Ásgarðr - a writer’s bliss

Occasionally, we would receive dispatches - news, personal letters, bills, fliers - wrapped in brown paper and tied with twine, the seal of Maraña’s personal staff affixed to the top of the package in dark blue wax, where the string crossed itself, to show that it had not been opened. A boy on a dapple horse, wearing sandals and white cotton, would ride up to the side of the river and call to the boat, whereupon Maraña would direct it to the nearest shallows; the package would be produced from one of the brown leather saddlebags, swiftly followed by the boy’s lunch, which he would take with us on deck whilst on the riverbank the horse watched its feet for snakes. We would feed him diabolos of cloudy lemonade and mint syrup and query him closely about the goings-on of the Maraña household in Cairo: who was ill, who was conscientious, who was slack, who whistled in the hallways, who snuck pinches of chicken breast from under the wing before serving it to Señora Olmedo, blind and submissive in her old age, who took breaks during deathly inactive night shifts for steamy trysts behind the rosebed. Maraña was an experienced gossip, and in absentia could quite deftly construct a psychological model of his staff; he would wait until we were in a frenzy of speculation before remarking, “Ah, hm, it is true that poor Javi cannot bear the mid-afternoon sun and must nap after lunch,” or some other remark that showed us our place ab extra. The boy, more often than not, would nod and gesture towards Maraña, to say, Yes that is right; he has it exactly, and we would sit back in our chairs, defeated.

The boy brought letters every week for Chema, which he always answered at length, and immediately, scraping his chair back and hurrying to his room, often with his drink or cigar in his hand. Chema was fond of martinis, and Maraña had an icebox in the base of the boat: at least a bottle of good gin was spilt over the course of the trip, the victim of impractical glassware and haste.

Sitting in this night, hearing the tick of the typewriter keys, my beer warm and flat and abandoned, I still wonder what sort of hold Elisabeta had on her son. He was not a mother’s pet, and yet would implore the post-boy to wait with us until he finished his response, so that it could be sent back immediately. His notes rushed headlong across the Atlantic, but Elisabeta could not have received them until after she sent her next letter; they spoke to each other as radios on a table: each following a thread of thought that the other could not immediately hear. This is not reminiscent of a true conversation; it reminds one more of military dispatches, which must be sent no matter what messages or replies are in transit. I cannot but conclude, for myself alone, that Elisabeta had sent her son, in part, to spy on her uncle. Perhaps she knew, after all, what he was planning.

This is not a topic I would usually dignify with a post. I’d usually sum up the debate by posting a witty video from my beloved YouTube nova intelligentsia, like this one by cdk007:

However, I stumbled across a recent debate between Dr. PZ Myers and Dr. Geoffrey Simmons that I thought nicely illustrates the gap in scientific understanding between a real biologist and a doubter of evolution.

There isn’t only a gap in scientific understanding but also a gap in self-knowledge exhibited by these two camps. It takes a particular sort of arrogance to assume that because one does not understand a theory, that makes the theory false. Biology students would not get away speaking to Dr. Myers the way Dr. Simmons challenges him. It is insulting that anyone would step into the scientific arena, stake out a private little area, and declare it free from mainstream science. I might as well deny Pythagoras’ theorem and by political influence force a mathematician to debate its validity.

I am frequently struck by unease when I hear from the news that a teenager has gone off the rails. That it appears in the news means that the victim’s behaviour has the perfect scapegoat prepackaged with the story.

During my not so distant childhood, in a very distant age, the first two questions that were asked after a child went loopy were as follows:

1. Is it the child’s fault?

2. Is it the parents’ fault?

These questions are now taboo. A “victim” role has been chosen. What is left, the “villain”, must not be filled by the “victim”, for that would render the world in upsetting shades of grey.

I play a morbid game when I read about these stories: if I find the bad parenting, I win.

After telling her mother, Christina “Tina” Meier, about the increasing number of hurtful messages, the two got into an argument over the vulgar language Megan used in response to the messages and the fact that she did not log off when her mother told her to. After the argument, Meier ran upstairs to her room. She was found twenty minutes later, hanging by the neck in a closet. (quotation from Wikipedia)

It was too easy to find, but no-one seems to be able to see it. There are those who seem to question the parents, but notice that they place a point on the map where the victim lies, pick a villain and place another point, and then draw a line between the two. A parent is responsible for severing that dangerous connection.

Am I unreasonable? By grouping the following facts together, am I asking the wrong questions?

1. “Megan’s mother, who monitored her daughter’s online communications, returned home and said she was shocked at the vulgar language her own daughter was sending. She told her daughter how upset she was about it.

Megan ran upstairs, and her father, Ron, tried to tell her everything would be fine. About 20 minutes later, she was found in her bedroom. She died the next day.” (MSNBC)

2. “According to Ronald “Ron” Meier (Meier’s father) and a neighbor who had discussed the hoax with Lori Drew, the last message sent by Evans read: “The world would be a better place without you.” Investigators did not find a record of this message.” (Wikipedia)

3. “Megan’s parents are now separated and plan to divorce.” (MSNBC)

Is it so unreasonable to wonder whether perhaps the Meier girl killed herself because she felt betrayed by her mother? Adults do not seem to remember what it was like to be a teenager desperately wanting both parental approval and autonomy; I’m not sure how, as I can’t seem to forget. It is absurd that Tina Meier chose not to stand behind her child, but to scold her for something so trivial as “vulgar language”.

It’s not important that a parent supports her children, because children need a firm hand, is that right? To a teenager, overwhelmed by attacks from a stranger, hostility from her mother about something so small would be the last straw. If Megan was pushed emotionally to curse at the attacker, she felt cornered and didn’t know what else to do, especially if cursing was verboten in her house. Her mother only saw a house rule broken, and did not pause to consider why. Megan, unable to have support from the person who should support her come what may, could not take it anymore. How dare Tina Meier attack her child?

Maybe running upstairs would have been the end, if her father had not told her that everything would be okay. Everything would not be okay. How could it be okay? Not even her father understood how desperate she was. Cornered, panicky, unable to gain perspective, possibly even to teach her parents a lesson, Megan Meier hung herself.

The paranoid theory continues: why were neither the police nor the FBI able to find the message that apparently drove Megan over the edge? Did it exist? The Meiers divorced. Whether or not Megan’s death was Tina’s fault must have been an issue, for Tina certaintly feels guilty.

If this sounds ridiculous, then look between 1m40 and 2m22 of the following video.

Teenagers, sadly, commit suicide on a daily basis, but only certain deaths are made public knowledge. I shan’t here reflect upon the nature of modern news coverage to support rather than inform public opinion, motivated by profit, suffice to say that the internet is a frightening place for those who do not wish their opinions challenged, or those who wish to protect the pride of a foolish populace.

Wicked internet, what hast thou wrought? Slashdot reports that the United States is considering legislation that will make trolling a punishable offence. The very act of criticism has now been blindfolded and led shaking to the firing squad.

In 1923, I was fortunate enough to be one of five passengers on a private pleasure cruise destined to seek out unexplored tributaries of the Nahr Ad-dindar River in Christian Soudan. We were to depart during the river’s most swollen months, so as not to risk grounding our boat. The organiser of the trip, a man by the name of Alberto Olmedo Maraña,  with whom I had a passing familiarity, owned and maintained a beautiful little dahabeeyah in Khartoum. He habitually wore undyed linen sacque suits, and a Havana hat when it was sunny. He moved slowly, and seemed quite fragile, as is common with very tall men in their old age. He did not smoke, but took a full lowball of dark rum in the early evening, with a glass cocktail stick to swirl the ice and to punctuate his thoughts, which tended to follow his crossed right foot as it made easy circles over the floorboards. Maraña was by origin an Argentine; he had grown up “stuffed into Palermo” as he once told me. Argentines, he said, were Europeans at heart, and who was he to deny the conquering instinct? A man like this, who has no children, no interest in that sort of immortality, seeks to make his mark on the world personally; he is not interested in the praise bestowed on his family name after he is dead.

He might have been a selfish man, but he did not think that denying something to children he did not as yet have selfish. He was in fact, quite gentle, and spared no praise where it was due, but his name was too much his own to share.

I was chosen out of his memory specifically, plucked from the multitudes, to join the expedition, I suppose partly for my vague interest in river biology. I was that rare sort of person who can be vaguely and genuinely interested in such a specific topic without being an expert, and I suppose the definition of exploration is to seek discovery; a company of experts would not suit his purpose at all. The world is discovered afresh through each pair of eyes, as someone once said.

I am typing this in Switzerland in 1995, on a typewriter, because the physicality of the ink ribbon pleases me. It is close to 5 in the evening, and I am drinking a large bottle of Tsing Tao, which tastes like it used to taste when my father drank it. It is the same first bottle of Tsing Tao drunk in 1903. Beer is immortal. It makes us feel young, nostalgic, makes us think that time is a stagnant pool. We can swim here and there, revisiting events as we please. Wine ages, develops, erasing what came before. It is a mortal’s drink, and so I don’t drink wine.

Maraña’s family was sparse. They did not like each other, and did not behave like a Catholic family at all. The only relative he kept in touch with was his niece, a serious woman one year his senior, by the name of Elisabeta Olmedo Martínez. She had received an invitation to the expedition, but declined; her concern was sleeping sickness. “You are used to such climates, Alberto,” she said. “I would succumb to the heavy heat very swiftly.” She did however, accept for her son José María, who was “of a stronger constitution.” Maraña assured her that sleeping sickness would be no problem, as he had plenty of screens and nets on the boat to keep out flies and mosquitoes, but she insisted that Chema would be more suitable for the trip. She was a well-read and modern woman, from what I heard, and so I know of only one reason why she would have used such an excuse, knowing as she must have done the true origin of sleeping sickness.

I am convinced Elisabeta knew what Maraña was planning, and substituted her son purposefully; whether out of love or hatred, I have no idea. Chema was happy to be with us. He was a gentle man, nervous and cheerful, very awkward around women, thus unmarried and using his youthful nickname at the age of thirty. He kept his distance from me; when he saw me approaching a kind of discomfort clouded his brow and he hastily extinguished his cigarette, made an excuse to leave the conversation, and sought his room. Maraña assured me it was nerves; his relative was simply not used to the company of young women.

The French are perfect. They swan around in interesting yet subtle clothes, choosing each word as though they were selecting chocolates. The women are all perched on a line between gorgeous and plain, one you only find at fashion shows and in France; you can’t stop looking at them, if only to decide on which side they fall. They have brilliant white teeth and fluid voices. They are impervious to tobacco, which they all consume incessantly. The men manage to look brooding and intelligent even when there isn’t anything going on upstairs.

The English are addicted to drudgery. Of course they have to get away from it sometimes, and there are days when they long for sunshine and cheap goods, but take an Englishman away from his country permanently and he’ll begin to pine for something to be sarcastic about. A big mug of tea is just inappropriate when one always gets to work on time, there aren’t any forms to fill out, the birds are chirping merrily and one’s children come home from school tanned and well-nourished. Foreigners, to an Englishman, are always braggarts, allowed to appear self-serving and proud, allowed to have faults rather than gripe about imaginary ones to appear modest.

The only real people in Europe are Spaniards. They’ve all got problems, which are all out in the open, but it’s okay, because everyone has the exact same problems. The prices in Galicia are about right; they’re far too expensive for Galicians, but at least they’re reasonable for everyone else. There are still real cafeterias, run by real people, where the food is made for you when you order it, or at least every morning before opening time. You can expect Spaniards to be self-serving, and they’re usually honest about it, but even when they try to pretend that they’re not it’s painfully obvious. They’re unabashedly proud of themselves. Just because you have more money and a better education and are better looking than they are does not make you better, what, do you think you’re better than me? Huh? You think I’m not worth talking to? Huh? Say it to my face. Gilipollas.

When it asks me if I’m certain, I’m thrown into anxiety. Should I delete this folder? I have space, I have plenty of space, but I’m not using the contents. They’re old e-tickets from Ryanair. It’s not like I’ll ever need them again. I keep the folder. It’s a sore on the inside of my mouth that I can’t stop tonguing; I go through the motions of deleting it over and over, never going through. I eventually take it off my Desktop, hide it in some systems folder I never go into, where a makeshift wastebasket of old documents is piling up.

It starts happening in daily life. I can’t order coffee. I’m torn between vanilla caramel lattes and black no sugar drip coffee that melts tooth enamel. I buy Chex mix and trail mix and mix them together. I wear goth hippie dress casual clothes to work. I change channels obsessively so I can watch all of them at once. That goddamned systems folder is taking up a fifth of my hard drive space. My dog gets sick because I feed him five brands of multivitamin a day “just to make sure”.

I could not resist a dramatic ending. I never can. On a second reading, that ending was pretty awful. I’m itching to change it, but I’m not going to. I would have had to spend much more time than I had thinking over how to get the malicious nature of the calling voice across without being so bloody obvious about it, and the rules are that the story took ten minutes, not that it took ten minutes and then fifteen minutes a few days later to edit.

I have a long way to go if I want to learn how to write more quickly.

“Sing to me, Montag, of the pain you have suffered.”

I respond, “Oh, oh, no, not that, it wasn’t like that,” and a woman across the bed hears me, but because I’m sleeping it sounds like, “Oh, oh, oh, not not not that, no.”

I wrap myself in the bedclothes. “Montag,” it calls. I refuse it. I say, “Go away.” The woman shakes me, but she can’t wake me up.

I dream of food. When I wake up, my belly is bloated with hunger and piss. I brush the woman off, direct my cramping feet to the toilet. “Montag,” it says.

I get myself some tea. I stare at the knives. “Tell me of your pain, Montag,” it says.

“I have no pain! My life is fine! My life is happy! Go away!”

The woman comes into the kitchen, fully dressed. She refuses tea, and leaves. She heard me clearly this time. I told her I sometimes have over-reaching dreams. She leaves anyway. I leave after she does, to get away from the flat.

“Montag.”

I have formulated a theory, that my genes are faulty, that there is something so wrong with my DNA that my subconscious has been recruited against me. My life is happy, I am young, artistically fulfilled, academically successful. I have my dream career, a lovely flat. I’m saving up for retirement. This is not the hollow emptiness of consumerism. I am full. I am a heavy stone, squatting comfortably in a river.

It calls me. “Montag.” Unceasingly. Fine, I’ll kill myself, just to shut you up.

Besides ousting the frothing right from the head of Spanish government, Zapatero earns my approval by choosing antisocial pomp above sycophantic small talk.

Note the cluster of smiling faces flocking to Bush like lepers to a messiah.

18 mars, 2008
13h30
Quand nous sommes arrivés, il y avait du monde chez « L’insolent ». Ça sentait le café et les herbes de Provence. La femme qui travaillait au comptoir essuyait une chope avec un torchon blanc.

Des fenêtres hautes ensoleillaient notre petite table de coin en fer forgé et nos chaises en  bois. J’ai remarqué qu’une seule fourchette propre restait sur sa serviette de table. La serveuse nous a donné les menus, et j’ai eu l’occasion à regarder le décor.

La salle était tout à fait parisienne, mais ici et là on pouvait voir les petits détails marrants comme un portrait éclatant de Ziggy Stardust sur un tableau de style « cow-boy » qui disait « Long Ranch Saloon » et une peinture murale qui vantait les qualités de la ligne no 13 du Métro.

J’aimais bien les lunettes en acier violet de la serveuse, parce qu’elles étaient montées sur une chaînette de la même couleur. J’ai aimé aussi quand la serveuse s’est courbée et a placé son bloc-notes sur la table pour bien noter nos commandes. Elle avait une écriture élégante, et elle écrivait avec un crayon-feutre qui faisait des lignes épaisses et noires.

Tous les serveurs étaient serviables et polis mais bien qu’ils semblent des gens vraiment sympathiques, leur gentillesse à notre égard était impersonnelle. Ils devaient remarquer que nous n’étaient pas francophones, parce que je suis sûre qu’en parlant je faisais quelques erreurs, et je traduisais pour mon compagnon au besoin. Cependant, je n’ai vu aucun signe de froideur. Alors, est-ce que c’était du professionnalisme ? Ou est-ce que les serveurs ont l’habitude de servir les étrangers ?

Je pense que je pourrai m’installer dans ce terrain. Quand ma mère est venue me voir en janvier, un serveur nous a parlé avec allégresse. Il semblait content que je reste dans le quartier et m’a encouragé à revenir.

29 mars, 2008
13h55-14h45
Aujourd’hui, nous avons mangé du confit de canard, et de la terrine de coquilles St. Jacques. Le repas était délicieux, comme toujours. Notre serveur avait peut-être 15 ans, et était zélé. Mon compagnon a observé que le serveur n’avait pas beaucoup d’expérience.

De temps en temps, la terre s’agitait. Nous croyions que c’était à cause du Métro.

Ceux d’entre nous qui étaient assis aux fenêtres captaient souvent le regard des passants. Quand quelqu’un me regardait, je le regardais aussi. Aux Etats-Unis, les passants me suriraient, mais en France, ils sont gênés.

Un groupe d’étrangers s’est assis pendant que nous mangions nos plats. Le serveur leur a proposé le menu espagnol, et j’ai pensé à mon article précédent. Alors, le restaurant avait fait des menus pour les touristes, et les serveurs avaient l’habitude à servir les étrangers. Deux femmes de leur groupe ont commencé à chanter bruyamment, mais personne ne jetait un coup de l’oeil sur la table, et je me demandais pourquoi. Peut-être que les Français pensent comme les Anglais qu’un coup de l’oeil sur une personne inconnue est impoli, ou peut-être que les petits spectacles de la rue ne les intéressent pas, comme les New-yorkais. À la fin de la chanson, certaines personnes applaudissaient.

J’ai oublié mon écharpe et je suis revenue la chercher. Le serveur qui nous a dit « Bonjour » d’une manière distante m’a taquiné, disant « À ce soir ! » J’ai rougi, et me suis trouvée bête, bien qu’il fût gentil.