Can a person be happy because they will be a few kilometers closer to their homeland?

YES! Next week I’m setting out for Europe. I typically do not preannounce on the blog activities that are about to happen, but this time, my head is already over there.

When I was slightly younger I could not have enough of Italy. Before I even finished my senior college thesis, I packed my bags and moved to Italy for a while, renting an apartment in the Dolomite mountains. It was a bittersweet period. I invited lots of people to come join me – but in the end, only my sister did. People think of a million reasons why they can’t just pack their bags and GO. I can never really fully appreciate those reasons, but I understand that others do have them.

Still, during my time there, I grew restless in the mountains. I soon discovered that if I took a long (vomit-inducing – I swear, one time I watched a nun vomit all three hours of the ride) bus ride, followed by a long (but much more pleasant) train ride, I could get to Venice within a day. Thus, during my winter hiatus in the Dolomites, I made the trip to Venice 13 times. I was in love with the incongruity of it all, of life, of building a city on the lagoon, of me being there alone in March, wandering the dark dank drizzly allies, I was mesmerized.

Since then, I’ve gone back to Italy in saner frames of mind. But each time, I feel the pull of the place in ways that defy description. And in spite of everyone’s grunting about Venice these days (Too crowded! Too many tourists! Too few Venitians!”) I am undaunted. Listen, the city was build on a fantasy, the grandest one of them all. How could I not take note of that?
[I’m not just going to Venice. But I am also going to Venice. Oh, I can hardly believe it!]

my last look at the canals, two years ago 

Is it true that France and Poland are bickering about G W Bush, Michael Moore, and the American way?

I would imagine that it is a given that Poland and France would be at odds about the value of conducting politics in the American Way. That's more or less a certainty.

As to the rest -- the issues of Bush/Kerry and Moore right now loom large in both countires. Consider what the French are saying these days: The IHT reports today (here) that neither the right-of-center (Le Figaro) nor the left-of-center (Liberation and, too, Le Monde) newspapers in France credited Kerry with sufficinetly distancing himself from Bush during the Convention, especially on the question of Iraq (it is ironic that none of the papers have much good at all to say about Bush, mainly due to his recent isolationist foreign policy).

Of course, they should be reminded that Kerry could hardly attack the electability issue if he wore an “I love Fahrenheit 9/11” button instead of an American flag in his lapel from now until the time of the elections. (The French papers, on a continued love fest with Michael Moore, noted that Moore was conspicuously absent from playing a major role in the Convention). The French news media might want to ask the more important question of who, in the next four years, is more likely to pay heed to the European nations who had opposed the military conflict, Bush or Kerry?

In the meantime, Moore's film made its first appearance in Poland last week. Although one major Polish newspaper was reported by the AP and the BBC (read about it here) as positioning itself substantially in opposition to the content of the movie, my reading of the Polish presses reveals a more generous set of responses. One major movie review website gives the film on average of 8 out of 10 stars and other news sources (here, but in Polish) claim that the film begins a new era in the role of cinematography in shaping political discourse.

Interestingly, Moore taped a special opening message to Poles and this is displayed before the showing of the movie. In it he states that “democracy isn’t carried in on the barrel of a gun,” that the “desire for it must be born within a people.” He analogizes here to the historic transformations occurring in Poland in recent decades.

What reaction on the part of the Poles? One of my favorite of the weeklies, „Polityka,” (here, though it is in Polish) is adamant in its belief that Moore’s film is not a simple piece of propaganda. The news weekly applauds Moore’s effort to piece together disparate events and speaks admirably of Moore’s gift of building a brilliant cinematographic argument. I would guess many movie-goers in Poland would agree with this statement. I should note that „Polityka" continues to be one of the more popular news weeklies in the country. Does it represent the voice of the majority? Perhaps it does -- at least of the "Fahrenheit 9/11" movie going majority.

Then and now

I read a short little piece in the New Yorker today (here) about New Year’s Resolutions, seven months later.

The thing is, to the naked eye, one could say I have been A+ ahead of myself even, in terms of resolutions: what, with all this healthy living, walking, eating, I am a paragon of organic virtue.

But on the inside – I know better. Not only am I the same old, same old bag of warped goods, carrying with me scars from battles that raged during the first 50 “new years” of my life, I have added some on! Why stay with just fifty years’ worth when I can have fifty one!

So, at least looking at the list in the New Yorker, I can boast my superior command over myself: I don’t smoke (never liked the stuff so I guess I can’t claim great virtue there), I keep my weight under control, I try to be nice to colleagues (last week was the exception – I was just getting back at a grave injustice that befell me!), and I don’t carry around a stick.

Or do I? It’s invisible, but sure enough, I think I do carry a stick. Darn it. I’m not even superficially perfect.

The nonsensical world of machines

A computer problem has swallowed me. I no longer exist. This morning I have been but a slave to Dell’s distant instructions, torn between what they say and what I know in my heart to be true: that the computer took my soul and ran with it and neither can ever be retrieved.

(However, the local computer store is having a go at setting things straight. Good-bye distant Dell rep, hello local computer geek.)