Travelogue 981 – April 27

 Another Day for the King

It’s King’s Day again. The king’s birthday is one of those holidays that stand in the calendar as uneasy amalgams. There a real king who has a real birthday, but the day is a celebration of Dutchness and a lot of other things that have nothing to do with royalty. It’s history for the living, irreverence and tradition, carpe (holi)diem with a nod to the dignity of preceding generations. It’s a frustrating assignment for journalists every year. What can you say? You print photos of people having fun beside photos of the king humbly smiling and waving. You leave it at that.

These silly paradoxes are what trip up nationalists every time. Look at Marjorie Taylor Greene’s short-lived Anglo-Saxon caucus in Washington, D.C.! It was patently ridiculous and offensive. Greene wouldn’t be able to pick an Anglo-Saxon out of a medieval line-up if her life depended on it. And I’m quite sure she couldn’t find ten words to describe the history of that maligned group. Does she realize they were the losers in the battle for primacy in England almost a thousand years ago?

People like Greene go out of their way to perform these intellectual pratfalls for us. But in fact, they are just providing us with catharsis for our own sense of awkwardness. We don’t like to admit how foolish we all are made by living in the present as products of time. Our histories make fools of us, our natural, national and personal histories. Loveable, hapless, God’s-children kind of fools.

The passing of my friend Bruce reminds me how difficult it is to assimilate all one’s life into one coherent identity, or even one coherent narrative. It’s like the personality of the present is living with personalities from the past in one big house. The house is spacious enough that our hero can pass whole weeks without encountering housemates. The hero becomes quite secure with his or her identity. But the day comes when the past and present cross paths in the hallway. If we’re honest, it’s a bit shocking every time. The act of recognizing oneself is rarely an encounter with the beloved, but an encounter with the Stranger. One can love the Stranger, as Jesus was at pains to say. But love for the Stranger isn’t achieved by misnaming the Stranger or by outfitting the Stranger in familiar garb or attractive masks.

As I talk about Bruce, I’ll talk about ideas I entertained back then. I’ll talk about places we knew, and how I knew them then. I confess it will be impossible to recapture the precise quality of my thought and feelings, and so I will freely mix them with current impressions. That is the uneasy marriage of ‘personalities’ arranged by Time.

Travelogue 980 – April 24

Spring’s Power

Little Ren has developed a taste for the outdoors. In principle, I approve, but whoever is tasked with taking her out must be rested, alert, and warmed up. Little Ren likes to run and run. Once out the door, she sets off and the excursion becomes a chase.

She leads me to the park at the end of the canal behind our building, next to Spart Stadium. It’s a big park, with lots of playground toys and lots of room to run. It has a fence around it, which I find a blessing. I get to retreat to one of the benches and sit while she cycles madly through her round of games and amusements.

Not that I don’t join in, once I catch my breath. I enjoy pushing her on the swing or helping her climb. But it seems as though her favourite pastimes are the messy ones, digging in the sandpit, or rooting around in the grass to find odd bits of Nature’s discards.

So rest on the side-lines I do. I recharge. I take in the first pleasant signs of spring. Trees are in the early stages of budding, sending up red shoots and ethereal clouds of green. It’s that delicate period when nature seems to be considering whether spring will take hold. The skies are big; the air is crisp. The trees, with their new growth, seem small. The tender new leaves might be a tentative query.

And, yet, below appearances, life is insistent. It’s unstoppable. It’s the weed that cracks the concrete. Life is the need to live, ravening and implacable.

This reminds me that I wanted to talk about Bruce. We were friends not even a full decade, though it seemed much longer. So much happened. We were young, and events were dramatic. Relationships were like drugs.

I wouldn’t say I was the Kerouac of our little group, but he was the Neal Cassady, the wild man, satyr and shaman. He was bigger than life, always laughing, and in perpetual motion. Everything he said was revelation or pure bathos. We followed him, and we recovered from him, and then we sought him out again. And then, suddenly, it was all over. He had crossed lines that couldn’t be forgiven, his antics gone too far. His friends turned away, grew up. The truth is, we had all crossed lines. His crimes were simply the most evident. I never really held a grudge, even though I had had to close the door. His life force was unrefined and unrestrained. He partook of that unstoppable power of spring.

Travelogue 979 – April 22

False Spring

Spring skies don’t always bring spring temperatures. The sun has been reclaiming its skies, rising early and then climbing high, putting the clouds to flight. But in the morning, we still need our coats and scarves. This can be a frustrating time of year.

My workplace has made the mysterious decision to station us squarely in harm’s way, just as case numbers are rising. To be fair, they are just following the Dutch government’s advice and model, as they open restaurant terraces while taking their own sweet time with the vaccination rollout. It would be hard to find reason in the move. Expediency and obstinacy, yes; sensitive and thoughtful leadership, I don’t think so.

Someone close to us is struggling with COVID right now, so I may be a little humourless on this topic. This person is not in the Netherlands. She is in Ethiopia, where the healthcare system tries the best it can without the resources Dutch institutions have. They fall short when they would rather succeed. Here in Europe, it feels at times like we fall short just to be contrary. 

Last week an old friend died. I don’t believe it was from COVID, though I can’t be sure. I had lost touch with him, and the news of his passing reached me in a circuitous fashion. We haven’t been close in many years, but I was nonetheless saddened by the news.

I’d like to write about my friend. I’d like to write about the many things he taught me. And I’d like to write about the galaxy of thoughts and feelings sparked by the event of his passing. It’s really impossible. Capturing honestly and accurately even one moment in writing is impossible. Writing requires structure that betrays the substance of being. I found this while writing the memoir about my first years in Ethiopia. I could buff the experience into a smooth narrative, which would be falsehood, or I could throw a mental net and capture fragments and impressions, commit them to the page somehow, and create a different type of falsehood. Memoir is a well-intentioned lie. A writer of memoir can only try, with every effort, to fashion a closer resemblance to truth. 

It puts me in mind of Michelangelo, with no justification at all. He famously (apocryphally?) saw the statue inside the stone. When the statue is finished, it seems to live. His style is based on ancient Roman sculpture, and those Roman busts are indeed impressive. I’ve noticed lately on youtube efforts to animate those busts, so that we might get an idea of what the Caesars looked like. It really doesn’t work. It makes you realize the beautiful bust is not the person.

Travelogue 978 – April 5 

The Firm

I interrupt my meditations again with an important bulletin. I have now seen the original pilot for “Suits”, a TV show that aired between 2011 and 2019. That means I’m qualified to report on the British royal family. “Suits” is the show that, of course, made Meghan Markle famous before her marriage to Prince Harry. In the pilot, she plays a sassy paralegal working at the high-powered law firm.

The series is a legal drama, and the show is not sparing with the tropes we love about this genre. The lawyers are cold-blooded and ruthless. They will do anything to win. They indulge in excess and luxury. Everything around them is beautiful. The male lawyers are womanizers in embarrassing style, meaning their behaviours are portrayed as cute and funny. They can’t help themselves; their physical attractiveness is a kind of imperative.

The practice of law is also portrayed in the usual film shorthand, time lapse drudgery and two-minute clips of a partner being a badass in a negotiation, and dramatic breaking points in interrogations. Who wouldn’t be mesmerized by the glamour of the law office? A lot of rhetoric is dedicated to the virtues of hard work and smarts, but the medium of television defies any real portrait. The screen allows for boredom but no pain, disaffection but no despair. It loves conflict, but can’t abide the long days when, hour after hour, you wonder how you will continue. It fails to depict mediocrity, even when it manages to be mediocrity in itself. Existentialist struggles don’t exist in law firms or on Wall Street.

Turning my newfound insights to an analysis of the royal family in England, it’s clear that the new Duchess was uniquely suited to join ‘The Firm’. She’s smarter and more attractive than the rest of us. She can be a badass in a negotiation. She rarely suffers from ennui or existential angst. If either intrudes on daily experience, she can be sure that a scene change is coming quickly. There will be none of these dreary depressions that beset royals of the twentieth century.

Piers Morgan has carried on with his crusade against Markle. It’s an odd obsession. “She’s just one of many whiny, privileged, hypocritical celebrities who now cynically exploit victimhood to suppress free speech,” he writes. Well, okay, it’s fun to call out spoiled celebrities, but isn’t he one of them? Does he get to do that? He calls out her “woke world view” and her service to cancel culture. Sure, the politically correct try our patience at times, but do they do that any more than the politically incorrect? Does being annoying make someone’s viewpoint wrong? Is it possible we’re annoyed because the politically correct are, in fact, correct? And again: does someone attacking another person so vehemently get to decry cancel culture? It appears that self-awareness remains the rarest quality in political discourse.

Travelogue 977 – April 2

Torches at the Capitol

Baby Jos sees air molecules now. One beautiful morning, walking to school, Baby announced that she could see the molecules in the air. “They’re going everywhere,” she said. Her mama and I were suitably impressed. “You don’t see them?” she asked. I didn’t mind admitting that I couldn’t. I see a lot less than I used to, but even at its best, my sight was never up to spotting individual molecules.

After remarking a number of times on her new discovery, she asked why she couldn’t see the molecules as easily where the sun was making its slow appearance in the east. I said I couldn’t be sure, but maybe it had something to do with the sun’s strong light. She agreed. She warned me I shouldn’t look at the sun. Further, she said I shouldn’t try to reach out to touch the sun. I might hurt myself.

In short, I’m see Scaevola everywhere these days, now that I’ve begin the all-important discussion of that ancient Roman legend, the discussion that will reveal all sorts of truths and near-truths and passive truths and unconscious truths.

I see Scaevola in the old rock music videos I’ve been watching in between more sober activities. I do this to reminisce, and I love the memories. But I can’t help being amused sometimes at the earnest abandon those singers brought to the mic. They had no self-consciousness and very little sense of irony. It takes belief. You can see it in their eyes. Once the music starts, they are absolutely immersed and swimming in the experience. All for the show.

I see Scaevola in Trump-(and-post-Trump)-era headlines in the U.S., like “Car Rams into Barrier at the Capitol”. Or the January 6 assault itself, where hundreds of dum-dums led by the QAnon shaman in buffalo horns stormed the Capitol building. Like Icarus challenging the sun, … but lacking the wits, the charm, the joie de vivre, the innocence, or the pathos; lacking, basically, any quality that might have excited sympathetic response from any corner. The January 6 assault has little to recommend it as a mythical event, other its flirtation with fire.

One watches spectacles like these and wonders whether these people were sober.