Travelogue 1242 – 12 March
Laura

The story starts in the church of Sainte-Claire in Avignon in France. Our young man, not more than 23 years old, catches sight of a beautiful woman during a service.

It was April 6, 1327, and our hero had just experienced two life-changing events within the past year, the passing of his father and the completion of his training in law at the prestigious faculty at Bologna. He was back in Avignon, working as a clerk somewhere among the ranks of church hierarchy gathered in the city. The papacy had moved to Avignon in 1309, and Petrarca’s father had followed a few years later, because he was a notary and needed the work. His father had been friendly with Dante, but Dante had been exiled from Florence some years earlier, and Petrarca had never met him.

So Francesco catches sight of Laura, and it’s one of history’s great stories of love at first sight, and also of unrequited love. Laura is married. Petrarca tries to court her, but she refuses him. It is both important and not important to us who the real Laura is. It’s the ideal Laura that we encounter. What follows the fateful encounter at church is nearly half a century of Petrarca’s writing life and then centuries of admiration via his poetry.

It is likely that Petrarca’s Laura was a woman named Laura de Noves. We know of her because she was aristocracy, married to a count. There is at least one portrait still existing of the real Laura de Noves, beautiful, modest, blonde. She died in the first wave of the Plague.

But Laura the ideal has never passed away. This unique creation, somewhat chivalric in origin, but developing into something very human and individual, does indeed endure the way Petrarca predicted. Literature has sent forth a raiding party to retrieve the soul. Poets will now tend for the welfare of the animating spark.

Perhaps it begins when Dante writes that Virgil, an ancient poet, has led him through Christian hell, and that Beatrice, his chivalric ideal, has led him through heaven. And we are led to question whether Beatrice lives on because she is in heaven or because we are reading about her. Dante has posed us this question.

Petrarca poses us a slightly different question, something humbler, less heroic: might beauty be enough? Might a pure heart be enough? Might a lover’s devotion be enough? Would these small things save the soul of the beloved?

Shakespeare writes of his own ideated love in Sonnet 18,

“But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,
Nor shall death brag thou wand’rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to Time thou grow’st.
    So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
    So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.”

By “this” he means the poem. The prestige of the artist and the artwork has grown through the Renaissance. Shakespeare is familiar with Petrarca, even if only indirectly. Renaissance proteges have played their part, poets like Vittoria Colonna.

Travelogue 1241 – 5 March
The Rhetorician

A century after its inception, the sonnet found its master. This is someone unavoidable, a figure dead centre in the road of cultural history, the indispensable man. Though one wouldn’t want to lose Dante, one could, and history would flow past him with barely a ripple. But one couldn’t tell our story without Francesco Petrarca, the father of the Renaissance, the first humanist, and the consummate poet.

I wrote a forgettable thesis about Petrarca at university, in my baccalaureate days, and he has haunted me since. Even after reading about him for months, I sense that I didn’t really understand him. His legacy is complex. His persona is complex. He is the fox to Dante’s lion. Where Dante stood tall, stood alone, stood proudly; Petrarca sought out company, linked arms with others, chatted, lectured, and sang.

It is meaningful for history that Petrarca was simply a more congenial man, someone who cared about and cultivated the opinion of others. He became the first modern poet laureate by courting important people across Italy and charming them, by exciting them with ideas. He was persuasive. He was a rhetorician. He revived the study of Cicero, one of the great rhetoricians in European history. To study Renaissance intellectual history is to study ancient Greek and Roman history. To the ancients, rhetoric was the linchpin of education. It was fundamental to politics; it was a tool in social advancement.

We in our time say we don’t like rhetoric. We are suspicious of it. Even as we make up the most manipulated societies of all time, swimming in floods of persuasion, drowning in advertising and targeted messaging, though we are subject to psy-ops nearly every day of our lives, we turn our noses up at the word “rhetoric”. It seems “inauthentic” to engage in formal rhetoric. I guess we would know from inauthentic, living in the Trump era.

The truth is, rhetoric can be a tedious study, boring. So is math, but we would never eliminate math from our curriculum. Instead, we dropped rhetoric and civics. We think we have grown beyond these topics. Never mind that in two generations, we have lost all feel for how we are governed, how our own government works; never mind that we are inarticulate in the face of oppression. Never mind that Donald Trump, a man forcing a national dialogue about dementia; a man who cannot finish a sentence; a man whose vocabulary is that of a middle-schooler; a man who cannot make an intellectual case for any one of his devastating policies, and has recourse only to primitive emotional ones; that this man is called, with great seriousness, a “great communicator”.

Travelogue 1240 – 24 February
The Birds

The birds have started singing in the mornings. This is a sacred time of year for me. Before the sun has risen, there is a songbird settled outside my window. She is not there every day. But the mornings she is there are made special by her voice. The timing feels perfect because winter’s mood has begun to pall.

Then I’m hearing birds as I travel around town. They seem to have nested among the branches everywhere. Or were they always there, and my ears have been opened by the first visitor to my window? I’m riding along the bike paths in a dream, as though I have headphones on. I’m listening to music, or listening for it.

And something magical did happen yesterday, among the birds. Among the green parrots that have become familiar in South Holland in recent years. We were returning on our bikes from Little Ren’s gymnastics in the evening. Ren sat behind me in the kid’s seat, so I don’t think she could see what I saw. Baby Jos was on her bike, riding behind us. We were coasting down the hill on the bike path next to Horvathweg. It’s a busy road, and there is a lot of traffic at this hour.

Suddenly a flock of parrots glided by, and they were calling as they went. They swooped by, just over the roofs of the cars on the road. Their flight was not smooth and light, but erratic. They dropped, and they rose; they veered left and right, though all the while speeding recklessly together. They skimmed over the cars in a way that seemed both graceful and clumsy, and was also alarming, as though they could have been hit at any moment. I was mesmerised by the sight. And it seemed like I was the only one who saw it. I didn’t see any response from the cars. I saw no one pointing. The girls said nothing. It was happening so quickly, I wouldn’t capture the girls’ attention fast enough. Then the parrots were gone.

Not totally gone. They had swept off the road and into the park ahead. That was our direction. I heard the daredevils. I spotted them. They had found perches at the top of one of the slender trees along the canal, among bare branches. They were happy to chatter there. And again, we were past before I could point or explain. They remained my little secret.

The birds have returned. Above, in the gloaming hour of evening, the Canada geese call.

Travelogue 1239 – 20 February
The Animal Arena

Baby Jos took a friend to the movies yesterday. Which means she also brought her sister and me. The outing was very exciting for them, riding their bikes downtown, buying treats, navigating the theatre complex. That something so easy can still be exciting for them makes me happy. Who knows how many years I still have for these simple pleasures, creating joy with an afternoon outing into town, enjoying their guileless smiles, being their ally in life, sharing in their laughs?

The film was an optimistic one. I can recommend it. “Goat” has a simple plot, the triumph of an unlikely hero. The animated cast are animals, and the field of triumph is a jungle version of basketball. His triumph is a fun story, and the animation is beautiful, looking more like paint on canvas than digital.

Because the heroes and villains are animals, they are easily typed. The goat is a “small”, playing against typically powerful animals. It isn’t that the animals have to act their types – e.g., the giraffe is a rapper and the rhino is sensitive, - but the separation between them is clear and visual. The result is a parable about diversity and acceptance. We know this – animals in fables have been put to this purpose for decades now. 

It's what I don't see that is more interesting to me. Because the characters are visually distinct, and their roles in the plot are established early, there should plenty of film time for character development, for exploration of personality and crisis. The plot’s crisis is also simple, easily resolved. There should be room for surprises, for revealing the kinds of foibles and contradictions that can make even children’s characters interesting.

But we don’t live in a time that values character, do we? In times when personal roles and goals are rigid and clear, foibles and contradictions can enliven art and lead to complex thought. But this just isn’t an age for great character development. We love plot and action. We love political and moral messaging. It may appear that we’re seeing character development because we identify with and we love our movie and series characters so much. Ironically, the instant love we experience may be more a sign that we are being expertly manipulated than that we are being offered challenging characters. The truth is, we need these friends; in a time of moral desolation, we need our fictional friends more than we need intellectual challenge.

Ultimately, the conclusion I’m led to is that the (unconscious?) function of movies like yesterday’s is instruction. It reminds me of lessons I am familiar with as a language teacher: what do I say in a situation like … (example)? Everyone feels lost in new territory. Our society (and I mean Western societies in general) is so fluid, and so lacking in boundaries, restrictions, guidelines, and instruction, that many of us are lost; we have little real security in our identity. This goes some distance in explaining the forcefulness with which some people identify themselves. Being a nationalist is not enough, for example, but one must shout it, wear red hats, assert egregious positions, make sure someone is prone on the ground so they know who they are confronted with. But it’s not only the bad guys; everyone is desperate for identity.

Teens and pre-teens are hungry for behavioural guidance. The characters in this film never miss a beat. They always say the right things for their type. The newcomer is humble and salty in just the right proportions. The supporting characters have wit and wisdom. The awkward character never crosses the line into being unbearable. The foil is present in just the right measure. And the dialogue is perfectly pitched between cool and sincere. I can feel the kids soaking all this up. This is gold for them.

Here is where we are with character. Because of my forever book project, I’ve spent a good deal of time skimming through what is popular among new books in my genre. And I’ve sampled lots of agent and publisher advice. Characters are meant to be formulaic. Certain combinations of types are a must, and each main character should have one complication to make them human. More complication is only distracting. Do not slow the reader down! The character’s job is to propel you through the pages. You can deliver a small arc to the character flaw, offer minor reader satisfaction there, but don’t resolve it completely, especially if you plan a series with this character. Do not lose focus on the movement.

Travelogue 1238 – 16 February
Snow Again

This morning, the snow is all gone. None of it is left on the ground. That was a strange episode, yesterday, dream-like and sudden. I couldn’t even make it home on my bike in the afternoon, the snow was blowing so strongly into my face. The cars were slowly trudging along next to me on the Nieuwe Binnenweg, inches from my shoulder, and I could barely see. I decided to stop.

There was a table available at the Pelgrim beer pub, a table by the window. I slowly warmed my hands, slowly shrugged off the jacket. The snow was thick and wet on my back and my arms. My backpack was wet. The morning had been sunny and moderate, so I hadn’t brought any gear for rain or snow. It had come as a shock to emerge from the Wijkpaleis and encounter the snow swirling the air, the wind sharp in my face, the street covered in snow, the cars slowly crunching their way through it. My bicycle looked shrunken and abandoned, standing locked in the accumulation of new snow.

I had been at the Wijkpaleis reading through a new play with a group of actors. It had been a fun event, and even successful, if success is measured by the amount of constructive criticism. If measured by praise, the play was as successful as I my weather prediction. As often happens in my early drafts, a fine cast of characters find themselves lost in a poorly managed plot. There is a logic underneath the surface, but they stumble over the awkward arrangement of elements and lost themselves in the lacunae, the things unexplained.

I thought it was a sad play, written in a sad season. The actors did not see what I saw, and it made me question myself. Mood is a tricky tool in writing. Mood is a tricky thing in life. It comes and it goes. You cannot really make someone sad with writing. You can remind them they are sad, at the most.

Mood is not a story. Plotlines are not sad or happy; they are tragic or comedic. Characters may be sad. Like most people, our characters will be sad alone. Tragic events are more likely to trigger other things than sadness, such as indignation, curiosity, a thrill of recognition, or contemplation.

Perhaps my characters are victims of a sad season, brought to life against their will, as we all are, by a sad pater. I feel some responsibility. As I rewrite, the same characters will remain trapped in their tragic plot, like a Nietzschean loop, hashing out their sad fates over and over. One ought to have compassion for their characters.

The snow didn’t let up. I had been watching it fall over the canal outside the pub, while cyclists passed unsteadily, covered in layers that are dark against the snow, that made them bigger and clumsier, that made them seem faceless. People on foot were laughing, gathering snowballs. When my triple was finished, I left. I was done with the bike; I would pick it up tomorrow. I bowed my head, and I headed for the Metro station.

Travelogue 1237 – 8 February
The Beautiful Things

The weekend was a pleasant distraction from computer problems. My girls had their moments to shine. Little Ren competed in a gymnastics tournament. This only happens once or twice a year. During the tournament, girls compete in four events over the course of a couple hours, while parents resent each other in the uncomfortable bleachers. It was Ren’s first time trying a floor routine with music, and she was very nervous. I gave her hugs on the way there, telling her everyone gets nervous. She didn’t answer, and upon arrival at the sporthal, she ditched me as soon as she saw her teammates. But she was smiling, and she was fidgeting with anticipation.

All in all, it went well, in that halting, swaying way of young girls. To me, it was a gold-medal performance. She had a few signature moves in her routine, things she had been proud of for years, including the “bridge”, in which she manages to arch backward until her palms lie flat on the mat, and then push with her feet and roll through a handstand until her feet touch the floor on the other side. It’s quite a feat of flexibility, at least for a proud father.

On Sunday, both girls had ballet class, and the lessons were open for parents. I was impressed by how hard they work for an hour each week. Baby Jos is at an age in which the teacher can teach, rather than just show and drill. She pays attention to detail; she corrects; she explains why each move should be executed the way it is, the visual effect and how it flows into the next move. Such a simple thing was moving to me, the passing on of a tradition centuries old, and in such a matter-of-fact way that it was the very expression of hope for me. Of course what we are doing here today is important. Every beautiful movement counts. Every calibration makes the art form work, justifies it, illuminates it, and illuminates our lives. This is important.

They have started working on the bar, too, which warms my heart for some reason. The rows of girls stretch one arm toward the bar, hold the other delicately in position, and they are run through various positions and moves, rising and dipping, and it’s all so lovely. When Baby Jos, the oldest, started ballet, I learned the names for the positions, but I have forgotten. I will have to review them.

Travelogue 1236 – 7 February
Machine RIP

February had a rough start. My trusty old computer died. Picture a cartoon jalopy and the sound it makes as it collapses, like the sigh of an abandoned squeezebox. The poor machine had been pushed pretty far. So far that I had already begun to worry. I had begun with some expediencies in the fall, opening the laptop up, replacing the battery, adding RAM. I was just figuring out how I would replace the hard drive when the thing seized up.

It was a February when I bought the little monster, back in 2019! Suddenly I had to buy a new one. There was no other way. Now an alien machine sits in its place on my desk. We are getting to know each other, the new one and I. She is thinner than the old one, but longer. Her dimensions throw me off. The keyboard doesn’t match the one I’m used to, so I make mistakes. She makes more noise when I touch her, and that is exciting, as though we might go farther.

Years of notes are gone. The desktop is blank. Even my photo of old Rotterdam has vanished, to be replaced by a generic AI image of sand dunes. Apps need to be reloaded. Old files need to be reloaded. Some are just lost. It’s uncertain territory, something like the AI wasteland in the picture, lacking real features. One finds he hasn’t been aware of all the character that was accumulating inside the flat little box on the desk, the box that has a lid that lights up when you open it.