Travelogue 918 – June 27
The Price of Sugar
The heat is muggy and oppressive. Sleeping is difficult, and so is work. The humidity stifles ambition. Last night, the sky was flashing with lightning, and I was wishing for a hard, cleansing rain. But the heavy clouds never offered anything but a drizzle.
My little family sat together in the living room with the TV on and the window open, half lying on the couch in a torpor. We snacked on mandarins and cherries. We’re constantly thirsty these days, and so we eat a lot of fruit. Especially now that we’re trying to be healthier. Baby has been lecturing me about my chocolate habit.
Last week, Papa was groaning about terrible toothaches. They came on every evening during our family time and made Papa very grouchy. That’s when Baby started with her lectures about chocolate, and Papa has taken her point. Now we have bowls of fruit everywhere. I’m not sure the dentist would approve. Sugar is sugar, natural or refined, right? Maybe I have to eat plain oatmeal for the rest of my life.
Dutch dentists waste no time. Within minutes, he had produced an x-ray. Within two more minutes, he was pulling on the offending wisdom tooth. Not ten minutes afterward, I was ejected onto the street with a wad of cotton in my mouth. That was after paying sixty euros, by the way. I questioned the woman behind the counter. “Really, that’s all my wisdom tooth is worth? That was a part of my body. That tooth was attached to my jaw for many, many years.” She wasn’t interested.
I wandered down the Nieuwe Binnenweg in a mournful state, my cheek numb and my mouth full of cotton. I could think of no better way to honour the tooth’s memory than to buy some pastries as Jordy’s the best bakery in town, placed strategically near my dentist’s office. I couldn’t eat anything yet, so I carried on with dejected walk, bag of goodies in hand. I would end up passing most of these treats on to the girls.
The girls went to bed, and the long, slow summer evening dissolved into darkness behind the flashing clouds There was still no relief from the humidity. I opened the front door, desperate for some air. I sat outside a while, watching the lightning. A number of neighbours were doing the same. It was kind of pleasant, after all. The storm did bring with it a cooling breeze. There was nothing else to do in this heat. At least there was no pain. My tooth was gone, and there was peace.
Saturday, June 27, 2020
Friday, June 19, 2020
Travelogue 917 – June 19
All the Questions
It was a lovely day spring day, the last spring day. The weather was intermittently sunny –intermittent often being the best we can hope for in Holland – and so I promised the girls they would each get a ride on the bike. Baby Jos I took across the river to the bakery for treats and to the Zeeman’s for socks for both girls. They burn through those little socks very quickly.
Baby Jos is so big now, she barely fits into the bicycle seat. We have to buckle her shoes into place so they don’t get caught among the spokes of the wheels, but she’s such a tall girl her knees rise high above her lap and swing back and forth as we ride. She’s so heavy, the back tire provides little cushion against the bumps in the road. This summer I have to teach her how to ride a bike. I didn’t expect her to grow so quickly; or perhaps it’s the time that’s grown so quickly.
They have their similarities, Time and Baby Jos. They are both incessantly asking me hard questions, ones I can’t answer. That’s Baby’s conversational style now, insistent questions. Her goal in conversation is to be heard. She wants to hear her words fed back to her, and she gets upset when someone is too distracted to do that. That aggressive note seems familiar. Ah yes, it’s the unrelenting bray of American political discourse. How could I have missed that? In a child, it’s a stage. In adults, it’s the desperate shouting of bullies. It’s the sad cry for help of the morally deficient.
Baby Jos is no bully. She already has her moments of being uncannily perceptive. She hears what you say. She notices what you’re feeling. She can be surprisingly sympathetic. Papa has been experiencing another round of tooth pain, and Baby Jos gives him a hug sometimes and says she wishes she could give him a special present. The present would make everything better.
Baby’s questions reflect her intellectual and moral growth. She’s constantly acting out stories during the day, stories populated with cats and butterflies and dinosaurs. She needs to figure the world out. Her urgency is the hunger for life.
The urgency of political bullies is the urgency of arrested development, adults who need to be heard though they have nothing to say. Society has failed to come up with mechanisms to care for people like this. Instead, our society keeps parroting the false notion that all opinions are valuable and confusing that notion with the much more sacred rule that tells us every person is valuable. My wife values me as a man and as a partner, but she does not value every opinion of mine. I have learned that I am not as smart as I thought I was, and I have been able to do that without being discounted as a human being.
I have a feeling that Baby Jos will play a similar role in my life. She corrects me all the time. She is the big sister through and through. She knows how things should be. “You need to share, Pop.” Yes, Baby. “If you don’t share, then your babies won’t have any, and we will cry.” I’m sorry, Baby.
We have made it across the river, Papa pedalling hard up the big hill and coasting down the other side, pointing to the pretty river below. On the way back, we watch a boat emerge through the narrow passageway underneath the same bridge. Baby Jos corrects me. “That’s a ship. Like what Sinter Klaas comes on.” Oh yes! She’s remembered the December school activity, in which the class went to the pier to watch Sinter Klaas’s arrival. She has a great memory.
And she continues to jabber some more, and she continues to ask her questions. I turn to tell her I can’t hear. She’s behind me, and the wind carries her voice away. But she keeps talking anyway.
All the Questions
It was a lovely day spring day, the last spring day. The weather was intermittently sunny –intermittent often being the best we can hope for in Holland – and so I promised the girls they would each get a ride on the bike. Baby Jos I took across the river to the bakery for treats and to the Zeeman’s for socks for both girls. They burn through those little socks very quickly.
Baby Jos is so big now, she barely fits into the bicycle seat. We have to buckle her shoes into place so they don’t get caught among the spokes of the wheels, but she’s such a tall girl her knees rise high above her lap and swing back and forth as we ride. She’s so heavy, the back tire provides little cushion against the bumps in the road. This summer I have to teach her how to ride a bike. I didn’t expect her to grow so quickly; or perhaps it’s the time that’s grown so quickly.
They have their similarities, Time and Baby Jos. They are both incessantly asking me hard questions, ones I can’t answer. That’s Baby’s conversational style now, insistent questions. Her goal in conversation is to be heard. She wants to hear her words fed back to her, and she gets upset when someone is too distracted to do that. That aggressive note seems familiar. Ah yes, it’s the unrelenting bray of American political discourse. How could I have missed that? In a child, it’s a stage. In adults, it’s the desperate shouting of bullies. It’s the sad cry for help of the morally deficient.
Baby Jos is no bully. She already has her moments of being uncannily perceptive. She hears what you say. She notices what you’re feeling. She can be surprisingly sympathetic. Papa has been experiencing another round of tooth pain, and Baby Jos gives him a hug sometimes and says she wishes she could give him a special present. The present would make everything better.
Baby’s questions reflect her intellectual and moral growth. She’s constantly acting out stories during the day, stories populated with cats and butterflies and dinosaurs. She needs to figure the world out. Her urgency is the hunger for life.
The urgency of political bullies is the urgency of arrested development, adults who need to be heard though they have nothing to say. Society has failed to come up with mechanisms to care for people like this. Instead, our society keeps parroting the false notion that all opinions are valuable and confusing that notion with the much more sacred rule that tells us every person is valuable. My wife values me as a man and as a partner, but she does not value every opinion of mine. I have learned that I am not as smart as I thought I was, and I have been able to do that without being discounted as a human being.
I have a feeling that Baby Jos will play a similar role in my life. She corrects me all the time. She is the big sister through and through. She knows how things should be. “You need to share, Pop.” Yes, Baby. “If you don’t share, then your babies won’t have any, and we will cry.” I’m sorry, Baby.
We have made it across the river, Papa pedalling hard up the big hill and coasting down the other side, pointing to the pretty river below. On the way back, we watch a boat emerge through the narrow passageway underneath the same bridge. Baby Jos corrects me. “That’s a ship. Like what Sinter Klaas comes on.” Oh yes! She’s remembered the December school activity, in which the class went to the pier to watch Sinter Klaas’s arrival. She has a great memory.
And she continues to jabber some more, and she continues to ask her questions. I turn to tell her I can’t hear. She’s behind me, and the wind carries her voice away. But she keeps talking anyway.
Wednesday, June 10, 2020
Travelogue 916 – June 10
Jurassic Dreams
At breakfast, I asked the girls about their dreams. Little Ren answered, like she had before, that she had dreamt about baby dinosaurs. She’s been fascinated with dinosaurs for a while. She loves cute babies, and she loves dinosaurs, and so she dreams about baby dinosaurs. Even a baby dinosaur can be cute.
I went through a dinosaur phase as a boy. It’s fun to learn about them again. What a wonder that these monsters existed, wandering the whole planet as some sort of alpha genus! What a wonder to think it was so long ago, and that they lasted for so long! Dinosaurs flourished for something like 160 million years. It boggles the mind. Humans have been around for three million. And they’ve been writing for only about five thousand. That’s one two-hundredth of one million years. It took them a tiny fraction of that five thousand years to develop industry and threaten the planet with a mass extinction. And we look at dinosaurs with horror!
It’s also strange the hold that dinosaurs have over us. We dream about them. They star in our films, TV shows, and theme parks. They inspire us and frighten us. It can’t be entirely coincidental that the first great age of paleontological discovery overlapped with the triumph of Darwinism in science and culture. The dinosaurs seemed “survival of the fittest” in blood, bone and teeth. They were the embodiment of brutal nature. We loved them. The metaphor of “Jurassic Park” is apt; they’re more real, more present, than they’ve been in 60 million years. It’s odd to consider that for most of humanity, living through their brief five thousand years of ascendance, there was no awareness at all of these great monsters from the past. Aurelius, firmly convinced that time provided no surprises, might have been surprised.
For some, the idea of dinosaurs, so wed to ideas of evolution, is oddly threatening. I think the religious right finds dinosaurs the moral equivalent of Democrats. Maybe they are fallen angels, like Obama or Pelosi. Maybe Democrats are essentially figments of our imagination, too: fever dreams to make believers toss and turn at night.
Little Ren wasn’t frightened by her dream, even though the story sounded as though it might be. Two baby dinosaurs followed their mother into a cave. There were two raptors hunting them. The cave shrank, and so their mother shrank, too. She was a baby, too. I think this is the gist of the dream. I admit, I’ve had to interpret some of Ren’s language.
Baby Jos is more into dogs now. She received the gift of a mechanical puppy for her birthday a few days ago, a puppy that yips and whines, walks and sits, eats and sleeps. Jos and her puppy Sparkle are inseparable now. I’m afraid this can only lead to uncomfortable eventualities, like the burden of living pets, real puppies and the hair they shed, the food they quickly process, the needs for baths and walks and training. I might prefer a baby dinosaur. Let him loose in the neighbourhood, and he fends for himself in Darwinian fashion.
Jurassic Dreams
At breakfast, I asked the girls about their dreams. Little Ren answered, like she had before, that she had dreamt about baby dinosaurs. She’s been fascinated with dinosaurs for a while. She loves cute babies, and she loves dinosaurs, and so she dreams about baby dinosaurs. Even a baby dinosaur can be cute.
I went through a dinosaur phase as a boy. It’s fun to learn about them again. What a wonder that these monsters existed, wandering the whole planet as some sort of alpha genus! What a wonder to think it was so long ago, and that they lasted for so long! Dinosaurs flourished for something like 160 million years. It boggles the mind. Humans have been around for three million. And they’ve been writing for only about five thousand. That’s one two-hundredth of one million years. It took them a tiny fraction of that five thousand years to develop industry and threaten the planet with a mass extinction. And we look at dinosaurs with horror!
It’s also strange the hold that dinosaurs have over us. We dream about them. They star in our films, TV shows, and theme parks. They inspire us and frighten us. It can’t be entirely coincidental that the first great age of paleontological discovery overlapped with the triumph of Darwinism in science and culture. The dinosaurs seemed “survival of the fittest” in blood, bone and teeth. They were the embodiment of brutal nature. We loved them. The metaphor of “Jurassic Park” is apt; they’re more real, more present, than they’ve been in 60 million years. It’s odd to consider that for most of humanity, living through their brief five thousand years of ascendance, there was no awareness at all of these great monsters from the past. Aurelius, firmly convinced that time provided no surprises, might have been surprised.
For some, the idea of dinosaurs, so wed to ideas of evolution, is oddly threatening. I think the religious right finds dinosaurs the moral equivalent of Democrats. Maybe they are fallen angels, like Obama or Pelosi. Maybe Democrats are essentially figments of our imagination, too: fever dreams to make believers toss and turn at night.
Little Ren wasn’t frightened by her dream, even though the story sounded as though it might be. Two baby dinosaurs followed their mother into a cave. There were two raptors hunting them. The cave shrank, and so their mother shrank, too. She was a baby, too. I think this is the gist of the dream. I admit, I’ve had to interpret some of Ren’s language.
Baby Jos is more into dogs now. She received the gift of a mechanical puppy for her birthday a few days ago, a puppy that yips and whines, walks and sits, eats and sleeps. Jos and her puppy Sparkle are inseparable now. I’m afraid this can only lead to uncomfortable eventualities, like the burden of living pets, real puppies and the hair they shed, the food they quickly process, the needs for baths and walks and training. I might prefer a baby dinosaur. Let him loose in the neighbourhood, and he fends for himself in Darwinian fashion.
Friday, June 05, 2020
Travelogue 915 – June 5
Our City
I carry on with my reading of Aurelius’s “Meditations”. (Would the emperor have objected to that title? The term wouldn’t have carried the same baggage for him as it does for us, its vaguely eastern flavour, or perhaps its suggestion of parallels with essay writers like Montaigne, who Aurelius might have found effete. Would he have understood the kind of packaging he and his writings have been subjected to, making him a viable literary product?)
Reading the Meditations during the various crises of 2020 has thrown some of his principles into interesting relief. Take passage 33 from Book Ten, for example: “In short, never forget that nothing can injure the true citizen if it does not injure the city itself, and nothing can injure the city unless it injures law.”
On the face of it, this sounds like a naïve, or even primitive formulation, but right away it confronts us with Aurelius’s emphasis on social identity. While ideas about interdependence are not too challenging, we’ve drifted so far toward individualism that Aurelius might have been astonished. Imagine his reaction to images of gun-toting demonstrators gathering during a pandemic, shouting they needed a haircut.
What’s a haircut without other people? What’s writing without readers? What’s public health without the public? What’s policing without a society that trusts you? Aurelius would take it further. Inherent in humanity’s purpose is service - to each other and nature and the gods.
Key to understanding purpose was reason. Human reason was created by nature in nature’s image, and it provided the link between service as purpose and service as action. It guided us in the moment. Staying to true to reason and nature would supply purpose. And this purpose was given meaning by service. Nature, in this way, served as law. We interpret nature’s law with reason. And thus we arrive at another sacred principle in the Roman mind. It’s axiomatic that Roman law was critical to the success of the Republic and the Empire. It became a world view. Divinity and law would have been difficult to untangle in the Roman mind.
Noting that the words citizen and civilization derive from the Latin word for city, (and the word police from the Greek word for city,) we begin to see familial relationships among the concepts. We begin to realize how important the city was to classical cultures and how far-reaching the metaphor. As classical culture fell into permanent decline, the concept survived in Christian theology, St Augustine writing about the ‘City of God’, extending the metaphor further. Aurelius was not writing about the physical city of Rome, but about the community of humanity. In this context, we note that, in the quote above, he refers not just to the random citizen, but to the ‘true’ citizen. Does that mean true by definition or true by loyalty? I don’t have the original in Greek at hand, so I’ll guess that it amounts to the same thing. The human loyal to reason and service can never be injured in his essence. Only through lapses in reason can the member of the human community be separated from purpose and compromised.
What can this tell us in 2020? Is it possible that Floyd’s death awakened our own fear of ‘injury’ in a state that has fallen from grace? The police have proven – even more so during the demonstrations – that their perceived purpose has drifted far from service. Are we owning the cognitive dissonance between how our police and government act and what reason tells us is decent and safe and corresponds to nature’s law? That’s a liberal interpretation, I admit. Aurelius spoke much more to personal responsibility than to political science. Maybe it explains better why someone, one among hundreds of thousands, might protest, perhaps seeing the protests as his or her true city. He or she risks physical injury but finds safety for the soul there. Rather dramatic, that interpretation. But it’s worth considering: how do we find that city of Aurelius’s vision?
Our City
I carry on with my reading of Aurelius’s “Meditations”. (Would the emperor have objected to that title? The term wouldn’t have carried the same baggage for him as it does for us, its vaguely eastern flavour, or perhaps its suggestion of parallels with essay writers like Montaigne, who Aurelius might have found effete. Would he have understood the kind of packaging he and his writings have been subjected to, making him a viable literary product?)
Reading the Meditations during the various crises of 2020 has thrown some of his principles into interesting relief. Take passage 33 from Book Ten, for example: “In short, never forget that nothing can injure the true citizen if it does not injure the city itself, and nothing can injure the city unless it injures law.”
On the face of it, this sounds like a naïve, or even primitive formulation, but right away it confronts us with Aurelius’s emphasis on social identity. While ideas about interdependence are not too challenging, we’ve drifted so far toward individualism that Aurelius might have been astonished. Imagine his reaction to images of gun-toting demonstrators gathering during a pandemic, shouting they needed a haircut.
What’s a haircut without other people? What’s writing without readers? What’s public health without the public? What’s policing without a society that trusts you? Aurelius would take it further. Inherent in humanity’s purpose is service - to each other and nature and the gods.
Key to understanding purpose was reason. Human reason was created by nature in nature’s image, and it provided the link between service as purpose and service as action. It guided us in the moment. Staying to true to reason and nature would supply purpose. And this purpose was given meaning by service. Nature, in this way, served as law. We interpret nature’s law with reason. And thus we arrive at another sacred principle in the Roman mind. It’s axiomatic that Roman law was critical to the success of the Republic and the Empire. It became a world view. Divinity and law would have been difficult to untangle in the Roman mind.
Noting that the words citizen and civilization derive from the Latin word for city, (and the word police from the Greek word for city,) we begin to see familial relationships among the concepts. We begin to realize how important the city was to classical cultures and how far-reaching the metaphor. As classical culture fell into permanent decline, the concept survived in Christian theology, St Augustine writing about the ‘City of God’, extending the metaphor further. Aurelius was not writing about the physical city of Rome, but about the community of humanity. In this context, we note that, in the quote above, he refers not just to the random citizen, but to the ‘true’ citizen. Does that mean true by definition or true by loyalty? I don’t have the original in Greek at hand, so I’ll guess that it amounts to the same thing. The human loyal to reason and service can never be injured in his essence. Only through lapses in reason can the member of the human community be separated from purpose and compromised.
What can this tell us in 2020? Is it possible that Floyd’s death awakened our own fear of ‘injury’ in a state that has fallen from grace? The police have proven – even more so during the demonstrations – that their perceived purpose has drifted far from service. Are we owning the cognitive dissonance between how our police and government act and what reason tells us is decent and safe and corresponds to nature’s law? That’s a liberal interpretation, I admit. Aurelius spoke much more to personal responsibility than to political science. Maybe it explains better why someone, one among hundreds of thousands, might protest, perhaps seeing the protests as his or her true city. He or she risks physical injury but finds safety for the soul there. Rather dramatic, that interpretation. But it’s worth considering: how do we find that city of Aurelius’s vision?
Wednesday, June 03, 2020
Travelogue 914 – June 3
Comedy and Art
Movie 4 for my ten-movie Facebook challenge was “Being John Malkovich”. “The Apartment” (Movie 3) had wit. It had style. It was elegantly performed and produced. It was my inspiration to write for theatre. At the same time I caught “The Apartment” on TV “Being John Malkovich” was coming out in movie theatres. I was absolutely enchanted. Who wasn’t? It was bizarre and entertaining throughout. It was unique and also familiar, making you wonder why it hadn’t been done before. It was clever, but the humour was written deeper into the code of the script than witty dialogue. The premise was funny. The performances were great. Just Malkovich’s “Dance of Despair and Disillusionment” was worth the watch.
Watching it was one of those artistic experiences of possibility. This was a writer’s movie, and Charlie Kaufman was a kind of revolutionary in his time. The intellectual challenge here was ‘why not?’ Why not be this silly? Why not re-imagine celebrity this way? Why not imagine an evil puppeteer? And cast Cusack?
Comedy can be categorized in many ways. It has opened itself to me in three phases, I would say, as I’ve thought about it, written about it, tried creating it. The first is the witty, “Apartment”, sort of comedy. This would naturally be the sort that appeals to writers first. Witty comedy is playful, and it continually refreshes itself. It finds its own limited audience among those who have a love of and facility with language.
The second sort was the “Malkovich” sort, in which the comedy was in the premise. ‘In the architecture’, I want to say because the successful writer here is an architect. The concept itself is the joke. It’s daring, and it’s exceedingly hard to achieve because building a funny house means making it funny all the way through, from blueprint to furnishings. It takes more than populating a standard drawing room comedy with unusually funny characters, and manipulating them in very funny ways, as Oscar Wilde might have done. The imagination needs to be engaged in every detail of the structure.
The third sort of comedy to capture my imagination has been farce. I think it would generally be categorized as the basest and the easiest form of comedy. Why do I come to it last? I don’t know, but I do. Maybe it’s the joyfulness of it. There’s art to wit, but there’s less joy. And joy in a concept piece serves a higher purpose, which might be said to diminish joy, if you think joy is its own purpose. A couple years ago, I delved into the Commedia dell'Arte, inspired by my trip to Venice, to perform a farce of mine, as it happens. I started reading and thinking about the Commedia dell'Arte compulsively. I can’t say I broke the code - I sensed mysteries about art and psychology there, - but I did gain some perspective about the evolution of farce from simple street entertainment.
The fact is, since I’ve been in Holland, most of my theatrical writing has been farcical. I’m just wrapping up another silly project now, a serialized Zoom production that was a spoof on “Game of Thrones”. I wrote and directed, and our theatre group performed it. We spent two months on it. Why? It was a lot of work, and the story was ridiculous. We didn’t rehearse; each episode we read once and taped. These were not little gems of sophistication. It was a quarantine project to amuse ourselves. And still I love these videos.
What I keep secret is that I see great art in these little pieces. It isn’t the art of the polished sort. It isn’t the sort that speaks of mastery or that suggests the Sublime. It’s the sort that captures the kind of convergences that I think makes theatre so vital: just the right gesture for just the right word, timed just right and delivered with pleasure. It makes me think of that wonderful word ‘happy’, which, in its etymological roots suggests chance and luck. I’m in love with this kind of art right now, the kind that shows spontaneity, is uneven and imperfect, but every so often produces the radiant moment.
Comedy and Art
Movie 4 for my ten-movie Facebook challenge was “Being John Malkovich”. “The Apartment” (Movie 3) had wit. It had style. It was elegantly performed and produced. It was my inspiration to write for theatre. At the same time I caught “The Apartment” on TV “Being John Malkovich” was coming out in movie theatres. I was absolutely enchanted. Who wasn’t? It was bizarre and entertaining throughout. It was unique and also familiar, making you wonder why it hadn’t been done before. It was clever, but the humour was written deeper into the code of the script than witty dialogue. The premise was funny. The performances were great. Just Malkovich’s “Dance of Despair and Disillusionment” was worth the watch.
Watching it was one of those artistic experiences of possibility. This was a writer’s movie, and Charlie Kaufman was a kind of revolutionary in his time. The intellectual challenge here was ‘why not?’ Why not be this silly? Why not re-imagine celebrity this way? Why not imagine an evil puppeteer? And cast Cusack?
Comedy can be categorized in many ways. It has opened itself to me in three phases, I would say, as I’ve thought about it, written about it, tried creating it. The first is the witty, “Apartment”, sort of comedy. This would naturally be the sort that appeals to writers first. Witty comedy is playful, and it continually refreshes itself. It finds its own limited audience among those who have a love of and facility with language.
The second sort was the “Malkovich” sort, in which the comedy was in the premise. ‘In the architecture’, I want to say because the successful writer here is an architect. The concept itself is the joke. It’s daring, and it’s exceedingly hard to achieve because building a funny house means making it funny all the way through, from blueprint to furnishings. It takes more than populating a standard drawing room comedy with unusually funny characters, and manipulating them in very funny ways, as Oscar Wilde might have done. The imagination needs to be engaged in every detail of the structure.
The third sort of comedy to capture my imagination has been farce. I think it would generally be categorized as the basest and the easiest form of comedy. Why do I come to it last? I don’t know, but I do. Maybe it’s the joyfulness of it. There’s art to wit, but there’s less joy. And joy in a concept piece serves a higher purpose, which might be said to diminish joy, if you think joy is its own purpose. A couple years ago, I delved into the Commedia dell'Arte, inspired by my trip to Venice, to perform a farce of mine, as it happens. I started reading and thinking about the Commedia dell'Arte compulsively. I can’t say I broke the code - I sensed mysteries about art and psychology there, - but I did gain some perspective about the evolution of farce from simple street entertainment.
The fact is, since I’ve been in Holland, most of my theatrical writing has been farcical. I’m just wrapping up another silly project now, a serialized Zoom production that was a spoof on “Game of Thrones”. I wrote and directed, and our theatre group performed it. We spent two months on it. Why? It was a lot of work, and the story was ridiculous. We didn’t rehearse; each episode we read once and taped. These were not little gems of sophistication. It was a quarantine project to amuse ourselves. And still I love these videos.
What I keep secret is that I see great art in these little pieces. It isn’t the art of the polished sort. It isn’t the sort that speaks of mastery or that suggests the Sublime. It’s the sort that captures the kind of convergences that I think makes theatre so vital: just the right gesture for just the right word, timed just right and delivered with pleasure. It makes me think of that wonderful word ‘happy’, which, in its etymological roots suggests chance and luck. I’m in love with this kind of art right now, the kind that shows spontaneity, is uneven and imperfect, but every so often produces the radiant moment.
Saturday, May 30, 2020
Travelogue 913 – May 30
Spring Update
The grass is growing high. The dandelions are old and spent. Treetops are full of leaves, bright green with spring sap. The first red poppies have bloomed. The sun has been shining without much intermission for weeks.
The girls and I walk along the raised path that follows the abandoned train route. We monitor the wild growth along the sides of the path. We’ve watched the wildflowers cycle through their various seasons, the daffodils and daisies and the dandelions. In summer, the thorny bushes will bear their little blackberries. Little Ren runs and runs. Baby Jos is more cautious. She’s afraid of the big bees. She wants me to carry her past them.
If we go late enough in the day, the shadows are long and the horizontal sunlight strong. In the cooling shade of the wild brush, the insects swarm. We bring bites back on our exposed skin.
When the sun is highest, it shines on the stretch of concrete in front of our front door, freed from the impediments of one building or another. We fill the blue plastic pool with air and then with water. The girls lie in it; they splash each other; they pour cold water from one container to another, little pitcher to little cup, little cup to clear glass. Today they played with water balloons, carrying them around for long minutes as prized toys before tossing them into the air.
On my own walks, I see that football practice has begun again. I see the young boys running and kicking, doing drills, some in blue jerseys and some in black. I walk by the pitches under sun that’s getting hot and in shadow that is still cool. The spring weather has been ideal, sun and temperature balanced as ends of a beam on its lever. I stop in the sun to write on a little pas that fits in my back pocket.
The sheep are progressing now along the other side of that road to Schiedam, advancing patch by patch of unruly grass toward the west, and now they’re grazing on the strip of land separating the road from the train track, in the shadow of the elevated Metro track. They are migrating toward Schiedam, inching toward that train-and-Metro station with the zig-zagging roofline. When they have purged the area, will they board a train back to Limburg?
Spring Update
The grass is growing high. The dandelions are old and spent. Treetops are full of leaves, bright green with spring sap. The first red poppies have bloomed. The sun has been shining without much intermission for weeks.
The girls and I walk along the raised path that follows the abandoned train route. We monitor the wild growth along the sides of the path. We’ve watched the wildflowers cycle through their various seasons, the daffodils and daisies and the dandelions. In summer, the thorny bushes will bear their little blackberries. Little Ren runs and runs. Baby Jos is more cautious. She’s afraid of the big bees. She wants me to carry her past them.
If we go late enough in the day, the shadows are long and the horizontal sunlight strong. In the cooling shade of the wild brush, the insects swarm. We bring bites back on our exposed skin.
When the sun is highest, it shines on the stretch of concrete in front of our front door, freed from the impediments of one building or another. We fill the blue plastic pool with air and then with water. The girls lie in it; they splash each other; they pour cold water from one container to another, little pitcher to little cup, little cup to clear glass. Today they played with water balloons, carrying them around for long minutes as prized toys before tossing them into the air.
On my own walks, I see that football practice has begun again. I see the young boys running and kicking, doing drills, some in blue jerseys and some in black. I walk by the pitches under sun that’s getting hot and in shadow that is still cool. The spring weather has been ideal, sun and temperature balanced as ends of a beam on its lever. I stop in the sun to write on a little pas that fits in my back pocket.
The sheep are progressing now along the other side of that road to Schiedam, advancing patch by patch of unruly grass toward the west, and now they’re grazing on the strip of land separating the road from the train track, in the shadow of the elevated Metro track. They are migrating toward Schiedam, inching toward that train-and-Metro station with the zig-zagging roofline. When they have purged the area, will they board a train back to Limburg?
Friday, May 29, 2020
Travelogue 912 – May 29
Sad Days
My thoughts go out to the people of my old hometown, Minneapolis. There’s nothing I can say about the tragedy that hasn’t been said, and still, there are times you have to say something, nevertheless.
The political situation in America becomes more egregious every day, and, though it’s thousands of miles away, it weighs on me. I’m particularly downhearted today. It’s a depressing time to be American. Power has been seized at every level by the very worst the country has to offer. Of course there are honourable cops and even honourable politicians in America, but the agenda is being dominated by the most revolting and amoral of people.
Regarding the police crisis, my wife said it best, shocked as she was by the Floyd video, that a stray dog in the street would be handled with more human feeling than this poor man. What has happened to these policemen that they feel entitled to be monsters?
When Trump was elected, we might have been tempted to strike heroic poses; we will overcome, we said. Day after grinding day, year after year, we find ourselves more disgusted and demoralized, less heroic.
Trump, for his part, spends his time telling us in startlingly clear language that he will honour no election that doesn’t provide him four more years of power. He orders his Stepford Press Secretary, who has voted by mail-in ballot many times, to argue against mail-in ballots. He comments quite openly that Republicans would lose any election in which all the people have a vote.
Nobody wants violence. So provide people with options! How do you suppose people should respond to a system that kills them randomly and with impunity; that breaks the same laws they hold citizens to; and that openly tells citizens that any vote against them will be nullified?
Republicans, it’s clear you enjoy the game. It’s clear you enjoy winning. When it’s increasingly clear you can’t win without cheating, be careful. Most grifters don’t advertise they’re cheating and then gloat. Okay, that’s just your style. Best to think twice, though, before you back people into corners who have reason to fear for their lives.
Sad Days
My thoughts go out to the people of my old hometown, Minneapolis. There’s nothing I can say about the tragedy that hasn’t been said, and still, there are times you have to say something, nevertheless.
The political situation in America becomes more egregious every day, and, though it’s thousands of miles away, it weighs on me. I’m particularly downhearted today. It’s a depressing time to be American. Power has been seized at every level by the very worst the country has to offer. Of course there are honourable cops and even honourable politicians in America, but the agenda is being dominated by the most revolting and amoral of people.
Regarding the police crisis, my wife said it best, shocked as she was by the Floyd video, that a stray dog in the street would be handled with more human feeling than this poor man. What has happened to these policemen that they feel entitled to be monsters?
When Trump was elected, we might have been tempted to strike heroic poses; we will overcome, we said. Day after grinding day, year after year, we find ourselves more disgusted and demoralized, less heroic.
Trump, for his part, spends his time telling us in startlingly clear language that he will honour no election that doesn’t provide him four more years of power. He orders his Stepford Press Secretary, who has voted by mail-in ballot many times, to argue against mail-in ballots. He comments quite openly that Republicans would lose any election in which all the people have a vote.
Nobody wants violence. So provide people with options! How do you suppose people should respond to a system that kills them randomly and with impunity; that breaks the same laws they hold citizens to; and that openly tells citizens that any vote against them will be nullified?
Republicans, it’s clear you enjoy the game. It’s clear you enjoy winning. When it’s increasingly clear you can’t win without cheating, be careful. Most grifters don’t advertise they’re cheating and then gloat. Okay, that’s just your style. Best to think twice, though, before you back people into corners who have reason to fear for their lives.
Wednesday, May 27, 2020
Travelogue 911 – May 27
Catharto Auto Bio
I’ve been writing about story-telling again. It’s hard to say what I find so absorbing. I feel sometimes I’ve been working for a lifetime through that one reference in Aristotle to the catharsis of tragedy. Maybe it signifies nothing more than this: that the stories we entertain are the angels and the demons of our own stories. A superficial example might be my partiality to mystery novels, perhaps symptomatic of a vain belief that there are answers to be found for those who search. I also love sci-fi, which might just be a theatre for those who still believe in theology.
But what I do know is how complex our relationships can be with our own stories. We embroider our stories. We soil them. We iron them and fold them. We bleach them, and we dye them. What we can’t seem to do is hang them in sunlight and see them all of a piece with the sure eye of a critic. That’s what the gods and judges are for.
I spent years writing memoir, trying to fashion truth from autobiography, or from a wrenching chapter of it. I can tell you how valuable it is to try, and how foolhardy it is to expect to achieve truth.
One product of that effort was my book, “Careful So”. Five years ago, I published this memoir about my first two years in Ethiopia. My friend, artist Troy Zaushny, created the fantastic cover art for the book. He also created a beautiful companion piece, a print called ‘The Promised’. I never really promoted the book; I was too self-conscious. But I’ve been thinking about it again. Please, dear reader, take a look at Troy’s site. The book is also available for e-readers on Amazon, Lulu, Apple Books, and Nook. A link to the Lulu edition is helpfully provided to the left.
Catharto Auto Bio
I’ve been writing about story-telling again. It’s hard to say what I find so absorbing. I feel sometimes I’ve been working for a lifetime through that one reference in Aristotle to the catharsis of tragedy. Maybe it signifies nothing more than this: that the stories we entertain are the angels and the demons of our own stories. A superficial example might be my partiality to mystery novels, perhaps symptomatic of a vain belief that there are answers to be found for those who search. I also love sci-fi, which might just be a theatre for those who still believe in theology.
But what I do know is how complex our relationships can be with our own stories. We embroider our stories. We soil them. We iron them and fold them. We bleach them, and we dye them. What we can’t seem to do is hang them in sunlight and see them all of a piece with the sure eye of a critic. That’s what the gods and judges are for.
I spent years writing memoir, trying to fashion truth from autobiography, or from a wrenching chapter of it. I can tell you how valuable it is to try, and how foolhardy it is to expect to achieve truth.
One product of that effort was my book, “Careful So”. Five years ago, I published this memoir about my first two years in Ethiopia. My friend, artist Troy Zaushny, created the fantastic cover art for the book. He also created a beautiful companion piece, a print called ‘The Promised’. I never really promoted the book; I was too self-conscious. But I’ve been thinking about it again. Please, dear reader, take a look at Troy’s site. The book is also available for e-readers on Amazon, Lulu, Apple Books, and Nook. A link to the Lulu edition is helpfully provided to the left.
Monday, May 25, 2020
Travelogue 910 – May 25
Blade Runner and Game of Thrones
I don’t remember seeing Movie 5 from my Facebook movie series when it came to the theatres in 1982. I’m pretty sure I did; I just don’t remember it. The effect of this movie grows over time. I believe everyone feels that way about “Blade Runner”. It had a rather lacklustre opening, and now it’s recognized as one of the greats. Rules for the challenge: No specific image that had impact. No top ten list.
There is so much to cite critically, from Philip K. Dick’s story and influence; to Ridley Scott’s youth, vision, and script work; to Vangelis’s score; to the individual performances – Ford’s star power and Hauer’s elegance. The film gathered narrative and visual themes that would fuel sci-fi cinema for decades: the clones and AI; the aesthetics of dystopia; the noir stylings; the menace of runaway tech.
My engagement is with the beauty of this film. Critics lambasted its pace in 1982; I applaud it. Ridley found the riches inside the story. Most of what Hollywood does wrong is suggested by the early criticism of “Blade Runner”, capturing plot and surface personality and leaving all the powerful latencies in a narrative in a rush to print. This film is simply beautiful. The composition of one scene can still move me deeply, quite independently of the plot.
I think a lot about story-telling. In a different genre, the TV series “Game of Thrones” tutored me in similar techniques. The first three seasons were masterfully done, populating a relatively standard fantasy world with compelling characters and investing an arbitrary ‘game of thrones’ among unappealing contenders with some urgency and emotion. Martin deserves a lot of credit; I’m not thrilled by his books, but he drew the blueprint. I learn similar lessons to those I learned from “Blade Runner”, the care for atmosphere and detail, the generosity with time. The characters are incessantly on the road in the first three seasons, and we travel with them. Sure, Martin is a genius with the surprising plot twist, but more compelling was the time spent with characters. One very obvious difference between early and late seasons is how quick the travel becomes. John Snow sends a text message from beyond the wall, and the dragon is there in minutes.
I’ve spent almost two months writing short comic scripts for Zoom productions by my Hague-based theatre group. The premise is a satire of “Game of Thrones”. Even in these silly, throwaway scripts, I see the same principles at work. There’s precious little plot to speak of and the characters are two-dimensional caricatures, and still there’s engagement and involvement. Actors are enjoying the characters and the unfolding story, absolutely meaningless as it is. It’s a kind of divine quality in the human, I believe, to invest lifeless landscapes with movement and passion. To quote another movie classic: “Life will find a way”.
I don’t want to close this blog post leaving the impression that I put “Game of Thrones” on equal footing with “Blade Runner”. The difference lies in that transcendent beauty that the latter achieves. The Romantic poets might have called it the Sublime. Maybe it’s a sad state of affairs that we find the Sublime in sci-fi movies, but, then again … it was Mary Shelley who wrote “Frankenstein”.
Blade Runner and Game of Thrones
I don’t remember seeing Movie 5 from my Facebook movie series when it came to the theatres in 1982. I’m pretty sure I did; I just don’t remember it. The effect of this movie grows over time. I believe everyone feels that way about “Blade Runner”. It had a rather lacklustre opening, and now it’s recognized as one of the greats. Rules for the challenge: No specific image that had impact. No top ten list.
There is so much to cite critically, from Philip K. Dick’s story and influence; to Ridley Scott’s youth, vision, and script work; to Vangelis’s score; to the individual performances – Ford’s star power and Hauer’s elegance. The film gathered narrative and visual themes that would fuel sci-fi cinema for decades: the clones and AI; the aesthetics of dystopia; the noir stylings; the menace of runaway tech.
My engagement is with the beauty of this film. Critics lambasted its pace in 1982; I applaud it. Ridley found the riches inside the story. Most of what Hollywood does wrong is suggested by the early criticism of “Blade Runner”, capturing plot and surface personality and leaving all the powerful latencies in a narrative in a rush to print. This film is simply beautiful. The composition of one scene can still move me deeply, quite independently of the plot.
I think a lot about story-telling. In a different genre, the TV series “Game of Thrones” tutored me in similar techniques. The first three seasons were masterfully done, populating a relatively standard fantasy world with compelling characters and investing an arbitrary ‘game of thrones’ among unappealing contenders with some urgency and emotion. Martin deserves a lot of credit; I’m not thrilled by his books, but he drew the blueprint. I learn similar lessons to those I learned from “Blade Runner”, the care for atmosphere and detail, the generosity with time. The characters are incessantly on the road in the first three seasons, and we travel with them. Sure, Martin is a genius with the surprising plot twist, but more compelling was the time spent with characters. One very obvious difference between early and late seasons is how quick the travel becomes. John Snow sends a text message from beyond the wall, and the dragon is there in minutes.
I’ve spent almost two months writing short comic scripts for Zoom productions by my Hague-based theatre group. The premise is a satire of “Game of Thrones”. Even in these silly, throwaway scripts, I see the same principles at work. There’s precious little plot to speak of and the characters are two-dimensional caricatures, and still there’s engagement and involvement. Actors are enjoying the characters and the unfolding story, absolutely meaningless as it is. It’s a kind of divine quality in the human, I believe, to invest lifeless landscapes with movement and passion. To quote another movie classic: “Life will find a way”.
I don’t want to close this blog post leaving the impression that I put “Game of Thrones” on equal footing with “Blade Runner”. The difference lies in that transcendent beauty that the latter achieves. The Romantic poets might have called it the Sublime. Maybe it’s a sad state of affairs that we find the Sublime in sci-fi movies, but, then again … it was Mary Shelley who wrote “Frankenstein”.
Monday, May 18, 2020
Travelogue 909 – May 18
The Apartment
I was living in Minneapolis. I was working for the school district, and I was sharing an apartment with Scottie on Dupont and 28th Street. Domestic life was basic. I had no furniture. Our kitchen was bare. But we had a TV, the kind that was more console than screen. In my mind’s eye, I see a TV like an old station wagon, capacious and lined with fake wood panelling. That TV is where I first happened to see “The Apartment”, the 1960 Bill Wilder film starring Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine.
“The Apartment” was Movie 3 for my Facebook challenge: “Ten images from movies over ten days that had an impact on me.” Rules: No specific image that had impact. No top ten list.
I was writing a lot of poetry at that time. What I saw in “The Apartment” was an artful and polished comedy, relying on witty dialogue and smart acting. The premise was provocative, but simple. The production and sets were beautifully done, but pointedly not epic, as the times favoured. (Ben Hur was the previous year’s big Oscar winner.) The success of the movie was primarily in the writing. Wilder’s work has been called a ‘cinema of words’. It was a theatrical movie in that sense, reading something like a play. And that movie, that evening, inspired me to write plays.
I had been working on a long poem dedicated to the memory of a friend who had died of AIDS. The poem had been through many revisions. The subject was painful, and it haunted me. The poem had evolved by that time into a kind of dialogue among grieving characters.
The day after watching “The Apartment”, I started changing the poem into a play, my first play. That play is still one of my favourites; I reprised it here in South Holland a few years ago, and I self-published it with a set of stories and short memoir a few years ago because it fit so well among my reflections of that earlier period of my life. The play is nothing like “The Apartment”. The inspiration lives solely in the choice of form.
I wouldn’t claim too many favourable points of comparison between Wilder’s writing and my own, beyond a fondness for the snappy comeback (and his are better). What inspired me were the efficiencies of his art. At the time, he was noted for his breaks with the conventions of the art form, but what I responded to, nearly forty years on, were the efficiencies within the form. I had stumbled upon a master, and one who achieved much of his effect through the power of words.
The Apartment
I was living in Minneapolis. I was working for the school district, and I was sharing an apartment with Scottie on Dupont and 28th Street. Domestic life was basic. I had no furniture. Our kitchen was bare. But we had a TV, the kind that was more console than screen. In my mind’s eye, I see a TV like an old station wagon, capacious and lined with fake wood panelling. That TV is where I first happened to see “The Apartment”, the 1960 Bill Wilder film starring Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine.
“The Apartment” was Movie 3 for my Facebook challenge: “Ten images from movies over ten days that had an impact on me.” Rules: No specific image that had impact. No top ten list.
I was writing a lot of poetry at that time. What I saw in “The Apartment” was an artful and polished comedy, relying on witty dialogue and smart acting. The premise was provocative, but simple. The production and sets were beautifully done, but pointedly not epic, as the times favoured. (Ben Hur was the previous year’s big Oscar winner.) The success of the movie was primarily in the writing. Wilder’s work has been called a ‘cinema of words’. It was a theatrical movie in that sense, reading something like a play. And that movie, that evening, inspired me to write plays.
I had been working on a long poem dedicated to the memory of a friend who had died of AIDS. The poem had been through many revisions. The subject was painful, and it haunted me. The poem had evolved by that time into a kind of dialogue among grieving characters.
The day after watching “The Apartment”, I started changing the poem into a play, my first play. That play is still one of my favourites; I reprised it here in South Holland a few years ago, and I self-published it with a set of stories and short memoir a few years ago because it fit so well among my reflections of that earlier period of my life. The play is nothing like “The Apartment”. The inspiration lives solely in the choice of form.
I wouldn’t claim too many favourable points of comparison between Wilder’s writing and my own, beyond a fondness for the snappy comeback (and his are better). What inspired me were the efficiencies of his art. At the time, he was noted for his breaks with the conventions of the art form, but what I responded to, nearly forty years on, were the efficiencies within the form. I had stumbled upon a master, and one who achieved much of his effect through the power of words.
Thursday, May 14, 2020
Travelogue 908 – May 14
A Space Odyssey
My friend Marcus nominated me on Facebook to post ten times about ten movies. I doubt I'll make it to ten.I see these Facebook challenges come and go, and I don’t think much about them. But because it was Marcus, and because it was film, I gave it some thought; I'll give it a try.
This is not supposed to be a Top Ten, or a collection of beautiful stills, but an inventory of movies that had an impact in my life. That makes it interesting. I’ll post some here in my blog, since not everyone is on Facebook. I can a little more substance. Facebook is not somewhere I can ramble on.
I saw “2001: A Space Odyssey” in the theatre when it came out. I was just a kid, and it was the first ‘grown-up’ film I remember seeing. Imagine the Kubrick classic being your first impression. I still remember the experience. I remember the monkeys fighting, of course, because I was a young boy. I remember HAL’s voice. I remember the sense of wonder inspired by the scenes in space. We were a family that watched all the moon launches on TV. I remember the music and the stately pace of the film. I remember my father complaining about the film. It was too slow; it didn’t make sense. But it was a beautiful and a challenging film, and it stayed with me.
It’s odd to call up this memory, which floats relatively free from attachments. I don’t really recall the theatre, the trip to the theatre, the popcorn, the seats, anything else. Other movie memories are tied to more tactile impressions. My memory of “Oliver” comes with a few other clips, of the car ride, of my parents laughing at me as I tried to reproduce one of the songs in the parking lot outside. But “2001” stands starkly alone in my memory, just the power of the imagery and sound. And then my father’s complaint.
I imagine he expected more from the film; something more conventional. He was an engineer and a believer in science. He was an enthusiast of the space program. If he had lived long enough, we would have gone to see “Apollo 13” together, and he would have been completely content. ‘That’s what a movie is supposed to be,’ I can imagine him saying. And still, my memory paints him as surprisingly mild in his critique of “2001”. It would have been more in character to rail or dismiss. But my memory portrays him offering calm and rational criticisms. Not ones I would agree with, from my privileged vantage point, more than fifty years later, but reasonable ones. The film took a lot of risks, and certainly not all of them were going to pay off for the average movie-goer.
A Space Odyssey
My friend Marcus nominated me on Facebook to post ten times about ten movies. I doubt I'll make it to ten.I see these Facebook challenges come and go, and I don’t think much about them. But because it was Marcus, and because it was film, I gave it some thought; I'll give it a try.
This is not supposed to be a Top Ten, or a collection of beautiful stills, but an inventory of movies that had an impact in my life. That makes it interesting. I’ll post some here in my blog, since not everyone is on Facebook. I can a little more substance. Facebook is not somewhere I can ramble on.
I saw “2001: A Space Odyssey” in the theatre when it came out. I was just a kid, and it was the first ‘grown-up’ film I remember seeing. Imagine the Kubrick classic being your first impression. I still remember the experience. I remember the monkeys fighting, of course, because I was a young boy. I remember HAL’s voice. I remember the sense of wonder inspired by the scenes in space. We were a family that watched all the moon launches on TV. I remember the music and the stately pace of the film. I remember my father complaining about the film. It was too slow; it didn’t make sense. But it was a beautiful and a challenging film, and it stayed with me.
It’s odd to call up this memory, which floats relatively free from attachments. I don’t really recall the theatre, the trip to the theatre, the popcorn, the seats, anything else. Other movie memories are tied to more tactile impressions. My memory of “Oliver” comes with a few other clips, of the car ride, of my parents laughing at me as I tried to reproduce one of the songs in the parking lot outside. But “2001” stands starkly alone in my memory, just the power of the imagery and sound. And then my father’s complaint.
I imagine he expected more from the film; something more conventional. He was an engineer and a believer in science. He was an enthusiast of the space program. If he had lived long enough, we would have gone to see “Apollo 13” together, and he would have been completely content. ‘That’s what a movie is supposed to be,’ I can imagine him saying. And still, my memory paints him as surprisingly mild in his critique of “2001”. It would have been more in character to rail or dismiss. But my memory portrays him offering calm and rational criticisms. Not ones I would agree with, from my privileged vantage point, more than fifty years later, but reasonable ones. The film took a lot of risks, and certainly not all of them were going to pay off for the average movie-goer.
Sunday, May 10, 2020
Travelogue 907 – May 10
Sheep on Grass; Sun on Sheep
For a month or so, someone has been rotating the sheep among the grass verges around our little neighbourhood. We lie in a kind of bowl between the Sparta football stadium and the Metro station. And all around are small strips of open grassy space. Apparently, the city and the shepherds have found some common ground among the unruly grasses of spring.
The sheep first show up on the grassy inclines that lead up to the level of the tram station, first on one side of the staircase and then a few days later on the other side. There look to be about fifty of them. There’s no one minding the sheep. They are confined within flimsy fencing of coloured twine. In a few days, those sheep trim everything green right down to the ground. It’s efficient.
It’s also refreshing. It breaks the hard divide between rural and urban. It eloquently expresses the Dutch commitment to pragmatism and middle ways. It also captures the sense of community so important to the Dutch. We all live together. The sheep show up every spring in this very urban neighbourhood. People pass and smile, or they register nothing.
I like seeing the sheep. They contribute a different element to daily life, a different colour. I stop and watch them. They live at a slower pace. Their job is eating grass. When they’re not chewing, they’re resting; they’re staring. There’s a timelessness to the sight of the sheep in their fields. I know we humans joke that we have lost track of what day it is, but in actuality we are keenly aware of the moment. History is very much present. It takes the form of an airborne virus. It prompts us to watch the headlines every day, count the days, count the casualties.
Every few days, the sheep are rotated to a new field. Eventually, they show up among the small grassy knolls beside the pitches that figure into my daily strolls. The short twine fence appears in my path to interrupt my routine. I stand and watch the complacent sheep munching on their grass.
I feel no resentment. Healthy communities are always in flux. There are tides in urban landscapes, and thhe tides bring noise and inconvenience. It’s best to give way. I take another path, following the dirt paths and then the bike paths. I cross over the busy boulevard that is one border to my small district. I stroll through an abandoned playground, follow the dirt paths around another construction zone, and then along the curving line a canal makes through this neighbouring city village. It’s different. It’s the same. The spring sun still shines on me.
Sheep on Grass; Sun on Sheep
For a month or so, someone has been rotating the sheep among the grass verges around our little neighbourhood. We lie in a kind of bowl between the Sparta football stadium and the Metro station. And all around are small strips of open grassy space. Apparently, the city and the shepherds have found some common ground among the unruly grasses of spring.
The sheep first show up on the grassy inclines that lead up to the level of the tram station, first on one side of the staircase and then a few days later on the other side. There look to be about fifty of them. There’s no one minding the sheep. They are confined within flimsy fencing of coloured twine. In a few days, those sheep trim everything green right down to the ground. It’s efficient.
It’s also refreshing. It breaks the hard divide between rural and urban. It eloquently expresses the Dutch commitment to pragmatism and middle ways. It also captures the sense of community so important to the Dutch. We all live together. The sheep show up every spring in this very urban neighbourhood. People pass and smile, or they register nothing.
I like seeing the sheep. They contribute a different element to daily life, a different colour. I stop and watch them. They live at a slower pace. Their job is eating grass. When they’re not chewing, they’re resting; they’re staring. There’s a timelessness to the sight of the sheep in their fields. I know we humans joke that we have lost track of what day it is, but in actuality we are keenly aware of the moment. History is very much present. It takes the form of an airborne virus. It prompts us to watch the headlines every day, count the days, count the casualties.
Every few days, the sheep are rotated to a new field. Eventually, they show up among the small grassy knolls beside the pitches that figure into my daily strolls. The short twine fence appears in my path to interrupt my routine. I stand and watch the complacent sheep munching on their grass.
I feel no resentment. Healthy communities are always in flux. There are tides in urban landscapes, and thhe tides bring noise and inconvenience. It’s best to give way. I take another path, following the dirt paths and then the bike paths. I cross over the busy boulevard that is one border to my small district. I stroll through an abandoned playground, follow the dirt paths around another construction zone, and then along the curving line a canal makes through this neighbouring city village. It’s different. It’s the same. The spring sun still shines on me.
Saturday, May 09, 2020
Travelogue 906 – May 9
Guns in the Neighbourhood
We share the planet; we share the virus. Even so, we humans inhabit a variety of different worlds. One reminder came a few nights ago, in the middle of the night. We were woken at 2:20 in the morning by the sound of gunshots. Within minutes, there were police vans cordoning off a section of the street within view of our windows. A few of them were searching the surface of the street with flashlights, looking for bullets. The next morning, I saw the bullet holes in the window and doorway across the street.
We lead our lives in parallel planes. I’ll try a Zoom analogy: we’re all invited into the same Zoom call, but we make our way into different breakout rooms, with different codes of conduct. One room chooses rules of confrontation and strife; another chooses rules of peaceful co-existence and cooperation.
In the same neighbourhood, some people have been living by much more savage rules than the rest of us. And just because it bubbles up once in a public way, like a shooting in the middle of the night, doesn’t mean that their rules are less violent on many other, quieter occasions. This case just rose to the level of our attention.
World events can provide those glimpses into the deeper coding of other rooms. The COVID-19 crisis has offered a rather stark view into the code underlying American society, revealing it as peculiarly tribal and violent. Everything is a contest of wills. The vehemence of the reaction against public health controls was surprising. When it took on the language of war, we understood. Everything is strife, and the U.S. response is to suffer and fight. Life is a Rocky movie. We take our hits. We are knocked to the mat. Our glory is rising again, against all odds, taking a dozen more punches to the jaw, bleeding profusely, but somehow prevailing, if only by dint of our … what? Our size, our ugly charm? Preventive measures are for the weak. Pandemic response in America was never going to be clean or efficient.
There are people with guns in the neighbourhood, and the guns are just the code made manifest. If we had known their lives were so fraught with danger, we might have advised them that life could be easier. But they wouldn’t have listened.
“For who can hope to alter men’s convictions?” Aurelius counsels. He is rounding off his thought that humble goals are best. Aurelius consistently reminds himself, the reader, that all human aspiration is social. There’s a lot of wisdom in this.
Guns in the Neighbourhood
We share the planet; we share the virus. Even so, we humans inhabit a variety of different worlds. One reminder came a few nights ago, in the middle of the night. We were woken at 2:20 in the morning by the sound of gunshots. Within minutes, there were police vans cordoning off a section of the street within view of our windows. A few of them were searching the surface of the street with flashlights, looking for bullets. The next morning, I saw the bullet holes in the window and doorway across the street.
We lead our lives in parallel planes. I’ll try a Zoom analogy: we’re all invited into the same Zoom call, but we make our way into different breakout rooms, with different codes of conduct. One room chooses rules of confrontation and strife; another chooses rules of peaceful co-existence and cooperation.
In the same neighbourhood, some people have been living by much more savage rules than the rest of us. And just because it bubbles up once in a public way, like a shooting in the middle of the night, doesn’t mean that their rules are less violent on many other, quieter occasions. This case just rose to the level of our attention.
World events can provide those glimpses into the deeper coding of other rooms. The COVID-19 crisis has offered a rather stark view into the code underlying American society, revealing it as peculiarly tribal and violent. Everything is a contest of wills. The vehemence of the reaction against public health controls was surprising. When it took on the language of war, we understood. Everything is strife, and the U.S. response is to suffer and fight. Life is a Rocky movie. We take our hits. We are knocked to the mat. Our glory is rising again, against all odds, taking a dozen more punches to the jaw, bleeding profusely, but somehow prevailing, if only by dint of our … what? Our size, our ugly charm? Preventive measures are for the weak. Pandemic response in America was never going to be clean or efficient.
There are people with guns in the neighbourhood, and the guns are just the code made manifest. If we had known their lives were so fraught with danger, we might have advised them that life could be easier. But they wouldn’t have listened.
“For who can hope to alter men’s convictions?” Aurelius counsels. He is rounding off his thought that humble goals are best. Aurelius consistently reminds himself, the reader, that all human aspiration is social. There’s a lot of wisdom in this.
Wednesday, May 06, 2020
Travelogue 905 – May 6
Notre Jardin
“…[D]o what nature is asking of you at this moment,” Aurelius write in Book Nine of his Meditations. Here we find a beautiful passage about humility. He continues, “ …and no glancing around to see if you are observed.” This part reminds me of Matthew 6, written about a hundred years earlier than the Meditations, and which includes this great scriptural line (in King James English): “Therefore when thou doest thine alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men.”
Imagine there were no bragging. It’s easy if you try. Imagine no boasting, no selling, no posing. These days, nothing is real until it’s being sold. Imagine no proselytising, no pitching, no preaching, no convincing. Contentment is no virtue in our world. We must exult and shout. We must see our own enjoyment in others’ faces before it’s legit. Barring that, or even in preference to that, we must see judgement in others’ eyes. It galvanises us and informs us that we are on the right side, by virtue of opposition.
“…[D]o not expect Plato’s ideal commonwealth,” Aurelius advises. “[B]e satisfied if even a trifling endeavour comes off well, and count the result no mean success.” I’m doing my part with trifling endeavours. When the shutdown forced my theatre group to cancel a performance, I suggested a Zoom project. We’ve been doing this for about a month now, taping two-minute episodes in an ongoing satire of Game of Thrones and posting them. It’s embarrassing, but it’s been a show of life during a time of restraint, not in protest but in simple celebration of life despite the sombre threat. It’s fun; we spend precious time in a trifling project, and I’d say we derive a certain Aurelian pride from its silliness.
These are such great people. I’m amazed every time they schedule precious time for something as trivial as this. But they do it. And when they pop up in Zoom, I am so gratified. We laugh; we have fun. We produce something ephemeral, but the camaraderie is the reason. What does move us as humans, after all, and what proves most satisfying? Are we most content producing enduring work at great personal expense, or deeply enjoying the production of something fleeting, like the perfect spring garden?
Voltaire famously ended his “Candide” advising us each to cultivate our own garden – after having tracked the misadventures of the book’s naïve hero in a wide and cruel world. This seems the hardest thing for human nature to do, to accept small ambitions. I would hardly suggest I’m an exception to that rule. The mirror and the microphone are dangerous daily temptations - for us all. We crave approval; we want to be seen and heard. We act out, testing our voices in the wind. Who turns their head?
Lacking approval, some of us are happy to be reviled. We march with guns in front of state capitol buildings, and we bask in contempt. To be clear, protesting COVID shutdowns with a gun in hand is no Rosa Parks moment.
Notre Jardin
“…[D]o what nature is asking of you at this moment,” Aurelius write in Book Nine of his Meditations. Here we find a beautiful passage about humility. He continues, “ …and no glancing around to see if you are observed.” This part reminds me of Matthew 6, written about a hundred years earlier than the Meditations, and which includes this great scriptural line (in King James English): “Therefore when thou doest thine alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men.”
Imagine there were no bragging. It’s easy if you try. Imagine no boasting, no selling, no posing. These days, nothing is real until it’s being sold. Imagine no proselytising, no pitching, no preaching, no convincing. Contentment is no virtue in our world. We must exult and shout. We must see our own enjoyment in others’ faces before it’s legit. Barring that, or even in preference to that, we must see judgement in others’ eyes. It galvanises us and informs us that we are on the right side, by virtue of opposition.
“…[D]o not expect Plato’s ideal commonwealth,” Aurelius advises. “[B]e satisfied if even a trifling endeavour comes off well, and count the result no mean success.” I’m doing my part with trifling endeavours. When the shutdown forced my theatre group to cancel a performance, I suggested a Zoom project. We’ve been doing this for about a month now, taping two-minute episodes in an ongoing satire of Game of Thrones and posting them. It’s embarrassing, but it’s been a show of life during a time of restraint, not in protest but in simple celebration of life despite the sombre threat. It’s fun; we spend precious time in a trifling project, and I’d say we derive a certain Aurelian pride from its silliness.
These are such great people. I’m amazed every time they schedule precious time for something as trivial as this. But they do it. And when they pop up in Zoom, I am so gratified. We laugh; we have fun. We produce something ephemeral, but the camaraderie is the reason. What does move us as humans, after all, and what proves most satisfying? Are we most content producing enduring work at great personal expense, or deeply enjoying the production of something fleeting, like the perfect spring garden?
Voltaire famously ended his “Candide” advising us each to cultivate our own garden – after having tracked the misadventures of the book’s naïve hero in a wide and cruel world. This seems the hardest thing for human nature to do, to accept small ambitions. I would hardly suggest I’m an exception to that rule. The mirror and the microphone are dangerous daily temptations - for us all. We crave approval; we want to be seen and heard. We act out, testing our voices in the wind. Who turns their head?
Lacking approval, some of us are happy to be reviled. We march with guns in front of state capitol buildings, and we bask in contempt. To be clear, protesting COVID shutdowns with a gun in hand is no Rosa Parks moment.
Saturday, May 02, 2020
Travelogue 904 – May 2
The Biggest Ever!
It’s a different age. My anxiety dreams used to be set in my school or on stage. I would find myself rushing to class and realizing I had no lesson prepared. I would show up to rehearsal without a script. Nowadays, I dream that I can’t get Zoom to work.
Everything is channelled through eye of the internet needle these days. And so much of it is routed through only a few platforms, namely Zoom and Teams and Skype. It’s unnerving to have so much at stake when working in computer environments that are essentially akin to magic, at least for people like me. I used to worry about the power that the masters of local transit had over my life. This is another level.
This is not to suggest a conspiracy. Evil programmers don’t appear in my anxiety dreams. Bill Gates doesn’t dress like Thanos and snap his fingers. Why do I feel compelled to add this disclaimer to every complaint I make these days? An item is missing in the supermarket, I don’t blame Bill Gates. Am I naïve?
It’s another indicator of the age. Conspiracy theory is like ice cream or candy. We show no restraint.
I had some more warnings on Facebook. Trump was right all along about the fake media. Look at these videos of real doctors telling you the coronavirus is a hoax. Death figures are being fudged for profit.
I enjoy this kind of moxie. As though there weren’t enough personality or individuality among the thousands of people working in the media to fill a thimble, but among the few dozen contacts of the conspiracy theorist were all the great mavericks and free-thinkers. As though we couldn’t find a few cranks with geology degrees to say the world was flat. As though hospitals were corporate scams and Fox News were a charity. As though anyone could claim with a straight face that the hospitals have been the centres of excess and abuse during the corona era.
There is something endearing about conspiracy theorists. They dream big. You don’t hear many conspiracies about local elections, or about the goings-on in the neighbourhood. Or can we call gossip conspiracy theory? No, conspiracy always has to be big. It’s the richest men trying the ballsiest gambit to control the whole world, trying to gather all the money ever printed, exploit all the data ever generated, persecute the greatest president and run the greatest nation. And it never stops, either. Conspirators never tire. (And they never seem to win, either. Otherwise, why do they always have to start over?)
Of course all this reminds me of a quote from Aurelius …
The Biggest Ever!
It’s a different age. My anxiety dreams used to be set in my school or on stage. I would find myself rushing to class and realizing I had no lesson prepared. I would show up to rehearsal without a script. Nowadays, I dream that I can’t get Zoom to work.
Everything is channelled through eye of the internet needle these days. And so much of it is routed through only a few platforms, namely Zoom and Teams and Skype. It’s unnerving to have so much at stake when working in computer environments that are essentially akin to magic, at least for people like me. I used to worry about the power that the masters of local transit had over my life. This is another level.
This is not to suggest a conspiracy. Evil programmers don’t appear in my anxiety dreams. Bill Gates doesn’t dress like Thanos and snap his fingers. Why do I feel compelled to add this disclaimer to every complaint I make these days? An item is missing in the supermarket, I don’t blame Bill Gates. Am I naïve?
It’s another indicator of the age. Conspiracy theory is like ice cream or candy. We show no restraint.
I had some more warnings on Facebook. Trump was right all along about the fake media. Look at these videos of real doctors telling you the coronavirus is a hoax. Death figures are being fudged for profit.
I enjoy this kind of moxie. As though there weren’t enough personality or individuality among the thousands of people working in the media to fill a thimble, but among the few dozen contacts of the conspiracy theorist were all the great mavericks and free-thinkers. As though we couldn’t find a few cranks with geology degrees to say the world was flat. As though hospitals were corporate scams and Fox News were a charity. As though anyone could claim with a straight face that the hospitals have been the centres of excess and abuse during the corona era.
There is something endearing about conspiracy theorists. They dream big. You don’t hear many conspiracies about local elections, or about the goings-on in the neighbourhood. Or can we call gossip conspiracy theory? No, conspiracy always has to be big. It’s the richest men trying the ballsiest gambit to control the whole world, trying to gather all the money ever printed, exploit all the data ever generated, persecute the greatest president and run the greatest nation. And it never stops, either. Conspirators never tire. (And they never seem to win, either. Otherwise, why do they always have to start over?)
Of course all this reminds me of a quote from Aurelius …
Tuesday, April 28, 2020
Travelogue 903 – April 28
Our Pilots
Clearly, I’m reading the Guardian too much. This morning I saw a report that the Pentagon has released the official videos of UFO sightings that have been circulating illicitly for five years. The videos spooked me. On my daily trip to the grocery, I was checking the skies.
There was nothing to see. Coincidentally, it’s been the first rainy day in weeks. Riding my bike to the store, I gazed into the clouds, and I saw no strange lights or shadowy vessels. But the change in weather and the darkening of the skies only heightened the mystery. What lay beyond the low screen of rain clouds?
Maybe they’re monitoring our progress with COVID-19. I’m guessing that public health would be a major concern among interstellar organisations. If the germ we’re dealing with currently was able to jump from bat to human, then what sort of devastating bug could leap from us to them? We might wipe out the whole star system. They came a long way to be taken out by something like COVID.
Maybe they’re monitoring the American election. I can imagine this might explain their long silence. The first Pentagon video was recorded in 2004 – during an election year. They may simply have found every election more disturbing than the last. In 2012, they might have been tempted by humanity’s uncharacteristic show of reason. But then they waited one more cycle in the name of caution, and 2016 happened. If my theory is correct, we won’t hear from the emissaries of reasoning extra-terrestrials for quite a while.
We do one thing right as a species. Watch these videos and listen to the Navy pilots as they track down these mysterious objects. In a movie, these scenes would have been scripted as hushed or full of portent. That’s not reality. These boys are having fun. They’re laughing, and they’re shouting to each other in admiration of these little flying saucers.
I hope the banter of these pilots was the aliens’ first impression of us. It’s definitely the best they will have for a while.
Our Pilots
Clearly, I’m reading the Guardian too much. This morning I saw a report that the Pentagon has released the official videos of UFO sightings that have been circulating illicitly for five years. The videos spooked me. On my daily trip to the grocery, I was checking the skies.
There was nothing to see. Coincidentally, it’s been the first rainy day in weeks. Riding my bike to the store, I gazed into the clouds, and I saw no strange lights or shadowy vessels. But the change in weather and the darkening of the skies only heightened the mystery. What lay beyond the low screen of rain clouds?
Maybe they’re monitoring our progress with COVID-19. I’m guessing that public health would be a major concern among interstellar organisations. If the germ we’re dealing with currently was able to jump from bat to human, then what sort of devastating bug could leap from us to them? We might wipe out the whole star system. They came a long way to be taken out by something like COVID.
Maybe they’re monitoring the American election. I can imagine this might explain their long silence. The first Pentagon video was recorded in 2004 – during an election year. They may simply have found every election more disturbing than the last. In 2012, they might have been tempted by humanity’s uncharacteristic show of reason. But then they waited one more cycle in the name of caution, and 2016 happened. If my theory is correct, we won’t hear from the emissaries of reasoning extra-terrestrials for quite a while.
We do one thing right as a species. Watch these videos and listen to the Navy pilots as they track down these mysterious objects. In a movie, these scenes would have been scripted as hushed or full of portent. That’s not reality. These boys are having fun. They’re laughing, and they’re shouting to each other in admiration of these little flying saucers.
I hope the banter of these pilots was the aliens’ first impression of us. It’s definitely the best they will have for a while.
Sunday, April 26, 2020
Travelogue 902 – April 26
The Tory Emperor
I had to laugh when a Guardian writer attributed an interest in Marcus Aurelius to a type of privileged Tory who would downplay the threat of the coronavirus. Huh? Strange that I hadn’t seen myself as the privileged backbencher before. I don’t have the penetrating mind of a Guardian columnist, clearly. And so I still read the old man, even as I obey social distancing rules without complaint.
Perhaps Aurelius himself wasn’t aware how prejudiced he was, favouring economic productivity over precious human life. But, of course, we all recall his proclamation against quarantine when the Roman stock exchange took a tumble and unemployment figures were skyrocketing.
I can only reassure our esteemed columnist that life is fleeting, and all prejudices die. I read it often enough in the writings of the Tory emperor, Marcus Aurelius. “Celer buries Hadrian and is buried himself. These noble minds of old, those minds of prescience, those men of pride, where are they now?” Sage commentators from the Guardian can be sure that the fat Tories will follow soon, rolled into Aurelius’s intellectual limbo and forgotten.
The sort of frontal attack her article represents is so boring. Proving yourself smart and taking the liberty of being unkind, these are the hallmarks of most commentaries during the early Trump years. Aside from a few late-night talk show hosts, most opinion has been too earnest. It seemed to us as though indignation should work. It was justified. They were a dark couple of years, and opinion makers being right and snarky didn’t really help anyone.
I’ve been seeing some funny stuff online lately. It seems like people are getting funnier. It’s very possible that I’m only now discovering what was always out there. But it may be that things had to get worse. Or we needed time to mature into confident opposition. It’s a kind of ripening of opinion.
Oppressors are nearly always comical. Look at our autocrats from the past century, their strutting; their fantastical, clownish oratory; their peculiar grooming; and their fondness for costumes and parades. They and their followers are ridiculous. And they can’t stand being laughed at. It’s too bad they’re so feral, but that doesn’t eclipse the comedy. Why are we so drawn to the Tiger King story? It’s the autocrat written small. Repulsive and a little frightening, but delightfully funny.
I admit, there aren’t too many passages in Aurelius advising us, “Laugh. Have a good time.” But his writings were ruminations. They suggest he didn’t need a reminder to have fun. Maybe the comedy in his position came to him readily enough. Maybe he needed reminders of graver responsibilities. We clearly don’t need to be reminded how serious the situation is. The Trumpistas, on the other hand, have their eye on a different ball than we do. Their reminders should come in the form of laughter: “you are mortal; you are ridiculous.” Trump wilted after the disinfectant episode. He was playing a bad part without conviction, and the crowd jeered. Simple enough.
The Tory Emperor
I had to laugh when a Guardian writer attributed an interest in Marcus Aurelius to a type of privileged Tory who would downplay the threat of the coronavirus. Huh? Strange that I hadn’t seen myself as the privileged backbencher before. I don’t have the penetrating mind of a Guardian columnist, clearly. And so I still read the old man, even as I obey social distancing rules without complaint.
Perhaps Aurelius himself wasn’t aware how prejudiced he was, favouring economic productivity over precious human life. But, of course, we all recall his proclamation against quarantine when the Roman stock exchange took a tumble and unemployment figures were skyrocketing.
I can only reassure our esteemed columnist that life is fleeting, and all prejudices die. I read it often enough in the writings of the Tory emperor, Marcus Aurelius. “Celer buries Hadrian and is buried himself. These noble minds of old, those minds of prescience, those men of pride, where are they now?” Sage commentators from the Guardian can be sure that the fat Tories will follow soon, rolled into Aurelius’s intellectual limbo and forgotten.
The sort of frontal attack her article represents is so boring. Proving yourself smart and taking the liberty of being unkind, these are the hallmarks of most commentaries during the early Trump years. Aside from a few late-night talk show hosts, most opinion has been too earnest. It seemed to us as though indignation should work. It was justified. They were a dark couple of years, and opinion makers being right and snarky didn’t really help anyone.
I’ve been seeing some funny stuff online lately. It seems like people are getting funnier. It’s very possible that I’m only now discovering what was always out there. But it may be that things had to get worse. Or we needed time to mature into confident opposition. It’s a kind of ripening of opinion.
Oppressors are nearly always comical. Look at our autocrats from the past century, their strutting; their fantastical, clownish oratory; their peculiar grooming; and their fondness for costumes and parades. They and their followers are ridiculous. And they can’t stand being laughed at. It’s too bad they’re so feral, but that doesn’t eclipse the comedy. Why are we so drawn to the Tiger King story? It’s the autocrat written small. Repulsive and a little frightening, but delightfully funny.
I admit, there aren’t too many passages in Aurelius advising us, “Laugh. Have a good time.” But his writings were ruminations. They suggest he didn’t need a reminder to have fun. Maybe the comedy in his position came to him readily enough. Maybe he needed reminders of graver responsibilities. We clearly don’t need to be reminded how serious the situation is. The Trumpistas, on the other hand, have their eye on a different ball than we do. Their reminders should come in the form of laughter: “you are mortal; you are ridiculous.” Trump wilted after the disinfectant episode. He was playing a bad part without conviction, and the crowd jeered. Simple enough.
Wednesday, April 22, 2020
Travelogue 901 – April 22
Sin and Distancing
I’ve started into the ninth book of Aurelius’s Meditations, slowly working my way through the emperor’s thoughts verse by verse, fortifying my spirit with his spare language and sun-baked philosophy. A dose of Aurelius is like a dry sauna, cleansing by desiccation.
There are interesting variations, though. Sunday evening, I had an asthma attack that sent me to the doctor. I was utterly wiped out. But Aurelius’s words that night were about kindness. Predictably, his words were an exhortation to show the kindliness of the gods, but I was touched, as though a stern dad were putting his hand on my shoulder.
The emperor starts the ninth book in a way I would have thought uncharacteristic, speaking with some passion about ‘sin’. I’ve been meaning to look into other translations. Was the Greek translated correctly, or appropriately for his time? It’s hard for me to dissociate the word from its Christian usage. That’s probably unfair. I doubt the Christians came up with the concept.
I’ve been thinking of Christianity – again unfairly, I’m sure – as a kind of tonic to the philosophies of Aurelius’s time and class. I’ve come to think of his ideal virtues as those of the noble classes. From those assured power and renown, religion and philosophy asked an ongoing contemplation of death, the great leveller and the waster of reputation. Christianity was a religion that spread among the plebeians. From those who never had power nor fame, Christianity asked an ongoing contemplation of heaven, where everyone was redeemed in the eyes of a familiar God who knew where every sparrow fell.
But there’s something current about Aurelius’s Spartan ways, stressing internal strength and contentment, something apropos while the world suffers through a time of pandemic, exercising social distance and suffering silently. And least those with dignity are. There are those protesting, like school kids whose recess has been taken away. But the majority have a care for the other as much as for themselves, a virtue commonly recommended by both Aurelius and Jesus. When encountering on a narrow sidewalk a stranger who makes a circuit to maintain social distance, one person is offended and another sees a courtesy. Which are you? It’s really as simple as that.
In Holland, we’re well into our sixth week of shutdown. It’s a culture that prides itself on common sense and moderation, and it must be said that things are calm. Dutch moderation didn’t go for full lockdown. Perhaps as a consequence, the country has always been among the top ten in deaths from the coronavirus. But no one panics or protests. The streets aren’t deserted, but people are generally and genially careful. They maintain distance, but they do it with a wry smile.
Sin and Distancing
I’ve started into the ninth book of Aurelius’s Meditations, slowly working my way through the emperor’s thoughts verse by verse, fortifying my spirit with his spare language and sun-baked philosophy. A dose of Aurelius is like a dry sauna, cleansing by desiccation.
There are interesting variations, though. Sunday evening, I had an asthma attack that sent me to the doctor. I was utterly wiped out. But Aurelius’s words that night were about kindness. Predictably, his words were an exhortation to show the kindliness of the gods, but I was touched, as though a stern dad were putting his hand on my shoulder.
The emperor starts the ninth book in a way I would have thought uncharacteristic, speaking with some passion about ‘sin’. I’ve been meaning to look into other translations. Was the Greek translated correctly, or appropriately for his time? It’s hard for me to dissociate the word from its Christian usage. That’s probably unfair. I doubt the Christians came up with the concept.
I’ve been thinking of Christianity – again unfairly, I’m sure – as a kind of tonic to the philosophies of Aurelius’s time and class. I’ve come to think of his ideal virtues as those of the noble classes. From those assured power and renown, religion and philosophy asked an ongoing contemplation of death, the great leveller and the waster of reputation. Christianity was a religion that spread among the plebeians. From those who never had power nor fame, Christianity asked an ongoing contemplation of heaven, where everyone was redeemed in the eyes of a familiar God who knew where every sparrow fell.
But there’s something current about Aurelius’s Spartan ways, stressing internal strength and contentment, something apropos while the world suffers through a time of pandemic, exercising social distance and suffering silently. And least those with dignity are. There are those protesting, like school kids whose recess has been taken away. But the majority have a care for the other as much as for themselves, a virtue commonly recommended by both Aurelius and Jesus. When encountering on a narrow sidewalk a stranger who makes a circuit to maintain social distance, one person is offended and another sees a courtesy. Which are you? It’s really as simple as that.
In Holland, we’re well into our sixth week of shutdown. It’s a culture that prides itself on common sense and moderation, and it must be said that things are calm. Dutch moderation didn’t go for full lockdown. Perhaps as a consequence, the country has always been among the top ten in deaths from the coronavirus. But no one panics or protests. The streets aren’t deserted, but people are generally and genially careful. They maintain distance, but they do it with a wry smile.
Sunday, April 19, 2020
Travelogue 900 – April 19
Choosing the Gulls
The sea gulls are loud. It’s all I hear as I wake up. I lie still and listen to them. I like bird song, even the plaintive cries of gulls. I can imagine them circling around each other, perhaps fighting over some scrap of food. I know some people hate gulls, but I’ve always liked the sound of their voice. They remind me of the sea.
It means a lot to me, living by the sea. But it would be hard to say what that means. Without the sensory experiences of the winds, the North Sea clouds, the occasional salty smell, and the cries of the gulls, how would I know the sea was there? I rarely visit it. The sea is more an idea than a fact, and the gulls the opposite. The mind likes ideas, but the emotions favour facts. I see the gulls every day. Did I choose the sea or the gulls?
The sun is out again, after only one day of light showers. It’ll be another beautiful spring day, and I can’t wait to take the girls out for a walk by the canal. The grass will be strewn with pink petals from the cherry blossom trees. They’ve been in full bloom for weeks and their flowers are beginning to drop. If we can get out in the morning, there will be a pleasant chill in the air.
It’s Sunday; ballet classes come first. Ballet class doesn’t mean leaving home. Nothing does anymore. It all happens by video call. Little Ren’s class is first. We set the computer on a chair in the kitchen so the girls can dance on the clear floor of the attached dining room. I help her slip on her pink ballet shoes. I join the meeting on Zoom, and we all say hello to the teacher. Other children show up in their windows.
It’s wonderful that the lessons continue despite the shutdown, but the rituals around a family activity can be as important as the activity itself. We used to arrive early and change, while the other families arrived. I would take Little Ren into class. We would sit together on the wooden floor while the other children entered. After both classes, we would go out to a café for treats.
Living the video conferencing life is convenient. It saves us a lot of time. But I’m sure the girls miss the excitement of seeing everyone, the immediacy of dancing for your teacher in the same room. Little Ren finds it hard to concentrate in this format. She gets distracted; she wanders. Seeing the world through her eyes is a reminder of how small the computer screen is, and how flat. If we could afford the thoughts, we might wonder at the arbitrary power we’ve invested in these little screens and their pictures.
Choosing the Gulls
The sea gulls are loud. It’s all I hear as I wake up. I lie still and listen to them. I like bird song, even the plaintive cries of gulls. I can imagine them circling around each other, perhaps fighting over some scrap of food. I know some people hate gulls, but I’ve always liked the sound of their voice. They remind me of the sea.
It means a lot to me, living by the sea. But it would be hard to say what that means. Without the sensory experiences of the winds, the North Sea clouds, the occasional salty smell, and the cries of the gulls, how would I know the sea was there? I rarely visit it. The sea is more an idea than a fact, and the gulls the opposite. The mind likes ideas, but the emotions favour facts. I see the gulls every day. Did I choose the sea or the gulls?
The sun is out again, after only one day of light showers. It’ll be another beautiful spring day, and I can’t wait to take the girls out for a walk by the canal. The grass will be strewn with pink petals from the cherry blossom trees. They’ve been in full bloom for weeks and their flowers are beginning to drop. If we can get out in the morning, there will be a pleasant chill in the air.
It’s Sunday; ballet classes come first. Ballet class doesn’t mean leaving home. Nothing does anymore. It all happens by video call. Little Ren’s class is first. We set the computer on a chair in the kitchen so the girls can dance on the clear floor of the attached dining room. I help her slip on her pink ballet shoes. I join the meeting on Zoom, and we all say hello to the teacher. Other children show up in their windows.
It’s wonderful that the lessons continue despite the shutdown, but the rituals around a family activity can be as important as the activity itself. We used to arrive early and change, while the other families arrived. I would take Little Ren into class. We would sit together on the wooden floor while the other children entered. After both classes, we would go out to a café for treats.
Living the video conferencing life is convenient. It saves us a lot of time. But I’m sure the girls miss the excitement of seeing everyone, the immediacy of dancing for your teacher in the same room. Little Ren finds it hard to concentrate in this format. She gets distracted; she wanders. Seeing the world through her eyes is a reminder of how small the computer screen is, and how flat. If we could afford the thoughts, we might wonder at the arbitrary power we’ve invested in these little screens and their pictures.
Saturday, April 11, 2020
Travelogue 899 – April 11
The Lonely God
Someone on Facebook has warned me to beware any vaccine they develop for the coronavirus. It’s part of a plot on the part of Bill Gates to wipe out a portion of humanity. It wasn’t clear what Gates’s reasons might be for that; and it didn’t seem to matter much. Guys like Gates have evil agendas. They eradicate people like weeds. They take guns away, like ice cream from babies, just to watch children cry.
I shouldn’t find it funny, but I do. Isn’t it wonderful that fans of the Avengers find adventures in the headlines, that they should see Thanos in the spindly figure of Bill Gates? The human imagination is dazzling.
Who are we to each other? I think the pandemic has offered opportunities to take stock, look at society and our fellow humans with a new eye. In general, has it made us appreciate each other a litte more? Does absence make the heart grow fonder? Or was alienation already a cancer in the body of post-modern societies? And has the pandemic only exacerbated the situation, making our fellow man even more sinister-looking beyond that metre and a half, behind their masks, behind their windows and doors?
Edgy people are getting edgier. Those not used to courtesies and self-sacrifice are finding an end to their patience. They stalk the streets and host vengeance-on-the-world parties. Ideologues have had time to dig their trenches. Behind their lines, they scribble pages of new twists on old paranoia.
“Men exist for each other,” Aurelius writes, in one of his blunter formulae. “Then either improve them or put up with them.” It’s a sentiment he returns to repeatedly, and you feel the depth of the challenge. We don’t know much about the emperor’s social life. He may well have been an amiable gent and a gregarious host. But the essential friction among people affects extroverts as much as introverts. Even the cheeriest garden party only allays our tensions for a minute.
That said, the landscapes that I glimpse through his prose are lonely ones, not unlike the recent photos on Facebook posted to illustrate the lonely feeling of social distancing. “It’s a lonely job,” the cliché tells us, being at the top. Holding all the power, in a position that comes with godhood, might isolate a person. He talked himself through his trials, drawing on the wisdom of his teachers from the past, the philosophers. These pep talks are his Meditations.
How many are writing their Meditations in these lonely times? What ratio would describe the Meditations being written compared to the treatises of raging propaganda?
The Lonely God
Someone on Facebook has warned me to beware any vaccine they develop for the coronavirus. It’s part of a plot on the part of Bill Gates to wipe out a portion of humanity. It wasn’t clear what Gates’s reasons might be for that; and it didn’t seem to matter much. Guys like Gates have evil agendas. They eradicate people like weeds. They take guns away, like ice cream from babies, just to watch children cry.
I shouldn’t find it funny, but I do. Isn’t it wonderful that fans of the Avengers find adventures in the headlines, that they should see Thanos in the spindly figure of Bill Gates? The human imagination is dazzling.
Who are we to each other? I think the pandemic has offered opportunities to take stock, look at society and our fellow humans with a new eye. In general, has it made us appreciate each other a litte more? Does absence make the heart grow fonder? Or was alienation already a cancer in the body of post-modern societies? And has the pandemic only exacerbated the situation, making our fellow man even more sinister-looking beyond that metre and a half, behind their masks, behind their windows and doors?
Edgy people are getting edgier. Those not used to courtesies and self-sacrifice are finding an end to their patience. They stalk the streets and host vengeance-on-the-world parties. Ideologues have had time to dig their trenches. Behind their lines, they scribble pages of new twists on old paranoia.
“Men exist for each other,” Aurelius writes, in one of his blunter formulae. “Then either improve them or put up with them.” It’s a sentiment he returns to repeatedly, and you feel the depth of the challenge. We don’t know much about the emperor’s social life. He may well have been an amiable gent and a gregarious host. But the essential friction among people affects extroverts as much as introverts. Even the cheeriest garden party only allays our tensions for a minute.
That said, the landscapes that I glimpse through his prose are lonely ones, not unlike the recent photos on Facebook posted to illustrate the lonely feeling of social distancing. “It’s a lonely job,” the cliché tells us, being at the top. Holding all the power, in a position that comes with godhood, might isolate a person. He talked himself through his trials, drawing on the wisdom of his teachers from the past, the philosophers. These pep talks are his Meditations.
How many are writing their Meditations in these lonely times? What ratio would describe the Meditations being written compared to the treatises of raging propaganda?
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