Sunday, January 15, 2006
The Hours
“Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.” This is how Virginia Woolf’s novel, translated by Dezso Tandori and published in Budapest the year of my birth by Helikon, begins. And with these words begins one of the best movies of the past years, in my opinion, directed by Stephen Daldry based on a screenplay by David Hare. The movie is an adaptation of Michael Cunningham’s novel The Hours, inspired by Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway.
The movie is not filled with Mr. Cunningham’s presence. It is Virginia Woolf who emerges from every sentence, every uncovered taboo, and every metaphorical situation. We listen to Woolf’s words written and spoken. This movie is about a lot of things that happy people don’t want to know and the unhappy ones would like to forget about.
Three well known women – Mery Streep, Nicole Kidman, and Julianne Moore – play three very different women in the film. Streep is a New York-based editor in the 90s, who is called Mrs. Dalloway by her best friend, and whose first name is Clarissa, just like Mrs. Dalloway’s. Moore’s character is a housewife in 1950’s America, who is reading Woolf’s novel, and Kidman is the writer herself writing the novel Mrs. Dalloway.
Mrs. Dalloway is about one day in life of a higher class woman in London. We know her every thought, we know where she is going and also what others think of her. The writer in the movie argues that someone has to die in the novel so that the others will cherish life more. First, the heroine herself was supposed to die, but later the mentally unstable young man will kill himself, leaving his young wife behind. Woolf in her own life also chooses suicide, filling the pockets of her coat with stones and walking into the river, leaving war ridden Europe and her Jewish husband behind. But first, she finishes her novel.
Julianne Moore’s character, Laura Brown, lives like many wanted to live in the USA in the 1950’s: she has an ideal husband, a car, a beautiful son, a nice house, in a suburb and a second child on the way. Her husband brings fresh flowers every morning for his wife before he leaves for work. But in spite of all of this, Laura Brown is not happy. On this particular day, she takes her son to a neighbor and despite his protests, she leaves him there and goes to a hotel room to die. But before the water closes over her bed, just like over Virginia Woolf, she realizes: She cannot kill her unborn child. She promises herself, that as soon as the second child is born, she will leave her family and start her life over. And that is exactly what she does.
Meryl Streep’s character, Clarissa Vaughn, buys the flowers herself the morning of her best friend’s and ex-boyfriend’s celebratory party. Richard, Ed Harris, is a well-known poet, who at this point is very ill with AIDS and who calls Clarissa “Mrs. Dalloway”. “I stayed alive for you until now.” says Richard. “It’s time for you to let me go.” But Clarissa cannot let go, because, as she confesses to her daughter, the happiest moment of her life was with Richard. She thought from that moment on, that happiness would grow, but she was wrong – it all got worse. At the end of the day– after Richard jumps out of the window – Clarissa realizes that she was mistaken: her present life is not unhappy and empty. She kisses her partner of many years as an acknowledgement of this, but the partner has no idea what is going on.
The story ends with Laura Brown coming to her son, Richard’s, funeral and staying over at Clarissa’s. Clarissa meets the evil mother who abandoned her child, but who does not seem so evil at all. Every piece of the puzzle falls into place.
Michael Cunningham’s novel brings four basic issues, still taboos in the 21st century, to the spotlight.
The first is the question of suicide. How long must a person live if her/his life is only suffering? When has one the right to say: �I can’t take it anymore’ and die? Who are we living for? What is happiness? Whose life is it?
The second taboo is mental illness. Not everybody who is mentally unstable is crazy. There are those who are depressed or those who have schizophrenia, but our society has not learned to live with these people, and would like to lock them up, separate them from the rest of the population that is momentarily more mentally stable. Are we denying other realities than our own? And in connection with the first taboo – Which is harder: to be sick or to live with the sick person? How long is it a must to live with one’s illness?
The third taboo is the role of a classical housewife. Laura Brown cannot take the role of a housewife, she struggles to be a wife and mother, and she would rather die than keep trying. She chooses life, her own life, over her own death, which is only possible if she leaves her family after her second child is born. Her first born will never be able to cope with the fact that his mother did leave him in the end. But this is the only way Laura Brown can stay alive. Not all women are able to be wives and mothers.
The fourth is the issue of sexuality. It is known that Virginia Woolf was inspired by women – her novel Orlando has been called the longest love letter ever written, and was inspired by a woman. Laura Brown kisses her woman neighbor passionately and Clarissa lives with her female partner and daughter fathered by a sperm bank. Cunningham successfully implies that sexuality, despite what many want us to believe, was never one dimensional. Bisexuality and homosexuality are not inventions of the 20th century, only people can be openly what they are in a few modern cities and countries of today. Virginia Woolf could not talk openly about her love of other women, although she did it in subtle ways anyway. Laura Brown could not talk about the kiss, not even to the woman she kissed. But Clarissa Vaughn had the possibility and choice to live her life freely the way she wanted and her environment accepted her the way she really was.
It is possible that Virginia Woolf would not be too thrilled with Nicole Kidman’s sometimes glowing fake nose, but maybe she would be happy about this sensitive and brave movie, because Woolf was a brave woman. On the Oprah Show, Nicole Kidman has said that the nose, the clothes and the cigarettes helped her to form her interpretation of Virginia Woolf. Meryl Streep said on the same show, answering the question about coping with being a mother and a busy working actress, that she is very tired. She also said that she thinks the movie is about “despair and the desire to live.” I would add that it is also about despair and the desire to love.
By unfortunate promotional timing, the same time as The Hours, two other movies came out in the US. In Adaptation, Meryl Streep excels as a New York-based editor of The New Yorker. In Far From Heaven, Julianne Moore’s character is a housewife in the 1950’s suburbs. Since both movies and both actresses in them are brilliant, it is really only Nicole Kidman’s performance in The Hours that pleasantly surprised all, especially because many were skeptical about her being able to pull off Virginia Woolf in the first place.
The movie The Hours is like a silk scarf: it is soft, cold, but strong and beautiful, and it tears easily. It is made like this by the music, the lighting and the beauty of women; the unbearable heaviness of being, the unsolvable situations in life, the secrecy of emotions, shame, the art of pretence, falsehood and pose. There is no ideology in this movie – it is simply and honestly deeply human. And many will not like this. And many will.
When I first saw this movie, in December of 2002, the theatre was filled half by men and half by women. Not one eye stayed dry. They should have given all of us a packet of tissues with the ticket!
Miriam Molnar
(Published in Kalendarium, a traditional almanac, in Hungarian in Slovakia, 2003)
“Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.” This is how Virginia Woolf’s novel, translated by Dezso Tandori and published in Budapest the year of my birth by Helikon, begins. And with these words begins one of the best movies of the past years, in my opinion, directed by Stephen Daldry based on a screenplay by David Hare. The movie is an adaptation of Michael Cunningham’s novel The Hours, inspired by Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway.
The movie is not filled with Mr. Cunningham’s presence. It is Virginia Woolf who emerges from every sentence, every uncovered taboo, and every metaphorical situation. We listen to Woolf’s words written and spoken. This movie is about a lot of things that happy people don’t want to know and the unhappy ones would like to forget about.
Three well known women – Mery Streep, Nicole Kidman, and Julianne Moore – play three very different women in the film. Streep is a New York-based editor in the 90s, who is called Mrs. Dalloway by her best friend, and whose first name is Clarissa, just like Mrs. Dalloway’s. Moore’s character is a housewife in 1950’s America, who is reading Woolf’s novel, and Kidman is the writer herself writing the novel Mrs. Dalloway.
Mrs. Dalloway is about one day in life of a higher class woman in London. We know her every thought, we know where she is going and also what others think of her. The writer in the movie argues that someone has to die in the novel so that the others will cherish life more. First, the heroine herself was supposed to die, but later the mentally unstable young man will kill himself, leaving his young wife behind. Woolf in her own life also chooses suicide, filling the pockets of her coat with stones and walking into the river, leaving war ridden Europe and her Jewish husband behind. But first, she finishes her novel.
Julianne Moore’s character, Laura Brown, lives like many wanted to live in the USA in the 1950’s: she has an ideal husband, a car, a beautiful son, a nice house, in a suburb and a second child on the way. Her husband brings fresh flowers every morning for his wife before he leaves for work. But in spite of all of this, Laura Brown is not happy. On this particular day, she takes her son to a neighbor and despite his protests, she leaves him there and goes to a hotel room to die. But before the water closes over her bed, just like over Virginia Woolf, she realizes: She cannot kill her unborn child. She promises herself, that as soon as the second child is born, she will leave her family and start her life over. And that is exactly what she does.
Meryl Streep’s character, Clarissa Vaughn, buys the flowers herself the morning of her best friend’s and ex-boyfriend’s celebratory party. Richard, Ed Harris, is a well-known poet, who at this point is very ill with AIDS and who calls Clarissa “Mrs. Dalloway”. “I stayed alive for you until now.” says Richard. “It’s time for you to let me go.” But Clarissa cannot let go, because, as she confesses to her daughter, the happiest moment of her life was with Richard. She thought from that moment on, that happiness would grow, but she was wrong – it all got worse. At the end of the day– after Richard jumps out of the window – Clarissa realizes that she was mistaken: her present life is not unhappy and empty. She kisses her partner of many years as an acknowledgement of this, but the partner has no idea what is going on.
The story ends with Laura Brown coming to her son, Richard’s, funeral and staying over at Clarissa’s. Clarissa meets the evil mother who abandoned her child, but who does not seem so evil at all. Every piece of the puzzle falls into place.
Michael Cunningham’s novel brings four basic issues, still taboos in the 21st century, to the spotlight.
The first is the question of suicide. How long must a person live if her/his life is only suffering? When has one the right to say: �I can’t take it anymore’ and die? Who are we living for? What is happiness? Whose life is it?
The second taboo is mental illness. Not everybody who is mentally unstable is crazy. There are those who are depressed or those who have schizophrenia, but our society has not learned to live with these people, and would like to lock them up, separate them from the rest of the population that is momentarily more mentally stable. Are we denying other realities than our own? And in connection with the first taboo – Which is harder: to be sick or to live with the sick person? How long is it a must to live with one’s illness?
The third taboo is the role of a classical housewife. Laura Brown cannot take the role of a housewife, she struggles to be a wife and mother, and she would rather die than keep trying. She chooses life, her own life, over her own death, which is only possible if she leaves her family after her second child is born. Her first born will never be able to cope with the fact that his mother did leave him in the end. But this is the only way Laura Brown can stay alive. Not all women are able to be wives and mothers.
The fourth is the issue of sexuality. It is known that Virginia Woolf was inspired by women – her novel Orlando has been called the longest love letter ever written, and was inspired by a woman. Laura Brown kisses her woman neighbor passionately and Clarissa lives with her female partner and daughter fathered by a sperm bank. Cunningham successfully implies that sexuality, despite what many want us to believe, was never one dimensional. Bisexuality and homosexuality are not inventions of the 20th century, only people can be openly what they are in a few modern cities and countries of today. Virginia Woolf could not talk openly about her love of other women, although she did it in subtle ways anyway. Laura Brown could not talk about the kiss, not even to the woman she kissed. But Clarissa Vaughn had the possibility and choice to live her life freely the way she wanted and her environment accepted her the way she really was.
It is possible that Virginia Woolf would not be too thrilled with Nicole Kidman’s sometimes glowing fake nose, but maybe she would be happy about this sensitive and brave movie, because Woolf was a brave woman. On the Oprah Show, Nicole Kidman has said that the nose, the clothes and the cigarettes helped her to form her interpretation of Virginia Woolf. Meryl Streep said on the same show, answering the question about coping with being a mother and a busy working actress, that she is very tired. She also said that she thinks the movie is about “despair and the desire to live.” I would add that it is also about despair and the desire to love.
By unfortunate promotional timing, the same time as The Hours, two other movies came out in the US. In Adaptation, Meryl Streep excels as a New York-based editor of The New Yorker. In Far From Heaven, Julianne Moore’s character is a housewife in the 1950’s suburbs. Since both movies and both actresses in them are brilliant, it is really only Nicole Kidman’s performance in The Hours that pleasantly surprised all, especially because many were skeptical about her being able to pull off Virginia Woolf in the first place.
The movie The Hours is like a silk scarf: it is soft, cold, but strong and beautiful, and it tears easily. It is made like this by the music, the lighting and the beauty of women; the unbearable heaviness of being, the unsolvable situations in life, the secrecy of emotions, shame, the art of pretence, falsehood and pose. There is no ideology in this movie – it is simply and honestly deeply human. And many will not like this. And many will.
When I first saw this movie, in December of 2002, the theatre was filled half by men and half by women. Not one eye stayed dry. They should have given all of us a packet of tissues with the ticket!
Miriam Molnar
(Published in Kalendarium, a traditional almanac, in Hungarian in Slovakia, 2003)
Charlie Kaufman and the Human Brain
When I grow up, I want to be Charlie Kaufman. Or Aaron Sorkin, but that is a different story.
Before I started researching Charlie Kaufman, I imagined him as a short, chubby, bald guy running around the streets of New York or Los Angeles, nervously scribbling in his notebook with an evil smile under his nose. But I had to face the fact that he has lots of curly hair, is thin and maybe even tall (no reliable information about this so far). It is possible that he does run around the streets with a little notebook – no reliable information about this either.
I heard Charlie Kaufman’s name for the first time when I saw the movie Being John Malkovich (1999), for which he wrote the screenplay. The movie, in short, is about a poor New York puppeteer (John Cusack) who finds a job at the 13.5 floor of an office building, where he by accident discovers a tunnel leading to the actor John Malkovich’s (playing himself) mind. Those who brave the journey into the tunnel will be John Malkovich for 15 minutes and will afterwards be thrown out onto the side of the road off the New Jersey turnpike. The puppeteer shares his secret with a colleague (Catherine Keener) on whom he and his wife (an unrecognizably ugly Cameron Diaz) both have a huge crush, and who in return tortures both of them by only wanting to sleep with them when they are inside John Malkovich.
The movie is full of subtle humor. For example, when John Malkovich realizes that it might not be him who sometimes governs his own deeds and thoughts, he asks Charlie Sheen – of all people – to come to his apartment and give him advice. My favorite scene is when John Malkovich himself goes down the tunnel to his own mind and finds himself in a restaurant, where every guest is John Malkovich, every waiter and every item on the menu also. I guess that Jung would have imagined the subconscious of huge egos somewhat similarly.
The absurd does not end with the drama of the particular individuals: it turns out that there is a group of selected people who are traveling from body to body through time using the before mentioned secret tunnel and after taking control over the bodies, they live through centuries this way. (Kureishi’s book The Body has a similar theme.)
Charlie Kaufman wrote his alter ego into the movie Adaptation (2002) in the form of twin brothers. Nicholas Cage is both Charlie and Donald Kaufman, who are screenplay writers, both bald and overweight. Charlie has high standards, is not very successful, has low self-esteem and can only long for women. Donald is successful, overly self-assured and narcissistic and turns up for breakfast with several gorgeous women (the brothers live in the same house). Charlie is trying to write a screenplay from Susan Orlean’s book The Orchid Thief, with little success. Finally, he makes up his mind that he has to meet her and travels to New York, where only Donald is brave enough to actually talk to her (Meryl Streep). The movie and the adaptation Charlie is working on melt at this point and we realize only at the end that we are watching the adaptation itself, which, influenced by Donald, becomes full of violence, drugs and pornography.
Besides Nicholas Cage, Meryl Streep also excels, because her character also changes rapidly during the movie. Chris Cooper, who plays the orchid thief John, is a real jewel. He drives an old, rusty car, wears dirty clothes, has no front teeth (the story about loosing his teeth is a great one itself) and when he takes the writer for an orchid hunt, he gets lost in the wetlands. One of the most memorable scenes is when Meryl Streep’s character, in a somewhat elevated mood caused by an orchid based drug, calls the orchid thief and asks him to join her imitating a phone dial tone. Their success will be the source of enormous happiness.
Charlie Kaufman in this movie writes the way he lives: with difficulty. Donald lives the way he writes. Susan, the writer, writes about life, but does not live it. The life of the orchid thief John is a book that needs adaptation.
Charlie Kaufman’s newest movie, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), isn’t short of surprises either. I was a bit prejudiced seeing Jim Carrey’s name on the posters, but I was pleasantly surprised by his performance. Even more so was I pleased by Kate Winslet, who stole the movie playing a character that was more complex and rich in challenges.
We meet Joel (Jim Carrey) one morning on a train platform in Long Island, when he decides not to take the train to work, but to take the one that goes to Montauk. It is on this train that he meets Clementine (Kate Winslet). Their romance is going well, until one day Clementine decides that she wants to erase all memories of Joel from her brain. She visits the offices of Lacuna Inc. which happily obliges her wishes. It takes a night to do the procedure and Clementine no longer knows Joel the next day.
After Joel realizes what has happened, he decides to order the same procedure for himself and most of the movie happens while Joel’s memories of Clementine are being erased from his brain.
Because we see the story of Clementine and Joel unfold backwards (the freshest memories are being erased first), we see the whole picture only at the end of the movie. The film has very few characters and by the end of the movie the strings get tangled and it resembles a soap opera in which everybody takes advantage of everybody. Joel wants to stop the procedure while it is happening. But that is, of course, impossible. Here comes the most enjoyable part of the movie, in which Clementine and Joel try to hide from the eyes of the computer doing the erasure to save Joel’s memories of Clementine. The stage of his memories dissolves around them as they get destroyed and they try to hide among Joel’s childhood memories. We saw similar scenes in Being John Malkovich, when he wanders among his childhood memories, although these were mostly nightmares.
The real Charlie Kaufman was born in 1958 in New York state and studied film at New York University. In 1991, he moved from Minneapolis to Los Angeles, to be a writer on a sitcom. He lives in Pasadena, California with his wife and child. He does not give interviews and hates public appearances, although he was on The Charlie Rose Show and NPR in 2004.
Obviously, this man spends most of his time asking questions such as: Where is the human consciousness located? What is our identity comprised of? Who and what can influence our consciousness and identity? How do we know who we are and what we remember, and what motivates our feelings and deeds? The movies written by Charlie Kaufman address these questions. Nobody will be able fully to answer them in our life time, so we can look forward to many funny, surprising, intelligent screenplays coming from Kaufman’s kitchen.
(Published in Kalendarium, a traditional almanac, in Hungarian in Slovakia, 2005)
When I grow up, I want to be Charlie Kaufman. Or Aaron Sorkin, but that is a different story.
Before I started researching Charlie Kaufman, I imagined him as a short, chubby, bald guy running around the streets of New York or Los Angeles, nervously scribbling in his notebook with an evil smile under his nose. But I had to face the fact that he has lots of curly hair, is thin and maybe even tall (no reliable information about this so far). It is possible that he does run around the streets with a little notebook – no reliable information about this either.
I heard Charlie Kaufman’s name for the first time when I saw the movie Being John Malkovich (1999), for which he wrote the screenplay. The movie, in short, is about a poor New York puppeteer (John Cusack) who finds a job at the 13.5 floor of an office building, where he by accident discovers a tunnel leading to the actor John Malkovich’s (playing himself) mind. Those who brave the journey into the tunnel will be John Malkovich for 15 minutes and will afterwards be thrown out onto the side of the road off the New Jersey turnpike. The puppeteer shares his secret with a colleague (Catherine Keener) on whom he and his wife (an unrecognizably ugly Cameron Diaz) both have a huge crush, and who in return tortures both of them by only wanting to sleep with them when they are inside John Malkovich.
The movie is full of subtle humor. For example, when John Malkovich realizes that it might not be him who sometimes governs his own deeds and thoughts, he asks Charlie Sheen – of all people – to come to his apartment and give him advice. My favorite scene is when John Malkovich himself goes down the tunnel to his own mind and finds himself in a restaurant, where every guest is John Malkovich, every waiter and every item on the menu also. I guess that Jung would have imagined the subconscious of huge egos somewhat similarly.
The absurd does not end with the drama of the particular individuals: it turns out that there is a group of selected people who are traveling from body to body through time using the before mentioned secret tunnel and after taking control over the bodies, they live through centuries this way. (Kureishi’s book The Body has a similar theme.)
Charlie Kaufman wrote his alter ego into the movie Adaptation (2002) in the form of twin brothers. Nicholas Cage is both Charlie and Donald Kaufman, who are screenplay writers, both bald and overweight. Charlie has high standards, is not very successful, has low self-esteem and can only long for women. Donald is successful, overly self-assured and narcissistic and turns up for breakfast with several gorgeous women (the brothers live in the same house). Charlie is trying to write a screenplay from Susan Orlean’s book The Orchid Thief, with little success. Finally, he makes up his mind that he has to meet her and travels to New York, where only Donald is brave enough to actually talk to her (Meryl Streep). The movie and the adaptation Charlie is working on melt at this point and we realize only at the end that we are watching the adaptation itself, which, influenced by Donald, becomes full of violence, drugs and pornography.
Besides Nicholas Cage, Meryl Streep also excels, because her character also changes rapidly during the movie. Chris Cooper, who plays the orchid thief John, is a real jewel. He drives an old, rusty car, wears dirty clothes, has no front teeth (the story about loosing his teeth is a great one itself) and when he takes the writer for an orchid hunt, he gets lost in the wetlands. One of the most memorable scenes is when Meryl Streep’s character, in a somewhat elevated mood caused by an orchid based drug, calls the orchid thief and asks him to join her imitating a phone dial tone. Their success will be the source of enormous happiness.
Charlie Kaufman in this movie writes the way he lives: with difficulty. Donald lives the way he writes. Susan, the writer, writes about life, but does not live it. The life of the orchid thief John is a book that needs adaptation.
Charlie Kaufman’s newest movie, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), isn’t short of surprises either. I was a bit prejudiced seeing Jim Carrey’s name on the posters, but I was pleasantly surprised by his performance. Even more so was I pleased by Kate Winslet, who stole the movie playing a character that was more complex and rich in challenges.
We meet Joel (Jim Carrey) one morning on a train platform in Long Island, when he decides not to take the train to work, but to take the one that goes to Montauk. It is on this train that he meets Clementine (Kate Winslet). Their romance is going well, until one day Clementine decides that she wants to erase all memories of Joel from her brain. She visits the offices of Lacuna Inc. which happily obliges her wishes. It takes a night to do the procedure and Clementine no longer knows Joel the next day.
After Joel realizes what has happened, he decides to order the same procedure for himself and most of the movie happens while Joel’s memories of Clementine are being erased from his brain.
Because we see the story of Clementine and Joel unfold backwards (the freshest memories are being erased first), we see the whole picture only at the end of the movie. The film has very few characters and by the end of the movie the strings get tangled and it resembles a soap opera in which everybody takes advantage of everybody. Joel wants to stop the procedure while it is happening. But that is, of course, impossible. Here comes the most enjoyable part of the movie, in which Clementine and Joel try to hide from the eyes of the computer doing the erasure to save Joel’s memories of Clementine. The stage of his memories dissolves around them as they get destroyed and they try to hide among Joel’s childhood memories. We saw similar scenes in Being John Malkovich, when he wanders among his childhood memories, although these were mostly nightmares.
The real Charlie Kaufman was born in 1958 in New York state and studied film at New York University. In 1991, he moved from Minneapolis to Los Angeles, to be a writer on a sitcom. He lives in Pasadena, California with his wife and child. He does not give interviews and hates public appearances, although he was on The Charlie Rose Show and NPR in 2004.
Obviously, this man spends most of his time asking questions such as: Where is the human consciousness located? What is our identity comprised of? Who and what can influence our consciousness and identity? How do we know who we are and what we remember, and what motivates our feelings and deeds? The movies written by Charlie Kaufman address these questions. Nobody will be able fully to answer them in our life time, so we can look forward to many funny, surprising, intelligent screenplays coming from Kaufman’s kitchen.
(Published in Kalendarium, a traditional almanac, in Hungarian in Slovakia, 2005)
Monday, January 09, 2006
Stuck
There was a big storm, hail and rain, we were told, but by the time we arrived, the sun was shining. Atlanta, Georgia, USA. Wide, spacious airport, where a little train takes the passengers with their luggage from one terminal to the other.
First we ate at the Wall Street deli thinking that we would be flying in an hour, but we were wrong. The crowds were growing, impatiently waiting to hear announcements from the loudspeaker, and also talking on their cell phones and eating. Everybody wanted to continue traveling immediately, but because of the delay, there was more and more chaos. Those who were so inclined started to argue with representatives of different airlines. Nobody knew when they would arrive at their final destination.
The tall black guy sitting next to me was past middle age. He talked loudly on his cell phone, laughed a lot and moved his baseball cap back and forth on his head. When he – after about an hour – left to get something to eat, a young woman sat in his place. She put her feet up on the chair across from us and took a book out of her bag. (She must have just bought the book, I thought. She wandered around the airport stores and then decided to buy this book with a nice pink cover.) But she was not reading, just watching the people around her and the big monitor, where names of those who already had a seat in the airplane were listed. (Of course, I could not see that far. Maybe I should be wearing glasses.) She wore sandals, the kind in which you have to put your big toe through a little strap so that they don’t fall off your foot. (She is going to be cold soon in these, I thought.)
And then the woman soldier came. She was black and seemed young. A medium-sized backpack was sitting on the floor next to her. She had earphones in both ears and as she sat down, she started reading a book. (Of course, I could not read the title of the book from where I was sitting. I really do need those glasses! Or do I have to take my binoculars everywhere with me?) First I thought about the soldiers that I saw on my way here. They were mostly young, but some of them looked around fifty, balding already, but that was not very visible, because they had their heads shaved. It was sad to see them, not that to see the young ones was not sad. The young woman soldier wore a uniform that would melt nicely into the country in Iraq or Afghanistan and the bottom of her pants was tucked into her boots.
And then I thought about where she was going. Or where she was coming from. And if she is going, because probably she is going, because she was in no hurry apparently, because it did not bother her, or at least not in any visible way, that the planes were late, so if she is going, then who is she leaving behind? Does she have a lover, or maybe a child, or children and if so, what are they feeling knowing that she left and maybe she will be not coming back? And her parents and siblings? I pictured birthday and Christmas photographs, her colleagues and friends who must miss her, must feel something.
And then I thought about why she joined the army in the first place. (The army here consists of volunteers. Why would anybody want to join? Except when you are dealing with someone like Hitler – that I could imagine. But if there were no armies at all, there would be no Hitlers either and no need for armies at all.) Maybe she wanted to have an education and this was her only option – the army pays the tuition, gives a stipend and health insurance. Maybe she really wanted to study badly and wanted to get out of her parent’s house. Maybe she gave birth early, because nobody told her how to be careful and she saw no other way to fix the rest of her life. And now she sits here at this airport and maybe she is on her way to Iraq and maybe there will be no rest of her life.
And then I thought about how two nights ago in Taos, New Mexico, Julia talked about a relative of hers who wants to join the army. I must have given her a strange look from beyond my red-wine-and-coke: (The Americans don’t know the red wine and coke combination and are always very surprised – coke with wine? Well, what a strange idea of these Central Europeans!) To the army? Is this guy insane? And of course, I should not have given the look because Julia lowered her eyes and said that the guy is not insane, it’s only that he does not know what to do with himself. His mother cared for him for all these years, studied with him for every test. But he will be eighteen and his mother cannot go to college with him, can she? If they would accept him. And she cannot go to work with him every day, can she? And the guy cannot stay at any job long enough and he feels uncomfortable in this society which accepts only the successful ones, even though his parents did not raise him this way and stressed that what society expects is not what really matters. But he thinks the army will put him into place. Because there he will have no choice.
Especially, if he gets shot dead somewhere, I thought, though I did not say this, because I saw how hard the whole thing was for Julia. The guy’s sister is a big anti-war activist in their high school, and the whole joining the army thing is a big secret. And of course I was just sitting there mute, eating my delicious vegetable rice and tried not to think about how this guy will also become just a killing machine, if he survives the brain washing. Or he will have a nervous break down and will be haunted by nightmares, because how can anyone survive with a healthy psyche what one sees in war? And feels? And knowing that there is someone out there who wants to shoot me, who hates me only because I am wearing this uniform? And I thought, while the rest of the table was exchanging small talk pleasantries, that someone should take this guy to the nearest veteran’s hospital. He should work there for a month and see how it is, when one does not have a leg or an arm or has burns all over his body or is a bit crazy. Or someone should take him to where the dead are arriving in their coffins and he could work there too and see how the families receive the coffins, and the mothers are breaking down and the fathers are losing it as they cry. Someone should show this guy what it means to be in a war, which is not a video game, which has lasting consequences.
And then I thought about a different conversation with another woman in which she was telling us how one of her nephews came back from the war unexpectedly and how the family is not talking about what happened to him. Maybe he had a nervous break down, said the woman, but we don’t know, because nobody says anything and nobody asks anything, although all of them are worried, because he was a nice guy before he went to Afghanistan, and who knows what is going to happen to him now. And you could feel something behind this woman’s words, something about how the soul of this guy, who was a nice guy, rebelled and could not take it anymore and so it broke down, because this kind of experience is not for nice guys. New Mexico is one of the poorer states and this suits the army because the poor enlist more easily than the rest. In the meantime, I thought about a guy who I talked to many years ago in Budapest and who fought on the side of the Soviets in Afghanistan against the Americans, and he said with vehemence that only those who wanted to kill went there. And he went there to be adventurous and because he wanted to kill a man and he paid for it dearly and will never go to war or would want to be in the army again.
And then I thought about the young college student who wrote in her paper that she hopes all white people will burn in hell for what they did to the black people in this country. And that when she was traveling on the bus, she did not give up her seat to the old white lady who was standing and even felt like punching the little old lady in the face. This young college student is studying to be a police officer. And maybe in just a little time she will have a real gun in her hands and I hope I will never meet her on the street at night, because who knows how that would end.
And then I thought that the woman soldier, who is just sitting here quietly, is black too, but she does not seem to be angry, while it is very probable that her ancestors were dragged here from Africa by some ugly white man to be slaves for decades and decades for other white people. No wonder that blacks are angry when they realize that they cannot go to college or get good jobs, because it was the white men who became rich as a result of their ancestor’s work, and not them. No wonder.
And then I thought about what could be in her backpack. What does one take to a place from which one may not return? Not much fits into a medium-sized bag. What would I take? A notebook, because there is no electricity in the desert, a laptop would not be useful. Pens and pencils and pictures. And my camera, because what if I survive, and if not, maybe someone would find it and send it to my family. Body lotion for sure, and sunglasses and a hat, but that they would give us, I guess…Interesting, I can’t think of many necessary things.
And then I thought that this woman at the airport, who is also being watched by others, did not isolate herself from the environment by accident with her earphones and book. I have decided by that time that if she looks up, I will smile at her, but what I really wanted is not to smile, but to get up and hug her and say something that would make her feel good. Or to save her, to take her with me so she would not have to go to the war or even just to say to her that I will be her friend, if she needs one. We could talk and email and I would send her packages with M&Ms and milk chocolate. She could tell me her fears and anxieties, which she cannot tell her family, because they are already worried, they have a strong bond and we don’t have a bond at all. But the woman did not look in my direction and I did not go up to her and did not hug her and did not say anything.
The boyfriend of the girl sitting next to me arrived. He was also wearing those sandals. He offered his jacket to the girl, who was cold, of course. They talked. First about the plane and the delay, but later about people. Near the counter from where the plane to New York would be leaving, two passengers from Damascus were screaming at Delta employees. The man’s face was red and his voice was given some support by his fist in the air. His wife was standing next to him and nodding vehemently. Eventually, hours later, we saw him boarding the plane alone and we thought that maybe she was not his wife at all, or he left her in Atlanta, or she left him in this big mess and maybe she would never ever go back to him because after waiting for twelve hours for their connecting flight he still couldn’t make it to leave!
But when the Egyptian taxi driver, who picked us up at JFK, was showing us the picture of his Irish wife and nine-year-old son, instead of getting us home as quickly and safely as possible after this long journey, I still thought of that young black woman soldier. Where could she be and what could she be doing? And I thought about how this taxi driver, whose English was very bad and who had a degree in bio-engineering, was very lucky to be able to go home to Queens to his wife and son and how many in Iraq and Afghanistan are not able to do that. And that the soldier woman will be waking up or going to sleep to the sound of bombs going off and cars being blown up and shooting – and why all of this? Because some insane men think that their god is better than the god of the others? And is this 2005 or are we still in the middle ages? Because it is dark, our age, however they will call it hundreds of years from now.
Written in May 2005 in New York City
(Published in Kalendarium, a traditional almanac in Hungarian in Slovakia, for the year 2006.)
There was a big storm, hail and rain, we were told, but by the time we arrived, the sun was shining. Atlanta, Georgia, USA. Wide, spacious airport, where a little train takes the passengers with their luggage from one terminal to the other.
First we ate at the Wall Street deli thinking that we would be flying in an hour, but we were wrong. The crowds were growing, impatiently waiting to hear announcements from the loudspeaker, and also talking on their cell phones and eating. Everybody wanted to continue traveling immediately, but because of the delay, there was more and more chaos. Those who were so inclined started to argue with representatives of different airlines. Nobody knew when they would arrive at their final destination.
The tall black guy sitting next to me was past middle age. He talked loudly on his cell phone, laughed a lot and moved his baseball cap back and forth on his head. When he – after about an hour – left to get something to eat, a young woman sat in his place. She put her feet up on the chair across from us and took a book out of her bag. (She must have just bought the book, I thought. She wandered around the airport stores and then decided to buy this book with a nice pink cover.) But she was not reading, just watching the people around her and the big monitor, where names of those who already had a seat in the airplane were listed. (Of course, I could not see that far. Maybe I should be wearing glasses.) She wore sandals, the kind in which you have to put your big toe through a little strap so that they don’t fall off your foot. (She is going to be cold soon in these, I thought.)
And then the woman soldier came. She was black and seemed young. A medium-sized backpack was sitting on the floor next to her. She had earphones in both ears and as she sat down, she started reading a book. (Of course, I could not read the title of the book from where I was sitting. I really do need those glasses! Or do I have to take my binoculars everywhere with me?) First I thought about the soldiers that I saw on my way here. They were mostly young, but some of them looked around fifty, balding already, but that was not very visible, because they had their heads shaved. It was sad to see them, not that to see the young ones was not sad. The young woman soldier wore a uniform that would melt nicely into the country in Iraq or Afghanistan and the bottom of her pants was tucked into her boots.
And then I thought about where she was going. Or where she was coming from. And if she is going, because probably she is going, because she was in no hurry apparently, because it did not bother her, or at least not in any visible way, that the planes were late, so if she is going, then who is she leaving behind? Does she have a lover, or maybe a child, or children and if so, what are they feeling knowing that she left and maybe she will be not coming back? And her parents and siblings? I pictured birthday and Christmas photographs, her colleagues and friends who must miss her, must feel something.
And then I thought about why she joined the army in the first place. (The army here consists of volunteers. Why would anybody want to join? Except when you are dealing with someone like Hitler – that I could imagine. But if there were no armies at all, there would be no Hitlers either and no need for armies at all.) Maybe she wanted to have an education and this was her only option – the army pays the tuition, gives a stipend and health insurance. Maybe she really wanted to study badly and wanted to get out of her parent’s house. Maybe she gave birth early, because nobody told her how to be careful and she saw no other way to fix the rest of her life. And now she sits here at this airport and maybe she is on her way to Iraq and maybe there will be no rest of her life.
And then I thought about how two nights ago in Taos, New Mexico, Julia talked about a relative of hers who wants to join the army. I must have given her a strange look from beyond my red-wine-and-coke: (The Americans don’t know the red wine and coke combination and are always very surprised – coke with wine? Well, what a strange idea of these Central Europeans!) To the army? Is this guy insane? And of course, I should not have given the look because Julia lowered her eyes and said that the guy is not insane, it’s only that he does not know what to do with himself. His mother cared for him for all these years, studied with him for every test. But he will be eighteen and his mother cannot go to college with him, can she? If they would accept him. And she cannot go to work with him every day, can she? And the guy cannot stay at any job long enough and he feels uncomfortable in this society which accepts only the successful ones, even though his parents did not raise him this way and stressed that what society expects is not what really matters. But he thinks the army will put him into place. Because there he will have no choice.
Especially, if he gets shot dead somewhere, I thought, though I did not say this, because I saw how hard the whole thing was for Julia. The guy’s sister is a big anti-war activist in their high school, and the whole joining the army thing is a big secret. And of course I was just sitting there mute, eating my delicious vegetable rice and tried not to think about how this guy will also become just a killing machine, if he survives the brain washing. Or he will have a nervous break down and will be haunted by nightmares, because how can anyone survive with a healthy psyche what one sees in war? And feels? And knowing that there is someone out there who wants to shoot me, who hates me only because I am wearing this uniform? And I thought, while the rest of the table was exchanging small talk pleasantries, that someone should take this guy to the nearest veteran’s hospital. He should work there for a month and see how it is, when one does not have a leg or an arm or has burns all over his body or is a bit crazy. Or someone should take him to where the dead are arriving in their coffins and he could work there too and see how the families receive the coffins, and the mothers are breaking down and the fathers are losing it as they cry. Someone should show this guy what it means to be in a war, which is not a video game, which has lasting consequences.
And then I thought about a different conversation with another woman in which she was telling us how one of her nephews came back from the war unexpectedly and how the family is not talking about what happened to him. Maybe he had a nervous break down, said the woman, but we don’t know, because nobody says anything and nobody asks anything, although all of them are worried, because he was a nice guy before he went to Afghanistan, and who knows what is going to happen to him now. And you could feel something behind this woman’s words, something about how the soul of this guy, who was a nice guy, rebelled and could not take it anymore and so it broke down, because this kind of experience is not for nice guys. New Mexico is one of the poorer states and this suits the army because the poor enlist more easily than the rest. In the meantime, I thought about a guy who I talked to many years ago in Budapest and who fought on the side of the Soviets in Afghanistan against the Americans, and he said with vehemence that only those who wanted to kill went there. And he went there to be adventurous and because he wanted to kill a man and he paid for it dearly and will never go to war or would want to be in the army again.
And then I thought about the young college student who wrote in her paper that she hopes all white people will burn in hell for what they did to the black people in this country. And that when she was traveling on the bus, she did not give up her seat to the old white lady who was standing and even felt like punching the little old lady in the face. This young college student is studying to be a police officer. And maybe in just a little time she will have a real gun in her hands and I hope I will never meet her on the street at night, because who knows how that would end.
And then I thought that the woman soldier, who is just sitting here quietly, is black too, but she does not seem to be angry, while it is very probable that her ancestors were dragged here from Africa by some ugly white man to be slaves for decades and decades for other white people. No wonder that blacks are angry when they realize that they cannot go to college or get good jobs, because it was the white men who became rich as a result of their ancestor’s work, and not them. No wonder.
And then I thought about what could be in her backpack. What does one take to a place from which one may not return? Not much fits into a medium-sized bag. What would I take? A notebook, because there is no electricity in the desert, a laptop would not be useful. Pens and pencils and pictures. And my camera, because what if I survive, and if not, maybe someone would find it and send it to my family. Body lotion for sure, and sunglasses and a hat, but that they would give us, I guess…Interesting, I can’t think of many necessary things.
And then I thought that this woman at the airport, who is also being watched by others, did not isolate herself from the environment by accident with her earphones and book. I have decided by that time that if she looks up, I will smile at her, but what I really wanted is not to smile, but to get up and hug her and say something that would make her feel good. Or to save her, to take her with me so she would not have to go to the war or even just to say to her that I will be her friend, if she needs one. We could talk and email and I would send her packages with M&Ms and milk chocolate. She could tell me her fears and anxieties, which she cannot tell her family, because they are already worried, they have a strong bond and we don’t have a bond at all. But the woman did not look in my direction and I did not go up to her and did not hug her and did not say anything.
The boyfriend of the girl sitting next to me arrived. He was also wearing those sandals. He offered his jacket to the girl, who was cold, of course. They talked. First about the plane and the delay, but later about people. Near the counter from where the plane to New York would be leaving, two passengers from Damascus were screaming at Delta employees. The man’s face was red and his voice was given some support by his fist in the air. His wife was standing next to him and nodding vehemently. Eventually, hours later, we saw him boarding the plane alone and we thought that maybe she was not his wife at all, or he left her in Atlanta, or she left him in this big mess and maybe she would never ever go back to him because after waiting for twelve hours for their connecting flight he still couldn’t make it to leave!
But when the Egyptian taxi driver, who picked us up at JFK, was showing us the picture of his Irish wife and nine-year-old son, instead of getting us home as quickly and safely as possible after this long journey, I still thought of that young black woman soldier. Where could she be and what could she be doing? And I thought about how this taxi driver, whose English was very bad and who had a degree in bio-engineering, was very lucky to be able to go home to Queens to his wife and son and how many in Iraq and Afghanistan are not able to do that. And that the soldier woman will be waking up or going to sleep to the sound of bombs going off and cars being blown up and shooting – and why all of this? Because some insane men think that their god is better than the god of the others? And is this 2005 or are we still in the middle ages? Because it is dark, our age, however they will call it hundreds of years from now.
Written in May 2005 in New York City
(Published in Kalendarium, a traditional almanac in Hungarian in Slovakia, for the year 2006.)
Friday, January 06, 2006
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