another mashup of found tallava pieces.
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Saturday, July 17, 2010
Monday, July 5, 2010
the embassy / the museum
On July 2nd we passed through metal detectors, armed guards and police cordons so that we could join the other Americans and their invited guests eating hamburgers and hot dogs. There can't possibly be a single enemy of America in Pristina, but still, because we are Americans, we must shut down the streets and divert traffic and have the utmost in security measures for an early Independence Day celebration at the museum, with an exhibition honoring the relationship between our countries.
The Kosovo constitution had been reproduced by hand to resemble its American counterpart. There were numerous ordinary items of clothing on display too, clothing that had been worn by Madeline Albright and Wesley Clark. American flags were hung side by side with Albanian flags and there were pins for Greater Albania and signs for Get Serbia Out of Kosovo, and I was embarrassed to be seen there, as if this display was making any attempt to grapple with history and truth, because it wasn't. It was only more adoration and patriotism, hamburgers and rock music.
Not that the items on display weren't historical. Many of them were. But this was a museum, and the uncritical homage seemed out of place there, like a political speech in a church, or an execution in a hospital.
I had a funny feeling as we ate hamburgers and the band played “Money for Nothing” and “One Love.” I wished I could have celebrated, because there were people present who were truly happy and truly thankful to my country. But it seemed like such a simple and stupid mistake that my country had made—to use a museum this way. The displays were perhaps even somewhat less self-analytical than those in the Military Museum of Belgrade, and I was scared that my country had really become hopeless, that we had become incapable of learning, that we would always ignore that which didn't suit our needs until it was too late, and that when real tragedy struck again here—as it had only the day before, when a pediatrician died in the streets of Mitrovica—the people from my country would only stare in wonder, dumbstruck, convinced that there was nothing they could have done better, and then go back to patting themselves on the back. I felt like I was getting dizzy, and spinning in circles, because it was me and my fellow citizens who used a museum this way; we had paid to have our praises sung, and we would probably have to pay for it again, one way or another, for years to come, because I've never yet read of self-satisfaction like this ever coming to any good.
The Kosovo constitution had been reproduced by hand to resemble its American counterpart. There were numerous ordinary items of clothing on display too, clothing that had been worn by Madeline Albright and Wesley Clark. American flags were hung side by side with Albanian flags and there were pins for Greater Albania and signs for Get Serbia Out of Kosovo, and I was embarrassed to be seen there, as if this display was making any attempt to grapple with history and truth, because it wasn't. It was only more adoration and patriotism, hamburgers and rock music.
Not that the items on display weren't historical. Many of them were. But this was a museum, and the uncritical homage seemed out of place there, like a political speech in a church, or an execution in a hospital.
I had a funny feeling as we ate hamburgers and the band played “Money for Nothing” and “One Love.” I wished I could have celebrated, because there were people present who were truly happy and truly thankful to my country. But it seemed like such a simple and stupid mistake that my country had made—to use a museum this way. The displays were perhaps even somewhat less self-analytical than those in the Military Museum of Belgrade, and I was scared that my country had really become hopeless, that we had become incapable of learning, that we would always ignore that which didn't suit our needs until it was too late, and that when real tragedy struck again here—as it had only the day before, when a pediatrician died in the streets of Mitrovica—the people from my country would only stare in wonder, dumbstruck, convinced that there was nothing they could have done better, and then go back to patting themselves on the back. I felt like I was getting dizzy, and spinning in circles, because it was me and my fellow citizens who used a museum this way; we had paid to have our praises sung, and we would probably have to pay for it again, one way or another, for years to come, because I've never yet read of self-satisfaction like this ever coming to any good.
Friday, July 2, 2010
one thing I never expected to be doing; many things I never expected to see; so much left undone
After a month or so the back seat of the car has been filled with empty plastic bottles, and then it's time to drive up into the mountains to the spring by the side of the road and fill them. We used to fill the empty bottles from the tap as reserves for those times that the water goes out. But then we saw the sediment in that water forming into brown algae-like clouds that rose to the surface of each container, and we smelled the toilet backing up through the shower drain, and we stopped trusting the tap water. We could buy it in the stores, and sometimes we do, but we try to get most of what we need from the springs, and today I went looking for one in Bajgora.
Halfway up the mountain I passed the mines, and then I entered the tunnel, slowly, because of the cows. There were four of them in there this time, one laying in the middle of the road, and the other three frantically licking the sides of the tunnel. They were pale colored, a dirty white with yellow and tan spots. Their horns flashed in the headlights, and they didn't seem to notice me as I wove between them, as if the time they spent down their had made them blind, or as if they'd been born that way, like enormous hairy albino newts in subterranean caverns. They sucked away at the slimy stone like leeches.
The spring was only a trickle, filling an enormous metal trough. Villagers passed by and said things to me. For all I know they were telling me “That spring is poisonous,” or “That's be ten dollars.” I finally found one who understood my mix of Albanian and English. He grinned and said, “Yes,” the water was good. Still, the rest of the village had so much to tell me I couldn't feel confident that I was understanding everything. Maybe I had offended them, or there was a trick to it, or maybe they just rarely had strangers up there.
I'm telling you this so you'll know how it was that I died, should I die. It was the water, from all the way up in Bajgora, that drips down across blind cow tongues, pass the entrance to the coal mines and seeps through piles of slag, into the rivers and lakes and then the pipes that empty into our sink, our toilet and tub: if I'm dead, then you'll know that the water turned out to be most deadly at its source.
Halfway up the mountain I passed the mines, and then I entered the tunnel, slowly, because of the cows. There were four of them in there this time, one laying in the middle of the road, and the other three frantically licking the sides of the tunnel. They were pale colored, a dirty white with yellow and tan spots. Their horns flashed in the headlights, and they didn't seem to notice me as I wove between them, as if the time they spent down their had made them blind, or as if they'd been born that way, like enormous hairy albino newts in subterranean caverns. They sucked away at the slimy stone like leeches.
The spring was only a trickle, filling an enormous metal trough. Villagers passed by and said things to me. For all I know they were telling me “That spring is poisonous,” or “That's be ten dollars.” I finally found one who understood my mix of Albanian and English. He grinned and said, “Yes,” the water was good. Still, the rest of the village had so much to tell me I couldn't feel confident that I was understanding everything. Maybe I had offended them, or there was a trick to it, or maybe they just rarely had strangers up there.
I'm telling you this so you'll know how it was that I died, should I die. It was the water, from all the way up in Bajgora, that drips down across blind cow tongues, pass the entrance to the coal mines and seeps through piles of slag, into the rivers and lakes and then the pipes that empty into our sink, our toilet and tub: if I'm dead, then you'll know that the water turned out to be most deadly at its source.
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