Fresh, Cleaned Up, Some Distance and Perspective

I wanted to retread my last Syria post, more palatable this time. I had a few emails from people thanking me for my honesty. Speaking and writing freely should be our banner, always and forever. To those championing free speech, I wanted to do them honor.

As for the rest... Perhaps the insulting and obscene comments can be kept at bay? Just read/reread with an open mind...

Homestretch. Last school year in Syria, the last months of living there. Come June we were gone. Our plan was to stay three years, although the usual contract is two years. But we knew we wanted to settle in a place, a region, for awhile, to live there. If we’d just sweated out a two-year stint, we’d just finish our first year, and then would have to start looking for employment elsewhere, with all the forms and finances and anxieties accompanying the move—plus, all of the baggage accumulated to ship. Our sea shipment took months to arrive; I can’t imagine wanting to pack that again so soon. Many folks will sign on for two years and vacate when the contract runs out. Quite a few of our friends, who came here a year after we did, disembarked, too, their two-year contract fulfilled. Turnover, it turns out, is high. Why? For one, Syria can be somewhat boring—or at least I got bored there. This might seem strange, considering the recent political upheavals: getting shot at for protesting isn’t boring. But as modes of expression are banned, and having been banned a few generations instills banned expression as a way of life, people naturally and even affably simply don’t express much. Why take a chance on making art when you could be pulled in for questioning? When authority is absolute and strictly from your leader, individual initiative is, of course, stifled. Perhaps there’s a distinctive mode of Western First World living long marrowed in our bones. After you’ve eaten at a few of the restaurants, most of which have exactly the same menus cooking nearly similar styles, you tire, and then either eat at home or eat with Western friends. Not that the cuisine wasn’t good—we’ve had some fantastic meals in Syria. We saw a smattering of music; we heard about an interesting dance group that blew through, but we neglected to catch that breeze. But for myself I’ve recognized what I deem a self-imposed barrier. What we’d intended before we arrived in Syria we never accomplished: learn the language as a gateway—the true gateway—into a new culture. A few furtive attempts at Arabic, and then we gave up. Enough to get by, that’s what we learned. And we did get by. But that’s all we did. So advertisements for a concert could very well have been sprayed across a billboard, but I’d drive by and think the woman pictured was hawking shampoo. I don’t quite know why we never kept up the Arabic lessons. Part of the reason is a very settled lifestyle I acquired, just keeping my own garden cultivated. Stepping lightly around trash day every day—there’s nothing encouraging in suggesting, as some have, that “after awhile you get used to it” as if deadening sense and myopic vision are survival tactics. I don’t want to survive, I want to live. When visiting a lovely beachcove last Spring near the mountain village of Kasab, a few of us actually spent our last morning walking the sand and picking up the trash the locals left. What is redeeming about all this? You will not find a friendlier, more welcoming people anywhere in the region. When charting up what we’ll miss about living here, it all comes down to friends: we’ve made some of the best friends of our lives here. But they’re almost all Westerners. To slough off the worn, threadbare jackets of our culture and suffer the tiny steps into an unfamiliar climate I find honorable. But in the end I find I’m too enamored of the good old West, liberal, environmentally uppity, animal-loving, creating and sustaining styles of music that defy categorizations, churning our theater and song and film and poetry and essay and food and story and dance and painting and sculpture, mundane, punk, heady, angry, desperate, savory, kickass, sultry, delicate, revelatory, whirling and wild, soft and silent, hymns and bells and whistling angels. Case in point: just now, dear reader, you might have noticed a pause in the narrative. Consider yourself astute. Indeed, I laid down the typing finger and walked into the night-lit front patio to investigate a noise like rain toppling and tinkling on the granite. Or whatever the pavement is. I knew what it was: one of our upstairs neighbors from one of the four floors was rinsing down their balcony railing with hosewater. Syria is dusty, incredibly so. Dust settles on all things living or inanimate. On balcony railings. So folks—or their housekeeper—hose the railings off. Of course, the dirty railing water splashed onto our patio, and so dirties it up more. Reader, I’ve trudged upstairs probably a dozen times over the last two years, complaining to seemingly understanding ears that their dirty railing should not be hosed off onto our perhaps clean patio. Dirty water sprinkling onto our cushioned lawnchairs. Go back, dear reader, and note how many times I brought this to their attention, including the owner of the building, a very nice rotund man you met early in this blog, who’d held my hand during the call to prayer one warm August evening and explained that Jew, Christian, Muslim, we all pray to the same God. First off, how many brain cells does it take to figure out that pouring dirty water onto someone else’s patio isn’t acceptable? Got a brain cell ballpark? Good, okay, then how often do you have to be told before you cease and desist, or perhaps—oh man, a wacky thought, this, hold on folks, we’re racing round the rickety end of the wooden rollercoaster soggy and peeling, two wheels off and flaring, no seatbelts—perhaps you can just get a rag warm water wet and wipe the railing down. I’m sorry, am I in line for a Nobel Prize for that brilliant idea? So I just walked out in righteous indignation, looked up in despair, thought I’d take the wet cushion up to the 4th floor, bang on the sweet guy’s door, and present him with his housekeeper’s damn failings. But I just shook my head. Why bother. Daily experience here is split between the lauded and the lame. A positive: a few weeks ago I was attempting to connect the natural gas tank for the stove. The nut wouldn’t screw, no matter what I tried. Frustrated, I went round the corner to the little shop and asked the proprietor how it works. Without a thought, he happily locked up his shop and accompanied me to our apartment, and connected our gas. A negative: the prevalence in this day and age of the 7th century symbol of oppression of women: the hijab. You just can't get used to it. The empowerment of women IS the one tried and true thing that lifts the economy of peoples. I defy every male on the planet to read Mary Wollstonecraft's "A Vindication for The Rights of Women" written in the 18th century and then try to argue rationally why women should be covered. A positive: the utmost hospitality that is hallmark of the region going back to nomadic times. We’ve experienced nothing but kindness and smiles in almost all of our dealings here. And as it never ceases to amaze me—as writ in these pages—if you don’t have money enough to pay for the dozen bottles of wine picked out, George (there are Georges selling wine and booze on either side of this one street in the Armenian quarter) hands you your bagged wine, scoffs at your apology, and says “Next time, next time!” and trusts you’ll pay then, which you do. And so, let’s end on a positive. All in all, we’re glad we made the journey, found friends, travelled, and lived in Syria. But I can’t live without Art. And a decent Jewish deli within a stone’s throw.

To See Beauty You Gotta Rise Above the Dust

We have to begin thinking of our time here as living in Honduras. If we trap our imaginations in the rough city we reside in, Tegucigalpa, we'll miss the startling beauty and memorable experiences to cherish here. A national holiday awarded us a three-day weekend, so Carrie and I determined to escape. I haven't blogged much about our short time here, as there's been little of note to note. Much like Aleppo, there's not much to do here. Unlike Aleppo, there's loads of street crime, and we are warned not to travel out at night, take cabs everywhere, stay out of certain neighborhoods. And here in Tegus, I think I can safely chart one of the most interesting cultural experiences of my life: one weekday afternoon we were in the backseat of a taxi stuck in traffic that clogs the narrow winding hilly streets here, chocking on exhaust, en route to Walmart. That was our highlight of the day. Hope we don't get robbed. To return: Carrie knew of some cabanas set high on a mountain bordering La Tigre National Park about 20 kilometers from Tegus. A short taxi ride from near the Mexican embassy in our neighborhood to one of the main roads where the chicken buses (old schoolbuses probably sold from the States) wait to groan and wheeze their way up to Valle de Angeles, a quaint colonial artisan handcraft village in the mountains. Another bus ride 15 kilometers to be dropped off at a road leading into the even smaller village of San Juancito, an old mining town once the economic powerhouse of Honduras, now nearly defunct and shrunk to a quarter of its size after the mining companies and a Pepsi bottling plant boarded windows and doors and skipped out. Once out of the dull grays and rickety browns of Tegus, lush green mountains and forests rise around the snaking roads, banana and coffee plantations, side of the road ramshackle stalls where peasant fires twirl white smoke into verdant countryside. Once dropped off, we called Jorge and Monica, the German owners of Cabana Mirador El Rosario, and a half hour later we were shaking hands with a tall thin Jorge who offers a large smile of teeth but is otherwise soft-spoken and quiet and content in the cloud forest he calls home. The rocky rumbling bouncing bumping ride in Jorge's pickup took indeed a half hour, up and up and up we go, the daily rains washing out scoops of earth from the road. Three big dogs greet us at the gate, and proceed to lead us down the winding stone steps past terraced gardens and fruit trees, and direct us to our cabana. For 13 years Jorge and his wife have operated the cabanas on two acres high on a sloping mountainside. Just two cabanas, clean, spartan, elegant wood. But the deal sealer is the view from our deck: forested mountains rolling down to a valley of sugar cane with a thick brown rushing river cutting gently through. Puffs of white cloud like daintily poised whipped cream toppings sift across the sky. Below us is their rich, diverse garden (no spraying), hummingbirds flit through the dense brush and the soft roar of the waterfall is heard around a distant canyon, otherwise the blessed silence and temperate winds of Honduras. What would you expect to pay for a weekend in Paradise? How about $35 a night? After a leisurely lunch of sandwiches, cut celery and apples, Carrie and I hiked the trails into La Tigre, vines trellising through mossy trees of grand and wild abandon, slivers of sunlight consecrating a curve in the trail, mist suddenly descending, and after days of heavy rain, arching waterfalls drew down the hillsides and splashed happily. For three hours hiking Carrie's and my soul were the only ones we encountered. About ten minutes from the cabana on our return hike, a torrential downpour soaked us, the road back down becomes a river, puddles formed in our hiking boots, my shirt creaked when I finally under our roofed deck removed my dripping clothes. The expanse of sky was white with foamy stormcloud and rain, and we were so high up that we could actually see the clawing fingers of a dark threatening raincloud spreading and convulsing toward us. A change of clothes, we head down another level to the main house. Jorge lights a fire to warm our cold feet. The dogs, furry and glad to see us dry, wander in and curl around our chairs. A cat waltzes by. Jorge opens the night's first bottle of a Chilean Cabernet. The last twilight blue shudders and then darkens in the panoramic sky outside wide windows settling on a peaceful world. Jorge quietly eases out of the room to prepare dinner. Carrie and I count our blessings, peer up at the high vaulted ceilings, we the cabana's only guests and now feeling like royalty in the main house, warmed by the now blazing fire, here on this lush mountainside in the quiet soft air of this forest in this Third World country, our feet up, the dogs' hair soft to our strokes, wine glasses full and held high, and we toast to the magic we've found, that glowing balm sweet and healing.

How I Get By in the Third World...

Turn to Gin

So this is what it’s come to
Life abroad in limbo,
My hairline and patience wearing thin
Soon it will be evening
Twilight, shade of grieving
No leaving, I turn to gin




I’ve got no one else to blame
Wanderlust fueled the flame
Scorching sun toughens my skin
Stranded, lost and shipwrecked
A Gilligan of the intellect
I reflect and turn to gin

Gin, I fear
Cold and clear
If you’ve a better idea
I’m all ears

City buildings wreathed in wire
Barbed and loaded guns for hire
Car alarms wail above the din
Gray exhaust perfumes the air
Bookstores are a sad affair
With consummate flair, I turn to gin

Exile and the bourgeoisie
Agony and the ecstasy
Fail to embrace the culture is a sin
But I’d consider turning gay
Just to see a Kushner play
Dismayed, I turn to gin

Easily bored and feeling weak
My lamentation’s not unique
Eschew the booze, bear the blues, and grin
I’m not cut out for martyrdom,
And after all’s said and done
She comes, my faithful gin

Gin, King Lear
Cold and clear
If you’ve a better idea
I’m all ears

Goddamn finally finished writing this,
Tegucigalpa, Honduras
September 26, 2011

All I Wanted To Say About It

Song written after a good friend in Syria, a citizen there, refused to speak to me again because I kindly suggested that at least in the US you can protest without fear of violent repression. Well, honey, take this:

All I Really Wanted to Say About It

Wind whipped the wire while photographer got ready to shoot
Waiting for a sign when the desert spit the dust on his boot
He’ll soon be wiping blood off his heel, so I guess the point is moot
Hail the Day of Denial, Big Daddy’s got a new shiny suit.

Slogans of devotion in the mouths of everyone you meet
Flags are a-flying and the banners unfurled across the street
But the dragon’s blowing fire, so get out if you can’t stand the heat
Servants shuffle knives while the master shuffles his feet

Dear lady in a haze, confusing what is real and what is not
The guilty only find the words to speak when they fear getting caught
Will the sons and the daughters freely speak without fear of being shot?
I’m just tossing seeds to the weeds in an old vacant lot

Water in the cistern gleaming cold like a diamond pool
Water for the women of the wheat and the riders of the mule
But the rusted pipe’s corrupt and the king’s nobody’s fool
Flowers for the iron tower, the valley’s dry as a jewel

Packing up my bags, western sky’s calling my name
I thought I might apologize, but it wouldn’t be the same
Contrived explanations, empty wind when the dead are to blame
Here’s a shot of me in New York City, I’m the one just outside the frame.
Here’s a shot of me in New York City, I’m the one just outside the frame.



Written 5:30, April 23, 2011

Instead of Living, Just Record It

In the future, nothing will be experienced, but only recorded. Documented on video for later viewing on smaller and smaller screens, your child in glorious pageantry dancing her sugar plum fairy across a pre-school stage will be a digital reproduction of an evening you won’t remember because you were there only to hold up your iPhone to capture a moment in her fleeting childhood. Why did you want to capture your daughter’s performance? Do you even know? Perhaps it was important to her, and therefore to you, because she had been practicing for weeks, telling you excitedly about her part, showing you her twirl, sharing anew the tale of the Nutcracker and the Rat. She wanted to know that you and Daddy would be there. You assured her you would, and, indeed, smiling to yourselves that evening on the drive over, proud parents, you both showed up (though your cell phones were on silent and you had no intention of not answering any vibration). When the lights dimmed and the magic began, tiny cameras held aloft (with all other parents), you videoed this evening’s performance because it was an important event—but evidently not important enough to pay attention to the performance itself while it was unfolding before your eyes. You missed it.
Or rather, you captured the performance, either partially or whole depending on your arm’s level of endurance holding up the device, so you could—well why, exactly? View it in the future in its greatly reduced capacity for reasons not strong enough then to sway you to experience it in the present?
Perhaps you wanted to forward it to me, because surely I get as much delight watching your daughter perform as you did recording it. Perhaps you wanted to upload it to Facebook, and monitor your wall awaiting the “likes” and effusive comments. We agree: she is just too cute. My, how she’s grown.
Perhaps years to come when she’s a snarling teenager averting her gaze and mumbling listless responses to your humblest morning greetings, you’ll sift through your saved files to watch in her more innocent and loving times what you didn’t watch the first time around. And under the clutter this is the driving reason, isn’t it: to remember. To scoop from its ceaseless flow a cupful of time’s rushing river. This is your daughter when she was young and beautiful and didn’t resent you. It was your daughter back then, too, when she was a sugar plum fairy, and that magical evening would never come again, though so many days and evenings were still to come, and many of these you recorded as well—blessed technology!—but the river kept rushing, didn’t it? Where did the time go? After receiving from your daughter a somewhat halfhearted goodbye hug—she fell limp too soon, you thought—and waving as the taxi took her to the airport for her flight to Prague to live with an indie filmmaker, who will end up not marrying her, you return to your digital recordings. There she is (no, there she was). You did it: you captured that wonderful evening long ago. She loved you so. Look at her smile. Don’t you wish you would have been there to see it?
Ask an ambitious mountaineer why he (or she) desires to ascend Mount Everest, the mountaineer may cleverly remember to answer “Because it’s there” and we nod and grin admiringly, sharing the aptness of this stock response. But that’s not the reason to ascend Everest, is it? You could brush aside the mountaineer’s unintended evasion and lay scrutiny: no really, why? Next response might come “Because I want to” or “Because I’ve always dreamed of doing it” which are variations on the original evasion. You persist. If at this point the mountaineer isn’t annoyed at your dogged pursuit, you may get a shrug. He may not know the reason. Or he may. But because the mountain exists isn’t a reason to climb it. The chair I’m sitting on right now also exists, but I doubt the mountaineer wants to climb it. Giraffes exist. After his descent from Everest, will he scale them?
If we can record it, we should record it. By recording it, we don’t have to bother experiencing it. Recording it is certainly much less work. We don’t have to attend to what we’re seeing or hearing, just whether we’re getting the footage we want and whether the device has enough power. We are relieved of the dreaded responsibility of living in the present, and more importantly, thinking about the meaning of the experience. Thank goodness. We can use our minds more constructively: putting the recorded footage on Facebook, for instance.
Look, your daughter has sugar-plummed her way offstage. You may stop recording now, and continue watching the delightful play. You have missed seeing your daughter, but she’ll return soon. Here she comes again: stop experiencing and start recording, quick. Well done: you have succeeded in missing another moment in your daughter’s life.
I had a friend who, when asked by strangers if he would be so kind to snap a photo of them standing in front of (insert attraction: waterfall, statue of stern king on horseback, sunset, whatever), would kindly refuse. I’m sure they didn’t expect that. What an asshole, they murmured as he walked away. Or perhaps they asked, why not? Being a kind person as I know him to be, he probably answered them truthfully. I know what he would have said. They may or may not have understood the gravity of his answer.
Make sure you take photos. You will often hear this as you bid goodbye to friends and family before embarking on any adventure or vacation. They want to see what you’ll see. You may meet some really fun people. Let’s say you do. You have such a great time with them, you make sure to document the four of you together to commemorate the amazing time you had. One of you approaches a stranger to ask him to take a photo of the four of you (careful whom you ask). Click. You’re all captured smiling gleefully. Back home, showing the photo to friends, you try to convince them how absolutely cool and amazing these people were. It should be apparent from the photograph. It’s not. But we all nod heartily and say “Wow, sounds like you had a great time” which isn’t entirely insincere.
I was in a bar once with a friend. We’d had a few drinks. A woman arrived with a hand-held video recorder and began filming the young woman behind the bar who busied herself wiping down the counters. I waited for the bartender to do something, or say something…well, significant, or out of the ordinary, or flatly just worth recording. She didn’t. Excuse me, I slurred to the video recorder, why are you filming her? Unwavering in her concentration, the woman replied, “Because she’s my friend.” I persisted, probably a little more impatiently than a few drinks before—okay, she’s your friend, but why are you filming her? “Because I want her to be famous,” her tone a bit annoyed I didn’t grasp the obvious. Well, of course I persisted again (I suppose I should have just asked if she knew any giraffes). As my friend pulled me off the bar stool toward daylight, the woman finally looked away from the device. “God, what’s wrong with you!”
Well, there isn’t just one thing wrong with me. But in this I’m simply trying to understand why people find it necessary to video-record the everyday. I walked along a North Carolina beach yesterday afternoon and passed a father with iPhone recording his two daughters splashing in frothy waves. They were too small and too young to evince any talent; they’d bend their squishy little legs and gather up water and let it drop, that’s pretty much it. When I returned direction twenty minutes later, young father was still their posed to record daughters repeating their fun. I suppose I shouldn’t be prejudicial: perhaps he wasn’t filming them, but watching porn.
The Venus de Milo, or Aphrodite of Melos, graces the Louvre in Paris, solemn, demurring her gaze, a sensual masterpiece of ideal Hellenistic beauty. Famous, it is mobbed by visitors because they’ve read or heard it’s famous, and here they are, a family, finally in Paris after a long and expensive flight from Ohio. They’ve read the guide, planned their few hours, and behold! In the marble flesh! They stand back and take a photo. This time they don’t have to ask: a stranger offers to take a photo of the whole family in front of it. Duly documented, it is forgotten, and the family searches out the next famous work of art in the guide. They’ve got photographic evidence that they indeed saw this famous statue. Thank goodness, because they can’t really afford numerous trips to Paris on what their salaries.
When they get home, they can prove to their friends.
Gather round the laptop. Look here. Click. Enlarge the jpeg. Ohhh, we say reverentially. You narrate: yes, that’s the famous Venus. Wow, we say, you really saw it. Click. Hey, that’s you guys next to the Victory of Something. That proves beyond doubt that you saw this famous statue! I guess you liked it so much you also bought a large cardboard glossy reproduction of it. Fifteen dollars? Whoever took that photo is a real professional. No, I know you’re not a professional photographer, you’re an accountant. So why did you take the photo when you also bought this expertly glossy reproduction? You just wanted to. I see. Rest assured, I don’t doubt you actually visited the museum and saw first-hand this famous statue; no reason to lie about a thing like that. Although here on your bookshelf is an art book you grabbed from the bargain rack at Barnes & Noble before your trip. Doesn’t look like it’s been opened. But here’s the photo of the Venus. Another real professional job. But hey, you now have your own photo of the famous statue. But tell me, the Venus is famous for its sensual expression of a Hellenistic ideal of beauty, so what did you notice about it specifically? Oh. But I thought you said you saw it, and this photo of you and the kids proves you were there. You just took the photo, is all. So you spent thousands of dollars and flew all the way to Paris and visited the Louvre which houses this famous statue which, let’s face it, you probably won’t visit again, and you were right there in the presence of this masterpiece of ancient sculpture, and you didn’t even look at the statue except to take the photo, the same photo you already own within this heavy art book you bought on the bargain rack at Barnes & Noble? The real work of art you simply ignored?
Well, at least you have your own picture.

Deep Springs, Silent Peaks

Just a glimpse of a documentary on Nietzsche, and I am swept into a whirlwind of regret, dust and pebbles clogging eyes and nostrils, those organs I once used to see mist feathered peaks and breathe crisp alpine granite rain-softened cool still hidden waters. What have I not been engaged in? Passing photo stills in the documentary of a German scholar coveting his oak and icy windows and warm pages of books, and I find myself reaching, longingly, into the computer screen. Nietzsche's last human gesture before falling into the abyss of madness was to throw his arms around a workhorse who had fallen under his terrible burden. I witness those horses in Syria. Would anyone weep for them, fallen? Oh Nietzsche, you last decent man. You embraced the animal while descending as a god--and what god doesn't retire finally into madness? When have I last admired the silent soar, watchful and fiercely intent, of an eagle? I cannot continue to give away if fresh flows are not coming in. I must trace a path to new springs.

My, my

Such a storm of offending and offensive comments unleashed after my Thrill Gone post (no names offered of course--ah the boldness in anonymity). As a courtesy, I deleted it--and the comments. But the post? Just a whimsical and lively relating of a smattering of my experiences there. But what many obviously missed was: being my blog, these were MY experiences. Not anyone else's. And of course I don't speak for anyone else. Unless the offended would be content if I just kept to the party line? Or pretend my experiences didn't exist? That's probably better: denial. Sorry to disappoint. When I think of my time in Syria now, I can only conjure up good memories. But to my detractors: I think you have other worries far more significant than a blogger posting. Far, far more significant.