Death and the Madman, A Tragedy of Sorts

On January 3, 1889, Friedrich Nietzsche broke down.

Living in Torino (Turin), Italy, while sitting on the Piazzo Carlo Alberto, he cracked. He had long been plagued by migraines, possibly from a suspected illness ranging from diagnoses of syphilis to manic-depression to full-blown psychosis. No consensus has been reached.

In my romanticized version, I believe it was a philosophical crisis that broke him. Since the medical field has yet to come up with a more plausible cause, I will go with that.

I was talking with a friend about this event the other day, regarding the various contradictions of his life, as Nietzsche indeed is a self-fulfilling prophecy when it comes to being misunderstood. He welcomed it as much as he shunned it.

A favorite example of mine is the phrase that Nietzsche is most famous and simultaneously infamous for, that is, “Gott ist Tot!” (God is dead!) This comes from a scene in which a madman is running into a marketplace, proclaiming this shocking news, to which he is mocked and derided for his madness. This is often picked up as “proof” that Nietzsche was indeed the Anit-Christ or that he was an atheist, or it is picked up by angry, all-too-angry young people who don’t quite get the nuance of the situation.

None of them is accurate. Nietzsche proclaimed himself to be the Anti-Christian, in much the same way that his near contemporary Kierkegaard (a staunch believer of Christ, but also Anti-Christian) was against the hypocrisy of the Christian church in Europe near the turn of the 19th Century. Nietzsche wrestled with God, but did not deny It/Him/Her. That would be too simple.

The fuller version of that familiar phase is never, like the motto of Socrates , or at least seldomly repeated, namely “Gott ist tot! Gott bleibt tot! Und wir haben ihn getötet!” (God is dead! God remains dead! And, we have murdered him!). According to Nietzsche, the God of humans was created and murdered by humans, because we can only know what it is to be human, be-ing humans, and thus create a god in our image. Nietzsche was quite aware that there was something bigger, much bigger and more powerful than we are.

However, what he introduced is the oft-maligned, highly mis-contextualized and tragically mis-appropriated by the Nazis (Nietzsche was catatonic from 1889 until his death in 1900, long before the Nazis. His sister Elizabeth is responsible for that connection...though that is for another time...) concept of the Übermensch, or the Superman, though literally the Overman.

In short, for Nietzsche, this meant that humans could be better than what we are, but only one person at a time, and the only person who could better him or herself, was, you guessed it, yourself. No one else can make you better or worse. You are responsible for your self, and you can be better. The name comes from the idea of over-coming your weakness. For Nietzsche, the human being was a work of art in progress and the artist was the individual. He had high hopes, perhaps too high, for humans, and in January of 1889, I believe that illusion had its fatal and chronic consequences.

As the story goes, Nietzsche saw a man beating a tired and sick draught horse on the square. The horse was shrieking, but was too feeble to fight. The man continued to beat the horse mercilessly. Nobody moved to help or intervene. Not my business. Nietzsche is reported to have run to the horse, and embraced it, as it died. Although Nietzsche lived for another 11 years, he never uttered an intelligible word after that incident, and relatively soon thereafter spent his remaining life in a drooling, catatonic paralysis.

I believe that Nietzsche saw man for whom he was, just a man. It was too much. This was not the man who could over-come himself. It was a creature that would beat a dying horse to death with his bare hands while the rest of humanity walked idly by.

Yesterday, just days after having this conversation about Nietzsche’s breakdown, I saw an article in the online Belgium newspaper. It was about a video, which was included and that I watched, from US troops in Afghanistan. It is only thirty seconds. It is nauseating. An infantry man bludgeons a goat to death with an aluminum bat. You can hear each metallic clang, followed by someone saying “what the fuck?” about the damn, stubborn goat who keeps getting up, staggering, twitching and going ultimately collapsing into a seizure. Cheers from young Afghan boys fill the air and “manly” guffaws and encouragement from the Troops goads the assailant on. Finally, the goat stops twitching after several more direct blows to its skull, rounded of by a chorus raucous of cheers, high-fives and hell yeahs.

That is man.

Tragedy originally means “goat song” in ancient Greek as it represented the darkest in humanity, the saturnine, the sadistic, and the satyr.

That is the message that some of our Super-men are sending to the world.  I don’t care if it is isolated. It is part of our reality, as humans, and we need to wonder at what we see.

WTF People?

No, Mind if I Fart?

Kudos to Robert Griffin III and the Baylor Bears for “their” Hesiman Trophy win, but tonight I am thinking about another Waco person, namely the comedian Steve Martin. Although Martin was raised in California, it is somewhat comforting to know that at least he was born in a town called Wac(k)o. Martin was the definition of American comedy of the late 70s and early 80s, along with Eddie Murphy, John Belushi, Chevy Chase, Robin Williams, and many others of the vintage SNL era.

And, what better line to remember Martin’s wit with than the classic response to someone who asks you if he can smoke in a restaurant, “No, mind if I fart? It’s one of my habits.”

To me, that sums up quite a bit. As I get older and crustier, something that I notice quite a bit about people is that they don’t really want “to go there” even if they initiate the conversation. I have heard many times in my life, “can I ask you a personal question?” or “can I ask a frank question?” Well, my answer is simply, “Absolutely, if you can handle a frank answer.” Most people can’t, I have learned, because I can give an answer frank-er than Sinatra...wait for it...

Like Martin, we (and, yes, I include myself in that “we”) want to initiate, but when it comes to the response, when it is something that perhaps we don’t want to hear, we become uncomfortable, we hesitate, we stall. We want to smoke, but we don’t want others to fart. To paraphrase Jack Nicholson from A Few Good Men, “we can’t handle the Truth.”

I have spent the greater part of the last week having one, long, frank discussion with a very dear friend of mine whom I have recovered and re-dis-covered from the obscurity of the past. There was no mediation, no pretense, no guard. Nothing but exposure. To be frank. 

Being an American here in Belgium and recently also in India, I am somewhat exposed on a different level, whether I want to be or not. People have ideas about us and US, again, like it or not. Stereotypes exist, and we play into them, confound them, or confirm them. I also had an interview with a potential client this past week as well at a high-level international organization, in which there were certain stereotypes about being an American I felt inclined to either dispel, or at times embrace. We do have the ability to chose, to be frank, and to be honest, but most often we opt out for the softer, easier way.

That is a shame, but I’ve been there. I know the sham comfort of crawling behind platitudes of clichés and habits and hiding behind a mantle of denial and distrust, both of myself and others. But, over time, the moths eat away that mantle, exposing the frailty of the fabric we once believed to be so strong, so permanent, so real.

However, when we can release that fear of exposure, of casting off the cloaked illusion of security, we can have breakthroughs, we can learn to live again. To, in essence, be re-born, a word that my sister put into my mind, and to suggest that the word for next year be just that, a Re-naissance.

After I dropped off my friend at the airport in Brussels and had come back to Antwerp to meet my apartment, seemingly so empty and alone again, I later went to the local Buddhist “club” to listen to a guest speaker. She was to speak on “emotions” as I found out upon arrival. What she opened with, I found to be interesting is that for the most part, when we see such a title, we immediately think of our negative emotions, those that hinder, that bind, that hold us down. Instead, she wanted to talk more about those that release and free us from suffering. Although the talk went downhill from there in my eyes, that thought did stick with me. What emotions can indeed free us?

Given that I have gone through the full range of my emotional gamut in the past days, I realized that it does not really come down to the emotion at all, but rather what Martin gave us, honesty. That’s it.

Mind if I Fart?

That is about as honest as it gets, slapping us in the face with the force of one hand clapping against our skin. But, can we handle that honesty when the tables are turned? Can we hear what we have been telling ourselves, but what happens when it comes from another person?

What I have learned is that if I’m not willing to have someone fart in my general direction, then I had better not idly blow smoke in his or her eyes.

To be frank.

Entanglement

One of my “hobbies,” for lack of a better word, is to read so-called popular science books, specifically on the New Physics of String Theory and the like such as Brian Greene’s The Elegant Universe, whom I find to be incredibly accessible, yet gets the most difficult concepts across without being either condescending or flippant.

However, there was a book some time ago that I read about a concept that has never really left my mind, perhaps because it is somewhat beyond comprehension, even to the most sophisticated physicists and über-mathematicians, usually from Hungary for some reason. It is the concept of Entanglement (from Amir Aczel’s eponymous book), which, if it truly is a phenomenon, blows away any possible conception of the universe as we know it out of the water, not the least the concept of a constant speed of light being the limits of a transfer of energy from one point to another.

Entanglement, which as the name indicates, involves at least two entities becoming entangled, but at such a profound level that it truly defies any laws of physics known to humans, way beyond even the fantastic concepts of String Theory, which in themselves have the most astute mathematicians and physicists scrambling for a GUT, or Grand Unifying Theory, the ultimate quest of Einstein’s entire corpus of work, a quest that left him alone towards the end of his life as even his most staunch supporters began to question his quest for such a Holy Grail.

Whether String Theory becomes the GUT to end all GUT’s, or merely the Emperor’s New Clothes, remains to be seen, and what role, if any that Entanglement may play out in this quest is also unclear, yet as with all modern physics, all roads somehow end up leading to Einstein, either to prove or disprove him.

Just this week, yet another headline appears, “Was Einstein Wrong?” as it goes on to explain that 15,000 test runs have shown that the previously elusive neutrino may in fact be caught with a speeding-faster-than-light ticket on the super-conductor highway. Apparently, such particles can arrive faster than a light particle, suggesting that they can, as seen in many Feynman diagrams, theoretically go back and forth in Time, and thus arrive before they depart, or other such funky scenarios. Yikes, and once again, Truth may well be stranger than even (Science) Fiction.

In order for Entanglement to be possible, likewise, there must be the possibility of a transfer of energy, in this case, information, at a speed that exceeds that of light, but not by billionths of a second, but something even more sinister...without Time elapsing at all, thus SIMULTANEOUSLY. In other words, there is a transfer of information that does not happen over Time, irrespective of Space as well.

Here’s the skinny. When two particles become “Entangled,” then neither Time nor Space can interfere. Particles have Spin and weight. Let’s two particles are then “Entangled,” then if one changes Spin from positive to negative, then the other will also change from positive to negative Spin at the EXACT same Time. Fine, you may say, interesting enough, but show me the money. Now, the kicker is that they can be at opposite ends of the Universe (we won’t go into Finite vs. Infinite there for simplicity sake), and they will still change Spin simultaneously, if it were to be able to be recorded as such. And, for all intents and purposes, they will remain entangled, again, irrespective of either Time or Space.

So, you may be thinking, why has Robert gone off on this obscure, yet to be proven, much less explained concept?

For one, reading that article reminded me how much I love reading about this, but it also reminded me of the philosophical concept behind “Indra’s Net,” in that within the Net, every intersecting jewel infinitely reflects every other, simultaneously in Time and over infinite (not going into that...) Space. It is the concept of the Universal Atman self-containing the individual Atman that upon the surface appear to be separate, yet are ultimately merely parts of a greater whole, something that I obviously place great stock in with my own philosophy of life.

Furthermore, it made me think about the various physical “jewels” in my life, namely my friends, family, and you (yes, I’m talking to you, dear Reader), that we might very well be reading this post, or another, at the exact same moment, being somewhat entangled if you will. Or, via email and other electronic communications, that how rapidly we can communicate in comparison to just a few years ago, further making the tyranny of distance a thing of the Past to some extent.

Just this weekend, I corresponded directly in writing with a number of people in a variety of locations in Belgium, my friend in Brighton, UK, my friend in Tirunelveli, India, my Irish friend who was traveling in Spain, my sister who lives in Chicago, my mother who lives in Texas, but was traveling to New Mexico, two of my very dear friends  (having finally found one of them recently) in different places in Texas, a client who lives in Russia, and a friend who lives in Arkansas, all from the comfort of my armchair in Antwerp.

Big deal, right?

But, isn’t that amazing that we can just shrug our shoulders at that, so quickly? If I had written that 10 or 15 years ago, it would have been shocking, or at least pretty darn amazing. Today, yeah, big deal...

Do I have a point here? Not really, except to say that perhaps we should remember that it is a big deal that we are able to be virtually entangled because mediums such as Facebook have made it a commonplace, quotidian event, but like the poor high school student (and a large part of the remaining population for that matter) at the cash register who can’t add or subtract whole numbers to make change when the power goes out at the grocery store, what would happen if the lights go out on The Net? Where would you be in your means of communication? Would the “entanglement” then suddenly be just a sham, the Emperor’s New Clothes? Where would all of those dozens (or hundreds) of “friends” suddenly go if you couldn’t post your status with the click of a button and you actually had to make a physical, concerted effort to contact them? How many jewels in your Net would you have left if the system failed? 

Waves Roll

Water, Water Every where, nor any drop to drink...so laments the albatross-haunted voice of Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

Sitting on the bank of the Schelde the other day, I noticed an interesting phenomenon while trying to focus on the rolling waves of the river. I have noticed this often while at the ocean, most notably when I was at Kanniyakumari where three different major bodies of water come convene, causing the most amazing currents I have ever seen, but it was very apparent with the river’s coursings as well.

Try to focus on a point in a body of moving water. It is not easy. The natural tendency of our eyes is to follow the water, not remain locked in on the point of interest, especially if there is a piece of flotsam, jetsam, or sundry detritus bobbing along, much less a lazy seagull. The gaze follows the motion.

There was a cautionary buoy of sorts some fifty yards or into the middle of the river. That was a completely different experience then, to focus on a non-moving object surrounded by total movement. Both were hypnotizing to say the least, and I became engrossed and entranced by each over Time, losing myself indefinitely in the inertia and the inertia.

Being abroad, I sometimes wonder, what makes it “abroad,” and for me, the answer is simply, water. I am abroad because I am across the Atlantic Ocean from my native land. I was abroad abroad in India because I was across the Arabian Sea across the Atlantic Ocean or across the Indian Ocean across the Pacific Ocean. Six or one half dozen. I was exactly halfway around the globe in either case.

Yet, I have never made one of these trips per boat, oddly enough. I have always flown, as we live in the jet-age, so why should I? I have many times heard the story of how my mother, when she was eight and her brothers merely 2 and under traveled across the Atlantic in the dead of the deadest of deadliest winters to come join their father, traveling with my grandmother who had like many on the trip, fallen ill. My mom has described this trip, and it made me realize how impressionable that must have been. Huge, dark, ominous, unforgiving waves rolling and smashing against the hull of a transport ship lurching across a nearly frozen ocean, as the English Channel itself did freeze that winter!

That was a journey. That was a passage.

Now, we jump on an airplane and are magically transposed from point A to point B, with no real liminal space in between. Sitting by the river on Sunday, it was hard for me to imagine that just a week and a half before I was sitting in a boat, contemplating the ephemeral nature of life on the Ganges , watching bodies burn in a chain-smoking row of bonfires, and now, here I was, alone along the banks of the Schelde, contemplating...what?

I am content to be back in Antwerp, yet the disjunct between Belgium and India is so great at times, jolting, and the journey back was so sudden. I am confident that the next time I make such a journey, I will find a way to go by boat, or at least by a slower medium than the 747 that carried me from Mumbai’s Chatrapi Shivaji to London’s Heathrow.

I recently read online a list of ways to travel “differently” from the Lonely Planet publications. One of them was to “return slowly.” I believe that that is merely one half of the equation. I would like to next take a journey that I “go slowly” and where the journey itself is the destination. To roll along the waves, surrounded by water, water everywhere, desiring no-thing but the passage itself.

Not So Innocently Abroad

Here is a piece from a very good friend of mine, Professor John Pedro Schwartz at the American University of Beirut, Lebanon. John Pedro is a so-called “late-bloomer” in academics and has never slowed down once he got his wings. I am constantly blown away by the verve and detail of his writing, though not losing the essential message.

JPS, as I am wont to call him, sent me this piece a couple of weeks ago while I was still in Madurai, and I was yet again blown away about what he is writing about and how. He has the ability to render a highly socially conscious piece, without being biased or didactic. A true gift. Not to mention that he is quite funny, both in person and on paper.

Two days ago, after I had returned to Antwerp and was beginning to read the various newspapers online again and seeing the events in Syria, I could not believe the real impact of JPS’s words. He then sent me an email with “Published” as the subject line and this link as the body of the mail.

So, here it is. Important stuff from Lebanon.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/11/04/highway_to_homs 

In a Sense, Abroad

When I was nineteen, I had “dropped out” of college and was working as a bus boy/bar back at a seafood restaurant in Austin, Texas. I had rather long hair, or at least for me as mine grows very slowly, and was reading more than I ever had before or have ever since. I had small cairns of books all about my apartment, most of which shaped my thinking from those days onwards. The only difference is, now I am beginning to understand them.

My good friend Tom and I were living a Bohemian life, across the board, as he shared my apartment most of the time as his relationship with his girlfriend had gone South and he was stuck without a place to live for a Time. We had conversations til the break of dawn on a daily basis about everything from the inability to understand women (yes, cliched, but valid), the inability to be understood ourselves by women (ditto), and the gamut of “sex, drugs, and rock and roll” that nineteen year-old guys talk about. Tom and I were dreamers, and for the most part, armchair philosophers. We would stand on the balcony for hours opining the world away, though between the two of us had very little “world” experience, though he more than me at least.

I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with my life. I had left a decent private school because I had quit the swim team and did not want to be in that environment any longer, but was not sure that I wanted to be back in school either. I have had a lifelong struggle with education, as I love learning more than anything, but have been disappointed with educational institutions. This is nothing new, as I used to protest at a very, very young age about my “need” to go to school. The irony of course is that I learned that dissatisfaction by becoming more educated within those institutions. It is in fact what made me decide to dedicate my life to teaching, to instill a sense of questioning, yet also to teach the rich traditions of the humanities. This has caused much commotion in my life as most people usually take one or the other (challenge or tradition), but I believe that the traditions are only made better by being tested sufficiently by questioning, thus yielding yet a stronger alloy of thought tempered by the fires of dissent and scrutiny. The wheels turn.

So, I was becoming the “self-taught man,” the autodidact, reading all what I could like the character in Jean-Paul Sartre’s Nausea, though not in alphabetical order. But, ending up more like “Jude the Obscure,” I felt on the outside of the ivoried towers of knowledge, not being taken seriously like those who had gone to the ivory-covered halls of learning. The University of Texas loomed liked Kafka’s Castle over me...taunting my lack of erudition, refinement, and authenticity as a thinker. I was just a punk kid who liked to hang out in coffee houses and read books, argue over things I didn’t even comprehend, and write novels that more than a handful of people have yet to read, (though of which I plan to edit with a vengeance once back in Belgium from India). I had big dreams, big ego, big delusions of grandeur, and a big open hole in my culture. There’s a hole in my culture dear Liza, dear Liza, there’s a hole in my culture dear Liza, a hole. I need to fill it, so I thought I would set out to Europe.

I booked a Eurail pass, which at the time where cheap, made a deal with Tom to take over my apartment, bought an orange Let’s Go!, and, so I left.

I flew into Amsterdam like many Americans do, though did not visit those coffee houses as it was not my drug of choice, though did enjoy the beer. That was the beginning of a three-month trek across 17 countries/territories/principalities and more hostels than I can remember. I met dozens of fellow travelers and in those days Americans used to actually backpack across Europe, which is nearly a rarity these days. The ubiquitous Maple would be proudly stitched on Canadians’ packs, being certain to distinguish themselves from their less-liked southern neighbors.

It was a grand Time, and a grand tour. I was young, stupid (though thought I was brilliant), naïve, daring, resourceful, and ready to take on the world, or so I thought I was doing that. What I have come to realize is what a laughably small part of the world I had and still have actually seen.

But, I was young, and with youth comes a dose of great confidence, a strong tincture of folly for good measure.

Having traversed the continent, shedding books, clothes, and pounds along the way, I ended up in Greece for the last three weeks. My eldest sister and her then husband were stationed on Kreta at the Knossos site as he was an archaeologist. By that point, I had felt like I had been initiated as a traveler, passing from a mere tourist that I had been the first time I had been off of the North American continent for the same sister’s wedding in Great Britain.

No, this time, I was not a mere tourist, but indeed a traveler. However, I was a traveler without a cause. I had passed the initiation, but was stuck in a disjunct. I wasn’t European, but neither did I feel American any longer. I did not feel like a “kid,” but wasn’t an adult. I wasn’t in school, was not in a relationship of any kind, and had had almost no contact with anyone from the United States for the entire trip as this was pre-email and pre-cell phone. I know if you are younger, you may have just gasped that anyone could be that old...

In addition, I was no longer “The Swimmer.”

I was in limbo, and I did not see a way out.

Backpacking across Europe in the late 80’s was seen as nearly a rite of passage for American teenagers. Go East, sort of, and sow your wild oats. Come back to America and make a fortune and become a doctor, lawyer, corporate raider, because, “Greed is Good,” as Mr. Gecko hissed into our impressionable ears.

I missed the memo.

What the trip was, was indeed a passage of rites, and it was to be one of the biggest steps in my life towards “Know-ing Myself.”

While on Santorini, the famed island in the Cycladaes group, and which is the island photographed as the face of Greece, I was staying on one of the many black sand beaches as Santorini is a volcanic island and is the Greek island. You know, the one with the blue houses and whitewashed stucco buildings? That’s the one, and it is the only one of the dozens of Greek islands that actually looks like that.

I love to swim, and when I can, in the ocean or sea. So, I swam each day while there. One day, I decided to keep swimming, not sure why, but I did. I just put my head down, and swam, not looking back. When I did look back, I was in for a bit of a shock. I had swum out about 2km and could not even really see the beach any longer. I was on the periphery of the island, threatening to be pulled into the general current of the Adriatic.

I turned and began to swim back in, but made very little progress as the sea didn’t feel like giving me up at that point. It was the first time in my life that I realized I might not have any control over my own life due to bigger things. I kept swimming and eventually through a series of panic, fear, anger, and finally resignation, I thought that I might not make it. Nobody knew I had gone out as I knew nobody there. It would be ten hours before the beach would be cleared and my lone towel found. I stopped and bobbed in the water, and thought about a lot of things for a while.

That day, though, I chose life. I have at times foolishly and childishly cursed my life, asked God, “why me?” like an arrogant blasphemer, but, I always knew that there is a way out. That is the odd thing about choice and what Sartre has called the true existential question, suicide.

I could have turned back out and kept swimming. I was at a crossroads. I did not know what I was going to do when I got back to Austin. I was already on the path to what would be a lifelong series of decisions that many people in my life would kind of look at me and say, “huh?” to. I had no plan. I had no “ambition.” I had not identity that distinguished “me” from the masses. I was no-one.

But, I chose life, and have ever since, despite that feeling of not always fitting in. I continued swimming against the outward pull of Poseidon’s realm and kept swimming. After what indeed feel like an eternity, I was able to make it back to the point where the wave starting rolling in, and I felt a natural forward movement. I crawled back onto the beach, and collapsed on my towel. 

Small, small Big World

This weekend, on the last day of shooting the Bishop Sargent movie that I have been working on in Tirunelveli, India, I accidentally knocked this hymnal book off of a desk. My friend, Handel, the cameraman, picked it up and happened to look inside.

This is what we saw....

Apparently, Caroline, Handel's mother and the director, had gotten this hymnal book for their congregation from a shipment of books from America that came in through Chennai.

I don't think I have to tell you that the odds of this are beyond comprehension that this is the town that I graduated from high school in to see in a town in southern India halfway across the globe on a film that I was working on by chance.

Stranger than fiction...

No More Kings

Being American, it is an interesting concept that I come from a large, developed country that was, by its conception, devoid of kings. All of the countries that I have lived in or traveled to, without exception, have a rather modern or contemporary history of kings and queens, save for my own. One could argue rather pedantically that the US did have kings, when we were the colonies, but technically that would be remiss.

The Declaration of Independence was an enormous milestone in the history of human civilization, and one that has been a model for many, many countries since its signage. It has been interesting teaching in India and discussing the relationship of the US and the UK here because 99% of the time, people assume that I am from the UK upon seeing me. (For some reason they know I am not from here.) However, I will then tell them that I am American, and they are often eager to know about it, because, as I have found out, that the US is not only physically half way around the world, but conceptually as well. Many Indians that I have met do not have a concrete image of America, unless they have family there and have visited it.

In the various classrooms I have taught in and visited, I have given many introductory talks about who I am and where I come from, asking them questions about what they know or think about America. As I mentioned in a previous Blog post, , many of them are quick to say that they know MLK, Obama, Abraham Lincoln, Bill Gates, and now, because of the prominence of his death, Steve Jobs. India has an affinity with each, the former three because of its own struggle for independence, opportunity, and equality, while for the latter, it is a reflection of India’s strident efforts in becoming a world power in the IT sector. When I told my cousin who is a computer guru at the University of Colorado in Boulder where I would be, she knew exactly where I was talking about because of the many IT connections here in Tamil Nadu, specifically Madurai, as well as further north in Karnataka’s Bangaluru (Bangalore).

The concept of a king is not altogether unappealing, though, I must admit, as in the case of Thirumalai, the illustrious Nayak king who ushered in a renaissance of sorts into Madurai in the 16th Century. However, it was an indelible mark left upon the historic consciousness of our species when the early American lawmakers drew up a constitution to abolish the rule of the British Monarchy.

Valluvar, Tamil Nadu’s most renown poet of the sangam tradition, sums up this sentiment in his landmark work, Thirukkural, saying:

Though blessed with various gifts of bountiful wealth,

A land gains nothing when it is not at peace with the King.

So true, and the deeper message of the Quest for the Holy Grail, that a land without a King (read, God), is no land at all.

The Indian I have spoken with have been curious about the fate of the British Monarchy ousted some 2 and a quarter centuries ago, though at times with mixed reactions. There is a population of Indians who regret that the British actually did “Quit India,” and say that well in an equivalent of, “at least the trains ran on time,” and that Gandhi’s movement for independence was misplaced or ill-timed. With that reference, it must be noted that the Italians who do say that about the Mussolini-era trains mythically being on time is just that, urban legend. Trains have never run on time in Italy, and most likely there was little more semblance of order in India before, during, or after the British Raj. India, like Italy, has been depicted rather uniformally chaotic throughout Time, verging always on the “functioning anarchy” ascribed to India by Robert Clive, I believe.

Having now been in India for nearly two months, in all truth, the thought of having a remotely controlling monarch her is beyond ludicrous to me. I can only speak from what I have seen here and now, but I cannot imagine a time that thinking that a solitary crown could ever contain the flood of energy on the sub-continent is really like sticking a finger in a doomed levee when the waters are already breaching the top. It is, as history bore out to be true, an exercise in futility.

However, merely removing a monarch is not always easy, as history has also proven to be true time again, and when done so, there exists a nature-abhorred power vacuum, something that seems to still be present in India as a whole. Though India does function in spite of itself, and I mean that quite literally, there is at times the sense of the scene in Apocalypse Now when Willard’s PT boat reaches the Cambodian border during a firefight and Willard asks in disbelief at the chaos ensuing, “Who’s in charge?” The answer in the movie is not much different when you ask someone here the same question. A vague sense of government is in place, but are they really ruling?

I have become more and more skeptical that India can even be ruled at all, whether by a monarch, local or imported, or by democracy, oligarchy, or even tyranny. India to me is just as unique in America’s incredible experiment in, like or not, the most successful democratic system in the world (I used to doubt that til having lived abroad in numerous countries) in that it is perhaps one of the greatest examples of human history of existing without any true seat of power. There have been dynasty aplenty, but fleeting and large power shifts, and for the most part, Dravidia has never really played ball with the rest of the Sanskrit-based sub-continent, preferring an autochthonous autonomy for thousands of years.

Living in India has certainly made me look at my own government with a sense of awe in the fact that it truly was created from scratch and emerged, historically speaking, in a startling short time upon the world stage as the world power. That power is currently waning, or at least dissipating, but it is still looked upon as the model that broke the monarchial bank of power, beginning the end of the never-setting British sun on the soil of the planet. For better or worse, one could argue, but impressive nonetheless.

Through A Prism Darkly

While teaching in Castiglion Fiorentino, I had one class that I called, “A Portrait of the Student in Exile,” for at some level, studying abroad can be seen as a sort of exile if you will. Exile can be imposed from the society, or self-imposed as James Joyce famously and infamously declared his freedom from Ireland as an exile who was escaping the nets of Irish paralysis in society with silence, cunning, and exile. The result was that Joyce ended up writing about Ireland even more than many of his compatriots who had chosen to stay.

One of the books that we read in the class was Luigi Pirandello’s One, No One and One Hundred Thousand (Uno, Nessuno e Centomila.) In the first-person narrative, he goes into a spiraling self-analysis of “who he is” and the results are rather unsettling at times. Hermann Hesse wrote in Steppenwolf that “Man is an Onion.” Thinking of the various layers of the peel that surround the hidden “Ego,” we try to peel them away, seeking to find out what is at the center. Ultimately, the center is empty, or at least it appears that way. Is a negative space ever really empty? That is the No One of the title.

With Pirandello, the layering also goes the opposite way as is suggested by the title. It is the age-old philosophical question between the One and the Many that flourished in Ancient Greece with proponents of Unity such as Parmenides, whose fragments include “Hen to Pan,” or “All is One,” on the one hand, and Aristotle on the other who began the system of taxonomy for all intents and purposes, going about from identifying characteristics that distinguish rather than unite. The character realizes that everyone in his life has constructed a different person in his or her mind about who he is, and none of them correspond. The Hundred Thousand.

Pirandello’s book, however, struck a deep chord with the students who were experiencing being in a new culture, many of them for the first time. I had told them that they would have a hard time going back home for a variety of reasons. Most of them would probably meet resistance, skepticism, and even hostility if they went on too long about how great Italy was. A common reaction to this from those who have not experienced such a new angle in life is “What’s so great about Italy? Why do you hate America!” Which are two very different things. You can love Italy, but also still love America, though this seems to be lost on many.

Another problem one has after living abroad is the inability to actually describe the events that have happened abroad. I know that many times I have just not talked about my experiences because they sound so trivial when I try to relate them, whereas when they happened, they were so visceral and alive. Seeing the looks on others faces when I start explaining, I realize that I will never be able to truly express the dynamics of the experience, and for that matter, it is mine alone.

With Pirandello, the narrator’s analysis follows a similar line of thinking in that he says that we are multiple people, all at once, though which one is our “true” self, because they can be quite contradictory. Who are we when we are with our parents, our children, our friends, our lovers, our spouses, with strangers, or alone? Each one of these identities is quite different and can at times be completely at odds with each other as well. So, who are we? Pirandello’s conclusion is rather bleak in that the ultimate result of this is that most people will never really “know” each other, and likewise, the vast majority of us will never even “know ourselves.”

I have experienced this disconnect many times in my life, though I know that I am not unique in this, but the book did resonate quite deeply with my own situation. Though it could easily, and erroneously, be said that I have “created” these disconnects, it does not matter if we travel or sit at home all our lives, we will still be different people when in the company or absence of other people. The person that I am in India, is not the person that I am in Italy, or Belgium, or America, but at the same time it is. The person that I am with my mother, my daughter, friends and loved ones, strangers, and alone are all completely different, yet, with the core of a “self” in there at some level.

I know that returning to Belgium in a month will be a challenge, as well as when I travel to the US next spring, for I have added yet more complexity to the person that I am with myself and/or with others. However, this is not a fear that I have, but rather a blessing that makes life so much more enriching and fascinating for me. Regardless of the miscommunications that I have had in life with some people who refuse to acknowledge the “multiple me’s” as a result of my “self-imposed exiles”, I would not change these experiences for the world. They make me who I am.

From the Ashes

I know exactly where I was on this date ten years ago. Much like Kennedy's Assassination and the Space Shuttle explosions , Americans remember where they were on those days. After finishing this post and having come to the Internet Cafe to post it, I received an email from a friend who had been discussing this very issue with her children. These are days to be remembered.

I was a young Instructor and Student Advisor at The University of Texas at Austin for the Liberal Arts Honors Programs and Humanities. I was teaching a Tuesday-Thursday 11:00-12:30 class called, “The Curse of Socrates.”

We had been glued to the television all morning in the LAH office, watching the events of the morning unfold, stunned into muted horror. Vicky, our secretary, was running triage of students coming in to just have a place to sit, while Elaine and I were managing phone calls from concerned parents about what was being done on campus. When the second tower went down, minutes before 11:00, I was in shock, but I had to go to my class and see what the students were doing.

I walked into the room and a full range of emotions met my eyes: anger, terror, fear, shock, disbelief, paralysis, confusion, and despair. It was a heavy moment, them looking to me to say something, do something. Just as the bell rung, in walked Mark, a normally deadpan student, had not heard what was going on, looked around the class, and when I told him, he just said, “Whoah, I guess I should watch TV more often.”

Our reading for the day had been summing up Book Three from Plato’s Republic as well as the prologue to Nietzsche’s “The Birth of Tragedy, (Out of the Spirit of Music).” In the reading for the Republic, Socrates and co. had been discussing the necessity or not of music as part of education, and Nietzsche’s work deals with his thesis that Art is the “progeny” of the creative and destructive forces respectively of Apollo and Dionysus (also serving as the inspiration for Rush’s epic “Cygnus X-1” from Hemispheres).

How were we to talk about philosophy at such a moment? It seemed ludicrous on the surface, so I told the students, “No holds barred, tell me what you are thinking.” And, they did. The next ninety minutes was the most candid discussion that I believe I will ever experience as a teacher. They did not hold back, and they ran the gamut. Some of the boys were talking about joining the army, which one did. Some people changed majors soon after, realizing that “you never can know.”

However, at one point, the conversation turned to “Now what?” “Now what?” indeed. What do you tell twenty year-olds is important after what they had just seen and witnessed? What is important? What really matters? Reaching a point of being at a loss for what to say, I turned to Nietzsche for help.

What do we do in the face of tragedy in life? How are we able to communicate the feelings of despair, disillusionment and vulnerability when our world is just pulled out from under us, leaving us hanging on to the edge, for fear of falling into the abyss. Nietzsche’s answer was that you have to stare at the abyss and realize that that is indeed part of life. To turn away, to forget or to deny what has happened is the greatest injustice you can do. Instead, when tragedy strikes, or when we feel our world crumbling beneath our feet, there is one thing to do--create.

From that point on, the discussion turned to how people have used tragedy, terror, war, and individual suffering to be the catalyst for great art. Not to be obsessed with it, but to, as Nietzsche advised, to look at it and see it as part of our existence, the destructive force of Dionysus, faced with the creative elan of Apollo, yields great art. I was reminded of this when I recently visited the Shaivite caves on the island of Elephanta off of the coast of Mumbai. The most imposing and striking carving is the enormous Trimurti of Shiva, depicting his three faces of the creative, preserving, and destructive elements.

On that day, many of those students later said that for the first time they understood “Art” and why people make it, and how powerful it could be. I remember that Adam, one of my students, had told me how amazing that it was that he was finally able communicate with his sister, who was in the Arts, because of that awareness. At the beginning of the hour, Adam, a staunch patriot, had been one of those ready to storm out of the class and get on the next military transport to kill whomever was responsible, consequences be damned.

To wish that the world be free of violence and acts of terror is a lofty and noble goal, though unfortunately, though not pessimistically, is one that is not rooted in reality. At this point in my life, I just don’t see that as happening on this planet, which is ultimately where Socrates will get to with his ideal city. Humans are complex, and in our complexity we have a staggering capacity to harm others. Perhaps one could say that it is out of self-preservation, but I don’t really cotton to that line. I think that people are merely quite capable of doing very bad things. Period. But, what happens when those bad things, and how we respond to them, that is the creative power that is likewise as staggering in the condition of being human.

Nearly without fail, each one of my students later told me that in all of their other classes, life had gone on as usual that day, as if nothing had happened, not a word was spoken about the events. A pure nearly campus-wide tsunami of denial had engulfed the 40 Acres and the sight of the Twin Towers crumbling to heaps of ashes and molten steel mixed with flesh had proved to be too daunting to look at, the abyss too deep. I had not been not sure what I was going to do, walking from the Gebauer building to Calhoun hall, that is from the LAH office to my classroom, I really wasn’t. It was one of the longest short works that I have made in my life and a lifetime of decisions went through my head, but I will never regret my final decision to open up that conversation, for the result was truly inspired on their part, it was a collective work of art. 

If I Were a Man

If I Were a Man

In one of the hallways of the Vikaasa World School where I am teaching here in Madurai, there is a hand-written copy of Rudyard Kipling’s well-known poems, “If” taped up on the wall. Kipling holds a rather interesting position here in India as he is somewhat scene as half in and half out of the culture, somewhat in a no man’s land. Kipling was indirectly responsible for an early childhood interest in India for me with the story of Rikki-Tikki-Tavi and the Jungle Books. I don’t have many memories of my paternal grandfather, but he spent two years in India with the American Air Force during WWII and was involved with the airlifts of supplies over the Himalayas. One of the things I do remember about him, however, is telling me stories about Shericahn, the great tiger of the Jungle Books. Shericahn was the bomb for me as kid. Whenever I needed strength for something, I would call upon the “Shericahn” inside of me to get me through it. Perhaps I still do to a certain extent.

Whether or not his son, my father, picked up an interest in Kipling from him or from some other source, I don’t know. However, Kipling again came up with my father for one of his favorite stories was “The Man Who Would be King,” which was a famous movie starring Sean Connery and Michael Caine as well. In the story and contingent movie, Connery is mistaken to be a god, a role that he eventually comes to play all to willingly, ultimately to his downfall, despite Caine’s warning that he is abusing his power. My dad saw it (or, at least when he communicated it to me) as one of toughest questions, how do we know if it is divine intervention, or ineluctable exigencies that are at play, and when we have responsibility, what are we to do with it (think Caine’s turn as Alfred in the Christian Bale-led Batman movies...)? Though my dad had his shortcomings as a father, he was dedicated to the last day of his life to the Hippocratic Oath that he pledged and lived every day of his life as a cardiovascular thoracic surgeon. For, in a sense, that profession can border on the responsibilities of what may be seen as God’s own.

But, for the rest of us, what do we pledge an oath to for life? At the school here, there is a “pledge of allegiance” to India when the flag is unfurled at the assembly. In American schools growing up, we also said our “pledge of allegiance,” which has now been discontinued (as far as I know) as a result of the prohibition of church and state. What does that mean to pledge one’s “self” to a country then? Is that not the height of all ideology? Yes, but, what isn’t when it comes to just the very idea of a nation, politics, or religion. Aren’t these all ideologies? Is it escapable at all, or is congenital to the very concept of trying to unite people in some fashion, or to extract a sense of duty to something greater than the individual? Can we recuse ourselves from a pledge to a country if we don’t believe in what it asks of us?

Beyonce’s hit single, “If I Were a Boy” is a rather scathing, though quite accurate lament about double standards of the sexes in modern life, but does beg an interesting question. What is it that makes one a “man” or a “woman?” Besides genitalia, what is expected of us? Is there an oath, a condition, a prerequisite?

Kipling’s poem sets out an interesting list of “ifs” for us to ponder this question on. Being a man, his poem is male. If he were a girl, perhaps he would have thought of other “ifs,” I don’t know, though I can surmise as such.

At my father’s memorial service, my sister read Kipling’s poem, “If.” I had heard it before, but it held a great significance for my father and her reading of it made a lot sink in for me. My father had struggled with “being a man” in many ways, and by God, he was a “man’s man,” often to his detriment. However, seeing that poem on the walls in a school here in India gave me pause. It was the power of poetry at work. That poem, copied out in a child’s hand, brought me back to that moment, hearing my sister reading, thinking about the fate of my father’s struggle to be a man. He was fiercely “American” and along with the Hippocratic Oath, he believed that it was his duty to serve his country, sadly often to his detriment as well. But, he did believe, and he did live his oath.

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too:

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,

Or being hated don't give way to hating,

And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream---and not make dreams your master;

If you can think---and not make thoughts your aim,

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same:.

If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

And stoop and build'em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings,

And never breathe a word about your loss:

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

Or walk with Kings---nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

If all men count with you, but none too much:

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,

Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,

And---which is more---you'll be a Man, my son!

Made In India

Having My Shirts Made today in Madurai at Pudhumandapam

The Economist magazine has a series of commercials that run here in India on the English-speaking television channels that expose various inequities in life, usually dealing with children. One of them, for example, shows two young African boys playing soccer on a dusty plain with Ashutosh Pathak’s Cannonball blasting in the background on a very old boom box. When the two boys are done, they pull up their make-shift goal posts, which are two assault machine-gun rifles, sling them over their shoulders and run off to duty. Fade to black with white lettering that reads, “African children lose their childhood because of the global demand for diamonds.” Another one has a very happy, rural looking schoolhouse with Chinese children repeating vowel sounds. However, it quickly becomes apparent that these are Hindi vowels, not Chinese. Then, the camera pans to the chalkboard, which has on it the Hindi vowels written in Devanagari script. Fade to black, and the message is, “China is importing its workers to its factories in India.” Both are followed by The Economist’s logo and the phrase, “Interpret the World” beneath.

Something that I have been doing for pretty much the entire portion of my conscious life has been more or less that, “interpreting the world around me,” whether it be with images, languages, travels, or just plain sitting there and thinking about it. Sometimes I have been able to do this with limited success, sometimes outright failed with over-interpretation, and perhaps sometimes spot on. Can I just sit and enjoy the flowers? Absolutely. My self-appointed and oft-confirmed nickname is Ferdinand, from Munro Leaf’s story “Ferdinand the Bull” in which the pacific bovine would rather be sitting around sniffing the flowers than much else. However, when pricked by a bee, watch out, for Ferdinand can spring into action like the best of them, though ultimately, a soft path of sweet-smelling flowers is all he really wants.

So, when not zoning out with flowers, I am usually observing my surroundings, taking it all in, making connections, finding similarities and noting differences. Being in India has taken that to a new level for me for as I have written, if you try to take in the whole picture, it is too overwhelming. Focus on the details, and piece by piece, day by day, patterns emerge and life begins to take on a new dimension.

One of those dimensions is comparing my life to being an American and interpreting my life here as such. When living in America and/or Europe, it is hard not to see the labels: “Made in China,” “Made in India,” “Made in Mexico,” “Made in Taiwan,” and less and less, “Made in Japan.” And, nearly non-existent is the once-proud “Made in America.” Now, I am no fool, this is not the first time someone has pointed this out. However, being here in India, seeing the children on the streets, and then to see that now China is exporting child labor to India, it is yet another step on the ladder down to humility of not really having seen the world for what it is in focus.

I believe that America, if it does not go back to “Made in America,” will be in serious, serious trouble, and quite soon. Because, what I am seeing more and more on a daily basis is that the world is learning to live without America in the picture, something that was not even thinkable between our Battle of Independence and World War II, when the world desperately needed the United States of America to be a “beacon on the hill.” As I mentioned elsewhere, I was quite proud to hear that Lincoln, MLK, and Bill Gates (one of the greatest philanthropists alive) were the three most recognized Americans by the kids that I am teaching, after President Obama that is. But, aside from ideology, what are we really exporting besides entertainment at this point?

One of Gandhi’s missions in his movement to have Britain leave India was the insistence that Indians use their own textiles, most notably the India khoti, or cotton fabrics which dhoti loin-clothes and saris are made of, for the most part. His statement was why are we using imported fabric or exporting all of our own work? A good question, when you have the resources and labor force that India has, it is absurd to think that they need anything from any other country. Because, in truth, they don’t. All of the produce that I have eaten or seen here is from India. Most of the cars are Indian, and the Indian IT market is rivaling the rest of the world at a blinding pace. And, as I experienced today, if you want the best clothing, go to the tailor’s market in Madurai.

One of the Many Sewers at the Market

Selecting the Fabric

One of my friends, Charles, used to work with Ralph Lauren and he told me that one of the favorite parts of his job was to go research the fabrics in Manhattan. I can completely relate to that. To be able to hand-pick the fabric for your clothes has been part of human culture since we started making clothes. On my mother’s side, there are Snyders, which is an anglicized Schneider, or literally, a cutter, meaning a tailor. Tailors, and hence Taylors, have been part of our society on a personal level since we began having cities. That, however, is nearly a thing of the past in America. I am stunned about how many clothes there are when I have gone shopping for my daughter in the States. I often wonder, “what happens to all of these clothes if not sold?” Many end up in developing countries to be sold wholesale, but the majority first come from those countries, and not “Made in America.”

It was quite a good feeling to go to the market and know where my shirt was coming from, I must admit. I met the man who buys the fabric, owns the stall, and as you can see, also the man who made my shirt as I waited. If you bring in your favorite shirt, they will measure it and with a team of men at the sewing machines in the Pudhumandapam (great hall, which is part of the old temple complex), then Kanan and his team (or one of the many other tailor stalls) will make your garments on the spot, or at least within the next day. I paid about $25 dollars total for three high-quality cotton, rayon, and silk shirts, custom fit. This is probably still an incredible profit margin, but I knew at least to whom I was giving my money. I don’t know where the fabric actually came from in India, nor the source of the labor force, as it could very well be Chinese children, I don’t know. I just know that perhaps I got at least one step closer to the source and knowing where something came from in this world of pre-packaged, outsourced, and impersonal commodities.

Adding the final Details

I don’t have a tag in my shirts, but, I do know for sure that they were “Made in India” as I sat there and watched

The Three Shirts

Nothing, but Fear Itself

It is something that has puzzled me for quite some time. The fear that I am talking about is a particular kind of xenophobia though, something with which I have been on both ends of the spectrum. It is not the traditional fear of strangers that I am talking about, but rather, something that is slightly more peculiar. Every culture I have experienced so far is xenophobic, unfortunately it seems to be in our blood, but I am thinking about the fear of when people, meaning Americans in this case, want to experience another culture and the reactions of other Americans can be quite odd.

Often, a strange, insecure fear arises that that person might “go native” and not “love/appreciate America” any longer. Or, it can manifest in, “why do you have to go to India, we have Hindus/spirituality in America?” Yes, we do. We have everything in America, but, in an American version, no matter how “authentic” it might seem. I have seen a very large part of America, and I love it for being what it is, America. But, I also love seeing other parts of the world as well, seeing them for what they are. Doesn’t mean that I like what I see always, doesn’t mean that I don’t. It is odd that one even feels compelled the need to “apologize” for seeing the world. Strange, that is.

But, I was once on the giving end as well, so I know the feeling. I remember in parts of Junior High School, I was an “American Boy,” or so it seemed. When “Red Dawn” came out, I remember how pumped up everyone was that high schoolers were going to kick some Commie Red Ass if they ever even thought about coming to America, by God. One of the proud stats of Amarillo was that it would be on the Top 3 places to get nuked because of Pan-Tex. That was a bragging right in the eighties. Slim Pickens as Major “King Kong” from “Dr. Strangelove, Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Learn to Love the Bomb (in case where you were wondering where this subtitle  came from)” was no comic figure for us folks in Amarillo. We were going to ride that bomb to the ground and make a big, glass parking lot out of anyone who tried to stop us, by God.

There is another kind of fear that I have been on both sides of, and it reminds me of a girl from High School. Teri was a very shy, pudgy girl during elementary and Junior High school, but the she lost the braces, lost the weight, got a funky, punky haircut, and hung out with the funky, punky kids, became editor of the school, and got interested in Russia (USSR, of course at that time). Boy, did we have a field day with that one, “us” being the Red Dawn Patrol. Saying stupid stuff like “If you love it so much, why don’t you go there?” and such oldies-but-goodies as “freedom isn’t free” and other banal patriotic whatnot, and Teri stood up to quite a bit of torment. But, you could smell the fear in the air. How could one little girl drum up so much anger without it? The fear was that America being the greatest and only place on the planet to live was suddenly crumbling because, “if just one little ant stands up to us, then they will all stand up to us,” to paraphrase Hopper again from A Bug’s Life.

At the time, I had only been briefly across the border to Juarez while we were in El Paso for a swim meet when I was younger, but my sisters had been to Europe. That was weird to see the pictures of them when they came back and to hear the stories. And, then, they had the nerve to go off and live there and/or study there for a while and one of them even got married in Scotland. Well, then I “had” to go. And, well, spending time in London and Scotland kind of rocked my world.

Eventually, I went back to Europe to backpack across seventeen countries for three months alone. At that point, I was at the point of no return. I was smitten by the drive to see the world. I went across “Checkpoint Charlie” in Berlin and in a simple event that changed my life, I knew that I would never fear another culture in the way that I had before. Don’t get me wrong, there are legitimate fears about cultural differences that I have a healthy dose of, but something changed. After I was on the East Berlin side of the wall, I was about to start taking pictures. Big no-no, for within about two shots, a young soldier with an AK-47 on his shoulder came up to me wagging his finger.

Turns out he was indeed Russian, and about my age, height and, in all honesty, we could have been brothers by our looks. We didn’t really exchange much as he didn’t know but a smattering of English, which was a smattering more of Russian and German than I knew at the time, and we just sort of stood there. He asked me where I was from, and I told him. He nodded, didn’t smile, didn’t frown. Kind of looked wistfully over to the other side of the Wall, and with a wave of his hand said, “now you go.” And, so I left.

I thought about that moment for a very long time and have brought it up in several occasions, mainly because that is whose Commie Red Ass I would have been kicking in my Red Dawn dreams. It was absurd to even think about that at that moment. When I saw that this was what a guy (I was only nnnaa-nnnaa-na nineteen) my age would be doing if I were born Russian, East German, or hell, just about any other nationality on the planet. In other words, I wouldn’t be gallavanting around Europe on my own.

The fear of “Russians” dissolved at that moment. Not, of “Russia, the Bear” and nuclear threat, but of the people.  I saw the enemy, face to face, eye to eye, could literally have smelled his breath, and the fear of the enemy was mine no more.

Of, By, and For the People

 I began my teaching position here on Monday in Madurai. I am teaching English at the Vikaash World School, which has around 2,000 students or more it seems as we had an assembly to begin the day and I saw the full student body. Originally supposed to be held in the auditorium, it was much more refreshingly done outside in the main courtyard.

The day began similar, yet different to what I have experienced with teaching at the Antwerp International School in Belgium. Similar in that the assembly had the typical student announcements, which are part hamming it up, part nervousness, and part just pure tweenage awkwardness. There were several songs sung throughout the assembly in English, Sanskrit, Hindi, and Tamil. That was quite a nice surprise I must admit.

The eighth grade sponsored a brief presentation on Ramadan, which is currently winding up with EID and the benefits, both physical and spiritual of fasting. There is a minority (perhaps 10%) of Muslim students both at the school and in Madurai, but the presence of Ramadan is felt. During the fasting period, devotees may not eat or drink during the hours that the sun is up, and for some, there are additional restrictions depending on one’s level of devotion. In addition, this weekend included zakat, which is when Muslims will offer 10% of their income to the poor. Pradeep, my host, told me of one of his friends who has a sari or a new khodi made for every woman and man in the village each year, as an example.

After that, I was introduced to the entire student body on the makeshift podium and was asked to say something about myself. I think, for the first time in a very long time, I was nearly lost for words. I stumbled through a brief, formal introduction of myself and congratulated them on their singing, and then sheepishly walked off to the eighteen hundred eyes fixed on me. It was humbling in a way I have not experienced in quite some time.

Afterwards, for the next several hours, I was greeted quite formally by literally hundreds of kids, wanting to shake my hand, ask me where I was from, my name, my father’s name, my mother’s name, what color my eyes were, and so forth. I probably said “good morning” in response to “good morning, Sir” about two hundred times at least. It was very touching to say the least. I know that leaving these kids will be difficult in two months.

I had three classes throughout the day in which I did a more thorough introduction of myself and about Belgium, where I live, and America, where I am from. This was the most interesting part for me, finding out what they did or did not know about America. Most of them had heard of Texas (which does come in handy, rather than say being from Delaware), and California. They knew the two oceans (these were 7th graders, for a reference) on each side of the US. They are very adamant about saying “the United States of America” here and not just “America” as in Europe as a side note. Then, came the curious part. I pointed to the East Coast and asked them what big city is up here in the corner? Without fail, in each class, the answer was “Washington D.C.,” not “New York City.” Many of them had not really heard of New York, which was when I really felt that I was on the other side of the globe.

All of them knew Barack Obama was the President and that he lived in the White House, and some of them knew that D.C. meant District of Columbia, but not New York! And, they knew Chicago (my sister will be happy to hear), which I found curious. Then, the teacher accompanying me told me why. Swami Vivekananda, a famous Indian sage who left from Mumbai to go to the US delivered a famous oration there called, “Brothers and Sisters” on equality. When I asked for them to tell me two famous Americans? The answer, without exception in all three classes: Martin Luther King, Jr., Abraham Lincoln, and Bill Gates. Yet, that sums up Southern India quite well. Tamil Nadu has a long history of being the most difficult state in India to “subdue” and was never really “conquered” by the British and is rather strident in their distinction from the North, particularly when it comes to keeping the Tamil language free from Hindi loan words. In addition, Madurai is known as being a center for IT innovation in India, so I imagine that many of the children knew Gates from their parents’ professions in some way or another.

It was interesting though that King and Lincoln were their model Americans, something I was quite proud to hear, and it did send a shiver up the spine in the first class when they knew the phrase from the Gettysburg Address that the government shall be “of the people, by the people and for the people.” India is in the midst of its own political sticking points including a recent (and successful) hunger fast by the “Anna Party” to combat graft and corruption in the central government.

Part of my assignment here will be to help educate them about “my” world while also learning about theirs. However, they set the bar pretty high on the first day for me to be thinking about what I can provide them about my own history, which I may evern be learning more about from them.

Tell Me About Your Family

For the next two months I will be a visiting teacher at a couple of schools in Madurai, teaching English and a sundry of other projects while learning Tamil myself. Today, I went to visit two of the schools and to meet some of the administrative and teaching staff. On Monday I will begin my teaching assignment after attending the all-school assembly in the morning.

After I had entered the headmaster’s office was introduced, we sat down, and the first, and nearly only question he asked was, “Tell me about your family.” I had read that Indians would often ask this question pretty early on in a conversation, so I was mildly prepared, but was still somewhat taken for surprise at how directly he asked it. It was not really the question itself, but the situation and the delivery.

He did not ask it in a hostile way, but neither was it really asked as if it were a conversational ice breaker either, but rather that it was actually part of “the interview” for what I was doing in India. I balked, not really knowing how to jump in and said, “my family in Belgium, or America, or...both?” as I was fishing for a response or change in his facial expressions, neither of which happened. Instead, with his eyes remaining fixed quite intently on me, he replied, “Yes, tell me about your family.”

I went on then to first tell him about my parents and that they had been physicians, but that my father had passed away, and that my sisters lived in various places as well, though he was quite impressed that they were in film and education. He was saddened to hear that my father was no longer living and was puzzled as to why my sisters were not with my mother. However, when it comes to explaining my situation in Belgium, the responses are not as welcoming.

In India, and I had also read about this, and it has borne out in reality at this point a couple of times, I am more or less considered to be a failure because I am no longer married. There are four stages in a man’s life in traditional Indian life, and one of them is to be a father and husband. This transcends poverty on the level of what is important in Indian society, much more so here in the southern part. If your wife has not died, and you have children, then you have failed if you are no longer married.

This reminded me of one of the more moving scenes in Terrence Malinck’s recent film, Tree of Life, (which incidentally one of my sisters actually worked on) in which Brad Pitt delivers an incredible role as a man at odds with himself and his family, and who is just trying to make it in life, but hasn’t figured out how. When he loses his job, Pitt is simply brilliant in his turn from the domineering father to a seismically reduced shell of a man, who breaks down crying to his son, who has literally wanted to kill his father at times in the film, and just says that all he wanted to do was to make things work. Without them, he was nothing.

I could see the visible disappointment in the man’s face when I was explaining that I was here alone and that my daughter was with her mother in Belgium and that we are not together. It wasn’t condemnation, but it certainly was not enthusiastic. India has major domestic problems to be sure, and to be born a woman here is a burden that I can never fathom in a million years. I cannot imagine what it must be like to be born into their predetermined roles in society here, which is not usually a glamorous one, except for the extremes of the Bollywood scene on a larger scale. However, I did feel the pressure that Indian men have on the flipside today of having to be the “man” of a household and to fulfill that role at all costs, for to fail is, in essence, is to be less than a complete man in his stages of life.

Yet More Tramps Abroad

Back in my hotel after an excellent dinner of grilled paneer sandwiched between slices of onion and green peppers and an amazing dish of baby corn, spinach paneer spiced with some smoking hot capsicum and raw green peppers. I could feel eyes upon me from the waiter to see if the sahib would eat them, which I did and got a nice drip nose to prove it. Topped off with a lassi and a walked along the putrid-smelling back bay of Mumbai Harbor talking with Mayur Dixit, a self-taught tour guide, who gives tours of the enormous slums in Mumbai, and is actually featured in the Wall Street Journal, about Slumdog Tour Guides. He strolls the Colaba promenade near the Taj Palace, which is the site of the bombing a couple years ago, and is trying to build his "tourist business" as the article discusses. Quite affable and knowledgeable about Mumbai specifically, but India in general, I was not able to take advantage of his services today, but perhaps will meet him on the way back through Mumbai in November.

The slums are enormous, mind-blowing, and there really aren't many words for it. You have to pass along them most of the way, as it is hard not too as 54% of Mumbai's population lives in them, making for 8 million people living in squalor. You fly right over them coming in as they literally encroach upon the runway, right up to the tarmac. The rooftops, which is rather elaborate word for rusted out, trash-covered corrugated metal sheets, are often painted blue, or have blue tarps on them, most likely in homage to Krishna's "blue-faced" aspect.

Now, here's the rub, and is one of India's sure to be paradoxes that will be impossible to fully grasp, even after I am here. As I mentioned before in a another blog, when Slumdog Millionaire came out, I was teaching at the pricey Antwerp International School, whose population is comprised of nearly 54% of the richest families in India's kids, namely the diamond traders kids. One of them said about Slumdog, "but, that's not Mumbai,..." which was shocking to some who mentioned the drive from the airport. But, Mukhta's point was that the slums were also incredibly active as a financial entity, and, well they are. It is bustling with businesses and people are out on the streets selling goods to each other, making food, repairing bicycle "tyres" and well, sorry to spoil it for you, but manufacturing all of those fancy woodworks, bronzes, and textiles that us whities are paying high dollar for in so-called boutiques in America and Europe.

Don't get me wrong, when I say squalor, I mean literally the poorest people on the planet, but they are out there "making a living." I have already seen the scenes of women, children, goats, and surprisingly well-fed stray dogs standing on trash heaps the size of Times Square. You can't really miss it. Mayur, whose name means "peacock" from the Sanskrit because of the sound they make, says that now it is particularly bad because of the rains and water rises to knee-deep with no where to go, but, he says, that is not as bad as the "hot season." He has an infant and 4 year-old daughter as well. He used to live with about a dozen people, but now lives with his family in the size of my bed, not bedroom, but bed. I have seen dozens of little girls my daughters age on the streets begging, orphaned, or asleep under plastic bags. Cows pulling carts of burned out air conditioners in the middle of lunch-time rush-hour traffic.

In short, there is no preparation as the saying goes. The is literally, no-thing that can prepare you for what you will see in 24 hours here. Lewis Carroll's Alice muses on thinking about the six impossible things before breakfast. From what I have already seen, that pretty much happens on an hourly basis.

But, there is time. I am tired, having tramped around the better half of downtown Mumbai today, though taking a break under the Regal Cinemas awning during the heaviest part of the rain, and well, saw six more impossible things during those 45 minutes as well.

This is just the beginning...