Friday, March 31, 2006

 

Move It Move It

Right, so apparently none of you have been moved by music or economics lately. Neither have I, so no worries. (Though if you've got something on either tip, let's hear it, please.)

Maybe this'll move you, though: there's a new issue of The Burnside Review now out. I like the Burnside Review. I think some of you will also like the Burnside Review. I also think that what Sid Miller has managed to make in the last couple years in enviable and something to be applauded. And since it's a small, independent literary journal, the best way to show your love is to buy a copy. Or eight. If you're not into showing love through monetary transactions (isn't that the American way?), I will point out that I have a poem in the new issue. I had a couple poems in the first issue, as well, so if you're looking to get a hold of collectibles and/or a foundation for that shrine to me you've been thinking about, here's as good a place to start as any.

If you're just plain not into active engagement, Erin uploaded some of the pics from our trip to Talas, so there are pretty things to passively look at here, including this:


Thursday, March 30, 2006

 

A Couple of Requests from the Other Side of the Globe

Request the first:

So, it's gotten to the point where I would rather stab myself in the ear with a pencil then listen to the music on our computer. Not all of it, certainly, but most of it: Yellow #2 'twixt the anvil, stirrup, & hammer, for sure. It's just that what's on the computer represents about 1/3 of the music typically available for perusal and selection when at home. We just didn't get around to digitizing everything before we left. (What? We had other things going on. No, don't look at me like that--we did. Really.) Plus, to make matters worse, there had been a considerably greater number of albums/songs/artists on my ipod, but through some mysterious force unknown to me, it decided to erase itself about a month and a half ago. Listened to it one day, hooked it up to the laptop to charge and update, woke up in the morning and there's nothing there. So, pencils in the ear. And here's where we get to the first request: songs. See, our internet connection is such that it takes about twenty or thirty minutes to download a single song. So the songs absolutely have to be choice, or else it's such a let down I feel like its the day after the presidential elections all over again. According to the stats, a fair number of people swing through here every day. And not all of them are looking to drop some comment spam on us. Some of you actually read. And I'm sure a few of you are even listening to your new favorite song while you're doing it. Or thinking about your new favorite song, at least. I want to know what that song is. And then I want to go find it and download it and listen to it as a balm against pencils in my ears. Let the comments section be your mount, music shepherds, and sermonize.

(For the record, to perhaps give you some sense of what's been coming through lately, my recent downloads include: The Modern Lovers' "New England" [we're getting dangerously close to Opening Day and I wanted to ensure I felt the proper level of Fenway love]; "The Killers' "All These Things That I've Done" [yeah, well, it rules, so quit yer cool stance and try dancing, ok?]; Sam Cooke's "A Change is Gonna Come"; some old Saigon battle tracks [it seems the hype is well founded]; some old Jay-Z I was desperately missing; and Elliott Smith's cover of Big Star's "Thirteen.")

Request the second:

I like to think that I'm engaged and intelligent enough to garner some sense of cohesion and relevance from the daily news, to make connections, see why such and such may affect this other place over here, why these people are taking to the streets and itching to lob a few Molotov cocktails embassy-ward. I can recognize all the major world leaders (and most of their seconds) or the Supreme Court Justices when presented with a line-up. (Junichiro Koizumi remains the coolest looking official on earth.) But then the world business report comes on and I glaze over like an abused chimp nearing an overdose level of OxyContin (that Rescue show on Animal Planet can keep you up nights, lemme tell ya). It's not that I don't care (entirely), or that I don't recognize that some people really want to hear reports about the Nikkei Index or the FTSE 100. (That last one I actually rather like, as it's pronounced Footsie, which has that seventh grade in the roller rink kind of feel to it and so almost manages to whisk away the three piece suit aspect of the market.) Or I read something like this (from "Capitalism: the Movie" by Clive Crook in the March 2006 Atlantic Monthly) and have to reread it a few times before I admit that I have no idea what it means: "America regulates its market force more lightly than Europe, hence its low rate of unemployment; but in many other areas, especially so far as risk, product safety, and the environment are concerned, America's economy is at least as heavily regulated as Europe's." The problem is, I am as ignorant of global-level economics as I am of animal husbandry. I somehow managed to never take an economics class, never, not once. Five years of high school, four (and a half) years of college--nothing. I'm not even going to include the three years of grad school, because the chances of my having gotten any economics when working toward a creative writing degree were slim to begin with. For all I know, Alan Greenspan is a warlock and regulated interest rates all those years only after studied concentration over a bubbling cauldron. I clearly need some help. And so we get to my point: do any of you feel you have a good enough grasp on the larger economic happenings of the world to provide me with a little study session? My email's in my profile: hit me up. I'll even do the homework. Promise.

Wednesday, March 29, 2006

 

Because Lists Are Fun & the Primary Reason I Carry a Notebook around with Me

It has been pointed out to me (by Erin, who does the bulk of the pointing out of things to me) that in yesterday's post, when I referred to the shiak (guardian) from the sacred sites complex as Holy Man Jim, I may have been being a bit culturally insensitive and maybe even a little mean. In an attempt to right that potential wrong, and as possible proof of my being a bit daft and/or deaf, I offer you this list of other English-esque phrases I misheard intermixed with Kyrgyz during our trip to Talas:

murder phonebook sloth

dinner plans foretold

Daniel stinks

possum possum hat trick

rock and fractal plane

gruff dinner hardtop kitchen

Machiavelli

jokes sure suck

rock top joke teller

Jerry Lewis joke

Are you a republican?

Friday, March 24, 2006

 

Short Takes #5 (or: What's 3 Weeks between Friends?)

So I've been sick. Not deathbed sick, but sick enough to not leave the apartment for three days and to have amassed enough dirty tissues to build a 2/3 scale model replica of the Taj Mahal. I blame it on having drank from a communal tea cup that had been sitting out for who knows how long water that was taken from a spring only yards away from a pile of poo. Erin says I'm being paranoid. I thinks she's nuts. Here is proof of my side of the story:

eyewell

If you look just below the Sprite bottle, you'll see the tea cup in question. Guarding said cup (and the spring and the 26 other sacred sites in this particular complex) is the man in white, Holy Man Jim. Or at least that's what his name sounded like to me and let's face it, that's a pretty good name for a man who guards sacred sites for a living. Below is proof #2:

well poo

That's poo, just on the other side of the stone wall surrounding the spring visible in the first picture (the poo would be up and to the right from that point of view). I don't like poo in my water. Nor do I like the saliva of an indefinite number of other people in my water. But beyond that, I hate being sick. Maybe I'm wrong, but I blame the poo water. Poo water bad, very very bad.

*
Sometime not long before we left Bloomington, I popped into the Corner Book Store (a wonderful independent bookstore whose name for some utterly inexplicable reason I always want to say as The Book Nook, even though it is located--shocker!--right smack dab on the corner of Walnut & Kirkwood) and loaded up with some new lit journals for the road. One among them was the debut issue of Barrelhouse, whose intent is to marry once and for all pop culture and literary culture. Naturally, I loved it. (The fact that Steve Almond was involved in that first issue didn't hurt matters much, as I have stated for years that he's a god among lesser men. Or at least a damn funny and damn fine writer.) Beyond the magazine proper, however, I've recently (since being here, anyway) discovered that the good folks at Barrelhouse are also blogging (here), and their blog more or less makes me laugh every day, which is more than I can say about most things I regularly read on the internet. Yesterday's post points to an art show in Brooklyn containing a sculpture of Britney Spears giving birth atop a bear skin rug. A quote from the page:
According to the announcement, the piece is a "monument to pro-life." Leaving aside for a moment the problematic grammar of that phrase's construction, I've got to assume (hope?) that the sentiment is meant ironically. Though, if it is, apparently no one bothered to clue in the Manhattan Right to Life Committee, which purportedly donated materials to the project.

However, the real highlight recently (beyond Mrs. Federline, of course) has been their version of March Madness, in which pop icons have been put up against literary icons in a battle royale (of on-line voting). The first match saw Joyce Carol Oates get utterly destroyed by the esteemed Mr. T. (As it should be; I've still not gotten over Ms. Oates spending a week at Pomfret my junior year.) You can find the brackets on the blog and get your votes in (yesterday was a round two match-up between Mr. T and Willie Nelson!). And, of course, check out the magazine. The second issue is now out (I think; I've obvioulsy not seen it, as they don't sell it in Bishek), so maybe buy it and give the Barellhousers a try.

*
One aspect of our recent trip to Talas that Erin failed to mention in her recap was my having to 'purify' myself before we went up to one of the mazars. Essentially, this meant I dropped my pants and, standing ankle-deep in a partly frozen river, splashed Arctic-like water all over my nether regions for a few long minutes while five or six Kyrgyz elders looked on approvingly. Maybe that has something to do with the vicious cold, too. I don't know. And I don't particularly want to think about it, either. But I'm not above sharing it with all of you.
*
Last Saturday, as Erin was in Kochkor with her advisor and Kubat and others and I was left to my own devices in Bishkek, I wandered around town for awhile and when I got hungry I stopped into the Metro Pub, which is a self-described 'ex-pats hangout' with a Western-esque menu (hamburgers, traditional English breakfasts, Philly cheesesteak, etc.). All of our experiences there have been tainted by the presence of other Americans (not that you need my word to point this out, but we tend to be an annoying bunch when left to our own devices in foreign territory; especially those of us in the Peace Corps, it seems), but I was hungry and it wasn't lunch time and looked empty, so I went in. There was a big table full of military guys in from the base having lunch and no one else. I sat off by myself by the window, ordered a sandwich and a drink, and started reading. Not long before I left, an American scholar E. & I have met before but who apparently didn't recognize me (though I smiled and did the male head nod of recognition thing as he walked past) came in with a Kyrgyz woman (KW). They sat right next to me. The restaurant is rather big, with about twenty tables, 17 or so at that point empty. But the real point of my story is that this is the conversation they had almost immediately upon sitting down, when American scholar man (ASM) told his server, when she brought over menus, that he'd like an order of onion rings immediately:
KW: What are onion rings?
ASM: You'll find out.
KW: But what are they?
ASM: They're onions in the shape of rings. What more can I say?
KW: Whole onions?
ASM: They're an American thing. You'll find out soon enough.
I asked for my check immediately. And then went and bought some bootleg DVDs down the street.
*
On a more positive note, the one-year anniversary of the Tulip Revolution (March 24) came and went without much to report. The day was made a national holiday about a week and a half ago and the requisite hoo-ha went down in the center of the city: tanks and ballistic missiles rolled through followed by hundreds of men dressed in camo and simultaneously holding Kalishnikovs and beer bottles (always a fun combo). There were fireworks and performances and general yippie-type activities, but in the end, perhaps thanks to the constant reminder recently of the government's sizable military might (I mean when compared to, say, the guy in the bazaar selling cabbage, not the global military powers), everything went on peacefully and is now back to what passes as normal.

Friday, March 10, 2006

 

Would it be Asking Too Much...

...if I were to request someone TiVo these, burn them onto DVD, then ship them to us in Kyrgyzstan? Would it? I'll pay. For real. C'mon, you know you want to.



Thursday, March 09, 2006

 

Happy Family Do Cooking!

So say the aprons, in English, worn by the women in the cafeteria at AUCA. A good point, I think. And one I like to enact as often as possible. Sitting around a table with a (few) bottles of wine talking with people I’ve just fed ranks really high on my lists of things that make life good. Especially when the dogs do the bulk of the cleaning up of leftovers. But the feeding and sitting and eating and reveling hasn’t really happened on any large scale since we’ve been here, for a number of reasons. Until yesterday.

Yesterday was Woman’s Day. (It is singular in title, oddly, and thereby gives the sense that each woman individually owns the day as an autonomous entity, which strikes me as sort of contrary to the whole socialist thing, considering this holiday was birthed [pun? me? never.] by the Soviets way back when. Maybe collectivism was only for men. Are Communists still beholden to patriarchy? Well. But the women got their own day! One whole day! Suckers.) Where were we? Right, Woman’s Day. So a couple weeks ago, you’ll remember, we celebrated Fatherland Defender’s Day, aka Man’s Day (a holiday whose motto may very well be “we get most of them anyway, but it’s nice to set one aside every now and again to really revel in it.” When we get to Straight White Middle Class American Day is when the real party gets going!). So on Man's Day, we trucked over to Nathan’s apartment with the usual crew of students and faculty and friends we’re taken to trucking around with and you’re no doubt used to hearing about by now. Once there, Yelena and Asel (Yelena’s best friend and fellow AUCA student) made us all samsi and in the process taught us how to do so ourselves. As you’ve seen over on Erin’s blog, we’ve done our best to put the teaching into practice. But while we were still learning and the samsi were still not yet oven-bound, I commented that I’ll have to cook for Yelena and Asel sometime. I like to cook, you see. And Fatherland Defender’s Day made for the second time I had been cooked for in a short period of time by one of the women among us. So it was only right, right? I thought so. Yelena and Asel didn’t quite understand. “Erin will cook for us?” they asked. “I don’t cook,” lied Erin. “Well then,” said Yelena after a long quizzical look at both Erin and me, “we will have pancakes. For Woman’s Day.”

Somehow, by the end of the evening it was further decided (by Nathan, I think) that I would make crepes. Blini were out of the question, as you don’t make borscht in the buckle of the world’s borsht belt without a serious wish for failure. (Does that metaphor even work? I don’t know. It would be best to just move on…) And American pancakes were vetoed as well, as Yelena (wrongly, but with conviction) assured us that they were the same thing as blini. So crepes it was.

We bought a new, smaller non-stick pan and a whisk, milk and eggs and flour and sugar, some jam and ground meat and sour cream and mascapone cheese (Italian cheese made in Wisconsin, bought in Bishkek; living abroad has more rewards beyond the obvious, I'd say), and on Sunday had Janika over for a test run. All went well. I was afraid without a blender (most crepe recipes I know involve blenders) that things might be a bit clumpy and weird. I whisked all of the batter together in a bowl then transferred it to a jar left over from the tomatoes we used for lasagna a couple months ago and shook it like Tom Cruise doing his bartender thing in Cocktail. Like Catharine Hepburn in an earthquake I shook. Like Otis at Monterey. Shake with the feeling! In the end, all was well. The batter was smooth and problem-free. Let’s hear it for jars and rapid movement.

Because the number of people coming over was constantly in flux (when I saw Yelena at the university on Monday, she listed people she’d invited for what seemed like twenty minutes; turns out I missed a segue in the conversation and after some amount of time she had moved on to talking about who she had seen over the weekend. My bad.), I decided to make a minimum of six batches of crepes—two savory, two sweet, and two neutral (or, as I’ve taken to calling them, bland). I figured I’d spread the crepe-making over three days and save myself some work—bang out a couple of batches on Monday, a couple more on Tuesday, finish up on Wednesday in time for guests. As with most things I plan, that didn’t work. Monday I woke up late and fell asleep early, obsessing over some revision work I was doing the entire short-lived period of wakefulness. Then on Tuesday we were invited at the last minute (totally normal move here, by the way, which I love) to a party at a cafe in celebration of Woman’s Day hosted by the former head of the Anthro department at AUCA. It was weird and took most of the night and involved another American forcing unwilling Kyrgyz to do improv games ripped right off from the lesser of the two What’s My Line?s and adapting Eliot’s poems from Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats over and over again to the point of people literally groaning whenever he started to even mention a cat. So the night wasn’t entirely a waste (ahem). But that left me to spend eight hours yesterday standing in the kitchen flipping crepes. Well, most of the time I was flipping crepes. There was also some sautéing of mushroom, some cooking of meat, some sitting around checking my email and reading about the Red Sox pre-season woes. But mostly flipping, which looked a lot like this:

flip

Eventually people showed up and ate the crepes, which was really the point of this ramble wasn’t it? Janika and Alexander showed up first, but, as they themselves pointed out, that’s to be expected: they’re German and have a stereotype to live up to. Matt, an American here running the Alpine Fund (as well as a fellow New Englander—Maine—and Red Sox fan, so he gets extra points), turned up next with what seemed enough pussy willows for every women in Bishkek to have her own four foot stalk. They are all still in a vase on our balcony, which is pretty rad, if you ask me. Shortly after that Yelena and Asel showed up and kicked me off the stove. “I’m supposed to be cooking for you,” I said. “But you’re doing it wrong,” said Yelena. Who can argue with that? She was at the stove long enough to make one pancake, thick like a blini, then wandered off to argue with Alexander in Russian about the Uzbek/Kyrgyz relationship (she’s half Uzbek, half Kyrgyz; Alexander is German; they were arguing in Russian. Brilliant.) and Asel took over the cooking. I hopped in the shower in an attempt to scrub off the layer of grease that had taken over my entire body. When I got out, grease-free, there were about twenty people in the apartment, smoking, drinking, laughing, telling stories, reading poems, making toasts, and eating crepes. Many, many crepes. There were over a hundred in the end and they all got filled with the many tasty things people brought—Nutella, jams, meats, veggies, cheeses, on and on—until there were no more left and people were full and content and talkative. It was wonderful. If the dogs had been here to give the plates a once over, it may have been perfect.

Tuesday, March 07, 2006

 

The Defenders Keep Their Word: a Woman's Day Message from the Menfolk

A selection from the message that popped up on the AUCA server today, just in time for tomorrow's Woman's Day celebrations:

Dear Ladies of AUCA!

The spring season always starts in an atmosphere of a holiday. Indeed, what else can compare with the magic of the spring thaw, songs of birds, and first flowers? There is one thing – the International Women’s Day, with its spirit of Love and Beauty that enliven our senses and elevate our spirits.

On behalf of all gentlemen of our University and us personally we would like to extend our most sincere congratulations to you on this special day. Thank you very much for your tremendous work and graciousness.

We wish so much that your kind smiles never leave your faces! Be loved and be happy every day!


I for one am looking forward to having my senses enlivened and my spirit elevated, as it's been quite some time since that's happened without the aid of chemicals or Peter Jackson's special effects team. But I'm still waiting on the magic of the spring thaw. I mean, the bits that had been covered in snow are now piles of mud with wee sprouts of grass poking out, but I'm still not feeling the magic. Maybe tomorrow. That is, after all, when the spirits of Love and Beauty (capitalized in honor of Emily Dickinson, I assume), those renowned harbingers of magic, supposedly get going. Either way, I'll keep you posted.

Monday, March 06, 2006

 

The Biggest Little State in the Union



I was either in Lake Placid or Montreal the first time I realized Rhode Island didn't make it onto many people's mental maps. Either way, there were Canadians involved and it was in an ice rink. My sister was doing her precision skating thing and I was trading pins with the teams that had come, because that's how everyone spends their childhoods, damn it. Anyway, I walk up to a group of Canadians and we start exchanging pins. They look at the one I've given them and then one of them says, "Rhode Island? Is that in New York?"

Turns out, yes, yes it is.

In the four months we've been here, I've gotten quite used to people not knowing what the hell I'm talking about when I answer the question "What part of the US are you from?" I've become accustomed to saying "It's south of Boston." I've even gotten used to saying "It's between Boston and New York," which, aside from being a geographical fib of sorts, seems to settle the issue nine times out of ten. The biggest exception came this past Friday, when E and I went to Kochkor with Kubat (the Kyrgyz archaeologist working on Erin's project with her) and one of his colleagues from the Turkish Manas University here in Bishkek, Anil, a Turkish archaeologist (pictures here). At some point early in the day, Anil asked where we were from and we went through the list--Indiana, Ohio, Rhode Island, met in school in New York....


Later in the day, while Erin was battling a friend of Kubat's in a Kyrgyz game called Nine Stone (with perhaps only slightly more pride than warranted, I assure you she kicked his ass), we went through the role call again. The friend, the head of a school in Kochkor, asked Anil if I was Turkish too (apparently I'm not nearly as pale as I used to be; no more getting called the Galloping Ghost, thank you very much). Anil told him no, Dan is American, from New York. The man looked at me and nodded in recognition.

So, turns out I'm a New Yorker. By birth. The accent's a little off, but I guess I could work on it.

Wednesday, March 01, 2006

 

Fat Tuesday at the Wee Purple Palace

wee purple palace
Wee Purple Palace
(2000-2006)


All of the utilities have been transferred, the cave crickets in the basement informed of their new landlord, the mortgage payments stopped, the papers signed, the realtor paid, and the bank account is healthier than it was yesterday morning.

The Wee Purple Palace is no longer ours.

If you're in Bloomington (and I know at least a couple of you are), give it a drive-by and a wave on our behalf. And if anyone is sitting on the porch when you're there, shout something offensive at them, just to make them feel like locals.