Growing older . . . and hearing voices from the past

"Switch Your Land"
Google Images

As I lay dining on a piece of toast while bedridden with my stomach virus, an old Swiss-German friend with the ever surprising surname "d'Aujourd'hui" was writing me an email:

High Jeff,

Well, that would be nice, in general, but while sick, I had no desire for any chemically induced buzz. Nevertheless, Ms. d'Aujourd'hui continued:

I was thinking about you, asking myself how you might be going. I saw Antonia today, Monica's friend in Fribourg. Maybe you remember her . . .

By the time I read her entire email, I was able to answer. I didn't say, well, I'm going . . . going . . . though not yet gone. I instead replied reasonably to Ms. d'Aujourd'hui's question:

Yes, I remember Antonia. I admit I had to reflect a bit to do so, but that seems to be a matter of getting older - in my case anyway.

Ms. d'Aujourd'hui went on to inform me:

I'm at Zürich for work. And I'm astonished how lively this city is. There are so many people here from all over the world. Summer is really nice here; everybody is outside, gathering in the parks, swimming in the river and the lake. I stay at my brother’s flat; my son is living here, so it is a nice occasion to spend some hours together.

I was at work, too, although in Seoul, and I told her:

At the moment, I'm preparing for my 9 a.m. course, an intensive class on writing. Expository, not creative. Occasionally, I have to correct students' pronunciation, so I sometimes do your [sort of] work, if you're still doing Logopaedie . . . . I still read the IHT - though it's now the INYT - so I know that Zürich is a bustling place, and so is Basel, with its yearly art fair (or whatever it's called). Once in a great while, there's an article that mentions Fribourg.

Ms. d'Aujourd'hui soon signed off:

A lot of Swiss greetings . . . . hope you're as fine as you can be!!

I did the same:

I suppose I'm doing as well as the last time we communicated, though a bit less so. You seem to be doing well. I hope you are.

And so it goes as our past fills up with more and more of our less and less time . . .

Absinthe makes the heart go founder?

Absinthe
Photo by Niels Ackermann
The New York Times

Apparently not, rumors to the contrary notwithstanding. Absinthe does not drive its drinkers mad.

Or so implies an article, "On the Absinthe Trail," by Evan Rail for The New York Times (July 4, 2014). Rail belies his surname and instead praises the disreputable drink, and he ought to know, for he's a booze writer, author of In Praise of Hangovers and Beer Trails: The Brewery in the Bohemian Forest.

And even if he -- counterfactually -- know not, an expert he met near the 'Valley of Absinthe' would: American writer Scott MacDonald, author of Absinthe Antiques: A Collection From la Belle Époque. The two met in the French town of Pontarlier and compared notes, though MacDonald obviously knew more -- and treated Rail to a special drink:

Mr. MacDonald approached with a glass. "Try this," he said.

The drink seemed thicker, perhaps just in terms of the density of its aromas, with a long-lasting bitterness hiding behind a slightly oxidized, licorice-like anise nose. It was an absinthe verte, but the taste was more gentle than the others I'd tried, with an alcoholic warmth that seemed to expand into infinity.

I felt a strange sense of disappointment when Mr. MacDonald told me what I had just tried: one of the distillery's own pre-ban absinthes, made just before the drink was outlawed in France in 1914, and poured from one of the last remaining bottles as a gift for Mr. MacDonald by the distillery's owner. Until then, I thought that I had found what I was seeking on the route de l'absinthe, and that was Swiss absinthe bleue. But this had been one of the best sips of my life, and unfortunately I would almost certainly never taste anything like it again. Not even in the Val-de-Travers, beside a mountain spring, just a few steps ahead of the Green Fairy herself.

A mite overwritten, and the disappointment is not entirely clear -- one has to think about the meaning -- but I infer that the disappointment was over having sought the special Swiss absinthe bleue, only to discover a sip of absinthe verte exceeded in taste any other absinthe he might imbibe for the rest of his life . . .

Basel: A Quarter-Century Past

I lived over a year in Switzerland back in the latter 1980s, about four months of that time in Basel, where I first had and then didn't have a Swiss girlfriend named Monika whom I'd originally met in Fribourg in 1986, a breakup that worked out for the best in the long run, though I had my doubts about its beneficial consequences during the summer of 1988. I spent a lot of time in Basel that summer at Andreasplatz drinking coffee in the Café zum Teufel -- though I think it had already been renamed Café Zum Roten Engel -- and writing in my journal (when I wasn't working on my Coptic), depicting in lead of pencils the vicissitudes of a once golden relationship.

Café Zum Roten Engel

Google Images

I've never had an overwhelming desire to revisit that lovely city, though I did go again in the Fall of 1989, for I was -- courtesy of a Fulbright Grant -- living in Tübingen, not so far from Basel, and I took that opportunity to walk the city's streets and seek out old haunts. I never looked up my old girlfriend, despite strolling by the place where she probably lived, for too little time had passed to enable me to deal with that unpleasantness. Besides, as she saw me off at the train in late summer of '88, I had left her with the words, "Leb wohl," and though she found that amusing -- a marginally appropriate response -- I kept my promise implicit in the words of that farewell.

Despite my reluctance about ever again returning to Basel, I actually liked the city, and still wish the best for it. It appears to be doing well, as I see from the art and architecture pages of the International Herald Tribune in an article reprinted in the New York Times as "Basel's New Center for Design" (June 1, 2012 ), by Ratha Tep, who informs us:

On a brisk Saturday morning in April, a group of young architecture students from Bologna, Italy, walked down a white granite promenade in the St. Johann neighborhood in Basel, Switzerland, to take in 14 "starchitect"-designed buildings that have sprung up in recent years. An opaque glass structure by Yoshio Taniguchi resembled a floating box. A soaring Frank Gehry design of contorted cubes stood just beyond. And over near the large Richard Serra sculptures, a Tadao Ando building converged into a razor-sharp triangular edge.

That a group of art and design geeks would be visiting this corner of northern Basel, which hugs the Rhine River, would have been unimaginable just a decade ago, when it was a gloomy stretch dotted with nondescript office buildings and chemical factories. But the new buildings, part of an ambitious 2.2 billion Swiss franc plan by the pharmaceutical giant Novartis to turn its production facility into a gleaming corporate campus, has drawn curious onlookers to the 50-acre site, where a project by the hometown firm of Herzog and de Meuron is still on its way.

Sounds impressive. Unfortunately, the article offers only one photo, but I Googled the company Novartis and found all the necessary photos to accompany Tep's descriptions. Here's Yoshio Taniguchi's opaque glass structure like a floating box:

Here's Frank Gehry's soaring design of contorted cubes (which Tep does provide):

Here's Tadao Ando's building converging into a razor-sharp triangular edge (or so says Tep):

There are twelve other photos of architecture to look at, each of them small, unfortunately, but they will give you an impression of what you'd see if you visit the area . . . which I suppose I never again will.

"Leb wohl," Basel.

UPDATE: Go to the Novartis site and click on the camera icon under each of the tiny photos for a larger image.

For Funny Furry Feline Fondue Friendship?

Fondue You

Wikipedia

Before I lived in Switzerland, I thought that I'd eaten fondue, but a long winter in Fribourg taught me otherwise, for I not only ate true fondue, I learned the rules of fondue propriety, one of which threatened punishment on the poor devil who dipped too awkwardly into the melted cheese and lost the cube of bread from the prongs of the typical, long-handled fork. There's an old proverb relevant in this context:

"He who sups with the devil must use a long spoon."

I assume that's meant to provide a head start for escape if something goes wrong. Well, a really long fork would be useful if you sup fondue with the Swiss-French. They threatened me, if I should lose the bread, with an ancient punishment first recorded in the historically entirely accurate Asterix and Obelix comics -- weighing the malefactor down with stones and tossing the poor devil into Lake Geneva . . . though I didn't really believe they'd go that far. Probably just toss me into the Sarine River that splits Fribourg into its Swiss-French and Swiss-German parts!

But fondue etiquette seems to have gotten more civilized since my day among the Swiss-French, for I have a diplomatic friend stationed in Europe -- whom I've previously mentioned -- and she took a trip to Geneva, where she enjoyed a dinner of authentic Swiss fondue, but reported nothing about the dark, watery depths of the nearby lake, though I can't believe she never lost a chunk of bread!

Apparently, the fondue was so tasty that it inspired her to organize a fondue party back in the dark and rainy, northern European city where she carries out her diplomatic endeavors, so she invited twelve friends who brought friends who brought children -- a bit like a flash mob -- and the fun began as the cheese melted into fondue and adults began to get awkward from drink:

"We enforced the Swiss tradition of requiring anyone whose fork loses a bit of food in the pot to kiss the person closest by."

That was not the threatening tradition that I encountered! My friend even found the experience so pleasing and conducive to good will that she considered how it might be the secret to world peace:

"So, I've been thinking. Perhaps a world fondue party is what we need. Wait . . . sharp pointed objects and flame . . . maybe not such a good idea. But kissing your neighbour anytime something is dropped might be good."

That pacific suggestion had such a certain charm, I considered dropping my guard . . . till I looked around myself at three-thirty in the morning here in Seoul as I was reading that email (on a brief break from blogging) and saw that my nearest neighbor was a neutered tomcat stationed beside me licking its various body parts.

Ugh, no thanks, 'neighbor'. I'd rather get loaded down with stones and tossed into Lake Geneva . . .

Peter Zumthor: Architect

Oculus

Peter Zumthor

Photo by Julian Faulhaber

(Image from The New York Times)

I like to read articles on things that I know nothing of to see if they spark ideas on things that I know something about, and I came upon an interesting statement by the Swiss architect Peter Zumthor quoted by Michael Kimmelman in "The Ascension of Peter Zumthor" for The New York Times Magazine (March 11, 2011):

"I think the chance of finding beauty is higher if you don't work on it directly," Zumthor has said in describing his philosophy. "Beauty in architecture is driven by practicality. This is what you learn from studying the old townscapes of the Swiss farmers. If you do what you should, then at the end there is something, which you can't explain maybe, but if you are lucky, it has to do with life."

I'm not entirely sure what to make of Zumthor's statement, but I find an elusive beauty in the images of his works within the Times article, so he must know what he's talking about even if I don't know for certain. I suspect he means that beauty cannot be readily grasped at in the abstract by the artist, but is better found through working within the constraints of deep experience, which informs the beauty that "has to do with life."

I know nothing of architecture, but I have a bit of experience with poetry, and I find some sense there to what Zumthor says. My most effective poems stem not from an attempt to write poetry, but from a need to express myself, within the framework offered by experience, upon the desire for something greater than what life ordinarily offers, given through what life has to offer.

Perhaps I'm not alone. What, for instance, is John Milton's Paradise Lost, if not an expression of that imperiled desire, an oculus of, and for, the blind?

Art Imitating Life Imitating Art?

Super Sad True Love Story

(Image from Amazon)

From reading Clifford J. Levy's NYT article on Gary Shteyngart, "A Wayward Son Checks in With Mother Russia" (October 24, 2010), I suppose that there's yet another fine contemporary author in addition to David Mitchell whose works I ought to read. Or should I read those of his doppelgänger, Igor Semyonovich Shteyngart? Wait a minute -- which is which? Anyway, so many decisions . . .

"The thing about Russia is that, for a satirist, it's almost too easy," he told an audience in Moscow after reading from his new novel, "Super Sad True Love Story," which revolves around the relationship between Lenny, a son of Soviet immigrants, and Eunice, daughter of Korean ones. The setting is a futuristic America in bedraggled decline, but, as Mr. Shteyngart points out, he learned everything that he needed to know about decaying superpowers from the collapse of you know what. "Having Russia and America -- these two giant empires -- under your belt, as a writer, you can't ask for anything better," he said.

I guess that means that his art imitates his life:

On this trip, sponsored by the State Department, Mr. Shteyngart also gathered material for a memoir that is to be his next work. And he showed his fiancée, who is of Korean descent, the nostalgic sites of his St. Petersburg childhood.

Yep. Guess so. But the Korean connection, at any rate, makes me more open to taking a chance on this writer. And there may be something in common between Russians and Koreans:

But literature here has usually been rigidly labeled as Russian or foreign.

"There is this basic split in people’s minds -- you are either here or there," said Tatyana Venediktova, a professor at Moscow State who specializes in American literature and helped organize Mr. Shteyngart's talk on campus. "This split identity -- Gary's -- is taken as a wound to be healed rather than a resource to be used."

That's like the division that Koreans make: Hanguk or Waeguk. Korean or Foreigner. But Koreans and Russians aren't the only folks who do this. It's also the case in Switzerland. When I lived there, I loved to watch the evening news, when the Swiss anchor would refer to "das Ausland" -- literally, "the Outland" -- in contradistinction to Switzerland. One of my Swiss friends jokingly once remarked, "It's a big country, the Ausland."

But he was right, as I can attest, for I've been living in the great big Outland ever since I left the Ozarks.