Tiananmen

I was in Beijing just a few days after the tenth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. It was still closed to the public for “renovation,” in anticipation of protests and commemoration events. I could only get a few shots of the huge Mao poster above the gate before shuttling along to the next stop on our tour.

I was attending a conference on biography and life writing at Peking University, presenting a co-authored paper entitled “Politicizing the Trivial: Life Writings of Virginia Woolf & Slavenka Drakulić.” It was basically a comparison of Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own and Drakulić’s How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed, an evaluation of how early twentieth-century capitalism and late twentieth-century communism had failed in gender equality and how those failures resonate with each other across geography and time. I was still surprised I had even been given a visa after the NATO bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade the previous month.

Since I never technically saw Tiananmen Square, I’ll rely on the description from Jan Wong’s Red China Blues, a brilliant memoir that should be required reading in literature, politics, journalism, and cultural studies.

Tiananmen is gargantuan, the biggest square in the world. It is a hundred sprawling acres in all, flatter and bigger than the biggest parking lot I have ever seen. I used to get tired just walking from one end to the other. Moscow’s Red Square was intimate in comparison. Tiananmen could simultaneously accommodate the entire twenty-eight teams of the National Football League plus 192 other teams, each playing separate games. It could stage an entire Summer Olympics, with all events taking place at the same time. Or if you put a mountain in the middle, you could hold a Winter Olympics there instead.

Tiananmen Square made me feel tiny, insignificant, powerless. That was no accident. As the geographic and political center of Beijing, it was enlarged after the Communist victory to celebrate the grandiosity of Red China. In 1949, the Great Helmsman stood on the rostrum, in front of the Forbidden City, to proclaim: “The Chinese people have stood up.”

Tiananmen, which means Gate of Heavenly Peace, is also one of the least hospitable squares in the world. There is no bench or place to rest, nowhere to get a drink, no leafy tree to offer respite from the sun. Only the one-hundred-foot high Monument to the People’s Heroes punctuates it, and, after 1977, Mao’s white and gold mausoleum. Tiananmen is also one of the most monitored squares in the world. Its huge lampposts are equipped with giant speakers for crowd control and swiveling videocameras. The commercial photographers, with white pushcarts and colorful shade umbrellas, are actually plainclothes police. For a modest fee, they snap photos of Chinese tourists posing in the square and mail you the pictures a week later. That way, they have your name and address, too.

Here is a well written op-ed from the New York Times: China’s Grief, Unearthed by Mia Jian. For those of you less squeamish, here's an excerpt from a BBC report nineteen years ago:

Istanbul 03: History is a Pile of Debris

Saturday, May 17, 2008, Turkoman Hotel, Istanbul

Last night we went on the obligatory people-watching pilgrimage to Taksim in what used to be the Genoese colony of Pera that is now the trendy nightlife district of Istanbul. We sat upstairs at Baraka, eating and listening to the house band for a couple of hours. I ended up consuming far too much salty feta in my cucumber and tomato salad.

We spent all day exploring the Topkapi as well as the Archaeology Museum. Exhausted now from the throngs of tourists and number of placards read. At Topkapi, I was struck by the man in tears, visibly moved by the displayed footprint cast in bronze of the Prophet. As my interest in religion deepens, I find myself becoming less tolerant of superstitious, and hence superficial, religious experiences. I think for most people, the reverse is true, so that at the end of life, only childish trinkets remain.

“Disappointing” is too meager a description of my visit to the Byzantine exhibit at the historical museum. So little to actually look at and study. Certainly, there must be more to the Byzantine collection housed in Istanbul, unless, of course, the legend is true that the splendor of Constantinople was indeed hauled off by the cartload as the vanquished disseminated the glory of the classical world across western Europe, sowing seeds of Renaissance throughout the continent. But a thousand years of Christian Byzantine rule should not be so easily erased. I guess it is good to be a conqueror so as to reshape history into one’s own image.

Case in point: reference to the Anatolian architectural consistency expressed in the city walls of Constantinople. Apparently, they were patterned after the fortified Hittite capital of Hattusa. But since neither the Hittites nor the Byzantines were Turks (or Muslims), we’ll reduce it all to a footnote in history. Or worse: to a blog entry by a mediocre hobbyist who doesn’t even believe in history.

Unfortunately, I can’t just dismiss this obvious absence to the Turks since even periodically throughout the Christian Greek empire, radical iconoclasm was official state policy. (And don’t even get me started on those damned European Catholics who plundered the city during the Fourth Crusade!)

Istanbul 02: Travel Journal Except

Friday, May 16, 2008, Hotel Turkoman, Istanbul

After what seems and certainly feels like two lost days of traveling across continents and time zones, the beginnings of my third day in the same clothes due to a lost bag by the ever-incompetent American Airlines, I know why people don’t travel like this, like me. But sitting atop our hotel on the terrace over breakfast, overlooking the Bosporus Straits in front of me and the Sea of Marmara to my right, over strong coffee, after waking at 5:00 am by the call to prayer at the Blue Mosque across the street and a subsequent leisurely stroll around Hagia Sophia, and now surrounded by squawking seagulls who have nested on the roof, plates of dried fruits, sweet melons, and cakes topped with sesame, and spoken foreign languages, I cannot for the life of me figure out why people don’t travel more often, more like me.

We’re waiting to be joined by Chris and Mary before deciding on a plan for today. Cars and tour buses honking. A ship’s horn. The sun is breaking through and dispelling the haze over the water.

We saw a group of attractively dressed boys crossing the hippodrome on their way to school this morning. Seeing the beautiful Turkish lads reminded me of all those accounts about the sultan’s seraglio and how the conquering Ottomans fought over the choicest Byzantine girls and boys after breaching the walls of Constantinople in 1453. Runciman writes that even the Emperor’s godchildren were not spared: “The girl, Thamar, died [in the seraglio] while still a child; the boy was slain by the Sultan for refusing to yield to his lusts.”

Istanbul 01: Call to Prayer

Five times a day the call issues forth from the amplified speakers mounted atop the minarets. These days, the muezzin need not bother climbing the steps up the tower. Because of my training, I wonder (fully aware that I am alone in this) about the metaphysical implications of relying so on technology.

You hear the short buzz and click of the microphone being turned on before the call actually begins. Sometimes you can make out a word; most notable, of course: “Allah,” even though it’s stretched beyond comprehension like countless amen’s of so many Christmas carols.

We arrived too late the first night. Old Istanbul was fast asleep by the time our shuttle reached the hotel. In the morning—even earlier, perhaps, with jetlag and insomnia factored in—the call shocked me awake, but not before shifting my otherwise mundane dreams into vivid Technicolor animation about a drunken vampire. I wanted it to shut up, to go away.

But when the Blue Mosque (Sultan Ahmet Camii) is directly across the street from your hotel, just beyond the paved track of the ancient Byzantine hippodrome, it is up to you to get used to it.

When I see Arabic written, I think of snakes, thanks to Sonia, who, so many years ago, once referred to it as “that snake language.” Every letter looks like a serpent—some with eyes, some with curved tails. Each hissing out the mysterious beauty of that ancient desert tongue. Hearing it—and I’m only assuming that the liturgical language of Turkey is (still) Arabic—made me think of snakes flying through the air, twisting their way into the ears of the devotees.

The call lasts for several minutes. At times, it seems endless, and at other times, abrupt and too quickly ended. And the echoes across Istanbul from the other mosques make it seem even more enigmatic and not of this world.

The evening call retained its splendor and sublimity throughout my entire stay, but already by the third day, I was sleeping through the morning call like a local.

Overview

Is it over yet?
Now is the time when my prick of a professor contacts my colleagues to let them know when the revised deadline is for their obligatory rewrite. Graduate school is so much easier when the professor dies and everyone automatically gets an A.

Overkill
I’m still a bit shell-shocked by the death toll in Burma. Day one: 400; day two: 4,000; day three: 10,000; day four: possibly 100,000. And how many of those deaths by “natural disaster” are really and ultimately a result of the political fiasco of a corrupt and illegal government? Only one news report claimed that the military had killed about 40 “inmates” because of a “riot” situation. Of course, ultimately, all these deaths are the result of a failed policy of institutionalized terror and abuse hanging over the Burmese people, but will we ever know the proportion of those killed by the storm (and neglect by the government) to those directly murdered by the government over the past few days? Has anyone heard from Aung San Suu Kyi?

Over Easy
Please don’t get me or my politics wrong: I think Obama is a fine candidate. Hell, I voted for him in the primary and was more than willing—initially, at least—to serve as a district delegate for him. But it makes me sick to see him swallow the bait—hook, line, and sinker, as the saying goes—from the incessant race baiting over his relationship to Rev. Wright. The only reason Rev. Wright was an issue was because he was black. The only reason Obama (felt he) had to respond was because he was black. And the race situation in these United States rolls happily along as it always has.

It aint’ over till the fat lady sings.
Decades after these United States congratulated itself for passing along democracy and capitalism to the Soviets, we see a new Soviet-era and Soviet-styled passing of power out of the hands of the peoples of the former Soviet Union and into a handpicked puppet. Former “democratically-elected” President Vladimir Putin passed the position on to “democratically-elected” Dmitry Medvedev, who in turn appointed him Prime Minister. All this in time for Victory Day celebrations in which triumph over the (other) fascists was observed in true Soviet-era fascism—er, I mean, fashion. Perhaps the Russians have become a little too proficient in American “democracy.”

May Day, May Day

As if to prove the rule from yesterday’s post, today’s headlines included “U.S. airstrike kills top Qaeda agent in Somalia” and “Car bomb kills at least 9 in Baghdad; U.S. troops kill 18 militants.” How smart our bombs—how intelligent their design!—must be to only kill “militants” and “insurgents” but never a single “civilian” or “freedom fighter.” Or even a single American soldier. (You have to love the grafted-together nature of the second headline, as if to call further attention to the us vs. them nature of the illegal and immoral invasion and occupation of Iraq.) Yet the dangerous statistics remains: over half of all war fatalities are women and children. Perhaps we need a new math to go along with our new language and new logic. And new extra-judicial killings in the name of justice.

On a more “peaceful” note, the tit-for-tat political posturing between DC and Minsk has escalated: the US has closed its embassy in Minsk and has ordered Belarus to close its embassy and all consulates here. Everyone sing along: There’s no diplomacy like no diplomacy, like the no diplomacy I know.

I wonder how many questions on the standardized (yet altogether lacking standards) TAKS (Texas Assessment of Knowledge & Skills) test this week will deal with such issues. How many will even concern the topic of May Day, a day that commemorates the benefits of labor? One glorious benefit from this less-than-glorious revolution in education: the golden opportunity to read such priceless statements like this from my college-level philosophy course essays: “This makes me wonder what will we enlighten our people on next?” It does make one wonder, no?

I (modestly, of course) propose enlightening “our people” on patriotism:

“What, then, is patriotism? ‘Patriotism, sir is the last resort of scoundrels,’ said Dr. Johnson. Leo Tolstoy, the greatest anti-patriot of our times, defines patriotism as the principle that will justify the training of wholesale murderers; a trade that requires better equipment for the exercise of man-killing than the making of such necessities of life as shoes, clothing, and houses; a trade that guarantees better returns and greater glory than that of the average workingman.” [from Emma Goldman’s essay “Patriotism: A Menace to Liberty”]

On this note, I bid all working peoples of the world a blessed day of rest. “Don’t let the bastards grind you down.” And God bless Saint Emma.

Fidelidad

Just let me say amid the shouts of self-congratulatory glee across DC and Miami today: the problem with Cuba has never been Fidel Castro. Cuba’s problem has never had anything to do with anything as embedded in Cuba as Comrade Fidel.

From its colonization under the repressive thumb of the Spanish Empire—may you and your conquistadores de terrorismo (todo en el nombre de Dios todopoderoso, por supuesto) rot in hell—Cuba and the inhabitants of Cuba have always gotten the short end of the stick, and the rotten end of hegemonic imperialism. And when Spain was finally banished, the US came riding in atop a brown horse named Little Texas, no less, to take charge, subjecting Cuba to de facto American rule for half a century.

Both corrupt American political parties have played along in the game of World Domination. From Kennedy’s Bay of Pigs fiasco (don’t worry, children: he got his just a few years later in Dallas) to Clinton’s signing of the Orwellian-named Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act of 1996, Democrats have been just as thickheaded and insular as Republicans when it comes to dictating policy toward one of America’s closest neighbor-nations.

So on this glorious, sunny day in Havana, the “Cuban problem” still remains and will be around for quite some time, for as long as Americans keep electing imbeciles, for as long as crazy “refugees” in Miami keep dictating a bankrupt policy toward their homeland despite reasonable proposals over the past 50+ years, for as long as that pinche Dios todopoderoso sits on his shiny gold throne puffing away on his El Rey del Mundo cigar.

Until then: ¡Viva la Revolución!

A walk down memory alley

December 11, 1988, Sunday

Four days of
foreplay
and by the end of the week ...
Is no one real anymore? or anymore real?
I touch and tease and talk,
But I don't see him when he's not there.
And when he's here his face is not familiar.

Moving in dreams,
And yet I lack sleep.

December 13, 1988, Tuesday

I met a damsel in distress
Who fought dragons with broken wine glasses
She moved in shadows of candlelight
She showed me sights without a sound
And broke the silence with laughing gods
I'll build a tower for my lover
Keep her safe from herself

Instead of throwing myself under the academic bus this afternoon, I decided to drag out that old yellow spiral-bound notebook and see what kind of crazy shit I wrote almost twenty years ago. These were two particularly poetic passages that stood out from that cold December; the first entry was for Todd, the second for Melissa. Funny how I never wrote anything readable before then, and sad how even then what I wrote was pure shit.

The uselessness that was Todd (although I still sometimes mistype his name as Tod, German for death) dragged on till late the following summer. The bizarreness of Melissa petered out sometime in the spring.

After a few more pages--on the level of "I still smell you on my clothes"--we get to this:

December 14, 1988, Wednesday

The moon wasn't right tonight, but I was. And I remain hungry. If I get on your nerves, just brush me off. Both of you are pretty good at it already, and you're such great teachers. Perhaps I may one day brush you off like the dandruff you left on my sheets or like the mud caked on my muffler after we trampled it in your car. I may just fucking wash my hands altogether and be done with it.

And then there's some Russian phrases. We three were studying Russian together; in fact, Melissa and I met in Russian I my first semester at UTA. I was smitten. Todd was in a different section, but the subsequent spring semester we were enrolled in the same section of Russian II.

If I remember correctly ... and I do ... that double-whammy significantly contributed to my almost flunking out of college:

Fall 88 GPA: 4.000
Spring 89 GPA: 2.385

But how exactly did I manage to earn my one A that term in Russian II? The one class I only went to when I was drunk and depressed? (My one D was in PHIL 2311 Logic, as if my personal life needed that little reminder! Too bad there wasn't a PHIL 2312 Fucked-Up Crazy Shit that I could've drunkenly aced!)

Now I rarely write bad poetry (or poetry at all). Bad relationships no longer inspire me. And I don't compose verse as I'm getting laid. I only pray I have the good enough sense to burn all these notebooks (as well as push this big delete button) before I die.

Whither the Turks?

During the forty-six hours I spent in Budapest in the winter of ’96, I befriended another American at the hostel who was traveling the world researching the history of coffee for a book he was writing. We decided to visit the castle way up in the hills of Buda on our last (and my second) day there. After about an hour walking through the historical exhibitions we were struck that there had been no mention of the Turks or the Ottomans in any of the displays. Between the two of us, we pretty much covered all major Western language groups, so we decided to ask a docent whither the Turkish history of Hungary.

I think it would be significantly funnier if we had opened the floodgates of our polyglottery upon that poor, unsuspecting Hungarian girl who happened to be volunteering that sunny winter day twelve years ago. But instead I think we were much more restrained as we passed the linguistic torch back and forth between ourselves.

I asked first in English, to which she stared blankly before shaking her head. Then it was my companion’s turn; this time in German. They were after all one time deeply embedded within the Austro-Hungarian Empire! Nein on the German front. Aha! I thought: let me try out my Polish; the sheer number of Polish tourists and guest workers in Hungary surely made it a viable option. And that would be a nie. His turn now: French. Nope (said in a Cajun accent, no doubt). My high school Spanish? ¡No! One last-ditch effort: my Russian. Nyet such luck.

After the repeated failures of language—not on our part, mind you—we retired to the café for some of that Turkish devil liquid itself that passed through these lands so many generations ago for the first time, shortly after that poor Cossack soldier found a bag of coffee beans on a dying Ottoman fighter following some long forgotten Ukrainian battle.

I wonder if my compatriot/co-traveler ever finished his book on coffee. I wonder if the museum docent ever learned a useful language. I wonder if the Hungarians were ever able to tell their secret history that once converged with the Turks'. I wonder where I’d be now if I would’ve taken up the offer I had received the night before at the disco near the deserted army barracks by the train station. I especially wonder such things when I hear “Knocking on Heaven’s Door” on the radio, one of the many songs we sat around singing at the pub the night before, before heading to the club.

Just a few hours later I was on a frozen train to Krakow.

What comes when I try to write...

"All of your anno Domini
the whole year long
has turned to
anno servi, or two, or
better yet:
ano polaco...
in a piece of the wor(l)d
where slave and Slav
de-fine the di-stance between
six years—nine, but who’s counting?
seven hours, and
365 degrees,
the temperature at which this flesh burns."

Bullet-Point Friday

• Thumb drive? Check. I do, after all, need to record the grades of the precious students enrolled in the US history course I TA for.
• Stack of history quizzes? Check. I finished grading them over breakfast this morning, but I told my professor I wanted to re-evaluate a couple of them just to ensure I’m being fair (and consistent), so I’ll return them Monday. I’m still a bit perplexed by one student’s response: “Truthfully, I have no idea of what I should write because I haven’t read the book just yet. Fortunately [sic], there isn’t a way for me to pass this class having failed two of the last tests.” It continues for a couple of pages. I don’t like this conflicting sympathy-annoyance I suffer from: I really am too sensitive at times to be a professor, but I also work ridiculously hard for my courses, even the ones that only annoy me and waste my time. (After my last presentation, there was a hush before the professor exclaimed, “That was a damned good protocol!” I felt like crying, relieved after putting myself under that much pressure for a two-page paper.) But, of course, I’m not a freshman too lazy to read the assignment. (If I skip a required text, I have some deep-seated reason … usually. And I always make sure it’s one I won’t be tested over.)
• Sophie’s World? Check. I read it originally back in the fall of ’97 in Japan. When I moved into my apato, it was one of the few books left by a prior occupant. Because it was in English, I read it. I was annoyed because of its overly contrived narrative. I cringe when I feel like someone is trying to trick me into being educated. Now it’s a required text for my introduction to philosophy course I teach at the community college downtown. I had/have no say in the matter. But after drinks Tuesday evening with my brighter-than-average colleagues, I just may finally stop hating this book. Both of them swore that it was a more-than-suitable text for an introductory course. I’ll trust them (since they are so painfully freaking intelligent). Lesson learnt: stop fighting the flow and see what there is to learn instead of overly complicating things.
• Knitted skullcap? Check. In the mornings here, the temperature has been quite a bit more tolerable: in the mid-40s. It’s almost as if things are starting to cool down like they’re supposed to this time of year. In Poland I would’ve already had several days of snow by now.
• Crappy Apple laptop? Check. Thankfully it isn’t a problem connecting to the wireless here at this college campus (where I spend my “free days” writing, working, and doing research). I wonder how many other people here aren’t really supposed to be here? I spend more time at this school than I do at either the campus where I teach or the campus where I’m a student. But no one’s ever asked to see my identification or to justify my presence. At least I finally started bringing my own computer instead of using the one’s in the library.
• Internal (and upcoming) deadlines? Check. One paper due Wednesday. Another portfolio/project due on the 30th. And a final paper/presentation on December 3rd. Final exams in history to grade; five-page essays and final exams in philosophy to grade; eternal and continual paperwork to endure for classes taught as well as taken. Yes, I’m almost done with this term. But now I have to buckle down in order to check these things off. One by one.
  

Northern Latitude Dreaming

Instead of just sitting still long enough to grade 39 quizzes in US history over my break/office hour I've instead read through a couple of blog posts, did a search for Joris-Karl Huysmans' novel À rebours at my university's library (we have several copies), and ate a 280-calorie dark chocolate "energy" bar. I've holed up on the 5th floor of the library, sitting next to a window from where I can see--apart from a few office buildings in the distance and a handful of cars in the parking lot--a line of trees running alongside the western creek on campus. I seem to have caught fall fever: I don't want to be in love or run naked in nature. Instead, I'd really prefer to wrap up in some warm clothes in front of a fire somewhere and read a good book (perhaps Huysmans' novel) with a warm drink and even warmer cats. Considering this is Texas and today's high is in the mid-80s, it is unlikely I will get to have this experience any time soon. Even the promised thunderstorms don't seem to be on their way.

I have slightly more than a week to complete my term paper over Celan, about two weeks before submitting my final drafts for the translation workshop, and maybe three weeks before my project on Redon is due. Then there's final exams in US history to grade and then finally my final for philosophy is scheduled for December 11th. Now if only I can get through these damned 39 quizzes to set the rest of the term in motion. Ah, December! when life comes due.

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….

Satellites

I've been meaning to write something on this tired, old, useless blog (or perhaps I'm describing myself) for several days now, but nothing seems to come to mind. Today, though, is a special day: the fiftieth anniversary of the launch of Sputnik--Sky Lab's older punk-ass Soviet sister. Without her, where would we be today? I can pretty much bet that the bus stop in Warsaw where I used to catch my bus would not have been named Gagarin.

And we wouldn't have had such beautiful songs such as these:

Rickie Lee Jones' "Satellites"


or Lou Reed's "Satellite of Love"
.

Here's U2's version of the Lou Reed classic from the early '90s:
.

I don't know if a big image and three embedded videos from YouTube count as a real post here at Crash Course, but since I see others doing it, it must be alright.

Nur ein bisschen

All throughout the German language course Saturday morning I kept thinking that the grammar my teacher was going over was too easy for me and that I should transfer to a more advanced level. Then we had to open our mouths and introduce ourselves, and the realization that I have absolutely (or at least almost) no vocabulary under my belt or in my head hit me square in the face. Worse: we had to read a short passage from the textbook and then translate it into English. I started to think that perhaps I should drop down a level instead. Or two. Maybe I'll just ride it out for a couple of weeks.

I like my teacher. That's an improvement over the angry (and smelly) Romanian from this summer. She talked about being a girl during the Berlin Airlift, jumping up and down on the mounds of rubber at Tempelhof with excitement when the one plane would tilt its wings to let the children below know that it was going to drop chocolates with tiny parachutes down to them. I almost always like people who can share stories from the Cold War. I wanted to shrink her and put her in a tiny box for my desk and make her jump for joy every time I lifted the lid and dropped a Hershey's kiss down for her.

I especially liked how she introduced herself and then immediately admonished us not to pronounce her name "like Americans." Now that's the German efficiency (and domineering) I can get behind! Ah, we shall see, no?

Köln

Just a week-and-a-half ago I spent a blissful couple of days in Köln by myself visiting museums and enjoying the culture of one of Germany's largest and oldest cities. Click on the image to see some of the highlights of that excursion.

Internationalismus

… or the post where Euro-Franz offends absolutely everyone. (By the way, here "euro" is pronounced "oy-Roh," pretty much how a Jew would address Rosie O'Donnell.)

Sitting at Café Angst yesterday afternoon, I asked myself the following question: is it racist for me to call my professor a smelly Romanian? She is indeed from Romania, and my nose can attest to her smelliness especially after sitting rather a bit too closely to her these past couple of days during our one-on-one sessions. And the next question: why am I in Germany studying German with a smelly Romanian? (I guess maybe a better next question would’ve been: why is this particular Romanian smelly? But my advanced education and intellect preclude obvious segues.)

Then I remembered: my morning language instructor is from Hungary. Quick: what’s German for “What the fuck?!?!” So I am sitting miserably at Café Angst—and no, that’s not the real name of this place, but Café Angst is such a better, more appropriate name for the basement of the Mensa, which is Roman-Germanic for "Student Union Building (SUB)"—slowly realizing that I’m here (heute Deutschland) studying German with a bunch of foreigners (“New Europeans,” I believe is the official term used by the US State Dept.; Morgen die Welt! no doubt.)

I refuse to believe that these so-called new Europeans are somehow better or even similar to the old ones. When are the old Europeans going to export their superior "bathroom technologies" to the east? Will there come a day of no smelly Romanians? Hell, why doesn’t Herr Professor Dingleberry just outsource the whole fucking program to the Chinese? That way, my solid German education would be just as good as poisoned dog food without the messy analogy.

Herr Professor Dingleberry, you must know, is the quintessential oompa-loompa kind of German who has a surreal lilt to his perfect cartoon caricature voice. I suspect he secretly wears lederhosen and plays the tuba.

It’s becoming increasingly difficult to accept “feedback” on my German from teachers who misspeak and mispronounce almost every word in English. If I can understand their comments in not only broken but completely butchered English, then certainly any poor slob on the streets here won’t bat an eye when I use the “soft” pronunciation of the German ch instead of the “hard” one. But as the Nigerian woman who sits next to me attested, there are still a few old Hitlerites who appear out of nowhere (history? the bushes?) to scold foreigners for speaking English and/or bad German. Funny how it takes an 80-year-old German fuck to protect the language from a young African and Asian woman who came all this way to study the devil's language and who are simply waiting at a bus stop.

Oh, and you thought the Nigerian woman was going to get off easy: I refer to her (in my mind) as the Nigerian communist because what is mine is hers. One day this past week she, throughout the course of the class meeting, had "borrowed" my dictionary, pencil, pen, and notebook. A question I had never really considered asking before: Can I borrow my dictionary again?

Funny how speaking Polish last night after the concert with Kasja was the most normal I’ve felt since arriving in Germany. Looking back at just last week, speaking Spanish (with a lisping Castillian inflection--I sounded like a gay Puerto Rican--redundant?) was pure bliss, being able to express what I wanted and being able to understand the replies. The people I share English with here are not worth the pixels on your computer screens. Besides, there’s no way I could capture their insipid conversations and “observations.” (Case in point: we see a fabric store, and one says, “There’s a fabric store. I like fabric stores.” Gee, thanks for sharing. Why don’t you save that to blog later and just be quiet for now?)

The cute Azerbaijani boy asked me rather rudely in German on the way to the concert last night, “You don’t speak anything other than English?” I replied in Russian that I understood pretty much everything he was saying to the people he had just been speaking Russian to, and then in German I filled out my resume: Polnisch. Spanisch. Japonisch. Suckmydickbisch. I didn’t take it too personally, though, because he’s probably the prettiest eye candy around. When he wasn’t looking, I snapped a few photos of him. What the hell is going on with my fetish for widow’s peaks?

Arrival/Departure

We arrived yesterday morning in Germany without too many travel scars despite the simply lovely family that not only tried to take over our seats before we settled on the plane for the next 8 1/2 hours but also proceeded to talk throughout the entire flight. And by talk I mean whine incessantly, slap one another (mostly a mother-daughter ritual), and--as we from the hills say--holler up a storm. When I logged on to the Internet today I saw a headline about some mother arrested for beating her child on a flight in the US. I followed the link just to see if it was Indira Slapsalotta travelling on to the Gulf States (as in Persian and not "of Mexico"). I felt like hollering myself, "If you don't fuggin behave, I'll turn this plane around. So help me, Allah!" But then I'm not too sure if I'd be able to blog from Guantanamo.

Wiesbaden is even more wonderful and relaxing than it was in December. After a painfully short nap, Stephen and I walked the pedestrian mall, eating a hefty sandwhich at Perfect Day. I also stopped at a couple of bookstores just to see what kinds of gift purchases I could make for my professors who made it possible for me to be here for the next six weeks (by writing letters and suggesting I apply to this program). When Chris and Mary returned from work, we walked back into town for Italian. Last night I slept from 11:00pm until about 5:45am. It was a recent record!

Today we plan more cups of coffee, more casual strolling, perhaps some sweets, and maybe a short visit to one of the old thermal baths--a mainstay of Wiesbaden. (The "bad" in Wiesbaden means bath; it was known as a Roman spa town a couple of thousand years ago.) Tonight we head to Barcelona, where our all-too-short vacation goes to a whole 'nother level.

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.

Required Reading (definitely though with love)

This Independence Day it's important for us Americans to finally get it through our thick heads that there is a fundamental, essential difference between nationalism and patriotism. And that neither of those has anything to do with hegemonic warmongering. Just to keep us straight on those points, here is one of my favorite poems from patriot Nikki Giovanni:

I Laughed When I Wrote It
(Don’t You Think It’s Funny?)

the f.b.i came by my house three weeks ago
one white agent one black (or i guess negro would be
more appropriate) with two three-button suits on (one to
a man)
thin ties—cuffs in the bottoms—belts at their waists
they said in unison:
ms. giovanni you are getting to be quite important
people listen to what you have to say
i said nothing
we would like to have to give a different message
i said: gee are all you guys really shorter than hoover
they said:
it would be a patriotic gesture if you’d quit saying
you love rap brown and if you’d maybe give us some
leads
on what some of your friends are doing
i said: fuck you
a week later the c.i.a came by two unisexes one blond afro
one darker one three bulges on each showing lovely bell-
bottoms and boots
they said in rounds:
sister why not loosen up and turn on
fuck the system up from the inside
we can turn you on to some groovy
trips and you don’t have to worry
about money or nothing take the commune
way and a few drugs it’ll be good for you
and the little one
after i finished a long loud stinky fart i said serenely
definitely though with love
fuck you
yesturday a representative from interpol stopped me in the
park
tall, neat afro, striped hip huggers bulging only in the right
place
i really dig you, he said, i want to do something for you
and you alone
i asked what he would like to do for me
need a trip around the world a car bigger apartment
are you lonely i mean we need to get you comfortable
cause a lot of people listen to you and you
need to be comfortable to put forth a positive image
and digging the scene i said listen i would sell
out but i need to make it worth my while you understand
you just name it and i’ll give it to you, he assured me
well, i pondered, i want aretha franklin and her piano
reduced to fit next to my electric
typewriter on my desk and i’ll do anything you want
he lowered his long black eyelashes and smiled a whimsical
smile
fuck you, nikki, he said

And below some more worthwhile reading this holiday: first, an op-ed about immigration hysteria, and secondly, an interview with probably the most intelligent conservative thinker I've ever heard on what's wrong with the current administration.

• The Founding Immigrants
  By Kenneth C. Davis
  Published: July 3, 2007
  Disdain for what is foreign is, sad to say, as American as apple pie, slavery and lynching.


• Interview with Victor Gold
  By Bill Moyers
  Aired: June 29, 2007
  The impact of the sound bite mentality which you find in both parties...is there's been a debasing of the system. Because if you listen to these — I call them the Stepford candidates — on both sides in these debates the only two candidates that speak clearly are the ones they call the kooks.

Podcast-aways

Here are my favorite podcast subscriptions. There's something for everyone. Well, maybe not you.

• Twelve Byzantine Rulers
  This history of the Byzantine Empire is a lecture series written and presented by Mr. Lars Brownworth who teaches history at The Stony Brook School in Long Island, New York. He has traveled extensively from the furthest reaches of the Byzantine Empire all the way to its heart at Constantinople. Join him for an engaging look at the history of the Byzantine Empire through the eyes of 12 of its greatest rulers.


• Alan Watts Podcast
  Alan Watts is one of the most widely read philosophers of the 20th century. In addition to his 28 books, Alan Watts delivered hundreds of public lectures and seminars the recordings of which have been preserved in the archives of the Electronic University, a non-profit organization dedicated to higher education.


• The Meditation Podcast
  A free monthly podcast of guided meditations with Jesse and Jeane Stern.


• PDX Ripped
  Pampelmoose.com's weekly podcast with Gang of Four's Dave Allen. Discover new music and catch interviews with up and coming new bands.


• Global Hit
  PRI's The World presents the Global Hit podcast, a daily spotlight on international musical artists or trends. Created by The World's Marco Werman, the Global Hit features interviews with musicians, critics and deejays around the globe.

Am I missing anything? I'm always open to suggestions on what to listen to.

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.

The Unnamable (A Protocol)

9/11 is an American quasi-logo denoting the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, which becomes in its use an ideogram in which we continually re-inscribe the Twin Towers. Lower Manhattan is the public face of those attacks: the destruction of the World Trade Center and the ever-present absence of those towers, which have since been temporarily replaced with columns of smoke, light displays, and nothing.

Throughout history, major events (read: battles) have always been site-specific and therefore marked geographically: Carthage, Troy, Waterloo, Crimea, and the Alamo. Even in our Christian teleological worldview, the battle at the end of history (the battle to end all history) is geo-positioned: “Armageddon” is the Latinized-Anglicization of Mount Megiddo in Israel. However, in our naming 9/11, we seek to remove it from the realm of merely human, merely earthly events, displacing its geographical specificity (that is, New York, Washington, D.C., and rural Pennsylvania) and assigning it instead a place in history. 9/11 is, after all, a historical date.

Derrida reminds us that “referring to an event with a date automatically gives it historical stature: it monumentalizes it.” Yet it is a date on the Gregorian calendar, a calendar with its origin in Roman Catholic Europe. So, when we write 9/11, we not only inscribe the World Trade Center again and again, we too denote our own Christian and European heritages as Americans (as well as perhaps deny our indebtedness to Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America).

The use of the month before the day, however, specifically indicates the style typically employed in the United States. Thus, 9/11 is also an inscription of American exceptionalism and difference. But every date on every calendar repeats every year; therefore, we cannot completely extract the marker of those events, dispersing them into pure timelessness and monumentalization. September 11 will repeat, even if that particular September 11 is over and done with.

9/11 too denotes the fragmentary and fractional—a literal fraction (nine-elevenths): a whole unit minus and missing two pieces (the Twin Towers?). Most significant, however, is the fact that despite all the rhetoric of us (Americans) versus them (the Muslims, or the Arabs), we Americans use what is commonly referred to as “Arabic numerals.” Considered an important milestone in the development of mathematics, these numbers were developed around 400 BCE in India and were later transferred via the Persians to Western Europe.

9/11, in this way, also exposes our reliance on Eastern “others,” including Arabs, for the development and advancement of our science and technology sectors that would come to create skyscrapers and jet airliners in the first place. Ultimately, there could be no “us” without “them.” 9/11, in this way, inscribes as well as denies a common world heritage and a common world event.