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Lovely, for the first time in the week I could sleep in without
concern for a meeting or schedule! Lunch was less than lovely: pizza in a
smokey restaurant. It's impossible to avoid smoke in Europe. The most
annoying thing about the additional time on the train yesterday was the
insidious fumes grinding against my allergy grated sinuses. In Europe, a
non-smoking car isn't really non-smoking — one shouldn't take these
things too literally! It means that smokers merely step outside the little
compartment, close the flimsy door, and light up in the narrow hallway! Or,
smokers sit on one side of the car, non-smokers on the opposite side. You'd
think it would occur to them to create a genuinely non-smoking car!
After lunch we set out for Kostnice, the Ossuary at Kutna Hora. I had the sense that this was off the beaten path, and I was right, later in the day we had to beat our own path along train tracks. But first, finding the place was relatively easy since we were able to take a local one way trolley. The ossuary was a bit smaller than I expected, and it struck me as similar to the Berlin Koerperwelten: you can't believe the candalabra's are made of real human bones. And like with the Pyromancer show, you have to pay a little more to take photos.
Since we had saved time getting there by taking the one car trolly on a one way track, we were a bit confused as to how to get back to the main station. We walked towards a town where a man was good enough to actually ask us if we needed help, and told us we were in the wrong place, the train station was 2km in the opposite direction. We eventually returned to the little shack where we were locally dropped off and encountered a kind woman who seemed able to direct us to the right place — though it was back in the direction from which we came! She made cigarettes at the Philipp-Morris plant, which required it's employees to learn English. "Even me, who is too old at 55 years," she lamented. So we talked in jilted but friendly English and walked along a lovely green path in a mist of grey: the rusty train track on one side and a creek on the other. As directed, we eventually reached the station, but there was no train to Prague: that station was 3km in the opposite direction! Again, we walked the tracks but the mist had turned to a deluge. While it was cold and wet, I didn't mind too much, my greatest concern was stepping on the beautiful slugs that where now at the bottom of puddles.
Eventually we found our station, but our train for Prauge wouldn't arrive for 2 hours. We spent the time in a quiet restaurant with grizzled men bent over their beers, a server with a handle bar mustache and mullet, and a soccer game absently minded on a television in the corner. They were friendly enough, and we welcomed a warm place to dry off and get cheap eats: two beers, a tea, and some bread for under a dollar!
Today we took a six hour train trip to Prague, or rather, we took it
to 100km beyond and then back! The conductor was very nice, but his help
began to feel almost condesending; he must've felt we were idiots, and we
didn't do much to disprove him I suppose!
In the evening we walked along the famous bridge, had a very good Italian dinner, and yummy destert in a cafe; the total cost for the evening was around 20 dollars!
Mimi took us out to Potsdam for a biking tour of the palaces and orange castles. Unfortunately all the bikes
were rented out, but we enjoyed our walk just as well. Though there were many
beautiful buildings and gardens, Nora and I most appreciated a spot of lawn
on which to take a much needed afternoon nap.
The evening we woke up a bit and walked around Mitte. We were headed back to Tacheles, but on the way Mimi wanted to show us the pretty prostitutes and her favorite plaground on the way. The most arresting thing about the street prostitutes was not their lack of discretion on the cafe crowded streets, but their appearence. They are actually attractive young women in silver pantyhose, hot pants, and bustiers/ corsets; you wouldn't think they'd be working the street.
In Berlin there's a vitality you'd never find in the ever litigious
America. And in no place was this more apparent than the playgrouds: they're
a lot of fun, so much so that you could get hurt. No plastic covered
bolts and spungy asphalt: just stones, mortar, and metal. We played on a
seriously cool cable swing and a curved slide so huge and fast that I
actually screamed in joy — and one which Mimi has yet to brave!
The vitality is also apparent in the art scene. Walking from the
playground to Tachles two punks with flamethrowers attached to their backs
would poke their head into a cafe and toss an arm of fire in while announcing
their upcoming performance. Conviently for us, we had the same destinion! Pyromancer's performance
included personal flamethrowers, fire juggling, and fire spitting Mad Max
cars! On the walk to Tachles, while trying not to get burnt, I asked if they
minded photography. "The donation should be twice as large", one punk
grinned. He also confided that many photos they had were frustrating in that
they were under/over exposed, or an orange wash-out, so I'm very pleased with
my own!
A friendly Russian boy permitted me to take his photo and then gave me a
beautiful rouble note (by the boring green standard) as a fellow travelers'
gift. I could only recipricoate with a small coin of Roosevelt without his
glasses — the unrecognized President on the US dime. The boys gift was
more valuable than my own because of his initiative; he laughed that the
roubles were not worth much more than my dime.
Earlier in the day I gave my presentation, concluding the business side of this trip. Nora and I spoke with the Russian on our way (bags in hand) to stay at Mimi's house, starting our long Memorial Day weekend in Europe!
Later in the evening we hunted for a Goth club. The first choice was supposed to have some sort of Japanese/anime performance, but aside from a relaxed and quiet conversation in a cavernous old brewery, lit only by votive candles, it had little to offer. Mimi led us to our next candidate: a Goth night at Station2Station.
One of my favorite things to do, particularly in other countries, is to bluntly, but with a big smile, ask if someone is a goth. The question creates a puzzle one can see play across the face: should one express a friendly solidatary, or risk being labelled — which we are all above of course!
Mimi, Nora, and I, couldn't quite find our way and when I asked a young women in a long black velvet dress "Du bist goth?", she smiled, removed her headphones, and declined. Of course, she was headed to the same club and the four of us managed to find by following other black clad freaks who would also deny being goth, I'm sure!
DJs Uwe Marx and Alex Bachmann played some decent music (including class EN of course!) and (like everything in Berlin) the space had a lovely, quiet, room with high barrel vault ceilings, and large windows facing the street. I'm so used to goth clubs feeling like a dingy basement that the idea of people looking right in felt scandelous! However, the true novelty of the Geramnic Gothic experience was the female "windmills." I suspect they're cross-overs from the head-bangers, standing with legs at shoulder width and whirling their long hair in grand circles about their swaying bodies.
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Europe is taking place at ICC Berlin. It was built in a futurist style reminscent
of the Star Wars Senate chamber, but its technology dates from the 70's. The
chairs and tables can convert to the other like Transformer toys; they
include various jacks, a fold out desk lamp, and a bevy of dials, but don't
expect a power or ethernet drop. Futuristic retroism creates a pleasing
dissonance.
Tonight Nora and I went to the Koerperwelten exhibit. I read of the controversy back in the states: perfectly preserved human remains (or just the muscle, nervous, or circulatory system) posed in lifelike stances (e.g., playing chess, riding a horse, or standing with one's skin draped over an arm.) It was a little unsettling, particularly the pregant women with fetus envitro, but less so than I expected. Counter to my intuition, the fidelity of the preservation lessened the effect: I had to remind myself that that these once were people. The exhibit space was beautiful: an old train station with lots of green plants. Through the large windows we could hear the drum&bass from the open-air club next door. Odd.
We've arrived. I thought that it'd be nice to go see the last panel of
EuropeXML today but the Sandman intervened. After our nap, Nora and I walked
over to Mimi's
neighborhood in Mitte. Even though we figured Mimi was still at work, we
thought we'd scope out the neighborhood. I found the enthusiasm expressed in
Mimi's emails for her new home to be well deserved: lovely parks and
playgrounds, beautifully decrepid buildings, and countless cafes!
The playgrounds are so fun; they are built like little castles, including escape tunnels! The playgrounds have all manner of cool rides and clever touches. When I went to play on the see-saw three children ran over to join me. The nice part of its design is the flexible old tire acting as a landing pad for our bum's: no teeth jarring slams for me, nor any fear of knocking the kids off! The two sisters with their curly pony tails floating above their big eyes and smiles were cute as buttons. The little boy took a disliking to me though — perhaps when he realized Nora and I didn't have a clue what he was saying. He started throwing his soccer ball at me and absent a (hoped for) rescue by a parent, we had move on in search of food.
And we found yummy bagel presses at Bagels & Baileys! Given bagel presses were also the staple of our diet in Miami, I certainly wish we had them back in Cambridge. Compared to the cramped dining of tasteless airline food, this evening we ate messy guacamole presses on the lawn near Friedrichstrasse station while listening to a single Hare Krishna and his box accordion.
Afterwards, we met Mimi and Matthias at her apartment, in the same building as a mime school, and ventured out for a Star Trek cafe, German beer, and late-night Turkish falafel.
A local community is advocating that prisons count towards the 10% affordable housing requirement of the "anti-snob" zoning law. I wonder if they appreciate the irony?
Prisons and Poverty: A Nation in Crisis — The United States spends more on prisons and incarcerates more people than any other industrialized country in the world. Over 5 million are in prison, on parole or probation, or are incarcerated in INS detention centers. Between 1971 and 1992, public spending on prisons alone jumped from $2.3 billion to $31.2 billion. Altogether, corrections spending is growing at a faster rate than Medicaid, higher education, and Aid to Families with Dependent Children. In 1995, prison building expenditures jumped by $926 million while university construction dropped by $954 million.
I just became a Salon Premium member; I'm such an anarchist. You laugh?
I'm serious. When I describe myself as an anarchist people think I'm either
joking, or not credible. But I don't feel like I'm particularly funny (I've
asked people that say they read this site because it's funny if
they're joking!) and I hope that while what I say might not always
be agreeable, it is at least thoughtful.
Clearly, it's difficult to communicate my political philosophy when the nearest term is associated with all manner of bunk. I'm not the sort of anarchist that enjoys smashing Starbucks' windows and assasinating politicians. I don't want chaos, nor am I a Utopianist. I've read and respect elements of Proudhon, Bakunin, Kropotkin, and Goldman, but I disagree with them as well. I typically say I'm an anarchist like Thoreau and Gandhi, but aside from reassuring people that I'm not going to start rampaging, that still leaves them confused. If they're familiar with Hindu/Buddhism, I can liken it to Ahisma, but then some think I'm a new-age hippie.
Consequently, I've started using the term "civil anarchist" hoping that it communicates that I (at least) try to behave civilly and (if I'm lucky) it's evocative of the civil rights and disobediance movements. The kernel of my Anarchist's Punk Ethic is a statement by Gandhi, "... The outward freedom . . that we shall attain, will be only in exact proportion to the inward freedom to which we may have grown at a given moment." This freedom relates to all things, including freedom from paternalistic government. Governments frequently achieve their ends through coercive violence. I'm not interested in responding in kind, instead, I try to live my life such that government is not necessary. For instance, I agree with many in America that drugs can be harmful, but I don't believe we should be locking people up for using them. Therefore I both abstain from their usage and oppose the "Drug War".
My theory doesn't mitigate the need for all forms of governance. I think government should be charged with enforcing animal (including human) and civil rights, and provide for necessary social and economic functions — libertarian theories do not completely address many market failure scenarios such as externalities (e.g., pollution) and short-sighteded planning (e.g., failing to provide for education and research).
So instead of running around looting, I actually have to support the things I care about: to be constructive instead of destructive. To that end, Salon is the best source of insightful, informed, and well written content on the Web. So as an anarchist, I ante up.
(Interestingly, after I wrote this entry I checked my logs and noted a link from the GANDAC, the Global Anarchist Nonviolent Direct Action Committee. Neat!)
My flight leaves at 5:40 pm today. I should be at the airport 2 hours
early, the train to Narita takes 90 minutes, the subway to Ueno train station
takes 40, and the walk to the subway is another 20. That means I have time
today, but not enough time to do anything but be anxious... When I've been
away from Cambridge for two weeks, usually I'm happy to go back. While I miss
my friends, I'm not all that keen for the States. Perhaps that's because this
trip's been so engaging. Hong Kong is monocultural, but has nice island
trails [o] and is something different none-the-less. Sometimes
Tokyo's gender issues and slavish youth culture frustrates me, but I also
find it intriguing (like goth and punk back home). And I can always get away
to the museums, temples [o],
and gadget [o]
stores. Plus, the whole place is infused with a sense of design [o]
that puts me at ease. The packaging, poster, magazine, building, and urban
design works very well, even if I don't know what I'm looking at. (I found a
great design bookstore by my ryokan, and it was the third store to be playing
Deee-Lite's "Groove is in the Heart" that I encountered here!) The rice-paper
doors and tatami mats feel (and smell) right. And while it's a huge modern
city with it's problems, the people are surprisingly courteous and
friendly.
In two weeks Nora and I are going to Berlin and Prague, I wish I could just skip ahead to that.
While I was in Hong Kong I was doing some research on the Tokyo subway and came across this article, "Women-only carriages are to be introduced in Tokyo trains to address the growing problem of drunken men groping women commuters." The catch is that most of the men aren't drunk, that's only an attempt to justify the behaviour. What's at the heart of the issue is fucked up gender/power relationships. I thought my Lonely Planet guide expressed the issue concisely, "When movement is impossible [on the subway], roving hands are frequently at work and women often put up with this interference, because in Japan it would simply be impolite or unseemly to make a fuss." They recommend a roving hand should be, "grabbed, held up, and the whereabout of its owner inquired about." When the friend I was staying with on my last visit did just that, the man was extremely shocked (angry) and offended. He couldn't believe she would do such a thing.
This isn't merely an incident occurring on trains; it's part of the warped relationship between men and women. There's a subgenre of rape fantasy (common in Japan) focussed on public groping. Given my trawling of the web and usenet for porn, I occasionally catch something I fancy, but it's often unappealing and sometimes distasteful/offensive. One such clip was of two Japanese workmen who convince a passing female to help them support a ladder; she ends up holding one end above her head such that if she let go, the whole thing would fall. So she helplessly stands there while the men get in a few gropes before running off and I'm thinking this has got to be staged! Would her desire to not drop a ladder (and her culture's norms) keep her from letting the thing crash down on the heads of her attackers?!
And it's just not porn, it's in the way they flirt, it's in their tv shows and magazines: the woman is a passive innocent who must be convinced to assent to her own desire. In some ways, the shy school boy/girl innocence common in anime is "cute", but it's appalling in reality. When I passed a western woman selling jewelry her confident posture, direct gaze and smile came to me as a relief.
Look carefully at the photo on the left, does the young woman look
happy? I carefully watched this interaction, as I did for many interactions
between such men and Japanese women, and in the end, I couldn't tell. From
the looks of the photo, definitely not. Furthermore, for whatever he was
pushing (himself, prostitution, a product, or a night club?), he was very
skillful at it. At one point he managed to maneuver her out of her cell
phone. The young Japanese tend to walk around with cell phone in hand at all
times, and at one point I could see he asked about hers, and once he had it
in his hand, he had her as well. However, she continued to be deferent, she
would respond with a smile; even after the phone found its way back to her
(and I rooted for her to leave) she continued to linger.
One night I stood at an intersection of night clubs and one of the things I watched was a black promoter manhandle women into a nightclub. He'd push it hard, and some would break away, but others would giggle and proceed on under their own volition. I comment on his race only because it seems relevant to the agility to which these men could exploit women's submissiveness. Japanese men would not be quite so crass because of the very same cultural norms.
After hours of walking this afternoon, I ended up sharing a pair of swings with a friendly and talkative Nigerian — though too "macho" for my PC sensibilities. He talked about why he came to Japan (his brother paid for his way over, which he would pay back from working at hip-hop stores), what he thought of Japan (expensive, but he could save and return home with a relative fortune), and the women (they have little asses but love big dicks). The Nigerians run the 80 or so hip-hop stores in Tokyo, and also promote most of the night clubs. (I expect the Japanese with the perms, tans, and baggy clothing — some even have a pant leg rolled up — have designated these men as proxies of the American hip-hop culture.) I asked him if many Nigerian women accompany the men, and he laughed at the thought of bringing expensive and bitchy women here when there's a supply of local and willing women, though they were rather coy. He then pointed out a femme that had been quietly sitting nearby, "See her, she probably likes you. Though she'd never talk to you, and even if you tried, she'd still pretend she didn't."
The winding roads of Shibuya and Harajuku are like those of Boston. But
unlike Boston, should you fall off the main path, there's still no shortage
of people and places to marvel at.
I'm the only person not holding hands with someone else while wandering about the love hotel [o] district — a complete neighborhood dedicated to anonymous hotel services for couples looking to escape their crowded apartments for some "privacy".
I accidently discover Mandarake [o] the largest manga/anime store I've ever seen: take the Strand Bookstore in Manhatten, put it three floors underground and fill it with Japanese illustration. Even though I can't read Japanese, I can identify the genre of the isle by the sort of people browsing there (school boys, school girls, businessmen, geek boys, etc.)
I find a new flag for Tyger, my "low-rider" bike [o], at Loft. This chain of stores is like an Ikea/Urban-Outfitters flavored Woolworths. Now I'll be flying the colors of a Japanese noodle shop that serves octopus.
I wonder how Japanese cities can be crowded and concrete, but not look like shit. I walk about the residential area near Fukudaya Ryokan (where I'm staying [o]) and figure it must be the narrow streets and reclusive buildings, the neighborhood shrines [o], and the abundant use of plants and trees.
I'm on a silent sabbatical from the jabber and homogeneity of Hong
Kong; I'm sitting on a ledge in Shibuya watching the people walk by. The men
constantly primp their chemically permmed fro's. The women hold hands so as
not to fall over while walking on cloven hooves: foot binding now takes the
form of 8 inch high platform-heels with open toes. The tan "ganguro" [o] look like they just walked off the beach and their
male counterparts with the long feathered hair and 70s glamour sunglasses
remind me of Johnny Depp in Blow. There's a couple of boys carrying
small attache cases joshing in a circle while keeping an eye out for a mark.
Occasionally, one detaches from the group and attaches himself to a quickly
walking femme who is horrified at this approach. The boy clings like a leach
to the young woman trying to convince her of something before he finally
breaks off; he slows, turns, and grins back at his circle, as if he just
successfully jumped from a moving train.
I ask a kid that sits next to me if he speaks English, but it's not good enough to explain the scam, but earnest enough to give me a friendly "goodbye" when his girlfriend returns from the store.
I often remind myself of Lincoln's observation that it is "better to
remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.."
Two presentations, 3 receptions, 3 dinners, and innumerable schmoozings
later: if I haven't made a fool of myself yet, I wouldn't believe it. My
voice is sore and I'm looking forward to silent walks in vibrant Tokyo. While
I marvel at Hong Kong's spinning frenzy, a kinetic ant hill is an ant hill
still.
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