Travelogue 451– June 23
Abraham on the Mountain
I just saw a ridiculous film, made well. It seems horror must be ridiculous. Only a cross can redeem serious horror. Outside the exorcist's chamber, credibility lies in humor. What this says is, our fears are laughable. Or it says we are comic when we are afraid. Both true, I suppose.
The film has another message. It says we find our history inscrutable. That is a healthy admission, I think. It's got to be a good thing when we laugh about our mysteries. It's the most humble way to deal with frustration. Better for everyone if Americans find healthy channels for frustration, as, say, the last fifty years might demonstrate.
Its funny. I just finished re-reading Gore Vidal's fine book about Father Abraham. Vidal's portrait has mystery at its center. What motivated the great man? Just what was his devotion to the Union?
The horror film 'solves' the mystery. Obviously, vampires were leading the rebellion, and wanted a nation of their own. Abraham kills vampires as avocation. His mother was bitten: sacred territory is the virginal throat of one's mother. Sacred as the innocence and tenderness of a young nation encircled by red-eyed predators.
Vidal lays it out well, the wonderful ambiguity and fragility of history. Because history is made of finished business, we tend to see it as a train on its one iron track. But Vidal finds the feeder tracks, the tenuous zigs and zags: the president's selective readings of the Constitution, and his vague and shifting positions on slavery, for example. Moreover, Vidal takes a measure of the astonishing power that this one man exerts, almost passively, on the historical moment, becoming something like the eye of the needle. Astonishing most of all to his contemporaries, as Vidal so well portrays.
But there are no final answers. History may be finished business, but much of its course is cloaked in obscurity. We don't like that. Father Abraham's portrait on the penny is etched in very clear lines. That is how truth should be.
So persecuted vampires want a nation of their own. (A reference to Israel? Jews as blood-sucking racists? Israelis in Confederate uniforms?) Papa Vampire meets with Jefferson Davis in a vine-clad mansion in New Orleans. And Lincoln's Union is code for the struggle against monsters who move in darkness. Sure. Why not?
The mysteries are bundled conveniently for us. And it's so much more fun than the usual conspiracy theory. Was Lincoln a Mason? An Illuminati? Was he secretly married to Mary Magdalene and taking orders from Pontius Rothschild?
Meanwhile, rest in peace, Father Abraham. Yuu took your child to the mountain under threat of death, only to have him reborn. Isaac lives on, and you are the sacrifice. Isaac is the new corporate party and the new corporate state, child of the Fourteenth Amendment, harbinger of qualified equality to all: banks, railroads, and ... slaves.
And the monsters? They are returned to their natural state, that of vaudeville. They lurk and they hope. And they write history.
Wednesday, June 20, 2012
Travelogue 450– June 20
Sick on the Mountain
It creeps up on me during the Awasa trip, a dull pain radiating through my lower jaw after the first bites of a meal. It grows into a horrible earache. Twice a day, I'm immobilized. There is a gland underneath the jawline that gets triggered by the pain, swells into a constant menace.
Mauro has his own problems. He is an Italian hippie. He is sick. He is cramped in the back seat of Shimeles's taxi, and he is sick. But not as sick as his wife.
Mauro is middle-aged and grizzled. He has been in Ethiopia for five years. He farms down south, in Arba Minch. He speaks only in pigeon Amharic. He doesn't know English. He won't speak Italian, rebutting with a simple and intriguing sort of disavowal: 'I'm Veneziano.' His wife speaks Amharic. I can't say whether she's learned any of the Venetian dialect.
Me, I'm thinking I can still train. I get up early and stretch. I leave home, and I walk up the road, laid with stones, up to the asphalt, where Shimeles and the runners are waiting. I ease myself into the car. 'Kusquam,' I say: our destination for today. The place is code for short run. Kusquam is the closer of my training areas. It's halfway up the mountain. The terrain is very rocky. It's not made for long runs.
Mauro says that everyone has weba down in Arba Minch. Weba is malaria. I think of our trip down that way last year. It's a wet and fertile land. The fruit there is amazing. So are the crocs. And the mosquitoes. He has weba. His wife has weba. The minute you're not strong, he says, it gets you.
My training partners and I set out on the run. The first half mile or so is uphill, up a rough dirt road, through what used to be forest. The road is even rougher now. They've been logging in our chaka, our forest. The trucks have been chugging up and down my road, churning up the mud. The trees are missing along the southern side of the road, exposing hazy Addis below. We will have to follow the trails off the road for a while to get back into full chaka.
I don't make it that far. My jaw is throbbing. I am tired to the bones. I can't sleep at night for the pain. There's an infection raging along the root nerves of one molar. I make it a few hundred meters, and I have to stop. I have deep muscle fatigue. I can feel it all the way through my body. We walk back down to the asphalt. But Shimeles is not there. The car is gone.
Mauro's girlfriend is dark-skinned Ethiopian, from the south. She is very sick. She is rocking in her seat, moaning, 'Weny, weny,' an Amharic cry of pain or despair, meaning something like, 'Why me?' We have to stop halfway down the mountain, while she retches, leaning out the door and into the street. We sit in silence for five minutes while she is sick.
Shimeles keeps a roll of plastic bags in his glove box. He passes back a bag. She leans over it for a second round. Mauro holds her gently, says, 'Ayzush.' Shimeles starts the car, and we start drifting down the mountainside again.
After I have given up on the run, we walk back down the hill. Shimeles's taxi is not there. And everyone's mobile phone is in the taxi. Tesfahun is resourceful. He manages to beg a few coins from a store-owner. When I ask why, I'm astounded to see that there's actually a working pay phone up here, at this hiccup in the climb to sacred Entoto.
Shimeles tells us he got a fare while we were gone. He's on his way back down from Entoto. We wait. Little boys with mud on their faces play soccer around us. This is a way station for the van taxis, so there's a good cohort of the mordant boys that make up this trade. They are among the world's great satirists. I'm years beyond minding as they make quick work of me in my bright running gear.
When Shimeles arrives, there is a faranj in the back seat, a faranj with his Ethiopian wife. The faranj is middle-ages and long-haired. His skin is bronzed from years in the fields of the south, so that it takes a second glance to determine that he is faranj. He is slouched forward and leaning into his wife. He is preoccupied.
They need to be taken to a clinic. I climb in front. My runners will now have to take a van taxi down the hill. They are gracious about it. We set off, and I reach back to shake his hand. He introduces himself as Mauro. His teeth are dark from tobacco. 'Miste amowatal,' he says. My wife is sick.
Sick on the Mountain
It creeps up on me during the Awasa trip, a dull pain radiating through my lower jaw after the first bites of a meal. It grows into a horrible earache. Twice a day, I'm immobilized. There is a gland underneath the jawline that gets triggered by the pain, swells into a constant menace.
Mauro has his own problems. He is an Italian hippie. He is sick. He is cramped in the back seat of Shimeles's taxi, and he is sick. But not as sick as his wife.
Mauro is middle-aged and grizzled. He has been in Ethiopia for five years. He farms down south, in Arba Minch. He speaks only in pigeon Amharic. He doesn't know English. He won't speak Italian, rebutting with a simple and intriguing sort of disavowal: 'I'm Veneziano.' His wife speaks Amharic. I can't say whether she's learned any of the Venetian dialect.
Me, I'm thinking I can still train. I get up early and stretch. I leave home, and I walk up the road, laid with stones, up to the asphalt, where Shimeles and the runners are waiting. I ease myself into the car. 'Kusquam,' I say: our destination for today. The place is code for short run. Kusquam is the closer of my training areas. It's halfway up the mountain. The terrain is very rocky. It's not made for long runs.
Mauro says that everyone has weba down in Arba Minch. Weba is malaria. I think of our trip down that way last year. It's a wet and fertile land. The fruit there is amazing. So are the crocs. And the mosquitoes. He has weba. His wife has weba. The minute you're not strong, he says, it gets you.
My training partners and I set out on the run. The first half mile or so is uphill, up a rough dirt road, through what used to be forest. The road is even rougher now. They've been logging in our chaka, our forest. The trucks have been chugging up and down my road, churning up the mud. The trees are missing along the southern side of the road, exposing hazy Addis below. We will have to follow the trails off the road for a while to get back into full chaka.
I don't make it that far. My jaw is throbbing. I am tired to the bones. I can't sleep at night for the pain. There's an infection raging along the root nerves of one molar. I make it a few hundred meters, and I have to stop. I have deep muscle fatigue. I can feel it all the way through my body. We walk back down to the asphalt. But Shimeles is not there. The car is gone.
Mauro's girlfriend is dark-skinned Ethiopian, from the south. She is very sick. She is rocking in her seat, moaning, 'Weny, weny,' an Amharic cry of pain or despair, meaning something like, 'Why me?' We have to stop halfway down the mountain, while she retches, leaning out the door and into the street. We sit in silence for five minutes while she is sick.
Shimeles keeps a roll of plastic bags in his glove box. He passes back a bag. She leans over it for a second round. Mauro holds her gently, says, 'Ayzush.' Shimeles starts the car, and we start drifting down the mountainside again.
After I have given up on the run, we walk back down the hill. Shimeles's taxi is not there. And everyone's mobile phone is in the taxi. Tesfahun is resourceful. He manages to beg a few coins from a store-owner. When I ask why, I'm astounded to see that there's actually a working pay phone up here, at this hiccup in the climb to sacred Entoto.
Shimeles tells us he got a fare while we were gone. He's on his way back down from Entoto. We wait. Little boys with mud on their faces play soccer around us. This is a way station for the van taxis, so there's a good cohort of the mordant boys that make up this trade. They are among the world's great satirists. I'm years beyond minding as they make quick work of me in my bright running gear.
When Shimeles arrives, there is a faranj in the back seat, a faranj with his Ethiopian wife. The faranj is middle-ages and long-haired. His skin is bronzed from years in the fields of the south, so that it takes a second glance to determine that he is faranj. He is slouched forward and leaning into his wife. He is preoccupied.
They need to be taken to a clinic. I climb in front. My runners will now have to take a van taxi down the hill. They are gracious about it. We set off, and I reach back to shake his hand. He introduces himself as Mauro. His teeth are dark from tobacco. 'Miste amowatal,' he says. My wife is sick.
Sunday, June 17, 2012
Travelogue 449– June 17
Steady and Moving
Part Two
And then there's Bekoji, small town accreted from mud and from humbler skies than Awasa's. One visit informs of its unchanging qualities. A new asphalt highway winds through the town center, and the residents turn away from it, turning toward the bold hills to east and west. There are no taxis; residents amble along the highway, stopping in the middle of the road for conversation.
The hills feel newly risen from the high plain. That has everything to do with the drive. From Awasa, one passes through shabby Shashemene and turns east. From there, due east, are mild hills, mild farms, and the rough-hewn, staring towns common to Oromiya. The mellow pastoral and the harsh angles of the farmers slip into one's unconscious as dream-like symbols, and one seems to doze until the van reaches the juncture with the northern road.
There the land opens up, until the traveler is speeding through a most unusual feature in this part of the country, flat spaces. The towns become scarce. The farmland pours into spacious tracts. One passes a tractor on the road, a most unique animal.
After a while, the hills return with a sort of primeval pungency, and one enters Bekoji. Unknown Bekoji, famous Bekoji. It's an odd town. The people mill about on the highway. Horse-drawn carts stop on the muddy shoulder. There is a sense of imminence. We arrive at the town hall just as rain starts. Town hall is an assembly of mud walls among high grass. Everyone is out for lunch. We sit in the van, listening to the thrum of rain on the roof.
Once people arrive, we splash through puddles to the office. We sit together without lights. The talk is formal. Around the walls are posters in English and Amharic, each hailing a hero from Bekoji. They comprise an impressive list. Coach Sintayehu shows us the over-sized ledger that records all his Project kids during the past decade. Recorded among the first pages are Tirunesh Dibaba and Kenenisa. The Project: in Ethiopia, this is the term for kebele-sponsored athletic programs for youth. The running Project in Bekoji is legendary.
The best hotel in Bekoji is owned by a runner, an alum of the amazing talent factory that is this town. It conforms to the standards of 'good hotel' in small town Ethiopia: single-level concrete structures, two long rows of rooms. The doors and the locks work. The TV works. There is hot water. The restaurant is clean, and the food is not bad at all. ...There is a mosquito net.
The following morning is clear and chilly. We are invited to a training session. Just off the still highway is a curving dirt road that ends above a grove of eucalyptus that occupies a sharply defined bowl in the landscape. On one wide but shallow, grassy slope, between a local's wooden fence and the declivity, they gather, small and quiet groups occasionally appearing from north and south, some emerging from the woods in the bowl. They stand and sit in an informal crescent of expectation. The coach is a short man with greying hair. He smiles benignly and talks little. He wears a baseball cap and sneakers. He strolls among the athletes, and along the edges of the accumulating crowd. By 7am, there are more than a hundred there, and more coming, all waiting for orders.
He stands before them, only a few minutes behind schedule -- a miracle of discipline in itself in Ethiopia -- and he mildly spells out the morning regimen in a few short sentences. The crowd of youngsters starts off, streaming to the right, around the fence, and down a well-trod mud path. The coach describes the workout vaguely, gesturing in sweeping waves of his arm: twenty minutes of warm-up, and then speed drills among the trees below.
The morning is a glorious one. The sky is blue, the air fresh. We wander among the eucalyptus. After their warm-up, the young athletes start passing in groups, thundering by in full stride. The groups are organized by their distances. First are several clusters of the core 'middle' distances, five and ten kilometers. Then the short distance people, looking tall and muscular. Then the long distance runners, with set faces and measured pace. Everyone waits for them at the end. They have may more repeats than anyone else. Each distance has its male groups and female.
The circuit they run is obviously programmed into their blood. They run alongside the eucalyptus grove and up the mud path between fences. Five minutes later, they're running down through the trees to the bottom of the hill, where they circle back and attack the incline, dropping steps perfectly among the networks of roots marbling the earth. Repeat, repeat. Tesfahun and Ijigu from Team Tesfa have traveled with us. They have risen to the challenge, changed clothes and joined in.
Menna and I are happy to enjoy the brisk morning and the peace of the trees. The area is beautiful. The work we're witnessing is also beautiful. I can't say why exactly. It's funny how Bekoji is the meeting of archetypes: the first is ancient Ethiopia and the second is new Ethiopia. There is hope in every stride of the runners. And that becomes strength and freedom. I know the feeling inside that tenth lap, if one is healthy. This is life, pinpointed in the pace, all focus on this path through the woods. Even strolling alongside of them, we feel it. This is the first place, the original place. We didn't arrive. We'll never leave. The marathoners roll by, and one is singing with joy.
Steady and Moving
Part Two
And then there's Bekoji, small town accreted from mud and from humbler skies than Awasa's. One visit informs of its unchanging qualities. A new asphalt highway winds through the town center, and the residents turn away from it, turning toward the bold hills to east and west. There are no taxis; residents amble along the highway, stopping in the middle of the road for conversation.
The hills feel newly risen from the high plain. That has everything to do with the drive. From Awasa, one passes through shabby Shashemene and turns east. From there, due east, are mild hills, mild farms, and the rough-hewn, staring towns common to Oromiya. The mellow pastoral and the harsh angles of the farmers slip into one's unconscious as dream-like symbols, and one seems to doze until the van reaches the juncture with the northern road.
There the land opens up, until the traveler is speeding through a most unusual feature in this part of the country, flat spaces. The towns become scarce. The farmland pours into spacious tracts. One passes a tractor on the road, a most unique animal.
After a while, the hills return with a sort of primeval pungency, and one enters Bekoji. Unknown Bekoji, famous Bekoji. It's an odd town. The people mill about on the highway. Horse-drawn carts stop on the muddy shoulder. There is a sense of imminence. We arrive at the town hall just as rain starts. Town hall is an assembly of mud walls among high grass. Everyone is out for lunch. We sit in the van, listening to the thrum of rain on the roof.
Once people arrive, we splash through puddles to the office. We sit together without lights. The talk is formal. Around the walls are posters in English and Amharic, each hailing a hero from Bekoji. They comprise an impressive list. Coach Sintayehu shows us the over-sized ledger that records all his Project kids during the past decade. Recorded among the first pages are Tirunesh Dibaba and Kenenisa. The Project: in Ethiopia, this is the term for kebele-sponsored athletic programs for youth. The running Project in Bekoji is legendary.
The best hotel in Bekoji is owned by a runner, an alum of the amazing talent factory that is this town. It conforms to the standards of 'good hotel' in small town Ethiopia: single-level concrete structures, two long rows of rooms. The doors and the locks work. The TV works. There is hot water. The restaurant is clean, and the food is not bad at all. ...There is a mosquito net.
The following morning is clear and chilly. We are invited to a training session. Just off the still highway is a curving dirt road that ends above a grove of eucalyptus that occupies a sharply defined bowl in the landscape. On one wide but shallow, grassy slope, between a local's wooden fence and the declivity, they gather, small and quiet groups occasionally appearing from north and south, some emerging from the woods in the bowl. They stand and sit in an informal crescent of expectation. The coach is a short man with greying hair. He smiles benignly and talks little. He wears a baseball cap and sneakers. He strolls among the athletes, and along the edges of the accumulating crowd. By 7am, there are more than a hundred there, and more coming, all waiting for orders.
He stands before them, only a few minutes behind schedule -- a miracle of discipline in itself in Ethiopia -- and he mildly spells out the morning regimen in a few short sentences. The crowd of youngsters starts off, streaming to the right, around the fence, and down a well-trod mud path. The coach describes the workout vaguely, gesturing in sweeping waves of his arm: twenty minutes of warm-up, and then speed drills among the trees below.
The morning is a glorious one. The sky is blue, the air fresh. We wander among the eucalyptus. After their warm-up, the young athletes start passing in groups, thundering by in full stride. The groups are organized by their distances. First are several clusters of the core 'middle' distances, five and ten kilometers. Then the short distance people, looking tall and muscular. Then the long distance runners, with set faces and measured pace. Everyone waits for them at the end. They have may more repeats than anyone else. Each distance has its male groups and female.
The circuit they run is obviously programmed into their blood. They run alongside the eucalyptus grove and up the mud path between fences. Five minutes later, they're running down through the trees to the bottom of the hill, where they circle back and attack the incline, dropping steps perfectly among the networks of roots marbling the earth. Repeat, repeat. Tesfahun and Ijigu from Team Tesfa have traveled with us. They have risen to the challenge, changed clothes and joined in.
Menna and I are happy to enjoy the brisk morning and the peace of the trees. The area is beautiful. The work we're witnessing is also beautiful. I can't say why exactly. It's funny how Bekoji is the meeting of archetypes: the first is ancient Ethiopia and the second is new Ethiopia. There is hope in every stride of the runners. And that becomes strength and freedom. I know the feeling inside that tenth lap, if one is healthy. This is life, pinpointed in the pace, all focus on this path through the woods. Even strolling alongside of them, we feel it. This is the first place, the original place. We didn't arrive. We'll never leave. The marathoners roll by, and one is singing with joy.
Saturday, June 16, 2012
Travelogue 448– June 16
Steady and Moving
Part One
In town, the hotels decay quickly. Electrical sockets short out; door locks jam; bathrooms develop permanent puddles; the showers have no hot water; TVs malfunction; anything wooden becomes infested; beds sag; ceilings stain; toilets don't flush, become dark nests for mosquitoes; bedsheets become grey and frayed. The prices reflect no depreciation. They climb, and are simply surpassed by the latest facility in a town that never ceases to grow: Awasa, capital of the southern nations.
Politics are funny at the moment. This town, founded only fifty years ago, has found a handy heritage and history. As capital of a region that consists of more than fifty nationalities, this city is a day-long procession of ethnicity. The federal government would like to declare it a federal city and administer it directly. The Sidama people protest. The arbitrary site of Awasa lies in Sidama territory. Suddenly Awasa is their historic capital. Many are on strike today. Many meet illicitly. Peaceful Awasa streets host sinister riot vehicles from Addis.
The tender skies of the region register no change, beyond that of the season. Gentle humidity sustains us. Sun warms us in the morning: we take an outdoor table at the Time Cafe. Just after midday, clouds quietly gather. By five, there will be rain. But they will be smiling showers, short in duration and little more than an inconvenience, stark contrast to the fierce deluges in Addis, already beginning to claim our afternoons. As rainy season gathers momentum in Addis, during July and August, they will consume whole days in their violence.
The current kings in the Awasa hotel market are the two resorts on the lake. One is owned by athlete Haile Gebreselasse. The architecture is square, slick, monolithic. It turns inward, around the vast restaurant / bar that echoes like an airport terminal. A piano man in a tux plays nursery rhymes. Several high TV screens regale visitors in their plush couches. American military shout their conversation, Sudanese businessmen slip lower and lower into their chairs, issuing nonsense drunken witticisms in accented English and giggling.
This is where we go in the evenings to watch the first games of the Euro Cup. After a few nights, we've made friends with the manager, one of Haile's team of business managers in what amounts to an impressive empire in his native country. The man is sharp, and sharp about more than selling cars and hospitality. He calls the subs in the Netherlands game perfectly during the half. They will need Huntelaar and Van Der Vaart, he says. The coach obliges.
Traveling first-class Haile, our destinations in the evening are Poland and the Ukraine, rowdy host peoples of the cup, hosts always on the verge of smoke bombs and racist chants. We watch Germany in its cool march toward the finals; Croatia in its impetuous rush for advancement; Ronaldo pouting and Ribery scowling and Bendtner as hapless white knight.
During the day our destinations are more prosaic: dim and sleepy government offices, painted a mild mustard yellow, and holiday quiet -- Sidama-protest holiday. We wait for officials, as always, but it's a benign interval, so unlike Addis government offices, where hope dies alone and in agonies every minute of the day.
We emerge into the broad dirt road, into the mellow afternoon sun. We turn toward Piassa, the center of town, and stroll lazily forward together, past the variegated shuffle of Ethiopia's intense diversity, proud ethnicities lost until found, boys driving standing their flat horse-drawn carts, women to and from markets, to and from markets, teens roaming with humor and without will, small staring children lost until found.
In good time, we flag down a bajaj, the three-wheelers always good for a laugh. I can measure my age, racing and retrograde, by how easily I can slide into these little blue buggies. Today, I lose my cap backing in and bow to my clumsiness, picking it up. The driver has an eye cocked back and down, watching my shoe. The minute it lifts from the ground, he twists the accelerator and we buzz forth, bound for Wraclow.
Steady and Moving
Part One
In town, the hotels decay quickly. Electrical sockets short out; door locks jam; bathrooms develop permanent puddles; the showers have no hot water; TVs malfunction; anything wooden becomes infested; beds sag; ceilings stain; toilets don't flush, become dark nests for mosquitoes; bedsheets become grey and frayed. The prices reflect no depreciation. They climb, and are simply surpassed by the latest facility in a town that never ceases to grow: Awasa, capital of the southern nations.
Politics are funny at the moment. This town, founded only fifty years ago, has found a handy heritage and history. As capital of a region that consists of more than fifty nationalities, this city is a day-long procession of ethnicity. The federal government would like to declare it a federal city and administer it directly. The Sidama people protest. The arbitrary site of Awasa lies in Sidama territory. Suddenly Awasa is their historic capital. Many are on strike today. Many meet illicitly. Peaceful Awasa streets host sinister riot vehicles from Addis.
The tender skies of the region register no change, beyond that of the season. Gentle humidity sustains us. Sun warms us in the morning: we take an outdoor table at the Time Cafe. Just after midday, clouds quietly gather. By five, there will be rain. But they will be smiling showers, short in duration and little more than an inconvenience, stark contrast to the fierce deluges in Addis, already beginning to claim our afternoons. As rainy season gathers momentum in Addis, during July and August, they will consume whole days in their violence.
The current kings in the Awasa hotel market are the two resorts on the lake. One is owned by athlete Haile Gebreselasse. The architecture is square, slick, monolithic. It turns inward, around the vast restaurant / bar that echoes like an airport terminal. A piano man in a tux plays nursery rhymes. Several high TV screens regale visitors in their plush couches. American military shout their conversation, Sudanese businessmen slip lower and lower into their chairs, issuing nonsense drunken witticisms in accented English and giggling.
This is where we go in the evenings to watch the first games of the Euro Cup. After a few nights, we've made friends with the manager, one of Haile's team of business managers in what amounts to an impressive empire in his native country. The man is sharp, and sharp about more than selling cars and hospitality. He calls the subs in the Netherlands game perfectly during the half. They will need Huntelaar and Van Der Vaart, he says. The coach obliges.
Traveling first-class Haile, our destinations in the evening are Poland and the Ukraine, rowdy host peoples of the cup, hosts always on the verge of smoke bombs and racist chants. We watch Germany in its cool march toward the finals; Croatia in its impetuous rush for advancement; Ronaldo pouting and Ribery scowling and Bendtner as hapless white knight.
During the day our destinations are more prosaic: dim and sleepy government offices, painted a mild mustard yellow, and holiday quiet -- Sidama-protest holiday. We wait for officials, as always, but it's a benign interval, so unlike Addis government offices, where hope dies alone and in agonies every minute of the day.
We emerge into the broad dirt road, into the mellow afternoon sun. We turn toward Piassa, the center of town, and stroll lazily forward together, past the variegated shuffle of Ethiopia's intense diversity, proud ethnicities lost until found, boys driving standing their flat horse-drawn carts, women to and from markets, to and from markets, teens roaming with humor and without will, small staring children lost until found.
In good time, we flag down a bajaj, the three-wheelers always good for a laugh. I can measure my age, racing and retrograde, by how easily I can slide into these little blue buggies. Today, I lose my cap backing in and bow to my clumsiness, picking it up. The driver has an eye cocked back and down, watching my shoe. The minute it lifts from the ground, he twists the accelerator and we buzz forth, bound for Wraclow.
Thursday, May 31, 2012
Travelogue 447– May 31
Ants Twenty
May is quiet. May is hot. Harmless summer clouds pause over Addis Ababa, like a gentle pause in the calendar before the darkening mood of June. A smoky haze and occasional stiff breezes presage the rains of summer. But May is made for idyll.
Mark insists on a trip to Debre Zeit during the weekend that breaks up the faranjis' training trip. We oblige him. On a previous trip, Mark has found a 'lodge' by Lake Babogaya, where rows of mosquito-infested huts sit among pleasant gardens. The owner has captured some guinea fowl, and put them in a pen with dikdiks, There is a formidable old turkey that roams the grounds free, chasing guests who get too near. There is a tired nag that gives rides to the children. There are campfires and tasty grilled fish at night.
May hangs over Lake Babogaya like a smoked-glass mirror set over the bowl of surrounding hills, gathering the gold of the grasses and the blue of the lake. The waters lap against the concrete foundation of the lakeside terrace. I've stolen away from the huts to the new, mosquito-free Babogaya Resort, where I can sit next to the lake, watching the calming motion of the waters, listen to the stilted monologue of the member of the Ethiopian parliament next to me, where I can read my book in a desultory way until the rest of the party joins me. They have gone for a hike in the dry hills. I spend an hour battling with the internet connection inside, and finally give up to enjoy the terrace.
Yes, it's Gunboat. That's the Amharic name for May. Ethiopians don't particularly like this idyllic miniature summer, between the April showers and the deluges of rainy season. The heat oppresses them. I tell them I love Gunboat. I also love playing with their language -- since I have so little facility with it in seriousness. By some silly association, I called the big holiday of this month 'Gundan Haya'. It's supposed to be 'Gunboat Haya', or May 20, a rather prosaic name for a big holiday, the day the Derg regime was ousted by the present one. I find holidays like this faintly ridiculous, with the uniforms and the marching bands and all the police. So the accidental name 'Ants Twenty' makes comic sense. The Abashas laugh guiltily.
I am not so smooth on another day, when I have the honor to meet the grandson of Haile Selasse. His name is unfortunately close to a bad word, and I fall into the linguistic trap. So I am shaking his hand, and essentially I am saying, 'It's such a pleasure to meet you, Mister F**ker. How are you today, Mister F**ker?' His coterie of friends are horrified, but he takes it stride. He is a friendly and accessible man, with big, doe-like brown eyes. He is unaffected, and I would not have picked him out as a prince.
We meet a second time in the Wabe Shebelle Hotel down in what I call the Haile Selasse side of Addis, where the architecture of the grand period remains preserved in benign neglect. The Wabe Shebelle was the happening place in its day, they tell me. I've always liked the place because of its cool, 60s cosmopolitan look. In its heyday, all the legendary singers of Ethiopia's first pop period sang here. I can just see it, suits and ties and cigarettes, while outside the night closes in on the thousands and thousands of shacks in candlelight.
In any case, let's leave the young couples of the imperial era to dance the night away; let's give Prince F**ker some respite from clumsy faranjis; and let's return to Lake Babogaya, while the sun still shines. We sit in deck chairs beside the water, drinking beer, and we play Connect Four. Gelila always loses; Menna always wins. The sun is high in the sky. All is just.
Ants Twenty
May is quiet. May is hot. Harmless summer clouds pause over Addis Ababa, like a gentle pause in the calendar before the darkening mood of June. A smoky haze and occasional stiff breezes presage the rains of summer. But May is made for idyll.
Mark insists on a trip to Debre Zeit during the weekend that breaks up the faranjis' training trip. We oblige him. On a previous trip, Mark has found a 'lodge' by Lake Babogaya, where rows of mosquito-infested huts sit among pleasant gardens. The owner has captured some guinea fowl, and put them in a pen with dikdiks, There is a formidable old turkey that roams the grounds free, chasing guests who get too near. There is a tired nag that gives rides to the children. There are campfires and tasty grilled fish at night.
May hangs over Lake Babogaya like a smoked-glass mirror set over the bowl of surrounding hills, gathering the gold of the grasses and the blue of the lake. The waters lap against the concrete foundation of the lakeside terrace. I've stolen away from the huts to the new, mosquito-free Babogaya Resort, where I can sit next to the lake, watching the calming motion of the waters, listen to the stilted monologue of the member of the Ethiopian parliament next to me, where I can read my book in a desultory way until the rest of the party joins me. They have gone for a hike in the dry hills. I spend an hour battling with the internet connection inside, and finally give up to enjoy the terrace.
Yes, it's Gunboat. That's the Amharic name for May. Ethiopians don't particularly like this idyllic miniature summer, between the April showers and the deluges of rainy season. The heat oppresses them. I tell them I love Gunboat. I also love playing with their language -- since I have so little facility with it in seriousness. By some silly association, I called the big holiday of this month 'Gundan Haya'. It's supposed to be 'Gunboat Haya', or May 20, a rather prosaic name for a big holiday, the day the Derg regime was ousted by the present one. I find holidays like this faintly ridiculous, with the uniforms and the marching bands and all the police. So the accidental name 'Ants Twenty' makes comic sense. The Abashas laugh guiltily.
I am not so smooth on another day, when I have the honor to meet the grandson of Haile Selasse. His name is unfortunately close to a bad word, and I fall into the linguistic trap. So I am shaking his hand, and essentially I am saying, 'It's such a pleasure to meet you, Mister F**ker. How are you today, Mister F**ker?' His coterie of friends are horrified, but he takes it stride. He is a friendly and accessible man, with big, doe-like brown eyes. He is unaffected, and I would not have picked him out as a prince.
We meet a second time in the Wabe Shebelle Hotel down in what I call the Haile Selasse side of Addis, where the architecture of the grand period remains preserved in benign neglect. The Wabe Shebelle was the happening place in its day, they tell me. I've always liked the place because of its cool, 60s cosmopolitan look. In its heyday, all the legendary singers of Ethiopia's first pop period sang here. I can just see it, suits and ties and cigarettes, while outside the night closes in on the thousands and thousands of shacks in candlelight.
In any case, let's leave the young couples of the imperial era to dance the night away; let's give Prince F**ker some respite from clumsy faranjis; and let's return to Lake Babogaya, while the sun still shines. We sit in deck chairs beside the water, drinking beer, and we play Connect Four. Gelila always loses; Menna always wins. The sun is high in the sky. All is just.
Monday, May 21, 2012
Travelogue 446– May 15
The One Constant
I'm disoriented. It will take me a while to adjust. After more than eight years, I have changed blog sites, and I am overcome with melancholy thoughts about the transience of life. What forms our foundations, our touchstones, in a world where blogger sites can be shuffled like college residencies? I have to re-assess all that is jarvis, all that formed the bedrock of the jarvis world.
I stand outside Bole International, and I reflect: if a website can be so ephemeral, so vulnerable to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, then are there any real anchors in life? Will the Ethiopian sun rise in the west? Will the aroma of Ethiopia fade or change? Does it give itself away a degree every year, while I don't even notice? The first joy in every arrival -- from the moment I pass through the door of the airliner -- is this very comfort, this balm among the hardships of travel, that earthy scent in the air of this place, made of charcoal and berbere, onion and red earth, coffee and eucalyptus. It is arrival.
One thing slavishly obedient to the principle of change is the dispensation of people and cars, baggage and taxis at the airport -- just about any thing or system moveable in the complex. The entries and exits change. The cafes change. Today, there is no entry at all into the terminal for visitors. And no cars are allowed to drive up to the terminal. Now one enters the empty terminal from baggage claim, and then makes one's way through the parking lot, full of milling crowds, to the far end of the asphalt, where police are allowing cars through in a narrow, choked stream. It's mayhem.
It takes me half an hour to find Shimeles. He has made a major change himself, having finally saved enough to buy his own car. Most drivers pay commissions for use of a regular car. Now he owns his own. This car looks much like the last, small, square, and taxi blue. He has a few more sporty lights now; he has a few more Christian bumper stickers in Amharic or Ge'ez inside and out. And he is proud.
My cozy little place is no longer my own, of course. The walls show new colors; The floor space has contracted. Menna has used my long absence to do some work, closing up with plaster the many portals from the insect universe into our own. There are frilly things on the bed and over the windows. The bathroom hosts rows of mysterious bottles. We have a television. I contentedly part the pretty new sheets, and I find the profound sleep of the pilgrim.
I have meetings immediately, first thing in the morning. They do not take place in our Spartan old office, where four people share two desks, and Yemisrach sits behind a child-sized writing table; where we meet in the center, sitting on plastic stools, sharing a knee-high table that allows only a few notebooks and coffee cups from the cafe downstairs; where closing the shades over our one window in the afternoon, when the sun glares in, involves climbing halfway onto our short book cases. No, today we meet in our spacious new digs, where either of our two new rooms could swallow the old office whole. Even adding in the new furniture to the old, the first room echoes with unused space. The second is still empty.
In the staff meeting, we review the year. Both the program year and school year are coming to a close. It has been a year of successes and growth. When we break, staff disperses to the far corners of our office. I stand in the center, arms akimbo, the lost captain of a well-appointed and well-directed ship.
The One Constant
I'm disoriented. It will take me a while to adjust. After more than eight years, I have changed blog sites, and I am overcome with melancholy thoughts about the transience of life. What forms our foundations, our touchstones, in a world where blogger sites can be shuffled like college residencies? I have to re-assess all that is jarvis, all that formed the bedrock of the jarvis world.
I stand outside Bole International, and I reflect: if a website can be so ephemeral, so vulnerable to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, then are there any real anchors in life? Will the Ethiopian sun rise in the west? Will the aroma of Ethiopia fade or change? Does it give itself away a degree every year, while I don't even notice? The first joy in every arrival -- from the moment I pass through the door of the airliner -- is this very comfort, this balm among the hardships of travel, that earthy scent in the air of this place, made of charcoal and berbere, onion and red earth, coffee and eucalyptus. It is arrival.
One thing slavishly obedient to the principle of change is the dispensation of people and cars, baggage and taxis at the airport -- just about any thing or system moveable in the complex. The entries and exits change. The cafes change. Today, there is no entry at all into the terminal for visitors. And no cars are allowed to drive up to the terminal. Now one enters the empty terminal from baggage claim, and then makes one's way through the parking lot, full of milling crowds, to the far end of the asphalt, where police are allowing cars through in a narrow, choked stream. It's mayhem.
It takes me half an hour to find Shimeles. He has made a major change himself, having finally saved enough to buy his own car. Most drivers pay commissions for use of a regular car. Now he owns his own. This car looks much like the last, small, square, and taxi blue. He has a few more sporty lights now; he has a few more Christian bumper stickers in Amharic or Ge'ez inside and out. And he is proud.
My cozy little place is no longer my own, of course. The walls show new colors; The floor space has contracted. Menna has used my long absence to do some work, closing up with plaster the many portals from the insect universe into our own. There are frilly things on the bed and over the windows. The bathroom hosts rows of mysterious bottles. We have a television. I contentedly part the pretty new sheets, and I find the profound sleep of the pilgrim.
I have meetings immediately, first thing in the morning. They do not take place in our Spartan old office, where four people share two desks, and Yemisrach sits behind a child-sized writing table; where we meet in the center, sitting on plastic stools, sharing a knee-high table that allows only a few notebooks and coffee cups from the cafe downstairs; where closing the shades over our one window in the afternoon, when the sun glares in, involves climbing halfway onto our short book cases. No, today we meet in our spacious new digs, where either of our two new rooms could swallow the old office whole. Even adding in the new furniture to the old, the first room echoes with unused space. The second is still empty.
In the staff meeting, we review the year. Both the program year and school year are coming to a close. It has been a year of successes and growth. When we break, staff disperses to the far corners of our office. I stand in the center, arms akimbo, the lost captain of a well-appointed and well-directed ship.
Friday, May 11, 2012
Travelogue 445– May 11
Bless the Waters
Note: Dear Readers, as I face the prospect of blogger blackout in my once and future destination, I am forced to diversify in order to protect the continual and, indeed, survival of this vital account. Please, therefore, after this entry, visit my new site for further entries once I have crossed into Africa. Once I am back in America or Europe, I will update this site. Thank you for your indulgence.
My place of transition is green and flat. Everything about the land is sculpted by man, even the waters. Near my hotel is the Sloterplas, a lake on the site of a lake, a refashioning of water. The ancient lake was a messy affair, waxing and waning with the seasons, unpredictable. And ultimately, in the way. More land was needed for tilling. The magicians of the prosperous new Nederland drained the old lake, and for centuries it was peaceful farmland.
In the twentieth century, land for housing became more necessary than land for farming. But houses require foundations and terra firma. And so a lake was reborn, made in the likeness of nature, made from the pit left by excavation for sand to raise surrounding lands. Now, there are homes and streets and parks. And when I go for a jog, I run around this very pleasant, domesticated plot of water, There are lawns and trails and fine-looking geese. There is even a fountain some thirty meters off shore.
Amsterdam is nothing if not a pleasant city. Despite the international image of mayhem and licentiousness, I've always found this to be a preternaturally calm and orderly people and place. It would seem to be designed for greatest comfort. It is, after all, the first and most constant instance of European bourgeoisie.
This is the Osdorp district out here, on the other side of the Sloterplas. It might be considered something of an immigrant slum by some. Every race is represented, but all others are outnumbered by the Turks and Arabs. People are poor. The kids do their best to look menacing. But the tough teens have it hard here. How does project danger while loitering on green lawns beside scenic canals, feeding the water fowl? I feel for them. They do their best. They don shiny puff jackets, and shave parts of their heads; they slouch and drag their feet and smoke, and somehow it all just floats down the canal like a smile.
I share the walkways with them, the wide pavements through peaceful parks. We share those with veiled mothers pushing carriages. We gather at the tram stop. Public transport runs frequently and efficiently. We file into the car in an ordered manner. There are seats for everyone. We head toward the city center. One sits in an attitude of defiance, but it is hard to direct one's rebellion. Maybe it's the skies one resents, the source of scarcely relenting fog or drizzle. These are some of life's challenges around the North Sea.
Sunday, April 29, 2012
Travelogue 444– April 29
An Aside, an Homage
These are the dangers of food and of drink. I will speak first of the danger of ground salt. I am having a late breakfast at the dive down the street from the hotel. It's a tasty combination of eggs and ham. And that should be that; another breakfast in Puerto Rico. But I guess I tempt fate with my voluptuousness. I add salt, the kind you grind in the dispenser. You shake it out in large grains. It crunches when you chew. It crunches your tooth.
It's night. I've been drinking rum again. This time my motivation is escape, escape from pain. There a piece of my molar that slides back and forth, like the door to a secret chamber, one filled with nerve endings.
I'm browsing on You Tube, something I only do in emergencies. I am somehow, according to the whimsical logic of the internet, led to Ricky Gervais. He's a smart fellow. He's controversial. He thanks God he's an atheist. He has to answer for that in a serious TV interview. And he does.
Atheism leads me into options for Christopher Hitchens, who, for better or worse, positions himself among the front lines of the atheism debates. Is he an advocate? Apologist might be a better term. He's not playing recruiter. He says he wishes he could believe.
In defense of atheism, Hitchens says that at least there is no resort to wishful thinking. It's a point that I find pleasure in. It's true, and in my book, an honorable position. But it cannot stand as proof. Which is kind of my standing objection to atheism: lack of proof does not constitute proof in itself. That we cannot prove God's existence does not logically prove his non-existence Even Mr. Hitchens says so, preferring the term antitheist, which implies a dispute with the concept of deity.
Given the range of intellectual debates, I find the one about God's existence unengaging. On the one side, it's an examination of nothingness -- a favorite topic of the twentieth century, and one I find a little short on nutrition. The other side argues with passion for an abstraction. My passions tend to require more substance. If there were a polytheism club, I might join in. Seems like polytheism might have more logic to it, and certainly more fun.
Fortunately, there is much more to our friend, Mr. Hitchens, than his passion for nothingness. I followed him casually for years and years, greedily reading any essay and review I came across. I always had time for him, and I suppose this is as good a moment as any to say au revoir -- or not, I guess he would insist. He had intellect; he had courage. That some found him pompous doesn't surprise me and doesn't sway me. That some wrote him off because of his political convictions in later life does not surprise me, not does it sway me. I grew up with enough idiot political dogma, left and right, to discount politics as a measure of anything but one's intolerance and lack of humor.
Small minds latch on to conclusions rather than acknowledge the thought that leads to them. I didn't always agree with Hitchens, but I always enjoyed hearing him out. Intelligence is a pleasure, and such a scarce pleasure among the American Right these days, among a political movement that openly distrusts intellect. One can be forgiven for accepting that conservative positions are by definition anti-rational.
In fact, the human mind looks for and wants something to respect in one's opposition, and this is one of the sorest deprivations in the American political scene now. It bleeds us all of dignity and self-respect.
In one of the videos -- and I have to paraphrase because I don't log in to You Tube sober -- an interviewer tells him that so-and-so says he's just a loud-mouth, fat ass drunkard. Hitchens, who has already lost considerable weight and hair in his battle with cancer. 'Well, and what's wrong with that?' he replies, a wonderful, parting ambiguity. Indeed.
An Aside, an Homage
These are the dangers of food and of drink. I will speak first of the danger of ground salt. I am having a late breakfast at the dive down the street from the hotel. It's a tasty combination of eggs and ham. And that should be that; another breakfast in Puerto Rico. But I guess I tempt fate with my voluptuousness. I add salt, the kind you grind in the dispenser. You shake it out in large grains. It crunches when you chew. It crunches your tooth.
It's night. I've been drinking rum again. This time my motivation is escape, escape from pain. There a piece of my molar that slides back and forth, like the door to a secret chamber, one filled with nerve endings.
I'm browsing on You Tube, something I only do in emergencies. I am somehow, according to the whimsical logic of the internet, led to Ricky Gervais. He's a smart fellow. He's controversial. He thanks God he's an atheist. He has to answer for that in a serious TV interview. And he does.
Atheism leads me into options for Christopher Hitchens, who, for better or worse, positions himself among the front lines of the atheism debates. Is he an advocate? Apologist might be a better term. He's not playing recruiter. He says he wishes he could believe.
In defense of atheism, Hitchens says that at least there is no resort to wishful thinking. It's a point that I find pleasure in. It's true, and in my book, an honorable position. But it cannot stand as proof. Which is kind of my standing objection to atheism: lack of proof does not constitute proof in itself. That we cannot prove God's existence does not logically prove his non-existence Even Mr. Hitchens says so, preferring the term antitheist, which implies a dispute with the concept of deity.
Given the range of intellectual debates, I find the one about God's existence unengaging. On the one side, it's an examination of nothingness -- a favorite topic of the twentieth century, and one I find a little short on nutrition. The other side argues with passion for an abstraction. My passions tend to require more substance. If there were a polytheism club, I might join in. Seems like polytheism might have more logic to it, and certainly more fun.
Fortunately, there is much more to our friend, Mr. Hitchens, than his passion for nothingness. I followed him casually for years and years, greedily reading any essay and review I came across. I always had time for him, and I suppose this is as good a moment as any to say au revoir -- or not, I guess he would insist. He had intellect; he had courage. That some found him pompous doesn't surprise me and doesn't sway me. That some wrote him off because of his political convictions in later life does not surprise me, not does it sway me. I grew up with enough idiot political dogma, left and right, to discount politics as a measure of anything but one's intolerance and lack of humor.
Small minds latch on to conclusions rather than acknowledge the thought that leads to them. I didn't always agree with Hitchens, but I always enjoyed hearing him out. Intelligence is a pleasure, and such a scarce pleasure among the American Right these days, among a political movement that openly distrusts intellect. One can be forgiven for accepting that conservative positions are by definition anti-rational.
In fact, the human mind looks for and wants something to respect in one's opposition, and this is one of the sorest deprivations in the American political scene now. It bleeds us all of dignity and self-respect.
In one of the videos -- and I have to paraphrase because I don't log in to You Tube sober -- an interviewer tells him that so-and-so says he's just a loud-mouth, fat ass drunkard. Hitchens, who has already lost considerable weight and hair in his battle with cancer. 'Well, and what's wrong with that?' he replies, a wonderful, parting ambiguity. Indeed.
Friday, April 27, 2012
Travelogue 443– April 27
Encanto
Take a right at the Burger King.
I've had to stop in a panaderia to ask directions. It's too hot out to wander and discover. Take a right, she says, at the Burger King. The panaderia has an open tile floor and glass cases along two walls. Along the third are some barren shelves. Along the third is the dusty window. Inside the cases are Latin cookies and cakes.
I return to the dense midday air. I find the Burger King, just past Popeye Motors, where the owner is standing outside operating a sound system, shouting at passers-by and playing salsa. He has a big blow-up Homer Simpson swaying in the sea breezes.
The city of Ponce is named after the great grandson of Ponce de Leon. Young Ponce was the leader of those who settled the current site of the city in the seventeenth century. His illustrious ancestor -- member of Columbus's second expedition and explorer of the Sunshine State, which he named Florida -- old Castilian for refuge-for-those-with-bad-taste -- was the first Spanish governor of the island. It seems only fair that the island's second city should be named after his family. The first city was named for John the Baptist, and I'm sure he felt that that was fair, all things considered. Originally Columbus had named the entire island -- Boriquen to native peoples -- after old Saint John, but subsequent travelers became accustomed to calling it the Rich Port, and the moniker stuck, demoting the austere saint to capital city.
I've set aside a day to see more of the island. The conference has confined me to San Juan. I decide on Ponce as my destination because I happen to see an article about an exhibit from the Prado at the Museo de Arte in Ponce. It's on the southern, Caribbean coast of Puerto Rico, whereas San Juan is situated on the northern, Atlantic shore. I've rented a car for the drive.
There is a haze over the morning, a gentle threat of rain. I sit out the early traffic, inching forward along several highways across downtown while listening to salsa music and compulsively adjusting the air conditioning. Then I reach the incline leading out of the city. The traffic quickens. The buildings disperse, and I'm over the ridge.
The interior is shadowed by the clouds. It's mountainous. It's tropical, but not in any cinematic way -- no skyless, Avatar jungles where you must wield the machete. This jungle belongs to a low-lying, seascape category of tropical, serious in its verdant fertility, carpeting the rugged hills, but showing a certain amiability and lack of ambition.
The landscape of Puerto Rico seems to unfurl in fast forward. You've studied the maps; the names come too fast. This is a small island. I've left the oceanside bowl that San Juan occupies. Already I'm descending into Caguas, a town that appears on the maps to be almost midway across the isla. There's only one more major valley and its major town inland. Beyond the lip of that second bowl, I spy the blue Caribbean horizon.
Before I search for the Museo, I tour the town center. The sun has banished the threat of storms. I stop in the wonderfully named Plaza Las Delicias, ornamented by a fountain with goofy lions spitting water, with statues of civic leaders of old; with the cathedral; and with a red- and black-striped nineteenth-century firehouse -- the first built in Puerto Rico; with old-timers sitting on benches in their sweaty shirts and bantering.
I'm fortunate to park one block from the notably pleasant Cafe Cafe. Anyone visiting Ponce must stop in. The walls are covered in local art; the tables are local art, painted over by a local, tattooed boy who signs as 'ManWe'. In this festive atmosphere, taking respite from the heat under the slow ceiling fans, I have the best food and coffee of the trip. I'm reluctant to venture out again, but I must in the name of art.
Take a right at the Burger King. In this humidity, the street past the Burger King is torture, featuring the interminable facades and grounds of public buildings that in extreme climates can only be seen as instruments of torture. Why did I walk?
The exhibit from the Prado is dominated by El Greco and Goya, neither of whom are favorites -- a fact I can confirm after another viewing, the former weird in all the wrong ways, and the latter completely unremarkable in my eyes. Mois, reductionist?
I'm in a mood. I stroll the air-conditioned halls, and I dismiss pieces I would usually marvel over: I'm a sucker for Renaissance and Baroque classicism on any other day. Today, I'm drawn to the Museo's prized permanent collection of Pre-Raphaelite art. There I find the usual red-headed beauties dwelling in worlds of intense detail and glittering color. The sheen, the romanticism, the weeping symbolism is usually too much for me. Maybe the Latin milieu suits this art well. I'm drawn in and ready to shed a tear for beauty and truth -- though I don't, quite.
Inspired, I will now make my way back to the car, and I will drive to the sea. I set out, pushing through the thick air, past the blank-eyed civic halls and past Homer and back to the Cafe Cafe for a quick shot of caffeinated fortitude. The center of Ponce is fascinating, a kind of funny art installation of its own, fragile stands of plaster and brick set like game pieces in the glaring sun. So many buildings have become empty shells, some leaving only free-standing bricks facades with windows looking in on high grass and wild flowers. The blocks are short; the streets are alleys; one walks them much as one might the halls of the precious museo.
I stand at the edge of the Caribbean sea. It's a blustery day. The winds are kicking up whitecaps all the way out. As I look south toward South America, I have to hold my cap on. To the guy on the other side of the Caribbean, it must look like I'm saluting.
Encanto
Take a right at the Burger King.
I've had to stop in a panaderia to ask directions. It's too hot out to wander and discover. Take a right, she says, at the Burger King. The panaderia has an open tile floor and glass cases along two walls. Along the third are some barren shelves. Along the third is the dusty window. Inside the cases are Latin cookies and cakes.
I return to the dense midday air. I find the Burger King, just past Popeye Motors, where the owner is standing outside operating a sound system, shouting at passers-by and playing salsa. He has a big blow-up Homer Simpson swaying in the sea breezes.
The city of Ponce is named after the great grandson of Ponce de Leon. Young Ponce was the leader of those who settled the current site of the city in the seventeenth century. His illustrious ancestor -- member of Columbus's second expedition and explorer of the Sunshine State, which he named Florida -- old Castilian for refuge-for-those-with-bad-taste -- was the first Spanish governor of the island. It seems only fair that the island's second city should be named after his family. The first city was named for John the Baptist, and I'm sure he felt that that was fair, all things considered. Originally Columbus had named the entire island -- Boriquen to native peoples -- after old Saint John, but subsequent travelers became accustomed to calling it the Rich Port, and the moniker stuck, demoting the austere saint to capital city.
I've set aside a day to see more of the island. The conference has confined me to San Juan. I decide on Ponce as my destination because I happen to see an article about an exhibit from the Prado at the Museo de Arte in Ponce. It's on the southern, Caribbean coast of Puerto Rico, whereas San Juan is situated on the northern, Atlantic shore. I've rented a car for the drive.
There is a haze over the morning, a gentle threat of rain. I sit out the early traffic, inching forward along several highways across downtown while listening to salsa music and compulsively adjusting the air conditioning. Then I reach the incline leading out of the city. The traffic quickens. The buildings disperse, and I'm over the ridge.
The interior is shadowed by the clouds. It's mountainous. It's tropical, but not in any cinematic way -- no skyless, Avatar jungles where you must wield the machete. This jungle belongs to a low-lying, seascape category of tropical, serious in its verdant fertility, carpeting the rugged hills, but showing a certain amiability and lack of ambition.
The landscape of Puerto Rico seems to unfurl in fast forward. You've studied the maps; the names come too fast. This is a small island. I've left the oceanside bowl that San Juan occupies. Already I'm descending into Caguas, a town that appears on the maps to be almost midway across the isla. There's only one more major valley and its major town inland. Beyond the lip of that second bowl, I spy the blue Caribbean horizon.
Before I search for the Museo, I tour the town center. The sun has banished the threat of storms. I stop in the wonderfully named Plaza Las Delicias, ornamented by a fountain with goofy lions spitting water, with statues of civic leaders of old; with the cathedral; and with a red- and black-striped nineteenth-century firehouse -- the first built in Puerto Rico; with old-timers sitting on benches in their sweaty shirts and bantering.
I'm fortunate to park one block from the notably pleasant Cafe Cafe. Anyone visiting Ponce must stop in. The walls are covered in local art; the tables are local art, painted over by a local, tattooed boy who signs as 'ManWe'. In this festive atmosphere, taking respite from the heat under the slow ceiling fans, I have the best food and coffee of the trip. I'm reluctant to venture out again, but I must in the name of art.
Take a right at the Burger King. In this humidity, the street past the Burger King is torture, featuring the interminable facades and grounds of public buildings that in extreme climates can only be seen as instruments of torture. Why did I walk?
The exhibit from the Prado is dominated by El Greco and Goya, neither of whom are favorites -- a fact I can confirm after another viewing, the former weird in all the wrong ways, and the latter completely unremarkable in my eyes. Mois, reductionist?
I'm in a mood. I stroll the air-conditioned halls, and I dismiss pieces I would usually marvel over: I'm a sucker for Renaissance and Baroque classicism on any other day. Today, I'm drawn to the Museo's prized permanent collection of Pre-Raphaelite art. There I find the usual red-headed beauties dwelling in worlds of intense detail and glittering color. The sheen, the romanticism, the weeping symbolism is usually too much for me. Maybe the Latin milieu suits this art well. I'm drawn in and ready to shed a tear for beauty and truth -- though I don't, quite.
Inspired, I will now make my way back to the car, and I will drive to the sea. I set out, pushing through the thick air, past the blank-eyed civic halls and past Homer and back to the Cafe Cafe for a quick shot of caffeinated fortitude. The center of Ponce is fascinating, a kind of funny art installation of its own, fragile stands of plaster and brick set like game pieces in the glaring sun. So many buildings have become empty shells, some leaving only free-standing bricks facades with windows looking in on high grass and wild flowers. The blocks are short; the streets are alleys; one walks them much as one might the halls of the precious museo.
I stand at the edge of the Caribbean sea. It's a blustery day. The winds are kicking up whitecaps all the way out. As I look south toward South America, I have to hold my cap on. To the guy on the other side of the Caribbean, it must look like I'm saluting.
Sunday, April 22, 2012
Travelogue 442– April 22
Rum Diaries
The crabs move gingerly across the sand. They are pink, and it's as though they are tender from sun burn, returning from the beach as the sun hangs low over the condos and hotels to the west, as the first tones of crab pink creep into the ocean air. They are heading for safety underneath the planks of the deck. They seem to see me, watching them from a god-like height. They hesitate; they scuttle to the side. They dig among the sand and leaves beneath the broad-leafed trees. My gaze returns to the horizon. It is a straight line. It is blue. Everything resounds with the rolling of gentle waves.
The Pakistani has delivered me safely into the hands of the next stewards of travel, to the diligent airline employees and vigilant mavens of airport security, and to the pilots who tell stories to each other in the cockpit to stay awake. And I have logged my hours above the earth, flying toward the west, aiding the sun in turning the day toward conclusion.
I didn't sleep well during the night, so as soon as I'm seated on the plane, as soon as we're on our way, I nod off. My head swings from side to side across my chest. I wake and see the cities. I wake and see valleys under benign clouds. And then I wake and there is only the ocean. And again it's ocean. I am not able to stay awake, though the view becomes miraculous, and I sense that the order of dreams and waking has been upset.
The ocean is glowing. There are patches that are a bright aquamarine, a color almost green, and glowing as though there are lights just below the surface. Small islands appear with curious shapes, boasting strands of white sand and lagoons of dull green, and surrounding them is that glowing aquamarine. There are clouds that are pure white and big as cities, layered and high and molded into all types of detail. There are faces in them, somber civil servants from centuries past. They leave shadows on the surface of the ocean, detached and lost as ghosts. And then we're approaching for landing, descending over windblown waves.
Now the crabs are abandoning the beach. So are the people. The day is done. The sun is leaving the sky to cool. Above, a sliver of moon brightens. Along the straight road of the horizon, purple clouds are forming in a line, like priests in robes, progressing silently forward on pilgrimage. The waitress arrives with my rum. She returns to the long patio bar, where ice is dished into plastic cups, echoing like the work of bulldozers miles away. On the beach, sharp lights from mobile phones bob like fireflies.
Rum Diaries
The crabs move gingerly across the sand. They are pink, and it's as though they are tender from sun burn, returning from the beach as the sun hangs low over the condos and hotels to the west, as the first tones of crab pink creep into the ocean air. They are heading for safety underneath the planks of the deck. They seem to see me, watching them from a god-like height. They hesitate; they scuttle to the side. They dig among the sand and leaves beneath the broad-leafed trees. My gaze returns to the horizon. It is a straight line. It is blue. Everything resounds with the rolling of gentle waves.
The Pakistani has delivered me safely into the hands of the next stewards of travel, to the diligent airline employees and vigilant mavens of airport security, and to the pilots who tell stories to each other in the cockpit to stay awake. And I have logged my hours above the earth, flying toward the west, aiding the sun in turning the day toward conclusion.
I didn't sleep well during the night, so as soon as I'm seated on the plane, as soon as we're on our way, I nod off. My head swings from side to side across my chest. I wake and see the cities. I wake and see valleys under benign clouds. And then I wake and there is only the ocean. And again it's ocean. I am not able to stay awake, though the view becomes miraculous, and I sense that the order of dreams and waking has been upset.
The ocean is glowing. There are patches that are a bright aquamarine, a color almost green, and glowing as though there are lights just below the surface. Small islands appear with curious shapes, boasting strands of white sand and lagoons of dull green, and surrounding them is that glowing aquamarine. There are clouds that are pure white and big as cities, layered and high and molded into all types of detail. There are faces in them, somber civil servants from centuries past. They leave shadows on the surface of the ocean, detached and lost as ghosts. And then we're approaching for landing, descending over windblown waves.
Now the crabs are abandoning the beach. So are the people. The day is done. The sun is leaving the sky to cool. Above, a sliver of moon brightens. Along the straight road of the horizon, purple clouds are forming in a line, like priests in robes, progressing silently forward on pilgrimage. The waitress arrives with my rum. She returns to the long patio bar, where ice is dished into plastic cups, echoing like the work of bulldozers miles away. On the beach, sharp lights from mobile phones bob like fireflies.
Saturday, April 21, 2012
Travelogue 441– April 21
Via Brevis
My appointment is at 6am.
I am waiting on Hoyne Avenue. Hoyne Avenue is not much of an avenue. Two cars could not pass between the parked ones. The buildings are humble. The avenue dead-ends just south, and Mary mentions there's a Target on the other side of the dead end. She repeats it several times, and suddenly Target is a landmark of some significance.
Right at 6am, the taxi arrives. The driver lets me in, and we set off. He asks about my home, my trip. He looks more closely at me over his shoulder, with the casual intensity of a pro. He's been driving for five years now.
I'm in Chicago, just for one night. Stephanie and Mark have driven me there from Michigan, and we all have stayed the night at Mary's on Hoyne Avenue. Past the Target and not too far away is the center of Lincoln Square. Mary says it's quaint. I haven't got my big city glasses on yet; I am able to discern only the slightest variation among the blocks of two- and three-story brick. There is a kind of main street happening. There is a string of small restaurants, which include our Mexican place. It's tiny, of course, packed carefully with tables and with suggestive decor, and there is a small crowd waiting to sit. We join them, standing awkwardly at the entrance, holding our bottles. It seems that very few restaurants in Chicago can manage a liquor license, and patrons are encouraged to bring their own. We've brought a bottle of wine and a plastic thermos of margaritas. Mary found a bottle of tequila and a bottle of mix that dated back to her housewarming party. We figure it's worth the chance.
I'm fascinated by the lives of big city taxi drivers and so I step right into this one's trap. I ask how the day or the night is going. Long, he says. He's been driving twenty-one hours. He says it's almost impossible to stay awake after twenty-one hours of driving. I nod compassionately, and glance at the road. He tells me it's good to have someone to talk to. 'After this many hours, nothing else works,' he says. 'Coffee.' He shakes his head. 'Food.' He shakes his head. "It takes a good, intense dialogue with someone. You know?' And so, for twenty minutes, my life depends on my conversation.
The time difference should work in my favor, but the margaritas and the late night, the futon bed and the anxieties of travel have worked on me. Last night I lay in bed thinking of next stops and next stops. This morning I'm dizzy with it all.
He asks about my work. I tell him about Ethiopia. He asks, 'Is it true that all NGOs are agents of American policy?' I cautiously say no, I don't think so. He says he gets a lot of mercenaries in his taxi, guys with military gear saying they work for NGOs, heading off to international locales. He sizes me up again in a long glance and a sly smile. 'Are you sure you're not military? I could see you with a sniper rifle.' I say, thank you, I'm flattered, but I've never even held a gun.
This is a suspicion that tails me like a spook. Short hair, long hair, grubby clothes or neat, it doesn't matter, people are always thinking I'm CIA. I'm sure it follows most international travelers in the choking modern atmosphere of conspiracy theory. I usually find humor in the idea of the CIA being super villains behind thousands of perfectly orchestrated mishaps around the globe every day, knowing how hard it is for most human beings simply to get out the door on time in the morning with matching socks. But there you go.
No, sorry, friend. I'm sadly trapped inside the very persona I present to you. His persona is far more interesting, He's half Pakistani. He sports the kind of long, frizzy beard that triggers odd muscle twitches in Middle America. He has a broad grin furnished with even, white teeth. He's big-boned and leans far back in his seat. His diction is educated.
'There's no freedom of press anywhere in the world like freedom of the press in Pakistan,' he declares. He paints a picture of innumerable factions writing continuous streams of abuse about generals and presidents alike. Karachi comes alive through his words, a sprawling megalopolis ready to skip to the head of the line. Did I know that before Bangladesh broke away, Pakistan was the third largest nation on Earth -- in population, of course?
We make it safely to O'Hare. He takes a last cunning look. 'And you're sure ...?' I'm sure. Are you going back, I ask him. 'Next summer, insh'Allah. That's why I'm pulling these crazy shifts.' Ah, well, may you find steady conversation. And the same for your pilot.
Via Brevis
My appointment is at 6am.
I am waiting on Hoyne Avenue. Hoyne Avenue is not much of an avenue. Two cars could not pass between the parked ones. The buildings are humble. The avenue dead-ends just south, and Mary mentions there's a Target on the other side of the dead end. She repeats it several times, and suddenly Target is a landmark of some significance.
Right at 6am, the taxi arrives. The driver lets me in, and we set off. He asks about my home, my trip. He looks more closely at me over his shoulder, with the casual intensity of a pro. He's been driving for five years now.
I'm in Chicago, just for one night. Stephanie and Mark have driven me there from Michigan, and we all have stayed the night at Mary's on Hoyne Avenue. Past the Target and not too far away is the center of Lincoln Square. Mary says it's quaint. I haven't got my big city glasses on yet; I am able to discern only the slightest variation among the blocks of two- and three-story brick. There is a kind of main street happening. There is a string of small restaurants, which include our Mexican place. It's tiny, of course, packed carefully with tables and with suggestive decor, and there is a small crowd waiting to sit. We join them, standing awkwardly at the entrance, holding our bottles. It seems that very few restaurants in Chicago can manage a liquor license, and patrons are encouraged to bring their own. We've brought a bottle of wine and a plastic thermos of margaritas. Mary found a bottle of tequila and a bottle of mix that dated back to her housewarming party. We figure it's worth the chance.
I'm fascinated by the lives of big city taxi drivers and so I step right into this one's trap. I ask how the day or the night is going. Long, he says. He's been driving twenty-one hours. He says it's almost impossible to stay awake after twenty-one hours of driving. I nod compassionately, and glance at the road. He tells me it's good to have someone to talk to. 'After this many hours, nothing else works,' he says. 'Coffee.' He shakes his head. 'Food.' He shakes his head. "It takes a good, intense dialogue with someone. You know?' And so, for twenty minutes, my life depends on my conversation.
The time difference should work in my favor, but the margaritas and the late night, the futon bed and the anxieties of travel have worked on me. Last night I lay in bed thinking of next stops and next stops. This morning I'm dizzy with it all.
He asks about my work. I tell him about Ethiopia. He asks, 'Is it true that all NGOs are agents of American policy?' I cautiously say no, I don't think so. He says he gets a lot of mercenaries in his taxi, guys with military gear saying they work for NGOs, heading off to international locales. He sizes me up again in a long glance and a sly smile. 'Are you sure you're not military? I could see you with a sniper rifle.' I say, thank you, I'm flattered, but I've never even held a gun.
This is a suspicion that tails me like a spook. Short hair, long hair, grubby clothes or neat, it doesn't matter, people are always thinking I'm CIA. I'm sure it follows most international travelers in the choking modern atmosphere of conspiracy theory. I usually find humor in the idea of the CIA being super villains behind thousands of perfectly orchestrated mishaps around the globe every day, knowing how hard it is for most human beings simply to get out the door on time in the morning with matching socks. But there you go.
No, sorry, friend. I'm sadly trapped inside the very persona I present to you. His persona is far more interesting, He's half Pakistani. He sports the kind of long, frizzy beard that triggers odd muscle twitches in Middle America. He has a broad grin furnished with even, white teeth. He's big-boned and leans far back in his seat. His diction is educated.
'There's no freedom of press anywhere in the world like freedom of the press in Pakistan,' he declares. He paints a picture of innumerable factions writing continuous streams of abuse about generals and presidents alike. Karachi comes alive through his words, a sprawling megalopolis ready to skip to the head of the line. Did I know that before Bangladesh broke away, Pakistan was the third largest nation on Earth -- in population, of course?
We make it safely to O'Hare. He takes a last cunning look. 'And you're sure ...?' I'm sure. Are you going back, I ask him. 'Next summer, insh'Allah. That's why I'm pulling these crazy shifts.' Ah, well, may you find steady conversation. And the same for your pilot.
Thursday, April 19, 2012
Travelogue 440– April 19
Pax Brevis
There's something like peace here. The sun hasn't risen yet, but he's throwing forward the fire in his soul, tinting the clouds red, his ruddy fingers thrusting forth in silent and exuberant mastery. This is my world. Every day this is my world.
I've been up since before the stirring of light. I lay on my back, waiting for the undefined moment when I think I can stir. In the meantime, I gather up fragments of the previous day.
The back porch sits high above the Thornapple River. We overlook not the other side of the river but an island. There are houses in there, but it appears to be uninterrupted woods. At riverside, there's a small, attenuated meadow. Half a dozen deer are chasing each other playfully. There's a flash of white, a bald eagle rising to his perch.
Entertainment is throwing the ball for dog, a bull-necked little guy named Chompers. He demonstrates great joy for us in his devotion to the ball. It's with undiminished and always new enthusiasm that he growls and chews on the durable plastic, tosses it at our feet.
My readers have been clamoring for a renewal of the blog. Clamoring! I sort through hundreds of emails every day: there's one from that young man who insists on calling himself 'Snooger', and who insists he hails from Michigan, the hallowed ground in which I awaken today. Snooger clamors.
And so I dress, and I stumble down the unlit stairs of the house to begin another day. I stumble into the unlit garage. I put on the clumsy shoes made for the beautiful Cannondale bicycle. I push the bike toward the door, but stop when I see there is a ladybug on the threshold. Gingerly I step over her, lifting the light-as-air bike frame.
I put on my gloves, though I discover that it's warm. The sky is neither a night sky nor a day sky. Between the web of tree branches, the color is a sober and muted blue. I mount the cycle and click the shoes into place. I set off down the first steep hill, coasting among the high trees, away from the river.
Almost two weeks I've been here. In a few days, I set off for more exotic places. Peace has been welcome. Peace is always timely.
Minnesota was her usual placid self, but her quiet hid deadly snares: like the break-in perpetrated on my innocent rental car, and the loss of my entire traveling self, stowed away as it was in that wonderfully durable bag from Target. All gone. A few weeks later, my hip rebels against the training schedule. I watch from shore as my aspirations for the May half marathon tank, sinking into metaphorical depths stained the bruised colors of a sunset very like advancing age. I leave for Michigan.
In the tiny township of Ada, there is a cafe that opens early enough for me. It opens early enough for a twittering covey of high school girls. They commandeer the next table and giggle about boys. It's true! I would never conjure such a bland image, but they literally giggle about boys. There's a new boy at school. I went on a date last night. Ooh!
I step out to admire the reach of fiery Helios. He smites the clouds with rare shouts of hope, so all-encompassing one doesn't sense a thing. But they enclose the skies. They embrace the earth.
Pax Brevis
There's something like peace here. The sun hasn't risen yet, but he's throwing forward the fire in his soul, tinting the clouds red, his ruddy fingers thrusting forth in silent and exuberant mastery. This is my world. Every day this is my world.
I've been up since before the stirring of light. I lay on my back, waiting for the undefined moment when I think I can stir. In the meantime, I gather up fragments of the previous day.
The back porch sits high above the Thornapple River. We overlook not the other side of the river but an island. There are houses in there, but it appears to be uninterrupted woods. At riverside, there's a small, attenuated meadow. Half a dozen deer are chasing each other playfully. There's a flash of white, a bald eagle rising to his perch.
Entertainment is throwing the ball for dog, a bull-necked little guy named Chompers. He demonstrates great joy for us in his devotion to the ball. It's with undiminished and always new enthusiasm that he growls and chews on the durable plastic, tosses it at our feet.
My readers have been clamoring for a renewal of the blog. Clamoring! I sort through hundreds of emails every day: there's one from that young man who insists on calling himself 'Snooger', and who insists he hails from Michigan, the hallowed ground in which I awaken today. Snooger clamors.
And so I dress, and I stumble down the unlit stairs of the house to begin another day. I stumble into the unlit garage. I put on the clumsy shoes made for the beautiful Cannondale bicycle. I push the bike toward the door, but stop when I see there is a ladybug on the threshold. Gingerly I step over her, lifting the light-as-air bike frame.
I put on my gloves, though I discover that it's warm. The sky is neither a night sky nor a day sky. Between the web of tree branches, the color is a sober and muted blue. I mount the cycle and click the shoes into place. I set off down the first steep hill, coasting among the high trees, away from the river.
Almost two weeks I've been here. In a few days, I set off for more exotic places. Peace has been welcome. Peace is always timely.
Minnesota was her usual placid self, but her quiet hid deadly snares: like the break-in perpetrated on my innocent rental car, and the loss of my entire traveling self, stowed away as it was in that wonderfully durable bag from Target. All gone. A few weeks later, my hip rebels against the training schedule. I watch from shore as my aspirations for the May half marathon tank, sinking into metaphorical depths stained the bruised colors of a sunset very like advancing age. I leave for Michigan.
In the tiny township of Ada, there is a cafe that opens early enough for me. It opens early enough for a twittering covey of high school girls. They commandeer the next table and giggle about boys. It's true! I would never conjure such a bland image, but they literally giggle about boys. There's a new boy at school. I went on a date last night. Ooh!
I step out to admire the reach of fiery Helios. He smites the clouds with rare shouts of hope, so all-encompassing one doesn't sense a thing. But they enclose the skies. They embrace the earth.
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Travelogue 439– March 13
My Town
In the real Amsterdam – not the right British variety – the houses are hundreds of years old and they lean and bulge like crooked teeth, brick the color of clay, the color of decrepit rose, they lean over narrow alleys of buckling brick. I'm walking through history, climbing the steep little inclines of merry bridges over placid canals, bridges that describe tight arcs like jokes.
I'm entering his neighborhood, a tiny made-up district – yes, made up – like a fairy tale, except dirtier, pulled up from the waters of the Ij. It's an island, a creation of land-hungry burgomasters creating a set for the Golden Age. It's a district that has a future as a home to thousands of Eastern European Jews. So many that his street is destined to change from Breestraat to Jodenbreestraat.
I can hear his voice. Although he grew up in the provincial town of Leiden, and didn't move to Amsterdam until his mid-twenties, when he was already gaining a name, he's saying, 'This is my town.' He adopts a sensual swagger as he takes to the streets, swaying in his characteristic gown and floppy cap, and he claims everyone there as his own. He has the cannibalistic appetite of those in his profession.
'The beggars are mine,' he says. 'The street musicians, the street walkers, the street vendors are mine. I know their bodies, misshapen and asymmetrical. I recognize the marks of the years and gravity on the flesh. I know their smiles, teeth missing like gaps that sudden fires make along the street. I know which leg takes his weight; I know which side she lies on. I see their shadows. I know the color of the light in their dens.' And there is no sneer with his claims. They come with a smile of satisfied desire.
His house still stands, now renovated and clean, now standing on a busy boulevard. This is the house of his pride and his shame. He bought it, and almost twenty years later, he lost it to bankruptcy. How does a master go bankrupt? How does a success become a failure in an age known to be Golden? The talent is still there; the money is there.
In his studio, he studies the mirror. He reaches in and strokes the whiskered cheek, reading the texture there by touch. He paces the studio. He stops to pick up a coin, an discovers his apprentices have painted it there as a joke. He admires his extraordinary collections, of prints by his favored masters, Lucas van Leyden, Durer, and others. He admires his collections of armor, armament, spears statuary, and fabrics.
All of this he loses in the bankruptcy. After he loses his wife. It's odd how no reports of rage reach me across the centuries. He adapts; he continues. And maybe it's because he understands the laws of trade so well, citizen of the first republic, citizen of the first modern middle class state, a society founded on commerce.
His wife dies, he starts a long affair with his wife's nurse, a thing that turns to bitter public acrimony. And then the years with his maid, Hendrickje. The church was eventually forced to charge her with 'the acts of a whore,' producing a child out of wedlock as she does, and to ban her from communion. They can't touch him because he is member of no church.
Where there is no royalty, there is respectability. I buy your work, I buy you, the burgomasters say. Am I going to commission for my dear family's portrait? What will the church say? What will they say at Town Hall?
Tourists and students stream by. We have to squeeze by each other on the narrow streets. The tiny world of the centrum makes for intense work for the senses. It's all so close, so concentrated, and so finely detailed by the first and last artist, Time. The cobblestones themselves assert a sort of bourgeois individuality, jostling each other and enforcing sharp attention on the pedestrian. Tourists stumble. They don't want to be distracted by watching their step. They are looking hungrily, claiming the city brick by brick with their eyes. They will bring it home in their cameras. They will own it.
My Town
In the real Amsterdam – not the right British variety – the houses are hundreds of years old and they lean and bulge like crooked teeth, brick the color of clay, the color of decrepit rose, they lean over narrow alleys of buckling brick. I'm walking through history, climbing the steep little inclines of merry bridges over placid canals, bridges that describe tight arcs like jokes.
I'm entering his neighborhood, a tiny made-up district – yes, made up – like a fairy tale, except dirtier, pulled up from the waters of the Ij. It's an island, a creation of land-hungry burgomasters creating a set for the Golden Age. It's a district that has a future as a home to thousands of Eastern European Jews. So many that his street is destined to change from Breestraat to Jodenbreestraat.
I can hear his voice. Although he grew up in the provincial town of Leiden, and didn't move to Amsterdam until his mid-twenties, when he was already gaining a name, he's saying, 'This is my town.' He adopts a sensual swagger as he takes to the streets, swaying in his characteristic gown and floppy cap, and he claims everyone there as his own. He has the cannibalistic appetite of those in his profession.
'The beggars are mine,' he says. 'The street musicians, the street walkers, the street vendors are mine. I know their bodies, misshapen and asymmetrical. I recognize the marks of the years and gravity on the flesh. I know their smiles, teeth missing like gaps that sudden fires make along the street. I know which leg takes his weight; I know which side she lies on. I see their shadows. I know the color of the light in their dens.' And there is no sneer with his claims. They come with a smile of satisfied desire.
His house still stands, now renovated and clean, now standing on a busy boulevard. This is the house of his pride and his shame. He bought it, and almost twenty years later, he lost it to bankruptcy. How does a master go bankrupt? How does a success become a failure in an age known to be Golden? The talent is still there; the money is there.
In his studio, he studies the mirror. He reaches in and strokes the whiskered cheek, reading the texture there by touch. He paces the studio. He stops to pick up a coin, an discovers his apprentices have painted it there as a joke. He admires his extraordinary collections, of prints by his favored masters, Lucas van Leyden, Durer, and others. He admires his collections of armor, armament, spears statuary, and fabrics.
All of this he loses in the bankruptcy. After he loses his wife. It's odd how no reports of rage reach me across the centuries. He adapts; he continues. And maybe it's because he understands the laws of trade so well, citizen of the first republic, citizen of the first modern middle class state, a society founded on commerce.
His wife dies, he starts a long affair with his wife's nurse, a thing that turns to bitter public acrimony. And then the years with his maid, Hendrickje. The church was eventually forced to charge her with 'the acts of a whore,' producing a child out of wedlock as she does, and to ban her from communion. They can't touch him because he is member of no church.
Where there is no royalty, there is respectability. I buy your work, I buy you, the burgomasters say. Am I going to commission for my dear family's portrait? What will the church say? What will they say at Town Hall?
Tourists and students stream by. We have to squeeze by each other on the narrow streets. The tiny world of the centrum makes for intense work for the senses. It's all so close, so concentrated, and so finely detailed by the first and last artist, Time. The cobblestones themselves assert a sort of bourgeois individuality, jostling each other and enforcing sharp attention on the pedestrian. Tourists stumble. They don't want to be distracted by watching their step. They are looking hungrily, claiming the city brick by brick with their eyes. They will bring it home in their cameras. They will own it.
Tuesday, March 06, 2012
Travelogue 438– March 6
Not Like Any Other
Part Two
As predicted, the day of the race dawns with rain. I can see its tiny, fleeting craters on the pavement from the seventh floor of my hotel. The scene is utterly silent. I have plenty of time to watch the hypnotizing pattern of its falling. The race isn't until half ten.
My warmup will be a brisk walk in my street clothes, gathering rain on my cap and on my shoulders as I search for anywhere open in Milton Keynes on a Sunday morning. There isn't any. It's a half nine opening for everyone, and by then I need to be stretching and suiting up. I stand outside the Starbucks watching the barista bustling behind the counter. Starbucks stands as a miniature free-standing shop in glass under the high, curving ceiling of the town center's super-mall. Here, the space is like a stadium, circular and open-air. The dome stands above the neighboring rooftops and admits plenty of cold air beneath its eaves. It's actually colder inside than out, the clammy cold of dead concrete.
I find the scene of a street market, where south Asian men are running here and there to set up their shops. I find a collection of jackets and walk quickly among the racks looking for something cheap and light to wear for the race. Finding nothing suitable, I decide I'm going to have to rough it.
Back in my room, I find the old cotton sweatshirt I packed for training in the cold. This will be the best I can do. I jog to the starting line on the other side of town, timing my arrival perfectly, climbing over the barriers and in among the runners a minute before the gunshot. My competitors stand around shifting from foot to foot cracking jokes, as Brits will. 'I hear the course is all downhill,' one says wryly. 'It is,' says another. 'Except the bits that are uphill.'
We're off. I set a comfortable pace right away, thinking of last year's races, in which I started too fast and paid for it. People are passing me for the first several miles, but I hold steady. After two miles the sweatshirt is soaked. I peel it off and throw it beside the road.
The rain in England is quiet and diffident. It falls gently, and seems to calm the spirit. The hills glow with a warmer green. I have rarely found it to be much of a hindrance to life here. But the British rain is imperious; it will not suffer its reign to be questioned. One accepts it, but one doesn't defy it. The damp penetrates, and pulls one to earth.
I've never had to run a race in England in the rain. In three races encompassing a year and a half, I've had pleasant weather. I'm thinking how bad can it be?
Every race has a story, especially the long ones. I start at a pace I think can hold. I find out at the second and third miles that I'm behind my best pace. A decision has to made. I speed up. I'm able to hold it. Mile Six is particularly successful. I start passing people. I start matching my best time.
Then, just as I approach Mile Nine, and just as I'm telling myself that the next two miles will determine the race, something happens. The weather turns. It's the temperature. Suddenly there's a head wind, and it carries a chill. This rain is on the verge of turning into snow. And I've tossed away the long-sleeves. By the end of Mile Nine, the skin on arms and legs is numb. By Mile Eleven, I'm cramping up suddenly and stumbling.
We're running through villages that are little more than crossroads, stone outposts of age-old comforts, inns and pubs and churches. The residents are standing by the road in the freezing rain, clapping and yelling out support. It's hard not to be encouraged by that.
We have run by lakes; we have run alongside canals. By Mile Twelve, we are heading back toward the city. We find a sheltered half mile, where the arctic winds don't blow, and I find a second or third wind of my own. I find it in me to finish, even pushing my stiff limbs into a burst of speed.
It is the stretch past the finishing line that is most challenging. Now that I have stopped, even for only a few moments, all the muscles are screaming in outrage against the madness of running again, even at a jog, back to the hotel. But the rain is set to turn to snow, and I have to get indoors. This half a mile is the most painful of the months of training. Once indoors, I find my fingers are locked in position; I can't get them to grip anything. Slowly, clumsily, I peel off the clothes. The touch of lukewarm water on the fingers is excruciating.
And today, in London, as I reach the postage stamp beauty at the end of Devonshire Street, both bags across my shoulder, my legs are stiff and sore. It's a day suited to a stroll, more made for a race than yesterday – as was the day before the race, as well. That's the luck of the draw.
I take a working break in a natural foods shop. On the second floor, there is a cafe where I can set up my cafe and have killer carrot cake. The clientele is nothing less than posh, earning every accented phoneme of that loaded word. They sit in style and state, and they glance around the room. As I watch them, I can't help looking over my shoulder with a shiver, sensing the imminent appearance of Angelina Jolie in an evening gown, like a haunting. But no one ever appears, except the waiter with my cake, and a much more welcome sight is he.
Marlyebone turns into a stamp again and recedes, and I walk painfully back to Euston Station, under the gaze of the strangely past-futuristic BT tower, odd spoke to my odd kingdom.
Not Like Any Other
Part Two
As predicted, the day of the race dawns with rain. I can see its tiny, fleeting craters on the pavement from the seventh floor of my hotel. The scene is utterly silent. I have plenty of time to watch the hypnotizing pattern of its falling. The race isn't until half ten.
My warmup will be a brisk walk in my street clothes, gathering rain on my cap and on my shoulders as I search for anywhere open in Milton Keynes on a Sunday morning. There isn't any. It's a half nine opening for everyone, and by then I need to be stretching and suiting up. I stand outside the Starbucks watching the barista bustling behind the counter. Starbucks stands as a miniature free-standing shop in glass under the high, curving ceiling of the town center's super-mall. Here, the space is like a stadium, circular and open-air. The dome stands above the neighboring rooftops and admits plenty of cold air beneath its eaves. It's actually colder inside than out, the clammy cold of dead concrete.
I find the scene of a street market, where south Asian men are running here and there to set up their shops. I find a collection of jackets and walk quickly among the racks looking for something cheap and light to wear for the race. Finding nothing suitable, I decide I'm going to have to rough it.
Back in my room, I find the old cotton sweatshirt I packed for training in the cold. This will be the best I can do. I jog to the starting line on the other side of town, timing my arrival perfectly, climbing over the barriers and in among the runners a minute before the gunshot. My competitors stand around shifting from foot to foot cracking jokes, as Brits will. 'I hear the course is all downhill,' one says wryly. 'It is,' says another. 'Except the bits that are uphill.'
We're off. I set a comfortable pace right away, thinking of last year's races, in which I started too fast and paid for it. People are passing me for the first several miles, but I hold steady. After two miles the sweatshirt is soaked. I peel it off and throw it beside the road.
The rain in England is quiet and diffident. It falls gently, and seems to calm the spirit. The hills glow with a warmer green. I have rarely found it to be much of a hindrance to life here. But the British rain is imperious; it will not suffer its reign to be questioned. One accepts it, but one doesn't defy it. The damp penetrates, and pulls one to earth.
I've never had to run a race in England in the rain. In three races encompassing a year and a half, I've had pleasant weather. I'm thinking how bad can it be?
Every race has a story, especially the long ones. I start at a pace I think can hold. I find out at the second and third miles that I'm behind my best pace. A decision has to made. I speed up. I'm able to hold it. Mile Six is particularly successful. I start passing people. I start matching my best time.
Then, just as I approach Mile Nine, and just as I'm telling myself that the next two miles will determine the race, something happens. The weather turns. It's the temperature. Suddenly there's a head wind, and it carries a chill. This rain is on the verge of turning into snow. And I've tossed away the long-sleeves. By the end of Mile Nine, the skin on arms and legs is numb. By Mile Eleven, I'm cramping up suddenly and stumbling.
We're running through villages that are little more than crossroads, stone outposts of age-old comforts, inns and pubs and churches. The residents are standing by the road in the freezing rain, clapping and yelling out support. It's hard not to be encouraged by that.
We have run by lakes; we have run alongside canals. By Mile Twelve, we are heading back toward the city. We find a sheltered half mile, where the arctic winds don't blow, and I find a second or third wind of my own. I find it in me to finish, even pushing my stiff limbs into a burst of speed.
It is the stretch past the finishing line that is most challenging. Now that I have stopped, even for only a few moments, all the muscles are screaming in outrage against the madness of running again, even at a jog, back to the hotel. But the rain is set to turn to snow, and I have to get indoors. This half a mile is the most painful of the months of training. Once indoors, I find my fingers are locked in position; I can't get them to grip anything. Slowly, clumsily, I peel off the clothes. The touch of lukewarm water on the fingers is excruciating.
And today, in London, as I reach the postage stamp beauty at the end of Devonshire Street, both bags across my shoulder, my legs are stiff and sore. It's a day suited to a stroll, more made for a race than yesterday – as was the day before the race, as well. That's the luck of the draw.
I take a working break in a natural foods shop. On the second floor, there is a cafe where I can set up my cafe and have killer carrot cake. The clientele is nothing less than posh, earning every accented phoneme of that loaded word. They sit in style and state, and they glance around the room. As I watch them, I can't help looking over my shoulder with a shiver, sensing the imminent appearance of Angelina Jolie in an evening gown, like a haunting. But no one ever appears, except the waiter with my cake, and a much more welcome sight is he.
Marlyebone turns into a stamp again and recedes, and I walk painfully back to Euston Station, under the gaze of the strangely past-futuristic BT tower, odd spoke to my odd kingdom.
Monday, March 05, 2012
Travelogue 437– March 5
Not Like Any Other
Part One
There's a picture ahead, where the street ends. It could be Amsterdam, with its high, narrow house fronts of brick, its rounded gables. And yet it's clearly not. As I approach it, and as the picture opens with unfolding perspective into reality, it becomes unmistakeably British. The brick is too red. The street too tidy, the scene too distinct.
I'm taking a stroll, if a 'stroll' can be burdened by two bags over the shoulder. I have a break between two meetings in the Euston Square area. And I know it's not too terribly far to my current favorite among London neighborhoods, the heart of which beckons to me through that postage stamp vision between buildings at the end of the street.
One of London's attractions is the way it unfolds, one intriguing district after another, each with its frank of beauty and history. I've forgotten exactly where Marylebone is in relation to Euston Square. Graham has to point me in the right direction. It takes me a half hour to walk there, with luggage on my back and carrying in my muscles the lactic memory of yesterday's arduous half marathon.
In each direction, I catch suggestive glimpses of neighboring areas of the city, University College, Regents Park, Oxford Circus, Portland Place and its embassies, Baker Street. Each image resonates with personal memory and with a feeling for the variety of the city.
I'm just back from a venture into another corner of this country. In the early years of my acquaintance with England, there was only London and Bath. The diversity within London was enough to nourish me for a long time. But other locations called, and I'm discovering a crazy patchwork to this tiny bit of map.
My running habit is, of course, one way I explore. Just over a week ago was my first race of the season, 'season' being defined as one of my two annual excursions outside Ethiopia. This race was a 10K that I found online. I didn't have to travel at all for this, the race being located in Bath. And yet, funny England will present variety in constancy.
What does not communicate itself well across the internet is the British fetish for roughing it. This was not a road race. And I knew that much already, as the website made clear there were hills and trails. What it doesn't mention is that the race is a cross country race, and cross country in the true spirit in which the Brits first conceived of the sport. By the second mile, we are stumbling through deep mud on a trail that itself barely maintains its hold on a steep and wooded hillside. Each runner churns the mess a bit more; some resign to a puffing march instead of any pretense to running; some – like me – plunge forward, sliding into tree trunks and courting disaster. It's a two-lap course, and I quickly figure out that the rougher patches are where I excel, conditioned by the mountain running in Ethiopia. Here's where I pass people – the same people who pass me right back on any grassy flats.
A week later, I'm en route to a town named Milton Keynes, and not named after any iconic economists. No, the name – perhaps more suggestive of a droll and obscure author and surely a drunken intimate of Peter O'Toole's in the day – the name has a long and logical and very British history, deriving from a certain Middleton located in the lands of the Norman Cahaines family.
The town stands separately from the village, however, and represents something very unique in my English travels. See, the town of Milton Keynes was implemented in the 60s as a 'New City', an experiment in urban planning toward creating suburban space for a burgeoning population of London.
The town is about forty minutes by train northwest out of London Euston. There is some open farming country on the way, rolling hills trimmed by hedges, roamed by round sheep, cut by tidy country roads. One of the last villages before MK is Bletchley, now a suburb of the suburb, a dot on the map with an august name. During the Second World War, Bletchley was home to Alan Turing and to the Government Code and Cypher School, where German codes were cracked like walnuts, some by 'Colossus', one of the first computers constructed to torment humanity.
Then there appears the 'New City' on its hill, a collection of 60s architectural gems and some of the only grid-organized streets you'll find in Britain. Like most human projections of paradise onto the innocent world, Milton Keynes is a bit spooky. The wide avenues cross the land that once harbored three organic English villages, crossing the ancient farmland with a certain desolate authority, offering more austerity than promise, lined with dull-blue glass beauties that Haile Selassie would have found the acme of sophistication. What vitality that still clings to the place, creeps indoors along the bleak corridors of extensive malls, short, square tunnels featuring a limited and repetitive menu of chain outlets.
Never mind. I'm here to run.
Not Like Any Other
Part One
There's a picture ahead, where the street ends. It could be Amsterdam, with its high, narrow house fronts of brick, its rounded gables. And yet it's clearly not. As I approach it, and as the picture opens with unfolding perspective into reality, it becomes unmistakeably British. The brick is too red. The street too tidy, the scene too distinct.
I'm taking a stroll, if a 'stroll' can be burdened by two bags over the shoulder. I have a break between two meetings in the Euston Square area. And I know it's not too terribly far to my current favorite among London neighborhoods, the heart of which beckons to me through that postage stamp vision between buildings at the end of the street.
One of London's attractions is the way it unfolds, one intriguing district after another, each with its frank of beauty and history. I've forgotten exactly where Marylebone is in relation to Euston Square. Graham has to point me in the right direction. It takes me a half hour to walk there, with luggage on my back and carrying in my muscles the lactic memory of yesterday's arduous half marathon.
In each direction, I catch suggestive glimpses of neighboring areas of the city, University College, Regents Park, Oxford Circus, Portland Place and its embassies, Baker Street. Each image resonates with personal memory and with a feeling for the variety of the city.
I'm just back from a venture into another corner of this country. In the early years of my acquaintance with England, there was only London and Bath. The diversity within London was enough to nourish me for a long time. But other locations called, and I'm discovering a crazy patchwork to this tiny bit of map.
My running habit is, of course, one way I explore. Just over a week ago was my first race of the season, 'season' being defined as one of my two annual excursions outside Ethiopia. This race was a 10K that I found online. I didn't have to travel at all for this, the race being located in Bath. And yet, funny England will present variety in constancy.
What does not communicate itself well across the internet is the British fetish for roughing it. This was not a road race. And I knew that much already, as the website made clear there were hills and trails. What it doesn't mention is that the race is a cross country race, and cross country in the true spirit in which the Brits first conceived of the sport. By the second mile, we are stumbling through deep mud on a trail that itself barely maintains its hold on a steep and wooded hillside. Each runner churns the mess a bit more; some resign to a puffing march instead of any pretense to running; some – like me – plunge forward, sliding into tree trunks and courting disaster. It's a two-lap course, and I quickly figure out that the rougher patches are where I excel, conditioned by the mountain running in Ethiopia. Here's where I pass people – the same people who pass me right back on any grassy flats.
A week later, I'm en route to a town named Milton Keynes, and not named after any iconic economists. No, the name – perhaps more suggestive of a droll and obscure author and surely a drunken intimate of Peter O'Toole's in the day – the name has a long and logical and very British history, deriving from a certain Middleton located in the lands of the Norman Cahaines family.
The town stands separately from the village, however, and represents something very unique in my English travels. See, the town of Milton Keynes was implemented in the 60s as a 'New City', an experiment in urban planning toward creating suburban space for a burgeoning population of London.
The town is about forty minutes by train northwest out of London Euston. There is some open farming country on the way, rolling hills trimmed by hedges, roamed by round sheep, cut by tidy country roads. One of the last villages before MK is Bletchley, now a suburb of the suburb, a dot on the map with an august name. During the Second World War, Bletchley was home to Alan Turing and to the Government Code and Cypher School, where German codes were cracked like walnuts, some by 'Colossus', one of the first computers constructed to torment humanity.
Then there appears the 'New City' on its hill, a collection of 60s architectural gems and some of the only grid-organized streets you'll find in Britain. Like most human projections of paradise onto the innocent world, Milton Keynes is a bit spooky. The wide avenues cross the land that once harbored three organic English villages, crossing the ancient farmland with a certain desolate authority, offering more austerity than promise, lined with dull-blue glass beauties that Haile Selassie would have found the acme of sophistication. What vitality that still clings to the place, creeps indoors along the bleak corridors of extensive malls, short, square tunnels featuring a limited and repetitive menu of chain outlets.
Never mind. I'm here to run.
Thursday, February 23, 2012
Travelogue 436 – February 23
Roll
well past the midway point of this our life,
don't i now find myself again confounded by the sure,
by the sylvan darknesses of dead-eye probity?
In another wry display of synchronicity, I'm presented with a photo of myself from 2005, suddenly displayed alongside an interview. I'm baffled by the appearance of this photo, until I check google images. What the architects of days may have found amusing is that I'm working on the very moment that produced that photo in my shabby little memoir.
It's July and I have returned to the US in time to enjoy a blessed Minnesota summer, when events conspire to spell 'success' for us in the sand. Carolyn has made the connection that leads to the wealthy family behind a large American trust. One young scion of that house is traveling in Africa. Friends have whispered in his mother's ear, and he has consented to a visit to our first school. I am forced to board a plane for Ethiopia, now well into rainy season.
The photo is official, a product of the visit. It captures me in my disheveled glory in the early days of the Ethiopian enterprise, the expression on my face a fair representation of my uncertainty, even my dread and regret. I have a question for lenses. Am I doing the right thing?
The visit to the school went well, and the generous young man from the wealthy family funded our next two projects. My fate was sealed, and after the visitors had dried their eyes and left, after the children had gone home to their unlit huts, I sat on the doorstep alone, under damp skies, and I watched all content drain from my mind. I watched the highest leaves in the eucalyptus sway in the mild breezes. This was to be home, now, it would seem.
It's not 2005 anymore, in case any of my readers have lost track. It has not been for some years. I'm not in Addis Ababa. I'm taking a run along the towpath beside a canal that itself is older than Addis Ababa, carved from the British landscape by enterprising men during the youth of empire.
The ground is winter hard, studded by rocks. The sky above is both half-full and half-empty of clouds, a meteorological stew for all seasons. And in between the resolute earth and fickle sky is me, winning my battles while losing the war against Time. And beside me, surrounding me in fact, is landscape in somber green. The hills, as revealed by winter's bare trees, are pre-occupied by silences and meditations, probably meditations on spring. Faced with the responsibility of springtime, how will they fare? What concatenation of stone, what divinity dressed in mud, decreed this weary cycle of things? Once spring has blossomed, it will feel very like joy, they know.
I've come out today to share the solitude and silence of the hills. According to my rigorous schedule preparing for the approaching half marathon, I should have dropped in on the gym for a light routine. But the hills required my company. And the world of music video and sweaty triumph seem altogether too bright for me.
One mile is like another, but for the exquisite subtlety of unfolding countryside along the course of the Avon. Sometimes the bluffs climb in protest against the smug propositions of peace, and then they gently surrender. The prospect opens. The fat sheep graze, blessed in their ignorance of opportunity. The grass is always green in Britain.
If only Britain were mine. But Motion is dictat; it rules the very molecules in my tender knees. The landscapes must each be abandoned to their terrible musings. And the life of jarvis retains for life the title of 'jarvis travels'.
There is a ripple being sent across the surface of the green water of the canal. It is a slight shiver, a faint and passing register of the chill. It arrives at the hull of a sleeping house boat. There the movement stops. Smoke curls from the chimney pipe above the narrow boat. Someone might be reading inside, warm underneath the blanket that warmed him yesterday. He might be pausing, just as I pass, to dream about the next place. When he does move, he will stand on the deck of the boat, towering above the roof of his abode, steering clear of the stone walls of the canal. He will advance at the pace of a walk. He will tie to his new moorings. He will return to his blankets. There was no need to pack them.
Roll
well past the midway point of this our life,
don't i now find myself again confounded by the sure,
by the sylvan darknesses of dead-eye probity?
In another wry display of synchronicity, I'm presented with a photo of myself from 2005, suddenly displayed alongside an interview. I'm baffled by the appearance of this photo, until I check google images. What the architects of days may have found amusing is that I'm working on the very moment that produced that photo in my shabby little memoir.
It's July and I have returned to the US in time to enjoy a blessed Minnesota summer, when events conspire to spell 'success' for us in the sand. Carolyn has made the connection that leads to the wealthy family behind a large American trust. One young scion of that house is traveling in Africa. Friends have whispered in his mother's ear, and he has consented to a visit to our first school. I am forced to board a plane for Ethiopia, now well into rainy season.
The photo is official, a product of the visit. It captures me in my disheveled glory in the early days of the Ethiopian enterprise, the expression on my face a fair representation of my uncertainty, even my dread and regret. I have a question for lenses. Am I doing the right thing?
The visit to the school went well, and the generous young man from the wealthy family funded our next two projects. My fate was sealed, and after the visitors had dried their eyes and left, after the children had gone home to their unlit huts, I sat on the doorstep alone, under damp skies, and I watched all content drain from my mind. I watched the highest leaves in the eucalyptus sway in the mild breezes. This was to be home, now, it would seem.
It's not 2005 anymore, in case any of my readers have lost track. It has not been for some years. I'm not in Addis Ababa. I'm taking a run along the towpath beside a canal that itself is older than Addis Ababa, carved from the British landscape by enterprising men during the youth of empire.
The ground is winter hard, studded by rocks. The sky above is both half-full and half-empty of clouds, a meteorological stew for all seasons. And in between the resolute earth and fickle sky is me, winning my battles while losing the war against Time. And beside me, surrounding me in fact, is landscape in somber green. The hills, as revealed by winter's bare trees, are pre-occupied by silences and meditations, probably meditations on spring. Faced with the responsibility of springtime, how will they fare? What concatenation of stone, what divinity dressed in mud, decreed this weary cycle of things? Once spring has blossomed, it will feel very like joy, they know.
I've come out today to share the solitude and silence of the hills. According to my rigorous schedule preparing for the approaching half marathon, I should have dropped in on the gym for a light routine. But the hills required my company. And the world of music video and sweaty triumph seem altogether too bright for me.
One mile is like another, but for the exquisite subtlety of unfolding countryside along the course of the Avon. Sometimes the bluffs climb in protest against the smug propositions of peace, and then they gently surrender. The prospect opens. The fat sheep graze, blessed in their ignorance of opportunity. The grass is always green in Britain.
If only Britain were mine. But Motion is dictat; it rules the very molecules in my tender knees. The landscapes must each be abandoned to their terrible musings. And the life of jarvis retains for life the title of 'jarvis travels'.
There is a ripple being sent across the surface of the green water of the canal. It is a slight shiver, a faint and passing register of the chill. It arrives at the hull of a sleeping house boat. There the movement stops. Smoke curls from the chimney pipe above the narrow boat. Someone might be reading inside, warm underneath the blanket that warmed him yesterday. He might be pausing, just as I pass, to dream about the next place. When he does move, he will stand on the deck of the boat, towering above the roof of his abode, steering clear of the stone walls of the canal. He will advance at the pace of a walk. He will tie to his new moorings. He will return to his blankets. There was no need to pack them.
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
Travelogue 435 – February 15
The Goose Abides
The ice is breaking up in the canals. In the small canals, it has cracked into clear-edged little sheets. The fat white geese step gingerly across the tilting islands, skating slightly with each step. The ducks bathe where the yellowing ice has sunk below the surface. In the larger canals, the ice has retreated to the sides.
Europe's deep freeze of last week has subsided. Temperatures are solidly above freezing. The skies have resumed a kind of formal grey brooding, shedding intermittent drizzles throughout the day.
I've gotten a late start, so by the time I arrive at the Bagel and Bean, just off the Schinkel Canal, the place is crowded. I still score one of the round, green tables by the window. The place is intimate. The place has been staffed by he same few for several years. They serve me a bowl of yogurt accompanied with tiny dishes of stuff to add, tasty and healthy, raisins, granola, wheat germ, honey, lecithin, bananas. I'm happy. The computer winks; I am summoned.
I slept almost to nine. After a month made up mostly of 5am starts, this feels luxurious. Especially since I was in bed by seven. Amsterdam is a short respite on a crazy trip. I knew even as I boarded my first plane that this trip would be crazy. It would be immersion.
There's a joy to work. There's abandon. I dare say there's amnesia built into the hardest regimens. And I can't say, strolling beside the quiet canal, what it is I've accomplished in a month's craziness. Checking items off a list has as its end abolishing the list. They're all gone.
But I'll retain the image of the fat white geese sliding along their bobbing slabs of ice, the overarching unconsciousness in their eyes, as though their own blessed plumpness were the law that held water and ice in their thrall. They step and they slide; they peek at the sky. They put another ice sheet behind them.
The Goose Abides
The ice is breaking up in the canals. In the small canals, it has cracked into clear-edged little sheets. The fat white geese step gingerly across the tilting islands, skating slightly with each step. The ducks bathe where the yellowing ice has sunk below the surface. In the larger canals, the ice has retreated to the sides.
Europe's deep freeze of last week has subsided. Temperatures are solidly above freezing. The skies have resumed a kind of formal grey brooding, shedding intermittent drizzles throughout the day.
I've gotten a late start, so by the time I arrive at the Bagel and Bean, just off the Schinkel Canal, the place is crowded. I still score one of the round, green tables by the window. The place is intimate. The place has been staffed by he same few for several years. They serve me a bowl of yogurt accompanied with tiny dishes of stuff to add, tasty and healthy, raisins, granola, wheat germ, honey, lecithin, bananas. I'm happy. The computer winks; I am summoned.
I slept almost to nine. After a month made up mostly of 5am starts, this feels luxurious. Especially since I was in bed by seven. Amsterdam is a short respite on a crazy trip. I knew even as I boarded my first plane that this trip would be crazy. It would be immersion.
There's a joy to work. There's abandon. I dare say there's amnesia built into the hardest regimens. And I can't say, strolling beside the quiet canal, what it is I've accomplished in a month's craziness. Checking items off a list has as its end abolishing the list. They're all gone.
But I'll retain the image of the fat white geese sliding along their bobbing slabs of ice, the overarching unconsciousness in their eyes, as though their own blessed plumpness were the law that held water and ice in their thrall. They step and they slide; they peek at the sky. They put another ice sheet behind them.
Friday, February 03, 2012
Travelogue 434 – February 3
Selt It, and Selt it Cheep
It seems the Knicks are to be my team this trip. I'm watching them keep a salty upper hand over the Celtics – pronounced like, 'I like selt it, I selt my soul last night'.
The ubu storm moved in last night, making a mess of Denver. I stayed at 'home' and watched the world come to an end from my fourth floor window. The apocalypse had been the day's story. It's a-coming, folks, it's a-coming. I tease everyone I get a chance to about it, but they only nod with goosebumps and strange smiles of apprehension. I get a lecture at the mall: strangers had best stay home. 'If you don't know how to drive in this, you'll only get yourself in trouble.' I acquiesce solemnly.
I stay home and watch the flakes start their swirling fall from the heavens. I have a lovely prospect from my window of two interstates meeting and coiling around each other in angry intimacy. As the snow finds us, the rush hour traffic slows. The headlights slow and take their places in long queues.
The TV hangs at the height of the bartender's head, and my monitoring of the game is only intermittent, punctuated by drink orders, punctuated by bartender's banter. They take the role seriously here, something I generally appreciate.
The ubu storm continues through the next day. I obey the mall boy for the entire morning, but then I cannot contain myself. I venture out to my blue steed, abandoned to the snow drifts in the parking lot. I lift my chin to the skies, accepting the apocalypse, so gentle on my cheeks, melting against me, frustrated in its multitudinous assault on the doomed earth. I enter the steed, turn the ignition, and wallow in my sin, my irresponsibility – driving when I was warned.
The roads don't look markedly different from hundreds of winter roads I've driven in Minnesota, but I'm prepared for the Colorado surprise. Nothing about snow driving is fun, especially behind the wheel of a front-wheel drive compact. 'Do not worry, my trusty one,' I murmur to the steed, stroking its clean dash. We spin wheels and pull a few swimming skids, but otherwise the trek into town is uneventful, slow and wet. Though the feathery darts still rain down upon the sinful, man's friend Apollo asserts himself from beyond the clouds, warming the atmosphere to a degree friendly to life, and the streets are awash with melt-off.
The Tattered Cover has survived the snow assault. I work for several hours in the bookstore's cafe quite comfortably. I'm encouraged by my defiance of avenging weather. I drive downtown. I'm thinking film. I'm thinking Jazz Age entertainment.
And it must be said that the pre-film bar, Marlowe's, has an old-world style to it. The bartender slicks back his hair. He has perfected his patter. Some of his customers are regrettably twenty-first century. Next to me is a rich man in a windbreaker who is buying drinks and 'squares' for all the lingering off-duty staff. 'Squares' are part of some barroom lottery, and they cost fifty dollars each. His wife slouches in her sweat suit. Her spring-flower nails are perfect. She cackles rather than laughs.
The Knicks are winning. To judge by air time, the winners are advertisers. They're certainly self-assured, buoyant. Life is good. Life is suspension in a solution of style. I'm reminded again of America's great contribution to culture, the unadulterated, winning image. There was electricity; there was the atom bomb; there was frame of film. American science distilled the image into transcendental experience, and has proven to everyone's satisfaction that the snapshot means more than the scene, the scene more than the chapter, the chapter more than the long, tiring day.
And Rimbaud, what would he say? I had the pleasure of being reminded of him recently, reading an article, an article about Patti Smith! It happens I have also been writing about my first visit to Harar, a place that takes pride in its association with the sour arms-runner, ex-poet, proud enough to fabricate a few he-slept-here locales.
What would the poet say – the boy who changed an art form, the boy who understood a thing or two about distilled images and distilled sensation, the rare poet who knew exactly how quickly he had outlived his own image? How long can one play stringy-haired and starry-eyed adolescent? The antidote: stringy-haired and gruff merchant in the deserts of East Africa. Beautiful.
Standing up, I set in motion a series of actions rarely allowed to characters in film: I pay my bar bill; I walk the entire way across the street; I climb every step of a three-floor staircase; I stand in line for three uninterrupted minutes. And my reward is to reenter that bath of warm-water imagery. Life has meaning. I mean, it has poetry. I mean, same thing.
Selt It, and Selt it Cheep
It seems the Knicks are to be my team this trip. I'm watching them keep a salty upper hand over the Celtics – pronounced like, 'I like selt it, I selt my soul last night'.
The ubu storm moved in last night, making a mess of Denver. I stayed at 'home' and watched the world come to an end from my fourth floor window. The apocalypse had been the day's story. It's a-coming, folks, it's a-coming. I tease everyone I get a chance to about it, but they only nod with goosebumps and strange smiles of apprehension. I get a lecture at the mall: strangers had best stay home. 'If you don't know how to drive in this, you'll only get yourself in trouble.' I acquiesce solemnly.
I stay home and watch the flakes start their swirling fall from the heavens. I have a lovely prospect from my window of two interstates meeting and coiling around each other in angry intimacy. As the snow finds us, the rush hour traffic slows. The headlights slow and take their places in long queues.
The TV hangs at the height of the bartender's head, and my monitoring of the game is only intermittent, punctuated by drink orders, punctuated by bartender's banter. They take the role seriously here, something I generally appreciate.
The ubu storm continues through the next day. I obey the mall boy for the entire morning, but then I cannot contain myself. I venture out to my blue steed, abandoned to the snow drifts in the parking lot. I lift my chin to the skies, accepting the apocalypse, so gentle on my cheeks, melting against me, frustrated in its multitudinous assault on the doomed earth. I enter the steed, turn the ignition, and wallow in my sin, my irresponsibility – driving when I was warned.
The roads don't look markedly different from hundreds of winter roads I've driven in Minnesota, but I'm prepared for the Colorado surprise. Nothing about snow driving is fun, especially behind the wheel of a front-wheel drive compact. 'Do not worry, my trusty one,' I murmur to the steed, stroking its clean dash. We spin wheels and pull a few swimming skids, but otherwise the trek into town is uneventful, slow and wet. Though the feathery darts still rain down upon the sinful, man's friend Apollo asserts himself from beyond the clouds, warming the atmosphere to a degree friendly to life, and the streets are awash with melt-off.
The Tattered Cover has survived the snow assault. I work for several hours in the bookstore's cafe quite comfortably. I'm encouraged by my defiance of avenging weather. I drive downtown. I'm thinking film. I'm thinking Jazz Age entertainment.
And it must be said that the pre-film bar, Marlowe's, has an old-world style to it. The bartender slicks back his hair. He has perfected his patter. Some of his customers are regrettably twenty-first century. Next to me is a rich man in a windbreaker who is buying drinks and 'squares' for all the lingering off-duty staff. 'Squares' are part of some barroom lottery, and they cost fifty dollars each. His wife slouches in her sweat suit. Her spring-flower nails are perfect. She cackles rather than laughs.
The Knicks are winning. To judge by air time, the winners are advertisers. They're certainly self-assured, buoyant. Life is good. Life is suspension in a solution of style. I'm reminded again of America's great contribution to culture, the unadulterated, winning image. There was electricity; there was the atom bomb; there was frame of film. American science distilled the image into transcendental experience, and has proven to everyone's satisfaction that the snapshot means more than the scene, the scene more than the chapter, the chapter more than the long, tiring day.
And Rimbaud, what would he say? I had the pleasure of being reminded of him recently, reading an article, an article about Patti Smith! It happens I have also been writing about my first visit to Harar, a place that takes pride in its association with the sour arms-runner, ex-poet, proud enough to fabricate a few he-slept-here locales.
What would the poet say – the boy who changed an art form, the boy who understood a thing or two about distilled images and distilled sensation, the rare poet who knew exactly how quickly he had outlived his own image? How long can one play stringy-haired and starry-eyed adolescent? The antidote: stringy-haired and gruff merchant in the deserts of East Africa. Beautiful.
Standing up, I set in motion a series of actions rarely allowed to characters in film: I pay my bar bill; I walk the entire way across the street; I climb every step of a three-floor staircase; I stand in line for three uninterrupted minutes. And my reward is to reenter that bath of warm-water imagery. Life has meaning. I mean, it has poetry. I mean, same thing.
Friday, January 27, 2012
Travelogue 433 – January 27
Death, the Entertainer
Now it's basketball. And again New York stands in as the villain, challenging the everyman LeBron. I'm sitting behind a bar of burnished steel and watching the action on a screen bigger than my bed. I'm sitting by myself, but I'm not alone. Next to me are a couple young men being funny for each other and declaring in breathy syllables their admiration when the men on the court achieve some miracle. A man in white lobs the ball high over the heads of players rushing toward the basket. LeBron is already high in the air to catch and stuff in one fluid motion. As he charges, a man in blue swings the ball in a high arc from one hand to the other, over the head of the defender, and then up to the basket. 'Ho-o-o-o,' exclaim the boys at the bar. To me, basketball looks like first-graders at play. The guys are so big now, and the shiny court hasn't grown with them.
My job is less kinetic. I sit by myself in the office – I have an office while I'm in Denver – and I review lists that fill me with foreboding. Sometimes I'll pace, if I'm on the phone or on Skype. At other times, I gaze out at the city through the parted shutters of my blinds. The sky is often blue over the mild hills tapering off toward the flat east. But this morning, there was snow, descending at forty-five degrees in the wind, drawing a veil over the town. There was only the street below, and people in heavy coats struggling against the weather.
When I walk to the gym, I see the mountains. They haven't moved an inch during the night. They are noble creations, aren't they, standing somber guard over their valleys, keeping secrets sacred until they're forgotten?
Basketball and the 'Angus Burger' are the preludes to my night out, a film next door at the multiplex. The bar is a mammoth affair, with rooms full of video games for the kids, and several types of venues for adults, leather couches for some, square Fifties bar for others, and the anonymous sports bar.
I hear someone say 'Newcastle', and I eagerly look up at the screen, forgetting where I am. I'm expecting to see the boys in black and white taking to the pitch. But it's an order for beer. I'm in America. At the gym today, I walk past a trainer and his client. The trainer has an accent. 'Where are you from?' asks the client. I'm from England. The client says, 'Where?' England, the trainer pronounces slowly, and he's struggling to keep his professional smile from breaking into a laugh. 'Ah,' the client replies, 'and hence the accent.' Yes.
For those of us not completely lost to cynicism, poetry is a fan sport. One wants the poet to succeed. But poetry is a tough game, and few poems are slam dunks. It's something of a bitter disappointment when a poem comes close and fails. It's too much like life, like poring over one's formidable lists at the office and catching the first whiff of failure. Most of us are destined by our own ambitions to be mediocre. One could hardly be blamed for hoping for more from poets and point guards.
The film is about a boy whose father has died in the nine-eleven attacks. He is a neurotic and brilliant boy, portrayed by a fragile and brilliant waif, surrounded and nurtured by a guard of box-office superstars. The direction is compelling, the story sweet and implausible. It's an undisguised attempt at poetry, and it falls just short. One senses that in Hollywood, the first sense to rot is the gauge of sentimentality. One of the trailers shows Drew, long-time Hollywooder, crying over whales. Cry, humanity, please do cry! But don't leave it to Hollywood to demonstrate how. They have forgotten how real people cry.
On the radio is a man talking about death. He is doing so intelligently, but I have to turn the radio off, and rest in silence. I can't take it any more.
As I slowly compile my anemic and stumbling little memoir, I shape a realization around our dear companion, death. Troy said something to me after Leeza had died and after some time had passed. I wish I could remember the words exactly, but he said something to the effect that Leeza's death had been a crisis for me. The message wasn't in the words but in the tone, a tone that suggested a kind of wonder. It was something about her death in particular that triggered an odd chemical reaction, a rash, a latent psychological train wreck. Really? I thought. Are there measures for sane grief? Wouldn't that be the most inhuman of creations, an index for grief, the small iron weight one puts in the balances to set against one human life?
But it's true that Leeza was the final resounding note in a crescendo of death in my life, running through friend, aunt, mother, and wife within a compact eight years. The first shock came for me when I was sixteen, when my father died – more precisely, when I discovered his corpse. With Leeza, the last moorings came free. There's an eternity preserved for me in that moment, in which I scream. I will never stop.
And when I get into the car after the film, after the poet has assayed his tender sensibility against the cold in the attic, after the poet has stood uncertainly before his failure, assessed his fair complexion in the attic's mirror and then has turned away, when I get into the car I am alone. I am sleeping in the house of strangers.
Death, the Entertainer
Now it's basketball. And again New York stands in as the villain, challenging the everyman LeBron. I'm sitting behind a bar of burnished steel and watching the action on a screen bigger than my bed. I'm sitting by myself, but I'm not alone. Next to me are a couple young men being funny for each other and declaring in breathy syllables their admiration when the men on the court achieve some miracle. A man in white lobs the ball high over the heads of players rushing toward the basket. LeBron is already high in the air to catch and stuff in one fluid motion. As he charges, a man in blue swings the ball in a high arc from one hand to the other, over the head of the defender, and then up to the basket. 'Ho-o-o-o,' exclaim the boys at the bar. To me, basketball looks like first-graders at play. The guys are so big now, and the shiny court hasn't grown with them.
My job is less kinetic. I sit by myself in the office – I have an office while I'm in Denver – and I review lists that fill me with foreboding. Sometimes I'll pace, if I'm on the phone or on Skype. At other times, I gaze out at the city through the parted shutters of my blinds. The sky is often blue over the mild hills tapering off toward the flat east. But this morning, there was snow, descending at forty-five degrees in the wind, drawing a veil over the town. There was only the street below, and people in heavy coats struggling against the weather.
When I walk to the gym, I see the mountains. They haven't moved an inch during the night. They are noble creations, aren't they, standing somber guard over their valleys, keeping secrets sacred until they're forgotten?
Basketball and the 'Angus Burger' are the preludes to my night out, a film next door at the multiplex. The bar is a mammoth affair, with rooms full of video games for the kids, and several types of venues for adults, leather couches for some, square Fifties bar for others, and the anonymous sports bar.
I hear someone say 'Newcastle', and I eagerly look up at the screen, forgetting where I am. I'm expecting to see the boys in black and white taking to the pitch. But it's an order for beer. I'm in America. At the gym today, I walk past a trainer and his client. The trainer has an accent. 'Where are you from?' asks the client. I'm from England. The client says, 'Where?' England, the trainer pronounces slowly, and he's struggling to keep his professional smile from breaking into a laugh. 'Ah,' the client replies, 'and hence the accent.' Yes.
For those of us not completely lost to cynicism, poetry is a fan sport. One wants the poet to succeed. But poetry is a tough game, and few poems are slam dunks. It's something of a bitter disappointment when a poem comes close and fails. It's too much like life, like poring over one's formidable lists at the office and catching the first whiff of failure. Most of us are destined by our own ambitions to be mediocre. One could hardly be blamed for hoping for more from poets and point guards.
The film is about a boy whose father has died in the nine-eleven attacks. He is a neurotic and brilliant boy, portrayed by a fragile and brilliant waif, surrounded and nurtured by a guard of box-office superstars. The direction is compelling, the story sweet and implausible. It's an undisguised attempt at poetry, and it falls just short. One senses that in Hollywood, the first sense to rot is the gauge of sentimentality. One of the trailers shows Drew, long-time Hollywooder, crying over whales. Cry, humanity, please do cry! But don't leave it to Hollywood to demonstrate how. They have forgotten how real people cry.
On the radio is a man talking about death. He is doing so intelligently, but I have to turn the radio off, and rest in silence. I can't take it any more.
As I slowly compile my anemic and stumbling little memoir, I shape a realization around our dear companion, death. Troy said something to me after Leeza had died and after some time had passed. I wish I could remember the words exactly, but he said something to the effect that Leeza's death had been a crisis for me. The message wasn't in the words but in the tone, a tone that suggested a kind of wonder. It was something about her death in particular that triggered an odd chemical reaction, a rash, a latent psychological train wreck. Really? I thought. Are there measures for sane grief? Wouldn't that be the most inhuman of creations, an index for grief, the small iron weight one puts in the balances to set against one human life?
But it's true that Leeza was the final resounding note in a crescendo of death in my life, running through friend, aunt, mother, and wife within a compact eight years. The first shock came for me when I was sixteen, when my father died – more precisely, when I discovered his corpse. With Leeza, the last moorings came free. There's an eternity preserved for me in that moment, in which I scream. I will never stop.
And when I get into the car after the film, after the poet has assayed his tender sensibility against the cold in the attic, after the poet has stood uncertainly before his failure, assessed his fair complexion in the attic's mirror and then has turned away, when I get into the car I am alone. I am sleeping in the house of strangers.
Sunday, January 22, 2012
Travelogue 432 – January 22
Scrimmage
I'm watching football in Denver. It's a tied game at the moment. The crowd at the bar is excited. Most of them are rooting for the Niners. That's not surprising: I'm in the West. New York will not inspire much loyalty.
Not even half the seats in the bar are full, and it's a small place. It's a Sunday night. The place is long and narrow, showing off some weathered brick behind the bar. The walls are adorned the standard chaotic selection of visuals. There is a poster of Hendrix. There are swirls of paint on canvas executed by locals. There are posters and cards made from vintage advertisements, which I've noticed are items that tug with peculiar force upon American sentiment.
After a long stretch of current TV ads – all of which suggest a world designed by professional wrestlers, full of earth-shaking grandeur, everything outsized and narrated in basso melodrama like a circus – the boys are back on the field. They rumble out in their tights, and they take positions. It's a sweaty ballet, excess meat jiggling for the multiple cameras that sweep the field. Everything suffers symptoms of excess: from the tattoos and hair attachments to the ads, to the equipment and Dr. Strangelove intensity of the coaches, to the sheer number of camera angles. It is sport become farce. So serious, it is drained of human interest. I leave before the tie is resolved.
I'm staying with Rich and his family. It's an anonymous residential area, and even after a week, I have to watch the street signs and the house numbers or become lost among the samenesses. It's a nice location. I can drove my shiny blue rental car only ten minutes to the office. In fifteen minutes I can run to Cheery Creek. I run along the creek toward downtown, out and back.
Or I can run to the cemetery. Evelyn suggests it. I hadn't run in that direction yet, and hadn't seen it. But it's only two blocks away. Fairmount is a vast swath of land, and she's right that I can run among the dead, along peaceful asphalt lanes for a good long time. The mile-high sky is indeed high, blue and sharp in blue clarity. The mountains stand in silent formation in the west, and do not flinch as heavy clouds, etched in fine detail, gather about their heads.
I'm struggling with my run today. I've been on the road for almost two weeks, and I've been running every day, logging miles on three continents. My body is protesting by now. The muscles are tired; my gait is clumsy and slow. The dead make no comment. They keep their counsel, hiding beneath slabs of marble, behind columns. Some of them share sumptuous pavilions with their families. Some have only the frozen earth beneath sturdy leaves of grass that hold on through winter like faded specters of their summer green.
I give it up after a while and turn back. I have an appointment. I will sit among a circle of folks in a dim and subdued chamber of a Denver church. The carpet has died. The plush chairs cling to life, determined to support us with stoic devotion to duty. A frail voice has descended. It wants to tell about a life-changing experience in 1962. All eyes in the circle are fixed in a forward position. I try to follow the voice, turning my head slowly and with reverence. The eyes are blue as a Colorado sky.
Scrimmage
I'm watching football in Denver. It's a tied game at the moment. The crowd at the bar is excited. Most of them are rooting for the Niners. That's not surprising: I'm in the West. New York will not inspire much loyalty.
Not even half the seats in the bar are full, and it's a small place. It's a Sunday night. The place is long and narrow, showing off some weathered brick behind the bar. The walls are adorned the standard chaotic selection of visuals. There is a poster of Hendrix. There are swirls of paint on canvas executed by locals. There are posters and cards made from vintage advertisements, which I've noticed are items that tug with peculiar force upon American sentiment.
After a long stretch of current TV ads – all of which suggest a world designed by professional wrestlers, full of earth-shaking grandeur, everything outsized and narrated in basso melodrama like a circus – the boys are back on the field. They rumble out in their tights, and they take positions. It's a sweaty ballet, excess meat jiggling for the multiple cameras that sweep the field. Everything suffers symptoms of excess: from the tattoos and hair attachments to the ads, to the equipment and Dr. Strangelove intensity of the coaches, to the sheer number of camera angles. It is sport become farce. So serious, it is drained of human interest. I leave before the tie is resolved.
I'm staying with Rich and his family. It's an anonymous residential area, and even after a week, I have to watch the street signs and the house numbers or become lost among the samenesses. It's a nice location. I can drove my shiny blue rental car only ten minutes to the office. In fifteen minutes I can run to Cheery Creek. I run along the creek toward downtown, out and back.
Or I can run to the cemetery. Evelyn suggests it. I hadn't run in that direction yet, and hadn't seen it. But it's only two blocks away. Fairmount is a vast swath of land, and she's right that I can run among the dead, along peaceful asphalt lanes for a good long time. The mile-high sky is indeed high, blue and sharp in blue clarity. The mountains stand in silent formation in the west, and do not flinch as heavy clouds, etched in fine detail, gather about their heads.
I'm struggling with my run today. I've been on the road for almost two weeks, and I've been running every day, logging miles on three continents. My body is protesting by now. The muscles are tired; my gait is clumsy and slow. The dead make no comment. They keep their counsel, hiding beneath slabs of marble, behind columns. Some of them share sumptuous pavilions with their families. Some have only the frozen earth beneath sturdy leaves of grass that hold on through winter like faded specters of their summer green.
I give it up after a while and turn back. I have an appointment. I will sit among a circle of folks in a dim and subdued chamber of a Denver church. The carpet has died. The plush chairs cling to life, determined to support us with stoic devotion to duty. A frail voice has descended. It wants to tell about a life-changing experience in 1962. All eyes in the circle are fixed in a forward position. I try to follow the voice, turning my head slowly and with reverence. The eyes are blue as a Colorado sky.
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