A couple days in Antwerp

I love the way the seasons work. We’ve passed the apex of Winter, when Life, mostly unnoticed by us poor modern mammals, held still for a long night in perfect frozen equilibrium, a clear blue liquid depth, from which we are now slowly rising back towards the green air of Spring and the mythic yellow air of Summer.

But that warmth is still a long way off, and this Saturday morning was a loving reptile, slow to awaken in the cold but we don’t mind waiting. Sluggish buses, reluctant dog-walkers with arms clenched tightly to their sides, and a sun so bright and cold it can’t possibly be the same entity that will redden white Belgian posteriors on vacation in Spain in a few short months.

This winter has actually been remarkably mild, the cold only coming in Friday night. Thursday and Friday were borrowed from Autumn, which was great timing on two days where I taught in the morning, then had several hours of free afternoon before an evening class.

Thursday I wandered towards the University district through an urban crevasse of building facades, not quite united on a single plane and each unique to themselves, but united in a texture of Continental age, with walls of bricks chipped by centuries, or weathered gray stone showing a grayscale of accretions from generations of rainfall.

Cobblestones under the tires of small gray fuel efficient cars, with breathily metallic exhalations from trams that pass at an unexpected variety of velocities. Opposite a tidily imposing storefront of Romanesque columns that now shelters a gay bookstore, I found one of those perfect European cafes to stop and warm my hands.

The walls are rich dark wood chosen in full expectation of centuries of service, lightened here and there by mirrors. There is a coat rack. A silvered man in a well made sweater is reading the paper. Good coffee is served in small curvaceous cups, each coming with a small cookie. Two cubes of unrefined sugar in one of those little jars used in hotels for single servings of confiture (nothing so crass as jam). I wonder if the waitress is reading any of the same texts I read in college.

This place has nothing to talk about with Starbucks.

Three tables are occupied, two languages, neither of them English, the man reading the paper is alone. His sweater exults in cold misty mornings, and his hands are worn and confident. After a half hour he is joined by a younger woman with large startled eyes, whose own coat has repurposed some of its functionality to fashionability. He greets her with a nearly wordless calm that is clearly paternally pleased to see her. Happiness leaks out of him in small smiles during their conversation. His eyes disappear completely during his rare laughs, which seem like a newly acquired skill in a formerly harsh life.

On Friday I go to a funky young place for dinner. The façade is neon green, the front door handle is an indoor-rock-climbing hold, the music is Johnny Cash, Nina Simone, and company. I have the tortellini, with zucchini, sun-dried tomatoes, artichoke hearts, arugula, and quality mozzarella. A little pesto drizzled on top of the hearty tomato sauce.

Outside the window a rainbow arcs down in shouting defiance of the northern European grayscale onto the theater building across the square where schoolboys are skateboarding with impressive skill and minimal image-consciousness.

Both Thursday and Friday were astrologically blessed, with lessons to be learned from observation, an Ipod with impeccable timing, and flirtatious weather that drizzled precisely the right amount of precipitation as I walked across Antwerp to my evening class Friday night.

Yup, I’m going to miss Belgium.

A Little Scratch on New Year's

I am waiting, drowsing. Not too much longer, just another two turns of the calendar’s pages.

The calendar is hanging opposite the tankless water-heater in the little closet off our tiny kitchen where we cook our incredibly healthy vegetable stir-fry dinners that I will soon be missing. It was made and gifted by my folks and has pictures from their trip to Europe last September. Pictures of places in Belgium that were eye-grabbing to me too when I first saw them, my big traveling backpack on, but now I wear a functional day-pack and don't always notice them as I pass by in the fugue of the familiar.

I have accidentally and incorrectly given the impression that I do not like Belgium, that I don’t want to be here. I do, and I do. Belgium is still a great place, my vagabond feet don’t change the places they step. I am voraciously thankful for the shelter I have found here. The lessons and the growth. The smiles and sighs of contentment.

The deliciously maddening thing about sighs of contentment is that they’re a renewable resource… that needs renewing.

There is a new and delicious plate of food to go find. There is a new and gorgeous vista to go see. There are new and wonderful people to go meet. There are new and frustrating episodes to go through. There are new and important lessons to go learn.

There are urges, familiar and beloved, perhaps inimical. And maybe even dangerous? But Belgium is and will remain a haven of goodness.

We’ll see what happens to those urges in 2012. And to start the year, a little scratch of the traveling itch, courtesy of a Christmas gift hotel voucher from my folks. We found a place in Neiderbronn-les-bains, just across the border in France, that looked like a nice place to spend New Year’s Eve.

We packed basically toothbrushes and snacks, reaching a good ratio of healthy (homemade hummus and cherry tomatoes) and junky (peanut snack-things, Szechuan flavor), and stopped to get fresh bread on our way out Saturday morning.

This specific area of Belgium has it’s own New Year’s Eve tradition, where kids go door to door singing short songs and receiving little treats. It’s sort of a combination of Christmas caroling and Halloween.

With a 9 grain baguette in hand I got back to the car just in time to hear a handful of Flemish children, all bundled up, singing to a smiling old man:

Oud jaar, nieuw jaar

Twee koekjes is een paar

We wensen jullie

een gelukkig nieuwjaar

("Old year, new year, two cookies is a pair, we wish you a happy new year.")

Perfect. Geweldig.

It was only a 4 and ½ hour drive, and passed from Flanders, through relatively rustic Wallonia, into some snowy forests of Germany, then along winding Alsatian farm roads in France. I love Europe.

Unbeknownst to us, the GPS was set to avoid toll-roads, so we left a wide Teutonic freeway and drove the last hour through sleepy villages that can only plausibly be inhabited (in my mind) by Hansel, Gretel, and various other Brothers Grimm fairy tales. Worn brick walls built by hands that never left the village, long wooden beams bowing under the weight of centuries, street names in dialects particular to the village, and those winding streets that descended organically from whatever paths the horses felt like making.

Oh, and much to my giggling delight, one of those towns is called Bitsch (Bitche on the French side). I wish I’d taken a picture of the fork in the road that featured Bitche on one hand and some quaint-sounding village on the other…a metaphor for how we respond to the minor irritations of life. “Will you take the Bitche road, or the delightful little village path?”

Neiderbronn-les-bains is almost one of those sleepy towns, but is a little too enlivened by money, is now larger, and features a sizeable casino, yet remains ineffably picturesque. It holds to the regional integrity of prominently not featuring chain stores or modern blech like neon lights. There was of course a grocery store that is probably not full-fledged Mom-and-Pop, but it was small, packed to coziness, and locals were chatting away in the Alsatian blend of German and French. I would bet you dinner that they knew all about each other’s parents and children.

The hotel was the other exception to the no-chains rule, as it was a Mercure.

The first time I remember leaving the US was when we went to England to visit my little British granny when I was circa 8 years old. We hopped over to Paris for the weekend (a trip that included my first experience of throwing up on a train…I have currently thrown up on trains in 4 countries, and although the following 3 were all the results of poorly timed food poisoning) and stayed in a Hotel Mercure.

Thus, I have reason to believe that the first words I ever learned in another language, taught to me by my responsible mother, were “où est l’hotel Mercure?” Followed shortly therafter by my brother’s and my improvisational “où est l’merde?” which earned us a stern look from the severe old Parisian woman stalking past us on the Champs-Élysées.

Neiderbronn-les-bains (named, I assume, after the thermal baths located there, which I think the Romans were fond of) saw a second childhood return on New Year’s Day, when we went for a walk on the train tracks. No, that wasn’t the childhood activity, remember, I mentioned my responsible mother. Instead it was the practice of putting a penny on the rails for the train to run over. I assume I have several smeared slivers of ex-penny stashed somewhere in my parent’s house. This time the penny was knocked off almost immediately, so I have a slightly oblong and distorted 2 Eurocent as my new lucky coin.

The town is only a half hour away from Strasbourg, so after abusing my small amount of Continental currency we headed there to wander around. Strasbourg is a university town, one of the primary European Union capitals (European Parlaiment, Court, and Commission on Human Rights), where Gutenberg invented the printing press and Goethe fell in love, and takes quaint/epic old architecture to a new level.

It being New Year’s Day, all the Strasbourgians were abed or fled, leaving the streets empty of all but burned-out firecrackers and tour groups. Not the worst way to see a city, but a bit odd.

There were two eating establishments open, one of which had an entertainingly incomprehensible menu (it seemed to be entirely appetizers, drinks, and flams…without any explanation of what a flam is) so we ended up eating in an American-themed burger joint, with stacks of Prohibition-labelled crates under an American flag, Roy Lichtenstein’s cartoon pop art on the walls, and a Bonny & Clyde special of the day.

I could tell we were still abroad though by the indigestible Euro techno assaulting my heart rate and the order-taker guy who looked like a distinctly French caricature of J. Edgar Hoover, don’t ask me how. The cook was French Eminem, and had been in a fist fight within the last week or so against someone bigger than him.

Monsieur Hoover was very likable, which made it confusing when our food continued to not show up for an impressively long time. People who ordered after us got their food and my patience was somewhat frayed by the nonstop nnn-tss-nnn-tss aural attack, and I found myself wondering if it was that infamous French stereotype of arrogance and passive disrespect for foreigners…but I don’t think it was. He said the tape on the order machine had run out, and (after we ate) followed us out the door to apologize again, which he didn’t have to do. So Monsieur Hoover d’Strasbourg is still mon amie.

We took the toll roads home, thereby avoiding Germany in favor of Luxembourg, which ended just before I realized we were there. We gave a cheer to enter Belgium again, and listened with satisfaction as the Flemish radio stations came back in range.

Gelukkig nieuw jaar, everyone!

Universe's reminder

I gave Belgium a little good-natured ribbing in that last post about being boring for following rules, and a couple hours later the Universe reminded me that it is very much my culture too. Yesterday evening as I was waiting for my train home, I was called upon by a unanimous resolution of God, Country, and My Stomach to indulge in one of Belgium's gifts to humanity: the waffle.

Tangent:

There is in fact a difference between American waffles and Belgian waffles. The latter are lighter, fluffier, and thicker, owing to the use of either a special waffle-only flour and/or yeast. The main exemplar of this is the Brussels waffle, which is properly served warm, with powdered sugar. They also sell it with whipped cream, chocolate, or fruit topping, which are all considered somewhat touristy here, though Belgians eat those too.  (And Spirits of the Redwoods help me, sometimes I just have to get that chocolate waffle...so delicious and horrible...)

There are also Luikse waffles (Luik is a city in Belgium, "Liège" in French) which have a type of sugar crystal in it, so it has a sort of crunchy glaze texture.  You can put the sweet toppings on Luik waffles too, but I don't recommend it, unless you have a large glass of beverage at hand, and/or the sugar capacity of a 7 year old. They also have a slightly different shape, with the batter not poured all the way to the outer part of the iron, so it is sort of circular.

There are waffle stands in most Belgian downtowns, and there is one in the Antwerp train station that fills the loitering area with a sugary smell of baking that is positively licentious on a freezing evening.

End of tangent.

So last night I got in line behind a young Belgian lass, who was behind a gleeful elderly couple paying for their Luikse waffles. As they searched for their cash a couple of guys from a different part of the world came up, one moving right to the front, examining the display, then ordering when the delighted older folks danced the two-step away with their waffles in hand.

So this fella cut in front of the Belgian lass and myself.  She prickled and scowled silently, as we do, and I stared at the guy to see if he was aware of us at all. I don't think he was. Honestly. I really don't think he meant to be rude. He wasn't pushing ahead with a "screw you" sort of feel, he just didn't seem to have a concept of The Line. I don't think it's racist to say that there are cultures that do not use this system...is it?

Think back to elementary school. Teachers straining for years to get you and your shrieking little velociraptor friends to form a line. As natural as it seems now, forming lines is not an instinctive behavior. (Ants do it to follow a scent trail. Geese do it to draft off each other when flying. Those ain't lines in the sense we use.)

It reminds me of the first time I went to Morocco. I got off the boat with the Austrian fellows I had met onboard, and we tromped through the ferry terminal in Tangier. We got to the x-ray thingy and all lined up, put our bags on the belt, and walked to the other end...to see that there was no one else there. No bored dude planning his weekend with eyes glued unseeing to the little screen. We saw a device, made an assumption of a rule, formed our tidy line, and complied. Meanwhile the Moroccans on the boat were halfway to the medina.

Okay, this is a wandering ramble of a post, but it's a blog, you're just lucky I pay some attention to spelling.

The point (or thing closest thereto) is that standing in lines may be boring, but I'll take it over the alternative any day. A system of "whoever is loudest and most up-in-the-face gets served" engenders assholes, because let's be honest, in this context "assertive" is a euphemism for asshole. If that waffle stand in the train station just served the loudest first, that cuddly little old couple would have had to wait for their waffles, and that is just not right.


(I delayed posting this so I could take a picture of the waffle stand and some waffles today after class, but of course forgot the camera, but that's okay because they had set up a temporary stage and some chick was self-consciously covering Gnarls Barkley's Crazy on acoustic guitar, which, delightful as that was, is not the point.  So here's a pilfered picture of someone else's blog, courtesy of google images.)

Reminding myself

Ssssh. Quietly. Don’t wake me up. Another couple months of sleep… Then I can despertarme in Latin America.

It’s a rather productive slumber though. I’ve added some legitimate words to my resume, and I’m probably in the best physical condition of my life thus far. Granted I can’t run the 12 miles to the top of Higgins Canyon like I did in high school, but going to the gym takes longer now that I sometimes have to wait for the lumpy dudes in tank tops to put back the weights I want.

But I am managing not to identify with these changes. I guess I demonstrated my non-identification with the job when I gave my notice, and as entertaining as the physicality is, I am aware that it will melt off with astonishing speed, most likely before I say a single word in Spanish.

Hopefully what will stay with me are the things I’m learning. For example a few fundamental things to do/be as an English teacher. I wish I could go back to Nepal and be presumably much more productive.

And things I’m re-learning. My brothers, my sisters, I have seen a face of the enemy! It is a versatile threat, sometimes sleek, sometimes hulking, but can almost always be identified by the license plate at the back. Behold! The automobile is no friend to the human species! Perhaps I just lost my US citizenship in saying that, but my tragic affection for Porsche 914s notwithstanding, these exoskeletal beasts of internal combustion mayhem are the death of us, even when they leave our bodies unscathed, and the first thing they run over is our interpersonal humanity and reasoned thinking. The Belgians never saw it coming.

Belgians obey the rules. They wait in line, they pay their bills on time, they vote, save money and respect authority. It’s the underlying reason why the society is so functional, stable, and boring. Yet they drive like spoiled children on their way to the cake table! US drivers sometimes zip through a light as it turns red, but holy crapola, that doesn’t come close to what they do here. In a class last week I was commiserating with a French woman about how people here keep going through red lights, clogging the intersection with several cars who really should have stopped. Then of course the people blocked from going the other way glower and lean on their horns, then repeat the behavior at the next light. La Francesa  assured me, “non non, we do not do zis in France.”

And I don’t want to give my poor mother high blood pressure, so I won’t tell you about the tailgating. At freeway speeds. Are we sure Nascar didn’t originate here?

Even K! My own little evening primrose is far more angelic than some chalk-faced cherub in a church, but if they drove like that in the heavens I would expect a whole lot more thunder and lightening.

Or maybe I’m just a crotchety old man already. (Oh crap, did Andy Rooney’s spirit move to my body? Heaven forbid. Chalky cherubs forbid.)

In fact, I fear I’ve done it again: focus on details that are interesting to me but sound like bitching and moaning. So allow me to be clear: I love Belgium.  I have a deep affection and respect for this country and her people. K’s family in particular is a group of people who anyone would be blessed to know. While I will of course miss my family during the holidays, if I am spending them away, I couldn’t ask for a better place to do it. I have enjoyed my year (& a half) here, and would not mind coming back in the future.

That being said…get me the fuck out of here. Two (& a half) more months. Okay, I can do this. I can handle traffic jams. I can pass people with the deep creases of the chronically displeased between their eyes without slapping them and screaming “You have food! Water, shelter, clothing, medicine! No one is trying to kill you! Cheer the fuck up!”

Maybe, if I try real hard, I can even love them as my fellow man, and learn from the epidemic of non-appreciation that infects the West.

When I see some gross example of petty conflict, like road rage at a stop sign or bitching customers, I used to smile or even laugh in an attempt to block the negative energy from touching me, and just maybe helping someone near me keep the same perspective. But now, as I stand at the crosswalk watching people drive like sociopaths, that laugh sounds cynical, snarky and bitter. (Not to mention condescending and obnoxious.) I don’t want that!

So I take a quick dream-trip back to Stanyard Creek, on the island of Andros, in the Bahamas, in 1998. A couple hundred people in a town so small they hadn’t formalized the spelling, Stanyard, Staniard, however else you liked. There were two dirt streets, one on either side of a tidal river, then a few others that were more like paths dressed up for Halloween than actual roads.

On paper it was sheer poverty: no jobs, no commerce, and most of the food came from gardens and the day’s catch. As far as I’m aware there was neither a doctor nor police (when “Cracker” one of the leathery-faced older guys with eyes blasted nearly colorless by a life of the sun’s reflection on the sea got drunk and knifed somebody, it was a handful of village men who dealt with it; I’m not sure how, but I never saw him take a drink).

People passed on the street with the Bahamian greeting “alright alright,” treating the handful of us white kids the same as everyone else. We were invited to attend the local church if we wanted, with warmth and caring whether we accepted or not. We alternated meals between the one “restaurant”, the one “hotel”, and the town mayor’s house. (Wendy at the restaurant made the best soup, the hotel always had fresh fish, and the mayor made the best conch fritters.) In the evening Wendy would put on music, and the locals would dance with us, without a hint of mockery at our stiff movements. (It’s not entirely our fault, they were great dancers.) We were always welcome to join in the nightly game, whether it was volleyball, basketball, or soccer.

Granted I was 17, abroad, had a huge crush or three, and was swimming in the Caribbean every day, so there may be a tad of golden hue to my hindsight, but the juxtaposition with any wealthy suburb in the world shines clear and confident in my mind.

So the stressed out guy in the Range Rover behind me in traffic can keep his status symbol car, his lifestyle, his bald spot, and his mansion he never sees. I’ll take a bus. I’ll take a dingy hostel room. I’ll take smile lines over stress creases.

Alright alright.

Just my two cents.

This isn't really a post, I just wanted to respond to a friend's facebook status, but without leaving a paragraph no one would read...so I'll put it here...where it can more easily be not read.

(The post was over which countries are more polite, with assertions that Americans are more polite than Europeans.)

It’s one of my inconsistencies that I think such broad generalizations are inherently pretty useless (no nation is that homogeneous) yet find myself interested in them and making them myself.  So I won’t pretend to be an expert, but having traveled in 39 countries I can offer my impression.

With regards to politeness, the US varies so immensely it is almost obscene (see: political discourse, racism, sports fans) but if I put my rose-tinted glasses of optimism on, I would rank us as near the top for politeness in interactions with strangers.  We smile and nod on the street, hold doors, talk to waiters and cashiers, and ask each other how it's going.  (That last one in particular amuses people here, particularly on the phone.)

(I would say this politeness is more common in smaller communities, since cities are more of a nationality in themselves, regardless of which country they happen to be in, but that's another topic.)

So I would say America does very well…but only compared to other developed countries.  (I have not been to Japan.)  I have yet to find a single developing country that doesn’t kick the holy crap out of the US when it comes to hospitality and manners towards strangers*.

(* Caveat that this exempts a few highly-touristed zones, where the unscrupulous will try and rip you off, though even then I can only think of one country where I felt this way.)

From Guatemala to Zambia to Nepal, the level of openness and friendliness towards strangers beggars our behavior in the West.  Of course it is not universal, there are assholes in every land, but I think one learns a lot about hospitality, priorities, and humanity from traveling in undeveloped countries.

Which reminds me of one image that continues to amaze me.  In this secondhand anecdote it was in Kenya.  If someone gets on a bus to find it empty but for one other person, they will go sit next to that person, to talk.  I just love that.

My two cents.

Gratitude and siblings

After posting that blog last night I went into the kitchen and started chopping veggies for dinner, and on the last cut of the onion sliced into my thumb.  Not too bad, but there’s a chunk of nail and skin hanging off, and blood started flowing, and much to my disappointment I got a little shaky.  Damn, I wanna be a mountain man who shrugs away compound fractures!

But I sat down for a minute to let the nausea pass and was thinking it’s not too surprising that I don’t like seeing my own blood.  After all, I’ve gone without seeing it much, at least since childhood’s continuously skinned knees.  And that lack of injury is something to be grateful for.

And holy cannoli, do I have shit-tons to be grateful for!  I look down at my clothes alone… 

My belt…I set my favorite belt aside when I packed up the rest of my stuff in Santa Cruz three years ago, then forgot to put it on the morning I left.  My brother drove me to the airport, and when I noticed I was beltless he immediately whipped his own off and gave it to me.  That was three years ago, and the belt’s come with me just about everywhere.  And he is still sagging like a homeboy.

Hanging on the back of the chair next to me is the black hoodie sweatshirt I wear to the gym, given to me by my other brother when he heard I didn’t have one.  Hanging on the retro coat rack (cuz we’re stylish like that) is my waterproof layer that a pequeño Spanish innkeeper on the plains of La Mancha gave to a poor shivering pilgrim.

Looking at this list I feel a tremendous gratitude (and a little embarrassment at my apparent lack of preparation and shopping skills) for the gifts I’ve been given, and these are just a few physical ones!

Another place in Spain gave me a hand-me-down cap that protected me from the sun all the way to Zambia where I traded it to a guy at a river-crossing for a wood carving to give to a friend who had donated very generously to our fundraising for the orphanages there.  Is there a blessing greater than friendship?

My folks were here in September (which is yet another thing to be grateful for) but I was surprised when my mom asked if we really enjoyed Nepal.  I guess my blogging tended to focus on the odd and sometimes uncomfortable aspects, just cuz I think they make interesting tidbits, but I was startled and frankly ashamed to not have expressed just how fantastic our time in Nepal was.

I mentioned two of my three brothers already, all of whom are fantastic buds that a guy is lucky to have, and all of whom I am proud to call my kin (plus my sister!  I could go on but I feel like I’m bragging.)  I am already blessed by them, but in Nepal I picked up more.

K and I lived in a room, in a building, next to a school, in a neighborhood, outside of Bhaktapur, in the Kathmandu Valley of Nepal.  The owner of the building was a…shall we say: taciturn…little fellow, and though his wife smiled enthusiastically and greeted us with a robust “Namaste!” every morning, her total lack of English (and our Nepali being limited to “My name is Tilak, I like vegetables and the color blue”) made a more substantial friendship rather difficult.

But we were far from bereft of friendship, because in the school next door (Kalika, one of the two schools we taught in) lived Saroj Subba and his wife Anita (I never saw it written, so I’m not sure if that is a westernized form or not).  Subba Sir is a teacher at Kalika as well as the property guardian, and was our liaison and assistance with all things scholastic.  (That's K and Subba Sir on the third floor.)

Anita made our dal bhat, twice a day, delicious without exception, all summer long.  The guest culture of Nepal is “The guest is a god” which included not letting us help with the preparations or clean-up, but we enjoyed a nightly game of seeing how much we could get away with helping.  By the end I could sometimes wash a few plates before she ran me off, and K was allowed to help cook.  (Which is great because now she makes a mean dal bhat herself.  Here she's crushing garlic and ginger with the big stone roller.)

But Subba and Anita were much much more than just our feeders.  They invited us into their home, in all the profound senses of the word.  They invited us into their faith, culture, and family.  Some of my favorite memories of Nepal are participating in the Hindu rituals of their humble home.

One of those rituals was Janai Purni.  (Note: I will describe it according to my experience and explanation of it while there.  When I looked online for confirmation, I basically found the same article plagiarized on half a dozen different sites, which describes something different from what we experienced.  Thus this disclaimer.  This blog is not a text on Nepali Hindu-Buddhist tradition, just what I learned while there.)

Where was I?  Janai Purni!  Janai Purni takes place on the first day of Gai Jatra, the weeklong Festival of the Cow.  Gai Jatra is another whole post, in fact it’s second on my longstanding mental list of post-to-be.

On Janai Purni we were invited up to the Subbas’ room (Subba is their surname, but what Saroj Sir went by most of the time) where we had a tikka ceremony, but with something extra.  After lighting the Ganesh lamp and incense, Anita performed a ritual cleansing with a pinch of rice (which absorbs your sins/impurities and is then thrown out the window) and sprinkling of water, then blessed me, as my sister, and tied a Janai around my wrist.

The Janai is a sacred thread that seems to have two manifestations.

The first (according to my googling) is as a marker of male adulthood, and is bestowed in a ceremony called Bratabandhan.  This Janai has three threads, which represent body, speech, and mind, and when the knots are tied by a Brahman the wearer gains complete control over all three.  He must wear the thread for the rest of his life.  We did not have a Bratabandhan ceremony.

Janai Purni (or Purnima) is the day when these threads are changed, if they have become frayed or defiled (for example by touching a woman who is menstruating), and for us it was a single thread, which granted protection from evil spirits.

Anita had already blessed me, and afterwards I blessed her in kind, including a tikka and a ritual gift of money.  (My Western money-consciousness wished I had known this beforehand and so brought more cash with me, to sneakily pay them back for all their hospitality, but I’m not sure this would have been appropriate.)  This two-way blessing was repeated by K and Subba Sir.

Then the sisters served the brothers a portion of a special rice pudding, with dried dates, coconut, and raisins, which tasted better than anything, eaten there in a familial circle on the floor of their room, which was fairly Spartan in décor, but luxurious with hospitality.  Subba set aside a little of the pudding as an offering to his mother, who died the year before.

The Janai on this day is tied onto each man by his sister.  So when Anita tied one on me, and K tied one on Subba, done in appreciation and recognition of our time together, they became our brothers and sisters.

So I have four brothers and two sisters, spanning the West Coast of the US all the way to the Kathmandu Valley of Nepal.  And more blessings than I can count.

Another week in the life.

Wait, wasn’t my last post about time moving quickly?  Sheeyit, I guess it’s a theme because where did those last couple weeks go?

Do we all agree time goes faster when you’re in a routine?  When it’s all familiar, unthreatening, and you have a good idea of what they next day is going to be like, that’s when the years act like months, the months look like weeks, and the weeks barely fit on your watchface.

When I started traveling I didn’t know where I would sleep that night, where my next meal would come from, and what anything would be like.  After a year of this feeling it was only three weeks in.  That’s an extreme example, and even then, the months started squirting away like that unripe cherry tomato on your plate at the fancy restaurant.  (Just use your fingers next time.)

I thought I have enough uncertainty these days to keep them crawling, but I guess even if a day lasts a long time, it can be part of a fast week.  Can I even remember last week?

Monday…  Oh yeah, I had the day off so took the bike ride between Flemish farm fields to have lunch with K in our sandwich place, with kinda weird amateur drawings on the walls: a horse’s head, a duck flying, and a serious-looking baby with a bowl of spaghetti overturned on his head, noodles leaking down his neck and their misspelled slogan “no nonsens pasta.”

It had been closed for renovations by a new owner, and we were eager to see the new version.  They put on nice tablecloths, removed the perchy bar, and painted it off-white, slightly violet and whatever.  We weren’t sure if we liked the random old stuff, but now…the funkiness is gone, man!  It’s basically just like a million other “proper” restaurants in Belgium/Western Europe/The West.  Boooooring. 

Faux-elegance is a stand-in for actual personality.  (And real elegance is even worse, like boasting of that lack of personality.)

Tuesday my first class was late enough that I could go to the gym first.  The gym is my best local site for people-watching, and I am enjoying learning the different crowds.  

-During the day: is quiet, like a singles’ club on really off-hours.  A few folks peering around, looking for each other, and showing off for the wrong audiences.  Some beefy lad pumps iron for housewives who look more frightened that titillated by his grunts.  Or that lady I mentioned awhile back, the blond in tight black spandex who comes and does lunges behind  my bench.  (Remember her?  She got embarrassed after I caught her farting.)

-Early evening: is the working folk, efficiently checking Exercise off their To-Do List.  They move faster, are in better shape, and don’t talk.

-Weekends and holidays: (unless it’s warm weather) are like the bars on Friday night, without the beer.  It is preening, strutting, and pissing contests among the males.  A stage crowded with solo acts.  Highly entertaining.

-Weekday morning, opening hour 8:00 AM: was a new one for me.  Turns out that’s Senior Time.  Silver Citizens crowd the stationary bikes and circulate, a few at a time, among the rest.  One distinguished fellow came to row next to me, and when I finished, a little lady with finely brushed hair and one of the squarest jaws I’ve ever seen came and took my place.  She looked at him, he didn’t look much at her.  When he got up and moved on, another retired fellow took his place.  This one looked at her, but she didn’t look at him.

I love humans.  We are all children on the playground.  Or maybe sniffing dogs.

Work on Tuesday and Wednesday was functional but forced.  Like when I tried to get new (to me) students to use the language in ways they weren’t used to from past teachers, and just looked at me in confusion.  I’m still on the learning curve…and feel like a bit of a fraud.  I fear I am less of a teacher, and more of a conversation partner who guides a bit and corrects your grammar.  Wow, that would be annoying in real life, yet people pay beaucoup bucks for it in private.

Especially for the intensive lessons!  They pay a boatload of cash to spend all day with a private teacher…we even go to lunch with them, speaking only in the target language.  I had a kid (23) on Wednesday who was there to learn coffee vocabulary, since he’s going to coffee school in London next month.

Okay, we’ll talk about coffee.  Only as soon as I started, he mentioned that no, he wasn’t interested in that at all, he’d learn it at the school, where he was going just for kicks.  Okay then.  So we talked about other stuff.  Like “tell me about your home town” which provided a glimpse into Belgian xenophobia.  That was awkward.

“In my town there are a lot of…strangers.”

“Okay, what do you mean by ‘strangers’?”

(Searching look.  Probably realizing I am an immigrant.)  “You know…foreign…Arab…  You know, terrorists.”  He continued “you can’t look at them, or they get angry.”

“Hmm.  Are there a lot of fights?”

“No.  Not for ten years.”

I am gratified that I still find it shocking when someone dismisses and judges an entire macro-group of people, even though it is a very common behavior.  So common in fact, that I’m going to do it right now.

There is a lot of anti-immigrant feeling in Belgium.  I’ll save my theories on why for another day, but I have to mention that sometimes I want to drive to the immigrant neighborhoods and twist some ears.  On the news last week was a mass brawl between immigrants from Turkey and (I think it was) Azerbaijan.  Started by a damn soccer game.

I’m sorry, but guys…GUYS!  You can’t do that!  You can’t come to a country where people, you know, behave themselves, and get in a gigantic brawl, throwing stones and shit, because your f-ing soccer team played!  (Not even if your great-grandfather was killed by his great-grandfather.  Sit down.)  You wonder why Belgians talk about you like that?

Obvious disclaimer: not all Belgians nor non-Belgians act in either of those ways, in fact, most don’t.

I got home Tuesday and Wednesday at quarter to nine at night, in time to scarf a bowl of cereal (there was no slot in the schedules for dinner) and go to bed.  That’s okay sometimes, but pretty quickly I find myself saying “I gotta quit this job.”  Especially after I realized today that I paid 57% of my earnings in taxes and fees already?  And there are more coming at the end of the year?  Can that be right?

The air is getting colder and the sun is gone by six.  Fingers on handlebars feel locked solid and the skin on the knuckles dries and cracks.  Cheekbones feel prominent as the skin on top stretches tight in the chill, and even at 8:30 PM the streets are abandoned, humans huddling together for warmth in front of cold television screens that never lived.

(Did I mention you should get rid of your TV?  The two Secrets to Wellbeing that I’ve discovered amidst all my profound cluelessness are to give up your TV and automobile; both are toxic to the human spirit.  But that’s a soapbox for another time.)

Thursday was back to Brussels for the follow-up “Consolidation Day” to formally end my teacher training.  I was eager to go, to see and catch up with my little teacher cohort.  We were originally 9, but 4 had to teach, and 1 has already left the country, but it was nice to see the other three and hear that I’m not the only one…

The day was run by the internally famous regional head honcho, a rather severe woman whose flat looks and minimal expressions (that seem disapproving) leave people stumbling and stuttering in an attempt to figure out what she wants from them.  How do I please this person?!?

Maybe it was having a small group, or that she was just back from vacation, I don’t know, but she was in rare form.  We went over a new tool to use in class, and in a demo lesson Dolly Parton came up as an example.  So here was the stern, inscrutable, and much-feared Chief Director of Something-Or-Other for Western Europe discussing Dolly’s boobs in the Causative: “Yes, she has had her boobs done.”  It was awesome.