Melancholy Monday

I like a good funeral.

It was 102°F (39°C) in the San Fernando Valley; I will never understand why people live there of their own free will. Going into the funeral home (why is it called a ‘home’?) was bizarre – dozens of people that looked vaguely familiar. Everyone knew my parents but, because I look nothing like either of them, people looked at me very puzzled, like they couldn’t figure out who I was. As I was introduced, people actually said things like, “Oh my goodness, I never would have known. Last time I saw you, you were only this high.” Blah blah blah. Jesus.

I am still angry there was no funeral for Jarda and that is part of the reason I had to be at Annie’s. The rabbi was brilliant. No one else spoke at the service but the rabbi read some things that Annie’s family had written about her, and the rabbi just talked about what an amazing person Annie was and he was successful in capturing her spirit.

The things I loved about Annie were that she was always positive, she only ever said nice things about people. I have wondered all my life how she could resist making snide comments because she had a great sense of humour and a sharp wit. But she would never be unkind. If she met one of my friends once 20 years ago, she would ask me about that person regularly. She once sent me a doll, a monster from Where the Wild Things Are, when I was already a divorcée in my 30s, because she had seen the doll in a shop and remembered that it was my favourite book from childhood. I have never visited LA without seeing Annie and H., her husband.

Annie was selfless. She had written sincere thank you notes to the doctors who had tried to save her, and had consoled the nurses as she was dying. Annie sent early birthday and anniversary cards to people. My mom received both on the day of Annie’s death. Annie wrote cards for the people to whom she was closest to be given to them just after her funeral. Mom got one of those too.

I was overcome by sadness during Annie’s service, even while laughing at some of the stories the rabbi was telling. It got worse as I watched my parents walk out with the coffin, my dad as a pallbearer, my mom behind as an honorary pallbearer.

The graveside ceremony was very quick because of the heat, and because Annie did not want any of the mourners throwing dirt on her grave. She had found that ritual overly dramatic and maudlin. I walked away from the gravesite with my mom. She pointed to a nearby gravestone: “Did you notice who’s buried just there?” I looked and it was Danny J., a kid I had gone to Hebrew school with who had grown up to do amazing philanthropic work but who got sick and died last year. That was when the sadness became overwhelming and I fell sobbing into my mom’s arms. Fucking hell, enough already.

We drove over to Annie’s sister-in-law’s house. All day people asked me if my mom was all right, including Annie’s kids. Annie’s husband and daughter talked to me about Jarda, telling me how sorry they were and how upset Annie had been. Annie’s son hugged my mom and said, “She was just crazy about you, you know.” My poor little mom.

The evening service was a renewal of strong emotion. I got comfort from the familiar Hebrew prayers: I love the sounds of the words and the cadence, I like to sing. I don’t like reading prayers in English because then I have to pay more attention to what the words mean and that is hard because I don’t believe any of it. We read the mourner’s prayer twice (in Hebrew) - that set me off again because I was saying it both for Jarda and for Annie.

I have cried and cried and cried, but now that I have had an outlet for my grief, I will be able to get back to my life more completely starting today. And that is why I like a good funeral.

Nobody Walks in LA

People think no one walks in LA and therefore everyone doubts me when I tell them that my parents live in a walky neighbourhood and walk all over the place. It is especially convenient to walk somewhere for dinner because that way everyone can drink.

I went for a walk with my parents today. It is their normal Sunday thing to walk down to the local farmers' market after breakfast. As we were strolling down our street I saw 2 Hummers go by within 5 minutes of each other. I commented on it and my dad said, "Welcome to Brentwood." I had thought Hummers were for men with small dicks, but both of these were being driven by women.

I had taken one of my mom's sunhats, absolutely necessary here as the sun is much stronger than I am used to. By the time we got down to the market, my head was hurting because the hat was a bit small. Same conversation every time:
Max - My head hurts, this hat is too small.
Mom - That is because you have a big head.
Max - I need it to hold my big brain.
Mom - And your big ego.

It is nice to be back with my mom. We'll be going shopping for a new hat tomorrow.

I argued politics with my parents over breakfast; I think I had held out pretty well considering I had already been here for over 12 hours.

Walking back up our street from the farmers' market, I noticed that at least for a while every 2nd car was an SUV. It makes me sad that people really just don't think. Gas is about to go above ₤1 per litre in the UK; that is roughly $8 a gallon. And people continue to kill and be killed in Iraq.

I started reading the latest Harry Potter on the plane from London yesterday. I am over 400 pages into it and will finish by tomorrow. It is as engaging as the earlier books but not nearly as interesting, and I think I am bored with Harry Potter, the same way I could only watch 18 hours of 24.

I told my parents last night that I might quit my job to move to a village in the south of France with Monkey so that I can write. My dad ignored me (there was baseball on the tv) and my mom said that she was sure that I had a novel in me because I had led a very interesting life thus far. I was primed for a fight, but I realised that I cannot surprise them anymore and they will no longer object to anything I decide to do.

I don't like LA but I don't hate it. I would never live here again, it's too weird. Prague is so much nicer.

Max in the America

Here I am in LA, 10 days earlier than originally planned. I left Prague 5 days ahead of schedule and skipped going to London ostensibly to be able to go to a funeral here, but I think I really just wanted to see my mom.

My dad called me at 1.40 a.m. on Saturday to tell me that he had got my ticket changed and that my flight from Prague was at 7.45. I went back to sleep for 3 hours. Prague-London, London-New York, New York-LA. My parents were waiting for me at the airport and I saw immediately on my mom's face that Annie had died while I was flying. Annie had been my mom's best friend for 35 years, and my very good friend too.

It feels weird to be in the America but I think I needed to take some time out and just come back here and be a spoiled kid for a while at my parents' house. Dad made martinis when we got home and I booked a ticket to go to Denver next weekend.

Bare Flesh

I love going to lunch on my own with a book, a magazine or a newspaper; today was the only day this week that I have been able to do so. One of the things I read this lunchtime was AA Gill’s column from The Sunday Times Style magazine, which had me quietly chuckling to myself over a grilled vegetable salad. Gill was lamenting global warming because the English do not know how to dress for it.

Frankly, I don’t give a toss if half a dozen Pacific islands become an underwater adventure destination for sharks (serves the islanders right for eating strangers), and I don’t much care if Greece becomes part of a new, improved Aegean. But I do mind having to look at the English attempting the sweaty equation of heat, going out, Sunday and “my wardrobe”.

What is it that makes English bodies so spectacularly repellent in the daylight? It isn’t simply the clammy, adipose, maggoty-white flesh, with its zits and lesions and dry, scrofulous craters. It’s the distribution that so noisomely offends. The softly curdled lumps that hang like fungus on beech trees, the swaying underarms, the double nuggets of cheesy flob behind the knees, the exhausted, stretched, who-cares haggis of gut, the shuddering, horrified backsides, with their wrinkled, slippery clefts and creases, the thighs pitted like rain on cold sand – all of it shaped and moulded by waistbands and straps that were hopeful three years and 4in past.

My friends have heard me on the subject many times - dress for your body. It is one of Max’s pet peeves that so many people walk around in public, or even serve me drinks, showing bits of their bodies that would best be left covered forever. It is not at all that I have a perfect body; in fact I am quite secure in saying that I do not. The thing is that I also do not insist on showing bits of flesh that absolutely no one wants to see. I am tired of bare midriffs and thongs crawling out of trousers that are cut too low. I am sick of seeing waists bulging out over belts that are too low and too tight. Show a bit of cleavage, sure, and perhaps fleeting glimpses of skin elsewhere, but please leave the rest up to the imagination.

The Jester

I went to see The Jester today to change a prescription. The previous pills had produced a side effect in the form of a dry cough, which has been driving me crazy by interrupting my normally flawless sleep pattern.

The first thing I did was tell The Jester that I needed different pills. He was annoyed at me because the pills I had been taking had been working perfectly and now he would have to look in two different books and try to figure out what else to try. Finally he wrote out a prescription and then expected me to just go, but I asked for more.

“Monkey wanted me to ask if you would write a prescription for some more Viagra and Cialis.” The Jester reached once again for his prescription pad.

“How many of each does he want?”

“As many as he can get, I guess.”

“I’ll write him a prescription for four packets of each.” Pills here come in pre-packaged boxes rather than little personalised bottles.

The Jester then once again made as if I should leave.

“Um, don’t you want to take my blood pressure?” That was, after all, what I was taking the pills for.

“No, no need. I’ll just see that it’s fine and it doesn’t matter because you are changing medication anyway.”

“Well, I would feel better if you would take my blood pressure.” This was still a new thing for me and I didn't really trust that the medication would still be working just because it was working the last time.

Sigh. “Okay then.”

“120 over 80.”

“Oh, that’s good then. Thank you, that makes me feel better.”

“Well, it makes me feel miserable because the old medication was doing the job and now we will be dealing with an unknown.”

Then The Jester told the receptionist to charge me 40% extra because he had written out the prescriptions for Monkey too. Monkey keeps saying that we need to find a real doctor.

Comic Relief

My 12-year old nephew is away at summer camp. I get to send him e-mails while he is there, and it is important for him that I do, however there is only so much I can really say to a 12-year old kid in a one-way communication. So I had this idea, that he might like it if I sent him some jokes. The problem I have run into is that I don't know any appropriate jokes, such jokes being clean, PC and suitable for children. I am aware that the kids tell inappropriate jokes to each other, but I am Auntie Max and I must set an example. Not only that, but the e-mails go through the camp administration so I wouldn't get away with it.

Fellow bloggers, would you please donate some jokes to my cause? An added benefit is that they might lighten all of our moods a little bit.

Thanks.

Hate Your Neighbour

hate intense hostility or dislike; loathing

hate crime a crime that is committed against somebody because the perpetrator disapproves of their race, sexuality, religion, etc. It usually takes the form of physical violence, verbal abuse or threats, or damage to property, etc.

Scotland Yard: crimes motivated by religious hatred have jumped by nearly 600% in London since 7th July.

Statistics compiled by Human Rights First for the OSCE, published 31 May 2005:

Only 3 OSCE member countries provided thorough and reliable data on hate crimes as requested. That is 3 out of 55. They were the US, Canada and the UK.

Only 19 of the 55 countries have laws in force to punish crimes motivated by racism.

Only 5 of the 19 countries have enacted legislation to punish crimes motivated by sexual orientation and disability bias – Belgium, Canada, France, Spain, UK, as well as 29 states of the US and the District of Columbia.

Only 4 countries plus 26 states and DC have laws that punish hate crimes based on gender (Belgium, Canada, France, Spain).

In the United Kingdom, anti-Jewish violent personal assaults doubled in 2004 over the previous year.

In France, anti-Jewish violent offences were up 63% from 2003 to 2004. In 2002 there were 41 violent hate crimes against gay men, and in 2003 there were 86. In 2003 there were 232 attacks classified as acts of “racism and xenophobia”, victims mostly North African, and in 2004 there were 595.

In the United States, there were 28 hate crimes against Muslims in 2000, and 481 in 2001.

If you would like to know about murders, violent attacks, cemeteries being desecrated, mosques being burned, children being beaten up, a gay man being set on fire and more, have a look at the report:

http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/discrimination/pdf/everyday-fears-053105.pdf

Will we never learn?

My morning reading today has included one article about Hiroshima survivors talking to students in Japan and another about the unveiling of a plaque dedicated to German victims of a massacre in post-war Czechoslovakia.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/4735163.stm

http://www.praguemonitor.com/ctk/?id=20050731E01356

Reading about the Hiroshima survivors reminded me of my own experiences of listening to Holocaust survivors every year at Hebrew school. “Remember” and “never again” were the catchphrases that over time and through other genocides have been rendered meaningless.

The plaque in Ústí nad Labem is controversial because of the continuing tension between Czechs and Sudeten Germans. Its placement on the Edvard Beneš Bridge is controversial because President Beneš was the one who signed the order expelling 2.5 million ethnic Germans from Czechoslovakia after WWII. But on the other hand, it was from this very bridge that several (no one knows how many) Germans were thrown to their deaths into the Labe (Elbe) during the massacre.

The massacre in Ústí happened on 31st July 1945; the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki 6th and 9th August. 60 years have gone by and what have we learned?

One of the Hiroshima survivors talked about Japan being both an aggressor and a victim and it is clear to me that we are no different. The United States is an aggressor in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The United States was a victim on 9/11 and will doubtlessly suffer further attacks as the campaigns go on. My point here is not cause and effect, or even chronology, but only that it seems that every aggressor is doomed to also be a victim in turn. It makes the whole exercise of war look pretty pointless from every perspective.

Ominous midday bells again...

Wouldn't you like to be a Nazi too?

I have just read an interesting article written by a limey whose grandad was in the Waffen SS.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4734661.stm

The writer never knew his grandad, who was killed in Prague in 1945, so he never got to ask him what he had actually done during the war. What he does know is that his grandad was a member of the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler, which was the premier regiment of the Waffen SS, and rumoured to have been involved in the execution of civilians and POWs. The writer acknowledges that his grandad must have “been involved at some level even if that involvement was just driving a truck and turning a blind eye.”

The writer’s family have a collection of photographs taken by the grandad during WWII, which depict him sight-seeing in Paris, playing football and passing the time with his mates in other benign ways.

…it’s impossible to avoid what one always hopes wasn’t true about the Third Reich – these men are not monsters. No matter what sort of gangsters, charlatans and psychopaths they may have been following, the vast majority of the German people, even the vast majority of the Waffen SS, were normal people.

…And that I suppose is why I find this microscopic story of an insignificant part of the Third Reich so fascinating. If it shows that my grandfather can not only stand aside while bad things happen but actively take part, then it could happen to any of us.

I believe that the writer is correct. I believe that as Americans in a society which is progressing towards totalitarianism, we need to be wary of the phenomenon of normal people becoming capable of doing evil things. We need to remember that just because someone has official sanction and is wearing a uniform, whether TSA or NYPD or whatever, does not mean that s/he is looking out for us. In fact, we need to keep in mind that our government has interests that not only have nothing to do with our security and well-being but are, in fact, in conflict with them. That government is manipulating people to do their dirty work. Beware, for we are in danger of becoming a nation of Nazis and informers.

...and now the unbearable heaviness

My office is in the Old Town area of Prague. We are right next to the Church of St Giles and I can see countless other churches from my window including St Vitus Cathedral up at the castle, and both St Nicholas and Our Lady of Týn on Old Town Square. Church bells gong on the quarter-hour and there is an extended ringing of bells at midday. I used to love the sound of the bells ringing, the depth, resonance and melody. But now for some reason the bells have started to sound ominous to me, sending chills through my body, as if heralding the onset of some great catastrophe.

I have been sad lately. My sadness makes me overly sensitive, intolerant, cranky and mean; yesterday I was an absolute bitch on the phone to my parents. I feel like I cannot help it, although Monkey says that’s nonsense and deep down I know he is right. But I am not ready to shake the sadness: it comes from a deep despair inspired by the state of the world and the evil of some of the people in it.

I am an American and proud to come from such a great country. But I despair that we have embarked on a downward spiral into martial law. Provisions of the Patriot Act, searches on the subway, anyone that looks dark and spooky being treated as suspicious, electronic tracking devices for people crossing the border from Canada, fingerprinting everyone who visits our country… What is next? The trend is ominous.

I am going to the US this month, flying over sometime between the 6th and the 16th. Monkey does not exactly try to talk me out of it, he merely drops small but frequent hints that I must be out of my mind to want to go to the US right now. I don’t really want to go but I have family commitments and feel I have to go, and I really need a holiday at any rate.

I wish this feeling of dread would go away; I am not comfortable with the heaviness.