Monday, March 25, 2013
Sunday, March 24, 2013
I am in Romania
I'm not going to lie: when I first got outside the airport in Cluj-Napoca, I was a little apprehensive. Really apprehensive. The airport in Cluj, like many around the world, is not located in the area of the city that we'd call the "happenin', cosmopolitan downtown." Totally fine. There's not that much space in the city center. However, the difference is that those other inconveniently located airports are not situated in places that could be readily described with the adjectives "frighteningly-dilapidated", "Dracula-esque", "gyspsy-shantytownish", or "stray-dog bedecked".
You can't really bedeck with stray dogs. Can they be festooned?
OK, it wasn't THAT bad. It wasn't what I'd call, for example, "post-Communist, crumbling housing-block-strewn", or "rife with shifty, grizzled, faded-Cosby-sweater-wearing drifters." No, it was none of those things. But there were a lot of people milling about. They were looking at me. Staring at me with my big, "I-am-a-gullible-tourist-from-somewhere-that-is-not-here" backpack. Luckily, I found some dudes from Madrid who also had cumbersome rucksacks and we scrounged our way onto a bus.
As we drove along, things did not quickly improve. The crumbling, Vlachian cabins made way for huge apartment blocks, bedecked with cracks and festooned with litter. More Cosby-sweater-wearing bedecked drifters-
OK, wait wait wait. Wait a minute. I'm getting a little carried away with the descriptions. I've said bedecked twice, maybe even three times now. Fuck it. I'll cut to the chase: the airport was in kind of a shitty part of town. The bus went through an equally shitty part of town. But in about 20 minutes we got into the historic downtown center of Cluj and it was actually really, really nice.
Check it out:
I met some awesome cats at the hostel. They were actually human beings, not cats. It's just a manner of speaking. We went to a bar where everything was made out of cardboard. And everyone was smoking. I'm no fire marshal, but I don't think tenuously holding burning embers and drinking Romanian whiskey in a room made out of cardboard doesn't really say "safety" to me.
Ray don't mind though.
You can't really bedeck with stray dogs. Can they be festooned?
OK, it wasn't THAT bad. It wasn't what I'd call, for example, "post-Communist, crumbling housing-block-strewn", or "rife with shifty, grizzled, faded-Cosby-sweater-wearing drifters." No, it was none of those things. But there were a lot of people milling about. They were looking at me. Staring at me with my big, "I-am-a-gullible-tourist-from-somewhere-that-is-not-here" backpack. Luckily, I found some dudes from Madrid who also had cumbersome rucksacks and we scrounged our way onto a bus.
As we drove along, things did not quickly improve. The crumbling, Vlachian cabins made way for huge apartment blocks, bedecked with cracks and festooned with litter. More Cosby-sweater-wearing bedecked drifters-
OK, wait wait wait. Wait a minute. I'm getting a little carried away with the descriptions. I've said bedecked twice, maybe even three times now. Fuck it. I'll cut to the chase: the airport was in kind of a shitty part of town. The bus went through an equally shitty part of town. But in about 20 minutes we got into the historic downtown center of Cluj and it was actually really, really nice.
Check it out:
I met some awesome cats at the hostel. They were actually human beings, not cats. It's just a manner of speaking. We went to a bar where everything was made out of cardboard. And everyone was smoking. I'm no fire marshal, but I don't think tenuously holding burning embers and drinking Romanian whiskey in a room made out of cardboard doesn't really say "safety" to me.
Ray don't mind though.
Friday, March 8, 2013
The Battle of the Book / La lucha del libro
In a convenient twist of fate, in each language the two nouns in this post's title start with the same letter.
Aliteración al azar.
But is the alliteration really so random?
This book, whose title lacks any kind of alliterative charm, has been to me both bane and benison since I started reading it. It's called Los detectives salvajes ("The Savage Detectives"), and it was written by a Chilean/Mexican/Spanish poet named Roberto Bolaño. It's one of those books that's in right now. I think the New York Times made the English version their book of the year. It was originally written in Spanish, and it is about, more or less, the trials and tribulations and flights and fiascos of two poet/detectives (that's a thing) named Arturo Belano and Ulises Lima. These two dudes, and almost every other character as well, are based on Bolaño and his friends, and one can only assume that a lot of what happens in the book actually happened. More on this later.
A few years ago I was in Smith Family Bookstore in Eugene (an incredible and glorious place for bookheads) and I saw a copy of it in the original Spanish-language edition. I had had to read another of Bolaño's novels in a Spanish class a few years before and I liked his style. Hard to read, very poetic language, but cool stuff. Kind of like a Spanish-language beat poet. I had heard that this book was similar but that it had an engaging yarn, wrapped in mystery and intrigue. Christ, it was the New York Times' book of the year! How could it not be intriguing?
I knew that I was going to live in Spain so I thought my castellano vocabulary and syntax could use a little brushing up.
It was the classic "I'm going to read this to make myself a better human being"-personal-challenge-type-of-book. So of course, it sat collecting particulates on a bookshelf for the first year or so. Every time I glanced at its immaculate yellow spine, I felt awash in shame for not having even cracked the bastard open.
One day.
............
About a year ago, maybe less, I decided to tackle the tome. At 600-some pages (the English edition is more; must have bigger type!), it was a daunting task to begin reading Bolaño's "obra maestra". But you know, sometimes when books are so damn long, you don't even count pages at the beginning because you're so far from the end. It's like comparing a 12 hour drive with a three hour one. The shorter drive is always more difficult because at any point you can almost taste the end. With 12 hours to go, then 11, you aren't even thinking about the end. You're just thinking about the pines and desert passing you by. And trying to keep your foot off the gas.
In the same sense, the book wasn't too hard at first. I kept a Spanish dictionary at my side at all times, whether on my laptop, my smartphone, or an actual, real dictionary (with pages!). And because I'm a little maniático, I actually looked up almost every single word I didn't know.
The book itself is imposing. It's split into three sections: the first is a diary of a young poet; the second, which is the longest at about 400 pages, is a frenetic collection of about 27 different narrators' personal accounts of what happened to Lima and Belano throughout their "savage" journeys, across five continents and about 25 years; the third section goes back to the original diary format to finish off the novel.
When I first started the book, I was gung-ho, like I said. I was killing it, crushing at least 25 pages a day, and in Spanish, too! But by about page 200-something, things were starting to fall apart. The question that had been there since the beginning at about 50 pages in, was starting to come up more and more:
"What is going on? Why are these people talking about this stuff?" It was reminding me of another book I never liked and never finished.
I pushed on, waiting for a point to be brought up. Apart from some really well written and beautifully illustrated passages, nothing seemed to be happening. People kept recounting times they got drunk with some other people, talking about their forays into painting and poetry. And then the chapter would end. The next person would describe a love affair with someone who had never been mentioned before, and then they would get drunk and maybe smoke some weed. End of chapter. More drinking, more drugs, more crying, but this time in Paris instead of Mexico City. End of chapter.
Months went on. I picked up the book less and less, but it was always in the back of mind.
By page 300-something, I was almost legitimately angry at the late Bolaño for this book. How could people have thought it was a classic? Nothing was happening. OK, maybe once or twice every 25 pages or so something ostensibly important happened, but nothing more. The writing was of course beautiful, ephemeral, poetic. But it was basically a bunch of spoiled hipster kids complaining, having sex, smoking weed, drinking, and writing poetry. They were supposedly searching for a lady poet who mysteriously disappeared in the 1920s, but she was almost never mentioned.
What the fuck?
This YouTube video basically sums it up:
It had been about six months now, at least. Despite my frustration-cum-anger, I was determined to finish the book. It was going to make me a better person. The New York Times had loved it!
One day, I was on the bus trudging through a particularly pointless-seeming passage of the book, when it hit me: this book is about life. It's not really about any particular plot. Sure, they're looking for this lost poet chick, but that doesn't really matter. It's sort of like the pissed-on-rug in Lebowski - it's a MacGuffin. It has no real importance, except to give a reason for the characters to exist. And while we, the diligent and doting readers, do just that and read, we see their lives. We are treated to their Sisyphean machinations, the ins and outs of their pretty much pointless existences as rich "real visceralist" poets, looking for a lost teenage poet in the deserts of Mexico.
Then, like that, the book became beautiful and well written, and I actually tengo ganas to read it. And now, about eight months after starting it, on page 550, I can almost taste the end.
I will soon be a better person.
Aliteración al azar.
But is the alliteration really so random?
A few years ago I was in Smith Family Bookstore in Eugene (an incredible and glorious place for bookheads) and I saw a copy of it in the original Spanish-language edition. I had had to read another of Bolaño's novels in a Spanish class a few years before and I liked his style. Hard to read, very poetic language, but cool stuff. Kind of like a Spanish-language beat poet. I had heard that this book was similar but that it had an engaging yarn, wrapped in mystery and intrigue. Christ, it was the New York Times' book of the year! How could it not be intriguing?
I knew that I was going to live in Spain so I thought my castellano vocabulary and syntax could use a little brushing up.
It was the classic "I'm going to read this to make myself a better human being"-personal-challenge-type-of-book. So of course, it sat collecting particulates on a bookshelf for the first year or so. Every time I glanced at its immaculate yellow spine, I felt awash in shame for not having even cracked the bastard open.
One day.
............
About a year ago, maybe less, I decided to tackle the tome. At 600-some pages (the English edition is more; must have bigger type!), it was a daunting task to begin reading Bolaño's "obra maestra". But you know, sometimes when books are so damn long, you don't even count pages at the beginning because you're so far from the end. It's like comparing a 12 hour drive with a three hour one. The shorter drive is always more difficult because at any point you can almost taste the end. With 12 hours to go, then 11, you aren't even thinking about the end. You're just thinking about the pines and desert passing you by. And trying to keep your foot off the gas.
 |
| This was a long, at times boring, drive on a Spanish highway, like The Savage Detectives |
In the same sense, the book wasn't too hard at first. I kept a Spanish dictionary at my side at all times, whether on my laptop, my smartphone, or an actual, real dictionary (with pages!). And because I'm a little maniático, I actually looked up almost every single word I didn't know.
The book itself is imposing. It's split into three sections: the first is a diary of a young poet; the second, which is the longest at about 400 pages, is a frenetic collection of about 27 different narrators' personal accounts of what happened to Lima and Belano throughout their "savage" journeys, across five continents and about 25 years; the third section goes back to the original diary format to finish off the novel.
When I first started the book, I was gung-ho, like I said. I was killing it, crushing at least 25 pages a day, and in Spanish, too! But by about page 200-something, things were starting to fall apart. The question that had been there since the beginning at about 50 pages in, was starting to come up more and more:
"What is going on? Why are these people talking about this stuff?" It was reminding me of another book I never liked and never finished.
I pushed on, waiting for a point to be brought up. Apart from some really well written and beautifully illustrated passages, nothing seemed to be happening. People kept recounting times they got drunk with some other people, talking about their forays into painting and poetry. And then the chapter would end. The next person would describe a love affair with someone who had never been mentioned before, and then they would get drunk and maybe smoke some weed. End of chapter. More drinking, more drugs, more crying, but this time in Paris instead of Mexico City. End of chapter.
Months went on. I picked up the book less and less, but it was always in the back of mind.
By page 300-something, I was almost legitimately angry at the late Bolaño for this book. How could people have thought it was a classic? Nothing was happening. OK, maybe once or twice every 25 pages or so something ostensibly important happened, but nothing more. The writing was of course beautiful, ephemeral, poetic. But it was basically a bunch of spoiled hipster kids complaining, having sex, smoking weed, drinking, and writing poetry. They were supposedly searching for a lady poet who mysteriously disappeared in the 1920s, but she was almost never mentioned.
What the fuck?
This YouTube video basically sums it up:
It had been about six months now, at least. Despite my frustration-cum-anger, I was determined to finish the book. It was going to make me a better person. The New York Times had loved it!
One day, I was on the bus trudging through a particularly pointless-seeming passage of the book, when it hit me: this book is about life. It's not really about any particular plot. Sure, they're looking for this lost poet chick, but that doesn't really matter. It's sort of like the pissed-on-rug in Lebowski - it's a MacGuffin. It has no real importance, except to give a reason for the characters to exist. And while we, the diligent and doting readers, do just that and read, we see their lives. We are treated to their Sisyphean machinations, the ins and outs of their pretty much pointless existences as rich "real visceralist" poets, looking for a lost teenage poet in the deserts of Mexico.
 |
| This case has a lot of ins and outs, man, just like the Sisyphean workings of Bolaño's characters. |
Then, like that, the book became beautiful and well written, and I actually tengo ganas to read it. And now, about eight months after starting it, on page 550, I can almost taste the end.
I will soon be a better person.
Friday, February 22, 2013
Back from Ireland + The Future / La vuelta de Irlanda + el futuro
I'm a little under the weather today so I thought I would update this bad boy to let anyone readin' know what my status is. I've got a real post in the works on Microsoft Word, one that describes a little bit more profoundly our stay in Belfast. I hope I can go into a little more detail and analysis of some of the things we saw while we were there.
So obviously, I just got back from Ireland on Monday, Feb. 18th. I spent two days in Dublin and one day in Belfast with my good friend Pete T., and then when he left for the airport on Saturday I headed over to Galway by my lonesome. I hung out in Galway for a night and met some good people there, including a couple infantrymen from the Maltese army, a nice couple from Minnesota, a party-animal from Australia (there are no shortage of this species in hostels throughout the world), and a fellow distinguished metalhead from Belfast. We went out and heard good tunes and shared a few laughs.
I went and saw beautiful Connemara the next day. This is the wild west of Ireland, full of peat bogs, rolling desolate mountains. It's been the setting of countless films through out the years. But make no mistake, it has seen its share of suffering and battering and toil.
It is famine land - one of the worst-hit parts of Ireland when the potato blight sunk its claws into the Emerald Isle in the early 1800s. Over one million left the country. Over one million died or were displaced. It is harsh land, but enrapturing and beautiful.
Take a look at Galway and Connemara.
Ireland is indeed a beautiful place. Now I see what all those longing, lonesome singers were singing about.
I'll go into more depth here in a little bit. At least I hope I will. That's the plan!
My next trip, which is happening during the ridiculous two full weeks we get off for Easter here in Spain, is to: Cluj Napoca, Transylvania, Romania; Budapest, Hungary; Kraków, Poland; and Warsaw, Poland. I'm going to see Dracula (and hopefully some of Romania's many bears - biggest bear population in Europe!), where Liszt wrote music (hopefully), and many, many beautiful cathedrals and buildings.
But I'm maybe the most anxious about seeing and learning the history of Eastern and Central Europe and its peoples, specifically with relation to the 20th century and its great turbulence. I had originally written "excited to see", but I feel that "anxious" is a better word here. Being someone from outside, from the safety and security and stability of the USA, I don't think it's right for me to say I'm "excited" to see Auschwitz, that I'm pumped up to see evidence of war and oppression and conflict, especially one that I was distant from, not even yet born, that I was never at risk to see or experience.
It's similar to how I felt about Belfast. It started as a somewhat morbid curiosity, but quickly turned into respectful and reverent fascination. After seeing the Peace Walls and the memorial murals, I can't and will not ever again joke around about the conflict in Northern Ireland.
In a similar way, I want to see for myself the scars and stories and sweeping landscapes of europa oriental.
Please don't take it the wrong way, but it's something I need to do. I have to.
So obviously, I just got back from Ireland on Monday, Feb. 18th. I spent two days in Dublin and one day in Belfast with my good friend Pete T., and then when he left for the airport on Saturday I headed over to Galway by my lonesome. I hung out in Galway for a night and met some good people there, including a couple infantrymen from the Maltese army, a nice couple from Minnesota, a party-animal from Australia (there are no shortage of this species in hostels throughout the world), and a fellow distinguished metalhead from Belfast. We went out and heard good tunes and shared a few laughs.
I went and saw beautiful Connemara the next day. This is the wild west of Ireland, full of peat bogs, rolling desolate mountains. It's been the setting of countless films through out the years. But make no mistake, it has seen its share of suffering and battering and toil.
It is famine land - one of the worst-hit parts of Ireland when the potato blight sunk its claws into the Emerald Isle in the early 1800s. Over one million left the country. Over one million died or were displaced. It is harsh land, but enrapturing and beautiful.
Take a look at Galway and Connemara.
 |
| This is actually Dublin. Lied a little bit. |
 |
| So is this. Lots of Polish people in Dublin! |
 |
| I went to a real peat bog! |
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| This is the bridge from "The Quiet Man". Haven't seen the film though. |
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| Lough in Connemara |
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| Kylemore Abbey in County Galway |
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| I like the palm trees plus the Irish and EU flags |
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| Why is she always so sad? |
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| Ireland has fjords too! |
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| Fairy tree aside the fjord. You tie a ribbon to it and make a wish. Apparently fairies are there to grant them for you. |
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| Lough Corrib, County Mayo |
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| Whiskey bottle. Green fields. Ireland. |
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| Book of Kells Exhibition, Trinity College, Dublin |
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| St. Stephens Green, Dublin |
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| Keep Off The Damn Fields, You Damn Gaelic Speaking Ruffians |
I'll go into more depth here in a little bit. At least I hope I will. That's the plan!
My next trip, which is happening during the ridiculous two full weeks we get off for Easter here in Spain, is to: Cluj Napoca, Transylvania, Romania; Budapest, Hungary; Kraków, Poland; and Warsaw, Poland. I'm going to see Dracula (and hopefully some of Romania's many bears - biggest bear population in Europe!), where Liszt wrote music (hopefully), and many, many beautiful cathedrals and buildings.
But I'm maybe the most anxious about seeing and learning the history of Eastern and Central Europe and its peoples, specifically with relation to the 20th century and its great turbulence. I had originally written "excited to see", but I feel that "anxious" is a better word here. Being someone from outside, from the safety and security and stability of the USA, I don't think it's right for me to say I'm "excited" to see Auschwitz, that I'm pumped up to see evidence of war and oppression and conflict, especially one that I was distant from, not even yet born, that I was never at risk to see or experience.
It's similar to how I felt about Belfast. It started as a somewhat morbid curiosity, but quickly turned into respectful and reverent fascination. After seeing the Peace Walls and the memorial murals, I can't and will not ever again joke around about the conflict in Northern Ireland.
In a similar way, I want to see for myself the scars and stories and sweeping landscapes of europa oriental.
Please don't take it the wrong way, but it's something I need to do. I have to.
Saturday, February 16, 2013
Belfast: In Photos / En fotos
| Here is a small selection of photos from Belfast, with descriptions. I can't really describe it here, nor do the photos do it justice, but the feeling of being amongst these homes and streets and pictures and buildings was something I have never experienced before. There was a dark, grayness here, left by the fiery years it has seen. But there was an electric hope as well, an eager sense of change that I felt on the streets, a vibrant youth. Hard to describe. |
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| A series of murals on the Catholic side of the Peace Walls in Belfast. The Catholic murals tend to commemorate revolutionary and independence movements throughout the world, whereas the Protestant murals are more militant, defensive, and "British" in nature. |
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| This hotel is the third most bombed hotel in the world, a dubious distinction indeed. Only Tel Aviv and Sarajevo have hotels which have suffered more attacks with explosives |
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| A street version of Picasso's "Gernika" |
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| Another Catholic mural, this one commemorating a women's march in Belfast |
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| These five young people were killed when the bomb they were building exploded prematurely. The oldest person was 20. We later saw the plaque on the house where it happened. By the way, the residents, by choosing to live in these neighborhoods, must accept the artwork and memorials that cover them. Our guide told us that if they object to it, they are not permitted to live in the area. |
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| Revolutionaries from across the globe. Note MLK, Fredrick Douglass, and Obama (far left) |
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| This is one of the gates in the Peace Wall between the Falls Road neighborhood (Irish Catholic) and the Shankill Road neighborhood (Ulster Protestant). This gate is closed every night between 10 PM and dawn and no one is allowed to pass through. Note the height of the wall and the barbed wire. Still all of this in 2013. Crazy. |
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| Another shot of the gate. Note Obama on the right. Also, note the "No Man's Land" between the two gates. This was to prevent projectiles from being thrown/launched between the two walls. |
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| Sinn Fein headquarters with Bobby Sands mural. Bobby is somewhat of a martyr for the Irish Republicans. He was actually elected MP of the British Parliament by his Irish Catholic constituency, and he later died in a hunger strike in one of the infamous H-block prisons. |
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| Memorial garden in Falls Road neighborhood. |
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| Many of the houses have these cages to protect their property from bricks, bottles and other projectiles that were thrown over the walls |
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| "The Last Supper" on the Shankill (Protestant) side of the Peace Wall |
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| This is an example of an Ulster Protestant mural in the Shankill road area, apparently commemorating one of their commanders who died. |
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| In front of the Protestant mural they call "the Belfast Mona Lisa", so called because the AK-47 follows you no matter where you stand looking at it. Notice all the British flags? The Ulster Protestants consider themselves British and only British. They do not say they are "Irish". |
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| The Queen, Shankill Road. |
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| William of Orange, or "Ol' King Billy". In 1690, William defeated Catholic Jacobite forces at the Battle of the Boyne, so the Ulster Protestants venerate him. He's in a lot of murals. |
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| OK, no politics. Just us in front of City Hall. |
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| City Hall square, downtown Belfast. A far cry from the murals and walls of West Belfast. It's a modern, happenin' city over here. |
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| Inside the famous Crown Liquor Saloon, downtown Belfast |
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| Even amongst all of the other messages, we found the most important mural in downtown Belfast |
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| Ulster Museum, near Queen's University, South Belfast |
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| A high-schooler did this. Incredible. |
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| Queen's University main building, modeled after Oxford University. |
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