Travelogue 954 – December 30

Hard Day’s Night

Part Two

And then, unexpectedly, you encounter a calm graciousness to this anarchic world. I awoke yesterday morning sick again with this autumnal malaise that seems to be my Dutch karma, a kind of Stuyvesant’s Revenge, a zombie cold-bug that never dies. I felt miserable. Nevertheless, I suited up for my morning errands. The family depended on me, after all.

I was moving slowly, unlocking my bike and wiping off the wet seat, feeling like an old man, and very gingerly swinging a leg over. I saw that one of my downstairs neighbours was watching with some amusement. He’s a Brit, and so I knew we could chat easily, without the usual awkwardness that attends small talk with Dutchies. I asked whether he would rather be in England for the holidays. He replied, “Oh, I left England for a reason.” And so the conversation went, sharing observations about our home countries and our holiday plans. He took an interest in the child’s seat on my bike; he has a young one about the age to start riding on his bicycle. All in all, it was a nice break in the routine.

When a few people deferred to me in the line at the Arab bakery, and even smiled, I knew something was up. There was some kind angel overseeing my morning. I smiled back gratefully. In the grocery store, the kids stocking the shelves courteously made way for me. From overhead, we enjoyed Adele singing something sentimental. I smiled at the continued British theme, and I even noticed something like a warmth in my heart as I listened to the song. I lingered as I held up item by item in front of the scanner, as I placed each item in my bag. I’m easily affected by small signs of kindness and grace. I wanted to soak it in, knowing it was a special and temporary dispensation.

Back home, the girls were just getting up. It was a holiday. They were in a sunny mood, and they wanted hugs. They each wanted to show me what they had built with their new magnet sets. Little Ren says, ‘Come look, Vader’. This way of addressing me is a habit she picked up from her big sister, who one day decided we were ‘Mother’ and ‘Father’. This was a cute phase, and one that Little Ren quickly adopted, though in a Dutch voice. She took my hand and led me.

It’s been a tough year. The headlines don’t offer much hope. Wouldn’t it be nice to see some congenitally mean figure like Mitch McConnell show sudden warmth, pause one morning to reflect on the fragility of nature, for example, or express just one small impulse, however hesitant, to be generous to another member of the human race? The cold cosmos shows more empathy, commiserating with me in a whispering voice on a dark morning, knowing somehow that my battery was low. And that is not to trivialize the kindnesses of my neighbours, of my family. Maybe these kindnesses are the dark matter that will hold the world together in the face of ignorance and evil.

Travelogue 953 – December 28 

Hard Day’s Night 

Part One

I don’t suppose I’m the only who feels as though he is staggering toward the finish of this awful year, depleted of the hope that should inform these final steps toward the moment of renewal.

I reflect on the degradation of hope in America, a country founded in hope. I compare the years when my parents were raising young children, when the nation was illuminated with optimism (delusional, maybe, but heartfelt). There were no shadows, only sunshine. I am forced to compare those years to these dim ones in which I am forced to raise my small children.

The story of our moment has roots in the golden days of our fathers, of course, but the overt signs of decay are as old as the millennium, perhaps starting with 9/11 and accelerating through the false spring ten years later, when we realized that not all hope was well-founded, becoming a juggernaut with the advent of the Brexiteers and Trump, and finally igniting in combustible handwriting on midnight’s walls describing inevitable climate change and deadly contagions. It’s solstice now, and we ought to be gazing into our hearths in reflection and repentance, but there’s a man standing in his pyjamas outside in the snow, shouting that he will never recant. We despair that these rantings will be the death of peace; we will never have the silence we need to sum things up. We would like to choose our last impressions.

And so it is we welcome a Biden administration with exhaustion, with lack of conviction, perhaps through no fault of Biden’s or his team’s or his supporters’, but simply because we have been herded through an alley of shadows and beaten with sticks. When hope is a weak candle flame, the only people laughing are the rich and the desperate. Everyone else is at pains to produce a sincere smile.

Travelogue 952 – December 21

 Return of Day

Making it to the solstice was a rough journey, like most of 2020 was; much like the final approach to a clean oasis, only to find it surrounded by briar patches.

Tough as it is, we do arrive. Time makes sure of that, scratched as we may be by the thorns of pandemic lockdowns and government incompetence everywhere. We do arrive at that magic moment when the sun changes directions, halts its southern migration and turns its face back toward its neglected subjects in the north. Days will grow longer again. Discredited science tells us that. Our cumulative experience of shared winters also tells us that, if we would rather not heed those traitorous scientists who are continuously trying to slip microchips into our brains.

The holiday break and the latest lockdown almost arrived simultaneously. The ‘almost’ is operative here. In fact, the lockdown began three days before the end of term, and students found themselves having to present to teachers online. Part of the curriculum this term was oral presentations, and they were due to be graded on posture and body language, among other things. Now they were suddenly forced to address us sitting at a computer. It was awkward, and of course I failed everyone. (Not really.)

The whole year has been like this, and it has been exhausting. Education has been ad hoc and improvisational at every step, where creativity was lacking then simple blind tenaciousness sufficing, the students handled like lab rats whom we alternately isolated to keep safe and then herded together in order to be socialized and to give them their proper college experience. They seem rattled to me, encouragingly goofy at times, but their insouciance blunted by uncertainty.

Hope is a feathered thing, ready to soar into the winter storm, if necessary. It hasn’t abandoned even Donald Trump, hunkered down in his lonely luxury, tweeting inanities and eating ice cream, so why should it abandon the rest of us? Even as a new, fast-spreading strain of COVID appears in Britain, scaring us in our sleep, we look to the lengthening day, and then to the new year, (and then to the new president?) for new inspiration. Mundane life in lockdown is fuelled by rumour and hope. The day is reborn!

Travelogue 951 – December 19 

Here Today

It’s been forty years since John Lennon was shot and killed in Central Park. That’s as long as he lived. And that’s a sobering ratio. To give it some perspective, it’s been seventy years since Edgar Rice Burroughs died, at an age of a few years over seventy. Remember him, the creator of Tarzan? That’s a nice reminder of the power of Time.

Paul McCartney has also been in the news, just having released his ‘III’ album. I was reminded in a sentimental little piece written about McCartney that I found posted on Facebook of his touching little tribute to Lennon, found on his 1982 album, ‘Tug of War’. The tune was called ‘Here Today’. ‘If you were here today,’ he sings to his friend and song-writing partner.

There’s that little formula that I find so tragic, the theoretical ‘would’. ‘What would you say?’ McCartney asks. What would John Lennon say now, literally a lifetime later? From these innocent and sad speculations spring our insubstantial ghosts, our hauntings. I’ve been re-reading Gore Vidal’s novel about the Emperor Julian. What would Julian say, if he were here today? He would probably recommend we sacrifice a bull beside the Reflecting Pool in Washington.

These two icons, Lennon and McCartney, have cast long shadows over my life and thoughts. The good kind of shadow, the kind you trace on the sidewalk and measure yourself against. I remember a dream I had some time near the end of my youth, an image of a kind of personal Mount Rushmore. The faces were those of Lennon, Kerouac and Hemingway. That was years ago. I much prefer other authors now. I prefer McCartney to Lennon. It’s hard to shake those youthful icons, though, and there’s little reason to.

I idolized my brothers with a similar fervour. They were much older than I; they would remember the Beatles as a living artefact of their youth. The band was history by the time I was old enough to appreciate them. But as a teen, I idly projected the personae of the songwriters onto my brothers. John was the soulful and private Paul, and Michael was the iconoclastic John. It was the kind of emotional echoing that helps a teen place himself in a confusing world. The charismatic songwriters provided many of us with powerful archetypes in that era, archetypes almost divorced from reality, but not entirely.

I wonder what inspirational figures will fire the imaginations of my girls. They’re too young to attach to Greta. I’ve certainly lost track of the current slate of pop stars. I wish for them the same sort of love and inspiration I experienced with my heroes. And, inevitably, the same heartbreak, I suppose, if they live out the long lifespans that I want for them.

 Travelogue 950 – December 10

The Way Seems Long

 

I finally understand. For parents, this season is a competitive test of endurance. In Holland, we basically have two Christmas seasons, one for the kids at the beginning of December and one centred around the common date of the 25^th. In addition, this family has one kid’s birthday in between those two Christmases and an anniversary at the end of November. This season – I see it now – is an Olympic event. It requires discipline and concentration. Frivolities must be pushed aside. The early years, when the children were young, were training for the more serious competition. One gauges one’s failures in the eyes of teachers and other parents, and one makes adjustments for the coming years.

 

I wake early, and I stretch. I do some breathing exercises. In the pre-dawn darkness, I turn on my desk lamp, and I read through strategy. I review gift lists and party schedules. One must have gifts not only for one’s own children, but for children’s classmates (in case of birthdays,) for children of adults in your network (in case of parties,) and gifts for one’s spouse, to keep morale up. There are holiday costumes; children have their picture days. One must review Christmas card schedules, for production or purchase of those cards, for inscription with signatures and cute notes, and then for posting. Cards should make it in time, not only for Christmas, but so that those who might be made to feel guilty are able to post something back. Conversely, some slack must be allowed in the schedule for our own surprises and miscalculations, people we’d forgotten about, people whose street addresses suddenly turn up, or those who unexpectedly re-emerge on stage after the first scene, so to speak, of the holiday variety show.

 

I see it clearly now. We are entering our athletic prime. We have performed all right this year, certainly better than last year. Objectively, there’s plenty of room for improvement. The next few years will be critical for our parenting career.

 

The timing of Little Ren’s birthday has seemed particularly cruel this year. She turned four, and in the Netherlands that means she starts school. Children are integrated into classes mid-year, whenever they have their fourth birthday. That means that, just as the temperatures are dropping, we are forced to figure out how to get two children to school in the morning. On the surface, that sounds simple. We’re already taking one, after all. But that one child was riding in my one child’s seat on the back of my bicycle.

 

We don’t have full daylight till nine in the morning, if you can call December light ‘full’ in any way. In fact, winter mornings leave one feeling uneasy and eventually disappointed. One glances into the sky, sensing something wrong. Even the sunny days are dim in some intangible way. Most mornings now, we pedal away from home with the bike light on, a tiny lamp that illuminates very little in the murky hour before dawn. The air is misty, and Baby Jos shrinks into her big jacket. The way seems long.

 Travelogue 949 – December 5

My Gift from Sinterklaas

 

It’s Sinterklaas, the day that Dutch children wake up to discover gifts that have been left for them in the night by the generous old saint. Me, I woke up early for an appointment to get a COVID test. I’ve had a cough and cold for weeks now, and the doctor won’t see me unless I get this test. I don’t think I have the virus, but it doesn’t hurt to be safe, anyway. The test is free, and easy to set up in my efficient new country. I made the appointment online, choosing a site I could reach on my bicycle.

 

Fortunately, there was no rain. In fact, the sun entered into a blue field of sky as I pedalled toward Schiedam. I had to marvel how far south the sun rises in December. There were a few clouds, scattered along the western horizon, but far less than we’ve seen all week. December came to us under heavy cloud cover. Mornings have been dark and wet. It’s been hard to tell exactly when dawn turns day. The light has been dim and watery, and everything glistened.

 

The testing centre in Schiedam is set in a warehouse district, long streets with anonymous buildings. One of these grim buildings has been taken over by the health service. Masked attendants guide cars one way and bikes another. Walking paths are delineated in green tape, and every few paces there is a station manned by young people with cheerful dispositions. They check identity. They pass you a labelled vial with a long stick. They assign you to a testing station. They bid you blow your nose and then hand you back the tissue in a plastic bag. They seat you. Finally, the nurse comes, clothed in protective gear from head to toe.

 

The young man assigned to me had a sense of humour. That’s always a nice quality in a torturer. He advanced with his swabs, and I was suitably humiliated for the sin of debility. I gagged, and I cried. He forgave me, and he sent me away, to wander like a lost soul along the forlorn paths outlined on the cold concrete floor of the sanitized warehouse. I emerged into the frigid morning air, redeemed by my suffering. I raced home in hopes I would be there before the girls ran downstairs to find their gifts.

 Travelogue 948 – November 26

Thanksgiving

 

This is my Thanksgiving. There’s no turkey, but there’s family. There’s no table full of treats; there’s no football; but there’s the comfort of being inside together on a gloomy fall day. We have our cosy evening routine together, quiet and humble.

 

On American Thanksgiving, family should be together. On Thanksgiving, we should share what we’re grateful for. For my part, I ponder gratitude very often. I know that’s different than being grateful. But it is an intriguing moral quality. Today it seems to me it’s an exercise in contrast. The Pilgrims faced a harsh world, but they took a moment to recognize what they had. At least, that’s the narrative we’ve inherited. If we hold a place in the calendar for thanksgiving, do we still see a harsh world out there?

 

The world’s been a little harsh on me. Not the starving-in-a-New-England-winter variety of harsh, just the coughing and sniffling variety, but still, it doesn’t seem fair that I battle this same cold every November. Every time I get out of bed and start working, I suffer a slow relapse. This drags on for weeks.

 

That’s what we do. We’re the species that picks ourselves up, dusts ourselves off, and starts all over again. That’s our virtue, Darwinian resilience and survival. The headlines are a wonderful portrait of it, a country enduring Trump’s criminal pathology and selfishness for two more months in the fragile hope of a new day; a world surviving wave after wave of COVID and finding the strength to problem-solve and to think about each other. This is a very functional form of gratitude. It’s an exercise of solace and of generosity. It’s taking a risk on a world might not turn out to be a horrible place.

 

Gratitude is more than recognizing the generosity of others, or the generosity of Nature or God. Gratitude is generosity itself. Grateful people give. Grateful people are gracious. They aren’t preoccupied by what they are owed or what they deserve.

 

Graciousness is humble. In 2000, I was disappointed in Al Gore for conceding as early as he did. I see things in a different light today. I see a generous spirit, someone that didn’t give up to despair. Many, many of us have graciously admitted our powerlessness in the face of COVID-19. We have listened to each other, tried to take care of each other. Where we failed, we picked ourselves up again. We spared a thought for our neighbours and family. And we struggled over better responses where we could have despaired and blamed others (China? God? Soros and Gates?), when we could have donned the sackcloth and wailed.

 

That’s it. That’s our Thanksgiving: looking to tomorrow with a humble faith that there’s some good there waiting.

 Travelogue 947 – November 23

In the Shoe

 

We had no choice but to admit Sinterklaas into our house this year. Baby Jos came home from school one day determined to receive the man … and his gifts. On the fourteenth, Sinterklaas made his entry into the Netherlands. This is what he does every year; he travels from Spain in mid-November to set up his seasonal base here.

 

It was a sign of the times that we couldn’t leave our houses to greet Sinterklaas. Last year, Baby’s school left the school on an expedition to greet him at the harbour. We received a short video from one of the parents who had attended, the kids cheering along the wharf as Sinterklaas waved from his small barge. It was an occasion that Baby spoke about for a long time afterward and, indeed, still remembers vividly.

 

This year, Sinterklaas’s arrival was streamed. Of course, we couldn’t figure out the link. We watched on the telly. By the time we got the right channel open, Sinterklaas had already arrived, and he sat in state at the head of some staircase in the Hague, cheerfully receiving delegations from around the Netherlands. His assistants, the clownish ‘Piets’, gathered the gifts and took them inside. Each delegation had some characteristic gift, cheese or baked goods from their region, and many offered performances by some children. Sinterklaas was a good sport, not at all tired from his journey and enjoying all the visitors in the long caravan.

 

Sinterklaas is not Santa, the Dutch will tell you. And they’re right, though the two figures have similar historical roots. Sinterklaas doesn’t live at the North Pole. He comes earlier to relax in the Netherlands. He is a more public figure. He enjoys crowds. He has his ‘Piets’ to take care of him wherever they go. And he is less covert about his mission. We greet him into the Netherlands in the light of day, and he leads a parade.

 

I’ve been surprised and very entertained by Baby’s enthusiasm for Sinterklaas. She’s a believer! She draws pictures of him. She has coloured a beautiful picture of him arriving in his steamboat. After the old man’s ‘intocht’, or entry into the country, she set one of her shoes inside the front door and explained to us that Sinterklaas would be bringing gifts. This is the Dutch tradition, a gift every morning in the children’s shoes. Of course, no one had explained to us was that the gifts don’t start immediately, but closer to the holiday of Sinterklaas, which is the 5^th of December. So now our girls have been receiving gifts every morning for more than a week already, and we have to keep going until the 5^th! Sly girl.

 

Their excitement is so infectious that I don’t mind the hassle of stocking up on gifts. They run to look in their shoes first thing every morning. There’s something so powerful in the delight of a child.

Travelogue 946 – November 12

In Equal Measure

 

There are times to celebrate. Little Ren started at school yesterday. For days, she had been excited to attend. My heart melted every time she smiled about it. The morning finally came. We dressed her up and we all left the house together. Usually, she stays behind and waves good-bye to her big sister, but today they were going together. She was shining.

 

Little Ren will have her challenges at school, just like her sister did. Life never stopped being uncertain. If we celebrate, we don’t pretend to certainty. We celebrate Biden without thinking he’s perfection. We celebrate the election victory knowing that Republicans are actively trying to snatch it away. We play the fool because we’re joyful.

 

Lately, Little Ren says she loves something, or she says she doesn’t love something. “I don’t love that toy.” All the softer words, like “like”, have been dropped for the moment. It makes for passionate discourse. I’m with her on that. I love her innocence.

 

It might be said that the diehard supporters of America’s soon-to-be-ex-president have innocence and passion. They love their man. They don’t love losing.

 

I’ve struggled since the outgoing president was elected to understand how people vote. The democratic system pre-supposes rational thinking. But the neo-con movement has wonderfully bypassed that mental process. It famously moves people to vote against their own interests, as it does, for example, when convincing the working class to elect people who stand against unions and higher wages and universal healthcare.

 

My new theory is that people vote for images in their mirrors. Voters may not be adulterers and grifters, like the soon-to-be-ex-president, but they see in him their own rebelliousness against norms. They say, “I would do that, too,” when the press excoriates the man for dodging taxes and being awkward in Europe, for indulging in conspiracy theory and making light fun of other people’s failings. Others watch Biden and they identify with his thoughtfulness and affectionate nature. They have a certain understanding of responsibility, thinking that personal behaviours must be adapted when given any form of leadership.

 

There’s a joy in being a part of Little Ren’s new life. We naively celebrate each new step, knowing that life provides lots of missteps. Joy and wisdom co-exist. We choose each in equal measure.

Travelogue 945 – November 8

Modest Hope

 

Our youngest daughter is turning four soon, just before the Dutch holiday of Sinterklaas. Because at four she’ll be old enough for school, she’ll start attending part-time next week. This is what the Dutch call ‘wennen’, or an adjustment period. We took Little Ren to the school the other day, and she met her new teacher. She returned home excited about her new life. She will be attending with her big sister, who will be in the group one year ahead of hers.

 

Every day now, Little Ren asks whether she’ll be going to school. ‘Not yet,’ we say, happy that she’s looking forward to it. She was not a fan of daycare, and she was quite sad some mornings that she had to go. Now she has hope again.

 

It could be that America has some grounds for hope again, after four years of rather intense gloom. It’s a modest sort of hope, tempered by the reminder that 48% of the population would still vote for darkness and ignominy; tempered by the daunting amount of reconstruction to be done; tempered by the tepid Democratic returns in Congress. But hope must sit beside reality on the city bus; otherwise, it’s not hope but delusion.

 

I noticed an interesting passage while re-reading Caesar’s ‘Gallic War’. He starts Book Two explaining that the Belgae in the north were becoming restless. Caesar cites a number of reasons why, saying some were apprehensive about the Romans and some were nervous about the Germans. ‘Others,’ he writes (according to the translation by Carolyn Hammond,) ‘were of a volatile and unstable disposition – the sort of men who delight in changes of rule.’ It does sound very familiar, though this year’s rebels are agitating to stop the change of rule, praying at polling stations and carrying signs saying, ‘Stop the Count’. (Right-wingers are the masters of the self-own. Stop the count to save our democracy, they can chant without any sense of irony.) Somehow, it’s comforting to know that all the ages of humanity have had to deal with this pest of human nature, the wilfully primitive.

 

One can be distressed about them. One can reach out to them. One can barricade; one can run. Inevitably, their behaviour just can’t be tolerated. When Hitler came along, modern Europe was still relatively new to democracy, particularly the sort with universal suffrage. People were puzzled by the shockingly crude use of intimidation and prejudice. They were scared; some were tempted to be impressed. They reasoned with them and laboured over compromises. It didn’t work. You play laissez faire with these people, they eventually play scales on your bones. There’s no nice-guy check on a fascist movement. And now, as relieved as we may feel, we have to pause and remember, our demons are still out there.

 Travelogue 944 – November 2

Almost Great Again

 

Reason is hope. Reason constructs systems like democracy and republics. The human race spent centuries developing the political systems we live with today. They are imperfect, but they are edifices of reason. They were built with an eye to the future. People who fight for democracy, or those who look to protect democracy, are imperfect people who are caretakers of what reason created for future generations.

 

Caesar was not one of these people. He was a figure whose ambitions could not be bound by the republican system. Ironically, I think it was a system he cherished, but it was a system already crumbling under the pressures of empire. I don’t believe he was an honest man, but the system wouldn’t have tolerated an honest man. The stakes were too high, the power struggles deadly, and the amounts of money involved to sustain power were astronomical. Therefore, the only way to realize ambitions were military. We don’t want Caesar. As brilliant as he was, he was a harbinger of the decline of the best political systems that the ancient world had developed.

 

Strangely, we seem to crave something worse than Caesar. Caesar was, at least, a brilliant and strong leader, who had a clear grasp of what the state needed to survive. If he couldn’t protect humane systems, he could protect the empire and the potential for peace. He applied reason to the problems of his time. Better would have been cooperative efforts, but the Senate would not have it.

 

Instead of Caesar, we seem to like the Mussolinis and the Stalins and the Assads and the Putins and the Bolsonaros and the Erdogans and the Trumps, the bland missionaries of self-indulgence, the prophets of conspiracy theory, the opponents of reason. It’s no mistake that these people, in contrast to Caesar, who took care to protect his reputation as an intellectual, turn to the obscurantists of conspiracy theory. They are afraid of debate. They deny progress. Trump and his ilk will wear MAGA hats to the very end, proclaiming that America is almost there, perpetually on the verge of greatness again. Keep tracking us on social media, they will say. We will let you know when we arrive.

 Travelogue 943 – November 1

The Resistance

 

Among this morning’s headlines were a story from Hong Kong and a story from Texas. The news from Hong Kong has been jarring in recent years. On the one hand, it aligns so well with stories of oppression from all over the world, but there’s an otherworldly quality to it, a cognitive dissonance. It comes down to the ferocity of the resistance. Here is a population that has been fighting for democracy for years now, and their energy never seems to flag. It’s astonishing, particularly when you consider the regime they are up against. These aren’t drunk guys with Confederate flags in their trucks led by a flabby real estate salesman. This is the steely Communist Party of Xi Jinping. I’m afraid for the opposition every time I read about them. But they are an inspiration. I feel sometimes like the American resistance is exhausted and no longer entirely sure what they believe in. They can agree on hot-button issues. And most Democrats will agree that the Trump movement is ‘threatening democracy’ But I’m not convinced that a ready majority opinion could be found about democracy itself. I sense most would lose patience with the question. A good number would prove as suspicious of democracy as the opposition, certainly of traditional American democracy. The right finds democracy distasteful but loves the Constitution. And the left? Well, as they are currently being beat about the head and shoulders with a rolled-up copy of the Constitution, I’m not sure they’ll flock to its defence. I really don’t know.

 

Though the country was founded in a fight for democracy, I think many people find the idea quaint. Democrats are compromisers. You fight for Marxism. You fight for nationalism. But democracy? That’s what is astounding about Hong Kong’s fight in our time.

 

In Texas, Biden and his team were treated to a Trump-style welcome after Don Junior sent out a social media call to action. It was one of those wink-wink, chummy messages that pretends to naiveté. A bunch of goons in trucks surrounded Biden’s bus and delayed it until it missed an engagement. At least one of the Biden entourage was nearly run off the road.

 

It’s this casual relationship with violence that I find most unsettling. I’m quite sure that Don Junior would have felt nothing if someone had died in a car accident. And I mean nothing. From the Trumps, I can imagine a cold Communist Party fury no more than I can imagine regret. They lack all affect. That is why they are so cherished by their base. These people are fatigued. They are tired of moral choice. They are tired of so often finding themselves on the wrong side of the age’s moral questions. They want the relief of mocking the sincere and the suffering alike, and they want the relief of being told it’s okay. These people don’t have the courage of their cruelty. They don’t stand at the bars of the cages at the border, smiling to see the children’s misery. They must consume reports by fellow travellers that assure them it’s all a terrible exaggeration. That exaggeration somehow proves they were even more right about the dubious policy than they had thought. There’s no room for the slightest hesitation: “Gee, what if there were even a small chance that children were suffering?” Just as wearing a mask is intolerable. “Gee, even if one person were saved, wouldn’t it be worth a moment’s slight discomfort?” Nope.

 

It will take generations to figure out this fatal nihilism. It’s a riddle. I believe there’s one conclusion that’s unavoidable: you don’t aspire to nihilism. It happens to you, when all the cocaine has scorched the natural receptors for serotonin, for example. It leaves one with a flattened sensation of life. With no cognitive measure of the value of life, there’s no measure of the significance of death.

Travelogue 942 – October 31

Weimar Days

 

As Trump and his ilk send their anonymous troops off to the battlefields of COVID-19; as Trump’s anonymous foot soldiers fight for the right to carry guns to polling places; as Trump’s raises a fist in oblique support of the Michigan hillbillies caught plotting the kidnap of their state’s governor, we are reminded that Americans are in a rather serious struggle for power over their nation and their future. Some old-time Democrats, like Senator Feinstein, who admitted defeat in the battle over Coney Barrett’s confirmation before it began, who hugged Lindsey Graham after losing, seem confused about the tenor of the times. They still find comfort in rhetorical bipartisanship and a collegial spirit that died when Republicanism became an experiment in feudalism. The lord of the manor is a bloated old fool, but obligation is iron-clad among the nameless. There’s no debate among equals in Washington, but staged pronouncements of the lord’s interests, a reading of proclamations in the town square.

 

Trump knows very well that every time he voices sly insults of Representative Omar or Governor Whitmer his nameless minions will issue death threats. Because he knows, it is a tactic. If I became aware that a thumbs-down gesture in public resulted in someone being killed, I would stop making the gesture. I wouldn’t stubbornly carry on, perversely arguing that I never asked anyone to interpret my gesture that way. Given that Trump is threatening public officials; given that his nameless foot soldiers swagger around with guns; given that his nameless legislators and judges openly advocate for a permanent rule of the minority; given that that rule threatens the lives of immigrant children, women, gays, and minorities; given that Trump’s nameless officers of the law are empowered to kill in the streets without cause; given the violence necessary to the rule of the minority, what remains for those in opposition, those who are losing votes to the machinations of the regime’s courts?

 

We lionize heroes of the resistance movements in countries conquered by Hitler in the late 30s and 40s, and well we should. But I wonder sometimes why earlier instances of resistance are comparatively forgotten. Could it be because many were leftists? I was looking into the years before Hitler gained power in the election of 1932. It was a bloody time. The Nazis were vying with the Communists for rights to put the poor Weimar Republic out of its misery. (A sad experiment, indeed. I feel for those early republicans with a small r. Timing was everything.) Between 1918 and 1922, there were 376 politically motivated murders. 354 of them were committed by the radical right, 22 by the radical left. This has generally been the breakdown through recorded history, and it’s likely to be what leftists in the U.S. will experience. I don’t think I’m endorsing German Communism by pointing out that adherents didn’t deserve to be murdered. Neither do BLM protesters deserve to be mowed down by moving vehicles. But as long as the police are willing to take off their nametags to support the minority party, we can’t expect much better.

Travelogue 941 – October 29

Pro Patria

 

Reading Caesar’s account of his campaigns, it’s easy to forget that people died fighting those wars. Battles are described in short order, a few short paragraphs to describe the strategic unfoldment of engagements. Individual casualties recorded by name are generals or patricians, or they are model soldiers, whose fates are somehow instructive.

 

This is common in ancient histories. Casualty numbers are a form of boasting, indicators of how resounding the triumph and how miserable the other’s defeat. The ancients were sticklers for the burial of fallen soldiers. It’s the one sign of respect accorded to all fighting men. Beyond that, it’s hard to say how the death of soldiers was looked at by society and the soldiers themselves. Was it romanticized? Was it anticipated, as the individual’s chance at glory? Was it shrugged at, given the generally short lifespans? Few are the Enkidus, Patrocluses, or Hectors, the fallen soldiers in ancient literature who existed to be grieved.

 

Since Mussolini, fascists have often made simple-minded appropriations of bits of ancient cultures: the spare monumental architecture and statuary in white marble, for example. In reality, the Greeks and Romans probably painted their statues in bright colours, and their architecture symbolized other values than the ones represented by fascist buildings. But they were symbols based on the symbols of symbols. Similarly, the fascists sought to assemble their own ranks of anonymous soldiers, armies of men who sought nothing but the glory of the state.

 

A few months ago, Trump took to calling people going to work during the pandemic ‘warriors’. Culture war is as close to combat as most Trumpistas want to come. The traditional foreign enemies of America have become summer bromances for Trump. Better to fight battles of righteousness against the Democrats, and when Democrats wear masks, the troops must cross en masse the minefields of disease.

 

Only days ago, the White House signalled it was giving up on combatting the COVID pandemic. The pronouncement was delivered in a predictably offhand way, in a TV interview with the White House Chief of Staff. Case numbers are mounting into a third wave bigger than the first two, but Trump recites in every appearance now, ‘we’re turning the corner’. These are signals that the populations is to be expendable. Anonymous death in the culture war is the new glory for those attending Trump rallies.

 

Next we’ll look at casualty numbers of a different sort from a different time.

 Travelogue 940 – October 27

We Admitted We Were Powerless

 

So another Supreme Court Justice is sworn in, while Mitch McConnell crows. As a reminder that this matters, two Trump Justices wrote opinions yesterday in a judgement that denied an appeal to extend Wisconsin’s deadline for accepting mail-in ballots (during a pandemic). A similar decision in April’s primary would have denied 80,000 citizens their vote. If they are successful with this effort in my home state, I’ll likely be one of those disenfranchised.

 

We all know this is minority rule. The Republicans don’t deny it. McConnell’s judiciary campaign, helping Trump appoint over 200 federal judges, is all about being the minority party in charge. What would be the urgency otherwise?

 

The writers of the Constitution were concerned about protecting the small states. The Republicans have deftly turned those constitutional protections against us - the senators from a minority of the U.S. population, for example, forcing an extremist Supreme Court Justice on the majority. They’ve also attacked the unwritten norms that protected people from abuses of power for generations, in displays like Rose Garden campaigning, norms that one might be forgiven for thinking shouldn’t have to be written down.

 

At the beginning of the confirmation process, Dianne Feinstein, the lead for the Democrats in the Senate hearings said there was nothing the Democrats could do. It was no Democrat who said that politics was the art of the possible, but I can think of a few Democrats who made a career of demonstrating it was true. I can’t imagine LBJ or Roosevelt (famous again for his court-packing episode) endorsing Feinstein’s position and standing idly by. The Democrats opted for delay tactics that were more theatrical than calculated for practical effect. This is the Clinton-Gore party, one that concedes, one that worries about keeping its hands clean, one that finds solace in being gracious losers.

 

As Republicans gloat more brazenly with each passing week, as they publicly speculate that the founders never intended a democracy, as they openly discuss plans to disenfranchise people, the question of resistance does arise again with more urgency. The opposition party’s complacency doesn’t seem to be founded on much: a strangely out-of-touch belief that people can’t be subjugated (despite 99% of human history as evidence to the contrary); a sentimental belief in decency and dignity; a short-sighted excitement in the game.

 

What does it mean to fight back?

Travelogue 939 – October 24

Which Way to Pharsalus?

 

I wonder about Caesar’s education. Like other boys of his class, he was probably taught at home first, with a focus on moral education and physical training. He would have been taught young how to swim and ride and fight. He would been shown how to receive visitors with dignity. At some point, a tutor would have been brought in. Ironically, we do know that one of the tutors for the future conqueror of Gaul was a Gaulish slave, named Marcus Antonius Gnipho. Gnipho also provided some lessons to Cicero, critic and rival to Caesar. As a young man, Caesar studied rhetoric in Rhodes. This was the final touch for a young patrician with political ambitions. Imagine if there were educational requirements for politicians in America. At times, it seems quite the opposite.

 

Notable how education began for the Roman child, with rigid moral and physical training. I wouldn’t know who to trust with a child’s moral education these days. I suppose that’s the brainstorm behind most home schooling. It’s not a comforting thought. Roman moral education, whatever we may think of it now, provided unity. It seems as though the motive for most organized moral instruction these days is quite the opposite, to create isolated communities of special people.

 

We are raised to value principles like equality and peace. That’s a sort of moral education, though not rooted in family, nor rooted in religion, nor accompanied by strict rules of behaviour, as the Romans would have had it. Our moral concepts are free-floating, non-denominational. We learn them in cartoons.

 

I find this combination of vague idealism for the young with an aggressive and racist capitalism in adult life to be a toxic brew. It makes for a brand of chaos that must be unique in history. Caesar may have been a dangerous man, but it was always clear who his enemies were. If his tactics could be surprising, his larger goals never were. If he killed Romans, it wasn’t at random. He hardly needed to resort to conspiracy theory and untargeted, general intimidation. His army pursued Pompey’s. War took place on the battlefield.

 

The Romans prioritized military virtues. There was little nuance in their world view: the Romans were born to dominate in a hostile world. They were surrounded by (in their eyes) effete older civilizations, like the Greeks, and aggressive barbarians, like the German tribes and the Gauls. Both types were constant. We forget sometimes that Roman history began with wars against the barbarians, much as it ended with them. Rome was sacked by Alaric and his Visigoths in 410 AD. That was the first time in 800 years. In 390 BC, the city was sacked by the Gauls. Circuit complete.

 

Is the world safer than it was in Caesar’s lifetime? There are Americans who are looking to foment civil war. Their disgraced candidate threatens to set aside the results of the election. Democrat Dianne Feinstein gives Lindsey Graham a hug, while Trump loyalists gather with guns. Who exactly are they proposing to shoot with those guns? Maybe we should consult QAnon. There’s no clear Rubicon. There’s no battlefield. There are barbarians, but there’s no gate.

 Travelogue 938 – October 20

The Colours of Reason

 

I’m forced to watch a lot of children’s TV. I can’t say I resent it. Some of it’s pretty funny. There’s much more variety than when I was growing up. One thing that’s consistent with my time, that long-ago era, is the colour scheme, speaking literally and emotionally. The mood is upbeat and always cheerful. The colours are fantastic: bright worlds are painted for our children in glowing rainbows and pastels. One watches and one feels wonder that there could be worlds like that out there, in the ethers, in the imagination, in the art studios … somewhere.

 

Those colourful panoramas have the power to trigger something in me, something so old and so buried under worldly experience that the feeling survives only a second. I puzzle over those fragmentary sensations, trying to preserve a remnant of them, like a sweet aftertaste. It’s bittersweet, awakening a wistful sadness.

 

The colour schemes correspond to an air of hope in those imaginary worlds, hope like oxygen. In those worlds, love conquers. Kid-like characters learn lessons about the world, learn about the power of cooperation and the power of knowledge. Every character is unique and has apparent potential. Resistance and conflict exist in order to be overcome. Even as we advance into YA fiction, and some battles are lost, the characters are ennobled by every setback.

 

I wonder sometimes if we do our kids any favours with these stories. Children’s stories were notoriously dark before the modern era. If you count classical mythology as pedagogical in nature, then we can say they were extremely dark.

 

I grew up in an era of unprecedented optimism. There were reasons for it, I suppose: the defeat of the deadly Axis regimes, which were rather easy to label as evil; the establishment of the United Nations; the dazzling advances in science and technology; the seemingly limitless growth of world economies. Even with an abundance of reasons for optimism, the frame of mind is a choice, and, with some hindsight, I don’t wonder that a generation that had suffered unduly made a deliberate choice, and with the power of a grit and determination strengthened by years of struggle. I think of my parents as I write this. We were going to be happy! Reason and the rule of law would guide this planet forever more! Children would be raised to be cheerful and hopeful and ready for a peaceful world.

 

I’m a product of this superabundance of hope. Have I been ready for the world as it turned out to be, for the world of international terrorism and diplomatic chaos, for conspiracy theory and Trump? I haven’t been swallowed up yet, but I have been trailed through life by disappointment. The world was consistently darker than I had anticipated. My childhood was dogged by this dissonance between conditioned expectations and experience.

 

As a boy, I thought I’d discover a world outside like the one reflected in the TV screen, where kids were sweet and eager to learn; where schools were sunny and cheerful; where everyone tried their best and worked together in earnestness; where everyone revered books and the teachers who explained them. I never quite overcame this handicap. It held me for years. I entered work environments expecting smarts and polish and sweet dedication everywhere.

 

Alas, humans are jokers, barely domesticated apes. I’m one myself. There’s a beauty to be found in that, of course, unless you were raised to believe in reason, and to see the manifestations of reason everywhere, like lambs with their lions and fruit on the vines. My father was an engineer. His devotion to science and reason would be hard to exaggerate. It was a sign of his generation, a generation who foresaw the dawn of an age of reason, heralded by a world burning in its passions. They had seen the destruction; they were believers in hope.

 Travelogue 937 – October 16

Voting by Fetish

 

And so Americans choose between the personal vs the rational, much as the Romans did in Caesar’s time. Do they vote according to personality or reason? The difference is that Caesar’s constituency was largely made of soldiers and the urban mob, people who understood their interests, people who didn’t have many advocates. The ruling classes in Rome had devolved into competing personal interests, much as the real rulers of the Republican party have, (think Koch brothers and their ilk). And what is Trump’s constituency? We’ve seen them at Trump rallies, seen them in candid TV interviews, the interviews that seem like satire. We’ve been introduced to the inbred minutemen who plotted to kidnap the governor of Michigan. We’ve seen the ghoulish couple who pointed guns at protesters from their manicured lawn. We watch them now, setting up fake ballot boxes in California with winks to the camera, as though life really were a never-ending frat party. We see the inoffensive white woman they want to size for Justice. Her brief at the moment is to say nothing about her intentions to attack civil rights and public health. Her agenda captures the right’s intellectual position neatly: cloak your motives, get set to attack people’s rights. The program is entirely negative. Immigrants and women and anyone that Obama helped, they must suffer. Anyone vulnerable, they all must suffer. Why? Purely because strength demands it. Their cynicism is like the sleep of Lethe; it can’t be bothered to disturb the sleep of reason. They reach for a principle once in a while: we protect the unborn; we protect the American worker, who is threatened by immigrants, threatened by China. But their attention wanders when the child is born, when the white worker is safe in her low-paying job that won’t cover expenses or healthcare. Those are complexities best left to the cruel ministrations of libertarian wizardry. “Life is harsh,” they say with a shrug. And we’ve circled back to their default position, which is a fetish for shows of strength. This fetish for strength makes the mind lazy. This fetish for strength doesn’t need reason. It is nihilistic and renounces hope. Catalogue the fetishists’ positions: relentlessly negative and founded on fear, relying on grievance, relying on ready hatred. They look to a fantastical past, as an ideal to protect. They don’t arm to protect people. They arm to protect delusions. There can be few more cynical movements in history. Their favourite conspiracy theory was dreamt up by a grifter who moved to the Philippines to design porn-sites. There is nothing of real value to find here, just the grotesque aping of strength, like the cartoonish gestures of the villains in silent films. The children cry. The teens applaud. The adults smile indulgently. It’s just a film.

Travelogue 936 – October 12

Clementia

 

Imagine Caesar shouting to his troops, “Make Rome Great Again!” Gauge the absurdity of that image, and you have a handy measurement of how far off the rails we’ve gone. If the comparison seems needlessly macho, be aware that this is Trump’s criteria. Everyone is a weakling or a loser, while he is the winner, and he will tell you in just those words. His magic power is the inability to be embarrassed. To those who are bankrupt in character, that shamelessness looks like strength. And that’s truly the extent of it; that’s Trump’s brand. He’s the guy at the party flexing a bicep. Those who question their impulse to laugh stick around and become followers.

America’s power would have staggered Caesar, even in its decline. Just as staggering would have been the court jester taken as king. Caesar’s adversaries for ultimate power were brilliant and fearless. The Late Republic bred a special kind of killer. Sure, the Empire had its crazies and fools, but the Republic burned its chaff thoroughly.

 

Trump would have held a particular cat-and-mouse fascination for Caesar, much like he does for Putin. I imagine the two of them brainstorming slogans. “Make the Sky High Again,” Caesar proposes. “Make the World Turn Again.” “Make Tigers Roar Again.” Try this experimental treatment, Donald, and we’ll start over.

 

That Caesar was tough was never in question. And it was certainly never his brand. Rome was great. There was little need to say it. Caesar was strong. So were dozens of others. That was not the case for supporting him. The branding was about other qualities. Caesar’s case was presented in many ways, and one way was the publication of his canny Commentaries, written to be his reports on military campaigns for the benefit of the Roman public. This was not “The Art of the Deal”, a bubble gum gossip column extended to dance length. This was a sophisticated piece of propaganda artfully composed for the ages. He showcased his brand, and one key element of that brand was Clemency. He portrayed himself as cool-headed and rational. He was the gracious winner and the calm loser. And, above all else, he was humane. He was humane with the barbarians. He was humane with the Romans who plotted his downfall. This was his most important message, perhaps more so than even “veni, vidi, vici”: “I am humane”. Examine this single chess piece for a moment, and you’ve travelled miles higher than Trumps’ escalator.

 

Next, we consider the quality of hope.

Travelogue 935 – October 10

The Strong Man

 

We know about Julius Caesar’s achievements, but do we understand his motives? It’s hard enough to understand how a contemporary Dutch person thinks; I’m not sure we’ll figure Caesar out. But I do think it’s safe to say that Caesar didn’t set out to be dictator for life and imperator. He was Roman patrician, and he pursued the cursus honorum faithfully. That was the traditional ladder of offices to reach high office. He imagined himself consul and proconsul one day, winner of the fierce competition among Roman aristocrats. One doesn’t imagine becoming grand master in chess by overturning the board, (fundamentally the Wonderland promise of almost every Republican since Reagan). The fact that Caesar did overturn the board doesn’t mean that the upset was his life’s ambition. That was a measure of his passion for the game that he felt was rigged against him.

 

Contrast Caesar’s example with the current president. Yes, I mean the one who registered as a candidate as an afterthought, as a tactic to gain leverage in his negotiations for a TV contract.

 

Caesar was no civic saint, driven by selflessness. He was proud and corrupt and greedy. He demonstrated he would stop at nothing to gain power. What we should find interesting is that behind that hunger for power were some ideas for what to do with that power. He had a sincere interest in governance. He was curious about the people he governed. He had ideas about how to make people’s lives better. He had ideas how to make the Roman government run more smoothly, even if many of his reforms were part of a campaign against the Senate. (Even his reform of the calendar was inspired by instances of senatorial corruption, exploitation of the ambiguity of the old calendar to manipulate elections and terms of office. Sounds a little McConnellish.)

 

One strong man is not the same as another. In a perfect world, we can do without all types, but let’s be clear what sort we’re dealing with. Let’s begin with a look at MAGA as a political program.

 Travelogue 934 – October 7

Commentaries on the Civil War

 

Though our Roman summer in Holland is long gone – it’s been raining for just about three weeks now, - I’ve carried on with my Roman literature project. Now it’s Julius Caesar. I’ve read ‘The Commentaries on the Civil War’; I’ve started re-reading the ‘The Gallic War’; I bought a textbook full of articles about his writings. This has turned into a big project.

 

Caesar is a fascinating historical figure. Years ago, I was challenged, as the history major at the party, to name the person who had had the biggest effect on history, and I came up with Caesar. I spent an inordinate amount of time in the days and years afterward thinking about that spontaneous, drunken answer to what is really a senseless question, and I’ve found my answer surprisingly defensible. So are dozens of others, of course. But here’s a truly remarkable character who did change the course of history. (And even changed the calendar.)

 

Studying Caesar seems appropriate while America struggles to deal with its wannabe strong man. But, in my humble estimation, there are more disparities between Caesar and Trump than there are similarities. And I don’t mean the toga. By extension, a lot might be said about the different historical moments they represent. I’m an amateur historian, at best, and so my opinions are probably worth about as much as Trump’s on the virus. But here goes.

 

Beyond the staggering vanity and ambition that both men manifested, I see very little to compare in their characters. Caesar was an intellectual and an accomplished orator from a noble family with an old and respected name. How many points of departure have I charted already? At age 40, he turned his attention to military glory and became one of the greatest military leaders in history. No draft-dodger. After fighting three years of civil war, ranging across the entire Mediterranean empire, Caesar took the reins of power and pursued reforms based on the populist agenda he had consistently pursued since he was a young man. For centuries, Roman leadership had generally fallen into two camps, one for aristocratic and senatorial power and one for more decentralized power. Caesar belonged to the latter camp. No doubt this path suited his ambitions as much as his ideals, but it appears his convictions were real, given his actions once he had power. ‘Convictions?’ Yes, that’s a word that has gathered some dust.

 

There’s more. It’s hard not to be astounded by the sheer energy and stamina of this man, if all the chronicles are accurate. This leads, in my mind, to the question of motive. What moves a person like Caesar?

 

"Nobody that's a leader would not do what I did," Trump said the other day. Aside from the tortured syntax, it’s a maddening statement, not least because it’s not entirely clear what he thinks he did. He contracted COVID-19. He left the hospital early. It doesn’t require Julius Caesar to provide a contrast. Maybe only the guy in the next bed, the one listening to his doctor and the one concerned about his family.

 Travelogue 933 – October 5

The One-Thing-After-Another Kind of Wisdom

 

Fall advances quickly. The sun’s retreat is perceptible day by day. It’s darker when we wake, and soon enough it will be dark when Baby and I go downstairs to get on the bicycle and head to school. I’ll need lights on the bike. Still there’s sunlight. We chat about the autumn as we cross to the bicycle. We count how many leaves have fallen so far, and we reflect on how chilly the air has become. I remember discussing the advent of fall with her last year, and still - even at her advanced age, - the seasons are mysterious.

 

An understanding that one thing follows another takes time to mature in the human mind.

 

My daily rotation of funereal lectures in the Zoom zone continues apace. Now advancing fall has carried us through the first of four terms, almost to its completion. Students fade even further from us among the ethers of remote learning, their voices arriving as though sent from across the galaxy. The communications are as garbled. They respond to simple queries in blunt utterances like ‘What?’, meant not to clarify but to challenge. In deference to all the light-years between us, I respond diplomatically. ‘Correct answer!’ I say, and I move on.

 

In truth, we teachers of teens understand that the most valuable wares we trade in are not the ones advertised in the name of the course, but are in fact those gathered under the repellent rubric ‘soft skills’, a group of qualities and skills that seem as depleted in the human character as ozone in the air. Those ‘soft skills’ centre around critical thinking and communications. They are as often cited by business leaders at job fairs as they are pushed aside by curricular committees because they are so darn difficult to measure in multiple-choice exams.

 

So here we are. I design lessons to be revolving review sessions. Course requirements must be reviewed relentlessly. Just today, six weeks into the term, a student interrupted an exercise to ask when the final exam was. I pass the question to another student, who had the privilege to recite for us that there was never a final exam for this course. They would be grade according to portfolio. Most of my feedback on writing assignments consists of rote repetition of the assignment instructions. Most protests on exam questions are rebutted by a review of the question instructions. It’s an odd sequence: we finish with instructions. We draw circles to the beginning.

 

A true understanding of sequence takes a long time to mature in the human mind.

 Travelogue 932 – September 28

Lecture in the Cemetery

 

The cemetery, I call it. That’s the Zoom environment when students won’t activate their cameras. Admittedly, that’s a grim moniker during a pandemic, but that’s what it feels like.

 

It’s class time. I open the Zoom session and start admitting students. Most pop up during the first three minutes of class. Stragglers will continue to request admission until the final three minutes. Once admitted, the students appear in my gallery as black tiles with their names in white. Occasionally, one or two will politely say, “Good morning”. The majority file in in silence. A few burst in with music or with a shouting match with their roommate. I mute them, and restore the peace.

 

I know my colleagues harangue students about cameras, drawing a line in the sand. I understand how they feel, but it does seem rather arbitrary. I agree that video is a sign of respect in the new age; it shows that the meeting or the class is worth putting clothes on for; it’s a way of demonstrating attention. But signs of respect should have mutual value. They don’t get it. They’re signing in for a lecture; they don’t see the relevance of video. We would like to teach them that you don’t act this way in a business meeting, but it’s not a business meeting. I’ve had this discussion frequently with my colleagues in the business program. I don’t think telling students to treat school meetings as business meetings imparts any real learning. It’s the usual dilemma in role play.

 

And so I start the lecture, speaking into the void. I have asked for video. A few have obliged. It makes little difference, really. It’s lonely for us all in the cemetery.

 

I have sympathy for this generation. Recently I had to go to the hospital for some tests. I stopped at a nearby café afterward. I sat by the window. Across the street from the hospital is a gymnasium, a secondary school. There was a group of kids sitting on the bus station bench, doing their best to goof around on a rainy day. For this generation, that means gathering around someone’s smart phone and laughing. It also means having masks at the ready, hanging off their ears. It seems strange. Teens should be careless and annoying. It feels wrong that they should have the spectre of illness hanging over them.

Travelogue 931 – September 24

The Me Game

 

Young people adapt quickly to new conditions. My students are entering their second school year with online learning, and that’s already a long time. They have internalized the pattern of online learning, made the routines their own, found their bad habits, and forged their online personae. They know how to enter the classroom just late enough to avoid attention. Too early, and the teacher engages them in hello’s and chit-chat. It really doesn’t matter what time of day it is, teenagers are still waking. They are groggy and irritable, and they can’t endure any pleasantries. If they come in late, the teacher has to admit them, and that teacher is likely to torment them with in-class questions, as just desserts for being late. They know how long to keep the camera on before surreptitiously switching it off, drawing minimum attention. They know how many times a teacher will insist on cameras back on before his or her will is broken.

 

Students have learned a hundred effective ways to be annoying. If they interrupt someone in Zoom, their voice drowns out all others, so they know they can stop a lecture cold with a question. The teacher can’t talk through them. They know that if they don’t speak for a long time, they will sink down into the gallery and be forgotten. That has its own rewards, but it’s also a great platform for the ‘me’ game. That’s when a student issues some brief, random comment and then responds to the teacher’s query about who that was with ‘me’. When the teacher calmly explains that ‘me’ doesn’t help, the student is indignant that education has become so impersonal. Another silly game adopts a very different strategy. The student keeps his or her camera on and giggles through the lesson with the mute on. The teacher naturally calls on this person often, in order to break up the competing conversation, but all that that accomplishes is to keep that student high in the gallery so that the perpetual giggling distracts everyone far longer. For many students, the simplest strategy is to keep camera and mic off, answering ‘I have no idea’ whenever a question comes their way, in a voice dripping with ennui. The teacher shudders with aversion and never comes round again. It’s often one of those students who invites the power struggle in the final minutes by shouting a question about something covered weeks ago, like when the exam will be. The teacher replies in a polite voice with his or her finger hovering over the mouse, cursor suspended above ‘End Meeting For All’. The politeness confuses the jester just long enough to make a quick exit.

Travelogue 930 – September 15

The COVID Cityscape

Part Two

 

There’s more construction going on in the city than I’ve ever seen, and it’s been a growing, vibrant city since before I arrived, a lively city within a culture that loves things in good working order, loves modern design and neat lines. Though I had been aware that construction plans for 2020 were ambitious – some urgent modernization that would require ripping up streets almost comprehensively through the city, - I couldn’t help but speculate idly that the COVID slowdown in traffic in spring might have encouraged a spike in road works that hasn’t been allowed to dip.

 

Meanwhile, the Dutch people persist round roads like mazes redrawn daily or weekly; they persist round the barren and antiseptic spaces indoors; they persist in putting on a show of normalcy, as though December 2019 represented a sort of gold standard in human behaviour; they persist, as new cases have reached totals nearly doubling the highs reached in April, and no change in summer public health rules is even on the table.

 

It’s odd to think that few had foreseen this twist in the over-population of our planet, that density would equal personal space in some inverse proportion; that the more there were of our species, the more we would be forced to isolate, physically and emotionally. We would be pushed into abstract boxes of space by regulation; we would be forced to live sedentary lives, experiencing the world through computer screens.

 

Well, we were having fun. After our ballet class, Baby and I stopped at our favourite café. The place retained some seating, but the space in the middle of the bottom floor was cleared, as though for a dance party. And so, dance we did. As the Ramones were played in the sound system, Baby showed me her ballet moves on the café dance floor. A set of young people sat at intervals around the long table by the windows, tapping away at their laptops. A few smiled to see the girl dancing; but even those tuned us out quickly. No one joined; no one clapped; no one sang along. The young barista, herself a picture of a generation’s downplayed hip chic, raised her eyebrows as she passed; not necessarily in the usual tight-lipped Dutch judgementalism, but in a kind of amused surprise. What seemed most silly to her was Papa clapping out a beat to the Ramones. I wondered whether she thought they belonged to her time. I wondered if she thought I was being undignified. I wondered if she thought it was too much a concession to enjoyment. It didn’t matter. Nothing much was meant by it. Baby danced, and I was happy for her.

Travelogue 929 – September 14

The COVID Cityscape

Part One

 

As hard as Dutch people try to treat the COVID-19 virus like they treat fellow passengers on the Metro or fellow shoppers on the Lijnbaan, willing it out of existence by the power of the averted eye, the cityscape and everyone’s daily experience still bear too many signs of the public health battle to support even the most stubborn Dutchman’s assessment that everything’s fine. Masks are compulsory on public transit; signs about social distancing proliferate; interior spaces are scarred, more or less irreversibly, by the mandate to keep people apart. The ad hoc has become permanent. Once pleasant waiting rooms and lobbies that were hastily emptied and rearranged six months ago now have the haggard air of the basement room quickly furnished for the prodigal son and finally abandoned to squalor. Seats are blocked by makeshift, laminated signs advising social distance. Cashiers mumble behind hanging plastic; customers are separated by small, hanging plastic windows at breathing height. Floors that should never have been bared have been exposed for months and given up on. Café and restaurant play areas for children have been cleared and left barren. All this was supposed to be temporary. Now, fatigue has made it all okay, the patchwork and the unadorned and the awkward.

 

The girls attend different ballet classes on Sunday because of the division made at age four. COVID rules allow only one parent inside, and so now we handle ballet day in teams. Yesterday was my Sunday with Baby. Parents aren’t allowed inside the class, so mamas and papas sit in the waiting room, avoiding each other’s eye in good Dutch fashion. I worked on a short story idea, scribbling notes in a notebook. I’ve returned to writing by hand whenever possible because I spend so much work time in front of a computer, and, thanks to that small diversion, I’m realizing how much society has been changed by its technology. There’s one parent in the room reading an actual book, and she looks odd. Who reads a book in public anymore? But me, the guy using a pen? In a ruled notepad? That is really beyond the pale. I feel very self-conscious. I worry it seems affected, as though I think I’m making a statement. Or it seems precious, as though the pad were my diary and I were cataloguing my failures to execute a worthy midlife crisis. Or it seems suspicious. If you see someone typing on a laptop, it would never occur to you to wonder what he or she is writing. See someone with a notepad and you wonder what it is they’re recording. Is it about me? Is this a police agent, a deep state mole? But I go ahead. On the rare occasion someone looks at me, I wink, just to fuel their paranoia.

 

The story I’m working on, by the way, is my shot at fantasy writing. I saw a call for stories about monsters, and I thought, why not? Monsters are fun. Why else are so many children’s stories devoted to them?

Travelogue 928 – September 6

The Wallabies

 

We started with the wallabies, and we finished with the flamingos. These are the two exhibits flanking the entrance to the zoo. We started the day heading left into Australia, and rounded off the afternoon in Asia, emerging by the flamingos.

 

We entered the zoo with tickets bought months ago for Baby’s birthday. It took us three months to find a suitable weekend, neither too hot nor rainy, when everyone was healthy. But the day finally came, and it was a beautiful one, pleasantly cool with scattered high clouds to take the edge off the sun.

 

The wallabies didn’t seem too energized by the weather. Maybe sleeping was their celebration. But morose wallabies didn’t get the girls down. After three months’ build-up, the girls hardly seemed to care about the animals at all. They were excited to be at the zoo, but not for the central attractions. The fun was in the opportunities to run and climb. I think Baby’s peak moment was climbing around in the big tower in the playground. The big tower is three storeys tall. You can only enter it by ladder or rope, and you can only exit by one of the high slides.

 

I was surprised. In earlier visits, Baby was entranced by the giraffes. They were her favourite animals for years after her first visit to the zoo. During this trip, I had the impression suddenly that my toddlers had become kids.

 

The flamingo pond was a good place to decompress. It’s peaceful. You can space out very effectively watching these oddball birds. Even hypnotizing: one of the colourful birds stood on one leg and swung his lowered head back and forth. I could have slept, if Little Ren hadn’t had mysterious reserves of energy.

 

Ren’s mission as a three-year-old has been to log as many miles as she can, running ceaselessly from one thing to another without apparent purpose, running without ever looking back. If your attention lapses for more than a moment, you might lose sight of her. I’ve had enough frights with her to know I must stay alert. But I’ve also had lots of practice describing small circles inside her larger ones. Conserving energy seems to be a priority among parental skills.

 

Predictably, Ren’s battery runs out once we’re out on the street. One strange lacuna in the admirable public transit plan in Rotterdam is the zoo. There is almost no way to get there without some walking. I have to accomplish that with Little (growing) Ren in my arms. It’s a beautiful day for a very slow walk.

 

The highlight this time was the aquarium. That exhibit never gets old, watching the fish glide across enormous windows or overhead. The diversity of them, the colours, the dreamlike motion, they’re always engaging.

Travelogue 927 – August 30

What’s the Score?

 

There’s the sound of a crowd on the wind. It’s not so common a sound as it once was. I can hear their cries hundreds of metres away.

 

The clouds have cleared, and I’ve decided on an evening walk. My usual route takes me by a set of community pitches. And there’s a match on. I can see their uniforms, yellow and scarlet. I can see the modest grandstand mid-pitch, where plenty of seats are still empty. These spectators have powerful lungs.

 

I circle the pitches in my usual way, passing close to one team’s net. I stop to watch, and it happens that I’m fortunate enough to see a goal. It’s the yellows, looking like bees with their black stripes, who swarm down the pitch to score. It’s not the prettiest goal, a ball that the goalkeeper gets a piece of and then quickly bounces among the players to dribble into the net. But the fans are happy, letting loose another surprising volley of sound.

 

I carry on with my walk, accompanied by the echoes of the cheering and jeering of the football crowd. Evening walks are made for trivial thoughts, and two lines of meaningless inquiry compete for the floor in the parlour of my mind. One is topical. I wonder at the vehemence of their enjoyment. That they’re excited is not surprising, considering the enforced general hiatus from sport. What I wonder is how much of their exuberance may be a show for the benefit of the community, which they may feel still disapproves of their gathering in this way. I wonder, also, how much might be attributed to unconscious fear, fear for their health and fear that this match might be one precious bit of joy between waves of illness and shutdown. In short, how exceptional is this occasion, and, looking deeper, how sincere?

 

My second line of thought is less topical. The sight of the match, small league play on a local pitch, strikes me as the essence of sport. It is exciting. And it’s timeless. The spectators know the teams, know some or all of the players, and their dedication to one of those teams may match their dedication to Manchester United, or whoever they watch at the bar. That’s how it should be. I notice, walking by again, there’s not even a scoreboard. Everyone just knows the score. It’s among the best forms of entertainment, a kind of theatre. The local theatre company doesn’t need to tell you which act of Hamlet they’re in. You remember, or it doesn’t matter. When the first image to come to mind of European football is one from a multi-million-euro match broadcast around the world, I think the sport is done a disservice. The local is the real.

 

I walk on. The skies have opened up. The clouds are glowing with sun. These are the skies I was encountering in early April, when the crisis was new, when we were beginning to wonder how serious all this was.

 Travelogue 926 – August 29

Windy Speeches for the Stable Genius

 

It’s still August, but it feels like the winds have blown summer away. Or maybe that’s the onset of the school year blowing away all leisure for teachers. It doesn’t take long before those two elements of a successful summer, lazy heat and lazy behaviours, seem far in the past.

 

Even though the Roman temperatures have been blown away by this week’s winds, I’m still pursuing my Roman reading. I miss the Emperor, the thoughtful and earnest and solitary Marcus Aurelius, who wrote to bolster his confidence with thoughts of virtue. I’ve moved on to reading history and drama.

 

The plays of Seneca are appropriate reading for stormy weather. By day, Seneca may have been a prominent Stoic philosopher, preaching the importance of a cool head and a cool heart, but, by night, he dashed off florid melodramas. The plays are all high rhetoric and wrenching emotion. There is no stage direction and little action. There is some debate about whether these plays were written for performance. If they were performed, it was probably at court, where Trump’s historical twin, the petulant Nero, lay on his side in a sumptuous room and watched a small set of actors sweat through their long monologues and their mortal fear of the critic.

 

In “Medea”, the protagonist writhes in jealousy and fury and self-reproach, finally resolving to call upon all dark powers in an impressively comprehensive manner in order to punish her husband’s new lover, the lover’s father, and finally her own children. This performance would have demanded extraordinary stamina from any actor, and perhaps Seneca the director counted on the actor’s fear for her life, performing in front of the stable genius who was emperor, for that extra shot of energy. In “Trojan Women”, the pervading emotions are horror and grief. There is plenty to go around, so no one actor would have been forced to carry the whole eight of Troy’s mortification.

 

It’s hard to reconcile the various sides of Seneca, the ambitious courtier, the sage philosopher, and the writer of grotesque stage plays, but no one can dispute his influence. I can’t read Latin. By all accounts his style was powerful and beautiful. His writings have survived as models for authors through the centuries, and even had their influence on Shakespeare and Elizabethan theatre. You can find Seneca in the five-act structures, the charged rhetoric and the general doom and gloom. There is in much of that era’s writing the feeling of the proud student mimicking his don.

 

Seneca survived well through the centuries, in part because Christian scholars believed Seneca was pals with Saint Paul. I might have chosen other representatives of Roman culture to survive this well, but there’s something valuable and instructive to this man’s repellent complexity. He was a man of his time. I look forward to tasting from other Roman drama. I’d like to travel back into the happier times of the Republic, take a look at the comedian Plautus.

Travelogue 925 – August 22

Some August Heat

 

Summer effectively ends for me on Monday, but today I’m registering a mood that is something like optimism. That might be because I had the kind of good night’s sleep that has been rare in summer. And that might be because the temperatures are suddenly not so summer-like. The winds have blown in, heralding a change of season.

 

Riding my bike to the store this morning, I rode under blue skies and among cool breezes that could have belonged to autumn. I enjoyed that short ride. The skies were wide and bright, and the clouds high and noble. The bike ride could have been a moment of inspiration. Autumn always did awaken a sense of hope in me.

 

I’m not complaining about the summer. Days are supposed to be hot, especially in August. In recent years, summer has waned before August had fairly begun. We were fortunate with our August this year. And still, here it is, as though on cue: school is set to begin again and the winds pick up, carrying their teasing suggestions of chill and damp. The timing is uncanny. It makes one think that tradition was always a product of nature.

 

This year’s summer heat has meant a few more trips to the beach than usual. That’s been great for the family. It’s also meant a kind of atmospheric accompaniment to my readings in Roman literature. I’m not really sure why I continue to be drawn back to my writers from the days of polytheism and marching legions, but it’s nice to have something like the Roman climate as backdrop.

 

I finally finished my long and slow sojourn through the “Meditations” of Marcus Aurelius. I would be hard-pressed to say what wisdom or consolation I derived from that study. I might understand something more of Stoicism than I did before. I learned very little about the history of his time. But it’s not time regretted, any more than the time invested in good conversation would be. One doesn’t need an inventory of improvements to his character to give merit to an evening spent with a friend. And ultimately, it did feel a bit like a conversation, the confidences of someone I was getting to know.

 

I have my doubts that there was any real intention in the order of the thoughts in his book. I can’t be sure who determined the order given the editions that we know now. But I did think the last passage had a bit of class to it, in light of the thoughts already shared, beginning with, “O man, citizenship of this great world city has been yours”; and carrying on until its close: “Pass on your way then, with a smiling face, under the smile of him who bids you go.” There are a few little gems in even these two sentences for those who have participated in the conversation.