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.