7: Old Journals

I apologize for this not going up yesterday. We lost power at mein Haus, and with it, the wireless. Double posts make up for it!

Earlier this week I reread good portions of my journal from last year, specifically the spring abroad, looking for suitable words for a pastoral poem I knew I wanted to write about Galway. Incidentally, I found the beginnings of a poem I wrote on Jan Palach, the rough draft of a poem I wrote on graffiti found by the old ChristChurch in Dublin. I was reminded of walking with Bruno (my couchsurfing host) through Berlin the May before, trying to explain why I write in a journal. He dismissed the concept as pointless, while I argued that by writing down bits of what I see, half remembered dreams and conversations, I can search back for poems. Beyond that, I can chart a timeline of who I am at any particular moment.

'I don't know if I'll go back to school for a time- it's less expensive to travel then to study....What I'm realizing is that I'm done with education. I want to learn, and learn everything I can get my hands on- Czech, German, Buddhism, how a coffee machine works, what animals think about, literary theory, Jungian psychoanalysis- and to read as much as I can. But I'm tired of arbitrary classes, of being dictated to, spoken at instead of spoken with...' Galway

I really like the idea of having all that space to do nothing but think, to the point where I'm willing to give "On the Road" another shot. I really want to begin to come to terms with the concept of being an American: I feel as if I've seen more of Europe than I have of the U.S, based on emotional responses.' -Prague

'We kept passing by cows and horses lying in the grass, which startled me. I read somewhere when I was little that horses never lay down, but that's clearly wrong. Still it's hard to shake the image of them standing through nights and rain, clustered together but unable to share the weight, how tired I thought their knees and hips must be' -on a bus trip from Cork to Limerick

And the poem?

Galway

The four hours there, the same small pub with light

streaming through someone’s window,

the fields of sheep and lambs,

the baby cow that startled and kicked

as we passed,

rolling the same last cigarette

the last few matches

because I wanted to smoke them by the sea.

I stood on the retaining wall for a long time

watching the other side of the Atlantic ebb.

Swans drifting through the ends of waves,

gulls cried for fish and livers,

I could smell the tide.

You were somewhere behind me.

You were somewhere ahead.

Everywhere the legacy of boats,

the trinity of drizzle,

I counted the Irish I knew

(taoiseach, craic, fir, slainte),

and smoked a broken cigarette,

spitting out tobacco curls.

It was raining.

Of course it was raining.

6: Electioneering

I voted for the first time today. I didn't do it for the sticker, and the free goods that I can get today by showing it off. I didn't do it because of peer pressure. I didn't do it because of the dozens of people who would come up to me in Dublin, in Prague, in Germany and will the American people through me to make a change. I didn't do it because Kevin Drew/Broken Social Scene asked me to. I did it because it felt right. And it's done, and tonight when I watching the results come in while I serve beers and burgers, I'll know that I did something.

I keep thinking about staying in Budapest, and watching coverage of the nomination process in a room of Americans, Brits, and Canadians. And there was one Canadian arguing with us Americans, stating how much better we think we are, how self important, when really the rest of the world doesn't care who we elect because we're all the same, anyway. The Brit spoke up and reminded the Canadian that actually, it does matter. It felt so surreal to be in that moment, to be watching other people debate something I'd always dismissed as common place. I actually felt to be an American, carry over I assume from earlier that day, when I saw graffiti that commanded 'Yankees go home'- the sudden anger at the confusion of who I am and who I am not, who I will always be, and my own politics cast off in favor of assumptions.

It's odd that as newspapers everywhere are calling upon the youth vote (and for once the politicians are listening), and the youth are responding, I'm researching youth movements at the beginning of the century, when the term teenager was first being developed, and in present day Balkans and the surging fascist movement there. Do I mean to say that today's American youth are fascists or future Hitler Jugend? No. But it is interesting the similarity in quotes, as generations recognize the revolutionary potential of the young.

I hope, more than anything, that the youth movement doesn't die out now. There's so much potential to keep going, keep pushing for change. Was it Spinoza who declared that revolution is the only way to significantly change a democracy? Or was it Kant? Either way, I want this brewing to bubble, to churn and make positive change more than just throwing collective weight around.