The Solvay Lining

Last week I went to the market to buy flowers, and well, let's just say it put me in a "something is rotten in the state of Belgium" kind of mood for a short time, and resulted in a post in like manner, more or less bemoaning my own state of being in Belgium.

However, if I have one quality that I can boast of, eventually, even when moving towards a negative slant, I am able to find the silver lining in the clouds, and to make the lemonade from the lemons. I have my maternal genetics to thank for that to be able to counter the tower of dour of my paternal genes, and the former have always triumphed, as they do now.

It is easy for one to get down on a country in which that person is the foreigner, lo straniero, l'étranger, de vreemdeling, and so on and so forth. Sometimes you are excused of certain social customs, but other times you are excluded from them, and both situations can call for a modicum of dis-ease or anxiety. You always feel that you are being watched, judged and at times ridiculed. Paranoia? If you have lived in such a scenario you would not say so. It exists. The paranoia comes into play about the extent that it is actually happening. It is happening, but often not as much as we feel it to be.

Finding the balance, then, as in all things is the key.

Finding the balance.

So, there are several things that are very "right" about Belgium, and I will take a moment to highlight them here, for, despite the incredibly small size of this country, western civilization has much to thank the Belgians for, again for better and for worse. Everything has it place, and time, and there have been many things that have happened in Belgium that have their place in history.

The Solvay Conferences

The two biggest of these were the 1911 and 1927 conferences funded by the Belgian Ernest Solvay, who is chiefly responsible for carbonated beverages, and had a list of attendees that has made every theoretical and experimental physicist drooling for decades. Here are some of the names for the 1927 conference: Schrödinger, Pauli, Heisenberg, Bohr, Born, Einstein, Dirac, Curie and Planck. The average IQ of that group just mentioned would be a Richter-scale event of any single group of minds coming together, and they were just part of it. It was at that fateful event that the (in)famous quip of Einstein made the record books for his attack against the randomness of Quantum Physics that "God does not play dice" to which, unbeknownst to most who know that quote, Bohr, the pre-eminent QP advocate answered, "Stop telling God what to do..." or along those lines. Neither has been definitely proven to be right or wrong, something I like to think of God's little joke or gentle reminder that no one knows everything all the time as I like to tell my daughter, meaning me so that she knows Papa's can have faults too.

Belgian Lace, Beer, Fries, and Cheese

For anyone who visits Belgium, you will most likely come across one or more of the above. The lacework of Belgium, specifically west Flanders is legendary. The comestibles and digestives of the latter hardly need mention except for the fact that what the world has erroneously known as "French Fries" (and for a god-forsaken time as "Freedom Fries") these are actually Belgian and there is a museum in Bruges to prove it, and the fact that the smelly "Limburger" cheeses in all of the Bugs Bunny type cartoons would be none other than the Belgian Limburger cheeses.

Music Festivals

Belgium, and specifically Flanders, is the proving and testing ground for bands around the world. Only Austin's SXSW could boast of having more direct influence on the make or break of a band. In addition, many of the world's most renowned DJs are, you guessed it, Belgian.

Movies

Look on IMDB. For some reason, nearly every major movie is released in Belgium first. It is kind of like the New Hampshire primaries. Actually, not kind of like, exactly like. Do the math.

Art

Okay, if Belgium has a corner on anything, it is art, and in a big way. Whether the Northern Renaissance is officially Belgian or Low Countries is a source of debate, but it is impossible to deny the talent that has come from this area: the Breughels, Van Eycks, Memling, Bosch and Magritte, to name but a very, very small number of monumentally important artists for their respective times. Without a doubt the latter two have been huge influences in my own life with regards to thinking about the relationships between art and life (as Bosch was for Henry Miller, inter alia), but I cannot imagine my own artistic world view without each and every one of these. Ceci, n'est pas une pipe...Derrida would have never existed without this one. Think about that for a moment and let it disseminate.

There are many, many more things. I never live in a place to which I am not drawn to for a variety of reasons. I will, never, and I mean NEVER be drawn to Belgian folk music with the accordion and whatnot, but there are many reasons that I realize why I am here, and the various paths that lead to the doorstep that I walk out of each morning.

I do fully embrace my charge as a Fulbright to be an ambassador of goodwill both to my home country and those others that I live in.

However, we can be human, well, we are human, and with being human comes being human.

And, BTW, here are this week's spoils from the Market.

An Advocate of the Devil

I live in a bit of a dilemma as an American in Belgium. On the one hand, I am supposed to somehow fit into a slotted role of the ex-patriate, a role that I have flat-out avoided and refused to embrace, and then on the other, I should be respectful of the culture in which I chose to be a part of, for better or worse. In some ways, I have failed at both horns of this dilemma in that I neither subscribe to being the American abroad, nor do I fully respect what I see here, though would rather offer an informed and somewhat scathing critique, something I have held back in doing, out of some outmoded form of gentlemanly respect. In other words, I chose to be here, and though at some level I am "stuck" here now because of life's choices and events, I am wearing thin of the veiled decency that we view other cultures with and with which they view us.

This is a problem for me.

Why? Why should I not just unleash vitriolic venom on what I see being "wrong" with Belgium, and consequently my cultural surrogacy that I have acquired being a father to a half-American, half-Belgian daughter, thus securing my ties to this country for the rest of my life?

There are many reasons why this is a problem, and I have been trying to sort through them of late, and I find myself wanting.

In the first place, my daughter is also part of this country, and with genetics, we all inherit, like it or not, certain characteristics of our ancestors. And, this can go back many generations, not just to the immediate one that I am American and her mother is Belgian (and some would correct me here and say: Flemish). But, even further, my own background goes back to German, Scottish, and perhaps English. My ex-wife's lineage is not entirely clear and my suspicions is possible somewhat southern mediterranean, even Greek. Though, that is speculation, but nonetheless, my daughter is a mixture of several cultures, and I feel that it is incumbent upon me to help her to see the best of all of the worlds that she is coming from, even if I don't agree with them.

This is the first level of the challenge, to go beyond my own issues and potentially negative responses and observations about living in Belgium, so I want to stay positive for her sake, and I will, but I will also remain realistic about the good and bad of both being American and Belgian (Flemish, European, Northern European).

However, a few years ago, I was also designated as a Fulbright visiting professor to the Universiteit Antwerpen. Part of my charge as a Fulbright is to both be an ambassador of my own culture as well as a conduit for the culture that I am in to help bridge any differences on a level of cultural, social and educational discrepancies. I have tried to fulfill this charge whenever I am in Belgium, back in America or even in a third location such as India or Italy, or wherever.

But, when we put our best foot forward, put on our best face, or dress up in the Easter-Sunday garb of being such an ambassador, I fear that there is a disjunct between reality and dress up.

What does it mean to be a representative of one's country? I don't envy my President, Mr. Obama, nor any of his predecessors because what does it really mean to represent an entire country, especially one on the level and magnitude of the USA?

I've reflected quite a bit on the details of whom I have been and what I have "represented" as being an American abroad here in Belgium, though also in Italy, India and the numerous other countries I have visited in my years alive on this planet, and I have done the best that I could, despite being che brutta figura at times, or merely a bumbling American. The flip side is that it is not always easy and definitely not a bad thing to be American, but it does bring out the devil's advocate at times on both sides of the equation. It's in the details.

To be continued....