Potulky

Paradisi Gloria

2009-11-22T13:21:00.002-05:00

It had been months since I last attended a choral performance. In college I saw some singing ensemble perform nearly every week, and I rehearsed with my own beloved groups five times each week. So this dry spell was really starting to get me down.

I've had a great time keeping up with the music scene in Kosice: organ concerts, piano and violin recitals, evenings at the Kosice State Philharmonic. But no choirs. Of course, I sing in the shower, and around the rest of the apartment, and while walking down the street, and there is always some choir blaring from my computer speakers. (Recently, I've been on a Brahms Neue Liebeslieder kick.) But there's nothing quite like hearing and seeing a choir, smiles shining across the stage, your breath mingling with the choir's up among the rafters.

All this is to say that the concert I attended on Thursday was a real arrival point in my path towards feeling comfortable about living in Slovakia. It was an evening of refreshing, rejuvenating relief. The Kosice State Philharmonic; Collegium Technicum, a choir from Kosice's Technichal University; a choir from Uniwersytet Warszawski; and a quartet of soloists joined forces to present Dvorak's Stabat Mater, which I had never heard before. It was fantastic. The soloists were standout--especially the tenor--and the choirs were technically superb and emotionally unified.

Dvorak wrote the piece--his first to use a sacred text--after his daughter died. His setting is nine movements of sorrow and sadness, reflecting on Mary's grief at the crucifixion. The last movement, though, is a glorious affirmation of the possibility of life after death. Choir, soloists, and orchestra pass a theme between them: Quando corpus morietur, fac ut animae donetur paradisi gloria; When my body dies, grant that to my soul is given the glory of paradise. It ends with an exuberant Amen--thick chords punched along a cadence strong enough to make your heart palpitate in sync.

Yesterday was a Good Day

2009-10-28T03:30:00.004-04:00

Indeed, it was. Productive, but not rushed, and reassuring in that several students received perfect or near-perfect scores on the test I am giving this week. At least somebody in my class is learning something.

I think I will spend more time in the departmental office from now on. Perhaps that sounds bleak to many--why dilly dally in an office when I can enjoy the luxury of working from home? My classes only bring me to the department in the late afternoons and evenings, when nobody else is there. But during the day the office is a far livelier place, to which I can turn for a sense of the collegiality I didn't realize I was missing until this weekend, when I reflected back on the summer at Phillips Exeter. So, it is hereby resolved: I will spend more time acting like a legitimate working adult in an office, and less time bumming around the apartment in pajamas and bedhead.

Today: Michael Blaakman vs. the Slovak Foreign Police. Battle royale, visa edition.

On not coming Home

2009-10-25T18:16:00.006-04:00

It was Homecoming this weekend. Rough.

I had a productive few days: I voted, did some grading, shared beer and pizza with Jon, cleaned, ran a load of laundry, and planned what promises to be a fantastic trip to Geneva, Lyon, and Aix-en-Provence. I rested awhile. But the persistent thought of being absent while all of my best friends convene in the place I love most was cruel and unusual torture. The feeling wasn't so much sinking as just rock-bottom low. And it was compounded by a week of generally low self-esteem with regard to my teaching, and an interminable string of gray, soggy days.

I don't like this sog. It's not fall. Fall brings cider and donuts, pumpkins, James Taylor, autumn microbrews, and cool breezes that carry the faint smell of apples. Here the trees don't even seem to care that it's fall. There's no exuberant flash of color, no arboreal homage to a summer well lived. The leaves simply fade to yellow and slip from their branches, into the sog.

Nevertheless, this weather does make the apartment feel cozier. And it makes me very glad to have Rita, a German Shepherd I've temporarily adopted, to keep me warm. The raindrops on my skylights make Nutella taste better in the morning, and they certainly make it much more fun to curl up with a good book. (Recently, by the way, I've been reading Susan Jacoby, The Age of American Unreason [fantastic], and Rose Macaulay, The Towers of Trebizond [so far, OK].) So while two soggy weeks is a bit oppressive, it's not all bad.

The sunniest moment of the past week or so was most certainly Friday night. Every year, the William & Mary Choir pours itself into a Homecoming float of epic proportion. We've dominated the poor competition for something like seven years running. Newbies, oldsters, and alumni stay up all night to build the thing and generally engage in soused revelry, preparing themselves for the kind of performative misery that is the early morning parade on Saturday. At midnight, we convene in the lobby of Ewell Hall for a bit of carousing: "Wassail," our favorite drinking song, and the Alma Mater. I couldn't be at the parade, the tailgates, the game, the concerts, the social hour, the mug night, the parties--but I'll be damned if I was about to miss floatbuilding! So thanks to Larisa and Jess's benevolence, I Skyped in at 11:30 EST (5:30 a.m. my time . . . ew), saw a bunch of my dear friends, shared a drink, and sang along. It felt really, really good.

I'll post something soon about how teaching is going. I know that I keep saying this and then putting it off. In all honesty, I'm a bit afraid of what I'll write. It's a lot harder--and so much less fun--to analyze my classes and my own teaching without something like the stellar group of friends and colleagues I found at Phillips Exeter this summer. Nevertheless, it must be done. So check back soon for what promises to be one hell of an update :)

An Indulgence in Metaphor and Parallel Structure

2009-10-04T16:44:00.010-04:00

Kosice is just as multifarious and complicated as any city I've known. There's the Kosice of elderly couples and high art, the Kosice of teenage sweethearts and late-night strolls, the Kosice of twentysomethings looking for a cheap pint, the Kosice of gypsies loitering their days away, of workers and students and businessmen.

I know I'm new here, and I know I have a lot to learn before I can consider myself familiar with the city. Yet I cannot resist the urge to simplify, to grasp one strand in the fabric of the place and follow it a ways, just to help me towards understanding.

A conversation with Williard last night alerted me to one such thread. From the cacophony of the Hlavna, it's possible to discern any number of coherent melodies. I spent this afternoon straining to focus on one of them: a slow, tired melody--not a dirge, but still something pensive and, perhaps, defeated. It's the unhurried hum of Old Europe, the calloused song of a continent that, for much of the twentieth century, had its nose shoved in the shit of the worst parts of humanity.

The motif is passed from the rush of a fountain, trying to forget, to the cold plangency of a carillon, echoing forward from memory. It's accompanied by the slow rhythm of stilettos on stone-paved streets and the quiet conversations of old men in baggy suits. It's a theme well-known by each of Kosice's dusty organs, their exaltations bursting forth from the doors of every dim church, rolling down from year to year.

I can't decide if this graying melody is nostalgic or amnesiac--whether it's the soundtrack of memories or daydreams. In any event, it's why the record stores' hip-hop beats seem to profane the sidewalks. (Hip-hop only has a place here between midnight and 5 a.m., when the gargoyles and the steeples and the noble Baroque withdraw into night.) It's why Sinatra's "My Way" plays five times each day at the city's singing fountain, and why that just seems so right. It's why this morning's Kosice peace marathon--long-established though it may be--doesn't mesh with my idea of the place. Who would want to run anywhere in Kosice? It's why the city feels more real beneath clouds than sun.

Kosice is slowly sipping a cup of coffee, and taking an unhurried drag from its fifth cigarette of the morning. It's Europe. It's old, dammit, and it's tired, and this afternoon it's not about to let me think otherwise.

Quick Updates

2009-09-13T16:39:00.002-04:00

Just thought I'd post a few quick notes about the past couple of days. My days have mostly been devoted to reading this and that and the other thing--Friedman, The World Is Flat; Purdy, Being America; and finishing up John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany. Today I began to settle on page numbers and daily discussion topics for my course on Politics and Culture in the Contemporary U.S.! It's starting to get exciting :-)

The evenings have been an absolute blast. I've spent several more nights out with Johan and the Swedes, and have met a bunch of his new friends from the veterinary school in Kosice. Among these new friends are a few Irish students, including a fellow twenty-two-year-old named Gavin. Last night, for example, we enjoyed a small, delightful wine tasting festival in one of the small squares off the Hlavna. Johan and Gavin are witty, good-natured, and downright genuine guys--easy to talk to, and easy to befriend, which is why I am thrilled that we'll be moving in as roommates at the beginning of October! Sometime over the course of the next week or two, I will take and post some pictures of our cozy and newly renovated flat :-) Gavin and Johan begin classes at 7:15 tomorrow morning (ouch), which is why I am updating this blog tonight, and not out for another night on the town.

I also spent a fantastic night out with Eduard, PhD student and kind soul, and a large group of his Slovak friends. After a failed attempt to enjoy a karaoke bar (it had been overrun by sixteen-year-olds singing "Dancing Queen"), we found a nice place with a decent D.J., wherein I was handily shown to be a novice at the Slovak national sport (i.e., consumption). We later moved on to a club, and danced the rest of the night away. (Which leads me to wonder, why are we so bad at dance clubs in the States? They don't all have to be huge and disgusting and filled with nasty people and $15 covers, do they? Talk amongst yourselves.) I met some great new people--all that was missing was Old Crow Medicine Show's "Wagon Wheel" at the end of the night :-)

This post was rather less heady or literary than I'd like the blog to remain on the whole, but I wanted to let people know that I'm happily meeting people, and that the housing situation has worked itself out perfectly. Missing you all, and sending love.

Elegance and Fortuity in the Hlavne Namestie

2009-09-10T06:56:00.010-04:00

My first post from Kosice. So much to tell!

I suppose the first thing to say, so that there's no need to wonder or speculate, is that, yes, I am terribly homesick. I want my bed and my family and my friends and my car and my dog and my house and my Wegmans. OK, I've said it.

I arrived on Sunday after long flights and little sleep. I talked to few people on the plane; the man sitting next to me seemed particularly uninterested in conversation. Perhaps it was just the fiercely acute angle of his frighteningly chiseled jaw, but he seemed rather unhappy to be sitting next to me. Oh, well. Eduard, a PhD student in the department of British and American Studies, met me at the Kosice airport. He brought me to the dorm, helped me buy some groceries, and shared a cup of coffee with me in the city center. I feel a bit badly, because I was probably not very good company on Sunday--sort of in shock and neither talkative nor coherent. Somehow, though, we managed to share an enjoyable conversation.

My first night in the dorm was when the loneliness set in. At the moment I am living in a large Soviet apartment building that has been made into a dormitory. It is a ten-minute bus ride from the city center, in a part of town that contains a lot of the government-owned gypsy housing. Sketchy. The building's exterior is rather uninviting, but my suite is quite comfortable, and comprises a furnished kitchenette, a spacious bedroom, and a clean bathroom. There is an internet connection in a small computer lab down the hall, which I have dubbed the Center for a Digital Information Future Hub of Next Generation Technology, in recognition of its staggeringly sophisticated Compaq Deskpros, ca. 1995. Classes don't start until September 21, so at the moment I have the computer lab to myself; on Sunday, for example, as far as I could tell, I was the building's only resident. This is not a good thing. The building remains mostly empty, and I think I have begun to associate it with loneliness. As you may be able to tell, I have no real desire to stick around there.

The city center, however, is a beautiful counterpoint. The long, slender Hlavne Namestie ("Main Square") contains the city's two most prominent landmarks--the State Theatre and St. Elizabeth's Cathedral--both of which are featured in the photograph at the top of this blog. The square is also punctuated by an elaborate fountain, a fourteenth-century belltower, and, yes, a plague column, memorializing victims of the black death, which swept the city in 1710-1711. Beautiful baroque and art nouveau buildings line the Hlavna Ulica ("Main Street"), which is intersected by small streets and courtyards. The elegance and grandeur of the Hlavne Namestie is at once muted and amplified by a patina of age--the paint chips here, the plaster crumbles there. This part of the city was neglected during the communist years, when, like incipient weeds sucking nutrients from the soil, thousands of gray apartment behemoths sprung up in the surrounding acres, diverting money and resources from the city's historic district. Now, however, the city center is again the focus of attention. Buildings are being painted and refurbished. Businesses have moved in, mostly locally owned, but some British, and some American--a Pizza Hut here, a Tesco there. The square is not overrun by tourists, but feels very lived in and lively. It is an encouraging example of what can happen when capitalism* blossoms and history is re-remembered.

I have taken a liking to a specific cafe on the northern half of the square, the Caveateria Theatru ("Theatre Coffeehouse"), where Eduard brought me on my first afternoon in town. I was sitting at a table in front of the cafe on Tuesday when someone walked up and said, "Excuse me, by any chance is your name Michael Blaakman?" Why, yes, it is! It was Johan, a Swedish-American and an '05 W&M alumnus whom I have been in contact with on couchsurfing.org. Johan is just beginning veterinary school here in Kosice, and we had been planning to meet up soon, but this encounter was pure coincidence. Thank God it happened, because it led to a fantastic night on the town. I joined Johan and his three Swedish vet friends for coffee, and they invited me out with them that night. We had a splendid and fancy dinner at a new restaurant in the spankin'-new Hilton (they decanted the wine!), and then went out to a bar and a club--yes, on a Tuesday night. Johan tells me that Swedes bear a special love of bernaise sauce, which was available to frill up any dish at this restaurant. I had never had bernaise sauce before, but ordered a side to try on my pork medallions and potatoes. Sure enough, when the bernaise arrived, it elicited squeals of delight from my Swedish friends--and, I must confess, they (the squeals) were not entirely unmerited. I am a freshly converted bernaise devotee. The rest of the night was similarly delightful; I made friends and had a great time. It has been the highlight of my time here so far.

Johan showed me his new apartment, which is in a much nicer part of part of town, is closer to the city center, and is spacious, beautiful, and recently renovated. I hope to be able to move in with him. Check for updates on that.

Later today I will post a picture album on my Facebook profile: www.facebook.com/blaakman

Time to crack open a good book and to buy myself a cup of coffee. More to come soon. Whoever you are, if you are reading this, I miss you very much.

-------

*Here I do not mean to suggest that the Slovak government is anything other than socialist. More on all that later!

Preparing to Leave

2009-09-05T00:38:00.000-04:00

Only two days remain before my long flight to Central Europe. I have been soaking up every drop of the comforts of home, and trying to get my affairs in order--packaging and sending books, spending time with my family, trying to spend as little money as possible, etc. The challenge of squeezing life into three suitcases comes tomorrow. Wish me luck!

I've been in more and more frequent touch with the people in my department. We've ironed out the details of my housing situation for the first few weeks, and I've been assured that someone will be at the airport to pick me up. I was going to be kicked out of my apartment for three days while "an important German professor" visited, but that's since been worked out. I learned that the start of the semester has been arbitrarily delayed one week. . . . OK. I have a work address, to which things can be mailed regardless of my apartment situation:

Michael Blaakman
KAA FF UPJS
Petzvalova 4
Kosice 040 11
Slovakia

I've also been given some tips about assembling my syllabi; they are to be thorough and clear with regard to expectations and grading policy. Apparently, an academic culture of increasing litigiousness on the part of students is among the more recent American exports to central Europe. (That's not how the faculty member put it--that's my own perception.)

Assembling a syllabus for my American Studies class has been the most exciting intellectual challenge of this long preparation for the fall. I still have a couple of weeks to write it, but the arc of the class has, I think, finally come together. I'd love to hear your thoughts, because, in fact, I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing.

This class is for first-year M.A. students working toward a degree in English Language Education. I am supposed to broadly cover the contemporary United States, and to provide some level of depth on the topic/theme of globalization. The specific directive from my department chair was, "whatever you do with the US will be fine." So the course has essentially developed as an exercise in Things Michael Likes to Read, Talk, and Think about. Contentless? Perhaps. But practicing English is the important thing, and there will certainly be ample opportunity for that. Here is the plan, such as it is:

POLITICS AND CULTURE IN THE CONTEMPORARY U.S.

Part I: Globalization

This unit will explore the causes and mechanisms of globalization. We will begin to study the effects of globalization upon politics and culture in this part of the course, but that objective will, in reality, guide discussions throughout the semester.

Selections from Thomas Friedman, The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century, 3.0 (2007).
Selections from Jedediah Purdy, Being America: Liberty, Commerce and Violence in an American World.
Some anti-globalization piece, not yet selected.

Part II: Recent History

A wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am consideration of the defining movements and moments of American history from roughly 1990 to 2008.

The Clinton Years
The Election of 2000
9/11
Afghanistan
Iraq
Katrina
Economic crisis
Religion in contemporary America
Global warming and environmentalism

Texts will include a long list of landmark essays from periodicals of repute; selections from Michael Crawford, Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work (2009); selections from George W. Bush, A Charge to Keep: My Journey to the White House (2001); Charles P. Pierce, Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free (2009); and some more academic articles when I deem them worthwhile or interesting, or when I have time to find them. We'll also view and discuss a few documentaries (e.g., Al Gore, An Inconvenient Truth; Spike Lee, When the Levees Broke; Michael Moore, Fahrenheit 9/11).

Part III: The Election of 2008, and the Obama Presidency

Just what it sounds like, with a big writing project dealing with either a comparative analysis of these texts OR an deep reading of several endorsements of Obama's candidacy, and a research-based analysis of how well he is fulfilling his campaign promises and rhetoric.

Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope (2006).
Newt Gingrich, Real Change: From the World That Fails to the World That Works [sic] (2008).

Part IV: Whence and Whither America?

A more theoretical discussion of American identity and ideology, focusing especially on conceptions of freedom and American exceptionalism, and with an eye for how the American past relates to the present and the future.

Selections from Alexis De Tocqueville, Democracy in America
Selections from Obama's and Gingrich's speeches on American exceptionalism
Jedediah Purdy, A Tolerable Anarchy: Rebels, Reactionaries, and the Making of American (2009)
Dinesh D'Souza, What's So Great About America? (2002)
Selections from Simon Schama, The American Future: A History (2009)

That's the just of it! Again, I would be glad to hear ANY feedback on that basic framework--especially suggestions for additional readings or critiques of my picks so far. I'm specifically looking to get some female authors up there. Really, though, I can't stomach Laura Ingraham. Like I said, I really have NO idea what I am doing. Any constructive criticism would be well-received.

Ok, time to sign off. I promise that these posts will become much more exciting when I actually arrive in Slovakia :) Until then, stay well.

ADDITION, 9/5: Just finished this blog post in a Barnes & Noble cafe in Park Slope. I have an eight-hour layover at JFK, so I got the hell outta there. Just enjoyed a lovely diner breakfast and will stroll around Brooklyn before hopping the A-train back to the airport. Then it's a red-eye to Prague and a hop to Kosice. More soon!

A Frayed Introduction

2009-08-12T20:09:00.004-04:00

This blog will chronicle my year as a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant in Slovakia. I hope to post pictures, stories, and reflections, and to use this medium to feel connected to friends and family back home.

It remains unclear why precisely I am going to live in Slovakia. I hope to find out once I get there.

I applied on somewhat of a whim, attracted by the romance of living abroad, and desirous of something valuable, worthwhile, interesting to do before graduate school. I was selected as a grantee, and appointed to Pavol Jozef Safarik University in Kosice as a lecturer in the department of British and American studies. I am presently intimidated.

I will teach four sections of "English Conversation" and one section of "Contemporary United States," an examination of modern American culture and politics within a kind of American-Studies framework. Even in the latter course, the goal is less accumulation of knowledge than to create a venue for practicing language. My next post will probably chronicle my struggle to assemble something of a syllabus for the Contemporary US class, and will ask for opinions and suggestions regarding my plans both for that class and for the Conversation sections.

As of now, my hopes for the year are to live comfortably, to make friends, to teach well, to acquire some basic Slovak, to find a good wife, to travel widely, and to not get robbed too frequently. Hopefully by the time I return home, I will also have been admitted to graduate school in American history someplace respectable.

My mother, for the sake of her health, should probably not read this blog. I plan to be blunt, and bluntness on any subject runs the risk of amplifying my mother's current feelings about my year abroad. Apprehension will give way to anxiety. Anxiety will give way to hysteria. Hysteria will give way to apoplexy. Here and now, therefore, I absolve myself of any responsibility for the state of my mother's health as influenced by the tales and tirades that will, in the months to come, be uploaded to this blog.

From now until August 30 I will be in Williamsburg, and August 30 to September 5 will find me in Rochester. I hope to see you.