Die Vampire, Die

It is, roughly, a two and a half-hour ride from Bucharest to Brasov by train.

The station itself is the epitome of socialist-realism. The corridors are large, unsentimental, and entirely the same color. Efficiency is present with a subtle, vaguely sinister hint of the intimidating nationalism that so heavily defined the Socialist Republic of Romania. The corridors are deceptively large. It reminds me in many ways of the Piața Unirii (Unification Square, formerly the Boulevard of the Victory of Socialism which doesn’t roll off the tongue as nicely). This, too, is enormous in proportion while not looking especially large at initial glance. It features enormous fountains that spray typhoons of water into the air (still virtually useless against Bucharest’s infamous heat) and is close to the Palace of Parliament which, after the Pentagon, is the second largest building in the world. While walking in both of these areas, it becomes clear that the atmosphere is one of grandeur that seems to oppress more than impress. One’s steps are inadequate to propel forward motion and, despite one’s best effort, walking can provide the unsettling simulation of standing still.

The train itself is a slight improvement on the Polish Intercity Trains. The open compartments are considerably less stifling than the actual closing carriages on the ICE trains and outlets provide electricity (although there is no wifi). However, for this particular train voyage, wifi is unnecessary. Looking out the window as the flat areas around Bucharest begin to gain texture and character, forming the foothills of the Carpathians and, eventually, Transylvania’s iconic mountainous landscape. To say my interests are in anything but folklore and the supernatural would be untrue. My thoughts the entire ride center around werewolves, vampires, and the other spooky subjects of childhood fascination. Privately, I believe that they have good reason to associate this area with the supernatural. I am told that film-makers wishing to convey the Appalachian mountains now flock to Transylvania because it is still relatively free from human development. I think of Lon Cheney stumbling around as he turns into a werewolf (I know, I know, the film takes place in Wales), Count Dracula, Young Frankenstein, Rocky Horror, and Vasalisa stumbling through the forest with an illuminated skull providing her with just enough light to keep her from stumbling off a cliff and breaking her neck. Granted, many of these stories are not based in Romania. However, it makes a powerful commentary that Hollywood is so willing to provide this area with the moniker of the birthplace of horror and the supernatural.

The landscape certainly lends itself to it. The hills go quickly from rolling and lush to blunt, jagged, and dangerous. The forests are still dense, occasionally broken by the white shock of a small cemetery with ice-colored tombstones and a small shrine to an Orthodox Saint. Wooden churches, homes of the Romanian Orthodox Church still dot the country-side and occasionally, a bearded man in a black cassock stands in front of one sweeping or perhaps just enjoying the afternoon sunshine which glows warm off of the jade-green hills. A man gets on the train at one of the stops, using a wooden cane to ensure he won’t bump into anything. His eyes are covered with dark glasses and he holds small icons of the Virgin. These icons are somewhat new to me, vastly different from the Catholic depictions of Madonna and the Christ Child. Jesus here looks entirely grown, simply miniature, Mary’s face and contour give her a somber, vaguely forlorn expression, and both are surrounded by clouds of starlight. Though I cannot understand much of what he says, I gather he’s selling them for two lei each.

What does, however, strike me is the shocking juxtaposition of the train stations along the railroad in the backdrop of the Carpathians. The wildness, the dangerous untamable geography of the area is somewhat undermined by socialist-realist stations: over-sized marble halls with large concrete courtyards. Within these courtyards are often concrete picnic tables and the faint contour of clover and weeds subversively growing through the cracks in the cement, a signifier that maintaining these areas is not necessarily a priority. The geometry and order of these buildings seems almost comical. Behind one such station, a man and his dog heard copper-red cows down the road towards a pasture for grazing. Further ahead, a teenage girl leads grey, ash-colored sheep towards a stream (not to be confused with the tumbling mountain river encased in concrete and polluted with plastic bags and tires). The juxtaposition of tradition and now-neglected modernization, a superimposed infrastructure of balance that, upon the collapse of an ideology, now seems grotesque and out-of-place in the rugged naturalism of the area.

The Brasov train station is, of course, designed in a similar style. It is large, angular, with vaulted ceilings, excessive natural lighting, and filthy floors whose last cleaning may have antedated Perestroika. The town is known for its retention of some semblance of old-Transylvanian charm: lots of Orthodox churches dating back to the middle-ages, an old town straight from Vampire Hollywood film-making. The streets are still flooded with chocolate-brown water from a large thunderstorm which has left the air heavy, wet, and stinking of ozone. This, however, is not my final destination. With some difficulty, I locate the second bus-station, an unceremonious, depressive little affair some 5km away from the Brasov station. The bus that will take me to Bran is a relic. It is dust-brown inside with seats upholstered in textured carpet. Crosses and icons hang from suction cups on the windshield and the driver plays nothing but ABBA the entire drive. There is no air conditioning, leaving the compartment smelling stale with wet feet from those who had just stepped out of the rain. A banner hangs from the rear-view mirror that says in dirty, faded fabric: Romania.

Bran itself is a town that has a keen sense of where its bread is buttered. The Bran Castle rests prominently on a hill, again providing a strange entanglement of the classical with modernized infrastructures (roads, themed restaurants, tourist stalls). The castle itself is notable for possibly being the source of Dracula’s Castle in Stoker’s infamous epistolary novel. It seems disappointing in some ways. In the novel as well as in Nosferatu (the best adaptation of the text despite being legally distinct from it), the concept of isolation, fear, and remoteness seem intertwined. Hutter is dumped suspiciously and fearfully by a coachman who will go no further in the dark towards Orlok’s castle. When the symphony of terror begins to warm, Hutter is miles away from anyone, subject to bloodlust and sexual advances from the grotesque Count. Should he scream, he would be unheard, and, even if he were, superstition and self-preservation would prevent the villagers from intervention. Here, however, Hutter would not need to bother shouting. He could simply walk down a hill and wait for the next coach while enjoying a short-stack and coffee at the nearest restaurant. Furthermore, the castle itself maintains little interest in legend. There is, as it turns out, no conclusive proof that Stoker was even aware of the castle’s existence when he wrote the novel. It is more famous in documented terms for being restored by Queen Marie of Romania (an offspring of Victoria). However, the whole system operates under the unfortunate assumption that tourists are intrinsically more interested in Romanian history and the architectural end-game of inbreeding between the Crown Heads of Europe than in vampires.

The stalls beneath the castle (and the gift-shop itself) still sell vampire mementos, trinkets such as mugs and metal icons of Vlad III (which can be found across Romania). There are, also, exact replicas of the icon the blind man had been peddling on the train. These, however, cost 5 lei. I wait for the bus which will take me back to Brasov and, in turn, Bucharest when I notice the spectacular view of the hills in the distance. I attempt for eight minutes to capture a photograph, a visual representation of the daunting natural beauty of the area, the land devastated during the War, the land rebuilt with concrete and marble, the land synonymous with terror and threats that do not make themselves known until it is too late. However, it is impossible to capture one without buildings, telephone wires, or the grey scars of concrete roads shouting louder and rising higher than the peeks of distant mountains.

I Didn't Know What Time It Was

Today marks one month left in Poland.

My one regret is not watching more Netflix.

The Sun Won't Set

8 o'clock. Twilight.


How the hell am I going to get 9 months of living into one suitcase?

9 months is enough time to make a baby. If I were in delicate condition on my first jour in Poland, that fetus would be at 8 months. It would have been considered a person in Oklahoma for 7 and a half months. That is 8 months of cold nights, missed trams, fruit that went bad before I ate it. Lost keys in cabs in Warsaw, realizing I'd worn twin holes in my best shoes.

 5 months ago, I had been horrified to see the sun setting at 3:30.

It is now 9 o'clock and it's still perfectly light. The daylight has melted admittedly into more neutral tones, leaving the sky pale blue with splashes of orange and a delicate pink the color of powdered pink lemonade. It's almost diabetic. Those precious 5 and a half hours of daylight were not free. Those were the result of working well into the dark teaching writing courses, dreading the wait for the dram in the cold, spending lonely tram rides back to almost the last stop on the route by reading Emily Dickinson, wondering what her opinions might be on American politics and culture.
Would Emily Dickinson watch Orange is the New Black? I made such a mental note to myself once as I stared at the burning yellow lightbulbs bounce clumsily off of an almost- frozen Lake Malta while the street car sat, perfectly snug and motionless while a pileup of trams in front of it brought the tracks to a standstill. By that point, we had gained an additional hour and a half of light in the day.

By March, I had come to accept the turbulence of weather. I still carried around a thick knitted jacket, debating on whether I would take it back with me to the states or leave it in a charity bin. It would be absurdly oversized on most people and would, more practically, make a nice home for a destitute warren of rabbits. However, they will go wanting. It is making the trek with me across the ocean next month back to the United States where it will remain packed and worthless until November (11 months after I first bought it in Munich, when the days had just begun to drastically shorten). However, it was in late March that the days once again began to expand. I thawed from the dark, depressing days of January when I was unable to appreciate much due to homesickness, cold, and a few fleeting hours of sun a day. I spent those mostly indoors where I didn't need the damn jacket anyway.

I think too of the shoes, the brown pleather moccasins. I had purchased them after losing one of my green boating shoes (ironically) to two feet of brown mud on the banks of the Potomac River. Those shoes had been troopers. They survived being chewed on by a dog, months of standing in front of a classroom while I pleaded with students to see the significance of "A Doll's House" (most of them didn't). In the end, I left the river that day with one shoe. The other, as far as I know, is still encased in mud and river-water somewhere in suburban Washington. I bought these brown moccasins which I wore today later that afternoon after being delighted to find something in my size and not made of leather. I noticed they contained a hole in Sarajevo walking back to the car (whose driver had been unwilling to drive down the hill in the snow) from the Olympic ruins. Ski slopes hid in the distance like titanic ghosts (gigantic and ludicrously difficult to see for something so large) behind the dominating fog of falling snow. The terrain was perfectly round, smothered in a solid foot of snow, the slate icon shouted out the words in chemical orange, looking grave-like against the pines and elements, "Sarajevo, 1984." As I took my first picture, I noticed my foot felt wet. It was a total reversal of the day I bought the shoes. The heat of Virginia in May was replaced with Bosnian winter and yet my shoes fared no better. My black sock soaked up the melting ice, chilling my foot instantly. I kept the shoes, wearing them out further on dry days, experiencing the expansion of daylight nestled firmly in their well-worn, broken-in familiarity that can only come from a truly excellent pair of shoes. However, as I glance at them across the room (still illuminated at 9:00 even though I haven't turned on any electric lights in the room), I realize that they have reached the end of their days. They will be disposed of (I sound like Ayn Rand).  I'm now of the green shoes (similarly worn-out and comfortable) and how it had been an unwelcome sacrifice to lose them while boating.
I had wanted to berry pick that day.

The rest that remains to be sorted is a collection of papers. Meaningless receipts, post-cards, ticket-stubs from museums, ballets, the opera. Sketches drawn too hastily and disregarded. Letters written to those I love, confessing what I could never imagine confessing, expressing how the thought of them made my stomach ache from recognizing the void brought on by their absence, reeling from the accusation that I was an abandoner, someone who would sooner leave what he loved than face stillness in his life.
These, too, will be disposed of. However, the shoes are a considerably harder loss.

In one month, I have read, there will be six hours of darkness in the span of 24 hours. I will likely both go to sleep and wake up in light. However, the space will grow increasingly empty as I fill suitcases and backpacks with what I will carry back to the states. Fewer shadows will be cast against the walls by pre-mature morning. Such, however, seems to be the progression of things. The days expand.

The sky has turned into a total blueness now.
Sunset approaches.

The Night That Goldman Spoke at Union Square

Emma Goldman, July 9th, 1917: It is organized violence on top which creates individual violence at the bottom.  It is the accumulated indignation against organized wrong, organized crime, organized injustice which drives the political offender to his act.  To condemn him means to be blind to the causes which make him.  I can no more do it, nor have I the right to, than the physician who were to condemn the patient for his disease.  You and I and all of us who remain indifferent to the crimes of poverty, of war, of human degradation, are equally responsible for the act committed by the political offender.  May I therefore be permitted to say, in the words of a great teacher:  “He who is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone.”  Does that mean advocating violence?  You might as well accuse Jesus of advocating prostitution, because He took the part of the prostitute, Mary Magdalene.

Livestream:

11:01am: Exit domicile.
*notices red and white flag fluttering from building*

That's odd. It must be understood that patriotism has taken different forms here. In the United States, the barrage of stars and stripes, the symphony of tasteful primary colors which have become cliche in Americana are common, not to be missed. Americans, by and large, are willing to express their patriotism visually because it is simpler. An act as basic, as common as waving the American flag is, in itself, innately political. Similarly, defacing the flag becomes a rallying cry of the right wing, willing to say (without detecting the irony) that men and women died for that flag. The flag assumes its own identity as something to be paraded and protected like a prize-winning poodle. To help me illustrate this point, please welcome Ms. Edith Bouvier Beale

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_0IhqWd6fE

It's nothing uncommon. However, I have seen more flags today than I have in 7 months of living in Poland. It's unsurprising. The third of the month is Constitution Day. Today, however, marks something different: Worker's Day.

On July 9, 1917, Goldman spoke to a jury which sought to imprison her under charges of "inducing persons not to register," citing the quotation above in her argument. A tireless advocate for women, workers, and birth control, Goldman was, in simple terms, a threat. Privately, I believe the US government had good reason to be afraid. Workers had just shot the capitalists in Russia, toppling a dynasty, and were working towards the formation of the USSR. Workers in Manhattan, contrary to popular media, had not always been so content to take money for work. When women seamstresses went on strike, they were beaten by police, attacked by hired prostitutes, and tossed around with little concern. Goldman appeared in a purple dress and, through use of cool rhetoric and common sense, advocated that the principles of Americanism and common decency protected her right to distribute anarchist pamphlets and newspapers to the workers.

The jury disagreed. She would then serve two years in prison alongside Kate O'Hare, a fellow socialist.

11:10
Nothing seems to be open (Workers' Day) and yet I needed soap to do laundry and some olive oil to use to cook dinner. The air has turned cold again. A liquor store stands open, four men smoke cigarettes in the doorway.

December 21, 1919
Goldman sits in the New York Port of Embarkation. She has not been told when or where she is going and reflects privately on the cowardly and secretive nature of the whole affair. She would, she realize, be taken from this land, the melting pot, the land of opportunity for those who did not need it. Her work would end. New speakers would rise from the cesspool of American capitalism to challenge the norms of treatment, to advocate for better pay, better hours, and more humane conditions. Perhaps there was a chill as she walked, step by step, towards Soviet Russia on boat called the Soviet Ark.

She would return later, prior to the war. She would speak favorably of Franklin Roosevelt. Before her death, she would suffer a stroke rendering her incapable of speech. She died silent, capable of hearing, capable of sight, but unable to utter a sound.

The cartoons would say "good riddance."

11:33
I find an open store. A woman stands behind the counter, surrounded by boxes, loaves of bread wrapped in plastic, oranges still packed in crates. She speaks no English and I see no machine that would take credit cards.

I return home empty-handed.

Excited and Scared

I’m riding on the train from Newcastle to Edinburgh, having presented research on the impact of Civil War death on popular literature of the time. My nerves have not entirely calmed from the anxiety of academic presentation. You all know what I’m talking about. There is no one to blame but yourself. You signed up, you printed the damn thing, and now it’s just a simple mater of reading it. In the present, however, there is only the lingering dampness of sheer terror at public speaking to a room in which you can see everyone’s  face, and a series of visual cliches rolling beside my window. I shall, for lack of anything better to do, relay these images as faithfully as possible.

On either side are rolling green pastures, fields turned, with blood-warm soil churning around with what has been dried and stomped upon. Some are emerald green, dappled with bushes sprouting goldenrod flowers (it seems impossibly cold for these), populated by sheep, wooly, hearty, and exploitable. I think for a moment of Animal Farm. The chorus of ovine simpletons chanting “four legs good, two legs bad” (I recall hearing that “Beasts of England” went to the tune of “Darling Clementine”).  I remember wondering in my core when I read that book whether or not they almost deserved it. Did their stupidity warrant Jones? Did it warrant Napoleon? But then I realize it’s all an allegory, a metaphysical speculation. In reality, sheep do not talk, nor learn to read (in a moment of consistency with metaphor). These creatures seem content to walk across green meadows, followed by lively lambs with frost-colored skin who skip with hearty foot and breath salt-air from the sea between bites of clovers. 

The moment, I decide, reminds me more of James Harriet (a remnant of the Shook family pilgrimages to Orlando, always accompanied in a vaguely Chaucerian sense by the tales of veterinary science and mayhem that seemed to follow James and Helen Harriet on a day to day basis). In retrospect, I might have preferred The Pardoner’s Tale to Harriet. At any rate, the metaphor was easier. 

In the distance, the sky seems to battle between a blue cosmos the shade of an easter egg and colonies of slate-grey. I imagine these titans have produced some rain. There is an animation to them, the lines which seem to absolve them of definite shape are at work. 

In front of them, a rainbow has formed, neatly touching from hill to hill as a sea the color of iron splashes against the white sands. A woman walks in a brown coat and high rubber boots, leading a horse, pausing for a moment to catch her breath (or perhaps to look off into the abyss of ocean that separates her from a continent). The water looks deep and cold, with the wind blowing sprays of salt-water off of its crests.  It’s the first time I’ve thought of the ocean as poisonous. 

I feel very strongly about setting a scene. Is it vital that you see the rows of trees (still naked from a northern winter)? Perhaps not. However, to skip them would be inauthentic, excluding a narrative’s Emerald City (I leave for Ireland in the morning). 

I think of the events of the week. One week ago, I was in Berlin, thinking of passover, and all the colors I would dye my hair if I lived there. Two nights ago, I was standing in the vaults of a bridge, hearing of the people who dwelled within them, eating oysters in the dark and tossing their shells without much concern for hygiene. I was told, too, of the amount of money one could get for the body of a healthy male (with no signs of sickness or trauma). 

Rocks quarried from an old volcano were insufficient, it was discovered, to keep out water. 

We walked, too, through a graveyard dating back to the 1500s. We stand alongside graves topped with acorns, cavernous mausoleums that remained locked without explanation as to what is being kept out or in.

Yesterday at this time, I was underground in a quadrant of the city that had been covered for the sake of progress (an impressive building covers it now). We hear of families visited by doctors clad in leather cloaks and bird-beak masks stuffed with herbs to keep out sickness, a white flag signifying to all who walked by that sickness dwelled within (better than the rumors that the ill were bricked in and left to die without transmitting the disease). We hear the tale of a man who spent the last moments of his life surrounded by a murder of crows, soot-black and unholy, drawing closer with each step he took. We see doors that must remained closed because the wallpaper was saturated with Arsenic (a specialty of the Victorian time). It is, perhaps, most unnerving to walk in places that once hosted life, once were too crowded to move, that now sat empty, entered only by those who are looking for a good scare. 

The World You Never Thought to Explore

There are few things quite as wonderful as a guest.

This is a fact as universally acknowledged as more popular assertions perpetuated by Ms. Austen.

After 6 months of dividing life between Poland and America, my dear friend Tory Johnson visited me for a week of fun and games.

I am notoriously awful at playing host. Ask any of the prospective Mercerians from North Hall High School who visited me. They will tell you about my lackluster ability to talk up things that have become common.

Sample dialogue includes:
-"And what is this?"
-"Oh. It's the quad."
-"It's beautiful."
-"Yeah, I guess."

Even now, Poznan has become base camp, ordinary, and unremarkable (to me). It's a beautiful, historical city. However, existing somewhere long enough for the loveliness, the novelty to fade causes an attitude of indifference that one can only have when showing the place s/he lives off to someone who has never been there. I struggle to think of what one must see versus what one could see. There is the gorgeous town square, the Baroque churches, the vast public spaces where the modern and the classical blends against the medieval like patches of earth viewed from an airplane, cafes with sipping chocolate, pierogi... How could it fill a day?

However, the following two days were something of a Jolly Holiday with 76 trombones. It felt wonderful to have someone from the states visit, the excitement of showing them around places that are new to them, seeing spaces as if they were brand new...getting kissed on the head by a stranger probably asking for drug money, and the satisfaction of not totally screwing up someone's time in Poland.

From there we went to Warsaw, staying in the Old Town and walking around the streets that have hosted John Paul II, Chopin, and Marie Curie (the trifecta of must-know Polish historical figures). We enjoyed warm weather. We ate in a restaurant that looked like it had been drawn in sharpie and searched through antiques for pins, medals, and posters. From there, we went to the Jewish Museum, cramming over 1000 years of history into 4 hours. Exhausted, tired, but entirely satisfied, we schlepped our way to Lublin, Mary, spinach tarts, and my first non-undergraduate conference.

The wonderful thing about all of this was that I, too, was able to experience new things in Poland. The delight of learning about a place you'd dismissed as familiar is incomparable, even more so when you are discovering it side-by-side with a devoted old friend.

 I mean, who else would quote Disney on top of the Palace of Culture and Science?

Every Day a Little Death

Marie Curie 

for Danielle 

I am, for reasons I do not know, quite anxious to take her picture. 

Bitter iron woman, cast in meal, pockets filled, I imagine, with the elements

that would eviscerate her. 

She clutches no prizes (though she won a gold medal in gymnasium) and holds

at her side her precious journals, today stowed away, still lethal to the touch. 

The statue does not, regrettably, convey the loss of a husband, the loss of a god, or fainting from hunger when she forwent sustenance to sustain her studies. 

I had once been told that there exists film of her preparing her meals while conducting

research with highly radioactive materials, her hands still contaminated with uranium. I 

imagined the plate and its contents as acid green, chemical and inedible-looking as she

ate, unaware that the would would call her brave, essential enough to preserve in metal and print, dressed in the blue wedding dress that she would wear in her laboratories. 

“The greatest woman humanity has ever produced,” she would be called. Tourists would stand in the streets of Warsaw to photograph the vaulted halls where she once lifted her first test-tube.

Indeed, she might think, unknowingly dying slowly with each step she took, that such a distinction is quite a burden.