Alone

I’ve just come back from a reception for the 30 participants in the Summer Program at the Law School – a program that teaches the basics of the American legal system to foreign attorneys and those seeking to further their legal education in the States. Thirty people, many from Asia, some from South America, a handful from Europe, including one from Poland, all here to take part in this intense course of study. Most are in the States for the first time. One lawyer from Korea is here with his entire family – wife and two adorable children; another lives in Berlin and works in a town that borders with Poland. And the Polish participant – she’s here after just barely finishing her legal studies in Poland. She lives in a small town outside Wroclaw. Most Americans have never even heard of Wroclaw. (She was shocked when I came up to her and started speaking Polish.)

I am impressed with the lot of them. To travel to a different academic setting, halfway around the world is difficult. [Been there, done that, and I never had the language issues to worry about.] To leave people behind in the close communities that you grew up in, be it Berlin or Tokyo is nearly impossible. I can guarantee that this evening will stand out for them for a long time, perhaps forever. The first 24 hours you spend in a completely alien setting is like that. You are alone, completely, utterly alone where no one understands anything about your life, your culture, your home. You are here for a purpose, but in the initial moments you can’t quite get a grasp on what the purpose is. You feel like you are totally out of your element.

Sometimes those impressions come back to haunt you even when you are no longer a new transplant. In later years, even when you know how to pretend otherwise, you understand that you are not part of this world, you are an outsider.

Sunday rain

A summer rain on a Sunday afternoon... What to do?

1. Work on my lecture notes.

2. Listen to Ann on WHA radio talk about blogging (check her blog here -- she said on the radio she took pictures of the studio and so I expect a post any minute now) and give very good responses to caller comments!

3. Make use of yesterday's Market berries (see below). Chocolate is such a good companion to fruit.

strawberries put to good use 

Low tolerance for good things?

For some time now I’ve been worried that people are liking “nice” less and less and “rotten” (at least in small doses) more and more. [I am not worried that I am too nice. I am worried that the rest of the world will get off the niceness kick and turn more and more icky.]

I have two examples just from this past week. I was discussing the weather yesterday with a friend and he said “it’s too sunny and nice.” I responded with something not so nice, like “you are out of your mind!” But he countered with: “I’m not the only one. I was at a store where the clerks were commenting that they didn’t want to go downtown to the Art Fair because being out in this nice weather was no fun at all.”

In another instance of something that I think is quite related, I heard an NPR interview with an expert on classical guitar. He was talking about Andres Segovia’s charismatic playing and how much it had transformed that instrument into something that could be used in the classical context. I was listening to this with a good deal of interest since I am a fan of Segovia and have a scratchy, much overplayed record of his music.

The person commenting on classical guitar said, however, that in many ways, Segovia has been surpassed; that this generation of classical guitarists plays with a precision that Segovia lacked (if you listen to Segovia, you’ll inevitably pick out the “woosh” oh his shifting hand or the tweak of a string vibration that shouldn’t be there). The NPR person responded – “but that’s no good; isn’t it better if there is a demonstration of human imperfection, so that the piece doesn’t, in fact, come out flawless? There is such a thing as being ‘too good’ at something.”

Of course, my scratchy record hid Segovia’s flaws from me. But I would actually like the scratches not to be there, and listening to snippets from the young guitarists, I liked their ‘overkill on the perfection thing’ just fine. And I like bright weather, nice words and good designs, or at least attempts at getting as close to them as possible.

So uncomplicated and so beautiful

Tomorrow is the 100th birthday of the late Pablo Neruda, perhaps the most beloved and widely read poet in the world. I am certainly a fan. From his simple odes to his love sonnets and everything in between – I like it all. I wanted to pick a favorite for the blog, but I have no favorite. It is the entirety that is, to me, so appealing.

“No theme would be beyond my orbit,” Neruda once said. And indeed, his collections are a testimonial to his remarkable versatility. In his “Odes About Everything” he describes what inspires him and what he puts down on paper:

…Odes
of all
hues and sizes,
seraphic, blue
or violent,
to eat,
to dance,
to follow footprints in the sand.

I might mentions that there is a Slavic connection to Neruda – for one, he adopted his name in honor of the Czechoslovak poet, Jan Neruda; for another, he was intimately associated with Poland’s Czeslaw Milosz – at least until their falling out over Neruda’s persistent support of communism.

Today, the Washington Post has an article by Edward Hirsch on the life and work of Neruda. It is well worth reading (here).

Ahh, Neruda would have been a fantastic blogger!