Friday, March 27, 2015

the situation in Czechoslovakia 2015

Life here becomes increasingly frustrating.
How can I say that there's been no progress here since 1996?
That's what I think.
Telephones and pads, computers--none of that is progress.
Minds are becoming filled with garbage, and even the dreams that students have seem to be becoming increasingly circumscribed and hollow.
And I am not allowed to comment or mention these facts.
It would be considered rude.
So, please allow me to repeat what I've said before.  There is a basic problem here (and I don't say it isn't in the USA; it is.) which Kafka already described.  It pre-dates Communism.
So, if I say there's been no progress since 1989, I am not making a remark that is especially about Communism.
Unfortunately, since I hail from the cruel empire of the USA, I can't say that without being misunderstood.  So, now, please allow me to cancel the misunderstanding:  I am not claiming that the USA is in any way superior.  The USA is a mess.  Nonetheless, I see no substantial progress in this region since 1996.

The Internet is One Big Tax Form

The Anthropologist David Graeber has written some interesting things.  I'm not completely overwhelmed by everything he's written that I've read, but I do respect him.

On the other hand, recently I read something where he was asking how many hours we waste filling in forms.

He seems to miss the point that the Internet is increasingly a series of small boxes that we've got to fill out following someone else's rules.  And it is a nightmare.  As if every day had become tax day.

It is possible that there are classes among Internet users.  Maybe some individuals (University Professors) spend less of their time having the Internet rammed down their throat.

But as I hunt among too-small boxes with excessive redundant and unwanted information, trying simply to get the information an old fashioned paper map conveys with ease, I would like to curse and smash my laptop to pieces.  (I am trying to find out which bus I should take to go to a nearby company where I am supposed to teach English.) The Internet ain't fun when we use it for work which is forced upon us by the need to survive.  

Tuesday, March 24, 2015

obscenities

I know that dictatorships
tyrannies,
do not respect the right to privacy,
our personal space,
where we grow love between persons,
family,
and others.

Most obscene of all
is the fact that
among the lost letters
which my mother has never received
are poems,
very personal poems,
reflecting upon my father's love,
my father,
who died last year,
and whose loss I feel.

I wanted to console my mother,
to tell her that I remember my father,
and think of him,
every day,
that I appreciated him,
that I still love him.

I wanted to tell her that she is,
to that extent,
less alone with her grief.

Someone has stolen this from me,
and her.

Saturday, March 21, 2015

A delicate subject

Today I am writing about a delicate subject, one which I cannot quite get my head around.  I may say something false.  I trust my readers to be charitable.

It seems to me that among Czechs there are two possible polar and opposed attitudes towards Americans, and, I speculate, foreigners in general.

When I need to wash my clothes, I have to deal with a sort of oppressed class, the door-keepers of the University's dormitories.   I know their job is boring, and can't be well paid.  And I suspect that they may have a supervisor who is not always kind.  But to me they often seem cold, indifferent, or even sour.  In the past, some were overtly friendly--so long as one didn't ask too many questions.  In my first three months, I did manage to achieve a sort of friendship with one lady, in a building where I then lived.  She has been the exception.

Of course, it is a pain in the ass to put my name on a waiting list for washing machines.  And it is a nuisance to spend time walking across a busy street with nervous, impatient cars that may or may not slow down to allow you to cross ( an obscenity) to the enormous dormitory which houses students, and request the keys to the (a) washing machines, (b) laundry room.

Not only are the machines behind a locked door.  Each machine requires a key to use.  That seems like excessive paranoia to me.  Who thought up that sort of idiocy?

Is the University so short of funds that it must extract every last crown from every visiting scholar, teacher, and student?

Just as in the city buses--with their proud labels telling us to thank the EU for funding--use the latest technology to monitor passengers and make sure no one rides without paying.  In fact, the large boxes which allow a passenger to prove that he or she has paid take up an inordinate amount of space on the grab bars in the bus---which would otherwise be useful for the passenger to grab hold of and prevent falling over. When I ride those buses, by the way, I don't feel grateful to the EU. On the contrary, the buses are nothing special.  They are high off the ground, and bounce around like an amusement park ride--but there is nothing amusing about a bus ride.  And I won't even mention the fact that the buses  today are routinely over-crowded just as were the buses in Bratislava in 1996 when I rode them then.  So much for the great progress represented by EU membership.

I suggest, hypothesize, dare to suggest that among Czechs there are two contradictory attitudes toward Americans:  either naive admiration or a kind of cold discomfort  That's been my experience.  I wasn't surprised that a dishonest American had managed to go to a local film festival pretending to be a famous actor.  When I heard that story, I am sorry to say that my reaction was to say that this was not surprising.  

Those who admire America (the USA)--often on the basis of dubious and incomplete evidence--are aware of the xenophobes among them, and regard them with disdain.

I am caught in the middle.  My country is not democratic but plutocratic, imperialist, and racist.   Those words cannot be said or heard.  If I say them, my audience typically scoffs at me in a tone suggesting I am an idiot or a fool.  

There is much to say here, but I think the essential problem was described in the well-known book that (I am told) no one reads, in Hašek's adventures of Schwejk.  And that must be the ultimate irony.  Here's a book which pre-dates Communism, and which diagnoses the problem.  It is a book which political leaders bestow upon foreign visitors, while they indulge policies which illustrate the madnesses described by Hašek.  (Why should membership in NATO, to take an example any more serve the interests of the Czech Republic than participation in the army of the Austrian Emperor?)

I hear a voice saying:  You shouldn't complain; it's better than communism.  (This is a locally opular universal retort, a universal conversation (and thought) stopper.)

And another voice says:  Yankee go home!---But, then why am I here?  Well, I have something here I wouldn't have if I did return home:  health insurance.....


Wednesday, March 18, 2015

Bloody Murder USA style

As my father's birthday approaches, I think of him.....and the way he was killed...

Oh yes, they murdered him,
and I know that as surely as I know
that the ladies of the dormitories of the University of Pardubice
mingle resentment and anger and pure nastiness and spite
whenever I speak to them,
them,
with their superior nasty airs....

My father was murdered by a for-profit system,
which does not care, 
and it doesn't even give a damn;
yet some insignificant and ignorant man named John Boehner 
dares to label it the best in the world.

They murdered him when they isolated him 
from everyone who loved him,
and tore him away from the surroundings he knew,
putting a senile eighty-nine year old man in a bed without railings
where he was bound to fall,
putting him in an under-staffed house of torture
which they called a "facility".

They killed him with their imposed isolation,
loneliness,
waking alone at night,
in the dark,
in a cold and unfriendly place,
where there was no wife's hand to hold his,
no friendly voice to acknowledge him.

That was cruel torture.
and I do not forgive his murderers.
They have not earned forgiveness:
they continue their cruel business,
sucking the blood and the dollars out of the sick and the weak. 

Tuesday, March 3, 2015

Crimes unpunished, crimes unrecognized?

Is it a crime at all?
Around 13 January I returned to the Czech Republic.
Give-or-take a week-and-a-half after that, I sent a letter to my mother.
Today is the 3rd of March.
I continued to write her once a week.
She has, so far, received not one letter.  And, realizing this, I stopped writing her two weeks ago.

It's been about six weeks since the first letter was mailed.  

What does this mean?

During that time my mother has mailed me one letter.  I received it, and it took about a week to arrive.

Has a nationalist American decided that the Czech Republic is home to crazy Muslims?
Has a Czech person started collecting my letters.

Letters with photos and poems.  Intimate things.

I realize now that when I sit down to write, I approach things differently.  My state of mind is very different than when I communicate with my mother via Skype.

And that more intimate form of communication and expression has now been stolen from me.
And, no, the Internet cannot in any way make up for that......

Monday, March 2, 2015

factories

people who work in factories deserve no less respect than the rest of us.

But I don't think that when I go shopping, I am doing much more than surviving and contributing to the unearned wealth of another person.  In the Czech REpublic, as often as not that person getting rich off my life is a German, or a Brit....but usually not Czech.

So if I complain when I'm shopping at Lidl that I am obviously not experienced enough in assembly line work, that's because it is unpleasant to be constantly disciplined via speed-up.

In fact, I don't think hospitals are or should be factories, and I don't think factories should be factories.
That's to say that I think a more humane way of producing the goods we all need is possible.
And that's not a criticism of those who work in factories.
They deserve better than they have.
And I don't think I belong to a special class of people who have escaped factory work because I deserve it.  I was just lucky.

This is by way of apology to a man who overheard me complaining in Lidl.