Maybe This Time

"Closure. She's looking for closure."

One especially astute young student made that comment when my class was discussing "Forgiving Dr. Mengele" (a documentary discussing the decision of one Eva Mozes Kor to forgive the demented experiments to which she was subjected as a Mengele twin during the Holocaust). This moment seemed to encapsulate the entire topic of Holocaust literature that I had just covered with my sophomore English students. Wasn't Vladek Spiegelman looking for some sort of closure when he burned Anya's diaries? Wasn't Art himself seeking closure for the life he experienced in the shadows of his parents' mutual trauma and mixed ability to cope with the prospect of survival? Perhaps Simon Wiesenthal too was seeking some form of closure when he asked his reader if they would forgive a dying Nazi. As I learned this previous week, Jan Karski was unable to find closure as a Righteous Gentile. He spent his life torn between his invaluable services towards exposing the brutality of racism in the National Socialist regime and the gnawing sensation that he could have done more.

Times are marginally different. The number of Holocaust survivors dwindles. There are monuments to the Holocaust that simple read out the names of the deceased. Picture a room made of mirrors reflecting the light of a single candle that, in the labyrinth of obsidian panels, multiplies to millions and is entirely silent except for the listing of names of murdered children. The names become almost anonymous, as indistinguishable as the candles staring back in the cosmos of a single space. We have the luxury of memory rather than witnessing. Yet perhaps this luxury has done more damage than it has provided closure.

As an educator, I feel it is my duty to ensure that young people are educated about the past (chiefly as it is expressed through literature). However, these people are the heirs to a planet that has seen war and hatred manifest as genocide countless times in its history. We remember what has happened but are gutless, neutered to any actual response until after the damage is done. Armenia, Rwanda, Bosnia, Serbia, Cambodia. The deceased are then added to the list of names that increasingly lose their meaning. We seek closure but this, like a candle in a mirror, is a reflection. It cannot be touched, let alone achieved.

It is this philosophy which motivates me to study how the world teaches the next generation about what previous generations have done. The past week, while certainly filled with happy, memorable moments with my fellow Fulbrighters, also was designed to help me expand, reflect upon, and conceptualize my understanding of an education that espouses social justice and the earnest belief that the world can be repaired with the proper tools. It is the search for these tools that took me to three distinct locations, each offering its own unique methodology for preserving memory, confronting the present, and paving the path to improvement for the future.

1. Warsaw, Jan Karski Conference.

For those of you who do not know, Jan Karski is (arguably) Poland's most famous Righteous Gentile (an honor bestowed by Yad Vashem in Jerusalem for those who took personal risks to help Jews in the Holocaust without seeking any sort of monetary compensation or religious conversion in return). This was a man who spent his entire life after the Second World War haunted largely by his belief that he had not done enough. Responsibility was a vital component of his character and it was this sense of civic duty which motivated his life. While there were many Righteous Among the Nations as well as countless others who acted with compassion during an amoral time, there is something especially compelling about the question of ethics in moments where ethics seem unimportant at best and a weakness at worst. Visitors to the conference included colleagues of Karski's from Georgetown University, artists, historians, government officials, and a survivor of the Rwandan genocide. Questions flew, many of them about who we blame for the Holocaust in Poland. Finally, one especially disgruntled speaker stated plainly, "Who do we blame? The ones who did the killing."

I coupled this conference with a visit to Warsaw's Jewish Museum. As I walked through the exhibits which traced the history of the Jewish people from the middle ages to the contemporary time, there were several questions which rooted rapidly in my mind. Primarily, how can I as an educator ensure that questions of ethics and morality are not sideswiped for the sake of time or convenience? I think back to discussions about ethics and capitalism in Brecht or dialogue about gang violence in Romeo and Juliet. Is there something missing in American education when it comes to ethics? Too often we like to handle children with the care and sensitivity of an Easter egg. We refrain from posing difficult or challenging questions out of concern for "sensitivity" or the fear that students might say things we just don't want to hear. Flatly, if this is the course that American education continues to take, it is doing its children a disservice. It seems that a proper education would indeed instill a fundamental criticism for historical ethics and include substantial dialogue about how we can foster our own sense of ethical existence. This, in turn, would produce some sense of responsibility, a trait modeled by the countless Righteous Among the Nations who proved that ethics are not meant to hide during turbulent times.

2. Norway

Norway's history during the Second World War is somewhat less devastating and complex than Poland's. Norway, like Poland, fought fiercely against Nazi occupation. Both hosted bold and dedicated resistance movements. However, unlike Poland, significantly more of Norway's Jewish population survived. There are a plethora of historical reasons for this. Neutral and Allied territories (such as Sweden and the UK) were much closer to Norway. Despite this, however, many Jews were killed in Norway as part of the Holocaust.

What is perhaps more noteworthy of my time in Norway is the focus on Norway's place as one of the world's most tolerant nations. This tolerance was largely the purpose of my visit. After making contacts with and establishing an interview with the Rafto Foundation (a  Norwegian human rights advocacy group in Bergen), my questions as they related to education were informed by the Foundation's educational workshops on Democracy, Discrimination, and War/Dehumanization. The group advocates a dialogue-based approach to learning about these three components of human rights discussion.

Dialogue and discussion are indeed essential parts of learning about catastrophic events and finding solutions for situations of injustice. My time in Norway expanded my understanding of social justice education largely due to its focus on the future. While the events of the past do play a significant part of our understanding of the present and future, without a clearly defined concept of what must be prevented, a knowledge of the past does little good. Furthermore, this concept must be the result of democracy and dialogue. People must work together to act as a shield against human rights abuses as a coalition rather than courageous individuals.

3. Berlin

This was perhaps the hardest part of my project thus far. I am German. My heritage is firmly rooted in this nation that has been the cradle for culture, art, and science for thousands of years. I am enormously proud of this heritage. Dadaism, Beethoven, Hildegard, Goethe, Bach.... But I digress. It's no secret a shadow still hangs over Germany due to the events of the Second World War despite the fact that most of today's German population was not alive for these events, let alone collaborative in them. However, there seems to be an unspoken rule that people constantly view Germany with Nazism in the back of their minds. While I plan to visit Germany multiple times and experience the culture that walks hand in hand with my heritage, I must, regrettably, dedicate a large part of this post to Holocaust discussion since that was the focus of my trip and my Make it Happen project.

Few nations today can boast the tolerance and liberalism that Germany represents. I looked forward to visiting Berlin for weeks, despite the historical irony that a queer Jew would look at Berlin as a safe-haven. I thought about the vibrant Weimar LGBT underground scene including film, magazines and music that heralded Berlin as an LGBT Mecca in the 1920s. I spent my senior year researching this period and I craved something of this liberal, open environment as if it were something I could purchase in a shop as soon as I got there.

Berlin proved to be all I could want in terms of a diverse and open-minded city. Walking through Berlin was an almost electrifying experience. The streets were lined with illuminated orbs that symbolized the fallen Wall. People from all walks of life paraded the streets to commemorate the day that East and West Germany began the process of reunification. Some might say it is truly Germany's best age. The economy is booming, its education is free and of high quality, and it has become a beacon of open-mindedness. This stems from, in large part, the frankness of Germany's confrontation with its own past.

Germans today bear no responsibility for the events of the Second World War. Yet it is not an uncommon thought when one sees older Germans to silently wonder, "Where were you in 1933?" It However, Germany's cities (including the vibrant Berlin)  is saturated with monuments to the victims of the war (including Romani people, Communists, Jehova's Witnesses, LGBT people, and people with disabilities). One such monument is the compelling and humbling monument to Europe's murdered Jews. With a design based on Prague's Jewish cemetery, the monument seems to represent chaos and order existing simultaneously. The large concrete blocks feature uneven tops but perfectly gridded alleyways between them. While walking through this space, a tight and distressing claustrophobia seems to set in. One longs for the openness that exists outside of the guts of this sterile labyrinth. The effect of this was quite impactful. The experience lent itself to reflection about its purpose both as a historical commemoration and as a work of art.

Similarly impactful was the Berlin Jewish Museum. This featured a room where a robotic arm writes the Torah at the same pace as a human would. It is a jarring, almost disturbing image. The sterility of the mechanical arm as it writes the fluid, lively hebrew on a seemingly infinite scroll of paper took getting used to, to say the least. There was a room in this building (concrete, lacking in climate control or lighting, 26 meters high). This room is called the Holocaust tower and is designed to exemplify the void left in German Jewish life by the Holocaust. I had been battling an ear infection for several days before I entered this room. Looking up caused vertigo. To speak the truth, looking anywhere but straight ahead caused vertigo. However, as I looked up into the cold darkness of this tower, my head began to spin for medical reasons. I pinned myself in a corner and continued to look up as the room twisted in my vision like a tilt-a-whirl. The other two people in the room stared at me slightly and then left quickly. God only knows what they thought was happening. The void, however, was demonstrated perfectly despite my inability to get it to sit still.

The progress that Germany has made is undeniable. It's history has been broken down into pieces that you can purchase on the street (like the Young Pioneers friendship pin I purchased from a man for 4 euro or the remnants Berlin Wall that has been cracked and crushed into souvenirs by tourists. Its history seems to be a melting pot where nothing melts. Yet a vibrant nation and rich culture have endured. It is a nation honest with its history but also entirely active in ensuring that the atrocities of the World War are public and thoroughly depicted.

How many other nations can claim such a response to a previous inhumanity? Certainly not the United States. When I was taught Civil Rights, the pictures were always of Martin Luther King, Jr speaking in front of the Lincoln Monument. Occasionally one might see a photograph of a "whites only" sign. I certainly didn't see the pictures of teenagers being doused by fire hoses. Images of hot coffee being poured on students sitting at segregated lunch counters were censored from the mix. Indeed, America's own genocide against the First Nation people is glossed over or presented in the cheery false-balance of the Indian Wars or the First Thanksgiving.

It all blends together into an essential question of how we teach children responsibility to prevent injustice. Furthermore, how can we unite children across the world to partner together to advocate human rights?

It was in Berlin that I rounded off my reflections about where my plans for social justice education must go.

I won't share them here because they are still shapes held only in soft clay and perhaps it is best that they stay only somewhat formed for the time being. I'm not looking for closure just yet.

All my love.
K.

Halloween

The combination of smoke from chimneys and the farthest reaches of light pollution from the city gave the sky an austere tone as if it were toxic to breathe. The color was a smokey orange that seemed to produce its own light, more alien than human. In fact, it held an almost spot-on Halloween ambiance. Eldritch and mournful at the same time, it couldn’t have been better to see on All Hallow’s Eve.

Regrettably, this sky became a day late. This eerie sky was the backdrop for my first All Saints’ Day. 

Through the woods surrounding one of Citadel Park’s  military cemeteries (the perfect place, we had been advised, if you don’t have anyone to mourn), we could see the lights glowing with unyielding persistence. There was nothing cavorted or twinkling in them. Each flame sat behind colored glass and offered neither sentiment nor signs of neglect. What it did insinuate was something that neither picture nor words could adequately convey. 

The park itself was thrust into the history books in 1945 as the site of the last Nazi stronghold in the Battle of Poznan (an event which devastated the city and left much of it in piles of rubble). Today, it houses several museums and several military cemeteries. The graves are thus uniform for the most part and offer little explanation beyond birthdate, death date, and nationality. Each grave was fashioned with a small jar (some were red, some green, most clear) with a candle inside. The end result while stumbling through the hillside was a sea of light. The solid ground drifted away and what was left seemed almost cosmic, less tangible than soil, but offering boundaries only in the form of where light from the thousands of candles could reach.

I reflected on this holiday sporadically over the week. Naturally, I associated the end of October with Halloween. It is, without doubt, my favorite holiday because if offers a campy environment in which mirth and sorrow exist simultaneously. The philosophy or sanctity of the day has long since drained for most Americans. As one of my Polish students phrased it, “There’s no philosophy behind it. People just get in costumes and drink.” I can see what she meant. We hollow out pumpkins in the United States and illuminate them from the inside to keep away what we want to stay only in a memory. Jack O Lanterns are designed to send a message to the dead to stay put, to frighten things away. In contrast, the candles on All Saints' Day are designed to help the dead, to navigate a path in a vacuum of darkness.

In this cemetery, there was a certain peace, a silence appropriate to the circumstances. People meandered through the maze of illumination, pausing occasionally for their own reasons. Yet to someone looking in from the outside, there were just candles sitting on the graves visited largely by those who, as we were informed, had no one else to keep the path lit for them. 

Other photos from the week:

On the Steps of the Palace

I'll start at the very beginning (a very good place to start).

Several of my fellow Fulbrighters decided to gather in Krakow for a workshop on "Green English" (or, teaching environmental responsibility in English classes). Obviously, there could not have been a better location. Krakow is a gorgeous city (one of the few cities in Poland to survive the war without major destruction). It is large, expansive, beautiful, and literally spills history with each step you take. I do not exaggerate when I say the past has soaked into the ground like rainwater in dried soil. It felt part fairy-tale and part horror story when you consider the pristine, ancient loveliness of the city combined with its gruesome recent history. Beauty and tragic existing side-by-side is becoming a recurring theme, I'm discovering. More on that later, however.

Let's start with arrival.

Picture it: Poznan train station. Thursday.

Corinne and I walk up to the ticket counter:

Me: 2 billety Krakov?
Woman: Something in Polish. God knows what. *holds up a schedule indicating a train at 14:40 that doesn't arrive until 22:56.*
Corinne and I exchange looks of concern and terror.
Me: 2 billety Warsawa?
Woman: Speaks in Polish. The word problem is recognized. We assume she's saying "No."

Corinne and I end up on an 8 hour train ride from Poznan to Krakow. This fate could have been avoided if we could have been sold the tickets to Warsaw and then taken a train from Warsaw to Krakow. The trip would have been 2.5 hours shorter. However, had that happened, we would not have made a new friend known as "Gas man."

Gas man might call to mind someone with IBS or a kindly gentleman who you call when the gas in your house is off. Or, as I now know, it can mean a sketch-ass mofo who runs into your train carriage and sits in an empty seat. The room immediately smells like gasoline (or maybe paint thinner). The gentleman begins opening and closing the door to the carriage while peaking his head out. He then amuses himself by doing the same thing with the curtains. Meanwhile, the carriage quickly fills with the smell of gasoline (which we suspect he was carrying in a large plastic bottle that he shoved into his dirty hoodie pocket). Eyes immediately begin to water. No one can really breathe and yet here is gas man just doing his thing.

My immediate thoughts were along the "Jesus take the wheel" line. Who IS this person? Who?

Fortunately, after he decided to hop from carriage to carriage and hide in the bathroom, gas man was thrown off the train at the next stop and the world rejoiced.

We arrived in Krakow and discovered that the quiet nighttime streets of Poznan are deceptive. This place was party central. The music and shouting from the streets outside of the hostel continued well past midnight. I'm not entirely sure what they were talking about but I hope they had a good time while some of us were busy not sleeping.

The next couple of days consisted of Fulbright bonding and wandering around Krakow.

Photos follow.

It's 11pm. Do you know what statues your children are taking pictures of?

Turns out I don't really either. I'm not sure who this is a statue of, but the dramatic shadow was too much to ignore. 

Statue of a saint outside of St. Peter and Paul Church. It might not be a saint. In my defense, there are lots of statues of old white men here. I can't keep up. 

This is from the Dragon's Den under Wawel castle. Apparently legend has it that a dragon lived under the castle.

No. Really. This is an artist's rendering of what the dragon may look like. See the peasant? He's DONE with that dragon and those sheep. He literally can't even. 

Whatevs. Enemies of the heir beware. 

This is St. Mary's Basilica. I didn't go inside. However, this is the place where the trumpeter of Krakow plays the Hejnał Mariack on a daily basis to commemorate the sentry who signaled a Mongol invasion and allowed the city time to shut the gates and thus prevent an ambush. He was shot in the throat before he could finish and so the song stops abruptly in compliance with this Grimmsian saga. 

Wawel Cathedral 

Swans. Terrifying, violent swans. 

The inside of the beautiful Wawel castle and...

Some Jew holding bags of money and pennies! See how happy they are? 

           Wait. What? 

Yeah. This little tidbit caught my eye while we were visiting a gift shop inside the castle. I'm not totally sure what to make of this. Casual antisemitism is alive and well. Just look at how cuddly these things are. It's like if Wallace and Gromit had a quirky Jewish neighbor who liked to count his money and charge interest on loans.

Honestly, I'm still processing this one. Antisemitism is bad enough. Repackaging antisemitism so that it seems cute is even worse. This image sat on my stomach the entire day. I really, REALLY wish I hadn't seen this.

We ended the evening in the Jewish quarter of Krakow which is now synonymous with nightlife and trendy bars. We encountered one such bar in an alleyway that was featured in Schindler's List.

This is the alley as it looks today. 

The alley as seen in the film. 

I kept most of my internal conflict internal during this time. However, I found it difficult to concentrate by this point in the evening. The combination of the magnets and the realities of being in the area where Krakow's Jews lived before they were evicted and sent to the ghetto weighed a lot on my mind. When we were standing in the center of the Market Square in Kazimierz, I literally couldn't look at anything without thinking about the catastrophic loss that occurred not only in Krakow, but in Poland in general. I looked at the windows and saw tombstones staring back. I looked around at people walking through the streets and began playing a righteous gentiles game in my mind. I clearly pictured the most disturbing scene in Schindler's List when the German soldier puts down his gun and plays Bach on the piano while the sounds of machine gun fire and the destruction of the Krakow ghetto is heard in the background. The sophistication of European art and music is dropped disturbingly in middle of savage and inhuman destruction. Then I thought back to the magnets in the store and the beehive of thought came to a boil.

Simply put, I placed too much trust in my emotional distance from events that happened 70 years ago. I've studied the Holocaust in books since I was in 4th grade. I did major college research projects on the NS period in Germany and antisemitism in Europe. However, the page failed to transmit the conflict of thought that exists when something is tangible and no longer existing sole in academic terms. I've walked through Yad Vashem. I've seen the pictures and home movies of a culture and people ripped out of the planet by the roots. Yet I could barely walk down a street that I would not have recognized without a few pictures on a wall in an alleyway. 

I'm not quite sure what else I can say on the matter. I'm still working my way through a bit of a shock in terms of confronting the actualities of contemporary history. It is one thing to read about something. It is quite another to stand where it happened. Yet it seemed almost impossible to be solemn. Music blared from colorful bars. People (myself included) spent lovely evenings with friends sipping drinks and having some laughs in this area that seemed almost haunted. This is only the beginning. My research will include visits to concentration camps and visits to countless museums about genocide education. However, these places tend to be frozen in time. There is an intellectual stability that comes with these places. They are designed to inform rather than illicit emotion. They focus exclusively on what once was. There is no accounting for progress and healing. There no accounting for plump little Jewish figurines smiling blankly into the glare of a coin in their hands sold alongside postcards of Krakow, cobalt china,  and floral-print aprons. It goes back to the beautiful and the perverse sitting on the same stoop.  The inevitable occurs. Life continues but memory and history remain like persistent green plants growing in sidewalk cracks. 

I'm working harder to check where I'm walking. 

It's Hot Up Here

Throughout my 24 years, I've honestly made a career of causing accidents. It's almost miraculous that I've lasted as long as I have. Casualties have included family heirlooms, numerous pieces of china, and, more realistically, my person. I've fallen on my ass in public more than Laurel and Hardy. So, I realized that it would only be a matter of time before I brought my talents across the ocean. Gertrude Stein and Earnest Hemmingway had their writing, Josephine Baker and Isadora Duncan had dancing, and F. Scott and  Zelda Fitzgerald had alcohol, torrid love affairs and mediocre writing. What shall the history books pin my name to? Falling in public.

My class has been moved from the Collegium Chemicum back to Collegium Novum. This is really not of particular interest, but it does play into the story. I was rushing up the stairs to my class which I believed started in five minutes (it actually didn't start until 3pm). In the process, I miscalculated a step and bang, boom, yelling timber. I'm down for the count and I can already feel bruising in my shin and blood pooling in my shoe from where I once had part of a toenail. A collection of Polish students stopped, staring at me with an interest probably not unlike those Joseph Merrick probably received walking through the streets of London. It's impolite too stare, but who the hell would look away?

I hurry to my feet and rush to the classroom to discover that I actually have an hour and forty five minutes at my disposal. However, walking back down the stairs to get the key to my office would mean possible exposure to the legion of students who had just seen me fall. So, I did what any red-blooded American would do: hid in the bathroom for 10 minutes for the next class to start and the halls to clear. 

It's at this point in the story that I need to stop and inform you all of how normal I am.

I decided after emerging that the stairs were not to be trusted and the only safe option was to take the elevator. I push the button and wait a few moments for the elevator to come down from floor 6 to floor 2. However, the elevator was moving at a positively glacial pace. So, to pass the time, I read about Cambridge summer programs via a poster on the department bulletin board. The elevator arrives, and as I'm walking in, the door promptly shuts with me not quite in the car. I'm pinned for a moment, thinking about the rabbit posters on the Paris Metro that I'd only just finished mocking. I feel another bruise forming on my arm from the surprising force of closing door.

In short, by the end of the class, my shin, my shoulder and my toe were damaged, bruised and in moderate pain.

But then again, pain is beauty? Maybe? 

I ended up drowning these sorrows in a bar called "The Proletariate." It's decor is made up entirely of Soviet novelties. These include: a wicker bear, several Soviet Realism paintings, photographs of Lenin and Marx, a giant bust of Lenin's head, and a hog's head wearing a commander's cap (all animals are equal...). All in all, it looked like the place George Orwell and Leon Trotsky would go to hook up. There was something irreverent and fun about it at the same time and it was truly the perfect environment for sipping beer.

In potentially more interesting news, I've experienced a proverbial culinary cabaret the past few days.  I'll break this up into three parts so that you may get a better sense of exactly what I'm talking about.

Cooking with a Hotplate
I learned one of Poland's harshest lessons early. If you are a vegetarian, nothing can be trusted. Pierogies can easily house meat inside their deceptive, delicious shells. Bacon is used as a garnish with alarming frequency. I once ordered pumpkin soup from a small cafe and spent the better part of a minute asking a series of questions to the poor waitress to be sure that the soup was 100% vegetarian. 

What I ask normally: Is this vegetarian? 

What I now realize I have to specify: I consider fish a meat. Is the base chicken or beef stock? Is there some zany Polish surprise where the soup is actually served in a bowl fashioned out of veal cutlets or something?

The end result is me doing a lot of my own cooking. 

So far, I've mastered the following on the hotplate:

Sauteed chickpeas with cherry tomatoes, garlic, onions and a shot of gin.

Chardonnay cream sauce and noodles 

Eggs poached in tomato juice and a hint of vodka.

SIDENOTE: Who knew that "cooking with alcohol" meant you were supposed to put it in the food? 

I'm trying new things without an oven. It's awkward and has a generally confusing vibe (which I normally dig). We'll see where this goes and what else I can come up with. 

Pierogies and Art

It was really only a matter of time before pierogies found their way into my system. Stupid, fattening, delicious pierogies.  I've spent some time actively avoiding them because it would be just like one to have meat in it. At the grocery store, I managed to pick up a couple of packages of pierogies (sauerkraut and mushroom and cheese) and fry them in some olive oil on the old hotplate. However, as I recently discovered, nothing quite compares to stuffing and cooking them yourself. 

Blogs always tend to make the process of cooking traditional foods in foreign countries totally romantic. 

"I lost my wedding ring in a loaf of pan de muerto once because I was so interested in my host's story about her time as a Marxist revolutionary."
"I named the chicken Hilda without realizing her head was about to be cut off."

"People came from all over, contributing vegetables and spices for the sweet potato stew of love."

 They make it sound so easy. 

Don't get me wrong. I had a blast making pierogies (see the delightful pictures Corinne posted on my Facebook) and it truly was a fantastic way to bond. 

That being said, I don't see "pierogie chef" in my future.

The process involves rolling and cutting the dough, stuffing the pierogies and then sealing them so that they won't fall open while being boiled. 

Except they just don't want to %#^ing seal sometimes. It was an act of God that none of them fell apart in the pot of boiling water. Some especially stubborn ones required a subtly made water and flour adhesive. 

In the end, the pierogies were as delightful as the evening. My stomach rumbles now just thinking about them (that cranberry and cheese crepe suddenly seems like it was ages ago). We had a fabulous conversation and the comforts of cooking (despite the difficulty) and speaking in your mother tongue are a wonderful substitute for the things you actually miss (my kingdom for a Texas margarita).

Food and Drink. But mostly drink.

I'm finally getting the point where I don't accidentally order sparking water. By finally getting to the point, it means it has been 24 hours since the last time I ordered sparkling water by mistake. However, I won't waste anyone's time talking about sparkling water when we're really all here to discuss liquor and beer. 

Some of the more interesting things I've tasted so far include:

Bison grass vodka and apple juice. 

Polish beer. Oh, Polish beer. 

Czech beer. It's somehow different from Polish beer. 

Shots of vodka. 

I've found a new appreciation for both vodka and black coffee the past few weeks.

This week will include a visit to Krakow, a workshop on teaching environmental responsibility, and a much-needed reunion with some of my fellow Fulbrighters.

More posts to follow. 

All my love,
Kyle.

PS. I wasn't kidding about the margarita. 

Down the Block There's a Riot

The signs around me still caused some ping of internal alarm (though I knew the chances of actual danger were remote). Airports, simply put, are not the kind of place you like to see placards telling you where to go in the event of an air raid. 

Then again, such things aren’t terribly uncommon when a nation is at war. 

I sat in the large atrium of David Ben Gurion Airport, happily arrived, checked, and thoroughly grilled by El Al security (what did you do in Jordan last year? how did you teach a class if you don’t know Hebrew?), I sat looking at the flight board. I double checked to make sure my flight back to JFK was still happening (of course it was) and to see if the the travel plans of any of my remaining TALMA brethren would be interrupted by any last minute cancelations. However, as the calm that only comes from realizing your travel plans are going exactly as you had planned settled over me, I began thinking about what my mother (I’m sure you’re reading this, Ma, taking a break from all the wedding excitement) always seems to say to me in such situations:

“You are never far from disaster.”

It’s a barb in good humor. My southern family is inclined to worry. Anxiety runs in our bloodlines with the same frequency as brown hair, freckles, or acidic sarcasm and it manifests just as potently. We work in fretting the way an artist might work in marble or pastels. 

In a way, however, my mother has a point. 

Sample comments over the history of my life include:

“He threw WHAT at another kid in Mission Friends?” (a toy car and the son of a bitch had it coming)

“Well, Randy. You’ll never guess what our son did today. He made a dumb waiter out of an Easter basket and all the shoe laces he could get his hands on.” 

“I have no idea why he thought dryer fresh, just folded wash cloths looked enough like Easter eggs for him to feel he should hide them all over the back yard.” (My cousin Megan should also remember this, so should Jennifer since she’s the one who tattled). 

“I tried to warn you before the wedding. Making him the ring bearer was a dreadful choice.” 

“I’m so glad I paid a plastic surgeon to fix the scarring over your eye from your accident so that you could turn around and get your eyebrow pierced.” 

“I told you the chemistry set was an awful idea. Maybe if we move the desk, no one will notice the stain.” 

Rambunctiousness, really. 

My best hypothesis is that my early childhood chicanery stemmed from an underutilized imagination. After I started school, most of these issues went away. I channelled my penchant for mischief into more constructive endeavors (like writing, painting, theatre, cooking, and developing a love of chardonnay and frozen margaritas) and metamorphosed into the well-bred, composed, highly functioning adult you see today. 

I say all this to say that it was only natural that before I left for Poland, I would get a healthy dose of reminding that the crisis in Ukraine, like Ebola, could spread rapidly and without warning. 

I honestly have no clue what they were talking about. In their minds, I’m some patrician sitting in a tree near the frontline, a sniper in a make-shift militia, shivering while fighting off the advancing Red Army. It seemed almost laughable. 

And, especially in retrospect, I can appreciate the humor of the situation. 

So why am I writing this? You’re probably asking it. I do find a good narrative sets up a commentary on global affairs in a more comforting way.

While I was at a bookstore today (side note: I found the English section and came away with enough Truman Capote and J.D. Salinger to last me the next couple of weeks), I waited in line to pay and, like any red-blooded consumer, scanned the shelves of magazines and confectionary used to squeeze pennies out of shoppers with poor impulse control and access to disposable income.

I begin to notice something quite common on all of the magazine covers. They all feature Putin and they all either mention or also depict Stalin. I don’t speak Polish, but the message is clear. 

I immediately assume sensationalism. Magazines are digging into a nations not-so-distant past to drum up sales. It is at that moment, things seem to come full circle.

I think back to the good-natured plug at Fulbright orientation, reminding us to eat apples (boycotted by Russia currently) with the same gentle guidance of “an apple a day keeps the doctor away.” I couldn’t fathom something as simple as eating apples to be a political statement. However, after a few glasses of apple juice and munching a macintosh on the train from Warsaw to Poznan and running across a magazine shelf drawing uncomfortable parallels to a time just before Warsaw saw the Palace of Culture and Sciences rise from the ground like that volcano in Mexico which sprouted from a field in a matter of weeks, I have to do some serious thought into the political climate I walked into.

I think back to what my mother said, silently agreeing that I am (by coincidence) never too far from trouble. 

I pause here to remind everyone of two things: 

Primarily, I don’t know jack about the inner machinations of former Soviet-bloc politics. I have literally no answers and thus cannot reach any conclusion beyond the vocal acknowledgement of my observations. 

Secondly, I am not an alarmist. The point of this is more of a reflection of what I’ve seen rather than a verification of Cold War paranoia. 

Also, I’d kill right now for a hot apple brandy. Can you imagine? In a clear glass mug with a cinnamon stick, steam hovering just slightly above the rim? Is it the alcohol or the smell of apples and cinnamon that is more warming, more filling? It just sounds too divine. 

I don’t recall a day that I’ve been here that I don’t come across some reminder of recent history. There are statues all over the place commemorating the catastrophic loss of life that occurred in Poland at the hands of both invading Germans and Soviets. Entire cities were reduced to rubble (only a thousand people were in Warsaw by the end of the war in Europe). These monuments are solemn, grim, and in many ways are exactly what I would imagine them to be.

I’m not entirely sure what to say. I embark on my research knowing that many of the conversations will be …academically unpleasant. I say this to indicate that I cannot possibly relate to or even understand the process of healing and relapse in chaos which have marked the 20th century here. It’s a process of stitching and hemorrhaging that can’t be comprehended by those of us who were raised on the narratives of the United States in war time. 

When I think of this, I think of Simonova’s sand art. Granted, she was Ukrainian, but there are certainly parallels in narrative. I showed this clip in virtually every class I taught. It was haunting and it was beautiful. There are thousands of possible comments and questions that can arise from a video that is less than 10 minutes long. However, the same one always came up (it’s frankly what I thought the first time I saw it), “Why is everyone crying?” 

There’s the obvious answer. It’s an artistic statement about the history of a people who in a very short amount of time became experts on loss. 

By the time the video ends, we are left with an image of a child (newborn when the war began, now a toddler)  making some faint, bittersweet contact with the ghost of someone whose love he is unable to remember, a love he will spend his entire life only understanding in hearsay and family anecdotes. 

This concept of national loss and national healing is still quite elusive to me. I’m not totally sure what to make of it. However, I feel as though the early stages of this blog would be entirely artificial and incomplete without some reflection on my part over the current state and its relationship to the past century. 

This place was home to the first truly democratic elections in the former Soviet bloc. It houses a history and culture of perseverance, beauty, art, science (Chopin, Copernicus, Sklowdowska-Curie, Wajda, Szymborska, Warlikowski…to name a few). Yet in a modern context, it is also associated with atrocities that are measured in bullets, bomb shells, and unfathomable destruction. 

It’s odd to consider and I realize that my point is not something easily graspable (largely because I’m not sure that I have one and I may just be verbalizing everything that swarms around the hornet’s nest that is my mind right now). Imagine granite blocks etched with the bronze faces of the men and women who were taken by something terrible sitting in a park in front of an immaculate, plush opera house with immaculate tracings in gold leaf.

The Spartan and Athenian existing simultaneously. 

It’s a dreadful metaphor, I recognize this. 

I also recognize that I am yet again pouring sentiment like thick gravy over something that I never intended to be an exercise in emotional outpouring. 

However, I doubt that I could explain the impact that seeing those magazines had on me without some elaboration. 

In honesty, I’m not certain why that image disturbed me as much as it did. 

I didn’t have the guts to take a photograph. Seriously. How would you respond to someone who took a picture of the checkout line? 

However, imagine if you will a picture of Stalin and Putin, both blood-red with the communist banner hanging in the background, surrounded by candy on all sides. Stalin looks ample, healthy and is covered with waving, though tamed hair. Putin, by contrast, looks thin, hairless, and thoroughly untrustworthy. It’s as though you walked into to Willy Wonka’s chocolate room (the Gene Wilder version because obviously) and saw the two of them playing chess. It’s like something out of Orwell. The adjustment from fear to temporary indulgence is so immediate that I guess some pause isn’t out of the question. 

Around this time, however, a woman tapped on my shoulder and pointed the open cashier who had just been calling me for the last few seconds. 

I chuckled to myself as I walked over, wondering if maybe slowing down a line to gaze at a magazine stand was the kind of disaster from which my mother feels I’m never far . 

In Search of Apple Brandy, 

Kyle 

100 Easy Ways to Lose a Man

Or, One Really Complicated Way to Lose an (unwanted) Man 

Written: September 28, 2014, 8:36 pm.

Posted: September 29, 11:30 pm. 

Today’s adventure in Poznan was based almost exclusively in my desire to wander around without a set goal and see as much as I possibly could. This totaled out to be an 8 mile hike through the town, searching for certain things (the old town) and stumbling unexpectedly on others (a bakery with gigantic loaves of bread with seeds and nuts baked right in. I was terrified that the bakery might have a “you selfie with it, you buy it” policy and if I took a picture, I’d be saddled with an 80 dollar loaf of bread the size of a modest wedding cake. However, the smell poured out into the streets with an almost cartoonish presence. I’d just eaten breakfast and my mouth immediately watered. There are certain smells that I never really grew accustomed to growing up. One such scent is baked bread. After I spent perhaps an inappropriate amount of time yesterday writing about burning leaves, I’ll spare the senses from another rant on a smell that virtually everyone likes. Just trust me that this smell was everything wonderful in the world.

This brings me to the Old City. Pardon my French, but holy schweet hell. I’ve spent my entire life dreaming about being in Europe. Specifically, the grand medieval towns that somehow survived the terrible war and remained intact. United States history, being relatively brief, robs modern Americans of the astounding architectural intricacies of Renaissance and medieval central European style. The Poznan old town did not disappoint. 

I’ll pause in our narrative to insert pictures and captions. 

1. Statue with a yellow church behind it with an almost chemical blue sky. 

The inside of the church doesn’t allow photography and mass was actually going on when I walked inside (thankfully, I was quiet and didn’t draw much attention to myself which is in itself a miracle worthy of some sort of religious significance). I’d never seen a church that looked like this since I was in Israel staring at the garish decor of those ancient churches where crusaders slashed their names into stones and where the alleged miracles absolutely happened according to pre-colonialist European fanatics who based the destruction of entire cities and cultures on hearsay. There was a priest in white, a bunch of people sitting in the pews, and walls with no blank space. If it could contain a painting, an alter, or a marble statue, it had one. My response was not what I expected. I usually find religious iconography to be…almost tacky? I have trouble distinguishing between intricate, ancient churches from Carrie White’s house. There’s something vaguely violent about it to me and it makes me feel nervous. However, there was still some kind of beauty here that flashed quickly enough for me to appreciate it for what it was. It was undeniable impressive and maybe it’s just for the best that you cannot take photographs inside. 

2. Pictures of the Old City. My words won’t do it justice. I was privately freaking out but am really working on not being socially incompetent on every continent I find myself on (I failed spectacularly at this later, as you’ll soon discover). 

Here is where our narrative picks back up.

“How I interacted with my first panhandler in Poznan.”

So after these adventures, I make my way the Adam Mickiewicz University campus and sat waiting for the next streetcar when a man holding a sign comes and stands in front of me.

Cold panic immediately sat in. I can say a few words. I can order coffee and buy a streetcar ticket. These are covered in early chapters in my Polish instruction book. 

“Tactfully but firmly refusing to give money to panhandlers while still recognizing the economic injustices of capitalism” isn’t coming for a while.

Honestly, if I had a few zlotys, they would have been all his. However, I just spent my last three on the tram ticket. I tried to quickly explain that I didn’t speak Polish. He then began demanding dollars (the only word in English throughout the conversation) , Euro, and Zloty. I use the word “demanding” to mean “using the word over and over, increasing in volume every time I said ‘no.’” This went on for roughly 30 seconds. He then asked how I bought a ticket with no money (I assume, anyway. I only recognized “ticket” and “no money” out of what he said). I decided enough was enough and opened up my book and continued reading so he’d get the hint. 

He apparently took this as an invitation to sit down next to me and start feeling my pockets for loose change. 

I’m not the kind of person who loses his temper easily with total strangers. To do so would be un-Southern. However, I’m also not the kind of person who likes being touched without permission ever and this instinct trumps manners. 

I bolt up and am scrambling for something to say besides “No.”

My Polish failed me. English would’ve been ineffective. I relied on the only other profanity I knew. With a loud,  "Verpiss dich! Arschloch!" (some of my minimal German)  I bolted up and walked away as quickly as possible. 

I keep walking, embarrassed for making a scene in public, feeling totally violated at the thought of being frisked for pocket change at a tram station, and processing everything that had just happened.

I write now and wonder if I overreacted. Was there a better way out of that situation?
The burden of proof was not on me to show him my empty wallet (with the exception of the 10 rand note that has been in there for four years).  He was in no way entitled to my or anyone else's money. Yet I keep thinking back to this moment as one that I could have avoided without making a splashy, unbecoming display on the third day I’m here. 

I’m now enjoying the last few hours of the evening sipping some more tea (I think it’s pear-flavored), rereading Fun Home, and taking some temporary refuge in the solace of a familiar and beloved book. It’s an absurd and dull cliche, but when we start something new, I suppose we all have to rely on the cliches, the banalities we may privately despise for the sake of juxtaposition. The weaving conflict of newness and a dull but persistent hunger for the familiar results in a mental scramble. At least it does for me. I’m working on sorting that out, so you’ll be so kind as to bear with me. 

Perfectly Marvelous

“Perfectly Marvelous”

Written: September 27, 6:54 pm
Posted: September 29, 11:15 am 

A brief update of every detail of my life since I last wrote.

A Kyle Shook Production

September has historically been my least favorite month. The heat of summer still hovers around and it makes dressing a hell, alright? A living hell. It’s also historically been a period of transition. Although school began in August for me growing up, September was the settling month where the novelty of a new setting wears off and the wolves finally stop sniffing and decide whether to let you hunt caribou with the pack or go for the throat.

I remember distinctly when I was in 10th grade buying a jacket in August that was on sale. It was grey, enormously comfortable and looked like some vintage letterman jacket from the 1950s.

This was also the summer where it was in the 80s until mid-October. However, I insisted it wasn’t too hot to wear and so I showed up to school in it in late September. I spent the entire day with a red face and mopped sweat off of my face, insisting that I wasn’t too warm. I still have a picture of me wearing it that day (it was my younger sister’s birthday) and I looked uncomfortable, unfashionable, and nothing so much as the kind of guy that the guys wearing letterman jackets in the 1950s would shove into a locker. 

This September probably takes the cake for most transitions in a single month. A week ago, I was at the Maryland Renaissance Festival, waiting in an ungodly line for tickets, feeling myself sunburning, and wondering where I would be a week later. Two countries, three cities, two train rides, four cabs and one confession with a priest explaining the dark things I had to do to get tram tickets in Poznan later, I’m sitting in my first Polish apartment (dorm room? I’ll explain later) with the window open. The wind is colder than any September that I have ever known and smells like burning leaves. I swear to God, if I could bottle this smell and wear it always, I would.

Brief pause to talk about the smell of burning leaves. Isn’t it delicious? I don’t think I can imagine the kind of person who doesn’t enjoy the smell of burning leaves. My darling Granny H used to tell me that smelling burning leaves caused cancer and out of everything I believed I was now barred from smelling (birthday candles, incense on Easter, over-cooked burgers), leaves was the most traumatic.

A few months later, however, she informed me that eating ice shavings out of the open freezers at the supermarket also caused cancer and I realized quickly that maybe she didn’t always know what she was talking about.

It’s probably a little too cold to have the window open. I’m sipping hot tea and am increasingly relying on it for warmth. As soon as I finish typing this, I’ll probably have to close it and wrap up in the old-fashioned floral blanket the school provided and settle in to finish Girl, Interrupted. But for the moment, all I can think about is that jacket from my 10th grade year and how I wish I had it now. 

I will take this opportunity to transition into more concrete ramblings for those of you who have survived the onslaught of schmaltz I’ve just exposed you to.

Warsaw.

Oh, Warsaw. 

There are few cities I’ve ever encountered and been totally in love with. Jerusalem falls into this category and that’s about it. Before I came, I was told that Warsaw wasn’t worth visiting. Krakow was better, I’d been told. It was prettier, happier, and Warsaw just looked depressing. This person could not have been more wrong. My initial thoughts while driving from the airport to my hotel were focused on rainclouds and concrete and overwhelming grey. This was probably what the Soviets planned. Big, elaborate houses with tiny allies are opulent and wasteful. Practicality usually trumps beauty. I hate to say that I find validity to this. You might not have grasped this by my previous posts which have probably overdone it to some degree. Yet, there is a lot to be said for inexpensive and functional. However, splashes of color began to pop up. It’s like those posters we all had in our college dorms where there’s a field of tulips in black and white with only one red one standing out. The people on the streets had found a way to manage looking both practical and beautiful. The outfits were meticulous, tailored, neat, colorful, fashionable, etc. I looked at my frumpy flannel shirt, grey sweater, and oversized jeans and felt horrendously out of place. At the same time, I was immediately fascinated.

I’m still fascinated. 

My side-research and Fulbright commitments (Holocaust education in post-communist Poland) will undoubtedly take me back to Warsaw so I will lay off much more explanation and switch the focus to Poznan after a short picture break. 

Random pictures from Warsaw. 

The Old Town is mostly reconstructed. For those who don’t know much about Polish history, almost the entire city was destroyed by the German army prior to the Soviet invasion in response to the failed and catastrophic Warsaw Uprising. 

One of the first things a visitor in Warsaw notices is the Palace of Culture and Science. “Noticed” is an absurd understatement. It’s like going to Washington and “noticing” the white limestone phallic symbol sprouting from the center of town. It’s no secret that most Poles spent years hating this building because it represented the hated Soviet occupation. On a bus tour, my fellow Fulbrighters and myself heard a story about a woman in an apartment near the Palace who wrote to complain that the antennae on the building were exposing her to radiation that caused her to have frequent and enormous orgasms. We all thought it and our tour guide said it. What the hell was she complaining about? 

This was the previous Communist Party headquarters and today it is a stock exchange and the ground floor houses a Ferrari dealership. This contrast is what is most striking to me. The concept of a building designed to display the ideals of the socialist movement, a freedom from materialism, a statement for the cooperation and equality of all (which was not the reality of communist Poland and I am in no way endorsing the communist governments of the former Eastern Bloc) now houses easy symbols of wealth and status. The contrast is too damn screwy not to make note of. 

NOTE: I didn’t take any pictures of the former Warsaw ghetto. Driving through it, you wouldn’t know you were there. There are a few notable monuments but nothing that I was able to photograph.

I think back to the sensation of sitting in the middle of Washington Square Park two years ago. It was a warm day and I was re-reading Fun Home for the thousandth time and I suddenly remembered what Washington Square park used to serve as for the early citizens of New York. I looked around and saw people jogging. Some students were tossing around a frisbee. A man was playing a cello near by. The life, the electricity of living in the city struck me as such a bizarre contrast when I considered that Washington Square Park, as well as Bryant Park and a few other notable public spaces were cemeteries. If I’d cracked through the pavement with a shovel and tossed enough dirt around, I would have shortly hit bones. Not just a few. Not like the movies where someone digs in a garden and comes across a skull. It would be a forest of bones. And yet, it wouldn’t matter. The necessities of progress mandated that the potter’s field be plowed and paved over. It next mandated a fountain, statues, a marble arch, NYU students, the Asch building a few blocks away (formerly known as the Triangle Shirt Waist Factory).

The Warsaw Ghetto was the total opposite. The ground is saturated with the bodies of those murdered by the Third Reicht whose religion mandated burial within 24 hours of death and forbids the disruption of dead bodies. There are apartments, shops, tattoo parlors. A sense of historical distance may be present for non-tourists but all I could focus on was the fact that this is the location of the atrocities which shaped the history of the world. The pictures of the Warsaw ghetto flashed in my mind at every turn. I had no way to locate these images geographically. Even if someone put pictures of places in the Warsaw ghetto to the current locations, I would simply have to trust that person’s honesty. I would have no possible method of verifying whether or not they were telling the truth.

Poznan. Or, Where We Are Now.

My dormitory is located a ways out of Poznan’s fabulous city centre (roughly 20 minutes by tram, not including a 10 minute walk to the tram station). However, that did not deter me from scouting out the down-town area today and exploring. Granted, I was on a mission to get at least a basic supply of groceries (which came to include a loaf of bread, oat milk, tea, Nutella, pasta, goulda cheese, strawberry yogurt, and some apples) and a couple of towels. Also, I am now the proud owner of a Polish cellphone which makes me feel slightly more settled. I visited two malls (one by the train station and a much cooler one in a building that used to be a brewery. I also instantly realized that being in Warsaw spoiled me in terms of English speakers. In Warsaw, I only encountered one person who didn’t speak English. Today, I have used English, broken Polish, broken Czech, broken German, broken Hebrew and Google Translate to communicate with people (mostly ineffectively). 

Below you will find a sample conversation from the melodrama that was me trying to get from my dormitory to the city centre. 

Me: (in Polish) Hello. Tickets for tram where buy?
Woman with wicked cool haircut: (in Polish) lwetrbiuf bdifvweyvf @%@#1dgubdb.
Me: *Tina groan*
Me:(in Polish) Do you speak English?
Woman: (in Polish) No.
Me: (in Polish) German? 

Woman: No.

Me: Other?
Woman: Czech.
Me: ....
Woman: ...
*tram comes. Everyone leaves*

Me: That's okay. I'll wait for the next one. Surely someone on it will speak English.
*dies alone* 

I’m honestly amazed that my limited social skills have served me as well as they have in the US. It was only bound to get worse when I spilled the banks of English. 

In short, the past week has flown by yet seemed as though it has taken years. It’s an odd combination of everything going quickly at yet seeming stagnant at the same time.

We’ll see what the next week has in store. 

Always,
Kyle