Si Says Hi

The effects of gravity

2011-07-26T00:52:00.004+01:00

I run effortlessly in my dreams. Loping strides, limitless energy, easy breathing. Nothing stops me from bounding over obstacles. I can simultaneously sprint and look over my shoulder to chivvy my partner along. The ground beneath my feet is firm, but not brutally hard. Running is the reason I was born.

In real life, I can barely break out of shuffle as I move down the trail. My heels don't drag, but they might as well. Every step takes all of my weight, and even though I'm moving forward, I'm outrunning exactly nothing. My entire life is sitting on my shoulders, doubling my already excessive weight. Running is never easy, and never will be easy, as long as I'm awake.

Mental Cases

2011-03-14T23:08:00.001Z

From Poems, by Wilfred Owen.

Who are these? Why sit they here in twilight?
Wherefore rock they, purgatorial shadows,
Drooping tongues from jaws that slob their relish,
Baring teeth that leer like skulls' tongues wicked?
Stroke on stroke of pain,—but what slow panic,
Gouged these chasms round their fretted sockets?
Ever from their hair and through their hand palms
Misery swelters. Surely we have perished
Sleeping, and walk hell; but who these hellish?

—These are men whose minds the Dead have ravished.
Memory fingers in their hair of murders,
Multitudinous murders they once witnessed.
Wading sloughs of flesh these helpless wander,
Treading blood from lungs that had loved laughter.
Always they must see these things and hear them,
Batter of guns and shatter of flying muscles,
Carnage incomparable and human squander
Rucked too thick for these men's extrication.

Therefore still their eyeballs shrink tormented
Back into their brains, because on their sense
Sunlight seems a bloodsmear; night comes blood-black;
Dawn breaks open like a wound that bleeds afresh
—Thus their heads wear this hilarious, hideous,
Awful falseness of set-smiling corpses.
—Thus their hands are plucking at each other;
Picking at the rope-knouts of their scourging;
Snatching after us who smote them, brother,
Pawing us who dealt them war and madness.

By Eavan Boland

2011-02-16T04:35:00.001Z

THAT THE SCIENCE OF GEOGRAPHY IS LIMITED

—and not simply by the fact that this shading of
forest cannot show the fragrance of balsam,
the gloom of cypresses,
is what I wish to prove.

When you and I were first in love we drove
to the borders of Connacht
and entered a wood there.

Look down you said: this was once a famine road.

I looked down at the ivy and the scotch grass
rough-cast stone had
disappeared into as you told me
in the second winter of their ordeal, in

1847, when the crop had failed twice,
Relief Committees gave
the starving Irish such roads to build.

Where they died, there the road ended

and ends still and when I take down
the map of this island, it is never so
I can say here is
the masterful, the apt rendering of

the spherical as flat, nor
an ingenious design which persuades a curve
into a plane,
but to tell myself again that

the line which says woodland and cries hunger
and gives out among sweet pine and cypress,
and finds no horizon

will not be there.

Thoughts for the Times on War and Death (1915) by Sigmund Freud

2011-01-26T18:17:00.002Z

From http://www.panarchy.org/freud/war.1915.html.

Note: In this essay, written about six months after the outbreak of the First World War, Freud expresses his disillusionment about human nature and the supreme institution of the civilized world, namely the state. The words describing the state and its monopoly of violence are powerful and right to the point. The analysis of the human being, as prone to violence because of bad primitive instinct (the state of nature) against which civilization has not yet triumphed, is not really convincing. It does not explain, for instance, why many conscripts, coming from humble rural occupations, away from the centres of civilization represented by the capital city, had to be forced to fight and had to be punished whenever they fraternized with the so-called enemy. In this respect, the explanation of the historian A. J. P. Taylor sounds closer to the truth: " In the state of nature which Hobbes imagined, violence was the only law, and life was 'nasty, brutish and short'. Though individuals never lived in this state of nature, the Great Powers of Europe have always done so." (A. J. P. Taylor, The Struggle for Mastery in Europe 1848-1918)

THE DISILLUSIONMENT OF THE WAR

In the confusion of wartime in which we are caught up, relying as we must on one-sided information, standing too close to the great changes that have already taken place or are beginning to, and without a glimmering of the future that is being shaped, we ourselves are at a loss as to the significance of the impressions which bear down upon us and as to the value of the judgements which we form. We cannot but feel that no event has ever destroyed so much that is precious in the common possessions of humanity, confused so many of the clearest intelligences, or so thoroughly debased what is highest. Science herself has lost her passionless impartiality; her deeply embittered servants seek for weapons from her with which to contribute towards the struggle with the enemy. Anthropologists feel driven to declare that enemy inferior and degenerate, psychiatrists issue a diagnosis of his disease of mind or spirit. Probably, however, our sense of these immediate evils is disproportionately strong, and we are not entitled to compare them with the evils of other times which we have not experienced.

The individual who is not himself a combatant - and so is a cog in the gigantic machine of war - feels bewildered in his orientation, and inhibited in his powers and activities. I believe that he will welcome any indication, however slight, which will make it easier for him to find his bearings within himself at least. I propose to pick out two among the factors which are responsible for the mental distress felt by non-combatants, against which it is such a heavy task to struggle, and to treat of them: the disillusionment which this war has evoked, and the altered attitude towards death which this - like every other war - forces upon us.

When I speak of disillusionment, everyone will know at once what I mean. One need not be a sentimentalist; one may perceive the biological and psychological necessity for suffering in the economy of human life, and yet condemn war both in its means and ends and long for the cessation of all wars. We have told ourselves, no doubt, that wars can never cease so long as nations live under such widely differing conditions, so long as the value of individual life is so variously assessed among them, and so long as the animosities which divide them represent such powerful motive forces in the mind. We were prepared to find that wars between the primitive and the civilized people, between the races who are divided by the colour of their skin - wars, even, against and among the nationalities of Europe whose civilization is little developed or has been lost - would occupy mankind for some time to come. But we permitted ourselves to have other hopes. We had expected the great world-dominating nations of white race upon whom the leadership of the human species has fallen, who were known to have world-wide interests as their concern, to whose creative powers were due not only our technical advances towards the control of nature but the artistic and scientific standards of civilization - we had expected these people to succeed in discovering another way of settling misunderstandings and conflicts of interest. Within each of these nations there prevailed high norms of moral conduct for the individual, to which his manner of life was bound to conform if he desired to take part in a civilized community. These ordinances, often too stringent, demanded a great deal of him – much self-restraint, much renunciation of instinctual satisfaction. He was above all forbidden to make use of the immense advantages to be gained by the practice of lying and deception in the competition with his fellow-men. The civilized states regarded these moral standards as the basis of their existence. They took serious steps if anyone ventured to tamper with them, and often declared it improper even to subject them to examination by a critical intelligence. It was to be assumed, therefore, that the state itself would respect those moral standards, and would not think of undertaking anything against them which would contradict the basis of its own existence. Observation showed, to be sure, that embedded in these civilized states there were remnants of certain other people, which were universally unpopular and had therefore been only reluctantly, and even so not fully, admitted to participation in the common task of civilization, for which they had shown themselves suitable enough. But the great nations themselves, it might have been supposed, would have acquired so much comprehension of what they had in common, and so much tolerance for their differences, that 'foreigner' and 'enemy' could no longer be merged, as they still were in classical antiquity, into a single concept.

Relying on this unity among the civilized people, countless men and women have exchanged their native home for a foreign one, and made their existence dependent on the intercommunication between friendly nations. Moreover anyone who was not by stress of circumstance confined to one spot could create for himself out of all the advantages and attractions of these civilized countries a new and wider fatherland, in which he would move about without hindrance or suspicion. In this way he enjoyed the blue sea and the grey; the beauty of snow-covered mountains and of green meadow lands; the magic of northern forests and the splendour of southern vegetation; the mood evoked by landscapes that recall great historical events, and the silence of untouched nature. This new fatherland was a museum for him, too, filled with all the treasures which the artists of civilized humanity had in the successive centuries created and left behind. As he wandered from one gallery to another in this museum, he could recognize with impartial appreciation what varied types of perfection a mixture of blood, the course of history, and the special quality of their mother-earth had produced among his compatriots in this wider sense. Here he would find cool, inflexible energy developed to the highest point; there, the graceful art of beautifying existence; elsewhere, the feeling for orderliness and law, or others among the qualities which have made mankind the lords of the earth.

Nor must we forget that each of these inhabitants of the civilized world had created for himself a 'Parnassus' and' a 'School of Athens' of his own. From among the great thinkers, writers and artists of all nations he had chosen those to whom he considered he owed the best of what he had been able to achieve in enjoyment and understanding of life, and he had venerated them along with the immortal ancients as well as with the familiar masters of his own tongue. None of these great figures had seemed to him foreign because they spoke another language - neither the incomparable explorer of human passions, nor the intoxicated worshipper of beauty, nor the powerful and menacing prophet, nor the subtle satirist; and he never reproached himself on that account for being a renegade towards his own nation and his beloved mother-tongue.

The enjoyment of this common civilization was disturbed from time to time by warning voices, which declared that old traditional differences made wars inevitable, even among the members of a community such as this. We refused to believe it; but if such a war were to happen, how did we picture it? We saw it as an opportunity for demonstrating the progress of comity among human beings since the era when the Greek Amphictyonic Council proclaimed that no city of the league might be destroyed, nor its olive-groves cut down, nor its water-supply stopped; we pictured it as a chivalrous passage of arms, which would limit itself to establishing the superiority of one side in the struggle, while as far as possible avoiding acute suffering that could contribute nothing to the decision, and granting complete immunity for the wounded who had to withdraw from the contest, as well as for the doctors and nurses who devoted themselves to their recovery. There would, of course be the utmost consideration for the non-combatant classes of the population - for women who take no part in war-work, and the children who, when they are grown up, should become on both sides one another's friends and helpers. And again, all the international undertakings and institutions in which the common civilization of peace-time had been embodied would be maintained.

Even a war like this would have produced enough horror and suffering; but it would not have interrupted the development of ethical relations between the collective units of mankind - the peoples and the states.

Then the war in which we had refused to believe broke out, and it brought -disillusionment. Not only is it more bloody and more destructive than any war of other days, because of the enormously increased perfection of weapons of attack and defence; it is at least as cruel, as embittered, as implacable as any that has preceded it. It disregards all the restrictions known as International Law, which in peace-time the states had bound themselves to observe; it ignores the prerogatives of the wounded and the medical service, the distinction between civil and military sections of the population, the claims of private property. It tramples in blind fury on all that comes in its way as though there were to be no future and no peace among men after it is over. It cuts all the common bonds between the contending peoples, and threatens to leave a legacy of embitterment that will make any renewal of those bonds impossible for a long time to come.

Moreover, it has brought to light an almost incredible phenomenon: the civilized nations know and understand one another so little that one can turn against the other with hate and loathing. Indeed, one of the great civilized nations is so universally unpopular that the attempt can actually be made to exclude it from the civilized community as 'barbaric', although it bas long proved its fitness by the magnificent contributions to that community which it has made. We live in hopes that the pages of an impartial history will prove that that nation, in whose language we write and for whose victory our dear ones are fighting, has been precisely the one which has least transgressed the laws of civilization. But at such a time who dares to set himself up as judge in his own cause?

People are more or less represented by the states which they form, and these states by the governments which rule them. The individual citizen can with horror convince himself in this war of what would occasionally cross his mind in peace-time - that the state has forbidden to the individual the practice of wrong-doing, not because it desires to abolish it, but because it wants to monopolize it, like salt and tobacco. A belligerent state permits itself every such misdeed, every such act of violence, as would disgrace the individual. It makes use against the enemy not only of the accepted stratagems of war, but of deliberate lying and deception as well - and to a degree which seems to exceed the usage of former wars. The state exacts the utmost degree of obedience and sacrifice from its citizens, but at the same time it treats them like children by maintaining an excess of secrecy and a censorship upon news and expressions of opinion which leaves the spirits of those whose intellects it thus suppresses defenceless against every unfavourable turn of events and every sinister rumour. It absolves itself from the guarantees and treaties by which it was bound to other states, and makes unabashed confession of its own rapacity and lust for power, which the private individual has then to sanction in the name of patriotism.

It should not be objected that the state cannot refrain from wrong-doing, since that would place it at a disadvantage. It is no less disadvantageous, as a general rule, for the individual to conform to the standards of morality and refrain from brutal and arbitrary conduct; and the state seldom proves able to indemnify him for the sacrifices it exacts. Nor should it be a matter for surprise that this relaxation of all the moral ties between the collective beings of mankind should have had repercussions on the morality of individuals; for our conscience is not the inflexible judge that ethical teachers declare it, but in its origin is dread of the community and nothing else. When the community no longer raises objections, there is an end, too, to the suppression of evil passions, and people perpetrate deeds of cruelty, fraud, treachery and barbarity so incompatible with their level of civilization that one would have thought them impossible.

Well may the citizen of the civilized world of whom I have spoken stand helpless in a world that has grown strange to him - his great fatherland disintegrated, its common estates laid waste, his fellow-citizens divided and debased!

There is something to be said, however, in criticism of his disappointment. Strictly speaking it is not justified, for it consists in the destruction of an illusion. We welcome illusions because they spare us emotional distress, and enable us instead to indulge in gratification. We must not complain, then, if now and again they come into collision with some portion of reality and are shattered against it.

Two things in this war have aroused our sense of disillusionment: the low morality shown externally by states which in their internal relations pose as the guardians of moral standards, and the brutality shown by individuals whom, as participants in the highest human civilization, one would not have thought capable of such behaviour.

Let us begin with the second point and try to formulate, in a few brief words, the point of view that we wish to criticize. How, in point of fact, do we imagine the process by which an individual rises to a comparatively high plane of morality? The first answer will no doubt simply be that he is virtuous and noble from birth - from the very start. We shall not consider this view any further here. A second answer will suggest that we are concerned with a developmental process, and will probably assume that the development consists in eradicating his evil human tendencies and, under the influence of education and a civilized environment, replacing them by good ones. If so, it is nevertheless surprising that evil should re-emerge with such force in anyone who has been brought up in this way.

But this answer also contains the thesis from which we propose to dissent. In reality, there is no such thing as 'eradicating' evil tendencies. Psychological - or, more strictly speaking, psycho-analytic - investigation shows instead that the deepest essence of human nature consists of instinctual impulses which are of an elementary nature, which are similar in all men and which aim at the satisfaction of certain primal needs. These impulses in themselves are neither good nor bad. We classify them and their expressions in that way, according to their relation to the needs and demands of the human community. It must be granted that all the impulses which society condemns as evil - let us take as representative the selfish and the cruel ones - are of this primitive kind.

These primitive impulses undergo a lengthy process of development before they are allowed to become active in the adult. They are inhibited, directed towards other aims and fields, become commingled, alter their objects, and are to some extent turned back upon their possessor. Reaction-formations against certain instincts take the deceptive form of a change in their content, as though egoism had changed into altruism, or cruelty into pity. These reaction-formations are facilitated by the circumstance that some instinctual impulses make their appearance almost from the first in pairs of opposites - a very remarkable phenomenon, and one strange to the lay public, which is termed 'ambivalence of feeling'. The most easily observed and comprehensible instance of this is the fact that intense love and intense hatred are so often to be found together in the same person. Psycho-analysis adds that the two opposed feelings not infrequently have the same person for their object.

It is not until all these vicissitudes to which instinctual impulses are subject have been surmounted that what we call a person's character is formed, and this, as we know, can only very inadequately be classified as 'good' or 'bad'. A human being is seldom altogether good or bad; he is usually 'good' in one relation and 'bad' in another, or 'good' in certain external circumstances and in others decidedly 'bad'. It is interesting to find that the pre-existence of strong 'bad' impulses in infancy is often the actual condition for an unmistakable inclination towards 'good' in the adult. Those who as children have been the most pronounced egoists may well become the most helpful and self-sacrificing members of the community; most of our sentimentalists, friends of humanity and protectors of animals have been evolved from little sadists and animal-tormentors.

The transformation of 'bad' instincts is brought about by two co-operating factors, an internal and an external one. The internal factor consists in the influence exercised on the bad - let us say, the egoistic - instincts exercised by erotism, that is, by the human need for love, taken in its widest sense. By the admixture of erotic components the egoistic instincts are transformed into social ones. We learn to value being loved as an advantage for which we are willing to sacrifice other advantages. The external factor is the force exercised by upbringing, which represents the claims of our cultural environment, and this is continued later by the direct pressure of that environment. Civilization has been attained through the renunciation of instinctual satisfaction, and it demands the same renunciation from each newcomer in turn. Throughout an individual's life there is a constant replacement of external by internal compulsion. The influences of civilization cause an ever-increasing transformation of egoistic trends into altruistic and social ones by an admixture of erotic elements. In the last resort it may be assumed that every internal compulsion which makes itself felt in the development of human beings was originally - that is, in the history of mankind - only an external one. Those who are born to-day bring with them as an inherited organization some degree of tendency (disposition) towards the transformation of egoistic into social instincts, and this disposition is easily stimulated into bringing about that result. A further portion of this instinctual transformation has to be accomplished during the life of the individual himself. So the human being is subject not only to the pressure of his immediate cultural environment, but also to the influence of the cultural history of his ancestors.

If we give the name of adaptability to culture to an individual's personal capacity for the transformation of the egoistic impulses under the influence of erotism, we may further affirm that this adaptability is made up of two parts, one innate and the other acquired in the course of life, and that the relation of the two to each other and to that portion of the instinctual life which remains untransformed is a very variable one.

Generally speaking, we are apt to attach too much importance to the innate part of this adaptability, and in addition to this we run the risk of over-estimating the total adaptability to culture in comparison with the portion of instinctual life which has remained primitive - that is, we are misled into regarding human beings as 'better' than they actually are. For there is yet another element which obscures our judgement and falsifies the issue in too favourable a sense.

The instinctual impulses of other people are of course hidden from our observation. We infer them from their actions and behaviour, which we trace back to motives arising from their instinctual life. Such an inference is bound to be erroneous in many cases. This or that action which is 'good' from the cultural point of view may in one instance originate from a 'noble' motive, in another not. Ethical theorists class as 'good' actions only those which are the outcome of good impulses; to the others they refuse recognition. But society, which is practical in its aims, is not on the whole troubled by this distinction; it is content if a man regulates his behaviour and actions by the precepts of civilization, and is little concerned with his motives.

We have learned that the external compulsion exercised on a human being by his upbringing and environment produces a further transformation towards good in his instinctual life - a further turning from egoism towards altruism. But this is not the regular or necessary effect of the external compulsion. Upbringing and environment not only offer benefits in the way of love, but also employ other kinds of incentive, namely, rewards and punishments. In this way their effect may turn out to be that a person who is subjected to their influence will choose to behave well in the cultural sense of the phrase, although no ennoblement of instinct, no transformation of egoistic into altruistic inclinations, has taken place in him. The result will, roughly speaking, be the same; only a particular concatenation of circumstances will reveal that one man always acts in a good way because his instinctual inclinations compel him to, and the other is good only in so far and for so long as such cultural behaviour is advantageous for his own selfish purposes. But superficial acquaintance with an individual will not enable us distinguish between the two cases, and we are certainly misled by our optimism into grossly exaggerating the number of human beings who have been transformed in a cultural sense.

Civilized society, which demands good conduct and does not trouble itself about the instinctual basis of this conduct, has thus won over to obedience a great many people who are not in this following their own natures. Encouraged by this success, society has allowed itself to be misled into tightening the moral standard to the greatest possible degree, and it has thus forced its members into a yet greater estrangement from their instinctual disposition. They are consequently subject to an unceasing suppression of instinct, and the resulting tension betrays itself in the most remarkable phenomena of reaction and compensation. In the domain of sexuality, where such suppression is most difficult to carry out, the result is seen in the reactive phenomena of neurotic disorders. Elsewhere the pressure of civilization brings in its train no pathological results, it is true;

but is shown in malformations of character, and in the perpetual readiness of the inhibited instincts to break through to satisfaction at any suitable opportunity. Anyone thus compelled to act continually in accordance with precepts which are not the expression of his instinctual inclinations, is living, psychologically speaking, beyond his means, and may objectively be described as a hypocrite, whether he is clearly aware of the incongruity or not. It is undeniable that our contemporary civilization favours the production of this form of hypocrisy to an extraordinary extent. One might venture to say that it built up on such hypocrisy, and that it would have to submit to far-reaching modifications if people were to undertake to live in accordance with psychological truth. Thus there are very many more cultural hypocrites than truly civilized men - indeed, it is a debatable point whether a certain degree of cultural hypocrisy is not indispensable for the maintenance of civilization, because the adaptability to culture which has hitherto been organized in the minds of present-day human beings would perhaps not prove adequate for the task. On the other hand, the maintenance of civilization even on so dubious a basis offers the prospect of paving the way in each new generation for a more far-reaching transformation of instinct which shall be the vehicle of a better civilization.

We may already derive one consolation from this discussion: our mortification and our painful disillusionment on account of the uncivilized behaviour of our fellow-citizens of the world during this war were unjustified. They were based on an illusion to which we had given way. In reality our fellow-citizens have not sunk so low as we feared, because they had never risen so high as we believed. The fact that the collective units of mankind, the peoples and states, mutually abrogated their moral restraints naturally prompted these individual citizens to withdraw for a while from the constant pressure of civilization and to grant a temporary satisfaction to the instincts which they had been holding in check. This probably involved no breach in their relative morality within their own nations.

We may, however, obtain a deeper insight than this into the change brought about by the war in our former compatriots, and at the same time receive a warning against doing them an injustice. For the development of the mind shows a peculiarity which is present in no other developmental process. When a village grows into a town or a child into a man, the village and the child become submerged in the town and the man. Memory alone can trace the earlier features in the new image; in reality the old materials or forms have been superseded and replaced by new ones. It is otherwise with the development of the mind. Here one can describe the state of affairs, which is a quite peculiar one, only by saying that in this case every earlier stage of development persists alongside the later stage which has arisen from it; here succession also involves co-existence although it is to the same materials that the whole series of transformations has applied. The earlier mental state may not have manifested itself for years, but none the less it is so far present that it may at any time again become the mode of expression of the forces in the mind, and indeed the only one, as though all later developments had been annulled or undone. This extraordinary plasticity of mental developments is not unrestricted as regards direction; it may be described as a special capacity for involution - for regression - since it may well happen that a later and higher stage of development, once abandoned, cannot be reached again. But the primitive stages can always be re-established; the primitive mind is, in the fullest meaning of the word, imperishable.

What are called mental diseases inevitably produce an impression in the layman that intellectual and spiritual life have been destroyed. In reality, the destruction only applies to later acquisitions and developments. The essence of mental disease lies in a return to earlier states of affective life and of functioning. An excellent example of the plasticity of mental life is afforded by the state of sleep, which is our goal every night. Since we have learnt to interpret even absurd and confused dreams, we know that whenever we go to sleep we throw off our hard-won morality like a garment, and put it on again next morning. This stripping of ourselves is not, of course, dangerous. because we are paralysed, condemned to inactivity, by the state of sleep. It is only dreams that can tell us about the regression of our emotional life to one of the earliest stages of development. For instance, it is noteworthy that all our dreams are governed by purely egoistic motives. One of my English friends put forward this thesis at a scientific meeting in America, whereupon a lady who was present remarked that that might be the case in Austria, but she could assert as regards herself and her friends that they were altruistic even in their dreams. My friend, although himself of English race, was obliged to contradict the lady emphatically on the ground of his personal experience in dream-analysis, and to declare that in their dreams high-minded American ladies were quite as egoistic as the Austrians. Thus the transformation of instinct, on which our adaptability to culture is based, may also be permanently or temporarily undone by the experiences of life. The influences of war are undoubtedly among the forces that can bring about such involution; so we need not deny adaptability to culture to all who are at the present time behaving in an uncivilized way, and we may anticipate that the ennoblement of their instincts will be restored in times of peace.

There is, however, another symptom in our fellow-citizens of the world which has perhaps astonished and shocked us no less than the descent from their ethical heights which has so greatly distressed us. What I have in mind is the want of insight shown by the best intellects, their obduracy, their inaccessibility to the most forcible arguments and their uncritical credulity towards the most disputable assertions. This indeed presents a lamentable picture, and I wish to say emphatically that in this I am by no means a blind partisan who finds all the intellectual short-comings on one side. But this phenomenon is much easier to account for and much less disquieting than the one we have just considered. Students of human nature and philosophers have long taught us that we are mistaken in regarding our intelligence as an independent force and in overlooking its dependence on emotional life. Our intellect, they teach us, can function reliably only when it is removed from the influences of strong emotional impulses; otherwise it behaves merely as an instrument of the will and delivers the inference which the will requires. Thus, in their view, logical arguments are impotent against affective interests, and that is why disputes backed by reasons, which in Falstaff's phrase are 'as plenty as blackberries', produce so few victories in the conflict with interests. Psycho-analytic experience has, if possible, further confirmed this statement. It can show every day that the shrewdest people will all of a sudden behave without insight, like imbeciles, as soon as the necessary insight is confronted by an emotional resistance, but that they will completely regain their understanding once that resistance has been overcome. The logical bedazzlement which this war has conjured up in our fellow-citizens, many of them the best of their kind, is therefore a secondary phenomenon, a consequence of emotional excitement, and is bound, we may hope, to disappear with it.

Having in this way once more come to understand our fellow-citizens who are now alienated from us, we shall much more easily endure the disappointment which the nations, the collective units of mankind, have caused us, for the demands we make upon these should be far more modest. Perhaps they are reproducing the course of individual development, and to-day still represent very primitive phases in the organization and formation of higher unities. It is in agreement with this that the educative factor of an external compulsion towards morality, which we found was so effective in individuals, is as yet barely discernible in them. We had hoped, certainly, that the extensive community of interests established by commerce and production would constitute the germ of such a compulsion, but it would seem that nations still obey their passions far more readily than their interests. Their interests serve them, at most, as rationalizations for their passions; they put forward their interests in order to be able to give reasons for satisfying their passions. It is, to be sure, a mystery why the collective units should in fact despise, hate and detest one another - every nation against every other - and even in times of peace. I cannot tell why that is so. It is just as though when it becomes a question of a number of people, not to say millions, all individual moral acquisitions were obliterated, and only the most primitive. the oldest, the crudest mental attitudes were left. It may be that only later stages in development will be able to make some change in this regrettable state of affairs. But a little more truthfulness and honesty on all sides - in the relations of men to one another and between them and their rulers - should also smooth the way for this transformation.

The Destruction of Memory: Architecture at War

2010-12-29T19:26:00.004Z

"Cultural Cleansing: Who Remembers the Armenians?" Excerpt from The Destruction of Memory: Architecture at War, pp. 52-69.

Hundreds died every day from cold, starvation and disease. By this stage, the Nazis had so successfully spatially separated the Jews that their "subhuman" otherness became a tourist attraction. Coach parties of German soldiers visited. Whips were brandished to provoke the "wild animals". Alfred Rosenberg reported on a visit for the Reich’s press department: "If there are any people left who still somehow have sympathy with the Jews then they ought to be recommended to have a look at such a ghetto. Seeing this race en masse which is decaying, decomposing, and rotten to the core will banish any sentimental humanitarianism." Gradually the ghettos were liquidated, with their inhabitants killed there and then or transported to the death camps. Where there was resistance, the ghettos were physically destroyed. In Warsaw, the entire ghetto was reduced to rubble following the uprising by the systematic blowing up or burning of the buildings block by block. Around 50—60,000 Jewish resisters were killed, thousands of these dying in burning buildings. The man in charge, Brigadeführer Jürgen Stroop, symbolically marked the end of the liquidation by dynamiting Warsaw’s Great Synagogue on Tlomackie Street. A thousand-year-old civilization, its people, its books, theatre, art and buildings had been almost entirely eradicated. There are few physical reminders left of this great tradition and few Jews living among them to remember.

The Holocaust was not the first genocide of the twentieth century: that dishonour goes to the Turks and Kurds in present-day Turkey for the slaughter of up to 1.5 million Armenian men, women and children in a campaign that began in earnest in 1915. As under the Nazis and 1990s Serbian extremists, this was accompanied by thorough cultural cleansing. It was an attempt to destroy a people that Turkish governments deny and cover up to this day. The continued neglect and destruction of Armenian monuments in Turkey can be seen as part of this stance. Although Turkey reluctantly admits that around 300,000 Armenians died during the period, it attributes the deaths to starvation or exposure arising out of the chaos of the First World War. The reality is harsher: torture, pogroms, mutilation, rape and sexual slavery were part of the Armenian experience as the Young Turks murdered many Armenian men across the country and sent the remaining population of ancient Armenian towns and villages on forced death-marches. Primitive gas chambers using fires lit at the mouths of caves have also been reported. Those who survived ended up in Syria or behind the Russian lines in Russian-controlled Armenia. Continued denial of the atrocities by Turkey is assisted, on the one hand, by those in the West wanting to keep Turkey, a NATO member and EU supplicant, on side, and on the other by Turkey’s ongoing erasure of the Armenian architectural record.

Armenians were the first Christian nation, accepting the new creed at the beginning of the fourth century AD. They inhabited the uplands between the Black and Caspian seas for more than 2,500 years. At times independent, the culturally and linguistically distinct Armenians were eventually absorbed into the Ottoman Empire, but their cultural patrimony under the Ottoman system of government remained largely intact for hundreds of years. As non-Muslims they were second-class citizens, but also formed an important trading and business class especially, like the Jews, in areas forbidden to Muslims, such as banking. However, the decline of the empire in the nineteenth century led to increasing oppression of minorities within the empire and growing nationalist feeling within its constituent parts. Between 1894 and 1896 pogroms under the leadership of Sultan Abdul-Hamid II led to the massacre of up to 200,000 Armenians across eastern Turkey— the Armenian heartland— and the exile and forced conversion of thousands more. Turkish troops led the killings and were followed by plundering Kurdish gangs and the subsequent destruction of towns and villages. Further massacres followed in 1909, a year after the Young Turks (Ittihadists) seized power in a military coup. In some ways the junta has been seen as progressive, more secular and modern in its vision for a future Turkish state emerging out of the fragmentation of the Ottoman world. But unlike the multi-ethnicity that characterized the Ottoman Empire, however problematically, the new regime’s increasingly chauvinistic ‘Turkism’ quickly evolved into a desire to establish an exclusively Turkish nation state within Asia Minor. In the wake of the Balkan wars and the Russian threat to the East, the Armenians were also regarded as an internal threat, a view intensifying with the outbreak of the First World War. The redrawing of borders and mass resettlements creating ethnic nation-states was the emerging pattern across the region.

After a period of beatings and deaths, the genocide began on 23 April 1915 with the rounding up and murder of thousands of Armenian community leaders. Systematic mass murder followed throughout Turkey. Men and women were often separated and the men murdered immediately or sent to death camps, such as those at Ras-Ul-Ain and Deir-el-Zor. Those who survived the sadistic deportations were forced into permanent exile. Armenian churches, monuments, quarters and towns were destroyed in the process. Some Armenians were burned alive in their places of worship. One survivor from the town of Marash later told his tale to a US oral-history archive:

Some two thousand Armenians had gathered, whom the Turks surrounded and poured gasoline all around and set them on fire. I, myself, was in another church that they were trying to set on fire and my father was thinking that this was the end of the family. He just gathered us around and pulled the movable pews around us as if he were trying to protect us and said something I will never forget: ‘Don’t be afraid, my children, because soon we will all be in heaven together.’ And, fortunately, someone discovered some secret tunnels that the French had dug from that church to another vantage point and we escaped that way.

In the genocide whole cities lost their Armenian populations, including the historic Armenian city of Van. More than 50,000 Armenians were killed and the city itself was almost entirely flattened (apart from two mosques) and the new Kurdish city of Van rebuilt nearby. Armenian property not destroyed during the massacres was transferred to the ownership of the Turkish state in September 1915.

In the late nineteenth century and the years that followed the First World War, Greeks and Turks also died in their thousands in forced population exchanges. Monuments and towns were razed. The entire northern part of the ancient and once beautiful coastal city of Smyrna (now Izmir), which included the Greek and Armenian quarters, was burned in September 1922: every remaining mosque in Athens that had not been destroyed in previous anti-Muslim attacks was later demolished. The Armenian genocide and the destruction accompanying the mutual expulsions were a devastating cultural as well as human loss. The early Christian tradition of Armenia had produced a unique architecture characterized by worked tufa stone rising in domes and spires. The essential verticality of forms and the use of pointed arches, ribbed vaults and clustered piers prefigured the ecclesiastic architecture of European Gothic. Medieval Armenian kingdoms built on their tradition, creating spectacular churches and monasteries. Its craftsmen exported their stone-working skills to other religious and ethnic groups throughout the region.

A survey, not in itself comprehensive, prepared in 1914 by the Armenian Patriarchate of Constantinople listed 2,549 religious sites under its control, including more than 200 monasteries and 1,600 churches. Many were destroyed in the process of the genocide but many more have since been vandalized, flattened or converted to mosques or barns. In contrast to Kristallnacht, where the destruction of architecture offered a warning of worse to come, the Turks have continued to remove, stone by stone, the evidence of millennia of Armenian architectural and art history following the mass murder and exile of the Armenian people. It was only in the 1960s that Armenian and other architectural scholars began the politically and physically dangerous task of recording and rescuing what remains of 1,800 years of Armenian ecclesiastical heritage. A 1974 survey identified 913 remaining churches and monastic sites in Turkey in various conditions. At half of these sites the buildings had vanished utterly. Of the remainder, 252 were ruined. Just 197 survived in anything like a usable state.

In the late 1980s and early ’90s the travel writer William Dalrymple found evidence of the continuing destruction of Armenian historic sites. Although many sites had fallen into decay through not so benign neglect, earthquakes or peasants searching for Armenian gold supposedly hidden beneath churches, there are clear instances of deliberate destruction. He argues that the destruction accelerated in the 1970s and ’80s in response to the emergence of a terrorist group, the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia, which had carried out attacks against the Turkish establishment. Censorship increased. In one 1986 incident, the editor of the Turkish edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica was arrested and charged regarding a footnote that made mention of the historic Armenian kingdom of Cilicia. The book was banned. Ten years earlier, French historian J. M. Thierry was sentenced, in his absence, to three months’ hard labour after being arrested for drawing a plan of an Armenian church near Van. He escaped before being sentenced. Thierry also reported that the government had sought to demolish an Armenian church in Osk Vank in 1985 but the villagers resisted, valuing it for various utilitarian uses—a granary and a stable among them. Although Dalrymple notes the difficulties of finding unequivocally clear evidence of deliberate destruction after the fact, a number of telling examples have been discovered. A collection of five important churches at Khitzkonk (now Bes Kilise), near Kars, had been officially offlimits to visitors since the genocide until the 1960s. Only the cupola of the eleventh-century St Sergius chapel remained by the time of Dalrymple’s visit; its four walls had been blown out (no earthquake could cause such damage). The remaining churches had all but vanished. Locals said the buildings had been dynamited by the army. Other shattered religious sites include Surb Karapet, partially destroyed in the 1915 massacres and then reduced to rubble by military target practice in the 1960s.

Elsewhere some remains cling on, including the tenth-century chapel frescos at Varak Vank, now a barn. The ninth-century basilica at Dergimen Koyu, near Erzinja, is a warehouse with a huge hole smashed in the side to allow vehicles entry. The Armenian cathedral at Edessa (now Urfa), converted into a fire station in 1915, was converted again to a mosque as recently as 1994 with the remains of its ecclesiastical fittings destroyed in the process. The town is, traditionally, the first outside the Holy Land to have accepted Christianity. There are no churches in use today. By contrast, ancient Armenian churches in Iran and Georgia have been restored using state funds. The Georgian restorations came with independence from the Soviet Union, long after Stalin destroyed more than 80 churches in the state. In areas hostile to the post-Soviet Union state of Armenia, monuments have not been so lucky. The Azeri campaign against the Armenian enclave of Nagorno Karabakh, which began in 1988, was accompanied by cultural cleansing that destroyed the Egheazar monastery and 21 other churches. Among the remains of one Armenian town in the enclave, half a millennium of history was reactivated. Jugha was first flattened in 1605 and its inhabitants deported to Persia (forced exile had long been a feature of Ottoman punishment). Its cemetery, although much damaged, remained and featured thousands of khachkars (medieval stone crosses) until 1998, when it was reported that Azeris had bulldozed a third of the monuments, trucking away the rubble before UNESCO intervention stopped the destruction.

Greek heritage in Turkey has also continued to suffer. In 1955, in an echo of Kristallnacht, thousands of Greek shop windows in Istanbul were smashed during an anti-Greek riot, More than 1,000 houses, 26 schools and 73 Greek Orthodox churches were attacked and many destroyed, including the two main Greek cemeteries and the Greek Orthodox Tomb of the Patriarchs in the city. The riot was fuelled by inter-communal violence in Cyprus and faked photographs in the Turkish newspapers of a Greek bomb attack destroying Kemal Atat&umul;rk’s birthplace in the city of Thessaloniki. (It had been only very slightly damaged by a blast outside the Turkish consulate next door.) Even in contemporary Istanbul, historic Armenian churches and graveyards continue to be neglected and vandalized. In recent years there have been reports of surviving khachkars being smashed and their rubble removed.

In 1987 the European Parliament called on Turkey to ‘improve the conditions of protection of architectural monuments’ and stated that Turkish denial of the Armenian genocide was an ‘insurmountable obstacle’ to Turkish membership of the EU. Little action has resulted and the question of Turkish membership of the EU looks likely to be settled without this "insurmountable obstacle" being addressed by either party. The World Monuments Fund has also attempted to take on the issue with limited success. Only the celebrated Armenian church on the island of Aght’amar in Lake Van looks set to be restored (after international pressure and with Armenian, not Turkish, money). As George Hintlian, the curator of the Armenian Museum in Jerusalem, says: "The churches are all we have left. Soon there will be virtually no evidence that Armenians were ever in Turkey. We will have become an historical myth."

If the writing of history is the privilege of the victor, so is the successful rewriting of it. In Turkey the desire has been to deny the past, to continue to cover its tracks. The continued demolitions and deliberate neglect of Armenian monuments demonstrates a state that remains ill at ease with itself and its minority groups. Guilty reminders must be removed. The repression of the Kurds and the remaining Armenians and Greeks within Turkey is still with us and Kurdish heritage too is disregarded or drowned in enormous dam projects. Destruction here is both a denial of a victor’s deeds and a mark of the incomplete nature of that victory. The architectural legacy of Ottoman multiculturalism was a witness to the security and strength of the Pax Ottomanica. The careful and partial promotion by the Turks of only favoured elements of that heritage is, by contrast, evidence of modern Turkey’s insecurity and weakness.

Copyright notice: Excerpt from pages 52-59 of The Destruction of Memory: Architecture at War by Robert Bevan, published by Reaktion Books Ltd, distributed by the University of Chicago Press in the USA and Canada. ©2006 by Reaktion Books Ltd.

The Grand Inquisitor

2010-12-28T16:39:00.003Z

Fyodor Dostoevsky (Trans. H. P. Blavatsky), excerpt from The Brothers Karamazov (Братья Карамазовы), c. 1880.

[Dedicated by the Translator to those sceptics who clamour so loudly, both in print and private letters—"Show us the wonder-working 'Brothers,' let them come out publicly—and we will believe in them!"]

[The following is an extract from M. Dostoevsky's celebrated novel, The Brothers Karamazof, the last publication from the pen of the great Russian novelist, who died a few months ago, just as the concluding chapters appeared in print. Dostoevsky is beginning to be recognized as one of the ablest and profoundest among Russian writers. His characters are invariably typical portraits drawn from various classes of Russian society, strikingly life-like and realistic to the highest degree. The following extract is a cutting satire on modern theology generally and the Roman Catholic religion in particular. The idea is that Christ revisits earth, coming to Spain at the period of the Inquisition, and is at once arrested as a heretic by the Grand Inquisitor. One of the three brothers of the story, Ivan, a rank materialist and an atheist of the new school, is supposed to throw this conception into the form of a poem, which he describes to Alyosha—the youngest of the brothers, a young Christian mystic brought up by a "saint" in a monastery—as follows: (—Ed. Theosophist, Nov., 1881)]

"Quite impossible, as you see, to start without an introduction," laughed Ivan. "Well, then, I mean to place the event described in the poem in the sixteenth century, an age—as you must have been told at school—when it was the great fashion among poets to make the denizens and powers of higher worlds descend on earth and mix freely with mortals... In France all the notaries' clerks, and the monks in the cloisters as well, used to give grand performances, dramatic plays in which long scenes were enacted by the Madonna, the angels, the saints, Christ, and even by God Himself. In those days, everything was very artless and primitive. An instance of it may be found in Victor Hugo's drama, Notre Dame de Paris, where, at the Municipal Hall, a play called Le Bon Jugement de la Tres-sainte et Gracièuse Vierge Marie, is enacted in honour of Louis XI, in which the Virgin appears personally to pronounce her 'good judgment.' In Moscow, during the prepetrean period, performances of nearly the same character, chosen especially from the Old Testament, were also in great favour. Apart from such plays, the world was overflooded with mystical writings, 'verses'—the heroes of which were always selected from the ranks of angels, saints and other heavenly citizens answering to the devotional purposes of the age. The recluses of our monasteries, like the Roman Catholic monks, passed their time in translating, copying, and even producing original compositions upon such subjects, and that, remember, during the Tarter period!... In this connection, I am reminded of a poem compiled in a convent—a translation from the Greek, of course—called, 'The Travels of the Mother of God among the Damned,' with fitting illustrations and a boldness of conception inferior nowise to that of Dante. The 'Mother of God' visits hell, in company with the archangel Michael as her cicerone to guide her through the legions of the 'damned.' She sees them all, and is witness to their multifarious tortures. Among the many other exceedingly remarkably varieties of torments—every category of sinners having its own—there is one especially worthy of notice, namely a class of the 'damned' sentenced to gradually sink in a burning lake of brimstone and fire. Those whose sins cause them to sink so low that they no longer can rise to the surface are for ever forgotten by God, i.e., they fade out from the omniscient memory, says the poem—an expression, by the way, of an extraordinary profundity of thought, when closely analysed. The Virgin is terribly shocked, and falling down upon her knees in tears before the throne of God, begs that all she has seen in hell—all, all without exception, should have their sentences remitted to them. Her dialogue with God is colossally interesting. She supplicates, she will not leave Him. And when God, pointing to the pierced hands and feet of her Son, cries, 'How can I forgive His executioners?' She then commands that all the saints, martyrs, angels and archangels, should prostrate themselves with her before the Immutable and Changeless One and implore Him to change His wrath into mercy and—forgive them all. The poem closes upon her obtaining from God a compromise, a kind of yearly respite of tortures between Good Friday and Trinity, a chorus of the 'damned' singing loud praises to God from their 'bottomless pit,' thanking and telling Him:

Thou art right, O Lord, very right,
Thou hast condemned us justly.
"My poem is of the same character.

"In it, it is Christ who appears on the scene. True, He says nothing, but only appears and passes out of sight. Fifteen centuries have elapsed since He left the world with the distinct promise to return 'with power and great glory'; fifteen long centuries since His prophet cried, 'Prepare ye the way of the Lord!' since He Himself had foretold, while yet on earth, 'Of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven but my Father only.' But Christendom expects Him still. ...

"It waits for Him with the same old faith and the same emotion; aye, with a far greater faith, for fifteen centuries have rolled away since the last sign from heaven was sent to man,

And blind faith remained alone
To lull the trusting heart,
As heav'n would send a sign no more.

"True, again, we have all heard of miracles being wrought ever since the 'age of miracles' passed away to return no more. We had, and still have, our saints credited with performing the most miraculous cures; and, if we can believe their biographers, there have been those among them who have been personally visited by the Queen of Heaven. But Satan sleepeth not, and the first germs of doubt, and ever-increasing unbelief in such wonders, already had begun to sprout in Christendom as early as the sixteenth century. It was just at that time that a new and terrible heresy first made its appearance in the north of Germany.* [*Luther's reform] A great star 'shining as it were a lamp... fell upon the fountains waters'... and 'they were made bitter.' This 'heresy' blasphemously denied 'miracles.' But those who had remained faithful believed all the more ardently, the tears of mankind ascended to Him as heretofore, and the Christian world was expecting Him as confidently as ever; they loved Him and hoped in Him, thirsted and hungered to suffer and die for Him just as many of them had done before.... So many centuries had weak, trusting humanity implored Him, crying with ardent faith and fervour: 'How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost Thou not come!' So many long centuries hath it vainly appealed to Him, that at last, in His inexhaustible compassion, He consenteth to answer the prayer.... He decideth that once more, if it were but for one short hour, the people—His long-suffering, tortured, fatally sinful, his loving and child-like, trusting people—shall behold Him again. The scene of action is placed by me in Spain, at Seville, during that terrible period of the Inquisition, when, for the greater glory of God, stakes were flaming all over the country.

Burning wicked heretics,
In grand auto-da-fes.

"This particular visit has, of course, nothing to do with the promised Advent, when, according to the programme, 'after the tribulation of those days,' He will appear 'coming in the clouds of heaven.' For, that 'coming of the Son of Man,' as we are informed, will take place as suddenly 'as the lightning cometh out of the east and shineth even unto the west.' No; this once, He desired to come unknown, and appear among His children, just when the bones of the heretics, sentenced to be burnt alive, had commenced crackling at the flaming stakes. Owing to His limitless mercy, He mixes once more with mortals and in the same form in which He was wont to appear fifteen centuries ago. He descends, just at the very moment when before king, courtiers, knights, cardinals, and the fairest dames of court, before the whole population of Seville, upwards of a hundred wicked heretics are being roasted, in a magnificent auto-da-fe ad majorem Dei gloriam, by the order of the powerful Cardinal Grand Inquisitor.

"He comes silently and unannounced; yet all—how strange—yea, all recognize Him, at once! The population rushes towards Him as if propelled by some irresistible force; it surrounds, throngs, and presses around, it follows Him.... Silently, and with a smile of boundless compassion upon His lips, He crosses the dense crowd, and moves softly on. The Sun of Love burns in His heart, and warm rays of Light, Wisdom and Power beam forth from His eyes, and pour down their waves upon the swarming multitudes of the rabble assembled around, making their hearts vibrate with returning love. He extends His hands over their heads, blesses them, and from mere contact with Him, aye, even with His garments, a healing power goes forth. An old man, blind from his birth, cries, 'Lord, heal me, that I may see Thee!' and the scales falling off the closed eyes, the blind man beholds Him... The crowd weeps for joy, and kisses the ground upon which He treads. Children strew flowers along His path and sing to Him, 'Hosanna!' It is He, it is Himself, they say to each other, it must be He, it can be none other but He! He pauses at the portal of the old cathedral, just as a wee white coffin is carried in, with tears and great lamentations. The lid is off, and in the coffin lies the body of a fair-child, seven years old, the only child of an eminent citizen of the city. The little corpse lies buried in flowers. 'He will raise the child to life!' confidently shouts the crowd to the weeping mother. The officiating priest who had come to meet the funeral procession, looks perplexed, and frowns. A loud cry is suddenly heard, and the bereaved mother prostrates herself at His feet. 'If it be Thou, then bring back my child to life!' she cries beseechingly. The procession halts, and the little coffin is gently lowered at his feet. Divine compassion beams forth from His eyes, and as He looks at the child, His lips are heard to whisper once more, 'Talitha Cumi'—and 'straightway the damsel arose.' The child rises in her coffin. Her little hands still hold the nosegay of white roses which after death was placed in them, and, looking round with large astonished eyes she smiles sweetly .... The crowd is violently excited. A terrible commotion rages among them, the populace shouts and loudly weeps, when suddenly, before the cathedral door, appears the Cardinal Grand Inquisitor himself.... He is tall, gaunt-looking old man of nearly four-score years and ten, with a stern, withered face, and deeply sunken eyes, from the cavity of which glitter two fiery sparks. He has laid aside his gorgeous cardinal's robes in which he had appeared before the people at the auto da-fe of the enemies of the Romish Church, and is now clad in his old, rough, monkish cassock. His sullen assistants and slaves of the 'holy guard' are following at a distance. He pauses before the crowd and observes. He has seen all. He has witnessed the placing of the little coffin at His feet, the calling back to life. And now, his dark, grim face has grown still darker; his bushy grey eyebrows nearly meet, and his sunken eye flashes with sinister light. Slowly raising his finger, he commands his minions to arrest Him....

"Such is his power over the well-disciplined, submissive and now trembling people, that the thick crowds immediately give way, and scattering before the guard, amid dead silence and without one breath of protest, allow them to lay their sacrilegious hands upon the stranger and lead Him away.... That same populace, like one man, now bows its head to the ground before the old Inquisitor, who blesses it and slowly moves onward. The guards conduct their prisoner to the ancient building of the Holy Tribunal; pushing Him into a narrow, gloomy, vaulted prison-cell, they lock Him in and retire....

"The day wanes, and night—a dark, hot breathless Spanish night—creeps on and settles upon the city of Seville. The air smells of laurels and orange blossoms. In the Cimmerian darkness of the old Tribunal Hall the iron door of the cell is suddenly thrown open, and the Grand Inquisitor, holding a dark lantern, slowly stalks into the dungeon. He is alone, and, as the heavy door closes behind him, he pauses at the threshold, and, for a minute or two, silently and gloomily scrutinizes the Face before him. At last approaching with measured steps, he sets his lantern down upon the table and addresses Him in these words:

"'It is Thou! ... Thou!' ... Receiving no reply, he rapidly continues: 'Nay, answer not; be silent! ... And what couldst Thou say? ... I know but too well Thy answer.... Besides, Thou hast no right to add one syllable to that which was already uttered by Thee before.... Why shouldst Thou now return, to impede us in our work? For Thou hast come but for that only, and Thou knowest it well. But art Thou as well aware of what awaits Thee in the morning? I do not know, nor do I care to know who thou mayest be: be it Thou or only thine image, to-morrow I will condemn and burn Thee on the stake, as the most wicked of all the heretics; and that same people, who to-day were kissing Thy feet, to-morrow at one bend of my finger, will rush to add fuel to Thy funeral pile... Wert Thou aware of this?' he adds, speaking as if in solemn thought, and never for one instant taking his piercing glance off the meek Face before him."....

"I can hardly realize the situation described—what is all this, Ivan?" suddenly interrupted Alyosha, who had remained silently listening to his brother. "Is this an extravagant fancy, or some mistake of the old man, an impossible quid pro quo?"

"Let it be the latter, if you like," laughed Ivan, "since modern realism has so perverted your taste that you feel unable to realize anything from the world of fancy.... Let it be a quid pro quo, if you so choose it. Again, the Inquisitor is ninety years old, and he might have easily gone mad with his one idee fixe of power; or, it might have as well been a delirious vision, called forth by dying fancy, overheated by the auto-da-fe of the hundred heretics in that forenoon.... But what matters for the poem, whether it was a quid pro quo or an uncontrollable fancy? The question is, that the old man has to open his heart; that he must give out his thought at last; and that the hour has come when he does speak it out, and says loudly that which for ninety years he has kept secret within his own breast."

"And his prisoner, does He never reply? Does He keep silent, looking at him, without saying a word?"

"Of course; and it could not well be otherwise," again retorted Ivan. "The Grand Inquisitor begins from his very first words by telling Him that He has no right to add one syllable to that which He had said before. To make the situation clear at once, the above preliminary monologue is intended to convey to the reader the very fundamental idea which underlies Roman Catholicism—as well as I can convey it, his words mean, in short: 'Everything was given over by Thee to the Pope, and everything now rests with him alone; Thou hast no business to return and thus hinder us in our work.' In this sense the Jesuits not only talk but write likewise.

"'Hast thou the right to divulge to us a single one of the mysteries of that world whence Thou comest?' enquires of Him my old Inquisitor, and forthwith answers for Him. 'Nay, Thou has no such right. For, that would be adding to that which was already said by Thee before; hence depriving people of that freedom for which Thou hast so stoutly stood up while yet on earth.... Anything new that Thou would now proclaim would have to be regarded as an attempt to interfere with that freedom of choice, as it would come as a new and a miraculous revelation superseding the old revelation of fifteen hundred years ago, when Thou didst so repeatedly tell the people: "The truth shall make you free." Behold then, Thy "free" people now!' adds the old man with sombre irony. 'Yea!... it has cost us dearly.' he continues, sternly looking at his victim. 'But we have at last accomplished our task, and—in Thy name.... For fifteen long centuries we had to toil and suffer owing to that "freedom": but now we have prevailed and our work is done, and well and strongly it is done. ....Believest not Thou it is so very strong? ... And why should Thou look at me so meekly as if I were not worthy even of Thy indignation?... Know then, that now, and only now, Thy people feel fully sure and satisfied of their freedom; and that only since they have themselves and of their own free will delivered that freedom unto our hands by placing it submissively at our feet. But then, that is what we have done. Is it that which Thou has striven for? Is this the kind of "freedom" Thou has promised them?'"

"Now again, I do not understand," interrupted Alyosha. "Does the old man mock and laugh?"

"Not in the least. He seriously regards it as a great service done by himself, his brother monks and Jesuits, to humanity, to have conquered and subjected unto their authority that freedom, and boasts that it was done but for the good of the world. 'For only now,' he says (speaking of the Inquisition) 'has it become possible to us, for the first time, to give a serious thought to human happiness. Man is born a rebel, and can rebels be ever happy?... Thou has been fairly warned of it, but evidently to no use, since Thou hast rejected the only means which could make mankind happy; fortunately at Thy departure Thou hast delivered the task to us.... Thou has promised, ratifying the pledge by Thy own words, in words giving us the right to bind and unbind... and surely, Thou couldst not think of depriving us of it now!'"

"But what can he mean by the words, 'Thou has been fairly warned'?" asked Alexis.

"These words give the key to what the old man has to say for his justification... But listen—

"'The terrible and wise spirit, the spirit of self annihilation and non-being,' goes on the Inquisitor, 'the great spirit of negation conversed with Thee in the wilderness, and we are told that he "tempted" Thee... Was it so? And if it were so, then it is impossible to utter anything more truthful than what is contained in his three offers, which Thou didst reject, and which are usually called "temptations." Yea; if ever there was on earth a genuine striking wonder produced, it was on that day of Thy three temptations, and it is precisely in these three short sentences that the marvelous miracle is contained. If it were possible that they should vanish and disappear for ever, without leaving any trace, from the record and from the memory of man, and that it should become necessary again to devise, invent, and make them reappear in Thy history once more, thinkest Thou that all the world's sages, all the legislators, initiates, philosophers and thinkers, if called upon to frame three questions which should, like these, besides answering the magnitude of the event, express in three short sentences the whole future history of this our world and of mankind—dost Thou believe, I ask Thee, that all their combined efforts could ever create anything equal in power and depth of thought to the three propositions offered Thee by the powerful and all-wise spirit in the wilderness? Judging of them by their marvelous aptness alone, one can at once perceive that they emanated not from a finite, terrestrial intellect, but indeed, from the Eternal and the Absolute. In these three offers we find, blended into one and foretold to us, the complete subsequent history of man; we are shown three images, so to say, uniting in them all the future axiomatic, insoluble problems and contradictions of human nature, the world over. In those days, the wondrous wisdom contained in them was not made so apparent as it is now, for futurity remained still veiled; but now, when fifteen centuries have elapsed, we see that everything in these three questions is so marvelously foreseen and foretold, that to add to, or to take away from, the prophecy one jot, would be absolutely impossible!

"'Decide then thyself.' sternly proceeded the Inquisitor, 'which of ye twain was right: Thou who didst reject, or he who offered? Remember the subtle meaning of question the first, which runs thus: Wouldst Thou go into the world empty-handed? Would Thou venture thither with Thy vague and undefined promise of freedom, which men, dull and unruly as they are by nature, are unable so much as to understand, which they avoid and fear?—for never was there anything more unbearable to the human race than personal freedom! Dost Thou see these stones in the desolate and glaring wilderness? Command that these stones be made bread—and mankind will run after Thee, obedient and grateful like a herd of cattle. But even then it will be ever diffident and trembling, lest Thou should take away Thy hand, and they lose thereby their bread! Thou didst refuse to accept the offer for fear of depriving men of their free choice; for where is there freedom of choice where men are bribed with bread? Man shall not live by bread alone—was Thine answer. Thou knewest not, it seems, that it was precisely in the name of that earthly bread that the terrestrial spirit would one day rise against, struggle with, and finally conquer Thee, followed by the hungry multitudes shouting: "Who is like unto that Beast, who maketh fire come down from heaven upon the earth!" Knowest Thou not that, but a few centuries hence, and the whole of mankind will have proclaimed in its wisdom and through its mouthpiece, Science, that there is no more crime, hence no more sin on earth, but only hungry people? "Feed us first and then command us to be virtuous!" will be the words written upon the banner lifted against Thee—a banner which shall destroy Thy Church to its very foundations, and in the place of Thy Temple shall raise once more the terrible Tower of Babel; and though its building be left unfinished, as was that of the first one, yet the fact will remain recorded that Thou couldst, but wouldst not, prevent the attempt to build that new tower by accepting the offer, and thus saving mankind a millennium of useless suffering on earth. And it is to us that the people will return again. They will search for us catacombs, as we shall once more be persecuted and martyred—and they will begin crying unto us: "Feed us, for they who promised us the fire from heaven have deceived us!" It is then that we will finish building their tower for them. For they alone who feed them shall finish it, and we shall feed them in Thy name, and lying to them that it is in that name. Oh, never, never, will they learn to feed themselves without our help! No science will ever give them bread so long as they remain free, so long as they refuse to lay that freedom at our feet, and say: "Enslave, but feed us!" That day must come when men will understand that freedom and daily bread enough to satisfy all are unthinkable and can never be had together, as men will never be able to fairly divide the two among themselves. And they will also learn that they can never be free, for they are weak, vicious, miserable nonentities born wicked and rebellious. Thou has promised to them the bread of life, the bread of heaven; but I ask Thee again, can that bread ever equal in the sight of the weak and the vicious, the ever ungrateful human race, their daily bread on earth? And even supposing that thousands and tens of thousands follow Thee in the name of, and for the sake of, Thy heavenly bread, what will become of the millions and hundreds of millions of human beings to weak to scorn the earthly for the sake of Thy heavenly bread? Or is it but those tens of thousands chosen among the great and the mighty, that are so dear to Thee, while the remaining millions, innumerable as the grains of sand in the seas, the weak and the loving, have to be used as material for the former? No, no! In our sight and for our purpose the weak and the lowly are the more dear to us. True, they are vicious and rebellious, but we will force them into obedience, and it is they who will admire us the most. They will regard us as gods, and feel grateful to those who have consented to lead the masses and bear their burden of freedom by ruling over them—so terrible will that freedom at last appear to men! Then we will tell them that it is in obedience to Thy will and in Thy name that we rule over them. We will deceive them once more and lie to them once again—for never, never more will we allow Thee to come among us. In this deception we will find our suffering, for we must needs lie eternally, and never cease to lie!

"Such is the secret meaning of "temptation" the first, and that is what Thou didst reject in the wilderness for the sake of that freedom which Thou didst prize above all. Meanwhile Thy tempter's offer contained another great world-mystery. By accepting the "bread," Thou wouldst have satisfied and answered a universal craving, a ceaseless longing alive in the heart of every individual human being, lurking in the breast of collective mankind, that most perplexing problem—"whom or what shall we worship?" There exists no greater or more painful anxiety for a man who has freed himself from all religious bias, than how he shall soonest find a new object or idea to worship. But man seeks to bow before that only which is recognized by the greater majority, if not by all his fellow-men, as having a right to be worshipped; whose rights are so unquestionable that men agree unanimously to bow down to it. For the chief concern of these miserable creatures is not to find and worship the idol of their own choice, but to discover that which all others will believe in, and consent to bow down to in a mass. It is that instinctive need of having a worship in common that is the chief suffering of every man, the chief concern of mankind from the beginning of times. It is for that universality of religious worship that people destroyed each other by sword. Creating gods unto themselves, they forwith began appealing to each other: "Abandon your deities, come and bow down to ours, or death to ye and your idols!" And so will they do till the end of this world; they will do so even then, when all the gods themselves have disappeared, for then men will prostrate themselves before and worship some idea. Thou didst know, Thou couldst not be ignorant of, that mysterious fundamental principle in human nature, and still thou hast rejected the only absolute banner offered Thee, to which all the nations would remain true, and before which all would have bowed—the banner of earthly bread, rejected in the name of freedom and of "bread in the kingdom of God"! Behold, then, what Thou hast done furthermore for that "freedom's" sake! I repeat to Thee, man has no greater anxiety in life than to find some one to whom he can make over that gift of freedom with which the unfortunate creature is born. But he alone will prove capable of silencing and quieting their consciences, that shall succeed in possessing himself of the freedom of men. With "daily bread" an irresistible power was offered Thee: show a man "bread" and he will follow Thee, for what can he resist less than the attraction of bread? But if, at the same time, another succeed in possessing himself of his conscience—oh! then even Thy bread will be forgotten, and man will follow him who seduced his conscience. So far Thou wert right. For the mystery of human being does not solely rest in the desire to live, but in the problem—for what should one live at all? Without a clear perception of his reasons for living, man will never consent to live, and will rather destroy himself than tarry on earth, though he be surrounded with bread. This is the truth. But what has happened? Instead of getting hold of man's freedom, Thou has enlarged it still more! Hast Thou again forgotten that to man rest and even death are preferable to a free choice between the knowledge of Good and Evil? Nothing seems more seductive in his eyes than freedom of conscience, and nothing proves more painful. And behold! instead of laying a firm foundation whereon to rest once for all man's conscience, Thou hast chosen to stir up in him all that is abnormal, mysterious, and indefinite, all that is beyond human strength, and has acted as if Thou never hadst any love for him, and yet Thou wert He who came to "lay down His life for His friends!" Thou hast burdened man's soul with anxieties hitherto unknown to him. Thirsting for human love freely given, seeking to enable man, seduced and charmed by Thee, to follow Thy path of his own free-will, instead of the old and wise law which held him in subjection, Thou hast given him the right henceforth to choose and freely decide what is good and bad for him, guided but by Thine image in his heart. But hast Thou never dreamt of the probability, nay, of the certainty, of that same man one day rejected finally, and controverting even Thine image and Thy truth, once he would find himself laden with such a terrible burden as freedom of choice? That a time would surely come when men would exclaim that Truth and Light cannot be in Thee, for no one could have left them in a greater perplexity and mental suffering than Thou has done, lading them with so many cares and insoluble problems. Thus, it is Thyself who hast laid the foundation for the destruction of Thine own kingdom and no one but Thou is to be blamed for it.

"'Meantime, every chance of success was offered Thee. There are three Powers, three unique Forces upon earth, capable of conquering for ever by charming the conscience of these weak rebels—men—for their own good; and these Forces are: Miracle, Mystery and Authority. Thou hast rejected all the three, and thus wert the first to set them an example. When the terrible and all-wise spirit placed Thee on a pinnacle of the temple and said unto Thee, "If Thou be the son of God, cast Thyself down, for it is written, He shall give His angels charge concerning Thee: and in their hands they shall bear Thee up, lest at any time Thou dash Thy foot against a stone!"—for thus Thy faith in Thy father should have been made evident, Thou didst refuse to accept his suggestion and didst not follow it. Oh, undoubtedly, Thou didst act in this with all the magnificent pride of a god, but then men—that weak and rebel race—are they also gods, to understand Thy refusal? Of course, Thou didst well know that by taking one single step forward, by making the slightest motion to throw Thyself down, Thou wouldst have tempted "the Lord Thy God," lost suddenly all faith in Him, and dashed Thyself to atoms against that same earth which Thou camest to save, and thus wouldst have allowed the wise spirit which tempted Thee to triumph and rejoice. But, then, how many such as Thee are to be found on this globe, I ask Thee? Couldst Thou ever for a moment imagine that men would have the same strength to resist such a temptation? Is human nature calculated to reject miracle, and trust, during the most terrible moments in life, when the most momentous, painful and perplexing problems struggle within man's soul, to the free decisions of his heart for the true solution? Oh, Thou knewest well that that action of Thine would remain recorded in books for ages to come, reaching to the confines of the globe, and Thy hope was, that following Thy example, man would remain true to his God, without needing any miracle to keep his faith alive! But Thou knewest not, it seems, that no sooner would man reject miracle than he would reject God likewise, for he seeketh less God than "a sign" from Him. And thus, as it is beyond the power of man to remain without miracles, so, rather than live without, he will create for himself new wonders of his own making; and he will bow to and worship the soothsayer's miracles, the old witch's sorcery, were he a rebel, a heretic, and an atheist a hundred times over. Thy refusal to come down from the cross when people, mocking and wagging their heads were saying to Thee—"Save Thyself if Thou be the son of God, and we will believe in Thee," was due to the same determination—not to enslave man through miracle, but to obtain faith in Thee freely and apart from any miraculous influence. Thou thirstest for free and uninfluenced love, and refuses the passionate adoration of the slave before a Potency which would have subjected his will once for ever. Thou judgest of men too highly here, again, for though rebels they be, they are born slaves and nothing more. Behold, and judge of them once more, now that fifteen centuries have elapsed since that moment. Look at them, whom Thou didst try to elevate unto Thee! I swear man is weaker and lower than Thou hast ever imagined him to be! Can he ever do that which Thou art said to have accomplished? By valuing him so highly Thou hast acted as if there were no love for him in Thine heart, for Thou hast demanded of him more than he could ever give—Thou, who lovest him more than Thyself! Hadst Thou esteemed him less, less wouldst Thou have demanded of him, and that would have been more like love, for his burden would have been made thereby lighter. Man is weak and cowardly. What matters it, if he now riots and rebels throughout the world against our will and power, and prides himself upon that rebellion? It is but the petty pride and vanity of a school-boy. It is the rioting of little children, getting up a mutiny in the class-room and driving their schoolmaster out of it. But it will not last long, and when the day of their triumph is over, they will have to pay dearly for it. They will destroy the temples and raze them to the ground, flooding the earth with blood. But the foolish children will have to learn some day that, rebels though they be and riotous from nature, they are too weak to maintain the spirit of mutiny for any length of time. Suffused with idiotic tears, they will confess that He who created them rebellious undoubtedly did so but to mock them. They will pronounce these words in despair, and such blasphemous utterances will but add to their misery—for human nature cannot endure blasphemy, and takes her own revenge in the end.

"'And thus, after all Thou has suffered for mankind and its freedom, the present fate of men may be summed up in three words: Unrest, Confusion, Misery! Thy great prophet John records in his vision, that he saw, during the first resurrection of the chosen servants of God—"the number of them which were sealed" in their foreheads, "twelve thousand" of every tribe. But were they, indeed, as many? Then they must have been gods, not men. They had shared Thy Cross for long years, suffered scores of years' hunger and thirst in dreary wildernesses and deserts, feeding upon locusts and roots—and of these children of free love for Thee, and self-sacrifice in Thy name, Thou mayest well feel proud. But remember that these are but a few thousands—of gods, not men; and how about all others? And why should the weakest be held guilty for not being able to endure what the strongest have endured? Why should a soul incapable of containing such terrible gifts be punished for its weakness? Didst Thou really come to, and for, the "elect" alone? If so, then the mystery will remain for ever mysterious to our finite minds. And if a mystery, then were we right to proclaim it as one, and preach it, teaching them that neither their freely given love to Thee nor freedom of conscience were essential, but only that incomprehensible mystery which they must blindly obey even against the dictates of their conscience. Thus did we. We corrected and improved Thy teaching and based it upon "Miracle, Mystery, and Authority." And men rejoiced at finding themselves led once more like a herd of cattle, and at finding their hearts at last delivered of the terrible burden laid upon them by Thee, which caused them so much suffering. Tell me, were we right in doing as we did. Did not we show our great love for humanity, by realizing in such a humble spirit its helplessness, by so mercifully lightening its great burden, and by permitting and remitting for its weak nature every sin, provided it be committed with our authorization? For what, then, hast Thou come again to trouble us in our work? And why lookest Thou at me so penetratingly with Thy meek eyes, and in such a silence? Rather shouldst Thou feel wroth, for I need not Thy love, I reject it, and love Thee not, myself. Why should I conceal the truth from Thee? I know but too well with whom I am now talking! What I had to say was known to Thee before, I read it in Thine eye. How should I conceal from Thee our secret? If perchance Thou wouldst hear it from my own lips, then listen: We are not with Thee, but with him, and that is our secret! For centuries have we abandoned Thee to follow him, yes—eight centuries. Eight hundred years now since we accepted from him the gift rejected by Thee with indignation; that last gift which he offered Thee from the high mountain when, showing all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them, he saith unto Thee: "All these things will I give Thee, if Thou will fall down and worship me!" We took Rome from him and the glaive of Caesar, and declared ourselves alone the kings of this earth, its sole kings, though our work is not yet fully accomplished. But who is to blame for it? Our work is but in its incipient stage, but it is nevertheless started. We may have long to wait until its culmination, and mankind have to suffer much, but we shall reach the goal some day, and become sole Caesars, and then will be the time to think of universal happiness for men.

"'Thou couldst accept the glaive of Caesar Thyself; why didst Thou reject the offer? By accepting from the powerful spirit his third offer Thou would have realized every aspiration man seeketh for himself on earth; man would have found a constant object for worship; one to deliver his conscience up to, and one that should unite all together into one common and harmonious ant-hill; for an innate necessity for universal union constitutes the third and final affliction of mankind. Humanity as a whole has ever aspired to unite itself universally. Many were, the great nations with great histories, but the greater they were, the more unhappy they felt, as they felt the stronger necessity of a universal union among men. Great conquerors, like Timoor and Tchengis-Khan, passed like a cyclone upon the face of the earth in their efforts to conquer the universe, but even they, albeit unconsciously, expressed the same aspiration towards universal and common union. In accepting the kingdom of the world and Caesar's purple, one would found a universal kingdom and secure to mankind eternal peace. And who can rule mankind better than those who have possessed themselves of man's conscience, and hold in their hand man's daily bread? Having accepted Caesar's glaive and purple, we had, of course, but to deny Thee, to henceforth follow him alone. Oh, centuries of intellectual riot and rebellious free thought are yet before us, and their science will end by anthropophagy, for having begun to build their Babylonian tower without our help they will have to end by anthropophagy. But it is precisely at that time that the Beast will crawl up to us in full submission, and lick the soles of our feet, and sprinkle them with tears of blood and we shall sit upon the scarlet-colored Beast, and lifting up high the golden cup "full of abomination and filthiness," shall show written upon it the word "Mystery"! But it is only then that men will see the beginning of a kingdom of peace and happiness. Thou art proud of Thine own elect, but Thou has none other but these elect, and we—we will give rest to all. But that is not the end. Many are those among thine elect and the laborers of Thy vineyard, who, tired of waiting for Thy coming, already have carried and will yet carry, the great fervor of their hearts and their spiritual strength into another field, and will end by lifting up against Thee Thine own banner of freedom. But it is Thyself Thou hast to thank. Under our rule and sway all will be happy, and will neither rebel nor destroy each other as they did while under Thy free banner. Oh, we will take good care to prove to them that they will become absolutely free only when they have abjured their freedom in our favor and submit to us absolutely. Thinkest Thou we shall be right or still lying? They will convince themselves of our rightness, for they will see what a depth of degrading slavery and strife that liberty of Thine has led them into. Liberty, Freedom of Thought and Conscience, and Science will lead them into such impassable chasms, place them face to face before such wonders and insoluble mysteries, that some of them—more rebellious and ferocious than the rest—will destroy themselves; others—rebellious but weak—will destroy each other; while the remainder, weak, helpless and miserable, will crawl back to our feet and cry: "'Yes; right were ye, oh Fathers of Jesus; ye alone are in possession of His mystery, and we return to you, praying that ye save us from ourselves!" Receiving their bread from us, they will clearly see that we take the bread from them, the bread made by their own hands, but to give it back to them in equal shares and that without any miracle; and having ascertained that, though we have not changed stones into bread, yet bread they have, while every other bread turned verily in their own hands into stones, they will be only to glad to have it so. Until that day, they will never be happy. And who is it that helped the most to blind them, tell me? Who separated the flock and scattered it over ways unknown if it be not Thee? But we will gather the sheep once more and subject them to our will for ever. We will prove to them their own weakness and make them humble again, whilst with Thee they have learnt but pride, for Thou hast made more of them than they ever were worth. We will give them that quiet, humble happiness, which alone benefits such weak, foolish creatures as they are, and having once had proved to them their weakness, they will become timid and obedient, and gather around us as chickens around their hen. They will wonder at and feel a superstitious admiration for us, and feel proud to be led by men so powerful and wise that a handful of them can subject a flock a thousand millions strong. Gradually men will begin to fear us. They will nervously dread our slightest anger, their intellects will weaken, their eyes become as easily accessible to tears as those of children and women; but we will teach them an easy transition from grief and tears to laughter, childish joy and mirthful song. Yes; we will make them work like slaves, but during their recreation hours they shall have an innocent child-like life, full of play and merry laughter. We will even permit them sin, for, weak and helpless, they will feel the more love for us for permitting them to indulge in it. We will tell them that every kind of sin will be remitted to them, so long as it is done with our permission; that we take all these sins upon ourselves, for we so love the world, that we are even willing to sacrifice our souls for its satisfaction. And, appearing before them in the light of their scapegoats and redeemers, we shall be adored the more for it. They will have no secrets from us. It will rest with us to permit them to live with their wives and concubines, or to forbid them, to have children or remain childless, either way depending on the degree of their obedience to us; and they will submit most joyfully to us the most agonizing secrets of their souls—all, all will they lay down at our feet, and we will authorize and remit them all in Thy name, and they will believe us and accept our mediation with rapture, as it will deliver them from their greatest anxiety and torture—that of having to decide freely for themselves. And all will be happy, all except the one or two hundred thousands of their rulers. For it is but we, we the keepers of the great Mystery who will be miserable. There will be thousands of millions of happy infants, and one hundred thousand martyrs who have taken upon themselves the curse of knowledge of good and evil. Peaceable will be their end, and peacefully will they die, in Thy name, to find behind the portals of the grave—but death. But we will keep the secret inviolate, and deceive them for their own good with the mirage of life eternal in Thy kingdom. For, were there really anything like life beyond the grave, surely it would never fall to the lot of such as they! People tell us and prophesy of Thy coming and triumphing once more on earth; of Thy appearing with the army of Thy elect, with Thy proud and mighty ones; but we will answer Thee that they have saved but themselves while we have saved all. We are also threatened with the great disgrace which awaits the whore, "Babylon the great, the mother of harlots"—who sits upon the Beast, holding in her hands the Mystery, the word written upon her forehead; and we are told that the weak ones, the lambs shall rebel against her and shall make her desolate and naked. But then will I arise, and point out to Thee the thousands of millions of happy infants free from any sin. And we who have taken their sins upon us, for their own good, shall stand before Thee and say: "Judge us if Thou canst and darest!" Know then that I fear Thee not. Know that I too have lived in the dreary wilderness, where I fed upon locusts and roots, that I too have blessed freedom with which thou hast blessed men, and that I too have once prepared to join the ranks of Thy elect, the proud and the mighty. But I awoke from my delusion and refused since then to serve insanity. I returned to join the legion of those who corrected Thy mistakes. I left the proud and returned to the really humble, and for their own happiness. What I now tell thee will come to pass, and our kingdom shall be built, I tell Thee not later than to-morrow Thou shalt see that obedient flock which at one simple motion of my hand will rush to add burning coals to Thy stake, on which I will burn Thee for having dared to come and trouble us in our work. For, if there ever was one who deserved more than any of the others our inquisitorial fires—it is Thee! To-morrow I will burn Thee. Dixi'."

Ivan paused. He had entered into the situation and had spoken with great animation, but now he suddenly burst out laughing.

"But all that is absurd!" suddenly exclaimed Alyosha, who had hitherto listened perplexed and agitated but in profound silence. "Your poem is a glorification of Christ, not an accusation, as you, perhaps, meant to be. And who will believe you when you speak of 'freedom'? Is it thus that we Christians must understand it? It is Rome (not all Rome, for that would be unjust), but the worst of the Roman Catholics, the Inquisitors and Jesuits, that you have been exposing! Your Inquisitor is an impossible character. What are these sins they are taking upon themselves? Who are those keepers of mystery who took upon themselves a curse for the good of mankind? Who ever met them? We all know the Jesuits, and no one has a good word to say in their favor; but when were they as you depict them? Never, never! The Jesuits are merely a Romish army making ready for their future temporal kingdom, with a mitred emperor—a Roman high priest at their head. That is their ideal and object, without any mystery or elevated suffering. The most prosaic thirsting for power, for the sake of the mean and earthly pleasures of life, a desire to enslave their fellow-men, something like our late system of serfs, with themselves at the head as landed proprietors—that is all that they can be accused of. They may not believe in God, that is also possible, but your suffering Inquisitor is simply—a fancy!"

"Hold, hold!" interrupted Ivan, smiling. "Do not be so excited. A fancy, you say; be it so! Of course, it is a fancy. But stop. Do you really imagine that all this Catholic movement during the last centuries is naught but a desire for power for the mere purpose of 'mean pleasures'? Is this what your Father Paissiy taught you?"

"No, no, quite the reverse, for Father Paissiy once told me something very similar to what you yourself say, though, of course, not that—something quite different," suddenly added Alexis, blushing.

"A precious piece of information, notwithstanding your 'not that.' I ask you, why should the Inquisitors and the Jesuits of your imagination live but for the attainment of 'mean material pleasures?' Why should there not be found among them one single genuine martyr suffering under a great and holy idea and loving humanity with all his heart? Now let us suppose that among all these Jesuits thirsting and hungering but after 'mean material pleasures' there may be one, just one like my old Inquisitor, who had himself fed upon roots in the wilderness, suffered the tortures of damnation while trying to conquer flesh, in order to become free and perfect, but who had never ceased to love humanity, and who one day prophetically beheld the truth; who saw as plain as he could see that the bulk of humanity could never be happy under the old system, that it was not for them that the great Idealist had come and died and dreamt of His Universal Harmony. Having realized that truth, he returned into the world and joined—intelligent and practical people. Is this so impossible?"

"Joined whom? What intelligent and practical people?" exclaimed Alyosha quite excited. "Why should they be more intelligent than other men, and what secrets and mysteries can they have? They have neither. Atheism and infidelity is all the secret they have. Your Inquisitor does not believe in God, and that is all the Mystery there is in it!"

"It may be so. You have guessed rightly there. And it is so, and that is his whole secret; but is this not the acutest sufferings for such a man as he, who killed all his young life in asceticism in the desert, and yet could not cure himself of his love towards his fellowmen? Toward the end of his life he becomes convinced that it is only by following the advice of the great and terrible spirit that the fate of these millions of weak rebels, these 'half-finished samples of humanity created in mockery' can be made tolerable. And once convinced of it, he sees as clearly that to achieve that object, one must follow blindly the guidance of the wise spirit, the fearful spirit of death and destruction, hence accept a system of lies and deception and lead humanity consciously this time toward death and destruction, and moreover, be deceiving them all the while in order to prevent them from realizing where they are being led, and so force the miserable blind men to feel happy, at least while here on earth. And note this: a wholesale deception in the name of Him, in whose ideal the old man had so passionately, so fervently, believed during nearly his whole life! Is this no suffering? And were such a solitary exception found amidst, and at the head of, that army 'that thirsts for power but for the sake of the mean pleasures of life,' think you one such man would not suffice to bring on a tragedy? Moreover, one single man like my Inquisitor as a principal leader, would prove sufficient to discover the real guiding idea of the Romish system with all its armies of Jesuits, the greatest and chiefest conviction that the solitary type described in my poem has at no time ever disappeared from among the chief leaders of that movement. Who knows but that terrible old man, loving humanity so stubbornly and in such an original way, exists even in our days in the shape of a whole host of such solitary exceptions, whose existence is not due to mere chance, but to a well-defined association born of mutual consent, to a secret league, organized several centuries back, in order to guard the Mystery from the indiscreet eyes of the miserable and weak people, and only in view of their own happiness? And so it is; it cannot be otherwise. I suspect that even Masons have some such Mystery underlying the basis of their organization, and that it is just the reason why the Roman Catholic clergy hate them so, dreading to find in them rivals, competition, the dismemberment of the unity of the idea, for the realization of which one flock and one Shepherd are needed. However, in defending my idea, I look like an author whose production is unable to stand criticism. Enough of this."

"You are, perhaps, a Mason yourself!" exclaimed Alyosha. "You do not believe in God," he added, with a note of profound sadness in his voice. But suddenly remarking that his brother was looking at him with mockery, "How do you mean then to bring your poem to a close?" he unexpectedly enquired, casting his eyes downward, "or does it break off here?"

"My intention is to end it with the following scene: Having disburdened his heart, the Inquisitor waits for some time to hear his prisoner speak in His turn. His silence weighs upon him. He has seen that his captive has been attentively listening to him all the time, with His eyes fixed penetratingly and softly on the face of his jailer, and evidently bent upon not replying to him. The old man longs to hear His voice, to hear Him reply; better words of bitterness and scorn than His silence. Suddenly He rises; slowly and silently approaching the Inquisitor, He bends towards him and softly kisses the bloodless, four-score and-ten-year-old lips. That is all the answer. The Grand Inquisitor shudders. There is a convulsive twitch at the corner of his mouth. He goes to the door, opens it, and addressing Him, 'Go,' he says, 'go, and return no more... do not come again... never, never!' and—lets Him out into the dark night. The prisoner vanishes."

"And the old man?"

"The kiss burns his heart, but the old man remains firm in his own ideas and unbelief."

"And you, together with him? You too!" despairingly exclaimed Alyosha, while Ivan burst into a still louder fit of laughter.

Form Ever Follows Function

2010-12-28T02:52:00.003Z

Louis Sullivan, Lippincott's Magazine, March 1896.

The architects of this land and generation are now brought face to face with something new under the sun namely, that evolution and integration of social conditions, that special grouping of them, that results in a demand for the erection of tall office buildings.

It is not my purpose to discuss the social conditions; I accept them as the fact, and say at once that the design of the tall office building must be recognized and confronted at the outset as a problem to be solved a vital problem, pressing for a true solution.

Let us state the conditions in the plainest manner. Briefly, they are these: offices are necessary for the transaction of business; the invention and perfection of the high speed elevators make vertical travel, that was once tedious and painful, now easy and comfortable; development of steel manufacture has shown the way to safe, rigid, economical constructions rising to a great height; continued growth of population in the great cities, consequent congestion of centers and rise in value of ground, stimulate an increase in number of stories; these successfully piled one upon another, react on ground values and so on, by action and reaction, interaction and inter reaction. Thus has come about that form of lofty construction called the "modern office building". It has come in answer to a call, for in it a new grouping of social conditions has found a habitation and a name.

Up to this point all in evidence is materialistic, an exhibition of force, of resolution, of brains in the keen sense of the word. It is the joint product of the speculator, the engineer, the builder.

Problem: How shall we impart to this sterile pile, this crude, harsh, brutal agglomeration, this stark, staring exclamation of eternal strife, the graciousness of these higher forms of sensibility and culture that rest on the lower and fiercer passions? How shall we proclaim from the dizzy height of this strange, weird, modern housetop the peaceful evangel of sentiment, of beauty, the cult of a higher life?

This is the problem; and we must seek the solution of it in a process analogous to its own evolution indeed, a continuation of it namely, by proceeding step by step from general to special aspects, from coarser to finer considerations.

It is my belief that it is of the very essence of every problem that is contains and suggests its own solution. This I believe to be natural law. Let us examine, then, carefully the elements, let us search out this contained suggestion, this essence of the problem.

The practical conditions are, broadly speaking, these:

Wanted 1st, a story below ground, containing boiler, engines of various sorts, etc. in short, the plant for power, heating, lighting, etc. 2nd, a ground floor, so called, devoted to stores, banks, or other establishments requiring large area, ample spacing, ample light, and great freedom of access, 3rd, a second story readily accessible by stairways this space usually in large subdivisions, with corresponding liberality in structural spacing and expanse of glass and breadth of external openings, 4th, above this an indefinite number of stories of offices piled tier upon tier, one tier just like another tier, one office just like all the other offices an office being similar to a cell in honey comb, merely a compartment, nothing more, 5th, and last, at the top of this pile is placed a space or story that, as related to the life and usefulness of the structure, is purely physiological in its nature namely, the attic. In this the circulatory system completes itself and makes it grand turn, ascending and descending. The space is filled with tanks, pipes, valves, sheaves, and mechanical etcetera that supplement and complement the force originating plant hidden below ground in the cellar. Finally, or at the beginning rather, there must be on the ground floor a main aperture or entrance common to all the occupants or patrons of the building.

This tabulation is, in the main, characteristic of every tall office building in the country. As to the necessary arrangements for light courts, these are not germane to the problem, and as will become soon evident, I trust need not be considered here. These things, and such others as the arrangement of elevators, for example, have to do strictly with the economics of the building, and I assume them to have been fully considered and disposed of to the satisfaction of purely utilitarian and pecuniary demands. Only in rare instances does the plan or floor arrangement of the tall office building take on an aesthetic value, and thus usually when the lighting court is external or becomes an internal feature of great importance.

As I am here seeking not for an individual or special solution, but for a true normal type, the attention must be confined to those conditions that, in the main, are constant in all tall office buildings, and every mere incidental and accidental variation eliminated from the consideration, as harmful to the clearness of the main inquiry.

The practical horizontal and vertical division or office unit is naturally based on a room of comfortable area and height, and the size of this standard office room as naturally predetermines the standard structural unit, and, approximately, the size of window openings. In turn, these purely arbitrary units of structure form in an equally natural way the true basis of the artistic development of the exterior. Of course the structural spacings and openings in the first or mercantile story are required to be the largest of all; those in the second or quasi mercantile story are of a some what similar nature. The spacings and openings in the attic are of no importance whatsoever the windows have no actual value, for light may be taken from the top, and no recognition of a cellular division is necessary in the structural spacing.

Hence it follow inevitably, and in the simplest possible way, that if we follow our natural instincts without thought of books, rules, precedents, or any such educational impediments to a spontaneous and "sensible" result, we will in the following manner design the exterior of our tall office building to wit:

Beginning with the first story, we give this a min entrance that attracts the eye to it location, and the remainder of the story we treat in a more or less liberal, expansive, sumptuous way a way based exactly on the practical necessities, but expressed with a sentiment of largeness and freedom. The second story we treat in a similar way, but usually with milder pretension. Above this, throughout the indefinite number of typical office tiers, we take our cue from the individual cell, which requires a window with its separating pier, its still and lintel, and we, without more ado, make them look all alike because they are all alike. This brings us to the attic, which having no division into office cells, and no special requirement for lighting, gives us the power to show by means of its broad expanse of wall, and its dominating weight and character, that which is the fact namely, that the series of office tiers has come definitely to an end.

This may perhaps seem a bald result and a heartless, pessimistic way of stating it, but even so we certainly have advanced a most characteristic stage beyond the imagined sinister building of the speculator engineer builder combination. For the hand of the architect is now definitely felt in the decisive position at once taken, and the suggestion of a thoroughly sound, logical, coherent expression of the conditions is becoming apparent.

When I say the hand of the architect, I do not mean necessarily the accomplished and trained architect. I mean only a man with a strong, natural liking for buildings, and a disposition to shape them in what seems to his unaffected nature a direct and simple way. He will probably tread an innocent path from his problem to its solution, and therein he will show an enviable gift of logic. If we have some gift for form in detail, some feeling for form purely and simply as form, some love for that, his result in addition to it simple straightforward naturalness and completeness in general statement, will have something of the charm of sentiment.

However, thus far the results are only partial and tentative at best relatively true, they are but superficial. We are doubtless right in our instinct but we must seek a fuller justification, a finer sanction, for it.

I assume now that in the study of our problem we have passed through the various stages of inquiry, as follows: 1st, the social basis of the demand for tall buildings; 2nd, its literal material satisfaction; 3rd, the elevation of the question from considerations of literal planning, construction, and equipment, to the plane of elementary architecture as a direct outgrowth of sound, sensible building; 4th, the question again elevated from an elementary architecture to the beginnings of true architectural expression, through the addition of a certain quality and quantity of sentiment.

But our building may have all these in a considerable degree and yet be far from that adequate solution of the problem I am attempting to define. We must now heed quality and quantity of sentiment.

It demands of us, what is the chief characteristic of the tall office building? And at once we answer, it is lofty. This loftiness is to the artist nature its thrilling aspect. It is the very open organ tone in its appeal. It must be in turn the dominant chard in his expression of it, the true excitant of his imagination. It must be tall, every inch of it tall. The force and power of altitude must be in it, the glory and pride of exaltation must be in it. It must be every inch a proud and soaring thing, rising in sheer exultation that from bottom to top it is a unit without a single dissenting line that it is the new, the unexpected, the eloquent peroration of most bald, most sinister, most forbidding conditions.

The man who designs in the spirit and with the sense of responsibility to the generation he lives in must be no coward, no denier, no bookworm, no dilettante. He must live of his life and for his life in the fullest, most consummate sense. He must realize at once and with the grasp of inspiration that the problem of the tall office building is one of the most stupendous, one of the most magnificent opportunities that the Lord of Nature in His beneficence has ever offered to the proud spirit of man.

That this has not been perceived indeed, has been flatly denied is an exhibition of human perversity that must give us pause.

One more consideration. Let us now lift this question into the region of calm, philosophic observation. Let us seek a comprehensive, a final solution: let the problem indeed dissolve.

Certain critics, and very thoughtful ones, have advanced the theory that the true prototype of the tall office building is the classical column, consisting of base, shaft and capital the molded base of the column typical of the lower stories of our building, the plain or fluted shaft suggesting the monotonous, uninterrupted series of office tiers, and the capital the completing power and luxuriance of the attic.

Other theorizers, assuming a mystical symbolism as a guide, quite the many trinities in nature and art, and the beauty and conclusiveness of such trinity in unity. They aver the beauty of prime numbers, the mysticism of the number three, the beauty of all things that are in three parts to wit, the day, subdividing into morning, noon, and night; the limbs, the thorax, and the head, constituting the body. So they say, should the building be in three parts vertically, substantially as before, but for different motives.

Others, of purely intellectual temperament, hold that such a design should be in the nature of a logical statement; it should have a beginning, a middle, and an ending, each clearly defined therefore again a building, as above, in three parts vertically.

Others, seeking their examples and justification in the vegetable kingdom, urge that such a design shall above all things be organic. They quote the suitable flower with its bunch of leaves at the earth, its long graceful stem, carrying the gorgeous single flower. They point to the pine tree, its massy roots, its lith, uninterrupted trunk, its tuft of green high in the air. Thus, they say, should be the design of the tall office building; again in three parts vertically. Others still, more susceptible to the power of a unit than to the grace of a trinity, say that such a design should be struck out at a blow, as though by a blacksmith or mighty Jove, or should by thought born, as was Minerva, full grown. They accept the notion of a triple division as permissible and welcome, but non essential. With them it is a subdivision of their unit: The unit does not come from the alliance of the three; they accept it without murmur, provided the subdivision does not disturb the sense of singleness and repose.

All of these critics and theorists agree, however, positively, unequivocally, in this, that the tall office building should not, must not, be made a held for the display of architectural knowledge in the encyclopedic sense; that too much learning in this instance is fully as dangerous, as obnoxious, as too little learning; that miscellany is abhorrent to their sense; that the sixteen story building must not consist of sixteen separate, distinct and unrelated buildings piled one upon the other until the top of the pile is reached.

To this latter folly I would not refer were it not the fact that nine out of every ten tall office buildings are designed in precisely this way in effect, not by the ignorant, but by the educated. It would seen indeed, as though the "trained" architect, when facing this problem, were beset at every story, or at most, every third or fourth story, by the hysterical dread lest he be in "bad form"; lest he be not bedecking his building in some other land and some other time; lest he be not copious enough in the display of his wares; lest he betray, in short, a lack of resource. To loosen up the touch of this cramped and fidgety hand, to allow the nerves to calm, the brain to cool, to reflect equably, to reason naturally, seems beyond him; he lives, as it were, in a waking nightmare filled with the disjecta membra of architecture. The spectacle is not inspiriting.

As to the former and serious views held by discerning and thoughtful critics, I shall, with however much of regret, dissent from them for the purpose of this demonstration, for I regard them as secondary only, non essential, and as touching not at all upon the vital spot, upon the quick of the entire matter, upon the true, the immovable philosophy of the architectural art.

This view let me now state, for it brings to the solution of the problem a final, comprehensive formula.

All things in nature have a shape, that is to say, a form, an outward semblance, that tells us what they are, that distinguishes them from ourselves and from each other. Unfailing in nature these shapes express the inner life, the native quality of the animal, tree, bird, fish, that they present to us; they are so characteristic, so recognizable, that we say, simply, it is "natural" it should be so. Yet the moment we peer beneath this surface of things, the moment we look through the tranquil reflection of ourselves and the clouds above us, down into the clear, fluent, unfathomable depth of nature, how startling is the silence of it, how amazing the flow of life, how absorbing the mystery. Unceasingly the essence of things is taking shape in the matter of things, and this unspeakable process we call birth and growth. Awhile the spirit and the matter fade away together, and it is this that we call decadence, death. These two happenings seem jointed and interdependent, blended into one like a bubble and its iridescence, and they seem borne along upon a slowly moving air. This air is wonderful post all understanding.

Yet to the steadfast eye of one standing upon the shore of things, looking chiefly and most lovingly upon that side on which the sun shines and that we feel joyously to be life, the heart is ever gladdened by the beauty, the exquisite spontaneity, with which life seeks and takes on its forms in an accord perfectly responsive to its needs. It seems ever as though the life and the form were absolutely one and inseparable so adequate is the sense of fulfillment.

Whether it be the sweeping eagle in his flight or the open apple blossom the toiling work horse, the blithe swan, the branching oak, the winding stream at its base, the drifting clouds, over all the coursing sun, form ever follows function, and this is the law. Where function does not change form does not change. The granite rocks, the ever brooding hills, remain for ages; the lightning lives, comes into shape, and dies in a twinkling.

It is the pervading law of all things organic and inorganic, of all things physical and metaphysical, of all things human and all things superhuman, of all true manifestations of the head, of the heart, of the soul, that the life is recognizable in its expression, that form ever follows function. This is the law.

Shall we, then, daily violate this law in our art? Are we so decadent, so imbecile, so utterly weak of eyesight, that we cannot perceive this truth so simple, so very simple? Is it indeed a truth so transparent that we see through it but do not see it? Is it really then, a very marvelous thing, or is it rather so commonplace, so everyday, so near a thing to us, that we cannot perceive that the shape, form, outward expression, design or whatever we may choose, of the tall office building should in the very nature of things follow the functions of the building, and that where the function does not change, the form is not to change?

Does this not readily, clearly, and conclusively show that the lower one or two stories will take on a special character suited to the special needs, that the tiers of typical offices, having the same unchanging function, shall continue in the same unchanging form, and that as to the attic, specific and conclusive as it is in its very nature, its function shall equally be so in force, in significance, in continuity, in conclusiveness of outward expression? From this results, naturally, spontaneously, unwittingly, a three part division, not form any theory, symbol, or fancied logic.

And thus the design of the tall office building takes its place with all other architectural types made when architecture, as has happened once in many years, was a living art. Witness the Greek temple, the Gothic cathedral, the medieval fortress.

And thus, when native instinct and sensibility shall govern the exercise of our beloved art; when the known law, the respected law, shall be that form ever follows function; when our architects shall cease struggling and prattling handcuffed and vainglorious in the asylum of a foreign school; when it is truly felt, cheerfully accepted, that this law opens up the airy sunshine of green fields, and gives to us a freedom that the very beauty and sumptuousness of the outworking of the law itself as exhibited in nature will deter any sane, any sensitive man from changing into license, when it becomes evident that we are merely speaking a foreign language with a noticeable American accent, whereas each and every architect in the land might, under the benign influence of this law, express in the simples, most modes, most natural way that which it is in him to say; that he might really and would surely develop his own characteristic individuality, and that the architectural art with him would certainly become a living form of speech, a natural form of utterance, giving surcease to him and adding treasures small and great to the growing art of his land; when we know and feel that Nature is our friend, not our implacable enemy that an afternoon in the country, an hour by the sea, a full open view of one single day, through dawn, high noon, and twilight, will suggest to us so much that is rhythmical, deep, and eternal in the vast art of architecture, something so deep, so true, that all the narrow formalities, hand and fast rules, and strangling bonds of the schools cannot stifle it in us then it may be proclaimed that we are on the high road to a natural and satisfying art, an architecture that will live because it will be of the people, for the people, and by the people.

Your New Normal.

2010-06-17T09:08:00.001+01:00

A year ago today, I arrived back in India. Actually, today is already tomorrow in India, which means I'm one day off. When everyone else marks May 28 as the one year anniversary, I mark May 29, all by myself. And that pretty much sums up the entire year--one day off, all by myself.

When I looked at the calendar this morning, I realized 1) I wasn't sure what day of the week I arrived back in India; 2) I couldn't remember arriving back in India; 3) there were no witnesses to my arrival back in India. This is how memory works. You start out with a jagged memory, and it gets worn smooth, bit by bit. Every time you go back to visit it, it gets a little bit smoother from the contact. Turns out, refusing to visit a memory also smooths it into the same sort of river rock. Who knew repression and neglect could have the same effect as multiple return visits?

I have a lot of memory flashes from the two weeks in the U.S. (midnight trips to Walmart and McDonald's so I didn't have to go back to the hotel room, going for a run down to the stockyards, going out for Mexican with one aunt, out to the Breadline with another, the stupidest decision in the world to go see Up!, the trip to Republic to go fossil hunting). My return to India? This morning I was drawing a complete blank. Several hours of hard thought later, it's starting to come back to me.

I vaguely remember driving to Spokane to get on the airplane (that is, I remember an early morning drive by myself over Leahy Junction, but since I've done that more than once, I could be remembering some other trip). I vaguely remember the taxi from the airport (if that's the trip we had a flat tire before turning onto Africa Avenue. Again, it could have been some other midnight run in an airport taxi, god knows I've done a million of them in the last five years). I vaguely remember depositing my luggage at the bottom of Claire's staircase and searching for the doorbell (that must be the right memory, because that was my first solo arrival, and if it had been my second, I would have known where the switch was. Instead, I used my mobile to announce my arrival). I definitely remember Claire putting me on the train to Bikaner the next day, but what happened between the midnight of my arrival, and the four o'clock (in theory) of my departure for the desert? I have no idea.

I've been given a lot of estimates as to how long it would take me to reconnect with the world. Of course, none of those estimates included the extra months needed if you add several months of isolation in India to the equation. Without India, I've been told by several people that it takes three years to get over it. I've been told quite specifically by another person that it takes 13 months to stop being a complete freak show, and another two years after that to learn how to live in the world. I've been told by a professional that, "in the field," a year minimum is needed for recovery. Of course, if it takes another several months on top of that to recover from a regular year abroad in India, and then another six months on top of that to recover from a challenging year abroad in India, you can see how it would take a lot longer than three years before a person could even start thinking about living in the world again.

It would be nice if I had learned something useful from the experience, other than the fact that I should never be trusted to make major decisions because I will fuck them up. Well, I did learn a few things. For instance, I learned not to trust my friends. The one friend I thought would completely be there for me was instead completely absent. One e-mail and then nothing. Nothing for months, until I reconnected with the intention of blasting her head off. I haven't gotten around to doing that, though, because I've discovered I just don't care about her enough anymore. Funny how that works. On the other hand, Claire has probably earned a permanent pedestal in the pantheon of friendship, not the least because she's still around and still talking to me, even though we both left India at the end of 2009. Friends from childhood turned out to be pretty useful, it's good to have people who knew you from way before to talk you off a ledge. But overall, I've mostly learned that the friends you thought you had will all disappear when you need them the most. I can count on one hand (two or three fingers, in fact) the number of friends who made even a minimal effort to help me. So, lesson learned.

What else did I learn? I learned that it's impossible to enforce boundaries in the time of the internet or facebook. As it turns out, the way I grieve is not compatible with the 21st century. The internet put my method of grieving in direct conflict with the methods used by other people (relatives). Consequently, the internet feels like a hostile place, and I've grown to absolutely loathe facebook, even though I haven't deleted my account yet (mostly because it's how I found those important childhood friends last summer when I needed them, and I'm not ready to give them up). Also, my method of grieving doesn't fit very well with any of the multiple models embraced by modern psychotherapy, and that's left me in a tricky spot.

I also learned that everything I just typed is hardly unique to me. You wouldn't know it, but everyone goes through the same crap I've been going through (minus the additional trauma added by my sojourn in the deserts of Rajasthan). The thing is? No one talks about it. I don't know why, except that it does no good to talk to people who haven't experienced it, because they don't understand (and, if they haven't lived in India, they don't understand that part, either, so what's the point of trying to communicate?). I think there are many different ways of becoming an adult in the world: graduating from college, getting married, having a kid...all different routes into adulthood, some throw you into the deep end of the grown up pool more quickly than others. But if you can get someone to talk about this experience with you, I think you'll find there is a common agreement--this is the quickest way to the deepest part of the shark-infested pool of adulthood. Yeah, you can get there from other diving boards, but when you jump off this one? You've got a concrete block chained to your ankle. It's not the ritual of transition you want to define your existence, that's for sure.

So, a year ago today/tomorrow, I was supposed to be returning to normal, just another day in New Delhi. Sadly, it turns out that normal no longer exists. Even when you think you've found it, you accidentally look through your e-mail archive and see something you wish you'd deleted, and realize, fuck, this isn't it, this can't be normal. Please, don't let this be the new normal. Bad news for you, though. That feeling you had when you saw that "from:" tag on the e-mail? That's your normal from now on. Get used to it.

It's Gotta be the Protein.

2009-05-22T13:25:00.000+01:00

I just spent an hour lying on my bed, mentally making and re-making the perfect turkey sandwich. A rather odd pastime for a vegetarian, don’t you think? Cold turkey, a little mayo, cranberry sauce, leafy greens, a hearty white bread, this is what I want to eat 4 times a day every day for the rest of my life. Well, occasionally my sandwich fantasy is interrupted by dreams of a bacon and cheese sandwich on a fresh bap, but I’m guessing a lifetime of turkey is a lot healthier than a lifetime of bacon.

I think this unusual yearning for white meat is a result of being sick earlier this week. Did you know that your digestive system actually needs a surplus of water in order to work? Unfortunately, any surplus H2O in my body this week went straight into my pillow and mattress during the night. I was sweating so much at night that I could easily wring moisture out of my bedclothes every morning, making a little pool of wasted sweat on the floor. My room has been—I think quite literally—baking me to death. It is on the top floor of the hotel, and is detached on three sides, so it gets full sun on at least one wall all day long. Plus, the water tanks are on my roof. They gather heat all day long, and release it into my room all night long. The AC unit in my room stopped working a couple weeks ago, and even though I mentioned it to the Hosts, they didn’t seem to really understand what I was saying.

I’ll spare the blogosphere the details, but on Wednesday afternoon, I was suddenly and dramatically ill. For about two hours, I was quite seriously sure that I was going into full renal failure. When I finally dragged myself downstairs to the dining room, I must have looked pretty damn bad, because Mr. Host instantly went to work on my AC unit, and Mrs. Host started pouring glasses of watermelon juice with black salt for me. I managed to add some daal and rice to my stomach, but mostly I just used what little energy I had left to become a two-fisted drinker: water in my left hand, salted melon juice in my right hand.

After dinner, instead of walking across the street to see the doctor, I went back to my room to rest. The floor of my room was so hot, I couldn’t take off my sandals for fear of burning my feet, and the AC unit (actually, the voltage stabilizer, not the unit itself) still wasn’t working. I decided to sit out on the balcony—it was so lovely outside, with a nice breeze. Well, as it turns out, the surprise was that it was still 113F outside. My room was so hot that it made a hot summer evening feel like cool spring. I think even Mr. Host, who was trying to get the AC to work, was shocked by the heat in my room. I had mentioned it a few times, but I think it just sounded like White Person Whining, not a potentially dangerous situation.

Mr. Host couldn’t fix the AC, so he unlocked the room next to mine for me to sit in, with AC going full blast. I was going to sleep there if my AC didn’t get fixed, but just as I was getting ready to go to bed, an AC technician showed up, played a bit with the voltage regulator, and voila! suddenly the AC unit came to life. And I’ve spent the last three days moving slowly, trying to recover, drinking water non-stop, and wishing my body would return to its normal state of being. It’s a struggle, because we are still dealing with three-hour scheduled power outages every day, so even if I stay only five hours at the archives, that is three hours in a small, hot room with no air circulation, in the heat of the day. I can’t drink enough to keep up with the sweat, really.

You have to wonder: is grad school supposed to kill you? I mean literally, and not figuratively, speaking? I feel like I’ve engaged in so much risky behavior over the past four years, in India and the U.S.: falling asleep behind the wheel while commuting, going to conferences with whooping cough, eating tainted food, drinking bad water, riding motorcycles without helmets, playing games with heatstroke, talking to strangers, riding with drunk autorickshawallahs, traveling with people I don’t really know, etc. I know getting a Ph.D. is supposed to be hard, it requires a lot of sacrifice, a lot of suffering and a huge amount of work and worry, but really, should I be dead by the end of it? Because that’s kind of the message I’m getting these days.

Not dead (yet).

2009-05-19T11:08:00.003+01:00

It's hard to write in a blog when you have no electricity I think we still have electricity for more hours of the day than we don't have it, but it's getting pretty close to an even split. Up until this week, the power outages were numerous, but random. If there was a storm, the power went out for a couple of hours. If there wasn't a storm, the power went out for a couple of hours. Sometimes the power goes out for fifteen minutes, comes back on for two, then goes out for a couple of hours. Yesterday afternoon, the power went on and off and on and off and on and off and on and off and on so on. Annoying, but fine, okay, I live in a desert city with poor infrastructure, okay.

This week, we have mandatory, scheduled power outages, three hours every day. Yesterday, it was no power between 12-1:30 and 4-5:30. Today it was no power from 9:30-11:00 and 4-5:30. This regularly scheduled power outage doesn't stablize the grid. We enjoy this darkness, plus the fun described in my first paragraph. The problem these days is that Rajasthan isn't producing enough energy, so they have to siphon off electricity from Bikaner for three hours to send to nearby villages to give them three hours of power. That's all those villages will get for the day. All the cities in Rajasthan are having power siphoned. I think Jaipur might have 6 hour power cuts right now. In Ajmer, it is really bad because not only are they having 6 hour power cuts, there is a water shortage. Not just a shortage, but no water, period. So, it could be worse, I could be stuck in Ajmer.

I think my hosts are afraid I am about to fade out and die. They keep bringing me watermelon and ice cream for lunch. I'll take it!

Right now, I am 15 minutes from the next power cut, so I am stripping down to "take my rest." I don't sleep at all at night, it is simply too hot (yesterday it was cooler, only 115), so that fake nap in the afternoon helps keep me alive. I am drinking way too much bottled water. Sorry, environment, I'm not trying to kill you, it's just that I'm really, really thirsty all the time, and I need clean water. I will stop drinking bottled water when I get back to the U.S. I promise.

2009-05-12T14:07:00.005+01:00

My fingertips and the outside edge of my right thumb have been really painful lately, like the nerve-endings are exposed. It took me a few days to figure out why, but I finally realized they were sore because they are burned. My laptop keyboard and touchpad get so hot they are starting to damage my fingers. My laptop has two internal fans, and it is sitting on top of a heat sink with three fans, but the heat still doesn't dissipate. It's just too hot in my room. Consequently, about fifteen minutes after I turn on my laptop, the heat starts leaking out through the keyboard. Not fun, not fun at all.

I think the Hosts worry about me being out here all by myself, because they invited me on two family outings last weekend. On Saturday night, we went to Laxmi Niwas Palace for dinner. You gotta love a dinner with a common denominator of butter: butter chicken, butter paneer, butter naan, butter roti, and a local vegetable. After dinner, we went to the only ice cream parlor in town and had butterscotch ice cream. Aside from the threat of heart disease, it was a wonderful night to be out. We ate outside on the lawn under the full moon. One of the nephews went with us, and he kept us entertained by disobeying every order given to him by Mr. Host.

On Sunday, I dragged myself out of bed at an ungodly hour (okay, 8 a.m.) and joined the family for a trip to a holy lake, Lake Kolayat (my photos). This is a pretty important pilgrimage lake, on par with Pushkar, only not so horrible to visit. It was hot, but really pretty. And all that water! I guess I have never seen lotus before, or I would have known before now how big they grow, right?

On the way back, we stopped at Gajner Palace, just to look around at the luxury. The Hosts are pretty concerned that I see everything there is to see, and this was worth a look. There is probably a lot I could write about these late 19th-early 20th century palaces, but you know what? My fingers are starting to burn. I'll continue this later.

Make Mine a Double.

2009-05-09T06:10:00.002+01:00

Was I drunk when I wrote that last post, or what? Typos, weird grammar, repeated phrasing, irregular paragraph breaks...geez. I fixed the misspellings, but I think I'll leave the rest to remind myself of what it feels like at the end of a day at the beginning of summer in Bikaner.

The Desert is Dusty.

2009-05-08T18:11:00.002+01:00

It may be my imagination, but it seems to me that we're getting an awful lot of air traffic over Bikaner these past few days. Who is bombing who in my part of the world?

Aside from runs in the evening, I spend most of my time inside. It hasn't been as hot--it was only 109F today--but it can still be painful to be out in all the radiation. I don't mind burning skin, but even with sunglasses, my eyes can only take so much of the glare.

I'm only putting in five hours a day at the archive, for two reasons. First, that about takes me through the maximum amount of material they will let me look at in day. Second, it is physically uncomfortable to stay longer than a few hours. The room is okay as long as there is electricity to run the ceiling fan. They even brought in a window AC-unit, not that it does much good when there is no insulation, the windows don't shut tightly, and the door is left hanging open. Then, too, my back starts to hurt after about three hours, and I just have to grit it out for the last two hours of every day. The worse problem, though, the thing that really gets to me, is that there is no women's bathroom at the archives. There are two men's rooms, and a row of urinals out behind the building, but for women? Nothing. Today, I actually used the men's bathroom, but I got caught, so I guess I won't do that again.

Anyway, five hours max. I'm getting my work done, but I am mostly doing it in a heat-and-hunger-induced stupor.

Another thing that has been keeping me inside my room is the dust storms. Friday to Monday = four days of wind and dirt and heat, so pretty much stayed low the entire weekend. Well, on Saturday, before the late-afternoon winds arrived, Mr. Host took me to KEM Road to get a new pair of glasses. And on Sunday, we went to Deshnok to the Karni Mata Temple (AKA "the Rat Temple" photos here). Otherwise, I spend a lot of time practicing taps, cuts and rolls on the tin whistle, and obsessively messing up my Rubiks cube. It turns out that no matter how long I spend messing it up, it still takes the same 1 minute to solve the damn thing. That's not much of a distraction.

Much tired.

2009-04-28T10:30:00.002+01:00

Well, this started off as a pretty lame day, but in the past hour or two I think maybe I managed to turn it around to at least only a *kind of* lame day.

I couldn't sleep last night because my brain was trying to pointlessly solve a couple of problems with my dissertation. One part of my brain was trying to figure out how to work around a problem with the first chapter of my dissertation, and another part was trying to figure out if I really needed to do research in Jaipur, and if so, when? A third part of my brain was yelling, WTF! GO TO SLEEP! I don't lose sleep often to thoughts about my research, so I guess I should be glad it was only one night.

Anyway, I woke up this morning tired and cranky, and that wasn't helped too much by having to eat another parantha for breakfast. I miss the days when they were being slightly lazy by giving me toast and jam for breakfast. Ate breakfast, tidied my room, discovered my autorickshawallah was not waiting for me as he should have been. Ordinarily, Mr. Host would just take me to work in this type of situation, but he's in Delhi, so I had to walk out to the main road to catch a lift. Not a horrible hardship, but it is 107 out right now (on its way to 113), and walking outside is not SO much fun.

And you know what? I only lasted two hours at the archives. I really needed a bathroom, and there is no working bathroom for women there. I wasn't having much fun, anyway, so I came home after two hours only just so I could use my bathroom.

Pretty lame, right?

I came home, sat down in front of my computer, and thought: "Susan, you are so lame. You are in Bikaner to do research, not play computer games. Quit being so lame." So, I took a deep breath, brought up the web page with the phone number for the City Palace in Jaipur, and proceeded to try and call the director of the archives there. I don't know if you've ever tried to make a phone call in Hindi, but it can be pretty stressful. The first man I talked to was really nice and helpful, and gave me a second phone number. At that point, things went down hill, because the guy who answered the second phone call started laughing hysterically at my Hindi and passed the phone around to all his friends so they, too, could have a good laugh. Eventually, I got angry (long distance, yaar!), and they finally put me through to the director of the archives. Who was really nice, by the way.

To get permission to do research in Jaipur, I have to write a letter to the director explaining my research agenda, and then he will forward it to the princess, who will either approve it or not. If she does approve it, I guess then I write to SSRC and ask if I can go to Jaipur for a couple of weeks instead of spending my last three months here in Bhopal.

Speaking of SSRC, I spent some time working on the rough draft of my second field report after I calmed down from the phone call. It's not due until 15 May, so I think between that and the phone call (and two hours at the archives), I can say that I have been at least a little productive today. At least productive enough to upgrade my day to only *kind of* lame, don't you think?

Even When I'm Sad.

2009-04-27T08:50:00.001+01:00

Bea Arthur can make me laugh.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHd3MrMbnzY

Okay, not all people.

2009-04-24T15:51:00.006+01:00

You might remember my first trip to India, and how miserable I was living with a host family in Jaipur. Or, you might not, because I didn't blog about it. Let's just say that at 39 years old, I was too old to have a host mother, especially a mother who didn't understand the concept of "allergic to milk."* I mention this now, because my experience living with, or at least near, families this time around has been much better. I really liked the place I was living in Delhi. My room was located in the front of the house, off the sitting room, I had a lot of privacy, and although I'm sure they would have fed me more, I only ate breakfast at home. I enjoyed my freedom, but I also liked it that there were other people in the house. The boys in the house were hilarious, and Mr. and Mrs. Host took very good care of me.

I like this place in Bikaner even better. I am living in a family hotel, so not with the family, but I eat my two meals a day in the main house, and I see and talk with the family members quite a bit. I have a lot of privacy and solitude, but I can also go down to the sitting room whenever I am bored and watch TV (but I have a TV in my room).

Nice things my host family has done for me:

Mr. Host was driving me to work every day, but then he arranged for a local autorickshawallah to take me there and pick me up in the afternoon. This is nice, because I don't have to walk out to the main road and try to flag down a ride in the afternoon.

I asked Mrs. Host if the local store would have soap (both Dettol and Pears), and she instantly called Mr. Host on the cell phone and told him to go to the store and get me soap. When he brought me the soap, he said I couldn't give him money for it, because family doesn't charge family for soap.

Mr. Host has been bringing me boxes of bottled water. Usually, I try to avoid bottled water because the empty bottles are bad for the environment, but I run out of clean water pretty quickly if I rely on the Aero water from the house. I am paying for the boxes of water, but only the marked price, not the "guest price" of 20 Rs. a bottle (which is how it is marked in my monthly budget).

Mrs. Host thinks that I shouldn't do my sightseeing in an autorickshaw, so she has volunteered Mr. Host as a chauffeur. He has taken me to the fort, already, and maybe this weekend we will go to the palace.

Mr. Host sent me a plate of grapes last night, and when dinner was slightly delayed today, he sent me a box of Tropicana orange juice.

Generally speaking, they are just very nice people. I'm trying to focus on this, because it is easy to get so irritated with all the unwanted attention on the streets and work myself into such a fury that I use twitter to declare that I hate all people except Roger Ebert. I often end up in my room at the end of the day just staring at the mattress (because I am flat on my face), praying no one else talks to me for the rest of the week. But, really, Mr. and Mrs. Host are being really nice to me, and it is good to know that I have friendly, helpful people just down the hall from me.

*In order to avoid this during my second trip to India, I stayed in a hotel, but not a family hotel. I really liked that experience, too, as my room became the "happening pad" where we all hung out, but I kind of like having a family nearby, too.

Feed Me, Seymour

2009-04-20T12:18:00.003+01:00

At the risk of demonstrating that I am complete and total loser, I think I'll share the list I wrote up today at the archives. There's no AC at the archives, and we sometimes don't have electricity. In the mornings, there are frequently-scheduled power cuts from 9:00 to 12:00. In the afternoons, the power often cuts out for 5-15 minutes, just because. This afternoon, about 30 minutes before my day was scheduled to end, the power cut out. I was already hot, tired, and thirsty, and the loss of electricity just emphasized all those things. Instead of bursting into tears, I started to write a few encouraging words to myself in my notebook: "I can do this!" However, somewhere in between the first and second words, my brain switched off, and I ended up writing "I will do this:" instead. And my brain continued to shut down while my hand kept writing, and by the time the power came on 15 minutes later, I had entire list of things I will do, none of which had anything to do with my research or dissertation.

I'm going to share the list, not because I'm proud of it, but because I'm amazed by how quickly I went from "chin up" to "I'm hungry." Without any changes, here's what I wrote.

I will do this:

visit Washington
eat Nachos
go to Nashville
watch Food Network
pet the kitties
drink lots and lots of really cold water
sleep in my own bed
enjoy doing nothing but looking out at the landscape
have a bowl of popcorn with butter
make one batch of cookies
eat a big salad at Panera
eat another big salad at Outback
have an egg salad sandwich
try Alton Brown's recipe for deviled eggs
ask Catherine to make me some potato salad
ask my mom to make a phyllo tomato tart
watch random sporting events on television
grill salmon and vegetables
shoot baskets every day!
ride Catherine's bike
order a BBQ pizza with onions, thin crust, well done
go to Valpo for Thanksgiving
make grilled pineapple salsa and eat Nachos again
go on a hike

And then the lights came on, and I pretended to work while I studied my list in horror. Those are all things that I *will* do at some point, but nothing on that list is something I will do between now and mid-September (except possibly drink lots and lots of cold water). When I stop controlling my mind, it stops living in the moment and fast forwards to a point where this is all over. I'm not actively unhappy, and I'm learning stuff and doing things, but I think other people enjoy India a lot more than I do. Plus, I'm really, really hungry, all the time, so if you love me, send food.

Grad School Killed the Internets.

2009-04-18T08:12:00.006+01:00

You know, I used to have a lot of internet friends. And by "a lot," I mean, "A LOT." In the early 1990s, my online friends outnumbered my friends from school and work by about 50 to 1. Maybe something closer to 75 to 1. Even after I stormed off Usenet, and IRC turned into an ugly monster, I had friends from a bunch of online interest groups: stamp collecting, model rocket building, drumming, sports. My e-mail address book is full of names of people with whom I used to correspond on a daily basis. Well past the year 2000, I could have written up a long list of friends that I'd met on the internet, some of which I'd since met in person, but most of which were strictly online friendships.

I bring this up because facebook recently drew my attention to the fact that I no longer have internet friends. My friends list consists almost entirely of people I met in person before establishing internet contact. Since leaving the U.S. my facebook friends list has finally become long enough that I had to create categories for my friends so I could keep up with them with as little cognitive dissonance as possible: "relatives," "Tonasket," "Seattle," "Western," "Oregon," "Bloomington," "Illinois," "Poulsbo," "Los Angeles," "India," and finally, "Internet." I can now see updates from all my friends in Bloomington at one time. (Mostly, this means I read about the weather in Bloomington from five different people, all simultaneously telling facebook that it is windy outside.)

Anyway, my point is, out of 100 friends, only 4 fall into the category"Internet," and only two of the four really belong in that category. I've had enough face time with the other two that I don't really consider "Internet" to be the right category for them, but I can't figure out where to move them. They don't fit into the geography onto which I've mapped the history of my social life.

How did this happen? I think some people would think this is a good thing, having more "real" friends and fewer "internet" friends, but I think it's not so great. I used to talk to people from all over the place, and now it seems I talk to people who are standing only in the same place I am at the moment. I think grad school had a lot to do with my internet fall off. I don't like to talk about my work, so I didn't, and that probably slowed some friendships down. I didn't have internet access in my first apartment in Illinois, and that probably had something to do with it. Using all my free time to commute during the school year, then going to India where internet access is unreliable at best, well, that probably had something to do with it. And then the big reason: I gave up all my hobbies when I went back to grad school, so reading about tin whistles or woodworking online is just a form of torture, since I never have the time to do it.*

It's really a shame. I used to talk to the most interesting people. I mean, not that the other 96 peope on my friends list aren't interesting, they definitely are. I just miss having the opportunity to cultivate online friendships. But maybe people don't do that anymore? After all, it's not 1991 anymore.

*If you want time to work on your hobbies, and they are portable, I recommend moving to Bikaner. When it is 105 degrees out, you can stay in your room and practice to your heart's content.

Three Days Only.

2009-04-15T17:02:00.003+01:00

The last three nights have been spent over in Sadul Colony, attending the wedding of a complete stranger. Well, now that I've spent three nights with the family, I can't say that we are strangers, but still, this is not something that you would see happen in the U.S. "Hi, complete stranger, please come to three days of my son's wedding, including the family prayers. Oh, and have some whiskey."

When I was starting to make my research plans, one of my committee members gave me the e-mail address of a senior scholar at another university and told me to e-mail her and ask her for research advice for my stay in Bhopal. I did that, but said senior scholar replied that she had no helpful advice, but that I should e-mail another scholar in the U.K. and ask for her advice. So, I did that, and we made tentative plans to meet while I was in London, but that didn't happen. A month or so ago, I sent a follow-up e-mail asking if she could share her advice through e-mail. She didn't send me any advice, but she did do something better: she sent me the e-mail of an archivist in Bhopal and suggested I ask him for advice (are you following this? That's at least three e-mail addresses).

This wonderful archivist replied with many useful suggestions, but more than that, he responded with an invitation to his son's wedding, which was coincidentally in Bikaner this last weekend. Even more coincidentally, the U.K. scholar, who I've never met, also was coming to Bikaner for the wedding. So, Sunday night, I met U.K scholar and Bhopal archivist at a wedding of a handsome young man I'd never met before. Good times.

It was good times (whiskey aside). Two nights of essentially just hanging out, doing prayers, listening to music, doing more prayers, eating, taking photos. One night of walking (well, dancing) through the streets of Bikaner. I've only ever been on the bride's side of an Indian wedding, so walking with the barat was a new adventure.

I can say with some authority that it is very difficult to do a full day of archival work the morning after the third night of an Indian wedding. I thought I was going to fall out my chair this afternoon. No lie.

Can I take a nap now?

2009-04-09T13:12:00.004+01:00

Quite suddenly, I'm exhausted. I don't know if it is just the move from Delhi to the desert catching up with me, or the fact that I'm not eating enough, or maybe I'm using my brain way more than I would like, but something is completely wearing me out. I felt it coming on a bit yesterday, and today it just overwhelmed me in earnest. I couldn't stay alert at the archives, and I finally called it a day at 3:00, about an hour earlier than I usually do. There is no AC there, and only one window, so the room gets pretty stuffy by late afternoon. I'm sure the lack of oxygen surely wasn't helping. Anyway, I am deeply weary, and wish I could just go to bed and sleep for a few days straight.

In regards to not getting enough to eat, I'm trying, I really am. There's nothing wrong with the food, and the hotel owner makes sure it's not super spicy. But after 2-3 mouthfuls, I feel like I just want to stop eating. At breakfast, if it is plain parantha, I force myself to eat two, otherwise, I let myself stop after one aloo parantha or sandwich. I have been forcing myself to eat two chapati every dinner, and along with that, forcing myself to eat something with every bite of chapati. That is, every bite has to have either veg or rice with it, I can't just dip it in the dal and pretend to eat more food that way. That is the Jaipur way of getting through a meal, but it's really not healthy. The food here doesn't taste bad (although you really have to like jeera to eat it), I just don't want it. Thinking about 8 more weeks of force feeding myself isn't very pleasant, but since that seems to be the only down side to living in Bikaner, I guess I can't complain.

Where I live.

2009-04-06T17:38:00.001+01:00

The hotel in which I'm living has a website. More importantly it has links to photos of my bedroom, and the room in which I eat breakfast and dinner. Now you can imagine me in my space.

When even the cows are staring.

2009-04-05T14:13:00.005+01:00

The first year I lived in Jaipur, there was this stray dog that lived along Big Shopper Road in Rajapark. He was a special stray dog, in that every time I walked by, he totally lost his mind, racing after me, barking and snarling. The locals thought that was hilarious, and the other Americans didn't believe me when I told them about it, until one day a friend saw it happen. I don't know what that dog had against me, but he meant it.

Fast forward just about three years, and look for me in Bikaner. I will be easy to spot, not just because I'm the only white person on the streets, but because all the dogs and cows are staring at me. I am used to avoiding the human gaze*, but not so accustomed to bringing all of animal kind to a dead halt every time I walk by. It's as if the cows had never seen a foreigner before. This can't really be true, because I'm staying in a hotel listed in The Rough Guide to India, so surely other backpackers have walked these streets. Still, I seem to startle everyone every time I go outside, which is--let's face it--not all that often.

I did go out Junagarh Fort yesterday (my photos here), and I walked two blocks to buy some Bisleri this morning. The hotel owner gives me a lift to the archives every morning, and I go out after dark and walk in the park. That is enough outside time for me. It is already getting warm (98 degrees this afternoon, but dramatically cooling off with an evening thunderstorm), and that combined with the attentive fauna makes me want to stay inside. When I feel like being productive, I work on my Hindi vocabulary. When I feel like relaxing, I play the tin whistle or drum (thanks to Catherine, who brought me a set of Susato whistles and a pair of drumsticks when she visited me in Delhi).

So, that's the exciting life of a foreign researcher in Bikaner. Next weekend maybe I will go out to Lallgarh Palace, or maybe to the Camel Breeding Station. Tune in for more exciting news in a few days.

*I think we were at Purana Qila when Claire looked up and said, "Wow, I totally forget that everyone is staring at me. It's only when I deliberately look around that I notice that everyone is looking directly at me." You learn how to walk with your chin up but your gaze pointed off to the right or left so you don't have to actually acknowledge the fact that everyone is staring into your face.

New Home.

2009-03-30T13:34:00.004+01:00

So, here I am at the edge of the Thar desert. While the city itself seems to be surrounded by sand and scrub, you can see from the picture above that I am living in a fairly typical suburban neighborhood in Rajasthan. It’s going to be uncomfortable on those days when the weather forecast is for “blowing sand,” but otherwise, it reminds me a lot of Jaipur (also unpleasant in sandstorms). The hotel (the Shri Ram, if any of you feel like sending me mail in the next 10-12 weeks) seems pretty comfortable. In fact, the only complaint I have so far is that I can’t figure out how to turn off the AC.

I stayed last night in Mandawa, and while you’d think the architectural historian part of me would have wanted to see all the havelis I could before nightfall, the freakazoid part of me voted for staying in my hotel room. I had low level anxiety attacks all day during the drive from Delhi to Mandawa, alternating with periods of intense sleepiness, and by the time I got to Mandawa, all I wanted was for no one to talk to me EVER AGAIN. Sadly, I messed that plan up right away by all-but-deliberately locking myself out of my cell phone. I swear, I thought, “If I do this, I’m going to disable my cell phone, and I don’t want to do that because today is the day I am scheduled to call my parents.” But I did it anyway, and sure enough, I rendered my mobile useless. In my panic to get out of my hotel room and find someone to unlock it for me—on a Sunday evening on a festival weekend, good luck with that—I caught my finger in the lock mechanism of my hotel room door. I stopped at the front desk to explain that I needed to find someone to unlock an Airtel phone, and when I looked at my phone, I thought, “Huh. It’s covered with sticky stuff. Why is that?” and tried to wipe it off. Really sticky, though. Then I realized my fingers were also sticky, and when I tried to wipe them off, I realized, no, not sticky, bloody. I had pinched my finger so thoroughly that I had torn the skin, and I had blood dripping from one finger all over the place. I was so focused on the fact that I needed to call my parents so they wouldn't needlessly worry that I didn’t even really notice that wow, my finger really hurts!

Anyway, for 50 rupees, the guys at the front desk not only fixed my cell phone, but bandaged my finger.

The drive from Mandawa to Bikaner only took a few hours, and it was pretty easy to settle in here. I think this is mostly a backpackers hotel, so they are used to freakazoid foreigners. It’s the off season for backpacking, though, so I seem to be here pretty much by myself. Just by asking I got a discount on my room, so I am paying considerably less for this place than I was paying in Delhi. Not sure about the food or laundry situation yet, but it will all work out.

Tomorrow my goal is just to find the archives, and maybe darken the door with my presence. No one has been able to give me an address for the place, so it could take all day just to get from here to there, wherever there is. By Wednesday, hopefully I will be fully registered, and by Thursday, hopefully I will be working. I don’t want to be too ambitious and invite disaster (although I checked my forehead this morning and it seems I will live to see another day), but I am optimistic.

Tara.

2009-03-30T13:11:00.003+01:00

Yesterday, we stopped at a Mid-Way for lunch. Predictably, a little boy materialized out of the bushes and tried to talk me into giving him some food or money or anything I had in my pockets. He was really funny, and really determined. After 20 minutes, I would have broken down and given him something, but I had nothing, no small bills, no candy, nothing. Finally, I opened up the Astronomy magazine I was reading and showed him the star chart in the middle. I tried to explain what it was, and I'm not sure he really got it, but when I asked him if he understood, he said, "Yes, stars, in the sky at night." I asked him if he wanted the star chart, and he said yes, so I tore it out of my magazine. It's difficult to learn to use a star chart on your own, but I like to think of him outside sitting outside his hut after dark, comparing the sky with the chart. I hope eventually he deciphers the puzzle and carries it with him the rest of his life.

24 weeks, max.

2009-03-28T06:34:00.003Z

Depending on how you manipulate the calendar, I either have 5-1/2 months to go before I go home, or I have 24 weeks left. 5-1/2 months sounds better right now, even if it includes the same number of days as 24 weeks.

I took two weeks of vacation while Catherine was in town, and we did a lot sightseeing, both within Delhi as well as in Agra and Jaipur (photos on Flickr). Catherine says she had a good time here, and I have no reason to think she's making that up. It was nice having someone to explore with. I was pretty careful to keep her out of danger, but on the other hand, I also took advantage of having someone else around to go look at places I normally wouldn't view by myself. Not sketchy places, but the more isolated parts of monuments, unknown corridors, things like that. I explore those places by myself, but it makes me anxious. When there are two people exploring, the anxiety is lessened.

Anyway, other than just enjoying each other's company, it was good to have her visit so she understands a little better what I mean when I say, "It is too hard to walk to the ATM today" or "I couldn't bear to get an autorickshaw today." I think she saw how much work my everyday life can take, how much frustration and unpredictability there is on my daily agenda. She also heard everyone tell me how horrible Bikaner is going to be, so I think (hope) she will be predisposed to sympathy when I start whining next week.

She also saw the good things--the flowers and the birds, for instance--so we can talk about that, too, when I feel like it.

Anyway, only 5-1/2 months to go. I'm ready to leave Delhi, much like I was ready to leave London. Three weeks from now, I'll be saying, "Damn, why did I want to leave Delhi?" the same way I said (continue saying) about London.

Enemy of Reason (TM)

2009-03-28T06:29:00.005Z

Peter F. Dubuque
March 24, 2009

Peter F. Dubuque passed away by accident on March 24, 2009. He was 39 years old.

Born in Springfield, VT, Peter was raised in Billerica and attended Billerica Schools. He was a Malden resident for the past 10 years and worked at Harvard University as a Data Base Architect. Peter was also an avid photographer and loved the outdoors.

Peter was the devoted husband of Steven Kleinedler. He was the son of Harriet (Desmond) Dubuque and the late Gilbert Dubuque. Peter was the dear brother of Kimberly Campbell and her husband Al of Dracut. He is also survived by several aunts, uncles, nieces and nephews.

Visitation will be held from the A. J. Spadafora Funeral Home, 865 Main Street, Malden on Sunday, March 29th from 12:00 - 4:00 p.m. Relatives and friends are respectfully invited to attend. Interment private.

In lieu of flowers donations in Peter’s memory may be made to Point Foundation-pointfoundation.org.

Steve's beautiful essay about his marriage to Peter.

John Scalzi's tribute.

Obituary from Bay Windows.

Steve's essay on "The Semantics of Marriage Equality"

Strange and Empty.

2009-03-26T05:12:00.005Z

The room doesn't look right without Catherine's suitcases standing in front of the bookcase. And even my stuff is looking a little thin on the ground, as I sent all my winter/London clothing back to the U.S. in said suitcases. I keep looking around, thinking that I am missing something, but I guess it is only that I am missing Catherine. Five and a half months doesn't seem very long when you are trying to get a lot of research done in an inefficient country, but it is an eternity when you are waiting for it to come to an end so you can finally go home.

This morning, when I logged on the computer to see if Catherine's flight was still scheduled to land in Chicago on time, I found an e-mail telling me that Peter died yesterday. [Erasure.] What a nightmare this is. I've been sitting here trying to find some words to write to Steve, not that anything I say could possibly help, but find myself overwhelmed with anxiety that something like this is going to happen to Catherine while I'm gone.

I told Catherine I wasn't going to be a wuss when she left, but I may have to take some time out to cry and feel sorry for ~~the world~~ myself after all. We had a really good time while she was here, and I'm sure one day soon these weeks will all be just hazy, happy memories, but for now, I'm doing my best to empty my mind completely. Think about nothing, feel nothing, be nothing.

Daily Life.

2009-03-11T08:43:00.003Z

Well, I admit it. I'm not a very good bloggist. You'd think I'd come home every day just bubbling over with things to tell, but that's just not the way my personality works. Not only do I want silence in the evenings in my room, I want it in my head. Sitting down and processing through my entire day isn't a relaxing pasttime for me. In addition to the limits of my own personality, I think it's true that daily life is pretty much the same no matter where you are in the world. You get into a routine, and stop noticing things around you on your way to work. Or, at least during this third stay in India, I've lost the ability to recognize what's different about my life here. Every once in awhile I look up and think, "Holy crap, I can't believe that!" but mostly it is all just so normal now that I don't even see it.

Catherine arrives tomorrow, and I will become a tourist again, so maybe this blog will gain some life spirit. As I was briefly reminded in Calcutta, being a tourist in India is a lot different than living in India. Touts are a lot more aggressive towards tourists than they are toward local white people, especially if you let yourself arrive in their own territory, in front of tourist monuments/sites. So, I think these next two weeks will have a different feel to them, and I will probably be yelling at a lot of people in Hindi to knock it the fuck off, because NO I DON'T WANT TO BUY ANY PUPPETS AND I HATE ELEPHANTS AND NO I AM NOT GIVING YOU JUST ONE RUPEE OR ONE CHAPATI OR ANYTHING AT ALL SO GO AWAY. Something to look forward to, I'm sure.

Stay off the streets!

2009-03-07T15:34:00.003Z

I'm feeling unusually homesick today. It could be explained by the fact that I've been away from home for six months, but I think more likely it's due to the weather. The weather in Delhi has now caught up with the weather I left behind in the U.S. in September. Summer is arriving, with hot days and warm evenings, breezy but not cool. I feel as if I've done the whole weather cycle--had my fall and winter in London, then spring and (briefly) summer in Delhi, and now it's time to go home. Too bad about those remaining six months of fellowship work.

It is slightly dangerous to walk around outside right now--water balloons are being thrown at just about everyone on the streets. Kush has assured me that I can walk in the park across the street "aram se" (comfortably), he will not pelt me with a water balloon. Too bad I can't trust his school mates! Arjun Nagar is particularly bad, for two days now it has been a water balloon-based gauntlet. The narrow lanes and balconies are ideal for water sports. So, I guess I am mostly inside until after Holi (Wednesday). I don't mind water balloons, actually, but when they are filled with color, well, then I turn into a girl and think about how much damage is being done to my outfit.

Return.

2009-03-06T12:51:00.006Z

Just back from a Fulbright conference in Kolkata (Calcutta). The plus side: the conference itself was really great. An unusual opportunity to spend time with 77 other Fulbrighters and listen to them talk about their work and life. A good mix of senior scholars, grad students, Ph.D. students, at-large researchers; fascinating to talk with those doing their research in Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh and Pakistan right now. It would seem as if India is at the center of a burning ring of fire right now. The food was good, meals were a good opportunity to talk to new friends and old, the conference hotel was comfortable and served us well. The beds were *great*. The negative side: a lot of people seemed to be more focused on hooking up than they were on their work. Don't get me wrong, I think it's fine if they want to hook up. I just don't want to be part of that hooking up conversation, okay?

Most of my time was spent in the hotel, as they scheduled us quite tightly from Sunday eve-Wednesday afternoon. But on Wednesday, a few of us went out to do some touring (took a few photos, of course). It is in the 90s now in Kolkata, hot and bright and a bit humid. The heat felt particularly sharp as we wandered around the Victoria Memorial gardens. Somehow, we (accidentally) ended up down at a river dock. Since we were there, we went ahead and took a nice, breezy ferry ride on the Hooghly. We also spent a good chunk of time at the Park Street Cemetery, where we got a good feel for the colonial era (jungly, hot, dead at a young age), and wrapped it up with a trip to St. John's Church (not quite as successful as St. Martin's in the Field, is it?). A bit of a colonial-focused afternoon, but I didn't organize the tour. I feel like I've done enough organizing for one friendship, let the burden fall on the other person (people) for once. Next time (when??), I'll visit Tagore House. Plese count the parenthetical expressions for me.

Going to Calcutta was like going to the Punjab in the sense that in both places, I cannot speak the language most commonly associated with the area. The signs might as well have been in Panjabi for all I could read them. At one point, Claire and I thought we had deciphered a sign, but then the driver read it out loud for us. Turns out what we were taking for an I was actually an N. So much for our linguistical talents. Luckily, every single person I talked to spoke Hindi as well as Bangla. There is a large population from Bihar in Calcutta, so Hindi is the second language of the city.

Calcutta feels a lot more dense than Delhi. In terms of population, Greater Delhi and Greater Calcutta are almost equivalents: 14,000,000 for the first, 13,200,000 for the second. But Calcutta is a taller city, and although Delhi is full of what we might consider ancient monuments, popping up like happy surprises here and there, the urban fabric of Calcutta is quite a bit older than that of Delhi. Classicism was the architectural language of choice by the "Britishers," and even though many of the buildings have been heavily water damaged, or at least stripped of their colors, the columns and arches of streetside buildings make it clear that the base form is Neoclassical.

Arrived in Delhi to discover summer had beat me home by a day. Pradeepji is recommending I give the AC a try, but I think I can live without it for a few more days. It is going to be scorching hot in Bikaner--not looking forward to that. However, in Calcutta, I met another Fulbrighter who has been doing his research at the Camel Breeding Center outside of Bikaner, so hopefully he will be able to give me a few tips to make life in the desert more bearable.

The Stress Involved.

2009-02-24T16:52:00.004Z

I don't know. It's a long story, but the main point is really this: it takes a lot of nerve to get medical help in a foreign country. To begin with, you have to make phone calls that are only 1/2 in English, 1/2 in Hindi, and you can't be sure the other person is understanding you, especially given the habit of every person in India to yell "Hello! Hello!" into the phone multiple times instead of just saying, "Could you repeat that, please?" You have to find the doctor's office in one neighborhood, then find the lab for blood tests in a second neighborhood, and then the ultrasound office in a third neighborhood. If you don't have a car and driver, this means three or four separate autorickshaw rides, with the same number of fare negotiations, and the same number of attempts at communicating your destination 1/2 in Hindi, 1/2 in English. None of the numbering schemes are regular, no one quite knows where the offices are (although that doesn't stop them from giving directions), and you don't have the right phone numbers to confirm the addresses with the first doctor. The questions the doctors ask here are different from the ones they would ask at home, the forms are different, the medical records are handled differently, the expectations are different. To describe it all would take pages, and you wouldn't believe it, anyway. Suffice it to say that I'm glad my friend, Claire, was with me yesterday so at least I have a witness to my day. I hope this is the last time I have to consult a doctor in a foreign country. Maybe I learned a lot from this cultural experience, but I think I could have lived without that particular bit of knowledge.

Time to move on.

2009-02-22T13:49:00.005Z

The route between my sector of Safdarjung Enclave and Hauz Khas Village (my photos here) runs through Deer Park. Yesterday, when I was walking along the path near the deer enclosure, I came across a couple of young men loafing in the sun. Just after I passed them, I heard one of them say to the other, "I know her. I saw her at Rashtrapati Bhavan, in the Mughal Garden."

Okay, there are something like 14 million people in Delhi, and I was at the Mughal Garden for one and a half hours only. What are the odds that one of the at-loose-ends boys in Deer Park would recognize me from my visit to the gardens? Clearly, everyone in this city knows me and my habits, so it's time to get the hell out of Dodge.

On the third hand.

2009-02-19T09:55:00.004Z

Getting back to that previous post on being the obvious white person, that same evening, my friend and I had a similar, but less happy, experience. On our way home from dinner, we stopped by the back autorickshaw stand at Defence Colony, and two of the drivers jumped up to try and convince us to use their services. Turns out that they already knew where we were going because they'd driven us both home at different times. Not sure what I think about autorickshaw-wallahs all over Delhi recognizing me, but I'm sure I'd feel better about it if those particular drivers hadn't turned out to be drunk. I think my friend had a more difficult time getting home because of intoxication than I did, but still, drunken driving on the ring road---yee haw!

I was just thinking about this because today at Sarojini Nagar Market, I walked up to a random driver and said I needed to go to Safdarjung Enclave. The answer: "Aren't you the one who usually goes to Janpath?" Yes. Yes, I am. He told me that he had driven me there before. I didn't recognize him, but once I was in the autorickshaw, I recognized his jacket because it had the word "ROCK" embroidered on it. I remember seeing it earlier and thinking it was kind of cool to have a jacket with the word "ROCK" on the back of it.

So, there you go. In Delhi, we're all just one big family, going all over the place with each other, whether we intend to or not.

Recap.

2009-02-18T11:39:00.004Z

Hm...what was the point of that last post? Oh, yeah: DON'T DRINK SPURIOUS WATER. I can say with some authority that if you do, you'll end up trapped in your room for several days running, afraid to stray too far from the facilities. It's not a pleasant way to pass the time. So, let's review, shall we? DON'T DRINK SPURIOUS WATER.

On Friday, I went to Rashtrapati Bhavan to visit the Mughal Garden. It is open to the public for five hours each day (except on Mondays) only in the month of February. This is one of those gardens we studied in my Rajput architecture seminar, and I could reasonably be expected to cover it should I ever teach a course on landscape/architecture in India. Friday was the day I had scheduled to visit the garden, so off I went, arriving just before noon. Long story of a beautiful garden with beautiful birds cut short, I ran into another American, and after a short chat, decided to hang out with her the rest of the day. We had a lot of fun: had lunch at a dhaba up near CP, went to see the Gandhi Smirti on Tees January Marg, Safdarjung's Tomb, and Qutub Minar. It runs completely contrary to my personality to suddenly go off into tourist land with a stranger, but I'm glad I did, as it was a pretty awesome day. It made me feel competent and knowledgable about Delhi, and I think it also helped my new friend feel more comfortable, traveling with a companion instead of trying to do everything solo.

Anyway, good day, but while we were at the dhaba, I ordered a fresh lime soda sweet, and they brought me a fresh lime soda salty. I don't know if you've ever had one of these, but it is basically like drinking sea water. I needed some regular water to wash it down. It must of been a day of doing things contrary to my usual behavior, because I bought a bottle of water. I usually just drink normal water, because it's typically filtered in restaurants. At this dhaba, I wasn't so sure, especially since we were seated in the kitchen and I could see there was no Aquaguard system or anything like that. So, I bought a bottle of Aquafina.

When I opened the bottle, it was overfull, and I even thought, "Oh, it looks like Neeraj [the boy who works in my guesthouse] filled this bottle!" Both Neeraj and Sonu fill my water bottles to the very top, but you know, bottle manufacturing plants don't do that. Clue 1. And then I looked at the lid of the bottle and thought, "You know, that looks like it's been glued." Clue 2. A smart person would have abstained from drinking the water, don't you think? But a fresh lime soda salty is horrendous, and I thought I needed to take drastic measures to save my taste buds. Big mistake. Sick by Friday night. A small recovery Saturday in the morning, sick again by late afternoon, trapped inside through Tuesday a.m. Such a dumbass thing to do.

So, just in case you haven't gotten the point of this little story, let me remind you: DON'T DRINK SPURIOUS WATER, ESPECIALLY WHEN YOU SEE OBVIOUS SIGNS OF ITS SPURIOUS-NESS.

Spurious Water.

2009-02-16T05:30:00.000Z

Don't drink it.

On the other hand.

2009-02-12T15:33:00.002Z

There are a few good things to being distinctively white. For instance, last night, I was supposed to meet a friend for dinner at Sagar in Defence Colony. Half way there, I realized that we hadn't clarified which Sagar--North Indian or South Indian--and I had forgotten my mobile on my desk at home. Where would I meet my friend? Once at Defence Colony Market, I went to the North Indian Sagar, and when the door man motioned me inside, I asked "Meri saheli kahan hai?" ("Where is my girlfriend?"), and he replied, "Oh, she is standing by South Indian Sagar." So, it pays to be the short, round white person who always walks around with the tall, thin white person, because there are a lot of white people in Defence Colony, but the door man still knew who my friend was and where she was standing.

Well.

2009-02-11T11:56:00.009Z

As it turns out, I've walked right by the entrance to a Lodhi-era step well every time I go to the USIEF office on Hailey Road. After spending some time with the satellite image feature of Google maps last night, I figured out exactly where it was, and stopped by today to take some photos. You can see it pretty clearly to the upper-left of the red "A" marking Hailey Road in the satellite view:

You'd think this would be a peaceful place: a seldom-visited, centuries-old architectural ruin in the middle of the embassy neighborhood of New Delhi. But, no. For one thing, like most monuments in Delhi, the stepwell is where teenagers go when they don't want adult supervision. A lot of snuggling, a lot of giggling, a lot of horseplay. Added to the shrill sounds of boys and girls trying to impress one another was the tremendous racket made inside the well by pigeons and bats. The deeper you go, the louder it becomes, like two aliens humming different songs underground. I could have sat and listened to this weirdness for a long stretch of time, actually, but the stares of the teenagers began getting to me before I even started my descent into the well.

Also, just as you would expect, a local fellow was hanging around inside the gate when I arrived, and he instantly offered his services as a tour guide. When I told him I wanted to explore on my own, he said that wasn't allowed. I pointed out that no one else was with a guide. True, he admitted, but he could show me things they wouldn't be looking at. I demurred as politely as possible, but insisted that I didn't need a guide. When I came back up from the bottom of the well, he jumped up and tried to talk to me again. I just shook my head, took some photos of the attached mosque, and left. He actually followed me out through the gate, asking for "baksheesh" and "tip". Seriously? I have to pay you now to get you to leave me alone? Please. It's an ASI-protected monument. If they want to me to pay an admission fee, fine, I'll play by the rules. But I'm not paying you to not give me a guided tour of a staircase, okay?

Anyway, my photos are now available on flickr.

Two Things Only.

2009-02-07T11:01:00.003Z

I've just finished my first field report for SSRC, and I think it represents accurately my first two months in Delhi. The research process is incredibly slow and laborious, so the direction of my project hasn't changed dramatically; I'm still working on ideas I brought with me from the United States. Socially, I'm well-connected with local and American friends in the area, and other than transportation problems, which come and go unpredictably, I have absolutely nothing to complain about at the moment.

But that's never stop me from complaining before, and it's not going to stop me now.

Actually, not complaints. I just had two "interesting" experiences, and I'm not sure what I think about them.

The place I'm staying is full up this weekend, all three rooms rented. What this means for the two boys who work here is that when they have time for a break, there is no available television, as all the televisions are in the guest rooms. I was gone for a couple of hours today, and when I came home, Neeraj was taking a break, sitting on the floor outside my door, watching my television from a distance. Instantly realizing what was going on, I told him to stay put. I had planned on reading on the couch in the sitting room, anyway, so he might as well finish up the Amitabh Bachchan movie. But the young man of the house (I think he's fifteen), came over and gave him a "Come on, yaar!" speech and made him turn off the television. For all I care, he could have been sitting in my room enjoying the show from two, rather than ten, feet away from the television. Seriously, I'm gone so much that if he was going to snoop or steal or anything else, he would have have had 5 lakhs opportunities to do so by now. He can watch my television any time he wants to, especially since I NEVER watch it. Someone might as well enjoy it. But, no, he just moved off to sit in the dining room instead.

Just a few minutes later (and this is the second thing), another guest came out of her room to greet me. She was a PIO (Person of Indian Origin), but grew up in the U.S., now resides in Thailand. She asked me how I liked it here, and I said the usual (good winter chaat, nice weather, lousy transportation system). She seemed pretty distressed, and I had overheard a phone conversation in which she described the horrible experience she had had earlier in Delhi's over-crowded Metro. But it wasn't just that, as it turns out. She told me that she was here for a wedding, and that she thought it would be good to come "home," because in Thailand especially, she always feels like a foreigner. However, now that she's arrived, she feels like a part of her has died. For one thing, the upper middle class spending is out of control, and it seems as if everyone is flashing money right and left. I can see her point, as being in South Delhi is like watching the victory flags of neo-liberalism unfurl before your eyes. Multiple houses are going up on every block, flashy new SUVs are plying the streets, and everyone is staring blindly down at their Blackberries as they walk. But mostly I think she was trying to express how frustrating it is to always be marked as foreign, no matter where you go in the world.

So, the experience of the dislocated and the comparatively poor (Neeraj from Bihar, working in the kitchen and sleeping on the roof), and the dislocated and the comparatively affluent (PIO returning home only to find it's no longer, or maybe never was, home), all in the same five minutes. No clever wrap-up for this post, just the observation that maybe I shouldn't go out to the market on Saturdays, lest I open myself up to more complicated scenarios surrounding the process of coming home.

Uninspired.

2009-02-04T15:33:00.004Z

I stayed up too late last night, counseling friends through various personal and academic crises. In the end, I don't think I helped anyone, and I woke up groggy and cranky this morning, so I probably should have stopped trying to be suppportive about two hours before I made the decision to knock it off.

The only exciting news for the week is that I saw a tree full of Yellow-Footed Green Pigeons when I was in Defence Colony on Monday. They are kind of awesome, but probably not worth an entire blog post.

You are looking TOO GOOD.

2009-02-01T12:31:00.015Z

I've somehow managed to string together nine days in which nothing traumatic has happened to me--I haven't been in an auto accident, I haven't fallen, I'm not sick, no one has driven away with my money in their hand, I haven't gotten lost. Of course, one of those days I worked at home. It's difficult to be traumatized while sorting bibliographic citations in EndNote. Also, of course, today isn't over yet. I might still go for a walk in the park, exposing me to the damning forces of gravity, but hopefully, I'll stay upright and uninjured.

Yesterday, I spent the day at the Delhi Zoo (NZP). You have to love a zoo at which the signs warn visitors about the animals outside as well as the ones inside the cages. At the gate, bags are checked to make sure you don't bring in food. I think this is supposed to protect the animals, and probably helps boost sales at the snack counter. However, if you're going to buy something at the snack counter, you have to be a lot quicker than the monkeys if you want to eat your snack. Case in point:

Aside from the monkeys, the zoo is really nice. It is on the banks of Yamuna River, and a lot of breeding flocks make their homes here, close to the water. The zoo's own water habitat is full of birds, especially waterbirds like painted storks, egrets and herons. The number of raptors is also impressively high, especially when they are headed straight toward your head (perhaps they don't like blondes?). Also, I saw a white tiger, which was it's own kind of awesomeness. Definitely worth the 50 rupee admissions fee.

Since I was in the neighboorhood, I went up to Purana Qila after I left the zoo. This is my second trip, so I was mostly just wandering randomly, taking photos when I felt like it, and not paying attention to much of anything. Mostly people left me alone at the zoo (except for the one billion plus school children who all had to say "Hi!" and give me high fives when they passed). At Purana Qila, people watched me more closely, starting with the women at the gate who tried to convince me to give them "a donation."

At one point, I saw a young man hovering nearby while I was taking a photo of the mosque dome. I kept my eyes down and tried to ignore him, but it was clear he wanted to talk to me. Eventually, I looked over at him, at which point he smiled and said, "Madam, you are looking TOO GOOD in your Indian dress!" I had to laugh and just say thank you. Not even ten minutes later, another young man wandered into my path. It was pretty clear that his group of friends (male and female both) had put him up to talking to me, so I just kept walking toward him to get it over with. And then he, too, said, "Madam, you are looking TOO GOOD in your Indian dress!"

I don't wear salwaar-kameez every day, but probably something like 5 out of 7 days, simply because I arrived here from London only with winter clothes. I had to buy some lighter weight clothing once I arrived, so most of my wardrobe this season is from Fab India. I don't think much about it, I wear what I have in my closet. But it seems clear that even if I look stupid in salwaar-kameez (my dupattas tend to turn into dirt rags by the end of the day), people generally appreciate that I'm trying not to look like a slob. And truthfully, while young women in Delhi usually wear jeans and kurta, women my age wear salwaar-kameez or saris. At least I'm dressing age appropriately most days of the week. And, hey, popular opinion seems to be that I am looking TOO GOOD for the first time in my life.

A few zoo photos here; Purana Qila photos [will be] here.

India's 60th Republic Day

2009-01-27T15:10:00.016Z

(Photo courtesy of the BBC)

All of Delhi shuts down on national holidays. Few autorickshaws ply the roads, and most restaurants and shops lock their doors and take a break. In my neighborhood, even the laborers working on the new houses took the day off, the first break they have taken since I arrived in mid-December. No horns, no sabzi-wallahs yelling at us to "Come! Come!", no concrete being mixed, it was a wonderfully peaceful atmosphere to wake up in for a change.

Claire arrived at my place a little later than our arranged time since she couldn't find an autorickshaw anywhere in GK-1. At the last moment, she was able to chase one down, so we set off together to the Republic Day Parade about ten minutes after eight o'clock. We had to skirt the entirety of south New Delhi because the roads were closed for parade security. We eventually hopped out of the autorickshaw somewhere along Purana Qila road, and joined the crowds heading toward the parade route on foot. When pedestrians take over the roads, with no cars honking behind your shoulder warning you of their approach, well, that is a special day in the city. So, we enjoyed walking the empty streets with the other celebrants, stopping at various checkpoints to ask directions, and just making morning conversation.

I think we went through two metal dectectors, and a couple other lesser security checkpoints to make sure we hadn't carried with us any of the following: "any bag, briefcase, eatable, radio/transistor, mobile telephone and pager, tape recorder, camera, binocular, digital diary, palm-top computer, remote controlled car lock keys, arms and ammunition, thermos flask, water bottle, cigarette, bidi, match box, lighter, knife, razor, scissors, screwdriver, blade, etc.

Our bodies were searched pretty thoroughly, but also pretty cheerfully, since we were the foreigners with good Hindi. Claire went through this whole explanation for one of the women at security as to why we wear sunscreen (not just to stay pale and pretty, but because the sun burns us and we don't like the pain), impressing me greatly.

It took just over an hour to walk from Purana Qila road, pass through security, and find our seats. But what good seats! Our enclosure was almost at the intersection of Raj and Jan Paths, on the north side. So, not directly across from the President's enclosure, but within view of her seat. Even if we hadn't been able to see it, the parade announcer did a fantastic job of describing everything that happened throughout the day, and with such poetic language.

After the President's arrival (accompanied by horse regiment), the ceremonies opened with a 21-gun salute, which startled me even though I knew it was coming. The birds also did not like it. After this came the very solemn occasion of the Ashok Chakra awards. This year, an unusually high number (11) of Ashok Chakra awards were delivered--this reflects the numerous deaths of military/police leaders in the Mumbai attacks two months ago. I like to build my Hindi vocabulary, but found it sobering to learn the Hindi word for "posthumous" because I heard it eleven times during the ceremony.

The parade itself opened with a show of military might. Four helicopters flew overhead in formation, dropping rose and marigold petals. After this, precisely as scheduled, tanks, Bhramos missles, regiments in dress uniforms, floats displaying the strengths of each unit of the military, came down the parade route. In this part of the parade, our favorites were probably the camel cavalry (how do you make a camel walk in formation?), the Punjab regiments (good marchers, SHARP uniforms), and the bagpipers. There are a lot of bagpipers in India--who knew? There are also a lot of marching bands, the most impressive of which were the ones attached to a central military force (Army, Navy, Air, Central Police).

Some individual states had sent floats to the parade. A helpful young man sitting behind us identified all the regiments and all the floats for us. Assam had a really sweet one with a huge rhinoceros and an elephant. Many featured local architecture styles, clothing and handicrafts. Since many of them were dedicated to demonstrating what makes the state economy work, many also had depictions of tourism, complete with mannekins of white people in ridiculous safari clothes, or Indians dressed in blonde wigs and floppy hats with cameras. Priceless.

Some sectors of the national culture were also displayed on floats. For example, one float celebrated centuries of Indian astronomy as well as 2009 as the UNESCO Year of Astronomy.

The parade concluded with several flyovers. First there were helicopters, then troop transporters, bombers and refuelers, and then the big guys--the fighting jets--came over in formation. They split into three different directions and spun off into the invisibility of high altitudes. Claire was so excited (it really was quite a spectacle) that she clubbed me in the head. ("Dude! Did you see that?!").

Leaving the scene was much like arriving. Many, many people, all headed toward the main streets looking for transportation or just walking home. Finding an autorickshaw seemed impossible, so after wandering around aimlessly for awhile, we ducked into the one open restaurant we saw. I think it might have been the only restaurant open between Raj Path and CP, because when we came out after our meal, there were crowds of people waiting to eat. We took an expensive autorickshaw home, then crashed in my room to watch the most patriotic movie I own, Lakshya.

The government has posted a two-hour video of the parade and celebration for your viewing pleasure. English language commentary begins at 5:22, and ends at 22:30; starts again at 55:30, ends at 1:04; begins again at 1:09. There's a long section on the Ashok Chakra awards that's completely in Hindi. However, just that minute from 5:30-6:30 in this video gives a good idea of the atmosphere of the day. The tone of the English-language narration perfectly echoes that of the parade announcers. Formal, poetic, sincere. We couldn't see the ceremony depicted in the first 30 minutes or so of this video, but we could hear the military calls and bugles while we waited for parade to start.

Mighty, Mighty India.

2009-01-27T12:06:00.001Z

You haven't lived until you've been sprinkled with flower petals by a military assault helicopter. Really.

Other Random Concerns.

2009-01-21T10:51:00.005Z

When I came home after a weekend away, my room had been thoroughly dusted. I often leave my books in stacks on top of the shelves or on my desk, but apparently the maid doesn't like this arrangement. This weekend, she stood the three books that wouldn't fit on my literature shelf upside down and on end, on the top shelf, pretty much out of my reach.
It is really frustrating that I can't read Panjabi. When I am reading it alongside the Hindi and Urdu on the signs in Delhi, it makes perfect sense. However, once the companion Hindi is removed, it all turns into Greek (except I could probably figure out more of the Greek than I can of Panjabi). If I ever get lost in the Panjab, I'm screwed.
How much do you suppose I'd need to pay for a hotel room in Delhi with an American bed? My back is killing me after this weekend. I thought I had become accustomed to my bed here in Delhi, but it isn't helping my lower back pain right now.
You know that Vodafone commercial were the guy buys a diamond ring, and when he leaves the shop, the entire city is staring at him? The point of the commercial is that with Vodafone's very reasonable price of 10 paise per SMS, you can spread gossip efficiently and inexpensively. So, by the time the guy gets to the restaurant with his ring, his soon-to-be-affianced knows exactly what's up. Well, my point is this: this commercial shows EXACTLY what it is like for a foreigner in a town where many foreigners don't go. Staring, gaping, following, everybody knows exactly where you are, every second of the day.
Slumdog Millionaire. Eh...not so much. Parts of it were brilliant (the organized begging, the spurious mineral water, the empty hotel/development project, the unfinished building in Mumbai, the pathways through the basti). Most of it, however, was just a filmi remake of Salaam Bombay. Such a shame, the movie started out so well, and then just dissolved into a story about how we don't have to worry about the fate of the poor chaiwallah because he was pure of heart and very resilient, and therefore would turn out A-OK. No need to examine our own roles in creating the slums and allowing organized crime and oppression to thrive.
I'm thinking about abandoning my Urdu lessons. For one thing, they are expensive, and I feel like a walking bank machine these days. For another thing, my head is too tired to add another language right now. I know it's mostly just learning the script, and in theory, it will help me with my Hindi, but it feels like too much for me these days. I'm not here to become fluent in Hindi, anyway, the time for that has past. My Hindi is good enough for daily life, and right now I need to create some more space in my cotton-filled head for thinking about my real work.
Speaking of real work, today I found something that will help me not at all with my dissertation, but could form the basis of a later article on the restoration of the Jaipur observatory in 1901. It's funny the things I'm learning about India without even trying, just looking at catalogue indices. Do you want to know what's really irritating, though? The indices for 1850-1859 Foreign Department (R-Z) are completely missing, as are the 1903 Foreign Department indices. How can I do research without an index? It boggles.

Road Trip.

2009-01-20T15:41:00.012Z

[I know my photo links aren't working. It's taking forever to upload this evening, so check back in a couple of days.]

I did my architectural duty this weekend and took a trip to Chandigarh. The friend who was supposed to go with me got sick at the last minute, so it was just me and the driver, Hukamji ("I will not give orders, Madam," he said when I was writing down his name, "you will give the orders."). He showed up promptly at 8:30, carefully set my bags in the outsize trunk of a shiny, white Ambassador, and off we went. This was a great adventure, as I'd only traveled toward/through Chandigarh on the train, and you can't see much from the train window. One reason I went to the expense of hiring a car was so I could stop and see a few architectural monuments on the way. I originally had a long list, but by the time I left the house, I had narrowed it down to one on the way to Chandigarh, one on the way back, and then three things in/around Chandigarh itself.

Okay. First, let me just say that the drive north out of New Delhi into Delhi is never much fun. The road isn't great, and there are a lot of development projects underway (metro, Yamuna river banks, mela grounds) for the 2010 Commonwealth Games. And then there is just the reality of traffic. My car came with seatbelts, but Hukamji had to slam on the brakes somewhere north of New Delhi, and the fastener popped out of the car wall. So, basically, travelling to Chandigarh with no seatbelt. Don't try this at home, kids! Luckily, Hukamji was a good, attentive driver. We saw one really bad accident, and I think even Hukamji was impressed by the car carnage because he said to me very solemnly that this was the result of "overspeed" and he would drive slowly-slowly.

The one place I wanted to stop on the way up was in Panipat, at the Kabuli Bagh (a few of my photos here), a garden/mosque first built by Babur c. 1527-26, and thus the first Mughal building in north India. And here is where we get yet another lesson on the difference between Seeing Like a State, and seeing from ground level. It looked so simple on the map: turn off the Delhi highway onto State Highway 12, drive straight until you see it. Yeah. Not so much. We must have driven through every bazaar in south Panipat looking for this place. Most of those bazaars were not planned with automobile traffic in mind, either. You would think this would be a somewhat well-known building in the town, but no, it's not. Big city, small building, no one knows anything about it. I admire Hukamji's dedication. Yes, I really wanted to see it, but by the time we followed all the mistaken directions given to us by people along the road, we ended up approaching the place through a swamp. I'm surprised we're not still stuck in the mud, really.

This place was interesting, though. Half the building had been restored, while the other half was left more or less untouched, leaving the structural elements visible. Most of the garden has disappeared. Only the garden immediately in front of the building has been enclosed within a protective wall. Outside the wall, houses have been built, and what must have been gardens are covered in trash and such (what can you expect, it's been almost 500 years since this place was founded). You can see a group of men sitting inside the entrance in some of my photos. When the requisite number of children tried to follow me into the mosque complex, these men chased them away. So, the kids followed me from outside the walls, catching me up at the entrance/exit.

We got into Chandigarh about 5:00, and I was in my hotel by 5:30. My hotel sucked, by the way, definitely not as advertised on the web. Seriously, I need hot water on a rainy, January morning. Really, I do. I won't put the name of the hotel here, because the internet has a way of blowing things out of proportion and I'd hate to put anyone out of business, but if you're going to Chandigarh, e-mail me and I'll give you the name of a better hotel. The television worked just fine, however, so I tried to force myself to practice my Hindi. Hukamji, who has perfect English, made me speak Hindi all day for practice ("If you try hard enough, you will achieve it"), so my head was pretty tired by the end of the day, but I gave it a go for awhile before turning in for the night.

The next day was touring in the Chandigarh area. The real purpose of the trip was to get a glimpse of the Secretariat complex. It is a bit difficult to get into this area right now, partly because of terrorism, and partly because it is just a bureaucratic process in the best of times. On weekdays, you have to take some sort of letter to Sector 9 in the city, and apply for permission. This wasn't possible for me, obviously, so I was just hoping to see the complex from afar. I first went to the High Court Museum (very awesome display on Bhagat Singh's trial), then Hukamji took me to the gate of the Secretariat complex. And this is the stupid part. I don't even like le Corbusier. Reading the Athens Charter or Towards a New Architecture makes me want to put a gun to his head and dare him to say just.one.more.thing. But I was standing there, staring at the Secretariat, and I started to cry. I have no idea what that was all about. Luckily, I had a dupatta with me. Comes in handy for wiping sweat, drying tables, and hiding tears.

Hukamji was off to the side, talking to the guards about how we hadn't gotten permission for entrance, and I was listening and nodding (well, wobbling) my head as he talked, not really looking at them. The guard suddenly realized I was following their conversation. "You have Hindi?" Well, a bit, I admitted. I told him I was an architect (I've given up explaining about the difference between licensed and unlicensed, historian and designer), so Chandigarh is important for me. It was very good to me to be able to stand and look at the buildings.

I really was just making conversation, but they were so delighted with my Hindi they apparently felt the need to reward me. They told me I could walk down closer to the Secretariat, and once I got to the inner gate, those guards were also impressed with my Hindi, and they let me go even deeper into the complex. So, there you go, I accidentally played the "white woman speaking Hindi" card, and it got me into the Secretariat complex. No camera allowed, of course, but it was still awesome. I walked up in front of the Vidhan Sabha toward the High Court (saw the Open Hand), and then back down to the Secretariat on an exterior staircase of the Vidhan Sabha. It would have been good to apply for permission to photograph and explore the complex even more thoroughly, but this was good enough for me, and possibly even more memorable because it was all sort of haphazard and accidental.

It would be very much a crime to go to Chandigarh and not stop off at the Nek Chand Rock Garden (best deal in India for foreigners--10 rupees!). Part of this garden is a later addition to Nek Chand's imaginative creation, but still, it was beautifully green and wet and cool (my photos here). It must be amazing during the rainy season. Some of the sculptures were a little creepy, but most of the animal sculptures sported smiles, so they must be enjoying their stay in the garden.

So different from Aurangzeb's gardens in Pinjore, also a good tourist deal at 20 rupees (my photos here). Pinjore is just outside Chandigarh, at the base of the Himalayan foothills. It's only 20km, but even so, the climate of Pinjore was even cooler and wetter than that of Chandigarh. Since even in winter I am always warm, it was nice to spend a few hours in the cool breeze. As you can see from photos, only the central corridor of the Pinjore gardens has been maintained/restored. The side gardens are less polished, organized mostly around orchard rows of fruit trees and eighteenth-century walls. This was the most interesting part of the garden to me. If you look attentively, you can find traces of original water channels, tanks and paths under the overgrowth.

Sunday, I just walked around Chandigarh. I expected to hate Chandigarh, given my general attitude toward Corbu. It is often said that Chandigarh fails as a city because it was not built on a human scale and space was overly rationalized by the architects. Maybe this is true. I didn't interview any residents, so I don't know it it "works" or not, but as I was walking around, it occured to me that Chandigarh is a much more reasonable place to live than New Delhi. Many of the open spaces in Chandigarh are available for infill and multiple uses. If it is rainy, you can duck under cover in front of the planned shopping areas. Or you can pitch your tent in front of the same over night. You can add to the front garden, or subtract. New Delhi space, at least in the embassy area, is so policed that you really can't adapt it to your needs. If you tried to pitch a tent in front of the Turkish embassy, well, let me just say those fellows at the gates carry weapons. Maybe (probably) it is not easy to move from sector to sector for shopping-wopping if you don't have a car, but I'm not sure why you would need to leave your sector. At first I was all "Goddamit, my sector doesn't have any biscuits!" But then I realized I was only looking at the front line of the shops--the biscuits were at the back! Anyway, I'm not an urban planner, and I'm not a big proponent of massive, planned cities. But if you can plan a city in such a way that it can be adapted to different needs and desires in the future, I think that's the best you can do, really.

On Monday, we went back to Delhi via Sirhind so I could visit Akbar's Aam Khas Bagh. As other Delhiwallahs noted, the fog on Monday in this part of the world was stupendous. You don't know fear until you've ridden in a car with no seatbelts along the Delhi highway in the fog. It could have been worse, I suppose: it could have been night time. Still and all, it was a rough way to spend the early hours of the day. Thank god Hukamji was driving.

Perhaps because Sirhind is a small town with only one major architectural monument (unless you count those enormous memorial gates spanning the entry roads, and of course, the Fatehgarh Sahib gurdwara), we had no trouble getting directions to the gardens from the people standing roadside. Much like everywhere else I went this weekend, I could have spent a lot more time here. This will probably be the only Mughal caravanserai I will be able to see while I'm here, and it will definitely come in handy for the second chapter of my dissertation. I did spend a lot of time taking 125+ photographs (a few of them here), but it was a little spooky and I left before I really needed to do so according to my own schedule. The ruins were pretty much abandoned, except for the two little boys flying kites, and the three teenaged boys skipping school. The roofs to many of the chambers had collapsed, so it felt a little precarious, climbing walls and skirting gaping holes. Plus, there was a chamber of bats (I could hear them from some distance off, and one of the school-skipping-boys told me not to go in because of the animals). Overall, it looked like a good place for snakes to be living, and once the sun came out, I expected the snakes to come out to get warm, too. I thought maybe this was my over-active imagination, but when I ran my idea by Hukamji, he thought snakes sounded like a reasonable possibility.

It took a long time to get back to Delhi from Sirhind, and now I am exhausted. I think I've used up my energy and courage reserves. Even though I took the comfort route by hiring a driver, it's tough to get into a car with a stranger and head off into the unknown for four days. I had intended to go to Chennai for a long weekend in February, but I'm thinking now that maybe I'll just stay in Delhi where I'm comfortable and can sleep in my own bed at night.

Why am I here again?

2009-01-15T10:50:00.004Z

You know, sometimes the disparity between the outcome and effort put into something to produce that outcome is so great that I end up wondering just what the point of life is, anyway.

In my fifth week here, fourth week in the archives, I finally found a useful document. One useful document, and that made me very happy. Yes! Progress! But then I started thinking about how I could use said document in my dissertation, and realized it would help me write two sentences only, or three if I decide to be really verbose. Is that really worth sitting in a room to which I'm clearly allergic for four weeks? No.

I'm actually just mad because the smallest tasks tend to derail me, sending me into a crash of depression and anxiety. Example: I stopped to get my phone recharged so I can call my parents this weekend. I wanted a 501 rupee top up, but he talked me into a 666 rupee top up. Then he mistyped, and ended up topping me up for 999 rupees, but I only had 700 rupees with me. I can't even go to the ATM because I've made my maximum withdrawal for the day to pay my Chandigarh driver tomorrow a.m. I can't take any money out of that stash because I need to pay out at 8 a.m. tomorrow morning, and I can't guarantee an ATM in the neighborhood will be working tomorrow a.m. if I try to go out early and make up the 300 rupee deficit for the phone (only one out of the four ATM on my street was working this afternoon, but that's another story).

But here I am, and he's telling me I have to give 1000 rupees, and I am saying I only have 700, and he is saying, this is not a problem Pablo here can go to your house and get the 300 rupees from someone there. Or he can come over this evening and get the money. And I'm trying to explain in my stupid fucked up Hindi that no, he can't go asking my landlords for money, and I don't have the 300 rupees, the ATMs are broken, and NO, he can't go to my house anyway. And you know how red my face is by this point.

Anyway, someone else came over and started explaining it all to me in English, and I'm like, dude, I get what happened, but that doesn't change the fact that I only have 700 rupees, the ATMs are broken, and I'm going out of town tomorrow a.m. In the end, I agree I would bring him the 300 rupees on Tuesday, and I will, but I probably won't go back to the same place after that. A 300 rupee typing mistake will not turn me into a return customer.

Lohri/Sankranti

2009-01-14T14:26:00.002Z

I'm a little disappointed in myself for taking so long to piece together all the clues. Clue 1) Vandanaji spent the evening crouched in front of the heater, drying the mehendi (henna) on her hands. Clearly a special occasion is coming up. Clue 2) The neighbors deliberately start a bonfire on the front walk way. Clue 3) Vandanaji is wearing a beautiful suit this morning. Clue 4) Family breakfast is really late! Clue 5) Two pieces of barfi on my breakfast plate. Clearly it is a celebration!

But, I had to ask what it all meant in the end, because I couldn't figure it out by myself. The fire was for Lohri. We live in south Delhi, and many of our neighbors are Panjabi (it's like a page out of the young Darymple's City of Djinns, only not so derogatory). There were probably a lot of fires going on last night, I just didn't see them. The mehendi, sweets and suit were for Sankranti, the fasting for which starts at first sight of the moon the evening before. But it's the good (Hindu) kind of fasting--you can still have chai, fruit and juice, just not the solid types of food.

So there you go. I've seen my first Lohri fire, and eaten my first Sankranti mithai.

Figure Skating 101

2009-01-13T17:31:00.005Z

Republic Day. I can tell it's approaching because they've started putting the seats back on top of the bleacher frames lining Raj Path. I really want to see the parade or them beating the retreat, but I keep getting e-mails from the U.S. Government telling me how dangerous it is to do fun stuff in India. We'll see.
Transportation. Last week was a really bad transportation week. I was in an accident--don't worry, the only person hurt was me, and I obviously lived to tell the tale--and I had a lot of hassle with autorickshaw drivers throughout the week. To the young man who tries to pick me up every afternoon at the intersection of Raj Path and Jan Path: listen, you're not doing yourself any good trying to force tourists to go to the bazaars. It just makes you look dishonest, and gives Delhi a bad reputation among foreigners. Knock it off.
City of Djinns. Re-read it yesterday and today. I read it years and years ago, when it first came out, so I could barely remember most of it. It's much more interesting now that I know Delhi more intimately. I will say, the young Darymple didn't know a heck of a lot about architecture (hint: Taj is not the model for Safdarjung's Tomb). But it's been interesting reading, especially the post-Partition commentary. Much has changed in twenty years, but much has not.
Chandigarh. Eric and I are going to Chandigarh on Friday, stopping in Panipat on the way up and Sirhind on the way back. Also going up to the gardens in Pinjore. I chose the hotel based on the description of the beds ("comfortable"), so I hope it turns out as advertised.
Fire. I often walk in the park across the street in the evenings. While I was walking tonight, a family deliberately started a fire on their driveway. When I came around the corner, the family was standing around it, hands clasped as if they were all doing puja, while the fire burned 4' high. It was intense enough that I could hear the cracking and popping through my earphones. Not sure what they were up to, really, but I'd like to know what it was for.
Italian. My favorite Italian restaurant is Stone, on the top floor of Moet's BBQ in Defence Colony market. I like eating outside on the terrace, where I can watch the birds all come to roost at the end of the day.
Rab ne bana di Jodi. The poster was better than the movie, but Claire and I had fun, anyway. This is the first time I've ever had to check my bag at a cigarette stand on the sidewalk. I guess once a bomb goes off outside your theatre, you're a little jumpy about handbags. Still, a cigarette stand?
I was complaining to Eric about my dissertation topic (rough summary of my concerns here), and he was trying to cheer me up. "Look," he said, "you could have stuck with colonial churches and cemeteries like you originally intended, but you probably wouldn't have gotten the funding you did. The archive is deep for those topics, they are very doable, but they are not very exciting. You got the funding because you're going for the triple, not the double, axel." "Triple axel!?!" I exclaimed. "Do you know how hard it is to land a triple axel? That's 3 and a half rotations!" "That's exactly my point," he said. "They expect you to land it. And you will." And this is where I explain: I use hockey skates. I can't even do a single toe loop in those things, much less a triple axel. My dissertation is going to crash and burn, sliding across the ice to crumple against the boards. Wait and see.
Calcutta. In March, I have to go to Calcutta for a Fulbright conference. We are being given ten minutes to present our research. Ten minutes only. Good luck with that, that's not even a poster session.

Safdarjung's Tomb

2009-01-11T15:34:00.003Z

Well, I intended to fill this space with a week's worth of whinging, but I've decided I'd rather eat cold cereal. So, instead of reading paragraphs full of my complaints, you can spend your free time looking at photos from my weekend instead.

Calcutta.

2009-01-07T14:08:00.000Z

Going there.

Afraid to ask.

2009-01-06T11:05:00.004Z

On the way home from the NAI today, I spent some time thinking about the feasibility of my dissertation topic. If my committee had tried to persuade me to take a different tack, would I have done so? I guess they could have failed my proposal, that would have sent a clear message. I'm just now wondering--did they let me go off and research this topic because they actually believed I would find a way to make it happen, or did they just not want to argue with me about it? I'd love to know, but...see title.

The other historians at the archives seem to have clearly delineated resources for which they are hunting. As an example, anyone doing a dissertation on disease and epidemic and how it relates to nationalism, resistance, colonialism, etc., would have no problem finding material at the NAI. The Home Records indices for the beginning of the 20th century are saturated with discussions on plague, epidemic and famine.* Similarly, if I wanted to construct on argument about definitions of "assault" as it relates to class, caste or position in early 20th c. India, I would have pages upon pages of assault records to scrutinize.** I spoke to someone today who is working on marriage laws and citizenship, and she seemed pretty upbeat about what she's finding in the Home Records.

Anyway, what I think at the end of today is that the big idea behind my research--the production and mobility of knowledge--is a good one. I think I made it really difficult for myself, however, by trying to base my argument on 5 sites of production, when there are only archival records available for 1 of those five (those records are in Bikaner, not Delhi). I should have chosen five science laboratories with clear construction and production records, not some obscure 18th c. monuments that apparently few people even noticed in the landscape. So, my idea's good, my application of it--not so much.

When I was paging through indices today, I noticed a lot of records about bicycles ("petition to let peons ride bicycles while in service") and typists/typography. I'm not sure why they jumped out at me, other than the fact that there were several of them, spanning across many years. When I was getting my bag out of the locker at the end of the day, I glanced down at a stack of research notes another fellow had placed on the table while stowing his own bag. It was a list of Home Records he was intending to consult, all of which pertained to bicycles and typists. I'm mystified by the connection, but it must be an important one, given that it came to my attention twice in one day.

[Interruption: Kush just brought me a bowl of hot pasta! I think they feel sorry for me with my cold.]

Well, tomorrow, I have another idea for another approach. We'll see if it works.

*Based just on my research today, I can say there is a great dissertation to be written about the policing of religion through restrictions placed on Hajj pilgrims because of the fear of the spread of disease. I also found, but did not read, a discussion about the possible spread of the plague during the Coronation Durbar of 1903--all the people required/requesting to pay their respects to Edward VII threatened to bring disease to Delhi with them. A real concern, or a method of policing motion?

**For the record, in 98% of the entries I saw today, only the European involved in the assault--whether the assailant or the recipient of said attack--was given a full name; the opposing party was generally listed as "a native," or "a coolie" or "a peon." Welcome to the colonies.

Ugh.

2009-01-05T14:00:00.000Z

Head cold. Cry for me.

How to Make a Living.

2009-01-04T10:57:00.003Z

Orchard labor, thinning (Tonasket)
Parking office clerk (WWU, Bellingham)
Cabin girl, guest ranch (Montana)
Cashier, Jack in the Box (Seattle)
Reference Assistant (UW, Seattle)
Translator/Interpreter (Seattle)
Temp worker (Seattle, multiple corporations)
Office Assistant, Seattle Indian Health Board (Seattle)
Medical Receptionist, Seattle Indian Health Board (Seattle)
Side, Herfy’s (Bellingham)
Campus Security officer (WWU, Bellingham)
Desk clerk, YMCA (Bellingham)
Day prep worker, Taco Time (Bellhingham)
Teaching Assistant, Art History (WWU, Bellingham)
Teaching Assistant, Art History (USC, Los Angeles)
Note Taker (USC, Los Angeles)
Green ceramic ware cleaner (Tonasket)
Teaching Assistant, Art History (UO, Eugene)
Night Janitor (UO, Eugene)
Translator/Proofreader (UO, Eugene)
Temp worker (UO, Eugene)
Billing Clerk (UO, Eugene)
Customer Service Rep, Symantec (Eugene)
Teaching Assistant, History (UO, Eugene)
Note Taker (UO, Eugene)
Research Assistant (UO, Eugene)
Chauffeur (Bloomington)
Hardware Specialist (IU, Bloomington)
Music Editor, Koreanday (Bloomington)
Electronic Resources Coordinator (IU, Bloomington)
Adjunct Faculty, Design Technology (Ivy Tech, Bloomington)
Construction Manager (Bloomington)
Prime Roller, One World Industries (Bloomington)
Commercial Drafter (Bloomington)
Computer Support, Forest Service (Bedford, Tell City)
Design Assistant (Columbus)
Teaching Assistant, Architectural History (UIUC, Champaign-Urbana)

Ganapati

2009-01-02T15:49:00.005Z

For the past two days, I've been helping another Fulbrighter settle into life in Delhi. I'm not doing this out of any sort of obligation to help out other Fulbrighters (although we all seem to be doing that), but because he's a friend from my first Hindi program in Jaipur. I tell you what, that A.I.I.S. thing--if you think you want to do research in India, get started with A.I.I.S. language programs right now, because these are going to be the people who are with you for your graduate education and beyond. Those people in your local cohort? Not so useful over the long haul if they are all Americanists. I run into fellow A.I.I.S.ers all over the place, in India, in Paris, in London, at conferences in the U.S., everywhere.

There's nothing like helping out a newly-arrived American to demonstrate to yourself how much you've learned since your own arrival. I've only been here three weeks, and already I was able to act the expert and help my friend get a mobile phone (the easy way, not the way I did it), find his new hotel, find lunch, find water, find a new flat, all of this. My Hindi has dramatically improved over the past three weeks (I think my Urdu lessons in Hindi are helping), and my geographical knowledge of south Delhi has broadened unbelievably. It's also just comforting because I can see that my friend is exactly where I was three weeks ago, absolutely desolate about 9 more months spent away from home. Another Fulbrighter (former A.I.I.S.er) talked me off the ledge my second day in Delhi, and now I can do the same for someone else.

Anyway, that's all just to say that I'm in a slightly different place today than I was three weeks ago. Still far from happy, of course, and desperately wishing to go home. Still annoyed that all this lipservice to diversifying the academy is just that--empty talk that doesn't address the structural issues that ensure "diverse" students can't make it through to the end (why should anyone be forced to spend an entire year abroad with no possibility of going back to the U.S. for a visit, especially when that person has two small children back home? How does such a travel ban make for a better academic?). Still concerned about the cough I've developed from the winter pollution, and still incredibly frustrated by my 100% non-productive time at the archives. But...no longer in danger of shooting myself with chachaji's rifle.

This post didn't take the direction I thought it would when I started writing it. I was going to talk about Ganeshji, who lives in our staircase. I spent a lot of quality time with Hanumanji the last time I was here, trying to work through a lot of frienship issues I was having (am probably still having, I'm not good at interpersonal relationships). In this house, Ganeshji is the deity at hand. And I suppose he is the more appropriate deity for all those doctoral students who should be focused on their dissertations and not on their social life. So, I'll try to be more respectful of his little round belly the next time I walk by him, and hope that the respect becomes mutual, and he helps me work through all the research and writing problems I'm facing while I'm here. But I think I should probably stay in touch with Hanumanji, too, because one thing that has become really clear to me over the past three weeks is that I'm not going to make it through the next nine months without my friends. So, please, Hanumanji, let me be smart enough and patient enough and kind enough to keep these friends, because right now, it's not just that I need them, but that we all need each other. Namasteji.

Deer Park

2008-12-30T17:57:00.001Z

Okay, for everyone who doesn't want to read my second-grade Hindi, here are the photos from my day at Deer Park.

Lazy Susan.

2008-12-30T13:42:00.003Z

Well, I'm not making headway in the archives, but I'm going to try something new tomorrow and see if it works. I give it a 80/20 chance of failing, actually, but I'm out of ideas.

Anyway, the real point of this post is to open a poll. In other words, tell me what to do. The question:

Should I pay a lot of money for a driver to go to Chandigarh for a long weekend in January, or should I be economical and take the train?

The plus side of driving is that the driver would be mine for the entire weekend--wherever I wanted to go, including Pinjore, would be included in the driving price. Also, if I wanted to stop somewhere (Kurukshetra, Ambala, anywhere else?) on the way to Chandigarh, I could. Also, I could go through Sirhind for kicks on the way back. Also, I wouldn't have to carry any luggage around the train station or worry about it getting stolen. I probably would have a daypack, my camera bag, and maybe a courier bag to deal with, and I get tired of carrying that stuff around.

The plus side of taking the train is, of course, the price. Train fare isn't expensive, even for first class, and it probably takes as long (maybe longer) to drive to Chandigarh from Delhi as it does to take the train. The Shatabdi express is easy and comfortable, and I've done this same route before. So, my bank account is telling me to take the train.

The negative cost of the driver is only the money, that and having to share the road with all the other drivers for a day full of honking horns.

The negative of the train is that I would have to take an autorickshaw/taxi from the station into town, and then negotiate with autorickshaws all weekend while I'm out photographing architecture. And I'm not sure I would be able to arrange a lift to Pinjore once I'm in Chandigarh.

Money vs. convenience, that's what it boils down to. What should I do?

प्रदूषण

2008-12-27T17:59:00.003Z

I read an article in today's newspaper that said that visibility at the airport (new runway) was down to 900 meters due to fog. At the end of the article, the author conceded that this fog was actually smog. Anyway, that's about 400 meters more visibility than I proposed yesterday, but still, not an ideal amount of visibility for a truck driver, much less an airline pilot.

Om Shanti Om

2008-12-26T14:55:00.005Z

I think we're going to have to consider this day a success, even if it did start with me refusing to get out of bed and face the world for a full two hours after my alarm went off.

I managed to get myself to the archives without too much hassle this morning. The first rickshaw I flagged down offered a reasonable price (ie, only Rs. 20 above the meter fare), so I took it and felt grateful after yesterday's transportation fiasco.

I'm not sure what I did wrong the first day at the NAI security booth. Other Americans walk right by me, sign the entrance book, and get security passes handed to them with no comment. I, on the other hand, have to wait while the security guard calls someone to ask if the person who has the letter from the U. S. Embassy is still allowed inside the building. So far, I am eventually allowed inside, so I'll just call that good enough for now. I'm not really using the archives at this point. Another historian recommended starting with the library collection, just to get used to the place, so that is what I am doing. I have a stack of half a dozen books that weren't available to me in the U.S., and although it feels like a slight waste of time (why read secondary sources when you are sitting just feet away from primary sources?), it's all I can really handle right now. I know how to check out a book, so that is what I am going to do for the next few days.

So, although the dust irritates my throat, and there is one huge--and hugely persistent--fly that annoys me, I can call that part of my day a success because at least my computer wasn't plugged into the wall during the power loss/surge on, and the battery held out in my headphones so I could listen to music while I scoured the bibliographies of the books in front of me.

Amazingly, the first rickshaw I flagged down after I left the archives agreed to take me to Green Park (sometimes they refuse to drive south of the tourist area) and offered me exactly the meter price to take me there. I was so stunned I almost forgot to get inside the rickshaw. So, that was also one success today.

I discovered that there is a Costa Coffee in the Main Market of Green Park. This makes me happy for several reasons:

Since they are ubiquitous in London, they look familiar and welcoming. The coffee shop closest to my house in Southgate was a Costa, so I spent many evenings there drinking hot chocolate and reading while watching the traffic pass by on the high street.
It reminds me home, because Catherine and I stopped in at a Costa so I could introduce her to Hot Chocolate with Marshmallow the night we went to Covent Garden for Christmas shopping.
It is quiet. Although my favorite coffee drink, the Cold Sparkle, can be found at CCD, neither CCD nor Barista are good for studying. The tables at CCD are horrible, and they are always playing Shania Twain (I kid you not, this is my third visit to India, and all three times--Shania Twain on repeat). Big tables at Costa, and a quiet atmosphere.
The menu is limited, so I have to order a cappuccino. Drinking a cappuccino out of a mug with sugar stuck to the rim always reminds me of my friend, Dana, because I had to take up drinking coffee when we started meeting to discuss books and things. The coffee shops on the UIUC campus don't carry Diet Coke, and they also don't know how to make decent Italian sodas or iced mochas, so I had to switch to hot coffee.

So, these are all good things to experience in a day. I have a feeling the Costa in India will be getting a larger percentage of my monthly income than did the Costas in London.

After doing my Urdu homework at the coffee shop, I walked for an hour in the park next to our house. It is a very small park, but it is closely watched by our watchman, so I can feel secure walking there even after dark. Catherine gave me a Zune for Christmas, so I can download podcasts and listen to them while I am zipping around in little circles. The pollution is so horrible you can hardly see across the park,* but I did see Jupiter while I was walking. I listened to the December episodes of News from Lake Wobegon, and started crying twice, once during "Gesu Bambino" and once during "Silent Night." That doesn't feel like much of a victory, but I've been wanting to cry for days and have been forcing myself not to do so. Music is a good excuse to let go.

Finally, I also watched "Deewangi Deewangi" from Om Shanti Om twice while I was sitting in Costa. I almost didn't buy this DVD because judging from Beth's two reviews, I figured I wouldn't like it. I have no love for movies that are about the movie industry (ask Catherine how many times she's heard me complain about The Player). And, sure enough, I liked the second half of the movie better than the first--I'm probably the only person in the world who will say that. Don't get me wrong, I like some inside movie jokes. I am always up for a good Gabbar Singh reference, for instance.** But that's about where I draw the line--one inside joke, fine. Forty two hundred, well, that's not a movie I want to see.

However, I really like "Deewangi Deewangi," probably because of all the beautiful women. I have to say, I know she gets help from her stylist and whatever, but Rani Mukherji must be the most beautiful woman in the world. Kajol comes in a close second, or maybe Priyanka Chopra comes in second. All quite beautiful. There are many loveable things about this picturization, but the thing I liked the most about it, and the movie in general is that THERE ARE NO WHITE PEOPLE DANCING BADLY IN THE BACKGROUND. Thank you, Farah. If I want to see white people dancing badly, I can just look in the mirror while I'm cleaning house. Also, the other thing that I liked about this is that it just shows that SAK isn't that...hm...bright. Don't you think he would know by now that dancing next to SRK is a bad idea? It just makes him look all loose and sloppy. OTOH, although the disco pain song demonstrates that SRK is not scrawny, he sure looks like he is when compared to SAK, Salmaan and Mr. Munna Bhai, MBBS.

Also, from Beth's description, I expected Rekha to look truly frightful, but she just looked normal to me. A bit of dramatic makeup, but actually more light-hearted than she is often depicted.

Okay, that's enough. I think I should stop writing and go to bed before something goes wrong and makes this into a bad day instead of a good one. I haven't decided how I'm going to spend the day tomorrow, but hopefully somewhere with clean air and few people. If only.

*I exaggerate not on the pollution. It was better for a day or two, but now has worsened. It is so bad that when I was standing on Jan Path, half way between Rashtrapati Bhavan and India Gate, I could just make out India Gate, and only see a shadow of Rashtrapati Bhavan. They are about 1/4 mile apart.

**Thinking about this, the Gabbar Singh scence was the best part of Amu. Also, the Gabbar Singh joke was the only funny thing about Dostana.

Surely.

2008-12-25T09:49:00.002Z

Some day all of this will make for a very funny story, much like the glowing blue cones up my nose in the Soviet Union. But right now, I feel exactly like I did when I pulled my Leningrad roommate, Kristine, out of class so she could sit with me while I cried about the experience of having less-than-clean foreign objects shoved up my nostrils.

First, let me say that the place I am staying is quite nice, and the owners have been very kind to me. Last night, Vandanaji made me a special waffle dinner for Christmas Eve, and Kush, the son, brought me a bowl of incredibly good popcorn. They also gave me a present, which I haven't opened yet, but from the familar size and shape, I'd say was a Cadbury bar of some variety. So, I recognize that everything is not completely horrible, and life could be much worse. In fact, right now, I'm sitting on the balcony outside my room, alternately watching Om Shanti Om and the cricket match going on in the park across the street. That's not a bad way to spend an afternoon in Delhi, that's for sure. I could be sleeping in the A.I.I.M.S. park with those whacked out stainless steel alien sculptures, but I'm in a comfortable chair enjoying the winter sun, instead.

Still, I wonder--if I stay here for nine months, how bitter will I be in the end? Will I hate the choices that I've made so much that I'll refuse to finish my dissertation? Or, if I finish it, will I refuse to do any work related to India or even architecture? This is a real possibility I think.

My day got off to an awkward and annoying start. I overslept, which seems to be happening every day to me. I just can't get myself out of bed, I don't want to do anything at all but sleep. Anyway, I got out of bed late, so I was still in my room when the maid came by to clean. While she was cleaning, she flat out asked me for baksheesh (money/bribe/"tip"). And I was thinking, you've got to be kidding me. I'm paying more than enough for this place to cover the cost of cleaning my floor. If you don't want to clean it, fine, but our first conversation shouldn't open with the word "baksheesh". At least say hello first. Anyway, I pretended I didn't speak Hindi, and left as quickly as I could, because honestly, it really isn't my place to be giving her money.

Yesterday, I thought I had ascertained that the NAI would be open today. It turns out that, yes, the NAI is open, but not the reading room or library. I should have been more specific with my question, I guess. So, I arrived for work today, only to find out the security hut closed and locked, a clear signal I wasn't going to get anything done today. So, fine, that's 60 rupees in rickshaw fare wasted, but I could find something else to do with my time. For instance, I could just go to a coffee shop in CP and work on my citations or something. I flagged down an autorickshaw and headed toward CP.

The rickshawalla approached CP such that we arrived right at one of the gates for the Palika Underground Bazaar. Well, it's a holiday, I thought, so why not pick up a DVD, sit in the coffee shop and watch it? But when I got out of the rickshaw, those complete jerkface scam artists surrounded me, trying to polish my shoes. I warded them off, but got stuck near the rickshaw too long because the rickshaw wallah had no change. No one around would give him change, so I did the nice thing: I walked to a vendor, bought a bottle of water, got change for the rickshaw wallah, gave him the bottle of water to boot, and sent him on his way. This stupidity kept me in the area just long enough for the shoe-shine jerks to step close again, throw wet monkey dung on my sandals and then tell me, "Oh, madam, your shoes are dirty, I can polish them!"

This made me furious, because for one, it was A LOT of dung, and they splattered it on my jeans which had just come back from the laundry. I told them to fuck off, grabbed a rag from one of them, and started wiping off my foot. You can imagine how the guy felt about me taking the rag out of his hand, but I figure, hey, you throw monkey dung on my sandals, you face my anger. I got off as much as I could, threw his rag on the ground, and walked away.

I was completely pissed--which means I was trying not to cry, because I cry when I get angry--but I didn't want them to think they had won (although they obviously had), so I went into Palika Market and bought a DVD with monkey dung residue on my foot. And then I went into a coffee shop, ordered coffee and a glass of water (and it took me three attempts to get the water), and used the water to rinse my foot. Still, there is no way to clean that stuff off without scrubbing, so I decided that my backup plan of watching a DVD and drinking coffee just wasn't going to happen.

Have I mentioned that I hate CP? No, I do NOT want to buy your stupid junk, so quit jumping in front of me and demanding that I look. I have eyes, and I have free will--if I want to look at your crap, I will. Otherwise, leave me alone. Seriously. Leave me alone.

So, I got a rickshaw back to SJE, and about half way here, the driver starts giving me the "I know a very good bazaar, we stop for only 5 minutes, then I take you home." At this point, I was feeling like I could punch him in the back of the head, but I took the peaceful route and just kept refusing. However, when you are in a moving vehicle, what are you going to do when the driver turns off the route? I thought about jumping out, but then what? Negotiating with my fourth rickshaw wallah of the day? So, in the end, we ended up at the bazaar. At first I refused to go in, but after sitting there in the rickshaw for awhile, it became clear that if I didn't go in, I was never getting home. I also thought, well, I could wait for another rickshaw here, but then there would be this long confrontation about how I hadn't paid him for the distance driven, etc. Fuck all that noise.

Into the bazaar, more people telling me to "Just look, Madam!" and they are all lucky I had no weapons to hand. I hovered for approximately three minutes, walked back out and demanded to be taken home. Luckily, the driver took me home this time, I don't know what I would have done had he ignored my wishes.

So, a lot of scrubbing of jeans, feet, sandals and hands with Dettol soap. Sometimes I feel like Dettol is my only friend here, I spend so much quality time with it.

Anyway, Merry Christmas. The weather's nice, the cricket game is interesting, the movie is a reasonable time pass, but that's really not enough pleasantness to erase the smell of monkey dung from my memory banks.

Kya bat hai?

2008-12-23T10:31:00.003Z

I'm trying to tell myself that this frustration is normal. This was originally a very long blog post about all the walls I hit today, but I've deleted the details in the interest of not making myself look like a crying, whiny baby. Let's just leave it there.

One of my former Hindi professors from Jaipur is doing his Ph.D. at JNU (which, btw, has the most beautiful campus in the world). We've arranged for him to give me Urdu lessons, something I hope will help me with both my Hindi and my Persian. Anyway, he's coming over this evening, we'll have some chai-wai, he'll teach me some alefs, and hopefully I'll feel better afterward.

Has it been nine months yet?

2008-12-21T04:41:00.000Z

Because I really want to go home.

Just send me a Missed Call.

2008-12-19T17:23:00.004Z

I've had this cell phone for four days only, and already it is dictating the rhythms of quotidian life here. It wakes me up in the middle of the night, it wakes me up in the morning (btw, how do you politely tell someone who is trying to help you get things done that you need more uninterrupted sleep?). Calls, missed calls, text messages--I feel as if my phone is glued to my hand already, and without it, I am no one.

This is somewhat true here, of course. Pradeepji told me that even someone who only makes Rs. 2000/month will invest in a b/w cell phone, say for maybe Rs. 500. They will never recharge it (or "top it up" for those of you from the UK), or use it to make outgoing calls, because that costs money. Incoming calls are free, however. As long as they have the capacity to receive incoming calls, they have an identity and a location.

Some Americans use their phones the same way here in India--never paying to make outgoing calls. Instead, they call and hang up as quickly as possible, creating a "Missed Call" message at the other end of the line. That way, the other person has to go to the expense of making the call back. I'm not quite sure why Americans suddenly become reluctant to pay for phone calls here, but it seems to be a common behavior. Common enough that I can't get upset about it, anyway. Rest assured, if you are my friend, and you send me a missed call, I will always call you back. I love you THAT much. I will gladly pay Rs. 10 to talk to you for ten minutes.

दिल्ली में हूँ

2008-12-18T10:15:00.006Z

थोड़ा सा अजीब है कि मैं दिल्ली में हूँ, न? मतलब, मुझे लगता है कि कभी नहीं दूसरे देश में रहती थीं। हाँ, साफ है कि अमरीका से हूँ, लेकिन सब कुछ साधारण है। सब्जी बेचने वाले आदमी हर सुबह चिचियानों से मुझे उठाते हैं। कबूतर जो मेरे कमरे से बाहर ऐ.सी. के ऊपर रहते हैं, वे सुबह और शाम को उच्च स्वर करते हैं। कुत्ते गलियों में सोते हैं। एक बात ही नयी है--मौसम अच्छा है। बहुत लोग स्वेटर पहनते, लंबे आस्तीनों से हैं। तो, हाँ, ऐसा मौसम बहुत पसंद है! प्रदूषण यहाँ खराब है, और स्वासथ्य और श्वसन तंत्र पर चिंता हूँ। इस के अलावा, सब ठीक है।

आज का कार्यक्रम ऐसा था--डीर पार्क गयी। यही बहुत हरिण रहते हैं। कई चिड़ियाँ भी हैं। मैंने मोरों, हंसों, तोतों, वगैरह देखा। पार्क में इमारतें लोदी वंश (1451-1526) से भी हैं। काली गुमती, बाग-ई-अलम गुमबाद (मस्जिद के पास), और तैफैवाला (Tefewala) गुमबाद देखा। सबसे अच्छा इस पार्क में एकान्तता थी। मतलब किसने नहीं मुझ से बात करना कोशिश किया!

Firefox $&!!!!!!

2008-12-17T14:09:00.002Z

I updated Firefox the other day, and it completely broke my machine. Not only can I not access the web with Firefox, I can't use Opera, either. And I couldn't even get Chrome to install as a third alternative. IE still works, but as we know, IE is hosed. WTF? It can't be my firewall, because even when it is completely disabled, Firefox and Opera don't work. Everything worked perfectly fine before this stupid update, I've followed all the suggested fixes, uninstalled/reinstall Firefox, uninstalled/reinstalled Opera, turned off and on all my security settings in various configurations, and nothing works. Do you know how hard it is going to be to get someone to fix this in Delhi? Goddamn you, Firefox.

Unbelievably...

2008-12-17T07:07:00.004Z

I now own four cell phones. A surplus of riches, I'm sure. I had good reasons for buying them all, I swear. The first is, of course, my US cell phone (an old phone, replacing the one I stupidly ruined last summer). That's my only phone for use in Illinois, and with the commute of the last three years, and the hockey travel before that, it can only be considered essential. The second is the phone I bought in India in 2006. Not absolutely essential, but making phone calls while standing along side the road got old really quickly. The unreliability of public ISD service was making me break out in hives, so that phone felt pretty essential, too. Oh, and I had to buy the new phone, because the US phone wouldn't work. Third, the phone I just bought in London. My US phone was locked, and the India phone needed an adapter, both of which would have required I find a new store. The fees for unlocking and cost of an adapter were equal to the price of a new handset, so I just got the handset and thought, well, now I'll have yet another backup the next time I carefully place my phone in a pool of water.

That brings me to the fourth phone. I won't tell the whole story of me visiting FIVE different mobile phone stores yesterday, but let's just say that arranging for a cell phone provider in India can be a super headache. I didn't need a new handset, only a SIM card--both my first India phone and the London phone will work here--but in the end, my need to call my parents was greater than my need to get exactly what I wanted. India can be a very complicated place, and it tends to make you go for the compromise more often than you would otherwise. [Sidenote: Mark, you were in the Airtel store, dressed in all white. You made your own verification call, during which you told your friends that Airtel wanted to "verify if you were human"--thanks, you made me laugh. Also, your Hindi is brilliant.]

My journey through five stores probably wouldn't have been so exhausting if I hadn't stood in line at the FRRO (office for registering foreign visitors, necessary if you are going to stay longer than six months in India) for approximately 4.5 hours beforehand. Well, I stood in line for two hours to get the green form, on which I wrote my name, address, passport and visa numbers, and incoming flight information. This might look exactly like the information one has to write on the landing card before going through immigration and customs at the airport. Well, it is. I'm not sure why they need it a second time. Filling out the green form took approx. 2 minutes, then I had to leave the office, go outside, down the street, and get two copies made of the green form. Then I had to paste passport photographs on these three forms and in the visitor's booklet, then get back in line. That all took about 15 minutes. Then I stood line to get my forms stamped. After approx. 1 hour, the entire office went to lunch, leaving all in the office. After lunch, which took approx. 45 minutes, I waited approx. 20 minutes. My forms were stamped, and then I went to In Charge, where it took approx. 15 seconds to deposit my forms in a wire basket.

So, you can see that was approximately 4.5 hours well spent.

Actually, my friend Rebecca did her registration today, and she showed up at 8 a.m., an hour before the office officially opens. She was 3rd in the queue, and was done by 10 a.m. So, there you go.

I've done all my tasks. I am waiting now for my letter from the U.S. Embassy, necessary for access to the National Archives. All I can do is wait now, the request has been made. Claire says that I can keep trying to be the first person ever to get into the archives within two weeks of her or his arrival date, but I will just end up exhausted and frustrated. After yesterday, I suspect she's right. I'm going to take this time to try and write up some of my London research more formally, even though I'm not quite sure where it's all headed yet.

Spicy Chaat.

2008-12-15T11:33:00.002Z

Today, waiting out a traffic jam, I found myself reading a book in the back of my autorickshaw. I don't think that means I'm fully acclimated to Delhi and therefore oblivious to my surroundings, but I'm sure it means something. Mostly it means I need to practice my Hindi, because I was reading the first chapter of the first book in the Chronicles of Narnia series, and I still stumbled across many unknown vocabulary words.

I had to take several deep breaths today (thanks for the advice, Claire) and tell myself everything was OK, really, it was. Just because I was in the archive working two days after my arrival in London doesn't mean the same thing will or has to happen here. If I'm in the archive by next week, that will mean I'm very lucky. I know this is the way it works--I do have to get fifteen thousand pieces of paper signed by fifteen thousand different people, all of whom sit at desks next to each other, but for some reason can only communicate through signed pieces of paper. In nine months, I will probably have accomplished about as much as I accomplished in London in three months. Now, I just have to convince my dissertation committee of this basic truth. I hope they understand I'm NOT MAKING THIS UP.

This evening, my "facilitator" is coming over to the guest house to help me fill out foreign visitor registration forms. I hope this goes okay, I'm not sure my hosts think my registration with FRO is necessary, but it is. It's particularly important that I do everything by the book now, because I will need to extend my visa before I leave, and I don't want to have any mistakes in my paper work before that time. If all goes well tonight, the facilitator will go with me and another American (coincidentally, a former classmate from my AIIS Jaipur program) to the FRO so we can register our presence as foreigners in India. I was advised today to take a book because although it is a matter only 3-4 signatures, it takes all day. This will be particuarly true now, because of Mumbai.

Speaking of Mumbai. Although I am complete agreement with Arundhati Roy when she writes that Mumbai is not "India's 9/11," still, the city's name is said the same way. You can articulate a lot by slightly shrugging your shoulder and saying, "Well, you know. 9/11." The same communicative potential is here, only you say, "After Mumbai..." and wobble your head slightly more slowly than you would normally. Anyway, after Mumbai, I definitely won't be able to sweet talk my way into a cell phone without a certificate of residency.
Am I worried about being blown up? Well, yes, more than I am worried about being shot, unless Chachaji down the street drops that rifle when he falls asleep in the shade and accidentally wounds someone. In two days, I have stepped into the space hit by four of the bomb blasts in September 2008--I walked right through the two spots in GK1 on Sunday, and today, along with hundreds of other people, I crossed paths with two bomb sites in CP. This is the type of assault that worries me. This is much like Jaipur blasts, all seven of which occured in places I had stood not just once, but many times. So, yes, I do worry, not about those places, but where the new places will be, since nowhere seems to be hit twice (knock on wood? not sure).

I read an article today that said because of Mumbai (slow head wobble), American and European tourist numbers are down by 50%. I can't really verify that, but I can say that I only saw 5-6 white people at CP today. This is a place that should be swarming with foreign tourists, so I suspect the news report is right.

Other than this, I am settling in as well as can be expected. I've developed a sore throat and nasal drip from the INCREDIBLE pollution levels (I'll let you do your own Google search for details, but here's a summary) in just two days, and am thinkingly longingly of the relatively clean air of Jaipur. Delhi is about >this much< more intense than Jaipur, and I hope Catherine doesn't freak out when she visits. But hopefully she will find it all amusing. I was riding to GK1 yesterday, thinking, "Oh, Delhi, you're such a noisy city," when spontaneously, all horns around me sounded off just in case someone didn't realize it was time to move forward, and I had to laugh--how can you not be charmed by such a pointless gesture? Make as much noise as you can, especially when you can't even see whether the light has turned green or not, because why not? You have a horn, after all. Use it.

And now, I have two hours to work before my facilitator arrives. Well, work, and eat the spicy chaat my host, Vandanaji, handed me a few minutes ago. Today's snack is puffed rice sprinkled with green chili--hot, but crunchy.

Caged.

2008-12-06T21:27:00.006Z

Trying to spend my last weekend in London outside, enjoying a last bit of "public privacy" before heading to Dehli next week. Passed the day at the zoo. Winter is always a nice time to visit because the animals aren't collapsed of heat exhaustion, and crowds are non-existent. I hurt my knee in Paris, I think a bit of an after-injury stemming from the fall I took a couple of months ago, so walking all day on hard surfaces was probably not the smartest thing, but stil and all, it was nice to be outside in the cold air. I already miss winter. Catherine and I had a bit of Christmas--shopping and busker-watching at Covent Garden, a nice dinner at Mahoe--but I think I will miss the run up to the holidays along with the winter weather. I don't take my winter holidays as seriously as the British (you should have seen the traffic jams caused by turning Oxford Street into a pedestrian-only shopping area today), but still, it's always something that I've done, so I suppose I will miss not doing it for the first time in forty plus years.

Perhaps later I will go back and add a post or two about Paris, but for now, I think I'm just going to leave that part blank. A few of the tourism highlights are covered in the photostream, anyway, and I don't suppose adding photos of my research would be very exciting.

Also, proving that what I said about myself earlier is true, I am now reading Hugo's Hunchback of Notre-Dame.

2008-12-02T19:10:00.000Z

I had forgotten about the trap door,
your fingers on the spring,
waiting for the moment
of escape.

--fragments, 2009

Fa fa.

2008-11-24T18:10:00.005Z

The big insight gained so far from life in Paris is this: being butch means you're the one who has to do all the French-language communication tasks. You're the one who has to buy the metro tickets, order the meals, buy the bread, pick up the room key from the reception desk, give directions to lost people on the street, and tell people queuing behind you that "the cashier said that this line is closing after she rings up our groceries." Good luck with that.

The photo stream expands.

There's a word for people like me.

2008-11-19T20:05:00.007Z

I do everything backwards. I read Les Miserables in Russia, and I'm reading Crime and Punishment in Paris. I never thought I'd say this, but twenty years later, I kind of wish I had looked into fictional Raskolnikov's fictional cupboard when I had the chance...

I know, you're all wondering, what spectacular things has Susan been doing in Paris? Is she hanging out on the Left Bank, smoking cigarettes without filters and drinking les cafés crèmes? Is she spending her nights at the Lido, hoping to spot the Australian's girlfriend on stage? Is she recreating dance scenes from Jhoom Barabar Jhoom in front of the Louvre?

Sadly, I'm doing none of the above. Instead, I've been hunched over manuscripts in the Archives des Jésuites in Vanves. Above is a representative--and most important--folio from the Fonds Brotier. You can expect to see that text cited in my dissertation.

That's right.

2008-11-18T17:09:00.002Z

This is why the link to Michael McAllister's blog has been hanging out on my links page for the past four years.

Freedom. Joy.

2008-11-17T17:53:00.004Z

I love this photo of Harvey Milk. See more at sfgate's photo gallery on the Milk and Moscone assassinations.

Wasting.

2008-11-16T20:17:00.002Z

"This man was thin. He was thin in a way that was immediately familiar. Hollowing from the inside out. His skin reddened, and his brown eyes looked over me as if lightning might fall on me out of that clear afternoon sky. And I knew then, as I paid twenty dollars for the boots, that they'd been recently emptied. That he was watching me walk off in the shoes of the new dead. And that all of this had been happening for some time now."--Alex Chee, in After Peter

And in real news....

2008-11-15T23:31:00.003Z

I found this incredibly stressful to watch, but interesting to watch against the edited version. I've been thinking a lot about Harvey Milk lately, and what kind of advice he would offer, but I've been coming up pretty much blank.

Think how fucking scary Stonewall must have been.

Babel.

2008-11-15T22:36:00.003Z

I can't tell if it's sign that I'm living my life right, or that I'm living my life wrong, but this afternoon, in order to listen to an announcement on the train, I had to lift my eyes from a page of Russian text* and turn down my Hindi music** so I could focus on the spoken French.

I've been thinking about foreign languages a lot lately, partly because London, as a post-imperialist city, is packed full of people speaking everything but English. In fact, I have not heard so much Russian spoken around me since I was last in Moscow. In Haringey, I hear a lot of Panjabi, Hindi, Urdu, etc. The other day, I was in an off-license buying chocolate, and a guy came in to buy something out of the cooler section. The cashier kept yelling at him, but clearly the customer had no idea what was being said. The customer eventually just shrugged and walked back out without buying anything. When I got up to the counter, the cashier complained to me that he didn't know why the guy didn't understand, since he was yelling, "Milk!" in Gujarati. Is everyone in London expected to speak Gujarati? This morning, when I got on the tube, there was a Turkish newspaper abandoned on the seat across from me. Four stops later, a man got on, sat down, turned on his i-pod, picked up the paper, and started reading it, just as if he'd expected to find a Turkish newspaper waiting for his arrival.

So, there's that, but mostly I've been thinking about the relationship between foreign languages and research--shouldn't there be a limit to how many languages a person should have to know to do dissertation research? Right now my MS Word spell check is set up for English (United States), English (United Kingdom), French (Paris), Persian, German (Germany), Portuguese (Portugal), Hindi (India), and Russian (Russia). Also Arabic (Algeria), but that's just for a few astronomy words, not something I've really used in the past two months. The rest of it, though, is completely real--all languages in which I've read or transcribed manuscripts over the past eight weeks. It's starting to feel like a bit much--I know I'm supposed to be all postcolonial and into the local and everything, but I'm starting to wonder why I don't rely on the Persian/French/German manuscripts that have already been translated to English, instead of finding new manuscripts, or double-checking old translations? I just read a perfectly decent book that relied heavily on the English versions of Tavernier and Bernier, for instance--was there any need for me to read it in French?

Probably not. When I was doing post-bacc. work in Art History, one of the assignments in the Modern-Contemporary Survey Course was an annotated bibliograpy. Each student was assigned a female artist whose work was exhibited in the Paris Salon (1907? 1917? can't remember), and we had to produce all the sources we could think of to research that artist's biography. The artist didn't have to actually show up in any of the sources; rather, the sources just had to be real possibilities for information (checking the Thieme-Becker for an artist showing at the Paris Salon of 1910-ish would have been a good idea, for instance, even if the artist didn't actually appear in it). Anyway, I put down the standard list of sources, but I also put down a bunch of Russian bio catalogues, because they were from the right time period, and they included information on the Salon exhibitions. Instead of giving my paper back in class, the professor asked me to come to his office to retrieve my assignment. Why? He wanted to ask me why I put down all those Russian sources in my bibliography. I said they were relevant, and in fact, my artist appeared in one of them. His response? "I don't think you put them there because they're relevant, I think you put them there to show off." No one else in the class had used any foreign language resources (except the Thieme-Becker and the Benezit, obviously), so of course, I was showing off.

Well, okay, that's a very wordy and round about way to say that it feels like I really am just showing off at this point. Who the hell cares if I'm translating the road book from the Chahar Gulshan myself? I mean, really? Does it really matter if I just use Tod's history of Rajastan for clan lineages instead of struggling through the #*^&&!!!! Jaipuri myself? I think no one would notice or care if I used the Ball or Phillips translation of Tavernier, instead of citing the original French. Ditto for Tieffenthaler (although in that case...hm. The original was in German, and the translation I'm using is in French, so...not English). I would be getting a lot more work done if I just stuck to the English archive, that's for sure. I'm not quite sure what I'm up to here, but I'm definitely tired of thinking in foreign languages--not a good sign when I'm a) on day 1 of a 14 day stay in Paris; and b) looking ahead to a 9-month stay in India.

Revisiting my opening statement, I think it might be the second choice--if the nightmares you've been having about being trapped outside during aerial bombing attacks on London are in multiple languages, that's probably a sign you're doing something wrong.

*I'm reading Pikovaya Dama again because a note in the edition of Crime and Punishment that I've been reading this week [in English!] says it was a direct inspiration for Dostoevsky's story

**I seriously need to expand my collection of Bollywood music, the last new soundtrack I purchased was Jhoom Barabar Jhoom.

Off to the Continent.

2008-11-14T20:49:00.006Z

Okay, off to Paris. The daily commute is starting to wear me down, anyway, so it's probably good that I am moving on to an archive that has a total travel time of "0 minutes" from my home, according to Mapquest France. As I was telling a friend last night, I'd be a whole lot more excited about this trip if I could conduct all of my business via the internet--the archivist could sit at one end of the room, I could sit at the other, and we could exchange e-mails. I read French really well, write it passably well, but speak it offensively poorly. I mean, I horrify myself when I speak French, imagine how the archivist is going to feel when I slaughter his native tongue.

As to other details of travel, I have quite fortunately stumbled on a decent place to stay in in Delhi, in Safdarjung Enclave. That's a bit farther to the west than I'd hoped (I was looking at Defence Colony and South Extension), but the place promises to offer "a relaxed stay even for single ladies." How could I not go for that? It looks great, and it's a relief to have something in place for my arrival, instead of having to look around after I get there.

As to other details of life, Catherine is arriving in Paris on Thursday morning. This is the second longest period we've been apart, by one day (ten weeks in India last year, we'll be meeting next week after 9 weeks, 6 days). If all goes according to plan, 10-12 weeks later, we should be meeting in Delhi. Then...six long months, unless I can come up with some bright funding scheme between now and then. Must stay in denial about that.

I'm sure I'll be adding to the flickr photostream over the next weeks, even nothing gets posted here.

I hope he's right...

2008-11-11T22:38:00.002Z

...about item no. 12, 'cause no. 12 is about all I've got right now.

Dogpoet: Twenty Reasons to Join the Impact.

Reassurance at Speaker's Corner.

2008-11-09T21:21:00.005Z

Today it was windy and stormy, with only infrequent sun showers, so I thought I would take the camera out and see what it could do in such conditions. I feel obligated to learn how to use it, since it's a work tool, paid for by one of my fellowships. I really need to have a firm grasp on all of its bits and pieces by the time I get to India. The typical cycle goes something like this: I study the manual, pack up the camera, go out and start taking pictures, and realize either a) I can't remember what I read in the manual; or b) I read the wrong part of the manual. So, I mess around, and sometimes hit on the right thing to do, but mostly not. Anyway, today I tried to take some black-and-white photos, figure out the camera's (as opposed to the lens') zoom functions, and also mess with some RGB settings/filters. Mixed results of these attempts can be viewed in the Kensington Gardens set on my Flickr page.

I think there's a movie named after what I'm about to do...

2008-11-06T18:00:00.008Z

Well....maybe we should try being honest with ourselves.

There's a lot of anger directed toward the state of California right now (most of it coming from me, I admit), but the truth is, the people of the Golden State didn't do anything different from the rest of us who cast our votes for Barack Obama. Sure, he said he didn't think a constitutional amendment was "necessary" to support his position, but he made it quite clear that as a Christian, he believes that marriage could only exist between a man and a woman. He proposed glb (and probably some t) should get a separate set of laws, instead of giving us access to those that govern his marriage to his wife and his relationship with his children.

There were a lot of reasons--probably most of them good--to vote for Obama despite his denial of equal rights to members of the glbt community. Catherine suggested I think of the polar bears his energy plan might save, for instance (although there's an argument to be made that if we kept Palin tied up with business in Washington, D.C., she'd be too busy to go out and shoot more wolves from helicopters). So, yes, it's pretty easy to ignore, or at least to rationalize, the negatives of voting for Obama. The U.S. was a sinking ship, and a few people had to be thrown overboard to save it. Fine, I get that. But still and all...calling Californians bigots for doing exactly what we just did...that's a bit much. There really is some truth to that old saying about pointing fingers: you can point a finger at California, but don't forget there are three pointing back at you (unless you're that kid I grew up with who accidentally cut his finger off when we were still in grade school, he's only pointing two fingers at himself). Maybe we like our reasons for throwing our support behind someone who doesn't believe in equal marriage rights better than some of the reasons put forward by the pro Prop 8 campaign, but really....same difference.

I've got a lot of fury spilling out of me right now. Some of it is directed toward...well...the targets you'd expect, and some of it is directed toward targets that probably would surprise you. A lot of my anger is directed at myself, for once again voting for someone I don't believe in, a candidate obviously willing to extend fair treatment to everyone but me. Mixed in with that is anger at myself for being too selfish to take the hit--shouldn't I be noble enough to step off the boat before I'm thrown off, so others can survive, and even improve their position? Turns out I'm not that generous--who knew? I want to be one of those people jumping up and down with joy, I want to be happy for all those people for whom this was a real victory. But I'm not, I'm not even close. I can be happy about not having a McCain/Palin administration, but the rest....I don't think I'm ever going to be able to forget what it felt like to watch the President-Elect celebrating with his wife and family in front of all those cheering people on election night, effortlessly enjoying his position of heterosexual privilege, no matter how much good comes out of this administration in the next four years.

Yes, that's me.

2008-11-04T22:40:00.003Z

If there's one thing this blog proves, it's that I'm capable of achieving stunningly high levels of snarkiness. I've got years of surly snark built up in those archives, folks. Enter at your own risk.

Poor Customer Service.

2008-11-04T08:31:00.003Z

You know what? Classmates.com really sucks. Any service that relies on auto-renewal, without informing its customers that the renewal date is approaching, is sketchy. It's making money because customers are absent-minded (me) or busy (me again), not because customers are satisfied and sign up for another year by choice. Yeah, well, maybe you can get my money once because I didn't keep on top of things, but you'll never get it again.

ETA: Aha--someone else has had it with classmates.com. Imagine how angry he would be if that $15 subscription turned into a $40 subscription over night.

Regent's Canal.

2008-11-02T18:58:00.005Z

So, I had a totally good time today at the London Canal Museum. This is a small museum tucked alongside Battlebridge Dock, near Islington Tunnel on Regent's Canal. I spent a lot of time walking the towpath around here the two summers I was staying in Bloomsbury, so I wanted to re-visit a couple of spots, and check out the museum. The best part of the museum is really the part about it being a former ice house. I thought the audio they had of a man reminiscing about his dad's work at the ice house was really nice. The b/w archival films they had of life on the canal were also splendid. It was a nice day, overcast just the way I like it, but not cold or wet. Nothing very profound to say about this walk, and the photos I took weren't all that, but it was still a fine day out.

Still Alive.

2008-11-01T20:02:00.004Z

Saw the French & Saunders Still Alive show this evening, and it put me in a slightly better frame of mind. Actually, I was a bit teary at the end (before the encore bit with the wall), but so was the man sitting next to me, so I guess that's okay. They wore the funny pants through most of the show, making funny things even more funnier. Still, it's sometimes amazing the thin line between horribly funny and horribly painful. I think the boarding school skit must have really hit some people hard, because I heard a lot of stifled moans at its conclusion, as if everyone thought it was funny, but then couldn't laugh because they'd suddenly realized that it could have been them left at school for the holidays. Ditto for the sketch with Saunders as the whacked out, emotionally fragile, Glastonbury-esque mom and French as the smart, overweight daughte who could never be sure her mother loved her because she was fat. It was funny, but I know many women were watching the interaction thinking, "That's what my mom said when she wanted me to lose weight!"

Speaking of weight, there's a photo in the program/brochure of Dawn French, looking quite young. The woman next to me said, "Oh, she's so young! And thin!" And I replied, "But you know, I bet she didn't realize she was thin." And the woman nodded and said, "We were just talking about that, how we thought we were so huge when we were young, but now we look back, and think, oh, if only I could be that skinny." "Yeah," I said. "I was tiny when I was in college, and all I could think about was how fat I was. It's amazing, isn't it. We all start out behind, thinking the worst of ourselves, don't we?"

And then we enjoyed two women taking the stage, and holding it as their own, and that was the best thing that could have happened after such a conversation.

Breaking my own rules.

2008-10-31T23:52:00.002Z

And losing all my friends. But I've decided that's okay. I keep thinking that I just have to hold the fury in a few days more,and then it will be okay, and I can talk to people again without risking ruining relationships with my anger, but that "few days more" keeps stretching to a few weeks, a few months, and then four more years.

Today is my sixteenth anniversary. Do you know what Catherine and I did on our first date 16 years ago? We went canvassing, handing out literature against Measure 9, an anti-gay measure sponsored by the OCA. A few years later, we were working on No on 13 (same measure, different number). We left Oregon before we had to work against yet another Measure 9.

Seriously, you'd think in 16 years, things would change. I bought into the (Bill) Clinton's administration promise, and look what I got--a president who wouldn't even speak to us at March on Washington, and Don't Ask, Don't Tell. I got a President who signed Public Law No. 104-199, 110 Stat. 2419, otherwise known as the Federal Defense of Marriage Act. And since that time, I've watched the U.S. become swept up in anti-gay legislation--only five states do not have some sort of statute against gay marriage (in most cases, that "statute" comes in the form of an amendment to the state Constitution). Anti-gay politics has evolved into a very pro-active institution--think of what gay people might want to do, and take that right away from them before they even knew they had it to begin with.

And we're at it again, of course, with Prop 8. There was no point in getting excited about being allowed to marry in California, because you know that ten minutes after permission was granted, we were all pulling out our pocketbooks to fund the campaign to preserve that right. It seems like improvement, fighting for the right to get married, rather that just the right to have sex without going to jail, but let me tell you, it feels exactly the same on an emotional level.

And we're at it again in other ways, too. Once again, I'm being told that I shouldn't expect too much or any support from any presidential candidate. How many times have I been asked in the last sixteen years to put my own civil rights on hold so we could elect "the best" candidate, a candidate that would surely fight for me once he or she got into office? Yeah, and how has that worked out for me? Not very well, I can tell you that. That's why endless comments like those made in response to Andrew Sullivan just piss me off--how many times can I be asked to sell myself and my relationship out for the Democrats? How many times am I going to be blamed for the loss of a presidential election for being too controversial? Don't be too vocal about Prop 8, you don't want to mobilize the religious right in California and lose the state for Obama! Well, fuck that noise.

And news flash for you: it's cowardly for a presidential to say that marriage is a "states' rights" issue. It's also just false. Let me tell you, it's not State law that is keeping me away from Catherine this year, it's a Federal law. A federal law signed by a Democrat.

Well, I waived my right to a secret ballot so I could vote through e-mail from here in London, so I can say that I voted the way everyone around me wanted me to vote. But I don't feel good about it, in fact, I may feel worse than after the last two elections. Once again, all I'm getting is more "separate but equal" rhetoric. Welcome, again, to the back of the bus.

So, when I get yet another e-mail from a friend telling me to be sure to cast my absentee ballot for Obama, I have to stop and remind myself that this person doesn't understand the level of sacrifice they are once again asking of me. It takes a long time for me to lose my political anger after every election season, and I have to work very hard to remember, "These people are my friends, they don't mean to hurt me." And I tell myself, "Really, don't be selfish, it's not all about YOU." And that is so true, it's never about me. If it were about me, I would be able to vote for a President who actually believed that everyone deserved the same rights.

I really miss Catherine, and I hate everyone who helped make this twelve-month separation possible, including myself.

Ubiquitous.

2008-10-31T21:35:00.005Z

Tourists spend a lot of time and money looking for the perfect memento to mark their trip to London. Some people buy models of red double-decker buses (hi, Beth!), some buy packets of biscuits (hi, Catherine!). I myself purchased multiple postcards with tube maps and images of the Tower Bridge and god knows what all on my first two trips to London. The truth is, however, if you REALLY want to capture the essence of London, you need to buy a Hi Viz Vest, or at least take a photograph of any random street in London, because you will be all but guaranteed to capture the image of some person--construction worker, charity volunteer, policewala, bicyclist--wearing a High Viz Vest at all times, night or day.

For the life of me, I can't remember which Dick Francis book contained the following scene: our hero needs to swap horses between two horse trailers without the driver of horse trailer A noticing the switch. So, he and his co-conspirators set up a fake census checkpoint along a dual carriageway, and then proceed to flag down the drivers of horse trailer A. The drivers park the horse trailer and go into the caravan to fill out lengthy census forms. While they are distracted, our hero swaps out the horses. The drivers return, notice nothing, see nothing, hear nothing, drive away.

You'd think this plot wouldn't work in real life, but Dick Francis remembered they key element on which all successful subterfuge relies: the Hi Viz Vest. If you are wearing a Hi Viz Vest, you can do ANYTHING in London (and probably the whole of the UK) and no one will question your right to do it. You can dig holes in the ground, park illegally, stand in traffic, ask people questions, force people to queue--the Hi Viz Vest is all powerful. Dick Francis noticed this 30 some years ago, and people still believe it in 2008.

Sadly, I already have a day-glo orange reflective vest w/matching arm and ankle bands for running after dark, so I don't need to buy a piece of authentic London to take home with me. But, I really should, because even more than the announcement that "There is a good service on the Piccadilly Line," or people nightly trying to force a copy of the London Lite in my hands as I go into King's Cross, the Hi Viz Vest is emblematic of my every day life in London.

Early Winter

2008-10-29T19:27:00.002Z

According to one of the free newspapers that everyone abandons on the floor of the tube during the evening commute, today was the first October snowfall London has had in seventy years.

I think this proves my point.

2008-10-26T22:07:00.002Z

vs.

Quayside.

2008-10-26T13:23:00.007Z

Decided to spend my Saturday around Canary Wharf yesterday (photos here). Usually, I'm pretty good at finding my way, but somehow I read the map upside down and ended up wandering around quite a bit before ending up at my intended destination, the London Museum in Docklands. I had my camera, so hopefully my wandering looked intentional to passersby.

If you only judged by the photos I've taken in my four trips to London, you'd think all of London lived quay-side, Thames-side or canal-side. I'm not sure how I always end up walking next to the water, or more precisely, how it is that I only have my camera with me when I'm walking next to water.

Anyway, I haven't been to Canary Wharf since 1997, we took a quick look-see at it with my Victorian Society Summer School, to check out the rebuilding after the bomb. It was then that I decided that I wanted to write my dissertation about bombs and buildings--too bad that was vetoed by my then adviser, as I would have been going on the job market some 4-5 years later, just in time.

The Museum in Docklands is quite nice. There's a special exhibit up on Jack the Ripper, which I didn't see. It was super crowded, either because this was the first Saturday of half-term break for school kids, or because it was the last Saturday of same, not sure which. I really only went there to see the London, Sugar & Slavery exhibit, anyway, so I kept my focus on that.

Well done exhibit, not nearly as brutal as I probably would have made it, but I guess that's why I'm not a curator. One thing I really liked about it was that the issue of slavery (and implicitly, empire) was brought into the present day (or at least up to 2007). What I found a little puzzling was the exhibit's starting date of 1700. There was a wall of statistics for the slave trade, listing the ships, number of enslaved Africans carried, destination, etc., but the stats all related to the last two decades of the eighteenth century. Enslaved Africans were used in the American colonies starting from 1650 or so, and I know Jamaica had rapidly growing enslaved populations in the second half of the seventeenth century.

Anyway, that's more of a side issue--the main point is that at least the museum is trying--not too long ago, it seemed as if Madge Dresser was talking into an empty void of indifference.

My favorite part of the exhibit was a bit of technology, actually. They had an interactive map that showed traces of slavery around eighteenth-century London. For instance, it had marked St. Botolph without Aldgate as a church with many African congregants, and a site of many African burials. It would be really brilliant if you could take the museum's map, and lay it over top of the maps from the Sugar Refiners and Sugarbakers database. If you could also overlay maps of trading houses for goods produced on plantations, and add to those maps locating domiciles of slave holders, or those with financial interest in slave ships, or those who produced the goods to trade for sugar, or the places where rum was bottled, you'd have an incredibly dense map, demonstrating fairly conclusively that slavery changed the geography of Thameside London as much as any seventeenth-century fire.

Speaking of fire, the only other galleries I really spent time in were the "docklands at war" rooms. They had a film clip borrowed from the Imperial War Museum, showing the inferno caused by incendiary bombs dropped by the Luftwaffe--I wish it had been longer, because I was riveted by it. I regret not being able to write my dissertation on Canary Wharf. Maybe the "bombs and buildings" wasn't such a great idea, the London Museum in Docklands demonstrates that somewhere in my research, I would have found an interesting, and hopefully worthwile, topic.

That's ridiculous.

2008-10-24T20:33:00.003+01:00

So, I just tried to look up the name of an Anupam Kher movie--I know the general theme, but not the title. He has 285 movies listed under name on imdb. That's just outrageous.

ETA: Found it, believe it or not. Anyone who can score me a copy of Daddy wins my eternal gratitude.

Game Over.

2008-10-24T19:36:00.005+01:00

What I look like on a Friday night after a week of feeling homesick, two days of being ill, and an afternoon of a sad movie:

Not a lot accomplished these past few days. I held steady through Wednesday, but yesterday just couldn't stay at the library. In the morning, I tried to do some research at the Royal Society, but ended up spending much more time feeling sick in the loo than I did doing actual work. I also spent some time sitting by myself on the platform of the Piccadilly Tube Station, watching trains go by, but feeling too upset in the stomach to get on any of them. When I did finally get on, it was clear I wasn't going to be able spend any quality time working, so I rode back and forth for a bit on the Piccadilly Line, waiting for my temperature to come down a bit.

In the end, I decided to spend the afternoon at a museum. I didn't feel like going all the way back to the house, and anyway, I knew my housemate was trying to get her lesson plan done and she didn't need me to be in the way. Museums have bathrooms, and they have benches, and they often have temperature controlled rooms, so that sounded promising. So, on my second time through the South Kensington station, I got off the tube, and walked over to the V & A. I spent a lot of time in the Sacred Silver collection, as well as in the stained glass collection. If you're feeling like you might vomit, these are good places to be, because the lighting is dim, no one else is around, and you can bolt down the ceramic staircase to the bathroom in an emergency. Also, the lighting is dim in the hallway with Lord Leighton's frescoes, and there is a nice floor-to-ceiling window at one end, so that is also a good, quiet retreat in times of distress.

What is NOT good for distress is to book a ticket for a special exhibition. This might seem obvious to everyone else, but it's difficult to walk out of a ticketed exhibition in search of a bathroom. I was thinking only, "High end exhibition = good temperature control, surely comes with benches." Unfortunately, it also comes with a tightly controlled path of movement--once you're in the exhibition hall, you're stuck until the end. Still, Cold War Modern was worth the nine pounds, even if I rushed the last two rooms a bit (the rooms for "revolution" and "last utopias"). If you're in London, and you're an architecture student, this is a great place to look at some architectural renderings for Soviet building projects--they're amazing, and they're BIG. I also enjoyed the recreation of the 8-minute "light and sound" experience originally plotted by Corbusier. Fall-out shelters, space suits, modular furniture, hammocks---this exhibit has it all. Except an easily accessible bathroom, so keep that in mind if you're not feeling 100%.

For our upcoming trip to the European subcontinent.

2008-10-22T19:42:00.000+01:00

Thank god for globalisation.

2008-10-21T20:20:00.003+01:00

Otherwise, I would have been forced to spend 20+ quid on a hair cut at a shop in the high street of Cockfosters. Thanks to aggressive capitalist markets, I instead spent only 12GBP for a trim at the Supercuts in Shopping City at Wood Green.

Actually, that's not true. I spent 15GBP--I gave the hairdresser a 25% tip. Part of my generosity was due to the fact that she took on the challenge that is my head 20 minutes before closing time. Most of my generosity, though, was because she was nice to me, and talked to me while she was working. Well, yes, hairdressers often try and chat with me (ask Catherine about the woman who sometimes cuts hair but mostly just talks in the shop out at Whitehall), but I tend not to engage in small talk. It's often the end of the day--or the beginning of the day--and I'm tired, and not really in the mood to chat. I'm polite and all, but not really talkative. Usually. I don't know what happened yesterday, but I had a real, honest to god conversation sitting in that tippy chair.

We went through all the usual questions--do you ever color your hair, why are you in London, do you have any children--and then got onto the topic of Skype, and how it was saving my marriage. She also uses Skype, but said she gave up using it with her mother, because her mother always cried at the end, and because she was a "big wuzzy", she also ended up in tears. It was easier to say goodbye on the phone than on a webcam. Somehow we moved on from there to a discussion about aging parents, and I admitted that was one of the worst parts of being away for a year, the worry that I might not see my parents again.

She told me that her father had died three years ago or so, and talked about how hard that first year was--hard for her, but also hard because she had to step up when her mother fell to pieces. She told me that it was something for which you tried to prepare, but until it happened, you just didn't quite understand what it was like. The father of a friend had died a bit before hers had, and she tried to be supportive, but it wasn't until her own father died that she realized just how much she didn't understand what her friend had been going through. The first year was the hardest, but then she was able to move on--it got easier with time. Still hard, but better.

I don't know, she was remarkably upbeat about the whole thing. Serious, but also looking out for the points where a positive turn could be taken--didn't I have siblings that could help, wasn't it good that my father had a course of treatment that kept him here this long, etc. It was the first real conversation I've had in weeks, and I don't think I'll ever forget her telling me about her parents, and how they loved each other, right up to the end, even after 45 years of marriage. "My father was a good man," she told me. I could tell she meant it, she was telling the truth, and it was really kind of her to share that moment with me.

Documentary fiction.

2008-10-20T19:48:00.004+01:00

Amu: I've been watching the old people lately, thinking about how much trauma they must be carrying around inside them. Yesterday specifically, I was watching the old people at the Diwali celebration on Trafalgar Square, wishing I could overhear their thoughts just for a moment. If you're eighty years old, and you were born in the Panjab, you probably directly experienced Partition. Maybe you can remember it clearly, or maybe you've suppressed it, I don't know. You definitely remember the Emergency. If your family moved to Delhi after Partition, you're carrying around memories from the 1984 massacre of the Sikhs. Or if your family moved to Mumbai, you have the 1992-1993 riots in the back of your mind. Even if your family had already emigrated to the UK--thus explaining your presence at the Trafalgar Diwali celebration--you've probably got some family members who were directly affected, even if they weren't living in the metropolitan areas. And of course, if you're living in London, you probably aren't a stranger to anti-immigrant violence that in all likelihood was tuned to the pitch of "anti-Pakistani."

All of this is to say that there's a lot of violence to explore in the history of India and Pakistan, just as there's a lot of non-violence to explore in the history of those two nations. So, I understand the intentions behind a film like Amu, particularly when the Indian government does such a good job at denying that such events have happened, and that certain sections of the government in fact enabled them to happen. And it wasn't a bad film, it just wasn't a great film. I felt as if the screenwrite and the director couldn't decide whether they wanted to make a documentary, or a work of fiction, so they flopped back and forth between the two genres. That made for some really stilted dialogue. And the stilted dialogue reminded me that, oh, this is following a script, this isn't real, thoughts that kept me from being swept away into the story. I love Konkona Sen Sharma, but her American accent slipped one too many times. And I'm sorry, but no person of color who grew up in L.A. and is old enough to remember the 1992 uprising is ever going to be puzzled about riots and massacres. Maybe a white teenager might ask earnest (and stupid) questions about the police role in violence, but not someone who is supposed to have the background of Kaju.

This sounds like a negative review, but it's not. It's a worthwhile film, obviously. I think it wasn't meant for people who study the history of India for a career, but for those who have only heard whispers in the background of their lives about earlier troubles. It's a nice entry point into that history, and because it was done as a popular film, perhaps more people will hear about these important events. It's a film the creators can be proud of, and I think I would recommend it to the right people--not to a completely naive audience, but one that knows something about India, but might not have been able to figure out how to learn about this bit of the past.

"This has been my best day ever, Lee Carter."

2008-10-19T20:45:00.007+01:00

Yeah, so...sorry. I had a bad week and didn't much feel like talking about it. Barely dragged myself out of bed on Monday to make it to work. Thought I'd shake things up and reinvigorate myself by working at the RIBA Library on Tuesday, but ending up falling on the sidewalk instead. Sore--in both the emotional and physical senses of the word--all week, and just generally angry at London.

Fortunately, I spent some time with friends this weekend, so I'm a little less surly now. Alex and Matt just got a new puppy--SO CUTE--so I went out to Ealing yesterday to check it out. We had great Chinese food for dinner, and watched Son of Rambow while the puppy chewed on its toy. I really liked the movie, but it was nothing like I expected it to be--I think the U.S. trailers for it must have been completely misleading.

About 14 hours after I left Alex and Matt for the night, I met up with Alex again (Matt stayed home to take care of the cuteness that is Chiyo). I think meeting up with Alex should become a trend, as he seems to have good taste in food, and I can use the variety in my diet. A group of his friends were gathering at the Blue Elephant in Fulham Broadway to celebrate a birthday, so I hung out with them for awhile, then headed home for a much-needed nap. On the way home, though, I saw a Diwali poster on a tube station and remembered that today was the Diwali celebration at Trafalgar Square. Couldn't just blow that off, so I stopped by for a while and listened to covers of Bollywood songs. A lot of good Diwali energy, but I was feeling pretty beat, so I came home before the lights came on, etc.

The neighbors have been celebrating Guy Fawkes Day a few weeks early--for the past two weekends, they've been putting on their own light show with fireworks in the garden. I guess I can count that for my Diwali show.

I also spent a good chunk of yesterday just wandering around by myself, trying to learn how to use this new camera (photos available on flickr). I'm not sure I want to spend the time learning everything about it--I'm not in this to become a professional photography. I can see that I'm going to have to invest in a perspective-control lens, though, and learn how to use some of the light-compensation settings. I left everything on AUTO yesterday, and it mostly worked out, but not completely.

Son of Rambow: nice movie. I caught myself laughing out loud a few times, making those weird noises you make when you can't control your hysteria. Some of the accidents the kids had were just too damn funny. Of course, some of the accidents the kids had were just too damn tragic, and at one point, I turned to Alex and said, "Man, that would put me into therapy for ten years. Oh...and there's another ten years added on." Something about the movie felt really familiar, but it wasn't until the second half, when the mother was having a flashback to her childhood that I figured it out. The lifestory of Will is driven by his mother's participation in the Plymouth Brethren. There's a scene in the movie in which the church elders come to have a talk with Will's mother about his behavior, and it put my heart in my throat. Ah...the church elders. I know exactly how this is going to go, how conditional the church's love is, even for a child. I spent most of my teenaged years desperately trying to prevent anyone from sussing out my atheism, because I didn't want to go through one more of those damn meetings. Christian love--at least as I experienced it--is so tenuous. The moment you transgress the church doctrine, you're out of the fold. Even if you repent, they are always watching you, waiting for you to screw up again so they can kick you out for good.

A Fine Day Out.

2008-10-12T14:07:00.004+01:00

Yesterday I walked Section 17 of the London Loop. All nine miles of it. What was I thinking? Well, from mile 6 to 9, I was thinking "God, you're a dumbass, just stop!" alternated with "God, don't be such a wuss, keep walking!" I swear, the last three miles took as long as the first six, I'm that out of shape. But it was a warm sunny day, something that's soon to be a scarcity around here, so I really wanted to get out into the country side. Unfortunately, I have no photos to share because while I'm alert enough to pick up the camera before I leave the house, I'm not alert enough to pick up a fresh battery. So, you won't get to see a team a draft horses pulling a wagon through a field, the "most charming part" of Turkey Brook, or the view up the lawn to Forty Hall. Trust me, they're there.

Pissed, and not in the good, drunken sense.

2008-10-10T19:11:00.004+01:00

I know it doesn't make any sort of sense, but sometimes I get REALLY ANGRY when people mistake me for a man. Or, I guess it's not the mistaking part of it, it's the "is that a girl or guy?" conversation that happens when I am obviously in earshot. I know I've ranted about this before, but bear with me, because it just ruined my day again.

Yes, as I've noted before, sometimes I think it's funny. Case in point: my first day here in the UK, I went to Carphone Warehouse on the shopping parade and bought mobile phone and a world SIM card. Throughout the entire transaction, the clerk called me "Sir," even after I gave him my credit card (only Johnny Cash knows a boy named Sue, surely). And I thought that was pretty funny, because he just never really clued in, despite the fact that when I walk, I lead with one bodacious bosom.

Tonight, though, it just pissed me off. I was on the train home after a decent afternoon at the movies (How to Lose Friends, if you're interested), and I was in the last car on the train with a small group traveling together. Americans, seemingly from three different families, going out to Cockfosters for god knows what reason. Three CUTE little boys that made me laugh with their stated intentions of having 600 kids. So, I was getting off the train, thinking"that was a nice way to end the day, listening to American accents is so effortless compared to what I do most of the day" (one of the adults actually said "Look at this bad boy!" when showing his mate a picture of the largest catfish in Europe, such an American thing to say), and then they had to ruin it.

When we got off the train, just them and me from the last car, I wasn't even 3 feet away from before the catfish guy turned to his friend and said, "Was that a guy or a girl?" and his friend answered, "Yeah, I know, I had to look twice before I could figure it out." Okay, I'm wearing casual clothes today, apparently women in the UK aren't ever allowed to wear plaid shirts, jeans and tennis shoes, but jesus christ, couldn't you just let me get a little farther away before you start talking about me? I'm just saying. No, I'm just saying thanks for nothing, losers with American accents. I hope they are your dead bodies inside that outsize, European catfish.

Sidewalks.

2008-10-04T21:58:00.006+01:00

I wonder if there's a limit to the number of people you can get to know in a lifetime. If there's a limit to the amount of energy a person can expend exchanging and absorbing life stories. Perhaps if you share too much too often as a young person, you run yourself short on possibilities for new friendships later on in life. You can't keep hold of all those people you knew when you were ten or twenty or thirty, even though they represent a major investment of time and energy and intimacy of sorts. But it's difficult to replace them when you're young, and it's even more difficult when you're older. If you only have it in you to really, truly know twenty people in your lifetime, and you've met and parted with eighteen of those people before your fortieth birthday, you've only got two people left to draw newly close to you in the second half of your life. It's too bad you didn't realize until too late that you should have used your choices more carefully when you had the chance ten years ago.

Doing new things.

2008-10-03T21:02:00.006+01:00

I finished up at the British Library a bit early today, so I went to see a movie. I know, Catherine must be picking her jaw up off the floor: I willingly went to the cinema, and guess what--I saw a serious film: Il y a longtemps que je t'aime. I knew nothing about it except that it had Kirstin Scott Thomas in it. I generally avoid movies with her in it, even though I think she's stunning. She reminds me of Eileen, who then reminds me of Todd--perhaps because we saw Angels and Insects with them? I'm not sure. Anyway, Scott Thomas should be proud of her work, as should Elsa Zylberstein. I'm not going to say anything about the movie, other than it was beautiful, but painful. The one editorial I would write about it would give away the last scene, so I'll keep my opinions to myself.

This movie also briefly reminded me of Debbie, because in one scene was shown a poster for Les Jeux Dangereux, which reminded me of the poster for Jeux interdits I had on my wall my freshman year of college at WWU. My first French film, and I wouldn't have seen it if Debbie hadn't taken me to the PAC with her.

In other news, I am eating too much pizza, but at least I'm working hard to get it. I can hardly wait to get to India where I can eat with my fingers like a civilized person. God, silverware sucks.

In Living Color.

2008-09-29T18:33:00.002+01:00

Photos from my walk on Sunday.

Conspiracy Theory.

2008-09-27T19:38:00.002+01:00

"Everyone knew that Kathleen was pregnant and that she died of the child. You'd have to be an idiot not to have figured that out, what with the girl's hasty home-coming and incarceration in the house. But the thing you do in a case like that is to go along with the idea that the child is the offspring of the grandparents. Everyone agrees to this fiction, and the only people who'd breathe a word of the actual facts to the illegitimate child are those who are so malicious to begin with that they are easily dismissed as liars. As in truth they are. For the beneficent lie tells the truth about the child, which is "you belong in this community", whereas the malicious truth-tellers use fact to convey a lie, which is "you don't belong". This is an imperfect system but it's the prevailing one. As as the years go by the facts get eroded and scattered by time, until there are more people who don't know than people who do."

Ann-Marie MacDonald, Fall On Your Knees (London: Vintage Books, 1997): 165-6.

Freak.

2008-09-27T18:21:00.003+01:00

Sometimes the intensity of my anxiety surprises even me. For instance, did you know that for the past ten years, I have been worried that something was going to happen to the Standard of Ur and its companion pieces, The Ram in a Thicket and the Queen's (Golden) Lyre of Ur? I know this fear is crazy--what possible difference could it make in my life if the Standard of Ur somehow was destroyed? But I ran over the to British Museum today just to make sure they were there. At first I was completely disoriented by the renovations made since the removal of the British Library to its own site (the British Museum now seems more like an over-sized gift shop than a museum, I think). Once oriented, however, I went straight to the Mesopotamia rooms to make sure the Standard and friends were okay. Even as I got closer, my anxiety grew more acute. At two galleries away, I was panicked that they were gone. At one gallery away, I had sweated completely through my shirt and jacket. At ten paces, I had to fight back tears of relief that everything was in place and as it should be.

For anyone else suffering from this particular anxiety, there is a small women's restroom just outside the north lift where you can recover from yourself in privacy.