Travelogue 831 – November 28
An Aching Trail Through Two Cities
Part Two
Nijmegen claims to be the oldest city in the Netherlands. It lies on the Waal River in the east of the country. The Waal is a major distributary branch of the Rhine, carrying some 65% of the parent river’s waters to the sea. It breaks from the Rhine only a kilometre into Dutch territory, as though the old river couldn’t bear any other name outside German territory. And it would seem Germany feels the same attachment, the way the border lunges toward the Netherlands just at that point, like a hand reaching for the departing Rhine.
Depart the river does, though, and it disappears among its distributaries. A few kilometres westward, the Waal flows into Nijmegen. Right downtown, the river feeds a quiet little harbour, the Lindenberghaven, where we stayed in an inn located in an old river boat. Our apartment was in the back of the boat, requiring us to carry the girls and our baggage along a precariously narrow walkway beside the cabins. It was night already and the temperatures were near freezing. The cold waters were all too close. Inside, the cabin was cosy, in the functional way of boat furnishings, everything small and pieced together meticulously. The walls were panelled with wood. The windows were round portals. The doorways had high bottom lips we had to be careful to step over. The girls treated the space like an amusement park. There was a cosy restaurant in the front of the boat, warmed with a fire in a raised central stove. The walls were steel and curved.
Boats make noises. They groan and creak as they shift in the water. Mama and Baby found these sounds spooky. “What was that?” they ask each other most of the night. Some of the noises came from the bridge high overhead. This is the famous arch bridge that played a critical part in the Battle of Nijmegen in 1944, when the Allies were trying to relieve forces in nearby Arnhem. The bridge was a key asset for both sides, and when the Germans finally left the city, they planned to blow the bridge. It was saved by a local Resistance fighter, and the Allies finally crossed – too late to relieve troops in Arnhem and after the city had suffered considerable damage. It should be said that the bridge launches from a high bluff above the Lindenberghaven harbour where, two thousand years ago, the Romans built their fortress. The bridge still stands, if the Roman fortress doesn’t, and during our long night underneath it, it provided passage to dozens of trucks that made the big structure shudder and boom.
Morning did come, and we were unspooked. The morning was cold. The sunlight was winter hazy. The decks were slick with frost. But it was daylight, and Baby was comforted. Friends came to pick us up and ferry the family to their house, which, as it happened, stood right on the course of the race. Mama and babies got to drink tea in the warm kitchen while the runners made their way to the starting line. When the time came, my family only had to stroll out to curb to shout their support. I stopped to give each a kiss before I continued on to my fate of hills and pain.
Wednesday, November 28, 2018
Wednesday, November 21, 2018
Travelogue 830 – November 21
An Aching Trail Through Two Cities
Part One
Discovering one’s limits is a human privilege. It’s one that I indulge in regularly. Very satisfying for the psyche is rediscovering one’s own cowardice. It’s not a quality I have to reach far for; I stumble upon it often.
Visits to the dentist are profoundly humbling for me. No matter how often they occur the terror never dissipates. Yesterday, I knew I was in for a long and painful treatment. I had two root canals scheduled for one day. I experienced acute anxiety for days. I made my wife accompany me to the appointment. Sitting in the chair while the dentist prepared his tools, I came surprisingly close to giving in to panic, getting up and making an escape.
Menna and I have made a point of finding the kindest and gentlest hands at our tandarts (dentists’) practice. They belong to a young man whose sincerity is affecting. It keeps me in my chair. I don’t want to let him down.
The nerves are exposed. I’ve been told to raise my hand when there’s pain, and so I do, raising it so several times. The dentist’s assistant kindly holds my hand. It’s oddly comforting. The doctor pours anaesthetic on the nerves, which sets them afire for a moment, and then quickly numbs them. This little operation must be repeated over.
Each shot of pain leaves me more tired. I stare up and into the lights that are focused on my mouth. I daydream, and I’m able to drift surprisingly far from the scene, that tableau in which a man is labouring over my open jaw.
Spacing out in the dentist’s chair, I review the race I ran the previous weekend. It was a 15K in the eastern Dutch town of Nijmegen. It was the first time I had been in Nijmegen. A new friend of mine had spoken so highly of the town, and of the race, that I couldn’t say no to the invitation to run this year. My running season was not supposed to extend this late into the fall, into the growing cold and gloom, but I did welcome one more chance at a redeeming performance. My races this year have not been too inspiring, at least in terms of final times.
My friend was not wrong about the race. It was a beautiful course, leaving town to roam among autumnal woods and fields. There was a pleasant chill to the air, and the skies were clear. Autumn is defined by that perfect moment, the season’s fulcrum point, when the colours are richest and the temperatures still crisp and bracing, but not unpleasant. This weekend was that moment. And the only way to celebrate autumn was to be out in it.
There were hills! I rarely have the opportunity even to miss hills. Rotterdam’s hill is the bridge. If I see a staircase while training, I aim for it, like a thirsty traveller. I enjoy engaging in the climb. The Nijmegen race promised seven hills, like Rome, and it delivered seven. The first, after two or three kilometres, was a long and slow incline, the kind that forces you to shift gears halfway through, lowering your head and settling into a steady gait that will see you through. Later, midway through the course, there were two short and steep ones, the kind you attack with the exuberance of a boy and finish with the shuffle of an old man. It was great fun.
Fun with pain. Sport is an engagement with pain, a diary for suffering. We may naively assume that life is about avoiding pain, but in fact we are always measuring our days by it, quantities of pain, frequency of pain. We abandon the warm bed on winter mornings in order to make money and avoid the worse pain of starvation. We suffer through our controlled daily runs so we don’t crash and burn on race day. We micro-dose on pain during flossing in exchange for visits to the dentist. Exchange visits to the dentist for tooth decay. We volunteer for small daily shots of it, our tonics and our bitters, in order to sweeten the intervals.
An Aching Trail Through Two Cities
Part One
Discovering one’s limits is a human privilege. It’s one that I indulge in regularly. Very satisfying for the psyche is rediscovering one’s own cowardice. It’s not a quality I have to reach far for; I stumble upon it often.
Visits to the dentist are profoundly humbling for me. No matter how often they occur the terror never dissipates. Yesterday, I knew I was in for a long and painful treatment. I had two root canals scheduled for one day. I experienced acute anxiety for days. I made my wife accompany me to the appointment. Sitting in the chair while the dentist prepared his tools, I came surprisingly close to giving in to panic, getting up and making an escape.
Menna and I have made a point of finding the kindest and gentlest hands at our tandarts (dentists’) practice. They belong to a young man whose sincerity is affecting. It keeps me in my chair. I don’t want to let him down.
The nerves are exposed. I’ve been told to raise my hand when there’s pain, and so I do, raising it so several times. The dentist’s assistant kindly holds my hand. It’s oddly comforting. The doctor pours anaesthetic on the nerves, which sets them afire for a moment, and then quickly numbs them. This little operation must be repeated over.
Each shot of pain leaves me more tired. I stare up and into the lights that are focused on my mouth. I daydream, and I’m able to drift surprisingly far from the scene, that tableau in which a man is labouring over my open jaw.
Spacing out in the dentist’s chair, I review the race I ran the previous weekend. It was a 15K in the eastern Dutch town of Nijmegen. It was the first time I had been in Nijmegen. A new friend of mine had spoken so highly of the town, and of the race, that I couldn’t say no to the invitation to run this year. My running season was not supposed to extend this late into the fall, into the growing cold and gloom, but I did welcome one more chance at a redeeming performance. My races this year have not been too inspiring, at least in terms of final times.
My friend was not wrong about the race. It was a beautiful course, leaving town to roam among autumnal woods and fields. There was a pleasant chill to the air, and the skies were clear. Autumn is defined by that perfect moment, the season’s fulcrum point, when the colours are richest and the temperatures still crisp and bracing, but not unpleasant. This weekend was that moment. And the only way to celebrate autumn was to be out in it.
There were hills! I rarely have the opportunity even to miss hills. Rotterdam’s hill is the bridge. If I see a staircase while training, I aim for it, like a thirsty traveller. I enjoy engaging in the climb. The Nijmegen race promised seven hills, like Rome, and it delivered seven. The first, after two or three kilometres, was a long and slow incline, the kind that forces you to shift gears halfway through, lowering your head and settling into a steady gait that will see you through. Later, midway through the course, there were two short and steep ones, the kind you attack with the exuberance of a boy and finish with the shuffle of an old man. It was great fun.
Fun with pain. Sport is an engagement with pain, a diary for suffering. We may naively assume that life is about avoiding pain, but in fact we are always measuring our days by it, quantities of pain, frequency of pain. We abandon the warm bed on winter mornings in order to make money and avoid the worse pain of starvation. We suffer through our controlled daily runs so we don’t crash and burn on race day. We micro-dose on pain during flossing in exchange for visits to the dentist. Exchange visits to the dentist for tooth decay. We volunteer for small daily shots of it, our tonics and our bitters, in order to sweeten the intervals.
Friday, November 16, 2018
Travelogue 829 – November 16
Bolt for Block
It’s time to say adieu to Le Grand K. I may not have known about K’s existence until this morning, but I miss K terribly already.
Le Grand K is a small cylinder of platinum and iridium that is housed under a glass bell in a locked vault in Paris. It was fashioned in 1879, and its purpose in life was to be the manifest international standard for the kilogram. It is the kilogram.
Now, it should not be in the nature of the kilogram to change or decay. That’s because the kilogram is an idea. It shares that beautiful incorruptibility among all things abstract. Nothing ages in Plato’s world of ideals. But in this world, for more than a century, the kilogram has been a corruptible object. No matter how cossetted and revered, Le Grand K is a physical object and shares the delicate properties of all physical things. It has shown signs of decay. There has been some concern about K’s reliability.
After all these years of service, the plucky paperweight will be retired. Where do retired weights and measures go, particularly weights of K’s stature? Will the French treasury offer K up on eBay? Will K end up in some private collector’s display case? Will some new Kafka tell the story of K? Will anyone feel sense some injustice in this callous retirement of a civil servant who dedicated over years to the good of humanity?
And what will replace Le Grand K? As seems appropriate to our age, the new standard will be a measure of electricity. Specifically, it will be a very precise amount of juice that will be shot through an electromagnet.
Max Planck has played his part in this quiet drama, as he has in so many. Is there a mathematical measure of Max Planck’s ubiquity? In this case, the old man has provided us with the key to measuring the electrical equivalent of one kilo. And that is his signature formula: 6.62607004 × 10-34 m2 kg/s. That’s Planck’s Constant. I find numbers beautiful, so I print this one, even though I don’t understand it. I’m quite sure I will never understand it, even if I were tutored by Mr. Planck himself.
I ought to be the last person to write science fiction, since the last time I showed any sophistication in scientific thinking was in the fifth grade. Maybe, I tell myself, the lack of qualifications is the best qualification, since I entertain the appropriate amounts of awe and wonder. I’m like the clumsy nerd who writes for the sports pages.
Work on my ‘summer project’, the science fiction novel, has gone well. The rough draft is finished. I am editing. I am sending out queries. Max Planck might have been proud. In my small way, I’m contributing to his cultural legacy. It’s his world we inhabit and elaborate, after all. Planck is the Constant.
Sadly, the reputation of time travel has taken a hit this week when it was revealed that the new acting Attorney General of the U.S. was on the advisory board of a patent company that scammed investors for millions with a variety of schemes, including one claim that the development of time travel was near at hand.
In an odd twist, the investment in time travel was tied to Bitcoin values. My understanding of currency is about as sophisticated as that of Planck’s Constant, but even I can perceive some irony in pegging the value of time travel to a volatile crypto-currency.
And that brings me back to poor, dear K being traded in for a burst of electricity. I picture Igor standing at the big lever, ready to release the lightning bolts that will bring Frankenstein to life. Electricity is the new gold standard. Cryptocurrency is one more monster fed by electricity. Block chain, the engine of cryptocurrencies, is fed by arrays of computers around the globe crunching numbers day and night, solving arcane mathematical questions in pursuit of new generations of crypto-cash. The trouble is, it all runs on tremendous amounts of energy – every year as much as the nation of Austria, I’ve read recently.
What happens when the lights go out? Will both coin and kilogram disappear? Will gravity short out, leaving us to float weightless and penniless above the earth? Weights and measures are fundamental statements of value. Their anchors – gold bars, platinum game pieces, lightning bolts – seem at times little more than cultural talismans. They are primitive symbols of potency.
Bolt for Block
It’s time to say adieu to Le Grand K. I may not have known about K’s existence until this morning, but I miss K terribly already.
Le Grand K is a small cylinder of platinum and iridium that is housed under a glass bell in a locked vault in Paris. It was fashioned in 1879, and its purpose in life was to be the manifest international standard for the kilogram. It is the kilogram.
Now, it should not be in the nature of the kilogram to change or decay. That’s because the kilogram is an idea. It shares that beautiful incorruptibility among all things abstract. Nothing ages in Plato’s world of ideals. But in this world, for more than a century, the kilogram has been a corruptible object. No matter how cossetted and revered, Le Grand K is a physical object and shares the delicate properties of all physical things. It has shown signs of decay. There has been some concern about K’s reliability.
After all these years of service, the plucky paperweight will be retired. Where do retired weights and measures go, particularly weights of K’s stature? Will the French treasury offer K up on eBay? Will K end up in some private collector’s display case? Will some new Kafka tell the story of K? Will anyone feel sense some injustice in this callous retirement of a civil servant who dedicated over years to the good of humanity?
And what will replace Le Grand K? As seems appropriate to our age, the new standard will be a measure of electricity. Specifically, it will be a very precise amount of juice that will be shot through an electromagnet.
Max Planck has played his part in this quiet drama, as he has in so many. Is there a mathematical measure of Max Planck’s ubiquity? In this case, the old man has provided us with the key to measuring the electrical equivalent of one kilo. And that is his signature formula: 6.62607004 × 10-34 m2 kg/s. That’s Planck’s Constant. I find numbers beautiful, so I print this one, even though I don’t understand it. I’m quite sure I will never understand it, even if I were tutored by Mr. Planck himself.
I ought to be the last person to write science fiction, since the last time I showed any sophistication in scientific thinking was in the fifth grade. Maybe, I tell myself, the lack of qualifications is the best qualification, since I entertain the appropriate amounts of awe and wonder. I’m like the clumsy nerd who writes for the sports pages.
Work on my ‘summer project’, the science fiction novel, has gone well. The rough draft is finished. I am editing. I am sending out queries. Max Planck might have been proud. In my small way, I’m contributing to his cultural legacy. It’s his world we inhabit and elaborate, after all. Planck is the Constant.
Sadly, the reputation of time travel has taken a hit this week when it was revealed that the new acting Attorney General of the U.S. was on the advisory board of a patent company that scammed investors for millions with a variety of schemes, including one claim that the development of time travel was near at hand.
In an odd twist, the investment in time travel was tied to Bitcoin values. My understanding of currency is about as sophisticated as that of Planck’s Constant, but even I can perceive some irony in pegging the value of time travel to a volatile crypto-currency.
And that brings me back to poor, dear K being traded in for a burst of electricity. I picture Igor standing at the big lever, ready to release the lightning bolts that will bring Frankenstein to life. Electricity is the new gold standard. Cryptocurrency is one more monster fed by electricity. Block chain, the engine of cryptocurrencies, is fed by arrays of computers around the globe crunching numbers day and night, solving arcane mathematical questions in pursuit of new generations of crypto-cash. The trouble is, it all runs on tremendous amounts of energy – every year as much as the nation of Austria, I’ve read recently.
What happens when the lights go out? Will both coin and kilogram disappear? Will gravity short out, leaving us to float weightless and penniless above the earth? Weights and measures are fundamental statements of value. Their anchors – gold bars, platinum game pieces, lightning bolts – seem at times little more than cultural talismans. They are primitive symbols of potency.
Friday, November 09, 2018
Travelogue 828 – November 9
Night Vision
I’m always dreaming about travelling. Rarely do I dream about the town I live in. Rarely do I dream about a quiet night at home. I’m always somewhere else, and on the move. Last night, it was New York. The night before, it was L.A. Those were the dreams I remembered. Before those, there were probably other places and other journeys.
Sometimes it feels as though I’m making up for lost time, as though the purpose of this life were travel, and if I weren’t adding miles in waking life, it would have to be done during sleep. There is some urgency to it. Maybe the dreams are just vehicles for midlife angst.
I had occasion to wonder how dreams are recorded in the great ledger. Do they count? Are they added into the pool of life experiences? What if one appeared before the judge of the afterlife and were held accountable for acts taken during dreams? What if one had lived a principled and disciplined daytime life, but committed horrible crimes in dreams?
I have no memory of crimes, but I do remember lots of trips. Do those destinations become compiled with my conscious travels? What makes the dream trips fun is that dream places rarely correspond to the daytime ones. For example, the New York in my dream last night was located next to Colorado somehow. I could look at the landmarks of Manhattan through the gap of a mountains pass. That’s fun.
And then there are places I’ve never been in day’s life. For example, I dream about Russia regularly, though I’ve never been. That might make sense if I saw my nocturnal travels as compensating for my sedentary daytime life. I’ve always wanted to see Russia. The way I’ve settled down with work and family, it’s hard to say I ever will.
And then there are the people. One of the characters in my dream last night was a high school classmate. He was one of our group, but he kept himself aloof. He didn’t participate in all our shenanigans and binges. He was more mature than we were, cooler in ways high schoolers were ill-equipped to recognize. I always liked him and was frustrated by the distance he maintained. At parties, he generally drank little and watched us with amusement, choosing calmer company.
This friend passed quietly through high school, achieving less and causing less damage. The rest of us were high achievers, in academics and in sport. We were high achievers in adolescent mayhem, staging spectacular shows of unleashed id. I saw this friend only a few times after high school. Our lives carried on in the forms established. He attended the local community college and lazily picked up the guitar. I went to university, earned high marks, and made even more ruckus and mess.
This is the most I’ve thought about this friend in years. It’s funny how things circle around. You can’t help wondering about the timing. I’m just well-versed enough in psychology and in what our age calls spirituality to know it should be significant, and it ought to be measured the way a medieval alchemist weighed every ounce of dross or gold. But I’ve grown sceptical about ideas that attribute such precision to the unconscious.
I can readily admit that I’ve been ‘taking stock’. I’ve been wondering what sort of narrative might be recovered from curlicues of my life’s path. Sometimes the oddest memory will pop up, unbidden, wholly unrelated to what was in my sight or in my mind. It’s funny.
Night Vision
I’m always dreaming about travelling. Rarely do I dream about the town I live in. Rarely do I dream about a quiet night at home. I’m always somewhere else, and on the move. Last night, it was New York. The night before, it was L.A. Those were the dreams I remembered. Before those, there were probably other places and other journeys.
Sometimes it feels as though I’m making up for lost time, as though the purpose of this life were travel, and if I weren’t adding miles in waking life, it would have to be done during sleep. There is some urgency to it. Maybe the dreams are just vehicles for midlife angst.
I had occasion to wonder how dreams are recorded in the great ledger. Do they count? Are they added into the pool of life experiences? What if one appeared before the judge of the afterlife and were held accountable for acts taken during dreams? What if one had lived a principled and disciplined daytime life, but committed horrible crimes in dreams?
I have no memory of crimes, but I do remember lots of trips. Do those destinations become compiled with my conscious travels? What makes the dream trips fun is that dream places rarely correspond to the daytime ones. For example, the New York in my dream last night was located next to Colorado somehow. I could look at the landmarks of Manhattan through the gap of a mountains pass. That’s fun.
And then there are places I’ve never been in day’s life. For example, I dream about Russia regularly, though I’ve never been. That might make sense if I saw my nocturnal travels as compensating for my sedentary daytime life. I’ve always wanted to see Russia. The way I’ve settled down with work and family, it’s hard to say I ever will.
And then there are the people. One of the characters in my dream last night was a high school classmate. He was one of our group, but he kept himself aloof. He didn’t participate in all our shenanigans and binges. He was more mature than we were, cooler in ways high schoolers were ill-equipped to recognize. I always liked him and was frustrated by the distance he maintained. At parties, he generally drank little and watched us with amusement, choosing calmer company.
This friend passed quietly through high school, achieving less and causing less damage. The rest of us were high achievers, in academics and in sport. We were high achievers in adolescent mayhem, staging spectacular shows of unleashed id. I saw this friend only a few times after high school. Our lives carried on in the forms established. He attended the local community college and lazily picked up the guitar. I went to university, earned high marks, and made even more ruckus and mess.
This is the most I’ve thought about this friend in years. It’s funny how things circle around. You can’t help wondering about the timing. I’m just well-versed enough in psychology and in what our age calls spirituality to know it should be significant, and it ought to be measured the way a medieval alchemist weighed every ounce of dross or gold. But I’ve grown sceptical about ideas that attribute such precision to the unconscious.
I can readily admit that I’ve been ‘taking stock’. I’ve been wondering what sort of narrative might be recovered from curlicues of my life’s path. Sometimes the oddest memory will pop up, unbidden, wholly unrelated to what was in my sight or in my mind. It’s funny.
Saturday, October 20, 2018
Travelogue 827 – October 20
On Leaves
Part Two
‘I’m walking in leaves,’ she says. They lie in drifts everywhere. They have gathered on the first-floor balcony outside our door. They are ground by the footsteps of our neighbours. They dot the grass of the small lawn below. The tree that nearly tops the balcony with its high branches is almost bare.
Elsewhere, there are still plenty of leaves left on the trees to fuel a long autumn. There are trees that have barely begun to lose their foliage. Some have only started to turn red, even as street gutters are cluttered with yellow leaves from others. It only remains for the temperatures to finally turn, and the rains to come, for autumn to take on its true character.
A few weeks ago, I ran a half marathon in Brabant. Usually, this is the first race of the season that requires long sleeves and perhaps even cap and gloves. This year, the one adverse condition was overwhelmingly the sun. I performed miserably, and I have the luxury of blaming a hot October sun.
Part of the ritual of running these large road races is the prolonged wait before the start. Crowds gather in the chute that trails back for a solid kilometre from the starting line, while some individuals find open space to warm up with stretches and dashes out and back. The day of this latest race, people were finding shade, keeping cool as long as they could before joining the crowds in the open sun. Those of us in the starting chute were already sweating,
The race provided little respite. There was no shade for the first half of the race. I knew I was in trouble. I started slow. I made every water stop count. And still, the second half of the race got the better of me, afternoon sun adding kilos to my burden every kilometre. I finished in my worst time to date, and I was happy with that.
If you aren’t running a half marathon, the second summer has been a blessing. People have found any excuse to be outside. They have taken kids to the park. They have strolled and cycled among the streets. My students have devised every excuse to miss classes. Attendance has dropped in proportion to the temperature outside.
Baby and I stopped by a local café, after her Saturday ballet class. We sat inside, while most of the clientele sat outside. This café is one of the most popular in the west of Rotterdam. It is set on a corner and offers outdoor seating along two walls. There is no view to speak of, neither downtown streets nor parks. No monuments, no markets. It’s just an intersection along the busy Nieuwe Binnenweg. Next door is a thrift shop. Across the street is Ekoplaza, an organic supermarket. With nothing but parked cars to look at, the outdoor tables are still full, and the corner resounds with lively chatter.
Baby likes sipping her orange juice from a spoon. She can concentrate on that delicate process for a surprisingly long time. I’m free to enjoy my espresso, leaf through a Dutch newspaper, and watch people. It’s most amusing to watch people as they make their entry. Some enter distractedly, in mid-conversation, and come to a standstill in the middle of the room. They need a moment to orient. Others enter aggressively, searching for a table with intense purpose. Some have generous boundaries, spreading themselves luxuriously across several tables. Some are modest and quiet, settling into a corner with a laptop and becoming still as the furniture. They whisper their orders and smile wistfully at the barista.
The regulars have their own relaxed pace. It may be a product of their privilege here, or it may be the lifestyle that allows them to be regulars at a café. They are friendly; they provide the place with its most human element. Their smiles are genuine. It’s just another day. A beautiful one, to be sure, but just a day in the neighbourhood. There’s no need for smiles like shouts.
Baby never finishes the orange juice. Maybe that’s what recommends a spoon to her, over a straw. The juice lasts forever that way.
On Leaves
Part Two
‘I’m walking in leaves,’ she says. They lie in drifts everywhere. They have gathered on the first-floor balcony outside our door. They are ground by the footsteps of our neighbours. They dot the grass of the small lawn below. The tree that nearly tops the balcony with its high branches is almost bare.
Elsewhere, there are still plenty of leaves left on the trees to fuel a long autumn. There are trees that have barely begun to lose their foliage. Some have only started to turn red, even as street gutters are cluttered with yellow leaves from others. It only remains for the temperatures to finally turn, and the rains to come, for autumn to take on its true character.
A few weeks ago, I ran a half marathon in Brabant. Usually, this is the first race of the season that requires long sleeves and perhaps even cap and gloves. This year, the one adverse condition was overwhelmingly the sun. I performed miserably, and I have the luxury of blaming a hot October sun.
Part of the ritual of running these large road races is the prolonged wait before the start. Crowds gather in the chute that trails back for a solid kilometre from the starting line, while some individuals find open space to warm up with stretches and dashes out and back. The day of this latest race, people were finding shade, keeping cool as long as they could before joining the crowds in the open sun. Those of us in the starting chute were already sweating,
The race provided little respite. There was no shade for the first half of the race. I knew I was in trouble. I started slow. I made every water stop count. And still, the second half of the race got the better of me, afternoon sun adding kilos to my burden every kilometre. I finished in my worst time to date, and I was happy with that.
If you aren’t running a half marathon, the second summer has been a blessing. People have found any excuse to be outside. They have taken kids to the park. They have strolled and cycled among the streets. My students have devised every excuse to miss classes. Attendance has dropped in proportion to the temperature outside.
Baby and I stopped by a local café, after her Saturday ballet class. We sat inside, while most of the clientele sat outside. This café is one of the most popular in the west of Rotterdam. It is set on a corner and offers outdoor seating along two walls. There is no view to speak of, neither downtown streets nor parks. No monuments, no markets. It’s just an intersection along the busy Nieuwe Binnenweg. Next door is a thrift shop. Across the street is Ekoplaza, an organic supermarket. With nothing but parked cars to look at, the outdoor tables are still full, and the corner resounds with lively chatter.
Baby likes sipping her orange juice from a spoon. She can concentrate on that delicate process for a surprisingly long time. I’m free to enjoy my espresso, leaf through a Dutch newspaper, and watch people. It’s most amusing to watch people as they make their entry. Some enter distractedly, in mid-conversation, and come to a standstill in the middle of the room. They need a moment to orient. Others enter aggressively, searching for a table with intense purpose. Some have generous boundaries, spreading themselves luxuriously across several tables. Some are modest and quiet, settling into a corner with a laptop and becoming still as the furniture. They whisper their orders and smile wistfully at the barista.
The regulars have their own relaxed pace. It may be a product of their privilege here, or it may be the lifestyle that allows them to be regulars at a café. They are friendly; they provide the place with its most human element. Their smiles are genuine. It’s just another day. A beautiful one, to be sure, but just a day in the neighbourhood. There’s no need for smiles like shouts.
Baby never finishes the orange juice. Maybe that’s what recommends a spoon to her, over a straw. The juice lasts forever that way.
Friday, October 19, 2018
Travelogue 826 – October 19
On Leaves
Part One
‘Yesterday,’ he says, ‘yesterday was the last hot day. Now the cold and the rain will come. Maybe snow in the next few weeks.’ That’s the owner of my regular café talking about the weather. It’s early in the morning. The sun has barely risen over the city. I don’t have much to offer in reply. ‘Well it was bound to come,’ I say, offering my generic wisdom.
We have been lucky with this Indian summer. The sun has been bright. The temperatures have been summer-hot in the afternoons. The advance of autumn has proceeded, nonetheless. The sun may be warm, but he is sleepier every day, rising later. This morning, I was readying for work in the dark. I couldn’t get myself to turn on the lights. I preferred to stumble across the room half-asleep. I preferred to stand at the window watching the pigeons beating their wings, bickering over something on the rooftop across the street. Behind them, the day’s first light painted the few clouds in the east with hopeful shades of pink.
Baby has enjoyed narrating the season. ‘The leaves are falling,’ she likes to say. ‘I’m walking in leaves.’ Twice a week, I walk with her to the bus station in the morning. We walk the path that follows the canal, underneath the trees that are readying for autumn. We shuffle our feet through the yellow leaves. We look for the ducks in the canal. Baby watches them dive in search of whatever it is they eat. She decides that’s ‘yucky’.
We board the 38 bus into town. Each journey with her is a joy for me. Each is unique. She says something funny. She plays a new game. She squirms in her bus seat, she talks to me about what she sees on the street outside. There’s nothing better than time like this with her.
By the time the bus reaches our destination, it is crowded. I must stand, swing the backpack over my shoulder, gather Baby, negotiate with people standing in the aisle, and swipe my transport card, all while the bus sways and finally swerves into place at the stop. It’s a dance that always recommends to me the longer and less convenient tram ride.
I let Baby down to the pavement with a sigh, and we walk hand in hand to the school. Parents and children are descending on the one gate like predators, many on bicycles weaving among the crowds deftly, intrepidly. We shuffle through the gate and walk together through the playground to the entrance to the peuterspeelzaal, the pre-school. The teachers welcome Baby, and she smiles with real affection, even if she smiles shyly. I ask the head teacher how she’s doing. Well, she says. She’s always happy. She likes to follow the teachers and see what they’re doing.
It’s still difficult for me to leave her behind, I linger by the door, and I watch her. She’s content. She sits on her little stool, and she watches her classmates play. She wears an expression of mild curiosity. We’ve said good-bye, and I’ve been forgotten. That’s a good thing. I make myself leave. I have only twenty minutes to make it to work.
On Leaves
Part One
‘Yesterday,’ he says, ‘yesterday was the last hot day. Now the cold and the rain will come. Maybe snow in the next few weeks.’ That’s the owner of my regular café talking about the weather. It’s early in the morning. The sun has barely risen over the city. I don’t have much to offer in reply. ‘Well it was bound to come,’ I say, offering my generic wisdom.
We have been lucky with this Indian summer. The sun has been bright. The temperatures have been summer-hot in the afternoons. The advance of autumn has proceeded, nonetheless. The sun may be warm, but he is sleepier every day, rising later. This morning, I was readying for work in the dark. I couldn’t get myself to turn on the lights. I preferred to stumble across the room half-asleep. I preferred to stand at the window watching the pigeons beating their wings, bickering over something on the rooftop across the street. Behind them, the day’s first light painted the few clouds in the east with hopeful shades of pink.
Baby has enjoyed narrating the season. ‘The leaves are falling,’ she likes to say. ‘I’m walking in leaves.’ Twice a week, I walk with her to the bus station in the morning. We walk the path that follows the canal, underneath the trees that are readying for autumn. We shuffle our feet through the yellow leaves. We look for the ducks in the canal. Baby watches them dive in search of whatever it is they eat. She decides that’s ‘yucky’.
We board the 38 bus into town. Each journey with her is a joy for me. Each is unique. She says something funny. She plays a new game. She squirms in her bus seat, she talks to me about what she sees on the street outside. There’s nothing better than time like this with her.
By the time the bus reaches our destination, it is crowded. I must stand, swing the backpack over my shoulder, gather Baby, negotiate with people standing in the aisle, and swipe my transport card, all while the bus sways and finally swerves into place at the stop. It’s a dance that always recommends to me the longer and less convenient tram ride.
I let Baby down to the pavement with a sigh, and we walk hand in hand to the school. Parents and children are descending on the one gate like predators, many on bicycles weaving among the crowds deftly, intrepidly. We shuffle through the gate and walk together through the playground to the entrance to the peuterspeelzaal, the pre-school. The teachers welcome Baby, and she smiles with real affection, even if she smiles shyly. I ask the head teacher how she’s doing. Well, she says. She’s always happy. She likes to follow the teachers and see what they’re doing.
It’s still difficult for me to leave her behind, I linger by the door, and I watch her. She’s content. She sits on her little stool, and she watches her classmates play. She wears an expression of mild curiosity. We’ve said good-bye, and I’ve been forgotten. That’s a good thing. I make myself leave. I have only twenty minutes to make it to work.
Friday, October 12, 2018
Travelogue 825 – October 12
Bow of the Ship
Part Two
My life is texts. During the day, I teach language. That amounts to little more than guiding people through texts. Exercises are like scripts that I direct. I instruct about the rules. I listen, and I correct. I model pronunciation. I tease and cajole.
Language requires play, so I joke. Humour is the spark in any language. It has occurred to me that this is why I’m such a poor language learner. I enjoy studying the grammars of other languages, but speaking is dull. I can’t endure the poverty of the early stages when conversations are stilted, when you can only come up with rote ways of delivering any thought.
This evening, I’m listening to four actors read my script. They’re reading it cold; it’s the first time they’re seeing the text. I prefer cold readings because they reveal mistakes and the clumsy patches in language. They show how well the characters and action are fleshed out. It’s not as though any script is so good it reads perfectly the first time. Where the readers stumble is informative.
I’ve written repeatedly about the pleasure of theatre. The thought bears repeating because theatre offers so many distinct experiences to its practitioners. In my imagination, each production is a jewel with many faces, presenting different sets of glancing light at every turn. The complexity is what makes it live and breathe.
Just the reading of a script offers surprising dimension. Actors are exploring as they read. They are finding a voice as they go. It’s what they do. I give minimal direction before we start, and none as we go. Midway through thhe script, each has discovered a persona. That persona never corresponds exactly to my vision. But tonight, it hasn’t diverged too much, either. With each persona comes a voicing, an inflection and a cadence. The play begins to develop a rhythm. Hearing that rhythm emerge is exciting.
There is a pregnant pause after we finish. What do you say? It’s such a strange activity for an evening. We’ve enjoyed it, but it’s hard to say what the outcome is supposed to be. There is no applause yet. We’re not sure if we will produce it. The actors can’t be sure whether the reading was also an audition. I ask some questions to explore their impressions of the piece. So we discuss, though briefly. The building is dead quiet now, a ship in the doldrums.
We part ways. I nearly get lost looking for the bathrooms and then looking for the exits. The old building is a maze of curving hallways and multiple staircases that lead to blank landings. Portals never seem to be in plain sight. When I do at last emerge into night, I test my land legs. I search for my bicycle, locked to one of many random racks set around the block. The moon is rising over the bluffs of the great hospital.
Bow of the Ship
Part Two
My life is texts. During the day, I teach language. That amounts to little more than guiding people through texts. Exercises are like scripts that I direct. I instruct about the rules. I listen, and I correct. I model pronunciation. I tease and cajole.
Language requires play, so I joke. Humour is the spark in any language. It has occurred to me that this is why I’m such a poor language learner. I enjoy studying the grammars of other languages, but speaking is dull. I can’t endure the poverty of the early stages when conversations are stilted, when you can only come up with rote ways of delivering any thought.
This evening, I’m listening to four actors read my script. They’re reading it cold; it’s the first time they’re seeing the text. I prefer cold readings because they reveal mistakes and the clumsy patches in language. They show how well the characters and action are fleshed out. It’s not as though any script is so good it reads perfectly the first time. Where the readers stumble is informative.
I’ve written repeatedly about the pleasure of theatre. The thought bears repeating because theatre offers so many distinct experiences to its practitioners. In my imagination, each production is a jewel with many faces, presenting different sets of glancing light at every turn. The complexity is what makes it live and breathe.
Just the reading of a script offers surprising dimension. Actors are exploring as they read. They are finding a voice as they go. It’s what they do. I give minimal direction before we start, and none as we go. Midway through thhe script, each has discovered a persona. That persona never corresponds exactly to my vision. But tonight, it hasn’t diverged too much, either. With each persona comes a voicing, an inflection and a cadence. The play begins to develop a rhythm. Hearing that rhythm emerge is exciting.
There is a pregnant pause after we finish. What do you say? It’s such a strange activity for an evening. We’ve enjoyed it, but it’s hard to say what the outcome is supposed to be. There is no applause yet. We’re not sure if we will produce it. The actors can’t be sure whether the reading was also an audition. I ask some questions to explore their impressions of the piece. So we discuss, though briefly. The building is dead quiet now, a ship in the doldrums.
We part ways. I nearly get lost looking for the bathrooms and then looking for the exits. The old building is a maze of curving hallways and multiple staircases that lead to blank landings. Portals never seem to be in plain sight. When I do at last emerge into night, I test my land legs. I search for my bicycle, locked to one of many random racks set around the block. The moon is rising over the bluffs of the great hospital.
Thursday, October 11, 2018
Travelogue 824 – October 11
Bow of the Ship
Part One
The sun is setting by seven. We sit by the window, though it will be dark soon. We have found a round table in a quiet corner of the school. We sit with coffee from a machine, our scripts in front of us, and we read aloud. We’re reading through the draft of a new play. The play is both new and old. I wrote the original draft fifteen years ago and produced it for the Minnesota Fringe Festival. Six months after the performance, I was on my way to Ethiopia, and the play was forgotten. Years afterward, I couldn’t remember the title of the play or what it was about.
I happened to discover the script in a box while I was in Minnesota last year. I read it on the plane, and I started editing it almost immediately. I loved the concept, but the language was dated. There were monologues that I knew current tastes would find trying. Character’s motives were cloudy. These days, I want plays to be as intuitive as possible. The characters should emerge as clearly as possible from dialogue alone.
So now I’m listening. There’s no better way to test a script. It seems to be going well. I’m certainly enjoying the accents. I have two Irish actors reading today. The play is set in Minneapolis, but my bartender speaks with a northern Irish brogue. It’s wonderful; somehow it fits perfectly. The other two are Dutch, but their accents in English are also British isles.
I’m simply enjoying being in this building. It’s one of my favourites on the west side of Rotterdam. A beautiful building lifts my spirits.
This structure dates back to 1931. It was built as the first headquarters of Unilever, though now it belongs to the Hogeschool Rotterdam. It shares a certain nautical flare with a few other notable expressionist buildings in the city. That aura of ship setting out to sea seems heightened by its occupation of a long block that is set like an island between the high cliffs of the hospital and the elegance spaces of the museum district. The front of the building faces the museum district with a kind of bravado, its façade curving and concave. Above its doors is a tiled, square tower with three high, narrow niches capped with allegorical statuary of some sort.
Just inside the front doors is a spiral staircase decorated with dark wood, stained glass and lamps suspended from several floors above. Its original aura survives the piles of bikes out front and the streams of indifferent adolescents. It elevates the mundane.
We have entered the other side, the humble side that faces the hospital and the busy avenue, the side augmented by modern additions, glass-fronted and lacking in all flavour. There is a cafeteria with a rounded bar for service, reminding me of a snack bar the stern of a ferry. I have boats on the brain.
Bow of the Ship
Part One
The sun is setting by seven. We sit by the window, though it will be dark soon. We have found a round table in a quiet corner of the school. We sit with coffee from a machine, our scripts in front of us, and we read aloud. We’re reading through the draft of a new play. The play is both new and old. I wrote the original draft fifteen years ago and produced it for the Minnesota Fringe Festival. Six months after the performance, I was on my way to Ethiopia, and the play was forgotten. Years afterward, I couldn’t remember the title of the play or what it was about.
I happened to discover the script in a box while I was in Minnesota last year. I read it on the plane, and I started editing it almost immediately. I loved the concept, but the language was dated. There were monologues that I knew current tastes would find trying. Character’s motives were cloudy. These days, I want plays to be as intuitive as possible. The characters should emerge as clearly as possible from dialogue alone.
So now I’m listening. There’s no better way to test a script. It seems to be going well. I’m certainly enjoying the accents. I have two Irish actors reading today. The play is set in Minneapolis, but my bartender speaks with a northern Irish brogue. It’s wonderful; somehow it fits perfectly. The other two are Dutch, but their accents in English are also British isles.
I’m simply enjoying being in this building. It’s one of my favourites on the west side of Rotterdam. A beautiful building lifts my spirits.
This structure dates back to 1931. It was built as the first headquarters of Unilever, though now it belongs to the Hogeschool Rotterdam. It shares a certain nautical flare with a few other notable expressionist buildings in the city. That aura of ship setting out to sea seems heightened by its occupation of a long block that is set like an island between the high cliffs of the hospital and the elegance spaces of the museum district. The front of the building faces the museum district with a kind of bravado, its façade curving and concave. Above its doors is a tiled, square tower with three high, narrow niches capped with allegorical statuary of some sort.
Just inside the front doors is a spiral staircase decorated with dark wood, stained glass and lamps suspended from several floors above. Its original aura survives the piles of bikes out front and the streams of indifferent adolescents. It elevates the mundane.
We have entered the other side, the humble side that faces the hospital and the busy avenue, the side augmented by modern additions, glass-fronted and lacking in all flavour. There is a cafeteria with a rounded bar for service, reminding me of a snack bar the stern of a ferry. I have boats on the brain.
Sunday, September 30, 2018
Travelogue 823 – September 30
The Rip Tide
Part Two
I’m watching the airplanes at rest, like beasts in deep meditation. Even repose is purposeful at an airport. There may be no better place to observe the zeitgeist in play than an airport, where business travellers are the model citizens, crisply dressed and self-contained. The atmosphere is one of undisguised utility. Everything serves the schedule, even the strenuous efforts to calm the human spirit. We must be offered every resource to make our peaceful progress through the queues.
I’ve been reminded of Ethiopia, sitting here at my Starbuck’s. With some perspective, the past six years, since the death of Meles, may prove to have been an attenuated and turbulent interregnum. The political party is still in place. In their compromised wisdom, they may have found their way to the future after all. Meles’s first replacement was sacrificed to the impossible contradictions embedded in the policies of the past twenty years. There was no way round that conclusive disillusionment. It might have been that the party and the man himself had predicted as much and had set out to weather the storm, dampen the rage, and survive. The interim PM was a bland enough character, hard to blame, hard to love. When he resigned, he left us all dry-eyed.
Then the party appointed Abiy Ahmed to take over. It’s difficult to know what they were thinking. It seems hardly possible they understood that the nation needed a tonic for themselves, and yet that is what Abiy has been. He has come in with a blast of charisma and optimism, bringing with him a policy agenda written to undo many of the worst effects of his own party’s rule. He’s made peace with Eritrea. He’s released political prisoners. He has promised liberalization in law and economy.
I pack up and start my slow amble toward the gate. My routine is to allow time to browse among magazines and newspapers. It’s a short flight, so one daily ought to keep me entertained. At the shop, I scan among the new book titles. The airport market exhibits a healthy appetite for self-help for business managers, for thin guides to immediate results. It’s also hungry for non-fiction, ideas and history packaged for self-improvement. I’m as vulnerable to the charms of these pop compendia as anyone, and if I had more time and money, I’d read them all and find six-figure enlightenment. Browsing titles will have to do. At least I can learn what I’m lacking to be a doer, a decision-maker, successful, important, happy, efficient, indispensable.
It’s been nice to see hope return to Ethiopia. They’re a people with hopeful dispositions. It’s only right that the universe reciprocates once in a while. Hope hasn’t returned without risk or without disruption. There are those in the party who regret Abiy’s appointment. There are those working to undermine him. There has already been one grenade thrown at him. Most of his adversaries are subtler, throwing obstacles in his path at every opportunity. And the disturbances among ethnicities during recent years haven’t disappeared. If anything, the liberalization of speech and policing have only excited more conflict in the short term. The illness of past administrations must run its course before the cure kicks in. I’m wishing then well.
The lines at the gates are crowded, and they seem tangled. I advance toward the flight to Newcastle for some minutes before I realize I should have been in the adjacent line. Once I’ve advanced to the right gate, I am stopped. The first bus is full, and we must wait for the second. The windows are tinted, adding to the shadows from the parking ramps. We might be boarding a submarine, judging by the murky blue of the spaces beyond the door.
The Rip Tide
Part Two
I’m watching the airplanes at rest, like beasts in deep meditation. Even repose is purposeful at an airport. There may be no better place to observe the zeitgeist in play than an airport, where business travellers are the model citizens, crisply dressed and self-contained. The atmosphere is one of undisguised utility. Everything serves the schedule, even the strenuous efforts to calm the human spirit. We must be offered every resource to make our peaceful progress through the queues.
I’ve been reminded of Ethiopia, sitting here at my Starbuck’s. With some perspective, the past six years, since the death of Meles, may prove to have been an attenuated and turbulent interregnum. The political party is still in place. In their compromised wisdom, they may have found their way to the future after all. Meles’s first replacement was sacrificed to the impossible contradictions embedded in the policies of the past twenty years. There was no way round that conclusive disillusionment. It might have been that the party and the man himself had predicted as much and had set out to weather the storm, dampen the rage, and survive. The interim PM was a bland enough character, hard to blame, hard to love. When he resigned, he left us all dry-eyed.
Then the party appointed Abiy Ahmed to take over. It’s difficult to know what they were thinking. It seems hardly possible they understood that the nation needed a tonic for themselves, and yet that is what Abiy has been. He has come in with a blast of charisma and optimism, bringing with him a policy agenda written to undo many of the worst effects of his own party’s rule. He’s made peace with Eritrea. He’s released political prisoners. He has promised liberalization in law and economy.
I pack up and start my slow amble toward the gate. My routine is to allow time to browse among magazines and newspapers. It’s a short flight, so one daily ought to keep me entertained. At the shop, I scan among the new book titles. The airport market exhibits a healthy appetite for self-help for business managers, for thin guides to immediate results. It’s also hungry for non-fiction, ideas and history packaged for self-improvement. I’m as vulnerable to the charms of these pop compendia as anyone, and if I had more time and money, I’d read them all and find six-figure enlightenment. Browsing titles will have to do. At least I can learn what I’m lacking to be a doer, a decision-maker, successful, important, happy, efficient, indispensable.
It’s been nice to see hope return to Ethiopia. They’re a people with hopeful dispositions. It’s only right that the universe reciprocates once in a while. Hope hasn’t returned without risk or without disruption. There are those in the party who regret Abiy’s appointment. There are those working to undermine him. There has already been one grenade thrown at him. Most of his adversaries are subtler, throwing obstacles in his path at every opportunity. And the disturbances among ethnicities during recent years haven’t disappeared. If anything, the liberalization of speech and policing have only excited more conflict in the short term. The illness of past administrations must run its course before the cure kicks in. I’m wishing then well.
The lines at the gates are crowded, and they seem tangled. I advance toward the flight to Newcastle for some minutes before I realize I should have been in the adjacent line. Once I’ve advanced to the right gate, I am stopped. The first bus is full, and we must wait for the second. The windows are tinted, adding to the shadows from the parking ramps. We might be boarding a submarine, judging by the murky blue of the spaces beyond the door.
Friday, September 28, 2018
Travelogue 822 – September 28
The Rip Tide
Part One
I’m back at Schiphol. It’s almost disturbing how well I know this place, how well I know even the train ride from Rotterdam. Coming here can feel like entering a familiar dreamscape. It’s a break from daily life, but not a real place of its own. It’s a setting for lines and waiting. It’s a café I see once or twice a year.
I recall that it was in this Starbucks that I heard that Meles Zenawi had passed away in a hospital in Brussels. That was just over six years ago. Meles was the strongman who had dominated Ethiopian politics for twenty years. I remember the shock I felt that the little dynamo could actually die. There had been rumours circulating about his illness and even his demise for a year or more already. It didn’t seem real when his end finally came.
I was sitting just two tables away from where I’m sitting now, at one of the high tables by the window. I was stunned by the news. I was waiting to board a flight to the U.S. I tried to quickly reason through the implications. Ethiopia had never seen a peaceful passing of power in the modern era. I was afraid for loved ones I had left behind. I was worried about our schools, staff and children. I debated turning back, returning to Ethiopia. I didn’t, and I suppose it was because I had a fairly clear understanding of my power in this situation, which was next to nil.
The café is tucked into a corner between wings of the airport, D gates on our side and E gates across the tarmac. Outside the big windows, I can watch the busy work of preparing for air travel.
The airport experience is one of being trapped indoors. The dreamscape is one of walls and corridors and stale climate control. The views outdoors offer little respite. They only reinforce the feeling of being in an alien city. The oversized and monumental – whales of the air ferrying across parade grounds of tarmac toward their vast hangars, -- mix with the oddly ludicrous – miniature trains zipping around, passing men in orange waving coloured batons.
With six years’ perspective, I can see there was little cause for alarm. People did suffer; the country did suffer. But it was suffering of the slow and simmering sort, as the party in power clamped down, put a friendly puppet forward as prime minister, and settled in for a long siege. They didn’t have to wait long. This was going to be an agonizing transition. Without the little magician, all the party’s parlour tricks went awry. Where Meles had managed to play ethnicities off each other to maintain control, the new man could only club them down and create common cause among them. In a few years, he united old enemies against himself and the party.
I wait at my Starbuck’s. I can tell they work very hard to keep the dreamscape of Schiphol as clean and light as possible. And still it is hard to avoid the sensation that the place is in perpetual slide into griminess and stink. The inertia of the airport, serving almost seventy million people per year, tends toward rapid decay. It’s not difficult to feel the strong rip tide underneath toward the dystopian. One surrenders willingly to the distractions of high-end window shopping, the wonderful opiates of perfumes and electronics. One indulges in snacks and magazines and social media and movies.
The Rip Tide
Part One
I’m back at Schiphol. It’s almost disturbing how well I know this place, how well I know even the train ride from Rotterdam. Coming here can feel like entering a familiar dreamscape. It’s a break from daily life, but not a real place of its own. It’s a setting for lines and waiting. It’s a café I see once or twice a year.
I recall that it was in this Starbucks that I heard that Meles Zenawi had passed away in a hospital in Brussels. That was just over six years ago. Meles was the strongman who had dominated Ethiopian politics for twenty years. I remember the shock I felt that the little dynamo could actually die. There had been rumours circulating about his illness and even his demise for a year or more already. It didn’t seem real when his end finally came.
I was sitting just two tables away from where I’m sitting now, at one of the high tables by the window. I was stunned by the news. I was waiting to board a flight to the U.S. I tried to quickly reason through the implications. Ethiopia had never seen a peaceful passing of power in the modern era. I was afraid for loved ones I had left behind. I was worried about our schools, staff and children. I debated turning back, returning to Ethiopia. I didn’t, and I suppose it was because I had a fairly clear understanding of my power in this situation, which was next to nil.
The café is tucked into a corner between wings of the airport, D gates on our side and E gates across the tarmac. Outside the big windows, I can watch the busy work of preparing for air travel.
The airport experience is one of being trapped indoors. The dreamscape is one of walls and corridors and stale climate control. The views outdoors offer little respite. They only reinforce the feeling of being in an alien city. The oversized and monumental – whales of the air ferrying across parade grounds of tarmac toward their vast hangars, -- mix with the oddly ludicrous – miniature trains zipping around, passing men in orange waving coloured batons.
With six years’ perspective, I can see there was little cause for alarm. People did suffer; the country did suffer. But it was suffering of the slow and simmering sort, as the party in power clamped down, put a friendly puppet forward as prime minister, and settled in for a long siege. They didn’t have to wait long. This was going to be an agonizing transition. Without the little magician, all the party’s parlour tricks went awry. Where Meles had managed to play ethnicities off each other to maintain control, the new man could only club them down and create common cause among them. In a few years, he united old enemies against himself and the party.
I wait at my Starbuck’s. I can tell they work very hard to keep the dreamscape of Schiphol as clean and light as possible. And still it is hard to avoid the sensation that the place is in perpetual slide into griminess and stink. The inertia of the airport, serving almost seventy million people per year, tends toward rapid decay. It’s not difficult to feel the strong rip tide underneath toward the dystopian. One surrenders willingly to the distractions of high-end window shopping, the wonderful opiates of perfumes and electronics. One indulges in snacks and magazines and social media and movies.
Sunday, September 23, 2018
Travelogue 821 – September 23
Why We Wake
Baby has wondrous reservoirs of energy. She can devise all sorts of strategies to avoid taking a bite at the dinner table. It can be quite entertaining. It can be frustrating. The latter sensation has its undeniable moments. Surprisingly, it never unseats the former sensation, the enjoyment, which is a feeling born of love.
Being an older parent, I have access to many years’ worth of bachelor memories. I know how a single man thinks. If I could have been a time-travelling fly on the wall in my own future, I would have observed Baby’s behaviour with only irritation and frustration. How could Future-Me be so indulgent, I might have wondered?
Tell a young person that, every day, for years, s/he will struggle with his/her child at the dinner table, that nearly every day the child will tire of the previous trick the parent used to get him or her to eat, and watch the young person recoil. It’s good trick in itself, a wake-up call in the face of hormones.
The steadfast love of a parent is a mystery. It’s a useful case study in meditating the eternal riddle, the one with many answers, none of them conclusive, ‘Why do we get up in the morning?’
Since I find the politics of our age a mystery, I relate one mystery to another. In this case, I am like the young person who has never been a parent. I read the news every day in a complex mood made up of elements like cynical amusement and horror. One element that has faded away is hope. I develop theories to simulate understanding.
What I see is humanity pulling away from hard-won sophistication, and doing so wilfully, like a child who doesn’t really need telling that she needs to eat and who doesn’t really need reminding that meals are part of the healthy routine of the day. She loves other forms of ritual, even making a show of replacing the meal-time ritual with one of a very scripted game. She holds up a hand in refusal and she smiles coyly.
I happened to catch a video clip on TV recently of Mussolini in the early days of his triumph, speaking to a crowd. His oratory was interspersed with the most ridiculous grimaces. I hadn’t seen it before. We are all familiar with the histrionics of Hitler. They make high school students laugh, which in turn makes teachers uncomfortable. We laugh that way at Trump, when he mugs for the crowds at his rallies.
I know that democracy is the answer. But I hold it true in the same moment that I feel that democracy is fatigued and ineffective. I am divided, and not in a way that excites action.
I have friends who are smart and politically active. I watch them with admiration, the way I watch certain indefatigable activists in the public eye. This is unalloyed admiration; it’s not diminished by a sense that I know better. These are the manifold parents, the ones who know that every day they wake they will have to cajole their children into just action.
Tell the people that democracy is every day the same struggle at the dinner table. Watch them recoil. It’s a wake-up call for the immature.
Why We Wake
Baby has wondrous reservoirs of energy. She can devise all sorts of strategies to avoid taking a bite at the dinner table. It can be quite entertaining. It can be frustrating. The latter sensation has its undeniable moments. Surprisingly, it never unseats the former sensation, the enjoyment, which is a feeling born of love.
Being an older parent, I have access to many years’ worth of bachelor memories. I know how a single man thinks. If I could have been a time-travelling fly on the wall in my own future, I would have observed Baby’s behaviour with only irritation and frustration. How could Future-Me be so indulgent, I might have wondered?
Tell a young person that, every day, for years, s/he will struggle with his/her child at the dinner table, that nearly every day the child will tire of the previous trick the parent used to get him or her to eat, and watch the young person recoil. It’s good trick in itself, a wake-up call in the face of hormones.
The steadfast love of a parent is a mystery. It’s a useful case study in meditating the eternal riddle, the one with many answers, none of them conclusive, ‘Why do we get up in the morning?’
Since I find the politics of our age a mystery, I relate one mystery to another. In this case, I am like the young person who has never been a parent. I read the news every day in a complex mood made up of elements like cynical amusement and horror. One element that has faded away is hope. I develop theories to simulate understanding.
What I see is humanity pulling away from hard-won sophistication, and doing so wilfully, like a child who doesn’t really need telling that she needs to eat and who doesn’t really need reminding that meals are part of the healthy routine of the day. She loves other forms of ritual, even making a show of replacing the meal-time ritual with one of a very scripted game. She holds up a hand in refusal and she smiles coyly.
I happened to catch a video clip on TV recently of Mussolini in the early days of his triumph, speaking to a crowd. His oratory was interspersed with the most ridiculous grimaces. I hadn’t seen it before. We are all familiar with the histrionics of Hitler. They make high school students laugh, which in turn makes teachers uncomfortable. We laugh that way at Trump, when he mugs for the crowds at his rallies.
I know that democracy is the answer. But I hold it true in the same moment that I feel that democracy is fatigued and ineffective. I am divided, and not in a way that excites action.
I have friends who are smart and politically active. I watch them with admiration, the way I watch certain indefatigable activists in the public eye. This is unalloyed admiration; it’s not diminished by a sense that I know better. These are the manifold parents, the ones who know that every day they wake they will have to cajole their children into just action.
Tell the people that democracy is every day the same struggle at the dinner table. Watch them recoil. It’s a wake-up call for the immature.
Wednesday, September 12, 2018
Travelogue 820 – September 12
School and Dinner
The school year returned, and it rushed in with force. I was vulnerable, indulging as I was in my writing idyll. I was actually, vaguely, looking forward to the start of classes. But one anticipates with the imagination, and imagination without work requires little strain. One actualizes with the body, the poor body that rises early, submits itself to the Metro, mounts the stairs when the lift is filled to capacity with students. The poor body stands at the head of the class for long stretches, wearying the back and the vocal cords in courageous shows of futility.
Priorities shift. Progress in writing my little book has slowed to a crawl. I am happy to add a few paragraphs at a time. Sometimes all I do is open the Word file and review where I was, edit a few sentences. I wake in the night, and I scribble ideas, things I must remember. Sometimes I find those notes. Sometimes I find them a second time.
Writing comes second when duty calls, as nagging and insistent as the voice of the book may be. They say that delay makes fulfilment sweeter. It adds philosophical depth to any enterprise. I’m not sure I can corroborate, as I have no points of comparison. I mean, life has never stopped for my creative work.
When dreary duty calls, I answer. I resist, but I answer. That seems fundamental to the human condition. We submit; we surrender; we resign ourselves. But the precondition to those noble acts is resistance. I imagine I can hear the truth in the word ‘work’. It isn’t a melodious word. It sounds like the short grunt of effort, effort made in an attitude of stolid and Spartan realism.
Baby has decided that eating dinner is her work. She must resist. I find it funny. I can’t remember ever feeling like that about meal time, but maybe it’s common among children. Her tactic is to demonstrate what the alternative is, what she should be doing with her time. “No, papa,” she says. “I have to play.” I protest, and she shushes me, placing a hand over my mouth. I laugh. Mama doesn’t appreciate that I indulge Baby, but I have to admit that I’m won over by the creativity she brings to her resistance.
Last night, her game was to hold up her hand like a crossing guard and announce that she would be right back after she slept. She calmly slid off her chair and went into the next room. She returned after only a moment, and climbed onto her chair, only to repeat the ritual before we could get a bite of food into her. My wife sighed. I made an effort to remonstrate, but it was half-hearted. I was smiling.
The trouble is, little Ren worships her sister, and she mimics everything Baby does. She holds up her hand, and climbs off her chair, even as she’s chewing her food. Ren has no issues with eating; she just wants part of the game. She bustles off into the next room, and Mama gets that weary look in her eye. I smile apologetically. I scold the girls from afar. But I’m enjoying my meal.
School and Dinner
The school year returned, and it rushed in with force. I was vulnerable, indulging as I was in my writing idyll. I was actually, vaguely, looking forward to the start of classes. But one anticipates with the imagination, and imagination without work requires little strain. One actualizes with the body, the poor body that rises early, submits itself to the Metro, mounts the stairs when the lift is filled to capacity with students. The poor body stands at the head of the class for long stretches, wearying the back and the vocal cords in courageous shows of futility.
Priorities shift. Progress in writing my little book has slowed to a crawl. I am happy to add a few paragraphs at a time. Sometimes all I do is open the Word file and review where I was, edit a few sentences. I wake in the night, and I scribble ideas, things I must remember. Sometimes I find those notes. Sometimes I find them a second time.
Writing comes second when duty calls, as nagging and insistent as the voice of the book may be. They say that delay makes fulfilment sweeter. It adds philosophical depth to any enterprise. I’m not sure I can corroborate, as I have no points of comparison. I mean, life has never stopped for my creative work.
When dreary duty calls, I answer. I resist, but I answer. That seems fundamental to the human condition. We submit; we surrender; we resign ourselves. But the precondition to those noble acts is resistance. I imagine I can hear the truth in the word ‘work’. It isn’t a melodious word. It sounds like the short grunt of effort, effort made in an attitude of stolid and Spartan realism.
Baby has decided that eating dinner is her work. She must resist. I find it funny. I can’t remember ever feeling like that about meal time, but maybe it’s common among children. Her tactic is to demonstrate what the alternative is, what she should be doing with her time. “No, papa,” she says. “I have to play.” I protest, and she shushes me, placing a hand over my mouth. I laugh. Mama doesn’t appreciate that I indulge Baby, but I have to admit that I’m won over by the creativity she brings to her resistance.
Last night, her game was to hold up her hand like a crossing guard and announce that she would be right back after she slept. She calmly slid off her chair and went into the next room. She returned after only a moment, and climbed onto her chair, only to repeat the ritual before we could get a bite of food into her. My wife sighed. I made an effort to remonstrate, but it was half-hearted. I was smiling.
The trouble is, little Ren worships her sister, and she mimics everything Baby does. She holds up her hand, and climbs off her chair, even as she’s chewing her food. Ren has no issues with eating; she just wants part of the game. She bustles off into the next room, and Mama gets that weary look in her eye. I smile apologetically. I scold the girls from afar. But I’m enjoying my meal.
Thursday, August 23, 2018
Travelogue 819 – August 23
Fall Coming
Time re-asserts itself. The summer heat wave is long gone. Clouds are allowed to roam freely about the skies, capriciously cooling the thirsty lands below without yielding a drop of rain.
Streets are crowded again. I can’t find a seat on the metro in the morning. My work email has come alive again, abuzz with September energy. Co-workers return refreshed from abroad, writing chipper emails about planning meetings.
I’m judging that my perception isn’t quite aligned with theirs. I stayed in town, and it’s only been a few weeks, after all, since we all traded gloomy emails about closing down the last academic year. It’s jarring. It would be better if I left town next summer. I might return as cheery as my co-workers. I might experience the new year as new, rather than a sort of ghoulish rising from the grave.
But leaving town would mean missing the blessed peacefulness that descends on the city. I do quite enjoy having some space while strolling around downtown, foregoing the constant negotiation that crowds require, particularly ones that are raised to stare dully ahead and offer no quarter.
I learn to appreciate cycling across town without the adrenaline rush of those brushes with death. I appreciate the empty seats at the cafes, the ones that separate me from the sound of video on smart phones. This is the real food for modern zombies, flashing light and the tinny lo-fi replay of voices. Outside, the parks offer open spaces, even on sunny days.
But the zombies are back, re-populating public transit, pouring onto the bike paths, weaving drunkenly and riding the wrong way. Maybe they will be slow to discover the parks.
It might have been summer’s return yesterday. The clouds gave us some respite from their sport, and we leapt at a chance to take the girls to the park. ‘Leapt’ here should be read in context of parenthood. Leaping takes hours, getting babies dressed and supplying the buggy for a major journey.
Once we had leapt, all was good. We strolled among banks of flowers toward the open space of grassy meadows, where the girls could run and tumble. We brought the inflated kickball, and they chased this with great glee. I took them to the pond, where we watched the baby ducks run after flies. Little Ren immediately sat in duck poop. Mama scolded Papa at length about this, but the mess didn’t faze the girls. They chased the ducks some more, enthusiastically accumulating more poop on their shoes for deposit on Mama’s slacks.
They pretended to climb trees, while I lifted them up to the leaves. They found rocks to climb, with Papa’s help. Repetition is key to infant enjoyment, so Papa donated his back to their happiness, lifting them again and again. It was very important to Baby that she got to dismount from her rock by sliding down the side of it, again with Papa’s help. Papa prayed for distraction, but these girls have admirable faculties for focus when playing.
Once the babies’ energy had begun to flag, we recommended cookies and they cheered. We guided them toward the outdoor café, following them with aching backs and clothes stained with duck poop. We gratefully occupied the deck chairs and submitted a rush order for pacifying sweets.
While I could, I enjoyed the prospect of open spaces, grass in sunshine, untrodden by the spring masses or the winter cold. Free space, warmed by sun, a vestige of summer. Baby had the same thought. She took off suddenly, running toward the grass. I’m up and running after her.
Fall Coming
Time re-asserts itself. The summer heat wave is long gone. Clouds are allowed to roam freely about the skies, capriciously cooling the thirsty lands below without yielding a drop of rain.
Streets are crowded again. I can’t find a seat on the metro in the morning. My work email has come alive again, abuzz with September energy. Co-workers return refreshed from abroad, writing chipper emails about planning meetings.
I’m judging that my perception isn’t quite aligned with theirs. I stayed in town, and it’s only been a few weeks, after all, since we all traded gloomy emails about closing down the last academic year. It’s jarring. It would be better if I left town next summer. I might return as cheery as my co-workers. I might experience the new year as new, rather than a sort of ghoulish rising from the grave.
But leaving town would mean missing the blessed peacefulness that descends on the city. I do quite enjoy having some space while strolling around downtown, foregoing the constant negotiation that crowds require, particularly ones that are raised to stare dully ahead and offer no quarter.
I learn to appreciate cycling across town without the adrenaline rush of those brushes with death. I appreciate the empty seats at the cafes, the ones that separate me from the sound of video on smart phones. This is the real food for modern zombies, flashing light and the tinny lo-fi replay of voices. Outside, the parks offer open spaces, even on sunny days.
But the zombies are back, re-populating public transit, pouring onto the bike paths, weaving drunkenly and riding the wrong way. Maybe they will be slow to discover the parks.
It might have been summer’s return yesterday. The clouds gave us some respite from their sport, and we leapt at a chance to take the girls to the park. ‘Leapt’ here should be read in context of parenthood. Leaping takes hours, getting babies dressed and supplying the buggy for a major journey.
Once we had leapt, all was good. We strolled among banks of flowers toward the open space of grassy meadows, where the girls could run and tumble. We brought the inflated kickball, and they chased this with great glee. I took them to the pond, where we watched the baby ducks run after flies. Little Ren immediately sat in duck poop. Mama scolded Papa at length about this, but the mess didn’t faze the girls. They chased the ducks some more, enthusiastically accumulating more poop on their shoes for deposit on Mama’s slacks.
They pretended to climb trees, while I lifted them up to the leaves. They found rocks to climb, with Papa’s help. Repetition is key to infant enjoyment, so Papa donated his back to their happiness, lifting them again and again. It was very important to Baby that she got to dismount from her rock by sliding down the side of it, again with Papa’s help. Papa prayed for distraction, but these girls have admirable faculties for focus when playing.
Once the babies’ energy had begun to flag, we recommended cookies and they cheered. We guided them toward the outdoor café, following them with aching backs and clothes stained with duck poop. We gratefully occupied the deck chairs and submitted a rush order for pacifying sweets.
While I could, I enjoyed the prospect of open spaces, grass in sunshine, untrodden by the spring masses or the winter cold. Free space, warmed by sun, a vestige of summer. Baby had the same thought. She took off suddenly, running toward the grass. I’m up and running after her.
Sunday, August 19, 2018
Travelogue 818 – August 19
The Tracks of Time
I was listening to a recording I made of Baby in April. She’s singing a song her mama had taught her. I remember that stage of pronunciation, the testing of words, the lisp and the lovely round vowels. I remember the loving repetition, her joy in singing. It seems much longer ago than April. Things change so quickly.
Quite suddenly, a few weeks ago, Baby started speaking in Dutch. She had experimented with isolated words before, but one afternoon she addressed me in full sentences, quiet out of the blue. She smiled slyly at my astonishment, as though this had been her intention. Then she repeated what she was saying, something about the provenance of one toy or other, which was hers and which her little sister’s.
I was speechless. Where did that come from? She’s in no school this summer. She has no little Dutch friends to play with outside. Does she absorb that much from the short spells of cartoons dubbed in Dutch that we allow? She certainly brings to those viewing sessions real intensity. For weeks she had cried for more reruns of ‘Peter Konijn’, her favourite.
Time asserts itself with authority. It never ceases to inspire wonder in me. There is no forgiveness, no soft spot for the beautiful moment. Baby sympathizes with time. She would pause for nothing along the way. She doesn’t seem sentimental at all, simply ready for the fray.
Sentiment is not something one sees much in nature, is it? It’s perhaps a cultivation of the effete, a sublimated form of grief or fear for those who haven’t kept up with life somehow. If that’s true, then I was running among the last in the race of life from the very start. I remember always being sentimental. Sentiment is linked powerfully to one’s experience of time, and I was aware of time at a tender age. Very young I decided I wanted time to pass as slowly as possible. I wanted every moment, joyful or painful. I decided life was about appreciation. Even the very worst of times I would accept without haste, accept and appreciate. That seems like a fairly sophisticated conclusion for a little boy, and recalling it is not the first time I have felt that I had much more wisdom as a boy than as a man.
The decision to respect time and appreciate life might explain my years as a dedicated slacker. There is no better way to slow the sensation of time down than to have nothing to do. When I had great ideas, I preserved them only in the mind, turning them over like gems in sunny windows. They prompted no action. In mid-life I seem to have lost my determination to achieve nothing and appreciate everything, perhaps succumbing to the shame we like to heap on slackers. I became busy. Time gathered momentum, and now I’m not sure what to do about it. Time is a runaway train, and I am no engineer.
The Tracks of Time
I was listening to a recording I made of Baby in April. She’s singing a song her mama had taught her. I remember that stage of pronunciation, the testing of words, the lisp and the lovely round vowels. I remember the loving repetition, her joy in singing. It seems much longer ago than April. Things change so quickly.
Quite suddenly, a few weeks ago, Baby started speaking in Dutch. She had experimented with isolated words before, but one afternoon she addressed me in full sentences, quiet out of the blue. She smiled slyly at my astonishment, as though this had been her intention. Then she repeated what she was saying, something about the provenance of one toy or other, which was hers and which her little sister’s.
I was speechless. Where did that come from? She’s in no school this summer. She has no little Dutch friends to play with outside. Does she absorb that much from the short spells of cartoons dubbed in Dutch that we allow? She certainly brings to those viewing sessions real intensity. For weeks she had cried for more reruns of ‘Peter Konijn’, her favourite.
Time asserts itself with authority. It never ceases to inspire wonder in me. There is no forgiveness, no soft spot for the beautiful moment. Baby sympathizes with time. She would pause for nothing along the way. She doesn’t seem sentimental at all, simply ready for the fray.
Sentiment is not something one sees much in nature, is it? It’s perhaps a cultivation of the effete, a sublimated form of grief or fear for those who haven’t kept up with life somehow. If that’s true, then I was running among the last in the race of life from the very start. I remember always being sentimental. Sentiment is linked powerfully to one’s experience of time, and I was aware of time at a tender age. Very young I decided I wanted time to pass as slowly as possible. I wanted every moment, joyful or painful. I decided life was about appreciation. Even the very worst of times I would accept without haste, accept and appreciate. That seems like a fairly sophisticated conclusion for a little boy, and recalling it is not the first time I have felt that I had much more wisdom as a boy than as a man.
The decision to respect time and appreciate life might explain my years as a dedicated slacker. There is no better way to slow the sensation of time down than to have nothing to do. When I had great ideas, I preserved them only in the mind, turning them over like gems in sunny windows. They prompted no action. In mid-life I seem to have lost my determination to achieve nothing and appreciate everything, perhaps succumbing to the shame we like to heap on slackers. I became busy. Time gathered momentum, and now I’m not sure what to do about it. Time is a runaway train, and I am no engineer.
Friday, August 10, 2018
Travelogue 817 – August 10
A Thousand Years
Part Six
The English found themselves victors on the field of Crecy. They had matched chaos with their chaos and prevailed. Froissart wrote, “This night they thanked God for their good adventure and made no boast thereof, for the king would that no man should be proud or make boast, but every man humbly to thank God.” Adventure here doesn’t have its modern meaning, and yet I find it appropriate in any sense. It wasn’t history, but the work of the moment.
Churchill famously said, ‘Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.’ But the obverse may pose the real danger: ‘Those who learn from history are doomed to try to repeat it.’ Bullies parse history for their purposes, intentionally misreading it and nursing it for their own gain.
Churchill’s great adversary, the tyrant Adolf Hitler, proclaimed the thousand-year reich. He referenced the thousand-year Holy Roman Empire, and modelled himself on the thousand-year Roman Empire. He had his people greet him with the salute of the ancient Romans.
The Romans might have recognized the salute, but I doubt they would have recognized much else. The simple cruelty in him, perhaps, and the hubris. These sorts of dramas are always written in blood, they might have said, shaking their heads as they left the theatre. I sense that tragic madness didn’t appeal to the ancients the way it has to modern European cultures. And Hitler’s ideas about race and nation and purity and destiny just wouldn’t have registered at all.
The thousand-year reich of the Nazis lasted just about the time it took to breed one generation of Aryans. History wasn’t on Hitler’s side, it would seem. At least, things didn’t turn out as he predicted.
There is a sense of humour to things. It’s written into the code of the universe. The joke is, nothing goes to plan. The plan produces a prodigy, something monstrous. The thousand-year reich fell in twelve. And the survivors wrote their stories, only to have younger generations interpret them for their own purposes. The joke cuts two ways.
Another aphorism attributed (probably wrongly) to Churchill was, ‘History is written by the victors.’ All too often being the victor requires little more than coming along afterward, like the Renaissance scholars writing about the Middle Ages. In Churchill’s case, in the case of the Allied armies, it was a battle won. Something like Crecy, but on a scale that would have made the medieval knights think they had sunk through the mud into hell.
As the Russian troops bombarded Berlin and took the city block by block, Hitler took his own life. There doesn’t seem a clearer admission of defeat than that. But does defeat in battle mean recanting? As he prepared his suicide, he probably still held a flattering idea of his place in history. Our own day’s fascists would never have hung his portrait in their dirty clubhouses if he had admitted defeat, surrendered, and saved a million lives. That would have robbed him, and them, of fascism’s great victory.
If the victors write history, then who are the victors? Definition is the trapdoor in that phrase. Perennial victory is the beauty written into the code of fascism. Categorically, it never loses. We have no further to search for examples than Trump. He has never had occasion to reconsider, doubt, regret, or apologize. It’s a wonderful life. Even if he dies in a jail cell, his self-image will shine with righteousness. Amazingly, he will tell himself, I was always right! I was the best there ever was! And a chorus of followers will affirm it, hammering the evidence of tawdry defeat into gilded symbols of triumph.
A Thousand Years
Part Six
The English found themselves victors on the field of Crecy. They had matched chaos with their chaos and prevailed. Froissart wrote, “This night they thanked God for their good adventure and made no boast thereof, for the king would that no man should be proud or make boast, but every man humbly to thank God.” Adventure here doesn’t have its modern meaning, and yet I find it appropriate in any sense. It wasn’t history, but the work of the moment.
Churchill famously said, ‘Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.’ But the obverse may pose the real danger: ‘Those who learn from history are doomed to try to repeat it.’ Bullies parse history for their purposes, intentionally misreading it and nursing it for their own gain.
Churchill’s great adversary, the tyrant Adolf Hitler, proclaimed the thousand-year reich. He referenced the thousand-year Holy Roman Empire, and modelled himself on the thousand-year Roman Empire. He had his people greet him with the salute of the ancient Romans.
The Romans might have recognized the salute, but I doubt they would have recognized much else. The simple cruelty in him, perhaps, and the hubris. These sorts of dramas are always written in blood, they might have said, shaking their heads as they left the theatre. I sense that tragic madness didn’t appeal to the ancients the way it has to modern European cultures. And Hitler’s ideas about race and nation and purity and destiny just wouldn’t have registered at all.
The thousand-year reich of the Nazis lasted just about the time it took to breed one generation of Aryans. History wasn’t on Hitler’s side, it would seem. At least, things didn’t turn out as he predicted.
There is a sense of humour to things. It’s written into the code of the universe. The joke is, nothing goes to plan. The plan produces a prodigy, something monstrous. The thousand-year reich fell in twelve. And the survivors wrote their stories, only to have younger generations interpret them for their own purposes. The joke cuts two ways.
Another aphorism attributed (probably wrongly) to Churchill was, ‘History is written by the victors.’ All too often being the victor requires little more than coming along afterward, like the Renaissance scholars writing about the Middle Ages. In Churchill’s case, in the case of the Allied armies, it was a battle won. Something like Crecy, but on a scale that would have made the medieval knights think they had sunk through the mud into hell.
As the Russian troops bombarded Berlin and took the city block by block, Hitler took his own life. There doesn’t seem a clearer admission of defeat than that. But does defeat in battle mean recanting? As he prepared his suicide, he probably still held a flattering idea of his place in history. Our own day’s fascists would never have hung his portrait in their dirty clubhouses if he had admitted defeat, surrendered, and saved a million lives. That would have robbed him, and them, of fascism’s great victory.
If the victors write history, then who are the victors? Definition is the trapdoor in that phrase. Perennial victory is the beauty written into the code of fascism. Categorically, it never loses. We have no further to search for examples than Trump. He has never had occasion to reconsider, doubt, regret, or apologize. It’s a wonderful life. Even if he dies in a jail cell, his self-image will shine with righteousness. Amazingly, he will tell himself, I was always right! I was the best there ever was! And a chorus of followers will affirm it, hammering the evidence of tawdry defeat into gilded symbols of triumph.
Wednesday, August 01, 2018
Travelogue 816 – August 1
A Thousand Years
Part Five
Today I ignored the forecasts. I checked the sky. The heat has moderated, though it is still hot and summery. The sky has resumed a Dutch character, changeable and varied. Now white clouds ride imperially through the blue sky. It’s a classic summer sky. I have no idea what the clouds intend to do. It’s happening now. They’re not acting out a prediction.
I’m writing a story based in the Middle Ages, so I’ve been doing some reading. Mr. Huizinga has provided the scholarly perspective. I’m supplementing with Jean Froissart, a fourteenth-century historian. And a good complement he is, providing a wide-eyed account of events that Huizinga’s cool cultural history sidesteps. It’s nice to hear the voice of a story-teller.
One of the stories Froissart tells is the one about the Battle of Crecy in 1346. King Edward III of England has decided that he has as good a right to the French throne as Philip VI. Already the English king is lord of several provinces in the southwest, inherited from his forebears.
Before Crecy, there are only skirmishes and the minor battles. In 1346, in response to some French encroachments in the south, Edward lands in Normandy. Apparently, he has the element of surprise with him because the country lies completely open to him. He marauds unopposed for four months before the French king can pull together a force and march north. He’s marching toward disaster.
The story reminds me of nothing more than Monty Python, the chaos and disorder, the unwarranted, almost nonsensical, violence. Edward and his troops have to stop at the coast to arrange ships to take back to England all the loot they have accumulated. And prisoners: peasants and the rabble in the towns are expendable, but any nobility is worth keep alive for ransom.
In the story of the battle, we witness the end of the age of chivalry as clearly as we do in any of Huizinga’s more abstract illustrations. The English army, drastically outnumbered by the French, wins the day by pitting archers and infantrymen – and even primitive cannons – against knights on coursers. The result was absolute mayhem for the French, and the beginning of nearly a century of bullying and invasion by the English.
But significance doesn’t indicate destiny. Crecy is a big name in history, but it doesn’t mean much to the English archers hunkering down in the fields. They don’t see how fight leads directly to Joan of Arc and a new French nationalism eighty years later. They don’t know they are acting out a rough version of Monty Python’s Platonic ideal. They are camping in a field, scared or excited. They are praying for a simple victory and some spoils. They’re not planning to make history. They probably wouldn’t have been able to relate to Froissart’s version and wouldn’t at all understand our analyses of their events.
Churchill famously said, ‘Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.’ But the obverse may pose more real danger: ‘Those who learn from history are doomed to try to repeat it.’ History can’t be repeated, try as you might. Reading imperfect histories as templates leads to disaster.
A Thousand Years
Part Five
Today I ignored the forecasts. I checked the sky. The heat has moderated, though it is still hot and summery. The sky has resumed a Dutch character, changeable and varied. Now white clouds ride imperially through the blue sky. It’s a classic summer sky. I have no idea what the clouds intend to do. It’s happening now. They’re not acting out a prediction.
I’m writing a story based in the Middle Ages, so I’ve been doing some reading. Mr. Huizinga has provided the scholarly perspective. I’m supplementing with Jean Froissart, a fourteenth-century historian. And a good complement he is, providing a wide-eyed account of events that Huizinga’s cool cultural history sidesteps. It’s nice to hear the voice of a story-teller.
One of the stories Froissart tells is the one about the Battle of Crecy in 1346. King Edward III of England has decided that he has as good a right to the French throne as Philip VI. Already the English king is lord of several provinces in the southwest, inherited from his forebears.
Before Crecy, there are only skirmishes and the minor battles. In 1346, in response to some French encroachments in the south, Edward lands in Normandy. Apparently, he has the element of surprise with him because the country lies completely open to him. He marauds unopposed for four months before the French king can pull together a force and march north. He’s marching toward disaster.
The story reminds me of nothing more than Monty Python, the chaos and disorder, the unwarranted, almost nonsensical, violence. Edward and his troops have to stop at the coast to arrange ships to take back to England all the loot they have accumulated. And prisoners: peasants and the rabble in the towns are expendable, but any nobility is worth keep alive for ransom.
In the story of the battle, we witness the end of the age of chivalry as clearly as we do in any of Huizinga’s more abstract illustrations. The English army, drastically outnumbered by the French, wins the day by pitting archers and infantrymen – and even primitive cannons – against knights on coursers. The result was absolute mayhem for the French, and the beginning of nearly a century of bullying and invasion by the English.
But significance doesn’t indicate destiny. Crecy is a big name in history, but it doesn’t mean much to the English archers hunkering down in the fields. They don’t see how fight leads directly to Joan of Arc and a new French nationalism eighty years later. They don’t know they are acting out a rough version of Monty Python’s Platonic ideal. They are camping in a field, scared or excited. They are praying for a simple victory and some spoils. They’re not planning to make history. They probably wouldn’t have been able to relate to Froissart’s version and wouldn’t at all understand our analyses of their events.
Churchill famously said, ‘Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.’ But the obverse may pose more real danger: ‘Those who learn from history are doomed to try to repeat it.’ History can’t be repeated, try as you might. Reading imperfect histories as templates leads to disaster.
Thursday, July 26, 2018
Travelogue 815 – July 26
A Thousand Years
Part Four
I’m running every day this summer. My pace has slowed considerably during the heat wave, but I’m still running. There’s some hope the heat may break today. The forecast says rain in the afternoon.
It’s afternoon, and I’m running. The sky is white with haze, though in the north are some darker clouds, a hint that there might be a shower coming. That’s what they’ve predicted.
I’m watching the sky as I run. The heat is interfering with brain activity. I find I’m getting impatient with the clouds. Let’s have that rain already, I’m thinking. Get with the program! The forecast said rain. The rain never comes, and I complete another summer hour of exercise in extreme heat.
Sitting outside afterward, putting down a large glass of cold water with lemon, I’m looking up at the hazy sky again. I had a script for the day, and Nature had other ideas. To be precise, as I watched, Nature departed from our script. In that moment, addled by the sun, I felt a sense of confusion.
I find the experience fascinating, reflecting on it over my glass of cold water. The human script had superseded Nature as reality. In essence, what I was watching in the sky during my run had already happened, when the prediction was made. So departure from the script felt like a disconnect from reality.
This is how the mind works in this age of science, prediction, and information saturation. Objective reality comes with a delay. It’s done already. So where is the nexus of our experience? Has our experience migrated to the template of the experience, and thus we actually live in our anticipation? Or have we failed to displace the real moment of experience, and therefore functionally live in the past? Did we create today’s warm sun? Do we enjoy it more because it was our plan to enjoy it?
These are the subtle powers of the mind. I’ve been studying history. And I’ve been questioning our labels for times past. The starting point was Huizinga’s study of the Middle Ages. I’ve wondered first about the patently silly name of the time period. ‘Middle’ hardly makes one think of a civilization lasting a thousand years. It makes it sound like a tram stop or two on a long line, far from anyone’s real destination. ‘Ages’ robs the period of coherence, even if it comes under one rubric. It’s not one ‘age’, it’s a hodgepodge of them, collected here for convenience.
The term, as we’ve seen, is an expression of disappointment, coined by the historians coming immediately afterward. The point of contrast was Rome, preceding the Middle Ages, victim of the Middle Ages.
What I’ve found most enlightening about Huizinga’s study is the possibility that there was far more coherence to medieval culture than it may be popularly credited with. The decaying values he finds in the ‘waning’ of the civilization, are, by extension, defining values for a thousand years.
The culture of chivalry, for example, that was self-parody in the court of Burgundy in the fifteenth century was innovation in France centuries earlier and was nascent when Germanic tribal values mingled with Mediterranean Christianity.
Rome itself lasted a thousand years. We see coherence there. It’s one civilization. That’s made easy for us because there is one political entity to reference. But would a citizen of the early Republic have recognized the late Empire? It was already Christian. It was already proto-feudal.
By contrast, would, say, a seventh-century Lombard have had as much trouble recognizing the cultural values of a fourteenth-century French knight? I admit I don’t have the expertise to judge. But I do wonder.
When the clouds don’t form, when the rain doesn’t come, we are startled. That is a wake-up call. Which reality am I living in? Similarly, it can be refreshing when history surprises us. It forces us to re-examine the locus of experience. What exactly is the image we are studying?
A Thousand Years
Part Four
I’m running every day this summer. My pace has slowed considerably during the heat wave, but I’m still running. There’s some hope the heat may break today. The forecast says rain in the afternoon.
It’s afternoon, and I’m running. The sky is white with haze, though in the north are some darker clouds, a hint that there might be a shower coming. That’s what they’ve predicted.
I’m watching the sky as I run. The heat is interfering with brain activity. I find I’m getting impatient with the clouds. Let’s have that rain already, I’m thinking. Get with the program! The forecast said rain. The rain never comes, and I complete another summer hour of exercise in extreme heat.
Sitting outside afterward, putting down a large glass of cold water with lemon, I’m looking up at the hazy sky again. I had a script for the day, and Nature had other ideas. To be precise, as I watched, Nature departed from our script. In that moment, addled by the sun, I felt a sense of confusion.
I find the experience fascinating, reflecting on it over my glass of cold water. The human script had superseded Nature as reality. In essence, what I was watching in the sky during my run had already happened, when the prediction was made. So departure from the script felt like a disconnect from reality.
This is how the mind works in this age of science, prediction, and information saturation. Objective reality comes with a delay. It’s done already. So where is the nexus of our experience? Has our experience migrated to the template of the experience, and thus we actually live in our anticipation? Or have we failed to displace the real moment of experience, and therefore functionally live in the past? Did we create today’s warm sun? Do we enjoy it more because it was our plan to enjoy it?
These are the subtle powers of the mind. I’ve been studying history. And I’ve been questioning our labels for times past. The starting point was Huizinga’s study of the Middle Ages. I’ve wondered first about the patently silly name of the time period. ‘Middle’ hardly makes one think of a civilization lasting a thousand years. It makes it sound like a tram stop or two on a long line, far from anyone’s real destination. ‘Ages’ robs the period of coherence, even if it comes under one rubric. It’s not one ‘age’, it’s a hodgepodge of them, collected here for convenience.
The term, as we’ve seen, is an expression of disappointment, coined by the historians coming immediately afterward. The point of contrast was Rome, preceding the Middle Ages, victim of the Middle Ages.
What I’ve found most enlightening about Huizinga’s study is the possibility that there was far more coherence to medieval culture than it may be popularly credited with. The decaying values he finds in the ‘waning’ of the civilization, are, by extension, defining values for a thousand years.
The culture of chivalry, for example, that was self-parody in the court of Burgundy in the fifteenth century was innovation in France centuries earlier and was nascent when Germanic tribal values mingled with Mediterranean Christianity.
Rome itself lasted a thousand years. We see coherence there. It’s one civilization. That’s made easy for us because there is one political entity to reference. But would a citizen of the early Republic have recognized the late Empire? It was already Christian. It was already proto-feudal.
By contrast, would, say, a seventh-century Lombard have had as much trouble recognizing the cultural values of a fourteenth-century French knight? I admit I don’t have the expertise to judge. But I do wonder.
When the clouds don’t form, when the rain doesn’t come, we are startled. That is a wake-up call. Which reality am I living in? Similarly, it can be refreshing when history surprises us. It forces us to re-examine the locus of experience. What exactly is the image we are studying?
Friday, July 20, 2018
Travelogue 814 – July 20
A Thousand Years
Part Three
In his study of the Late Middle Ages, Mr. Huizinga looks at cultural phenomena that define the time. Among other things, he looks at the popular preoccupation with death. The memento mori is a common religious trope, a reminder that all things pass. We’ve all seen the skulls in funerary sculpture and in Renaissance paintings. But this is something different: poets and painters taking great care to represent the decay of corpses or describe the agonies of dying.
Pictures of corpses may be edifying, I suppose, and that’s how they were understood at the time. Mr. Huizinga is less indulgent. He calls it ‘macabre’, and he says it’s no more than the dark side of the sensuality of the culture.
Wondering how people could become so entranced with ugly symbols of death, I couldn’t help thinking about our own bizarre obsession with violence. I think about our capacity to watch violent TV every night, play violent video games, and then join in emotional debates about gun ownership. It strikes me as manifest fear. I’m not the only one. Michael Moore argues eloquently in his film “Columbine” that the US is an extraordinarily fearful society.
A compulsive need to be reminded of death strikes me as a symptom of fear. Mr. Huizinga argues that the fear is one of passing youth and ephemeral pleasures. It seems to me like a strong tonic for a mild sort of sentiment. Rather, the corpse thing reminds me of the feeling of not being able to tear one’s eyes away from something terrible.
There is one parallel between their time and ours that seems to me valid. Maybe it’s a stretch; you will judge. People living in the year 1400 lived only a few generations after the times of the Black Death, when, indeed, corpses were everywhere. We live a few generations after World War II, the greatest show of violence in history. There’s something of the psychology of survivors that endures long after historical trauma, whether we are aware of it or not.
Survival translates into anxiety. Why did I survive? Why was I born into a time of peace, but my grandfather wasn’t? How do we know it won’t happen again?
We don’t. We are powerless over history. We are close enough to sense its magnitude, but far enough away to have a hard time imagining. We are overawed by the thought of it. Remember “Saving Private Ryan” and its effort to make the horror of war real? There have been a number of movies like that, trying to make us feel the war – bullets whizzing past, friends dying next to us in gory ways. We have a thirst for the virtual experience of large-scale violence.
Then there’s the ambivalence we feel about having benefitted from the suffering of others. Europeans in 1400 were materially better off than their ancestors of a hundred years earlier, simply because there were fewer people to share the wealth. This led directly to the slow collapse of feudalism, millions dead and the new scarcity (and value) of labour.
World War II kick-started the world economy and created the revolution in technology still being played out. Many of us were raised in times of peace and prosperity that were designed and zealously guarded by people who had lived through the war. They wanted to build a world order that would safeguard stability above all else.
Could this have been the real close of the Middle Ages, I wonder: the Black Death, and the years of trauma following? History doesn’t follow such simple schematics as that, but it’s interesting to contemplate.
A Thousand Years
Part Three
In his study of the Late Middle Ages, Mr. Huizinga looks at cultural phenomena that define the time. Among other things, he looks at the popular preoccupation with death. The memento mori is a common religious trope, a reminder that all things pass. We’ve all seen the skulls in funerary sculpture and in Renaissance paintings. But this is something different: poets and painters taking great care to represent the decay of corpses or describe the agonies of dying.
Pictures of corpses may be edifying, I suppose, and that’s how they were understood at the time. Mr. Huizinga is less indulgent. He calls it ‘macabre’, and he says it’s no more than the dark side of the sensuality of the culture.
Wondering how people could become so entranced with ugly symbols of death, I couldn’t help thinking about our own bizarre obsession with violence. I think about our capacity to watch violent TV every night, play violent video games, and then join in emotional debates about gun ownership. It strikes me as manifest fear. I’m not the only one. Michael Moore argues eloquently in his film “Columbine” that the US is an extraordinarily fearful society.
A compulsive need to be reminded of death strikes me as a symptom of fear. Mr. Huizinga argues that the fear is one of passing youth and ephemeral pleasures. It seems to me like a strong tonic for a mild sort of sentiment. Rather, the corpse thing reminds me of the feeling of not being able to tear one’s eyes away from something terrible.
There is one parallel between their time and ours that seems to me valid. Maybe it’s a stretch; you will judge. People living in the year 1400 lived only a few generations after the times of the Black Death, when, indeed, corpses were everywhere. We live a few generations after World War II, the greatest show of violence in history. There’s something of the psychology of survivors that endures long after historical trauma, whether we are aware of it or not.
Survival translates into anxiety. Why did I survive? Why was I born into a time of peace, but my grandfather wasn’t? How do we know it won’t happen again?
We don’t. We are powerless over history. We are close enough to sense its magnitude, but far enough away to have a hard time imagining. We are overawed by the thought of it. Remember “Saving Private Ryan” and its effort to make the horror of war real? There have been a number of movies like that, trying to make us feel the war – bullets whizzing past, friends dying next to us in gory ways. We have a thirst for the virtual experience of large-scale violence.
Then there’s the ambivalence we feel about having benefitted from the suffering of others. Europeans in 1400 were materially better off than their ancestors of a hundred years earlier, simply because there were fewer people to share the wealth. This led directly to the slow collapse of feudalism, millions dead and the new scarcity (and value) of labour.
World War II kick-started the world economy and created the revolution in technology still being played out. Many of us were raised in times of peace and prosperity that were designed and zealously guarded by people who had lived through the war. They wanted to build a world order that would safeguard stability above all else.
Could this have been the real close of the Middle Ages, I wonder: the Black Death, and the years of trauma following? History doesn’t follow such simple schematics as that, but it’s interesting to contemplate.
Wednesday, July 18, 2018
Travelogue 813 – July 18
Hands Up, It’s Summer
It’s been hot and dry for weeks. The grass is uncharacteristically brown. This kind of yellow brown is just not a Dutch colour. The deep brown of mud in winter, yes. But this shade of desiccation, this is a California colour. The sight of yellow grass and dry leaves must make a Dutchman feel ill at ease. He peers into the skies, searching for signs of rain.
The heat makes me slow, and I embrace it. During every long month of a particularly hectic work year, I imagined exactly this: the long days of summer taken at a lazy pace. I imagined the bright sun in the windows early in the morning. I imagined getting out of the house later and later every day, after leisurely playing with the girls. I imagined writing nonsense for hours in a comfortable café. I imagined wasting plenty of time on a book idea I had years ago, something frivolous. I imagined taking long and very slow runs every day.
I set out very slowly. Just outside our building is the sleepy little canal. I can jog along the gravel path beside it, warming up with an easy pace. Here, bordering the water, the grass is still green. A few ducks will be sleeping away the afternoon, nestling their beaks into their wings, making themselves inconspicuous among the reeds just canal-side. There’s a willow tree by the small bridge with long leaves that dip down as far as the surface of the water. Right under the bridge, there is a nest where a mama coot sits patiently.
The girls like taking walks by the canal. After my run, I will bring them out. We’ll cross the bridge slowly. I will lead one girl on each hand to be safe. On the other side, we’ll look for the ducks again. Little Sister will waddle after a rabbit that dashes into the bushes. Baby will talk to me; she will explain the world to me. She likes making indicative statements like ‘We don’t eat trees,’ or ‘We don’t eat grass.’ I say, ‘No, Baby.’ She continues with, ‘Not good.’
They will both want to run screaming up and down the path. I find the sight particularly affecting, the girls running and laughing. Baby will run back toward me with a joyful grin, her arms outspread. I’ll take her in my arms and swing her around. That image of her smile: it will never fade, I am very sure. It’s becoming a foundation stone for life, something that defines, confirms, justifies.
I wish I could surrender to that kind of joy when I run. It’s not easy for someone with so many years and so many worries. But I can attain the adult version, I’m judging, which is something like peace. I settle into a moderate pace, never too fast, and I can let the rhythm take over. The heat is calm and constant. The sense of passing time drops away; the day is timeless. The city is quiet. People are away on vacation, or they’re escaping the heat. At twenty minutes, the hypnotic rhythm and the endorphins take over and I can access a little bliss.
Would it come back to me, the joy of a child, if I threw my hands up and screamed and ran as fast as I could? It’s not likely to strike anyone as very cute. It might scare a few people. Is the cuteness the efficacious element of the run? I’ll try it anyway, one day when it’s not so hot.
Hands Up, It’s Summer
It’s been hot and dry for weeks. The grass is uncharacteristically brown. This kind of yellow brown is just not a Dutch colour. The deep brown of mud in winter, yes. But this shade of desiccation, this is a California colour. The sight of yellow grass and dry leaves must make a Dutchman feel ill at ease. He peers into the skies, searching for signs of rain.
The heat makes me slow, and I embrace it. During every long month of a particularly hectic work year, I imagined exactly this: the long days of summer taken at a lazy pace. I imagined the bright sun in the windows early in the morning. I imagined getting out of the house later and later every day, after leisurely playing with the girls. I imagined writing nonsense for hours in a comfortable café. I imagined wasting plenty of time on a book idea I had years ago, something frivolous. I imagined taking long and very slow runs every day.
I set out very slowly. Just outside our building is the sleepy little canal. I can jog along the gravel path beside it, warming up with an easy pace. Here, bordering the water, the grass is still green. A few ducks will be sleeping away the afternoon, nestling their beaks into their wings, making themselves inconspicuous among the reeds just canal-side. There’s a willow tree by the small bridge with long leaves that dip down as far as the surface of the water. Right under the bridge, there is a nest where a mama coot sits patiently.
The girls like taking walks by the canal. After my run, I will bring them out. We’ll cross the bridge slowly. I will lead one girl on each hand to be safe. On the other side, we’ll look for the ducks again. Little Sister will waddle after a rabbit that dashes into the bushes. Baby will talk to me; she will explain the world to me. She likes making indicative statements like ‘We don’t eat trees,’ or ‘We don’t eat grass.’ I say, ‘No, Baby.’ She continues with, ‘Not good.’
They will both want to run screaming up and down the path. I find the sight particularly affecting, the girls running and laughing. Baby will run back toward me with a joyful grin, her arms outspread. I’ll take her in my arms and swing her around. That image of her smile: it will never fade, I am very sure. It’s becoming a foundation stone for life, something that defines, confirms, justifies.
I wish I could surrender to that kind of joy when I run. It’s not easy for someone with so many years and so many worries. But I can attain the adult version, I’m judging, which is something like peace. I settle into a moderate pace, never too fast, and I can let the rhythm take over. The heat is calm and constant. The sense of passing time drops away; the day is timeless. The city is quiet. People are away on vacation, or they’re escaping the heat. At twenty minutes, the hypnotic rhythm and the endorphins take over and I can access a little bliss.
Would it come back to me, the joy of a child, if I threw my hands up and screamed and ran as fast as I could? It’s not likely to strike anyone as very cute. It might scare a few people. Is the cuteness the efficacious element of the run? I’ll try it anyway, one day when it’s not so hot.
Monday, July 16, 2018
Travelogue 812 – July 16
A Thousand Years
Part Two
Some things don’t change much from one historical age to another. I’m reading how the aristocrats of the fifteenth century became infatuated with pastoral or bucolic literature. It became a pastime of the elite, trading precious rhymes about the simple life in the fields and playacting as shepherds and country maidens. According to Huizinga, it as just another eroticism of sorts, an alternative to the prevailing game of knights and ladies, with the added value of criticizing life at court. How horrible, all the posing and backbiting at court! They whispered their disdain as they circulated among the courtiers at the ball with shepherds’ crooks under their arms.
Each age has its silly masquerades, and its own signs of decadence. That’s nothing new. But Huizinga doesn’t stop there. The author of “Homo Ludens” explores how playfulness has its dividends. Posing as shepherd boys may signify no real appreciation for country life, but it did accomplish something else: it inspired the development of an extensive language and vocabulary for describing nature. That seems timely, on the eve of the Scientific Revolution.
Sometimes, language is all we have. We play with words, and revolutions come about. It might seem as though the revolutions couldn’t have happened without the vocabulary. Could the French Revolution have happened without the philosophes? What revolution have we been preparing for? What seems obvious is the information revolution. We’ve spent several generations cultivating a language for computer technology and experience. There is probably an extensive gaming lingo by now. That would match Huizinga’s philosophy of play as human development.
I might argue that there is a post-Cold-War surfeit of rhetoric about democracy and free markets that is almost entirely empty and tailored for posturing. We all pose as democrats (small ‘d’,) like shepherds at the royal banquet, full of indignant passion, even as the rhetoric and the institutions themselves seem more and more hollow. It’s eerie how hollow. But this over-sophistication of political language and vocabulary must serve some purpose in the big picture. It creates possibilities.
Anyway, the ages do change, and we name them as we see fit. Somewhere in fifteenth century, the baton was passed. The Middle Ages became the Renaissance. It seems to have happened first in Italy and then moved northward in a wave, following the ideas of humanism and a new devotion to classical antiquity. It arrived in Northern Europe only just ahead of Luther’s revolution. The greatest of northern humanists, Erasmus of Rotterdam, spent the last twenty years of his life grappling with the explosion of Protestantism. He debated with Luther in letters and treatises that circulated across Europe, and he urged moderation.
In truth, it becomes hard to untangle the two phenomena, the Renaissance and the Reformation, at least in the north of Europe, and one is left wondering what to do with the categories. What is the Renaissance? Is it an event? If so, how do you localize it? Is it a movement? If so, does it involve more than a thin social layer of intellectuals, artists, and eccentric patrons? Is the category really a time period? Then how do we adjust for the wave effect, arriving at different places at different times, and how does it fit between the other categories? The term Renaissance has been problematic since the humanists first called their own time one of ‘re-birth’, feeling inclined to divide history into three parts: the great classical era, the intervening ‘media tempestas’, and then their own era. To them, it was crystal clear. Artists and scholars may have bickered; statesmen may have engaged in constant warfare; but they could all agree they lived in a new and enlightened era in the history of humankind
Did the citizens of the ‘Middle Ages’ identify themselves as such? ‘We are the great people of the Middle.’ No, ‘Middle Ages’ was a term invented by their descendants, the historians of the Renaissance. It was not a complimentary term. Before the Renaissance, all was dark. Civilization was lost. That much was universally understood by people of the new age.
A Thousand Years
Part Two
Some things don’t change much from one historical age to another. I’m reading how the aristocrats of the fifteenth century became infatuated with pastoral or bucolic literature. It became a pastime of the elite, trading precious rhymes about the simple life in the fields and playacting as shepherds and country maidens. According to Huizinga, it as just another eroticism of sorts, an alternative to the prevailing game of knights and ladies, with the added value of criticizing life at court. How horrible, all the posing and backbiting at court! They whispered their disdain as they circulated among the courtiers at the ball with shepherds’ crooks under their arms.
Each age has its silly masquerades, and its own signs of decadence. That’s nothing new. But Huizinga doesn’t stop there. The author of “Homo Ludens” explores how playfulness has its dividends. Posing as shepherd boys may signify no real appreciation for country life, but it did accomplish something else: it inspired the development of an extensive language and vocabulary for describing nature. That seems timely, on the eve of the Scientific Revolution.
Sometimes, language is all we have. We play with words, and revolutions come about. It might seem as though the revolutions couldn’t have happened without the vocabulary. Could the French Revolution have happened without the philosophes? What revolution have we been preparing for? What seems obvious is the information revolution. We’ve spent several generations cultivating a language for computer technology and experience. There is probably an extensive gaming lingo by now. That would match Huizinga’s philosophy of play as human development.
I might argue that there is a post-Cold-War surfeit of rhetoric about democracy and free markets that is almost entirely empty and tailored for posturing. We all pose as democrats (small ‘d’,) like shepherds at the royal banquet, full of indignant passion, even as the rhetoric and the institutions themselves seem more and more hollow. It’s eerie how hollow. But this over-sophistication of political language and vocabulary must serve some purpose in the big picture. It creates possibilities.
Anyway, the ages do change, and we name them as we see fit. Somewhere in fifteenth century, the baton was passed. The Middle Ages became the Renaissance. It seems to have happened first in Italy and then moved northward in a wave, following the ideas of humanism and a new devotion to classical antiquity. It arrived in Northern Europe only just ahead of Luther’s revolution. The greatest of northern humanists, Erasmus of Rotterdam, spent the last twenty years of his life grappling with the explosion of Protestantism. He debated with Luther in letters and treatises that circulated across Europe, and he urged moderation.
In truth, it becomes hard to untangle the two phenomena, the Renaissance and the Reformation, at least in the north of Europe, and one is left wondering what to do with the categories. What is the Renaissance? Is it an event? If so, how do you localize it? Is it a movement? If so, does it involve more than a thin social layer of intellectuals, artists, and eccentric patrons? Is the category really a time period? Then how do we adjust for the wave effect, arriving at different places at different times, and how does it fit between the other categories? The term Renaissance has been problematic since the humanists first called their own time one of ‘re-birth’, feeling inclined to divide history into three parts: the great classical era, the intervening ‘media tempestas’, and then their own era. To them, it was crystal clear. Artists and scholars may have bickered; statesmen may have engaged in constant warfare; but they could all agree they lived in a new and enlightened era in the history of humankind
Did the citizens of the ‘Middle Ages’ identify themselves as such? ‘We are the great people of the Middle.’ No, ‘Middle Ages’ was a term invented by their descendants, the historians of the Renaissance. It was not a complimentary term. Before the Renaissance, all was dark. Civilization was lost. That much was universally understood by people of the new age.
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