In the Pantheon

Here I am in the Pantheon...

Oh Candide!....

"I have got to make everything that has happened to me good for me.” --Oscar Wilde

The eternal optimist Candide returns from lifelong strife to marry Cunégonde, and quite simply, to plant a garden. There's nothing left for him to do.

There was a point about five years ago here when I thought I should volunteer on a farm, but since I can't stomach the scent of manure, this would have been a bad idea.

This photo actually is of the Pantheon in Paris, where Voltaire is buried. You can just barely see the sphinx, and Foucault's Pendulum.

I was reminded of Voltaire while looking at photos of our trip to the Pantheon in Paris this summer. It was originally built as a church to honor the patron saint Genevieve, but was later rededicated as the temple of France, and as a resting place for its great "men," (Marie Curie is interned there), foremost among them, Voltaire.

The Bernstein opera Candide is one of my favorite pieces of music. What a witty libretto written by Lillian Hellman, and the music Bernstein wrote to accompany it is just as witty to match. It's a real brain tickler. I've felt on many occasions, since singing it in choir at Hunter College, that it's my theme music.

With every mishap, disappointment, bad turn, I try to find some hidden jewel of wisdom. I try to think, like Candide, that if this or that unforunate thing hadn't happened to me, I wouldn't have been led to do such and such a thing, which is really what I wanted, after all. On the other hand, I am also quite pessimistic. Voltaire originally intended Candide as a parody of optimism. Every disappointment leads us to a new and surprising place. In the end, it leads us to the right place, even if we hadn't intended on going there.

I'm not sure if there's any point in this. Just passing it along to anyone who might be passing by here...

Learning a language sharpens the mind, and other ruminations...

I've read that learning a language is a good defense against dementia. Dostoevsky reportedly learned Greek later in life. Some advice books recommend language learning as a means to sharpen one's native language skill. I've read that many talented writers learned several languages.

Perhaps learning Dutch has made me a better writer, or a smarter person, who can judge? Certainly, I couldn't compare myself with Dostoevsky. I am now attempting to learn Swedish.

The more I hear spoken Swedish, the more I want to master it. It's such a beautiful language, and it's a language I've wanted to learn my entire life, unlike Dutch.

While in Paris this summer I picked up Gregorius by Bengt Ohlsson in translation at Shakespeare and Company. What a brilliant read. He's supposed to be one of Sweden's most talented contemporary writers.

I've sometimes thought that I would be happier if I'd ended up in Sweden, instead of The Netherlands. Of course, with the cold and dark winters, I'd probably just have more to complain about. People like to claim that the Swedes are cold and unapproachable, but I can't imagine that they could be much more disinterested than the Dutch. Any culture has got to be difficult to break into, and there's nothing like the comfort level of one's own culture. If only I were less reticent, I might have made a greater success here.... I must admit to identifying with the Swedish demeanor on a visit there in summer 2000.

Several months ago I read on the Internet that Sweden has the most progressive prostitution laws in the world. They used to have the same prostitution laws as the current Dutch laws, but after realizing that legalized prostitution is a total failure that only sanctions the illegal traffic in women and children, they developed a simple, yet brilliant strategy: Criminalize the client, ie, jail the men! What a revolution! Finally, tackling an ill from the predatory side. If you criminalize the demand for prostitution, you curb the demand. They also found that such an approach improves the position of women in society in general!

I was so happy to read this. It made me want to jump on a plane to Sweden right away. Not only do they have some of the most liberal women and child friendly maternity leave laws, the most successful daycare system, a progressive policy toward bullying in school (educate everyone), but they're doing something to help change one of society's greatest problems today: prostitution and trafficking. It should have been thought of thousands of years ago, but the Swedes are doing it today.

I don't think this will ever happen in The Netherlands. The Dutch government is too happy with the tax revenue it gets from prostitution. I'm not sure what they're doing about illegal trafficking, but I'm afraid that it probably isn't much. From what I've read in the newspapers, they're very good at looking the other way, and claiming that their policies are working, when they are a failure.

When I moved here I noticed that there was a lot of hostility toward women generally, and me in particular, on the street level. I'd always wondered if it had any correlation to women standing in shop windows literally for sale. I think that this level of degradation affects women on all levels of Dutch society, and gives men a general license to mistreat women and girls, and to see them as inferior beings, commodities, even. The study in Sweden proves that my suspicions are well founded.

Things couldn't get much worse than in Germany, where a woman can apparently be denied unemployment benefits if she doesn't accept a job as a prostitute. Since prostitution became a "legitimate" means of earning a living, pimps/madams and the like started recruiting from employment agencies. If a woman denies a chance at a job, she can legally be denied benefits, and this includes an "opportunity" to work as a prostitute. I would imagine that this law has since been amended. How absurdly arcane. Liberal/legalized prostitution hasn't improved anything The Netherlands, or anywhere else, it's apparent.

An interesting digression...

I've started listening to Swedish radio broadcasts in hopes that this will somehow adapt my mind to the language. I learned Dutch by being forced to hear it a lot, and not so much from studying, but I'm sure it was a combination of the two.

I hope that once I have learned Swedish I will be a smarter person, and a better writer. Who knows, perhaps someday I'll get to spend more time there. It sounds like a better place to be.

Misunderstood

Having felt vastly misunderstood ever since moving to The Netherlands in 1998, really felt like I've run into one brick wall after another, I found this interesting quote online last night. It clarifies much of the misrepresentation I've experienced here, from the neighbors, to the teachers at school, to literally just about everyone I've "bumped" into since coming here... Of course, there are a few valiant people out there who have been capable of looking beyond whatever it is about me that turns so many people off... Thank god for them!... The simple matter of the fact is, I don't belong in a flat country. It's quite obvious. I don't belong here... Here's the quote...

The fundamental attribution error: "The tendency for people to over-emphasize dispositional, or personality-based, explanations for behaviors observed in others while under-emphasizing situational explanations. In other words, people have an unjustified tendency to assume that a person's actions depend on what 'kind' of person that person is rather than on the social and environmental forces influencing the person." Amen.

Biding Time during a Block

What a bizarre lack of inspiration politicians are. Yesterday morning I went to a book signing in Rotterdam of Bill Clinton's latest political tract, Give or Geef (they only had Dutch language copies).

After waiting in line for about two hours, I finally got a glimpse of the man in person.... My first reaction was, wow, he's short!... Not much taller than my 5'6"..... I admit to feeling a surge of American patriotic sentiment, standing as I was in a crowd of perspiring Dutch people, nearly all of them taller than I. I nearly cried, I felt so bad for myself.... But I was able to wait out my emotional wave, and the tears didn't come.

I shook his hand, said my name, told him I voted for him, and Hillary, which really caught his attention. He actually looked right at me, turned his head to look again, and thanked me. I was able to steal a few more seconds, and a few extra glances, than the rest of the folks were when I actually said my name in an American accent. It seemed that most of the people weren't saying anything....

I had spent some of my time while feeling faint in line thinking that I had better things to do, but I persevered in the thought that this might be my only opportunity to touch Bill, and to look him in the eye. I actually started to feel inspired, and made several resolutions on my walk back to the Metro. I too could do great things....! I too could do great things....! What a revelation. My life was going to make a great turn around that afternoon! And I had a brief meeting with Bill Clinton to thank for a brighter tomorrow.

When I read the sentence on the poster in the bookstore, "We all have the capacity to do great things," it reinforced my feeling that I was doing something good, of iets nuttigs, in het Nederlands. Just goes to show what a sucker I am for marketing. I even told the guy behind me that the book was probably inspirational, if a bit clichéd. Well, my friends, I am here to tell you now that it is none of this....

Later that evening I started to read the book, which turned out, as I've already said, to be a political tract in support of Hillary's campaign. The book starts out as a list of all of the great things the Clintons have done for the world, and of what great people they are on top of it all. Hillary was of course a great mother who contributed to the common good her entire life. Then it goes on to list other great and powerful, and fabulously rich people in the world who've done great things, including fighting aids in Africa, and the Clintons are associated with all of many of these people, naturally.

It's funny that I've read persuasive articles to the contrary in The New York Review of Books. Hillary was never much of an activist, and turned her back on her activist roots in political revenge. All of the rich Western NGOs crusading against AIDS in the developing world have apparently done a lot more harm than good. As always, the most that's been done to combat the AIDS epidemic has come from the grassroots level, and not from ingratiating politicians looking to score humanitarian points with the masses.

The article on AIDS in the NYRB quotes a Ugandan saying: "there is Slim AIDS and Fat AIDS. Slim AIDS is what happens to the emaciated victims of HIV. Fat AIDS is what happens to the consulting companies who win contracts from International AIDS Inc."

Ever the salesman, Bill was out there plugging himself and Hillary, signing 1,000 books in Rotterdam, and I was one of the suckers who shelled out 20 euro, and several hours of my time to get one.

Eeking out a few words...

About two years ago I picked up the Joyce Carol Oats novel Blonde at a used bookstore in Amsterdam. There was this great sales guy from Hoorn working there who'd worked as an botonist in Peru, or someplace, and was slowly writing a Ph.D, but that's another story.... (I'm always surprised, at my age, when anyone flirts with me, my head turning days having ended long ago....)

Of course Arther Miller plays a small role in the book, since he was Marylin's husband. She criticizes him for for slow writing. Apparently, he spent a lot of time on one project, eeking out a few sentences, or was it paragraphs, per day. So that means that in the spectrum from Joyce, extreme profluence, to Arther Miller, and then to me (Daniel Bartholemew might figure in there somewhere), I might not be doing too badly as a writer of minimal words, after all. :-)

Incidentally, I became so depressed reading Blonde, that I had to put it down in the end, and have yet to read the last 50-100 pages. Poor Norma Jean. Otherwise, brilliant book about the tragic life of a brilliant woman.

Write 1000-2000 words a day

Here's a goal: If you want to be a writer, you should write 1000-2000 words every day! Of course, all of the advice says, if you want to write, you have to write regularly. Fair enough. Very sound advice indeed. Although, I can't seem to follow it.

Does this mean 2000 words of blather? Or does it have to be focused, purposeful writing. Will "automatic" dadaist writing do? The advice doesn't say. So many days go by of me persecuting myself for not coming up with something brilliant, predigested, and perfectly worded, that I do not write a word, but writhe in a lack of profluence.

Some of my best writing is under 500 words, which almost always comes out in a minute of inspiration. Problem is, inspiration running low.... Of course, this was an advice website for aspiring freelance journalists, a career I gave up over 15 years ago. The guy said that he reads hundreds of magazines. I just don't have the stamina for that anynmore. I may have back in my early twenties, but I changed, and now that's all over.

Even though I am not hyper-productive, and I question my motivation a lot, underneath it all, I like to think I am a writer.

Some other advice I've read is to tell people that you're a writer, if you want to be one. I did this for years in between dropping a journalism career, and dreaming of writing stories. Okay, I'd written some stuff in Alice Sebold's creative writing classes at Hunter College in New York, so I can't say that I was a total fraud. I'd written lots of other things. But I did feel like a fake a lot of the time when I told people (mostly in the art community of New York) that I was a fiction writer. Some astute people would want to know what kind of fiction I wrote. I had a remedy for this, too. I told them the truth, which is that I play around with voice, using material from my own life, developing different persona's.

Once, years ago, in the process of giving up a journalism career, I met with a guy who was a feature writer for Forbes or Fortune. He told me that when he was starting out he had what he like to call the "impostor complex." He was working at Time, but had a constant internal dialogue that he was an impostor, and that sooner or later, someone was going to find him out, and that he would get the sack. Of course, his fears were never played out, and he went on to have a career in journalism.

What a shame that I've never had the guts to go for anything. Even with people around me telling me that I was capable, I was always intent on proving to them that they were all wrong, and that I was right. I really was the impostor. It's a great way to squander all of your talent, grinding it down into sodden ashes.

There can always be a new dawn. I might just achieve my personal millennium goal to become a writer, yet. Hooray!