Whiffle's On the Care of the Pig

The cold delights of space

2008-04-16T18:17:00.002-04:00

It is a bright, sunny, mid-sixties day outside, but inside the library, a friendly polar bear has set the temperature to 'brisk' and taken up residence in the place, batting the books and sleeping graduate students back and forth to wile away the time. I study on the sixth floor in a room with enormous windows overlooking the sun-drenched campus area and happened to glance up a moment ago to see each bay of the windows occupied by a long-sleeved graduate student staring blankly into the tableau of fun-and-sun stretching before him into endless horizons of enjoyments not had. Thirty seconds later they were all back at their computers, trying to convince themselves that what they saw wasn't real.

But it's okay. The polar bear will probably eat them soon enough.

Zane's Beard Update

2007-10-30T11:55:00.001-04:00

Status: Coney Island-homeless-man shaggy

Put-in-mouth-ability: Fair to stormy

Flavor: Strong overtones of cotton candy. Reasons unknown.

Inquiring minds have a right to know.

Incredible works of time-wastery

2007-10-23T21:50:00.000-04:00

My friend Joelle held a short IM monologue in which every sentence accidentally began with an I. This got me thinking that she had tried to start writing an acrostic, but had been seized by the stutters as soon as she began.

I guess that's about as far as I can go to explain where the last twenty minutes went.

I-crostic

I started to write an acrostic,

Intending it to be fant-ostic.

Intricate secrets I would hide there,

Initials leading to wisdom’s lair.

Indeed, the very idea thrilled -

In such clever guise, my thoughts cradled.

Injurious to public morals?

Into the deep I cast such quarrels!

Interring my fear six feet below,

Impetuously I began – O!

Instead of wit so scintillating,

Ire alone I found a-waiting.

Impish beast, Fate! Why mention butter?

If only I could lose this stutter!

What does it mean to exist in this world of pain and emptiness?

2007-10-12T17:22:00.000-04:00

What follows is an intensely serious and enlightened discussion of man's state vis-a-vis the essential unknowability of goodness and the immanent presence of evil.

Did you know that leaving your window open all day when the weather is in the mid-fifties with a coquettishly chilly breeze can leave your body as cold as a lump of Antarctica swaddled lovingly in dry ice, boxed up with pure hate, and shot into a black hole? Well, in point of fact, this turn of events is highly possible. But how could I know such a thing, the impudent but attentive reader may ask. Though I may frown at the off-handed manner in which this hypothetical reader reveals his inability to take my word on trust, I will nonetheless confess that I have arrived at the above-stated piece of priceless knowledge not by extensive research, but through that most noble teacher of the Enlightenment, Experience.

The weather finally, and I hope permanently, broke yesterday after stubbornly persisting in maintaining temperatures well into the mid-eighties during the first week of October, and I am so enjoying the sounds of the crisp fall afternoon and the feel of the breeze that I refuse to even consider closing the large, wide-open window approximately two feet from where I sit. It seems somehow unjust that I should be doing what makes me feel good, but still be uncomfortably cold at the same time. WHEN WILL SOMEONE STOP THE BUSH REGIME'S REIGN OF TERROR AND LET JUSTICE RETURN TO AMERICA? How myriad are his injustices!

Seriously, though, my hands are, like, way cold. And so are my knees, for reasons unknown. THAT IS JUST WHERE THE COLDNESS GOES.

If someone told me anytime during the first two years of grad school that there would come a period in my course of study in which I could waste the tail end of a Friday afternoon typing a blog post about being too damn obstinate to close a window, I would have punched that person directly on the kisser and then gotten angry about how punching him had made me waste valuable time.

And now we are all better informed about the problem of evil and the ways in which it intrudes itself upon our consciousnesses.

An Unbearable Fact of Being

2007-09-26T00:05:00.000-04:00

Sometimes I step into timeless zone
And I lose my way
I don't know where I am
Sometimes I feel like I'm in the Milky Way
And I lose myself
I don't know who I am
I discover whiskers of a cat in a timeless zone
And I put them on my face
In a moment I become a sweet little cat
And I dance on a flying saucer

I Am A Cat

I discover ears of a cat in the Milky Way
And I put them on my head
In a moment I become a sweet little cat
And I dance on a flying saucer

I Am A Cat

Thanks, Shonen Knife. You make life just that much smoother.

KISSES

2007-08-20T10:31:00.000-04:00

This is apparently what happens when you, and by you I mean me, go hiking on the Polish borderlands with Michal: kisses from fat, topless drunk guys holding fish.

I guess I should have seen that coming.

We were in a minute speck of a village consisting primarily of train tracks (featuring exactly one train to and from Warsaw a day) and a hole-in-the-wall bar that dispensed serious booze for men who want to get drunk as cheaply as possible and stay that way for as much of the day as possible. I first visited this pleasant little establishment at the outset of my journey around 9:40 in the morning, by which time at least ten of the village's finest had gathered at the joint in order to drink vodka out of fist-sized glasses and exchange vague grumbles about, presumably, existential ennui. This visit ended fairly innocuously: I came, ate chicken-bowel soup and pizza slathered in ketchup (a Polish speciality), and went on my way without so much as a handshake from a fish-bearing fat topless man. I was not to be so fortunate during round two.

After the hiking trip came to a satisfactory close involving many hours of forcing our way through sparse forest and undergrowth along a beautiful river and occasionally being savaged by stinging nettles, Michal and I decided to kill the hour we had until the train arrived by joining the crowds of sweetness and light bustling in and out of the same dingy bar. Michal cunningly ordered a shot of "the worst stuff you've got," which as it turns out is pretty much the worst stuff that exists this side of lighter fluid mixed with actual death - I should perhaps mention that the shot cost about sixty cents and was steep at the price. We drank it with relish and not even remotely disguised coughing and retching, because we are two tough dudes. Having proven our credentials by navigating the rough seas of heinous vodka with manly aplomb, we were ready to join the bar flies in smoother seas and sat down at a table outside with rather more palatable alcohol and a heady sense of a job well done.

Michal first noticed our friend stumbling around on the street in front of the bar, and the sociologist in him discerned in the man's great drunken girth, ambling gait, and beached-whale exposure ample material for a work of photo-journalism on the faces of the Polish countryside. The man, for his part, spied Michal's half-empty shot glass from afar and discerned in it a chance to get ever so slightly drunker for free, with the result that in a few short moments he had joined us, flopping a fish (photographed above) down onto the table and exhorting us to partake of its bounty with him. As we did so, it came out that I was American, which led him to start a long monologue involving anecdotes about his time as a jet pilot in Iraq and his disdain for Ronald Reagan, who he thought was still president.

This was all well and good, but Michal decided it would be a shame to let our little piece of inter-cultural exchange escape undocumented, a sentiment heartily supported by our topless friend, so out came the camera, the photographs, and the kisses. The man had already planted a big Slavic present on the side of my head earlier in our conversation when some unknown theme in the conversation filled him with an intense love for humanity that simply could not be restrained any longer, but the fine specimen you see in the above photograph was the work of Michal, who suggested in Polish to the man that a mere smile would not be enough of a sign of international friendship, and after all what is a better sign of affection than a kiss? I do not have an answer to that question, and apparently neither did the man.

I guess the moral of the story is this: if you're ever traveling in the east of Poland along the border with Belarus and feel like what your life is missing is a big vodka-flavored kiss that subsumes most of the left side of your head, a trip to the local watering hole would not go amiss. Fish optional.

Warsaw, again

2007-08-10T19:57:00.000-04:00

So I'm in Warsaw now at the apartment of my wonderful friends Michal and Paulina. After almost fourteen hours on the train, I'm more or less glad to be stationary, but the train journey felt surprisingly short for all that. I brought a bunch of cheese, bread, and candy with me to while away the hours, which I confess bears all the earmarks of total genius. The only problem is that I chose three cheeses more or less at random and one of the happened to be so pungent that I could not even open it on the train for fear of unleashing lederhosen-clad rage the likes of which the world has never seen, so it just sat in my backpack the whole time, quietly exuding cheese funk into all of my books and clothes. I spent most of the trip alternating between happily champing down gummy candies like a five-year-old and sleeping as if in the grip of a violent beast of oblivion. That is actually a pretty enjoyable set of options to vacillate between.

The morning will see me off on the train again, this time to some random villages in the east of Poland that Michal knows. Or maybe he doesn't know them? It's hard to tell sometimes. In any case, we will head to the middle of (or the eastern edge of) Nowhere, Poland, and tramp around there for a few days. I'll be back on Monday or Tuesday to Warsaw, but I highly doubt I will be able to post anything before then - something tells me these random little villages are not exactly crawling with cheap internet cafes.

I guess that's about it. I chatted a little with two girls who were sharing my hostel dorm room last night, and spent most of the time trying to convince them that their second cousin's German fiancee was a Soviet spy bent on spreading Communist propaganda through manipulation of the matrimonial bond. I think they were pretty convinced, which is understandable because the case was pretty iron-clad. I just finished reading The Bourne Identity two days ago, and now my head is all full of spies and kung-fu kicks, one of which I have learned is usually aimed at the other (the latter at the former, although sometimes the other way around). Robert Ludlum is a pretty trashy writer, but the book is still a lot of fun. His love scenes, which probably total up to no more than ten pages out of the book's 500-some pages, reek so horribly that they almost kill the whole work. The tend to work like this:

BOURNE: I have to leave you, because I don't remember who I am, and I don't want to get you killed.

BOURNE'S FINE LADY: But I love you.

BOURNE: But... I love you, too.

BFN: Then you have to stay. Because we love each other.

BOURNE: Touche (proceeds to kill a bus full of spies with his bare hands because he is so cool).

The worst part is that I'm not kidding about or exaggerating the italics. Ludlum should be legally prevented from writing with italics until the end of time. In fact, so should everybody.

The Cold Embrace of Cowardice

2007-08-10T19:33:00.000-04:00

Yes, gentle readers, you are reading the words of a coward. These meager sentences are the fruit of a delicate mind that, when faced with the opportunity to feast on such traditional Munich/Bavarian fare as ox diaphragm, could barely suppress the desire to run and hide. Calf diaphragm? No, thanks again, though. Pork diaphragm? Still not doing it. When I noticed that one single dish promised a range of beef delicacies including heart, liver, kidneys, tongue, and I think stomach, I merely smiled weakly and turned to the sausages with the same sort of heavy heart that I can imagine weighted down Napoleon on Waterloo. The message was all too clear: You are not man enough for Bavaria. And it is true. Even the whimsical section titles of the English menu I received at the restaurant made me blanch and titter like a schoolgirl at a wrestling match: "The Best Part is the Offal," for instance, advertised about ten different dishes involving calf's head and the same number for calf hoof-based cuisine. I say "different" dishes, but really they all seemed to be calf head/hoof boiled in vinegar and onion "soup" and served with potatoes. I'm not quite sure that the addition or subtraction of something like parsely should really make it a new dish, but obviously the Weisses Brauhaus in Munich has other ideas.

Normally such food exotica would have exercised a powerful attraction, but frankly the two-fold fact of it being my last night in Munich and the fact that I was eating with an audience of one (being the Naipaul book I was reading, and therefore not very responsive) left me with the singular experience of being unwilling to put something that any random joker called food and charged money for into my mouth. I can't say I think this is a positive development.

At the same time, seeing what was actually on the menu made me feel a little better about my ability to decipher German. At every other restaurant, it had been easy enough to fumble my way through a variety of wursts, potato dishes, and the like, but after about ten minutes' hard staring at the menu last night, I was no more the wiser to its contents. When the waitress brought an English version and I saw that every item on the menu involved some complex interaction with bits of the alimentary canal and various internal organs of animals like the trusty ox, I felt somehow vindicated. This way I could be outraged - how on earth did my foolish professors think to omit crucial words from German 101/102 like "ox diaphragm"? Obviously it is an everyday word that even the simplest fool should be expected to know. I blame the Communists.

Blutwurst, or How I Went to Heaven without All the Hassle of Dying

2007-08-06T07:28:00.000-04:00

Ever since my tender years when I read Patrick McManus describe the process of making blood sausage, an unshakeable certainty lodged itself in my mind that any food product made by killing a pig, draining it of blood, gutting it, then pouring the blood back into the guts again had to be a taste extravaganza of divine proportions.
Today I learned anew how feeble the imagination of man is in comparison to the wonders of God, for if blood sausage was not made specially by God at the very moment of Creation, I have no idea where it could have come from.
I should have known I was in for a treat when I saw that the name of the dish at the biergarten where I was making my evening repast was "Himmel und Äd," the latter being a word which escapes my feeble German but surely means something suitably Germanic, like "The being-in-itself-ness of deliciousness." The sun shone ever so slightly sunnier the moment the order passed my lips, and I swear I heard choirs of angels take up their places in the wings, clearing their throats and humming softly to keep themselves in tune. I, foolish mortal, paid little attention to these signs and turned back to my book and beer, quietly sipping (the beer, that is) and reading (the book, mostly) as I waited.
Presently I noticed something was astir when celestial trumpets blew and the angels let off their hemming and hawing to burst into full-throated song as they formed with their bodies a shining corridor for the small old German waiter and his precious burden on his way to my table.
On the table before me lay a sizable sausage that had been split into two halves, fried, and nestled into the warm embrace of golden mashed potatoes. The sausage was extremely black along its surface, barring little white lumps of fat that dotted its surface like gems on a medieval sword.
Time seemed to contort strangely around the sausage, filling my head with visions of all that is good and beautiful in the past and future. Ignoring such oddities, I took a bite.
The Cathedral in Cologne is a sprawling masterwork of Gothic architecture, with twin spires rising over 450 feet into the heavens, untold numbers of statues, and hundreds of delicately crafted stained glass scenes. The interior is just as impressive, from the quiet peace of the underground crypt to the near-infinite heights of the soaring arched ceiling. The entire building was created to be a monument to the goodness of God, proclaiming the glory of Creation through the perfect harmonizing of mundane physical elements. Space, shape, line, and perspective collude with the senses to overwhelm the mind with unimagined beauties.

This was like that, only located comfortably between my tongue and teeth.

Mere words cannot explain what it is like to have a mouthful containing the sum total of all that is good in the world working its way around your tastebuds while you have a whole plate of the stuff smiling beatifically up at you from a foot and a half away. All I can say is that you will not regret it if, upon reading this, you quit your job, sell everything you own, fly to Cologne, and make a living eating blood sausage before crowds of amazed onlookers. I practically guarantee it.

Amsterdam also exists

2007-08-03T04:59:00.000-04:00

Yesterday I went to Amsterdam to visit a couple of friends and to see the Van Gogh museum. These two goals were achieved quite to my satisfaction, along with another that the previous post may have led you to expect: Lizbeth, who decided to take me on a wonderful little walking tour of the old city, included a substantial walk through the surprisingly beautiful Red Light District of Amsterdam. Mostly the place was pretty innocuous at 11:00 in the morning, although the ubiquitous presence of sex shops was a little out of place with the quiet streets and old-world charm of the area. Also incongruous with the reputation of the district was this amazing museum consisting of a 17th-century merchant house that is perfectly preserved with original decorations, furnishings, and the lot. The house looks like a normal private residence from the outside, and it is just that until you get to the third floor - that floor, however, is a complete and fully appointed Catholic church, with seating for at least a hundred people. It was built in the time of the high Dutch painting boom, too, so all the church decorations just so happen to be excellent works of art in that highly recognizable Dutch style. Apparently the deal with the church is that it was illegal at that time and for many years afterward for Catholic churches to operate openly, meaning that any church that was visible from the street would be torn down. In order to continue practicing their faith, then, wealthy merchants all over Amsterdam would turn the top floor of their homes into beautiful churches that still looked from the outside like normal private homes. The way Dutch persecution of Catholicism worked meant that there was no need for the fact that a church was present and operating in a given location to be kept secret; it was fine if everyone knew that a given home actually contained a church, as long as you couldn't actually tell by looking at it that it was in fact a den of papist devilry. Awesome.

The Van Gogh museum is also quite excellent, which is obvious enough. I saw a lovely painting of his with three brightly colored boats beached on a shore that I had first seen in May at the Neue Gallerie in New York, which marks the official first time that I have seen the same painting in person in two different countries. I am so cosmopolitan I can hardly stand it. Don't even waste your time being jealous, as this level of international hipsterism is not intended for ordinarily mortals.

Tomorrow: Cologne!

The Day after Tomorrow: Deodorant! (and worldwide destruction wrought by global warming)

ROXAAAAAAAANNE!

2007-08-03T04:58:00.000-04:00

PUT ON A RED LIGHT!

ROXAAAAAAAAAAANNE!

PUT ON A RED LIGHT!

ROXAAAAAAAAAAANNE!

Some things I have done in space and time

2007-07-31T12:20:00.000-04:00

On Sunday I decided to pursue a pernicious rumor I had heard to the effect that Pope Benedict would be giving an address of a sort at his summer residence in Castel Gandolfo, which P.S. is not just the Spanish name for a certain Tolkien wizard. The journey was relatively easy and, despite getting lost in the town of Castel Gandolfo with the result that I spent half an hour walking halfway down a mountain only to return to where I started and walk five minutes to the correct location, everything was even better than I was hoping. I joined up with a group of Filipino nuns who looked like they knew what they were doing and found myself joining a huge crowd of people piling into a small courtyard in the castle at around 11:00, waiting in eager anticipation for a noontime address. I felt a bit like that guy who wears the band's T-shirt to a concert of that band, as the book I happened to bring along to entertain myself during the wait was Ratzinger's latest book on Europe (Europe: Today and Tomorrow, I believe). One of the excitable Italian young women in front of me noticed and pointed it out in a giggling stage whisper to her equally excitable confreres (consisters?), and a good time was had by all.

Then out came Pope Benedict. I am absolutely not one to be wowed by great names or personages, and I am generally unfazed by the appearance of people who are famous for whatever reason, but seeing the Pope is an experience not to be likened with seeing some pop star or even a favorite author. I confess I was pretty amazed by the whole experience - here, after all, is the man to whom I owe a very great deal of my intellectual and spiritual formation over the last two extremely influential years of my life, and who just so happens to be the Successor of Peter. The combination is, I think, a uniquely powerful one. The small talk he delivered was all in Italian, as I expected, although I believe it will be translated into English pretty soon. The text of the Italian version, for all the non-existent Italian readers of my blog, is available here. After the talk we said the Angelus, which was my first time saying or hearing it; it was a neat way to be introduced to the prayer, but seeing as we said it in Latin about all I know about it is that you say some Hail Marys interspersed with short prayers, then close with three Glory Bes. Unless I missed something. Anyway, after that he delivered a short exhortation in every language he speaks, or at least every language that had representatives there that day: Italian, German, French, Spanish, English, Polish, and I might be missing one or two others. Impressive. Turns out the Pope's French sounds basically perfect to a non-native ear, as does his Italian, but his English is rather on the heavily accented side. Still, it was great hearing him speak in my language, and there were so few other English-speakers there that it felt almost like a personal address. The whole affair lasted about twenty minutes, but I count it as one of the great high points of my trip so far.

After the talk, I decided that I would spend the afternoon on the beach of the beautiful mountain-encircled lake that Castel Gandolfo is built on. The result was a few hours of gorgeous blue-green water, forested mountains, and cavorting families, accompanied by an impressively patchy sunburn that now adorns my shoulders, the top half of my arms that had not been previously farmer-tanned to an un-burnable brown, and strange patches on my back and legs. Sweet!

And all the sweeter as I went hiking in Assisi yesterday with my full pack on my back for more or less the whole day. Nothing says awesome like a backpack full of books on sunburned shoulders! Really, though, I have no complaints. Assisi is a gorgeous mountain city built on a seemingly never-ending series of slopes that duck and weave in harmony with the narrow, stone streets flanked on either side by two-story stone buildings of 13th- or 14th-century vintage (at least in appearance). The Basilica of St. Francis is a beautiful place, made more beautiful by its effect on the town - the whole place is a haven for monastic life in various forms, and nearly every church you see is supported by some order of monks and nuns. No Dominicans, though - I wonder why. The Basilica also has the bodily remains and personal relics of St. Francis, so I got to see the patchwork habit he wore for most of his life (which is actually grey, not brown, which surprised me) and some other wonderful things, in addition to the joy of being able to pray before the bodily remains of the great saint. Even better than the Basilica itself, though, is the hermitage that the Franciscans have built on the top of a nearby mountain. The place takes about an hour or an hour-and-a-half to walk up, but once there you find a gorgeous hiding place consisting of small trails cut into the verdantly forested mountainside, punctuated every so often by extremely old wooden chapels for masses, with adjoining Eucharistic chapels. After the hubbub and tourist buzz of the Basilica and Rome in general, I can think of no greater rest than to come to such a place and be utterly alone in the presence of Christ, without even the sounds of insects to disturb your prayer. I cannot think of a time or place where I have been more at peace.

All good things must come to an end, however, and transform into new and different good things. Right now I am in Nijmegen visiting my good friend Caroline and her boyfriend, where I plan to remain for a few days. The vague plan includes running up to Amsterdam to check out museums on Thursday, which sounds quite jolly. More on that as it develops.

Well, that was a suitably rambling and stereotypical college-kid-on-European-vacation blog post. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I.

Vatican City

2007-07-23T12:47:00.000-04:00

For an adult Catholic, the experience of seeing the Square of St. Peter's for the first time is wholly unlike any other. First you see the large pillars that seem to promise no more than any of a thousand other Roman or Grecian collonades, but the moment you pass through them you see the enormous obelisk pointing in its grasping, pagan way to the same God to which the great Dome and Spire point with unparalleled eloquence; the saints around the square welcome you with the same unflagging vigilance and joy with which they have welcomed untold hosts of pilgrims before you, who have likewise come to pay their own meager but eternal respects to the physical heart of the body of Christ. The feeling is not quite that of seeing something for the first time, for you cannot escape the impression that your are merely seeing the full face of something that has narrowly escaped your vision these many years, something that has always been present just outside your field of vision. A lifetime of near-misses, of being barely unable to turn your head fast enough to catch sight of a great and mystifying Presence is in one swift moment fulfilled; I do not think it is too much to say that the moment is a dim foreshadowing of that great eternal Moment when we shall awake and see the true face of the King of Kings, recognizing at once that we knew it all along and that we have never known it.
These notes I record now I scribbled first to the flickering light of a cigarette coal on the balcony of the conventual room where I am staying, from which the illuminated dome of St. Peter's is all that will let itself be seen. Night owls across the way fill the warm air with the sounds of a James Bond movie that spill generously into the sky from their open window. I do not begrudge the sound, nor the dim light with which I am struggling, for in them I find something beautiful about the nature of the Church herself, for now I am merely seeing a directly physical expression of what has always been true. Over how many of my cigarettes has the specter of St. Peter's loomed? Over how many action movies casting nets of simple joy into the unflinching night? Over how many quiet evenings beguiled into sleep by fleeting glimpses of beauties beyond my ken?
The bells ring in St. Peter's to usher in the eleven o'clock hour, unsettling the quiet with their undeniable thrumming. I look at St. Peter's and, hearing the bells, I realize that for all the sins of its past occupants, the Body of Christ still throbs within it. The throbbing of St. Peter's great heart awakens vibrations in my soul as well, and I feel anew the Body of Christ that some meager hours ago the priest laid on my tongue. From the depth of my sin comes the thrumming and the throbbing of Christ, creating earthy and ethereal harmonies with the bells that ring out to the night over St. Peter's. The clappers of the bells seem to have lost the power to strike, gaining instead the power to pour out rivers of pure sound unbroken by violence: the sound is that of blood streaming from a wound.

Auschwitz-Birkenau

2007-07-10T18:05:00.000-04:00

Drive for about sixty kilometers east and a little north from the center of Krakow and you'll come upon an area with some light industry and prominent railroad tracks. A little further on you'll see a 1960s-type hotel of the ultra-modern Soviet model called Hotel Globe, which acts as gatekeeper to the innocuous town of Oswiecim (German pronunciation: Auschwitz). What you see from the road looks like a quiet if drab city of relatively new construction that is notable primarily for being significantly uglier than the surrounding countryside, which is extremely beautiful. Small black signs, however, begin to catch the eye, reading nothing but "Museum - Auschwitz" with an arrow pointing in the appropriate direction. Pulling into the camp is something of a surprise, as you see none of the spare wooden barracks that one usually associates with concentration/extermination camps; rather, there is a dazzling array of simply but elegantly constructed brick buildings that look precisely like the Polish military base they once formed.
The camp is almost perfectly preserved, though most of the buildings have been reworked on the interior for the commemorative purposes of the museum. The space is surprisingly small, taking only about five minutes to walk across, but it is densely packed with rows of neatly spaced buildings that bear no exterior signs of the purposes to which they were once put; it is not the buildings, but rather the motto "ARBEIT MACHT FREI" on the wrought-iron entrance gate and the impossibly elaborate fence-and-watchtower system that prevent the distracted mind from forgetting what the name Auschwitz means.
I will not say there are no words to describe the things that the buildings contain, but I will say that I have not the words for them. In one building, you stand in a room that is perhaps fifty feet long and thirty wide that is partitioned into two glassed-off displays by a walkway of some five feet's width. For the length of the room on either side of the walkway, shoes have been piled to a height of about six feet. How is one to describe the sensation of being surrounded by the objects of the dead? And how is it possible to explain the impossible realization that the endless ranks of shoes are in fact no more than the barest fraction of the actual number of shoes discovered? The mind simply will not take it in. The gas chamber, the crematory ovens, these things you can actually touch - they are no more than cyphers, realities too brazen to divest their secrets.
The only moment in the camp when you feel at all human is the cell of St. Maximilian Kolbe, the Polish Fransiscan who volunteered to die in the place of another man who was the father of a large family, to which he was eventually able to return after the liberation of Auschwitz. Kolbe spent two weeks in the cell without food or water, but was eventually martyred when his impatient captors decided just to shoot him.
Auschwitz is a delicately constructed piece of cruelty, but for all that it has a limit and an end; the bricks themselves act as a breakwater past which the waves of inhumanity cannot pass. Birkenau knows no such limitations. A ten-minute drive from the entrance of Auschwitz puts you in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by gorgeous rolling fields of grain and verdant forests. Out of this nowhere there appears an enormous brick gate structure surmounting a double pair of railroad tracks from which the distinctive barbed-wire fencing extends to the right and the left. I know rationally that Birkenau is no more than two square kilometers in area, but nonetheless I cannot supress the certainty that it is infinitely wide and deep; the ramshackle wood-slatted buildings extend in monstrous rows until they are devoured by sheer distance and dwindle into specks toward the horizon. Birkenau has none of the ordered closeness of Auschwitz - it is an endless and open field of green verdure and wooden horror that traps the mind in an irresolvable conflict between beauty and revulsion.
Most of the Jews killed in camps were killed on these grounds; at least 1.1 million have been confirmed, and various contemporaneous reports seem to indicate that the actual number is likely somewhere between 1.5 million and 2 million. Evil and the blood of innocents are the constitutive agents of the entire site. Yet somehow the simple goodness of Creation will not let evil hold sway over even this, its high altar. The place is defined by a beautiful stillness that contrasts with the ugly fullness of Auschwitz. Even as I write this the repulsiveness of the camp is almost palpable, but I cannot and will not let go of the beauty that is there; perhaps Nature is trying in her own way to tell the story of the unsung martyrs of the slaughtered masses. Driving away, you see trees and bushes whose long arms hang wearily away from Birkenau, as if they had once turned away in horror and been unable to return.
Nearby in the old town of Oswiecim there is a church built by Dominicans in the fourteenth century where St. Hyacinth used to preach. The Salesians have had it since the end of the nineteenth century and a dedicated group of priests and nuns has been praying there and educating the youth in the attached school ever since. During the long darkness of 1940-1945, they ensured that the two small red lights on either side of the tabernacle were never extinguished. The Lord hears the cry of the poor; Christ has never left Auschwitz.

I am in Krakow

2007-07-09T18:16:00.000-04:00

That is a true statement. My first week and a half in Poland has been a grand old time; I started by taking the train from Warsaw to Torun, which is a beautiful medieval town in the northwesterly bit of Poland, where I stayed with my good friend Michal and his grandparents, who live there and are amazing. They don't speak a word of English, but his grandfather knows German quite well, so we would try to communicate on essential subjects like the greatness of the Reagan presidency and my pressing need to eat more in a heady mix of English, German, and Polish. The second morning I was there I slept in rather late having cunningly neglected to bring an alarm clock and was awoken by Michal's grandfather bursting into the room at about 10:45, puffing "Essen! Essen!" I correctly interpreted this to mean, "It is high time to be awake and eating some of God's great creation, you young lay-about!"
Also notable about my time in Torun is the fact that no fewer than all four of the Polish bands I know and love were taking part in an open-air music festival that started the day I got in. As a result I was treated to the once-in-a-lifetime experience of jamming out to Polish Catholic hard rock into the weeish hours of the evening on the grounds of a fifteenth-century Teutonic castle. Why not?
Reunions with other good friends, Paulina and Jadwiga, who are respectively Michal's wife and daughter, further proved the excellence of the decision to come to Poland. On the train from Torun to Warsaw, Jadwiga passed out with her head on my leg and proceeded to sleep with such athletic intensity that my entire right leg was left salt-stained with her sweat, as if a tidal wave of exhaustion had broken over her and spilled over into concrete reality, leaving only the high-water mark on my leg as evidence of its existence. I wish I could sleep like that.
Krakow is, as I expected, a beautiful city. The lectures and conversation at the seminar I'm on (Tertio Millennio) have proven to be surprisingly stimulating and interesting, and the people no less so. There are about forty of us in the seminar, and we seem to be getting along like a house that has very Catholicly caught on fire. This evening, after a luxurious meal at a restaurant that warmed up the stomach for the approaching tempest of deliciousness with thick slices of hearty bread on which one was to spread lard mixed with large chunks of bacon, the whole group inexplicably started singing songs in unison. I suspect that the ingestion of enormous amounts of pig fat swimming in beef fat may be the root cause of this outburst. Our musical orgy lasted about an hour and a half, with the song selection ranging from booming Polish folk songs to our respective national anthems to what I'm pretty sure may have been a 50 cent song. In short, a good time was had by all.
Other things have happened in the last week-and-a-half, as you may imagine, but time runneth short and my sleepiness groweth mightily. Tomorrow: Sunny, happy-go-lucky Auschwitz-Birkenau!

Here it is

2007-07-09T18:08:00.000-04:00

I can't write poetry. But here's a poem anyway.

Eulogy

Abraham climbed the mountain for three days
Every fire tied to the altar's,
Every knife-stroke smelling of blood -
From the eyes just like his own, a still gaze

Job sat in the ashes for seven nights
Each sore torn away by the sherd,
Each wound where once a child was balm
Deplored by the men who pitied his blights

Martha and Mary waited for four more
All peace lost in their brother's tomb,
All joy bound close to his body,
Left behind like husks on the threshing-floor

The Son of Man hung naked for three hours
Sometimes hope appears in its loss
Sometimes darkness consumes the sun
To reveal a light lost to her powers

July 6, 2007

I have written a story

2007-05-19T23:41:00.000-04:00

There was a time when I thought I wanted to be a writer and would spend an appreciable portion of my time writing silly little stories to amuse myself. I no longer think I will be a great writer some day, but a few weeks ago I realized that there was no reason this awareness should stop me from writing silly little stories to amuse myself. So here one is.

Gifts

Zane Torretta

It was just a small thing that fell from the sky. But it was dead, and in its deadness it was his. The bird made no sound as it landed on the pavement, its crumpled body glaring a brilliant white from the grey space before the man’s feet. His hands moved as if automatically, seizing the bird and forcing it into the pocket of his coat with unwonted eagerness. Before someone sees, he thought anxiously as his hand closed searchingly around the unfamiliar shape in the dark of the pocket. His fingers felt no clammy stickiness identifying a wound that had slain the bird; neither did they discover any suspicious bumps or broken bones that would offer some paltry explanation for its curious fate. A heart attack, he mused. The idea entranced him. An explosion secreted away from prying eyes by shields woven of bone and flesh; a heart throbbing so furiously with life that it shatters the wall to death and is consumed by what it finds.

The bird's deadness clung to him like the scent of a lover, encircling him and accompanying him on his long walk through the emptiness of night. The streetlights collaborated with the screaming colors of the shopfront neons to send endless waves of sensation to assault the man; moments earlier, they had oppressed him to the point of despair, but now the deadness that surrounded him kept such invaders far at bay, making him feel lighter and more free than his dim memory served him to recall ever being before. He continued his walk almost merrily, playing aimlessly with the corpse in his pocket as he gazed into the distance at the grey-blue mess into which the pavement, the streetlights, the taxicabs, and the sky too bright for stars collapsed at the end of every street. The bitter trepidation that marked his close circle of thoughts these many years seemed to have vanished without a trace, leaving in their stead a refreshing feeling of power and confidence.

Death owns me. I own death, he thought with a wan smile that grew into a true grin. Here it is, he said aloud, pretending to speak to himself in reference to the corpse, but actually addressing and meaning the cloud around him. His roving eyes scanned the street for anyone to whom he could reveal his newfound secret, but came up frustratingly empty. The frustration built rapidly into outrage. Here is an answer to the nothing. Where are they to see? The bird weighed heavy and cold in his pocket.

Lost in ruminations and recriminations, he almost did not notice that his feet had carried him to more populated regions. He almost missed the woman.

She stepped out of a taxi-cab in a rush, clapping the door shut with an efficient noise and hurrying down the street as if to flee the lateness of the hour. The man stared at her as she crossed his field of vision, too distracted by the deadness to notice her precisely formed lips or the indelicate half-shuffle her right foot made as she completed each step. Stop, he said. You have to know. Please.

The sounds leapt at the woman with a force belying their hesitancy and she whirled around as if physically struck. The hand caught her eye first, jammed uncomfortably into an over-small coat pocket that bulged strangely and maliciously with the portent of danger. The man followed her gaze and slowly began to realize the gravity and wrongness of her misguided thoughts about the nature of the weapon his hand was closed upon. Power, he thought. Death. Not a gun. The last word aloud.

The woman looked at him, eyes widening for a moment before she could stop herself. In control once more, she went through a weary mental checklist of the contents of her purse, more bored than afraid; satisfied, she threw it at his feet and ran desultorily across the street to the half-shelter of a group smoking outside an empty bar, her flight made halting and unattractive by her not-quite-lameness. Crying, she was already smoking a proffered cigarette before one of the men thought to retrieve the purse. But by then everything was over.

Gun. The corpse was a blinding white in the darkness of his pocket as the woman sent her purse skittering toward the man’s feet. His mind reeled from the deadness and the blindness, but his hand would not release the body. The woman’s purse was a red blotch on the pavement, its delicate hoops coursing away only to return in shame to a spot adjacent to where they began, as if nailed to an eternal circuit. The red pierced the cloud effortlessly even through the white, and the man gasped as if winded; reeling backwards, he stumbled into the street and the waiting embrace of a passing car.

The purse had disappeared, transformed into great pools of red welling around his prone form. A car was stopped strangely askew in the road right next to him, yet the desperate glare of its headlights seemed dim as fireflies in comparison to the white blazing from the bird in his pocket. His hand tightened on the white as if in desperate entreaty as his heart ground to a stop. Motionless, his heart throbbed with life as death drained from his body. The sky was full of stars.

Stupid colonialist Britney Spears

2006-02-20T01:19:00.000-05:00

I spent all day today reading Yokomitsu Riichi's book Shanghai, which is a really excellent novel about a couple of Japanese men in various stages of down-and-out-ness in Shanghai in 1925, when most of Europe and Japan were squabbling over who had the right to colonize China. The last fifty pages or so are rather intense and engrossing, which naturally meant that I tuned out everything but the book during that part; as I was nearing the end, though, I suddenly realized that the silence that had previously reigned supreme in my mind had been replaced by the unlovely strains of "Hit Me, Baby, One More Time," a song I haven't heard for at least a year. Despite my best efforts to supress it, my mind insisted on adding this one-song soundtrack to the last ten pages or so, even going so far as to swoop and crescendo in line with the plot.
Is my subconscious trying to alert me to the fact that Britney Spears is, in fact, a time-traveling siren sworn by demonic blood vow to colonize China in the 1920s, thereby providing her with a large population base she can exploit to produce vast quantities of low-quality evil that she can sell at immense profit to wealthier economies, possibly in the future?
If so, all I have to say to my subconscious is: Dude. I totally know. Who doesn't? I mean, it's obvious.

Historians just don't get it

2006-02-14T02:42:00.000-05:00

Fortuna has spun her dread wheel such that I have been reading rather a lot of historiography on 17th-19th century Japan of late. Perhaps this is in some way connected to my enrolling in an English historiography of 17th-19th century Japan course, perhaps not; I'm not one to question the ways of Fortuna. In any case, late last night I was reading about the development of new class relations in farming villages during this time period, when I found this little gem of accidental double-entendre:

"What proportion of domestic industry was organized after this fashion under the putting-out system by the late Tokugawa period is impossible to say, but there is evidence of the system on every hand, in nearly every important industry."

This led me to imagine the folowing dialogue.

Historian A: Dude.
Historian B: What?
Historian A: Dude, I totally scored a date with Jenny for Friday night.
Historian B: WHAT? You lucky son-of-a - Man, I hear that she organizes her industry under the putting-out system fo' shizzle!
Historian A: Dogg, there is evidence of this system on every hand.

*Congratulatory high-five is attempted, but goes awry, causing both historians to giggle nervously before parting.*

fin

Comment issues

2006-02-05T04:47:00.000-05:00

So I figured out that I was having a variety of issues with publishing changes in my blog that stemmed from the tabbing features of Firefox and how things are stored in the cache. Anyway, I think I've figured them out, so in the future I shouldn't have any more problems with comment pages not showing up. The reason that the comments weren't working is boring, but suffice to say it's related to the fact that I had to republish both posts I made last night again today in order for blogger to believe that they actually existed and could therefore have comments posted to them. To anyone who feels like posting anything, they are now ripe for the so-doing. Enjoy?

Fathers and Sons

2006-02-05T04:39:00.000-05:00

I remember when I was a little kid that whenever I heard my dad walking down the hall with his heavy steps toward the room where my brother and I were, I would be overcome with a sudden and intense fear, not as of terror, but as of the shocking awareness of lessness, of the realization that somehow these footsteps and the man they accompanied contained in them more power and authority than I could ever understand. If I was in bed, I would yank the covers over my head and huddle as small as I could. If we were awake and he talked to us, I would spend the whole time trembling, even when he sat on the bed and hugged me and I could smell his end-of-the-day breath that meant everything was all right.

I don't think he ever knew how afraid I was, afraid that the footfalls in the hall would lead him to me, but also afraid that they would lead him away. I could never make sense of it, even at the time. I hadn't been doing anything wrong, and I knew it - further, I knew that he was just coming to check on us to make sure we were all right, or to tell us about a baseball game he knew we would like to see. And this fear never happened with my mother, even though she was the more likely to punish us when we did something deserving, a contradiction that perplexed me to no end.

I never really understood what it means to fear God, how a love that consumes my entire being can coexist with, and even give rise to, a fear that can be called holy. A couple of weeks ago, think on these memories, I feel like I began to understand.

The pope is pretty awesome

2006-02-05T04:38:00.000-05:00

Irrespective of the degree to which you care, most of you probably know that the pope released his first encyclical a little while ago (two Wednesdays ago? I've been getting my days confused lately). The theme is simple, and spelled out in the title: Deus Caritas Est. To say the encyclical is dynamite doesn't do it justice, but I'll say it anyway: it's dynamite.

God is love. What could be easier or more difficult to understand? After all, the matter is so easy that children understand it, as any one who has ever seen a child singing "Jesus loves me," or one who has ever been that child. Yes, yes, yes, we say, of course - God is love. Of course he is, and the love I feel for him is a beautiful emotion that comes and goes, even though I know in some way or another that he is present whether I feel him or not. But what we adults forget is that we are called to love God as his children, as a child would. Love for children is not an emotion; it is deep-seated and absolute knowledge and trust that penetrates every aspect of the child's being.

Those who have been blessed with good parents will know automatically what I mean, if they make an honest attempt to remember what it was like to be six years old and love their parents. A child does not feel his love for his parents at some moments, and not at others; rather, children love with their whole beings at all times, even when their thoughts are radically far from their parents. A child sitting alone at a table drawing a picture and humming to himself is, at that moment, loving his parents with his entire existence. This boy does not know whence come the pencils and paper he is using; nor does he know that his parents have sacrificed their own needs to buy them for him because it makes them happiest to see him happy; nor does he know that this moment of peace is borne of their labor. What he does know with every piece of his being is that his parents provide. The trust that a child has in his parent's ability to provide for him is a permament awareness; it is not an emotion, although it can be accompanied by a physical sensation far deeper than most passing adult emotions. Rather, it is a certainty that comes from knowing no alternative: parents, and what they have provided, are literally the only things that exist. This is, as I say, a trait of perfect trust. Even at school, when far from parents and the comforts of home, the child knows that he is experiencing something that his parents have laid out for him. When things go awry at school and the child is, say, picked on, he cries and complains because he has been hurt, and he knows that being hurt goes against what his parents will for him: I'm going to tell my daddy on you, the child says, in perfect confidence that invoking the provider will restore peace to his life.

So why does this mean that the child sitting at the table drawing and humming is loving his parents with his whole being? Because before a child learns that when adults say 'love' they mean a certain mode of behavior, a certain way of addressing, touching, and treating certain people as opposed to other people, the child believes that all things have been provided for him out of love and that his parents want him to be happy because they love him, so anything he does in his innocence with what they have given him to make himself happy is actually an act of profound trust that stems from a perfect love.

Of course, children realize eventually that their parents are imperfect, that they only have wisdom and resources to provide for them up to a point, and that even their love can sometimes be tainted with weakness and self-love. When we say God is Love, then, we discover the true object of the love that was the very substance of our childhood. For this is what it means to love God: to acknowledge that his love is not something exterior to ourselves, but is in fact the very fabric of our existence - that it is only in him that we live and move and have our being. This is, I believe, the challenge and the joy that "God is love" presents us with: to acknowledge the love that already sustains us and trust in it so deeply that every moment will be a living prayer to God, whether our thoughts are on our grocery list, a paper that won't let itself be written, or the mystery of the Incarnation.

oh my goodness

2006-01-26T03:26:00.000-05:00

gracious sakes alive grad school

Insert whale pun here

2006-01-21T01:34:00.000-05:00

Please note the following two whale-themed extravaganzas that have burst into our bland reality in the last few days: http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2006030144,00.html and lest we forget http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/4631396.stm. A certain associate of mine passed these nuggests of sheer delight on to me, for which I am eternally grateful. Incidentally, it's worth taking time out to mention that 'associate' is a superb word because it is atmospheric and mysterious while being totally all-encompassing; am I a mobster talking about a cleaner friend of mind, or am I a fast-food employee with delusions of grandeur talking about the Taco Bell dog? No one knows.

But I digress, and the meat of my discussion is worthy meat indeed, for it is whale meat. Few things in this world are guaranteed to please in quite the same manner as whales; as far as I can think, only zombies, ninjas, and giant squid share the whale's ability to add instant comedy to any situation. If it is my misfortune to have my mortal remains put to rest with one of those drearily touchy-feely memorial services instead of a straight-to-the-point funeral mass with as little chatter from non-priestly folks as possible, I insist that said memorial service be interrupted at irregular but frequent intervals by high-spirited individuals in zombie, ninja, qiant squid, and whale costumes rushing around the place, belting out the characteristic cry of the being they are impersonating. Anyone who manages to attend the service as a convincing giant zombie ninja squid-whale will receive fully eighteen bonus points with a possible upgrade to twenty-three if a convincing call for such a beast is affected. I feel that this would set the proper tone.

I would like to take this moment to alert you to a certain danger that this line of thought leads to. Given that giant squids and whales are like twin elevators racing toward comedy bliss, one may reasonably suspect that a movie that promises not one but both of these Heaven-sent, multi-ton vehicles of comedy would be nothing short of a foretaste of the divine pleasures that await us and, inspired by these thoughts, further think that it would be a good idea to see Noah Burnbaum's The Squid and the Whale. However, in thinking thusly one would be very wrong indeed. I can tell you from painful experience that this movie features not a single well timed whale gag, and neither does it benefit from tales of terror about giant squid that would chill the bones of a salty old sailor. What it does have is a maddeningly uninteresting series of boring conversations about how much divorce sucks. A valid point, surely, but one that could equally surely have been enlivened by the occasional giant squid bursting into the family's living room and laying waste to all on the scene.

Somehow I suspect that I have rather strayed from the old straight-to-the-point style that the blogger should make his bosom friend. To return: whales. I confess I haven't ever really approved of any move Greenpeace has pulled in the past, but any group that carts a twenty-ton whale carcass around Berlin for the express purpose of dropping it on someone's doorstep, ringing the doorbell, and running away as if they had just delivered the most enormous flaming bag of poo in all of history deserves my applause. Not that I think they really achieved their goal of shaking up The Japanese Man and giving him Serious Food for Thought, because what could be more awesome for a diplomat trapped in some stuffy bureaucratic office than to look out his window and see a giant whale hovering vaguely in the air before descending gracefully to earth on to his doorstep? I can guarantee you that in such a situation the only thought going through my head would be hot diggety damn, thank you Jesus. The other bonus? Free all-you-can-eat whale meat number one. There will be enough whale jerky to carry that embassy through a generation of cold German winters. This is the most fun I've had with Greenpeace since France blew one of their boats all to hell.

I'm not entirely sure that was the post I had set out to write, but it's all I'm going to get right about now. For those Japanese speakers out there (Andrew Richardson and his imaginary friends?), great fun is free for the taking at the website for the Japanese whaling commision as it tries vainly to fend off claims that its research focuses primarily on the effects of large quantities of whale meat on the palate and gastrointestinal system. Check it out here: http://www.whaling.jp/qa.html#02_01

It's a blog!

2006-01-18T19:07:00.000-05:00

I always told myself that if I were to start a real blog, I wouldn't open it up with some generic "well, isn't it swell to be starting a blog" post, but now that I've come down actually to doing it, I realize why everyone does that: it's blasted hard to come up with something interesting to say at the drop of a hat. The meaningless intro post acts as a soothing balm to the brain, which has become angry and inflammed at the mere thought of being forced to come up with something worth reading, let alone something really brilliant. Later, when the brain is busy calming itself with the memory of the dreary pablum it has foisted off on the rest of the body, one can jump on the unsuspecting grey matter and give it a round shaking until something worthwhile drops out. At least, that's the goal.

Well, isn't it swell to be starting a blog.