Francis Berger's Blog, page 145
October 1, 2019
Unscripted
I am not supposed to be here. Here - in a small, nondescript Hungarian village mere kilometers from the Austrian border. It was not in the script. Mind you, the script was never engraved in stone or stamped with a seal, but it had certain boundaries and constraints, certain contractual responsibilities and understandings that, in lieu of a careful and pedantic inspection, left little room for improvisation.
My parents escaped this country as young adults, a little less than a year before I was born. Yes, escaped. You see, Hungary was still communist back then and the western part of the country wore a crown of barbwire bedecked with watchtowers and bejeweled by landmines. My parents applied for travel pass to Yugoslavia shortly after they were married. They told the authorities they were going to the Adriatic for a honeymoon, and then went off script and slipped across the Italian border, leaving everything they had ever known behind. Eventually, they found their way to America, and I was born in New York – another faceless immigrant kid in an ocean of faceless immigrant kids.
My sister was born a short time later, and my parents spent the next four years trying to find a place to call home. That place became a small town just outside the northern fringes of Toronto, Canada. Though I came into the world an American, I grew up Canadian, complete with an ingrained love of ice hockey and a certain foolhardy nonchalance for subzero temperatures. We lived beside a modest lake, which ensured my childhood was a good one, marked with glorious amounts of time in the woods and fields and water and fresh air, but as I grew older, our small town grew bigger, and was encircled by rings of soulless subdivisions.
The familiar faded and the unknown seeped in. Most of the kids I knew moved away as they matured. Those who remained drifted until connections became nothing more than accidental meetings at gas stations and awkward how the hell are yous in the thresholds of convenience stores. The molten change of progress fossilized the place I had known and made it lifeless, but I remained and stuck to the script I believed it my duty to follow.
I got an education and tried to find decent work. I fell in love and mused about buying a house somewhere and settling down, but I could not commit to love or my faint domestic aspirations because I no longer felt at home. I tried to keep to the script, to find that better life my parents had slipped under the barbed wire for, but the better life ended up escaping them as well. Their adopted script had been the hardworking immigrant script, and the diligence and doggedness with which they followed that script did bear fruit. They achieved respectable levels of material success, yet this success ultimately led to failure. They divorced shortly after I turned eighteen. Definitely not in the script. My own wispy daydreams of domestic bliss evaporated for a time. I took the script I had carried in my back pocket my whole life, threw it to the wind, and turned my attention to becoming a writer.
Ten years passed. I wrote volumes during that time, but I did not succeed at becoming a writer. As I was on the verge of abandoning this ambition, I met a young woman from Hungary who happened to be in Canada. Six months later, she was my wife. After that, we set sail on an odyssey, one that took us many places. Like Odysseus before us, a decade was needed before I found my way home, but the nostalgia I experienced was tainted far more with sickness than it was with joy.
The script I had tossed away years before fluttered back to my feet – dirty, worn, covered in grime. I picked it up, dusted it off, and did my best to reprise the role I had abandoned, but to no avail. The lines in the script seemed unnatural and forced. I had outgrown the part, or perhaps the part had outgrown me. After my son was born, my wife and I set sail again, headlong against the prevailing winds. In a fit of defiance, I threw away the rudder and allowed our craft to float away whichever way the waves desired. Before the year was out, we washed up here, in a nondescript village in Hungary mere kilometers from the Austrian border.
It was a place neither of us had known. A place we had never considered knowing. A place that had been as distant from our conscious thought as the silvery outlines of blurred moonlight dreams. And in this place, in this most unlikely of places, which had never appeared in any script, not even vaguely, has become home the way none of the other homes we left scattered in the world ever could.
In my more pensive and reflective moments, I consider picking up a quill and composing a new script, one for this place and this time, but after a few moments, I allow the thought to seep away. For the first time since childhood, I feel an affinity. I know where I am. I know where I am going. My physical vagabondism has come to an end. What I am engaged in now is a different sort of travel.
Though this is home to me now, there is one last destination I hope to reach. This destination is clearer than any I have ever considered before. Clear enough to allow the journey to remain unscripted, as the best journeys home often are.
My parents escaped this country as young adults, a little less than a year before I was born. Yes, escaped. You see, Hungary was still communist back then and the western part of the country wore a crown of barbwire bedecked with watchtowers and bejeweled by landmines. My parents applied for travel pass to Yugoslavia shortly after they were married. They told the authorities they were going to the Adriatic for a honeymoon, and then went off script and slipped across the Italian border, leaving everything they had ever known behind. Eventually, they found their way to America, and I was born in New York – another faceless immigrant kid in an ocean of faceless immigrant kids.
My sister was born a short time later, and my parents spent the next four years trying to find a place to call home. That place became a small town just outside the northern fringes of Toronto, Canada. Though I came into the world an American, I grew up Canadian, complete with an ingrained love of ice hockey and a certain foolhardy nonchalance for subzero temperatures. We lived beside a modest lake, which ensured my childhood was a good one, marked with glorious amounts of time in the woods and fields and water and fresh air, but as I grew older, our small town grew bigger, and was encircled by rings of soulless subdivisions.
The familiar faded and the unknown seeped in. Most of the kids I knew moved away as they matured. Those who remained drifted until connections became nothing more than accidental meetings at gas stations and awkward how the hell are yous in the thresholds of convenience stores. The molten change of progress fossilized the place I had known and made it lifeless, but I remained and stuck to the script I believed it my duty to follow.
I got an education and tried to find decent work. I fell in love and mused about buying a house somewhere and settling down, but I could not commit to love or my faint domestic aspirations because I no longer felt at home. I tried to keep to the script, to find that better life my parents had slipped under the barbed wire for, but the better life ended up escaping them as well. Their adopted script had been the hardworking immigrant script, and the diligence and doggedness with which they followed that script did bear fruit. They achieved respectable levels of material success, yet this success ultimately led to failure. They divorced shortly after I turned eighteen. Definitely not in the script. My own wispy daydreams of domestic bliss evaporated for a time. I took the script I had carried in my back pocket my whole life, threw it to the wind, and turned my attention to becoming a writer.
Ten years passed. I wrote volumes during that time, but I did not succeed at becoming a writer. As I was on the verge of abandoning this ambition, I met a young woman from Hungary who happened to be in Canada. Six months later, she was my wife. After that, we set sail on an odyssey, one that took us many places. Like Odysseus before us, a decade was needed before I found my way home, but the nostalgia I experienced was tainted far more with sickness than it was with joy.
The script I had tossed away years before fluttered back to my feet – dirty, worn, covered in grime. I picked it up, dusted it off, and did my best to reprise the role I had abandoned, but to no avail. The lines in the script seemed unnatural and forced. I had outgrown the part, or perhaps the part had outgrown me. After my son was born, my wife and I set sail again, headlong against the prevailing winds. In a fit of defiance, I threw away the rudder and allowed our craft to float away whichever way the waves desired. Before the year was out, we washed up here, in a nondescript village in Hungary mere kilometers from the Austrian border.
It was a place neither of us had known. A place we had never considered knowing. A place that had been as distant from our conscious thought as the silvery outlines of blurred moonlight dreams. And in this place, in this most unlikely of places, which had never appeared in any script, not even vaguely, has become home the way none of the other homes we left scattered in the world ever could.
In my more pensive and reflective moments, I consider picking up a quill and composing a new script, one for this place and this time, but after a few moments, I allow the thought to seep away. For the first time since childhood, I feel an affinity. I know where I am. I know where I am going. My physical vagabondism has come to an end. What I am engaged in now is a different sort of travel.
Though this is home to me now, there is one last destination I hope to reach. This destination is clearer than any I have ever considered before. Clear enough to allow the journey to remain unscripted, as the best journeys home often are.
September 29, 2019
Do Memes Like "Clown World" Miss the Mark?
This will probably end up being one of my “poorly argued” posts. In fact, it will likely be more of an exploration than an argument, but the subject is one I have been thinking about for a day or two, so for what’s it’s worth, here goes.
The “Clown World” meme has been drifting around the internet for nearly a year. In theory, I should like it, but I don’t. Although I get the overall background for the meme and the expression as useful weapons in the so-called meme war, I cannot say I am terribly keen on them or what they imply. Launched as a means to mock illogical and inverted progressive social initiatives and SJWs in general, Clown World and its associated Honkler meme have also been used to attack leftist politics Naturally, those on the receiving end of this unwanted criticism and trolling blame white nationalists, neo-Nazis, and other haters for the spread of the memes. Entire videos analyzing and dissecting Clown World and Honkler are readily available on the internet for those interested. I myself am not terribly interested – let me explain why.
Dismissing leftists as clowns seems appropriate and fitting, but is essentially nothing more than playground mockery, and as far as I can tell the vast majority of leftists are utterly immune to mockery of that kind. If they weren’t, they wouldn’t be engaging in the stupidity they promulgate with such enthusiasm and zeal. Yes, many claim these sorts of memes are effective trolling and triggering devices and serve as vehicles of ridicule, but I doubt that most hardcore leftists, or even milquetoast liberals for that matter, feel any sense of indignity or humiliation when they encounter images of Honkler or the planet Earth wearing a rainbow wig and a clown nose. If nothing else, it merely enrages them and provides more tinder for their endless witch hunts.
The people spreading the memes appear to mostly youngsters from the secular right. They seem to get a real bang out of it, and that’s all fine and well, but is that all the non-religious right proposes to do? Launch an endless parade of mocking memes against an enemy is incapable of being belittled despite the obvious depth of its lunacy?
The other thing that bothers me about Clown World is of a more semantic nature. Referring to leftists as clowns seems to trivialize the evil in which they engage. A clown’s primary purpose is to amuse people and make them laugh, which underscores the barb within the Clown World meme. Leftists are deadly serious about their stupidity and evil, so there is something stinging about laughing in the face of such stupidity and evil – in wholeheartedly dismissing leftist antics and schemes with a good, deep-bellied laugh. Nevertheless, such jocular rejection establishes the risk of not taking leftists seriously. And if there is one thing I have learned in life it is this – leftists need to be taken seriously, no matter how utterly ridiculous, foolish, asinine, and insane they or their policies appear to be. They need to be taken seriously because they draw their inspiration and motivation from demonic sources, and through the utilization of these demonic sources, leftists have been incredibly successful at imposing their ridiculous, foolish, asinine, and insane policies and worldview upon society – to the point that they control practically everything.
Now, I am not implying that people shouldn’t ridicule leftists, but we need to understand that ridicule alone is not enough. If it were, leftists would have been defeated or would have repented centuries ago. But leftists have not been defeated, and they certainly have not repented; and it doesn’t seem they will suffer any major defeats or engage in mass repentance in the near future. So laugh and ridicule all you want if it makes you feel better, but in the grand scheme of things, collective mockery from the secular right has not amounted to much on the battlefield. In fact, I believe the demonic source controlling the left relishes the scorn and derision it receives. It feeds off the jeering and the sneering and gets drunk on the satire and the sarcasm. The more the secular right jokes and jibes the more powerful the demonic source fueling the secular left becomes because the teasing and the taunts enables the demonic source to hide in plain sight.
Yes, demonic source. And there is nothing this demonic source likes more than to be dismissed as imaginary and non-existent, which is what memes like Clown World fundamentally risk doing. As far as I can tell, memes like Clown World do not openly acknowledge Satan as the driving force behind the left’s stupidity; instead, they relegate the evil purely to the left itself – that is to people – people who can then be made fun of and dismissed as clowns. And this marks a line of demarcation in the overall effectiveness and usefulness of memes from the secular right, as far as I am concerned. By not acknowledging Satan as the source of leftist evil, the secular right ends up missing the mark, which is exactly what Satan wants. Instead of attacking Satan, the secular right merely attacks the secular left who earnestly return the favor. A basically pointless battle ensues; the demons watch with delight from sidelines.
Memes like Clown World might be more effective if they laughed at the source of leftist evil rather than at leftist people and policies alone. The ultimate meme would be one mocking Satan himself; one that declares him essentially powerless and impotent, unable to tempt or to influence. I imagine such a meme would drive Satan to tears. I am sure there are memes like that out there somewhere. If not, perhaps we should create one using only the fabric of our individual lives. I imagine no meme in the world would annoy the Devil as much as an individual life lived beyond the grasp of his temptations. An individual life lived in such a manner would mock the demons more than a million Clown World memes ever could.
Note added: I started thinking about this because I have dismissed the left as clowns myself occasionally in blog posts. The most recent example was more a matter of happenstance than purposeful criticism, but it got me wondering about the effectiveness and usefulness of mockery.
The “Clown World” meme has been drifting around the internet for nearly a year. In theory, I should like it, but I don’t. Although I get the overall background for the meme and the expression as useful weapons in the so-called meme war, I cannot say I am terribly keen on them or what they imply. Launched as a means to mock illogical and inverted progressive social initiatives and SJWs in general, Clown World and its associated Honkler meme have also been used to attack leftist politics Naturally, those on the receiving end of this unwanted criticism and trolling blame white nationalists, neo-Nazis, and other haters for the spread of the memes. Entire videos analyzing and dissecting Clown World and Honkler are readily available on the internet for those interested. I myself am not terribly interested – let me explain why.
Dismissing leftists as clowns seems appropriate and fitting, but is essentially nothing more than playground mockery, and as far as I can tell the vast majority of leftists are utterly immune to mockery of that kind. If they weren’t, they wouldn’t be engaging in the stupidity they promulgate with such enthusiasm and zeal. Yes, many claim these sorts of memes are effective trolling and triggering devices and serve as vehicles of ridicule, but I doubt that most hardcore leftists, or even milquetoast liberals for that matter, feel any sense of indignity or humiliation when they encounter images of Honkler or the planet Earth wearing a rainbow wig and a clown nose. If nothing else, it merely enrages them and provides more tinder for their endless witch hunts.
The people spreading the memes appear to mostly youngsters from the secular right. They seem to get a real bang out of it, and that’s all fine and well, but is that all the non-religious right proposes to do? Launch an endless parade of mocking memes against an enemy is incapable of being belittled despite the obvious depth of its lunacy?
The other thing that bothers me about Clown World is of a more semantic nature. Referring to leftists as clowns seems to trivialize the evil in which they engage. A clown’s primary purpose is to amuse people and make them laugh, which underscores the barb within the Clown World meme. Leftists are deadly serious about their stupidity and evil, so there is something stinging about laughing in the face of such stupidity and evil – in wholeheartedly dismissing leftist antics and schemes with a good, deep-bellied laugh. Nevertheless, such jocular rejection establishes the risk of not taking leftists seriously. And if there is one thing I have learned in life it is this – leftists need to be taken seriously, no matter how utterly ridiculous, foolish, asinine, and insane they or their policies appear to be. They need to be taken seriously because they draw their inspiration and motivation from demonic sources, and through the utilization of these demonic sources, leftists have been incredibly successful at imposing their ridiculous, foolish, asinine, and insane policies and worldview upon society – to the point that they control practically everything.
Now, I am not implying that people shouldn’t ridicule leftists, but we need to understand that ridicule alone is not enough. If it were, leftists would have been defeated or would have repented centuries ago. But leftists have not been defeated, and they certainly have not repented; and it doesn’t seem they will suffer any major defeats or engage in mass repentance in the near future. So laugh and ridicule all you want if it makes you feel better, but in the grand scheme of things, collective mockery from the secular right has not amounted to much on the battlefield. In fact, I believe the demonic source controlling the left relishes the scorn and derision it receives. It feeds off the jeering and the sneering and gets drunk on the satire and the sarcasm. The more the secular right jokes and jibes the more powerful the demonic source fueling the secular left becomes because the teasing and the taunts enables the demonic source to hide in plain sight.
Yes, demonic source. And there is nothing this demonic source likes more than to be dismissed as imaginary and non-existent, which is what memes like Clown World fundamentally risk doing. As far as I can tell, memes like Clown World do not openly acknowledge Satan as the driving force behind the left’s stupidity; instead, they relegate the evil purely to the left itself – that is to people – people who can then be made fun of and dismissed as clowns. And this marks a line of demarcation in the overall effectiveness and usefulness of memes from the secular right, as far as I am concerned. By not acknowledging Satan as the source of leftist evil, the secular right ends up missing the mark, which is exactly what Satan wants. Instead of attacking Satan, the secular right merely attacks the secular left who earnestly return the favor. A basically pointless battle ensues; the demons watch with delight from sidelines.
Memes like Clown World might be more effective if they laughed at the source of leftist evil rather than at leftist people and policies alone. The ultimate meme would be one mocking Satan himself; one that declares him essentially powerless and impotent, unable to tempt or to influence. I imagine such a meme would drive Satan to tears. I am sure there are memes like that out there somewhere. If not, perhaps we should create one using only the fabric of our individual lives. I imagine no meme in the world would annoy the Devil as much as an individual life lived beyond the grasp of his temptations. An individual life lived in such a manner would mock the demons more than a million Clown World memes ever could.
Note added: I started thinking about this because I have dismissed the left as clowns myself occasionally in blog posts. The most recent example was more a matter of happenstance than purposeful criticism, but it got me wondering about the effectiveness and usefulness of mockery.
September 28, 2019
J.S. Bach: The Complete Lute Works
Lute compositions are not the first thing that spring to mind when one thinks of Johann Sebastian Bach, but he did a write a few pieces for the instrument, and like the rest of his compositions, Bach's pieces for lute are divine. Lutenist Mario D'Agosto's masterful playing brings these little masterpieces to life. Great music for a contemplative or relaxing rainy afternoon.
September 27, 2019
Is Hungarian News Propaganda? Of Course, Yet . . .
I have never really been a keen watcher of television news. Growing up in Canada, I found the news broadcasts rather dull and predictable. The news broadcasts in America struck me hysteria-laced screeching festivals coupled with deep-voiced pedestrian seriousness over the most ridiculously absurd topics and issues. One day I watched a whole hour of programming on CNN and became convinced a person could very well be driven to insanity by simply watching cable news every day over a period of a few months. As a result, I avoided American TV news with the same passion intensity I usually reserve for the avoidance of other, irritating affairs such as high school reunions, Black Friday shopping, and poetry slam competitions.
During my brief stint in England, I quickly discovered Brit news broadcasts were just as insane as their American counterparts. I found some reprieve from the TV news by watching children’s shows such as In the Night Garden with my son who was only three at the time. I still don’t quite understand what In the Night Garden was all about, but I found the intentional nonsense on CeeBeeBees less annoying than the intentional nonsense on the BeeBeeCee.
I visited Hungary a few times as a child when the country was still officially communist, and I clearly remember watching the state news broadcast in the evenings with my grandfather. Hungarian news during communist times was as dry and palatable as stale slice of week-old bread. I was usually bored to tears as I watched and listened to the news announcer murmur on about socialism's wonderful achievements as he sat before the camera in a stiff, ill-fitting suit he had been sentenced to wear for twenty-five years. Even as a kid I could tell how scripted and untrue the news the man read was.
When I first moved to Hungary as an adult after the collapse of communism, I immediately noticed the communist news announcer no longer dominated the news. Like the countless communist statues that had once held Budapest’s streets and squares captive, good old stiff suit had been taken down and stuffed into a memory hole somewhere on the outskirts of the city. But what replaced him was even worse. Deprived of the West for nearly half-a-century, Hungary drove headlong into emulating everything for which the West stood. Overnight, Hungarian news broadcasts became just as irritating and sensationalistic as other news programs in the West.
Upon moving back to the country four years ago, I made a point of avoiding the television news, which was easy to do because by that time avoiding the news on television came as naturally to me as breathing or sleeping. Nevertheless, when the migrant/refugee crisis began to swell in the summer of 2015, I began to watch the news on a regular basis. This lasted about six months. Since then, I have returned to my old custom of not watching televised news, but every now and then, usually when I arrive home late from work and feel too listless to do anything else, I plop down before the boob tube and passively allow the state broadcaster to inform me about the state of the country and the world.
On these occasions I have discovered the following regarding contemporary Hungarian state news – as is expected with any state broadcaster, it is rather propagandistic; however, the propaganda the Hungarian state news service now spews on a nightly basis is far more in touch with reality than it was nearly twenty years ago and is infinitely more in touch with reality than its Western counterparts. It addresses issues such as mass migration and sub-replacement fertility from a realistic perspective. That is, rather than rattle on about migrant rights, diversity, and empowering women in the workforce, the Hungarian state broadcaster acknowledges mass migration and sub-replacement fertility for what they are – crucial existential and spiritual problems. True, it uses both issues to bolster and fortify the policies of Viktor Orbán’s ruling Fidesz Party - which Western critics accuse of essentially taking over the media In Hungary - but beyond this veil of political partisanship there lies a core understanding of what these issues mean and the dangers they pose.
Of course, this does not mean I am going to start watching the news on a regular basis again. After all, Hungarian television news is just like any other television news broadcast – full of twisting and spinning and manipulating. But the twisting and spinning and manipulating the Hungarians are currently doing is far closer to the truth and to reality than the twisting and spinning and manipulating I remember watching when I lived in other countries in the West. There’s not much solace or encouragement to be found in that, but it is noteworthy, and it is better than anything I ever recall watching on CNN.
And does anyone out there have any idea what In the Night Garden is about? I still haven’t got a clue.
During my brief stint in England, I quickly discovered Brit news broadcasts were just as insane as their American counterparts. I found some reprieve from the TV news by watching children’s shows such as In the Night Garden with my son who was only three at the time. I still don’t quite understand what In the Night Garden was all about, but I found the intentional nonsense on CeeBeeBees less annoying than the intentional nonsense on the BeeBeeCee.
I visited Hungary a few times as a child when the country was still officially communist, and I clearly remember watching the state news broadcast in the evenings with my grandfather. Hungarian news during communist times was as dry and palatable as stale slice of week-old bread. I was usually bored to tears as I watched and listened to the news announcer murmur on about socialism's wonderful achievements as he sat before the camera in a stiff, ill-fitting suit he had been sentenced to wear for twenty-five years. Even as a kid I could tell how scripted and untrue the news the man read was.
When I first moved to Hungary as an adult after the collapse of communism, I immediately noticed the communist news announcer no longer dominated the news. Like the countless communist statues that had once held Budapest’s streets and squares captive, good old stiff suit had been taken down and stuffed into a memory hole somewhere on the outskirts of the city. But what replaced him was even worse. Deprived of the West for nearly half-a-century, Hungary drove headlong into emulating everything for which the West stood. Overnight, Hungarian news broadcasts became just as irritating and sensationalistic as other news programs in the West.
Upon moving back to the country four years ago, I made a point of avoiding the television news, which was easy to do because by that time avoiding the news on television came as naturally to me as breathing or sleeping. Nevertheless, when the migrant/refugee crisis began to swell in the summer of 2015, I began to watch the news on a regular basis. This lasted about six months. Since then, I have returned to my old custom of not watching televised news, but every now and then, usually when I arrive home late from work and feel too listless to do anything else, I plop down before the boob tube and passively allow the state broadcaster to inform me about the state of the country and the world.
On these occasions I have discovered the following regarding contemporary Hungarian state news – as is expected with any state broadcaster, it is rather propagandistic; however, the propaganda the Hungarian state news service now spews on a nightly basis is far more in touch with reality than it was nearly twenty years ago and is infinitely more in touch with reality than its Western counterparts. It addresses issues such as mass migration and sub-replacement fertility from a realistic perspective. That is, rather than rattle on about migrant rights, diversity, and empowering women in the workforce, the Hungarian state broadcaster acknowledges mass migration and sub-replacement fertility for what they are – crucial existential and spiritual problems. True, it uses both issues to bolster and fortify the policies of Viktor Orbán’s ruling Fidesz Party - which Western critics accuse of essentially taking over the media In Hungary - but beyond this veil of political partisanship there lies a core understanding of what these issues mean and the dangers they pose.
Of course, this does not mean I am going to start watching the news on a regular basis again. After all, Hungarian television news is just like any other television news broadcast – full of twisting and spinning and manipulating. But the twisting and spinning and manipulating the Hungarians are currently doing is far closer to the truth and to reality than the twisting and spinning and manipulating I remember watching when I lived in other countries in the West. There’s not much solace or encouragement to be found in that, but it is noteworthy, and it is better than anything I ever recall watching on CNN.
And does anyone out there have any idea what In the Night Garden is about? I still haven’t got a clue.
September 25, 2019
Disturbingly Oblivious
If you are able to imagine Dresdeners going about their day-to-day lives willfully oblivious to the infernal firestorm ignited at the height of the joint British/American bombing of the city during the Second World War, then you are a step closer to understanding the unfathomable tragedy of the spiritual war raging all around us.
September 24, 2019
Some Stories Are War
Some stories fight you. They are uninterested in diplomacy or establishing bilateral relations. Self-sufficient, they scoff at commerce; see nothing mutually beneficial in trade.
They feign neutrality then raid your peripheries in the dead of night with thunder cracks and lightning flashes. In the morning they deny everything and stare with wide-eyed innocence at the smouldering path they have carved through you. All attempts at appeasement fail; with no options remaining, you reluctantly launch your assault.
The goal is conquest, but some stories refuse to be conquered. Mounting a formidable defense, they decimate your avant garde and dig in doggedly against your heavy artillery, and as you relentlessly rain shells down upon their positions you become enraged by the faint lilts of mocking laughter filtering through the morse code pauses between explosions.
You wipe the sweat from your brow and steel your eyes against the setting sun staining the sky red beyond the trenches. As the last sliver of sun dips beneath the horizon, you understand the turning back point has slipped past you. You are fully committed now. Entangled in a war of attrition with an enemy that refuses to be beaten.
Some stories fight you and will continue to fight you until fully vanquished, battered and bloody, staring up at the point of your sword in seething terror. Sadly, the best stories regard surrender as dishonor. At the last moment they will turn upon themselves and bleed ink until they are lifeless, leaving you with nothing but a stretch of ravaged earth and the bitter aftertaste of victory so hollow it echoes only pain.
They feign neutrality then raid your peripheries in the dead of night with thunder cracks and lightning flashes. In the morning they deny everything and stare with wide-eyed innocence at the smouldering path they have carved through you. All attempts at appeasement fail; with no options remaining, you reluctantly launch your assault.
The goal is conquest, but some stories refuse to be conquered. Mounting a formidable defense, they decimate your avant garde and dig in doggedly against your heavy artillery, and as you relentlessly rain shells down upon their positions you become enraged by the faint lilts of mocking laughter filtering through the morse code pauses between explosions.
You wipe the sweat from your brow and steel your eyes against the setting sun staining the sky red beyond the trenches. As the last sliver of sun dips beneath the horizon, you understand the turning back point has slipped past you. You are fully committed now. Entangled in a war of attrition with an enemy that refuses to be beaten.
Some stories fight you and will continue to fight you until fully vanquished, battered and bloody, staring up at the point of your sword in seething terror. Sadly, the best stories regard surrender as dishonor. At the last moment they will turn upon themselves and bleed ink until they are lifeless, leaving you with nothing but a stretch of ravaged earth and the bitter aftertaste of victory so hollow it echoes only pain.
September 21, 2019
A Most Fitting Juxtaposition
Apparently there is an election looming in Austria. I deduced this from the hundreds of political campaign posters plastered all over the small city where I work as a part-time instructor on the weekends. The posters and billboards are everywhere - on lampposts, fences, buildings - and they compete for space with the regular commercial posters I usually see on my way to work: posters promoting concerts and sales and children's activities and car exhibitions and so on. This week a traveling circus began to advertise itself in the city, and it placed its posters in the same spaces the political posters occupy, which has created what I would classify as a most fitting series of juxtapositions, as can be seen in the photograph below. 
September 20, 2019
Written Off
Between 2001 and 2015 I lived and worked in the following places for various stretches of time - Budapest, Hungary; Sarasota, Florida; New York City, New York; Toronto, Canada; Morpeth, England; and Sopron, Hungary. Needless to say, I met and formed a variety of relationships with people from all walks of life during this little Odyssean voyage of mine, and I added these friendships and connections to the friendships and connections I had established before I embarked on my restless wanderings - childhood friendships, university chums, ice hockey buddies, and so on.
The other day I thought about all the people with whom I have been friends or with whom I have worked in my life. After a while, I felt dizzy. There are literally hundreds of them, scattered all over the countries and cities I have listed above, but for all intents and purposes, I have lost contact with nearly all of them. Of course, this is to be expected; after all, most of these relationships were circumstantial - locked within the boundaries of place and time - and it is only natural that they ended once the place and time supporting them dissolved. Still, I do not chalk up any of these past relationships, not even the most trivial of acquaintances, to happenstance. No, they were all meaningful to some degree, but this meaning remained confined within the spatiotemporal conditions that gave birth to them and survive now only as memories, filed away in categories like "I once . . ." and "used to."
Yet, I established deeper connections with some, connections that bled beyond the borders of being in the same place at the same time. Established understandings and appreciations. The meeting of kindred spirits. Adventures and agonies. Helpers and teachers and guides of every shape and form. The people who made an impact or whom I impacted. Naturally, there were efforts to keep the connection strong once the place-time stage fell away, but the flood of emails and letters inevitably dwindled to a trickle and then, one day, simply dried up. I am mostly to blame for this, because I was the one who perpetually had suitcase in hand and was constantly wet-fingering the sky to gauge the changes in the wind. StilI, I assumed the deeper commerce I had established with some during my travels and sojourns would survive - that we would maintain bridges rather than merely cast stones into the rushing water, but it was not to be.
Is it even possible to truly lose touch anymore in this age of interconnectedness? In this world where everything and everyone can be located and researched through a few simple clicks? All the means to stay in touch are there at our fingertips. Maintaining contact has never been easier, which means the barriers we erect, the drift we refuse to halt cannot be assigned to anything technical. Yes, laziness and perceived relevance plays a part, but I sense something deeper behind it all.
Most relationships have a natural beginning and an end and continue to exist in memory as positive experiences, ones that could instantly rekindled if the proper circumstances came together. But the end of some positive friendships eventually leads to bitterness and confusion. Time and distance alters perspective. People change. People estrange. Painful moments when the familiar ices over and is replaced by the alien. Revelations of people no longer being who they were or who they are supposed to be. A subtle sense of treachery underscores it all - the bitter sense of betrayal, of being played for the fool. I imagine I have inflicted this upon many. "What happened? No, no, that is not the person I knew. That cannot be him. And if that is now him, then I cannot conceive, nor can I proceed." And they withdraw their pens and the offender, in this case me, is written off, relegated to the realm of unsalvageable. And yes, I have engaged in this myself in the past because it is as easy and swift as triggering a guillotine, which is why I bear no grudge or bitterness against those who have likely written me off over the years. Clean breaks make for neater lives. Regardless, I have concluded that writing off people is anything but useful or astute if it goes beyond merely accepting that what once was will never again be.
I have faith in this - every person who has played a role in the stage that is my mortal life has brought something meaningful with them, something I was meant to learn. I have realized I cannot write anyone off, not even those whom I regard as enemies. Writing off people becomes dangerous practice when it becomes a means through which to render them meaningless and insignificant, which is a denial of reality, because everyone, even the lowest and most unassuming, are meaningful and significant. At best, this form of writing off is callous mockery; at worst, it is colder than hatred because it signifies the desire to relegate people into non-being.
The other day I thought about all the people with whom I have been friends or with whom I have worked in my life. After a while, I felt dizzy. There are literally hundreds of them, scattered all over the countries and cities I have listed above, but for all intents and purposes, I have lost contact with nearly all of them. Of course, this is to be expected; after all, most of these relationships were circumstantial - locked within the boundaries of place and time - and it is only natural that they ended once the place and time supporting them dissolved. Still, I do not chalk up any of these past relationships, not even the most trivial of acquaintances, to happenstance. No, they were all meaningful to some degree, but this meaning remained confined within the spatiotemporal conditions that gave birth to them and survive now only as memories, filed away in categories like "I once . . ." and "used to."
Yet, I established deeper connections with some, connections that bled beyond the borders of being in the same place at the same time. Established understandings and appreciations. The meeting of kindred spirits. Adventures and agonies. Helpers and teachers and guides of every shape and form. The people who made an impact or whom I impacted. Naturally, there were efforts to keep the connection strong once the place-time stage fell away, but the flood of emails and letters inevitably dwindled to a trickle and then, one day, simply dried up. I am mostly to blame for this, because I was the one who perpetually had suitcase in hand and was constantly wet-fingering the sky to gauge the changes in the wind. StilI, I assumed the deeper commerce I had established with some during my travels and sojourns would survive - that we would maintain bridges rather than merely cast stones into the rushing water, but it was not to be.
Is it even possible to truly lose touch anymore in this age of interconnectedness? In this world where everything and everyone can be located and researched through a few simple clicks? All the means to stay in touch are there at our fingertips. Maintaining contact has never been easier, which means the barriers we erect, the drift we refuse to halt cannot be assigned to anything technical. Yes, laziness and perceived relevance plays a part, but I sense something deeper behind it all.
Most relationships have a natural beginning and an end and continue to exist in memory as positive experiences, ones that could instantly rekindled if the proper circumstances came together. But the end of some positive friendships eventually leads to bitterness and confusion. Time and distance alters perspective. People change. People estrange. Painful moments when the familiar ices over and is replaced by the alien. Revelations of people no longer being who they were or who they are supposed to be. A subtle sense of treachery underscores it all - the bitter sense of betrayal, of being played for the fool. I imagine I have inflicted this upon many. "What happened? No, no, that is not the person I knew. That cannot be him. And if that is now him, then I cannot conceive, nor can I proceed." And they withdraw their pens and the offender, in this case me, is written off, relegated to the realm of unsalvageable. And yes, I have engaged in this myself in the past because it is as easy and swift as triggering a guillotine, which is why I bear no grudge or bitterness against those who have likely written me off over the years. Clean breaks make for neater lives. Regardless, I have concluded that writing off people is anything but useful or astute if it goes beyond merely accepting that what once was will never again be.
I have faith in this - every person who has played a role in the stage that is my mortal life has brought something meaningful with them, something I was meant to learn. I have realized I cannot write anyone off, not even those whom I regard as enemies. Writing off people becomes dangerous practice when it becomes a means through which to render them meaningless and insignificant, which is a denial of reality, because everyone, even the lowest and most unassuming, are meaningful and significant. At best, this form of writing off is callous mockery; at worst, it is colder than hatred because it signifies the desire to relegate people into non-being.
Another Great Source For Quality EBooks
Dave Smith, a reader of this blog, recently shared a link to standardebooks, another outstanding source of high quality, well-formatted, free ebooks. The selection at Standard eBooks is much wider than source I shared a few days ago in this post, but the quality is just as good, perhaps even better. Thanks very much for sharing this information with us, Dave.
September 19, 2019
Basilides' Charming Art Deco Paintings
Barna Basilides (1903 - 1967) was not exclusively an art deco painter, but his foray into the style resulted in a delightful series of paintings that exude storybook charm with a distinctive Hungarian flair. Many of the paintings featured here are currently on auction or have recently sold. If I were not planning more home improvements in the near future, I would seriously consider purchasing a Basilides myself . . . wait a minute . . . that could be considered a home improvement as well, couldn't it?
Hmmm . . .
Hmmm . . .
