, it seemed like a grand idea. Our entry to Poland had been marked with a trip to L'viv, which had left a certain impression of what lay to our east. To make another voyage east now, a few months before leaving, would allow me to weigh my previous impressions with newer, hopefully more balanced impressions, having lived in this corner of the world for a longer period. Furthermore, this time I would be accompanied by a couple of friends, and a tour guide would show us some of the more remarkable sights, which my wife and I had certainly missed on our first trip.

Our first trip had left me with the impression that Ukraine was largely comparable to a public housing project. You could see that it had been built with great hopes, and that it still was the scene of many hopes and dreams, where a million small dramas played themselves out with all the tenderness and tragedy of a million King Lear's every day, yet the first and last and foremost impression was one of dilapidation, ruin, poverty, desperation and the persistent yet subtle waft of urine. So what would this trip bring?

The last time we crossed the border it was in the dead of night, with all the fogginess of perception that goes along with it. This time was at mid-day. Going from the Polish side, the differences were evident immediately. Directly upon leaving the border post, the fields were suddenly uneven, unkempt, very muddy, with trash strewn across them. In point of fact, there was solid, uninterrupted stream of rubbish in the ditch on either side for kilometres at a time, in addition to the frequent sprinkling of debris throughout the muddy fields. There was water standing everywhere - in the fields were large puddles, on the side of the road where people waited for busses were puddles and mud and standing water which had to be negotiated, and all across the road were puddles and potholes. It was as though the science of drainage had yet to be discovered, even in towns and villages.

I had never noticed, as the absence of something is not particularly noticeable, how clean the fields in Poland were, nor the fact that they were not uneven, muddy, and filled with water. I found this interesting - I had assumed that Polish fields were naturally as they were, but since JUST over the border this was not true, I have to now think that some sort of engineering has been going on here for some time which moves the water out of the fields. All of which makes perfect sense, now that I take the time to consider it.

I spoke of the roads - the roads in Poland never impressed me by their luxuriousness. By no means have I seen anything equivalent to our 4 lane divided highways. But just across the border these simple 2 lane highways turn into a pot-holed, broken, bumpy country lane that most US counties would be ashamed to call their own. Our bus driver literally drove half over the white line to avoid the holes along the edge, and pulled back into our lane as necessary to allow oncoming traffic past.

We were not even out of the border post when the Polish man in front of me whipped out his camera-phone and began compulsively snapping photos of everything he saw - the horse-drawn carts clip-clopping alongside the highway, the worn-down, depressed looking grandmas shuffling alongside the road laden with bags in either hand, the church smaller than my living room, the chickens roaming in people's front yards. The comments and behavior exhibited by some of the Polish people made me feel as though they were enjoying a little bit of a sense of superiority in what their country had managed to do. By all accounts Poland itself bore many resemblances to what I am describing here when communism fell, though perhaps not going to such extremes in so many areas.

A house divided

2008-03-12T00:03:00.000-07:00

I felt dizzy, disoriented, weakened, and somewhat removed from myself. Though I stood right in a thronging mass of people, no one paid any attention to me at all. The crowd parted to the left and right of me like waters, and joined seamlessly together again on the other side.

I took a few tottering steps back toward the train station, and though I could feel my head clear a little bit I got stabbing aches in my heart and gut. I almost fell as I turned back around, and there she was, holding onto my arm.

She was the 1950's vintage Eastern European babcia. The top of her head came only to my chest, and she looked up at me without expression from a ruddy, whiskered, deeply lined face set in the middle of a floral kerchief pinned over her hair. A shapeless, non-descript blue work-smock covered her from her neck to her black rubber gum-boots.

She pulled my arm and guided me over to the side of the wayfare, where the homeless and young miscreants were sitting in rows on a short wall. When they saw her coming they moved aside. Even the young thug, who'd been yelling at his lads scurried quickly out of the way, and the group of them made off for other parts.

It wasn't as though there was something in particular about her that repulsed me. She didn't smell, as so many older, poorer people in that part of the world do. It wasn't the flat sheen, the greasy-worn texture of her house-dress that bothered me, because I was dirtier than that. 5 months on the road had seen to that. It wasn't the shabbiness, or anything I could put my finger on, but her physical proximity seemed to project a poverty, a memory of suffering that enveloped me in a sick-sweet odour the nose would never detect but that stuck to the back of my throat like a milk-scum. I would have pulled free from her stubby, thick-fingered grasp and walked away, but I was too weak to do so.

I had known I was terminal for some time. No doctor had ever told me so, so I just stopped asking them. It was pretty obvious to me. When you go from feeling as strong as a bull to having tremors in your hands and aches and pains in so many places you can hardly keep them straight anymore, when you get winded walking from room to room, when picking up your briefcase makes you want to go back to bed, when you drop 20 pound in the course of 3 months, you don't need a doctor to tell you something is wrong.

After a while the sickness just becomes a fact, which you accept. The sickness makes you tired, lethargic, and maybe this is what allows us to accept the idea that we will die. No raging against the dying of the light here. I was content to let it go. It was just a question of how much time I had left to drag myself around before it finally blinked off.

With hardly the energy to eat breakfast, how I managed to leave home is a mystery, but they say as you lose things, the drives that remain inside you become clearer. And though I was fading out in many areas, one urge kept growing stronger.

It was photos in National Geographic, I think, that started it. Photos of city streets in Belorussia, or some satellite republic, of squat boxy cars parked at the base of old grey buildings, around which milled men in black leather jackets and ridiculous fur hats. I had to go.

Part of the motivation was a memory from high school. Her name was Marianne, and she came to our little town of cows and hay from the border of Moldova and Ukraine. Her coming had caused quite a stir amongst the male population of our high school, which her habit of wearing leather boots that came nearly to the knee did nothing to quell. I suppose outsiders, the exotic, the other, is always attractive to us, but high school boys are famous for being attracted to everything vaguely reminiscent of femininity up to and including door knobs, so it is not surprising that for the first two weeks of school the most consistently flogged topic of discussion in the boys changing room was exactly what kind of lacy things might be worn by Eastern European babes under their black skirts.

I should make clear here, because it is important - every boy I knew, and most I didn't, was hopelessly a-drool over Marianne. But I wasn't. Whether it was just my natural reticence to talk about girls in the vein the other guys seemed to, or the fact that I had a girlfriend around whom my earth moved, or the fact that she was certainly out of my league, I cannot say. But for me she was simply a willowy creature who never once swung her long blond hair around the way the American girls constantly did, who seemed to own an improbable number of black turtlenecks and whose approach and ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ was always marked by the click-click of the high heels of her knee-high boots. She was certainly beautiful, but nothing beyond that to me. I considered her little more part of my plane of existence than the poster my older brother had of Alyssa Milano.

Both she and I had study hall 5th period. I used the time to read - occasionally I did homework, but mostly I just read novels. Perhaps it was my obvious lack of interest, perhaps she knew what she was doing, I can't say, and perhaps even now I don't want to. Why she spoke to me I don't know. I found it shocking then, and even now I recall that first moment when she spoke to me as a small jewel of a moment that still makes my heart rise slightly in trembling nervousness.

What followed from that conversation was more conversation. And more. At night I could still see her eyes in front of me. She always held my gaze too long, and it made me nervous, twitchy, as though I'd had 3 cups of coffee. But I could not stop talking to her. After the very first meeting we talked through every study hall, non-stop, for months. I had never thought of myself as interesting before, but perhaps through the eyes of a foreigner I was.

In retrospect, I wonder now if I wasn't really that interesting, but rather I was the only guy who didn't seem sweaty-palmed at the thought of salivating down the front of her sweater. Marianne hadn't made a single friend amongst the girls, for obvious reasons, and between the boys hungrily watching her and the girls who unanimously hated her, she must have been very lonely.

Michelle, my girlfriend, found out within days of the first conversation. I explained to her with all the conviction that accompanies convenient truth - Marianne was a friend. We talked. That was it. And that truly was it. She might not have been happy about it, but she could hardly forbid me to talk to other people in the same room.

Maybe that was when it started. Maybe it started later. It is impossible to say exactly when the division began. I loved Michelle - we had been together for 2 years, which in high school terms is the equivalent of a 17 year marriage. She really was the glue that permeated and held together every aspect of my life. I woke in the morning thinking of her, and I saw every part of my day in relation to her. The walk to school was the part without Michelle. She would be waiting for me outside the homeroom, or occasionally inside. Homeroom she would doodle on my jeans, and then we were off together to the first two periods, which we shared. She would sit behind me, with her feet propped under my seat and I would let my hand go back behind my desk and wrap my fingers around her tan calf or ankle.

We spent every part of our days together that we could. Lunch we sat together, 3rd through 6th periods were defined in my mind by her absence. Sometimes in 4th period I would sit in a certain desk where I knew she would sit in 6th period, and I would scribble her a note on the desk. Afternoons we always spent together until her father made her take up sports so she would have some time away from me. It is fair to say that I spent the majority of my time thinking about her, and she was the prism through which I saw the world. She was my world.

As I said, it is impossible to say when the division began. It wasn't painful at all, at first. Just an odd tickle of a feeling, really. But sometime after Michelle asked me about Marianne and our conversations in study hall I became aware that while Marianne was talking to me, while she looked into my eyes, Michelle had left my mind. I realized one day as I was leaving the library that I had not thought of Michelle for the whole hour. It was a strange realization, especially when accompanied by the sudden rush of familiar longing and emotion that came when I did think of her. How could I love her so much on one side of the library door, and not have thought of her for an hour on the other?

I didn't spend a lot of time thinking about it, but after a few months I couldn't help but be aware of it. Michelle was my very life outside of 5th period. But inside that library, in between those bookshelves, I had another existence. I wasn't the same person. Inside that library, as Marianne looked at me, day after day, hour after hour, I began to see myself through her eyes. I was no longer even the same person I was with Michelle. By her viewing me, I saw myself and I was transformed by what she saw. I became something new, something I had never known, something that was me, but was not me, because it existed in her, and only in this room.

I said things I would never have said. Thoughts came to me that were not mine, but were tinged by colors from a different world. I felt the division happening, and it did not hurt. It made me feel strange, when I realized I had two hearts beating inside of me, but it was a wild strangeness that pounded a new rythm, a new strength borne of being two people, and not just one. I sat differently, I began to speak differently. The words I used changed, as did my intonation. Like any communication between two people who know each other, our conversations developed a certain ebb and tide punctuated by slow intense silences in which we would look at each other, and during which, on the last day we were together, I took her hand.

It was the last day before exam week, and strange things always happened that week. I had never touched her before then, but it didn't surprise her at all when I did. Certain things have their moment, and when it is the moment it cannot be otherwise. She continued looking in my eyes as I held her hand, and then, laying down the pencil she had been toying with, she reached across the table, and put her other hand on my chest. She waited like that for long enough that I could feel rising in me what had been there a long time. The desire, the knowledge, the feeling that from now on the person who lived in this room would be the real me. As the desire rose, I reached out and touched her face. Her beautiful face that I had looked at for so long, and as I did so my two hearts leaped and quailed and her eyes drew suddenly narrow and she took her hand off my chest, and extracted her hand from mine.

She rummaged in her bag, and emerged with a small wooden box. I thought she was going to give me something, and later she did, but at that moment I must confess my mind was quite cloudy, and fogged by her in a way it had never been before. She opened the box, and inside, cradled on one side, was an egg. It was only when she placed it in my hands that I realized it was only the egg-shell. The feathery lightness and a tiny hole drilled in each end was the only evidence of the robbery that had taken place. In every other way it seemed perfectly whole.

She cupped her hands to her mouth, and in a gesture of infatuated mimicry, I did the same. She reached over and gently adjusted the egg so one hole rested just above my lower lip. I could smell her hands, and I wanted to grab them in mine. I felt the cool eggshell softly skimming my lip, and found myself staring at her lips, across the table.

"Now, blow." She said.

And I did. Without thinking, with a heart full of love and longing, perfectly divided and totally full I blew into the egg and it felt like when Jimmy Granger had kicked me in the stomach and when Joanna had held my hand in 2nd grade and when I had caught the look in Michelle's eyes as she arched around when I kissed the back of her neck. I don't know how long I blew into that egg, or if I took another breath that hour. I saw stars, and I felt sick with hurt and a desire and a love big enough to fill two worlds and she took the egg away from my mouth and placed it back in the box.

People were leaving, packing up their books and moving toward the doors. I did the same, the force of habit more powerful than my weak knees and a sudden sense of loss came over me and a strangeness descended between us as she walked ahead of me out the library door.

I didn't see her during exam week, nor anytime thereafter. When she walked out that door I didn't realize it was the last time I would see her. Perhaps if I had, I would have done something different. Perhaps not, as I remember feeling confused and awkward. As she walked away from me, her head held squarely up, her posture erect, those boots that were so incongruous in our country clicking away from me, I felt confused. I realized later it was the first time I had walked out of the library still thinking of Marianne, and not Michelle.

Michelle and I broke up at the end of that summer. Michelle never asked about someone now gone, and of course, I never told, for what was there to tell? But when we broke up, as I felt the rising hurt and indifference carrying us toward our breakup, sometimes for a split second I would speak differently, would see myself through foreign, strange eyes, and felt that Marianne was somehow still a part of me.

So it was that when I saw the pictures in National Geographic, they spoke to something wild and foreign, long dead or dormant within me, and knowing I would soon be dead myself, I quit my job and bought my ticket across the ocean.

I had always wanted to see Europe, and the cheapest flight was into Amsterdaam. I had never been a hippy, but having shed so much of the old, and having no new, I tried the hashish and found it helped to ease my pain, though it made the tremors worse. The tremors had got so bad one evening that I couldn't keep soup on spoon, and had to leave most of the bowl behind. I tried drinking it out of the bowl, but felt embarrassed. I wasn't very hungry these days anyway.

After Amsterdaam I went to Paris, then on to Munich, then Prague and Berlin, spending some days or sometimes weeks at each spot. I knew my money would run out, but it seemed as though my time would get there first, and I was ok with that. It became fixed in my mind that I had come here to die. The place it happened didn't matter much, but I generally drifted Eastward. I hit Gdansk, and then was turned back from Belarus by the steep visa fee, which forced me to turn south and go to Krakow.

The further I went, the clearer it became to me. I was moving toward Ukraine. The where didn't matter, and the only why I could find, deep inside me, was that I wanted to see where Marianne came from. I didn't know her town or village, but to see some of the sights she had seen, some of the sights I had felt in my heart when sitting with her, would be enough. We would have, after all these years, shared one thing more.

By the time I reached L'viv I had been travelling for 5 months, and I knew it would soon be over. I hoped the end would come on a sunny day, so I could stretch myself out on a park bench, or on the grass, and my last thoughts would be of the sun on my face, and that the world was not such a bad place, in the end.

The sun was shining when I slowly emerged from the tunnel into the crowd of people going this way and that and suddenly felt a numbness in my chest and a dizzy, slow disorientation.

When the old woman took my sleeve I wanted her to leave me alone, to let me die now, but she was stronger than me, her thick fingers telling of a life of grubbing for vegetables in the slick earth, and she led me to the small wall where I could sit, next to the grass, and I sat.

She looked around for a moment and then called to a well-dressed woman passing by. She came over, and talked with the old woman. Then she turned to me and addressed me in English.

"She says she has for you this thing," and as she said it the old woman produced an old plastic grocery bag, crumpled and dirty, and began untying it.

"I don't need anything," I said. "I will be fine, thank you." The old woman wasn't listening but was searching inside the bag, where there were a number of other plastic bags crumpled up.

Our translator was just beginning to translate this when, after a bit of feeling around the old woman produced a brilliantly painted easter egg, of the sort that old women sell to tourists for a dollar. I tried not to take it, because I was long past the point where I needed to buy souvenirs from impoverished grannies, but saying something to the younger woman, she forced it into my hand and I felt my heart move in and my guts churn in a paroxysm of fear.

"You very fool to give this." The woman's face was swimming in and out of focus as my stomach heaved and I felt a light sweat prickling my skin.
"She buyed this in the market, very much times ago. Is very bad for you what people do with."

I felt so close to vomiting and passing out at the same time that I feared I might do both. The egg inside my hand felt cool, and familiar as it had the first time, but strangely alive, and filled with a strange consciousness. The old woman made a disgusted sound, and took the egg from my hand, and in a hard, swift motion smashed it against my mouth. I gasped at the force of her slap, as I tasted a small squirt of blood from my weakened and fragile gums, and felt stale air slide past my teeth, and tasted the sweaty age of her hand.

I rolled over with a sudden urgency and strength that surprised me, and vomitted like I hadn't since college. I arched my back and heaved and then thrust my arms down to push my face out of the rising tide piling up beneath my face, a thick black and orange, foul smelling liquid that was nothing I had eaten but part of me. It went on in such a continuous stream that I wondered if I would ever get to take a breath, and when it stopped I gasped and it came heaving out again so strong that my back seized into a solid mass of sinews grating against each other and my asshole literally cramped. Then something hit the back of my throat, blocking everything, leaving me silently straining, writhing, open-mouthed. I had to open my mouth wider to let it out, but at that moment the old woman grabbed my head from behind, and poking and shoving her fingers into my mouth forced the mass back in, and down my throat.

She's killing me, I thought. I can't swallow, it won't fit. But I was wrong. The body can do anything it has to when life is at stake, and suddenly I wanted to live. I couldn't die now.

I swallowed and heaved and swallowed and heaved and choked on the fist-sized mass as I worked it, swallow by painful swallow, gasping, straining, back down my over-stretched esophagus till it came to reside next to my lungs, and I felt it settle.

I was covered in sweat, and strings of drool and blood ran from my chin to a pile of blood-black effluence on the ground. I watched in clinical abstraction as a gorgeous ruby droplet slid down a filament of black and then disappeared into the mess. I became aware that granny was still standing over my back, straddling me, one large gum-boot in each of my armpits. She stepped away from me, and then helped me to roll over, away from my mess. As I lay there, my heart racing, looking up at the sky, shaky with exertion and wonder, I realized that today I wasn't going to die.

2008-03-10T22:37:00.000-07:00

When I awoke in the middle of the night with a throat so sore I could drink my wife's moisturizer, I began to cast around in the back of my head for what could have caused this new annoyance to enter my life.

Was it the 4 shots of vodka last night, that somehow inebriated my immune system sufficiently to allow a small virus past?

Was it that eating 5 meals of hamburger and chips in 8 days has left my body deficient on vital nutrients found in, say, pasta, which are necessary to stave of these small illnesses?

Could it be that right before bed I had drunk water from an unwashed mixer cup, still bearing the smeary remnants of a yogurt and raw-egg shake from the distant past? Could that somehow have caused a sore throat?

Then I remembered. The class I had taught Monday, yesterday, - one of the boys had said he had been sick on Thursday. Headache. Fever. Vomiting. The works.

I did a quick mental inventory, checking for any of the above symptoms.

Just because I didn't find any doesn't mean it isn't entirely his fault.

I poured the remaining orange juice into the filthy, smeared mixer-cup, then gave the box a last squeeze, which caused it to huff out a last wheezy blerp of orange juice. I crumpled the box without thinking , and threw it on the floor next to the trash. Two separate thoughts sat in my head, too lazy to form themselves into actual words.

When is my wife coming back?

That little bastard. He made me sick.

To sleep, perchance to dream

2007-10-01T21:18:00.000-07:00

Last night an agent of divine retribution was dispatched from hell to my bedside. What I had done to attract the attentions of hell's minion I neither know, nor care to discuss.

It began with a dream - somehow I was making a video of a family, which was intended to be of a funny, youtube-esqe nature. During the filming of the family and their activities it becomes apparent that the mother and daughter (who are the only people I remember from the dream, although there were many more) typically spoke at cross-purposes, and were alienated from each other. The mother was around 50, a well-dresssed, well-coiffed suburbanite, who was meticulous about her house, lawn, and the pool. The daughter could be early to late twenties, or even early to mid thirties. It is hard to say, as something, be it hard living or a disease, or just a tendency toward chronic bitterness, had prematurely aged her. She had viciously short hair that may have been salt-and-pepper, but I couldn't really say, as she wore a kerchief over her head that reminded you of a cancer victim. That, combined with the drawn, bony face, and the downcast eyes, and the same dirty blue flannel shawl she wore every day combined to create an impression of illness, or at least some sort of deep discomfort.

Despite the appearance of physical weakness, or perhaps just mental exhaustion, the daughter would frequently, almost habitually, engage in activities which seemed miserably calculated in advance to demonstrate her as spontaneous, young, free and desperately fun-loving. Or to demonstrate that her mother's values were not her own. Whatever the driving force behind them, the impression I retain from them was one of awkwardness and slight embarrassment every time I bore witness to one of these scenes, in which the young skeleton in her kerchief and shawl, resembling for all the world one of the extras from Schindler's list, would by one of these displays grimly attempt to convince us all of something fundamental about herself.

The one scene that stays with me happened during a party out by the pool. It was night, and I recall thinking that the pool lights, working their way up through the water, made for a great diffuse lighting that shifted and slid over the subjects. I suppose this is my idea of what a cameraman-cum-director thinks about, though I really would have no idea. I was laying low, on my stomach, the camera practically on the ground, tilted up to catch the action, which in this case was the mother speaking of the mundane details of her impeccable existence. I don't doubt that such impeccability in household matters does indeed occupy a great deal of a person's mind and mental energies. In particular, she spoke of the pool filter, and how frequently it had to be cleaned. The words, typical of dreams, are no longer with me, but she gave the distinct impression of the tribulations she faced in keeping the pool filter free of clogging matter, all of which resulted from people's inattention to what they wore in the pool. Pieces of fuzz, lint, etc, that made one more bead in the cleaning rosary she worked daily.

It was at this moment that the daughter entered the frame, coming through the glass doors from the patio, and walked intentionally across the frame of my shot, and, removing her black leather clogs, sat herself down on the edge of the pool, right in the prominent left foreground of my camera-frame, and despite wearing heavy black cotton leggings, dunked her legs into the pool.

The sheer dream-like improbability of it, that the mother would have been speaking of clothing in the pool, and she should come from out of earshot, and immediately do exactly the thing her mother had been speaking of, seemed to lend something preternaturally sinister to the tension that existed between them. As I continued filming, she made every effort to appear that this was a thoughtless act of carefree pleasure in life, but the tension and rigidity in her back and around her neck seemed to belie this. Her mother came over to her and leaning over, addressed her as "honey," and asked her if she would be getting in the pool.

The simple presence of her mother beside her seemed to nearly push her into the pool by force of repulsion alone. As her mother bent over her and spoke, she reflexively gathered her strength, and pushing down with her arms, prepared to slide into the brightly-lit chlorine water, kerchief, brown-and-maroon plaid skirt, and shawl still in place. My last image of them was the daughter's neck and shoulders tensing to push off the edge, while the mother, still speaking, makes small frantic finger-plucks at the shawl around her daughter's shoulders, hoping to remove it, yet trying not to strangle her with it should she actually go, all the while trying to speak in a soothing voice that is only a thin veneer to the colliding forces moving inside and all around her.

But that was only a dream. I was pulled from the dream by the whining, small, high, screaming more loudly with every second with insistence possible only in machines of destruction boring down upon their targets or a mosquito bored at night. I waved him away with great vigor, wildly threshing the air around him, no doubt tumbling him (her) frantically about, sending her spinning, hopefully, out of range of being attracted back to me. Then I tried to go back to a restless and unhappy sleep.

I don't know if I succeeded or not - I may have, but it seemed not long when the intense, approaching sound of a dentist-drill came closer and closer to my ear. This time I could only muster a single wave at it - I knew it to be hopeless no matter what I did. You can't crush a mosquito in the dark - it takes two hands, anyway, and I could only muster energy to wave one. To vigorously churn the air like last time not only wakes one up unduly, but is completely ineffective. To wave one hand past one's ear may be equally useless, but it does have the advantage of less frustration at having expended lest windmilling energy into the ether.

She was back soon. I don't know how soon. It would be impossible to say. It would be impossible to say how many times I made a cup out of my hand, hoping to "scoop" her in a direction from which she might not return. I realized at one point that she had bitten my left pinky finger, and the persistent itch wound its way through my incoherent thoughts. My periodic dozing moments, if they were more than just simple tired dizziness moments, spun around options of putting my head under the blankets and sweating for a few hours, getting up and doing some work, and turning on the lights, hunting it down and killing it.

I got up after one of these waving incidents, turned on the hallway light, and got a drink of water. My plan was that the light would attract the mosquito out into the entryway, and then I could close the door, and sleep soundly. While in the kitchen I looked at the clock. It was 4:30. In a few hours I would probably get up anyway - why not now? But I didn't - I went back to bed. The next time it woke me (not many minutes later,) I grabbed my pillow, and one of the blankets, and went out to the living room.

I cleared the books off the couch, unfolded it, and tried to crawl under the blanket. It was not folded very well, and so I was cold, and my feet were not covered, and the space where the couch folded let cold air up from below, along my back. I sat up and arranged the covers more meticulously - under and over and stretching down to where it should, and closed my eyes, and began to dream again. I suppose I slept, for there was a period of blankness that I recall with a feeling of gratitude, that probably lasted a half hour before my alarm, which some days ago I had set to 5:30, went off.

I had no intention of getting up at 5:30 today, and how this alarm had suddenly got turned back on is a mystery to me. But experience does seem to show that when the universe has decided to array its forces against you, mysteriously turning on your alarm falls well within the reach of its powers. Getting up or not, I had to get up and go back into the bedroom to turn it off. I couldn't see the face of my wife through the gloomy half-dark, which was just as well. I went back out, and lay down again in the now warm blankets on the couch.

When the mosquito returned I was beyond amazed and demoralized. I had left it in the bedroom long before. Mosquitoes are not, to my knowledge, capable of cognition. How had it managed to find me in another room, past doors that were almost shut? What kind of hideous radar for misery did this creature have that made this feat possible? Did I bring it with me when I shut off the alarm? Had it set the alarm, as bait, so I would have to come back, and it could then follow me to my new resting place? Anything seemed possible at this stage, and I gave up entirely on sleep. I knew then, with the certainty of despair that the condemned has when he actually feels the vibrations of the descending guillotine blade, that divine agents were working against me, sending mosquitoes of supernatural abilities, arming my alarm, and cursing me with tension fraught dreams.

I arose and made the coffee, and washed my face, turned on the computer, and sat down with a flyswatter across my knees. Staring blearily at the screen, I would occasionally hallucinate a movement in my peripheral vision, that was most likely just the smear of sleep sliding across my yellowed vision. As it turned out, I didn't use the flyswatter. She literally rammed into my head, her whining going off in my ears suddenly like a klaxon, and I reached out both hands and clapped frentically once, twice, three times and saw a black ball and the end of a red smear across my hand, and felt a surge of joy that I had at last triumphed over one small gnat.

2007-09-30T09:04:00.000-07:00

The summer never really arrived here, but suddenly, now that we are back at work, we get an Indian summer. So today, (Sunday,) we packed some sandwiches and books, and went out for a long walk, across the river, to another side of town, and around, to a hill on the outskirts of town, on which sit the ruins of the old town "castle." I don't know how big it was to begin with, but not very would be my guess. It was blown up as the Nazis were leaving, though no one is really sure why or by whom.

So we had a picnic there, and ate our sandwiches while looking over the river, and then went and sat on the ruins and read our books in the sun. After we had read for a while, we went to a beer garden in the town square, and sat outside, drank some beer, and kept reading and intermittently talking.

When we finished, and the sun was slowly sinking, we went for a walk around the town square, looking in all the shop windows. One of my students has a factory that makes women's bags, and apparently one of the stores on the square carry his products. So we went looking for them, and though we never found them, we had a good walk, and looked at lots of interesting designs in the windows.

Now we are home, and Cynthia is making a potato soup for dinner. It has been a good day.

Adventurous I ain't.

2007-09-14T00:29:00.000-07:00

I have been on vacation recently, (more or less, meaning I work one day out of every two or three,) which has resulted in my sitting around far too much. Which has led me to question "what the fuck am I doing here? Why am I sitting around locked in my house when I could be out having "adventures"?

Which, of course, was the exact same question I used to ask myself at Gouno. Then I would embark upon an expedition, to . . . hmmm . . . hmmm . . . hmmmmmmm. The river! Along the way I would accidentally collect about 47 small boys who would attach themselves to me like burrs to velcro, and would proceed to spend the next 4 hours attempting to climb, swim, wade, fall-down and otherwise stumble painfully about, till I tired of the utter green magnificence, and realized that, while interesting, unless there was something more of interest to be found here, it really was Milo time. It never turned out to be much of an adventure.

So, in a similar fashion, I have recently repeatedly set out from the house, bearing with me a few items, and bravely went to . . . hmmm. A pizzeria!! A cafe!! A bar!! Well, in all honesty, I wander about first, looking for . . . something, until eventually it occurs to me that a beer might be in order. So, although I have made it out of the house, it really hasn't added up to much adventure. Until recently.

My wife and her friends, (OK, they are mine too, I suppose) decided to go to Szczawnica, (yeah, go ahead, try and pronounce it.) I agreed because it was "lovely, and so beautiful." When we got there, it finally came out, (what had been rather indirectly hinted at previously) that there really was nothing there unless we were to take bicycles, and pedal toward the old Red Cloister in the hills, on the Slovakian side of the border. Not willing to be a poor sport, (but knowing that bicycles often sense my unease with them and attack,) I agreed to rent this two-wheeled contraption, and we set off down the trail. It was fun for a while, but eventually the sheer rock cliffs around the river, the rushing brown torrent, the green forest and gently rolling hills began to merge together into a somewhat red-faced, slightly out of breath and lightly bespeckled with mud experience dominated by overtones of extreme hunger. Shortly after this fact had blossomed into full prominence in my mind was the exact moment when people began enquiring cheerfully about my welfare, and making generally pleased noises toward the surrounding plant life.

"Isn't it beautiful?" they would breathlessly enquire, looking off into the distance at something I apparently had not seen. "Look at the trees!" they would say, leading me to wonder if they were referring to something in particular, or just the fact that there were, in fact, a very large number of trees all around us. "Oooh, isn't the river nice?" Which comment led me to wonder exactly what the difference between a nice and not-nice river might be, and if I really wanted to find out.

It wasn't too long after this that a sort of semi-detached hallucinatory rationality set in, and I began to analyse what this scene required to really bring out the beauty, and make it a really pleasant, top-notch experience. And it occurred to me that if we could just knock down some of the trees, and build a really nice art-museum which could have a nice coffee shop/bar with large, plate-glass windows maintained spotlessly clean, through which one might stare at the nice trees,and the rushing river, while drinking a good espresso, and pondering the delicacies that the delicate young thing in the apron was carrying to other patrons every time you glanced up from your book or conversation, then we could REALLY have something here.

Now, it rather deserves mentioning at this point that sometime prior we had crossed the border into Slovakia, and sometime prior to that my bicycle had begun revealing its true nature. Whenever it was necessary to pedal hard, the chain would attempt to slip gears, resulting in your feet flying off the pedals, and your teeth flying toward the handle-bars. But, of course, as long as you changed gears, (which it could kind of, sort of, do) you could avoid this problem, unless you were going up anything much resembling an incline, in which case you were shit out of luck, and might as well get off and push.

As we progressed further and further away from the cluster of houses behind us which I mentally referred to rather wistfully as "civilization," my annoyance at the monotony of nature's majesty increased proportionally with my hunger, till it was difficult to refrain, when asked "How ya' doin, Matt?" from answering "What part of mud-spattered, out of breath, hungry and sore-assed would you care me to comment on?"

Then quite suddenly my self-pitying reverie was interrupted as my bicycle began doing a fair imitation of a drunk man on stilts. I slammed on the brakes, (to much cursing behind me,) and began fiddling with the front wheel, which was flopping back and forth freely, loose enough to be able to rub the brakepads on either side. I immediately could see that this was an emergency of the first order, and would require helicopter evacuation. To calm my sense of rising panic, I immediately ate my share of the lunch, which helped significantly. As my belly slowly filled with sausage and focaccio bread, I nourished myself mentally with thoughts of myself walking, pushing this damned infernal machine, suffering every step of the way, encountering pitying looks from passing hikers as I struggled up, and then down, one gentle incline after another, making my way back to civilization, where there would be beer and over-priced kielbasa.

My loving wife, eventually sensing that something gloomy was missing from her life, came back to find me. Despite all attempts to reason with her, she insisted that giving up was not the logical answer to most of the difficulties life presents one with, and suggested rather that we cast about for some tools with which to fix the problem. I half-heartedly tried the nuts with my fingers, and was delighted to find that they were rock-solid-tight. There would be no fixing it. Eventually the other members of our party returned, and after some debate, in which I felt I was doing well, and moving them steadily toward the idea that I must, for the good of all, begin walking back, Peter suddenly grabbed the bike, turned it back over (I had been enjoying the sight of the damn thing with its wheels in the air, like some sort of helpless beetle on its back) and pronounced he would ride it.

I cannot describe the humiliation of my defeat. After such a fortuitious turn of events, to be robbed of your martyrdom at the last second by someone who casually shrugs and takes your burden of suffering upon themselves and cheerfully soldiers forward was almost more than I could take. I fought back bitter tears of resentment as I watched him ride off, wheel wobbling like a wobbly wheel, while I was left with the better, still functioning bike. I was left with no choice but to follow.

As it turned out, the cloister was only another 10 minutes of muddy riding away, and as they had beer and over-priced kielbasa available there, they did a pretty good imitation of rudimentary civilization. After beer and kielbasa, I could no longer stomach the guilt of allowing someone else, (regardless of how brave,) to continue carrying what by all rights should be MY ticket to feeling sorry for myself, and so insisted that I would ride it back, despite the fact that he claimed to enjoy it, as it made the ride more interesting.

Which, it turns out, it did. The rubbing against the brakepads, the extra-hard peddling to overcome the extra resistance, the constant rythmic screech, and the side-to-side wobble were just the things for taking one's mind off the over-abundance of all things natural currently encroaching aggressively on one's person, among which had to be counted a fine layer of sweat.

The trip back seemed to take much less time than the trip out, which seems always to be the case. When we got back I forgot to dismount a little ways out and push it mournfully in, which meant we had to stand about longer, and stubbornly refuse to pay for some minutes before Rachel, for the benefit and better comprehension of the stubbornly insisting owner, did a fantastic impression of pushing the bike uphill and downhill, and sweating egregiously on the long walk, to the cloister and back. Which finally did the trick, and saved me 3 dollars.

On the busride home, before falling asleep, I pondered the whole concept of adventure, and finally came to the idea that adventure only occurs once one steps out of the zone within one's control, and allows chance and Mr. Murphy to play an unusually large role in determining one's happiness and comfort quotient. My final conclusion (which I suspect most people just grasp intuitively,) was unless one has a specific worthy goal in mind, (ie, we are going to hike through the woods to see an old temple in Cambodia) which will recompense one for the time, discomfort and expense, one really might be better off watching someone else's adventure on the discovery channel. Unless you just get off on mud and trees.

Or, alternatively, you can factor out the time and expense, add in extra pay for the discomfort, and set a price on the experience. At 30 zloty an hour, plus 5 zloty extra for discomfort pay, I have 35 zloty per hour over the course of 6 hours, (that includes time spent waiting for the bus) which is 210 zloty, plus 6.70 times 2 for the bus ride, plus 20 zloty for lunch, brings us to 233.40 zloty. Then, all I have to do is figure out how much satisfaction, monetarily speaking, I derive from telling the story. Roughly, I would say about 7 zloty worth. Maybe 8. Then it is just a matter of telling the story enough times to repay myself in satisfaction for the time and expense the story cost me in getting. Which means I only need to tell it another 28.175 times to break even.

Women are the answer!!

2007-09-04T23:57:00.000-07:00

Intersections of any sort are fascinating. Intersections are frequently where it is at, (whatever it may be.) Intersections are the reason the blood begins to smear and the contemplation comes to a crushed conclusion. Take the intersections out of a story, and you will have one long, self-involved noun. Physics equations show the balance between intersecting forces. Crashes occur at the intersections. Boxing is nothing but dancing while looking for a good intersection between Fist A and Jaw B. If I were either the assassin or the detective, I would still be looking for the intersections.

The reason for this is that it is when two forces meet that eddies and swirls and counter-currents and whirlpools are born. Currents under momentum suddenly meet, are deflected, transfer forces to other parts, cross again, re-establish direction, and shoot out under greater momentum than before, moving with greater force as the new single, larger, mass establishes a new direction that synergizes the incoming force of both.

A week or so ago I wrote my brother an email in which I laid out, in not precisely exact order, the issues I would most like to see prioritized by our next president. They were:

Climate change
The health of our environment
The population boom crisis
World poverty
Education
Human rights
Women's rights
Civil rights/Political freedom
Employment
The international economy
Various domestic economies.

The order of importance, (rough and subject to change as it is) is based on my perception of the number of people who would be affected over the period of time the problem affects us. Thus, you can imply, I perceive the problems posed by climate change and/or pollution to affect a wider number of people for a longer amount of time than the overpopulation of the earth. Or, conversely, I view the beneficial by-products of one as being greater than the other - so it could be said that I view fostering education in an area as producing further long-term benefits for a greater number of people than fostering civil rights, or the local economy. However, Education is placed higher on the list than civil rights or employment because it will result in not only a better educated person, who calls upon a wider set of resources to formulate solutions to his problems, but results in a more employable person, who will in time promote his local economy. Thus some issues may be more important because they exert a "trickle-down" influence on others in the list. To go further, the newly educated person, who now enjoys greater employment opportunities, who is operating in an expanding economy, will most likely then begin to seek greater civil protections from his state, thus increasing his civil rights. So we see that some issues on the list could also exert a "trickle-up" effect.

Once one begins to consider these "intersections" it becomes apparent that the most critical issues may not be the most important, since some, ostensibly of less import, could effect greater results among a wider number of areas, at possibly less expense to resources invested. It is these intersections producing synergistic relations among elements which should most grab our attention, and to which we should direct a greater proportion of our resources.

Unravelling the ball of string from the perspective of intersections necessitates asking slightly different questions. Rather than asking which issues are most pressing, or affect the greatest number of people, perhaps we should be asking which particular issues affect the largest number of other issues. In other words, which issue enjoys the greatest number of intersections?

We have already belabored the quite evident symbiotic relationships between employment, economy, poverty, civil rights and human rights. It does not take much thought to establish a similar relationship between population growth, pollution, and contributing to climate change. The more people eating, drinking, pissing and making plastic, (barring the emergence of new technologies) the greater our collective carbon emissions. The less people producing babies who require plastic diapers and toys, the less people who will someday leave on lights, drive cars, and replace remote-controls for their numerous TV sets.

To my mind, then, the way to most effectively reduce poverty, grow economies, promote civil rights, reduce pollution and thus avoid worsening the effects of climate change are to A. promote employment, and B. discourage reproduction. The obvious solution proposed by the intersection of these two concerns is mandating a 17 hour working day for all males, with selective forced sterilizations where any remaining over-abundance of amorous energy might necessitate intervention. The main problem with this scenario, unfortunately, is the reduced energy levels brought about by the lengthened working day, so critical for reducing population levels, may cripple the ability of the individual to agitate for greater rights, thus short-circuiting the synergy of our cycle.

(The other problem being that governments employing forced sterilizations have a record of being taken out of power at the first opportunity. Apparently people resent them.)

Education has already been named as a factor which has an immediate and obvious bearing on not only personal efficacy, but employability, and economic growth. Could education also be used to lower the birthrates? Some agencies have tried the direct approach, educating the population regarding birth control, such as condoms and contraceptives. The main problem encountered is that men intuitively recoil from stuffing their most acutely concentrated collection of nerve-endings into a tight rubber bag with a constrictive rubber-band at the end, before engaging in something commonly thought to be "fun," simply because the woman is concerned about avoiding another pregnancy. Men are rather comparatively short-sighted at the best of times, and famously so as the moment of truth approaches. The pressing physiological concerns hardwired into their being to take precedence over rationality tend to override most other concerns for a thankfully brief period, which has been known to result in shortsightedness during, chagrin shortly thereafter, and offspring some time later.

Fortunately for all concerned, the reproductive process typically entails the presence of another individual, for whom the "oops" factor presents a slightly greater measure of inconvenience, and who thus tends to favor a more reasoned approach to reproduction, if at all possible. Unfortunately for all concerned, among the majority of societies, this cooler-headed half of our species is traditionally expected to bow before the wishes of her husband at home, is often credited with less native intelligence, and is endowed with less political power in the society at large. This results in lessened earning potential, as men are more favored for jobs, as a result of having been favored for more education. Thus the woman, who could naturally act as a brake on the reproductive rate, is, due to her lower social position, economic dependence and lower level of education, placed at a significant disadvantage when attempting to reason with her more physically, socially, politically and economically powerful partner.

The solution, then, to this particular confluence of unfortunate facts is general education for women. Reproductive education alone is clearly insufficient to act as a counterweight to generally held perceptions regarding reproductive roles and rights. What is needed is education for women which results in greater economic independence, higher social standing, and improved sense of their own legal rights. Thus a woman who does not wish to risk pregnancy could negotiate with her partner on firmer, more equal ground, to the long-term benefit of all.

Research upholds, and further reinforces this conclusion. Not only is women's education the single greatest correlating factor with falling birthrates, but an increase in women's education also leads to a greater improvement in the health of the society at large than an equal increase in education among men. This is because of the money which a woman earns, a greater portion is saved, and invested back into the family. A greater proportion is spent on household and collective needs, as well as on children's needs, such as clothing and healthcare. Contributing to the cycle is the fact that the lower number of births per family results in freeing up more resources to be invested into the education and advancement of of the already existing children, thus ensuring the continuation of the benefits onto the next generation.

So just as education has an impact on employment, the economy, and on one's perception of one's natural rights, so education of the world's largest marginalized group could have a direct impact on population growth and pollution, in addition to applying more hands to our economies, and more minds to our remaining problems. Education of women, and the furtherance of women's rights, is a key component to every issue listed above, from reducing worldwide poverty to promoting the health of our environment. And who knows, it could well be a woman scientist who eventually encounters the key to reversing climate change.

The America Second Party

2007-09-01T22:31:00.000-07:00

I don't suppose there are many of my stateside brethren who are currently unaware that the US is going through yet another Presidential cycle. It seems every time you turn on the telly you are confronted with some aging patrician with politician's hair and smile and an indistinct air of oiliness about the way his shirt sleeves are rolled up. Sometimes you even get more than one of them on the screen at the same time, and I begin to weep and dry-heave for America.

In the midst of writing my brother a wandering email-almost-epistle yesterday, I had occasion to ask myself the question, "What are the issues that are most important to me?" And, oddly enough, "Domestic Security" didn't even come up. I didn't realize it till just this instant, but it's true - the main issue that is currently cornerstoning every Republican's platform never even entered my mind. Well, I suppose that just shows why I will never be president.

In fact, my whole list is replete with examples of why I will never be president. Frankly, almost everything on the list is horridly America-Second. I am an America-Seconder! Does such a designation exist? I must go check . . .

OK, not so surprisingly, the America First Party has been reborn, and surprisingly, I half agree with one-quarter of what they say. However the America-Second designation doesn't exist at all. The closest thing is America's Second Harvest, a nationwide foodbank. So now that I have finally found my true political designation, what are the philosophical underpinnings to this one-man movement?

Basically, the belief that the already best-fed can go to the back of the line for the buffet, and wait till others are served. Primarily, it is my belief that the already richest and most powerful nation should not place economic growth as the primary consideration for making larger decisions. It is not necessary that we, the rich, continue to grow richer at the expense of taking action on other issues.

Secondly, that power, true power, is only partially derived from having the biggest guns. When we see a large, overly-muscled policeman humbly doing his job, and assisting small children with finding their mommies, we feel a natural surge of goodwill toward those who protect the weak, care for the insignificant and small, and seek the good of others; how much more so when it is a person who could by right of force be overbearing and insufferable without fear of consequence? Yet when the same fellow swaggers, and appears to glory in his strength, his untouchability, and shows even the slightest disregard for the well-being others, we naturally detest him, and wish to resist him, for we see two of the most dangerous traits of humanity combined in one entity: selfishness, and a desire for power.

To those who say that they wish to restore American greatness, and American primacy, I say this - you can spend all the time you want trying to herd cats with a stick, and they still won't listen. But strap a sausage to your ass and start walking toward the milk dish, and every single one of them will follow you. When the rest of the world, (and there are some who are just too culturally blinded to see it even when it is true) sees that America is leading toward a better future for all, most will listen, and most will follow, more whole-heartedly and with less effort on our part, because they perceive that we seek a greater good.

I fully recognize that this sea change will not be immediately evident, that not all nations will be able to perceive this, or believe it, and that the great majority will continue to seek their own good as a primary goal. Be that as it may - the difference between a tycoon and a leader is the tycoon seeks his own good by whatever means are available, and the leader seeks the good of those who are led, often at personal cost to himself, by operating according to deeply held values. I leave it to you which word you would rather see applied to our country.

For the truth is this - as travel, exchange of information and transaction of commerce occur between ever further removed points around our world, we will find the common good ever more important. What issue affected only a region, a nation, or even a continent before, now comes to affect all of us, as everything from trade goods to market volitility to infestations and infectious diseases spread more quickly and widely than ever before. Whole labor forces move across borders en masse these days, bring with them the power of their sweat and the problems of their own country. Interdependence is the inescapable future, and the nation that recognises this and leads the way toward a more healthy interdependence will be the global leader, and will, on some level, earn the respect and admiration of those it assisted and led.

And that will constitute a greater power.

Max

2007-08-22T14:14:00.000-07:00

I have been more than fortunate in my life. I am, in fact, one of the most fortunate of men on our entire planet. I am exceedingly wealthy in friends.

Which is not to say I have that many. The contrary statement could well be true. I have only a few. Yet those I have are friends exhibiting qualities by which the word itself ought to be defined. Among this small number I count Max, and his wife Maria.

This post is about Max. It has a specific purpose, intent and aim. It is, (and I am not bothered to say it) intended to prompt Max to continue writing. The aim, intent and purpose of this posting is to inspire not guilt, but inspiration. By addressing here the role Max has played in my life, I hope to prompt, persuade, prod, propel and provoke Max into writing again.

You see, Max has achieved what few others could ever lay claim to - Max has created a community, in his own name. Without intention of ever doing so, Max has brought together people on different sides of our world, by sheer interest in his words - in the words he has written.

Max writes (normally) everyday. Nonsense shit, often. Pointless but interesting shit, frequently. And not so occasionally, true gems. Things that make the whole internet sit up, stop fondling its own balls, and pay attention. Suddenly, because of something Max said, people's inboxes fill up with mail from unknown and nevertheless welcome quarters, because we are discussing something that Max said. And underlying the whole conversation, often between strangers, is the idea that "you must be a half-way decent person, if Max is your friend, (despite the fact that you sound like an idiot..)" And oddly enough, the theory seems to hold true.

Max has thus created around himself, by investing nothing more than 10 minutes a day, an online community. A group of people who, if they met each other for the first time, would know a lot about the other already, simply by virtue of having discussed the ideas that Max leaves us with. Thus, technology combined with brilliance and persistence has made, or re-made in a new form, that most basic of human necessities - a community.

I met Max my first year of college - an impressionable year by any standard. Max was an unmoving beacon of stability even then; he was a rock, upon which events and turmoil (of which there would be plenty,) smashed and spent their energies.

We spent much of the first semester of our acquaintance discussing literature, and by the end of the first month of our acquaintance, had established a deep and lasting respect for each other. One of the first things I noticed about Max was the quality of his friends. I can assume he noticed the same about me, as my friends and roommates of that period were, and are, people of the highest caliber. Max and I spent afternoons sitting in fields discussing literature, liquor and love, (to steal a phrase from him, "the quivering relations between man and woman.") Which was appropriate as Max was getting married that summer.

I came to recognise a quality of thoughtfulness, a premeditated air to all that he did. Max was no fly-by-nighter. Max spent time deciding what he wanted, where his effort would be spent, and then moved with conscious steps in that direction. His solidity of character was to serve as an anchor to my own life later.

The second year of our acquaintance, Max made his home in a truck-stop. He came to have his own table in the greasy-spoon cum-drunkard hangout which masqueraded intermittently as a business enterprise under the name Stateline Cafe. He would stay at his table, drinking coffee (50 cents, at that point, bought you all you could drink for as long as you could stay,) for 24 hours at a time. He achieved a grudging respect from the toothless waitstaff, and the hapless owner, who would even tolerate his books and such remaining on the table when he had to leave for class, from whence he would return immediately thereafter. I do not recall if Max ever received flying jelly-packets to the head, with the salutation "Hey, college-boy!" (as I did,) at 2:00 in the morning, but if he did, no doubt he handled it with dignity and aplomb.

Because that was what characterised Max. Max was steady, steadfast, sure, with temerity, poise, firmness and a presence of person that could put many global leaders to shame. If I had to, I would compare Max with Chirac. Always talking, always sincere, and always sounding suspiciously as though he knows you know he is right, if you would have just taken the time to listen earlier.

This precise quality is what has allowed Max to beget "the intangible extasy of Maxness," a concept that has yet to take the world by storm, but will probably end up becoming the intellectual forebear of a great philosophical movement someday, on par with the "Chicken soup for (insert your demographic name here)" series of books.

The intangible extasy of Maxness is less complicated than many of the worlds leading paradigm-arrangement systems. It has as its underlying belief something we can all comprehend and admit into the realm of possiblity - that inside Max there is a small man, called the Ego-man. He is probably round in shape, and broadcasts a general air of vague sketchiness about his character, the kind of fellow you wouldn't want to turn your back on, for suspicion he would be found either smearing your wife's chest with chocolate and bad intent, or cleaning the last scrap of meat off your chihuahua's bones by the time you turned back round again. (Were it not for the total absorption he showed in his current task, which precludes all else.) He is clad in nothing more than a loincloth, red body paint, and abundant chesthair. Said fellow has all the self-conciousness restraint of a mongoose in a chicken coop, and spends his whole day beating out interesting rythms on his drum.

And while he beats his drum, and admires his own chesthair clumped with paint, he dances a little dance, and chants a big chant. And he chants :
Max is Great.
Fuckin Great.
Yah, yup, yum and yahoo.
Great fuckin Max.
Max eats a cheesburger
cuz its fuckin great
Max read his book
cuz its fuckin great.
Great, great, great,
Max is great.

And then he goes on to sing the cigarette song, followed by the coffee song, the Maria song, the family song, the work song, and then he sings an antihistab song, and then he starts again, with minor variations on the theme.

And the fact is, if you sit around Max for too long, you begin to hear the song, too. And you start to sing along. But you don't realise it until he gets up to go to the loo, at which point you have that odd feeling that you are singing a song that has left the room. And then you understand.

I ain't overjoyed

2007-08-16T06:27:00.000-07:00

In retrospect, this realization, like many, has been a long time in coming. It is always that way, at least for me. Once I realize something, I also suddenly realize that I have in fact known this for some time now, the only difference being that it has finally become so damn painfully apparent that a retarded monkey under heavy sedation in a sensory-deprivation chamber would have taken notice by now.

This flash of insight came, just like its predecessors, in a moment when my emotions were on the more extreme end of my emotional spectrum. I was walking along, pushing a bicycle whose mere sight I have come to loathe, and trying to make up lame anti-bicycle jokes.

Q: "Why did God give bicyclists hands?"
A: "It'd be pretty difficult to push your bicycle home without 'em!"

This was the 2nd time this bicycle had been out of the house in about 2 months. During the majority of those 2 months, it was languishing with a flat tire which I used as an excuse to avoid having to use the damn thing. When I finally got it fixed, and back out the door, now it had another flat, leaving me stranded about an hour and a half's walk from home.

So as I walked my stupid walk, and joked my stupid jokes, I had plenty of time to notice the crappy architecture of the buildings I walked past, and the shabbiness of many of the stores, whose bald and paint-skin chipped mannequins clustered in faux conversation outside dusty-windowed stores. I noticed that what few buildings didn't look as though the designer nursed a grudge against humanity had their plaster falling off in large chunks, revealing the brickwork underneath. And everywhere, all the buildings are coated in a coal-smoke residue that could pass for the color of dirty dark concrete, were it not for the streaks under the windows on either side, where the water washed off the sills, and left cleaner streaks to stand out.

The sidewalks are all made of individual concrete paving stones, frequently broken, pushing up out of the ground at odd angles, grass growing up between the blocks. My useless pointless fucking bike bounces and rocks over the jutting, angled blocks, and I curse boredly to myself.

All the while the cars go by, the sun shines down like something I haven't seen since a past life (which is not so far off, in case you were wondering,) the birds and bugs squawk and screech, and life is generally pleasant, considering. Then suddenly it occurs to me. This general pleasantness in outdoor life, this hideous lack of consideration for they eyes of passer-bys on the part of any architects, this small, humming, inbred small-town self-satisfaction - WHERE HAVE I SEEN IT BEFORE? And the answer comes to me - Hesston, Kansas.

Now, if your life has seen anything signficant happen during the last 9 years, this may be an indication that you are unfamiliar with this particular metropolis, so allow me to help you. The wikipedia entry for Hesston, Kansas, which has no pictures whatsoever, (due to the fact that there is nothing there worth taking pictures of except 2 girls who have been raised on nothing but corn and milk, and there are other websites for that sort of thing,) states that the population in 2000 was 3,509. And since credible research has demonstrated that the median IQ is indeed rising, we can assume that the population of Hesston has probably declined since 2000, since no person with the braincells necessary to steal candy from a person in a semi-vegetative state would remain in Hesston. I know this because I had a friend who lived his life in a highly functional semi-vegetative state, and even he left Hesston.

Nowy Sacz reminds me of Hesston. How can this be? How can a town of more than 100,000 remind me so much of a town of 3,500? Well, I suppose it is due largely to the magical, reality-bending forcefield which seems to be present in most small towns, which make them all resemble one another. But that aside, let's try to reason it out.

Is it the physical town itself? Well, yes and no. I mean, the buildings are in a dreadful state of disrepair - no doubt about it. Whereas Hesston was, on the whole, very well kempt. But Nowy Sacz is improving everyday, and slowly becoming a cleaner, nicer, less gray place to live, which is encouraging to see. When I first arrived here, I puzzled long and hard over the buildings that were painted on one or two or three sides, with the other side(s) left concrete gray. I pondered - had they run out of paint? Was paint truly that expensive, that the building had to be painted in stages? (This was not such an unreasonable assumption, as you could see many houses that had obviously been built in stages with the material available at that time.) It was only over the summer that I saw workmen erect scaffolding, and apply six-inch blocks of styrofoam all around the building, and then cover it in a light layer of mud, and paint it that I realized . . . they were insulating and painting at the same time. And the combined cost was indeed too much, so they were doing the buildings in stages, improving the heat retention and the appearance, one side at a time. Nowy Sacz, after the long, dark night of communism, is indeed on the mend. But it still has a long way to go.

Is it the variety of things to do, the limited offerings of entertainment in this small town? Well, that certainly may have something to do with it. I would hesitate to leap upon it as the definitive answer, since there is an occasional movie we can see here in English or Spanish, and there are a sprinkling of restaurants, of the Chinese, Polish, Pizza and Kebab variety, from which we can choose. But that gastrological cornucopia aside, (please note ironic tone) the fact remains that the streets are quite still by 9:30, and the nightlife here consists mainly of sitting in chairs around a candle in the center of the table, and listening to your friend tell a story quite similar, but different in some details, than the one he told you last week.

Is it the people? Well, yes and no. I mean, the people in Hesston were dreadfully closed off. If you hadn't grown up there, and molested the same cattle as them, well, you just weren't family. We could communicate in the same language, but there was still a barrier between us.
People in Nowy Sacz are far more open to outsiders than Hesstonites. At least the one's I deal with are far more intelligent in general, and open to outside influences, than their counterparts in Hesston. But, at the end of the day, there is still a barrier between the great majority of them, and yourself. In large part they were bred, born, and will live and die in this town. With some exceptions, their conception of life outside of Poland is no greater than my conception of a life limited to a 400 mile radius.

Which is not to say that they aren't splendid people. The ones I've hung out with have been generous, kind, and largely polite to a fault. You certainly couldn't say the same for most Spaniards. But despite their politeness, generosity and kindness, there remains a barrier between you - that you will never truly understand them, nor they you.

So . . . Nowy Sacz reminds me of Hesston, Kansas. And the fact is, every single instant that I spent in Kansas I now regard as having been a waste of my precious, God-granted life, and thus, an offense against the Almighty himself. I wish I had not been so stubbornly tough in my youth, and insisted that "when the going gets tough, the tough get rough," and had rather stuck by the maxim, "when the going gets tough, the smart move and let the dumbasses carry on in their stead." Yet, what am I to do? Having finally realized (what has been a long time coming,) that I am definitely not overjoyed to be living here, am I going to move?

The fact is, no. The job-hunting season is largely past, and I made a commitment to this school. But if you think that is enough to keep me here, you don't know your Matt very well. The real fact is that I am here for a reason; I am on a mission, and I won't quit till I get what I want. I am getting an advanced degree, which will be one more stepping-stone on the way to my ultimate goal of getting a PhD. I always said I could do time in prison, if need be. And this is a far cry from prison, but I still feel like I am doing time. I may not be locked up, but I still ain't overjoyed.

Where have all the Ninjas gone?

2007-08-08T22:23:00.001-07:00

I recall, upon returning to the U.S. in the year of our Lord, 1985, ninjas. Not any specific ninjas, mind, but ninjas galore peeking out from a million places. The world, (or central California, at least) was absolutely infested with ninjas. Turn on the telly, walk down the toy aisle, or enter the video store, and ninjas came flying feet first at you from around every corner. There were white ninjas, black ninjas, grey ninjas and red ninjas. Rambo faced off against ninjas in his cartoon, (if you were so fortunate as to catch that particular artistic marvel,) as did G.I. Joe. Cobra was about half staffed with ninjas, if memory serves. There were teenage ninjas, little kid ninjas (sometimes in groups of 3,) caucasian ninjas, black ninjas, and of course Asian ninjas. Well, Japanese ones, anyway. The burning question of whether a Chinese person could ever become a ninja never seemed to get addressed - I have to assume that the ninja schools turned away all the Chinese aspirants, telling them to "Go kung-fu yourself," or something like that. Ninjas were so ubiquitous in the mid 80's that we couldn't even confine them to one species, (witness Splinter the rat, and the Turtles,) let alone a single ethnic group or neighborhood. There were ninjas-a-plenty in Beverly Hills, if you recall. Enough so that they formed a club, and went about ninja-ing things. (I can't be more specific because I don't really know what ninjas did when not hanging from ceilings, moving incredibly stealthily, or throwing small, very sharp objects that result in instant, fantastically silent mortality. I just did a web search, though, and actually found an answer to the question -
Q: "What do ninjas do when they are not cutting off heads?"
A: "Most of their freetime is spent flying, but sometimes they stab."
I am glad we got that sorted out.

My point, however, is that something very dramatic has happened among the ninja populations over the past 20 years. Today we have far less ninjas than we used to. I attribute this to one of two things (or maybe a confluence of both factors.) First, global climate change, and secondly, the return of Pirates. I will explain in greater detail later.

The Long Walk

2007-07-29T21:55:00.000-07:00

I went on a walk yesterday, which turned out to be a long walk, which, though completely beside the point, is the title of a Stephen King book (which he wrote under a pseudonym) in which people compete for a prize by walking as long as possible, non-stop. If your pace sinks under x number of miles per hour, you are warned twice, then shot. And toward the end of my long walk yesterday, I was wishing someone would shoot me.

I began by walking to John's house. (On the way to John's house I saw the most fabulous VW - but anyway.) John is in this course with Cynthia, and is from Southern Arkansas. Cynthia had told me there was a fellow from AR in her course, and the instant I laid eyes on him I knew he was the Arkansan. He is painfully sincere, and a bit serious, and all in all a wonderful person. The night before we had watched a movie together with 4 other people, and John alone voted to watch "Hotel Rwanda," while everyone else opted for the "Tenacious D" movie. I think he was a little disappointed that we would choose to fill our minds with fluff and nonsense instead of watching a modern-day genocide, but frankly, I don't need a reminder to remain aware that humanity is still just as shitty as it has always been. That, and I had already seen it. Anyhoo, after the movie John asked if anyone would be interested in going to see where the Jewish ghetto of Krakow had been. I had just been reading about it earlier in the day, and so I jumped at the chance. So at 8:00 I set out from Cynthia's apartment and walked the half-hour to John's apartment.

From there we walked toward the town square, and I took pictures along the way of all the architectural oddities I saw as I went. Although it was warming up, it was still just a hair chilly, so I was glad I had brought my jacket. Past the main square we finally found a bakery that was open, and bought a couple of donuts. About 30 minutes later we had crossed the Vistula river, and made our way into the neighborhood where the ghetto used to be. We were talking rapidly, continuously about this and that, and so after about 10 minutes walking in one direction, we would note that we had somehow walked past where we wanted to be, and yet hadn't seen anything. This only happened about 3 or 4 times before we started to pay more attention.

We were looking for the remnants of the wall that the Nazis had erected around the ghetto. I had read somewhere that the wall was built in the form of Jewish gravestones. I found this fantastic on one hand (I mean, why bother?) and thoroughly believable on the other, (there are numerous instances that illustrate how the Nazis really went out of their way to lend a personalised touch to the suffering they dispensed; so if true, it would really be just one more example of their great attention to detail which probably assures they will be the interior decorators of Hell.) John, on the other hand, had heard that it was built FROM Jewish gravestones, which seemed similarly fantastic, with a nice touch of profaning-the-sacred / macabre. I couldn't wait to find out.

We were taking our fifth pass through the area when John finally noted the map said the wall was located "behind the school." Oh. No wonder we didn't see it. Sure enough, there was a school, and after some discussion of how we were going to get over the fence, we noticed the gate was left open, so we went through.

Behind the school was the children's playground, hedged in by a cliff-face on one end, into which ran a large grey wall, in the shape of headstones. Sho-nuff. That was it. Visually unimpressive on its own, it was nevertheless a daunting sight when you stop to consider it was erected in order to contain people who, like cattle, would later be led to slaughter. The old man's-inhumanity-to-man bit is certainly getting old, and should by now be considered just one more of the characteristic oddities inherent to the human species. But all that aside, it was interesting to ponder.

Especially given the juxtaposition with the children's playground, I couldn't help but try and imagine what different view on history they would have, growing up playing quite literally in the shadow of the holocaust. Would this make history more real, more alive, more a part of your reality, or less, and somehow diminished by its day-to-day hum-drum presence in your life? Someone once spoke of the banality of evil, and I can think of no greater example - an erection of clay, stone, mortar, designed to facilitate the murder of thousands, which now stands innocently sheltering children in the playground, with no real mark left by its former use.

From there we walked to the factory rented and run by Oskar Schindler, of Schindler's list fame. The sign still hangs over the gate, and for a small price you can go inside. John wasn't interested, as he wanted to get on to doing other things, but once again it was interesting to see a spot in history which had now become a spot in film history as well. Incidentally, though the movie seems to portray Schindler as becoming less of a womaniser, and growing a conscience, to the point of practically becoming a full on bhodisatva by the end of the movie, he seems to have kept his flaws intact to the end. A bit of reading reveals that despite having no money, he continued to spend profligately, living off donations from the Jews he had saved, staying in nice hotels, gambling and maintaining expensive girlfriends, frequently running out of money before asking those he saved for some more. But that said, the fact remains that he spent all he made during the war on saving people's lives, in the face of great personal danger, and as such deserves to be remembered as righteous.

After this we went to a coffee shop that John had heard of, which supposedly roasted and ground their own coffee. I suppose this makes them the equivalent of a micro-brewery, but with coffee instead of beer. I had a cappuccino and John had something called "spinach cake" which turned out to be a lovely, flaky, spinach-containing pastry, which they had liberally doused in ketchup. John was duly horrified, having never seen imagined such barbarism could exist. I had to laugh, as I had seen this sort of tragedy occur with pizza, but hadn't imagined the practice could also be applied to pastries.

Following our coffee, we went in search of the mound under which the original "King Krak" was buried - for whom Krakow is named. After some walking in a generally upwards direction, we saw an old brick fortification, and an old, tiny chapel. John wandered off to try and locate this mound, while I wandered off to see the tiny chapel. It was locked, but after wandering behind the chapel, it appeared that there was a way through the fence around the old fortification. So in I went.

It turned out that I was not inside the fence now, but rather running between two fences, and shuffling along a path that was overhung by trees, overgrown with weeds, and over-littered with bottles. Walking further along I came to a large hole in the fence, which led into some brambles and trees next to the fortification.

I called John on his mobile phone, and it turned out he was right behind me. He didn't want to go in, so I went in alone. I little ways in I started hearing voices, and it turned out there were three people in there, doing some sort of caretaking, which today consisted of using a small hatchet to chop down a tree growing too close to the fortifications. I worked my way back out to John, and we wandered around the edge of the fence, and at a certain point were able to clearly see what they were doing inside, and laughed that they had nothing more than a hatchet to attack this tree with.

After much ducking and shuffling we emerged on the top of a huge cliff, and looked down to see a children's playground. The whole scene looked vaguely familiar, and we suddenly realised that we were now on top of the cliff which had the fragment of the ghetto wall at the bottom. Without realising it, we had made a full circle, and come back to where we started, albeit 30 metres higher.

After a bit more bush-whacking, (we ran through some stinging nettles) we saw the mound off in the distance. It was difficult to see how to get their via the roads, as there was a large, fenced highway between us and it, but a path through the trees and nettles and underbrush led off in that direction, so we took it.

Within about 5 minutes the path dropped us down in front of a bridge which led over the highway, and toward the mound. After a bit more hiking up a large hill, we finally came to the base of the mound, and went up, up, up the steep side. The view from the top was amazing, as I had never realised that Krakow had so many outlying areas. We were, by all rights, on the outside of Krakow proper, but the suburbs and high-rise communist blocks of flats continued for a long ways further out. We could see the church in the main square, where we had started out, and the distance between various famous buildings.

Then we headed back. It was a long walk back, and once we got back to the main square, it was 1:30, and after watching a break-dancing exhibition, John went home to begin his coursework for tomorrow. I stayed, and meandered in and out of shops, perusing guidebooks of Krakow, and noting the angle from which they photographed various landmarks, making mental notes to try the same myself. Cynthia called and asked me to find a cassette tape for her - I had not bought a cassette tape in the last 15 years, I think, so it was a novel experience. Then I went back into the main square, and tried again to capture what has always eluded me - the beauty of the cathedral in the main square.

The two towers of the cathedral are of differing heights, but that is not exceptional in Poland. I have never seen it anywhere else, but here there are plenty of churches whose two front towers are different heights, and done in differing styles. But the one in Krakow has a story behind it. The two towers were built by two brothers, both architects. The younger wanted to go faster, and further, and so outstripped his brother, but due to lack of planning, had to build narrower and narrower as the height increased. At some point the towers became a towering point of contention between the two (sorry, couldn't resist,) and one brother stabbed the other one to death. Oddly enough, though, no one agrees on which brother killed which. Some say the brother who built the taller tower killed the other to keep him from surpassing his. Others say the brother who built the shorter tower killed the other out of jealousy. Some stories report the murdering brother then comitted suicide, while others report he was executed. Either way, they have a knife hanging on the wall in the cloth hall, which is undoubtedly the very implement used by whichever brother for whatever reason before ending up however he did.

The cloth hall itself is a beautiful covered passageway, with shops down each side, and with a line of back-to-back stalls down part of the middle. In here they sell wood carvings, chess sets, amber jewelery, beads, toys, reproduction swords, polish-folk dresses, and any object that can be inscribed with the Polish flag. All along the upper portion of the curved walls run windows that let in daylight, and between them are painted the coats of arms of various cities. In two side-by-side rows down the center run hanging lights. The overall effect is quite pleasing, and makes a tired tourist stop and think - "Now this is exactly the kind of place that would be the perfect to get my wallet stolen in."

They say upstairs is a great gallery, but it has been closed for renovation for the past year, so maybe someday I will get to see it. In the meantime, I content myself with trying to take photos of it that are of guidebook quality, and enjoy the jostling and bumping and waiting for someone to pick my pocket.

Slouching toward the Kleenex box, in order to blow.

2007-07-28T21:55:00.000-07:00

What did I do in a past life to merit the misery of walking the earth with a constantly dripping nose, rubbed-red-raw from constant futile wiping and blowing, hands full of soggy tissues (which I feel obligated to re-use unless I wish to be solely responsible for the deforestation of a large portion of the world's forests,) snuffling, snorting, hacking, hocking, wiping, and blowing, and grossing out people in my vicinity?

I spent the majority of last night doing nasal-excretion-management. About 30 seconds after having blown my nose, I would begin trying to find a dry spot on one of the 4 kleenexes I was rotating through, and begin to dab, dab, dab, the accumulated moisture from the bottom of my one hyperactively productive nostril. After sufficient time had passed to allow my body to produce a sufficient amount of phlegmy fun to entirely pack and seal one nostril to the point that the accumulated weight was beginning to tip my head to the right, I would once again gracefully dab, and then rise and slouch my way to the door, to blow, to breathe, to enter once again the cycle of mucus.

Now I know, that really, my tribulations are not that great when compared with the sufferings of others. When placed next to the soul-torturing phase of personal growth that Britney Spears is currently undergoing, it makes my troubles resemble nothing more than a moist nostril. But that's the point, isn't it? Just as gas expands to fill the space of it's container, so one's trials expand to fill the mental and emotional space you currently have available to host them. So while not being ethnically cleansed, my nose is indeed significant in its ability to engender suffering. And while not yet reduced to doing commercials for the Psychic Friends Network, Britney's divorce and inability to have a single genuinely original creative concept will torture her mind no less than the destruction of a village in Darfur would weigh on the minds of its former residents. Pain is relative, you see.

So what I am proposing, while revolutionary, is quite necessary. Based on the fact that my particular private pains can have no equal, exact, corollary in your life, I propose a graduated scale of emotional torment be developed. A Moh's scale of Agony, a Richter of Recrudescence, something that would translate "my cat has a raging case of dander" into solid decibels of life-disrupting distress, which you can easily equate to your personal podalgia of "my wife leaves things on the floor and I stumble over them in the dark of night."

The result would be dramatic, and instantaneous. Until now, pain has been a private affair, something that cannot be communicated objectively, a solitary struggle that each person undertakes, knowing that no one can comprehend his personal pangs of woe. Now, though, one has only to say the number - "I am running a 9.2 on the Matt's Distress Distribution" to elicit instant moans of sympathy (true, heart-felt sympathy, as your listener, for the first time in history, can adequately comprehend the scale of your pain) from your listeners.

The results would be far-reaching. For the first time in history, two aggrieved parties could sit down on opposite sides of the negotiating table, and hope to truly understand the hurt the other suffers. "When you launch rockets at our settlements, it gives me a 7.772," the Israelis would say. The Palestinians would respond with "When you deny us the ability to cross a checkpoint to get to our jobs, it gives my whole family a 5.99 increasing by .42 with each passing day." Obviously everyone would need to bring a calculator to the table, and it might take a while to factor in all the components, but in the end whoever came out to have a greater pain index would be the long-suffering winner, hands down, and could dictate terms to the opposing party. Unless, of course, this would cause too much pain to the opposing side, in which case we would just have to re-figure. Obviously.

Krakow

2007-07-26T20:47:00.000-07:00

Tonight I will sleep in Krakow. This is a first for me - everyone else I know regularly stays the night in Krakow, but tonight will be my first night spent there. (Well, that isn't quite true - if you count wandering the streets till a late hour, killing time till boarding the bus to Ukraine.)

The funny thing is - I have been to and through Krakow plenty. I have stayed quite late in Krakow a couple of times, and I have arrived quite early in the morning a quite a few times. Yet somehow the thought of spending the night, (and not just one night, but three,) makes me feel all giddy with anticipation. Maybe it is the life I have right now - living in a podunk backwater that makes it so exciting. Maybe it is Krakow itself. While I have walked the town practically from end to end, it has only recently begun to give up its secrets, the charming nooks and crannies shops and legends corner stores and slimy-good restaurants that all beautiful old towns have. (On a completely irrelevant side-note, in Barcelona I drank absinthe in Hemingway's favorite bar, which probably hadn't been cleaned since he was last there, and ate Indian food in restaurants where you wouldn't want to touch the walls, got the come-hithers from the hookers and lost money injudiciously to street-scams, and never even came close to feeling that Barcelona was a charming, or even very interesting, city.)

Krakow, on the other hand, has less wicked, crackling energy than Barcelona, and more of an air of staid reserve, under which pulses a strong current of life, with all the diverse manifestations which that implies. In Krakow you are not assaulted from every side with hawkers and the nimble-fingered. Although quite crowded in places, the feeling of being hemmed in and moved with a sea of humming humanity is not so great.

When entering Krakow by bus, you first approach the river Vistula, across which you can see the old royal castle Wawel (Vahvehl,) built not so much for fortifications, (though it certainly looks imposing) but rather as a seat of royal power. The Wawel is built in a crook of the Vistula, on a hill over a cave where the dragon used to live. Obviously the dragon doesn't live there any more, since a sly shepherd-boy came up with the idea of stuffing a sheepskin with sulfur and leaving it for the dragon to eat, thus winning the hand of the princess. (How she felt about marrying a shepherd-boy based simply on his sheep-stuffing skills probably doesn't bear dwelling on.)

After travelling around the Wawel on two sides, you cross the Vistula, and drive past a number of large monolithic buildings decorated with oversized muscular workers doing very muscular-worker things, like making steel with their shirts off and hats on. (You also drive past a small, tucked-away gym and bath-house named "Spartacus," in which I receive the distinct impression that there are also a lot of muscular men with their shirts off, doing muscular men things, albeit probably not with steel, though maybe with hats, but then I wouldn't know, ahem.)

This is an area with lots of University buildings, and consequently a lot of museums. Most are art museums, and the Wawel itself has the royal armoury, which boasts all sorts of lances, swords, daggers, armor and helmets-with-spikes-on and cutlasses-with-gun-barrels-installed, for the pirate who has everything, and likes it all to fit in a single, easy-to-carry package. (I may poke fun at this particular contraption, but don't let it fool you. I desperately want one.)

As you ride through this area, you are on the street Mickiewicz, which is the name of the Polish national poet, who has a street, a school and a statue bearing his name in every town in Poland big enough to fit a street, a school and a statue, and sometimes two statues in towns not big enough to host all three simultaneously. If your town cannot afford a statue or three of Adam Mickiewicz, you needn't panic, as there are at least four different Vodkas named for his characters, so there are less expensive ways of keeping reminders of his cultural greatness around, at all hours of the day. (I keep planning on buying his most famous work, a rather large tome entitled Pan Tadeusz, and reading through it while I am here. I have always found that reading the great literary works of a country gives one a feel for the cultural sensibility that might not be accessible anywhere else.)

So wish me luck, I'm off to the big city, to spend some days and evenings looking for fun and fascinating facts and historical crannies and old coins at reasonable prices.

Breakfast Part II

2007-07-26T05:45:00.000-07:00

Some time ago I wrote an entry about my breakfast of buttery cookies. I ate this breakfast every morning as a purposeful act of excessive decadence, in defiance of all the health-and-diet obsessed weirdness that our society wastes so much time, money and spittle on. Well, that, and the fact that it is just a yummy way to start the day.

However, all this has changed in the months since. Summer has come, fresh fruit is in season, and I am busy as a fat man at 50 ft. buffet. So every morning I get up, and dump about half a liter of orange juice in a big container. Then I add yogurt, one or two eggs, and whatever fresh fruit I can find. We always have bananas on hand, and more recently Cynthia has been bringing home literally pounds of strawberries or blueberries. Not only are they yummy to eat, but they are brilliantly beautiful to look at. Through my sleep-addled haze, I marvel every morning at the candy-jewels that nature offers up, the brilliantly colored sweet sugars she has painstakingly assembled, all in hopes of attracting birds, and other animals to eat and carry her seeds.

Of course, as with anything, it is inevitable that sooner or later we have to try and go one better. During our years in Spain, getting our hands on maple syrup (without which pancakes are just not pancakes, in my opinion) could only be achieved by asking our kind friends to put a jug or two in their luggage. So when Cynthia encountered maple syrup in an exotic/imported food store in Krakow, we couldn't resist.

And when we got home and saw the blueberries sitting in the fridge, Cynthia couldn't resist the idea of blueberry pancakes. So Sunday morning we fried pancakes, and relished eating the gooey, candied mess. It was good. But somehow I don't think it was quite as good as the berries eaten by themselves.

Practice thyself

2007-07-24T20:50:00.000-07:00

Every 6 months to a year, I sit down, open my journal, and make a list of 1. Who I want to be, and 2. What I want from life, and 3. The practices and steps that would bring me closer to either #1 or #2. Then I try to see what complementary intersections there are (in other words, where the least amount of time and effort invested would advance multiple goals toward completion,) and develop an action plan from that. Then I close my journal and effectively do nothing. (Or something like it.)

Two items that have become constants on the list are: Become a better photographer, and Become a better writer. It seems to me that everyone except the most dull should have within them the ability to produce something of artistic worth, ie something of an esthetic value (I left the "a" off intentionally, in case you were wondering,) something that can please their fellow man, and if not actually elevate him in some way, to a limited degree remove his thoughts from himself, and focus them on something else for a moment. I would argue that the more the product is in concordance with the principles of esthetics, the more arresting, (ie, absorbing, or "self-removing") it will be. The more one is moved to ponder on those things which do not directly affect the growlings of one's stomach and greasiness of one's navel, the more one, by contemplation and thus conciousness, at least, is connected to the greater world we inhabit.

There is something about both of these fields, writing and photography, which draw me strongly. I do not partake of them because I think I have much skill in them. I partake of them because I believe what small skill I have is centered in these areas, and because I am so attracted to them that the mere idea of them fascinates me, and I feel good as I do it, completely independent of the feelings regarding the quality of the product produced.

My wife has left me and gone to Krakow. She will be away for a month, staying in a beautiful old flat in Krakow, while doing a course. Which leaves me sitting here, alone in the flat with the computer, wondering how in the hell I am going to cope, to keep my life from further degenerating into mad mess.

So I am taking photos. It may not be much, but I hope it will help me to focus my time and energy a wee bit and keep me busy. I recently saw some photos that a lad took while visiting this town, and was amazed at his talent, and infuriated that I can't produce something of similar quality. (Though if I may point out, his camera is so far superior to mine, that it does provides me with a small excuse, which is small comfort.)

I also have also renewed my determination to contribute to this blog in a more regular manner. I hope my friends use it to follow a bit of what goes on in our lives and heads, but in the end, that is not really the point. The point is to give me somewhere to write, in the vain hope that practice will improve. And, hopefully, it will give me something constructive to do until she gets back.

If practice can improve one's skill, (a premise we all-too-readily accept, if you ask me,) I would think a month would be sufficient time after which one could reasonably expect to see improvements. The question is, though, how much would one need to practice during a month, in order to see results? 20 fotos a day? 40? One hour of writing? 30 minutes? We shall see.

Mad mess bath-thoughts

2007-07-21T23:07:00.000-07:00

I know it happens - I saw it happen last time, and I could feel it happening this time - but it doesn't make it any easier to deal with. After the first session of college classes, back in January, my life (actually neatly organized at that point, and humming along with frighteningly bright intensity of intentions) just fell apart. I went from having a routine involving regular exercise, daily cleaning and loads of financial responsibility, to staring at the walls, with my brain, spine and will turned to paste, wondering where it had all gone.

I entered this round of masters courses less prepared. But I exited it in the same way - as a ball of spineless paste. Now that I have returned to teaching, every day is a spectacle of haste, running to prepare for what will happen in the next half-hour. After a day of non-stop wolfing-food-while-you-plan-so you can copy- so you can go upstairs, say hello, and start the next class, I come home with a firm resolution that life cannot continue this way. I must put in some extra work, to pull ahead of the class, and reduce the frantic, last minute nature of it all.

But when I get home, I just collapse. I stare at the television, I surf the internet, I plumb the depths of my creativity to find the most utterly pointless and effortless activity I could engage in, and focus on it with a vengence. I am now getting up earlier and earlier to give myself time to prepare for classes that I could have taken care of yesterday afternoon, (or even last night, if I hadn't collapsed into bed so early, as a result of having risen so early that morning.) It is a vicious cycle that I doubt is making me healthy or wealthy, and seems to prevent me from cutting my fingernails.

It all goes back to the two-week intensive course in June - something about sitting as a student for 8 hours a day just sent my life into disequilibrium. Then, right as it was over, the very day it was over, we had to leave a bunch of people hanging out in our house, and get in a car with our boss and her brother, and drive for the border. We crossed into Slovakia, and sat there for an hour or so in the car, parked behind a gas station. I would have loved to sleep, but didn't really feel comfortable letting my boss see me drool in her car. We re-entered Poland at 12:30, no longer legal workers, but now as tourists. Who still work.

I think the midnite visa run is similar to the courses in that, ostensibly, it is not difficult - just sit down, take notes, and speak when spoken to. You are with kind and caring people the whole way, and really have nothing to complain about. But when you are tired enough, everything grinds a bit more, and you don't have the mental and emotional momentum to skate through the slushy patches of life.

And so much of my life really is just skating - I have so much to be thankful for. I am so fortunate in life, that it requires an incredible amount of gall on my part to bitch about anything. Yet when you are tired enough, it is difficult to see that. No matter that you are cared for by others, at great expense of their time and effort and sleep, all you can feel is a rising sense of weariness and claustrophobia. Every week becomes a mortal struggle to make it to the next day, make it to the weekend, (but, oh, there is a wedding you must travel to, so no relaxing this weekend, maybe next!) The horizon of relief is always just over the next hill.

I briefly mentioned this to a 16 year-old student (who is much closer to being a friend,) and he responded, "Yes, Mr. Matt. That is the life of the student. We are always tired, with people asking us to do so many things. So we just want to sit and do nothing because it is all too much."

"From the mouths of babes," thought I. Now, I do not doubt that a wise teacher would allow the re-found perspective on the life of a student to inform his teaching practices, and the work he assigns. But I think too much wisdom gleaned from a single experience might just tempt the gods by making one appear a wee too clever, so I won't. But I will think about it while I take my bath.

Thoughts on the train-ride to Tarnow

2007-06-07T07:01:00.000-07:00

I still find it odd that I wake up every morning in a backwater of southern Poland. It is, according to the season, vibrantly green, verdant and sunny, or grey, bare, cold and dirty. At this moment it is at its best - the landscape explodes in a million different stages of green growth. The beans are halfway up the beanpoles, which stick up from every garden. The hay has just been cut and has been piled on specially prepared sticks, making man-size haystacks standing sentry throughout the fileds like so many cousin It's. The corn is not yet knee high. Perhaps most visually arresting are the fields of red poppy flowers that contrast gorgeously with the green of the fields. Sometimes I see them singly, scattered among the green grain stalks. Other times they throughly dominate and cover a field, as though they are the crop. I have yet to understand if they are in fact the flowering stage of a cereal crop, or a particularly attractive weed that grows in with the grain. I'm sorry I don't have a picture of them.

Best and Worst

2007-05-08T21:39:00.000-07:00

In honor of my friend Max, whose life and writings should serve as an example to all whose keels sometimes roll sidewise, I am taking a page from his book, and pausing to ponder the best and worst things that comprise my life. Drumroll, please . . .

(Note to any and all - ok - probably any, because very few people ever read my gibberish - the followng list is likely to be under construction for some time, as I doubt I can honestly come up with 10 things in either category without a lot of thought.)

10 Best things about my life (in its present incarnation)

10. Sunshine
9. Languages
8. Travelling
7. My job(s)
6. The internet
5. Books
4. Living out of the US
3. Excellent food
2. Friends
1. Cynthia

10 Worst things about my life (in its current stage)

poking my shit with a stick every morning
Polish food
Polish students
Not having all the money I want
No scuba diving
Inability to speak Polish
Rejecting people
Making friends
No good wine
No sunshine

Gotta go - more later

Slovakia and Castle Stara Lubovna

2007-05-01T21:42:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we went to Slovakia for the first time. Now that we have been to the Czech Republic as well as Slovakia, we have seen both halves of former Czechoslovakia, even if only briefly.

The trip was organized by some students of mine. We took two cars, and there were nine of us altogether. It took about an hour of driving to get there. We stopped to change money at one point (I had already taken care of this the previous day, and enjoyed how the 1,000 Krony note was the size of a dinner-plate,) and stopped later to take pictures of some mountains. I had been told many times about the "mountains" of this region, but never having seen them, had decided that people were probably confusing the biggest thing they had ever seen with a mountain.

But no, sure enough, they have some whopping big mountains out there, a range of sharp, snow covered peaks that gave me shivers just looking at them. (See foto above.) Apparently they are good for skiing on. Not that I ever hope to find out. The further I keep from snow, the more fortunate I consider myself.

After a wee bit more driving, we were on the Slovakian border. Everything went like clockwork until the blue passports came out. We were told to pull over to the side, so that other cars could be processed while they phoned President Bush. Well, I assume that is what they were trying to do, anyway. Judging from the amount of time it took, they must have caught him at dinner, or snacking on pretzels. Our friends in the other car had already made it through, so they had to stop on the far side, and sit and wait. In the end it was only perhaps 15 minutes before they let us through, so I have to assume that they believed me when I told them that the arms-running charge that came up was a different Matt who just shares my last name.

In all seriousness, though, it came as a bit of a surprise to our friends that holding a blue passport was not the hassle-free ticket to anywhere except the middle east that they thought it was. It seems the perception is widely shared, (and why shouldn't it be, since little here is actually seen of Americans) that we enjoy every single advantage on the planet, and not a single drawback. One of our travel companions later took the opportunity over dinner to point out that Poles are required to undergo much worse beauracratic hassling if they wish to visit our country. To which I replied that I have to undergo worse bureacratic hassling than this when I enter my own country. And this is true. I have never been treated with less professionalism and courtesy, scrutinised more and had my luggage dissassembled like in the US. And this includes prior to our catch-all-justification, 9-11.

From the border we made our way directly to the small town that housed the castle, Stara Lubovna. Stara means Old, and is a commen prefix on towns. I live in a Nowy (New) and nearby is the Stary (old) version of the same town. Before venturing up the hill, we had to stop and fortify ourselves properly by testing the local brew. I was told that this was where the world's cheapest beer could be bought. I considered this carefully, and decided that it would be a shame not to buy a pint o' the local at the world's cheapest spot, if this was indeed true. According to what I was told, the beer was 75 cents per half liter (pint = .47 liter.) The more nationalistic of our group immediately asked if I could recognise that the Polish beer was better. I told him it depended on the brand of Polish beer he was comparing it to, but I thought this was a fine brew, which made some at the table nod their heads sagely, and seemed to disappoint him somewhat.

We were repeatedly invited by a tall skinny man with a long, grey beard sporting nicotine stains under his nostrils to partake of breakfast, lunch or dinner, and he repeatedly listed all the specialties of the house. Every time he stopped speaking, our companions would inform us about his accent, or the fact that he was speaking a muddle of half-Slovakian/half-Polish, or that here they liked to eat "wet-bread" (dumplings) or some other piddling detail that the traveller often notes with wonder upon entering foreign realms, and to a large extent comprises the main joy of both classical music and travelling from place to place, which is noticing all the minor variations upon a major theme. The final entreaty to eat at his establishment was accompanied by the detail that the food was prepared by a very beautiful woman, who sadly was never allowed out of the kitchen, but we could take his word for it. Unfortunately, I never did find out the price of the beer, since it was paid for by one of our companions.

We made our way up the hill to the castle, and at the entrance lined up for tickets. I was happy to be first in line, so I could be assured of the opportunity to pay for our own tickets, (which I could already sense might require a bit of planning and foresight with this crowd,) and have the opportunity to pay for the couple in whose car we had come, as a small way of saying thank you. We received English language brochures, which one of our group happily christened "leaflets," as he had just learned the word last week, and was anxious to use it.

Other linguistic highlights of the day included the word "gutter," "thresher," and "reaper." Which leads me to a question - if a thresher is the machine that separates wheat from the stalk, which I assume it is, what is the machine that separates corn from the cob? This question, as well as the finer points which might distinguish a brochure from a leaflet, probably give you some insight into the issues that torment my day-to-day professional life.

The castle itself had been built between 1301 and 1308 to protect Polish trade roads. They have reports written from the castle as far back as the early 14th century. Apparently the area was traded to the Polish as a guarantee for a loan. As long as the Poles ran the area it was relatively prosperous, as the king liked his little frontier post, and granted the village the right to host a weekly market. However, when the Polish term expired the area was handed back. The area was neglected under its new rulers and suffered, and the castle fell into disrepair. The castle survived and was restored a number of times. Even now there are places that are still crumbling.

Mixed throughout were exhibitions of exciting things like rooms full of . . . period chairs. Not every room was as exciting as the chairs, though. There were rooms with furniture arrangements as well, depicting the best in 18th and early 19th century furniture arrangements.

Fortunately, we also found a cellar-type room, which had a board with iron hoops on it that would hinge open so you could lockdown someone's hands, feet and midsection. Naturally, I had to try it out. I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised that it was so uncomfortable. But I actually pulled muscle in my neck trying to get into the thing. Despite the stabbing pain shooting up my spine and into my skull, I managed to stay on rack long enough for Marek to snap a picture.

After finishing seeing the castle, we made a bee-line for the nearest refreshment stand, from whence we went to an open-air museum of sorts. It was a collection of old Polish houses made at different periods, with period furnishings. Most of them were quite reminiscent of the images that floated in my head when I read the book Heidi as a child. Small, snug, two-room log cabins, decorated with very humble craft-work items. They were, on the whole, extremely cozy, attractive dwellings. However, that opinion might change if I actually had to live there.

There were about 12 different houses all told, and in different ones they also displayed the items or decorations which would normally be associated with certain events in the lives of the folk who lived there. So in one we see the typical wedding decorations they would make, a large hanging mobile made of straight sticks bound with white feathers and colored beads. In another the bed was separated from the rest of the house by a white wool embroidered curtain, which would separate the newborn and mother from the rest of the house for 7 days. They also told of the rituals which would normally accompany a birth, such as the naming ceremony, rubbing the baby with butter, etc, all of which served to insure that the child would grow up to be healthy, wealthy, and wise.

There was also a blacksmith's shop, and a flour mill, which was interesting to see the mechanics of. And what village would be complete without a church? This church was in the Orthodox style, with the iconostasis, or wall that separates the space where God truly lived, (the holy of holies, the sanctuary) where only the priest (and helperboys under certain circumstances) should go, where the alter is located, and the vestements and such are kept, from where the believers could stand, in the nave of the church. I always find different takes on religion interesting, and the orthodox-grown version is no exception.

In this particular church an interesting circular object hung in the center of the room, which I took to have some sort of function of symbolism. Upon consulting the brochure it divulged that "the wooden object hanging in the center of the church is connected with a local legend." I thought it a bit annoying that they didn't bother to tell us what the legend was, so I asked, and our companions said that while this had hung near the front of the church, a plague had come to the north end of the village. When the priest, either by fortutituous chance, or suspecting something, moved the object to the far end of the church, the plague shifted to the south end of the village. So the wise priest moved the object to hang from the center of the church, and the plague stopped.

This story naturally led me to ponder how the lives of the people who lived in these houses and attended this church were, in the end, governed by a body of superstitions to help explain the unknown, such as germ theory. Eventually these would naturally entwine themselves with the local religious traditions, until something like a local brand of the religion would emerge. If it became popular enough, it would become a heresy, and if it survived, eventually it could become a doctrine in its own right. It came to me quite suddenly, there and then, that the dividing line between heresy and doctrine is popularity and possibly military might, and the dividing line between religion and superstition is science. What science has thoroughly debunked becomes a superstition, only entertained by the weak-minded. What cannot be explained is retained by the realm of religion, and remains sacred to the believer until it, too, is slowly and painfully dismantled by the believer's acceptance of ever-encroaching science. In other words, there are three stations on the continuum of belief, the unsubstantiated belief of the few being superstition, the unsubstantiated belief of many, religion. Once substantiation is obtained, it ceases to be religion, and becomes science.

As I left that small, wooden church in Slovakia, for the first time I understood Oscar Wilde's saying "Science is the record of dead religions."

Bicycle, Bicycle, Bicycle.

2007-04-30T21:26:00.000-07:00

When we were in Valencia, both Cynthia and I had bikes. I was none too fond of mine, and I think it could sense this, because after a while it started trying to kill me. We lived in this state of mutual animosity for more than a year, with it developing new wobbles and problems as fast as it could, and me threatening to throw the damn thing off the roof at every opportunity, until late one night it was stolen. Frankly, I was about glad to be rid of the accursed infernal money-eating contraption of the devil.

The problem came about in the next few days as I found that, having become accustomed to moving about the city at a certain pace, walking was just annoyingly slow. Jaunts that should have taken me 4 - 5 minutes took 20-25. And after so long on the bike, walking now seemed like more exertion than it might be worth (unless we were going to the beach.) On top of all that, I missed the city-as-obstacle-course challenge that having a bicycle lent to my day.

It had taken me some time to begin to appreciate the fun that could be derived from going about town at a terrible break-neck speed, hopping curbs, dodging dogs, skidding around corners, playing chicken with cars, whizzing by right next to people and hearing them scream in alarm and dive for cover. In the same way as having a motorcycle, it fundamentally changed the way you looked at the terrain in front of you. You had to constantly gauge the narrowing distances between people and objects, the slowly increasing distance between one person and another, and calculate the quickly decreasing distance between you and the target (ahem, person, I mean) and make split-second decisions about which side of the old lady you would go on. It was a lot like shopping in Wal-Mart on a Saturday afternoon, but you're the only one with the cart, and at 50 times the speed.

So I decided I would have to buy another bike. I did, buying the cheapest one I could find, since we were out of there in a couple of months anyway. It was too small for me, not very nice, but extremely light, and it got me where I wanted to go. Upon leaving I sold it to the director of our school, who functioned as a sort of clearing-house for bikes. He would buy them up, and the new teachers who arrived could buy them from him.

When we arrived here in Poland, Cynthia made mention of the fact that I should get a bike. So did about 14 other people. I told them that it was possible, but not likely, that such a thing would happen, and when they saw a star in the East, or the Devil was seen buying thermals, that would be the sign that I had bought a bike.

Of all my classes, I have only one that is a one-on-one class. I go to the big department store, and go to the office of the store dyrektor. Three times a week He and I speak for an hour, and then I go down, do some shopping and leave. Not infrequently he plies me with "breakfast," which is normally an open faced sandwich of smoked salmon, or gives me bottles of fiery-liquids, or gives me 4 feet of homemade Polish sausage. So it was nothing unusual when he offered to get me a reduced price on a bicycle. I thanked him graciously, and told him I would think about it. After some perusal of what his store had on offer, I was thinking of declining. The cheap bicycles were too cheap, and the expensive ones were too costly for something I love as little as a bicycle.

However, a week later he handed me brochure of nothing but bicycles, (similar to a wally-world publication) which they would be receiving soon. Therein I found what looked like a nice mix of features at an appropriate cost, and acquiesced. I received 20% off the already reduced sales-price, and was told that it would be here in 4 days. He even asked me what color I would like, since he thought the advertised yellow was, in his words, "A little gay." I told him the color wasn't important to me, and so I ended up with silver.

The first thing I noticed upon mounting my new bicycle, is that my legs are OUT OF SHAPE. It didn't used to hurt nearly this much to ride on flat ground. My goodness, my legs need some work. I hadn't thought about it before, but most of my exercise over the winter months had been phenomenally good for my upper-body, (pull-ups, mainly,) and neglected my lower-body almost completely. Well, now is the day of reckoning.

I am beginning to recapture the joy of riding down innocent pedestrians, dodging cars and hopping curbs. It certainly makes the trip to work more interesting. On a side-note, this bike is different from my previous ones. The previous ones were of a traditional design, and on this one the rear wheel is a separate piece from the frame, on a hinged arm with a large spring that goes back to the frame, which makes it a lot easier to jump off of and back onto higher things, without so much jarring to the bike. On the downside, the bike is extremely heavy. However, no doubt with time I will get used to it.

Cynthia is already insisting that we must bicycle to Slovakia this summer. I counter that just because I made one mistake, (buying the bicycle,) does not mean I will be conned into making another. But she already knows who is going to win.