I wonder where I’m learning more, from the streets or class.
In class, I mention about the negotiations at the COP.
“The summit made history as the first to see the topic of loss and damage funding formally make it onto the COP27 agenda. The issue was first raised by climate-vulnerable countries 30 years ago,” reportedSam Meredit.
Sitting in the back of the lecture hall, a man referred to his country and its struggles to be a part of that conversation. Few of us quite understood he was referring to the the plight of Kosovo.
In our next class, it became clear.
We were discussing tensions between minority and majority rights, conflicts that seem to everywhere.
“What drives divergent reactions to demographic transformation?” wonders Justin Guest, our author of the week. “This question has grown in salience as the politics of the United States and Western Europe react to the prospect of becoming Majority Minority states — where the native constituency of people, defined by race, ethnicity, and/or religion, loses its numerical advantage in the territory of a sovereign state. Relatively little is known about how societies govern such demographic change in the course of global history such that we may anticipate and contextualise policy responses today…divergent political outcomes are subject to national institutions — contemporary attitudinal analyses have focused on the ways that popular discontent, racism, and xenophobia drive responses…. divergent political outcomes are subject to national institutions — specficially, whether the state equally enfranchises the newcomer population and whether the government’s subsequent redefinition of the national identity is inclusive or exclusive.”
This same man from the previous class was assigned to my breakout out. He pointed out, that in Kosovo where he's from, things were brewing. Ethnic Albanians are a clear majority of the population, he explained; Serbs are a minority. (Says google: “Ethnic Albanians form the overall majority with 92.9 per cent…Muslim and speak Albanian…The Serbs, the largest minority group in Kosovo, speak Serbian and are predominantly Orthodox Christians.) The Serbs seem to want far different things that have little to do with holding the self determination or the autonomy of Kosovo, in high regard. Tensions may turn to bloodshed over who gets to display whose flag on the license plates, he explained. The conflict could be a useful distraction from the events in the Ukraine, he argued. It's all about to blow up.
We all went to lunch afterwards. We kept on talking at lunch after class in the mensa, the dining hall at the Freie Universität Berlin. You have to have a pretty decent understanding of history not to get lost in it all, he said, referring to the history of conflict in the regions of the former Yugoslavia. It was not a positive experiment, he replies when I ask about the former country that seemed to hold it all together. I ask about about the NATO intervention in the 1990’s. I would not be here if it was not for that intervention, he went on. We were under siege in Sarajevo.
And certainly, Russia is doing its share to create sew conflict. The ripplies can be felt in countless directions. My friend Anne Christine was trying to do something about it:
I’ve spent the past year trying to make sense of why all this was happening, in between some travels and adventures.
The week would be another one of them, back to the US for the first time in four months, to see Mom, the teenager and friends.
Unlike the week before, this time, I was determined to make my flight, watching the maps from school like a hawk.
Back to the Brandenburg airport from the Freie Universität, right after class, for an early evening flight to JFK, Thomas Mann’s Faustus and social media as my company, through trains, security, more security, this document and that at customs, on my way back to the USA.
JFK air tram to Howard Beach, outside into the air, for the A train to Utica Ave.
Backward, forward back to Brooklyn, where I stroll through the night, old restaurants and junk shops, bars, past a bodega, taking in the feeling.
Heal your heart, says the mural.
Oh yea.
I hope we can.
Poetry on the streets, it's kinda strange and wonderful to be back.
I want to love it all and then I remember.
On the way, I'd been scrolling through the news.
Voiceofgowanus posted a note:
“Have you seen coal tar in the #GowanusCanal? @hannahkliger of @cbsnewyork points out the sheen on the water in the Canal, evidence that coal tar is seeping into the Canal from the land around it. Without full removal of industrial pollution the Canal will be recontaminated, making $1.5 billion #Superfund cleanup an epic exercise in futility. ..demand.. full removal of the industrial pollution down to pre-disposal conditions…”
Funny being in the United States, where mass shootings are everyday and toxic waste is part of new real estate developments. Friends are everywhere. So are contradictions.
Caroline loves the freedom of walking Berlin, a place to live without the threat of gunshots. That's freedom for her.
I think about the people not here, Penelope Wood Smith, who always cooked and hosted Thanksgiving, those still looking for something, those abundant searchers, the communities and rituals that keep us warm, the hero's, the villains, the selfless who take risks, and the cowards in congress who allow this to go on, who make sure there are empty seats this #thanksgiving2022.
Greg and I stay up late chatting, covering topics, family, Brooklyn, CUNY, teaching.
The conversation only continues the next morning.
A full day of strolling up and down Smith Street, appointments for a covid booster, texts with friends, a surprise meeting with the ditchdigger, talking about Russians giving masterclasses on writing, novels, seaweeds, and secret histories of lost art works.
Out to Princeton the train takes me, everyone making their way to the holidays, while I’m recalling seeing Steve here all those years ago after a holiday party in the village, picking him up at the Junction, where he told me about meeting my friend Elizabeth Meixell, after one of our holiday parties, before Mom picked me up and the conversation began anew. And then Dodi arrived, via Los Angeles, and we all ate in Princeton, talking about art, Bob Thompson and Nina Simone, and tips and the Hammer museum and mom’s years learning to be a docent here all those years ago.
And on and on, hanging with glamorous Mom and her beloved granddaughter and her younger self, perusing old portraits and snapshots on her beloved pony in Columbus GA, 1943, with her mom on her first trip to Berlin on the Spree in 1958. Grateful to see Mom and family. Thanks for the smile, I think saying goodbye. Till next time.
The teenager and I run to catch the train, no tickets, just on time.
Finding a way, looking at the day, sunlight pouring into the train, moving past New Brunswick, where Juno Diaz wrote about Oscar Wao, past Edison to Metuchen to Metropark to Rahway to Linden to Elizabeth to Neward to New York Penn Station, into the hustle bustle.
A walk through the hustle to catch the A train to West Forth, where we jumped off and walked by Judson, where Bob Thompson was buried, and I met Virginia on the way to see Tim last fall. The teenager joined me a week later, over the Thanksgiving Holiday to chat with him.
I like your hair, Tim told her.
I like your hair, he said, his words were departing, about to fail him.
This year a memory.
And drank a coffee at Reggio, past the Blue Note, where I watched jazz as it snowed during college. And the teenager saw James. I met with C. And we talked about Anna Karenina all those years ago.
On we walked and talked the streets of NYC, from Washington Square East, past the fountain, by Astor Place, down St Marks Place, to Tompkins, where some guys are passed out in the bathroom. And we rest on the park benches, visiting the legends, chatting about homesick tags, about being homesick for a city long disappeared, recalling the friends, looking the Allen Ginsberg plaque at 206 E 7th Street, where Allan lived with William B in the 1950’s. And thought about Mel in the West Village, and Ornette and the Garden of Music and meeting with the teenager in the community gardens after Earth Celebrations, down to Houston Street, where they still sell Gucci knockoffs, and we grabbed an F train to Jay Street, making our way to Hoyt Schermerhorn.
And Al welcomed us with football and a view, chit chat about Shoenberg, and the game.
And Barbara and Judy and Joss and Mav and Max and Jenn and Cara met us, until I had to run. Trains at midnight, not the next day, Caroline reminded me.
And said goodbye to the teenager ever growing, finding their own story.
Wonderful to see family and friends in my city of friends. Love you Brooklyn. Thankful for you. And even a few Manhattan people, a few Texans, a few from New Jersey, a few people who lived in Staten Island, even queens, even New Orleans and San Francisco, even a few in Berlin.
And the world spun backward.
Back to school for social movements class.
And off to the opera house to see Fidelio. "[A] woman, Leonore, whose husband Florestan has been secretly imprisoned by the villainous Don Pizarro. Determined to rescue him, Leonore disguises herself as a young man named 'Fidelio' and gets a job in the prison where he is being held.”
Caroline’s cousin, from Dresden, saw it in the fall of 1989 and everyone was weeping, overwhelmed with the feeling of freedom, glorious, choral music filling the room.
And more friends come sharing a meal, into the night, Thanksgiving from Brooklyn to Berlin.
And Irene departed.
What a feeling... Thank you for the soundtrack ... To a thousand carpool rides and tea dances and bar mitzvahs, and parties. I'm gonna remember your name....rip Irene. Fame…
Heartbreaking, said Ivy in a post.
“I sing the body electric,” writes Walt.
Singing about about us all being stars.
We will all be stars.
“The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth them,
They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them.”
I think of that song, of learning about New York from that movie, sitting at my cousin’s house, in Columbus, near Carson’s house.
I think of Eric rofes' story in Reviving the Tribe about dancing to “what a feeling” looking at the guys in the tea dance and realizing half of them would be dead from the health carnage moving through their communities, and a lump forming in his throat. What a soundtrack to so many stories.
Thankful for you, I posted.
Thankful for you, said Ivy, replying… “too many memories of reaching for the moon, and not being able to live forever and having to die with so much indignation- we all had to learn to fly. I am thankful for you - can wait to see u in person - as we lost some major love ones while you were away…”
Tim and Mel still guide us with their humor.
I’m grateful for you all, from Kosovo to Brooklyn, to Berlin and back.
And in all and in all, we will all be stars.
