Bolesław Leaf
March 19, 1994 - March 16, 2008

Rest in peace, my little orange baby.

Year of the Whirlwind

In honor of a Japanese tradition I recently learned about, I have chosen sempū as the kanji to represent the passing year. Sempū means “whirlwind” and is written thus:

From teaching new courses to conducting some of the most advanced research of my academic career, from hitting the gym up to six times a week to beginning to learn German, this entire past year has whirled about my dizzy, complicated, overly complex, and insomnious head.

My wish for 2008—itself admittedly a silly designation that has nothing to do with science or any other respectable metaphysical system—is for the wind to continue to whirl but that the center to remain forever (and always already) still.

Other things to look forward to this year: the first major move in more than ten years, the fortieth anniversary of my birth, a vacation to Istanbul, completion of my coursework and exams and the beginning of my dissertation, teaching new courses, conferences, writing projects, relaxation and meditation, better health (and less of me to love), and—the gods willing—more than a few nights of blissful sleep.

Happy New Year.

Thanksgiving Thursday

A random selection of music to be thankful for:

• "Beaten Thursdays" by Prefuse 73
• "The Columbia" by Lackthereof
• "Elvis Cadillac" by Rickie Lee Jones
• "Four Three All India Radio" by Echo Other
• "In a State" by Mojib
• "Kitten Who Did Not Want To Give Up" by BrainStorm
• "Masca" by The Duke Spirit
• "North American Scum (Radio Edit)" by LCD Soundsystem
• "NYC" by Interpol
• "When Under Ether" by P.J. Harvey

Just thinking about the multitude of ghosts that haunt every Thanksgiving and the network of friends around the globe who have made this a special holiday: 44 years ago President Kennedy was killed just a couple of minutes drive from my home; 10 years ago Michael Hutchence was found dead; Sonia in Kumamoto and the apato I painted green with the windows closed--I don't think my brain cells have really fully recovered; Tak & family in Osaka with my first bottle of beaujolais; Jola & the girls in Warsaw with several other bottles...; Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade way back in 1986 and the crappy meal in the basement of the Empire State Bldg.; "In this fateful hour..." over and over; and now me alone with a stack of books and one painting by Redon to keep me company.

Observance

Today, on Columbus Day (Observed) I’m sitting through a lecture on early American history—yeah, academic calendars don’t quite match up to national holidays. (When I was at UD—boo! hiss!—I was told that we would not be off on Labor Day because “we are not laborers.”)

But today, I too feel like Columbus: discovering something that millions of people already knew about. (Thanks, Lisa Simpson!) My discovery: I need a break from sitting through lectures and spending far too many hours in front of a computer doing research and writing.

A modest proposal for renaming the day observed today:

• Stolen Continent Day
• Genocide Day
• Taino Heritage Day
• European Legacy Day (celebrating the effects of smallpox and “conquista”)

Indeed, perhaps we all should just walk backward into the ocean….

Il y a / n'est plus

A hundred years of his undying death articulating as if the singular unsaid, unsaying, unsayable, in its fully exteriorized impossibility against the homogenized totalization of a text, an other. He always already (yet) exceeds his own excessive supplementarity. I hereby sign and countersign your centenary as we both recede in our mutually singular oblivions.

Voices

Nothing abides. Nothing remains.

Today I found out that Ray Williams died. (We raise our voices.) He was the chair of the fine arts division at the community college I attended. (We learn to speak.) He listened, especially when I had something (important) to say. (We speak our minds.) He spoke to me as if I had something important to say. (He taught speech. And humanities.) Although we certainly were not close, he had a deep impact on my life. (I teach.) He was sensitive, and intelligent, and passionate. (I am still learning to listen when my students speak.) Rest in peace, Ray. (Your voice will be missed.)

Euro-Franz Say Auf Wiedersehen

Euro-Franz isn't one to cherish or even approve of long goodbyes. Perhaps he's said goodbye too many times. When he lived in Japan all those years ago, he was even known to pop in and out of town without a word. Somehow he was always able to book tickets for flights either too early or too late for others to care about showing up at the airport. Or to even know. He's left too many countries to name without so much as an acknowledgment that he was on his way out. Perhaps the best goodbyes are the ones unspoken that leave no residual emotional messiness. No remains for those who after all remain where one has left.

Which is why yesterday's orgazmo of farewells was particularly unwelcome. I didn't mind saying goodbye to my professors, but when I was forced to interrupt classes to announce to people I barely knew that I was leaving, a line had been crossed. It's nothing personal because I don't even know them. They certainly do not know me. We passed each other a few times in hallways; I perhaps noticed them in required gatherings. But there was never any real chance of a connection. We are far too different, and I am considerably more different than they, than Thou. Making such announcements made me want to cover my head and duck into a dark corner, abandon my bags and jump on the next train pulling away from the station, stick out my thumb and accept the next stranger's offer of a ride. Life is far too short to attempt or move toward something lasting. Like breath: you aren't doing it correctly if you only inhale. At least one half of the process is letting it all go. Escape. Release. Goodbye.

Fauxhawk

Repeat after Euro-Franz: Don't fear the fauxhawk. The fauxhawk is your friend.

One thing I will miss about being in Europe: having considerably less social pressure about how I style my hair in the morning. Not that that ever stopped me before....

One thing I will not miss about being in Europe: mandatory smoking. Oh sure, there are "non-smoking sections," but each one I've seen still has ashtrays ... right below the non-smoking sign. I've suffered through enough secondhand smoke these past five weeks to equal at least one week of firsthand chain-smoking.

The Sky Is (Still) Falling

For those of you who are relatively new to this eight-year-old blog, today is the twenty-eighth anniversary of Skylab's descent. I began my own Crash Course shortly before the twentieth anniversary while I was living in Shimonoseki, Japan. (And I chose the Polish/Slavic spelling of the space station for my moniker because I figured it would be easier to consolidate my various online personalities under something a bit more foreign-spelled.)

On July 11, 1979, the abandoned United States space station Skylab made a spectacular return to Earth, burning up in the atmosphere and showering debris over the Indian Ocean and Australia.

That summer I thought the world was ending, and I obsessively collected every article about and photograph of what was then the largest (hu)man-made satellite ever. I still have that yellow scrapbook I made at my grandmother's house in Arkansas. (And I assume Skylab is the reason I love Wim Wenders' film Until the End of the World as much as I do. Skylab is also probably the reason I'm wary of (or at least ironic about) technojunk.) With a healthy dose of realism/cynicism about the (dis)abilities of humankind since that time, I'm even better "prepared" to face the next American/(hu)man-made cataclysm that falls from the sky.

Biomap

Since we'll be losing our home in the next few months, I've been thinking a lot about the places I've called home for the past (almost) 40 years. Here's a little map of where I hung my hat. I'll update it when I get more information organized or feel like expanding some of the stories ... which probably won't be for a while since we're leaving for Europe in 2 weeks. We'll fly to Frankfurt to meet up with our friends, then fly to Barcelona for a week before returning to Germany. Afterwards, Stephen comes homes and I settle in Marburg until the end of August. When I get back, we have the pleasure of finding a new home for the next 2 years ... because I swear on a stack of Bibles that I won't live in Texas after I finish the Ph.D.

Memory of Loss

The dead will always outnumber the living.

One of my favorite works at the Art Institute was Chagall’s 1938 White Crucifixion. In it Chagall chooses to depict the crucifixion of Jesus (the “King of the Jews”), including this scene as the crux of a long history of pogroms against the Chosen—a history with its own chiasmus at the Cross, that damnable and lamentable inversion from Chosen to chastised, from blessed to bereaved. And somehow we good Christians (and post-1948, Judeo-Christians (if such a hyphenated beast/bestial identity exists; and why not Judeo-Christiano-Muslim?)) only remember the last 2000 years of victimhood and not the prior 5000 of gloating victors against all the other desert peoples (with their own desert gods). History will teach us nothing, for even the Palestinians (these new Philistines) will rise up and slaughter new innocents. It reminds me of a recent headline: “army battles militants,” and yet the unasked question still heard in the depths of language: who more militant than the military? And you too do not exist … nor I. Auch du und du. I’m reminded too of all those Japanese I befriended and loved whose fathers, and grandfathers, and great-grandfathers probably shot at my own grandfather, filling his mortal body with shrapnel and environmental detritus so that even weeks before his death metal was still winnowing its way from beneath his skin more than sixty years after the ceasefire. And when will this fire finally cease? And who will burn for more? And whose father, or grandfather, or great-grandfather was absent—absent in the way of a missing limb or a lastborn son—due to a shot fired from my grandfather’s rifle? How the missing trace their absence(s) down through the generations so that in my clinging I cling only to that which absences itself, that missing part, that lifeline of longing. Each near-death experience (and I know such a hyphenated beast exists) brings me closer to the death that awaits only me in its mortal vastness, in its singularity and solitude, for only that one death will make it all better by making us one.

Vegetal Carnage

One of the most exciting things about living in Tornado Alley, USA, is every spring when the tornado/severe weather sirens begin wailing, and you have to rush into the hallway, grabbing the shortwave radio (and making sure that fresh batteries are nearby), the cats (and their food ... and hopefully a litter box), your cell phone, a flashlight or two, and some blankets (in case of flying glass) on the way. Usually you have about a five-minute warning before the storm is right on top of you. I never much worried about such quick preparations before Hurricane Katrina, but now the thought of losing everything--absolutely everything--seems much more like a possibility. (Thank you, George Bush, for all that you do!) In the past three weeks, the sirens have sounded twice. The last time warned of wind gusts of up to 100 mph. Listening to the news the next morning, you'd have thought that we had survived a major storm. All the Dallas news reports were broadcasting the damage all throughout north Oak Cliff. Apparently the small square where I live was the least damaged. Funny, but throughout the entire night we kept hearing screeching breaks; when we got out the next day we learned why: several trees and power lines were lying in the road right outside of the gate blocking traffic. The road remained closed for a couple of days. Walking and driving around the neighborhood, signs of devastation were everywhere. The main casualty: the lovely trees that make this section of Dallas the most beautiful and tolerable. Here are some photos of some of that (vegetal) carnage.

An Attempt toward an Elegy for A.N.S.

I just wanted to write something for you, not only because your death affected me more than my own father’s, but also as an apology from one of the many voyeurs into your private life.

Every newscaster has dragged out the Dictionary of Clichés to talk her/his way through your life: “train wreck of a life,” “famous for being famous,” and “not so much a ‘candle in the wind’ as a matchstick in a hurricane.” But you were more than all that. You were human after all.

You were an angel-bunny sent to teach us about our own shortcomings and to remind us of the seven deadly sins: lust, gluttony, and avarice, etc. etc. And let’s not forget envy.

You performed your celebrity duties with a sense of humor, slurring and stumbling your way into our homes. It was hard not to laugh. And the lesson you taught—that it’s no less difficult to be a punch-line than a punching-bag—will stay with us for a long time.

You were a devoted mother, and we shared in the tragic loss of your son, just as we shared in your daughter’s tragic loss of a mother mere weeks later.

If I were a praying man, I’d pray for your soul. And for the lives of those you left behind. For her, for him (and him, and him, and him, etc. etc.). But instead I can only offer one final cliché: rest in peace.

Nothing abides. Nothing is lost.

May your guardian angel-bunnies attend thee.