Carol Bergman

 

At some point it became the tradition for a slave to stand behind him and whisper reminders that he was mortal.

-Goldsworthy, Pax Romana

 

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.
― William Shakespeare, Hamlet

 

Why are we walking in the dark, let's go over there, where the flowers are blooming.
      ― Han Kang, Human Acts

 

 

Some days, since the election, since Ukraine and Syria and Sudan and October 7 and Gaza, I feel like a giant thresher has mowed us all down, scraping our innards to shreds and shards. "And when in their wake nothing remains but a desert, they call that peace," wrote Tacitus a very long time ago (ad 56—c. ad 20). I could have put this quote up top, but I'll use it here in the first paragraph of this blog post, a lamentation about the state of war mongering and impotent peacemaking in the world. I know there are some who prefer to look away to maintain equilibrium and joy, but I cannot. I am a child of war, and as Nikki Giovanni, a poet—who passed away this week—once said, our lives are not about us, not really, they are about our duty, our efforts to make this world a better place for future generations everywhere. This requires truth telling without obfuscation, a writer's mandate.

 

These wars, these horrible wars. When will they ever end?  I include in the inventory: wars within us and wars among us.

 

The landscape, usually a consolation, feels like an Arctic desert with its bitter temperatures and high winds. I walk into it layered like an Inuit. The sun creeps out only occasionally and this time of year it is not warming. Quotidian tasks: the compost container is full and must be emptied. The laundry awaits consideration. There's a shopping list to fulfill. And, despite the temperature, I'm going swimming today.

 

 Last week I wrote about a drawing workshop I attended, and making art as a life-affirming action even if it is just sketching a thought in a letter attached to an email, or indoor gardening. I will continue with that theme here, among others, as undoubtedly this will be my last blog post of 2024, thus a reckoning of sorts, albeit ephemeral. My mood will lift in the pool, the hot tub, the cold plunge and the sauna. How fortunate am I. How important to remind myself that I am fortunate.  My refugee family escaped a war zone and landed here in these United States of America. And were welcomed. How quaint that notion seems in this hiatus between one administration and another.

 

The German word schande comes to mind. I am studying German again and German words and phrases surface constantly. A linguist friend told me, "Well, it is you mother tongue," meaning it has been in my ear from birth, or even before birth. An odd and delightful realization considering there was a time when I could not tolerate the sound of German.

 

My choice of quotations today evinces the complexity and contradictions of my mood. At an art opening yesterday, the promise of renewal, windows of the gallery looking out on a sculpture garden, the sculptures in high relief against bared to the bone trees. Inside, warm lights and warm conversation. "I keep running into you," a neighbor says, meaning in this small town. "I am here today as a citizen, not a journalist," I explain, inside the circle rather than outside looking in, a journalist's obligation and burden.

 

After the opening, we head to The Bakery for a coffee, brought to life by a new owner who has two kids and a high tolerance for teen energy. Upstairs, a college jazz band is playing holiday tunes, and two crooners are trying to sing above the thrum of the instruments. We are surrounded by students bopping as they study for their final exams, laptops out on the tables. Their concentration is formidable. And though no one else is dancing, we get up to dance, which makes everyone smile. It's a lush scene and we are in the midst of it, laughing and dancing.

 

Peace does not mean an absence of conflicts; differences will always be there. Peace means solving these differences through peaceful means; through dialogue, education, knowledge; and through humane ways…Today, more than ever before, life must be characterized by a sense of Universal responsibility, not only nation to nation and human to human, but also human to other forms of life.

 

-the Dalai Lama

 

 

I've been taking a cold plunge after I swim. I can only get in up to my waist and only for a minute or two. Occasionally I share the small well of water with others, some up to their necks. They cheer me on, start a conversation, a communal effort, our connection solidified without politics.

 

There's scientific evidence that cold plunges reduce inflammation and cortisol levels. If nothing else, the cold water is bracing, it forces attention away from the chatter in our heads, negative or positive. I recommend it as an amusing interlude, too, as I always exit the plunge laughing. It's a respite from the world's woes, my aching aging bones, and deadline journalism. This week I interviewed Peter Zalmayev, my Ukrainian American broadcast friend, in New Zealand where he's on a 25 nation tour of the Global South to bolster support for Ukraine as the Trump administration takes hold. I tried to stay positive as I was talking to Peter, but like so many friends, family and colleagues, I have never felt so worried about continuing support for Ukraine and the survival of the American Experiment. It's been a helluva week. So, on Saturday, I took another cold plunge, metaphorically speaking, and went to a "collaborative drawing workshop" at the Dorsky Museum on the SUNY New Paltz campus facilitated by Professor Andrea Kantrowitz who has written, and illustrated, a book called Drawing Thought.                  

 

It was a joyful, peaceful experience. We sat in groups of three and worked on timed drawings together, passing the paper to our right at Andrea's direction. The results were remarkable, albeit weird, but the sensation of collaborative accomplishment was a model of humane, compassionate endeavor. One can only imagine what might happen if the Ukrainians and the Russians sat around their upcoming negotiating table drawing together. Admittedly, an insane thought, as bracing and enjoyable as a cold plunge.

 

 

Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less. Our prime purpose in this life is to help others. And if you can't help them, at least don't hurt them.      

- Jon Batiste, musician

 

I have felt the requirement to show up, set an example, bear witness all my life…

  It feels like a spiritual requirement as much as a political one.   

-Jorie Graham, poet

 

 

 

And here on earth, walking elegantly and with confidence onto the stage, smiling, sitting down slowly, and then riffing on Beethoven's 5th Symphony, here is the talented young musician Jon Batiste. In both words and music, he has become a sage, an exemplar of what` an artist can do in hard times: continue making art. And he's only 38.

Why am I thinking about him today? I had planned on writing about my fingerprints, if that makes any sense, which it doesn't, but not much does these days. And in the midst of the fingerprint snafu—a  futile attempt to retrieve my fingerprints—I  asked Pandora to play Jon Batiste. That settled me. Music usually does. So, too, poetry. So, too, sitting down to write, however tentative the effort.

 

The fingerprint snafu surfaces. I had them "taken" in 2018, for the second or third time since returning from the EU, when I was hired by a New York State  educational institution. I had thought they "belonged" to me and I could retrieve them, as needed. But no. I must pay for new prints every time they are required. "Even the FBI has my prints," I say, to no avail.

 

Definition of bureaucracy, as follows: a system of administration marked by officialism and red tape. In other words, Catch 22 at every turn. I am sure my readers will agree that that such bureaucratic entanglements are commonplace. Consider how many hours we spend talking to health care insurers these days, for example.

 

"Those who are ignorant naturally consider everything possible," Kafka wrote in his authoritarian dreamscape, The Castle. Which is where we are this week with the nominated cabinet of horrors and the President-Elect's new committee to obliterate bureaucratic inefficiency. This "new" committee is a feint, it's a cover. According to Project 2025, the President-Elect intends to reintroduce Schedule F, an obscure executive order from his first term that allows presidents to fire, at will, any federal bureaucrat who is seen as disloyal or resistant to his will. 

 

To be absolutely clear—because I am an educated and accomplished woman who wears suits—I am annoyed by robotic and/or offshore bureaucracy, but I am not on the President-Elect's page, nor will I visit the Kafkaesque Castle he is building for himself in DC. Far from. And I have no solution other than to write and teach with compassion and insight based on knowledge, if this makes any sense in a week that has challenged common sense.