Travelogue 385 – February 25
Picnic Parties
I have a free day! Or I should say I have an expensive free day. I've committed to coming into London at least once a week for foundation business. This week, it's been twice. And that during 'half-term', when all the children of England are on leave from school, and train tickets prices nearly double. And since all appointments but one have fallen through for the day, I've spent a good deal of money for a free day in London.
I can't say I mind too much. The price has been paid, and I don't get many free days anymore. I leave Paddington Station by the front door and stand blinking in a neighborhood I've never seen before. I have arrived often enough at Paddington, but have always headed from the train straight to the Tube.
I hadn't quite realized before how close the station was to Hyde Park. I meander around the park for a while. I feel obliged: the sun is making a sincere effort, after all. The park is crowded. I return to the streets by Speaker's Corner (where once again free speech is a dead letter) and Marble Arch, and I veer around busy May Fair.
My evening meeting is in Marylebone, so that's where I head. I've taken the long route from Paddington. And it's fortunate I did because I encounter some old friends at Manchester Square. Some of them I ran into just a few weeks ago in Amsterdam. These are an elite set of friends, I must say. Not just anyone gets to see them. One has to know where they hang out – or to be as lucky as I am.
Rembrandt isn't looking his usual stunning self, but Frans Hals is convivial as ever. His 'Laughing Cavalier' captures some of his finest spirit, the roguish underside of the old, black-clad Dutch imperial soul, captures the sarcasm without which a Nederlander would be a German.
This is the Wallace Collection, a very fine museum in this city of museums, and one I hadn't heard of before. Well worth the visit, though: the booty of five generations of aristocratic collectors lodged in the urban palace they called home, replete with all manner of knick-knacks. There's exquisite eighteenth-century furniture and porcelain, old armour and weapons, sculpture bronze and marble, snuff boxes, and just a few paintings. Beside my Dutch friends, there are lots of Boucher and Watteau, Rubens and Reynolds, Van Dyck and Canaletto.
My loves of the day were Van Dyck and Watteau. Anthony Van Dyck shows up with a half dozen or so tall portraits, my favorite being that of Philippe Le Roy, savvy illegitimate son of some savvy merchant in Antwerp. He's obviously done well for himself, securing his place among the great portraits of the day, scratching the head of his hunting dog and looking generally contented with himself, and well he should, being drawn so well. He's beautiful.
I'll pause before applauding Watteau, just to tip my (brimless) hat to Monsieur Fragonard, who produced 'The Swing', one of the funner pieces of the exhibit, showing two languid gentlemen pushing a lady on a swing in one of those idealized little Rococo woods dotted with classical ruins. The lady condescends to make a kick just above one smiling gentleman, opening a view up her voluminous skirts. Her look is one of scientific detachment and pity, really – his, one of simple rapture.
But on to Jean-Antoine Watteau, our trickster of the day, the originator of the genre that Fragonard has had such fun with. Moving along the museum wall, from one piece of Watteau to another, is to advance through a veritable forgotten decade of parties, debauched aristocrats making merry in dozens of idyllic parks and woods, furnished with the detritus of a thousand years of classical architecture and statuary. There are music men in ruffles, and lounging men and lounging women, sniffing dogs, and all under the shade of fair trees, Midsummer Night's Dream for the Gallic leisure classes, Arcadia by Versailles. And what's funny is how the woods predominate over the diminutive partiers, making the paintings fantastical landscapes as much as anything, studies in mortality as much as studies of revelry. Placing them in bizarre classical theme parks just makes them appear all the more fragile to my mind, whereas I think the point was to glorify humanity a la Mirandola.
There's an interesting set of portraits on one wall, three takes by three of the most prominent British painters of the eighteenth century, all of a young lady nicknamed Perdita. Perdita is one of those British actresses that rose to heights near legend in the centuries after Shakespeare had created roles like … Perdita. It was playing that particular role that she – sadly – caught the eye of the raunchy young Prince of Wales, the future King George IV. The affair made her and destroyed her. These portraits caught her in that all-too-brief shining moment between the two. And the portraits are remarkably consistent, preserving the eyes of brilliant mordancy, the beauty poised at its passing fullest phase.
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Death and the Art of Lying
by Jarvis Lawrence Mundi III
Phase One, in Which Doris Gets Her Oats
February 24
You know, Mr. Ishiguro, the question the artist must ask him or herself at all times is, 'When is it ruined?' The 'it' here is undefined, as, of course, most art is. Let's frame it in the broadest sense: when is life ruined? Or, better: when is a human being ruined?
It's odd that one of the previews before the screening of your film would be the new Herzog film that claims to take us to the roots of art, to the Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc cave in southern France, where human kind's earliest paintings are preserved, some 30,000 years-old. Oh, dear old Werner.
Mr. Ishiguro, do you know what the paintings portray? Animals.
It was the last night your film would be showing at Bath's precious 'Little Theatre'. It's been here since I arrived, and I gave you my word I would see it, didn't I? You didn't tell me that you yourself would be introducing the film at this very venue on Sunday night, which will in fact be the last showing.
I had two dubious reasons for wanting to view the film. The first is that I read your novel, the basis for the film. The novel was heart-wrenching, quietly bizarre and affecting. My second reason can be found in the promotional poster, an entrancing shot of Keira Knightley. She is so clearly looking at me every time I walk by, and trying to tell me something. It might be something erotic. More than likely, it's something mournful. It's a sad thought that hasn't occurred to me yet in all these years of morbid thoughts.
The author has produced the film adaptation. The author has claimed his stake in the hieratic line of homo delectus, the creature that lavishes hours on his portrait of water buffalo on submerged stone walls.
I've seen a lot of you lately, Kazuo, among the shreds of newsprint left on cafe tables. You have posed for photographic studies of Zen sensation, chilly celebrity. You render studied spoken-word paragraphs about the wonder of new parenthood. You speak about life. Your countenance, subdued as it is, by artifice, speaks of life.
The animals portrayed are alive. Blood flows through their veins.
There's something amiss in your film rendering, Kazuo. I don't mean to offend, but I read in your meditative news photos a willingness to hear. The actors are great. In fact, in the manner of many art-house films these days, the acting is the show. It's on display, much like certain mixes of gunpowder on the Fourth of July. One might just lose the trail of the story in admiration of the acting. And then, one awakens to the discrepancy between film and book. One remembers how one was moved.
Oh, Kazuo, I'm so tired of death. The old man with the sickle has been standing by for so many years now, I'm weary of him. He has the breath of a decrepit dog, or maybe of decaying autumn leaves lying too long in wait of a late winter. I wake at night and detect that stench. I know he's been warming himself at my feet, reading Dostoevsky, puffing a cold Meerschaum. I recall a dream in which I'm crying hopelessly.
When is it the milk has spoiled, Kazuo? 'Read the date,' he replies. When is a man ruined?
Watching your film, I'm enchanted by Keira. I'm even more enchanted by Carey Mulligan. But all it takes is a moment, like the careless step of the artisan in the marketplace, when he loses control of the fragile silver mirror, and it shatters. We all stand over it, and we privately mourn. Very privately. One moment I'm admiring lovely Carey, and in the next, I see only Leeza.
That's when the tear comes. One tear comes. It demands something of me. It's all good and well to indulge in the abundant talents of actors while safely indoors. But outside, the storm makes its demands.
I have to confess, my dear friend, that in that moment I know you're a fraud. You love beauty too much.
Do you think the artist of Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc painted the water buffalo because he thought it was beautiful? Don't be fatuous, Kazuo. We might think his painting is beautiful; that is a very different matter.
I'm so tired of Death. I feel the weariness in my bones, like a debilitating flu. It aches in me. It pulls me down at night with insidious, gentle force. And the old man sucks in a chilly breath in delight when he reads about Ivan Karamazov. 'My, my,' he whispers just below the level of hearing, 'such beauty!' I awaken just then from another dream about Leeza. She is still beautiful.
Do you think that Leeza was beautiful because she loved beauty? That sweet soul? You offend me, friend. You really do. I dream about her. She is still beautiful. And every time I awaken, I must give her back to dust.
Who is the real heir to the artist of Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc? Think about that late at night.
by Jarvis Lawrence Mundi III
Phase One, in Which Doris Gets Her Oats
February 24
You know, Mr. Ishiguro, the question the artist must ask him or herself at all times is, 'When is it ruined?' The 'it' here is undefined, as, of course, most art is. Let's frame it in the broadest sense: when is life ruined? Or, better: when is a human being ruined?
It's odd that one of the previews before the screening of your film would be the new Herzog film that claims to take us to the roots of art, to the Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc cave in southern France, where human kind's earliest paintings are preserved, some 30,000 years-old. Oh, dear old Werner.
Mr. Ishiguro, do you know what the paintings portray? Animals.
It was the last night your film would be showing at Bath's precious 'Little Theatre'. It's been here since I arrived, and I gave you my word I would see it, didn't I? You didn't tell me that you yourself would be introducing the film at this very venue on Sunday night, which will in fact be the last showing.
I had two dubious reasons for wanting to view the film. The first is that I read your novel, the basis for the film. The novel was heart-wrenching, quietly bizarre and affecting. My second reason can be found in the promotional poster, an entrancing shot of Keira Knightley. She is so clearly looking at me every time I walk by, and trying to tell me something. It might be something erotic. More than likely, it's something mournful. It's a sad thought that hasn't occurred to me yet in all these years of morbid thoughts.
The author has produced the film adaptation. The author has claimed his stake in the hieratic line of homo delectus, the creature that lavishes hours on his portrait of water buffalo on submerged stone walls.
I've seen a lot of you lately, Kazuo, among the shreds of newsprint left on cafe tables. You have posed for photographic studies of Zen sensation, chilly celebrity. You render studied spoken-word paragraphs about the wonder of new parenthood. You speak about life. Your countenance, subdued as it is, by artifice, speaks of life.
The animals portrayed are alive. Blood flows through their veins.
There's something amiss in your film rendering, Kazuo. I don't mean to offend, but I read in your meditative news photos a willingness to hear. The actors are great. In fact, in the manner of many art-house films these days, the acting is the show. It's on display, much like certain mixes of gunpowder on the Fourth of July. One might just lose the trail of the story in admiration of the acting. And then, one awakens to the discrepancy between film and book. One remembers how one was moved.
Oh, Kazuo, I'm so tired of death. The old man with the sickle has been standing by for so many years now, I'm weary of him. He has the breath of a decrepit dog, or maybe of decaying autumn leaves lying too long in wait of a late winter. I wake at night and detect that stench. I know he's been warming himself at my feet, reading Dostoevsky, puffing a cold Meerschaum. I recall a dream in which I'm crying hopelessly.
When is it the milk has spoiled, Kazuo? 'Read the date,' he replies. When is a man ruined?
Watching your film, I'm enchanted by Keira. I'm even more enchanted by Carey Mulligan. But all it takes is a moment, like the careless step of the artisan in the marketplace, when he loses control of the fragile silver mirror, and it shatters. We all stand over it, and we privately mourn. Very privately. One moment I'm admiring lovely Carey, and in the next, I see only Leeza.
That's when the tear comes. One tear comes. It demands something of me. It's all good and well to indulge in the abundant talents of actors while safely indoors. But outside, the storm makes its demands.
I have to confess, my dear friend, that in that moment I know you're a fraud. You love beauty too much.
Do you think the artist of Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc painted the water buffalo because he thought it was beautiful? Don't be fatuous, Kazuo. We might think his painting is beautiful; that is a very different matter.
I'm so tired of Death. I feel the weariness in my bones, like a debilitating flu. It aches in me. It pulls me down at night with insidious, gentle force. And the old man sucks in a chilly breath in delight when he reads about Ivan Karamazov. 'My, my,' he whispers just below the level of hearing, 'such beauty!' I awaken just then from another dream about Leeza. She is still beautiful.
Do you think that Leeza was beautiful because she loved beauty? That sweet soul? You offend me, friend. You really do. I dream about her. She is still beautiful. And every time I awaken, I must give her back to dust.
Who is the real heir to the artist of Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc? Think about that late at night.
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Travelogue 383 – February 19
My Space
Part Two
I've learned a few key things about myself living in Bath. I've learned that my average walking speed is between two and three miles per hour. I know that because I pass the bus station every evening on the way home. As I walk beside the ramp for buses, a sign flashes a message at me in red: Slow Down! And it gives me a reading for speed. When I'm cheery, it's three miles per hour; when I'm down it's two. Most times, it alternates between the two as I pass.
And there are the more disappointing things I've learned about myself. I'm staying in the loft room of a rather nice home on the rooftop of Bath, at the top of Beechen Cliff. This is Pey's neighborhood, of course, and one I'm very familiar with, and still infatuated with. I look out one window and see, well, Pey's house. I look out another and I see a panorama of the hills south of Bath. Looking right, I also see the green fields stretching toward Bristol. I am fond of that prospect. One day a few weeks ago, I set out to run to Bristol, and I passed among those very hills and fields. The run itself was something of a disaster; it did wonders for my now infamous injuries. And I wasn't even able to finish the entire course, only reaching the outskirts of downtown Bristol before I stopped at the sight of a supermarket, into which I staggered, insulting and shoving aside a pregnant woman who stood in front of the juices. A pint of orange juice dispatched, I grumpily boarded a local bus to the train station.
Anyway, my house in owned by Becky, and occupied by her and her two pre-teens. One day, I'm stalled in the middle of changing for my daily run when I get a phone call, and simultaneously there's a knock on my bedroom door. I vaguely say, 'Yeah?' and the door begins to swing inward. It's the boy of the family inviting me downstairs for lunch. But I don't know who is coming in, so I retreat, mid-sentence on the phone, behind the corner by my bed. The boy takes no clues and follows me, staring at my bare chest. 'Right. No, thanks there, James,' I reply politely, standing in the dark corner of my room, feeling only silly embarrassment.
One imagines there must be a submerged and, hopefully, an adequately repressed thrill in occurrences like this, (at least if 'one' is a post-Lolita urban Westerner). But I'm here to report, there is no joy in standing nearly naked before a pre-teen. What's left of the artist in me is disappointed. What's a good bohemian without indecent, illicit, thrills?
More disappointments: I'm learning again that I'm horrible at accents, and this is really one of the great tragedies of my life. I have always loved the company of those who can do accents. They have my permission to indulge in accents all night with me, and I'll delight like an idiot the whole time. After a few days in Bath, my internal voice speaks in a Bath accent. It's a very fun one. In any case, I am incapable of translating that voice into the external world. My attempts are embarrassing. What makes it all the worse is the teasing I receive at the hands of said pre-teens. They would naturally find the American accent amusing. When I try to mimic theirs, I just get laughs.
I'm learning that I don't mind the rain so much. I have made a great point in the past of my general opposition to the concept and experience of rain. I have taken care to differentiate between rain and snow, as a good Minnesotan should. Dry precipitation is quite acceptable in my book. For best effect, don't start the storm until it's well under freezing. The only exception to my rule about snow is if I have to drive. But I have equally strong objections to the concept and experience of driving, so that by rights falls under a different subtitle. (And driving in Great Britain merits another entire diatribe.)
But rain in England is simply … appropriate, isn't it? I prepped myself psychologically while in sunny Ethiopia. I know northern Europe far too well. What's more, while I was still a runner – oh, those glorious days … only last week – while I was a runner, I found clouds and drizzle pleasant. 'Clouds and drizzle' just about covers it. That's ninety percent of the weather here. I harbor entirely different emotions for a gentle drizzle than I do for rain. It's meditative; it's melancholy. It doesn't ruin your clothes. It doesn't ruin your hairstyle. The latter is all the more important now that I can't afford a visit to the barber.
I wake in the mornings. I assess the day's variation on clouds and drizzle. I watch the impacts of the precipitation on the skylight, against the weak and grey northern light of the sky. If I can count the raindrops, it's nice enough to go out. And that's most of the time. The air outside is fragrant of lush growth and mold, fresh with the rain.
My Space
Part Two
I've learned a few key things about myself living in Bath. I've learned that my average walking speed is between two and three miles per hour. I know that because I pass the bus station every evening on the way home. As I walk beside the ramp for buses, a sign flashes a message at me in red: Slow Down! And it gives me a reading for speed. When I'm cheery, it's three miles per hour; when I'm down it's two. Most times, it alternates between the two as I pass.
And there are the more disappointing things I've learned about myself. I'm staying in the loft room of a rather nice home on the rooftop of Bath, at the top of Beechen Cliff. This is Pey's neighborhood, of course, and one I'm very familiar with, and still infatuated with. I look out one window and see, well, Pey's house. I look out another and I see a panorama of the hills south of Bath. Looking right, I also see the green fields stretching toward Bristol. I am fond of that prospect. One day a few weeks ago, I set out to run to Bristol, and I passed among those very hills and fields. The run itself was something of a disaster; it did wonders for my now infamous injuries. And I wasn't even able to finish the entire course, only reaching the outskirts of downtown Bristol before I stopped at the sight of a supermarket, into which I staggered, insulting and shoving aside a pregnant woman who stood in front of the juices. A pint of orange juice dispatched, I grumpily boarded a local bus to the train station.
Anyway, my house in owned by Becky, and occupied by her and her two pre-teens. One day, I'm stalled in the middle of changing for my daily run when I get a phone call, and simultaneously there's a knock on my bedroom door. I vaguely say, 'Yeah?' and the door begins to swing inward. It's the boy of the family inviting me downstairs for lunch. But I don't know who is coming in, so I retreat, mid-sentence on the phone, behind the corner by my bed. The boy takes no clues and follows me, staring at my bare chest. 'Right. No, thanks there, James,' I reply politely, standing in the dark corner of my room, feeling only silly embarrassment.
One imagines there must be a submerged and, hopefully, an adequately repressed thrill in occurrences like this, (at least if 'one' is a post-Lolita urban Westerner). But I'm here to report, there is no joy in standing nearly naked before a pre-teen. What's left of the artist in me is disappointed. What's a good bohemian without indecent, illicit, thrills?
More disappointments: I'm learning again that I'm horrible at accents, and this is really one of the great tragedies of my life. I have always loved the company of those who can do accents. They have my permission to indulge in accents all night with me, and I'll delight like an idiot the whole time. After a few days in Bath, my internal voice speaks in a Bath accent. It's a very fun one. In any case, I am incapable of translating that voice into the external world. My attempts are embarrassing. What makes it all the worse is the teasing I receive at the hands of said pre-teens. They would naturally find the American accent amusing. When I try to mimic theirs, I just get laughs.
I'm learning that I don't mind the rain so much. I have made a great point in the past of my general opposition to the concept and experience of rain. I have taken care to differentiate between rain and snow, as a good Minnesotan should. Dry precipitation is quite acceptable in my book. For best effect, don't start the storm until it's well under freezing. The only exception to my rule about snow is if I have to drive. But I have equally strong objections to the concept and experience of driving, so that by rights falls under a different subtitle. (And driving in Great Britain merits another entire diatribe.)
But rain in England is simply … appropriate, isn't it? I prepped myself psychologically while in sunny Ethiopia. I know northern Europe far too well. What's more, while I was still a runner – oh, those glorious days … only last week – while I was a runner, I found clouds and drizzle pleasant. 'Clouds and drizzle' just about covers it. That's ninety percent of the weather here. I harbor entirely different emotions for a gentle drizzle than I do for rain. It's meditative; it's melancholy. It doesn't ruin your clothes. It doesn't ruin your hairstyle. The latter is all the more important now that I can't afford a visit to the barber.
I wake in the mornings. I assess the day's variation on clouds and drizzle. I watch the impacts of the precipitation on the skylight, against the weak and grey northern light of the sky. If I can count the raindrops, it's nice enough to go out. And that's most of the time. The air outside is fragrant of lush growth and mold, fresh with the rain.
Friday, February 18, 2011
Travelogue 382 – February 18
My Space
Part One
It's Friday night, and I've allowed myself to work too late. The consequences are unique to England. I should back up and set the scene. I'm just about two weeks into a working vacation in Bath, England. I'm renting a bedroom up the hill in Pey's lovely neighborhood on top of the steep hill above and south of town center.
I keep the work going. Work never stops, no matter what the locale. In Bath, my day is divided into three shifts, Sunday to Saturday. The morning shift is all about Ethiopia. I walk down the hill and enter the precincts of lovely, centuries-old Bath stone, looking for my work station. I spend loads of time in front of the netbook. And then my second shift begins. That entails the first of many hikes back up the intimidating hill, back home. After some tidying up of the morning's work, I'm off to train. I'm training for the Bath Half, March 6. I'm only achieving mixed results at best with that work, dealing as I am with a host of old-man maladies and injuries.
The third shift is generally writing. That has to happen in a pub. The English pub is a wonderfully inspiring work space. It follows a nearly invariable pattern, in its décor and in its hours. Since I'm fond of early evenings and early bedtimes, I like to get right to work after training, ordering my first pint by five. The earlier the better. There are practical reasons for that. The after-work crowd comes in soon afterward. And on a Friday night, the crowd is unruly.
I'm working ar Molloy's tonight. At six, the boys enter. They start in with me right away. The lads are not from Bath; their accents are broad and hard to follow. One of them seems to want to tell me about how fit he and his mates are. Another is very curious whether I'm up to business or to porn. 'Are you a businessman, are you?' No, I'm …. Another one seems to want to know about my digestion, or possibly my bum. All of it is delivered in a rapid-fire, drug-accelerated patois that I only partially understand.
Glenn takes a special interest in me, and the boys have a good laugh while he chats me up. He could be from a movie, possibly from a cartoon, he's so street-Brit skinhead. He's small and wiry, and looks perennially ready for a brawl. His eyes are piercing and mocking He wants to know who I am, where I'm from, and what I'm doing. Magically, the only thing I have to do in order to avoid a thrashing is to talk with him.
See, Glenn is from Swindon, a larger and more working class city not far from Bath to the east, on the way to London. In Bath, he says, leaning into me in his muscular and confidential manner, the people don't reply when you say hello. They're just blank, he says. 'It doesn't cost much, does it? Just to say hello? Some people, it makes their day, doesn't it? Just a friendly hello.' I cannot disagree. I ask about Swindon folk. He informs me they are 'skatty'. 'You know, they come out with the most random comments. 'They might say, “Good morning, ma'am. How are you this morning, and could you please tell me how are your sausages are getting on?” You know, something like that.'
Glenn and I are quickly mates. The blokes wander off, bored with teasing Glenn, who takes no notice. He's having a good chat with his new mate, Dan. (That's me.) There are so many things he wants to tell me about. He wants to tell me about raves. He tells me about the biggest of them all in Stratford-on-Avon. He fishes for the phone in his deep trouser pockets. The screensaver on the phone is photo of a young lady with a very fine figure and unblemished skin. She's showing lots of that skin, her legs spread. Glenn starts scrolling through photo files until he finds several videos, informing me as he does about the size and craziness of this rave. The video is less than crazy. There are people meandering among tents. 'You like bass and drums?' He demands, and he shows me the drum and bass tent. There are bobbing heads and a stage far off. 'Wow,' I say.
Glenn wants to tell me about doing the bungee jump at the rave, all 'pilled up'. His accent is getting the better of me, and I nod. It seems the line for the bungee event is a long one, and he combats his boredom with another set of pills, borrowing a bottle of water from his neighbor in line. (This last detail involves a story of its own, several minutes long, that slides right by me. Glenn weaves in the seat next to me, continually swinging back toward me, nearly butting heads and never letting his gaze waver.) 'Can you see it, mate? Bungee jumping on pills (on pi-ws)? How crazy is that?' I never find out what the pills were, and I wouldn't be shocked to find out that he never knew himself.
The lads have moved on. The boy who is 'fit' comes back. 'How are we doing, laddies?' It occurs to Glenn that this is his time to exit. He rises, and he makes several attempts at an exit, returning with vital observations. And then Glenn is gone. I could work, but my computer is packed away. I'm done for the day.
And that's the challenge of working in English pubs. The people are very friendly. On one of my first nights in Bath, I'm working at the Bear, a local pub up on the hill. Suddenly it's quiz night. People are flooding in. Tables are reserved. Richard invites me to join his group. Richard is another chatty bloke. He, his mate, his girfriend, and I form a quiz team. I tell them about Ethiopia. They tell me about their business – selling sex toys via the internet. I'm sure they're yanking my chain, but they earnestly insist. Richard backs it up by naming a sex shop in Minneapolis that he had heard about in … trade magazines (?), a place he remembers because it is owned by 'serious lesbians'.
For the record, our team does fairly well. There are six rounds, and my biggest contribution is during the round about dictators. Go figure. We lose it in the last round, the subject of which is British soap operas. It's worth losing to see the pub denizens creasing brows and slapping knees over who was so-and-so's fourth wife, the one who subsequently rose from the dead to exact vengeance.
Oh, fortitude, lend me fortitude, my Muse, as I try to craft a brief life and a brief book in old Bath Spa, so unresponsive to the hellos of Swindon lads but so overflowing with brotherly feelings for the writer from bloody America.
My readers will be relieved, it occurs to me, that I was able to catch the match between Arsenal and Barcelona the night before last, against all odds … but that's a tale for next time, innit? Cheers.
My Space
Part One
It's Friday night, and I've allowed myself to work too late. The consequences are unique to England. I should back up and set the scene. I'm just about two weeks into a working vacation in Bath, England. I'm renting a bedroom up the hill in Pey's lovely neighborhood on top of the steep hill above and south of town center.
I keep the work going. Work never stops, no matter what the locale. In Bath, my day is divided into three shifts, Sunday to Saturday. The morning shift is all about Ethiopia. I walk down the hill and enter the precincts of lovely, centuries-old Bath stone, looking for my work station. I spend loads of time in front of the netbook. And then my second shift begins. That entails the first of many hikes back up the intimidating hill, back home. After some tidying up of the morning's work, I'm off to train. I'm training for the Bath Half, March 6. I'm only achieving mixed results at best with that work, dealing as I am with a host of old-man maladies and injuries.
The third shift is generally writing. That has to happen in a pub. The English pub is a wonderfully inspiring work space. It follows a nearly invariable pattern, in its décor and in its hours. Since I'm fond of early evenings and early bedtimes, I like to get right to work after training, ordering my first pint by five. The earlier the better. There are practical reasons for that. The after-work crowd comes in soon afterward. And on a Friday night, the crowd is unruly.
I'm working ar Molloy's tonight. At six, the boys enter. They start in with me right away. The lads are not from Bath; their accents are broad and hard to follow. One of them seems to want to tell me about how fit he and his mates are. Another is very curious whether I'm up to business or to porn. 'Are you a businessman, are you?' No, I'm …. Another one seems to want to know about my digestion, or possibly my bum. All of it is delivered in a rapid-fire, drug-accelerated patois that I only partially understand.
Glenn takes a special interest in me, and the boys have a good laugh while he chats me up. He could be from a movie, possibly from a cartoon, he's so street-Brit skinhead. He's small and wiry, and looks perennially ready for a brawl. His eyes are piercing and mocking He wants to know who I am, where I'm from, and what I'm doing. Magically, the only thing I have to do in order to avoid a thrashing is to talk with him.
See, Glenn is from Swindon, a larger and more working class city not far from Bath to the east, on the way to London. In Bath, he says, leaning into me in his muscular and confidential manner, the people don't reply when you say hello. They're just blank, he says. 'It doesn't cost much, does it? Just to say hello? Some people, it makes their day, doesn't it? Just a friendly hello.' I cannot disagree. I ask about Swindon folk. He informs me they are 'skatty'. 'You know, they come out with the most random comments. 'They might say, “Good morning, ma'am. How are you this morning, and could you please tell me how are your sausages are getting on?” You know, something like that.'
Glenn and I are quickly mates. The blokes wander off, bored with teasing Glenn, who takes no notice. He's having a good chat with his new mate, Dan. (That's me.) There are so many things he wants to tell me about. He wants to tell me about raves. He tells me about the biggest of them all in Stratford-on-Avon. He fishes for the phone in his deep trouser pockets. The screensaver on the phone is photo of a young lady with a very fine figure and unblemished skin. She's showing lots of that skin, her legs spread. Glenn starts scrolling through photo files until he finds several videos, informing me as he does about the size and craziness of this rave. The video is less than crazy. There are people meandering among tents. 'You like bass and drums?' He demands, and he shows me the drum and bass tent. There are bobbing heads and a stage far off. 'Wow,' I say.
Glenn wants to tell me about doing the bungee jump at the rave, all 'pilled up'. His accent is getting the better of me, and I nod. It seems the line for the bungee event is a long one, and he combats his boredom with another set of pills, borrowing a bottle of water from his neighbor in line. (This last detail involves a story of its own, several minutes long, that slides right by me. Glenn weaves in the seat next to me, continually swinging back toward me, nearly butting heads and never letting his gaze waver.) 'Can you see it, mate? Bungee jumping on pills (on pi-ws)? How crazy is that?' I never find out what the pills were, and I wouldn't be shocked to find out that he never knew himself.
The lads have moved on. The boy who is 'fit' comes back. 'How are we doing, laddies?' It occurs to Glenn that this is his time to exit. He rises, and he makes several attempts at an exit, returning with vital observations. And then Glenn is gone. I could work, but my computer is packed away. I'm done for the day.
And that's the challenge of working in English pubs. The people are very friendly. On one of my first nights in Bath, I'm working at the Bear, a local pub up on the hill. Suddenly it's quiz night. People are flooding in. Tables are reserved. Richard invites me to join his group. Richard is another chatty bloke. He, his mate, his girfriend, and I form a quiz team. I tell them about Ethiopia. They tell me about their business – selling sex toys via the internet. I'm sure they're yanking my chain, but they earnestly insist. Richard backs it up by naming a sex shop in Minneapolis that he had heard about in … trade magazines (?), a place he remembers because it is owned by 'serious lesbians'.
For the record, our team does fairly well. There are six rounds, and my biggest contribution is during the round about dictators. Go figure. We lose it in the last round, the subject of which is British soap operas. It's worth losing to see the pub denizens creasing brows and slapping knees over who was so-and-so's fourth wife, the one who subsequently rose from the dead to exact vengeance.
Oh, fortitude, lend me fortitude, my Muse, as I try to craft a brief life and a brief book in old Bath Spa, so unresponsive to the hellos of Swindon lads but so overflowing with brotherly feelings for the writer from bloody America.
My readers will be relieved, it occurs to me, that I was able to catch the match between Arsenal and Barcelona the night before last, against all odds … but that's a tale for next time, innit? Cheers.
Thursday, February 03, 2011
Travelogue 381 – February 3
Some Miles
My second day in Amsterdam is gorgeous! Even before I left Ethiopia, I resigned myself to clouds and cold for the whole of my European sojourn, but here it is, my second day in the gloomy north, and the sun is proudly shining. The sky is boldly blue. I rise from bed astonished and fortified by abundant daylight. It's exactly what I needed on a day set aside for loads of work and many miles training for the half marathon. The sun gives me strength.
Living at the HEM Hotel gives me access to two of the largest of Amsterdam's city parks, the Vondelpark and Rembrantspark. I set out in the afternoon, after a morning of work in the cafe on my netbook, after my breakfast of egg and bagel has digested. I throw on the battered running shoes that double as walking shoes on this trip, shoes breaking through in the toes and with arches that gave up the ghost long ago. I set out from the HEM, chasing the geese along the first canal, crossing over on the concrete bridge and heading north until the canal takes a ninety-degree turn. Carrying on in that direction, I eventually reach the Vondelpark.
The Vondelpark was opened in the mid-nineteenth century, one of those grand city parks so much the rage in the flush of the industrial age. It is reminiscent of New York's Central Park in its narrow shape, acting as a sort of bridge among some of the city's most traveled districts. I run the park's length along one side of the connected ponds in the middle of the park, running all the way to the garish casino that stands opposite the park's grand entrance at the first of the centrum's canals. And I run back again along the other side of the ponds, exiting the park toward the north.
I feel my way along the streets north of my neighborhood, guided by the google map in my head, eventually finding the Rembrandtpark, another sizable rectangle of meadows and paths squeezed among the dense blocks of Amsterdam. This park is more modern, dating only to the middle of the last century, partaking of the bleakness of post-industrialism, feeling more like a place of our times, 'urban' in the ugly way of our belated age. Poor old Rembrandtpark can't help that it was assigned some more down-and-out districts of the city to serve. It spans a few miles of the north-south axis of the city, vs. Vondelpark's posh east-west section of the town. By the time the park reaches its northern terminus, all pretense has been dropped. Precious city park acreage is devoted to a drive-through KFC. I jog by the scarce locals, the hookers, and the punks … twice. In order to get my mileage, I have the run the circuit of Rembrantpark two times, and then go back and circle Vondelpark one and a half times.
The next day, I'm sore and tired. The sky seems just as used up. Ignominious clouds have crept back. The HEM locks me out of my room while I'm out for coffee. The elevators don't work, so I walk up and down to the third floor three times trying each new key they give me, until finally a cleaning woman lectures me about check-out time and unlocks my door with Teutonic authority. I'm kicked out forthwith, and have to wander the dim streets until my evening flight.
Since I have the time, I figure out the bus route from Oud Zuid to Schiphol – that's the 197 for anyone interested – and then stare into some canals, stare into some coffees, stare into my computer screen. I'm tempted to check out another museum, but find I just don't have the energy.
Evening inches forward. It's been coming on since the first glow among the clouds. As the light fails, I find my bus stop. Amsterdam recedes into the night, strange rows of high rises removed from the centrum like corporate colonies. Half the people disembarking from the Schiphol bus are fast food and hotel and baggage employees, sulking teens and tired ghetto moms. Airports: where the jaded and the bone-weary meet to exchange soiled bank notes. Airports: monumental fluorescent-lit halls where the sleepless wander – the closest thing to a zombie movie you'll find in the real world.
Some Miles
My second day in Amsterdam is gorgeous! Even before I left Ethiopia, I resigned myself to clouds and cold for the whole of my European sojourn, but here it is, my second day in the gloomy north, and the sun is proudly shining. The sky is boldly blue. I rise from bed astonished and fortified by abundant daylight. It's exactly what I needed on a day set aside for loads of work and many miles training for the half marathon. The sun gives me strength.
Living at the HEM Hotel gives me access to two of the largest of Amsterdam's city parks, the Vondelpark and Rembrantspark. I set out in the afternoon, after a morning of work in the cafe on my netbook, after my breakfast of egg and bagel has digested. I throw on the battered running shoes that double as walking shoes on this trip, shoes breaking through in the toes and with arches that gave up the ghost long ago. I set out from the HEM, chasing the geese along the first canal, crossing over on the concrete bridge and heading north until the canal takes a ninety-degree turn. Carrying on in that direction, I eventually reach the Vondelpark.
The Vondelpark was opened in the mid-nineteenth century, one of those grand city parks so much the rage in the flush of the industrial age. It is reminiscent of New York's Central Park in its narrow shape, acting as a sort of bridge among some of the city's most traveled districts. I run the park's length along one side of the connected ponds in the middle of the park, running all the way to the garish casino that stands opposite the park's grand entrance at the first of the centrum's canals. And I run back again along the other side of the ponds, exiting the park toward the north.
I feel my way along the streets north of my neighborhood, guided by the google map in my head, eventually finding the Rembrandtpark, another sizable rectangle of meadows and paths squeezed among the dense blocks of Amsterdam. This park is more modern, dating only to the middle of the last century, partaking of the bleakness of post-industrialism, feeling more like a place of our times, 'urban' in the ugly way of our belated age. Poor old Rembrandtpark can't help that it was assigned some more down-and-out districts of the city to serve. It spans a few miles of the north-south axis of the city, vs. Vondelpark's posh east-west section of the town. By the time the park reaches its northern terminus, all pretense has been dropped. Precious city park acreage is devoted to a drive-through KFC. I jog by the scarce locals, the hookers, and the punks … twice. In order to get my mileage, I have the run the circuit of Rembrantpark two times, and then go back and circle Vondelpark one and a half times.
The next day, I'm sore and tired. The sky seems just as used up. Ignominious clouds have crept back. The HEM locks me out of my room while I'm out for coffee. The elevators don't work, so I walk up and down to the third floor three times trying each new key they give me, until finally a cleaning woman lectures me about check-out time and unlocks my door with Teutonic authority. I'm kicked out forthwith, and have to wander the dim streets until my evening flight.
Since I have the time, I figure out the bus route from Oud Zuid to Schiphol – that's the 197 for anyone interested – and then stare into some canals, stare into some coffees, stare into my computer screen. I'm tempted to check out another museum, but find I just don't have the energy.
Evening inches forward. It's been coming on since the first glow among the clouds. As the light fails, I find my bus stop. Amsterdam recedes into the night, strange rows of high rises removed from the centrum like corporate colonies. Half the people disembarking from the Schiphol bus are fast food and hotel and baggage employees, sulking teens and tired ghetto moms. Airports: where the jaded and the bone-weary meet to exchange soiled bank notes. Airports: monumental fluorescent-lit halls where the sleepless wander – the closest thing to a zombie movie you'll find in the real world.
Wednesday, February 02, 2011
Travelogue 380 – February 2
The Neighborhood
I've adopted a neighborhood again. That's what I do. In Rome, it's Colli Albani. In Addis, it's Shiro Meda and Amist Kilo – the north side. There's no compelling logic to my choices. They're often led haphazardly by the first contact, the proximity of my first hotel or a friend's place.
Neighborhoods suit me. Neighborhoods are how people live. My patience for historic / touristic town centers is wearing thin. I like the day to day. And mundane doesn't mean uninteresting. People live with history. History lives through people. 'Regular' districts of major cities can offer some surprising discoveries.
My neighborhood in Amsterdam straddles Slotervaart and Oud Zuid, as near as I can tell. There are always fine distinctions among neighborhood names that a non-native won't catch. My home base is the HEM Hotel, a rather nondescript place dropped in a small bit of nowhere. On the next block is a school named 'St. Jan de Doper'. Only Amsterdam would honor a Saint John the Doper with a primary school. Price is the only thing to recommend this hotel. One can almost always find a cheap room here online. But the place loves its rules, and it makes up for low room rates with the innumerable charges for extras. Breakfast is about $20. Early check-in costs ten euros per hour. Late check-out costs twenty euros per hour. Etc.
It takes only a block or two's stroll to discover the virtues of the HEM's location. Two blocks north is the #2 tram, which runs frequently and reaches the centrum in 10-15 minutes. Walk two blocks east to the canal, taking note of the enormous white geese, noisy but harmless. Cross the canal and walk a few more blocks to the next canal. Then turn left and walk up to the main road, the street that hosts the tram. What you'll notice, besides the geese, are the pleasant brick residential buildings, the scores of people on their bicycles, the peacefulness, and the many little shops and pubs along the sidewalks and bike paths.
On the tram street, across the canal, you'll find my breakfast place, the 'Bagels and Beans'. Everything there is good, coffee, sandwiches, and yes, bagels. Having crossed that second canal, you'll find that the eastward walk becomes by degrees more fun, more posh. It's a few miles until you reach the centrum, and frankly the centrum is where things get seedy again. Stick to Oud Zuid, I say. North of the tram road are loads of little shops and eateries, and several of the larger city parks. My favorite meals this time are at the Gent aan de Schinkel. Gent is 'on the Schinkel', another canal. To make the name most fun, you have to pronounce Schinkel properly, making your 'ch' rise from the throat in a deep 'h' sound. Dinner on the Schinkel is heavenly, lamb with apricot and hazelnut, venison with lentils, complemented best by a few pints of LaChouffe. I'm very happy walking back to the hotel, stopping at the used book store where the elderly proprietress recognizes me. She turns on the light in the back room, where she keeps the shelves of English language books. It's interesting to see which authors pop up in different international locales. In Amsterdam, it would seem that among the most popular authors in English are Graham Greene (true everywhere,) Jerzy Kosinski (!), Len Deighton, and Virginia Woolf. Okay.
I arrived in Amsterdam at 7am. The HEM kindly offered to let me check in at 11am, for an early charge of only thirty euros. I declined, shouldered my pack, and headed for the tram. The sun still hadn't risen, and it wasn't easy to tell even when it did because of the thick fog. The day was never more than dim, and the wind was sharp and cold. It was a good day for a museum.
I haven't been to the Rijksmuseum for many years. For half the price of checking in to the HEM early, I bought the privilege of a few hours with the Dutch artists of the Golden Age. There was Frans Hals, happy-go-lucky portraitist with the light touch and loose hand, fond of painting debauching bourgeoisie. There was Rembrandt, early and late, profoundly sensitive to the emotion in a face, as demonstrated in his famous portrait of Jan Six, and profoundly attuned to the power of light, and to the power of one daub of paint, in an eye, on a button. I took in the famous 'Night Watch', his repackaging of the tradition of group portraits of the Dutch militia, refreshing it with action and depth. It blows the mind to think that a later generation would slice off pieces from either end in order to make it fit on their chosen wall.
But the piece that captured my heart was one by my perennial favorite, Vermeer. The piece is the called 'The Milkmaid'. She is in the kitchen, pouring milk from a pitcher into a bowl. On the table are a basket of bread and another pitcher. She stands before a window. Hanging on the wall is a wicker basket. Behind her on the tile floor is a little charcoal stove. Along the bottom of the wall, you see typical Dutch blue tile. Simple.
So what is it about Mr. Vermeer? I can't really say, in any final and all-encompassing way. But I can say he has a vibrant shade of blue that's all his own. I can say that there are details that jump out at you as amazingly sharp and convincing: the basket, the bread, the stove and the floor it stands on. Even the plain wall behind her is almost bizarrely convincing, including nail holes, chinks, and indentations, including the irregularities in the plaster, including the uneven impact of light and shadow on its surface. But a good painting isn't just about verisimilitude. It's a painting. The face is an impression of a face, a beautiful impression. If Mr. Vermeer had lived in the time of photography, would he have tried to match the accuracy? I tend to think not. However astonishing the detail in the wicker basket, it's the lovely face that everything else complements.
The Neighborhood
I've adopted a neighborhood again. That's what I do. In Rome, it's Colli Albani. In Addis, it's Shiro Meda and Amist Kilo – the north side. There's no compelling logic to my choices. They're often led haphazardly by the first contact, the proximity of my first hotel or a friend's place.
Neighborhoods suit me. Neighborhoods are how people live. My patience for historic / touristic town centers is wearing thin. I like the day to day. And mundane doesn't mean uninteresting. People live with history. History lives through people. 'Regular' districts of major cities can offer some surprising discoveries.
My neighborhood in Amsterdam straddles Slotervaart and Oud Zuid, as near as I can tell. There are always fine distinctions among neighborhood names that a non-native won't catch. My home base is the HEM Hotel, a rather nondescript place dropped in a small bit of nowhere. On the next block is a school named 'St. Jan de Doper'. Only Amsterdam would honor a Saint John the Doper with a primary school. Price is the only thing to recommend this hotel. One can almost always find a cheap room here online. But the place loves its rules, and it makes up for low room rates with the innumerable charges for extras. Breakfast is about $20. Early check-in costs ten euros per hour. Late check-out costs twenty euros per hour. Etc.
It takes only a block or two's stroll to discover the virtues of the HEM's location. Two blocks north is the #2 tram, which runs frequently and reaches the centrum in 10-15 minutes. Walk two blocks east to the canal, taking note of the enormous white geese, noisy but harmless. Cross the canal and walk a few more blocks to the next canal. Then turn left and walk up to the main road, the street that hosts the tram. What you'll notice, besides the geese, are the pleasant brick residential buildings, the scores of people on their bicycles, the peacefulness, and the many little shops and pubs along the sidewalks and bike paths.
On the tram street, across the canal, you'll find my breakfast place, the 'Bagels and Beans'. Everything there is good, coffee, sandwiches, and yes, bagels. Having crossed that second canal, you'll find that the eastward walk becomes by degrees more fun, more posh. It's a few miles until you reach the centrum, and frankly the centrum is where things get seedy again. Stick to Oud Zuid, I say. North of the tram road are loads of little shops and eateries, and several of the larger city parks. My favorite meals this time are at the Gent aan de Schinkel. Gent is 'on the Schinkel', another canal. To make the name most fun, you have to pronounce Schinkel properly, making your 'ch' rise from the throat in a deep 'h' sound. Dinner on the Schinkel is heavenly, lamb with apricot and hazelnut, venison with lentils, complemented best by a few pints of LaChouffe. I'm very happy walking back to the hotel, stopping at the used book store where the elderly proprietress recognizes me. She turns on the light in the back room, where she keeps the shelves of English language books. It's interesting to see which authors pop up in different international locales. In Amsterdam, it would seem that among the most popular authors in English are Graham Greene (true everywhere,) Jerzy Kosinski (!), Len Deighton, and Virginia Woolf. Okay.
I arrived in Amsterdam at 7am. The HEM kindly offered to let me check in at 11am, for an early charge of only thirty euros. I declined, shouldered my pack, and headed for the tram. The sun still hadn't risen, and it wasn't easy to tell even when it did because of the thick fog. The day was never more than dim, and the wind was sharp and cold. It was a good day for a museum.
I haven't been to the Rijksmuseum for many years. For half the price of checking in to the HEM early, I bought the privilege of a few hours with the Dutch artists of the Golden Age. There was Frans Hals, happy-go-lucky portraitist with the light touch and loose hand, fond of painting debauching bourgeoisie. There was Rembrandt, early and late, profoundly sensitive to the emotion in a face, as demonstrated in his famous portrait of Jan Six, and profoundly attuned to the power of light, and to the power of one daub of paint, in an eye, on a button. I took in the famous 'Night Watch', his repackaging of the tradition of group portraits of the Dutch militia, refreshing it with action and depth. It blows the mind to think that a later generation would slice off pieces from either end in order to make it fit on their chosen wall.
But the piece that captured my heart was one by my perennial favorite, Vermeer. The piece is the called 'The Milkmaid'. She is in the kitchen, pouring milk from a pitcher into a bowl. On the table are a basket of bread and another pitcher. She stands before a window. Hanging on the wall is a wicker basket. Behind her on the tile floor is a little charcoal stove. Along the bottom of the wall, you see typical Dutch blue tile. Simple.
So what is it about Mr. Vermeer? I can't really say, in any final and all-encompassing way. But I can say he has a vibrant shade of blue that's all his own. I can say that there are details that jump out at you as amazingly sharp and convincing: the basket, the bread, the stove and the floor it stands on. Even the plain wall behind her is almost bizarrely convincing, including nail holes, chinks, and indentations, including the irregularities in the plaster, including the uneven impact of light and shadow on its surface. But a good painting isn't just about verisimilitude. It's a painting. The face is an impression of a face, a beautiful impression. If Mr. Vermeer had lived in the time of photography, would he have tried to match the accuracy? I tend to think not. However astonishing the detail in the wicker basket, it's the lovely face that everything else complements.
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Travelogue 379 – January 23
Lessons of the Chaka
Part Two
We're about forty minutes into our hundred-minute run. I can feel the time in my body. I'm right behind Tesfahun, following with a kind of Stockholm fervency. Fikre is behind me, I can hear her footsteps. Tesfahun's favorite course begins in the chaka (forest) at the head of the meadow above the church of Entoto Maryam. Tesfahun likes a rough course, and this chaka is especially uneven. He takes many a sharp turn, and heads suddenly up steep hillsides, among treacherous roots and rocks. He squeezes between the closest trunks and dodges under low-hanging branches. I'm swatted in the face by swinging eucalyptus leaves and I'm clutched at by nettles.
I confess that I particularly like these sections of the run, the most like dance. I was holding forth last time on the five-fold path of the chaka. The dance was the first sacred principle: watch how you move, and enjoy it. I notice how clumsy I am while I turn to fit between tree trunks. I can feel all the extra weight I carry these days. I feel it as I lumber down a steep slope, rock to rock, landing with every step, rather than moving forward with light transfers of weight. I stay aware of all movement.
We're approaching halfway. I can see the wide dirt road that traverses the ridge. Across the road is a field where all the trees have been harvested, leaving only trunks and a bed of branches and leaves. This is another slick tactic of Tesfahun's, high-stepping among these fallen branches, each step falling among the leaves on uncertain ground. We're in full sunlight now. I feel my energy dipping.
Principle Number Two: managing one's resources. A long distance run is like an ephemeral little economy. One has limited resources – some of us more limited than others – and one must spend them wisely. So the dials require close monitoring, dials roughly corresponding to water, fuel, ready energy and latent energy. One monitors muscle fatigue, and body heat, and some of us monitor their portfolios of injuries, recovering at their various slow rates.
My despairing ankles and knees survive Tesfahun's minefields. We re-enter the chaka, this time on the other, the northern side of the range. The woods here are confined to a relatively narrow bit of land above a steep drop. One catches glimpses of the many miles of golden hills rolling northward, toward Selulta and Chancho and Fiche.
It's early afternoon and the sun is at its strongest. The play of shadow and light among the leaves and stones at my feet can be dazzling and distracting. Because I'm the faranj, I'm always second in line, which means that my field of vision is very reduced. I see the terrain ahead only a few feet at a time, practically as my feet discover it. Principle Number Three: one must stay alert. Aside from immediate distractions, such as the dazzling light, there are many temptations to draw one away from the present moment: the soothing views of golden fields and distant hills and whole hillsides of eucalyptus; the business of the day, crawling back ignominiously to nestle among the brain waves; daydreams about the glory of the race, or even the pain of running itself. Monitoring pain and thinking about it are two different things. The latter eventually creates its own problems.
Pain comes darn close to being a principle of its own, very salient to the athlete, or even to the dilettante-athlete such as myself. What saves pain from being a principle is that it is an experience. Among world-class philosophers of pseudo-sport, this is a vital point. Pain is real as a tree trunk, purer than thought. To the chaka runner, pain becomes more, becomes a familiar,becomes the witch's cat, the pirate's parrot, the Athenian's daemon, whispering in the ear. To an amateur, pain says, 'Stop!' To the chaka runner, pain whispers sweet promises.
In a roundabout way, this leads right into Principle Number Four, which is Focus. Running is an achievement of the mind. Alchemy bubbles in the brain cells. Pain becomes promise, and distances telescope. Eyesight dulled by computer work becomes acute. Muscle movement made dull by mundane routine becomes precise. Where jogging up a flight of ten stairs in the city feels like a fatal punch in the gut, half a mile up a rough mountainside is controlled, ecstatic agony.
We head back toward home. I can feel it before I realize it. Eventually we emerge from the chaka into the fields of dry grass where we started. Tesfahun usually wants to finish with five minutes or so in these broad fields, which are pretty but which very effectively undermine my confidence. This is when I am most tempted to hate Tesfahun with all my heart. The fields are discouraging for several reasons. First, we have an audience. Families are washing clothes or collecting water in the spring. Invariably, this means catcalls and jeering from all and sundry, just when I'm most tired. For another thing, I find the stimulation of the close woods stimulating. Emerging into open space where one sees the full distance one must conquer, and lacking the somewhat artificial sense of speed afforded by dense woods, robs one's sails of considerable wind. Lastly, these fields are set at a steep slant. Invariably, Tesfahun is taken over by Satan and arranges for a steep uphill climb to cap the long run.
Test now the Fifth Principle of chaka training: measure and check your reactions. Emotional and mental fatigue are more potent than physical fatigue. You can work with physical fatigue. Pull in your resources. Rather than slumping forward and giving in to a desperate and sloppy forward stride, pull it in. Straighten your back, measure and regularize your pace, and place each footfall precisely. There are always cycles to strength and energy. Pulling in is like laying a new base for the next cycle. Power returns, and your resilience will surprise you. But not until you regain some precision and economy of movement.
The final stretch is down the original dirt road, hard as asphalt in places, dodging donkeys and children and emerging into the dirt piazza in front of the church, Entoto Maryam. There our fan club gathers around us, a ragtag bunch of little boys who mimic our stretches and laugh. Shimeles backs his taxi out of the shadow of the church's wall. Once we've warmed down, we set out for the city. Addis Ababa lies spreading below us, reaching for Debre Zeit across valleys full of yellow teff.
Lessons of the Chaka
Part Two
We're about forty minutes into our hundred-minute run. I can feel the time in my body. I'm right behind Tesfahun, following with a kind of Stockholm fervency. Fikre is behind me, I can hear her footsteps. Tesfahun's favorite course begins in the chaka (forest) at the head of the meadow above the church of Entoto Maryam. Tesfahun likes a rough course, and this chaka is especially uneven. He takes many a sharp turn, and heads suddenly up steep hillsides, among treacherous roots and rocks. He squeezes between the closest trunks and dodges under low-hanging branches. I'm swatted in the face by swinging eucalyptus leaves and I'm clutched at by nettles.
I confess that I particularly like these sections of the run, the most like dance. I was holding forth last time on the five-fold path of the chaka. The dance was the first sacred principle: watch how you move, and enjoy it. I notice how clumsy I am while I turn to fit between tree trunks. I can feel all the extra weight I carry these days. I feel it as I lumber down a steep slope, rock to rock, landing with every step, rather than moving forward with light transfers of weight. I stay aware of all movement.
We're approaching halfway. I can see the wide dirt road that traverses the ridge. Across the road is a field where all the trees have been harvested, leaving only trunks and a bed of branches and leaves. This is another slick tactic of Tesfahun's, high-stepping among these fallen branches, each step falling among the leaves on uncertain ground. We're in full sunlight now. I feel my energy dipping.
Principle Number Two: managing one's resources. A long distance run is like an ephemeral little economy. One has limited resources – some of us more limited than others – and one must spend them wisely. So the dials require close monitoring, dials roughly corresponding to water, fuel, ready energy and latent energy. One monitors muscle fatigue, and body heat, and some of us monitor their portfolios of injuries, recovering at their various slow rates.
My despairing ankles and knees survive Tesfahun's minefields. We re-enter the chaka, this time on the other, the northern side of the range. The woods here are confined to a relatively narrow bit of land above a steep drop. One catches glimpses of the many miles of golden hills rolling northward, toward Selulta and Chancho and Fiche.
It's early afternoon and the sun is at its strongest. The play of shadow and light among the leaves and stones at my feet can be dazzling and distracting. Because I'm the faranj, I'm always second in line, which means that my field of vision is very reduced. I see the terrain ahead only a few feet at a time, practically as my feet discover it. Principle Number Three: one must stay alert. Aside from immediate distractions, such as the dazzling light, there are many temptations to draw one away from the present moment: the soothing views of golden fields and distant hills and whole hillsides of eucalyptus; the business of the day, crawling back ignominiously to nestle among the brain waves; daydreams about the glory of the race, or even the pain of running itself. Monitoring pain and thinking about it are two different things. The latter eventually creates its own problems.
Pain comes darn close to being a principle of its own, very salient to the athlete, or even to the dilettante-athlete such as myself. What saves pain from being a principle is that it is an experience. Among world-class philosophers of pseudo-sport, this is a vital point. Pain is real as a tree trunk, purer than thought. To the chaka runner, pain becomes more, becomes a familiar,becomes the witch's cat, the pirate's parrot, the Athenian's daemon, whispering in the ear. To an amateur, pain says, 'Stop!' To the chaka runner, pain whispers sweet promises.
In a roundabout way, this leads right into Principle Number Four, which is Focus. Running is an achievement of the mind. Alchemy bubbles in the brain cells. Pain becomes promise, and distances telescope. Eyesight dulled by computer work becomes acute. Muscle movement made dull by mundane routine becomes precise. Where jogging up a flight of ten stairs in the city feels like a fatal punch in the gut, half a mile up a rough mountainside is controlled, ecstatic agony.
We head back toward home. I can feel it before I realize it. Eventually we emerge from the chaka into the fields of dry grass where we started. Tesfahun usually wants to finish with five minutes or so in these broad fields, which are pretty but which very effectively undermine my confidence. This is when I am most tempted to hate Tesfahun with all my heart. The fields are discouraging for several reasons. First, we have an audience. Families are washing clothes or collecting water in the spring. Invariably, this means catcalls and jeering from all and sundry, just when I'm most tired. For another thing, I find the stimulation of the close woods stimulating. Emerging into open space where one sees the full distance one must conquer, and lacking the somewhat artificial sense of speed afforded by dense woods, robs one's sails of considerable wind. Lastly, these fields are set at a steep slant. Invariably, Tesfahun is taken over by Satan and arranges for a steep uphill climb to cap the long run.
Test now the Fifth Principle of chaka training: measure and check your reactions. Emotional and mental fatigue are more potent than physical fatigue. You can work with physical fatigue. Pull in your resources. Rather than slumping forward and giving in to a desperate and sloppy forward stride, pull it in. Straighten your back, measure and regularize your pace, and place each footfall precisely. There are always cycles to strength and energy. Pulling in is like laying a new base for the next cycle. Power returns, and your resilience will surprise you. But not until you regain some precision and economy of movement.
The final stretch is down the original dirt road, hard as asphalt in places, dodging donkeys and children and emerging into the dirt piazza in front of the church, Entoto Maryam. There our fan club gathers around us, a ragtag bunch of little boys who mimic our stretches and laugh. Shimeles backs his taxi out of the shadow of the church's wall. Once we've warmed down, we set out for the city. Addis Ababa lies spreading below us, reaching for Debre Zeit across valleys full of yellow teff.
Saturday, January 22, 2011
Travelogue 378 – January 22
Lessons of the Chaka
Part One
I'm feeling aggrieved because I have to rush to my biggest training run to date, straight from long, back-to-back meetings. I'm out of breath and five minutes late, jogging up the hill from my place to the asphalt road where I meet my taxi driver and my trainers, Tesfahun and Fikre. In fact, I'm a feeling a little macho about how brave I am, … until I hear from Fikre that she's coming straight from the stadium, where she just placed third in a race of 10,000 meters. I'm chastened. I ask her to see her medallion. It's a big wafer of metal with the Pepsi symbol on one side and a simple picture embossed on the other of female runners encircled by spare Amharic script.
We start the drive up Entoto mountain in Shimeles's old Lada, a vehicle that takes the incline so slowly that I get plenty of rest before the big run. We tease each other, asking chubby Shimeles when he's going to join us, taunting quiet and diffident Fikre about how difficult she is. I get teased about how much I suffer on these runs. Today we do 100 minutes in the chaka. I'm running out of training time in Ethiopia. Next week, we'll do the run from Entoto to Kotebe, something of a tradition now while I'm in training. I rent a minibus and invite a good crew from the team, and then I treat them all to lunch afterward. Kotebe is roughly half a marathon's distance from Entoto along a rocky dirt road that follows the ridge of the mountains. It features a few monster hills, but winds downhill for its second half, nearly breaking my morale with its relentless stones, gullies, and switchbacks. But that's the kind of thing runners think is fun.
We arrive and we stretch. I'm watching Fikre. She's so thin. She says she's seventeen, which is patently untrue. That has to be at least five years off the mark. Athletes here habitually lie about their age. She lives on her own and works as a housekeeper part-time. Her hands are over-sized and tough, a sign of the manual work she has always done to survive. Tesfahun tells me she was leading during the whole race today but wasn't able to hold onto the lead at the end. She has no kick. I'm no expert, but it seems clear to me why: she has no muscle. I'm pretty sure she gets nowhere near the protein she needs. I'll take her out for a celebratory feast tonight.
We start. I've admonished them to take it easy on me today. I'm comforted that Tesfahun is leading. Fikre unconsciously accelerates when she leads. The sun is strong today. Though we're in the shade most of the time, the dazzling light and the heat get to me early. I'm feeling light-headed. My breath is uneven. Past Entoto we're over 10,000 feet, according to Cien's mountain-man watch readings. I find that I never totally adapt to the altitude. I have moments of short breath and dizziness no matter how long I've been in Ethiopia.
But as I've mentioned before, one must stay alert and nimble in chaka training. One can't let one's feet drag; one can't lose concentration. Chaka training has become a kind of zen practice and yoga for me. One hundred minutes of pinpoint meditation and body awareness.
Shall I share? Here, in a nutshell, is the five-fold path of chaka training:
1. Since returning to running a few years ago, I've discovered that age may not bring wisdom, but it certainly forces one to look for it. When I ran as a boy, the body didn't resist. There were few dues to pay. Getting relatively serious about it at this age, I found myself battling injury after injury. Thus began the path of posture. After some perfunctory research, I decided that posture accounted for most of my injuries. I was fortunate in that my subsequent experiments were successful.
I got into the habit of monitoring my body as I ran. I checked in with feet, with back, with knees. I adjusted as I ran, straightening up, pulling in my stride, making sure my feet were underneath me, making sure I was rolling off the whole foot evenly. One injury would fade, and another would appear with another lesson.
In the chaka, I find myself even more aware of body mechanics. Maybe it's because of the variety of terrain, making for more variety of movement. It's a fascinating study, and profitable in the pursuit of fluid running.
Lessons of the Chaka
Part One
I'm feeling aggrieved because I have to rush to my biggest training run to date, straight from long, back-to-back meetings. I'm out of breath and five minutes late, jogging up the hill from my place to the asphalt road where I meet my taxi driver and my trainers, Tesfahun and Fikre. In fact, I'm a feeling a little macho about how brave I am, … until I hear from Fikre that she's coming straight from the stadium, where she just placed third in a race of 10,000 meters. I'm chastened. I ask her to see her medallion. It's a big wafer of metal with the Pepsi symbol on one side and a simple picture embossed on the other of female runners encircled by spare Amharic script.
We start the drive up Entoto mountain in Shimeles's old Lada, a vehicle that takes the incline so slowly that I get plenty of rest before the big run. We tease each other, asking chubby Shimeles when he's going to join us, taunting quiet and diffident Fikre about how difficult she is. I get teased about how much I suffer on these runs. Today we do 100 minutes in the chaka. I'm running out of training time in Ethiopia. Next week, we'll do the run from Entoto to Kotebe, something of a tradition now while I'm in training. I rent a minibus and invite a good crew from the team, and then I treat them all to lunch afterward. Kotebe is roughly half a marathon's distance from Entoto along a rocky dirt road that follows the ridge of the mountains. It features a few monster hills, but winds downhill for its second half, nearly breaking my morale with its relentless stones, gullies, and switchbacks. But that's the kind of thing runners think is fun.
We arrive and we stretch. I'm watching Fikre. She's so thin. She says she's seventeen, which is patently untrue. That has to be at least five years off the mark. Athletes here habitually lie about their age. She lives on her own and works as a housekeeper part-time. Her hands are over-sized and tough, a sign of the manual work she has always done to survive. Tesfahun tells me she was leading during the whole race today but wasn't able to hold onto the lead at the end. She has no kick. I'm no expert, but it seems clear to me why: she has no muscle. I'm pretty sure she gets nowhere near the protein she needs. I'll take her out for a celebratory feast tonight.
We start. I've admonished them to take it easy on me today. I'm comforted that Tesfahun is leading. Fikre unconsciously accelerates when she leads. The sun is strong today. Though we're in the shade most of the time, the dazzling light and the heat get to me early. I'm feeling light-headed. My breath is uneven. Past Entoto we're over 10,000 feet, according to Cien's mountain-man watch readings. I find that I never totally adapt to the altitude. I have moments of short breath and dizziness no matter how long I've been in Ethiopia.
But as I've mentioned before, one must stay alert and nimble in chaka training. One can't let one's feet drag; one can't lose concentration. Chaka training has become a kind of zen practice and yoga for me. One hundred minutes of pinpoint meditation and body awareness.
Shall I share? Here, in a nutshell, is the five-fold path of chaka training:
1. Since returning to running a few years ago, I've discovered that age may not bring wisdom, but it certainly forces one to look for it. When I ran as a boy, the body didn't resist. There were few dues to pay. Getting relatively serious about it at this age, I found myself battling injury after injury. Thus began the path of posture. After some perfunctory research, I decided that posture accounted for most of my injuries. I was fortunate in that my subsequent experiments were successful.
I got into the habit of monitoring my body as I ran. I checked in with feet, with back, with knees. I adjusted as I ran, straightening up, pulling in my stride, making sure my feet were underneath me, making sure I was rolling off the whole foot evenly. One injury would fade, and another would appear with another lesson.
In the chaka, I find myself even more aware of body mechanics. Maybe it's because of the variety of terrain, making for more variety of movement. It's a fascinating study, and profitable in the pursuit of fluid running.
Friday, January 14, 2011
Travelogue 377 – January 14
The Chaka
We're about halfway through the dry season. Since the small rains a few weeks ago, the sun has been steady and hot. The skies are glaring. The grass on the hillside is golden. It crunches under our feet. The three of us are passing single file across a broad sloping meadow underneath Entoto's peak. Nearby mountains spread their own gentle slopes to the east, yellow meadows and patches of eucalyptus. Below us are several families sitting among the grasses, washing clothes, watching livestock.
We are heading toward the woods for some training. I'm behind in my conditioning for the half marathon in March. I've been battling bronchitis for weeks. I've got to get some distance in. We enter the stands of orderly eucalyptus and begin the sixty-minute workout.
This is the most characteristic of Ethiopian training: chaka training. Chaka means forest. We dive right in among the trees and begin circling among the thin trunks of eucalyptus. Athletes might count themselves among the only beneficiaries of deforestation in Ethiopia. The entire range of mountains here have succumbed to the Australian invasion. The eucalyptus grows fast and is harvested fast. It is planted in tidy rows. Underneath is only bare red earth or moss.
Fikre is leader today. She is one of our top female athletes; she came in 26th in her distance in the recent cross country championships. She's tiny and very thin. She has a bright smile, and a certain innocence in her round eyes, in her girlish laugh. Behind me is Tesfahun, one of the short distance guys. He's in college and speaks English well. They are both extremely kind and patient. Running at my pace is trying, there can be no doubt.
Ahead of me, Fikre flinches when she hears me stumble or snap a stick in two. Chaka running takes intense concentration, which is one of the reasons I love it. We wind among the trees in tight formation, weaving among close trunks of trees, sailing over rocks and limbs, dancing down through gullies, down steep slopes and back up. You have to be very alert, and you can't let fatigue slow your reflexes or drag down your stride. During my first few runs, I experience a few severe 'benders', ankle twists that could have stopped me cold. But my ankles are pretty tough after years of running, and I force myself to keep going. If one stops, the ankle swells too much to run on. On my second run, I let my feet drag and tumble over a root. I roll down a slope and gather a few good scrapes, but again, I force myself up and running, though limping for a good five minutes. This is why Fikre flinches when she hears me being clumsy.
We run sixty, seventy, or eighty minutes. I need to boost this to one hundred soon. It's funny, because in eighty minutes, you literally never stray further than a few miles from your launch point, knitting complex patterns among the woods. At first, I struggle with that. My linear nature wants to cover some ground. I want to go from here to there. But after the first run, I'm hooked. The compensation is the connection among the runners. Chaka running becomes hypnotic. After the first ten minutes or so, you feel like you're all attached invisibly, and the leader's movements are your own. You are pulled forward by the leader and sustained by the one behind. The hypnotism of open-road running is the pace. Here it's somehow the opposite: the choppiness and variability of the terrain and pace induce a kind of hyper-awareness that a more pleasant trance than the lulling rhythm of street-running.
The dry woods are pretty. Once in a while we pass a crudely tilled field, a lazy horse or lying sheep. Every so often we see the wood-collectors in the distance, stout women who will bundle branches on their backs and walk down the mountain. Occasionally, there's a ragged man with callouses gripping an axe, showing us a startled face. The sunshine glows brightly in skipping spots along the forest floor. Light breezes hiss among the long leaves of the eucalyptus. Fikre winces at another clumsy step.
The Chaka
We're about halfway through the dry season. Since the small rains a few weeks ago, the sun has been steady and hot. The skies are glaring. The grass on the hillside is golden. It crunches under our feet. The three of us are passing single file across a broad sloping meadow underneath Entoto's peak. Nearby mountains spread their own gentle slopes to the east, yellow meadows and patches of eucalyptus. Below us are several families sitting among the grasses, washing clothes, watching livestock.
We are heading toward the woods for some training. I'm behind in my conditioning for the half marathon in March. I've been battling bronchitis for weeks. I've got to get some distance in. We enter the stands of orderly eucalyptus and begin the sixty-minute workout.
This is the most characteristic of Ethiopian training: chaka training. Chaka means forest. We dive right in among the trees and begin circling among the thin trunks of eucalyptus. Athletes might count themselves among the only beneficiaries of deforestation in Ethiopia. The entire range of mountains here have succumbed to the Australian invasion. The eucalyptus grows fast and is harvested fast. It is planted in tidy rows. Underneath is only bare red earth or moss.
Fikre is leader today. She is one of our top female athletes; she came in 26th in her distance in the recent cross country championships. She's tiny and very thin. She has a bright smile, and a certain innocence in her round eyes, in her girlish laugh. Behind me is Tesfahun, one of the short distance guys. He's in college and speaks English well. They are both extremely kind and patient. Running at my pace is trying, there can be no doubt.
Ahead of me, Fikre flinches when she hears me stumble or snap a stick in two. Chaka running takes intense concentration, which is one of the reasons I love it. We wind among the trees in tight formation, weaving among close trunks of trees, sailing over rocks and limbs, dancing down through gullies, down steep slopes and back up. You have to be very alert, and you can't let fatigue slow your reflexes or drag down your stride. During my first few runs, I experience a few severe 'benders', ankle twists that could have stopped me cold. But my ankles are pretty tough after years of running, and I force myself to keep going. If one stops, the ankle swells too much to run on. On my second run, I let my feet drag and tumble over a root. I roll down a slope and gather a few good scrapes, but again, I force myself up and running, though limping for a good five minutes. This is why Fikre flinches when she hears me being clumsy.
We run sixty, seventy, or eighty minutes. I need to boost this to one hundred soon. It's funny, because in eighty minutes, you literally never stray further than a few miles from your launch point, knitting complex patterns among the woods. At first, I struggle with that. My linear nature wants to cover some ground. I want to go from here to there. But after the first run, I'm hooked. The compensation is the connection among the runners. Chaka running becomes hypnotic. After the first ten minutes or so, you feel like you're all attached invisibly, and the leader's movements are your own. You are pulled forward by the leader and sustained by the one behind. The hypnotism of open-road running is the pace. Here it's somehow the opposite: the choppiness and variability of the terrain and pace induce a kind of hyper-awareness that a more pleasant trance than the lulling rhythm of street-running.
The dry woods are pretty. Once in a while we pass a crudely tilled field, a lazy horse or lying sheep. Every so often we see the wood-collectors in the distance, stout women who will bundle branches on their backs and walk down the mountain. Occasionally, there's a ragged man with callouses gripping an axe, showing us a startled face. The sunshine glows brightly in skipping spots along the forest floor. Light breezes hiss among the long leaves of the eucalyptus. Fikre winces at another clumsy step.
Thursday, December 30, 2010
Travelogue 376 – December 30
The Small Rain
The clouds have gathered in recent days, taking nothing away from the beautiful daylight hours, adding nothing more than spells of shadow and cool mornings. Suddenly last night, they piled up above the mountains, black and flashing with lightning, and they released torrents of rain. Fortunately we were down in Bole, the city's furthest district from the mountains. We watched the light show for an hour before the rain reached as far south as we were.
It's still raining this morning, mildly, steadily, like a mood almost spent. It's still raining when Derartu and Altaye arrive. They come by the house every other morning. Derartu and Altaye are athletes on my team, a young woman and young man with talent in the short-distances, the 800 and 1500. MWF they run speed drills written out by one of the U of M athletes, and TTS they do strength training with Cien. Sometimes it's weight training, and sometimes it's drills borrowed from a video that Cien brought with him, lunges and jumps and twists to driving music.
Kerempt, the rainy season, is a long way off. The autumn is usually all blue skies. The winter and spring months will see occasional 'small rains'. We're getting an early one. We are lulled during the night with the patter of the rain against our metal roofs.
I'm exiled to my bedroom during training. I have work to do. I set up the netbook on my bed and I type to the beat of Cien's southern rock. Occasionally I join the clan in the living room just for a laugh. Being top-notch athletes does not guarantee grace and poise. Many of the movements required are beyond them. This kind of thing is alien. They didn't grow up with PE classes, gymnastic, or ballet. One day they decided to run. That particular motion they've mastered. But the finer distinctions among forward and sideways lunges, bounces and sidesteps, wide arm movements while balancing, all escape them. It makes for comical workouts. When Ijigu is around, he tends to simply jump from side to side no matter what the video exercise.
This starts with Altaye. He's a boy blessed and cursed with talent. He grew up with a contemptuous father in tough country. Somehow he escaped to the city and has survived with virtually no skill, knowledge or talent beyond his running. He can't read. He needs his instructions delivered three times over. He cuts corners like a boy half his age. But he has a winning smile and raw talent as a runner. He requires strict supervision. He needs some muscle, and he needs some specialized training. There is no body fat on him, but he can't do ten push-ups. He can sprint around the track with the best in Ethiopia, but he's unfamiliar with spikes and blocks. Before we got hold of him, he had run on a real track a few times per year. Now he's prancing around the courtyard with Cien, a little mystified but in good spirits.
I'm inside staring at the computer again. For some reason, Januarys have been our most hectic months, even more so than Septembers, when the school year gets going. I can't say why, but it seems the prime month for visitors. Next month does more than prove the pattern; it pushes it further. We have far more going on than I have hours in my planning day, week, or month to take care of. Advances are made before there is the structure to support it. That's where I come in as trouble-shooter, and keep coming in, year after year. These are the growing pains; these are the small rains.
Derartu doesn't need much supervision. She is eighteen. She has run with our team since she was sixteen. But when it's time to train she is the adult in the room. While Altaye wears his goofy grin and cuddles up to Cien, Derartu attacks every movement with a creased brow, clean movement, and blunt muscle. When we take Derartu out for the occasional meal – a good dose of protein, she stares straight ahead silently. The rare smile is beautiful, but she is not here to smile. She is paying her dues.
The Small Rain
The clouds have gathered in recent days, taking nothing away from the beautiful daylight hours, adding nothing more than spells of shadow and cool mornings. Suddenly last night, they piled up above the mountains, black and flashing with lightning, and they released torrents of rain. Fortunately we were down in Bole, the city's furthest district from the mountains. We watched the light show for an hour before the rain reached as far south as we were.
It's still raining this morning, mildly, steadily, like a mood almost spent. It's still raining when Derartu and Altaye arrive. They come by the house every other morning. Derartu and Altaye are athletes on my team, a young woman and young man with talent in the short-distances, the 800 and 1500. MWF they run speed drills written out by one of the U of M athletes, and TTS they do strength training with Cien. Sometimes it's weight training, and sometimes it's drills borrowed from a video that Cien brought with him, lunges and jumps and twists to driving music.
Kerempt, the rainy season, is a long way off. The autumn is usually all blue skies. The winter and spring months will see occasional 'small rains'. We're getting an early one. We are lulled during the night with the patter of the rain against our metal roofs.
I'm exiled to my bedroom during training. I have work to do. I set up the netbook on my bed and I type to the beat of Cien's southern rock. Occasionally I join the clan in the living room just for a laugh. Being top-notch athletes does not guarantee grace and poise. Many of the movements required are beyond them. This kind of thing is alien. They didn't grow up with PE classes, gymnastic, or ballet. One day they decided to run. That particular motion they've mastered. But the finer distinctions among forward and sideways lunges, bounces and sidesteps, wide arm movements while balancing, all escape them. It makes for comical workouts. When Ijigu is around, he tends to simply jump from side to side no matter what the video exercise.
This starts with Altaye. He's a boy blessed and cursed with talent. He grew up with a contemptuous father in tough country. Somehow he escaped to the city and has survived with virtually no skill, knowledge or talent beyond his running. He can't read. He needs his instructions delivered three times over. He cuts corners like a boy half his age. But he has a winning smile and raw talent as a runner. He requires strict supervision. He needs some muscle, and he needs some specialized training. There is no body fat on him, but he can't do ten push-ups. He can sprint around the track with the best in Ethiopia, but he's unfamiliar with spikes and blocks. Before we got hold of him, he had run on a real track a few times per year. Now he's prancing around the courtyard with Cien, a little mystified but in good spirits.
I'm inside staring at the computer again. For some reason, Januarys have been our most hectic months, even more so than Septembers, when the school year gets going. I can't say why, but it seems the prime month for visitors. Next month does more than prove the pattern; it pushes it further. We have far more going on than I have hours in my planning day, week, or month to take care of. Advances are made before there is the structure to support it. That's where I come in as trouble-shooter, and keep coming in, year after year. These are the growing pains; these are the small rains.
Derartu doesn't need much supervision. She is eighteen. She has run with our team since she was sixteen. But when it's time to train she is the adult in the room. While Altaye wears his goofy grin and cuddles up to Cien, Derartu attacks every movement with a creased brow, clean movement, and blunt muscle. When we take Derartu out for the occasional meal – a good dose of protein, she stares straight ahead silently. The rare smile is beautiful, but she is not here to smile. She is paying her dues.
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Travelogue 375 – December 13
Amsterdam, Part Two
It's so hard to get up early in northern Europe. It's dark, and then it's dark some more. I eventually climb out of bed. Outside, the sunrise tints the clouds pink. It's 8:30.
I'm going to walk into the centrum. The canals have a film of ice on them. Seagulls stand on the ice as though they are dazed by the slow dawn.
The trams are humming by. Loads of people are cruising around on bikes. There's bustle, but there's never chaos in Amsterdam. It's the happiest town for A-type stoners. Bike paths accompany every street. Intersections are governed by intricate electronic choreography, and everyone obeys. Everything is tiny and cute. Only the detail and individuality of age saves the town from feeling like a model train set.
It's early enough, and I'm having little enough luck finding a place wide enough for a comfortable work session, so I commit to the walk into the centrum. I do make one stop before I make it there, a plush brasserie, where a diminutive machiatto costs three euro, where sheer white drapes hang beside ceiling-high mirrors. Some of the clientele could be TV stars. The men talk like producers. They wear bold ties. Their hair is Netherlands shag.
I continue my walk, along the Number Two tram line. I eventually arrive at the imposing Rijksmuseum. Passing that building and the Van Gogh Museum, I arrive in the centrum, crossing the first of the inner rings of canals. From here, everything just gets smaller, more squeezed, and more precious.
I stop at the Kandinsky Coffeehouse among the inner rings. It's Amsterdam cramped, all up and no width, off the beaten path, and exhibiting only a modicum of the charm of the classical facades around it. It has a counter downstairs and a few seats. Upstairs consists of four tables on poles set before a ragged L of a cushioned bench along the balcony, divan-style. The tables are barely big enough for my netbook. The music is made of bleeps and chants and hip-hop rhythms in water drops and bubble-gum pops. The downstairs has just enough space for several predictable murals featuring Oriental pleasures.
The barista is a tired-looking eighteen year-old blonde, who is eager to please, which means she is ready with a preemptive show of angry irony. 'Hello,' she drones, her tone saying she has my measure. 'Yes, you can sit upstairs but you have to order downstairs.' Oh? 'You can try to order upstairs ….' I think her English fails her here. Biting wit requires too much agility in a second language. I'd like to see the prices for coffee, but the menu only features hashish and 'Dutch Grass'. They have what seems like a nice variety of these items, several pages worth, anyway, and they're rated by 'stone'. Hmm. You know, I'd just like a coffee. She bucks her head dismissively. 'What kind?' I'm apologetic. I'm missing the tinsel celebs of the brasserie.
Amsterdam, Part Two
It's so hard to get up early in northern Europe. It's dark, and then it's dark some more. I eventually climb out of bed. Outside, the sunrise tints the clouds pink. It's 8:30.
I'm going to walk into the centrum. The canals have a film of ice on them. Seagulls stand on the ice as though they are dazed by the slow dawn.
The trams are humming by. Loads of people are cruising around on bikes. There's bustle, but there's never chaos in Amsterdam. It's the happiest town for A-type stoners. Bike paths accompany every street. Intersections are governed by intricate electronic choreography, and everyone obeys. Everything is tiny and cute. Only the detail and individuality of age saves the town from feeling like a model train set.
It's early enough, and I'm having little enough luck finding a place wide enough for a comfortable work session, so I commit to the walk into the centrum. I do make one stop before I make it there, a plush brasserie, where a diminutive machiatto costs three euro, where sheer white drapes hang beside ceiling-high mirrors. Some of the clientele could be TV stars. The men talk like producers. They wear bold ties. Their hair is Netherlands shag.
I continue my walk, along the Number Two tram line. I eventually arrive at the imposing Rijksmuseum. Passing that building and the Van Gogh Museum, I arrive in the centrum, crossing the first of the inner rings of canals. From here, everything just gets smaller, more squeezed, and more precious.
I stop at the Kandinsky Coffeehouse among the inner rings. It's Amsterdam cramped, all up and no width, off the beaten path, and exhibiting only a modicum of the charm of the classical facades around it. It has a counter downstairs and a few seats. Upstairs consists of four tables on poles set before a ragged L of a cushioned bench along the balcony, divan-style. The tables are barely big enough for my netbook. The music is made of bleeps and chants and hip-hop rhythms in water drops and bubble-gum pops. The downstairs has just enough space for several predictable murals featuring Oriental pleasures.
The barista is a tired-looking eighteen year-old blonde, who is eager to please, which means she is ready with a preemptive show of angry irony. 'Hello,' she drones, her tone saying she has my measure. 'Yes, you can sit upstairs but you have to order downstairs.' Oh? 'You can try to order upstairs ….' I think her English fails her here. Biting wit requires too much agility in a second language. I'd like to see the prices for coffee, but the menu only features hashish and 'Dutch Grass'. They have what seems like a nice variety of these items, several pages worth, anyway, and they're rated by 'stone'. Hmm. You know, I'd just like a coffee. She bucks her head dismissively. 'What kind?' I'm apologetic. I'm missing the tinsel celebs of the brasserie.
Sunday, December 12, 2010
Travelogue 374 – December 12
Amsterdam, Part One
It's the truth. I find it odd to be back in this old city again, find it strange and stirring. I've had a pass-through or two in the time since the halcyon days when I lived here, but those isolated snapshots are yellowing themselves, in their way more perishable than the impossibly distant autumn of my residence.
It was the fall. I was a student. It was the season, by chance, that witnessed the fall of the Berlin Wall – an event that I'm afraid rings as old these days as the moon shot, as Civil Rights, as the Civil War. But some of us walking the earth have held pieces of the Wall in their hands, gripping them like crystals, and wondering at the sensation of history, at the Right-Here-Right-Nowness of it.
That was my first extended trip to Europe. It was my first chance to experience the contrast between Europe the Romance and Europe the Reality. I was settled into student buildings stacked like blocks of cement among dozens of others of its kind in the outer rings of the city, reached by humming trams. The rooms were square and sterile, functional in a way that I found intriguing, appealing. The Dutch are indeed urban planners. They have centuries of practice squeezing dense populations into precious small space, all reclaimed from the North Sea. I remember feeling the sea, present though out of sight, grey and cold. Once you're outside the centrum, Holland asserts itself. One might think the high narrow houses, all with their hooks, characterize Holland, but instead I think of the flat, green fields, the narrowness of the land itself, the sprawl of flavorless buildings in neat blocks that halt abruptly along a line that the eternally thoughtful planners have scratched across a map.
I remember the light, Flemish skies expanding into expressive banks of cloud. Lying below those over-ripe impressions was the blunt fact of our latitude: the skies grew dim as the solstice approached. Frost gathered in the lengthening shadows and never melted. The omniscient concrete melded into the season's light.
I remember the Dutch, smart and sarcastic, the men with their stubborn blonde shags that were already dated. I remember their quiet domesticity. I remember the ruthlessly egalitarian spirit of the Dutch, tiring in its stridency. I remember being the only American in my language class. I fell for my teacher, young and fiercely intelligent, who not only didn't speak English – an oddity among the Dutch – but made a point of it. I remember American classmates from other classes, and drinking with them into the wee hours of the deep northern night. I amused them with ball-point portraits of their beer-numbed features. I remember Napoleon, my Colombian classmate, who entranced me with his uncanny salsa.
What I don't remember very well are red lights, canals, and 'coffee houses'. These pictures reside at the core of most modern tourists' impression. Amsterdam has become one of Europe's party cities. Book a short flight and commence drinking; make great shows of carousing; take photos with prostitutes; that sort of thing. I confess that, with the exception of Vegas in my teens, I've never conformed well to that mass mandate of travel. I've certainly 'partied', but I've never felt the need of a pack or a sanctioned city in order to do it.
Amsterdam in image is 'cool' in that mysteriously hypnotic way of our time. Age does much to strip away the mystique, and suddenly 'cool' evaporates and leaves something amazingly banal. What is more common, in fact, than intoxication and the jaded, self-aware merchandising of sex? Is this how it was in high school? Did we all swoon before mediocrity, just because we were entranced by its self-confidence? 'Cool' metastasizes into philosophy the way a drunk's ramblings on a bar napkin become art, in a sort of bold sleight-of-hand that consists of nothing but boldness. To the extent that the Dutch call their libertinism 'culture', the more they trivialize themselves. Fortunately, history preserves for them a better place.
Amsterdam, Part One
It's the truth. I find it odd to be back in this old city again, find it strange and stirring. I've had a pass-through or two in the time since the halcyon days when I lived here, but those isolated snapshots are yellowing themselves, in their way more perishable than the impossibly distant autumn of my residence.
It was the fall. I was a student. It was the season, by chance, that witnessed the fall of the Berlin Wall – an event that I'm afraid rings as old these days as the moon shot, as Civil Rights, as the Civil War. But some of us walking the earth have held pieces of the Wall in their hands, gripping them like crystals, and wondering at the sensation of history, at the Right-Here-Right-Nowness of it.
That was my first extended trip to Europe. It was my first chance to experience the contrast between Europe the Romance and Europe the Reality. I was settled into student buildings stacked like blocks of cement among dozens of others of its kind in the outer rings of the city, reached by humming trams. The rooms were square and sterile, functional in a way that I found intriguing, appealing. The Dutch are indeed urban planners. They have centuries of practice squeezing dense populations into precious small space, all reclaimed from the North Sea. I remember feeling the sea, present though out of sight, grey and cold. Once you're outside the centrum, Holland asserts itself. One might think the high narrow houses, all with their hooks, characterize Holland, but instead I think of the flat, green fields, the narrowness of the land itself, the sprawl of flavorless buildings in neat blocks that halt abruptly along a line that the eternally thoughtful planners have scratched across a map.
I remember the light, Flemish skies expanding into expressive banks of cloud. Lying below those over-ripe impressions was the blunt fact of our latitude: the skies grew dim as the solstice approached. Frost gathered in the lengthening shadows and never melted. The omniscient concrete melded into the season's light.
I remember the Dutch, smart and sarcastic, the men with their stubborn blonde shags that were already dated. I remember their quiet domesticity. I remember the ruthlessly egalitarian spirit of the Dutch, tiring in its stridency. I remember being the only American in my language class. I fell for my teacher, young and fiercely intelligent, who not only didn't speak English – an oddity among the Dutch – but made a point of it. I remember American classmates from other classes, and drinking with them into the wee hours of the deep northern night. I amused them with ball-point portraits of their beer-numbed features. I remember Napoleon, my Colombian classmate, who entranced me with his uncanny salsa.
What I don't remember very well are red lights, canals, and 'coffee houses'. These pictures reside at the core of most modern tourists' impression. Amsterdam has become one of Europe's party cities. Book a short flight and commence drinking; make great shows of carousing; take photos with prostitutes; that sort of thing. I confess that, with the exception of Vegas in my teens, I've never conformed well to that mass mandate of travel. I've certainly 'partied', but I've never felt the need of a pack or a sanctioned city in order to do it.
Amsterdam in image is 'cool' in that mysteriously hypnotic way of our time. Age does much to strip away the mystique, and suddenly 'cool' evaporates and leaves something amazingly banal. What is more common, in fact, than intoxication and the jaded, self-aware merchandising of sex? Is this how it was in high school? Did we all swoon before mediocrity, just because we were entranced by its self-confidence? 'Cool' metastasizes into philosophy the way a drunk's ramblings on a bar napkin become art, in a sort of bold sleight-of-hand that consists of nothing but boldness. To the extent that the Dutch call their libertinism 'culture', the more they trivialize themselves. Fortunately, history preserves for them a better place.
Saturday, December 11, 2010
Travelogue 373 – December 11
Christmas in Bath
The Kennet and Avon Canal has chunks of ice in it. The Bath area has emerged from a bitter cold spell just in time for my visit. I'm thankful. I need a long run, and I don't have cold weather gear. The towpath is very sloppy, offering either puddles or orange mud to the runner's careful foot. I choose the mud.
It isn't by any means warm out, nor is the afternoon terribly inviting for nature walks, glowering with clouds and already gloaming at 3pm. But there are still a good number of hardy Brits out still, unsteady on their old bikes or hunched inside their long jackets, their dogs by their sides.
The countryside still offers its charms, even in winter. The hillsides are green, lined in a very few fields with traces of snow. The trees are bare and brooding. Everything seems more damp than usual in the frustrated light of near-solstice. There are places slick with frost that never goes away. The sun rarely hits the ground in the northern shadow of tall hills.
The city offers a contrast to the vanquished silence of the hills. Today is Saturday, and Christmas is two weeks away. Bath is the shopping town for the region. The shopping streets downtown are jammed with milling people, and people remarkably cheery for what strikes me as a season of anxiety. Everyone is with family, window-shopping, gobbling sweets at cafes, carrying bags in every available hand. They're smiling, greeting, and chattering. Musicians are playing at corners. There's a group of high school girls standing before music stands and marching through carols with flutes and African drums.
I'm meeting a new friend at the Jika Jika cafe. It's a little restaurant and cafe at the top of the main shopping avenue. Word is it was opened by a rugby player who was drummed out of the sport because of his drug habit – and I'm not referencing steroid use here. The cafe is narrow and deep in layout, as to be expected in old Bath. The fare and service are that curious blend between hippie and posh, organic and refined, that caters to the conflicted appetites of modern urban types. The furniture seems rough-hewn, like sitting at picnic tables. Families loudly consume, while on the walls above them are displayed sophisticated photographic nudes.
I eat very little, and very simply. I have a plan to run soon after lunch. And I'm trying to be careful. Everyone in Pey's house has a cold at some stage of development. The smallest, Bea, has it the worst. She's been confined at home for several days, looking dejected and emitting hollow, regular little coughs. I'm being very careful to avoid the germ.
I limit the distance of my run because of the imminent, gathering dusk, settling down over the valley like the sad illness I'm trying to avoid. I know that stars will be out before five. But arriving home, I want a long warm-down. I pass the house and jog the extra several hundred meters to the top of their hill. There's a park there, and a little circuit around the hilltop that amounts to a third of a mile. I do some slow laps. From this vantage, you see a lot of the town, opening up below you, like scenes from a play, and then repeating. The scenery is very pleasant, but the action is far away and muted. The darkness deepens, and I realize I haven't learned much from the play. Scaling the heights doesn't give you the town.
Friday, November 26, 2010
Travelogue 372 – November 26
Palmer's and the Future of the Republic
I'm back at Palmer's. One never strays too far from Palmer's, once one has been to Palmer's. Palmer's is the quintessential dive bar. It stands -- or leans, more properly speaking -- on Cedar Avenue in the West Bank neighborhood of Minneapolis, a scrappy wedge of blocks abutting the university on one side, and the knot of highways I've mentioned in previous blogs, the spaghetti buffet of asphalt that chops up this side of the city. It's rather a seedy district, only flattered by the adjective 'ugly', somewhat more insulted by 'charming'.
There's a band crammed onto the high stage in the tiny nook fit into the prow of this oddly shaped building. The building has no definable shape. The angled walls that I'm describing as the 'prow' never quite meet in a point. There is a blunt wall on the outside, adorned with the locally famous wooden relief of a tall and attenuated gentleman in a derby leaning against an invisible bar. In the back of this building is a mosque.
The band is the Liquor Pigs. Craig and I catch a show or two of theirs every year -- for the last ten years or so. They used to play at the Vike, a West Bank bar now closed, a place with even a worse a reputation than Palmer's. The Liquor Pigs are a quartet of over-skilled, middle-aged musicians who swing whimsically through long sets of country and folk, with touches of bluegrass. Especially fun is the fiddle man stomping his foot and sawing through dizzy solos.
Look around Palmer's; peer through the dim light of it. Make an inventory of the faces. This place is the picture of American diversity. 'Diversity': the latest word to be eviscerated by rhetoricians.
Someone is shouting for their check. The old black gentleman in a beret replies that he's Russian, and actually gets a laugh. Among the crowded tables, Eritreans argue with Ethiopians, old drunks trade jokes with young drunks, each so padded with dirty winter gear that race is lost, and a pretty Hindu boy strums his guitar while he teases his blonde girlfriend. All of us are listening to old-time country. Civility reigns.
Why is it so easy in Palmer's, while right there on the tiny color screen suspended in the corner, our mixed-race president struggles awkwardly with his words and with his nation? You can almost see the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune surrounding him, the poison darts spit at him by right-wingers, left-wingers, wing-tippers, ultra-right-wingers, wing-nuts, tea-baggers, and neo-hate-wingers. The failure of Mr. Obama, to my mind, is the last chapter in a sad story, the painfully slow sinking of the ship we call American political discourse into the sea of babbling irrelevance. The rest of us wait on shore, expecting a very important message. But in fact, we will have to carry on without them somehow, nodding sadly as Ms. Palin shrieks that we must stand by our North Korean allies, and turning away, going back to work in our various retail outlets.
I'm reading 'Idiot America', by Charles P. Pierce, a light-hearted polemic about this very capsizing of intelligence and leadership in America. It's a fun read, but it does little beyond confirming the obvious. When we can't admit that not everyone's judgement is equal; when democracy becomes reality TV; when emotional stimulation trumps sober (and boring) thought; when shouting and insults are simply more fun than civility; when philosophy and religion are products, validated by marketing numbers; when values are fashions; then republics founder. That's it.
Turn away from the turbulent seas. Take a seat at Palmer's. Enjoy the show that is governed by reason. Some music still requires skill. Practice human virtues. Remind yourself how easy it is to get along with people. History is built of such things.
Thursday, November 25, 2010
Travelogue 371 – November 25
Tea Time
They say there is no more evocative trigger for memory than aroma.
It's Thanksgiving, and I'm on strike. I've received a few kind invitations from friends to Thanksgiving dinner, but Thanksgiving is a holiday for families. I have no family. What's more, I just don't like the holiday. So I won't go through the motions.
This morning, temperatures in Minneapolis are in the single digits Fahrenheit. There is new snow on the ground from a storm yesterday, but the sun is shining brightly. I'm going to go for a walk. My route toward any cafe is west, into the wind. I have no scarf, and by the time I've covered six blocks or so, my face and neck are raw.
It's a fortunate coincidence that my favorite cafe is the closest one. I'm praying that it's open. My prayers are answered. I spend quite a lot of Thanksgiving morning thawing and watching the sun smite snow crystals among tree branches and on the roofs of houses in the neighborhood.
I've ordered a cup of the cafe's amazing coffee. I've finished it. I'm lazily poking around my email accounts, assessing the pileup of work without having any resolve to tackle it. A scent comes to me. It's familiar but also seems to come to me from a distant past. The scent is jasmine. I immediately go to the counter and place my order for green jasmine tea.
For one extended moment, there's nothing in the world but that aroma. Some happy scents, at the moment of their first impact, overrun all other sensory input. Myriad doors open, and the moment stands alone, gathering into its sphere a world of pleasurable evocation.
There was a time when I indulged in jasmine tea the way I do good coffee now. My memory flatters those days. This is what is summoned to mind by the tea: long, trash-talking bouts of chess in the cafe, sun brilliant in the windows; daily afternoon walks in Loring Park between shifts of work, with an hour to allow my mind to wander. Those were days when poetry was meaningful. I studied ancient Greek for fun. I ordered jasmine tea. I let it steep until it was dark and stinky. My life smelled of jasmine.
It was on one of those afternoons that I first set eyes on Leeza. Alas, I don't remember the exact occasion, but I know it happened in my regular cafe. Maybe I was conjugating Greek verbs. Maybe I was teasing a few lines of words into iambics. Maybe I was cornering Rob's king. It's a safe bet that she was meeting Eman.
She enters shyly, backpack over her shoulder, brown Ethiopian angel's eyes searching the cafe, her glorious, curly black hair captured in a loose bun. She spots Eman and heads for her table quickly, her characteristic smile opening in a laugh already. I watch her with a teacup in my hand, steam rising, scent of the day insistent. I take a taste.
Tea Time
They say there is no more evocative trigger for memory than aroma.
It's Thanksgiving, and I'm on strike. I've received a few kind invitations from friends to Thanksgiving dinner, but Thanksgiving is a holiday for families. I have no family. What's more, I just don't like the holiday. So I won't go through the motions.
This morning, temperatures in Minneapolis are in the single digits Fahrenheit. There is new snow on the ground from a storm yesterday, but the sun is shining brightly. I'm going to go for a walk. My route toward any cafe is west, into the wind. I have no scarf, and by the time I've covered six blocks or so, my face and neck are raw.
It's a fortunate coincidence that my favorite cafe is the closest one. I'm praying that it's open. My prayers are answered. I spend quite a lot of Thanksgiving morning thawing and watching the sun smite snow crystals among tree branches and on the roofs of houses in the neighborhood.
I've ordered a cup of the cafe's amazing coffee. I've finished it. I'm lazily poking around my email accounts, assessing the pileup of work without having any resolve to tackle it. A scent comes to me. It's familiar but also seems to come to me from a distant past. The scent is jasmine. I immediately go to the counter and place my order for green jasmine tea.
For one extended moment, there's nothing in the world but that aroma. Some happy scents, at the moment of their first impact, overrun all other sensory input. Myriad doors open, and the moment stands alone, gathering into its sphere a world of pleasurable evocation.
There was a time when I indulged in jasmine tea the way I do good coffee now. My memory flatters those days. This is what is summoned to mind by the tea: long, trash-talking bouts of chess in the cafe, sun brilliant in the windows; daily afternoon walks in Loring Park between shifts of work, with an hour to allow my mind to wander. Those were days when poetry was meaningful. I studied ancient Greek for fun. I ordered jasmine tea. I let it steep until it was dark and stinky. My life smelled of jasmine.
It was on one of those afternoons that I first set eyes on Leeza. Alas, I don't remember the exact occasion, but I know it happened in my regular cafe. Maybe I was conjugating Greek verbs. Maybe I was teasing a few lines of words into iambics. Maybe I was cornering Rob's king. It's a safe bet that she was meeting Eman.
She enters shyly, backpack over her shoulder, brown Ethiopian angel's eyes searching the cafe, her glorious, curly black hair captured in a loose bun. She spots Eman and heads for her table quickly, her characteristic smile opening in a laugh already. I watch her with a teacup in my hand, steam rising, scent of the day insistent. I take a taste.
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Travelogue 370 – November 23
Fire and Ice
My only exposure to television is in bars. That comes with one distinct advantage: there is no sound. There is a break in the sports news, during which a distressed couple stands at a drug store counter, insipidly and earnestly asking the counter help about condoms, holding up a package with the brand name 'Fire and Ice'. This sad advertisement supplements its case with blue and red arrows spiraling like comforting cartoon breezes. Arguably something to the advertisers' credit is the lack of any note of eroticism whatsoever. If there was any message about sex at all, it was that coitus is an irksome task, probably not worth the anxiety it produces. 'Fire and Ice' might be a brand sponsored by the Vatican.
It's all ice and little fire in Minnesota now. There was a big snow weeks ago, and the white stuff has never completely melted away since. Yesterday, we awoke to ice. The skies were taken over by slate clouds and lines of sleet. I stepped out to test the viability of biking or even walking outside. I immediately lost my footing and fell down the stairs. I ducked back inside for the rest of the morning, nursing my shoulder, and staring outside at the glistening surface of everything -- the asphalt of the parking lot, the tree branches, the parked cars, the broken piles of frozen snow.
Today, the ice has abated just enough to allow us outdoors again. I take the bike out for a spin. Temperatures are below 20F, but temps like that in daylight are very different than the same at night. There's no science to that. It just feels warmer with the fire in the sky, no matter how attenuated. I'm fine for fifteen, twenty minutes at a time on the bike in these temps. The trick is being alert enough to all the winter hazards -- patches of ice, Somali drivers, streets narrowed by the snow plows, Somali drivers, sudden winds, slick bridges, Somali drivers, and such like.
There's a coffee shop inside the Freewheel bike shop on the Greenway in Minneapolis. It's not too far from home. It's a fun place to get some work done on wifi, watch the bike wonks, and browse the gear. There's a core of cyclists that will not stop for any weather. I enjoy their good-humored determination. There's a new bike on display in the shop, called the 'Pugsley'. It has huge hairy tires about four inches wide. The handlebars are outfitted with 'bar mitts
I simply can't sit indoors for very long. In the afternoon, I go for a run. I spend almost as much time dressing for the run as executing it. That's the biggest adjustment that winter demands, isn't it? Winter is time-consuming. Everything is slow. Dressing takes twice as long. Transit time slows down. And the running slows, too. You have to watch for ice, and you also don't want to strain muscles and joints that are already being tested by the cold.
Winter requires commitment. Winter is a child that you don't yell at. You just slow everything down. You take Winter's hand, and you look both ways before you cross the road. You don't step out until the way is entirely clear.
The winter run can be tricky to plan. You have to be careful about the route, never committing to a course that takes you too far away from home. You continually gauge the damage being done to skin and joints. The most vulnerable places are hands, face and ears, toes, and knees. A nice winter run is exhilarating, but the fun degenerates very quickly once the body ha had enough. Be as close to home when that transition happens as possible.
My farthest point today is the river. Ice is gathering already in the slow margins of the watercourse. But the chilled black water still surges south. There's another runner on the path ahead of me. She has that heavy winter tread going, slow and steady. Vaporous breath escapes from her. Her cheeks are bright red. We share a smile of something unique shared.
Fire and Ice
My only exposure to television is in bars. That comes with one distinct advantage: there is no sound. There is a break in the sports news, during which a distressed couple stands at a drug store counter, insipidly and earnestly asking the counter help about condoms, holding up a package with the brand name 'Fire and Ice'. This sad advertisement supplements its case with blue and red arrows spiraling like comforting cartoon breezes. Arguably something to the advertisers' credit is the lack of any note of eroticism whatsoever. If there was any message about sex at all, it was that coitus is an irksome task, probably not worth the anxiety it produces. 'Fire and Ice' might be a brand sponsored by the Vatican.
It's all ice and little fire in Minnesota now. There was a big snow weeks ago, and the white stuff has never completely melted away since. Yesterday, we awoke to ice. The skies were taken over by slate clouds and lines of sleet. I stepped out to test the viability of biking or even walking outside. I immediately lost my footing and fell down the stairs. I ducked back inside for the rest of the morning, nursing my shoulder, and staring outside at the glistening surface of everything -- the asphalt of the parking lot, the tree branches, the parked cars, the broken piles of frozen snow.
Today, the ice has abated just enough to allow us outdoors again. I take the bike out for a spin. Temperatures are below 20F, but temps like that in daylight are very different than the same at night. There's no science to that. It just feels warmer with the fire in the sky, no matter how attenuated. I'm fine for fifteen, twenty minutes at a time on the bike in these temps. The trick is being alert enough to all the winter hazards -- patches of ice, Somali drivers, streets narrowed by the snow plows, Somali drivers, sudden winds, slick bridges, Somali drivers, and such like.
There's a coffee shop inside the Freewheel bike shop on the Greenway in Minneapolis. It's not too far from home. It's a fun place to get some work done on wifi, watch the bike wonks, and browse the gear. There's a core of cyclists that will not stop for any weather. I enjoy their good-humored determination. There's a new bike on display in the shop, called the 'Pugsley'. It has huge hairy tires about four inches wide. The handlebars are outfitted with 'bar mitts
I simply can't sit indoors for very long. In the afternoon, I go for a run. I spend almost as much time dressing for the run as executing it. That's the biggest adjustment that winter demands, isn't it? Winter is time-consuming. Everything is slow. Dressing takes twice as long. Transit time slows down. And the running slows, too. You have to watch for ice, and you also don't want to strain muscles and joints that are already being tested by the cold.
Winter requires commitment. Winter is a child that you don't yell at. You just slow everything down. You take Winter's hand, and you look both ways before you cross the road. You don't step out until the way is entirely clear.
The winter run can be tricky to plan. You have to be careful about the route, never committing to a course that takes you too far away from home. You continually gauge the damage being done to skin and joints. The most vulnerable places are hands, face and ears, toes, and knees. A nice winter run is exhilarating, but the fun degenerates very quickly once the body ha had enough. Be as close to home when that transition happens as possible.
My farthest point today is the river. Ice is gathering already in the slow margins of the watercourse. But the chilled black water still surges south. There's another runner on the path ahead of me. She has that heavy winter tread going, slow and steady. Vaporous breath escapes from her. Her cheeks are bright red. We share a smile of something unique shared.
Monday, November 15, 2010
Travelogue 369 – November 15
Manassas
Sweet Lethe. It makes the onerous duties of humanity so much easier to bear.
In July, 1861, some 35,000 Union recruits marched out of Washington to great fanfare. Three months previously the Confederates had attacked Fort Sumter in Charleston. Armies were amassing to protect the two capitals, Washington and Richmond. And now it was time to discipline those unruly southern states.
'Old Fuss and Feathers', Winfield Scott, Lincoln's first commanding general, (already an officer in the War of 1812, nearly fifty years earlier!) a military genius weighing in at over 300 pounds, had had to bow to popular pressure. No matter how much his prodigious experience, supported by his prodigious physical presence, had argued against rash action, the northern states needed a battle. He sent off General McDowell to take Richmond.
In between the neighboring capitals, there was a critical railroad junction in Manassas, Virginia, near a little river called Bull Run. Here the boys met their first Confederate army, 22,000 boys guarding the fords of the river.
These young Union men had signed up as ninety-day volunteers. This was going to be a short campaign. So sure was the DC crowd that the native peoples of Richmond, Virginia would shower them with flowers, grateful for liberating them from the tyranny of slave-owning aristocrats, that a number of gentlemen and ladies packed lunches and followed in the wake of the army in order to watch the show. They ended up being hurdles for the retreating troops, who only survived because the Confederates boys were just as green, just as exhausted.
Doughboys and GIs whistling their way to the ships that would convey them to carnage; GW's liberators limbering up for the quick march to Baghdad; cheery young jihadists packing their underwear with explosives that will project them straight into the welcoming arms of their virgins in heaven: what is it about war that arouses an almost criminal naivete?
We've kicked off a few wars in my lifetime. The only time I remember a general impression of sobriety and caution about deployment was when we signed up for Gulf War Number One -- the one time that we achieved our dream conquest, a few months in and out. (Let's not talk about Iraqi casualties, shall we?) There was certainly lots of sober talk about Vietnam. But maybe I just missed the carnival.
Just over one year later, the boys were back at it in the same fields of Manassas. This time, they were battle-hardened. And this time, the battle raged three days, claiming three times as many casualties. Lincoln still hadn't found his winning generals. The South had been far more successful putting talent in place. It was at Manassas that Thomas Jackson earned his moniker 'Stonewall' -- by being unmovable, in case the metaphor escapes you. The Union was no more successful the second time, and the loss set up Robert E. Lee to make his first incursions into Northern territory.
The overlapping battlefields now comprise a national park, a large tract of fields and forests that feature a network of walking and horse paths. My hotel is close to the park, just across the DC commuter highway 66.
The fields are beautiful. When I left Minnesota, the first snow had just fallen and temperatures were plummeting. Here, it's autumn. The leaves have turned but haven't all fallen. The hills are afire with color, and among the red copses, the famous fields. I stand under Stonewall's equestrian statue looking out over pretty landscape. There is a line of cannons ahead of me, facing the northern horizon. Across rolling fields, across a shallow valley, in a corresponding high field near the horizon, you can just make out another line of cannons facing south. The scope of events suggested by the landscape boggles the mind: battles that raged across many square miles of hilly, wooded terrain. It's very difficult to picture. We've seen the movies: men in Union suits running, each with a gun, en masse among stands of trees, the ambient boom of cannon behind them. But how does one incorporate the whole of the action into one's imagination? How does one plot it against peaceful countryside?
In two days' running of the trails, I'm able to cover most of the territory of the two battlefields. I'm watching for melancholy ghosts who can explain. Instead I pass an intrepid doe, who stands firm though I pass within several yards of her. She twitches her nose at me. She tenses as though she might bolt. But she maintains her position, and I'm in retreat.
I survived the battle, though I nearly twisted an ankle running through fallen leaves. I've survived to see a country united and free of slavery, made free for peace and commerce. Back at Route 66, the heirs of Civil War veterans speed recklessly by in their automobiles (an invention of the Civil War generation, even if most of the work was German,) stopping for fast food or for their share of the quarter-of-a-trillion gallons of gasoline burned annually. I think the noise and adrenaline of the modern highway might have presented a challenge for even old Stonewall.
Saturday, November 06, 2010
Travelogue 368 – November 6
Running the Old Creek
I'm in Colorado. I see the Rockies through my windshield, through the window of my new hotel, and through the gaps among the buildings of the avenues. It's an image that retrieves sentiments from far down the well of memory.
Both my parents were born and raised in Colorado. By the time I came along they had evolved to Los Angeles, but often we visited my aunts, uncles, and cousins. Colorado was an odd paradise, one furnished by real mountains for climbing, real forests for hiking, and real farms. The pleasures were tainted: I had to find out that real nature was kind of dirty, that there were bugs and poison ivy, and that mountain streams were way too cold. This paradise was populated by bullying small-town cousins, and also by virginal cousins who inspired the first mysterious movements of romance.
There's a bar in the Wash Park area of Denver called the Candlelight Tavern. It sounds like a place for delicate sensibilities, where sweet romance might bud among cousins. But in fact it's a bar for rougher sensibilities. Actually, let's just leave sensibilities out of it. It's a place to crowd in with other drinkers, order a Man Beer (it's a brand!) and a fist-sized burger with fries in a basket, watch football, and wait for the advent of the scrapper crowd after eleven.
Tonight, the Candlelight is calm. I'm there well ahead of the scrappers. I sit at the bar and hunch down, hoping my big city-liberal credentials don't show. I order my Man Beer, and I watch hockey – an incomprehensible game to me, but so important to men in Minnesota and Colorado. Should I be trying to follow the puck? Should I be watching for a fight? Should I be enjoying the footwork of big men on skates? I'm afraid I don't get it.
Scott has grown into a big boy. He is broad of shoulder and broad of girth. The buzz cut under his cap is grizzled. He has the laid back charm that makes for a good bartender. Everyone seems to know him. A pair of inordinately buxom college women are leaning over the bar to call him over with flirty smiles. I worry him by my staring. It's his fault, though. Why is he wearing a shirt with the name 'Matt' sewn into it?
I call him over, and ask him where he grew up. He shoots me a warning glance, but plays along. I lead him through our town, our high school, and still he doesn't recognize me. 'Did you play sports?' I asked. Yeah, cross country. I'm smiling. And it finally dawns on him. After all that, he tries to tell me I look exactly the same, and I just laugh. He's certainly changed a lot, but his smile is the same.
Scott has and had an infectious smile. It's the thing you would remember about him. He was always joking around in high school, always in an amiable way. It was rare then, and seems rare now, to see him troubled or anxious.
He and I traded off as Number One on our high school cross country team. He charted very steady progress during his years of training, roughly parallel to his startling physical growth in junior and senior years, and eventually became the more dependable athlete. When we first met, we were both skinny kids. By the time we graduated, I was the skinny kid. He was tall and broad-shouldered. He was strong and steady. I was more of the prodigy unrealized. I held the course records, but was unpredictable.
I'm the one still running, these many years later. Scott just laughs when I invite him to train with me. The weather in Denver couldn't be better: blue skies and approaching eighty degrees by afternoon. My second hotel is close to Cherry Creek, so that's the route I choose, northwest alongside the creek, toward downtown. Most of the way, the creek is buffered from the city by its own green park. The creek itself is a pleasure. Its rocky course and the red, sandy banks are everything Southwestern, triggering all kinds of fond memories of both California and Colorado. It's with a heavy heart that I give in to the heat and to the pains in my knees, and I finally turn back after about four miles up the creek. I'm wishing I could lope all the way to the mountains on the horizon.
Running the Old Creek
I'm in Colorado. I see the Rockies through my windshield, through the window of my new hotel, and through the gaps among the buildings of the avenues. It's an image that retrieves sentiments from far down the well of memory.
Both my parents were born and raised in Colorado. By the time I came along they had evolved to Los Angeles, but often we visited my aunts, uncles, and cousins. Colorado was an odd paradise, one furnished by real mountains for climbing, real forests for hiking, and real farms. The pleasures were tainted: I had to find out that real nature was kind of dirty, that there were bugs and poison ivy, and that mountain streams were way too cold. This paradise was populated by bullying small-town cousins, and also by virginal cousins who inspired the first mysterious movements of romance.
There's a bar in the Wash Park area of Denver called the Candlelight Tavern. It sounds like a place for delicate sensibilities, where sweet romance might bud among cousins. But in fact it's a bar for rougher sensibilities. Actually, let's just leave sensibilities out of it. It's a place to crowd in with other drinkers, order a Man Beer (it's a brand!) and a fist-sized burger with fries in a basket, watch football, and wait for the advent of the scrapper crowd after eleven.
Tonight, the Candlelight is calm. I'm there well ahead of the scrappers. I sit at the bar and hunch down, hoping my big city-liberal credentials don't show. I order my Man Beer, and I watch hockey – an incomprehensible game to me, but so important to men in Minnesota and Colorado. Should I be trying to follow the puck? Should I be watching for a fight? Should I be enjoying the footwork of big men on skates? I'm afraid I don't get it.
Scott has grown into a big boy. He is broad of shoulder and broad of girth. The buzz cut under his cap is grizzled. He has the laid back charm that makes for a good bartender. Everyone seems to know him. A pair of inordinately buxom college women are leaning over the bar to call him over with flirty smiles. I worry him by my staring. It's his fault, though. Why is he wearing a shirt with the name 'Matt' sewn into it?
I call him over, and ask him where he grew up. He shoots me a warning glance, but plays along. I lead him through our town, our high school, and still he doesn't recognize me. 'Did you play sports?' I asked. Yeah, cross country. I'm smiling. And it finally dawns on him. After all that, he tries to tell me I look exactly the same, and I just laugh. He's certainly changed a lot, but his smile is the same.
Scott has and had an infectious smile. It's the thing you would remember about him. He was always joking around in high school, always in an amiable way. It was rare then, and seems rare now, to see him troubled or anxious.
He and I traded off as Number One on our high school cross country team. He charted very steady progress during his years of training, roughly parallel to his startling physical growth in junior and senior years, and eventually became the more dependable athlete. When we first met, we were both skinny kids. By the time we graduated, I was the skinny kid. He was tall and broad-shouldered. He was strong and steady. I was more of the prodigy unrealized. I held the course records, but was unpredictable.
I'm the one still running, these many years later. Scott just laughs when I invite him to train with me. The weather in Denver couldn't be better: blue skies and approaching eighty degrees by afternoon. My second hotel is close to Cherry Creek, so that's the route I choose, northwest alongside the creek, toward downtown. Most of the way, the creek is buffered from the city by its own green park. The creek itself is a pleasure. Its rocky course and the red, sandy banks are everything Southwestern, triggering all kinds of fond memories of both California and Colorado. It's with a heavy heart that I give in to the heat and to the pains in my knees, and I finally turn back after about four miles up the creek. I'm wishing I could lope all the way to the mountains on the horizon.
Friday, November 05, 2010
Travelogue 367 – November 5
The Lone Prairie
Denver's airport is a circus tent in the lone prairie. It's a white, spiky circus tent pitched in the golden prairie grasses of Colorado. The landing strips are temporary strips of asphalt purchased from the elements. From a few miles away, the place seems preternaturally quiet. It makes one realize that zombie and end-of-the-world movies are a creation of the western mind, cultivated among landscapes that mocks the hubris of bipedals.
(Having just come from Ethiopia, this seems like an interesting riddle. Anthropos evolved among open grasslands in East Africa – in large part because of the exigencies of survival among the unconscious savanna. You'd think we would feel right at home in the prairie. But I think homo americanus is anxious in the plains, is much more comfortable among the trees of Minnesota.)
The rental car counter-person talks me out of more money than I had promised on Expedia. The penetrating sunshine persuades me that it's all right. Chris and I jump into my blue Focus and slip onto the broad boulevard that eventually feeds into I-70. It's a straight avenue among unvarying grassland. The sky is a bright field of blue. The line of mountains ahead might be twenty minutes away; they might be hours.
I'm reminded of manic cross-country trips in my youth, coast to coast. I've crossed the plains on the old I-70, straight ahead for hours among the tawny monotony, through the anomalies of prairie cities, through Limon, across more wind-blown, glaring tabletop land. And then there's the miracle of the Rockies.
Today, I've flown right over it all, from the prairie's eastern edges in Minnesota to the base of the Rockies. The sun has shown all the way, and I've watched the subtle changes in the landscape, checkerboard Midwestern farmland gradually disrupted by rough patches of dry land, by stubborn gullies. The checkerboard gives way to green circles among miles of dust and wiry grass. Finally, grass wins, bending like surf toward the west.
In the morning I awaken as the sun is rising over I-70. I'm on the fifth floor and my window looks east. The highway is a line of blurring headlights emerging from the incipient sunrise. The brown horizon is flat and featureless. It's an abstraction; it's an etude.
Since my return to the States, I've been rising before the sun, engaging with the last darkness of the night. I work; I watch the approach of light. It's strangely comfortable. Today the sun is unimpeded by trees. It rolls over the lip of Earth. It lights the grass on fire.
The Lone Prairie
Denver's airport is a circus tent in the lone prairie. It's a white, spiky circus tent pitched in the golden prairie grasses of Colorado. The landing strips are temporary strips of asphalt purchased from the elements. From a few miles away, the place seems preternaturally quiet. It makes one realize that zombie and end-of-the-world movies are a creation of the western mind, cultivated among landscapes that mocks the hubris of bipedals.
(Having just come from Ethiopia, this seems like an interesting riddle. Anthropos evolved among open grasslands in East Africa – in large part because of the exigencies of survival among the unconscious savanna. You'd think we would feel right at home in the prairie. But I think homo americanus is anxious in the plains, is much more comfortable among the trees of Minnesota.)
The rental car counter-person talks me out of more money than I had promised on Expedia. The penetrating sunshine persuades me that it's all right. Chris and I jump into my blue Focus and slip onto the broad boulevard that eventually feeds into I-70. It's a straight avenue among unvarying grassland. The sky is a bright field of blue. The line of mountains ahead might be twenty minutes away; they might be hours.
I'm reminded of manic cross-country trips in my youth, coast to coast. I've crossed the plains on the old I-70, straight ahead for hours among the tawny monotony, through the anomalies of prairie cities, through Limon, across more wind-blown, glaring tabletop land. And then there's the miracle of the Rockies.
Today, I've flown right over it all, from the prairie's eastern edges in Minnesota to the base of the Rockies. The sun has shown all the way, and I've watched the subtle changes in the landscape, checkerboard Midwestern farmland gradually disrupted by rough patches of dry land, by stubborn gullies. The checkerboard gives way to green circles among miles of dust and wiry grass. Finally, grass wins, bending like surf toward the west.
In the morning I awaken as the sun is rising over I-70. I'm on the fifth floor and my window looks east. The highway is a line of blurring headlights emerging from the incipient sunrise. The brown horizon is flat and featureless. It's an abstraction; it's an etude.
Since my return to the States, I've been rising before the sun, engaging with the last darkness of the night. I work; I watch the approach of light. It's strangely comfortable. Today the sun is unimpeded by trees. It rolls over the lip of Earth. It lights the grass on fire.
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Travelogue 366 – October 28
Hounslow
For the duration of this stopover in England, I'm a resident of Hounslow. Hounslow is a township in southwestern Greater London. It gives its name to the borough, which is one of thirty-three that make up the same 'Greater London', a relatively recent creation. The town is linked in history with the heath of the same name. This town used to stand, quietly independent of the great capital, along the Great Western Road. The town is linked in contemporary blog history with the vast airport (roomy enough to swallow a few Houslows) to the west. Hounslow Central is three Tube stops from Terminal Four, which is where Delta patrons heading to America embark.
It's one of those London suburbs that has forged a unique relationship with the horizon. There might be a few multi-story business buildings in the center, but they are surrounded and suffocated by miles of streets of one- and two-story brick, tiled roofs, and square chimneys. Each dwelling looks to be a few strides wide. The cars in front seem rivals in comfort. The narrow streets go on and on, and the world seems a small place.
My time in Hounslow is a happy one. My guest house serves a good, free breakfast. And only a few blocks away, housed in one of the several high-rises, is a gym that charges a daily rate of only £5. A few blocks in the other direction is a spacious park, spacious enough for a run of a few miles in the morning, (a morning that comes appallingly late – I'm feeling very weird when it's still dark at seven a.m.). And nearby is a high street with lots of shops with cheap conveniences, and a Costa Coffee, too.
There are a lot of guys wearing turbans in Hounslow. To turn that around, it must be said that there are very few white faces in Hounslow. I didn't really notice or care on the first day. But it became clear to me that everyone else noticed. I acquired a foreboding sense that there are race problems round these parts.
The Asian faces are grim. I encounter them on my morning walk in the park. Most are middle-aged and set in disapproval when they pass me. The bodies accompanying the faces are garbed in middle class workout gear. The walks are brisk constitutionals that seem to become slightly martial in the presence of a white man. The old men in turbans sneer.
The gym is dominated by toned Indian and Pakistani youth. They glance at me with a mix of curiosity and hostility. The latter fades when I smile and when they hear my accent. They return to their workouts, workouts that have a disturbing intentionality to them. I'm sure that can be said of most men at the gym, including myself. It's probably the rare male that doesn't radiate a bit of I'll-show-him/her/them at the gym.
Lest I risk being unfair or insensitive, I should make mention of the Somalis. There they are, strolling the high street. The teenage Somalis sport distinctly British cuts. I'm not sure what's behind the prevalence of this faux-Mohawk that's so popular in Britain, the line of longer, greased hair along the center of the scalp. I'm certainly no one to speak about style, but the odd attachment of Europe to 80s hairstyles has long been a matter of concern for me. These are the people we would like to see as full partners in world governance, after all. That said, I confess that I have yet to see a true mullet in London.
And what is description of British life without reference to the ubiquitous Wetherspoon's chain? There is one in Hounslow center. I stop there for fish and chips one afternoon. I'll admit to one bitter. Maybe it's the taste of alcohol that moved me to ask about football. The friendly bartender gave me recommendations of venues to view the Arsenal match. There were two choices, the pub on the high street that will charge me. Or the pub that advertises both English and Indian food and is situated on the road that leads to my guest house. The bartender tells me that they have a beautiful big screen, but ruefully is moved to warn me that things often get contentious there, due to the crowd being of a split personality, 'a split reflected in the town population at large, I'm afraid.' Enough said, mate.
O Hounslow, must you succumb to the contentious spirit of the age, You, my idyllic town of gym and cheap electronics, of brick one-family bliss, of shaded park pathways beneath the above-ground Piccadilly line? Embrace those of turban and beard, make them your own, the boons of empire. Share together a Costa latte, put disputes to rest, and discover your bright future together, together in the shadows of the estimable airliners roaring above, O Hounslow, dear Hounslow.
Hounslow
For the duration of this stopover in England, I'm a resident of Hounslow. Hounslow is a township in southwestern Greater London. It gives its name to the borough, which is one of thirty-three that make up the same 'Greater London', a relatively recent creation. The town is linked in history with the heath of the same name. This town used to stand, quietly independent of the great capital, along the Great Western Road. The town is linked in contemporary blog history with the vast airport (roomy enough to swallow a few Houslows) to the west. Hounslow Central is three Tube stops from Terminal Four, which is where Delta patrons heading to America embark.
It's one of those London suburbs that has forged a unique relationship with the horizon. There might be a few multi-story business buildings in the center, but they are surrounded and suffocated by miles of streets of one- and two-story brick, tiled roofs, and square chimneys. Each dwelling looks to be a few strides wide. The cars in front seem rivals in comfort. The narrow streets go on and on, and the world seems a small place.
My time in Hounslow is a happy one. My guest house serves a good, free breakfast. And only a few blocks away, housed in one of the several high-rises, is a gym that charges a daily rate of only £5. A few blocks in the other direction is a spacious park, spacious enough for a run of a few miles in the morning, (a morning that comes appallingly late – I'm feeling very weird when it's still dark at seven a.m.). And nearby is a high street with lots of shops with cheap conveniences, and a Costa Coffee, too.
There are a lot of guys wearing turbans in Hounslow. To turn that around, it must be said that there are very few white faces in Hounslow. I didn't really notice or care on the first day. But it became clear to me that everyone else noticed. I acquired a foreboding sense that there are race problems round these parts.
The Asian faces are grim. I encounter them on my morning walk in the park. Most are middle-aged and set in disapproval when they pass me. The bodies accompanying the faces are garbed in middle class workout gear. The walks are brisk constitutionals that seem to become slightly martial in the presence of a white man. The old men in turbans sneer.
The gym is dominated by toned Indian and Pakistani youth. They glance at me with a mix of curiosity and hostility. The latter fades when I smile and when they hear my accent. They return to their workouts, workouts that have a disturbing intentionality to them. I'm sure that can be said of most men at the gym, including myself. It's probably the rare male that doesn't radiate a bit of I'll-show-him/her/them at the gym.
Lest I risk being unfair or insensitive, I should make mention of the Somalis. There they are, strolling the high street. The teenage Somalis sport distinctly British cuts. I'm not sure what's behind the prevalence of this faux-Mohawk that's so popular in Britain, the line of longer, greased hair along the center of the scalp. I'm certainly no one to speak about style, but the odd attachment of Europe to 80s hairstyles has long been a matter of concern for me. These are the people we would like to see as full partners in world governance, after all. That said, I confess that I have yet to see a true mullet in London.
And what is description of British life without reference to the ubiquitous Wetherspoon's chain? There is one in Hounslow center. I stop there for fish and chips one afternoon. I'll admit to one bitter. Maybe it's the taste of alcohol that moved me to ask about football. The friendly bartender gave me recommendations of venues to view the Arsenal match. There were two choices, the pub on the high street that will charge me. Or the pub that advertises both English and Indian food and is situated on the road that leads to my guest house. The bartender tells me that they have a beautiful big screen, but ruefully is moved to warn me that things often get contentious there, due to the crowd being of a split personality, 'a split reflected in the town population at large, I'm afraid.' Enough said, mate.
O Hounslow, must you succumb to the contentious spirit of the age, You, my idyllic town of gym and cheap electronics, of brick one-family bliss, of shaded park pathways beneath the above-ground Piccadilly line? Embrace those of turban and beard, make them your own, the boons of empire. Share together a Costa latte, put disputes to rest, and discover your bright future together, together in the shadows of the estimable airliners roaring above, O Hounslow, dear Hounslow.
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