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.