The Power of Naming

   I had the pleasure recently of translating a film title, Myuzeigais-Kalinders into Perpetual Calendar for my friend, Janis Ozolins-Ozols's documentary about Latgale, a region in Latvia.  Names are so important.  I went over the possibilities in my mind.  Which name captured the meaning and rolled off the tongue best?
    Nuruddin Farah, the Somalian writer, gave a talk in Buffalo last week and said unlike people in Islamic cultures, Europeans (those of European descent)don't know what our names mean.  Do you?
    My name, Teresa, has never quite fit.  It comes from the Greek and means "to harvest".  Teresa conjures up images of saints, maiden aunts, and Mother Teresa in her tiny form huddled over the sick and dying.  The name never quite fit because at home I was Tereze, my Latvian name, which my father rhymed with potatos and mice. Tereze, peles, kartupeļes.Over time I was also T, Miss T, T-bird, Tree, and Tere. 
    What's your name and what's its evolution?  Now that I'm back in the US, I've returned to my name duality- Teresa and Terez.  Thanks to the US Hispanic culture, Teresa according to the Urban Dictionary is now "A bodacious beauty with full lips, luscious locks and dark mysterious eyes.
Most Teresas are sensitive, caring listeners, but they also have their mischievous, fun-loving sides."  Hey, thanks! 
    And a bit of advice from Nuruddin about naming your characters.  Start their names with different letters.  He says people read so quickly that names blur into one another.  I have a novel with an Ilga and an Olga, whose names I will certainly change.  And I have a Donots ( a common name in Latvian).  We can all imagine the problems with that one.
     Tread carefully!  Learn your names. 

Info about the film-
 http://www.diena.lv/kd/kino/sodien-dokumentalas-filmas-myuzeigais-kalinders-pirmizrade-13975362

     

Boy scouts, priests, and the powerlessness of the child

     I thought the Catholic Church had the monopoly on sexual abuse of young boys but I was wrong.  The Boy Scouts of America  recently published information (14000 pages of files posted on the Internet of cases from 1959-1985)of  young boys abused by Sout leaders and other figures in the movement.  The website got so many hits it crashed. Of course, there were many posts describing positive experiences as scouts but the amount  of abuse is astonsishing. 
    What's alarming to me is how this went on for decades and what it tells us about the place of children in society.   Alice Miller in her writings on childhood "For Your Own Good" and "Thou Shalt Not be Aware" describes the position of children as totally dependent on those who take care of them.  She talks about the triad of concealment- shielding the parents (or abusers), blaming the child, and concealing the trauma.   This is evidently what has happened here and with the church's abuse cases.  There is hope though. Miller states- "I can see the possibility of substantial improvement for patients in simply being able to articulate their feelings, formulate their resentments, and experience their rage toward their parents (or abusers) providing they are taken seriously. She describes Klaus Thomas's method of patients writing directly in letters telling about the abuse to a therpist. He successfully treated adolescents who had attempted suicide. 
     So there is an opportunity for healing these terrible traumas and perhaps putting a stop to them in the future ( the abused can become the abuser).   Much has come into the open in the last decades but  I'm waiting to hear of cases of young girls in these situations (even more powerless than boys in our culture). 
    When I was doing research for a crime novel ting I encountered so much information on abuse cases, I was almost unable to continue reading the devastating stories.  But we can take heart- childhood is past and one will never be just that powerless again. 

"Girls Just Want to Have Fun"

     I know what constitutes fun in my daily life- writing, reading, watching a movie, or a walk in the park.  But what's fun in a social context?  In my 20's and 30's fun meant going out to bars and drinking and possibly dancing. A friend of mine described her 20's as a decade lost to booze. 
     Awash in alcohol- yet, there was an innocence to it.  There weren't date rape drugs slipped into unsuspecting sorority girls's drinks.  Bars closed at 2AM or 4 unlike these days in Spain where the night extends past noon the following day with after hour clubs and morning clubs.  When I was teaching university students, a young woman was upset because her parents expected her home at 6AM.  I couldn't imagine what the problem could be but she explained it was a time limit set.  Her parents wanted her home for breakfast.
   Fun, well in my 30's bars were replaced with dinners at friends' houses.  There was still drinking but a different enviornment.  At some point in my 40's I tried the test to prove I wasn't an alcoholic- never more than 3 drinks at any one event.  I did this for a year, carefully weighing maximum effect per drink for New Year's or other celebrations.  I rarely surpass this quantity and despite growing up in a heavy drinking culture (Latvian) I've managed to escape the terrible effects of alcohol or alcoholism. 
   These days I'm trying to figure out what fun is.  Novelty holds a key.  A new place (travel), new restaurants, in a never ending search for sensation.  Shopping works in American for this reason but it's not what I'm looking for.  I can try to figure it out in a process of elimination.  Dates at this point are rarely fun, meals out with friends can be.  I've discovered my job can be fun.  In the end, I'm with Sheryl Crow and Cyndi Lauper.
   Or in my poem, "Another Look at Happiness."

The Cold is here-when do I just give in to it?

The cold is here- when do I just give in to it?

The cold is arriving here in a chilly city famous for its winters, Buffalo.  There’s a macho sensibility with putting up with the cold.  When do you turn your furnace on? Apparently never in September, even if your’re freezing.  That’s part of the Buffalo character and it’s our conversations these days. 

“I turned the heat on ,”  I confessed to  a woman waiting for the bus.  She’s from Florida so her heat is already on.  At the dentist’s office, the assistant tells me her tenant asked if she’d turn on the heat.  Her response, “Bundle up.”  And that’s what I’ve been told more than once. Yes, this is Buffalo and even those who can afford to, wait until it’s way too cold before they succumb.  There was one October when I ran into a friend shopping who said she was avoiding going home because she didn’t want to put on the heat.  That’s how far it goes.  Another friend simply didn’t put on heat until it snowed.

Night time temps here dropped to 43 last night.  That’s about as cold as it got in Barcelona.  There we had a different dilemma.  I never had central heat so I moved through chilly spaces in my flat to get to the warm rooms- bedroom and living room.  One acquaintance from Iceland said she was colder in Barcelona than in her country.  The indoors was chilly but the outdoors never got to the point it does here.

Thankfully since the years I lived abroad, fleece and down have entered our lives.  My last foray into a Buffalo winter was spent in a secondhand Swiss army coat that reached my ankles and weighed a ton.  Before that I don’t remember feeling the cold.  My sister though said I spent winters in our big farmhouse wearing a GAA (girl’s athletic association) jacket and a wool hat. My hair was tucked up under the hat.  I remember the prickly feel of the hat on my forehead and the deep solitude of snow surrounding us, inch upon inch piling up.  The snow was the icy cover I needed to survive those years of my mother’s long slow slide into her illness and death.

3 activities where the after is better than the during

What I like best about these activities is that no matter how much I suffer while doing them, how I feel afterwards more than compensates. The first is going to the gym or exercise in general. It’s hard to get started. As I lie on the sofa, I see the obstacles to going for a bike ride. First is a steeply pitched overpass I have to cross that takes me over a highway and back to the neighborhood where I used to live. Just visualizing it makes me reconsider getting on my bike. And that same ride is what gets me to the gym. But once I do, the endorphins fly and I feel marvelous no matter how hard I have to pedal to get up the slopes (on a bike you notice any incline more than you ever would walking). Another activity that falls into the same category is meditation. Again there’s a resistance to just sitting down and while I’m meditating, I can’t believe what passes through my head. There is the struggle to find the right position, then there’s hunger, then the barrage of thoughts that range from the utterly mundane to the actual problem solving solutions. But that’s not where my mind is supposed to be. But regardless of where I’ve been, the after effects stay with me. I’m calmer and more likely to find pleasure in the smallest details. And of course, there is giving poetry readings. Margaret Atwood has a great short story, “Lives of the Poets” in her collection “Dancing Girls.” The character in this story finds herself lying on the floor of the bathroom with a nosebleed before every reading. Well, it hasn’t gone that far with me, but there are reasons public speaking ranks high in lists of fears. It does get better with practice and preparation. Mostly I’m happy when I finish a reading and find people have listened to my work (and perhaps even applauded).

Politicking

Politicking. Can it be true? The election is only 2 months away. Can I bear any more advertising and insanity? I don’t have a TV but political ads crop up every time I open any page on the Internet. You’d think I was President Obama’s best buddy considering all the e-mails I get from him and his team. I could scream “uncle” enough already but there’s one more convention to go. This one I can bear to listen to, parts of it at least, though it may prove to be less shocking or amusing (Clint Eastwood) than the Republican one. That leads me (as so many topics do) to politicking in Spain. Political campaigns are publically financed so all the ads for the parties (once they gain a certain percentage of votes they are eligible for public financing) are grouped together at the end of a regular TV program with a warning before and after that this is political advertising. This made them very easy to avoid and since most often it was the same ad repeated, millions weren’t spent on drumming a message into our heads. Here I did hear a person interviewed on the radio about her choice of candidate for president, say she’d decide once she saw all the ads. I never heard anyone say that in Spain. This campaigning goes on right up to the bitter end. On election day I have been handed ads, pamphlets, and flyers as I was walking into the polling place. “Isn’t this a bit late?” I asked, surprised and annoyed as these were shoved into my hand. In Spain there was the “dia de reflecion”. That meant there were no ads in any form of the media. Voting took place on Sundays which gives more time to vote. There’s no scrambling to vote before going to work or worrying about long lines afterwards. So when corporations are people and money can determine the result of an election, wouldn’t it be great to have public financing and less circus?

Turnaround- the old and the new

When I returned from a trip to Spain (my second home where I spent 20 years) I was struck by how modern Europe is compared to the US. Usually the image we have of Europe is of living history but Spain manages to combine the very old with innovations I never see in Buffalo. First of all there’s public transport. In Barcelona there are trams, buses, subways, and commuter train lines. Trams could be speeding right out of the Jetsons. All of these post wait times on a screen at the stop. My theory is that if you have to wait more than 20 minutes, it’s not going to be public transport and that rarely happens. And this is at a bargain price of less than 10 euros per ten rides. Even the city beaches have screens with water and wind conditions posted for all the different beaches. I pay $2 per trip on the bus here for a relatively limited service though I must be grateful it even exists. After all, the US doesn’t invest in public transport and it’s a battle to keep it running as was demonstrated in Buffalo with the battle when the NFTA (transport authority) tried to radically cut service. My bus rides in Buffalo couldn’t be more different than in Europe. Two men greet each other at the stop with knuckle touches, one woman says into her cell phone, “You’re in my shit.” I love listening to the conversations which have little to do with the language I teach daily. The bus has a curious mix of riders who I see on a regular basis, having become one of them: a Hassidic man with his religious book, lots of closed workshop attendees, a smattering of downtown workers, and the refugee students who greet me as they get on. In Barcelona, public transport isn’t just for the poor. Recycling- in Barcelona there are 5 containers for trash. We have two here and some communities don’t even have that. Public buildings in the city have solar panels and there is the sense of growth and prosperity despite the economic crisis. In Buffalo there are people who live in neighborhoods where there is no high speed internet. TV in Barcelona is free with at least 30-40 stations and the state run channels have no advertising. In the US, without cable, TV is extremely limited. I still haven’t succumbed to buying a TV and perhaps never will. There is new architecture and all kinds of innovations in Barcelona- it seems the old quarter is pretty much sacrificed for tourists but working class and middle class neighborhoods have new public spaces. The neighborhood of Sant Marti has a green area that helps cover up a noisy highway that runs through it. One section has a water wall so instead of the noise of traffic, there’s the sound of falling water. And in Barcelona bike sharing has really taken off. I saw people of all ages and dress on bicycles. Some cities here are finally getting a system set up but it’s hard to convince a car driving population that this really works for commuting. In a country where infrastructure is old and rarely replaced I feel like I am living in a far older place than Europe.

Mediterranean

     After 4 years of swimming in lakes, I've returned to the beaches of the Mediterranean.  I feel the slippery salt on my skin and its taste on my lips.  I'm not bounced about in the waves or flung under, scraping my knees on the bottom like in the Atlantic.  And let's not even talk about the Pacific with its fierce waves and chilly waters.  For the most part, the Mediterranean is gentle. 
    When I step out of the water here I feel light.  When I get out of a lake something soggy stays with me, like from the mud bottom of a pond.  The salt of the sea is a great purifier, a healer in its way.  So I have one more day to enjoy if not the water, then the pastel colors of the sunsets.

   The classic song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNkcAUAv1kw

I have a poem from my first chapbook too.

The Senora is alive and well

     I'm pleased to report that modern life in the 21st century hasn't erased the figure of the Spanish senora.  The senora is the woman who wears housedresses and a special housecoat over them to do the daily chores.  I see her leaning out of the balcony window to wipe down the endless dust settling from Barcelona traffic.  She's the one in the market shouting out, "Qui es el ultim?" so as not to be deprived of one second of attention.  She's the fighter with mala leche who won't hesitate to run over your toes with her shopping cart in an attempt to get to the fruit stand first.
     It's been ages since I've been stared at.  Here it's the senoras who have settled in for their midmorning cafe.  They look me up and down, and of course I'm the stranger here and despite the saying to the contrary "Paris, Londres, Reus", this city, Reus is not a capital of the world.  I'm not the only one they dismiss.  The elderly gentleman who approaches their table is waved away.  There's no time for him.
     The senoras have their own world- the hairdresser does their special styles and there are even glasses for them as I found out when I was trying on a pair and the shop assistant pointed at them and said, "No, no.  Those are for senoras." Yet the senoras have their dignity, something that seems to be lost in the American world where at 8 or eighty, women are all wearing the same styles.  One thing to be grateful for is the fashion of very short shorts hasn't reached the US with  60% of its population being overweight.

Change and a poem for Father's Day

              Change and a poem on the occasion of Father’s Day

What triggers the major changes in our lives?  At what point does the marriage become untenable, the roommate impossible, the job intolerable?  We go on day after day until something snaps.  Case in point-  I was never planning on moving now.  I have a trip to Spain which falls smack in the middle of summer and which means a big expense.  So what happened?  One day my landlady told me her three grandchildren (they are a bit wild- one put a hole in the wall) were spending 6 weeks with her downstairs from me.  My apartment suddenly became a place I had to escape from.  I could have coped with the visit; after all, I’ll be gone some of those weeks but this was the crisis point.  All along I’ve been aware that I need more space- that I can’t spend any more time looking at the walls of this flat but I’ve resisted.  I easily could have been stuck here for years.

   We all resist change but it’s better to adapt and play a part in it than face a possible earth shattering event that really shakes up our lives.  I remind myself as I sit in the chaos of bags and books.

    Years ago a Peruvian shaman told me I had a “genetic muy poco vista” and that I had more genetic material from my father than my mother.  When I told my sister- she said she knew that.  I think I inherited the physical, the wanderlust, but fortunately not the character.

Father’s Day a la Sylvia Plath

Winter black and white

weighs down

until green spring erupts,

he searches the barn for the kittens,

his touch tames.

He shells peas,

lines them up in equal piles

for me and my sister.

The storms lash out.

There is no peace in this house

Wind whips through

tightly closed windows.

He’s the one I search for

in shapely dark madness. 

Moving and exile

Moving

I  am sitting in a room that’s in the process of being dismantled, bit by bit, box by box.  Where does moving fit on the scale of life’s most stressful events?  Somewhere up there, after death and divorce.  My many moves are bookended by long periods spent in the same place.  17 years in the farmhouse in Varysburg, the small town where I grew up, and then 15 years in the atico flat in Barcelona with its terraces and views of the sea as a distant blue line and Montjuic, the city’s hill off the port. 

Since my American adventure, I’ve lived in three places- my sister’s home in Atlanta, a sublet in Buffalo, and my present apartment where I’ve been for, hard to believe but four years now.  Four years of living alone.  Surprisingly except for one brief stint here when I was in college, I have never lived alone.  Now that I’ve done it, it seems easy.  Solitude doesn’t weigh but there is that occasional need to find a witness for the daily details of life. 

So now, encumbered by a lot more stuff, I’m preparing for move 4.  I left Barcelona after twenty years with three suitcases and a few boxes of my papers which I sent.  How is it possible that I have amassed more stuff in four years here than in all that time abroad? 

My first trip away from home to Paris for my junior year abroad only required one suitcase and a small carry on.  With every subsequent voyage I’ve been weighted down with more stuff.  I have my books (heavy, aren’t they?), DVD’s, papers (way too many), CD’s, and more clothes than I could ever wear.  What do I really need?  Comfort is a way of life in America and every object is designed for that finality.  How much can I shed?  As I look around the chaos that is now my pre-move life, I’m going to find that out.

                                                                        “You can’t go home again.”  Thomas Wolfe   

                              

Exile

Cross the yard

to open the gate,

my mother stands

at the door.

Inside, the grey carpet

with faded roses,

consumes my breath.

The mismatched couches

 are covered over again,

a paint by numbers seascape

hangs on the wall.

I reclaim these rooms,

the medicine stained floor,

my father metes out drops

so he can breathe.

His voice, the backdrop

to my dreams,

as he reads aloud to my mother,

their secret night life.

Stripped naked

I try again to enter,

13 steps to my bedroom,

Petal pink, a girl long buried,

still wants the Barbie dress up world.

My mother’s closet holds two suits

from her past life,

strappy heels, red leather,

thick ankle straps,

I touch and identify,

She never wanted to be here,

in this farmhouse in America.

Yet she greets me,

we share for a moment

this white house,

this undersurface dream space.

Reading Moby Dick is a subversive act...

What does a whale represent to us?  In the 1850's the whale was a leviathan, a creature of massive proportions that inhabited a hidden universe and provided products of beauty and necessity (oil and ambergris).  For us, it's one more being in danger of extinction that "sings" and is part of a controlled world that holds little mystery.  Imagine confronting this huge being with small boats and harpoons.
   Two elements make Moby Dick subversive.  For the reader to understand the novel, Melville provides all the possible background information available to him in his day.  From a treatsie on the color white across cultures to classification and anatomy of the whale, this novel educates the reader.  And all of this requires DESCRIPTION and Melville is a master.
    Description has fallen out of favor.  Writers are routinely instructed to eliminate adverbs and all excess words.  Are we all victims of Hemingway's terse prose?  Or is it a lack of attention span?  Take the 6 word story as an example.  6 words are used to express an entire story and there are contests to do this.  Yes, it can be done.  But why?  We have a glorious vocabulary in English, one I particularly appreciate since English wasn't my first language.  A literary magazine I recently contacted now only publishes flash fiction.  Is this the path literature is taking?
    The other  subversion is that man is not the measure of all things as we've been led to believe.  What I liked best about Moby Dick was the ending.  Despite all foreshadowing and warnings, I was surprises by the ending.  Decades of the perfect Walt Disney type ending left me aghast and then thrilled by the last line of this novel.

Human Trafficking

Human Trafficking

On this beautiful spring day I am reading about human trafficking triggered by watching “The Whistleblower”, a film based on true events about a female police officer in postwar Bosnia who uncovers a trafficking ring involving UN officials and contractors.  The conditions of the young women who are lured abroad with tales of money and excitement (one can only hope that doesn’t happen as much now) are worse than we can even imagine. 

Mostly trafficking equates to female slavery.  Woman are still chattel in many parts of the world.  Even Turkey, a modern country, reports many cases of honor killings.  But let’s examine those UN officials and contractors.  What did they tell themselves to  make their actions possible?  Don’t men have sisters, wives, and daughters? Is it just another case of the brutality of humankind?  Woman is the other, and once you turn any being into someone separate from yourself, or even different, anything is possible.  Humans will never evolve until women regain a place of value in all societies.  It is precisely the femaleness, the feminine that our culture has deplored and tried over and over to eradicate, even to the point of making our own mother earth unable to sustain life.

http://www.iibuff.org/index.php?src=gendocs&ref=abouthumantrafficking&category=Human_Trafficking_Victim_Services

The Whistleblower

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Whistleblower

Purge- the wonderful novel by Oksanen

http://www.amazon.com/Purge-Sofi-Oksanen/dp/0802170773

Motherhood May 12th and a poem

The first love of anyone's life (reciprocated or not) is the mother.  These days mothers are called tiger moms and are expected to be perfect.  The very archetype of mother is so potent as to obliterate all other identities a woman can have.
  It's a role I didn't choose in this lifetime but motherhood is something I can visit on this day, May 12th, the birthday of my mother.  This was my first love and one that hasn't diminished in the years of her absence, now more than 30.
   Here's a poem:

Ma-Ya  (Not That)

No one will ever say -she’s the mother of my children, head bowed in homage.  Yet, I am the mother of many dreams and a few scattered kindnesses.

I have been the bitch of a litter of seven puppies, the taker of portrait photographs with the requisite puff of air, and a maple tree sending forth a seedling borne on air that settled in a small patch of earth and lived 100 years. 

Catholicism- My Take

     I haven't had too much of a problem with Catholicism, not after a dream I had when I was a teenager.  In the dream I was trying to kill a robot nun as she crossed the lawn.  My uncle finished the figure off for me.  It obviously represented my freedom from the doctrine, much of which I absorbed by half-listening to sermons.  One sticks in my mind because when I was a kid, it made absolutely no sense- something about tight sweaters and short skirts.  It was the 60's and these must have been dangerous.
     Years of living in Europe kept a benign image of the church alive.  I loved cathedrals and ritual.  One of my first published poems was "Lighting Candles is a Solitary Act".  But living in Spain led me to the Inquisition and when I visited the Vatican I was horrified.  All of this wealth was what my parents (on their limited income) tithed for, not the mention the poor around the world adding to the collection basket what they couldn't afford.
     So I was one of the people who sought the spiritual elsewhere. I don't think I ever considered the church as having much to do with my ideas of spirit.  There was Buddhism, astrology, and Jungian psychology to explore, mostly on my own.
     This week two things came up which show once again how disconnected the church is from reality.  The Pope reprimanded nuns for being "radical feminists" and focusing too much on social justice.  Kristof and Down address this brilliantly.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/opinion/sunday/kristof-we-are-all-nuns.html?_r=1&hp&gwh=A464DB3CB34756D533F78F20921F5AD4
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/opinion/sunday/dowd-bishops-play-church-queens-as-pawns.html?hp&gwh=6DB0AC29FFE1D8D9799B80DAAE700534

     And on Friday I took immigrants and refugees to a health fair.  Catholic Charities (which no doubt runs some great programs) had a stand dedicated to what the church does best- sexual education.  There was information on natural family planning.  If that works for you, I'd love to hear about it.  That was the most innocent.  One pamphlet denounced Planned Parenthood as promoting promiscuity while another warned that condoms cause cancer.  Something to do with talc. Where do they get their science? I was grateful most of the attendees didn't have the level of language to understand this dangerous misinformation.  Dangerous for people who deserve accurate information on how to protect themselves from disease and how to have fewer children if they so choose.
   Where to go from here?  What's next?  The writer, Anna Quindlen has formally renounced the church.  I'm coming closer.  The only thing that keeps me is the hard work of those chastized nuns.

The European Debt Crisis- My Take

A friend of mine in Spain travels often from Barcelona to the Priorat, a wine growing region about two hours from Barcelona.  On two Saturdays he experienced the horror of someone leaping onto the tracks and committing suicide.  Suicides are hitting the European countries that are subjecting their citizens to severe austerity measures.  Even the American press has published articles on the subject: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/15/world/europe/increasingly-in-europe-suicides-by-economic-crisis.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

Of course, reading about a suicide and witnessing one are worlds apart.  The same way that from a distance we are viewing the debt crisis in Europe from the perspective of what the media wants us to see- the result of corrupt spending by lazy wastrels.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  In my years in Spain, I had longer work hours and higher quality jobs than I have had here.  Not to mention the healthcare.  Here I was recently quoted a health insurance plan from Cobra that was $200 a month with a $10,000 deductable.  Insane!  Another indicator of the cost of US healthcare was a price for eyedrops I was prescribed for conjunctivitis- $460.  Needless to say, I didn’t get them.

What stands between workers in the United States and the Chinese economic model (no rights, no pensions, any work schedule up to 16 hours a day) ?  Europe, of course.  Europe has a social safety net and workers’ rights but these are being threatened.  We are fed the propaganda that the European worker is bloated by those social benefits. Universal health care, reasonably priced higher education, and pension plans are requirements for a society, not luxuries as we are being led to believe.    Meanwhile, public workers in Spain are taking large pay cuts and we’re not talking about high level politicians, but teachers and office workers (some of whom earn the equivalent of 1000 euros a month which would be about 1300 dollars).  That would be below poverty level here.  These are the people bearing the cost of the housing and banking scams that originated on Wall Street and spread throughout the world.  

The consumption that identifies life in the US is not present to such a degree in Europe.  Though there is wealth in Western Europe, it is never as conspicuous or as obscene as it is in America.  Sometimes I feel like I’m witnessing the decadence of the last years of the Roman Empire.  Turn on reality TV and be prepared to be disgusted as the “wealthy” bicker and consume.  You’ll see them rent $20,000 a month apartments in New York or take private jets to Morocco.  In the Sunday section of the NY Times there was an article called, “Bridal Hunger Games” describing a woman who spent 4 days on a feeding tube so she could fit into her wedding dress.  Decadent or what? http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/15/fashion/weddings/Losing-Weight-in-Time-for-the-Wedding.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

And, my tax rate is higher than Mitt Rommey’s.  

The American CIty

            So far this year, I’ve visited three American cities, four if you count my Christmas holiday trip to San Francisco.  The first city I lived in (and visited frequently as a child) was Buffalo, NY.  Over the years I watched its downtown transform from a busy place with department stores, shops, and restaurants into an after work ghost town unless there’s a special event taking place.   That’s increasingly the way an American city functions- it’s a place to escape from to a suburban home or it’s a place to go for entertainment like seeing a team play or going to a play.  The idea of including activities with living space has largely vanished except in larger cities like NY. 

            In a smaller city like Buffalo many essential needs can’t be met within the city.  My neighborhood has a café, restaurants, and boutiques.  For all practical concerns, I have to take a bus.   Contrast that with my neighborhood in Barcelona, called Gracia.  It had all of the above plus a supermarket across the street, a gym minutes away, and a medical center and cinema all within  walking distance. 

            “City Life” by Witold Rybcznski addresses how American cities have changed, and why, and how some may even thrive.  All the American cities I visited required a car thought if I lived in one of them, I’m sure I’d find a way to manage without one just as I have here in Buffalo.  I think that’s because they’re older cities (Philadelphia, Charleston, and Pittsburgh) all created before the car was the measure of all things.  I might not be able to manage in the newer cities like Phoenix and Dallas.  Let me know if I’m wrong. 

            In any case, I’m still clinging to my image of what a city should be, perhaps formed by the second city I lived in, Paris.  Need I say more.

http://www.witoldrybczynski.com/

Semana Santa- a re-visit to my post on the theme

Religion, Myth, and Magic*

The writer, Chris Albani says you can come back from torture, rape, violence. He should know having survived Nigerian prison, not once, but three times. Resurrection is the theme of this week. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rECVyN5D60I

That leads me Palm Sunday. I was raised Catholic but for decades only attended church for weddings and funerals. Since I returned to Buffalo, I reconnected with an old friend from my UB teaching days who had since become a priest (progressive, of course). Mass is familiar from a childhood of mouthing the words. Yet there are some differences: no male pronouns are used and the Holy Ghost has become the Holy Spirit. I’d forgotten Palm Sunday is a solemn celebration. It touches on the modern themes of betrayal (Judas) and abandonment (my God, why have you forsaken me?)

Albani was also raised Catholic which might help account for the theme of redemption in “Graceland” where as he puts it, “everyone is redeemed”. From there he went to Buddhism. As my Korean student who attended a Buddhist university put it, in Buddhism, you become the saint. Instead of the “I am not worthy to receive you” you have a pervasive basic goodness and the goal of an enlightened society (in the form I’m familiar with). As my Iraqi student says there is no God. You’re on your own. And my question is where is the witness that has been part of our modern therapeutic culture?

In the end, Albani tattooed the traditional Igbo deities on his arm. Besides Catholicism, I was raised with the distant remains of Pre-Christian Latvian culture with spirits inhabiting all of nature. My personal gods are my grandmother and a polar bear. I like to think of the polar bear as a totem animal from the far north of my mother’s ancestors. My grandmother is the muse of my first published poem.

Yet, I still love the saetas- the songs of love sung to the statues of Mary (or Jesus) in the processions of Andalusia and the shouts of “guapa” (pretty) when she passes. The processions go on all night and the drums are heard long before they appear. They can be solemn or the waiting time for the procession to appear can be spent in a bar. My apologies to the faithful.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4rxmnHj62U&feature=related

I love the geese of the 16^th century Barcelona cathedral and the L’ou com balla- the egg dancing in the fountain on Corpus Christi.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VoMp6kbydhU

Ritual, tradition, and repetition. Does one ever really escape them? Or even want to?

* the title of an anthropology class I took

The Perfect Job

What's your perfect job?  Mine would be sitting at my computer and writing each day.  Well, since I do that but still have to earn my living, I am now on the eve of attending the TESOL conference. TESOL means thousands of people from all over the world, hundreds of talks, and very few jobs posted. What's always shocked me is how a profession (ESL) that is filled with low salaried jobs holds its yearly conference in pricey hotels with high conference fees.
 The last time I went began my Spanish odyssey, first with an interview for a job at ACHNA in Madrid.  Gary interviewed me and he was so charming, I immediately took the job though there were others that were higher paying.  He was a great director and unfortunately was lost to AIDS. 
   Madrid was one of those defining moments in my life.  Many of the friends I made stayed with me and the job teaching adults English was great with an endless supply of stimulating materials. Madrid itself was fun too but I moved on (and stayed) in a more peaceful Barcelona.
   I don't expect any life defining moments at this conference except to reconnect with old friends and look and see if that ever elusive perfect job is out there.

TESOL- teaching English to speakers of other languages

The Old First Ward

The old first ward in Buffalo is one of the oldest neighborhoods in the city.  It's where the Irish first settled when they came to the city to work in the grain mills that are now imposing hunks of metal shading the small houses.  Since the neighborhood is still home to Irish bars and neighbors, it's the place to be for St. Patrick's Day with its annual neighborhood parade.  Nothing could be more welcoming than seeing the mix of floats commemorating deceased community members, police and firemen unions and a variety of other organizations that remind that Buffalo is still a union town even in these times.
    Attending the parade makes me realize everyone except me and my friends know everyone in the vicinity, and greet each other effusively as they march by.  I have a flash of that feeling I know so well, that of not being a part of a place.  And that leads me to the disturbing story of a Congolese refugee and his family who moved to the First Ward and were victims, not once, but twice, of arson. 
  A long time resident of the community was indicted for both incidents of arson.  There were the usual expressions of disbelief, and fortunately, great sympathy for the victim who had survived the horrors of Congo only to suffer in the First Ward. 
   This crime tainted the sweet camraderie and charm of St. Paddy's Day in what is called, the old neighborhood.

http://www.buffalonews.com/city/communities/south-buffalo/article748930.ece