For some reason I’ve thought often, over the last year, of Michael Jackson. He was so controversial that I was reluctant to post any of my thoughts—so this has been living on my hard drive for nearly six months.
I wish I’d posted it before; but it’s still—it's more than—appropriate now. _________________________________________
One of the few things that makes me feel the true generation gap between myself and my younger friends is their attitude towards Michael Jackson.
He’s an object of fun in the press now. A “freak”, deeply disturbed, with an appearance that gets less human with every appearance in the public eye.
But to my generation, and even those before? Also a legend. A titan. A glorious, glorious star.
Michael Jackson changed American music—and culture—forever. I will always love his music. No revelation of freakish personal habits or psychological imbalances will change that. He is extraordinary, a force to be reckoned with in this or any other time period, and he most certainly ranks in the top ten musical artists of the 21st century, if not the top five.
I’ve said this to younger friends, and have gotten an uncomfortable shrug or the verbal equivalent thereof, followed immediately by a “But…”
But nothing.
I was 8 when Thriller came out. No-one not remembering it can understand the extent, duration, and depth of the utter frenzy he induced with that album. No one had ever seen anything like him before—the way he moved, the way he sang. It was magic, a sorcerer’s spell he cast over the entire world.
There were replicas of that silver-glittering glove in every store—and not just in children’s sizes. Penny loafers flew off the shelves; pant hems shortened dramatically. If you watched MTV for an hour, you’d see one of his videos—depending on the time of day, perhaps more than one. Hordes of women of every age bought his albums in multiples, screamed and cried at his concerts, fought over the tickets. Posters of him were plastered in bedrooms and living rooms and offices and street corners. He met with President Reagan. Gang members wore imitations of his coats. He was everywhere.
And he deserved it.
Deserved it in the same way Frank Sinatra deserved it; the same way the Beatles or Elvis Presley deserved it. He was a phenomenon not just because he was new but because he was brilliant: a superbly gifted entertainer. No one who watched him came away unimpressed; classical musicians, hard-rock artists. His supremacy was undeniable.
And those are my subjective impressions. The facts, if possible, are even more stunning. Thriller sold a million albums a week while it topped the charts. Released nearly 30 years ago, and leading the advent of MTV as a primary marketing vehicle for music as well as most major mass-marketing techniques now in use, it remains the best-selling album of all time.
No wonder the New York Times said, two years after Thriller’s release, that “in the world of pop music, there is Michael Jackson and there is everybody else.”
I defy you to name one pop artist since him of whom that could be said. Just one.
And he didn’t stop. While no album afterward reached the mind-bending success of Thriller (and no album, his or otherwise, ever will), Michael Jackson won a “Living Legend Award” Grammy after Dangerous. Only 15 have ever been awarded; he shares it with figures such as Frank Sinatra, Aretha Franklin, Luciano Pavarotti, and Johnny Cash. He was 35, and he remains the youngest artist to whom it’s been granted. He. Is. A. Legend. For. A. Reason.
There’s a reason he’s still referred to in the industry as the King of Pop. A reason he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice. A reason he holds the Guinness World Record as “Most Successful Entertainer of All Time.”
Do you understand? The unhinged man you see in the tabloids, on the news—to those of you who didn’t live through his successes, that’s all he is.
But it isn’t all of him. Nowhere close. And it is because he is also a giant, a colossus, that the depth of the footprint he’s left on our music, our culture, our lives, is one that even his own psychoses cannot fill in.
His work, and talent, are magnificent, and nothing and no-one—not even himself—can ever take that away. __________________________
Postscript: I can’t believe, really, that he’s gone. It feels personal. It is personal. Because some people, though far away and personally unknowable, change our world so much that they change our lives forever as well.
He was one. One of the big ones. I wish he hadn’t been (I had to correct that from ‘weren’t’; I really don’t believe it, you see) so deranged. I wish he had gotten the help he needed. I wish he’d made more music.
Luke Valiquette committed suicide this past Wednesday.
I knew him in high school, sort of. Short, quiet, kind.
And so very, very talented.
Paul told me of his death, and it was Paul who sent me lyrics from “Sailmaker”—the song which won the first talent show Luke entered, in his junior year of high school:
He said, “Son this great sailmaker's Gonna hang it up one day...” Daddy is my sailmaker and mommy is the wind. My brothers in arms could never do harm To the sails that we mend…
Him and his guitar and a microphone, his glasses glinting in the stage lights: it was all he needed to blow everyone else—myself included—out of the water. Eighteen years later, I can still sing the chorus.
Every death steals something from the world. Twice before I’ve written of Millay’s “Dirge Without Music”:
Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you. Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust. A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew, A formula, a phrase remains,—but the best is lost.
For me Luke’s formula is a simple, loving tribute, honed by a talent that seemed too big for his body. His phrase is a four-note refrain, sweet and true and haunting. Daddy is my sailmaker and mommy is the wind…
His sail has vanished over the horizon.
But whatever darkness drove him there, whatever tempest he battled, anyone who knew him or his music holds the melody to which he gentled the thunder.
Make no mistake: I value clarity of conscience, compassion, kindness.
But the traditional idea of innocence—simplicity, inexperience, naiveté—leaves me cold.
Perhaps it’s because of the fact that I love fairytales, and I know that the ‘fairytale’ idea of innocence so often purveyed has nothing to do with the true, the original fairy tales. Honor was valued, yes, and virtue, but they did not have to do with lack of experience; they were active principles. Cendrillon devised her own dresses and a way to get to the ball. Gretel murdered the witch and saved her brother with a cunning trick.
In the black forests of the Brothers Grimm, the innocent were food—mere fodder and inspiration for the great deeds of more knowing heroes.
My love for myth and mythology has something to do with it too. My favorite hero—the Greeks’ favorite hero—was not Herakles, the strongman, or Theseus, the cold and valorous prince. It was Odysseus, the clever and cunning, wily and deceitful, lusty and devious king. The man who thought the Trojan War was a fool’s errand, but won it for the Greeks. The man who from exile and repeated defeats schemed his way back to his kingdom.
The epitome of knowledge, Odysseus, his journey a long sharpening of wisdom that shaped him as surely as it strengthened him.
Knowledge is power. The Greek word επστσθα, epistesthai, from which we derive epistemology, “the theory of knowledge”: it is to “know how to do, understand”. It is, literally, “to stand over”: epi, “above”, and histasthai, “to stand”.
To know is to stand above. The subsequent inversion of the term in English, “understand”, is one of those piquant etymological ironies. But it too has its—inflections.
This train of thought pulled in because I stumbled across the titular phrase in a story, translated in the same work as “hell calls to hell” or “error calls to error”.
Ah, no.
Abyssus abyssum invocat: Deep calls to deep.
The phrase is from Psalm 41:8 in the Vulgate (the Latin Bible): “Abyssus abyssum invocat in voce cataractarum tuarum; omnes gurgites tui et fluctus tui super me transierunt…” Deep calls to deep in the voice of your torrents, and the swells of your waves have washed over me. It is an entreaty from beside the rivers of Mt.Hermon, in the far northern reaches of the Israelites’ kingdom.
The cresting rush of knowledge does have a way of knocking one under. But unlike water, humans can swim in knowledge as surely as in its lack. And one can, in submersion, become a breathing part of the deeps.
Knowledge calls to knowledge, river to river, ocean to ocean.
It's been a long time since I've posted anything here, and because of my current scholastic responsibilities and personal writing projects the drought is likely to continue for some time. But as I was clearing out my email I stumbled across this class assignment, and after some consideration have decided to share it.
It is a 'statement of personal values', written for a class on legal ethics, and while rough (the essay remains as I wrote and submitted it to Professor Rudasill...3 hours before it was due) it is nonetheless a very good encapsulation of several of the most important things about me. Though not 'personal' in the conventional sense, most of them are not things I normally share.
Read it if you wish. It is, at the very least, informative on one subject: me. _________________________________
Sumi Rebeiro Personal Statement Legal Profession 1/15/08
My personal values and beliefs. Hmmm.
That’s a sticky wicket, partially because I reject most conventional systems of values despite having been influenced by them earlier in my life, and partially because the word “values” in this country has turned into a loaded term which conveys a near-demand for some religious sentiment.
Nonetheless, the account of which source or sources yield my personal ethos demands a brief recounting of certain aspects of my personal history. To wit: I was raised as a staunch Roman Catholic—Catholic schooling, lector at Mass, the works—and for my mother and the pastor of my church, that included a great deal of volunteer work, all of it targeted towards social justice.
As Mom told my brothers and I repeatedly, “You are your brother’s keeper.”
To that end, I’ve been working in soup kitchens and babysitting for single mothers and running food drives and working at shelters for battered women and writing letters for Amnesty International and so on and so forth, ad infinitum, since I was 12 years old.
That same mother, however, also told me when I came to her with questions about the Baltimore Catechism when I was 11, “God gave you a brain. No matter what the nuns say, you should use it.”
In great part because of both these admonitions, when I was 18 I went off to college determined to understand why it is that human beings do such terrible things to each other, and to that end majored in Political Science and minored in Psychology. Unfortunately for me, I got exactly what I wanted. (Professor Beres, a brilliant man who advises the Israeli High Council on international law, who “read” my senior thesis, and with whom I argued through two years of classes, once looked at my transcript and asked me incredulously if I was “majoring in atrocity”.) Put briefly, my studies in politics, psychology, and history utterly destroyed the religious faith which had previously helped to shape my views of the world.
My studies also reinforced, however, my conviction that personal responsibility for the world around us is a fundamental characteristic of a responsible human being, that human effort could and does improve the world, and that compassion for others is a hallmark of the human psyche—the flip side of the terrible insecurity and insular aggression we display. International law and history, along with the dreadful realities of the depths of human capacity, confirmed these shining and irreproachable truths.
And so I embarked on a view of the world at once more bleak and more complex than any I had known before.
My in-depth study of science, undertaken once I had reached adulthood, confirmed to me that there are other articles of faith for me, most based around the authenticity of verifiable observation and the ability of human beings to know things about the universe. It did not reshape the content of my ethics towards other human beings, but it did shape the way I parse information and the standards of veracity to which I hold opinion and knowledge.
‘Values’ and ‘beliefs’ may be verifiable or nonverifiable, empirically based or faith-based. Since I was sixteen, I’ve said that everyone has a religion—a way in which they explain the universe to themselves, a way in which they bring the world together into a coherent whole. For most people, this process stops at a young age—analogous to those who, in putting together a puzzle, find a way the pieces fit together to make an understandable picture, and conclude that the puzzle is finished, disregarding any extra pieces which later fall into their hands.
There are also those who, in receiving those extra pieces, try to fit them into the puzzle—even if it means disassembling some of it entirely and finding new places for pieces whose location they’d thought certain.
I try very hard to be one of those people. I don’t always succeed—but life is an exercise which demands perseverance.
Everyone also has articles of faith—beliefs which are difficult to logically justify, but which they nonetheless hold to be true. Some of my beliefs on the value of science, the worthiness of striving for justice, and the incontrovertible personal responsibility that human beings bear for the world around them derive from these articles of faith.
•I believe that human beings, through observation, can learn facts about the world around them. •I believe that the only changes which occur in the world, especially in human lives, are brought about through the actions of forces of nature or of other human beings. •I believe the scientific method of observation, testing, and disproving is the best method for learning about the world around us. •I believe human beings’ characters should be judged on their actions towards other people, not their professed beliefs, their skin color, their sex, their sexual preferences, or anything else. •I believe that every person has the ability to be both extraordinarily creative and extraordinarily destructive. •I believe that justice for the human race as a whole, though an artificial construct that has no real place in our evolutionary biology, is a worthy invention and deserving of fierce defense. •I believe that small actions, whether of caring or unconcern, have wide-reaching effects on the lives of both those around us and those we may never meet. •I believe that human love and hate are as active and effective on human lives as gravity or electromagnetism.
I try very hard indeed to make sure that my treatment of the people around me—including colleagues, professors, patients, administrators—reflects at the very least courtesy and basic respect for them as people.
My beliefs guide—have guided—both my choice of career as physician and my ongoing desire to affect the policies which most affect those with the least power to change them.
As far as tests are concerned, I’ve encountered many already. As someone who has worked and volunteered for well over 2/3 of my life, I’ve encountered thorny ethical dilemmas to which there is no good solution—only a choice between worse and worst. In those situations I do the best I can: I try to hurt the fewest number of people while keeping to the promises I’ve made.
I try my best, in other words, to be honorable.
I don’t always succeed. But the Chinese say that “the glory is not in never failing, but in rising each time you fail.”
That isn’t an article of faith for me. But I still hope it’s true.
So yeah, I took the text of this blog post down. I don't often do that, but in this case I had always planned that it be temporary.
It's rare that I post things that I don't want associated with my name. But honest opinions are one thing; me gratuitously cussing at a group of spectacular idiots is another.
Oh, sure, it's commentary. But it's not the kind of commentary that I find legitimate when others do it- why would I make it a permanent part of mine?
So it was a glimpse into the equally concerned, but somewhat less rational and logical side of my brain. It does exist, you know- as some of the folks reading this post have experienced, quite possibly to their rue.
Hope ya'll enjoyed it, at least a little. I certainly enjoyed the change of pace.
A friend wrote a blog the day after the election, a blog expressing his hurt and anger and disillusionment and near-despair at the passage of Prop 8 on the very same day on which we elected Barack Obama.
I commented on it at the time, expressing both sympathy and anger and my hope for change, but, I think now, in a somewhat shallow manner. I've had a little bit more time to think about what he said.
As a dark-skinned person growing up in the South, I experienced a level of unreasoning hatred and bigotry—especially as a young child—that very few people know about, because my family and I simply don't discuss it with our friends.
First, because we don’t want it to affect how we think of ourselves or others think of us. We are no-one’s victims. And second, because we know perfectly well that anything that happens to us is mild in comparison to what routinely happens to others—to black men and women—around us.
I may blog about it someday, but for now suffice it to say that, though it faded somewhat for me as I grew up—I still have to be aware of it every day, and it affects how I dress and behave in many public situations—I’ve had to watch my brothers endure treatment that (still) infuriates me no matter who experiences it...much less my beloved little brothers.
And so I thought about my friend’s feelings in that context—about how I'd feel if the situations were reversed.
And I sympathize with him nearly entirely.
I'd be mildly encouraged by others’ success, sure, but for the most part I'd be furious, and hurt, and betrayed—dispirited and disheartened and...well, wounded. What I'd say would be bitter and as wildly inflammatory as my post on Obama's victory was wildly hopeful. The feelings of disenfranchisement and marginalization I’ve felt over the past 8 years would intensify—moved me further away from identification with this country and towards depression at how it'd devolved from the extraordinary accomplishments of those who founded it.
I'd think, as he does, that living here isn't enough of a reason to believe that America can hold to its ideological heritage.
The part on which I think (of course I can't be sure) that I'd disagree is the part where I'd lose all hope of justice. I might not hope in America—not necessarily. But I’d still hope in the idea that people can act on ideals that we consider to be American, whether America fully embraces them or not.
I've always believed, you see, in incrementalism. A large part of that is my study of science—humanity assimilates ideas much more slowly than it discovers them. Microscopic organisms? Okay. And 150 years later, 50 years after it's noticed that they hang around people with diseases much more than normal people, a short French guy manages to break through the thousand-year-old beliefs that disease is caused at random, or by an inherent flaw, or by a deity.
And hey presto, a vaccine for rabies.
It’s not just our view of the world, though. It’s our view of each other too.
We’re at our most dense, afraid, and resistant when it comes to looking at and recognizing each other as equals. But still, that sort of gradual awakening has happened over and over.
Humans equal under the law?
Okay. We’ll start with members of the nobility. Male, of course. White goes without saying. But they still have rights that even the king can’t overrule.
Then landowners—still male, because women can't own property—have rights under the law.
Then women can own property, even though they're still too dumb and too emotional to vote.
Then comes the idea that all dark-skinned people, all slaves, are human and not animals. Not objects. Not equal—not that. But human.
Then slaves—because they’re human, and humans shouldn’t be property—are free men.
The former slaves have “equal rights under the law”.
Then former slaves are citizens.
Then it’s illegal to keep anyone from voting because of the color of his skin.
Then women can vote.
Then dark-skinned soldiers can fight with white soldiers—not just be led by them.
Then black kids and white kids can go to school together, because keeping them apart is a mockery of equality.
Then it’s illegal to hire or refuse to hire someone because of his or her race or sex.
Then it’s illegal to hire or fire someone from the federal civil service because of his or her sexual orientation.
Then laws enacted or enforced just to ban homosexual sex are unconstitutional.
Tiny steps, all of them. In context, “baby steps” isn’t too much of an exaggeration. It’s the incrementalism that all evolution shows—small, nearly undetectable changes, culminating in a change so apparent that it’s visibly and unmistakably transformative.
And in all cases but a few, the passing of the law or judgment in a court case follows decades of shift in attitude amongst the general population, so that the legal right, when it’s gained, is a legal acknowledgment of a right already considered legitimate by the majority of the population.
But every now and then, there’s an incredible shift, a surge forward, a societal demonstration of the inimitable Stephen Jay Gould’s theory of punctuated equilibrium—of the idea that evolution progresses in tiny steps and then, every once in a while, a giant leap.
Leaps like the declaration of Lord Mansfield in Knowles ex parte Somersett in 1772 that slavery “is so odious that nothing can be suffered to support it but positive law”, like the Emancipation Proclamation—both of which preceded by decades national acceptance of their premises. As did SCOTUS’ declaration in Brown v. Board that “separate institutions are inherently unequal”.
All of which is a very lengthy way of saying that we’re capable of another such leap.
That we’re long, long overdue, but still capable.
And now, with the Supreme Court of California agreeing to hear the Prop. 8 cases, we’re ready for and hopefully nearing it.
The people in California who want to be the arbiters of others’ beds, hearts and lives have spoken. But they’re not all of us. And their bigotry and insularity and their small minds are not ours.
And if the Supreme Court of California fails to do the right thing—to take the leap, to bring those who are held back forward until we can walk beside each other, to drag the California kin of those who howled at Somersett and Brown along with the rest of us on our journey—still we are capable of making the change.
We are capable of ensuring that the demeaning and devaluing of human love do not persist.
We are capable of making certain that the cold fiats of blind bigotry do not overwhelm the small flames of honest joy.
We are capable of guarding the rights of others’ hearts and lives as carefully as our own.
There IS a point to this, and in a day or so you’ll see what it is.
It came about because I was troubled by and thinking about something one of my oldest friends said. And since research is my reflexive response to nearly any form of brain activity, I did some research.
I looked for a chronological progression of major groups’ human rights under law—and couldn’t find any. They were fragmented into a dozen different lists.
So I bloody well made my own.
It isn’t comprehensive, but I intend to keep updating and expanding it.
Those rights for which I could find listings or information are here. Each right is listed only once (not once per country).
Only the entire country first granting national rights that it did not later revoke is listed (states and territories are not).
References to the actual documentary or proclamatory grant of right are only listed where I could confirm them.
Human Equality Under the Law
1215 AD. England. Male members of the nobility have rights that even the king can’t overrule. (Magna Carta.)
1275 AD. England. All male landowners—women can't own property—have rights under the law. (Statute of Westminster 1275.)
1772. England. Slavery is illegal. (It is "so odious that nothing can be suffered to support it but positive law."—Lord Mansfield, R. v. Knowles, ex parte Somersett, Court of King's Bench.)
1776. France. Women can be admitted to trade guilds.
1788. France. Widows of noblemen are allowed to vote, without a male guardian’s presence, in the Assembly of the Estates.
1791. France. Homosexual sexual activity between consenting adults is legal. (French Penal Code of 1791.)
1833. Britain. Slavery and the slave trade are criminal. (Slavery Abolition Act, 3&4 Gulielmi IV, cap. LXXIII.)
1839. Britain. Mothers can be the guardians of their children after a divorce. (Custody of Infants Act 1839.)
1859. Canada. Married women can own property in their own names.
1863. United States. The military service of former slaves and free men of color is acknowledged and formalized. (A separate Army department for “Colored Troops” is formed.)
1868. United States. Women are allowed to study if they wish to and if a school will admit them. 1868. United States. All persons born in the US, including freed slaves and people of color, are citizens. (Fourteenth Amendment.) 1868. United States. All citizens have the right to due process and equal protection of the laws. (Fourteenth Amendment.)
1869. Britain. Unmarried women may vote in local elections.
1870. Britain. Unmarried women can attain legal majority (legal recognition of adulthood—of control over body, decisions, and actions).
1870. United States. Male citizens are eligible to vote regardless of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude”. (Fifteenth Amendment.)
1874. France. An all-female workers union is acknowledged.
1878. Britain. A woman can cite abuse as grounds for a divorce.
1880. United States. It’s a violation of Equal Protection to exclude black men and women from juries. (Strauder v. West Virginia.)
1882. Britain. Married women can have independent property and legal majority. (Married Women's Property Act 1882.) 1882. France. Women and men both have a right to elementary school.
1884. Canada. Married women have control over their own property.
1894. Britain. Married women can vote in local elections.
1896. United States. Women can be admitted to the bar.
1919. Britain. Women can’t be barred from any profession, post, or civil office on the grounds of sex. (Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919.)
1920. United States. Women have the same voting rights as men. (Nineteenth Amendment.)
1935.United States. All subjects taught at state universities and professional schools must be available to all students. (Murray v. Pearson.)
1941. United States. All employees of defense contractors are entitled to equal treatment and training. (FDR, Executive Order 8802, the Fair Employment Act.)
1942. United States. Depriving a person of the right to marry a person of the same skin color and opposite sex is unconstitutional. (Skinner v. Oklahoma.)
1944. United States. All registered party members are entitled to vote in party primaries, regardless of skin color. (Smith vs. Allwright.)
1948. United States. Conditions of land use that restrict land ownership or tenancy by race are unconstitutional. (Shelley v. Kraemer.)
1951. United States. The US Army begins racial desegregation.
1954. United States. Laws which enforce racial segregation are a violation of Equal Protection. (Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kans.) 1954. United States. Equal protection extends to all racial classifications, including those not “Black” or “White”. (Hernandez v. Texas.)
1964. United States. Racial or sexual segregation in employment, education, government or housing, and on public property, is illegal. (Civil Rights Law of 1964.)
1967. United States. Depriving a person of the right to marry on the basis of the skin color of the chosen partners is unconstitutional. (Loving v. Virginia.)
1969. United States. Native Americans are protected under the Bill of Rights. (Indian Civil Rights Act.) 1969. United States. States can’t assume jurisdiction over Native American land. (Indian Civil Rights Act.)
1973. United States. People can’t be institutionalized based on sexual preference. (The entry on homosexuality as a psychiatric disorder is removed from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual.)
1982. France. The age of consent for homosexual and heterosexual sexual activity is the same.
1983. United States. Private schools with racially discriminatory admissions policies are not tax-exempt. (IRS Revenue Ruling 71-447.)
1985. France. It’s illegal to deny employment or services based on sexual orientation.
1988. United States. Recipients of federal funds must comply with civil rights laws in all areas, not just in the particular program or activity that received federal funding. (Civil Rights Restoration Act.)
1994. Canada. Asylum is granted to homosexuals fearing for their safety in their home countries. 1994. United States. Programs aimed at “converting” GLBT men and women lose medical backing. (The American Medical Association denounces therapies “based upon the a priori assumption that the patient should change his/her homosexual orientation.”) 1994. United States. Heavier sentences mandated in convictions resulting from federal prosecution of hate crimes committed on the basis of a person's race, color, religion, or nation origin when engaging in a federally protected activity. (USC: Title 28 §994.)
1997. Britain. Same-sex couples have the same immigration rights as opposite-sex couples.
1999. France. Same-sex couples can have recognized civil unions.
2000. Britain. Openly gay individuals are no longer banned from serving in the armed forces.
2003. United States. Laws enacted or enforced just to ban homosexual sex are unconstitutional. (Lawrence v. Texas.)
2005. Canada. Same-sex marriages are legally recognized. 2005. Canada. Same-sex couples’ adoptions are legally recognized.
I have something to say on the subject of Hillary Clinton.
And it’s too bad that Dave’s in the “out of love” phase of his revolving-door romance with Facebook, and that Bill has steadily resisted its allure. Because they’d be able to confirm that what I say here is what I’ve said over the past two years, as the campaigns of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton evolved.
Obama, as I’ve said, has had my support since he finished his speech at the convention in 2004. I’ve never wavered from that conviction.
Nonetheless, I was troubled by much of the venom spewed towards Hillary by my fellow Obama supporters during the primary—and indeed, during the campaign. First and foremost, because being pissed off and vituperative at the other guy’s antics has never been what Obama represents. But also because, though some of that spite was deserved—she ran a needlessly long and strident campaign—the resentment was exaggerated.
I felt, and said, that some of the acrimony was gender-based. Clinton was a jerk, but that’s SOP, especially in presidential primaries and campaigns—pure spite is a tradition as well-established in American political history as folksy rhetoric. For example, in one rather famous 19th-century presidential campaign, a candidate was described by his opponent as “a mean-spirited, low-lived fellow, the son of a half-breed squaw, sired by a Virginia mulatto father”.
The camp that issued that statement? John Adams’—about Thomas Jefferson.
Barack Obama’s different from other politicians not because they're especially mean and nasty about him (though Palin, as I’ve said before, dug straight through the bottom of the barrel), but because he avoids being mean and nasty in return as much as is humanly possible.
So when Clinton gave her concession speech, I found it both admirable and well-phrased. And I said to Bill the next day, “He should choose her for VP.”
Bill was horrified, as were the fellow Obama supporters to whom I said the same thing at the law school. VP? After that campaign? She was horrible, damn near evil, and she’d slammed Obama too much for it to work even if he did it.
I maintained that they’d be a dream team, a team with the kind of potent brainpower and imposing, intimidating, overwhelming talent that blessed Augustus, Marc Antony, and Lepidus.
Obama chose Joe Biden—a choice I could happily back—and I told Bill the next day, over burgers at Steak n’ Shake, that Obama should choose Clinton as his Secretary of State.
Again, Bill was aghast. Did I remember some of the things she’d said?
I cut him off with three words: Team of Rivals.
For those unfamiliar with the phrase, it’s the title of Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Pulitzer-Prize-winning chronicle of Lincoln’s Cabinet—a Cabinet composed of all his major rivals for the Republican nomination.
Sound familiar?
Lincoln, my worship of whom (yes, worship; ask Dave about the look on my face as we stood in the Lincoln Memorial on the 4th) would demand tens of essays to contain, was brilliant enough to realize that the people most qualified to advise him on national affairs were those who, like he, aspired to run the country.
And he was dedicated enough to his country’s health and success, and confident enough in his capacity to meet the challenges such appointments would bring, to act on that realization.
I’ve long said—only Bill, to my knowledge, has said it for longer—that Obama, in terms of the quality of his governance, truly has the ability to be the next Lincoln. And that holds true for Obama’s Cabinet appointments: he has the requisite brilliance, the strength of will and force of personality, to both realize the same thing Lincoln did and to put that realization to work.
Hillary Clinton would be a fantastic Secretary of State. Period. She’d be fantastic for the same reason that she’d be a formidable lieutenant in anything: when Hillary Clinton walks into a room, everyone in it sits up.
Secretaries of State are most often diplomats and, in fact if not in appearance, negotiators—and both on a global scale. Scalpel-sharp statecraft is their stock in trade. The people on the other side of the table from Clinton know she’s walked into the room to do business, and that behind the gracious smile and perfect composure are both a calculating intellect and every fact, figure and authority on the subject they’re there to discuss.
She’s a force to be reckoned with—one who’ll do everything that needs to be done to achieve the purpose for which she walked into the room—and everyone in the world knows it.
Obama is a man of both vision and logic. He has the wit to recognize that those with that kind of relentless faculty, that kind of powerful capability—even, and maybe especially, if they think differently than he does and have the spine to tell him so—are people who will serve he, his Cabinet, and his country best.
To quote: “I will listen to you, especially when we disagree. And above all, I will ask you to join in the work of remaking this nation…”
Barack Obama has always said that we need to work together, and has always behaved as he asks us to behave. Always.
And he’s always applied his mind to a problem, found the best possible solution, and held to it—even if others found it outrageous.
I watched the Rachel Maddow show with my mom and brother tonight (they're two of the approximately five people on earth who can actually get me to watch a TV show from start to finish). I was surprised (because I generally hold TV "news" in contempt for the extraordinarily limited amount of information it provides) to find that I enjoyed Ms. Maddow's commentary. She's whip-smart, wry, winning—and has a sharp eye for the absurd.
There was one thing she said tonight that irritated me, however (though again, unlike other news personalities, it was the only dumb thing that came out of her mouth during the entire hour).
She was talking about "leaks" from the Obama camp, and she repeatedly used the word "recant" to describe his official statements correcting the reports of the leaked [dis]information.
Foul. (And two foul shots.)
The statements issued by Obama cannot be described as "recanting". Here's why.
Per the American Heritage Dictionary:
leak v.intr. 3. [Informal] To become publicly known through a breach of secrecy: The news has leaked. v.tr. 2. [Informal] To disclose without authorization or official sanction: leaked classified information to a reporter.
recant v.tr. To make a formal retraction or disavowal of (a statement or belief to which one has previously committed oneself). v.intr. To make a formal retraction or disavowal of a previously held statement or belief.
Don't hurl words like "recant" about. The word is by both definition and context pejorative—an admission of error, often interpreted as admission of a lie (a witness recanting his/her testimony). Terming the corrections "recanting" connotes that the "leaks" were in fact authorized and intentional.
If that's what Ms. Maddow intended (she most certainly has the verbal facility to imply that or anything else she wishes), I'm offended. Since when has Obama been coy about enunciating his views and intentions?
If she didn't intend that, I'm irritated. (Though again, almost as much because of Ms. Maddow's extraordinary charm and dexterity in every other minute of the broadcast as because of the implied slur.)
To recant a statement is to disavow a statement to which one has committed oneself. Only the party making a statement may recant it.
A leak is an unauthorized statement, i.e., a statement which a party does not want to—and barring multiple personality disorder, does not—make or commit to.
If a party does not make or commit to a statement, it cannot recant that statement.
To review:
If recanting is a formal disavowal of a statement one has made and committed to
And Obama did not make or commit to the statements he later disavowed
Why I, who admire Machiavelli and am skeptical of all human political systems, all hegemonies, am here in Parma, OH working 17-hour days for an American candidate.
I can say it no better than the LA Times, a paper that has never, in its 126 years, endorsed a Democrat for president. __________________________
___
Barack Obama for president He is the competent, confident leader who represents the aspirations of the nation.
October 19, 2008
It is inherent in the American character to aspire to greatness, so it can be disorienting when the nation stumbles or loses confidence in bedrock principles or institutions. That's where the United States is as it prepares to select a new president: We have seen the government take a stake in venerable private financial houses; we have witnessed eight years of executive branch power grabs and erosion of civil liberties; we are still recovering from a murderous attack by terrorists on our own soil and still struggling with how best to prevent a recurrence.
We need a leader who demonstrates thoughtful calm and grace under pressure, one not prone to volatile gesture or capricious pronouncement. We need a leader well-grounded in the intellectual and legal foundations of American freedom. Yet we ask that the same person also possess the spark and passion to inspire the best within us: creativity, generosity and a fierce defense of justice and liberty.
The Times without hesitation endorses Barack Obama for president.
Our nation has never before had a candidate like Obama, a man born in the 1960s, of black African and white heritage, raised and educated abroad as well as in the United States, and bringing with him a personal narrative that encompasses much of the American story but that, until now, has been reflected in little of its elected leadership. The excitement of Obama's early campaign was amplified by that newness. But as the presidential race draws to its conclusion, it is Obama's character and temperament that come to the fore. It is his steadiness. His maturity.
These are qualities American leadership has sorely lacked for close to a decade. The Constitution, more than two centuries old, now offers the world one of its more mature and certainly most stable governments, but our political culture is still struggling to shake off a brash and unseemly adolescence. In George W. Bush, the executive branch turned its back on an adult role in the nation and the world and retreated into self-absorbed unilateralism.
John McCain distinguished himself through much of the Bush presidency by speaking out against reckless and self-defeating policies. He earned The Times' respect, and our endorsement in the California Republican primary, for his denunciation of torture, his readiness to close the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and his willingness to buck his party on issues such as immigration reform. But the man known for his sense of honor and consistency has since announced that he wouldn't vote for his own immigration bill, and he redefined "torture" in such a disingenuous way as to nearly embrace what he once abhorred.
Indeed, the presidential campaign has rendered McCain nearly unrecognizable. His selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate was, as a short-term political tactic, brilliant. It was also irresponsible, as Palin is the most unqualified vice presidential nominee of a major party in living memory. The decision calls into question just what kind of thinking -- if that's the appropriate word -- would drive the White House in a McCain presidency. Fortunately, the public has shown more discernment, and the early enthusiasm for Palin has given way to national ridicule of her candidacy and McCain's judgment.
Obama's selection also was telling. He might have scored a steeper bump in the polls by making a more dramatic choice than the capable and experienced Joe Biden. But for all the excitement of his own candidacy, Obama has offered more competence than drama.
He is no lone rider. He is a consensus-builder, a leader. As a constitutional scholar, he has articulated a respect for the rule of law and the limited power of the executive that make him the best hope of restoring balance and process to the Justice Department. He is a Democrat, leaning further left than right, and that should be reflected in his nominees to the U.S. Supreme Court. This is a good thing; the court operates best when it is ideologically balanced. With its present alignment at seven justices named by Republicans and two by Democrats, it is due for a tug from the left.
We are not sanguine about Obama's economic policies. He speaks with populist sweep about taxing oil companies to give middle-class families rebates that of course they would welcome, but would be far too small to stimulate the economy. His ideas on taxation do not stray far from those put forward by Democrats over the last several decades. His response to the most recent, and drastic, fallout of the sub- prime mortgage meltdown has been appropriately cautious; this is uncharted territory, and Obama is not a master of economic theory or practice.
And that's fine. Obama inspires confidence not so much in his grasp of Wall Street finance but in his acknowledgment of and comfort with his lack of expertise. He will not be one to forge far-reaching economic policy without sounding out the best thinkers and practitioners, and he has many at his disposal. He has won the backing of some on Wall Street not because he's one of them but because they recognize his talent for extracting from a broad range of proposals a coherent and workable program.
On paper, McCain presents the type of economic program The Times has repeatedly backed: One that would ease the tax burden on business and other high earners most likely to invest in the economy and hire new workers. But he has been disturbingly unfocused in his response to the current financial situation, rushing to "suspend" his campaign and take action (although just what action never became clear). Having little to contribute, he instead chose to exploit the crisis.
We may one day look back on this presidential campaign in wonder. We may marvel that Obama's critics called him an elitist, as if an Ivy League education were a source of embarrassment, and belittled his eloquence, as if a gift with words were suddenly a defect. In fact, Obama is educated and eloquent, sober and exciting, steady and mature. He represents the nation as it is, and as it aspires to be.
It occurred to me, somewhat belatedly (but luckily, before I posted it), that I should probably wait till I'm not working for Senator Obama's campaign (i.e., till after the election) to post the essay I wrote on Senator McCain and Governor Palin. Essentially, it's a challenge of Senator McCain to single combat- to avenge the grave insult the honor of all womankind has suffered at his choice of Governor Palin as an exemplar of womanly accomplishment. (That's rather a mild description. The substance, however, is accurate.)
I think, however, that there's little harm in what I'm writing today.
I used to respect John McCain. No, really.
He and I disagree about 97% of damn near anything you can name. I think he'd make a horrible president- besides his views, which I consider to be (and which, economically, are working out to be) ruinous. I think his intellectual/emotional makeup, as evidenced by his personal behavior and his political career, is more suited to commanding a small, elite company than to being a general or a Commander-in-Chief.
Nonetheless, his behavior until eight years ago was largely that of a man of integrity- one who acted consistently, according to his views, and who spoke up firmly and audibly on the rare occasion when a colleague said or did something with which he disagreed.
Even though he wasn't my candidate, or even from my favored party, I was furious at the insults Bush threw his way in 2000- and not just because Rove all but used the word 'miscegenation' (or even because hearing the word 'Rove' causes me mild nausea). I was furious because those statements were lies from start to finish, and because they took the best of the dignity and ideals of someone who tried to live by them and trod them into the dirt. McCain didn't deserve that kind of abuse.
When he stood beside Bush in 2004, a lot of my respect for McCain's integrity vanished. But I still thought he might have retained some of it, even as he was turning into a sort of neocon functionary.
I've watched the progress (if indeed anything so backwards and intermittently moronic can be called that) of this election with mounting horror. I truly believe (and have for nearly 2 years now) that Barack Obama will prove to be one of our great presidents; that he has the intellect, the aplomb, the statecraft, the tact, and the ingenuity to handle and to improve the dire morass of a country whose reins he'll take. For that reason alone some of the things that were said about him, during the primaries and afterward, repulsed me.
But with the advent of Governor Palin the presidential election reached a new low. Bored through the bottom of the barrel, in fact, and it's just kept going. (Perhaps it's an Alaskan cultural tradition of which I'm ignorant- a compulsory personal quest for oil...?)
It shouldn't have been unexpected. Palin's attacks on Senator Obama's trustworthiness and intentions as an American citizen (nothing she's said can be interpreted as any less)- her nearly explicit allegations, in fact, of treason- are, as her record shows, what's to be expected of a woman of her intellectual and moral accomplishments, upon which I'll refine at a later date.
And please don't think that said refinement will consist of insults to Governor Palin. It is not possible to insult Governor Palin.
Her behavior is no longer capable of shocking me, but her behavior in the context of the fact that she's John McCain's running mate has filled me with dismay. This, this is the campaign of the man whose strength- whose ability to withstand years of torture- I'd admired since grade school?
And then, yesterday, that man emerged from the welter of pandering he's done for the last eight years- from the degradation he inflicted on himself to become a 'viable candidate'. For a moment- a moment when his integrity and his conscience were so outraged by the lies being told in his name that he had to correct them, even though it cost him the approval of his audience- he was the man I'd known about since seventh grade.
For a few minutes last night, the man I used to respect appeared.
And unless he acts to rein in his campaign, acts now, he'll be remembered, after a lifelong career of government service, as the man who, because his opponent was winning, accused him of treason based on his name. Palin may have uttered the words; but what the history books will record is that they were said by McCain's campaign.
John McCain- the McCain who spoke up in defense of the patriotism, if not the governing credentials, of his opponent yesterday- doesn't deserve to be remembered that way.
I wouldn't vote for him. I don't want him running the country. I think he'd be a very bad president- again, his policy views are proving disastrous.
But yesterday I really was glad to see, for a little while, the John McCain that existed until eight years ago .
I’m in Parma, Ohio—where I have been for a month—with people from California and Tennessee and New York and Illinois and Georgia and Virginia and Washington. With people in high school, college, grad school, professional school. With people who own small businesses and who work for big business.
There are fifty people here screaming, toasting, hugging.
And I and two friends—women who participated in the civil rights movement, who grew up and live on the South Side of Chicago, one black, one white—cried.
Katy said it for us as we knelt on the cement outside hugging each other: We did it. We did it. We changed the world.
And we did. But not in the way that the network pundits are saying.
For Barack Obama, for his appeal to the best in all of us, for his conviction that the best we can do is extraordinary, we pounded pavement and doors and data and phone numbers. We worked ourselves haggard.
And what he’s done—what we’ve done—
What we’ve done with our work hasn’t changed America.
We didn’t change how Americans think. We showed them that it’s all right, that it’s necessary, to express what they think.
We didn’t make people in Ohio think about whether or not race really mattered in the end. We showed them that they already believed it didn’t.
What we’ve done—what Barack Obama made us believe we could do, and what we went out and did—was to convince Americans that they’re truly free. That what they believe can change their lives, their country, their world.
That the strength of their belief and the power of their hope is the most important thing Americans have.
That what Americans really believe, really hope is worth hours in cold and rain and power outages. Worth saying.
Worth shouting.
Worth a resonating, overwhelming cry of We believe.
That what America is designed to be, what we’ve dreamed of being—
I’ve been reading poetry for as long as I’ve been reading. Blame my mother—who else would read her kids Tagore and Shelley as a bedtime story? But I didn’t really fall in love with poetry until I was 10. In fifth grade the words, their pictures, their cadence rose up and overwhelmed me. Mrs. Siebold knew how to read poetry, and she read us Longfellow’s “Paul Revere’s Ride”. The words start at a trot, then work up to a canter, and by the last verse they come at a pounding gallop. Read correctly, the words of the poem ring in rhythm with the hooves of Revere’s horse. So, in both singing and dancing, poetry became part of my love for music. And then it was music. And then it wasn’t, because music was poetry. And then everything—sun and sine and stars and spin and silk—was poetry. We read ee cummings in the seventh grade. The Dominican nuns who ran the school were certainly not going to teach us his erotic poetry; we read “Buffalo Bill’s” and “anyone lived in a pretty how town”, and even in these relatively tame works I was fascinated by the twinned passion and parsimony of cumming’s words, the shocking frameshifts of adjectives and nouns, the processes of heart and mind rendered into bodily sensation by this man who parsed his reality into words so precisely that he refused to capitalize any word that wasn’t of supreme importance. I didn’t know why I loved it so at the time, of course. But I looked for his poetry in the library and realized that for this man, too, everything was poetry: sun moon stars rain. All of cumming’s poetry is worth reading, but his special gift was for lovers’ talk. He didn’t just write love poems; he wrote monologues from, conversations between, lovers. Whether erotic or plaintive or fierce, his love poems have the feel of a tender, brushing touch, of words meant to be spoken against skin. Only a few poets have ever accomplished that, and among them ee cummings is the best. The poem below is—as you may have guessed—one of his love poems. And in spite of my attempts to explain my delight in his poetry, that latter denomination is the only true praise I can give it. In the end, any words of mine are inadequate to capture his.
__________________________
if i have made, my lady, intricate
if i have made, my lady, intricate imperfect various things chiefly which wrong your eyes (frailer than most deep dreams are frail) songs less firm than your body's whitest song upon my mind - if i have failed to snare the glance too shy - if through my singing slips the very skillful strangeness of your smile the keen primeval silence of your hair
—let the world say "his most wise music stole nothing from death"— you will only create (who are so perfectly alive) my shame: lady through whose profound and fragile lips the sweet small clumsy feet of April came
I’ve just come to an understanding of why I’m so contemptuous of the use of fashion models as patterns for attractiveness.
Don’t get me wrong. I actually have a great deal of respect for models themselves. I’ve known people who model part-time, and even as a part-time occupation it requires, in addition to good genetics, enormous discipline and hard work. Professional models work even harder—like professional actors, harder and longer and with more precision than the average person can imagine. The top models in the world, by the time they’ve reached the top slots, earn, if not every penny of their exorbitant salaries, then every bit of the aesthetic admiration and awed appreciation that they get.
But as far as attractiveness goes—sheer oh-my-god-would-you-look-at-thatness— I’ve literally never, since the time I was a toddler and even before I had Barbie dolls on which to operate, thought that fashion models were where ideal physical attractiveness lay. Why?
Because I grew up watching the Olympics—and ballet.
And when I say “grew up”, I mean that, at age two, during a childhood in which I was permitted one hour of television a day (which usually consisted of Sesame Street and/or The Electric Company), my mother had the sense to make some very important exceptions to the one-hour rule.
So the first athlete I remember seeing is Nadia Comăneci.
Comăneci, who moved with the kind of grace and power and balance and calculated perfection one expects from a climbing leopard or a stooping hawk, not a human being. Comăneci, who at 14 became the first gymnast ever to be awarded a perfect 10 for Olympic gymnastics. It was a score so unexpected that the boards displayed a 1.00 because they were not set up to display a 10. The roar after her uneven-bar routine finish was so loud that I remember thinking, in my two-year-old head, that it sounded like fireworks.
Then she got on the balance beam and did it again—but better.
I was, of course, incapable of rendering such logic at two. I only knew that I had never seen a person move like that and that it fascinated me. Why would I want to look at people who just stood on a page or wandered around in TV commercials when there were people around who could do that?
My definition of that was then refined further by Mikhail Baryshnikov.
The next year—1977—I watched as Baryshnikov and Kirkland rewrote The Nutcracker… and ballet history. Primed by Comăneci’s performance, I was far more fascinated by Baryshnikov’s Nutcracker Prince—the same explosive power as a gymnast, but with even more grace and control—than by Kirkland’s dreamlike fragility, her ineffably fluid Clara. He moved like nothing my three-year-old eyes had ever seen.
That performance of The Nutcracker remains the most famous of all time, not least because by the time Baryshnikov rewrote the main characters he was already a legend in the world of ballet. In that world there are “technical” dancers—dancers with the power to perform movements that push the limits of the human body, and to do so with consistent perfection—and “artistic” dancers, dancers whose movements are so effortless, so exquisitely expressive that they pull at one’s emotions as well as one’s mind. Baryshnikov is one of the first dancers in history to completely combine those two aspects of ballet.
He is 5 foot 7, which was—until Baryshnikov—considered too short for a classical danseur. He was from Riga, Latvia, and when at 16 he joined the VaganovaSchool in St. Petersburghe was considered something of a hick by his more sophisticated urbanite classmates. His mother committed suicide while he was a teenager, and his Stalinist father forced him to dance the day after her funeral. He debuted at the Kirov at 19, late for a dancer.
And he is, with Nureyev, Nijinsky, Plisetskaya and Fonteyn, considered to be one of the five greatest ballet dancers of all time (and “all time”, in this case, goes back more than 500 years).
We moved in the summer of 1980, and I missed the Olympics that year. By the time the 1984 Olympics rolled around I was ten, and had been studying ballet, tap, jazz, and gymnastics for more than four years. Partly because of those studies, my aesthetics were by then firmly in place; when clips of Comăneci rolled as a prelude to the gymnastics telecasts, I fully understood for the first time what I was seeing. Understood, and was dumbfounded.
But still unprepared for Mary Lou Retton.
I knew who she was, of course. Anyone who took gymnastics knew. But I had never, in the days when YouTube was just a glint in Nostradamus’ eye, seen her compete. By the time she was done, Baryshnikov had a new rival for the word “power” in my mind.
Retton scored two perfect tens that year- for floor exercises, and for vault. I don’t even remember her floor exercises (I was jaded because of my love for dance), but I remember- will always remember- her vault.
Retton is tiny. At 4 foot 9, she was smaller than the other gymnasts—in a sport in which the average sizes of competitors shrank every year until 1992, she was the same height as Strug, who followed her by more than a decade. But I remember not breathing from the second she started her vault run. It was like watching a stick of dynamite: small and innocuous, pretty and sparkling—and then sudden, explosive strength followed by a soaring perfection of form that seemed to defy the laws of physics.
My father had thrown a party that night: adults standing around in dressy clothes looking over each others’ shoulders, pretending to eat expensive hors d’oeuvres, protectively clutching their alcohol—languid and self-important and unspeakably boring. I thought my brother and I were the only ones watching the TV. But at the end of Retton’s vault I couldn’t even hear the TV, though everyone on it was screaming. The living room and den were in an uproar, and only the fact that I could crawl through the legs of the adults (much to my mother’s chagrin) kept me in view of the screen.
The station replayed it over and over and over, and I watched it over and over and over, till long past my bedtime.
These are the humans I grew up seeing as the pinnacle of physical perfection. These are the bodies I grew up admiring, studying, attempting to imitate. Nothing in my later experience changed that—Comăneci, Baryshnikov and Retton were the first in a long line of artists from whose bodies, whose movement, I could not tear my eyes.
Maya Plisetskaya, the red-haired enchantress whose mythical, inhuman grace and immaculate form overcame at last even the Russians’ anti-Semitism to power four decades of French, Russian, and American ballet.
Greg Louganis, who made me believe that humans could, if only for a short moment, match the joyous, supple perfection of a dolphin’s leap.
Carl Lewis, whose choppy prerun pacing morphed at the starting pistol to a fierce, elegant power that changed, over and over and forever, what human beings think of as a perfect run.
Fu Minxia, the river-trained sylph whose flower-fair face and quiet containment belied the relentlessly hard, knifelike precision of her diving form.
Kieren Perkins, whose lithe, effortless stroke pushed him so far ahead of his competition that the poolside shots of his races show only him.
Oksana Baiul, whose pliant, willowy frame combined with an unmatched purity of movement to produce a prima ballerina in guise of a figure skater, a black swan and flamenco dancer of stunning beauty.
Haile Gebrselassie, he of tiny body and unhurried pace, who 100m from the finish line of a marathon invariably shifted into a blazing, predatory lope that left both spectators and competition breathless with shock.
And Florence Griffith-Joyner, Flo-Jo, winsome and tragic, whose lovely face and long, unbound hair melted in her run into a shining thoroughbred gallop, mane bannering, each foot striking further apart until she nearly flew, imprinting in my mind the most glorious image of a sprint I have ever seen.
These were my models.
I studied dance till I was 15, and was a dancer long past that. I hit my stride as far as pulchritude goes around 16, but I never measured it by weight. By size, yes—by how I looked in a leotard, or in the clothes I liked. But most of all, I measured my own attractiveness by what I could do—on the dance floor, in a swimming pool, climbing trees or rocks or mountains. By how I could move. By how well my body did what I asked it to do, what I loved to do.
I’ve been thinking about human aesthetics a lot in the last year, and attempting to figure out why mine don’t match those of the majority of the people around me. In grade school, I didn’t think about it much. In high school, I thought it was because my body was different than most of the girls around me. (It isn’t; my body is an hourglass, rarer than some other types, but on a larger scale than high school it’s by no means the exception.) In college, I thought it was because I’m a feminist. (It isn’t; traditional ideas of female attractiveness don’t trouble me. They’re based on proportions, not measurements—proportions springing from evolutionary biology and unvarying through fashion trends, Monroes and waifs alike.)
No, it’s because I grew up with the aesthetics of movement. I love what the body can do, and so basing my assessment on what it looks like captures less than half of the equation. Your photograph may be pretty, may even be beautiful (though for me the latter assessment is rare). The way you wear your clothes may be very pleasing to the eye. But the question of attractiveness won’t enter the picture until I’ve seen how you move.
I love the human body. I admire fashion models both in terms of how they look—I consider haute couture an art form, and love the perfection with which models display it—and for their drive and work ethic. But my ideal, my model in the literal sense—in the sense of being a pattern of perfection one attempts to imitate—has always been functional. And the current ideas of beauty distress me not because I can’t match them—the only ones I could ever have matched died with Marilyn Monroe—but because they’re based on immobility.
Ballet dancers and gymnasts are tiny, it’s true, but there is a sense of power in their frames, even while at rest. Their hipbones jut, but their thighs are heavily muscled; their ribs show, but you can see their triceps and lats; they’re underweight, but they can move fast and hard and fluidly. They look good in clothes, but they can also do something, something more than standard cardio or weight exercises.
The most attractive people to me aren’t the ones who fit a size. They’re the ones who use their bodies for something more than how they look, and do it well. My models.
[I have included only videos in which the salient performances are front-loaded.]
Comăneci’s 1976 Olympic Uneven Bars Final:
Comăneci’s 1976 Olympic Balance Beam Final:
Baryshnikov dances Le Corsaire and “The Turning Point” of Don Quixote:
Retton’s 1984 Olympic Vault Final:
Plisetskaya dances Death of the Rose:
Louganis’ 1984 Olympic 10-Meter Final:
Baiul’s 1994 Olympic Short Program:
Minxia’s 2000 Olympic 3-Meter Springboard Final (1992-96 Finals not available):
Samarra sits, as it has for the past 7,000 years, on the banks of the Tigris in Iraq. Its name is derived from the classical Arabic phrase “sarr min ra’a”, meaning “a joy to all who see”.
“Appointment in Samarra” is Somerset Maugham’s retelling of an ancient fable—a tale told by Death.
An appointment in Samarra is by definition an appointment with Fate. It is the unavoidable meeting, the one toward which any attempt at evasion draws you closer.
There was a merchant in Baghdad who sent his servant to market to buy provisions. In a little while the servant came back, white and trembling, and said, “Master, just now when I was in the marketplace I was jostled by a woman in the crowd, and when I turned I saw it was Death that jostled me.She looked at me and made a threatening gesture. Now, lend me your horse, and I will ride away from this city and avoid my fate.I will go to Samarra and there Death will not find me.” The merchant lent him his horse, and the servant mounted it and dug his spurs in its flanks, and as fast as the horse could gallop he went.
Then the merchant went down to the marketplace and he saw me standing in the crowd and he came to me and said, “Why did you make a threatening gesture to my servant when you saw him this morning?”
“That was not a threatening gesture,” I said, “it was only a start of surprise. I was astonished to see him in Baghdad, for I have an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.”
I do not believe in Fate.
I have shifted the bounds of the possible so many times in my life, by choices large and small, that my personal experience is an empirical contradiction of any such force. I did not have to make those choices. And some of the choices I make cut far counter to what most would deem inevitable if they knew my history.
Nonetheless there are certain moments in my life which have the taste of Samarra. Moments which, though not consciously chosen, have a feel of both perfection and inevitability.
My decision to defer medical school for a year is one of them.
The details are, at this point, unimportant. And those of you familiar with the events of the last 6 months know what my reasons are.
I am happy with this path, far happier than I would have been had I started medical school in 2 weeks. My plans now include things that I would not otherwise have a chance to do for a very, very long time.
Which is not to say that this decision is without cost. Friendships very dear to me have been altered; some of my resources, tangible and otherwise, will doubtless be strained. When I enter medical school I will be a different person than the one I had anticipated being. That prospect, like all things unknown, frightens me.
But it also gleams golden, like a drive eastward over the mountains at dawn.
Like a Tigris sunrise over Samarra’s spiral minarets.
I have come to this place from afar. I have kept the time of my meeting. And I am content.
I'm so sick of the ubercool hipster/punk/scenester jackasses who slam on top-40 bands and music because they're popular.
Yeah, you people are clearly the last word in musical knowledge.
That must be why most of you can't sing or play an instrument. Hell, most of you can't even dance.
British pop star Mika's a good example. So is Nickelback.
Because honest to friggin' Christ, if they're good enough for Brian May and Billy Gibbons, they're good enough for me.
What's that? You don't have to be a musician or display any level of musical knowledge because you know enough to know that you're terminally cool?
Cooler than May? I clearly skipped the slot where Rolling Stone ranks you above Les Paul, Pete Townshend, and T-Bone Walker in the Top 50 Guitarists of All Time.
Cooler than Gibbons? I must've missed the last time you opened for Hendrix.
...from Proto-IndoEuropean, *kwoiwo-, "making", from base *qwei-, "to make".
I've been gone lately (not physically, but in terms of the webernet- and email, and telephone) trying to Get Things In Order. Things, meaning the entire sprawling magnificently labyrinthine intrigue which is my life.
That's far less an exaggeration than it sounds.
I clarify so that those of you reading this will understand my conviction that paring my life down to something only a little past the essentials is long overdue.
And as far as posting my writing, I've had little time for it- or, at least, for the editing my writing requires before I post it.
Nonetheless, I do read. (I will stop that when I'm dead.) All of which is to say that I still take in new material; I'm just not sharing my integration of, or insight into, it at the moment.
Why any of this should concern you greatly or even minutely I've really no idea. But I mention it in building up to the statement that for the next month (at least) I'll be posting poetry- old and new favorites- occasionally accompanied by brief updates about my life.
*Poem. From 'to make'. Oddly appropriate to the prosaic task of re-inventing my life.
Ah, creation. __________________________
__________________________
For now, a writer whose poetry I love far better than his prose.
A Love Song Reject me not if I should say to you I do forget the sounding of your voice, I do forget your eyes that searching through The mists perceive our marriage, and rejoice.
Yet, when the apple-blossom opens wide Under the pallid moonlight’s fingering, I see your blanched face at my breast, and hide My eyes from diligent work, malingering.
Ah, then, upon my bedroom I do draw The blind to hide the garden, where the moon Enjoys the open blossoms as they straw Their beauty for his taking, boon for boon.
And I do lift my aching arms to you, And I do lift my anguished, avid breast, And I do weep for very pain of you, And fling myself at the doors of sleep, for rest.
And I do toss through the troubled night for you, Dreaming your yielded mouth is given to mine, Feeling your strong breast carry me on into The peace where sleep is stronger even than wine. -D.H. Lawrence
The sea taught me the feel and taste and sound of distance; the meaning of depth. My world and my eternity would be flatter without the sea.
I study the stars. When I was in grade school I would sit in the summer dusk, watching fireflies and stars. Watching the stars become brighter as the fireflies dimmed. Looking at the spaces between the shining points. Wondering at the idea of infinity. Trying to plunge further amongst them. I could never make the spaces between stretch as they should. I could never make them deeper the further I went.
But I have loved the sea far longer than the stars.
When I was 3 we spent the summer at NorfolkBeach. On first sight of the sea I slipped out of my mother’s arms and ran toward it saying “Big water.” My memories are of sand and jellyfish and the crash of waves, shimmering heat and cold water and the smell of salt. I didn’t know how big the big water was then. But I knew that I could swim in it and that waves could tip me over and that it got deeper the further I went.
When I was 10 we spent a week in Pensacola. I was an accomplished swimmer, but the force of the waves surprised me. I went out far enough that I could pretend not to hear my mother calling me back. Far enough to leave the bottom in the breakers, bobbing back down to it after leaping through the curls like a fish. I wanted to go farther, but didn’t; I knew what the dangers were. I remembered that it got deeper the further I went.
When I was 12 we spent the summer in a South Indian village not a mile from the sea. The beach is called Thirimiruvallum, a brief curve of sea-borne sand in the granite seawall. I was the only girl swimming, surrounded by a cortege of male relatives. We swam until I lost the bottom for the first time, I and my brother dolphining over the swells. But we went no farther. The water, free of the riptides that spin further up the coast, is still dangerous. I could feel safety drop away beneath my feet, lying deeper and deeper the further I went.
When I was 15 we returned to India for the summer, and Thirimiruvallum waited for me. It had grown longer during the monsoons, a new half-moon of sand curving against the seawall. I watched the sun set over the Indian Ocean and looked at new stars and wondered again about depth and eternity. I had swum again, farther and deeper—though not much. The bottom had been carved away during the monsoons, dropping steeply within a few feet of the beach, getting much, much deeper the further I went.
When I was 16 we spent a week in Panama City. There was too much shrieking and eye-straining color and fake-coconut-scented suntan lotion on the beach. I would walk there during the day, but came late to the ocean, slipping in a few hours before sunset while it was being deserted. I kept it company as the tide rose and the crowd ebbed, almost alone, so I didn’t go in too deep. But I struck until the long shallows fell away beneath my feet, rejoicing as, finally, it got deeper the further I went.
When I was 19 we spent a week in CapeFear. There were no crowds on the small private beach behind the cottage, nothing to stop me from swimming to exhaustion and napping and then swimming again. I wanted desperately to swim at night, to find out what the inky silk of the farther waters would feel like. But I didn’t; it was too frightening, even for me. I knew that the blackness beneath me as the sky darkened would feel so much deeper the further I went.
When I was 27 I spent 10 days in Hawai’i. I swam in the secluded grotto, open to the ocean but protected from the tides, at the exclusive hotel. I learned that there are fish I am afraid of: eels. And what it feels like to swim with a sea turtle—my hand just touching the giant shell as I swam above it all the way to mouth of the sea. And that even in the presence of the most exotic of marine life, the water can bore me. It didn’t feel like the ocean; it didn’t rise and fall and pull. It didn’t get deeper the further I went.
I’ve longed for the ocean for years now. It is an odd, contented ache; I will go, whether sooner or later. It soothes me to know that soon or late it will be there waiting, sand and rock still falling away beneath the singing waves.
It comforts me to my center to know that when I am gone from it entirely, no more than a memory and then not even that, the sea will remain. It will roar against whatever coast it has shaped for itself, wearing ceaselessly against sand and stone. It will sustain its slow and swift and shimmering grace, its shallows’ turn and thrum and tumble, its deeps’ scored stretches falling and falling and falling away.
There is solace in the knowledge that the sea will continue long past the time when there are none to name or recall it.
Stars were, long before the ocean, and long after it they will endure. But I will never submerge my body in their lives, never swirl my hands through their substance, never comprehend the spread of their shores, never swim in the endlessness between them as it falls away beneath me. I will study all these things, yes. But I will never feel them against my skin.
The sea waits for my touch: here, now. While I am still here to remember it. While I can still cherish its teaching.
While I can still understand that all things get deeper the further I go.
As the beginning of my second century- which is to say, the first post of my second hundred (no, I’m not yet that old)- I thought I’d give those of you who stumble across this blog a guide.
This is a road map, as it were, to this meandering record of my thoughts- and it contains the warning signs which go with it.
But first things first: Your map.
Unlike some blogs, this one is not topical. You’ll find posts on bioethics, science, movies, politics, and culture. You’ll also find prose poems, rants on cultural follies and inadequacies, literary essays, paeans to outstanding achievements, and posts on a smattering of other topics as well- topics which range from Windows Media Player to the Paris-Dakar Rally.
I’ve done my best to arrange the (in my opinion) best of the posts in the major categories in cognizable order on the sidebar, as well as to tag my posts appropriately- but both are ongoing processes.
My sense of humor ranges from the dry-as-the-Sahara to the crashingly juvenile to the utterly ridiculous. You’ll find ludicrous and/or bizarre posts cheek-by-jowl with serious intellectual efforts. Rest assured that the absurd is as much a part of my thought patterns as erudition is.
This blog is a record of my thoughts and opinions, and occasionally of my feelings. It’s my largest form of communication with the global community, and I truly hope that those of you who read and/or stumble across this blog will be provoked and/or entertained and/or enlightened.
And now: Your warnings.
Mind the step. This is not a blog which I write to keep the world at large updated on my personal life. It covers topics from cosmology to constitutional law, and I take most of those topics very seriously. My posts are largely structured essays, and meant to be read that way. If you want a blog full of amusing anecdotes, cute one-liners, or adorable photographs, you may be disappointed in this one.
Danger – Corrosive. I’m an enthusiastic smartass and an avid iconoclast, and there are few things that are immune from mockery here. (Two of the sacrosanct subjects are human rights and scientific achievement.) If you expect writers to treat certain topics with reverence because “everyone else” does, because some religious text says so, or because it’s impolite not to, you may be offended by some of the statements here.
Highly Flammable. I have very definite opinions on the topics on which I write, and I’m not hesitant about expressing them. In detail. If you’re troubled by seeing points of view other than your own challenged and certain behaviors condemned, you should avoid quite a few of the political and ethical posts here.
Warning – High Voltage. You’ll encounter essays on subjects from torture to abortion to rape on this blog. When I write about abuses of power and ethical dilemmas, I don’t sugar-coat. If you prefer euphemistic treatment of unpleasant subjects, some of these posts will trouble you.
Parental Advisory – Explicit Lyrics/Strong Language. I have a very good English vocabulary, and I use it. If you’re uncomfortable with precise and extensive use of the language- and I don’t mean the traditional “cuss” words, but caustically critical language that goes into rich detail about certain flaws and candidly exultant praise of certain achievements and knowledge- then some of these posts will frustrate you.
Caution – Uneven Surface. I’m a lit geek, a science geek, a superhero geek, an SF&F geek- in short, a geek in just about every way it’s possible to be one. You’ll find ample evidence of all my geekery here. If it’s your quest in life to accumulate cool points or associate only with the chronically chilled, this blog will disappoint you in your aim.
For my 100th post, a juvenile but mildly humorous Shakespearean sonnet.
_________________________________________________
It’s been a while since I’ve written rhymed verse, but still, I have the bee in my bonnet- and though for exams I’ve law to rehearse my bee today desires a sonnet.
(Law school exams are delightful, some say, and those who say so I’d never deny- but should still note that some disorders may cause the occasional psychotic lie.)
The exam-averse bee’s buzz in my brain breaks the dark thrall of my Evidence book- draws its delight from distracting again my bleary bent from its bleak legal nook.
(I recall now why no test, book, or bee pardons a sonnet around a JD.)
{For I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, And I have seen the eternal footman hold my coat, and snicker, And in short, I was afraid.}
Dave and I went to see No Country for Old Men before the break. Unusually, our experiences of the movie didn’t agree.
The movie ended with a sudden black screen and left me staring- staring and cold to my very center.
So cold that I tried, over the next four hours, to explain why I had frozen over during the movie, congealing in that final second of darkness- tried without any success at all. Tried in the theater and the car, tried over cups of tea and then beers and then tea again- the bracketing teas I requested we get because I needed so badly to warm up inside.
(Wrapping a hot cup of tea around myself like a cherished and raggedy childhood blanket when I need deep, cosseting comfort is a tried-and-true strategy.
...It didn’t work this time.)
I managed to explain some of it, if not to him, then to myself, later. Days later.
So wandering through the Hudson News store in JFK on my way back from Bangalore I looked at Cormac McCarthy’s books and picked up No Country for Old Men, thinking, It can’t give me the same feeling here, in this raucous terminal, in this small tiled crowded shop- the public venue giving me a vague conviction of safety.
I read the beginning and the end.
And the Sheriff woke from a dream of his father and darkness and cold and an assurance of light granted without hope or tenderness.
And said this sentence: I think its more what you are willin to become.
And I felt, in that small noisy pedestrian shop, oblivion breathing on the nape of my neck.
And felt the cold again in an icy wave that traveled from my scalp down my spine to the soles of my feet.
I had tried to explain the despair the movie conveyed, the ending an aching longing for lost light and a chilly certainty that it flickers somewhere in the darkness.
Somewhere. But not here.
The defeat of the Sheriff- of the forces of order, of goodness, of law- is so total that the vanquished have no room for bitterness, only a dazed and wondering awe at the magnitude of the devastation wrought upon them.
The man reliving the story is, at the end, like a mortally wounded warrior who looks at the torn flesh and pumping blood and, pushed beyond any fear, thinks Damn. That’s bad, huh?
I don’t get emotional in public. But I think I might have been shaking as I set the book gently back on the shelf as though it were an unstable explosive. And looked at it.
And thought- I might read it.
But I saw myself curled in the enormous green armchair in my mother’s house, and her finding me there with the book in my lap, weeping hopelessly. And on the heels of that had another vision of myself in the same chair, huddled and frozen and bereft of tears, too frightened and despairing to weep.
And knew that that is what would happen. What will happen.
Because though for the first time the thought of reading a book terrifies me, I will read it.
Because it terrifies me, I will read it.
I cannot bear to know a fear and not confront it- and this…
The crushing entropy that may turn anyone who stands in its path to its own agent, traducing her to her and others’ destruction: This is, apparently, one of my greatest fears.
So great it took me more than a month to name it. So great it made me literally back away from a bookshelf, turning from it as from a source of fatal contamination. So great I practically ran away, ran away to my gate to sit and scrawl this.
(So great it took me a month just to transcribe this essay.)
So great I almost cannot bear to voice it.
Can a person battle darkness without letting it creep through her veins?
Or is it destined all ways, always to supersede all effort, an entropic corrosion grinding relentlessly over any effort, all virtue?
Subverting light into the thin final dust which at the end of all things will cushion its inexorable tread?
{Between the idea And the reality Between the motion And the act Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
Between the conception And the creation Between the emotion And the response Falls the Shadow
Life is very long
Between the desire And the spasm Between the potency And the existence Between the essence And the descent Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
For Thine is Life is For Thine is the
This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper. }
Woke in a cold sweat at midnight, from a dream of reflected light and echoing choir song and murderous intent (high fevers seem to bring me bad dreams), and realized that it was based on a movie that still counts as one of the most disturbing things I've ever seen.
It's called Frailty, and it came out in 2001. Starred Matthew McConaughey and was directed by Bill Paxton.
Understated, spare, elegant. Utterly terrifying.
It was brilliant, the best first movie from a director that I've ever seen, one of the best horror films I've ever seen.
I don't ever want to see it again.
Though apparently my fever-dreams occasionally give me no choice in the matter.
Charles Darwin’s birthday (today is his 199th) is one of my favorite days of the year (coming as it does two days ahead of VD- yeah, I said it- on which, unhappily, there will probably be more at some other time… read: when I’m in a mood to have other people laugh at my misfortunes).
Darwin’s second voyage on the HMS Beagle, with its stop at the Galapagos Islands, changed biology- medicine, pharmacology, genetics, genomics, taxonomy- forever. If you doubt his preeminence, note that there is no greater intellectual snobbery than that of royalty, and that Darwin is buried in Westminster Abbey near John Herschel, father of modern photography, and Isaac Newton, father of modern- well, everything.
Like all scientific genius, Darwin’s greatness is based on two profoundly simple insights, which have nonetheless shaken the very foundations of how we think about development, disease, and destiny:
1. Random mutation of genetic material occurs in all organisms. 2. Organisms with the attributes which give them an advantage in their environment survive.
Obvious, no? Ridiculously obvious. So ludicrously obvious that it’s laughable that anyone even bothered to articulate them.
So obvious no one even realized them. Or thought about them. Or followed through on their logical consequences.
From those consequences and their complex, subtle and profound shadings does all the glorious and dazzling variety of life on Earth spring. The mechanisms of evolution- adaptation, genetic drift, gene flow, mutation, natural selection, speciation- and their results permeate the biosphere and our lives in a way, and on a scale, and with a totality, that is frankly impossible to grasp.
Those who come close to grasping it are, to my knowledge, universally overcome with astonishment at the incredible effects of such simple facts.
Try, for a moment, to conceive of what that means: Your genetic predisposition to certain diseases, your sexual development in the womb, your dog’s eye color, the length of your cat’s claws, the rate of growth of the mold in your refrigerator, the dueling colonies of bacteria and fungi housed in your body, the texture of the apple you just bit into, the scent of the lilies on your hearth.
All of these owe their scientific articulation to Darwin.
Imagine it. Can you grasp the scale of it? It’s every bit as sprawling and stunning and splendid as any cosmological Theory of Everything could ever be.
And it lives inside you. Inside every living thing.
It’s 7 am, and I’m eating blackberries with raspberry pastry and becoming increasingly frustrated with the shift from composite gravity to the tensor-vector-scalar (TeVeS) version of Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND).
To quote Inigo Montoya: Let me explain. –No, there is too much. Let me sum up.
After a dinner party at Dave’s house and a woefully garbled explanation of alternative gravity theory (actually, not so much that as an explanation of the quantum-mechanical postulation of gravity) to several of my fellow guests, I went and did some revision. Though (thankfully) I seem to be okay on the basics, it turns out that the latest developments in alternative gravity theories (or perhaps just the ones beyond the books I own) are beyond my current grasp of math.
Given the fact that this is advanced physics, that’s perhaps not entirely surprising, but it’s still frustrating- I’m the person whose uncle explained quantum physics to her at age 6 and who picked up her first book on black holes at age 10. My addiction to cosmology goes waaaay back.
Since my beloved internet allows me an open forum to as much of an audience as I can gather, I’ve decided to make an appeal for knowledge- or rather, tutelage.
The concepts behind MOND’s and TeVeS’ conception of gravity (and yes, I’m aware that it overlaps but does not subsume alternative gravity) are befuddling me utterly. My incomprehension turns on my inability to grasp the concept of tensors and tensor fields, including those in ranks 1 through 4- once I can parse that, I should be able to visualize the rest. Therefore, I need someone who will correspond with me on that question until I understand it.
Such tuition may include not only explanations but references to books and graphics that can help. (And just to save some time- before you ask, I’ve already checked Wikipedia links and the Physicsforums archives on MOND, TeVeS, tensors, tensor fields, and almost every topic under any of those headings you can name.)
And if anyone reading this can’t explain but knows someone who can- could you pass on this appeal? I can’t say this won’t take long, because I have no idea of the length of time it will take me to understand- but I can say that the linear time investment on the part of my tutor will be relatively small.
Thanks in advance, guys. Such knowledge may not be necessary to my continued existence, but it’s enormously frustrating to have such an intricate and magnificent palace of theory, built on such a cosmic scale, standing before me… and be incapable of grasping its loveliness because I don’t know the shape of some of the bricks.
I have bad- no, very bad and simultaneously ridiculous- news for gearheads everywhere.
First- Paris-Dakar 2008 has been canceled.
This in itself is horrible. Paris-Dakar is the world’s longest off-road rally; it usually starts in France and winds up in Senegal, and over the years it’s been run through Portugal, Tunisia, Algeria, Libya, Niger, Spain, Egypt, Morocco, Mauritania and the Western Sahara. This year’s rally was set to be the roughest course ever, with more than 5,700 miles of rock, riverbed, ravine and road to traverse.
More importantly, for gearheads who love to drive the Paris-Dakar is the ultimate dream- crossing desert, dune, mud flat, rock, ravine and erg in a grinding more-than-4,000-mile run at an average temperature of 130 degrees Fahrenheit.
It is the definitive test of driving and navigational skill, mechanical skill, wilderness survival skill, determination and endurance for any driving team. Only 40% of those who begin the race finish it.
And the 2008 Paris-Dakar was canceled two weeks ago due to terrorist threats from (who else?) Al-Quaeda.
That’s bad enough. Now comes the ridiculous part.
It’ll be run next year.
In South America.
Excuse me? It’s called the Paris-Dakar (or more recently the Dakar) for a reason. The race from Europe to Africa covers the most brutal terrain in the world- Mauritania’s Adrar segment chief amongst them. The course is so harsh that automakers the world over routinely test their off-road vehicles in the Paris-Dakar.
Doubtless Chile and Argentina can offer stark conditions- but they cannot match either the roughness of the past courses or the sheer romance of travel through and around some of the oldest human cities, villages, and cultures on earth.
The movement from Europe to Africa is meant to be a journey backwards in time, meant to challenge everything in its entrants, body and mind- from endurance to perception of humanity’s significance.
Moving the Paris-Dakar to South America is not only capitulation to the threats of terrorists but a willful subversion of everything that the rally stands for.
Change the course to avoid terrorist-controlled areas? Yes- though it will prove challenging and delicate, it can be done.
Move it from two continents to one- one in another hemisphere? No.
The Paris-Dakar has run for thirty years not only on the grueling, nerve-sapping challenge it presents, but also on the intrigue and fascination of the transition from new to old on a scale that maps tens of thousands of years of human existence.
Let the Paris-Dakar remain in its birthplace.
Let its entrants challenge their own beginnings and have the singular and unmatchable satisfaction of finishing their race face-to-face with the fathomless gaze of their ancient past.
I constantly make fun of people who keep up with celebrities’ lives. But this…
He had such integrity, such ability. He never took a role he didn’t like and think worthwhile. His filmography was already impressive, and he was- after Lords of Dogtown and especially BrokebackMountain- one of my “ones to watch”, a young Peter O’Toole or Jack Nicholson in the making.
Ledger’s last scene in Brokeback, standing in his dead lover’s closet, is to this day one of only three that have made me, a moviegoer, feel as though what I was watching was private. Looking at his face, sitting in a theater with 200 people and gazing at a 50-foot high screen, I felt as though I were intruding, seeing something I was not meant- should not be able- to see.
I had to fight not to avert my eyes.
The intensity of the suffering he was able to convey with no words, with barely any movement, the magnitude of tragedy and loss…He transmuted breath to the thready pulse of a man bleeding from a mortal wound, touch to the last, frozen gasp of a swimmer drowning in water too dark to grant sight.
It is something few actors have ever accomplished. And it evidenced genuine genius.
Nobody knows whether he committed suicide or not, yet.But whether he wanted to die or not, the world is a little bit darker for this.
For another golden boy lost to the dull and indiscriminate dust.
{
…Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned with lilies and with laurel they go: but I am not resigned.
Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you. Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust. A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew, A formula, a phrase remains - but the best is lost.
The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,- They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve. More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.
...Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind; Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave. I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.
Those of you who know what I did last summer- well, here are some pictures from it (finally).
As I get time over the semester, I'll update my travel photographs until they're up-to-date (which may take a while, because I'm picky about things like formatting and photo information)- meaning that I'll be posting photos of Innsbruck, Vienna, Washington D.C., Florence, Verona, Venice, Bangalore and Chicago, as well as the rest of my Munich pictures.
In the meantime, here's a badge link to my Flickr site:
"labor, toil," c.1250, from O.Fr. travail "suffering or painful effort, trouble" (12c.), from travailler "to toil, labor," originally "to trouble, torture," from V.L.
This is by way of a personal update, partly because nobody Stateside really knows what’s been going on and partly because what I went through to get to Bangalore really does deserve a bit of a tell (I haven’t yet given it its due).
I left the Nashville @ 5:30 pm on a Saturday, got to JFK at 10 pm, and learned- after an hour-long wait in line- that Delta had lost my bags and further, that they would not arrive in time to make my 7:30 am flight. I therefore, after filling out the appropriate paperwork and finding my way to the international terminal- by which time it was 1 am- settled in to wait. (This involved, as I previously noted on my Facebook and MySpace statuses, sitting on the floor and jacking a plugpoint that rightfully belonged to a self-check-in machine.)
When the Virgin Atlantic counter (on which airline more at some other time; in the meantime let the following tale speak for itself) opened at 5 am, I trudged over to check in and was informed quite rudely that I couldn’t take on my cabin baggage, so I zipped it apart and requested that she check the duffle portion to Heathrow and not through to Mumbai. She asserted that she had and handed me my boarding pass, upon which I made my way though Security and onto the plane.
There I and some 300 other passengers proceeded to sit stationary for 3½ hours while being assured every few minutes that we would soon be ready for takeoff. Naturally, we arrived at Heathrow 3 hours late, and I (and practically every other passenger on the plane) missed our connections. We therefore, at 11:30 pm, trooped first through Security, then through an hourlong line at the Virgin Atlantic counter. At the end of the wait we were all informed that no, Virgin would not be providing a hotel or food, and I personally learned that the next available flight to Mumbai was at 9:50 pm- the following night.
Thankfully during the flight I had made friends with a charming and very lovely woman named Monet, who told me that she was renting a room and that since she’d be paying for one anyway, I was welcome to share it. The airline’s tasteless in-flight meal by then 7 hours in the past, she proceeded to buy us both dinner, hail a taxi, and check us both in to the Park Inn (a rather swanky digs five minutes from Heathrow).
We washed up and crashed on soft and extremely comfortable beds for a princely total of 3 hours before rising, washing our faces, and grabbing another taxi back to Heathrow to find out about getting on standby for our flights. Upon arriving at the Jet Airways counter I was told that Virgin had got the schedules wrong and that there was another flight in 2½ hours, and that I could get a confirmed seat- if I could make it back, with my bags, within 45 minutes. Bidding a fond and thankful farewell to Monet, I did so.
The frankly incredible staff at Jet Airways, after some drawn-out (and, I gathered as a captive audience, rather involved finagling), got me a confirmed seat- aisle, no less- but told me that Virgin had not yet transferred my bag to Jet Airways and that it had, in any case, been checked through to Mumbai. Thus my checked cabin baggage- which, as I had known, would be perfectly acceptable as a carry-on to Jet Airways and which in consequence contained 2 changes of clothing as well as jewelry- might not accompany me to Mumbai. Which is to say that I might well arrive in India bearing the grand total of the clothes I stood up in and a laptop, travel soap, and a toothbrush.
By then I wanted desperately to just get to India, and agreed, hoping all the time that when I arrived in Mumbai the bag would be there.
We were (naturally) 2 hours late in taking off from Heathrow, though the flight was much more comfortable and friendly this time around, and so I was in a fair way to missing my connection when I arrived in Mumbai if I experienced the slightest delay there- and of course as a consequence I did.
When my bag didn’t turn up on the luggage carousel I approached a woman named Leela and asked her about my bag, and she asked if my name was Sumi Rebeiro. Knowing that having a total stranger address you by your given name is seldom a good sign, I admitted that it was.
She informed me that Virgin still hadn’t handed over my bags, whisked me over to the luggage counter to fill out a luggage authorization form and assured me that they’d ship the bag to Bangalore as soon as it came in. Whereupon I smiled, handed her the form unsigned and assured her that there would be no need for such exigencies because I would just stay in Mumbai until my bag got there on the next flight- 12 hours later.
When she told me that there was no hotel close by and I replied that I would just sit in the waiting area, all the counter staff erupted in furious whispers and sidelong glances. (I gathered that such intransigence in already-battered travelers was, er, exceptional.) I got my exit papers stamped, changed $40, made my way to a washroom and washed up, and settled myself across from the Jet Airways check-in counter, propped my head on the backpack and purple-and-orange travel pillow which now comprised my luggage, and dozed fitfully.
There were several delightful little interludes and fascinating people during the 12 hours I waited there- the most notable being the old gentleman headed to Goa who was, as he explained in a fascinating mixture of Marathi, Hindi and English, waiting for his wife’s flight from Pakistan, and with whom I took turns watching our luggage as the other stretched his/her legs; and Karima, the girl waiting to be escorted back to claim her luggage, to whom I lent my fleece vest after she explained that she’d accidentally been flown to Delhi (where it was freezing- and she really was wearing very little clothing).
Karima, bless her, upon claiming her baggage came pelting over (in 3-inch heels!), gave me a hug, and handed me half a bar of dark chocolate filled with Remy Martin VSOP, telling me- absolutely correctly- that I needed it more than she did.
The flight from London duly arrived- without my bag. Shawn, taking over from Leela, went so far as to go out and poke through the containers of luggage himself, with me waiting and watching, trying to find the pathetically small duffel- but it was as absent as it could possibly be.
Trying to decide if I should wait another 12 hours for the next flight to come in, I called my aunt in Bangalore, who greeted the suggestion with a shriek of outrage, a demand that I come to Bangalore immediately, and the statement that I “couldn’t just keep waiting in airports.” To which I replied, “Demonstrably I can. Whether I should is a different matter entirely.”
She reiterated her urgent request and I acceded, making sure Shawn had the appropriate authorization to ship me the bags and thanking him for his help, and got in line for the bus to the domestic airport- in which line I spotted, if you can believe it, a woman wearing an SIUe t-shirt. Upon my incredulous question of whether or not she actually went there, she replied that she did, and we chatted about SIU politics for the hour it took us to get to the airport and checked in.
I got to Bangalore, walked out of the airport, and called my aunt, who told me that she was waiting at a certain sign. I went to greet her, whereupon she burst out laughing, hugged me, and took me to the car. (She couldn’t help it, she explained to me later; seeing all the people come staggering off the Mumbai flight with enormous bags, and me hailing from the States with my backpack and a grin, was too much for her sobriety.)
So, about 52 hours after leaving Nashville, I’d finally got to Bangalore.
My family, who as some of you may know engaged in some rather sticky politics eight years ago, hadn’t seen me for that time, and (I think as a consequence of the time lapse, though I don’t remember being a wimp 8 years ago either) were shocked when what I asked for on getting to Nana’s house was strong, sweet black coffee and a bath- in that order. I then proceeded to stay awake till 10 pm, get up at 7 am the next morning, and carry on. But the carrying on, as Rudyard Kipling would say, is another story.
To end this one, suffice it to say that getting here reaffirmed my experience: that most people are kind; that most people will offer help to strangers and those whom they see in need of it with no reason other than compassion; that most people are friendly and decent even under the most trying of circumstances.
Sort of a “cheater’s post” for now- I dislike posting less than twice a month, and in truth have several essays sketched or half-finished; but I never post anything without editing it at least twice, never mind finishing it.
And since it’s finals time here at t’law school, and I leave the country in less than two weeks, it’s unlikely in the extreme that I’ll have anything decent done before that time.
So here, for your delectation, are some quotes and prose excerpts (the latter in italics) from things I’ve read this past year, attributed whenever I can remember the correct author. No pattern, no method- writers ranging from personal friends to Jay-Z to Seuss to Freud to Franklin to Plutarch. (If you see something by yourself or someone you know and it’s not attributed or misattributed, please email and let me know so I can correct it.)
Slainte, my comfits. Keep well.
The object of art is to crystallize emotion into thought and then give it form. -François Delsarte
Eroticism is like a dance: one always leads the other. -Milan Kundera
Let me tell you the truth of love, what life and death have taught me of it. Love is woven of chains, chains that bind you to your lover’s fate. Love makes you bare your throat to God’s sword and your chest to the Devil’s. At the whim of either one, a sickness, childbed, those chains will drag you under with the one who owns your heart. I’m a coward, dearest, you know the truth of that, but death showed me what the afterlife can be if you’ve never risked those chains. Endless, empty, no voices, just the rattle of regret and hollow freedom. -Writing Samsara
Violence is the first refuge of the incompetent. -Isaac Asimov
Revenge is an act of passion; vengeance of justice. Injuries are revenged; crimes are avenged. -Joseph Joubert
What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think... you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude. –Self-Reliance, Ralph Waldo Emerson
Difficult takes a day; impossible takes a week. -Jay-Z
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. -Dwight D. Eisenhower
Man has always engaged in pernicious acts of foolery: imperialism, murder, war among others. Of all of them, by far the worst is love. -??
Those who know how to win are much more numerous than those who know how to make proper use of their victories. -Polybius
Many a man thinks he is buying pleasure, when he is really selling himself to it. -Franklin
Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not. -The Lorax, Dr. Seuss
Whenever people say 'We mustn't be sentimental,' you can take it they are about to do something cruel. And if they add 'We must be realistic,' they mean they are going to make money out of it. -Brigid Brophy
Words ought to be a little wild, for they are the assault of thoughts on the unthinking. -Keynes
The art of illusion is the art of love, and the art of love is the blood-red heart of the world. At times I think there is nothing else. -The Illusion, Pierre Corneille (translated by Tony Kushner)
Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. -Bertrand Russell
La vengeance est un plat qui se mange froid. -Les Liasons Dangereuses, Pierre Ambroise Francois Choderios de LaClos
Too many people spend money they haven't earned to buy things they don't want to impress people they don't like. -Will Rogers
He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you. -Nietzsche
"If anyone, and I mean anyone, mentions this... this... incident ever again, anywhere, under any circumstances whatsoever, I will know about it. And that person, and their children and their children's children even unto the seventh generation, will know no rest. I will devote the remainder of my natural life to that end. If necessary, I will add special provisions to my will to ensure that that person and their descendants live lifetimes of suffering beyond imagination." He looked around the room. "Do I make myself absolutely clear?" -??
What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy? -Gandhi
The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions which have been hidden by the answers. - James Baldwin
The problem with you- it’s worse cause you’re so damn smart- is that you have to be logical. 30/20 vision, sight down things like a telescope, every leaf in the forest coming clear further than most’d see trees. And you miss the pissed-off cougar coming at you from the side. Logical doesn’t mean practical, Sumi. -Email from a personal friend *winces*
An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all. -Elbert Hubbard
Dissent is what rescues democracy from a quiet death behind closed doors. -Lewis Lapham
No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself, and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be true. -Nathaniel Hawthorne
"Watch your tongue," he said conversationally. "It's not long enough," John said. "I'd go cross-eyed." -??
Whenever morality is based on theology, whenever right is made dependent on divine authority, the most immoral, unjust, infamous things can be justified and established. -Ludwig Feuerbach
To believe in something, and not to live it, is dishonest. -Gandhi
"Is it so hard to believe that an attractive, intelligent, spirited, gentle woman might be interested in me? That she might be able to see past the man you all think I am?" He exploded. "Of course it is, you damned fool. Listen to yourself, for God's sake!” -??
The radical novelty of modern science lies precisely in the rejection of the belief ... that the forces which move the stars and atoms are contingent upon the preferences of the human heart. -Walter Lippmann
What progress we are making. In the Middle Ages they would have burned me. Now they are content with burning my books. -Freud
It started softly, like a tuning fork lightly struck, but grew, a pure note, blown by a trumpeter of inexhaustible breath, till there was nothing but the sound. The sound of Astarael. “Astarael, the Sorrowful,” whispered Sabriel. Astarael was the banisher, the final bell. Properly rung, it cast everyone who heard it far into Death. Everyone, including the ringer. -Sabriel, Garth Nix
Ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have. -James Baldwin
A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away. -Antoine de Saint-Exupery
John was about to snap back at him, but she laid a hand on his head. "Blessed are the ignorant, for they cannot be tortured for information." -??
The courage of the poet is to keep ajar the door that leads into madness. -Christopher Morley
"I heard a lot of the same speeches… the failure in my responsibilities, the throwing away of my potential, my certain poverty and disgrace- but in the end, it was a matter of making the choice I, myself, could live with." "…But I don't know what that is," she whispered. "I have to choose between giving up my family or... or myself, everything that I am." "No, you don't. You have to choose between leaving one of your families and giving up what you have been... I know what you mean, I said the same things to myself, but they weren't true. You won't give up yourself, no matter what you decide. You are your own, and you can't be given away…” “And you will still be yourself, no matter what path you choose. It's important that you know that. It's... so much less frightening when you know that." -Miranda, Dyce
The trade of governing has always been monopolized by the most ignorant and the most rascally individuals of mankind. -Thomas Paine
Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs; he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter. -Friedrich Nietzsche
It is not possible to find in all geometry more difficult and intricate questions, or more simple and lucid explanations… No amount of investigation of yours would succeed in attaining the proof, and yet, once seen, you immediately believe you would have discovered it; by so smooth and so rapid a path he leads you to the conclusion required.
…The charm of his familiar and domestic Siren made him forget his food and neglect his person, to that degree that when he was occasionally carried by absolute violence to bathe or have his body anointed, he used to trace geometrical figures in the ashes of the fire, and diagrams in the oil on his body, being in a state of entire preoccupation, and, in the truest sense, divine possession with his love and delight in science… -Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans, Plutarch (translated by John Dryden)
A dedicated iconoclast, I normally don't plug nonprofit organizations- even those to which I belong.
As an organized-religion-phobe, religious nonprofits normally don't register on my radar- with the exception of those with which I worked growing up (if you want to know about either set of organizations, contact me).
But Magdalene is something different. It's a community of women who are working to escape prostitution and drug addiction, founded by an Episcopal pastor.
Magdalene is free. It doesn't discriminate based on race or religion. And Becca Stevens, the pastor who founded it, set the program length at two years- long enough for the women to truly kick their habits and restructure their lives, to begin healing and building new lives for themselves.
It's a program that's not only compassionate but genuinely useful- that's designed to ensure that the women it helps really escape the horrors they work to leave behind.
I bring up this amazing place at this shopping-crazed time of year for a reason.
One of the ways in which Magdalene funds itself is by its bath-and-body "Thistle Farm" products. (Thistle, because it's considered a weed and it grows anywhere- including the concrete alleys where some of the women of Magdalene used to live. But its flowers are beautiful, and strong, and its roots grow deep and wide.)
Made by hand by the women who live at Magdalene, they're not only all-natural and high-quality, they're also an integral part of the rebuilding that Magdalene does.
The women of Magdalene make products that are wonderful, useful, healing. And with them they build the knowledge and confidence that they can contribute positively to the world around them, can create beauty and happiness both directly and indirectly.
The products are excellent (I love the Rose Grapefruit body balm), and the people who make them are outstanding too. All funds received go directly to the Magdalene program and residents.
And the story that goes with any gift you buy- the knowledge of what the people who buy (and use) Thistle Farm products are doing for the women who make them- is as good as the products themselves.
In my customary role of perennially didactic annoyance, I’m going to give you some information about lashing. That’s lashing, as in “being bound with one’s hands fastened above one’s head while being beaten across the back, shoulders, and buttocks”.
But first I’ll tell you why it’s relevant: A 20-year-old woman who was gang-raped by 7 men in Saudi Arabia has had her sentence doubled. Her original sentence? 3 months in prison and 100 lashes.
Yes, the rape victim’s sentence.
The woman is being punished for her lawyer’s public discussion of the case- as the Saudi court put it, “her attempt to aggravate and influence the judiciary through the media”. 200 lashes are what she will now receive, and since lashing is not something with which we in this country are familiar, let me give you a rundown on what exactly is going to happen to her.
Lashing is, as I said above, a punishment in which the hands are tied above the head of the prisoner to limit movement and expose the greatest possible skin area to the whip or cane. In Saudi Arabia, the traditional whip has been replaced by the bamboo cane in the case of women, probably between 50 to 100 years ago; it was around that same time that being lashed to death fell out of favor as a punishment.
Presumably this change came about because of humanitarian considerations (yes, I realize the irony in using that phrase to describe the substitution of beating to death with beheading). Although unconsciousness from hypovolemic shock (shock resulting from blood loss) is the inevitable result of continued flogging, it takes different victims different amounts of time to reach unconsciousness, time in which they will suffer extensive trauma and excruciating pain. (Even after unconscious, one Victorian observer wrote, “the prisoner’s body convulsed at every stroke of the whip”.)
Bamboo canes are less likely to leave permanent scars than a whip. They are also used because, although they cause massive edema and hemorrhage in the soft tissues of the back, they do not cause enough blood loss to allow the victim to bleed to death in a relatively short time. It is to ensure that the prisoner does not die that a doctor is present to monitor the proceedings, that the flogger holds a copy of the Qu’ran under the arm which swings the cane (to ensure that his arm does not have momentum enough to inflict bone-breaking force), and that lashes are typically inflicted in sessions of 50 each, spaced over 2-3 weeks (with variations depending on the size and health of the prisoner).
So, now that you have a brief methodology and history, let me give you the forensic pathology of what is going to happen to this young woman.
When a bamboo cane hits flesh it causes, in pathological terms, blunt trauma resulting in extravasation- crushing of soft tissue and the rupture of small- and medium-sized blood vessels. The blood diffuses from the injury, often along fascial planes- it spreads in the direction the tissue lies- forming ‘tramline’ bruises, consisting of two parallel bruises separated by an undamaged section of skin. This unbruised strip of skin results because the impact of the cane forces blood from the vessels at all points of contact, emptying them and making them incapable of leaking blood.
The skin surface is split or torn, the force of the blow damaging all layers of the skin, so that the lacerations will bleed profusely. Ragged wound edges are also characteristic, since the skin has been torn apart rather than having been cut. The healing process may take weeks or months depending on the severity and number of the wounds, and severe scarring is not uncommon.
A colleague recently posted a bit of prose (see below this entry) that has, to put it mildly, hacked me off.
She prefaced it with the notation that “No matter how many times it's told it’s still good!”—meaning, presumably, that this narrative gem is an item commonly posted. In all likelihood, she posted it because she thought that her friends—many of whom attend the same school I do—would enjoy it too.
I go to a law school. A law school. If most of my colleagues (or even some of them) think that this story represents discourse, that this is an acceptable way to interact with people who openly contradict the beliefs those colleagues hold, then we are all—man, woman, dog, and child—in so much trouble.
To summarize the tale, a college professor expresses doubt that there’s a God- in fact, publicly challenges God to knock him off a platform. (Which makes it clear that whoever wrote this was someone who’s never known any atheists. Like most other folks who aren’t schizophrenic, they don’t go around talking to people they think aren’t there.) The Marine who’s the hero of the story obliges the professor by knocking him out and then informing him that God is busy protecting the “soldiers who are protecting your right to say stupid shit and act like an asshole”.
There are several pieces of this narrative that utterly and completely floor me. And because I’m prepping for finals, I’ll outline them:
1) The professor/villain is “a vowed [sic] atheist and a member of the ACLU”. Apparently being a member of either group—let alone, horrors, both—automatically makes you a suspect character.
Hmmm. Some of the smartest, funniest, most principled people I know are atheists. Some of the most passionately apple-pie Americans I know are members of the ACLU. And it’s the American Civil Liberties Union, more than any other organization, which brings First Amendment/freedom of speech suits to protect those rights which the Marine is supporting by hitting college professors.
2) Expressing doubt that there is a God—or stating publicly and challengingly that you don’t believe that there is a God—qualifies as “say[ing] stupid shit”. Evidently, it also makes you an asshole.
Huh. So being loud about unpopular or unorthodox beliefs qualifies you as an asshole? Whew. Good thing the men listening to the suffragettes plead for women’s right to vote didn’t have this response. As far as being mouthy: No-one in law school has any business criticizing brazenness. It’s prized and cultivated in some highly accomplished legal circles, as is making your point dramatically.
3) Physical violence against someone who says something which contradicts your beliefs is acceptable and, by the smugly laudatory tone of this little anecdote, admirable.
Wow. Wonder what the Puritans who fled England to escape precisely this kind of treatment would think of this? Or for that matter, the abolitionists who were elemental in getting rid of slavery? Or the loudmouth on the corner shouting about his odd little religious sect? Or any one of a hundred principled social reformers who stood up and took an unpopular position at great risk to themselves? People like Gandhi and MLK Jr. endured a great deal of violence to put forth their beliefs. That doesn’t mean it was necessary or right.
4) Our soldiers are fighting for America and its protection of its citizens’ right to say what they want. Except, apparently, in front of those soldiers.
Saying something which challenges or contradicts a soldier’s belief in front of him, it would seem, is grounds for cold-cocking. They’re only protecting people’s right to free speech when they don’t have to listen to it? Freaking bizarre.
This story is supposed to be funny. It’s supposed to make those who dislike atheists, and others who challenge beliefs they value—including, obviously, members of the ACLU—feel good about themselves.
To feel vindicated in disliking those people. To feel smug in vilifying those people. To feel justified in retaliating against those people.
Here’s the trick, ya’ll: it isn’t funny.
It isn’t funny precisely because it promotes dislike of and disdain for and disregard of other people’s opinions. It isn’t funny because it encourages the kind of denigration and condemnation of other people that splits families and schools and countries.
It isn’t funny because it incites the kind of irrational assault against ideological opponents that perpetuates violent and unthinking bigotry.
Disagreeing with someone’s point of view? Well, that doesn’t make him/her an asshole.
Beating someone up for disagreeing with you? That does make you an asshole.
I wonder if someone at the law school’s gonna beat me up now...
________________________________________________
A United States Marine was attending some college courses between assignments. He had completed missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. One of the courses had a professor who was a vowed atheist and a member of the ACLU.
One day the professor shocked the class when he came in. He looked to the ceiling and flatly stated, "God, if you are real, then I want you to knock me off this platform. I'll give you exactly 15 minutes."
The lecture room fell silent. You could hear a pin drop. Ten minutes went by and the professor proclaimed, "Here I am God. I'm still waiting." It got down to the last couple of minutes when the Marine got out of his chair, went up to the professor, and cold-cocked him; knocking him off the platform. The professor was out cold.
The Marine went back to his seat and sat there, silently. The other students were shocked and stunned and sat there looking on in silence.
The professor eventually came to, noticeably shaken, looked at the Marine and asked, "What the hell is the matter with you? Why did you do that?"
The Marine calmly replied, "God was too busy today protecting America's soldiers who are protecting your right to say stupid shit and act like an asshole. So, He sent me."
{ Perhaps it is only Samhainn, All Souls, Dia de Los Muertos- the chill of this Day of the Dead, with its dying year and its beginning of the descent toward Midwinter's long dark.
But I don't think so. }
I see things as they are.
There is a storm coming.
This is one of the times when my bones creak and rasp. But its grey, glacial, ungilded sight- without tarnish or feeling, without the world a searing scald at every image- does not scare me.
This is an intricate, icy array of facts too frigid for fear.
This is one of the times when I know the stretch of my time and age. Old, old, old- ages echoing themselves down through my skeleton. Centuries old.
This is remembrance of my past. When I remember some of the things that have happened. When I consider some of the things I have done. When I fear some of the things I have failed to do.
This is one of the times when my spine rustles with secrets. It is a shifting murmur that holds a near-shattering weight. Heavy, grave, precarious- a stack of bricks balanced on the point of a crystal prism.
This is a burden of memory and unsought knowledge singing along fine edges.
This is one of the times when my hands are ugly. Very few things glitter without aid of gilt, and for now I have spent my store.
This is Cold, and Quiet. And Weariness.
This is one of the times that I feel a primeval wind rattling through my marrow. Rare and precious that all that remains is the truth, cushioned in a merciful void in which it does not wound.
This is that I comprehend too much; I say too much. (But never all of what I comprehend. Only what I know.) I have seen too much; I have felt too much. (But never only about what I see. Always also about what it causes.) I care too much; I am too close. (But never close enough to be found. Only close enough to keep the secrets given me safe.)
This is one of the times that mark seconds like weeks, ticking relentlessly against the seams of my skin.
This is one of the times that I am not big enough to contain my own life.
This is one of the times that it has spilled, pouring down through me, flooding through synapse and sinew into story. Into statement.
And into sense.
Eventually.
{ The full of joy do not know; they need not know. Nothing is reconciled They flash the light of heaven indeed. Let them have it, let them have it, it is mild.
Those who suffer see the truth. It has murderous edges. They never avert the gaze of calculation one degree. But they are hurt, they are hurt, they are hurt }
I got an envelope from my friend Maria on Friday. Thick. Marked "do not bend" in 5 places. Intriguing.
I sat down in my chair and opened it.
A third of a lifetime's worth of love spilled across my lap.
She had sent me- oh, what had she done? She lay across my legs in bits and pieces, images and lambent colors. In letters and words, in pictures and colors, in snippets of sheet music, in pieces of story and song and poem, she had sent me herself.
And she had sent me myself too- images of how she saw me, words of affirmation from her to me, flashing beauty culled from the apple of her eye, poetry and prose that pulled responses I had forgotten I owned from deep within my psyche.
On printer paper, on greeting cards, on thin exquisite Florentine stationery, on glossy cardboard, in laser print, in black ink she sent me
the gibbous moon. And happiness in watercolored Spanish. And fruit. And fragile hand-thrown ceramic shells. And music. And postage stamps from Tunisia. And fish. And stooping death in a laborer's hat. And queens. And a flawless silver-red heart. And wizards. And ecstatic song from sense-steeped poets. And coffee. And childishly absurd visual jokes. And photographs. And immaculate heartsblood-crimson blooms. And architecture. And petal-perfect flowering golden rings.
And the silver sun and golden stars.
I have received many gifts in my life; have been, often and again, one of the luckiest people I know.
Never have I received so much love- so much everything- in so small a compass.
Never, in fact, have I been given a gift so magnificent.
It is, as I said, more than a third of our lifetimes' worth of thought, of caring, of ideas and visions and work and secrets and dreams. I don't know how long she has been gathering these things- for me and for her. But this is no afternoon's work, no pile of a day's thought. This is months, perhaps years, of her thinking of me, setting aside things to send me, to show me, to write to me.
This is her seeing all that is weak in me and all that is best, and giving me everything she found within herself and the beauty around her to remind me of the latter and shore up the former.
She has given me- totality. The ideal of every object I could have desired. Of things I didn't know I needed. Of things I didn't until now know enough to crave and require.
Ah, Muina Colinda. I see, and will keep striving to experience, to understand, to know, to accept, to become.
I am lucky that the popular sport in the Soviet Union was chess and not baseball. -Garry Kasparov
Garry Kasparov is running for President.
For those of you who don’t know who he is, Kasparov is a Grandmaster and was World Chess Champion (the youngest ever) for 8 years running. He’s won every major chess tournament in the world, and on every one of the three scales used to rate chess players he is the highest-rated chess player of all time.
He is, in a other words, a smart guy.
While there have been (you’ll pardon the phrase) idiot savants who are capable of playing chess at very high levels, none of them has reached the level that Kasparov- or indeed any World Champion- has. Chess is a game that requires at its highest levels not only innate talent but a fierce, profound, and disciplined intelligence.
Kasparov is, not to put too fine a point on it, a genius. Indisputably. Indelibly. And not just a genius in his own time. The moving finger of time has writ his name in the books of every country in which chess is played- which is to say, in every country in the world- among the greatest chess players in human history.
He retired from chess in 2005 and has since 2003 built a literary reputation as a chess historian; and now he wants to go into politics. More precisely, he has already gone into politics, and now wants to participate in international politics as Russia’s chief officer.
I find this incalculably fascinating.
I find it fascinating because, as an observer on the sidelines of subjects from political science to history to physics to literature to mathematics, I’ve seen a general consensus among intellectuals that politics is the domain not of intellect but of ‘cunning’ and ‘common sense’. They are not mutually exclusive, of course; one may have all to varying degrees. But one of the few constants of almost every political discussion I’ve ever had is the idea that being intellectually brilliant will get you nowhere in politics- and may actually be a handicap.
I’m not sure what causes this sort of thinking. Certainly some of it is stereotype- the wily, cunning, powerful politician as opposed to the intelligent yet politically ineffectual intellectual. I’m nearly certain that some of it is hypothesizing on an observed phenomenon- ‘there are no pure intellectuals in politics, so there must be a reason why’. I’m positive that some of it is mutual dislike and distrust between the intellectual and political spheres and a desire to dismiss the importance of the other.
Assuredly there have been politicians who were incredibly intelligent (Bill Clinton’s Rhodes Scholarship comes to mind). But I cannot summon a single name of a person, living or dead, of Kasparov’s intellectual stature who participated in politics at a high level.
Well, no. I can summon one name: Benjamin Franklin.
One of the most brilliant men of all time, certainly the intellectual giant among the Founding Fathers, and quite possibly the greatest polymath this country has ever produced. (And also, not so incidentally, a personal hero.)
The dimensions of my fascination are becoming more obvious now, aren’t they?
The fact is that Kasparov’s run is unique- even Franklin never held the top office of his country, nor did he try. Other intellectuals have held ruling positions, it’s true, but they have either been born to them (like Cosimo de’Medici) or have gained reknown and only then had intellectual talents acknowledged as having been responsible (like Napoleon and Alexander). Kasparov, if he wins office, offers a chance that has never to my knowledge come down the pike in recent (meaning in the last 2,000 years) human history: the chance to see what a man who has proven himself over and over to be a genius- in a field entirely unrelated to politics- will do with the problem of running a country.
Here’s the rub: The idea that human political and social interaction is too complex to be analyzed and navigated systematically, rather than on an idiopathic ad hoc basis, is one of the most persistent and pernicious dismissals of human brainpower that I have ever encountered.
And it is- pay close attention here, folks- untested.
I am, as many of you know, an empiricist: do not state something as a fact to me unless you have observed data to back it up.
How can we dismiss overwhelming intellectual power as an effective means to political rule if it’s literally never been tried?
We can’t. This is our chance to collect data on this phenomenon. And if Kasparov wins, those who consistently discount the role of disciplined brilliance in running human affairs may have a hard time continuing to do so.
That is, in any case, my ideal- but we’ll see. At least, I hope we will.
Thoughts of the easily amused (even more so after pulling call last night):
Playing around with a WMP display by hitting the little arrow button and not paying any attention to anything but the "oooooooooo...coooooloooors" on the screen, I hit one and stopped.
Looked at it. Looked again.
And thought, That one looks like the radio sweep pattern of a neutron star.
And then looked up at the name: Event Horizon.
And am now idiotically, blissfully happy that somebody else out there shares my specific brand of geekery.
Yay for synchronicity. And wave patterns of all kinds (including music). And pulsars.
I am lying in bed, sipping Langer's Winter Blend (100% orange, pineapple, and passionfruit juice), recovering from the flu and from a terminated-rather-than-letting-it-get-terminal romantic involvement, listening to Zeppelin IV, pondering the perfidy of men and virii, and being bored out of my bloody skull. Not necessarily in that order, of course.
I cannot, in fact, decide what to think about men and romance (humans in general, really, only I'm straight, and so musing on romance tends to center around the male of the species), except that the situation seems to cause pendulation between abject buffoonery and exalted self-deception, though living in this particular greenhouse (the one containing the human race, I mean) I'm in no position to hurl any sort of stone.
And I've pretty much resolved my views on virii, Orson Scott Card aside (if you haven't read Speaker for the Dead, get off your duff and do so- it's one of the best meditations on sentience, xenobiology, scientific detachment in anthropology, and relative speciesism ever written, and also happens to be a very, very good science fiction novel). Ender Wiggin and pequeninos notwithstanding, I don't like 'em.
Boredom, however… I'm almost never bored, and I'm unused to it. I like being alone in a number of ways, and when I'm tired of being alone I can always call a friend or three and go someplace or do something, even if that something is only to call Dave, or Kristina, and tell either one that I'm bringing over a pot of tea and ginger thins or rum or coffee or whatever.
The aforementioned virii have, however, closed off that and all other options involving other people's presence- I've always had very strong views about not being around others while infectious- and so here am I, all the books in my house read, head too weak to sit up properly, eyes too glazed to watch an entire movie. Things have really burrowed through the bottom of the barrel when writing becomes a court of last resort…
What I am, in fact, doing is looking for something to ponder, and in the process writing a letter rather than an essay- though perhaps the only one of my readers who is likely to recognize this as such is Maria, Muina Colinda, wise woman and bearer of secrets. The characteristic neverending-and-yet-grammatically-correct-by-the-skin-of-their-teeth sentences, in particular, are a hallmark of our long correspondence- though, given my Bioethics' professor's comments on our most recent essay, perhaps no longer exclusive to our correspondence.
Ack. There are so many things running through my mind at the moment, any one of which would make an interesting essay topic- masculine ovoviviparity in seahorses, exploration of the Rub al'Khali, Anna Sui's bizarre 40's-and-glam-rock fall collection, the anomalous expansion of water at freezing, Maurice Bejart's choreography… but I can't settle down to any of it. Writing an essay means thinking of only one thing, and I honestly don't think my brain will tolerate that right now; if this is how people who genuinely have ADDHD feel all the time, then it's a wonder they ever get anything done at all, though I imagine with practice it might be easier to isolate and slow a particular train of thought. Then again, perhaps not, trains being notoriously unwieldy machines- and many of mine have all the weight and momentum of a Union Pacific Big Boy.
Sigh. Enough of this. My eyes are glazing and my fingers are missing key after key and maybe my body is telling me it's time to stop.
Wow. I'm actually listening to my body. Good thing there'll be a record of the date, because I won't remember it come morning…
What do you do with a quest laid upon you by one who is now dead? An endeavor born of pain which cleaved the life of the one who gave it to you?
What do you do with a weapon laid unsheathed across your palms when you are the only one who knows its weight- its murderous edge- but cannot grasp it?
This Sunday it will have been fifteen months since my friend Cindy died.
She was only fifty years old. Smart. Good with her hands- she gutted and refinished the hundred-year-old house she lived in alone. Tall, blonde, pretty. Quiet. Passionate about politics and responsibility and personal action.
She used to work in a sheriff’s office. She suffered sexual harassment there- one of the most extreme cases I’ve ever encountered. It continued for two years and it ended in a man’s- a cocaine addict’s- suicide, and her dismissal.
She fought for reinstatement for five years after that. First as a pro se plaintiff, then as an appellant represented by a feminist attorney.
Like him who day by day unto his draught
She lost. Lost what hope she had of getting her career back. Lost years of her life to an action ultimately dismissed sua sponte by a judge who could not believe that the evidence she had was genuine.
Lost, I think, her faith in the existence of justice. And in the good intentions of other human beings.
When we met I hadn’t yet applied to law or med school. She knew I wanted to be a doctor, but liked the law. She told me a little about her case and, when I expressed interest in the details, invited me over for strong black coffee and excellent jam cookies.
Every Wednesday for two months I would sit and sip and munch in her beautifully refinished kitchen, and we would talk about her case. I would jot down notes sometimes- names, dates, outrageous actions. There were plenty of those.
When she’d finished her story, we had become friends. We would go door-to-door on political campaigns together; meet for horrible Chinese food at a place she liked.
She was diagnosed with spinal cancer 4 months after I was admitted to SIU.
I saw her once more after that, and then never again. Never got to say goodbye to her, to tell her how much her suffering and her strength had moved me. Towards the end she was barely conscious, and her family would not permit anyone to visit.
Her friends John and Bonnie are the executors of her estate, and it wasn’t until 7 months after she died that they told me she had left me her French books and notebooks- and all documents relating to her sexual harassment case.
Of delicate poison adds him one drop more
And it wasn’t until then that I realized that they- her best friends- had no real idea what had happened to her.
She never talked about it, they said. Never told them or her family. No-one ever really knew what had happened, only that it had destroyed something inside her.
Had she told me?
Yes.
They had the enormous forbearance and decency not to ask. Had they done so before telling me that no one knew exactly what had happened, I’d have told them on the assumption that they knew some of it already. But this…
She meant me to carry the entire story alone- had told only me in all the years between its happening and the day she died. Had left me the only proof in existence of the events which made her the woman she was to that last day.
Wanted me to do something. To say something.
To make it mean something.
And I don’t know how.
Earth and sky forgive me, because I still, 8 months later, don’t know where to start.
How do I make the events which sliced the hope from her eyes, the light from her smile, mean more than she already has?
She survived it. She fought, and then fought again, until there was nothing of her left with which to fight. And even when she no longer believed in justice, in true decency- she worked for it anyway.
Till he may drink unharmed the death of ten…
She lived through something that would have made another woman a ringing shell. So her laughter sounded hollow at times- so what? It was still there. Still carried enough spark to warm her eyes once in a while.
The documents I hold are a weapon I have not the expertise nor time to wield. But they are mine, and she entrusted them to me, and so I bear them, a weight of helplessness and grief I have not the skill to ease or mend.
Because to do less would be to dishonor her pain, to forget her wounds and the grace with which she carried them.
What can I do with what she gave me? This small and pathetic commentary is unworthy of her. Unworthy even of her name.
Nothing, nobody can do more than she did.
I drink- and live- what has destroyed some men.
I’m sorry, Cindy. (And while I have strength, I will carry it for you.)
Alte Pinakothek 1) I don’t like Rubens. Not only do I find his nudes unappealing- no muscle or tone, and flat, doughy faces- his scenes and compositions look cluttered, undertinted, and boring to me. (Do NOT say this out loud in Germany. You’ll get nasty looks and museum guards will become belligerent. Really.)
2) Albrecht Durer was a major, major, major babe. Take a look at his self-portrait; he looks like the Wild Hunter just before he sheds his cloak to cry the avaunt, or like Aragorn Elessar on the morning before he was crowned. Breathtaking. Standing in front of the portrait was an unnerving exercise in convincing myself that I couldn’t really be mesmerized by a daub of paint. (I never did succeed.)
3) Brueghel’s paintings could outsell the “Where’s Waldo” series, and for the same reason. No matter how long you stand in front of one of those small, pied canvases, you’re never going to take in everything he’s hidden- whether it’s a boy stealing apples in the background of a Nativity scene or a squirrel stealing seeds from a bird in the foreground of a winter skating scene. The feathery brushwork, the deliberately muted hues, are deceptive; the life of the paintings is in the detail which crowds towards you when you stop to observe.
4) Static figures and compositions don’t interest me. I want a sense of movement, of some form of thought or emotion, in a painting. Or in a sculpture, come to think of it.
Bargello 5) All sculpture looks better when standing in an enormous 13th century medieval fortress. Not an intuitive piece of information, but you live and learn.
6) Cellini was in love with, or at least lusted after, Cosimo de’Medici. He had to be. Nobody produces a bust that looks like this without having some sexual feeling for its subject. The damned thing is hotter than a posed pinup- how in hell did he do that? It’s bronze, for crying out loud. (And considering the number of times Cellini literally got away with murder under that particular Grand Duke of Tuscany, the feeling might have been mutual.)
7) Donatello’s David is beautiful, but disturbing- this boy can’t have been more than 12, and he’s clearly sexualized (whether by the sculptor or on his own is indeterminate). His is also a more classical saint’s pose- the serenity of his face and feature, coupled with the enormous head at his feet, is slightly unnerving.
Uffizi 8) I actually like Alessandro Botticelli, weak-minded idiot follower of Savonarola that he was (what other denomination can be used for an artist stupid enough to burn his own paintings at the behest of that killed-too-late fanatic? –though as my colleague James observed, having Savonarola burned to death was, if poetically just, perhaps a bit excessive). I was tired of the Venus- and her pale, pastel palette- before I got there, but the wealth and complexity of allegorical imagery in Botticelli’s paintings is as involving and fascinating as his glorious, luxuriant tints. His Pallas and the Centaur in particular, with its frighteningly implacable, serenely murderous goddess, is arresting; Botticelli’s paintings- except, again, for the Venus- almost burst off the walls, pulsing with exacting detail and a pagan riot of color.
9) I could have made mad money if I’d majored in art authentication and become an expert on Domenicos Theotokopoulos. I can, apparently, spot an El Greco painting a mile and a half away. (This was a consistent theme in the Alte Pinakothek as well, but it was confirmed in the Uffizi.)
10) Similarly, I can actually tell a Perugino from a Vasari (without looking at the label). And I actually like Perugino. And no, I’m not talking about the chocolates (meh).
11)My congenital lack of a sense of direction doesn’t apply in museums. I- the woman who not five years ago got herself lost in the neighborhood in which she grew up- can, with no map and never having been there before, find my way through the most winding and labyrinthine of layouts in order to return to the precise spot of a single painting in a room containing dozens on a floor which holds hundreds.
12) I don’t like Leonardo da Vinci’s painting. (Gasp! Horror! Oh, bloody shut up.) It is the single most unimpressive oeuvre of a spectacularly talented man; static, placid, attenuated and overposed, it reeks of the late-Gothic sensibility that the artist repeatedly wrote that he deplored. I love da Vinci’s engineering, writing, and philosophy. But not his painting.
13) I have, apparently, no problem with standing in front of a painting in a major museum and laughing. As I’ve previously written, I’d discovered before I got to the Uffizi that seeing a work of art in person is very different from seeing reproductions in books; and I’ve also written that the differences in Michelangelo’s sensibilities, his portrayals of real human beings, were a shock to me. As was his Doni Tondo: a portrait of the Holy Family, in which Christ is being handed to a seated Mary, over her shoulder, by Joseph. And Christ? He’s doing what all babies do in that position, though you won’t see it until you’re close to the painting- he’s pulling Mary’s hair. (Blasphemy! Do you blame me for bursting into laughter?)
14) I have a quirk of character that forces me to go all girly over busts of my favorite Roman emperors. (This is especially true of Octavian, later called Augustus, calculating and impenetrable manipulator that he was. But it’s true for others too.) Warriors, thinkers: it doesn’t matter. I stand and stare like a starstruck fangirl.
15) Even if it’s the only thing I have that day, $6.00 for a doppio espresso macchiato is cheap to me- if it comes with a view of the Campanile ringing evensong at sunset against the soft gold of the Duomo, the rough and battlemented turret of the Palazzo Vecchio looming over the small balcony, close enough to touch in the growing dark.
Museo dell’Opera del Santa Maria Fiore 16) Michelangelo’s final Pieta SHOULD have stood on his grave, unfinished or not. The gorgeous anguish of the pose, the broken, gleaming body of Christ is beautiful in a way that surpasses ‘disturbing’ and goes straight to ‘awestruck’.
17) Donatello’s Magdalen far surpasses his David. Her suffering is palpable, a blow in the face to those expecting beauty, and her battered, pleading figure produces equal parts pity and horror- both a desire to turn away and hide from her pain and a complete inability to do so.
18) Donatello, like Titian (see below) displays a sympathy for his female subjects that, given his sex and time period, is startling. His portrayal of The Creation of Eve, the bewilderment and terror on her face, her weakness as she sags into the stiff shoulder of the god before her, clutching at a father who will not hold her back, evokes as much compassion as it does admiration.
19) The original panels from the Porta del Paradiso are worth seeing, but mainly for the understanding of what nearly 500 years of wear and weather will do even to bronze. The replicas at the Battistero are far more beautiful.
Kunsthistoriches and Museo Correr 20) Italian sculpture in the presence of other art has a strange effect on my senses. Antonio Canova’s neoclassical marbles, static and passionless as they are, bored the hell out of me all through Florence and Venice- but were suddenly so much more fascinating once I was in Vienna and by contrast with the larger, emotionally abstract statues there. Then again, it may also have been a question of scale and period- everything in Vienna, everything, is enormous, and reflects a gothic or baroque sensitivity. Canova’s sculptures are too sparely rendered to fit stylistically, but in terms of size and spirit- large, opulent, showy, but with little delicacy- they fit right in.
21) The Venetian Renaissance painters have no peer when it comes to use of color. For the few paintings that have been restored (far, far too few), the colors which push off the canvas are truer than life, so vivid that I wondered how the human eye was capable of seeing them at all, much less recreating them on canvas. But after glancing out the window of the Correr across the Adriatic on a sunny morning, those colors are less mysterious, though no less arresting.
22) I’m capable of a frightening level of avarice when it comes to books. When I see an illuminated manuscript I want it, with an instant and unreasoning passion. Not in order to say I own it: but to take it out and look at it, turn the pages, gaze at the words and images, feel the binding in my hands, as often and for as long as I want.
23) Ancient sculpture fascinates me intellectually but doesn’t involve me emotionally. Greek, Roman, Egyptian- the works produce awe at the age of the pieces, astonishment at the accomplishments of artists working under the technological constraints the ancients faced, but very little in the way of visceral response. I could gaze at them for hours, but I can’t get emotionally involved with them.
24) Titian’s reds fascinate me and always have- colors which glow off the canvas even through the centuries of accumulated grime- but his sympathy for his female subjects fascinates me even more. He shows a tenderness and understanding rare in that chauvinist time- indeed, rare anywhere- and his women are imbued with values far surpassing beauty and grace. His Lucretia and her Consort is radiant, but not because she’s lovely; her resolve and courage shine in her face. Her heroic gaze- uplifted, thoughtful, nearly joyful- make the man at her side and the blade in her hand almost irrelevant. Of all the portraits of saints and martyrs I’ve seen, Titian’s pagan queen comes closest to capturing perfectly the ideal of conscious and exalting, exulting self-sacrifice.
His Venus of Urbino was even more of a shock. Commissioned by a wealthy merchant as an “instruction” for a new bride who was a third of his age, his courtesan is provocative, yes; her beautiful body and the drape of her hands and hair are seductive. But there is challenge in her eyes; her gaze is as cool as it is hot, and the question of whether or not her lover is worthy to approach her, capable of satisfying her, gleams in her intelligent look. The artist’s sympathies lie palpably with the woman displayed for perusal, not with the observer, and his compassion is as skillfully rendered as it is astonishing.
My brother learned to ride a motorcycle when he was 13 years old.
In India, of course. All my uncles ride- large, sleek, gleaming British machines- and they taught him.
I? I was 15. Loved riding with them, wanted to learn so that I could do it too.
But I was a girl.
I was mewed in Nana's compound- the tall walls showing only trees and sky- the way a virgin nun is mewed in a cloister: I could not leave except for holy days and special outings, even then escorted by a guard of more than one of my aunts and at least one uncle.
(Often friends are amazed at the number of books I now read and have read. I tell them they should not be; but they seldom listen. And few of them know, and none have guessed, that the price for this skill, for the early catalogue of my knowledge, was an imprisonment as real as any convicted criminal experiences. Only… I was innocent.)
So, I climbed.
My uncles were all right with it. (I assure you that had they not been, I would have had to climb at night, in secret.) After all, my mother had done the same thing twenty years ago (but gotten into dreadful trouble over it, then); and I was still inside the walls. There was no chance of me being seen by anyone other than family, or of getting out, even had I thought of doing such a thing (I didn't; I had promised when I was 12 not to leave without permission, and I keep my promises): the tops of the walls are inlaid with broken glass.
I climbed and climbed and climbed. Barefoot. Shod in everything from flip-flops to sandals to sneakers. The mango. The coconut palm. (I got yelled at for that one.) The windowsills, the well- I would haul buckets of water up, over and over and over again, for something to do, for the chance to feel my muscles straining- the guava.
And, figuratively speaking, the walls.
I'm in the midst now of my biennial reading of Tolkien, which always reminds me of that pen, reminds me that though I was as strong, as fast, as graceful, as enchanted with riding as- and a better rider on horseback than- my brother… still I was left behind.
Any wonder that, instead of the magnificent, the immortal and exquisite Undómiel, I've always sympathized with Éowyn- mortal, flawed, fair and fell Shieldmaiden of the Rohirrim?
It was Gandalf who said these words of her:My friends, you had horses, and deeds of arms, and the free fields; but she, born in the body of a maid, had a spirit and courage at least the match of yours... who knows what she spoke to the darkness, alone, in the bitter watches of the night, when all her life seemed shrinking, and the walls of her bower closing in about her, a hutch to trammel some wild thing in?
Éowyn made sure Aragorn, too, understood: "What do you fear, lady?" he asked. "A cage," she said. "To stay behind bars, until use and old age accept them, and all chance of doing great deeds is gone beyond recall or desire."
I am free of walls and wards and warnings now. And I am, as an acquaintance of mine once told me, no longer governable, unbridled save for those bonds I accept of my own will. I come only to whom I please; I go only to where I choose.
I am, J. said, still a wild thing.
J. is only half right; for I am not still a wild thing. I am a creature who grew up penned and watching others running free.
I am not still wild. I am now wild.
And now, and here, are bonds I have chosen- a cage to which only I hold the key.
And I still, as I told my friend Kristina three nights ago, climb- climb everything I can climb. Not as often nor as high as I used to, though I still eye fences and trees and walls, and occasionally things like shelves or bridge supports, measuringly.
Heights I reach myself, with my own limb and sinew: not only air, and perspective, and sanctuary. Freedom.
I know this. And occasionally I remind myself of it, experimenting along the way. Like tonight.
No bitter watches of the night with air unbreathed, deeds undone, for me; no words spoken to the darkness. Only my breath and the scrape of bark and leather, the sting of weight on my palms and fingers, the rough press of tree-limbs through my jeans.
Freedom.
(Oh, yeah- even though they'll scuff, you can climb a magnolia in Doc Martens.)
My second trip to Firenze- I told you that I was addicted to the place, did I not?- almost didn’t happen.
My first, regardless of the fact that it included San Lorenzo, Santa Croce, the Palazzo Medici Riccardi, and the Porta del Paradiso of the Battistero, was a nearly-pure perdition. The hostel at which we stayed was the worst of any I’ve experienced in Europe; every single stroke of luck or timing from our arrival onwards seemed to conspire against Bea and I. Such was the buildup of intransigently horrible events that when she dropped her camera on the steps of Santa Maria del Fiore on the day that we arrived, we both nearly tucked tail and ran. Hell, we both nearly cried.
I debated returning. Why bludgeon myself with such patent unpleasantness again? But I’d not seen the Uffizi, the Bargello, the David. I gritted my teeth, stoked my inherent stubbornness, and returned, prepared to endure any unpleasantness to see the artists I’d loved my entire life.
And wound up in a place and with people who were as perfectly suited to my views and desires as my first trip was- not.
So my first tip? Stay at the Hotel Sampaoli with the brothers Caponi. Leonardo and Ricardo are erudite, good-humored, fiercely principled, and eloquent, brilliant conversationalists- in both English and Italian. They also, not-so-incidentally, run an excellent hotel: clean, comfortable, quiet, efficient. And, as I said, filled with cultured, informed, passionately opinionated conversation, if you want it. (In point of fact it was Orsanmichele that broke the ice between Leonardo and I as soon as I was through his door: “You know Orsanmichele?” Puzzled look. “Yes- former granary turned Medici church, no? Sculptures by Verrochio, Donatello, and Ghiberti?” A long impenetrable stare. “Si.Allora. Come here. Sit down.”)
Which leads to my second tip: Don’t ask Leonardo, Francesca, or Ricardo- hell, any Fiorentino- about the Trevi Fountain. (Yes, this really happened- and, I wince to say, it was an American. Leonardo informs me that it happens on a fairly regular basis.) What this really translates into is “do your homework”, which is the best general travel trip I can give anybody. You’re spending pots of money to get to, and then see, another place- learn about where you’re going, what’s there, and why it’s important to the world. It doesn’t take that long, and will make all the difference to what you see and how it stays with you.
Third tip: Don’t spend all your time shopping. This is another piece of good general advice. Even for those who love to shop- and believe me, Bea is one of those people; I spent more time shopping during the ten days we traveled together than I’d spend in a month and a half of my normal life- there are far better and more interesting things to do. While I bought Florentine leather, Venetian glass, fans, and museum books along the way... stuff is fungible. And all of the above are just that: stuff. Ultimately, you can get it anywhere.
Art, architecture, conversations with natives, espresso or wine or mountain air drunk in along with different views of the place in which you find yourself- these are the things that are unique and irreplaceable, the things which if missed in a given place are not obtainable anyplace else. Treat yourself to them. They, unlike the gorgeous leather belts and purses, the shimmering silver-and-gold glass, will stay with you as long as you have a mind with which to recall them.
Fourth tip: Walk. I’ve already gone on about public transportation in Firenze, and yes, I was there in summer, but the truth is that it’s a very small city, and no matter what the weather you’re going to see more twisting, cobbled alleys fronting improbable palaces and prisons-turned-museums, more jewelry stores spilling into each other on the Ponte Vecchio, walking, than you will any other way. So what if you’ll sweat? Wear antiperspirant, drink enough water, carry some baby wipes, and deal with it. Yeah, it’s plebian. It’s also the best way to see Firenze. (One exception: the Piazzale Michelangelo is a hell of a climb, especially at the end of a day of walking, and dusk is the best time to go. Ride up if you can.)
Fifth tip: Listen. Listen well. Fiorentine Italian- the gorgeous, pure Tuscan dialect- is unequaled; peerlessly beautiful, it is singular in the fact that it was chosen as the standard for Italian based solely on the loveliness of its sound. Dante Alighieri’s title of Pater Patriae- Father of the Country- is based on his popularization of Tuscan Italian in his Commedia (later dubbed Divina by Boccaccio). It is, quite possibly, the most ravishing language in existence, and it flows freely all around you.
Sixth tip (coffee lovers only): A doppio espresso macchiato in Firenze should qualify as a confection. We’re talking near-ecstatic perfection here; don’t miss it.
Most of the rest of my “tips” are actually observations from specific places I went in Firenze, and they belong in a different post. (When will I stop posting about this past summer? Probably next summer. At least that way, I can keep the memories close at hand during my year in Carbondale.) I’ll close with some thoughts from a recent email between Leonardo and I, in response to his question on what I would say- in English- to someone who asked about Firenze:
I would say that Firenze was the place that redefined what the West thought of as beauty. That rediscovered what the West could do with engineering and mathematics. That literally, through its revival of the laws of perspective, changed the way the entire world looked at art.
That seeing Firenze only for its shopping is like seeing the Pacific Ocean only for the soothing sound of its water.
That its palaces and castles are significant not for what they look like but for the opulence of the genius and artistry that they contain. That the grace and allure of the city lies in its anchoring in a past in which it changed the world. And for a time, dominated it.
That Firenze began a tradition so deeply ingrained in Western thought that we take it for granted: that human talent, excellence, and art are worth almost any price paid for their creation.
That if you look carefully and well, what you see will shift your definition of beauty, of power, of achievement, of wealth. And that no matter how much you see, once you truly behold what Firenze offers you will never be able to see enough.
And no pronouns. __________________________________
Humans love asking questions to which they don’t have the answers. To which no answer may ever be possible.
Why IS a raven like a writing-desk? _________________
Here’s to elucidation. Sweet monkey, I hope it’s catching. ________________
Never underestimate the ability of people to be utterly uninterested in terrible problems which don’t directly affect them. ___________________
Why is it that when I feel swamped, the Bog of Eternal Stench is a mildly odorous but unprepossessing reek in comparison? _________________________
Everyone knows that they live alone inside their own skins. So why do we rarely if ever think about this idea? Is it too terrible? Too appealing? Why spend so much time acting in denial of it? Would explicitly acknowledging it make us more compassionate? __________________________
What does freedom mean? Is it an idea? A reality? What is it worth?
What is a terrorist?
Is it someone who kills innocents? Someone who kills noncombatants? Someone who fights for the overthrow of the regime under which s/he lives? Revolutionaries, soldiers, guerilla fighters, freedom fighters- where are the edges of these categories? __________________________
The flicker of fluorescent lights saps my energy. I know I sound like Joe from Joe vs. the Volcano here, but can’t energy-efficient lighting be achieved without this skimmed-milk-blue humming zap? ____________________
These words are apparently illegal: Mr. Cheney, I think your policies in Iraq are reprehensible. __________________
Magic Numbers: Atomic Stability Fe (86P, 126N)
Neutrons and Protons: 2, 8, 20, 28, 50 and 82 Difference: 6, 12, 8, 22, 32
There’s a pattern here. Dammit. Dammit. Why can’t I see it? ____________________
Love beggars you. Family, intellect, education, friends- none of those things matter when romantic love is involved: nakedness is the order of the day. No pedigree, no credential will suffice for you there.
Come empty-handed, bearing only yourself with you. ______________________
The difference between profanity and obscenity: other than the obvious distinction between profaning something sacred and exposing something sexual or deviant? __________________________
Not that they starve, but starve so dreamlessly, Not that they sow, but that they so seldom reap, Not that they serve, but have no gods to serve, Not that they die, but that they die like sheep. -Vachel Lindsay
I’ve always had a crush on Michelangelo. Well, since I was 8.
I read his biography at that age (the well-written-if-not-entirely-comprehensive The Agony and the Ecstasy by Irving Stone). The fact that he was homosexual never interfered overmuch either (my crushes on dead geniuses tend to have more to do with talent and less to do with any sort of physical consideration).
But I didn’t understand how deep my feelings ran- how preeminent he is in the ranks of my most cherished human virtuosos- until I spent time in Florence.
I’m a museum junkie. There is absolutely no amount of museum-hopping that I would consider ‘too much’; by my calculation I spent 12 of 18 waking hours out of every day in Firenze in one museum or church or another. And I didn’t grasp until Firenze that there are some works of art, at least, that can never be fully comprehended until you see them in person.
I know this because, as I stood in the same room with Michelangelo Buonarroti’s work for the first time in the Cappelle Medicee- surrounded… dominated… diminished… awed… by the figures of Night and Day, Dusk and Dawn, which adorn the tombs of Lorenzo and Giuliano de’Medici- I realized that I had adored Michelangelo for more than two decades without ever understanding what it was that made him great.
I stood, staring at Night, looking at the cock of her knee and the tilt of her breasts, the ropes of muscle through shoulder and arm and hip and thigh that tell of hard, heavy toil, and wondered: Is this what Tuscan peasants looked like?
Because, face merely sketched, nowhere as finished as her curved and reclining body- which shows every fold of skin, every jut of tendon- I knew, I knew, that I was looking at a real woman. She had curled like this, twisted like that, turned her face to some Tuscan horizon just so, as the Master pulled her powerful, perfect peasant’s body from its immersion in the creamy stone.
Day, the man, is more potent still, his sinewed body that of a man in middle age, his hands thickening around the knuckles as laborers’ hands are wont to do- as were the mighty hands of the workman who looked back over his shoulder as the sculptor moved his breath and pulse into the stone before him- and turns away. Only his glance over his shoulder shows his face, his unfocused gaze and the heavy, rippling shoulders telling of a fierce and fearful brilliance, a might which must be diffused for any to survive beneath its touch.
And the power- the unbelievable force of the figures- all of them- the towering, overwhelming vitality emanating from these larger-than-life-sized embodiments of the coming of Light and Dark…
They are awesome in the true, unmitigated sense: they cause awe. They cow, they overcome, they overwhelm. Marble, immobile, immortal, they dominate the vaulted space which their creator designed for them until the air you share with them slows and thickens in your lungs.
Michelangelo’s contemporaries- that is to say, his fellow Renaissance geniuses- were so overpowered by his sculptures that they actually invented a new word to describe them, a word still used only in reference his work. To this day in Firenze, if you use the word terribilita- dreadfulness- it is understood that you’re discussing Michelangelo Buonarroti.
And his most well-known sculpture? I’ve looked at it a hundred times, admired it each and every time it has crossed my vision or thoughts.
But I was not prepared for it. Had no capacity to understand its perfection, the amazement and fear that would grip me as I gazed at his David.
I come to just below David’s hip- if he were standing on the floor. He is not. Standing 17 feet high, he is on an 8-foot plinth which dominates the skylighted rotunda of L’Accademia, the building built solely to contain him.
He is, in sculptural terms, a colossus, the first to be made since the Colossus of Rhodes, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. And he is, because he was sculpted by Michelangelo Buonarroti, entirely and completely different from the Davids which came before him. Verrochio, Donatello- their youthful heroes stand in composed triumph, coolly contemplating the head of their enemy already before them.
Michelangelo, handed the commission when he was 26 years old along with a block of marble that was considered to have been ruined by another sculptor, chose to show his epitome of male perfection as he prepared to hurl the stone that would bring him a kingdom.
David is perfect. Perfect. I walked around him for an hour (much to the consternation of the guards), first nearer, then further. No tendon, no curve, not even a fingernail, is lacking in lifelike detail. Even the corrosion of his shoulders, caused by acid rain when he stood in the Piazza della Signoria, serves only to emphasize the rippling faultlessness of his turning form.
But his face- it was his face that made me understand, all over again, that I had never really seen him before now.
Oh yes, David’s face is as perfect as the rest of him. As beautiful. He is young, features still retaining the planed but rounded softness that young beauties have before their features harden with age.
And he is scared.
You will never really see this in a picture. Oh, you may see those flawless lips compress at the corners, see that matchless brow wrinkle.
But until you have stood first close to him- seen the loosening of the fingers of his right hand as he prepares to swing the stone aloft, the tightening of his left hand on the long, simple strap of his sling as he gazes upon his enemy…
Until you have moved away, in the direction of his gaze- seen the tension in the turn of his body, the piercing gaze of fear and resolution canting up and away over your head, looking at something so much bigger than he is and so fixed in its focus that you begin, after a few moments, to look over your shoulder nervously at a blank wall…
Until you have stood in his presence, felt his anxiety, his courage, his strength- you will not truly comprehend that this perfect, beautiful boy was a warrior.
And in his gaze- his dread-filled, undaunted, determined gaze- you will see the ardent and formidable king he will become.
Who does this?
What kind of artist sculpts the first colossus since antiquity and portrays him not in triumph, but in the mingling of his fear and courage just before battle?
Who would make the symbol of the Republic for which he is sculpting it perfect, but scared and smaller and tense and- human?
Michelangelo Buonarroti, perfector of humanity.
Il Divino, the sorcerer who prisoned Courage and Fear and Beauty and Mourning and Dark and Light in immaculate stone.
All right. This is it. The watershed which determines whether or not I tell pretty much the entire human race to piss off if they have a problem, or undertake to change a basic aspect of my character.
Because either I have a cardinal and massive character flaw, or almost every person I know has a very specific area of complete imbecility.
I have had problems- many, many, many, many problems, especially of late- with people who try to read hidden meanings in what I say. This, despite peremptory, early, and repeated warnings that this approach does not work with me. Has never worked with me.
I almost never do subtext- I say, literally, exactly what I mean. I even have problems understanding things other people say, because I take them at their word- at the literal meaning of their word.
I sayWhat. I. Mean.
Word. For. Word.
And I tend to expect others to do the same, especially since most people say that they do.
{personal anecdote} The conversation that brought my Uncle Justin to the decision, when I was 15, that he actually liked me as a person- and to beginning a friendship with me rather than just treating me as a niece (for an Indian man of his generation, that last word might as well read 'beloved pet')- went like this:
"So sweetheart, are you still seeing that Michael guy?"
"No- good grief. Mom told you he dumped me, didn't she?"
"Oh. [Pause, pause, pause.] Yes. She did. Are you all right? Breakups can be..."
"You mean being dumped."
"Yes. That. It can be hard."
"Yeah. He's a jerk. I'd love to conk him on the head. But I'll get over it. [Pause.] So what're you having for dinner? -Or are you skipping again?"
He started laughing. He laughed for a long time.
And told my mother later, "That girl doesn't mince words about anything, does she? I hope she stays like that." We've been friends ever since. {/personal anecdote}
Incidentally, the 'almost' in 'almost never' is always a negative subtext. It's possible for those close to me to read in to what I don't say, though it's rare- very rare. But if I refuse to discuss a topic- and usually my refusal will be explicitly stated- there will be a reason behind the fact that I don't wish to discuss it with that person or at that time.
But what I do say? Precisely what I mean.
And I've had multifarious and complex and longstanding problems with people 'reading in' to what I say. It's broken up relationships of all kinds, both friendly and romantic. And I've been discussing this with two of my good friends for some time now, and was hanging out with one of them this weekend when I got a phone call from my mother. And picked it up.
"Hey, Mom."
"Hey, Sum. I just wanted to tell you that I know that we're going to Rome."
"Cool. So Uncle J told you."
"Yes. And he said you knew!" [This in an outraged, accusatory tone.]
"Mom. Of course I knew. I told you, quote- 'Yeah, I know where you guys're going. And I'm not gonna tell you.'"
"Yes- but- I didn't think that actually meant you knew!"
"But-"
"About Rome!"
"But, Mom, I-"
"And you didn't tell me!"
"But I told you that I knew and wouldn't tell you! Ofcourse that meant I knew and wouldn't tell you! If I hadn't meant that I knew and wouldn't tell you, I'd've said something else! After all this time you should've known that I meant exactly what I said!"
My friend was, of course, roaring with laughter by this time. I congratulated my mother once more, told her I'd call her later, and got off the phone. And got- "I told you! I TOLD you! People don't expect literal statements! If even your own mother can't always get that about you, how d'you expect other people who don't know you anywhere near as well to?"
And the answer is, of course, that I can't.
So I either treat people like they aren't equals worthy of honesty from me- in other words, like morons- and talk around them rather than to them, or resign myself to being nearly constantly misunderstood.
Sweet bloody monkey. Perpetually misunderstood because I say exactly what I mean. My name should've been Κασσάνδρα.
This is an absurdist's dream of nirvana. Kafka, Camus, and Beckett are wriggling in their graves in sheer delight.
There's a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all.
Since no man knows aught of what he leaves, what is't to leave betimes?
Let be.1}
There’s one type of death {To stand in the sun and melt in the wind2}- one very special kind- that has enabled better observation and cataloguing of the universe we live in than any other kind of radiation, electronics, or stellar/dark matter phenomenon we yet know.
It is the quietus of a star, of course. Hydrogen, helium {Even in your world, that is not what a star is, but only what it is made of3}, lithium, beryllium, boron, carbon…
Normally the list would end there. But a white dwarf {On silver necklaces they strung/ the flowering stars- on crowns they hung/ the dragon-fire4}, slowly accreting matter from a partner swimming too close to its undead sibling, eventually reaches Chandrasekhar’s Limit, a mass at which degenerate pressure cannot keep the star expanded.
It collapses, the heat of its foundering {The foundering, foundering, beast-instructed mansion/ of love called into being by this same death/ hangs everywhere its light5} igniting fusion at its core, beginning again the elemental march towards iron as the star implodes and within a few seconds the core shrieks past blue-violet to invisibility at billions of degrees Kelvin, the temperature enough to unbind the star, unmake it utterly, its shockwave pressing the building nuclear deflagration to detonation.
And the star {Mica, mica, parva stella6} explodes.
And the galaxies surrounding it {The whole universe appears as an infinite storm of beauty7} are dimmed in its brilliance.
The same way. The same mass. The same {If the radiance of a thousand suns/ were to burst at once into the sky8} luminosity.
Every. Single. {The fire in which we burn9} Time.
We know what their absolute magnitude is. Therefore their apparent {We are each other’s magnitude and bond10} magnitude tells us how far away they are. How many megaparsecs away the galaxies containing them are. They are the most spectacular of the “standard candles”, objects used by astronomers to measure stellar distances.
Dying, destroyed, undone, the light they shed gives us more than physical {Life cannot be rightly seen in the sole light, cannot be perfectly lived in the sole power of its externalities11} illumination.
What the human mind, at its deepest and most profound, perceives as beautiful finds its realization in external nature… What is intelligible is also beautiful. -Subramanian Chandrasekhar
I am just a poor boy Though my story's seldom told
One of the unlooked-for highlights of my visit to Florence was, oddly enough, a virtuoso performance of Simon and Garfunkel hits by an Italian duo; I heard them twice, both in the Piazza della Signoria.
I have squandered my resistance For a pocketful of mumbles Such are promises
The second time I listened, I saw something which shifted and deepened my understanding of the pain which rings through a song that I have heard since my childhood.
All lies and jests Still a man hears what he wants to hear And disregards the rest
As a child I had listened to the song, sung and strummed by a brilliant, handsome, talented, alcoholic uncle who grieved so deeply over what he saw around him that the only way he knew how to cope was to numb himself. When he sang "The Boxer" with me as I got older, the only way I could keep my voice steady as we sang was to pinch myself.
When I left my home and my family I was no more than a boy
When the descending ripple of chords which begins "The Boxer" sounded that second night, I was once again in the front row, and once again just behind a man who clearly lived very near the spot he occupied in the Piazza.
In the company of strangers In the quiet of the railway station Running scared
Until the opening chords, he had been loud and raucous, demanding songs, mumbling a loud commentary. Now he quieted.
Laying low, seeking out the poorer quarters Where the ragged people go Looking for the places only they would know
His hair was grey, though so filthy and matted it looked brown; the color of his clothes equally indistinguishable. He was clutching a bottle of clear liquid, nearly half full.
Asking only workman's wages I come looking for a job But I get no offers Just a come-on from the whores on Seventh Avenue
I listened to the sweetness of the twining voices, remembering my uncle, and saw that the man in front of me had drawn his legs to his chest. His arms were crossed over them, the hands gripping his smutted sleeves seamed and grained with dirt until every line and crack on them stood clear against the tanned skin.
I do declare, there were times when I was so lonesome I took some comfort there
He moved to grip the neck of his bottle and took a long swig, and I saw that the bottle was now less than a third full. He set it down again on the flat slabs of slate, but the sound was lost in the amplified echo of the singers' voices.
Then I'm laying out my winter clothes And wishing I was gone- going home Where the New York City winters aren't bleeding me Leading me, going home
His head was drooping towards his knees, his lips barely moving as he mouthed the words of the song, and I thought for a moment he might pass out. But he didn't. He only put his head down on his knees, one arm wrapped around them, one hand still on the bottle.
In the clearing stands a boxer And a fighter by his trade
He began rocking back and forth, gently, slowly, with the rhythm of the song, still curled into himself. Still clutching his bottle.
And he carries the reminders Of every glove that laid him down Or cut him till he cried out In his anger and his shame
The song was almost ended. He uncurled himself. I thought he might get up. Might leave. I thought I saw tears in his eyes, though they were so glassy with alcohol it was hard to tell.
"I am leaving, I am leaving"
He sat silently, stilly, wide-eyed and staring, as the song ended and the singers faded on the last chorus.
But the fighter still remains
And as the applause began, it was I who had to turn away.
I came to Austria. I've learned a lot here. A little German. More Spanish.
And much more salsa.
So yeah, I might have a different take on European travel. What of it?
My friend Beatriz, fellow law student, fellow traveler, una puertorriqueña y una bailarina de salsa brutal, has taught me salsa. And with my traditional (or maybe, possibly, distinctly nontraditional) enthusiasm, I've picked the most sexual, most controversial form of salsa to get attached to: reggaetón.
Bea was highly amused: reggaetón, in its current form, along with perreo, the (in the words of Wikipedia) "highly controversial" dance that goes with it, is from Puerto Rico. (In fact, her mother taught third grade to two of the current chart-toppers in the genre.)
The music is actually a mix of reggae and salsa, but it started in Panama, with their importation of Jamaican men to work on the Canal. However, the finished reggaetón "sound", as well as all the top artists, hail from Puerto Rico: it was they who took Jamaican artist Shabba Ranks' "Dem Bow" and moved the beat into fast salsa married to hip-hop to produce the distinctive sound.
And it IS distinctive: at the first measure of a reggaetón song following the more traditional salsa or (ergh) bachata, a roar goes up and the floor is suddenly bare of those who are there for romantic, old-fashioned canoodling, and full of dancers who want to get serious with their hips.
But then, I haven't really answered the basic question: What is it that makes me love it so?
Remember my blog post "Put Another Dime In the Jukebox, Baby"? Take that and multiply it.
Because even though the music is far more basic and less- well, less layered- the neurochemical and adrenal response to it, in anyone who knows how to dance, is 10 times as strong.
Strong enough, in a 90-degree club, to thud through the soles of your feet to the muscles in your hips and thighs, up through your abdomen and into your shoulders.
Strong enough to move your body in ways that normally require about the same ambient temperature but far, far less clothing.
That's where perreo comes in.
Perreo is- well, it's a dance that outrages people who do the lambada. Get the picture?
And the name? Perreo means "to act like a dog"... figure it out.
Here's the thing, though: I love reggaetón (and damn if I'm not actually getting good at it for a gringa, even by Latin standards), it's just... I don't like people touching me when I dance.
Unless it's a person with whom I'm romantically involved... and even then I don't like bumping and grinding. ICK.
But I think if I got to hang around Bea- and Mario, and Gensil, and Pablo- long enough, they might have overcome my prejudices on even that.
Luckily for my dearly cherished hangups, we leave here in a day and a half: she to Paris and Barcelona, me to Florence and Vienna.
But we'll see each other again at Christmas.
And Nashville had better look out.
***Chorus of an utterly addictive song by Daddy Yankee, who is himself more than a little drugging. A ella la gusta las gasolina (dame más gasolina!)...
Unlike many others versed in heartbreak, I've always thought it odd when people spoke of it as connected to sorrow, to feeling of any kind.
When something breaks, it also empties.
I knew that my course in International Health Law and Bioethics was going to be challenging. I even knew that it would be so on a personal level.
I knew already, when the professor told us we would have a section on Nazi doctors, some of what I would see- after all, as Professor Beres once told me, I majored in atrocity: laws of war, crimes of war, crimes against humanity. I've studied them all, spoken to Holocaust survivors.
But I didn't know that it was doctors whose ideology drove the Nazi regime. That practicing physicians who espoused eugenics inspired Hitler's madness.
That the largest group in the SS- 40%- was doctors.
I have seen pictures, before, of what was done. Heaps of bodies. Rows of corpses so emaciated they didn't look human at first glance. Crematoriums belching unending gouts of oily, obscene smoke to a sullen, black-smeared sky.
But this- torture and mutilation and laceration and maiming inflicted carefully, deliberately, repeatedly.
Individually.
Rather than on the anonymous jumble of limbs and features of people entering a gas chamber, on a person on a table with her face clear before them as they destroyed her and only her.
Only one human being before them as they cut, injected, disfigured, brutalized.
Their patient.
They pursued "the advancement of science". They believed in science. Used it. Used other human beings without thought or compunction to feed the filthy maw of their ambitions, to pursue a profane betterment that sanitized those they sought to improve into fresh and perfect monsters, leaving under a healthy shell a putrid core of the corruption on which its outward appearance was built...
They were doctors. Doctors. They took the Oath to do no harm.
Did they feel, on entering medicine, as I feel? That this was the best way they could serve the human race? Did they love the sciences they studied, take fire with eagerness at the intricacy, the delicacy, the unimaginable wonder of it all...?
No. No. Even if they did it is different. We are different. This way lies madness.
They served the good of "society", not of their patients. When a Polish inmate, a doctor and freedom fighter, asked one of the doctors how they could do this to a patient, he answered that they were "preserving the health of society" by cutting out its infectious parts.
They served "society". Not their prisoners, their victims, their patients.
I am not like them. We are not like them. We must not be like them. We cannot allow this to happen. Ever. Ever. Even now this wound will never heal, the scar never harden, the stain never wash out of our profession.
And to prevent more like it, we must remind ourselves of what it is that people who shared it did.
Because we could. We could be like them. We could so easily act for the good of "society".
Reporting our patients to law enforcement for medical conditions. Influencing the patient into refusing or administering the treatments we choose, rather than giving them full choice. Glossing over the "informed" part of "informed consent".
And I have to know this contamination. Know it, gaze it in the eye, see it to its fullest extent: take in the full horror before me.
Take it in and make that terror, that unutterable destruction, a part of me.
Because it is true.
Because it happened. Because I have to know. And because in knowing, I cannot refuse the consequences and responsibilities of knowledge.
Because it must never happen again.
My head hurts. My body hurts.
But my heart? No. Still numb.
I can almost see sparks winking off the edges of splintered pieces, surrounded by the fluid thought and feeling once contained. Glinting in the light.
I have had pieces broken before. Repair is a skill that improves with practice.
1. Have money. Lots of it. 2. Bring your money. 3. Spend a great deal of your money.
No joke. Getting to Florence (more properly Firenze) is expensive almost any way you slice it, unless you’re a native of Italy (and if you are, I can’t imagine what you’re doing reading this; go away- shoo!). Even rail travel on a Eurail pass will oblige you to shell out about $30 on top of the price of your pass for reservations on the one-way train. Trenitalia requires them, and let me tell you that the alternative to paying- standing or sitting in a train corridor for 3½ hours- is no fun (there was a rail strike while we were in Florence, and on the way back to Innsbruck all reservations were cancelled- we wound up sitting in the corridor for the entire ride). One-off train tickets from anywhere outside Italy- for example, from Innsbruck through the Brenner Pass by way of Bolzano, one of the shortest routes- start at 65€ (about $85), and planes run about the same price; so do car rentals.
Getting there is only the beginning of the expenditures you’ll need to make. Even a form of transport as humbly plebian as a 3-day bus pass is 12€ ($15.00); expect to drop at least that much per ride if you want to get around in a taxi- and if you have the money, I’d recommend it. Coming from Austria to Italy made the bus system a shock; from an utterly transparent and predictable system that a child (literally) could decipher to a system which is so jumbled and labyrinthine that even native Florentines know only the routes they need to get to and from work. Get a bus pass only if you have to, and keep your fingers crossed. (I’d tell you to buy a map, but they actually don’t make bus maps in Florence.)
Admission to the large museums will cost you $15.00 a go as well- make a reservation 2 days in advance, or you WILL stand in line for at least four hours at both the Accademia and the Uffizi, if you manage to get in at all… and if you leave without seeing the Uffizi, the Bargello, and the Accademia, why were you in Florence in the first place?
The smaller museums- basilicas and palaces- run cheaper; if, that is, you call $7.50 per person cheap. In other cities this would be reasonable; in a place like Florence, where there are at least 20 such sights which no one visiting the city should miss, prices start to add up.
There are no freebies in Florence; unlike many other European cities, there is no city card you can buy which gives you admission to museums and transportation for 48 or 72 hours, and there are no discounts for students or the elderly at attractions or lodgings. One price fits all and pay as you go: Florence is an a la carte kind of town.
Lodging matches this sort of “You’ll pay for it, so we’ll charge for it” philosophy. A room in an albergo’s dorm- meaning lodging with 4-12 other strangers and a communal bathroom in the hall- will start at 20€ per night and go up from there. The most expensive rooms in the city (whose prices are publicly available, anyway) go, in the high season, for prices like 2000€ a night.
There are hidden costs as well- don’t, for example, go into a higher-priced restaurant without inquiring if they have a “seating charge” (2-5€ per person) on top of their mandatory service charge. And plan to spend at least 6€ a day on water; you’ll need at least 3 liters to replace what you lose in the heat, and it’ll cost you. If you’re not used to moving around in blazing heat with no air conditioning as a respite, wear comfortable shoes that cover as little of your foot as possible (think Tevas or Crocs), light colored clothing in summerweight fabric, and sunblock. (Trust me on that last- my parents are ethnically Indian, and even I wear SPF 30 in Italy.)
That said, few cities have more in the way of art, history, and the fascination which springs from the marriage of power and beauty (that is, the Medici legacy) to recommend them, and with a 1€ map, even someone as congenitally lacking in a sense of direction as I can find her way around Firenze’s twisting, winding alleys and cockeyed streets on foot.
Cellini’s Perseo (post of its own coming soon), which stands in the open air in the Piazza della Signorina, was worth every bit of the aggravation and heartbreak it took to get to Florence (which, in my case, was a great deal indeed), and is utterly overwhelming. There were at least ten other experiences about which I could say the same thing- the tombs of my boys Galileo and Macchiavelli in Santa Croce, for instance, or the exquisite della Robbia altar which stands in the same place, or Ghiberti’s ethereally, blindingly beautiful Baptistery doors.
There was one moment which stood alone amongst all these glories, however: the Basilica di San Lorenzo, the personal crypt of Cosimo di Giovanni de'Medici (he's buried before its main altar), which contains the Medici family chapel (the Sagrestia Vecchia, designed by Brunelleschi). In it are the tombs of members of the Medici family and the monumental stone (though not the grave) of Cosimo de'Medici, Pater Patriae- placed by his grandson Lorenzo under an enormous elevated plinth so that all who saw it, in seeking to read the inscription, would bow before the memorial.
On the ceiling above the chancel, Leon Battista Alberti painted in a deep and glorious blue a map of the constellations, their shapes and stars gilded onto the lapis background. It is a picture of the night sky above Florence, exactly as it appeared on July 4, 1442… a precise picture of the sky, painted when the Ottomans were ill-tempered upstarts irritating the Byzantine Empire founded by Constantine; when Columbus had yet to conceive the idea of flattering Isabella, for the very good reason that neither had yet been born; when the church at San Lorenzo had already been named, sited, and consecrated for eleven hundred years.
My scalp was prickling as I stared. Everything was prickling- my neck, my arms, my eyes- from being open too long... I couldn't pull them away for a very, very long time.
No matter what you spend to get there- or spend while you’re there- Florence is worth it.
Salzburg: An outstanding example of a type of building, architectural or technological ensemble which illustrates (a) significant stage... in human history. -Criterion for which Altstadt Salzburg was included on the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites
I wasn't really knowledgeable about- or, before coming here, very much interested in- the Habsburg-Lorraine and Austro-Hungarian Empires, and all the cultural accomplishments thereof. Seeing Munich shook that indifference. I've yet to post about that richly bright, beautifully organized, cheerfully friendly city in any manner which does it justice- and this blog post, alas, will not do so either. But it was an extraordinarily easy and wonderful introduction to Europe, and it’s a place in which I intend to spend more time in the future.
It also made me consider that I was genuinely lucky to be able to spend time in this region. However, I was still fixated on my planned trips to Italy; visions of Cellini saltcellars, La Serenissima, and figures pushing through the white foam of Carrera marble dancing in my head as I rode into the Tirol.
But it took a trip to Salzburg to knock the last of the dust off my antiquated (or merely Mediterranean-centric) cultural notions and awe me as to the region’s cultural achievements, which stretch backwards to a time before any idea of the country in which I was born even existed.
Bea and I went to Salzburg in order to hear Mozart’s “Requiem” performed in the Kolligienkirche. The concert was wonderful, but it wasn't even close to being everything that made the trip worthwhile.
Salzburg, like my climb up that path in the Tirolian Alps, blew through me and replaced my breath with its own pulse, the steady bass throb of stone, the variegated ostinato chiming of the most perfect epitome of Baroque architecture and ornament in existence.
The history of Altstadt Salzburg, worth reading in far more detail than in this brief recapitulation, included Cardinals and Archbishop Counts and Dukes who imported Baroque architects and artisans to remake most of the town in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, and the result is the most immaculately preserved city of Italian Baroque architecture in existence. In Austria.
But the most perfect description of Salzburg I can conjure is one which I wrote to a friend: Altstadt Salzburg is incredibly beautiful. And it’s not the fragile, ethereal, evanescent beauty of other places: light on the buildings in the late afternoon, a particularly gorgeous sunset. No, Salzburg’s beauty is solidly grounded, carved from ancient stone and masonry, shaped in plaster. Permanent. Pervasive.
Embracing.
It’s endured through 10 centuries, and even the battering of the winds of Time have only managed to make it more unflinching. It is, step for step, the most beautiful manmade place I’ve ever been- and let me tell you that the Taj and the Palace of the Winds make for stiff competition. But they are jewels shining in otherwise commonplace landscapes, ornaments which are all the more dazzling for their contrast with the plebian world around.
Salzburg is an enormous gem, a massive carving into the heart of a rock unornamented from the outside but glowing like light prisoned in a sapphire within, every curve and alley another facet of an adornment which IS the thing which it embellishes.
And I have walked through it, captivated by the incandescence at its core.
Today in my Bioethics class we discussed Oregon's "Death with Dignity" law and the Netherlands' euthanasia laws. And my classmate- I'll call him Jason- said, "I don't think there's a right to die. I don't think it's a personal decision. I think people have an obligation to medical science to live for as long as possible, because that's how we learn about disease and that's how medical science progresses."
I raised my hand and stated my opinion, but didn't attack his.
He raised his hand- and repeated himself.
And I lost my temper and said: "Saying there's no right to die is absurd and inaccurate. People do die. Some of them choose to by active suicide or refusal of treatment- but they die. Everyone dies. Everyone has a right to. Everyone will.
Saying that people have no right to die is a mischaracterization. And dishonest. What you're saying isn't that they have no right to die. It's that you have the right to say when they should die.
You're substituting your judgment for someone else's on what should happen to the body they live inside. You're denying the most basic principles of the autonomy of every human being to determine what happens inside his own skin. And that's a usurpation of personal sovereignty and profoundly contemptuous of the dignity and integrity of every human being."
And the professor said, "Well, we know how you feel."
And I said, "Yeah, making that clear has never been a problem."
And turned around to see my friend Bea grinning at me.
And thought, Okay, done talking in class for today.
But simply moaning in pleasure doesn't come close to conveying the essence of this ecstatically wonderful confection.
The substance referred to as chocolate or cocoa (the word originated in the Nahuatl branch of the Uto-Aztecan language and means "bitter water") is a combination of solids from the seeds of the tropical cacao tree Theobroma cacao, cacao fat, sugar, and other additions.
It's been made in some form since at least 1100 BC, associated from the time of its earliest making with the goddess Xochiqetzal, bringer of fertility, and introduced to the Western world through the offices of Columbus, who brought it to Spain and let the industrious Spanish monks do the rest. By the 17th century it was a luxury item to European nobility; it was in Turin at the end of the next century that the solid candy that we now think of as chocolate was invented by Doret.
Cacao is as unique chemically as chocolate is historically, containing theobromine, a potent stimulant, as well as flavonoids and antioxidants. Human consumption also absorbs a family of chemicals known as anandamides (derived from the Sanskrit for "joy"), endogenous cannabinoids which with chocolate's tryptophan and phenethylamine content give rise to mild neurosynaptic stimulation, as well as the legends of chocolate's aphrodisiac qualities.
The making of good chocolate is a long, intricate, and cash-intensive process which resembles in its subtlety and complexity that of winemaking, with the added step of confection-making at the end of the growth, fermentation, roasting, and grinding process. The most expensive cacao varietals, the Criollo, grown in Central America and the Caribbean, sell for an average of $20.00 a pound raw and peeled. The added costs of chocolate production bring the cost of a well-crafted single-origin Criollo bar (the two best produced are Domori and Amedei, both in 70% bars that will steal your breath and leave your entire body prickling in delight) to approximately $6-$7 per 3-ounce bar- cheap for the smooth, sensuous heaven they produce on the tongue.
And I? I crave not only that heaven, but the rougher, spicier bliss of the blunt and artless Forastero, the bean from which most of the world's chocolate is made. A chocolate gourmand and gourmet, I've been exploring Europe on a budget, its chocolate in small pieces, and have stumbled across some melting raptures on the way.
My latest? Lindt's Edelbitter Mousse Sauerkirsch-Chili 70% Cacaogehalt. 70% cocoa solids encasing a 70% mousse, containing sour cherry extract, enwrapping a small core of chili extract (hearkening back to the very beginning of xocolatl, in which it was blended with chili and drunk).
Lindt, whose founder invented the conching process that gives modern chocolate its smooth texture, is the finest mass-producer of chocolates in the world. Its exquisite 85% bar gives even the 'grand-cru' producers a run for their money; its Mousse Sauerkirsch-Chili is a triumph of both confiserie and chocolatiering. Its distinct beginning, middle, and end notes deliquesce across the tastebuds; first the round, dark cacao, the barest trace of bittersweet coffee underpinning it, melting imperceptibly into the sourness of the cherry, finishing creamy on the tongue as the spice of the chili warms through the fruit until your tongue is left tingling and sated.
Ah, chocolate.
I cannot better describe it than Baron Justus von Liebig, a 19th- century German chemist: Chocolate is a perfect food, as wholesome as it is delicious, a beneficent restorer of exhausted power... it is the best friend of those engaged in literary pursuits.
My Comparative Criminal Procedure class discussed shari’a law today. As such, the conversation turned to India- which is unique in allowing Muslims to choose to abide by shari’a law rather than by the secular Parliamentary system- and Pakistan.
And thence to “honor killings”, which occur entirely outside of shari’a law but are often ignored by it.
And thence to (my soul shudders within me at this phrase) “honor rapes”.
And thence to Mukhtaran Bibi.
Knowing I had lived in India, the professor asked me about the first three subjects. And I could no more have avoided bringing Mukhtaran Bibi into the discussion than I could have stopped breathing.
So I told my classmates her story.
She is a 34-year-old woman- a Muslim- from a small village, Meerwala, in Pakistan. Her 12-year-old brother was seen talking with a woman from a higher tribal group.
Her village council, the panchyatjirga, sentenced her to be publicly gang-raped for his crime.
She was.
And she refused to do the proper and expected thing and kill herself afterwards.
Instead she found a sympathetic cleric, a scholar of shari’a law, who helped her prosecute her case through the courts. She won justice from her rapists, and a judgment which she could have used to sequester herself in comfort, or to leave her village, to leave her shame behind her.
She did neither of those things. She stayed in her village, living with the taint of a woman defiled and dishonored, under threat from tribal lords and government officials. And she used the money paid to her as judgment to open two establishments there: a school for boys, and a shelter and school for women and girls.
The first people she approached to enroll were the children of her rapists.
I cannot write or tell her story, especially those last words, without wanting to weep.
And I have no words to describe such a woman, such a human being, such greatness of spirit. Mukhtaran Bibi is too big for any utterance of mine to touch.
So I turn to other famous words, from the last speech to the court of a man who was also condemned to a terrible fate by an unfair tribunal:
Remembering [her] heroism I felt small, small, at the presence of [her] greatness and found myself compelled to fight back from my eyes the tears, and quanch my heart, trobling to my throat to not weep before [her]…
But [her] name will live in the hearts of the people and in their gratitude when [their] and your bones will be dispersed by time, when your name, [their] name, your laws, institutions, and your false god are but a dim rememoring of a cursed past in which man was wolf to the man…
If it had not been for these thing [she] might have live out [her] life among scorning men. [She] might have die unmarked, unknown, a failure. This is [her] career and [her] triumph. Never in our full life could we hope to do such work for tolerance, for justice, for man's understanding of man...
- Last speech to the court, Bartolomeo Vanzetti
Postscript: There is a very troubling follow-up to the story of Mukhtar Mai (her local press’ name for her, meaning “respected big sister”). She has been held under house arrest in Pakistan, her rapists were let go, re-arrested, and are now being retried in a different court, and her passport was confiscated by the Pakistani government- meaning Pervez Musharraf, our very good friend- just before she was to travel to the US to be introduced by Bill Clinton as she spoke at the UN last year.
General Musharraf thinks her public speaking and work for women’s education will “hurt the image of Pakistan”.
This is the webpage of the organization which invited Mukhtaran Bibi to speak at the UN on their behalf. From there you can write an email to the ambassador from Pakistan and get updates as to how she is being held and whether or not her rapists have been let go.
Walking by Lake Michigan with a friend, I heard a faint ringing.
Dismissed it. Wind in my ears.
Didn’t stop hearing it. Stopped a moment, halting him with me, and listened, and heard- bells.
Hundreds of small bells, ill-tuned, clanking in a susurration almost as mild as the hushed ripple of the water.
Couldn’t figure it out. We were looking out over hundreds of small boats- but they couldn’t all have bells, could they?
Then I saw it- metal blocks on the limp halyards, tapping against the bare masts, clanging in a quiet but variegated symphony.
We stood for maybe a minute, watching them bob on the gentle waves, hearing the dissonant but soothing murmur of the boats, talking in their sleep, gentling the wind and waves and each other.
