#the humorless ladies of border control

[pablomedinauribe]

Russia is easy to slander in an epigram. It is a sad country, a morbid country, as Theroux once said, "exactly ... as it had ever been: a pretentious empire with a cruel government." Beyond the stereotypical fatalism and romantic, alcoholic self-destruction, there is something in the typically Russian rude bluntness that appeals, alongside what Mark Ames called "the sheer energy and pride in Russian self-hatred." It's the kind of affection one might feel for a broken, alcoholic neighbor who has nonetheless decorated his walk with a mosaic of shattered glass embedded in concrete, or an obnoxious bachelor uncle who airs family secrets at dinner. Russia, Ian Frazier said, is "the greatest horrible country in the world ... We all know of famous authors who gave the world great works of literature yet were not such good people themselves. I supposed maybe Russia was an entire country like that." Russia and America, the two great imperial land powers of the last century, both project to the world equal parts injured dignity and inadvertent buffoonery, and both are easy targets for the jibes of a sarcastic traveler. Boilerplate romantic generalizations about the poetic and passionate Russian soul or freedom-loving Americans spring easily to the page, but either country is just as easily defined by flag-waving and fried food. I don't mean to imply a false equivalence, though. If the temper of Russian society is cynical, and the European pragmatic, the American remains, somehow, optimistic. You still find in America, despite much evidence to the contrary, the idealistic, naïve sense that if you just get the right person in charge or out of office that everything will be set right. And so we ride eternal cycles of hope and disillusionment.

Franz Nicolay, The Humorless Ladies of Border Control.

[fuzz-zine]

Review: “THE HUMORLESS LADIES OF BORDER CONTROL: Touring the Punk Underground from Belgrade to Ulaanbaatar” by Franz Nicolay.

To get it out of the way right now: the word PUNK means different things to different people, while I personally wouldn’t consider Nicolay’s musical ouvre to be PUNK, the ethic behind this book certainly is. Moving on.

I can’t recommend this book to US punx enough right now. Nicolay covers a couple of his tours to eastern Europe and central Asia, solo tours and ones he undertook with his wife, so there isn’t one central narrative story. This book is rather a collection of observations about areas of the world that aren’t often ‘toured’ in the traditional sense. Nicolay is playing gigs in places like Ufa (Russia) Ulaanbaatar (Mongolia)  and Sofia (Bulgaria) throughout this book (and there’s a handy map in the first few pages to help westerners get oriented if need be) which was enough in and of itself to peak my interest. In the US we hear next to nothing about what’s going on outside of North America and Western Europe, generally, and music specifically falls into that broader problem in unique ways. I think technology has a lot to do with it, as do implicit biases (the spectre of the Cold War looms ever over these amber waves of blood soaked grain). The bottom line is, Russia and the US are more similar than ever, and if we want to move forward through the problems we’re having right now we can learn a lot from these aged and young punks living in the former Eastern Bloc.

For those already in the DIY music scene, the logistics of booking shows in these areas of the world look pretty much the same as they do anywhere else. Nicolay doesn’t spend much time discussing the actual ins and outs of shows intentionally, the shit is repetitive and anyone who has toured even for a week knows the basics. He’s in touch with some people he knows, who have put him in touch with people they know, etc. In some scenarios he had to book shows through message boards. He takes trains for the majority of his journey in Russia and Mongolia, taking in the countryside so few people outside these regions ever see at all. The similarities are striking, every city has a ‘red circle’, an old soviet monument (perhaps its been repurposed), shoddily constructed apartment and office buildings (crumbling, in some cases), poor infrastructure, diseased natural spaces (burned out forests, polluted waterfronts), rampant corruption, and extreme nihilism. Sound familiar?

Nicolay speaks a lot about this former Eastern Bloc brand of nihilism, pointing out that oftentimes extreme leftist views age into extreme nationalist views in this area of the world, a place where so many have been denied their own cultural heritage. There are some people still booking gigs, promoting shows, operating illegal punk squats and infoshops, but by and large the people attending the shows were far more concerned with drunken escapism than with affecting societal change. (Sound familiar?)

The book is not without some hope, even in the face of seemingly insurmountable challenges like famine, war, and drought the people who live in Russia, Ukraine, Serbia, Poland, Hungary, et al find ways to cheer themselves. Nicolay points out repeatedly the old Austro-Hungarian pastel village style that is still present in many of the Balkan and Eastern European countries. They still get up, go to work, get on the radio, go to shows, protest corruption, and try to make it work together. They aren’t reliant on their governments or community ‘leaders’ at all in a lot of these places, the corruption is so bad that no one can afford to deal with politicians period. If anything, this book proves that there is no excuse to give up. We have to keep working together to keep this thing afloat. And by this thing, I mean Earth and all of us in it. PUNK is the metaphor, the message. What we do with it is up to us.

[kusunogatari-a]

[ SasuHinaMonth Day Four: Marriage Alliance ] [ @sasuhinamonth ] [ Uchiha Itachi, Uchiha Fugaku, Uchiha Sasuke, Hyūga Hiashi, Hyūga Hinata ] [ SasuHina ] [ Verse: To Rule Them All ]

“...you know he will object to this.”

“He objects to everything I say. I’ve grown used to his bullheadedness. It’s why I decided to talk to you first - maybe you can help him see reason.”

Sitting back, Itachi strokes a hand along his chin. The wheels of his custom-built contraption jostle slightly at the movement. “...is there no other way?”

“My son...I know you are resigned to your future. I cannot in good conscience offer you as a suitor given your limited capabilities. Best to plan ahead and simply...skip the inevitable. If we have Sasuke marry Hinata, he will step up into your place when...the time comes. That way, she will not be left a widower. We will have an Uchiha king to produce heirs, and ensure someone foreign-born does not inherit the throne entirely.”

Masking his distaste of his father’s opinions smoothly, the crown prince muses in silence for a time. “...I agree, it makes the most sense. But Sasuke clings to his freedom. He will not relinquish it so easily.”

“I know. It’s why this news best come from you - he hates you less than he hates me.”

“He does not hate you. It’s all a matter of circumstance.”

Fugaku huffs a humorless laugh. “...perhaps you are right. But either way, we need this alliance. We’ve money in our treasury, but no land - we swell at our borders. The Hyūga kingdom is sparsely populated. Integrating will help fill their coffers, and give our growing populace a place to thrive.”

“And what of Hiashi? Will he see this same reason, or refuse his heiress to a second born?”

“I’m to bring the offer to his attention in the coming week when he arrives. Surely the plan’s logic will appeal to him. He is also desperate for something to change. If nothing else, that may sway him.”

“...very well.” Hands finding his wheels, Itachi offers, “I will speak to Sasuke. But I make no guarantees, Father.”

Waving a weary hand, Fugaku merely replies, “Do what you can.”

Rolling from the man’s study, Itachi takes to the halls. Surely his little brother will be out of doors on a day like today. His first guess takes him to the archery range, and it’s there he finds Sasuke.

Drawing his bowstring, the younger prince takes a moment to aim before letting the bolt fly. It lands with a solid thwack against the target, up slightly and to the left of the bulls-eye.

“You still favor to the left.”

Turning at Itachi’s voice, Sasuke brightens. “I’m getting better at compensating. How did you get out here by yourself?”

“Pure will.” Folding his hands atop his lap, Itachi gives a soft smile. “...I wished to speak with you - I knew I’d find you here.”

Expression dulling, his brother gives a nod. “...I can tell already it’s not good news.”

“It depends on how you look at it.” After a pause, he sighs and offers, “...Father has found a match for you.” As Sasuke bristles, he holds up a hand, begging silence. “Please, let me finish before you go off. It’s a neighboring land. They’ve large borders, but little money. Father hopes the exchange of coin for veritable space will be profitable for us all. We can relieve our overcrowding, and the Hyūga will be able to repay several debts.”

“But you’re the eldest!”

“I am also dying, Sasuke.”

The blunt reply stutters him so hard, he takes half a step back. “That...that’s not -”

“It is unfair to offer a dying man as a husband. And Father knows it would lead to an outsider having full control of the throne. Best to have you take the role instead. You’re fitter, younger, and -”

“And unwilling,” the boy growls.

“Sasuke…” Itachi heaves a heavy breath. “...you know as well as I that neither of our lives have ever been our own. Since birth, they have belonged to our people. And this is how you can best serve them. Thousands are counting on you.”

“I never asked for this.”

“No one does.”

“...what about Shisui? He’s third in line.”

“And thus even less appealing for a first-born heiress than you,” Itachi replies dryly. “We’re already down on our offer, given my condition. I doubt Hiashi will make any further allowances.”

Pacing as an outlet for his temper, Sasuke scowls. “...did Father really not have the gall to tell me himself?”

“He knows well enough what you think of him. Thus he assumed it would be an easier blow, coming from me.”

“Tch.” The younger brother comes to a stop. “...am I even to meet her before this is all said and done?”

“I am not sure - Father said Hiashi is to visit in the coming week, but said nothing of whether the princess will accompany him.”

Running a hand back through his hair, Sasuke exhales a sigh. “...we both know you’d make a better king than I.”

“It would appear the gods have other plans.”

Worry colors Sasuke’s face. “...there has to be something…”

“Perhaps. But for now, we must prepare for the possibility.” Itachi reaches a hand, which Sasuke takes. “...this may be selfish of me, but...if nothing else, Sasuke...do this for me. I will not get this chance. I know it’s not what you want...but it’s what must be done. I will assist you for as long as I am able. But eventually...you must face this on your own.”

For a moment, something mists over Sasuke’s eyes, swallowing thickly. “...I’ll try.”

“That is all I can ask.”

For the next week, Sasuke avoids his father like a plague-ridden rat. Instead, he spends any free time with his brother: guiding his wheeled chair around the palace grounds.

“Do you know anything about her?”

“I’m afraid only what Father has told me. She is short of stature, but…” Itachi’s nose wrinkles. “...’well-filled’, as he put it. Long, dark hair; fair skin; pale eyes. Quiet, and unobtrusive. I have hopes you will get along.”

“So long as she’s quiet as you say,” Sasuke mumbles. He’s known his fair-share of loud, obnoxious young women.

When a white-painted carriage finds its way to the castle entrance, Sasuke spies from an upper window. Hiashi disembarks first, giving a rather stiff-looking greeting to his host. A few moments later, a second figure emerges. Palms smooth at a lilac-shade dress before folding at her front. A cascade of dark hair, highlighting amethyst in the sun, ripples as she walks.

She’s here.

Sighing and realizing there’s little avoiding it, he makes his way back down to the first floor. Itachi waits inside, turning as he approaches. “It would appear you’re in luck.”

“Am I?” Sasuke asks dryly.

Shooting his brother a look, there’s only a moment before Itachi turns his attentions to the opening doors. Smoothing his face into a welcoming smile, he bows as best he’s able in his chair. “Your majesty,” he greets Hiashi. “And princess Hinata. A pleasure to meet you at last.”

Eyeing the crown prince and his apparatus, Hiashi does little to hide his distaste...something that bristles his brother. “...indeed.”

“My sons,” Fugaku offers. “Itachi, and Sasuke.”

A nod. “It would seem they know already of my daughter, Hinata - her younger sister Hanabi elected to remain at home.”

Beside Hiashi, Hinata gives a small bow, expression somber.

Ever so slightly, Sasuke’s brow furrows. Glancing between father and daughter, it doesn’t take much for his keen eyes to notice their disparity.

“Now, I believe we’ve matters to discuss?” Hiashi addresses Fugaku.

“Yes...yes we do.” A pause - Hinata, apparently, has no other supervision beyond her father. “...shall we have the children join us?”

“I think not. They can remain here.”

Another hesitation - apparently Fugaku wasn’t expecting Hiashi to leave his daughter so unattended. “...very well. This way.” Giving his sons pointed looks, he guides his guest toward his study.

An awkward silence falls.

“...lady Hinata? Would you care to move to the rear gardens?”

Jumping slightly, as though not expecting to be addressed, Hinata blinks. “...I...would like that, yes.”

Nodding, Itachi looks to Sasuke, who takes to guiding his chair without a word. Together the trio leave through a second exit, finding themselves in the gardens. “I always prefer being out of doors,” the older brother muses. “The air is clearer, and the sun far more welcome than dreary halls.”

Another pause, then Hinata answers, “...I agree.”

Smiling at her pleasantly, he makes to speak again, but comes up short as a servant calls. “Your mother wishes to see you, my prince.”

Looking slightly confused, Itachi nonetheless starts back toward the door. “I will return shortly.”

The younger pair watch him go. Giving Sasuke a glance, Hinata can’t help but notice the worry upon his face. “...forgive me if this is...if this is too forward, but…”

“He’s been ill for several years now.”

The girl starts, clearly not expecting a reply.

Sasuke pays her no mind. “...he was fine as a child. But as he got older, he began to slow. Then his legs weakened, and he rarely stands now. There’s a fear he’ll not live much longer.”

Silence.

“...I...I see…”

“...so, as you might guess...he’s not the one Father intends to offer to you.”

“...I admit, I...had a feeling. So, then you…?”

Disquiet reaching a fever pitch, Sasuke takes to moving to alleviate it. He relocates to a bed of flowers, fiddling with a bloom absentmindedly. “...I apologize if it’s not what you intended. I...we didn’t mean to mislead you.”

Stepping up beside him, Hinata gazes at the blossoms. “I don’t feel misled. I’ve known for...a long time that I would be assigned a husband. I suppose then, in the end...it’s not of much difference to me who it is. I’ve no choice to begin with.”

Dark eyes move to their corners to glance at her. As before, a sad aura seems to coat her. She looks so...resigned. He’s seen the same look in his brother’s eyes: tied to a fate they never wanted.

Something clenches in his gut.

“...if it’s any comfort...I didn’t ask for this, either. But…” A pause, and he snaps the stem of the flower he’s been gripping. A hand tucks it behind her ear, feeling her stiffen. The action feels a little silly, but suitable nonetheless. “...I will do my best to make this work. As my brother says...it’s not just us we’ve got to worry about. At first he meant our people but...I suppose that means each other, too.”

Looking up to him in surprise, pale eyes widen, clearly not expecting his reaction. “...I…” Softening, she manages a small smile. “...then I...will give effort in equal measure.”

Giving a small lift of his lips in return, Sasuke can’t help but hope this might not be as bad as he’d feared. “...want to keep walking? There’s a lot more to see out here, and...something tells me we’ll be here a while.”

“I’d like that. My mother kept a large garden before she passed. Flowers are...dear to me that way.”

“...then consider these yours. My first gift to you.”

“But -?”

“I’ve no skill with plants anyway...I’m sure they’ll fare far better under your gentle hand.”

“...thank you.”

     Word count: 1916      Cumulative: 4706      WELP this is a day late, but also about twice as long as usual, so...hopefully that makes up for it ^^; I’ll get to today’s a little later so I don’t burn myself out. Everyone likes a classic kingdoms AU, right? Right! Honestly this plot probably could have used another thousand words or so (or a lot more tbh) to not seem as rushed as it is, but...I’ve gotta save some mojo for the rest of the month, lol - who knows? Maybe I’ll make a proper fic of it later, but for now it’s on its own~

[musicandmood]

From Rock Clubs to The Resistance

From Rock Clubs to The Resistance

When I wrote about my glimpses of the Ukrainian rock scene in the book The Humorless Ladies of Border Control, many of the musicians I spoke to had been newly radicalized by the 2014 “Revolution of Dignity” (or Maidan Revolution), and the Russian annexation of Crimea that followed. One was Sasha Boole, a rambunctious singer-songwriter from Chernivtsi, a city in southwestern Ukraine near the…

[powells]

COMING THIS WEEK TO POWELL’S

Monday: Poets Dena Rash Guzman (presenting Joseph) Leah Noble Davidson (presenting Door) Stephen Lackaye (presenting Self-Portrait in Dystopian Landscape)

Tuesday: Duncan Campbell (presenting The Art of Being There)

(also, don’t miss our Science Fiction Book Group meeting at Cedar Hills Crossing. They’re discussing Daemon by Daniel Suarez)

Wednesday: Andrea Bracken (presenting Wayfarer) Susan Dennard (presenting  Windwitch) Joshua Mohr (presenting Sirens)

Thursday: Marni Bates (presenting Dial Em for Murder) John R. Bruning (presenting Indestructible) Kent Nerburn (Voices in the Stones)

(And don’t miss our Deadly Diversions Book Group meeting at Cedar Hills Crossing. They’re discussing Ann Cleeves’s Shetland Island mystery series.)

Friday: Franz Nicolay in conversation with Cari Luna (presenting The Humorless Ladies of Border Control)

(And our Young Adult Book Club meeting at Cedar Hills crossing to discuss Miss Peregrines Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs.)

Saturday: The League of Exceptional Writers with Laura Stanfill (publisher of Forest Avenue Press) and Rosanne Parry

Sunday: Susan DeFreitas (presenting Hot Season)

(Photo of Margaret Atwood from a past Powell’s event.)

[chazzbot]

If the temper of Russian society is cynical, and the European pragmatic, the American remains, somehow, optimistic. You still find in America, despite much evidence to the contrary, the idealistic, naive sense that if you just get the right person in charge or out of office that everything will be set right. And so we ride eternal cycles of hope and disillusionment.

Franz Nicolay, The Humorless Ladies of Border Control

[dorothygalewrites]

The Axeman's Jazz by Ray Celestin, Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman, The Stranger by Albert Camus, Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell, Places No One Knows by Brenna Yovanoff, Where am I Now? by Mara Wilson and The Humorless Ladies of Border Control by Franz Nicolay

The Axeman’s Jazz (Ray Celestin)

added to TBR | on my TBR | couldn’t finish it | did not enjoy | it was OK | liked it | loved it | favorite | not interested

Neverwhere (Neil Gaiman)

added to TBR | on my TBR | couldn’t finish it | did not enjoy | it was OK | liked it | loved it | favorite | not interested

The Stranger (Albert Camus)

added to TBR | on my TBR | couldn’t finish it | did not enjoy | it was OK | liked it | loved it | favorite | not interested

Cloud Atlas (David Mitchell)

added to TBR | on my TBR | couldn’t finish it | did not enjoy | it was OK | liked it | loved it | favorite | not interested

Places No One Knows (Brenna Yovanoff)

added to TBR | on my TBR | couldn’t finish it | did not enjoy | it was OK | liked it | loved it | favorite | not interested

Where Am I Now? (Mara Wilson)

added to TBR | on my TBR | couldn’t finish it | did not enjoy | it was OK | liked it | loved it | favorite | not interested

The Humorless Ladies of Border Control

added to TBR | on my TBR | couldn’t finish it | did not enjoy | it was OK | liked it | loved it | favorite | not interested

[raystart]

In Praise of the Home Office

Early on a Sunday morning I’m sitting in my favorite space, a small outbuilding behind my house, in my favorite chair, a twenty-five year-old, medium-sized Aeron with a few small burn holes in the mesh seat. Even though it’s spring, it’s still cool outside. I’ve got my hoody pulled over my head, keeping the ole brainpan warm. I have nowhere to be but here. The red second hand of the school room clock mounted high on the wall ticks audibly, counting off the progression of moments, every one of which belongs to me.

Through the several windows I can see that the sun has begun to burn through the layer of clouds, revealing a patch of light blue sky—I’ll leave the exact color to my visual artist friends; to me it is reminiscent of the powder paint we used for skies in elementary school. A plane streaks overhead, gleaming and metallic, rumbling through the atmosphere like thunder. In the middle distance, a red-tail hawk circles, searching the canyon for breakfast; hummingbirds hover and dart, flirting and issuing their odd squeaks. A breeze plays through my neighbor’s invasive stand of tall bamboo. The stalks sway and knock together, making woody sounds like a marimba. From over the hill I can hear the throaty engines of powerboats and other personal watercraft churning circles around nearby bay, weekend warriors at play.

Here in my home office, the line between pleasure and duty is blurred. Weekend or weekday, there is no difference to me. Nobody counts my hours. My work is also my hobby. It takes as long as it takes. That someone is or is not paying me at any particular time is sort of secondary. Like most people, I work to live. But I also live to work.

This is where I do it—a 900-square foot patch of universe chock-a-block with photos, keepsakes, books and other familiar objects of personal history, most of it qualified as tax deductible, all of it mine to command.

Like nowhere else, when I am here I know who I am.  

***

Now it’s a little after noon. I’ve just returned from the house, where I threw together leftovers for my typical 15-minute lunch. Afterwards, I folded the whites and stuck the darks in to the dryer.

When I think about it, I come from a tradition of home offices. Both of my grandfathers—a lawyer and the owner of a clothing and shoe store—had offices in their homes, satellites to their more traditional workplaces. I remember being a little boy and swiveling around in their desk chairs, hunt-and-pecking on their clunky antique typewriters. In part I believe I owe my love of writing to the happiness of these times, my unexplainable attraction to the physical act of typing—the wonderful rachet-sound of the platen, the percussive clack of the keys against 20-pound bond, the ding at the end of each line heralding the need for the cleansing physical action of the carriage return. To type is to have the world at your fingertips—twenty-six neutral symbols to endlessly recombine. It is a task that requires both whimsy and precision. Another universe to command.

My father was an OBGYN. He had a home office, strictly for paperwork, in the basement of our rancher, the only place in the house he was allowed to smoke his cigars. The centerpiece of my dad’s home office was a desk his parents bought him for use in medical school—a blonde mahogany, Midcentury Modern kneehole desk with curved drawers by Heywood Wakefield, according to my research on the web. There is a matching Tambour door cabinet, on the back of which is stamped the manufacture date, May 1, 1954, two years before my birth. (The desk is too heavy to move.) As a boy I remember stealing down to the office when my parents were out for the evening. In the deep, double-drawer on the left side of the desk, my dad kept a stash of racy gag gifts given to him by friends—an oversize toothbrush with two plastic breasts instead of bristles, a windup penis with feet, a deck of cards with naked ladies instead of kings and queens.

When I went law school, my Dad gave me the desk and the hutch, for both practical and symbolic reasons. Hopefully, he said, it would see me through grad school with the same kind of success as he.

Of course, law school only lasted three weeks, but I was allowed to keep the furniture, which has traveled with me through forty years of home office incarnations. In Arlington Virginia, the desk was in the second bedroom of an apartment situated just beneath the flight path to what was then called National Airport—the entire building would shake. In Washington D.C., I lived in a basement apartment, and then in a loft, and then in a townhouse, the last for 12 years. My office was on the third floor; the desk had a nook within the front bay window, which looked out on the cityscape of a still-untamed section of town (in present times the Theater District), where hookers and crack dealers worked the dark corners, a different kind of natural show playing at all hours of the day and night.

Now my father’s desk has outlived him. For the past twenty years it’s been in this room, in San Diego, at the bottom-left corner of the continental United States, twenty-five miles north of the Mexican Border. The deep drawer is now full of vintage reporter’s equipment—defunct tape recorders, film cameras, old pads and other office supplies, not nearly so much fun as the booby toothbrush and other naughty bits of yore. In the hutch I have a ton of tear sheets from my years as a newspaper reporter and a few copies of the literary magazines I edited in college. I still remember sliding it open one time and finding multiple copies of a sex manual my father must have given out to patients. The authors were a husband and wife team. The photos were black and white. Naked, and without expression, the authors demonstrated dozens of positions, a sort of humorless kama sutra for the Masters and Johnson set.

In order to better accommodate the various pieces of hardware associated with today’s modern office, I have since added around the desk an eclectic mix of work tables and equipment stands, so that I’m nearly surrounded with surfaces—imagine a closeout sale in the office furniture department at Staples and you get the idea. (My original typing table, which used to hold a used, IBM Selectric typewriter, now holds the laser printer.) Swiveling around,  rolling my chair (over a plastic floor mat), I can attend to the different tasks and projects I have going simultaneously. Sometimes I imagine myself sitting in the command pod of a space ship, all the controls of my great solo enterprise at my fingertips—look at that, another reference to control.

Clearly a theme is emerging here. I am my own man, yes. But that also makes me nobody else’s man. Responsible to, and responsible for, only myself. Powerful and powerless at once.   

***

Nighttime now. These things take time, another reason I suppose I’ve spent so much time in my home office. The sky is dark. Stars have appeared. Somewhere across the canyon an owl is hooting. If I listen carefully I can hear the waves break quietly on the coastline, a half mile away.

After making myself a simple dinner of steak and greens, I’ve put up the dishes and returned the fifty or so steps to my office. Yesterday, I left the house to go to the post office. Today I didn’t leave the house at all; most of my time was spent in this chair. And yes, I am still wearing the sweatpants I put on this morning when I rolled out of bed. I will make sure to shower at the night’s end. I’m a home-based worker but I’m no misanthrope.

For the last few minutes, I’ve been trying to figure out a way to tally the number of hours I’ve spent in proximity to this desk, alone in a room with my thoughts and labors. With all the travel for work it’s hard to say, though I also know that for every week in the field doing research, I’ve generally spent several more weeks at my desk—making calls and arrangements, transcribing, doing further research, composing, rewriting and editing.

Struggling to find the right formula, I went to the doorway and looked into the darkness, in the direction of the hooting. One hot summer evening the owl had overflown me by only a foot or two—the whoosh was palpable in the immediate airspace and kind of freaked me out.

Standing there, I noticed one of the many photos of my son. A decade ago, he was working hard to become a point guard on the middle school basketball team. At an age where many boys dream of becoming pro athletes, he had a Lakers jersey with his name—SAGER—custom printed on the back. He was taking extra practices, working out with a coach, running several miles every day.

One afternoon when he was off at practice, I was sitting here in my home office, thinking I wished I could do something to help. One thing you (hopefully) learn as a parent—the kid has to take the all the practice shots and do all the math problems himself. You can’t do it for him. All you can really do is cheer them on.

In that instant, an idea came to me. I walked over to the desk and picked up a pen. I wrote it like this:

  Hard work

Well enjoyed

Builds a man

Makes a life

Day by day

  Though I wrote this with myself and my son in mind, the same can be said for building a woman as well.

It’s what I’ve learned after forty years of sitting in my home office, doing what I love.   

[microcosmpub]

We got more of Franz Nicolay's tour book in!

[pablomedinauribe]

There is no lack of regret, and disdain for Perm', in Chekhov: CHEBUTYKIN: But what a wide, splendid river you have here! A wonderful river! OLGA: Yes, only it's cold. It's cold here and there are mosquitoes. • • • ANDREY: Our town has existed now for two hundred years, it has a hundred thousand inhabitants—and not one of them who isn't exactly like the others, not one hero, not one scholar, not one artist, not one who stands out in the slightest bit, who might inspire envy or a passionate desire to emulate him.

The Humorless Ladies of Border Control, Franz Nicolay

[pablomedinauribe]

There were near-whiteout blizzard conditions when I left Zagreb in the morning, continuing east, and I nearly turned back. I’d be damned if I’d spend another night on the highway. But storms are slower than rental cars, even those without winter tires, and within two hours I’d gotten out ahead of the clouds, past lumber farms with square clear-cut acres and little hills with villages huddled at their humble feet. In the no-man’s-land between the Croatian exit and Serbian entrance borders it began to sleet, but it was just a border chill. “To change one’s country is tantamount to changing one’s century,” Custine declared. Nowhere else—save, possibly, the contrast between Mongolia and China—did I feel this more literally than at the crossing between Croatia and Serbia, once partners in the Yugoslav federation. In the wake of the wars of the 1990s, Serbia, as the most recent loser of the Balkan musical chairs of local villains, became persona non grata on the international stage. Croatia, meanwhile, was in the process of accession to the European Union, to be followed at some point by—against the vehement advice of the British and Polish—adoption of the euro. The laments of the locals notwithstanding, by most appearances this was a modern and relatively developed place. Not so Serbia. After a bad cop/bad cop routine from the skinhead thugs of the Serbian border patrol, who worked out of what would otherwise pass for an outhouse shack on the side of the road, I crossed into the country and might as well have passed back into the nineteenth century. I was now in a world of oxcarts (really just wooden platforms on truck tires) and conical haystacks, of old women in kerchiefs and old men in flat caps. I experienced a psychological shiver during the crossing into Serbia. “Serbo-Croat speech has an expression,” wrote Christopher Hitchens, “a vukojebina—employed to describe a remote or barren or arduous place—[which] means literally a ‘wolf-fuck,’ or more exactly the sort of place where wolves retire to copulate . . . easily adapted to encapsulate a place that is generally, so to say, fucked up. This is the commonest impression of the Balkans.” For me, born in 1977, the beginnings of my consciousness of world events coincided with the Balkan wars, in which, Hitchens argued, “the greatest harm was arguably inflicted upon the Serbs themselves. . . . Serbia lost its national honor and became an international pariah.” On some preteen synaptic level, for me, the Serbs have remained filed under “bad guys.” It’s the same frisson our grandparents’ generation must have felt visiting Germany or Japan (for our parents, it was Russia) or what our younger cousins will feel if they go to Iraq or Afghanistan a decade from now. And so I stared southbound, trying to catch a glimpse of the Bosnian border that lay just a few miles outside the right-hand windows, and pondered the intensely local and bloody politics that, in Rebecca West’s words, “grow on the basis of past injustice. A proud people acquire the habit of resistance to foreign oppression, and by the time they have driven out their oppressors they have forgotten that agreement [with each other] is a pleasure.

Franz Nicolay, “The Humorless Ladies of Border Control: Touring the Punk Underground from Belgrade to Ulaanbaatar”

[pablomedinauribe]

“Two weeks later, after a couple of shows in China, I flew from Beijing to London for the last leg of what had become a six-month worldwide tour. Maria continued east, to the Pacific Northwest, to teach accordion at a folk music camp. There were no newsstands in the Beijing airport. On my LOT flight via Warsaw, you could buy alcohol from the crotchety, elderly Polish staff only in złoty or dollars, not renminbi or pounds. I retraced in nine hours by air what had taken two months by land: northwest from Beijing over Mongolia, across Irkutsk and Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg and Moscow, to Warsaw. The slow pace of land travel is frustrating or relaxing or simply literal, time to be passed. It has the smoky flavor of nostalgia. The train journeys were always over too soon—I always had another chapter to read, another chapter to write, another hour I wanted to sleep. The flight, though, felt endless. If the faster you travel, the slower time passes, perhaps the slower you move, the faster you find your way to the end of the line.

Franz Nicolay. “The Humorless Ladies of Border Control: Touring the Punk Underground from Belgrade to Ulaanbaatar.”

[pablomedinauribe]

Touring is both a crucial component of most musicians' annual income and the gathering sieve when prospecting for material for songs. It is also a waste of time, especially creative time, and of energy that could be spent on producing new work. I had a fresh album coming out in England in a matter of weeks, and organizing artwork, publicity, and logistics from Siberia was a challenge. Concerned about weight and security, we hadn't brought laptops and were constantly borrowing other people's to conduct pressing business. Yet a Smartphone, given the etiquette of the day, makes a fantastic clandestine note-taking tool. If I was forever pulling out a pencil and notebook, it would be at a minimum distracting, whereas pulling out a phone in the middle of a conversation to tap out a few lines is scarcely even considered rude and draws no comment.

Franz Nicolay, The Humorless Ladies of Border Control.

[pablomedinauribe]

A kid leaned over its edge and yelled to his mother, "Hey look, our old couch" This is wha anarchy actually looks like: the absence of a local governing authority, the tragedy of the commons in stark material form. With no town dump, people just drive up into the woods and throw trash off the back of the truck for the wind and the elements to do with what they will. Acres of woodland in the middle of "Siberia's jewel" – a national forest, in fact – covered in detritus, the rest thinned to a sandy meadow from logging for firewood and for raw materials for development. ("When I think of the consumption of wood in this country, both for the construction and warming of houses, I am astonished that any forests remain in the land," wrote Custine in l839.) This was the not-so-hidden back door of Russian capitalism. The power of the government limited itself to action on its own behalf and in its own defense. The rest of society, and the land itself, was left unregulated and, by all evidence, unmourned. The towns, large and small, were graveyards of abandoned and wrecked concrete, undemolished except by lassitude and time, slumped buttresses of a sense of collective failure despite individual innocence. When a state takes full control, it assumes full responsibility; the corollary is that individuals completely relinquish the same. When the state melts away or abdicates, there is no entity to handle the leavings. A communal original sin hangs over everything, beyond the lifetimes of the young people who nonetheless grow up in its shadow.

Franz Nicolay, The Humorless Ladies of Border Control.

[pablomedinauribe]

"This is the problem with this part of the world, with Russia, and Ukraine," Maria fumed. "They just laugh at these drunks and let them get away with everything." Dostoyevsky wrote in The House of the Dead, "Everywhere among the Russian people a certain sympathy is felt for a drunken man; in prison he was positively treated with respect."

Franz Nicolay, The Humorless Ladies of Border Control.