Things We Saw With Our Eyes

Chatwin Soaring

2011-11-30T00:36:00.013-05:00

From Songlines, 1987:

"I had a presentiment that the 'travelling' phase of my life might be passing. I felt, before the malaise of settlement crept over me, that I should reopen those notebooks. I should set down on paper a résumé of the ideas, quotations and encounters which had amused and obsessed me; and which I hoped would shed light on what is, for me, the question of questions: the nature of human restlessness.

Pascal, in one of his gloomier pensées, gave it as his opinion that all our miseries stemmed from a single cause: our inability to remain quietly in a room.

Why, he asked, must a man with sufficient to live on feel drawn to divert himself on long sea voyages? To dwell in another town? To go off in search of a peppercorn? Or go off to war and break skulls?

Later, on further reflection, having discovered the cause of our misfortunes, he wished to understand the reason for them, he found one very good reason: namely, the natural unhappiness of our weak mortal condition; so unhappy that when we gave to it all our attention, nothing could console us.

One thing alone could alleviate our despair, and that was distraction (divertissement): yet this was the worst of our misfortunes, for in distraction we were prevented from thinking about ourselves and were gradually brought to ruin.

Could it be, I wondered, that our need for distraction, our mania for the new, was, in essence, an instinctive migratory urge akin to that of birds in autumn?

All the Great Teachers have preached that Man, originally, was a 'wanderer in the scorching and barren wilderness of this world' – the words are those of Dostoevsky's Grand Inquisitor – and that to rediscover his humanity, he must slough off attachments and take to the road.

My two most recent notebooks were crammed with jottings taken in South Africa, where I had examined, at first hand, certain evidence on the origin of our species. What I learned there – together with what I now knew about the Songlines – seemed to confirm the conjecture I had toyed with for so long: that Natural Selection has designed us – from the structure of our brain-cells to the structure of our big toe – for a career of seasonal journeys on foot through a blistering land of thorn-scrub or desert.

If this were so; if the desert were 'home'; if our instincts were forged in the desert; to survive the rigours of the desert – then it is easier to understand why greener pastures pall on us; why possessions exhaust us, and why Pascal's imaginary man found his comfortable lodgings a prison."

-Bruce Chatwin

Postcard From Sydney

2011-11-25T16:59:00.017-05:00

Hilary and I landed in Sydney on a rainy Friday morning and within a few hours I was choosing between kangaroo or crocodile for lunch. We had missed Thanksgiving all together, and in midair no less, so I went with the kangaroo. You gotta take it slow in Australia.

I'd never been to this country and I am grateful to my sister for the opportunity to spend a few weeks in a place so far away yet eerily similar to home. Australia is a bizarro America; it's like a warm Canada. I sense macro-familiarity but get lost in the details. They drive on the left in cars the color of toothbrushes. Much of the food seems the invention of Dr. Seuss. Ditto the flora & fauna. Women's dress styles are 1980s flashy and book cover designs are glossy and on the nose, like fakes from the movies. Cafes sell coffee at every street corner, but they pronounce it "cuffee". Australians do things to vowels many Americans would find difficult to abide.

Our hotel overlooks Darling Harbor, near an area called The Rocks for the reason that it sits atop a rocky cliff, like so much of Sydney. It was in The Rocks that I enjoyed my kangaroo burger. In the tiny bookstore I was pleased to browse a book of Australian poetry (who knew?) and discover the existence of one Banjo Paterson, the man with the most envious name in history. Paterson was a 19th century poet and the composer of "Waltzing Matilda", the Australian national anthem and the greatest drinking song of all time. (The second greatest drinking song was co-written by friend Skeely. It contains the line "but when I get so pissed, I don't toss about me fists".)

We walked to Surrey Hills for dinner our first night, along the way passing through a neighborhood I would describe as the Sydney Castro, featuring your full line of rainbow and strap-on whathaveyous. It was here I began to notice how so many Australian men are shaped like Bluto from the Popeye comic strip. Men in Sydney are a tough lot, and I have seen more men with black eyes here than I've seen anywhere in years.

Which brings us to Manly Beach. Yes, that's the name of the place. My photos from our day there are proof that this joke never gets old. There is a Manly Yacht Club, a Manly Children's Hospital, and a Manly Lifesaving Club which is a members only association of lifeguards. The beaches around Sydney are perfect. In addition to Manly, we also biked over to Bondi Beach. When I mentioned how pleasant it was that nobody was blasting reggaeton or Foghat through cheap speakers, Hilary thankfully pointed out the dearth of men in Speedos. Best of all, there was nobody was attempting the swim-&-smoke, one of my least favorite human activities to witness.

The ferry ride back from Manly across Sydney Harbor at sunset was worth the twenty-three hour flight. Nothing can prepare you for the Sydney Opera House. You just have to come and see it for yourself.

I'll leave you with this: there are bats in Sydney's otherwise beautiful Hyde Park the size of German Shepherd puppies. How it is that the entire city has not relocated I have no idea. The most discomforting moment I have had here was watching the bats fly en masse from the cathedral towers at dusk and circle above the trees in Hyde Park, clicking and swooping the way giant bats apparently do. Where I come from a bat fits easily inside your hand, the way it should be, not that you would ever touch one. These Aussie bats are snatch-your-baby-from-the-pram Nightbirds from Hell and I want no part of it.

Tomorrow morning we have a morning flight to Uluru, the giant red rock in the middle of this vast, dry continent.

Letter from Barrow, Alaska

2010-03-23T04:35:00.013-04:00

People keep asking me how cold it is, so here's the deal: temperatures fluctuate. I just looked and supposedly right now it is eight degrees below zero Fahrenheit, with a low of around fifteen below expected later tonight. Those numbers don't take windchill into account, and it's always windy here since the nearest hill or tree is more than three hundred miles to the south and it's a straight shot up and over the Arctic Ocean to the North Pole.

One local said the other day, and with a straight face, "we're lucky we have the Arctic Ocean right here. It keeps us warm." I know what he means, but come on. While temperatures here are slightly higher on average than in the vast interior of Alaska, as far as I can tell, "warm" is not part of the equation.

If you dress properly for extreme cold weather, temperatures below negative thirty degrees Fahrenheit are actually quite tolerable, though one area you've got to be extra careful about is your face. Don't leave any of that tender facial skin exposed. Your face will tell you pretty quickly that it's unhappy--I believe the word for this is "pain".

Just before I left New York for Barrow, my father wrote me with this bit of, um, advice: Kit, Just read a brief review of Ian McEwan's latest book, Solar, a satirical novel focusing on global warming. He apparently went where you're going and an anecdote drifted in from the review about the Arctic danger of having your penis freeze to your fly zipper! By the way, the remedy was to pour brandy over it. (Sorry waste of good brandy, but...there you are.) Hope things go well with you, Luv, D.
The most time I have spent outdoors in a given stretch is about one hour, and that was only once. When we start shooting, about three weeks from now, I will be outside for ten or twelve hours at a time. I am not dreading it, but I would be lying if I said I wasn't thinking about it an awful lot.

I mail ordered a polyurethane hood and some goggles on my second day here. They should arrive by the end of next week.

Today I walked about a quarter mile out onto the frozen Arctic Ocean and when I got back to town the local producer warned me that I should never do that without a gun. "Because of the polar bears," she said. All I could think of to say was "but I don't have a gun," followed by my sheepish pledge, "I promise not to be eaten by a polar bear."

A rudimentary Internet search will give you a more accurate picture of the people, culture, and climate here than I am able to after only four days, but here are some factoids and chewy bits you might enjoy:

The North Slope Borough of Alaska, of which Barrow is the borough seat, is the largest county-level municipality in the United States, and maybe even the world, covering an area roughly the size of Utah.
Each building in Barrow has a unique number for an address, so you don't even have to include the name of the street in your mailed correspondence. Brilliant!
Barrow has more than four thousand residents, and most of them tend to stay indoors. I've been here almost a week now, staying in one of the four small hotels on the "center" of town. During my walks at various times of day I've seen about fifteen other human beings.
Try and wrap your head around this: the North Slope of Alaska is both a desert and a wetlands. Here's how: the amount of overall precipitation is low enough to classify the region as a desert, while the permafrost (ground that never thaws) prevents drainage after what little snow there is finally melts, so as to make it a wetlands.
Barrow is a "damp" town, but not a "dry" town. In a damp town, an individual Alaska resident may procure a license to purchase alcoholic beverages from an out of town vendor. The sale of alcoholic beverages in Barrow is prohibited. In many neighboring "dry" communities, it is illegal to import or possess alcohol. Both native and non-native locals are quite frank about why this control is needed. As one guy put it to me rather bluntly, "Alcohol makes Indians crazy."

The movie I am working on is called On the Ice. The short film version, "Sikumi", won the Jury Prize for Short Filmmaking at Sundance in 2008. The writer-director, Andrew Okpeaha MacLean, has developed his short into a feature film, which tells a similar story about morality and freedom and choice, but includes more characters, and basically incorporates the entire town. About half the movie will be shot "on the ice" and the other half in the town of Barrow.

Here is a link to the short film.

The highlights so far were an after midnight road trip up to Point Barrow to look at the Aurora Borealis (Northern Lights), and spending much of an evening watching a group of a dozen local women sew the hides of several seals together to make the outer hull of a boat. When they finished sewing around ten-thirty at night, the men came by and stretched the newly sewn hides over the twelve-foot wooden frame of the whale boat. As soon as the Arctic ice melts, several whalers will hunt from this tiny vessel.

(And,

two months later...)

We wrapped last Friday after the most exhausting month of shooting I've ever experienced. About half the movie was shot out on the frozen Arctic Ocean. On those "ice days" we traveled to set each day on snowmobiles which in turn towed sleds with equipment and our rather banged up looking crew. The commute alone took hours sometimes: packing, loading, traveling over land, unloading, unpacking, setting up. Repeat at end of day. Snowmobiles break down a lot, and wooden sleds get all banged up after hours of travel over chunky ice formations. Our unit took a real beating on an hourly basis, but we shot everything we wanted to--or just about.

By the time we wrapped the movie, the sun was in the sky more than twenty-one hours a day. Over the final two weeks the darkest it ever got was what I would call broad daylight on a cloudy day.

Every minute during the prepping and shooting of a film is important. Hypersensitivity to time is a fundamental part of filmmaking. The locals in Barrow actually have a word for our southern ways; without a hint of irony, they call it "on-time culture".

Climate change is occurring, and not just according to this recent New York Times design piece. The locals here talk about the new calendar of seasons, and claim to have been talking about it for some time. It's affecting our shoot. The ice "looks like June", not March. Saint Patrick's Day is the new Memorial Day. The caribou run a month later in the fall now. A couple years ago a whole bunch of whalers floated away on some ice that broke off. The ice breaks off a lot closer to shore these days.

There's a website which details Aurora Borealis activity. Our chef couldn't get enough of these nights out observing and photographing--until the around-the-clock daylight made it impossible, he was out there just about every other night with his lenses and tripod taking amazing photographs.

Save for a fair amount of hydroponic marijuana production, there is no agriculture in Barrow, no matter what the season.

I have eaten the meat, blubber, and skin of whale, caribou stew, and elk--I think it was elk. Just about everything is expensive here, food most of all. A guy across the hall from me in the Top of the World Hotel ordered Chinese takeout for himself the other night and he was just as shocked as I was when the total for his dinner came to a fair seventy-seven bucks.

There are several restaurants in town, which run the gamut from inedible to way too expensive. There are two pizza places--both deliver, but only one has tables. And there's a Mexican joint, a local cafe, and even sushi. Three of us went for coffee the other day. Total cost of three delicious beverages: $17. (Full disclosure: we didn't have any cash on us, but the owner knew we were part of the film crew and agreed to let us come back and pay later.)

I saw whales in water, I saw whales out of the water. I saw whales butchered and ate their meat, blubber, and skin. Maktak has a fishy smell that is like a fishy smell on steroids.

All of the homes and businesses I have been in here are heated to the point of being way too hot. Since the windows and doors are not drafty, people tend to wear t-shirts and shorts inside their hot homes in which they burn gas, oil, or kerosene.

I was surprised to find out that people don't have woodstoves or fireplaces here until I looked around and reminded myself that there are no trees for hundreds of miles. There is one, literally, one, guy in town who goes to great expense to barge in firewood from Seattle once a year. He's known as "woodstove guy" and locals consider it a privilege to live in his neighborhood where you can smell the smoke.

The high school is the most expensive in the nation; eighty million dollars to ship materials & build it.

Lots of people have kids here, and in turn a lot of the kids have kids. One twenty-three year-old woman involved with our production is about to have her third child. I have met several teenage parents here.

On the plane from Anchorage to Fairbanks, I sat between a weapons manufacturer and a methamphetamine addict. Meth is a problem in Barrow, though like so much else in Barrow the side effects stay indoors most of the time. I remember witnessing the effects of alcoholism during two months I spent lower Alaska twenty years ago. The state newspapers refer to some of these folks as "chronic inebriates".

It pays to be a Native Alaskan. Indians in the lower forty-eight chose land over resources (we all know how that worked out), but the Alaskans chose to keep control over natural resources. As a result there is a Fortune 500 corporation from which every Eskimo receives a hefty annual stipend.

Postcard from Everywhere

2010-02-23T12:13:00.026-05:00

Yesterday I visited Wales, a country I claim as one of my three ancestral homes, and the twelfth country I have seen in the past eleven months. In just a couple of days I return to the United States of America, where my first film assignment on home turf will be in Barrow, Alaska (a mere seven-hundred-fifty miles north of Anchorage).

Since we last spoke, let me assure you, I have been everywhere. I am in possession of such a backlog of thoughts, notes, photographs, videos, musings, and ramblings, that I can't begin to fit them all into one letter. If you actually want to hear about it, you'll have to wait for my book to be published.
I finally did procure a camera, and by legal means I'll have you know. My journeys across Morocco, and in Spain, France, and the UK have all been documented in pictures. The camera is one of the reasons I am currently unable to organize my thoughts in words. I seem to think in images for the time being. I am bringing the camera to Alaska, where it will no doubt freeze and stop working and I will go back to being a writer.

I'm pleased to report that my seven weeks at the Four Seasons Hotel in Cairo didn't make me entirely soft. In subsequent travels I have happily shared bunk rooms with strangers, some even more fragrant than me. The cost of the rooms I stayed at in Morocco averaged about sixteen bucks per night. At those prices, I learned not to expect towels, a telephone, breakfast, a TV, or toilet paper.

When I crossed the Straits of Gibraltar from North Africa into Spain by ferry boat, I fulfilled a nearly lifelong desire--the desire not to capsize and die while crossing the Straits of Gibraltar by ferry boat.

Apropos of not much, the director of photography on my Egypt gig, a gregarious Aussie (is there any other kind?), insists that there must exist a connection between a country's GDP and its practice of painting its tree trunks white. He might be on to something. I first noticed this practice in Venezuela, and then later throughout the Mideast. But in Morocco, the tree painters took it one step further, and had actually stripped most of the bark from the lowermost portion of the trees before painting the trunks white. There are long stretches of roadside woods made up of trees with no bark left on the lower part of the trunks, which were then painted white. I have yet to see anything like this in Europe or the UK.

Hey: if you have the means and the wherewithal, I urge you to get out there and see the world. See as much as you can before it all looks the same. The sameness is encroaching everywhere.

See you soon, I hope.

Insha'Allah.

Kit

--
In Memory of Ann Purcell (1917-2010)

Marrakesh, Morrocoo, at Dusk, by Bike

2010-02-14T13:53:00.005-05:00

I took this video in Marrakesh, Morrocco.

Letter to Egypt [Vol. 2]

2010-01-27T17:09:00.002-05:00

[So this is not actually Volume 2, as I have not written a letter to Egypt yet. But you get the idea.]

Dear Egypt,

Please clean up your act. There are thirty million inhabitants in Cairo but you will not pay anybody to sweep the sidewalks or collect household trash, leaving your citizens no choice but to toss their trash in the seemingly endless irrigation ditches stemming from the Nile--the same channels in which people catch fish to feed their families. Your children bathe in this same water, full of garbage and human waste.

Have you noticed that of the many tourists who come here to visit, very few return for a second trip? This is because you hassle them, hustle them, rip them off, harangue them, and then lie that it ever happened like that. If I had been here on a two week vacation, I would have left after one week. You beg for things you don't necessarily need.

Have you no pride (or shame) in the food you grow, sell, or serve? Vegetables and fruit are served in a condition just short of rotten. A five dollar lemonade, listed as "fresh" on your menus, is nothing but powdered Country Time. Nescafe is your coffee beverage of choice. My friend ordered a milkshake the other day at lunch, and we will never understand how you could have possibly intended to serve it hot.

Where are you hiding the women? They don't wait or bus tables in your restaurants, or work in your hotels, or drive your buses and taxis. They aren't smoking shisha in your cafes or working in your shops. They don't pilot your river boats or sell wares on the street. What are they doing and where are they doing it?

What's with all the yelling? Can you not learn to communicate in softer tones? Every interaction need not be an argument or a chance to display your bravado.

Your infinite archaeological and historical attractions in and around Cairo, Luxor, and elsewhere are spectacular and well worth a trip here--something to be proud of indeed. Yet graft and mismanagement of these sites leaves visitors with more than just the taste of sand in their mouths.

I do not want a camel ride. I do not want a book of postcards. Thank you, I like my shirt too. I like Obama too, thank you. Really, thanks a lot. No, I do not want to buy a hat, sunglasses, or a scarf. No, I just told you I do not want a camel ride. No, not a donkey ride either. Or a horse, thank you. I refuse to be mocked for not riding your camel.

Keep honking your car horns, but please realize that nobody's listening. Sure, we all hear it, but the other drivers simply are not paying attention. May I suggest an alternative? Traffic lanes. (You know me, always thinking outside the box.) I have another suggestion: turn on your headlights after dark. Not only will it help you see the road, but it will help others see you as well.

I will be leaving Egypt in a few weeks. I hope you and I can learn to see eye to eye before then. If not, after I have gone, please keep me posted as to how things improve.

Best,

Kit

Letter from Egypt

2010-01-08T02:50:00.003-05:00

And Now... Egypt.
After taking December off to travel in Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan (where I floated in the saline waters of the Dead Sea, and hiked the far reaches within the ancient city of Petra), I flew from Beirut to Cairo on the second to last day of 2009 to begin a new job on a TV show about (what else?) Egyptology.

No amount of Middle East sightseeing and adventure could have prepared me for the experiences I am having in Egypt. I consider myself very fortunate to have the opportunity to explore Egypt for such a substantial length of time--it's a seven week shoot--all the while earning a paycheck.

On my first day in Egypt I tech-scouted the Great Pyramids of Giza and the Sphinx--I will be back there several days in the coming weeks to shoot. My second day had me riding atop a 4x4 shooting B-roll in the vast desert surrounding the Pyramids at Dahshur. And while my work has left me little time to explore Cairo itself, the largest city in North Africa, seeing the archaeological sites in which I spend my days have already made this trip worth a hundred vacations.

Because there are too many to properly manage and manage, the majority of archaeological sites in Egypt are closed to the public. But because we are working for the History Channel (a media entity known to drum up tourism) and because the Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, Dr. Zahi Hawass, is the subject of our show, our production has been granted access to certain tombs, pyramids, and temples most people have not been able to visit for years. We even covered a bona fide discovery this week, one the Council is calling "the best find in years"--and the kind of thing archaeologists drool over.

In addition to shooting in and around Cairo and Giza, our crew will head south to Luxor for a week and north to Alexandria for a quick shoot there. This month I will have the once in a lifetime experience of being four hundred feet beneath the surface of the Earth when we shoot a scene inside a tomb at the Valley of Kings.

It's A Desert Because... It's A Desert
On a good physical map Egypt looks like a beige rhombus with a vertical green line drawn down the right side of it. Inside that green line is an even narrower blue line--that would be the Nile. You've probably heard of it. The rest of Egypt, I can report, is sand broken up by a few oases here and there. It's hot, then it's cold, but mostly it's dry.

Cairo is Huge
Cairo is the first place I have seen homeless people since being in the Middle East. I can only assume they are homeless because they are sleeping on subway grates. The transition to a major city in a new-to-me part of the world was made much easier by my having spent so much time in the region already. If Beirut was like Albuquerque, Damascus like Chicago, and Jordan like Ohio: then Cairo is a dirty Los Angeles. It's vast, crowded, noisy, diverse, and difficult to navigate. The traffic is insane beyond belief. The smog is thick as mud, the buildings are dusty. Sadly, it's tough to find good food here (especially coming from Lebanon and Syria where one must search out a meal that's less than perfect). So far, I have not seen anything I would describe as "quaint" in Egypt.

For anyone planning a trip to the Middle East, I would suggest Egypt for the archaeological wonders, Syria for exotic and exciting Arabic culture, Jordan for rest, relaxation, and sightseeing, and Lebanon for partying like a rockstar, and eating delicious food--though you can hike and ski there too.

Am I Going to Hell?
My job has me holed up in the Four Seasons Hotel, overlooking the Nile on one side and the Great Pyramids of Giza on the other. Wouldn't it be my luck to get stuck with the Pyramid side? Several evenings I have watched the sun go down behind the Great Pyramids of Giza as I kicked back on my private balcony strumming the El Cheapo guitar I purchased months ago in Lebanon.

I am shocked I actually have it in me to complain about the service at the Four Seasons. The main problem is that it's too good. The staff have no qualms about touching my razor and toothbrush, and they continue to fold my dirty laundry even after I have asked them to stop because that confuses me. There are too many options to choose from at breakfast. The workers don't leave me alone and they are far too pleasant. People actually come by at night to save me the trouble of turning down the blankets on my bed, and aligning up my complimentary slippers for easy entry. When I call down to ask for a wake up call, the scripted response is "with pleasure, Mr. Bland," to which the only reply I can think of is "Pleasure? Really?"

So, yes, hello, it's me, a fat North American sitting pretty on the African continent, complaining about the all too eager service in my luxury hotel while miles away entire families subside on whatever piastres they can gather transporting their crops to market by ox or donkey, or raising a few goats for slaughter.

Letter From Syria, Vol. 2

2009-12-24T09:55:00.013-05:00

I must be in Syria again: It took six hours for two Americans to be issued a visa at the border. The highways and roads are in very good condition. There are no Starbucks, Burger Kings, or Kinko's. My U.S. bank will not allow me to use the ATM at the "Syria International Islamic Bank," access my account online, or transact in any way. The vast majority of the police force (in a country where fifty percent of the population works for the government) is undercover. Most businesses have young apprentices working in them, and it sometimes feels as if the country is run by twelve year old boys--but not girls. In addition to the myriad spices, candies, nuts, teas, coffees, soaps, clothes, and handmade items, a shopper with a keen eye for deals in the souks can find a Santa Claus bustier, an armoire inlaid with genuine camel bone, and pickled pigs' feet by the gallon. There are almost no American tourists, and only a handful of Europeans and Asians. Multiple photographic reproductions of a man looking like a darker haired Larry Bird are on display everywhere--oh wait, that's actually Bashar al-Assad, president of the Syrian Arab Republic, and son of Hafez al-Assad, the former president. (Okay, fine, here is the official government photo of the Syrian president. Nearly two weeks in Syria has permanently seared the man's face onto my visual cortex.) It is impossible to be served a bad meal--except in Palmyra, an archaeological wonderland, but a tourist trap of the worst degree. The typical restaurant has thirty-five to fifty employees on duty per shift. A delicious, leisurely dinner for two could cost $15, a hotel room $22, a rental car $35 a day, and a handmade Persian rug $1,000. The Middle Eastern pop music blaring from car stereos is just as bad as the pop music at home, but the classic Umm Koulthoum and Fairuz recordings are wonderful anywhere, anytime. The most commonly heard English word is "welcome." People on the street loathe George W. Bush, and want to talk about it. They love Barack Obama, and want to talk about it. Nobody bothers to read the [government owned and operated] newspaper. Signs on the highway point toward Baghdad. The 19th century architecture reflects an air of modernity. Local lore has it that the landing pad for the second coming of Christ is right over there atop the Umayyad Mosque, and some say John the Baptist's head is buried over there under that wall. Low key, easy to miss historical plaques tell of events which took place before Islam or Christianity existed. When I nod my head "yes" people assume I am saying "no." The fruit is abundant, fresh, and complimentary after most meals out, and the coffee is thick as mud.

Yes, I must be in Syria again.

Syrian Photo Journal

2009-12-20T10:14:00.004-05:00

Here is the link to our Syrian photo journal. Most of the pictures were taken by Matt.

(K*d@k requires that you sign in with an email address, but you can easily opt out of their mailings with a simple X in the box.)

Letter From Syria

2009-12-16T08:30:00.005-05:00

December 16, 2009

I returned to Lebanon on Sunday after more than a week of traveling in Syria. Next to Cuba, Syria is probably the country most misunderstood by Americans--though I hasten to add that Syria is not next to Cuba, nor anywhere near it.

I went to Syria with Matt, my good friend since middle school, who is now in many ways partly British, having lived in London more than a third of his life. Matt came to meet me in Lebanon after we wrapped production in early December. I was actually in Jordan the day he arrived, and then I slept most of the first forty-eight hours we were together in the Middle East. Such a host!

The geographical area of Syria is approximately fifteen times the size of Lebanon (which, as you will remember from an earlier report, is half the size of New Hampshire--itself being roughly twenty times the size of the five boroughs of New York City). Are we all clear on the size of Syria now? Please note: I may have most of my numbers wrong.

Let me be clear about one thing: there is enough hospitality, kindness, and good will in Syria to fill an entire continent many times over. The hardest time my travel companion and I had was getting across the border into Syria in the first place. The entire process took six hours, not including travel time--but delay is to be expected entering a country the United States government has officially considered a "rogue state" since 1979.

So many Syrians we met along the way took us in and offered us whatever they could: tea, cigarettes, food, lodging, travel pointers, and backgammon tips. (We did not realize there are several ways to play backgammon. Apparently, Westerners play "the boring way".) At each stop, our hosts would be curious why two Americans chose to come to Syria. The truth was that there was nowhere else to go from Lebanon.

Damascus
Damascus is thought to be the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world. I lifted that phrase right off Wikipedia, so it must be true, though I think they may have taken it from the Lonely Planet guide. Aleppo, in the north of the country, vies for the title as well. Plagiarism and contests aside, Damascus is a bustling old world city, with vast and significant religious and cultural history that one can feel as well as see. In a country crammed with ruins and thousands of archaeological sites, Damascus offers travelers a different experience, as one actually witnesses the current incarnation of the place as well as sees its artifacts.

The basement chapel where the apostle Paul, né Saul, first preached the gospel still exists in the Old City there. Paul claimed to have been struck blind by a vision of Jesus while en route to Damascus, where he intended to punish Christians. An early Christian dude named Ananais helped Paul recover and then helped him set up shop in his basement. The tiny hidden chapel reminds me of the Cavern Club, where the Beatles played those early gigs in Liverpool.

The Umayyad Mosque claims the status as the oldest location in which Muslims have continuously prayed. I can't tell you how many times I wrote that last sentence before it made sense; seriously, it was more than a twenty times. There are traces of civilization in Damascus and the surrounding area dating back, by some accounts, as far as 9000 B.C.E. For you historians, that's a very long time ago.

There is a small Jewish Quarter in Damascus as well, but you wouldn't know it when you're there. It's not exactly South Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

The Souks
The rambling pedestrian marketplaces in Damascus, called souks, extend in a spaghetti maze within the walls of the Old City for miles. When you take into account the side streets and alleyways, the opportunities for commerce seem to go on indefinitely.

The question what is for sale in the souk? is actually easier to answer in the inverse: what is not for sale in the souk?, the answer to which seems limited to the following items:

Stocks & bonds
Automobiles
Farm equipment
Pornography
Drugs & (with a few exceptions) alcohol
Newspapers
Yachts
Land (as far as I could tell)

Any item not on that list could be found in a souk. I dare you to challenge me on this. The well known specialty items are the aged olive oil soap, silk scarves and linens. There is also an abundance of all clothing, socks by the dozen, jackets, hats, candies, nuts, coffee, tea, beeswax, handcrafted wooden boxes, swords, knives, antiques, cutlery, furniture, rugs, blankets, luggage, toys, paintings, cheese, fruit smoothies, shawerma sandwiches, falafel, yummy pancakes, fine dining opportunities, pearl-inlaid backgammon boards and chess sets, and underwear. There are several stores that only sell candy-covered peanuts.

Aleppo
On our first night in Aleppo, a northern city as large as Damascus, Matt and I had the misfortune of getting lost while attempting to take our tiny rental car the mere one hundred yards from our own one-star hotel into the basement parking garage of a luxury hotel down the street. I was at the wheel. One wrong turn brought us inside the Aleppo souk, which is at times barely six-feet wide, and we couldn't find our way out. I felt I was trapped in the Middle Eastern version of that 1960s folk song about "Charlie & the MTA" by the Kingston Trio. It took us the better part of forty-five minutes, sometimes driving in reverse, of barreling down those dark and narrow alleyways, past vendors, donkey carts, shoppers and, surely, disapproving secret policemen, until we popped back out onto an actual street. We were laughing harder than what you might think is appropriate given the situation, and we must have looked like idiotic American tourists.

The parking garage ended up costing more than our hotel.

Syria Feels Safe
For tourists, Syria is one of the safest place to travel. It seems unthinkable that a crime would be committed anywhere on the streets of Syria. The sad reality is that Syria is a police state, yet we saw no (uniformed) police presence anywhere, save for the traffic cops here and there. Statistics state that fifty percent of the Syrian populace works for the government in some way, and the vast majority much of the police force is undercover. The hotel where we stayed in Aleppo (just south of the Turkish border) was also the headquarters of the so called "Tourism Police" and we saw middle aged men in plainclothes come in and out all day and night. No evidence of crime can be seen anywhere.

Old Country For No Women
In a decidedly male dominated region, Syria is a decidedly male dominated society. Women out and about during the day, but the overwhelming majority of businesses are operated by men.

Syria has a very active nightlife. While it is mostly men eating and hanging out in the restaurants late at night, there are some families here and there. Most shopping in the souks closes down by seven or eight o'clock, but the restaurants are packed until one or two in the morning. There's no New Orleans style rowdiness at all in Syria. The Muslim population--ninety-percent and growing--tend not to drink, and indeed most establishments don't serve alcohol. You see a lot of card playing and backgammon, sitting around chatting, and smoking tobacco in a nargileh--also known as shisha, hookah, or "hubbly bubbly".

Syria is the First World
Coming into Syria from Lebanon is an enlightening experience. In so many ways, Lebanon--open to Western influence and commercialism--remains a developing country. This has a lot to do with the economic hardships created by long stretches of war. Syria, however, compared to its tiny neighbor the west, really seems to have its act together. There are trains and buses and the traffic flows according to a plan. People stop at traffic lights. Beirut doesn't think twice about putting up a luxury hotel with a Dolce & Gabbana store inside the lobby, but they neglect to replace the torn up sidewalk in front of it. In Damascus, the sidewalks are in good repair, and people use them.

Bedouin Culture: Welcome!
The Bedouins are the most hospitable people I have ever known, with Appalachian porch dwellers coming in at a close second. Inside the ancient ruins of Palmyra--an area that extends for miles allowing a visitor to roam freely through the temples and along the colonnade--we were invited in by a family of Bedouins: Khalid and his wife (whose name I found unpronounceable) and their two young daughters, both toddlers, Cedra and Nour, who are so different from one another but both lively and adorable. The four of them live inside a small complex of three tents, the largest of which is about fifteen by eight feet. Khalid's wife is pregnant with their third child.

Matt took photos and video of the six of us sitting inside the tent, drinking tea, smoking Khalid's knock-off Marlboros and playing silly-face with the girls. Neither Matt nor I speak Arabic, and Khalid's three words of English ("one", "two", and "welcome"--by far the most used English word in the Middle East) weren't enough to make up for own ignorance, but we happily spent more than hour with them, laughing, and playing, and "talking". We took turns pointing to phrases in Khalid's dog-eared English-Arabic phrase book to communicate such ideas as "it is still raining", "we are friends" and "Italy is nice." I gave Khalid my sunglasses as a thank you gift, in anticipation of the rainy season someday coming to an end.

When we finally went outside at sunset, there was still a light rain, and as we walked away we saw a rainbow high in the sky which seemed to end right at the entrance to their tent.

Letter From Beirut, Vol. 4

2009-12-16T07:01:00.004-05:00

November 16, 2009

I have finally been able to check my email today and many of you have asked for an update. More specifically, many of you have asked if I am still alive. Internet is much scarcer now as I am on location all day and there is no connection where I am living. Filming began three weeks ago and I have not had a minute to write or even think. I jot these words down in haste as I am soon off to choreograph a chase sequence through the streets of "Tehran" (in Beirut) involving a stolen Mercedes, two motorcycles and a police cruiser. We don't have good walkie-talkies.

So much drama goes in to making a movie, though often most of it is behind the camera. This work is difficult anywhere but especially so in a place where the process is almost unheard of. For the small American crew here--four of us--we are working regular thirteen-hour days, but the local crew seems exhausted. There are about forty of them and I think they are starting to blame me for the circles under their eyes. Film shoots in Beirut are for videos or commercials and usually three days long, during which they work practically around the clock. We are on a twenty-seven day shoot. How do I express that the Lebanese, in general, are very sensitive? (I guess like that.)

Anyway, I am sleeping just fine.

I love it here still but I am missing home terribly now. I miss the orderliness of New York City. I miss riding my bike through the controlled traffic jams and good customer service and being in a place where religion is nothing to defend or argue about. I miss the clean New York City air. I miss the Maine woods.

One day we traveled out into a protected wilderness in the mountains of Chouf to shoot a hiking scene. The Cedars of Lebanon are truly magnificent. When I was ten years old I received a Bible from my church in Augusta, Maine, and I used to stare at the color photographs of those beautiful trees. Walking through the same hills last week I felt like a minor character in that book. Maybe Bildad the Shuhite, or Moses. I guess my Jesus complex is waning. (That Bible was dedicated to me by me father, who was the minister of the church. I still have it. It's got a red faux-leather cover and onion skin pages.)

Through an interesting coincidence, the son of my (need I say former?) pediatrician lives in Beirut and we have met up a couple of times, including a jaunt out to the suburbs to visit the magnificent Jeita Grotto. I have never seen anything like it. An underwater cavern and lake. During the civil war here it was used as an ammunitions depot. Now it's a tourist attraction. Jon has told me many interesting anecdotes of Lebanon--he was here in 2006 during the bombings. My new friend's wife is from Lebanon and he has heard a lot about what it was like in the days of the fifteen year struggle. I've heard some scary stuff.

Letter From Beirut, Vol. 3

2009-12-16T06:54:00.009-05:00

October 14, 2009

Here I go again, beginning with the quotidian and working my way toward utter profundity in near record time:

Fill It To The Rim
In case you were wondering why Nescafe is still "manufactured" (or whatever the hell you call what a company does to convert coffee beans into "crystals") look no further. You can blame Lebanon. Many Lebanese, who you'd think would know better, knock this stuff back like it's 1977 all over again. You can order a "three-in-one" just about anywhere and you will have a hot instant coffee with condensed milk & artificial sweetener in front of you in no time. In the supermarkets, Nescafe accounts for far more than half of the already abundant coffee choices.

Eating
Just about every meal I eat here goes down in the book as the best meal I have ever had. There is a locally made bread here that is sold on the streets every morning. The shape of the bread is reminiscent of the crescent design on the Turkish flag, which is to say reminiscent of an Italian handbag. The poor Syrian vendors push their custom bakers-rack-bicycles through Muslim neighborhoods calling out an eerie sounding kaihik! and selling this surprisingly delicious treat for about 60 cents.

Fattoush is a local salad of cucumbers, tomatoes and lettuce, tossed with pita chips. It is so incredibly tasty and fresh and I eat one nearly every day so please stop pestering me. I have yet to try (or even see) the traditional fava bean dish foul, though it is a common Lebanese staple, eaten here three meals a day.

We Exceeded the Water Ration for Our Apartment
When it finally happened there was much running about in a near panicked state. We muttered to ourselves "the water ration ran out, who should we call?" (alas, our landlord speaks only Arabic). Nobody could think to do much else. As that behavior was ramping up, someone pointed out that our office-style water cooler had also run out as well.

UPDATE: We all pulled through; the plumbing came back on in a few hours without anyone doing much of anything about it. Rami the Water Man delivered two bottles of drinking water the next morning. UPDATE NUMBER TWO: Yesterday (Monday) the plumbing shut off again, only this time it happened just as I had completely lathered up during my morning shower. This was an all time first for me, but even though I am an upbeat person I did have to admit that there was almost no way to put a positive spin on the situation.

Getting Around
I am still shunning taxicabs as much as I can, which is difficult in a city in which you are much safer inside a cab with a maniac driver than you are on a sidewalk where said maniac might run you over. Most days I walk a mile and a half each way to the production office. The weather is still warm but very humid, so I sweat quite a lot. This becomes especially troublesome when there is no running water at home for days on end.

I Promised I Wouldn't Bring It Up Again
Having studied the particular brand of vehicular insanity which makes up Beirut traffic, I have of late been revisiting the bicycle idea. I spent much of last Sunday searching for a place to to buy one that suited me. (During this excursion I approached a man named Rafia who is a professional photographer and who was out and about in the downtown area taking photos for a large multimedia art installation at the Unesco Palace here next month. Rafia is Lebanese and very friendly. When I told him I was out scouting for a store at which to buy a bike, his eyes lit up and he said this is a very good idea, I will go with you and rent a bike today as well. Rafia wanted to ride through the empty Vegas-like sprawl of downtown Beirut, a one-mile by one-mile area now called Solidere--named after the corporate real estate conglomerate that manages all of its development there--but neither of us could find what we wanted. I plan to attend his photographic exhibit.)

Anyone who has spent time with me in New York City knows enough not to get me started on the Moses Effect. Robert Moses was a famously misanthropic urban "planner" and for almost half a century one of the most powerful New York City officials of all time. Years before I was born, and in what Moses supporters claim to be the man's highest achievement, the neighborhood I now live in was cleaved in two by the Brooklyn-Queens-Expressway -- italics meant to highlight a misnomer if there ever was one. Beirut suffers from many such divisions as well. Overpasses, underground highways, eight-lane bridges. All of these have divided and destroyed communities to make smoother passage for automobiles. Add to this the culture of what I have dubbed pedestricide, and the quality of life for a diehard walker begins to feel limited.

The neighborhoods I pass through on this walk are varied, but most striking are the remnants of recent warfare. It is tough to get used to seeing bombed out buildings. Who invented bombs anyway, and why would anyone do that? What explains our ability--our propensity even--to sit calmly on our home turf, designing and constructing devices intended to be lobbed into our neighbor's home so that it kills him or maims him or (if he happens to not be home at that moment) rearranges and disrupts his surroundings and belongings in such a drastic way that he will be forced to focus only on his basic human needs for quite some time, thereby rendering him less likely to get all up in our business? It is the definition of barbarism, surely, and yet extremely popular the world 'round! Those are the kind of thoughts I tend to have when facing modern human-made ruins.

On a recent afternoon two Lebanese twenty-somethings from our crew--Jana, the office coordinator, and Jimmy, the locations manager--were telling me, in somehow side-splitting detail, how in years past they would pattern their socializing around the explosions going off around the city. They would sit home, waiting for an explosion, and then venture out to meet their friends in whatever hip neighborhood was farthest from where the blast occurred. Car bomb in Hamra, go to Gemmayzé. Rocket fire in Achrafieh, go to Hamra. And so on. They were laughing to the point of tears.

These same young people spoke of how downtown Beirut (now called Solidere--see above) has been destroyed and rebuilt seven times in recent history. They claimed since World War II--though I am led believe the place was leveled at the end of the First World War when the French wrestled the keys to the city from the Ottoman Turks. The most recent bombardment in 2006 drove the Hezbollah Party into the suburbs mainly to the south of Beirut, though in effect that organization is scattered about the way any political entity might be.

The Languages
France's "involvement" in Lebanon dates back to before World War I. In certain areas of the city French culture is quite prevalent and many Beirutians speak French as their first language. Almost all of my local colleagues here are fluent in French & Arabic, and more than proficient in English as well. A French speaker would find it much easier to get around here than an English speaker. My only question for all of French culture is: how is there time for anything besides greeting one another and saying goodbye when you must kiss three times on the cheek?

In Beirut it is not uncommon to encounter pockets of people who speak no French or English at all, especially in the predominantly Muslim neighborhoods like where I live near Sanayeh Park. As a woefully monolingual American, it's easy to feel left out of many interesting conversations.

Bruce Lee Meets Bob Fosse
Our production team has learned that there are no stunt coordinators within the tiny Lebanese film industry. Nor for that matter are there professional grade walkie-talkies. (There seem to be no harmonicas for sale either, but that fact has naught to do with my work.) The production is looking into hiring a local martial arts instructor and a choreographer to work together to help with several stunt sequences in our movie, and we may borrow some walkies from the military.

Trouble in Paradise
Our two lead actresses flew in for rehearsals this past weekend. We are still several weeks out from shooting and they will be here with us for the remainder of the project. Production made the rather serious mistake of putting the "talent" in the apartment in which I had been living so blissfully up until right about then. Product galore clutters both bathrooms now but there is nothing called simply "soap" or "shampoo" for me to pilfer without fear of smelling like berries afterward. There is actually a bottle in my shower whose label declares it contains an "ex-foliant". (Wasn't Agent Orange an exfoliant?) There are dirty ashtrays in the kitchen and we are always out of toilet paper. I plan on murdering one of them on my day off this weekend, partly for revenge and partly to send a message to the other one.

[UPDATE: After forwarding the above paragraph to one of the producers who I go to for help with spelling, I have since been told that I will be moving upstairs to my own apartment this Friday.]

What To Do, What To Do?
In general I am slightly overwhelmed by all of the cultural options here. The other night I was forced to decide whether to attend a screening of Jim Jarmusch's latest feature at the Beirut International Film Festival or go to a series of concerts at a local Jazz Festival. I went to the movie and loved it. The local line producer wrangled me an invitation for tonight's closing ceremony, also at the Unesco Palace, which is how I find myself in the predicament of needing to find a jacket and tie in Beirut. I'm actually a little stressed out about it. The event will include a screening of Ang Lee's brand new film Taking Woodstock as well as an open bar, and you have no idea how happy one of those facts makes me.

In addition to the Jarmusch film, I also saw an Iranian-French-Lebanese co-production called Niloofar, about a young Iraqi girl who runs away from an arranged marriage with a murderer, and who can blame her? I also watched Food, Inc., which I call a documentary for people who either don't know how to read, or would for some reason choose to watch cattle be cruelly pushed around by men driving forklifts rather than read about it. Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation) and Michael Pollan (The Omnivore's Dilemma) are the main talking heads of the film.

Last night I saw a very good and uplifting film by a Palestinian American. It was called Amreeka and it might be coming to a theater near you.

What I Am Reading
The father of our local production manager is the famous Lebanese novelist, Elias Khoury. I have so far read his early novel, City Gates, and I hope to get to his acclaimed Gate of the Sun while I am still in the country. I often have no time to read once shooting begins. Mr. Khoury came to the screening of Amreeka and was kind enough to sign the copy of City Gates I had with me. I felt as though I was meeting the Lebanese Norman Mailer. It was a truly proud moment--for me, not him. Also on deck is a novel called Midaq Alley, by Naguib Mahfouz, another author I have never read.

Next
The electricity just went out so I will sign off. After my last letter, which I thought pretty much did the trick, many of you asked me "But what's it really like there?" to which, having recovered from my sense of total failure as a writer, I reply that's what I've been trying to tell you. Next time I will talk more specifically about what I see when I'm walking around here in the different types of neighborhoods. And as always, I take requests.

Kaihik!

Letter From Beirut, Vol. 2

2009-12-16T06:51:00.005-05:00

October 3, 2009

In Memory Of My Only Uncle
Thirty hours after arriving in Beirut, I received word that my uncle, Dexter Below, the only sibling of either of my parents, had died unexpectedly in Vermont. The man was a force to be reckoned with the entirety of his too brief 67 years, and the news came as a total shock. He was the kind of person whom one felt would always just be there, like a mountain. My feelings were made more poignant by the fact of being on the other side of the globe, separated from and nearly unable to communicate with most of my family. The memorial service was yesterday, near his and my Aunt Donna's home in Connecticut. Today, weather permitting, the family was to scatter his ashes on Long Island Sound, where my uncle spent a significant amount of time on his beloved sailboat over the past thirty years.

I want to dedicate these words to him in the spirit of adventure and learning, insignificant though the gesture may seem. I come from a very small family and the loss of my uncle has affected me profoundly. After learning of his death, I was drawn to the sea, not inexplicably, and spent much of the following day gazing at the Mediterranean and imagining how much he would have loved to be out on those turquoise waters, which he would have called “blue-green”.

My Job
The movie I am working on is in prep until the end of October, which means long days at the production office near downtown, combined with driving around to scout prospective locations. As the first assistant director, I am responsible for breaking down the script elements and preparing the shooting schedule. Once we start shooting, I will be in charge of running the set.

Quiet, please, we’re rolling.

As I mentioned in my previous letter, the movie tells a story set in contemporary Iran, but we are shooting here in Beirut to stay out of Mr. Ahmadinejad's beautiful and well kempt beard. Being in the Middle East in general, and Lebanon specifically, where exists a rather colorful mixture of religions and races, and being so close to the Israeli border, shooting a film about Iran, with a crew and cast made up of Middle Easterners, Europeans, and Americans, there is no shortage of topics to avoid in conversation.

If ever there were a time when my sense of humor could get me into trouble, it is now.

Lebanese Culture
An Iranian friend from my college days recently described the feeling of experiencing a "great hug" from the Middle East. I recognized immediately what he meant. There's just no arguing with hospitality here, even when it's unwanted. The place takes you into its arms like a fat Italian grandmother, and if that was an ethnic slur or offensive to all you tub-a-lubs, I sincerely apologize.

I also heard from my cousin, a former US Navy pilot, who spent some time “nearby,” though not as a filmmaker, who had an understandably different take on the region. He described it as a "hornet's nest"—and I understood immediately what he meant as well. The underlying tensions here, when stirred up, often lead to unspeakable violence between what seem at present to be peaceful neighbors. It is a place of extreme contradictions.

The Human Being Is A Resilient Creature
Having lived the majority of my life in the United States, I have never been forced to consider the effect open warfare on one's home turf might have on one’s psyche. The Lebanese have no such luxury.

A Lebanese person my age saw open civil warfare in the streets from the age of three until eighteen, and has witnessed all manner of violent altercations since. Keep in mind this took place in a country one half the size of New Hampshire, though not nearly as mountainous. There was basically nowhere to hide. I have already mentioned the bullet holes in many of the buildings, most of which date to the civil war. In 2006 much of downtown Beirut was leveled by rocket fire during a brief but very deadly skirmish with Israel. I pass through downtown on my way to the office each day and I assure you it is quickly being rebuilt, and it looks like Las Vegas, only not as conservative.

As recently as 2008, a spate of car bombings targeting military and political leaders occurred in the very popular Hamra district. The locals say the popular nightclubs in the nearby Gemmayzé district were especially bustling during that wave of violence. Folks just gotta get the groove on! Only last month rockets were being launched from both sides of the border between Israel and Lebanon.

Money & The Cost of Living
As in any metropolitan city the cost of living in Beirut fluctuates widely depending on one's tastes. Last night four of us ate dinner in Hamra at a clean but not too fancy Lebanese chain restaurant called Kababji. The total cost of a rather large meal there was US$30, or $7.50 a person if my math serves me. The locals are immensely loyal to Kababji because it rather famously stayed open during the air strikes in 2006.

On the way home, we purchased several bags of household groceries which will feed the same four of us for several days. Total cost: US$22.

A tasty and filling shawerma sandwich (beef or chicken) from one of the many street vendors runs you a whopping two dollars. A delicious fresh falafel sandwich costs a buck-thirty. Western goods here, including clothing, electronics, and booze, are commensurate with Western prices. A drink out at a bar, which I swear I haven't been to yet, are expensive, up to $10 or more. Produce is abundant and costs pennies at the many stands markets around the city.

Beirutians use a mixture of US Dollars and Lebanese Lire (which they call Lebanese Pounds, or maybe it is the other way around). The two currencies are totally integrated and it is not uncommon to use a mixture of the two in a single transaction or to pay with one and receive the other back in change.

ATMs in Beirut dispense US dollars. Who knew?

How Things Are Rationed Here
I've mentioned the rolling blackouts and the generators used to combat them. There is a water tank on the roof of my apartment building which gets filled once a month, and that's it. When the electricity is on, there is high-speed Internet in Beirut, but at home one pays for it by the Megabyte, like an electric meter.

Service taxicabs take you as far as they feel like taking you, by whatever route, and they will pick other passengers up along the way. It’s a buck and a half and you ride in a filthy Mercedes. If you want a private taxi ride, you will pay four times as much.

Beirut Traffic, Redux
Q: Why did the Lebanese chicken cross the road?
A: Because it was impatient and suicidal.

I wrote that joke to demonstrate the driver-pedestrian social contract in Beirut, or the lack thereof. The Lebanese people come across as warm, generous, trusting, friendly, kind, protective even, but they undergo a Mansonification process when they get behind the wheel of an automobile. They truly become homicidal psychopaths, and will target everyone: women, children, old people, the handicapped, cute babies. Stephen King should pen a sequel to Christine and set it in Beirut: a city is terrorized by Mr. Hyde-like automobiles. My parents live an hour away from the guy. Maybe they could pitch the idea.

The Lebanese pride themselves on having the best traffic in the Middle East, with Cairo's being the worst.

As far as parking goes, fuhgeddaboudit. The rule of thumb is "put it anywhere." Cars park two-deep on sidewalks, on public stairways (!), at bus stops, and in the middle of intersections—reminding us that the middle of an intersection is, after all, wasted space. Certain side streets are transformed into parking lots during workdays.

After only three days, I've actually become bored of the topic of traffic, so this will be the last you hear from me about it, unless I start driving myself—at which point I will brag of running down pedestrians in my car.

Sounds
The ambient noise in Beirut is at times unbearable and for a New Yorker that's saying a lot. Taxis honk their horns constantly in an effort to attract customers. Additionally, and risking a small dose of cultural insensitivity, I will say that to my ear Arabic is a language to which whispering or speaking in hushed tones seems unsuited.

A building next to my apartment is being torn down, and all day long the rumble of dump trucks, jack hammering, and earth moving equipment can be heard. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that jack hammering is a national pastime here. And what’s with the welding? I've seen more welding in the streets and alleyways in the last week than I have in my entire life. Is there this much welding going on around the world and I've simply never noticed?

The Islamic call to prayer heard five times a day continues to be a welcomed antidote to the godawful street noise. The whole place really quiets down for those eight or so minutes, and the sonic atmosphere takes on an ethereal quality. Besides experiencing natural occurrences like a sunset or a full moon on top of a mountain, hearing these sound is the closest I've come to real life Magical Realism.

I've named the pre-dawn call God's alarm clock—my only beef with Allah being that he gets up a bit too early, especially on weekends.

What Else?
You could ask about the cats congregating around the city. I call them "gangs" and they remind me of South American street dogs, only they're cats. You could ask about the campus of the American University of Beirut. Or about how in certain places this city looks and feels like Rome, but in other places it’s like Las Vegas, New Orleans, Paris, or New York. There's so much character and variety and breadth and smog.

Letter From Beirut

2009-12-16T06:45:00.007-05:00

September 30, 2009

I arrived yesterday in Beirut, Lebanon, where I will be living for the fall while working on a feature film. The movie is written and directed by a Iranian-American, and takes place in Iran, but will be shot outside of that country for reasons I would prefer not to put in writing until my Farsi improves.

Here are a few verbal snapshots of my experiences so far.
• Air France seems to have more flight attendants than passengers.
• I've been here only eighteen hours, but I already love the Middle East. The people of Beirut seem great, the food is delicious, abundant, and inexpensive. The culture is fascinating and the city of Beirut is easily navigated.
• After answering with an apparently acceptable "I don't understand what you are asking me" to all of the questions asked of me by Lebanese Customs yesterday, I was met and whisked away by my 2nd assistant director Reine ("it means queen in French") and plunged into the exhilarating reality of Beirut traffic. Very quickly, I reached a soul-level understanding of why Middle Eastern taxi drivers in New York City drive in that specific way they do. Traffic doesn't flow here, it oozes, sputters, clogs, and finally explodes in a flurry of sudden movement. Rinse and repeat. It appears acceptable to drive anywhere at any time in any direction at any rate of speed. There is no road rage, praise Allah, probably because, as Confucius must have said somewhere, he who becomes angry with Beirut traffic soon goes insane. The faces of drivers in other cars as we pass them on the wrong side of the street at full speed in reverse show utter complacency, as if they are listening to NPR, which I doubt they are.
• As a daily Manhattan & Brooklyn bicyclist, I dreamt of purchasing a bike here, but this dream was crushed within seconds of witnessing Beirut street culture. It's not so much that it would be dangerous (which it would be) as that there is no room to ride.
• I am living adjacent to Sanayeh Park, and a short walk to the popular Hamra, a neighborhood of on the west and mostly Muslim side of Beirut.
• Historically, before and during the fifteen year civil war here which lasted until 1990, Beirut was divided by what was called the Green Line, with Muslims to the west, and Christians to the East. As with everything else in Lebanese political history, this becomes complicated when you learn that the locals referred to the Christian area to the east as “West Beirut” and the Muslim area to the west as “East Beirut,” differentiating the sides on global cultural lines, rather than local. A cartography enthusiast such as myself becomes irate at this kind of haphazard nomenclature.
• I live in an enormous third floor apartment with ceilings so high I have to squint to see them. The windows and doors onto our six separate balconies remain open most of the time, and the Mediterranean air and smog blow right through. There are no screens on any windows and there is at least one mosquito living in Beirut, but not for long.
• For now, I share this palatial apartment with the director, one of the producers, and the director of photography, but as I can't see or hear any of them, it feels private.
• The neighborhood of Hamra is quite Westernized in terms of shops. I could have a cup of Starbucks in my hand within five minutes of leaving my apartment, if I didn’t loathe Starbucks so much. There are other chain stores as well, but plenty of local businesses too. Internet cafes are very popular.
• The famous American University of Beirut is a short walk from where I live. They are letting us use the pool, or at least they don’t seem to mind. The campus reminds me of Switzerland—and it is perhaps the only thing here that will ever remind me of Switzerland.
• I woke this morning at five o’clock to the sound of the hauntingly beautiful Islamic call to prayers. The amplified chant happens five times daily. The "song" emanates from the sky and fills every nook and cranny of the Muslim quarters of the city. It sounds as close as if a man were standing on my windowsill singing into a bullhorn. I struggle to imagine that I would ever be able to sleep through it.
• Beirut follows a daily schedule of rolling blackouts in three hour increments. These start at 6am and go until 9pm, and the outages follows some sort of "schedule" that everyone claims to know, though I've not yet heard any two people describe it the same way. To counter the blackouts, many buildings have installed enormous generators, which I have yet to hear or see, but I am no doubt distracted by other sights & sounds, namely traffic and general street noise, which are ample. Using generators to compensate for an energy saving blackout strikes me as the definition of robbing Peter to pay Paul, but what do I know?
• The locals describe the weather time of year "cold like winter". I call it perfect. It was 75 degrees Fahrenheit yesterday, and dry. There are many rooftop bars in Beirut which have already closed for the season because it is too cold.
• It is an amazing and eye-opening experience to be somewhere affected by warfare so recently. After one day the bullet holes on so many of the buildings were old news. One of the balconies in my Sanayeh apartment overlooks an empty lot where a building used to be until 2006, during the month-long skirmish with Israel known locally as the July War. Across the street the other way there is an armored guard station outside the home of some high-level government official.

Nylons

2009-09-07T12:19:00.005-04:00

Some years back I ordered a book online that was written by a friend of mine, a humorist named Robert Lanham. (Rob's first book, The Hipster Handbook, was a small cultural sensation, and an unfortunate one if your zip code happened to be 11211.) I can't be sure which of his books it was, but it was either Food Court Druids, Cherohonkees, and Other Creatures Unique to the Republic, or The Sinner's Guide to the Evangelical Right. I'm leaning toward the latter, though either title would do my story plenty of good.

Leaving my house in a hurry a few days later, I saw a yellow envelope on my front stoop, grabbed it and stuffed it into a bike pannier on my way out to wherever I was going. I forgot about the package until the next day when I was leaving a friend's place in Queens, again, heading who knows where (a reality of my freelance status is that I have no routine in my life), when I remembered the book in the bike bag. I took it out of the pannier, and removed the book from the envelope, tossing the now empty, yellow (manila?), mini-bubble-wrap-stuffed envelope into a municipal New York City trash can (a tall green metal affair with a small hole on top, designed to prevent people from dumping their household trash in city garbage cans—even though the same agency collects both kinds of trash and brings both kinds to the same place) on the corner of Queens Boulevard and Forty-Seventh Street.

Let me tell you about the corner of Queens Boulevard and Forty-Seventh Street in Sunnyside, Queens. There is now a fancy Korean deli there, called, simply, Jonathan Market (perhaps a distant cousin of Susan Laundromat, the Chinese laundry near my house in Brooklyn). Thank God for Jonathan Market. For years, the corner "store" at Forty-Seventh & Queens was an establishment nobody in their right mind would ever want to enter. They "sold" or rented "videos"—not DVDs, but VHS tapes inside boxes so dusty you couldn't read the titles. I only know this from glancing in the windows when I walked by. I never went in there, as there are enough dusty items at my place already. But there was something else in there—a collection of items several notches below dusty, used VHS tapes on the desirability scale. On the shelves of a tall metal rack--the kind you'd expect to find reading material on in a church narthex—against one side wall were displayed packages of ladies' nylons from 1960 or thereabouts, or so I would guess. (Do I need to mention dust again?) These were not your L’Eggs variety of packaging, but nylon stockings folded around a very thin, flat cardboard insert, nestled inside a clear plastic sleeve.

Around the time my Lanham book had arrived and I was leaving my friend's place and was opening the yellow (manila?) envelope on the corner of Queens Boulevard and Forty-Seventh Street, the corner store was starting to undergo the transformation from un-shopped in, dusty VHS tape and ancient ladies' nylons hot-spot to the aforementioned and glorious Jonathan Market. The metal rack with the flat packages of nylons had been hefted out to the corner where it now sat, a sidewalk relic to fifty year old "fashion". The rack was ten feet away from the municipal green garbage can with the narrow opening on top. (I'd be lying if I said that I paid more than a glance's worth of attention to any of this. That's a great thing about New York City: so much happens all the time that it's as if nothing does. The two things that draw crowds are 1] heinous crimes and 2] crowds themselves. Just yesterday, on my way to a meeting, I witnessed a crowd of people gathered on Prince Street in Soho. A mixture of tourists and locals stood in concerned clumps, variously glancing west, reacting to something--or so it seemed. I had to investigate. I steered my bicycle over there to see what had happened. [Please, not another dead bicyclist.] I reached the space in front of the mass and finally saw... nothing. Like street fish, New Yorkers collect in schools for no other reason than that they saw others standing there looking at... nothing.) Seconds after passing the rack of nylons I tossed the empty envelope into the garbage can.

Three days later I walked into my house and noticed a thin yellow envelope at the bottom of the small piles of bills and other junk my landlord had kindly left for me on the stairs up to my apartment. The envelope looked familiar—and upon further inspection, I saw that the return address was the same as had been on the envelope when Rob’s book arrived earlier in the week. Indeed, it was the same envelope, and it was still open where I had torn off the cardboard strip on one end. Inside was a dusty old package of ladies’ nylons.

Letter from Chicago

2009-06-19T10:50:00.008-04:00

From Tara: "Chicago has a prison downtown. Arrow slit windows and all. Tall, with an excercise yard on the roof. Guys in bright orange are always whistling at women walking on the street thirty stories below. Across from the prison is the building I work in. Across from the building I work in is a garage, the roof of which is level with the tenth floor of my building. Ladyfriends of the convicts like to go up to the roof of the garage and strip for the prisoners when they are in the excercise yard on the roof. If your office is on the side of the building that faces the garage, you could be having a board meeting and suddenly have nakedness appear across the narrow alley that separates our building from the garage. Most of the tenants don't seem to mind too much. Still. I have to call all the tenants on that side of the building to ask if they have seen any 'objectionable behavior' lately."

The Burrito Incidents, Parts I & II

2009-04-15T20:16:00.009-04:00

From Lynn:

Part I
"We are here. In Maine. I am getting a little restless with some symptoms of Cabin Fever. Yes, my foot is healing and is no longer purple and as big as an overgrown zucchini. I was not able to personally acquaint myself with the guilty bone spur, the size of a human thumb. It would have made a great pendant. I do use crutches sometimes but that is only for support. I feel fine about driving which apparently there is some difference of opinion on that matter. I tried to take the car out for a spin but [the wife] blocked my way and I couldn't leave. Locking the doors was probably not a good relationship-building move on my part, but I committed an act in desperation and I did let her in once she stopped yelling. Speaking of always acting appropriately, [the writer's wife] had another pushing-the-envelope type of incident the other day. In public. At a restaurant. With people who didn't know her THAT well. So does one apologize for manually squishing someone else's bean burrito or does one assume that everyone knows it was just a joke? Or does one assume that a couple glasses of wine just does that to people and it's okay. My point of view is that there are different standards of appropriate behavior, and that some people may interpret the burrito strangulation as an act of anger or at least not very friendly, and that an apology or at least an explanatory conversation might soothe some jittery social climbers who think decorum in public involves food respect. One friend considered an appetizer "up for grabs", whereas an entree violation would be beyond accepted community standards. He also distinguished between a dry food squeeze as opposed to a mushy refried-bean-and-salsa-type attack. The former was slightly more acceptable than the latter, the latter requiring a hand wipe and that is just going too far. In any case questionable behaviors always result in some type of consequence: passive negativity, active gross out, vicarious rebellion, physically lashing out, various levels in the humor category, or shunning. This is the normal progression of social mores that effectively controls explosive outbursts and maintains our high level of human conduct in our society today. All these reactions are still potentially active for the 8 to 10 women involved. We will see them tonight at a kids' basketball game since that is the only common denominator here. That and gender and not one of them is bald. Phone calls of mild remorse have been made, messages left with members who are suspected of being the most likely to take offense. No returned calls, however, have been received which opens up more advanced speculation. The true test will be in face-to-face contact. Judgments will be made on evidence presented. Criteria will include type and length of eye contact (if any). Length and general tone of conversation (if any), duration and type of physical contact (if any), reference to the Causal Event (if any) and who may be the initiator of contact (e.g. victim, causal agent, neutral third party). Ideally, number values could be attached to help determine the level or degree of inappropriate behavior. "Man, you were up to a level 9 last night" That would prompt an immediate and embarrassed apology. A level 2 or 3 likely could be shrugged of as alcohol induced or generally clueless. Levels 4 through 6 certainly would make you review your conduct and appropriate remedial measures should be introduced in a timely fashion. Level 10. Well, there may be no hope and the consequence may be permanent. One friend (the entree vs. appetizer guy) thought the highly effective Code Red/Orange/Yellow system that has won universal appeal for its clear, effective, concise service in winning our War on Terror, could be adapted. I objected, thinking that these types of behavioral situations are far more complex and require much more consideration than assignments to the color wheel. At any rate the real victim in this drama is the burrito owner. She APPEARS to be un-phased by the Situation and ate her burrito anyway. Later, [Name Withheld By Request]"

Part II
"K. I don't care if you want to reprint this account since it already has been repeated and much discussed. I think you should proof read it and doctor it up a bit. I still am not clear about the whole Blog idea. Partly this involves my slow grasp of the computer concept and whether they are here to stay. I understand that other people read the Blog, perhaps people you don't even know. I guess if I wrote a novel I would expect people I don't know to read it. Anonymity is critical. The identity of the Burrito Victim-as well as my wife with whom I try in my own way to successfully live--should be concealed. Maybe even change the identity of the burrito. I thought about lasagna or manicotti but then I had a manicotti incident involving [again, his wife] about 20 years ago that still comes up in conversation. Nothing erotic, mind you, just a face plant. So, maybe a pastry, or a dumpling. (Thinkin' New York.) A fast food item like a McNugget would lend a political element but lacks the mess equivalent. An enchilada would be way to coincidental. How about spaghetti or American chop suey? The gush factor would be strong and I think that is important as is familiarity and instant identity. The ethnicity somehow plays a significant role, so I'm thinking the American chop suey. I'm not sure what prompted The Squeeze. I can't remember if I asked about that particular detail or not. Sometimes when you hear a story, the climactic conclusion is so eventful that you forget about the preliminary details and you spend all mental energy trying to analyze what happened. In truth The Squeeze may have simply been a reaction. Something said. The food arrives. A response delivered. Situations just happen. That's the weird thing about boundaries. If you have none--or fewer--a lot of possibilities open up. Thus, if you are having a fun, generic conversation and a tasty-looking food item appears, one reaction would be to eat it. Another possibility would be to engage in counter-spin and render the product into a pulpy, indistinguishable mass. I think the shock effect was dominate, the contradiction effective, the surprise and advantage and the irreverence desirable. Really, I don't know what prompted this. I do know that the reactions at the basketball game were muted. It helped that Will's team pounded their archrival and the kid who Will was guarding (their best scorer) left the game in tears about which we were all very proud. A couple of attendees claimed to have not witnessed the burrito event and were sorry about that. At least one person thought it was funny. Others thought an apology really was not necessary. I felt that there was sufficient eye contact. An adequate degrees of friendliness was available from one and all. Length of conversation seemed significantly brief which is worrisome, but then the basketball game was pre-empting conversation... I did not notice any flagrant snubs so that is good unless that was the goal. Of course everyone who was at the restaurant was not at the game. So the jury is still out I think. This seems to happen a lot with humans. Everything is so damn complex. Are they telling the truth? So do they really not care? Did they really not notice? You just don't know. Then the judicial system was developed to help decipher the Truth and nothing but the Truth. So you have twelve people or whatever who pow wow about what they think happened and try to come up with one answer that sounds pretty good. Maybe they can agree. Or not. Can two people agree on one source of conflict? Did you see that animated movie Hoodwinked? Where you got to see the viewpoints of the different characters and Little Red Riding Hood. Kinda’ opens up your eyes about different points of view. She was a manipulator, and a tramp. Great movie. Then of course inevitably you come around to a comparison to the Last Supper with the twelve guys and all. That was before Equal Opportunity. Yeah, the more I think about it, I think you should really make some changes in the story. Usually, fiction is better than reality since movies, TV, and novels are our basis for reality anyway and they are always good. (However, the radio show "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me", Saturdays 11 AM, on NPR is my all time favorite where reality is really weird and funny both). So I am happy to lend you an idea to riff on. Take it and run and make it your own, but don't feel bad about plagiarism. When the movie comes out I could have a cameo appearance as Myself, like Gloria Allred in Rat Race, one of my top ten, but even then I think I would change my name. Later, [Name Withheld By Request]"

Another Dispatch From Maine

2009-04-15T00:38:00.008-04:00

Another email from a friend in Maine:

"Spring happens in amazing ways.
Last week was the full moon.
On the same day the deer carcass on the ice in the pond finally fell through.
Maybe I won't swim there for a while.
L."

The Mysteries in Life Continue

2009-03-30T13:15:00.016-04:00

An email from a friend in Maine:

"K. I was thinking about butt sniffing in context to high mammal behavior. I haven't thought a lot about this, but occasionally I have observed this type of behavior, primarily among dogs of course. And cats. Also cows, wildebeests, not sure about whales, reptiles or amphibians, or chickens. You know how with the Humanoids there is so much complexity to the issues. As I mentioned before behaviors can be misinterpreted and reactions can have varying degrees of severity. Now with butt sniffing, you get what you see--or smell. I'm not exactly sure what all a dog sniffs out, but man oh man, s/he must get a powerful message out of a snoot full. In many situations, there is the initial nose greeting, then quickly to the butt for a more meaningful acqauintance. So it appears to me that the nose smooch is just the preliminary formality. It is the other end that really counts. I would love to know the information they get out of that. And if they enjoy it. I know there a lot of taboos involved here in translating to human terms, and I am IN NO WAY advocating a change to the saluatation system. This is merely observation and comparison. The dogs just have it all pared down to simplicity which is the part I like. Most dogs can do the meet and greet and move on happily. One exception is our dog, Muna, who skips the greeting and lunges snarling for the throat. Bitch. Maybe she takes offense to the norm. Don't blame her really. Anyway since you seem to be curious about my observations, I thought I should pass this along. We as humans have evolved way beyond the sniff test. Instead we react with disgust to any product from the lower extremity. I can be that way too. I'm just saying that dogs in particular really get off on it. So the mysteries in life continue. Later, L."

In Memory Of

2009-03-27T03:37:00.009-04:00

We will miss you, Anne, you bright star, you rapscallion, you heavy metal Brooklynite in bangs. I thought you were getting better. You said you were getting better. But now we know you weren't.

You were younger than all of us. Stupid world. Stupid me. I should have called more, but I didn't, and I'm sorry. I hardly wrote you, or even texted you. I never visited, or sent you singing-telegrams. I would have liked to have seen you one last time. Your smile was magical. Cliches abound regarding your beauty. You were in every way beautiful. Mostly, I knew you from work, but it didn't feel like work, because of you. You understood things. You just got it. You were good, and you were good at what you did. I understood the things you said, and I liked working for you.

I always wanted to know you better. You collected belt buckles, and had a rhinestone encrusted telephonic-device like Paris Hilton's before anyone besides Paris Hilton had one. You liked beer, and you wore black t-shirts featuring bands that were popular circa 1981. You loved your family. You drove a hybrid car. You acted the part of the Hippie Flute Player in Buck Nelson Presents: Lifting the Cloak of Mystery Off Rock Drumming, a movie you also produced, and which I will probably never see, no offense to anyone.

I have often been jealous of your close friends, because they were your close friends. But I'm not jealous of your close friends today.

I find solace in thinking of myself as your "close employee," possibly a category of one. Once, a long time ago, you sent me a text message that said "Stop flirting with me. I'm your boss. You can't flirt with me." But here's the thing: I hadn't been flirting with you. I had been texting you something about work. There is a difference between flirting and texting about work. Besides, you told me to stop flirting in a text message, so that's a two-way street, little missy. If you were here, I would bring this up, no matter who was around, and I'd purposely make us all feel very uncomfortable, and I would enjoy every second of it.

But you're not here, and that makes me incredibly sad. I really wish you hadn't left. I miss you already. We will all miss you. We all love you.

We love you! We love you! We love you!

Q: What's the Difference Between God and a Cinematographer?

2009-03-22T21:22:00.006-04:00

A large number of cinematographers on American film sets happen to be from countries other than the United States. I honestly believe some of them land DP jobs not merely by dint of their talent, but because of their thick accents and cool-sounding names. Hell, some of their names are cool looking. I have personally worked with Polish, German, French, Japanese, British, Peruvian, Mexican, Dutch, Australian, and Danish cinematographers.

Nigel Bluck (not pictured here), a talented Direktor von Fotografie from New Zealand, once mentioned to me that no appropriate adjective exists to describe something from his country. His statement left me with many follow up questions, all of which he refused to answer--an interaction that could stand in for almost any interaction beween an AD and a DP on a film set.

I worked as the first assistant director on an Egyptian movie that was produced by a French company. We shot in New York and New Jersey. (I don’t know what they were thinking either.) One of the producers was a wonderful and entertaining man named Daniel whose English grammar was pitch-perfect, but who spoke in a deliciously thick French accent. Everything he said sounded tasty, or intellectual, and sometimes both. His chain smoking no doubt added a lot. One day he described for me the decidedly odd filigree of our cinematographer, who was soon to arrive in New York from his home in the U.K.

“Hong,” (also not pictured here) he said, “is Chineeze of fayze, Sowz Afreecan by birz, and Eengleesh in manner of speaking.” Years later, and I am still laughing about that one.

There are plenty of talented American cinematographers too (one is pictured here), but none of them sound as fancy-pants as the foreigners when they ask where craft service is.

[A: God doesn't think he's a cinematographer.]

As I Wrote About Thurber

2009-01-20T22:07:00.003-05:00

As I wrote about Thurber, my eyesight weakened. As I wrote about Ross, my ten year-old ulcer reared its head. As I wrote about Winney, I fell into financial disarray. As I wrote about White, my style improved. As I wrote about Woollcott, my waistline increased. As I wrote about Gibbs, I began to sound like Gibbs.

Gotta Be A Spirit, Can't Be No Ghost

2009-01-17T13:32:00.007-05:00

Bulworth is a political movie made prior to 9/11. Syriana is a political movie made after 9/11. Bulworth is funny, sometimes hilarious. Syriana is serious to the point of being depressing. The comedic plot of Bulworth follows a traditional storytelling structure. The papery plot of Syriana was soaked overnight in alkali, removed and hung out to dry during a desert sand storm, lit on fire, and finally run over by a Hummer. Warren Beatty wrote and directed Bulworth, and played the lead role. The main character in Bulworth inspires hope, only to be assassinated in the last reel. The main character in Syriana, played by George Clooney, demonstrates the ruthlessness and cruelty of geo-politics, only to be blown to bits by a rocket in the last reel.

The Unskeptical Eavesdropper

2009-01-14T17:50:00.009-05:00

It was the fact of overhearing the advice the woman on the bus was giving a friend about a certain homeopathic medication that made the advice seem at all desirable. Had I known the woman and had she been speaking directly to me, I would not have taken her seriously--not for a second. My skepticism switches on only when I am not eavesdropping.

Today's Recommendations

2009-01-11T22:16:00.005-05:00

These are the books I recommended to someone who asked me to recommend some books to her today:

Grendel, John Gardner
The Abortion, Richard Brautigan
(any short story collection by) Anton Chekov
(any short story collection by) Raymond Carver
The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison
Hiroshima, John Hersey
A Fan’s Notes, Frederick Exley
The Road, Cormac McCarthy
The Mezzanine, Nicholson Baker
The Book of Laughter & Forgetting, Milan Kundera
Being There, Jerzy Kosinski
Ragtime, E.L. Doctorow
Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut
Cat’s Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut
The Crying of Lot 49, Thomas Pynchon
A Collection of Essays, George Orwell
Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, Tom Robbins
The Dwarf, Par Lagerkvist
Snow White, Donald Barthelme
Success Stories (short stories), Russell Banks
White Noise, Don Delillo
Cassandra, Christa Wolf

The request was for fiction. For whatever reason, my list includes only two women authors. This bothers me.

Riding My Bicycle Is One Of Those Things

2009-01-09T18:12:00.002-05:00

Riding my bicycle is one of those things I love so much that I am reluctant to try and express it in words. It borders on holy rapture. Mountain climbing is another one. And napping on summer afternoons.

Three Things I Have Learned

2009-01-08T15:56:00.008-05:00

Three things I have learned:
1) don’t let your rolling papers get wet;
2) if anyone asks you to smell their hand, don’t;
3) only scream if there’s real danger

It Makes No Difference To Me

2009-01-07T17:57:00.003-05:00

At dusk, in the park at the end of my block, on any given summer’s eve, the gray squirrels turn into rats. I don’t know why they do this, and I don’t mind. If a squirrel by day would rather be a rat by night, or vice versa, it makes no difference to me.

The Wrestler is America

2008-12-17T10:45:00.006-05:00

The Wrestler is the archetype of the dying warrior, the falling, not yet fallen, hero. The Wrestler is beaten, bruised, scarred and scared--but he's proud to be standing on two feet. The Wrestler has a pure heart, but a body that won't cooperate. The Wrestler wants to do right by his family and friends, but is too set in his ways. He is intelligent, but uneducated. The Wrestler shoots steroids into his muscles, snorts powder up his nose, and worships the unholiest of deities--himself. The Wrestler is nourished by the love and respect he receives from his ragtag and loyal fans. The Wrestler will never quit--what would he do? He could never hold down a job. The Wrestler will die in the ring and his fans will cheer him on when he does it.

It's Fun To Smoke Marijuana

2008-12-02T22:22:00.006-05:00

Remember when you could play records backwards? Those were the days. The world, to quote a former student of mine, was practically my oyster back then. I played "Another One Bites the Dust" by Queen backwards and it sure sounded an awful lot like they were saying "It's fun to smoke marijuana." Only it was kind of trippy sounding, as if the words themselves had been smoking marijuana. I enjoyed doing that. Speaking of Queen, remember when "Bohemian Rhapsody" didn't make you change the station? I must have listened to that song a hundred times the first day I heard it. I didn't know music could sound like that, simultaneously operatic and hard-rocking. For a while I tried playing most of my record albums backwards, but nothing much happened, except on the aforementioned Queen, some later-mid-period Beatles stuff, and of course, one of the tunes off Pink Floyd's "The Wall"--but I can't remember which one.

Things Get A Little Weird Around Here On Sunday

2008-05-19T23:48:00.003-04:00

Things get a little weird around here on Sunday. The usual places are closed, and we are forced to go to the smaller places, but the smaller places don't really act as though they want us there. (If they don't want us there, they shouldn't stay open.) The way the man looked at me yesterday made me think that perhaps something untoward was happening, perhaps in back. Then he slapped the change into my palm as if to say "no need to come back here next week. We know you only come around here on Sundays anyway and we're none too impressed." Things get a little weird around here on Sunday.

I Think I Pinned It Down

2008-05-15T10:37:00.005-04:00

I think I pinned it down. I was wondering what was making me so depressed and I think I pinned it down. It wasn't a chemical imbalance and it certainly wasn't the weather. It wasn't work or lack of it. It wasn't drink or drug. It wasn't interpersonal relationship related. But I finally pinned it down: I was reading "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy and it was making me depressed. But in a good way.

Dennis Hopper Did It In "Apocalypse Now"

2008-05-12T23:31:00.006-04:00

Dennis Hopper did it in "Apocalypse Now." Then Brad Pitt did it in "12 Monkeys." Jeremy Davies did it in Soderbergh's remake of "Solaris." James Franco will do it in "Pineapple Express." And I am going to do it in my job interview tomorrow morning.

"THINGS..." will return the week of May 12. Hang in there!

2008-05-05T01:06:00.001-04:00

Cleanliness Is (Nothing) Next To Godliness

2008-05-01T12:06:00.006-04:00

In New York City, the street cleaners don't operate on religious holidays. Same-side parking rules are suspended during any remotely recognizable day of religious observance.

I Had So Much Coffee Today I Feel Like Ray Liotta's Character At The End Of "Good Fellas"

2008-04-28T17:12:00.005-04:00

I had so much coffee today I feel like Ray Liotta's character at the end of "Good Fellas." When he thinks the helicopters are chasing him and he nearly crashes the car. I got up early, so I made an extra strong batch. I call them batches, not pots. Then this afternoon I made another batch when Phillip came over. That was what put me over the edge. I feel like Ray Liotta at the end of "Good Fellas."

It's A Good Thing Pelicans Aren't Aggressive

2008-04-27T19:00:00.007-04:00

It's a good thing pelicans aren't aggressive. Imagine, my Florida vacation foreshortened by a midnight run to the emergency room, my friend's two-year-old son's eye needing to be replaced by a glass marble after an attack by what amounts to an oversized magpie with a sheath bill. It's a good thing pelicans aren't aggressive.

Sometimes I Can't Tell If You're Joking Or Not

2008-04-21T23:00:00.006-04:00

Sometimes I can't tell if you're joking or not. When you say something, and you make that face, I really can't tell if you're joking for the life of me. It's weird because I usually get sarcasm--I'm quite sarcastic myself. I'm actually sort of known for it. But there's something about your sense of humor that I can't quite put my finger on. When you said that thing about the environment, were you joking? At first I thought you were serious, then after a few seconds I realized you were joking, but now, looking back on it, I'm not really sure.

Your Endless Questions Toward Getting Me To Qualify What I Assumed Was A Simple Order Does Not Good Customer Service Make

2008-04-16T01:39:00.007-04:00

Your endless questions toward getting me to qualify what I assumed was a simple order does not good customer service make. Don't ask me anything after I place my order. I don't want to join the member rewards club. I don't even belong to the gym or have a library card, why would I join your club? The one pass I'll give you is size. That's a valid question and if I skipped it during ordering, I apologize, but I don't think I skipped it. Anyway, I for sure don't want anything else to eat besides what I ordered. No need to even ask. If I wanted it to go I would have said so. The reason I mentioned that I don't need a bag is that I didn't want a bag. Seriously, no bag. Thank you.

I Spent The Afternoon Typing Code And Finally My Name Appeared In Block Letters

2008-04-14T10:44:00.013-04:00

I spent the afternoon typing code and finally my name appeared in block letters. I was ten years old. It was the very early 1980s. My dad had just purchased a TI-99 home computer for our family to share but I was the only one who used it. Ever. It was a bit bigger than a current Mac laptop--not the new tiny one--but it was by no means portable, at least not in any useful way. (A flower pot is portable, but so what?) To run a program or play a game, you inserted a cartridge into a slot similar to that of an eight-track tape machine. In those halcyon days, many programs were not yet available in the slickly packaged cartridge format. These other programs were on cassette. Yes, magnetic tape--the same kind you would pop into the dashboard cassette deck of your mom's Chevette when you wanted to listen to Supertramp. The tape deck for the TI-99 home computer was an external affair, the same kind on which your third grade teacher used to play the audio track for a film strip in class. Advance to the next slide at the sound of the beep. The TI-99 deck was connected to the computer by thick cables. You'd hit play and for several minutes the tape would speak electronic code into the computer's ear. You could turn up the volume on the tape deck and listen to the beeps and crackles of the code. (Fax machines speak this same language. The only other place I've heard the sound is on the other end of what was supposed to have been a phone call.) If you didn't have a tape deck and were tired of the same old cartridges, you could spend the better part of a weekend typing in your own code to varying and less-than-dazzling results. I remember one all-day session when I typed and typed and typed (cut me some slack, I was ten years old, and was copying computer code out of a book--stuff like "IF x, then GOTO y"--if it wasn't like that exactly, at the very least it made for difficult typing). Finally I finished copying the code from the book and typed "RUN" and pressed enter. Up popped my first name in block letters against a gray background. I watched as the text moved slowly around the screen, "bouncing" off the sides, feeling a mixture of pride and relief (which distracted me from the aching in my fingers). The future was there.

Debit Or Credit?

2008-04-10T20:20:00.009-04:00

Debit or credit? This unanswerable question is what we've been reduced to. As a culture, as a people. When anthropologists dust off the remains of our civilization some time around the year 2425, they will argue over the cause of our destruction, decimation and demise. Some will argue debit, others credit. The joke's on us--they'll both be right. (Another handful will lobby for the plastic bag. They'll be right too.) I get asked the question several times a week. I never have an answer. The question feels like the diminutive cousin of who's your favorite Beatle? (A person only comes to the correct answer to that question after living a life of wrong choices. Paul belongs to the pre-teen set. John is the choice of the adolescent. The working man chooses Ringo. Who is left for the enlightened, well-insured, semi-retiree?) Debit or credit? There's no similar spiritual life trajectory for this question. It's an either/or with no right answer. Debit or credit and when did you stop beating your wife? Debit or credit and what is the sound of one hand clapping? Let's make a change. Let's stop asking the question and start making answers. Not crebit or dedit, that's silly. Crebedit? It'll be a change we can all benefit from.

I Don't Like It When The Owner Just Hangs Around

2008-04-09T21:14:00.001-04:00

I don't like it when the owner just hangs around. Nothing against the owner--he's a nice guy and all--but he shouldn't just hang around. If he has something to do, that's one thing. But clearly: he doesn't have anything to do. He's just hanging around. It makes us all nervous. We don't work as well when he's here hanging around. It puts us on edge. There's irony in this and I wish the owner could see it. He thinks he's protecting his investment by being here but really he's sabotaging it--his loafing presence actually reduces the value of his own business. A simple solution would be reached if he had something to do. (Again, the problem is not so much his being here, but the fact of his merely hanging around.) He has the office in the back but it's small and uncomfortable and he can't see what's going on from back there. There aren't any windows. It's pretty obvious there's not much for him to do back there anyway--he gets the bulk of the office work done at home during non-business hours. So, rather than go home and do nothing, he hangs around here with nothing to do. Why he doesn't work from home during business hours and develop a complex hobby in all his free time is beyond me. Maybe this place is his hobby. Yeah, that must be it, this place is a hobby for him.

Painting by Francis Bacon.

My Sidewalk Is Often Blocked By Heavy Machinery

2008-04-08T15:25:00.003-04:00

My sidewalk is often blocked by heavy machinery. I live on a quiet street in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, New York City, New York, United States, Earth. Down the street from my building is a small company the business of which is some kind of metal fabrication. Maybe "fabrication" is the wrong word. What is the right word? Manipulation? I don't know. But they sandblast, weld, paint, saw, and bend metal. Long pieces of metal. Maybe they're I-beams. Again, I don't know--I just live down the street. Anyway, most weekdays, their shop spills out onto the sidewalk in front of the place. They sandblast, weld, paint, saw and bend metal right there on the sidewalk. Sometimes they take up a couple of parking spaces with their equipment and tools and materials too. (I'm the last person to complain about lack of parking. Ban automobiles--see if I care. But last time I checked--which, all right, was never--you needed a permit to hog an entire sidewalk and part of a street.) The workers make no apology about the fact that pedestrians have to walk out into an open street in order to pass by. And why should they--I'm sure it's not the workers' policy to take over the world with their steel beams.

It's one of those things I don't really mind, but it gets me to wondering just who is in charge around here.

(Photo: Will Sherman, www.untitledname.com)