Wot's Uh, The Deal?

Belgium has a new government, finally. After over 500 days of bickering, stalemating, posturing, and finally compromising, Belgium can re-join the hallowed league of nations that, at least superficially, try to settle problems in a quasi-democratic process.

This past year and a half has completely made a mockery of the so-called “Belgian Compromise.” It originally meant that Belgians were viewed as being able to reach acceptable compromises that are mutually beneficial, though the jejune fight between the Flemish-speaking North and the Walloon-speaking South has perhaps exposed the not-so-compromising truth that maybe the Belgians aren’t so agreeable as once thought.

In what became a travesty of diplomacy so long ago that we stopped counting that at least, the government of Di Rupo I, named after Elio Di Rupo, the Walloon politician who in my opinion, and that of nearly everyone except for most Flemings, has emerged as one of the most level-headed, positive-thinking politicians on the European political stage.

Bart De Wever, however, the Flemish-speaking spokesman of the antagonist party of Di Rupo’s party, has merely emerged larger in girth and less so in respect. He typifies the “Ja, Maar...” attitude that has plagued this entire process from the beginning. Oh, but he is so-o-o-o intelligent cries the Flemish fanfare. Fine, he is intelligent.

To that I say, “Big, Fucking Deal” to paraphrase Garfield’s kinder, gentler "Big, Fat Hairy Deal." As one of my aunts is fond, and rightly so, of saying, “Intelligence is a gift, we have nothing to do with it. It is how we use it that makes the difference.” Well, according to De Weveresque attitudes, intelligence is what you flaunt in people’s faces, using it to expose only the negative, meanwhile allowing the atrophy of the positive to go unchecked before yours and everyone else’s eyes.

With each referendum, De Wever would bloat and gloat about his unvanquished striving to look out for the Flemings’ best interest. Last time I checked, there were a scant 5 million of them, and Belgium’s financial security, believe it or not, has seismic proportions when it comes to keeping the European Union afloat. So, having your country go without a plausible, (much less risible) or even feasible, government because you are looking after the benefits of one of the wealthiest regions in Europe, while literally the sky may be falling around you, is in short, arrogant and ignorant, not intelligent.

So, we have a government here. Does that stop De Wever from whining incessantly and from stomping his leaded foot down and saying that he does not value Di Rupo’s government and that the situation has been downgraded in De Wever’s far-from-humble opinion from “total catastrophe to catastrophe.”

Wow. Catastrophe, really Mr. De Wever? Surely you’re joking, right?

But, the scary thing is, is that he isn’t. His perception, and that of many Flemings is that this really is a catastrophe that the French-speaking party may have actually finally breached the abyss of pigheadedness and is on the way to at least putting some things into action. It is a bastardization of the word when true catastrophe are unfolding around the world greater than the fact that the Flemings might have to tighten their belts, or loose some allegorical weight...

But, the “Ja, Maar...” must go on for some apparently. At what point, when a deal has been struck does one side need to continue to bitch and moan about any prior injustice? How long is too long? Belgium is a laughing stock of diplomacy in some circles because of this fiasco, but like a spoiled child, which is really what it boils down to, the likes of De Wever continue to call foul and taunt the winning side. Well, I don’t know if De Wever ever played any team sports, which is dubious given his selfish demeanor, but when the game has been declared over, it’s over. As I used to tell my water polo team when I was coaching, “Even if it was the fault of the ref that the game was poorly called, it was not the ref’s fault that we lost the game.”

Mr. De Wever, as I would say to my teammates after such a loss,

“Sit down, shut up, and work towards the future, please.”

And no more “Ja, Maar...”

River Swells.

riverrun past Eve and Adam’s...

So “begins” Finnegans Wake, or at least the first five words that one encounters when opening the book.

Finnegans Wake, or simply, the Wake as it is most often referred to amongst Joyceans (namely those of us hopelessly afflicted by being aficionados of the Irish Bard...) is arguably the most important book in my life. Or, at least one of them, but its presence in my life is ominous, omnipresent, and omniscient.

Likewise, Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha shares the literary pole position in my heart for favorite books. Both could not be more different, yet more the same, so it goes. The former is considered the most difficult, confounded, self-absorbed, narcissistic exercise in futility of language, while the latter is often scoffed at being too simplistic, naïve, and claiming to be a quest for losing the self, becoming the anti-narcissistic book. So, what then do they have in common? All, and no-thing, but most importantly, they are both about a river.

Joyce’s postmodern linguistic Frankenstein is topically about the River Liffey that runs through Dublin, though simultaneously about every river on the planet, condensed into no less than 800 different rivers in the well-known chapter on ALP, the universal Mother. Siddhartha, on the other hand is a “tale from old India” with a focus on an unnamed river, which teaches Siddhartha the magical power of the sacred syllable “OM.”

When I was young-er (I still feel young, despite being 42), and dumb-er (still dumb, but just aware of it now), then I gave a talk in Zürich, Switzerland at a Joyce Symposium, my first of many to follow over the years, about the relationship between the Wake and Siddhartha, arguing that they were more or less the same book, just different.

Having given, what I thought was a dazzling presentation for a young whippersnapper, complete with one of my in/famous Fulton diagrams (if you know me, this needs no further explanation, though I will post a picture of the original when I can find it again for a visual aid), I put down my felt-tipped marker and waited for shouts of “bravissimo, bravissimo, encore, encore.”

Rather, silence. Crickets more like. Only, unlike Beethoven , I wasn’t deaf, it truly was silent.

Now, silence is good and bad, and with a presentation, there is a fine line between death and victory, a hair’s breadth.

The silence was broken by Fritz Senn, the über-Swiss Joycean, who is in/famous for making or breaking young Joyceans on the spot, the former usually being sprite, young good-looking female Joyceans, the latter often look more like me.

In his typical faux-Socratic self-deprecating irony , Mr. Senn threw out this chestnut, more or less, as such, saying, in his Swiss manner, “Now, it is my humble opinion, and I don’t claim to know anything about anything, but there is one thing that I have noticed about the Wake and that is that there is a uncanny ability for people to talk a great deal about the Wake, but actually not understand it at all.” That was the first and last comment of the presentation, and I sat down.

Well, some twenty years later, having worked much more extensively on Joyce and having read Siddhartha several more times (I taught myself German to read it in the original, so it must be important to me), I would give the exact same presentation, the echoes of Mr. Senn’s deprecation notwithstanding.

Which was: the two books are the same, and they are about a river, and in that river, everything happens all the Time at all Times and covers all Space and it is contained in the sacred syllable OM, though protracted to the tesseract of A-U-M-Silence (hence I tell myself the silence at the end of my presentation was actually fortuitous...always look on the bright side of life, “whistle, whistle/whistle, whistle”) as described in the Advaita Vedanta classic, the Mandukya Upansihad...

Sunday was a beautiful day in Antwerp. Though 99% of the denizens might disagree evinced by the dearth of human beings out that morning, I found it to be phenomenal, to use my daughter’s favorite adjective.

It was very cold, grey and foggy as Dickens’ London. I was tooling around my bike in the Waste Land of avenues and streets and ended up on the banks of the Schelde, the river that made Antwerp a viable metropolis for hundreds of years. Down towards the South, where it becomes more river and less commercial property, I sat by the river, and wept silently, though not out of sadness.

Sitting there for some indefinite amount of Time, watching the muddy swells roll plashing against the nearby hull of the good ship Helenic, listening to the plaintive, feline calls of the gulls, and feeling the cold, damp caress of fog on my cheek, I sat, and tears did in fact come to my eyes, though I did not even notice when, how, or why, yet, I wasn’t sad, not at all, but rather I just was, and I was indeed a lone a long the... 

God, Fear, and Booze: The American Dream?

Several years ago, when we moved back to Antwerp from Austin, Texas, I was a visiting Fulbright Professor at the Universiteit Antwerpen. How I ended up there is a story in itself, having been a foreign exchange student nearly twenty years prior, with the same professors who were now my colleagues, during which I began my lifelong (from that point at least) love affair with languages and James Joyce. But, that, as the talking tree, the Sprookjesboom says, “dat, lieve kinderen, is een héél ander verhaal...”

One of the courses that I taught was called, “God, Fear, and Booze: The American Dream?” I had been asked to teach a course on American Drama, something I had never done before, so I put on the old thinking cap, and I thunk, and I thunk, and I thunk.

What defines America?

The time period was in and around the two World Wars, and I had chosen Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh, Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire and Arthur Miller’s The Crucible.

And, like casting the runes or spreading the Tarot Cards, the answer emerged: God, Fear, and Booze. And, of course, the American Dream, or was it?

Living and traveling abroad I am constantly confronted with stereotypes, both ones about Americans and ones that I have as an American about others, say, for example, Italians, Belgians, and Indians, just to name a few. Stereotypes raise the hackles of many immediately, but, in a sense, they can be useful. An incorrect stereotype is just as helpful in learning about a culture as a correct one, just as a negative experience can teach us as much as a positive one.

So, that was the course. The first day, not wanting to be shy, we dove right in and I asked the students, who were all Belgian, what stereotypes do you have about America and Americans?

Some of the answers which filled the chalkboard:

Obsessed with Religion

Christians

Drink too much when they come to Europe

War (there was another President in the White House at the time)

Xenophobia

Ignorance of geography

Hollywood endings

Problems with Racism

Freedom

Skyscrapers

The American West

Cowboys and Indians

In short, God, Fear, and Booze: The American Dream? I was not too much off the mark. Americans drink a lot of alcohol, both at home and abroad. Americans are quite preoccupied with Religion, specifically Christianity, and we Fear the Unknown as much as anyone, yet, behind it all, there is the promise of the American Dream. I can do anything that I put my mind to.

When people meet me, they will often say, “You’re not a typical American, are you?” To which I usually answer, “Yes and No.”

Personally, I have had my battle with booze, though have come out victorious . Questions of religion and spirituality are on my mind constantly, but not necessarily Christianity. I have had to conquer many fears in life, and have had to overcome prejudices and stereotypes of the Other, and I have learned about three different cultures on a deeper level than even some of the people born and raised in those cultures. I have believed in the American Dream and I have lived it, and I have seen it falter at times.

Much has happened in my life since I taught that course. I have lost much, and perhaps, in some ways, I have gained more. I have wrestled with the demons of my mind, of being American , of being a foreigner, of being a Man, of being a Human, of just Be-ing.

And, now, here I am, back in Antwerp having spent a phenomenal 10 weeks in India , which suddenly, like the thick mist of today’s autumn shroud, floats ghostly before my eyes, flickering. shifting, changing, fading, and eliding my thoughts, taking me back to that first day in the classroom, asking the question, “so, what comes to mind when you think of America?” Because, suddenly, again I am here, back in Antwerp, as an American, coming equipped with a bit more experience in life than when I left it in August.

For logistical reasons, Antwerp, or at least Belgium is my home for the indefinite, foreseeable future. I am a foreigner, and I am an American, living abroad. But, I have returned to Antwerp with perhaps a new pair of glasses, or better, a lack thereof. It is a new city for me. Though it has been part of my history, suddenly it opens before me, new, to be dis-covered, to be experienced from a new perspective.

I am American. I am a typical American, both in my typical and atypical ways. It is who I am, and it is who I will be when I die. For, to be paradox of a stereotype is about as American as it can get, and so, here I am.

Foreigner, Slightly Lesser

I have been back in Belgium now for a few days, and few things definitely stick out upon my return.

In the first place, boy, there sure are a lot of white people here. I did not realize how accustomed to not seeing any other white people I had become. Being virtually one of only a handful in all of Tamil Nadu as far as I could tell, it had just become a part of life for me. Now, suddenly, I am surrounded by them. However, what is most apparent is not necessarily the color, but also the size. In short, people are big here, but it is not the height, as the average Indian was surprisingly much taller than my uninformed preconception had been, but bone structure and just sheer volume. Everyone’s faces and hands and torso are just bigger here.

There is indeed though a growing, and very visible problem in Indian among the female population of obesity, and a high incidence of sugar diabetes is on the rise, most likely due to the insane amount of high-fructose sweets that Indians consume on a daily basis. However, even with that, the sheer body structure that I see here did not exist for the most part in India, and suddenly, having felt rather “large” for the past ten weeks, I know feel rather “medium build” for the first time in my life. That is in large part to the fact that I have finally, after daily exercise and changed lifestyle, returned to my college swimming weight. But, twenty years ago, I was big, now I don’t feel that way, despite being the same weight.

In addition to big, white people, perhaps the biggest culture shock has been the sheer volume of wealth that is apparent here. People seem to have money falling out of the ears here. Taking a walk through Antwerp last evening, I could not believe how many incredibly expensive new boutiques have cropped up, and that every restaurant was packed with people, eating, drinking, and eating more and drinking more. When a coffee now costs me what a very fancy meal was costing in Madurai, it is hard not to do some quick mental calculations and be left somewhat in a daze. I have spent more in the first few days than I think I did in the entire first month in India. That is not complaining, but just a sheer fact of life. This is an incredibly wealthy society.

 What is perhaps the most difficult things to overlook is how quiet and CALM it is here. Last evening, Antwerp was packed to the brim. Because of a late summer feel in the air, everyone was out on the streets and trying to catch the last warmish evening before winter really hits (which it is threatening to do today as I am writing in a very cozy cafe). But, despite the streets being wall to wall people, I could not get over how incredibly still it was. It was as if I had suddenly gone deaf and was experiencing what should have been a plethora of noise, it was silent, freakishly so. I was reminded of the scene in the film Immortal Beloved when  Gary Oldman as Beethoven is watching the Ninth Symphony being performed in total silence while all around him is the explosion of music and song.

Being surrounded by Flemish is also weird. Because I had been on hyper-alert with trying to pick up any Tamil and/or Hindi, I am catching myself surprised at not realized that I am listening to a “foreign” language, but rather one that seems thankfully familiar and accessible on a level that surpasses what I have ever had here.

There are many things that are strange about being back “home” in Antwerp. It is a wonderful city, and at its best has some of the most stunning architecture in all of Europe, if not the world on mere street levels.

The opulence of the evenings here is dazzling when the shops are illuminated and people are strolling leisurely about. It is easy to forget that less than 100 hours ago, I was sitting in the Mumbai Chatrapati Shivaji Airport waiting to board my flight to London Heathrow, en route to re-integrate myself back into the European society, albeit as an American abroad, but certainly a monumental degree less as a foreigner than I have been since the end of August in India.

And, in the blink of an eye, India passes,  as if in a dream...

Fries With Mayonnaise

How I got to Belgium was a curious path, which then became more curious even over the years. It is all Professor Jeff Smith’s fault, sort of.

After I returned from my trip across Europe, feeling older and wiser and ready to go back to school, I decided to throw my hat into the ring and enroll in The University of Texas at Austin. However, due to some oversight of my own about admission dates, I had to wait out a semester. So, what to do?

Wooden Shoe Like to Learn Dutch?

So read the bumper sticker on the door of Andre Lefevre, Professor of Dutch at The University of Texas. Andre was a very odd, little man from Ghent, with a snarky laugh that scruntched his eyes shut and caused a tremor in his shoulders to vibrate up and down. He had a very weird sense of humor, which I later learned was merely Belgian, and had a habit of pontificating to himself, something I am wont to do in class at times as well. Like me, Andre would amuse himself to no end telling jokes that no one would ever understand or care to get, but boy did he have a good time doing it.

Knowing that I had to take a foreign language requirement at UT, I wanted to be different. I had really liked Holland and Belgium during my somewhat innocent tramping abroad, so I chose Dutch. I went to see Andre and convinced him to let me sit in on his class to see if I could get up to speed to take the year end test to start at a more advanced level when I was actually admitted to UT. Andre was an iconoclast of sorts and libertarian, so he said yes.

Once enrolled, I continued the Dutch with Andre, Marianne, and Hanneke over the years. However, it was the first year at UT that I took Jeff Smith’s ARH 302, “Introduction to Art History.” Art History had been my favorite class at my last school and Jeff Smith is an amazing teacher who furthered that passion. His specialty is Northern Renaissance and he can make it zing. He is also big on in situ study as he now funds as many students as he can to see the real things in the real places. As such, he convinced me that I had to see the Flemish and Dutch Masters fleshed out on canvas, and Andre concurred.

After graduation, I had decided then to go to Antwerp to study at the UFSIA “European Studies Programme,” under the directorship of Luc Hermann. Not only was it cool that I got to spell Programme like that, but it gave me a legitimate reason to go live in Europe as I had been itching to go back since the day I had returned from my summer trip a couple years before.

And so, I left.

I arrived in Antwerp and found a cheap studio. Cheap because it did not have a shower in the building and you had to go outside on a busy pedestrian street and go next door to use one there. My friend Max, who eventually moved over to the same building after the programme started, used to delight in shocking the Belgian by going out in just a towel and bath slippers in sub-zero degree weather for his shower.

Though I could begin an entire blog on memories of Max and that year, which perhaps I shall at some point, it was the transition of an undergraduate who had only read about paintings in class and seen slides and had studied Dutch from Andre’s self-fashioned textbook to a budding graduate student who would later insist upon teaching in situ when possible as in the case of the Study Abroad Program in Castiglione Fiorentino and a lifelong passion for studying texts and cultures in the original language as I have done ever since.

Andre Lefevre, a stalwart name in the field of translation was to be my mentor in Graduate School for my MA/PhD program, but he died at a very young age of 50 from a cancer that he had kept secret from everyone, but which went ballistic on his body nearly overnight. He lit the fire in me to study languages not as mere tools, but as living organism that shape a culture and through which we can reach a new level of understanding. In my classes, I share his simple message that language has a primary purpose of communication, for when communication fails, and the result is miscommunication, problems ensue.

Because of his untimely death, I ended up moving away from Dutch as my focus in graduate school, turning the clocks steadily back, going from German to Ancient Greek to Sanskrit and ultimately throwing them all back together with my love of the works of James Joyce, which then lead me to Bologna some years later, adding Italian and a whole new series of adventures in Bella Italia...

It was the year in Belgium though that my true love of learning languages took deep root and has shaped how I view each culture and encounter with another language group in my life. The art of translation became my passion and likewise my avocation alongside that of teaching. It was the inception of The Language Doc for all intents and purposes. From Andre and Jeff I learned that you do not learn about a culture merely by studying or reading about it, you have to live it. You have to go there and along with the locals, eat Fries With Mayonnaise.

Gone to India, Be Back Soon

Thank you for visiting "Fries With Mayonnaise." I will be focusing on my main blog "Indra's Net" and "You May Leave if you Wish" as I am in India for the next month. Please check in there for my other blogs, and don't fret, "Fries With Mayonnaise" will be alive and kicking again in November.

Thanks for your interest, check out "Indra's Net" here:

INDRA'S NET

Namaste,

Robert

Holy Threads

On Belgian television, a sizeable proportion, if not encroaching upon a small majority, of the advertisements are for laundry detergents, and specifically those that make you clothes as white as the purest of snowfalls from heaven, because, god forbid, the greatest of all sins is to be seen in public with a dirty shirt, or even worse, for I know, a hole. Somehow, at nearly any given point, at least one article of clothing of mine has a hole that “shouldn’t” be there or, as I like to say, I often “wear my food so that you don’t need to ask me what I had for dinner.” Apparently, by now, I should know better judging from the looks I receive when I dare to walk the streets of the über-bleached and for sure, no holes in one’s shirt. Bringing me to one of life’s funny, little ironies.

After a breakfast of chole, which was a first for me, I started my day, walking towards the Gateway to India, thinking I would hit the caves of Elephanta first. However, along the way, weaving my way through the harkers and barkers of wares, services, and asking for alms, I gave in to a friendly face. Sishta, from Bangalore began in the usual way here of asking where I was from. Somehow everyone seems to know that I’m not from India...go figure. Anyway, because of a rather non-pushy mannerism, I gave in to him and engaged in the conversation, which from my limited experience, almost never ends free of charge once you begin it.

So, we chatted it up, and “luck” would have it, Sishta was a tour guide...imagine my surprise. He walked me up to the moorings of about twenty idle boats, having talked up Elephanta for the past ten minutes, then looks at me sheepishly, with a slightly-lilting head movement that Indians do that I will never be able to imitate, and says, “but, you can’t see the island very well in the morning, too much fog, you need to come back later.” But, “lucky” for me, Sishta had a solution...imagine my surprise.

So, we turned around and began walking back towards the hustle and bustle of the Colaba streets and he told me of a “tour” he could offer, which was basically getting me a cab and sending me along with the cabbie on a scavenger hunt of about fifteen destinations, which I agreed to since for sure I could not do this on my own in one day. After handing me off to Rajan, from Agra (have yet to meet someone from Mumbai yet), we were on our way through the teeming madness that is the streets of Mumbai. I have decided that the only formula that I can come up with is: to multiple the chaos, sounds, traffic, and street activity of Naples times that of Istanbul, then cube that sum. That might approximate Mumbai, maybe. If you have ever been to one of those two cities, you can begin to appreciate the absurdity of that formula, though it is rather accurate I think.

First stop, a view into one of the slums at washing time. This is what I saw at 9 am today, Mumbai time. There are parallel scenes in Bertolucci’s Little Buddha in which Keanu Reeves as Siddhartha (and, I will admit that I quite like his performance), the yet-to-be-awakened Buddha and that of two of the three re-incarnations of Lama Norbu, two little boys, one Nepalese and one American, “encounter the poor” for the first time. For Siddhartha, he breaks his father’s ban on him leaving the be-jeweled and protected life within the confine of the palace walls and dodges into the slums of his father’s capital city, while the latter are running wildly through the backstreets of Katmandu, fighting over a hand-held computer game. Both run into the respective slums of the time, but the cinematic shots are the same scene, the poor have not changed in Time, nor Space.

Walking through the streets this morning into the Mumbai slum was just that, a jolt out of Time and Space. I say this mainly because I had no prior reference point on which to hang this piece of mental laundry than that images from the movie, which I now see was no movie set, but probably an actual side-street of Katmandu.

This is the communal washing and bathing place for approximately 15,000 people per toilet.

PHOTO NOT UPLOADED YET, CHECK BACK, STILL WORKING ON SOME GLITCHES HERE
SORRY

After visiting other sites including a Jain temple in the wealthy neighborhood on Malabar Hill (which is what all of the families are at the Antwerp International School), viewing the hanging gardens (much less impressive than I imagine those of Babylon of old), the entrance to the Zoroasteran “Towers of Silence,” where the corpses of the ever-dwindling Parsi adherents are laid to the elements for the vultures to eat, the Gandhi House and Museum (more on that in a separate post), and several other places, we stopped in front of the Regal Cinema, where I sought refuge yesterday during a deluge, and there was Sishta, waiting smilingly for us.

He wanted me to go to one last place before dropping me off at the ferry landing in order to go to the caves, as the fog had lifted (and, more on that in a separate post), an emporium (imagine my surprise), where apparently Bill Clinton, Hillary, and Chelsea had visited. It was upscale, and this being my first couple of days in India, I had no intention on buying anything, but went in to be polite. However, it did not really matter if I had wanted to. I had made it in about ten feet before the floor manager came up to me and said, “can I help you,” but not like “can I help you find something nice to buy?” but rather, “can I help you find the door?” He gave me a once over (actually a twice and a thrice over, shaking his head indignantly), and guess what, the shirt I was wearing was pretty ratty as I had planned on going hiking on the island first and my shoes looked pretty much like I had just been walking through the slums, as I noticed then at that moment they were all barefoot on nice, afghan rugs in the store, all with very clean clothes and very clean feet.

I mumbled something along the lines of “no, I had just come in to look.” I turned, wanted to head back to the door, and before I could count to three, Mr. Manager had finagled his way between me and the stairs opposite the entrance leading up to the even nicer gallery, placing his body in such a way that I could not go up, even if I had wanted to, and he said, “there’s nothing up there,” barely dropping the “for you.” So, the security guard let me out. Sishta, who had been waiting outside for me, asked what had happened, and I said I wasn’t interested to avoid causing him embarrassment for bringing such a customer to them. As we were walking back in the car, Sishta took hold of the hem of my shirt and said, “Mr. Robert, what happened to your shirt, did you know that you have several holes in the back?”

When Giants Walked the Earth

Antwerp is a city of giants, albeit that can be the gigantic ego of the local Antwerpenaar, but it is the city of giants, or at least one for sure, that is Antigoon, the giant who ruled over the Antwerp harbor on the Scheldt, the river that runs through it.

Antigoon was large enough to straddle the Scheldt and as ships passed beneath his colossal legs, if they did not pay his toll, would be smashed to smithereens with a mighty blow from his fist. Well, people don't like taxes and tolls, that much is clear in history and in current American events. Some taxes are indeed necessary, I believe, but Antigoon was just plain greedy.

Others agreed, and one day, a strapping young Fleming named Brabo came to the rescue of all, and a legend was born, as well as a folk etymology for the city's name of Antwerpen. Instead of paying the toll, Brabo excised his own payment and cut of one of Antigoon's hands, casting it into the river, freeing the denizens of Antwerp to go back to drinking their Belgian beers and eating mussels in peace. The action of Brabo's deed is said to be immortalized then in the name "Antwerpen" which is said to be a contraction of "hand werpen" or "to throw the hand."

As such, the city's motif is a severed hand, which is proudly displayed throughout the town on banners, posters, a giant hand sculpture on the Meir, and even gooey-center filled chocolates for gifts to give to friends and loved ones, or total strangers, who come to visit Antwerp.

Last year, however, a different type of Giant came to town, an experience that I will never forget, and is one of the reasons that I do really love this town (and think that Brussels is Boring ;-)).

Royal DeLuxe, a French artistic company based in Nantes, also loves Antwerp (or Anvers for the French-speakers). Antwerp is one of only a "handful" of cities worldwide that Royal de Luxe has chosen to use as a cityscape for its incredible street theater performances using enormous marionettes, which are able to evoke true emotional responses from the street-born audiences.

It was a brilliant performance last year, spanning three days of intrigue and magic. The "program" was kept secret and you had to find out by reading clues in the newspaper or on a website as to where the two giants would appear.

The story was of the Little Giant girl (De Kleine Reuzin) who arrived on her gigantic boat and who was looking for her uncle, the Diver (De Duiker), who had emerged from the Antwerp Harbor. Throughout the day, these two marionettes traversed the city, searching in vain for each other, often just missing one another.

My daughter and I followed the steps of the Little Giant all day last year on one of the days, here on the back of the bike and us racing around the streets trying to find the two. Sometimes we found her napping and snoring loudly, other times dancing a jig on the quays, and even taking a potty break in between the cars parked along the street. We also found the enormous diver sleeping on the St. Jansplein and saw him wake up and start his journey to find his lost niece. Here is someone's version of that event posted on Youtube. My daughter and I were actually right behind the giant anchor that you see in the right-hand side of the frame at the end as the Diver is leaving the square. We were right at the front and you could literally feel the earth shake as he passed us by, towering above the houses, accompanied by a live band. It was the greatest street performance I could ever imagine.

Take a moment from your busy day and watch this video. You might even feel strangely calm by the end of it.

Eventually, the two wandering giants did find each other and in a moment that I can scarcely explain, I was really, really emotional seeing two large pieces of wood, cable, and scaffolding hug at twilight. It was amazing as to the level that I came to really care for these characters in the span of just a few days. When the two departed in the Little Giant's ship from London Bridge on the Antwerp harbor, I was very sad to see them go, as if I was watching two good friends leave on a magical journey, and they had floated away into the mist of memory and enchantment.

Let's Call the Whole Thing Off

Well, the clock is ticking for my sojourn in the US to be over and to soon return, albeit briefly, to Belgium before I then head off to India. So, as I have not been reading Belgian on-line version of its newspaper, De Standaard, as regularly as I normally do, I took a gander today, and guess what was on the front page?? Potato(e)s and Fries of course, what else? That, and the continuing crisis of not having a government. The two are more related than you might think.

Apparently, because of the substantial rains that Belgium has endured while the rest of the planet is drying up, most notably here in Texas, the potato crop has experienced a surplus and the price of a kilo of spuds has sunk to epic proportions. Now, this should be cause for dancing in the streets, but there is just one catch. The price of Frietjes has not experienced this windfall and has consequently not lowered.

Bernard Lefèvre of the National Union of Friers explains that the cost of the potato is actually quite marginal in the process of making the fries and that it is more about the cleaning, peeling, packing and shipping of the product than the base material of the spuds.

In the politics of Belgium, the current political impasse still rages between the French-speaking Walloons, championed by Elio Di Rupo and the Flemish-speaking Flemings, whose main mouthpiece is Bart De Wever. It has become a classic case of one side saying "AAA" louder each time the other says "BBB" and so on. Nothing really gets settled and each side continues to see its own agenda as more and more important, focussing on the differences rather than the commonalities. It was to such an extent earlier this summer that the Flemish party was dubbed the "Ja, Maar" party, or "Yes, But" in that every compromise offered was met with a "Ja, Maar..." and the impasse continued. Futility in praxis.

What the Flemings are arguing is that the Walloons, now the financial minority, are mooching off of the more affluent Flemings. However, recent history will clearly show that the exact opposite was the case when the southern portion of Belgium was booming and the northern part was bust. The Walloons supported the welfare state of Flanders for quite some time, but when the tables are turned, the Flemings don't appear to be willing to be so reciprocal. Granted, this is a huge oversimplification of a much larger, more complex problem, but the problem is universal, not limited to Belgium.

The core of most arguments, whether political or religious, private or public, is often a failure to either effectively communicate our differences, or more commonly, an inability to be willing to recognize the plight of the other party.

In a hypberbolic example, if the potato growers are providing the goods at a lower cost and those who make the actual fries don't reflect the change in price, they should not then later expect to share in the profits if the price of potato(e)s one day surges due to a blight or the like, right?

If we continue to look only after our individual concerns, without looking at the larger picture, we end up in tangled up in a sterilized stalemate and nobody profits.

The future of whether Belgium will actually stay a tri-lingual menagerie of provinces, or if it will be split up into two or three separate municipalities remains to be seen. For now, it comes down to whether you say pataat and I say pomme de terre. Regardless, the truth is, for now at least, French Fries are actually from Belgium.

Don't Say "Please" If You Please

One of those little differences between living in Belgium (and traveling in Europe in general) is the verbal or non-verbal exchanges that are involved with a monetary transaction or other types of cultural bartering.

Being back in the United States currently, the absence of anything being said is quite noticeable. When in Flanders and you are handing over your money for say, a coffee, you say, "Alstublieft," which means "If you please," being a direct correlation to the French, "S'il vous plait." To which the salesperson will say "dank u wel" and from there it is kind of a free-for-all. Next, when you get your coffee, the salesperson hands it to you saying, "alstublieft" You can reply again with "dank u wel" or some other similar verbal pleasantry. This can go on a few times, back and forth, until one of you breaks the monotony and the transaction is over. And, then you go on your way.

However, a rather annoying trait of many Flemings is the insistence on speaking English, despite one's sincere efforts to speak Dutch/Flemish. This may be done with good intentions at times, but other times it is rather, "don't bother, my English is better than your Flemish will ever be..."

When at that point of a transaction it reverts to English, instead of "alstublieft" when handing you your coffee, for example, the salesperson will say, "Please." Now, I know that he or she is trying to be courteous, or to show off his or her English skills, but in all honesty, that is worse than nails on the chalkboard for me. Yes, that is petty of me, but, I really cannot explain why this gets to me at my core. But, when I am back in the States, it is clear.

For the most part, shopping, customer service, or other commercial transactions, they are almost always more convivial in the States, or at least in most places. Customer service is, by and large, something that Americans do at least strive for, but in Europe, for the most part, it is considered a minor to greater annoyance for the service person. Customer does not always come first, and often not second, third, fourth or even fifth. As Leopold Bloom thinks to himself in Joyce's Ulysses, "Come forth Lazarus! And, came fifth and lost the job..."

Usually, or at least in parts of the "south or southwest," when you walk into a store, restaurant, mortuary, auto shop, barber shop, whatever, you are treated like the long-lost friend, coming back home from years trekking across the Outback. Relatives are called, hugs given, tears shed, hand me a tissue Tito...

But, when it comes to the actual exchange of the money and the goods, Americans are amazingly silent! We just thrust our money out, silently, and the service person takes the money silently, then, back to best, long-lost friends.

During that simple transaction, it is nearly a reverend silence, or an embarrassed moment like you are paying for a drug deal or selling your first-born child. Whereas the money/goods exchange in Belgium may be the only pleasantry or verbal exchange at all in a mercantile setting, in America, the exact opposit eis true.

When I am back in the States, then, during that weird silence, I feel compelled to say something, anything, but when I am in Belgium and they say "Please" I want to scream, "WE DON"T SAY PLEASE DAMMIT," but I don't. Instead I usually make some growling noise like Perry the Platypus from Phineas and Ferb...

Just Try and Swim 6,600 feet in my Fins at 2286 meters at Ft. Marcy

The purpose of "Indra's Net," if I may be so bold as to make a statement as to say it has one, meaning that yes, there is a method to the madness, can neatly be summed up in two words: analysis, synthesis.

For me, life is a series of negotiations between analysis and synthesis.

Some would argue that I am not the best negotiator (references upon request) because, according to them, I have often "given in" or "compromised" instead of being a cold, steel-hearted, ruthless haggler who fights to the death, ultimately getting it my way. Guilty as charged. Some battles are not worth fighting any longer.

For me, at least, that is not the purpose of negotiations. More often than not, as with the case of the Belgian non-Government Government, it is a stalemate, an impasse, an emotional or ideological brick wall. Call me a Hegelian.

I did my morning swim today at the Ft. Marcy pool in Santa Fe, and I thought of an analogy that helps me to get this point across, at least to myself.

For someone in Belgium right now, it may not mean anything if I say, "Hey, I just swam 6,600 feet at Ft. Marcy." For one, if people could actually see my words, they would think I just said 6 and 2/3 feet because you use a period, not a comma to designate a thousand. That aside, saying 6,600 feet instead of 2 kilometers is futile to someone whose cognitive set is the metric system. Moreover, unless you know Santa Fe, saying Ft. Marcy means nothing as well. Or, if I said at 2286 meters above sea level to most Americans, it would not garner much response, though 7500 feet would.

When we live or travel in other countries we are always making such conversions, for if we don't, our message does not get across clearly.

Similarly, just speaking about what concerns us may not mean anything to someone else. If I say that I swam 1 1/4 miles today to a runner or a cyclist, not much crossover. That is a paltry distance to them, given their choice of sports. However, I have made some correlations with running and cycling based on time and effort involved, and 1 1/4, my daily swim, becomes a 5 mile (11 km) run or a 15-mile (33 km) bike ride. (You're going to have to trust me on the math on this). Likewise, to someone who never swims, runs, or bikes, that is a great distance. For me, it is a leisurely morning swim at high altitude (which allows you to add a percentage of distance and time).  In other words, as you can quickly see, just talking about my morning swim can be a whole mess of miscommunications.

Add to that: emotions, cultural differences, interior monologues, personal demons, perspectives, ad nauseum, you get quite a net there rather quickly.

When I set out with Indra's Net then, it was to attempt to talk about these cultural conversions that we make every day in our lives. Some readers may relate to philosophical questions, others to being a parent, still more to being an American, or not being an American and so on. It is a calculus of negotiations, striving to produce such cultural conversions to open dialogue, rather than to create an impasse. As I said, call me a Hegelian, guilty as charged.

Perhaps I am a "weak" negotiator, one who seeks for resolution in order to move forward by realizing that some impasse situations lack such conversions. Some things just can't be translated. Some things are indeed, lost in conversion.

Learning to Swim

Although I have been swimming for the majority of my life, I have found myself in the position of learning to swim on a regular basis. Currently I am providing my uncle with swim lessons which are going quite well, until he gets the bill that is, but whenever I give lessons, I always find myself learning all over again.

One of the more dramatic forms of this took place while I was teaching English and coaching swimming at the Antwerp International School. Via via, I found out that there was a re-organization of the school's swim team and that they were looking for a new coaching staff.

Three of us were hired, myself, Raf (a top-level, former Belgian National team swimmer), and Veronique. It was quite a formidable coaching staff, especially when we saw the team. I had been told one, that there was a team, that was a slight exaggeration, and that I needed to watch out for the parents, no exaggeration.

We held team "try-outs" and indeed about 40 kids showed up. A couple, I was told, would not be there. Later, I met them, they were the sure things, kids who worked out with a real team and showed up when necessary for the AIS team. They were the rock stars.

Well, after the try-outs and some near drownings, we had our "team," which I lovingly called "The Bad News Bears," which fortunately no-one had heard of and they all thought I was being endearing. We had our Tanners, our Lupus, our Olgivie, our Engleberg, our Amanda, but what Bad News Bears team would be complete without Kelly? He was one of the ones who did not show.

Kelly, (a german kid, who had actual potential), had a bit of an ego problem. He was much, much better than all of the other kids on the team, that much was true, but his stroke was far from perfect. I am a perfectionist when it comes to stroke technique. I think you can see that things were off to a rocky start.

For the first few weeks, all we worked on was stroke technique and no drills. Let me put it this way, I believe that Pat Morita's "Mr. Miyagi" role in the original "Karate Kid" might just be the greatest influence one me as a coach in all my life.

After a few weeks of wax on/wax off, Kelly had about had it with me and pretty much became defiant and attempted to rope a few of the bench-sitters away from the dark side. Some were swayed, others continued with wax on/wax off.

I had several conversations, and without going into too many Teutonic stereotypes, many fell on deaf ears. His stroke was perfect and his "real" coach told him so from the other team. I met one of these other so-called coaches that some of the other kids had gone to. He showed up to one of my swim meets and we had a "conversation." Let's just say that one did not fall on deaf ears...

However, back to Kelly. He was adamant, and at some point, you realize, you can lead the horse to water, but you can't make him do wax on/wax off, or something like that.

At the final International Championships, Kelly did perform quite well and set several records. However, what stood out more is that the two or three other kids who continued with wax on/wax off, ended up beating his split on the 4x100 Freestyle Relay. To put it bluntly, Kelly was stunned. I was not coaching the next year, and apparently Kelly did not return to the team, but stayed with his other team and coach. A pity.

What I learned from Kelly was that I, too, can always learn. I needed to learn how to get to someone like him better in the future, as I see this as a failure of my coaching, not him as a swimmer. He was sixteen. Sixteen year-olds are supposed to be idiots. Adults aren't.

Teaching my uncle now, I am realizing how difficult it is for us to "be taught" by others. We have our minds set in our ways. I am impressed by my uncle's rapid improvement and his trust in my teaching methods as they are, shall we say, un-orthodox at times.

I hope that I then will remain teachable as well as learning to swim again, each time I help another. Today, I consciously thought of how I do actually breath when I swim and it was an interesting experience to have that renewed awareness after all of these years.

Afterwards, we picked up our stuff, me with my plastic and canvas bag, and we headed to the locker room for a well-earned whirlpool. Though, I could have sworn I heard someone cough, "Kabosshh." Strange.

The Times are A'changin'

I am sitting in Amarillo, Texas now, having flown from Brussels yesterday, where it is nearly 18:00, or 6:00 pm, and here it is 10:00 in the morning.

Travel across time zones is a curious phenomenon because we take ourselves along with the time change, though those that we left behind, stay behind with that "other" time and other place. When I am here in Texas or New Mexico, I am not just here physically and mentally, but also temporally.

For my daughter, who is not quite old enough to really grasp the time change, yesterday was just a really long day, being more like 31 hours, rather than 24 hours, which brings up the whole issue of perspective of time. I just told her, "Please give Papa fifteen more minutes and we'll go to the store."

"Whoaah! (her interjection of choice)," she said, "That's a long time."

"For you it is," I replied, fatherly.

So, here I am 7 hours "behind" Belgium, where a part of my life continues on, but a fourth of a day ahead of me.

People who might be reading my blog there, then, are winding up the day, while if you read this post in Texas as soon as I post it, your day is just beginning. The former might make a connection from today's events, while the latter might see something later today and say, "hey, that's odd, I just read about that in this weird guy's blog..." Or, something like that.

When I go to India next month, I will be in a time zone three and a half hours ahead of Belgium and ten and a half hours ahead of Texas. If I post something there, I will be nearly one half of the 24-hour day different. Makes sense, will be nearly exactly half way around the world. So, in essence, I will be living three lives at once, thinking simultaneously about my life here, my life in Belgium, and my life in India, or thinking about my past, present, and future all at the same time.

Or, is it? Can we think simultaneously about two things? We cannot be physically in the same place, so can we also not be mentally in the same place?

This morning, here in Texas that is, I went for a mile swim in the old pool I used to swim in twenty-five years ago. It is the same pool, or...is it?

Stephen Dedalus thinks about I, I and I (the Stephen of the past, present and future) as he walks along the beach in the Proteus chapter of Ulysses. Proteus, as you may know, is the god that Odysseus must hold onto as Proteus furiously changes shapes, in order to get an answer from the protean deity when he finally stops changing.

But, can we hold onto a memory, one stuck in time, one that is so dramatic, such as where we were when the Space Shuttle exploded, or the Twin Towers fell, or when man first walked on the moon?

Can we stop time to remember something? Do we have the leisure to do so? Or, are we always moving on to the next moment.

People to see, places to go.

Going to the store now, my fifteen minutes are up.

Brussels is Boring

Ok, there I said it. Brussels is boring.

I've said this before, and every time I say it I feel guilty, like I've got this dirty, little secret. I said it the first time I was in Brussels twenty years ago. Backpacking around Europe I remember standing in the Grand Place/Grote Markt thinking, "wow...this is amazing!" Classical music was playing and I had read in Let's Go that Victor Hugo had made a comment more or less saying that one cannot but be moved by standing in the Grande Place of Bruxelles/Brussels/Brussel. I was moved, but then, when I moved out of the great plaza, I was bored.

Walk back in, ... "wow!"

Walk out, bored.

ad nauseum

I remember people asking me, "what's Brussels like?" I fidgeted, shuffled my feet, looked at their feet, talked about the weather, anything but answered the question, closed my eyes, clicked my heels, "there's no place like home, there's no place like home." But, people wanted to know, "what's Brussels like?" When pressed, I would blurt out, "It's boring!" and then the guilt would set in...

Now, I want to jump on the rooftops, screaming, "Brussels is Boring!" Now, that is not entirely fair, but I am really stuck. I can't get past it.

I went to Brussels today, obviously, to pick up my Visa for India, and there it was...boring. From the station I had to go up towards the Royal Palace to catch the Tram 94 to Avenue Louise. Normally I walk around and up, but today, I kept going through the underground passage up into Galerie Ravenstein. Now, say that out loud, with a menacing accent--- Ravenstein. Sounds like something grand out of Harry Potter (going tonight) or Tolkein. At least, bats or belfries or something. Majestic.

Nope.

BOOORRRINGGGG!!!

Galerie Ravenstein is perhaps the most uninspired, inspired piece of architecture I have ever walked through. I was depressed by the time I got to the other end. I wanted to go home and listen to Morrissey, wear black, huddle up in a ball, rocking back and forth and cry.

Walking out towards the steps up to the park, that disturbing feeling of boredom was soaking me through. The steps leading up are through the Rue de Biblioteque/Bibliotheek with a statue of Baron Horta presiding. Horta, the name associated with Art Deco! There he is, guardian of Galerie Ravenstein. What a horrible fate.

So, there I was, waiting for the tram, bored out of my mind, all of ten minutes in Brussels, and a young woman comes up to me and asks, in Flemish, if this was the tram, richting Louizalaan? Now, for those of you not following Belgian politics...coming up to someone in the middle of Brussels and addressing them in Flemish is a statement. Of course, I was flattered. Finally, someone speaks to me in Flemish on the streets, albeit in Brussels. My friend who teaches in Beirut said I need to add more from "the man on the street" to my blogs. I told him, "the man on the street here ignores me..." until today. How to puff up my feathered breast, speak to me like a native, baby.

So, I answered that indeed it was. Doubly proud because Avenue Louise is the tony street in Brussels where all the AMERICANS go, so hey, Je suis arrivè! Oops, faux pas. Hier ben ik!

On the tram, feeling quite smug now, but still bored, I looked around. My god, were we going to a funeral today? In Ulysses, Bloom thinks to himself on the tram, how sour and dour everyone looks for such a short trip. As my Beirut-based friend says, "Roger that." You would think that this 10 minute tram ride was a transatlantic flight, sitting on wooden benches, with no heat. A funeral procession worthy of Eliot's waste land.

My stop comes, having passed the building where we had tried marriage counseling...strange...and I disembark.

And, so did she.

She crossed the street and went up towards where I was going. Now, I felt odd, but I had to go there too. Then, we get to the same building, smile awkwardly, she goes in one elevator, I the other. Up to the Indian Visa office, elevator opens, I get out, she gets out. OK, that was weird. Turns out, we are both picking up our visas to go to India.

So, after a very confused man behind the desk who thought we arrived together, a conversation in French, English, and Dutch, and if I am not mistaken Hindi, I leave with my visa and have met a fellow traveller.

So, we took the tram back together and talked about India, living in Italy (she had studied in Padua) and various other things. For her, the visa had been a bit more work, though she had been to India before, and I had said that it was much easier than going to the Questura in Italy. And, from that, she had said that "hoe gemakkelijker" it is in Belgium. How much easier...and I said, in English, "Don't get me started..." and later gave her my blog site.

Walking down through the Galerie Ravenstein (and a wave of boredom swept over me, not from the conversation, but that damn building) again on the way back to the station as she was catching a train to Leuven and I back to Antwerp, we talked (still in Dutch, as I kindly requested, and she granted that wish) and she had mentioned that America was not on her list to see. "Not even New York City??" I asked, in English, incredulously. Nope, not even a road trip out West??? Nope.

Times have changed. I remember the first time in Brussels when I told people I had come from Texas, everyone wanted to know about the horse that I rode to work (true story) and cowboys and Indians and, of course, Dallas, the TV show, (which is now getting a reprieve I saw). No longer, but hey, that is the way the world goes. Times change.

Just happen to be listening to REM (decided against Morrissey) right now (Fables of the Reconstruction) and the line just came up, "when you greet a stranger, look at his shoes..." Funny, I looked at everyone's shoes today... "home is a long way away...at the end of the day..." Today is full of serendipity.

I left my new traveler-in-arms at the train station. I wish her well and all of the other travelers out there a bon voyage, errr.... Ik bedoel, goeie reis...

OK, so Brussels wasn't boring today after all.

Muscles from Brussels?

Mosselen!

The mussels are coming, the mussels are coming, on a whimper rather than a bang, that is.

Tomorrow is the official start date for mussels season in Holland, but leave it to the Flemings to get a jump on the show. We'll show those damn Dutch! The two main food chains, Carrefour and Delhaize are jumping the gun and starting the festivities a day early. Only one problem, well, actually, two.

Apparently this year's crop of mussels is not so bumper. What is the world coming to!?! First, the real "Muscles from Brussels," Jean-Claude Van Damme is doing laundry detergent commercials (that is a blog entry in itself, don't worry!) and now this. The mosselen are not only 20% more expensive, but that much smaller. I expect total chaos, just waiting for the other clog to fall. Pure pandemonium. You know, Bill Murray in Ghostbusters, "cats and dogs, living together" kind of end-of-the-world chaos. I am going to batten down the hatches and avoid grocery stores at all costs, no telling what these Flemings are capable of doing in such a crisis.

As for me, the mussels things just sort of went South one day. There was a stretch of time that I was just bonkers about bi-valves, but now, eeeuuuwww. I don't know what happened. I would go to the store, get a pack of the Super Jumbo Extra Monster mussels and make up a steaming pot of them with so many spices and coconut milk and curries and lemon grass and lions and tigers and bears, oh my! And then, one day, as I was about half way through the pot, I just actually really looked at the things.

What the HELL am I eating?! was what went through my head. These things are bottom feeders, basically a stomach and guts and, well, to put it politely--mussels' excrement. As I said, eeeuuuuwww.

So, the mussels' pot has long since been retired and I can't say I miss 'em. But, who am I to stand in the way of a time-honored tradition? For the "origin" of Belgian's eating mussels, see the Asterix comic "Asterix and the Belgians." Spot on. Hilarious.

Oh, Jean-Claude, what happened? Has the thespian in you no shame? Who am I to think of now when I hear Men at Work's song "Down Under..."? I weep.

the horror, the horror

Uncle Filip Wants You!

 "11 juli moet de Vlaamse onafhankelijkheidsdag worden zoals de ’4th of July’ voor de Amerikanen Independence Day is", zei VB-kopstuk Filip Dewinter.


Or, in English,


"July 11th needs/ought/must to be become Flemish Independence Day, like the '4th of July' is American Independence Day," said VB-leader Filip Dewinter.


Ummm...yeah. Why can't Jon Stewart speak Flemish!


For those of you who are not aware of the current (perennial) Belgian political situation, we are looking at 400 days coming up around the corner for a country without, (apathetic drum roll, please) a government. Longer than Iraq, the former Guinness book of stalemate-gridlock-impasse Records holder for a government-less nation, by quite a bit.


"What is a nation?" asks a soon-to-be drunken pub patron, John Wyse, to Leopold Bloom in Ulysses in the "Irish" nationalistically laden chapter of "Cyclops." 


"A nation is the same people living in the same place." Bloom tells us.


...lots of ale-fueled laughter...


"Or also living in different places." he adds...


...more hops and barley-scented guffaws...


But, what, indeed, is a nation? Lest poor Filip need a history lesson, the 4th of July is just a little bit more than not wanting to be associated with the French-speaking Walloons and to preserve a pure, Flemish state. There was this small thing about international armies, new constitutions based upon revolutionary philosophical systems, taxation without representation, and a few other slight variations, but let's not haggle over the details...today at least (Guldensporenslag comparisons, which granted was no slouch of an event, will have to wait til another day).


But, to return to the question, what is a nation? Is Belgium a nation? Is Flanders a nation, worthy of an "Independence Day?" To become the 194th nation, following in the heels of South Sudan. Oh, wait, there was a war there and 2 million people died, starvation, genocide, never mind.


Elio Di Rupo, the French-speaking elected leader of the coalition-less coalition-run parliament, issued a referendum, the latest one to be shut down, that apparently threatens the sovereign, Flemish-speaking nation of ... Flanders? But, there is a French-speaking Flandres in France, and some Dutch is spoken in Holland, and there is this guy on The Simpsons, ..., but is it a country, a nation? 


Dewinter and Bart De Wever (political leader of a somewhat less Flemish-nationalist party) seem to think so. Though, in a recent poll, only 8% of the Belgian youth agrees that the end of Belgium is necessary. So, is it a nation or isn't it? I remember being in Normandy many years ago on July 14th, Bastille Day. Kind of like, you know, "the 4th of July is American Independence Day," there is this big day in France, but there was something odd. No French flags to be see. The Normans weren't so keen on being French, but there was no talk of a succession of Normandy, at least not that I was aware of. They were still French, sort of.


Will we see yellow flags waving proudly with the black Flemish Leeuw (lion) on July 11th next year? Fireworks? Hot dogs and parades? A hearkening back to a war, whose first shot, was, like the later American Civil War, "heard 'round the world?" Probably not more than today, and in the last instance, definitely not. Flags are already waving this year at the more "Flemish" establishments (brown cafes), hot dogs are to be had at the train station any day, and fireworks are best left to the Americans, Chinese, and Italians for the time being.


HOWEVER, it does raise the interesting question that Joyce posed to us.


What is a nation????

O, Rocks!

Today, I began a new blog called, "You May Leave if You Wish," which is to be a pseudo-chronicle, reconstruction of its origins, and preparatory musings of my upcoming journey to Madurai, Tamil Nadu, India. Upon thinking about that blog, I of course stumbled upon the silent tomb of this blog, begun and abruptly halted three years ago soon upon having moved to Antwerp as a still slightly younger, definitely more naïve, Fulbright professor to teach British and American Literature at Universiteit Antwerpen. Much has happened since my last post.

There is a curious passage in Ulysses, which I am currently re-reading for the nth time, but perhaps really just for the first, in the so-called "Aeolus" chapter, which reads: "I have often thought since on looking back over that strange time that it was that small act, trivial in itself, that striking of that match, that determined the whole aftercourse of both our lives." (Ulysses, 140) Curious for many reasons, not the least that it is not clear who the "I" is as most of the novel is in the third person, but also for its placement. Tucked in a completely innocuous sub-section of the chapter, this line is, for all intents and purposes, the philosophy of the entire book, if one were to go so far as to be so bold as to say, which I am now saying.

Joyce's penultimate tome about the day in the lives of quite a good number of Dubliners is about just that, the crossings and criss-crossings of seemingly inconsequential events that are essentially the further woof and warp of the fabric of our quotidian lives and are the determinants of the entire aftercourses of our lives as a whole. In the "Wandering Rocks" chapter, these characters move and sway through the streets of Dublin, sometimes meeting, sometimes not, but always affecting the others' lives in some way, whether grand or small, though always affecting.

However, to go further, which I have elsewhere (queue up  Jon Lovitz as "The Critic" saying, "Buy My Book! Buy My Book!"), this is Stephen's proof by calculus that Shakespeare is the ghost of himself, and is simultaneously his own son, father (this conversation is in the proximity of Trinity College...)and every other character he ever created and so on. A beyond-the-pale reflection of Joyce himself, who in turn is the creator of all of the characters in Ulysses, thus being thousands of people at once, meeting himself portraited as an artist as a younger man, Stephen, seen through the eyes of a more experienced, cuckolded family man, the everyman, Bloom.

Reading the "Circe" chapter last evening outside at the Jazz cafe, De Muze, in the heart of the old city of Antwerp, it was hard not to live some parallel lives of the characters I was reading. I first read Ulysses in Antwerp, nearly 18 years ago to the day, a good part of it in De Muze, where I also had the first date with the woman that I would be married to soon afterwards, and with whom I am now engaged in a divorce process as I write nearly two decades after that seemingly innocuous encounter.

Sitting there, looking up from my book intermittently, absorbing what I had read and glancing around, I wondered to myself as well. Am I meeting myself coming and going? Sitting in that cafe, in the same cafe that has been there, itself changed little, though now populated with new people, living different, yet similar lives. Young couples, where would it lead to? Older couples, where had it gone? Was I still that same starry-eyed American kid with a head full of ideas? Or was I now an older and wiser American who has seen much more of the world now, both physically and mentally, though still with a head full of ideas? Or, both? Or, more than both?

Auto-Metempsychosis?

O, Rocks!