Surveillance and Fear

A few weeks ago I received a notice from Swansea U.--a new policy was in place to monitor and track all of its International students. A two-fold program, students are required to present themselves monthly at the library to prove they are 1. doing their programme, 2. not breaking any employment laws, 3. haven't moved their address. And also, monthly attend "all" the required department meetings, lectures, etc. Thus proving oneself on two counts (at least) monthly. It's not just Swansea of course, following new regs that C & I encountered while applying for our visas (it was rigorous), all international students in the UK will be facing such attendance monitoring. In fact all Muslim students were required to register with the police on arrival.

That is not unfamiliar. While at UC Davis, in the tidal wave of proclamations and realignments that followed the "state of emergency" declared on Sept 14, 2001--all the students from particular countries (read Muslim) were required to appear at the school's administration to register themselves.

I don't have to report to the police, but having to check in and prove myself innocent of any sort of misbehavior on a 2x monthly basis doesn't really make for a warm and welcomed feeling. But then this is a state of affairs I likely should have expected from the CCTV cameras that form a network across the whole of Britian. The UK, like the US, is a surveillance state.

And, apparently, the US is still in a condition of fighting off imminent invasion, because on Sept 10 Obama renewed that very order Bush began back on Sept. 14 2001--keeping the US under a "State of Emergency". (Did that make the news in the US? Not likely--go to Commondreams.org to read the article). Effectively that means that the president maintains the power to do a variety things without reference to votes or checks, including seizing property, declaring martial law, regulating travel, deploying troops, seizing transportation and communications, etc. Now, by law, congress is required to review such an order every 6 months. But it never did so from 2001 to 2009 ...

A colleague said to me once that surveillance didn't bother him because if you were innocent and had nothing to hide you were fine. Only those who were guilty would worry about surveillance. But what is guilt in a "free" society? Friends of mine in Pomona were held at gun-point in the middle of the night, had their home ransacked and computers taken because of a suspicion, never substantiated, that one of the house-members had set a lot of SUVs on fire. The FBI was never required to give proof. The young man was held in jail for over a year before finally being set free, innocent, but with his life damaged. Why were they targeted? Because they were different. I maintain its because they were deviants from the norm--vegans, peace-niks, environmentalists. They offered free classes to their neighbors on organic gardening, vegetarian cooking, and solar-panel installation.

On paper, in theory, only the guilty should have to worry about surveillance--but of course it all depends on what the state, and all the fallible individuals within it, decides to deem a "guilt-worthy" infraction. Violence? sure. Going to Anti-War meetings? ahhh.... Going to Animal Rights conferences? ummmm. Practicing a certain religion? hmmmm.

It's a fine line. Our fear allows us to bend our heads just a little, just enough. It lets the state gather up that much more power, to centralize infrastructure and information to make it just that much easier to take the next step. And how many steps are there between a free society, a surveillance society, a benevolent dictatorship, and a totalitarian state? It's all for our own good, after all. To protect us. To keep us safe. The way the German government protected its people by making sure that all the dangerous intellectuals, deviants, and followers of a certain religion were locked away. The way the U.S. kept its people safe by locking up all the descendants of a particular race in wartime as potential enemies--even the children.

To me it begs the question of just what exactly is being protected ... If you think that the people as voters have power, remember the political coup that reigned from 2001-2009 in the form of 2 terms of a NON-elected president. And it might be worthwhile to look back at history and remember that the US government was structured exactly the way it was (a system of 3 co-equal branches sharing and checking power) because the men who wrote the constitution and the bill of rights knew that government would always tend towards consolidation of power. Of course just because Obama has the power to declare martial law, seize your house, or re-channel the means of production to some purpose that he deems necessary doesn't mean he is going to do it. Because we are all protected by something greater than those potentialities ... one thing standing between us and a totalitarian state--the notion that Obama is a man of conscience ....

Yes, I feel much better, too.

Guy Fawkes Night

For the fellow Yanks who've seen "V for Vendetta" you will have a little idea of who Guy Fawkes is and what Guy Fawkes/Bonfire Night is ...
"Remember remember
the 5th of November
the gunpowder, treason, and plot
I can think of no reason
the gunpowder treason
should ever be forgot."
Guy Fawkes was born April 13, 1570 in York--he converted to Catholicism at a time when there was repression and prejudice toward Catholics in Protestant England (in the year he converted Mary Clitherow (the Pearl of York) was executed by being crushed to death for harboring Catholic priests in her home). In 1605 he became involved in what came to be known as the Gunpowder Plot -- a plan to blow up the Houses of Parliament on the day of the State Opening when the King, most of the royal family, members of Parliament, and heads of state would be present. (Think of it as if someone blew up Congress on State of the Union night). If the plot had succeeded it would have effectively destroyed most of the power elite in one act. On November 5th Guy Fawkes was caught (someone had sent an anonymous warning note to the authorities) in the basement of parliament with 1800 pounds of gunpowder. He was taken to the Tower and tortured but only divulged the names of conspirators who were either already dead or had already been caught. On January 31 1606 he was taken to be executed.

On the night of Nov 5th Londoners were encouraged to celebrate the Kings escape by lighting bonfires throughout the city. And so every 5th November since 1605 (think of that oh young nation, 404 years of 5th Novembers) in England Guy Fawkes Night is celebrated with bonfires, fireworks, and the burning of the "Guy". A celebration of the survival of the state against a terrorist plot.

Of course in later years certain groups came to think of Guy Fawkes differently--Anarchists hailed him as, "The only man ever to enter the Houses of Parliament with honest intentions." And even as a villian he inspired a lot of poetry, including Milton's very famous Satan in Paradise Lost. He's recently made it to lists of the top 100 British people in history and even has some islands in the Galapagos named after him ....

So there's the background ....

So last night Christien and I wandered out into the streets, making our way down to the beach near the Cricket fields. Throngs swarming the roads, the parks, the beach all up and down the Bay. Bonfires large and small all along the sand, and people with firecrackers, sparklers. Explosions and whines. The smell of cordite and woodsmoke. Then the fireworks displays started all up and down the coast--from our perch on the dunes could see the pop of red, white, green, purple lights from the other side of the peninsula, out in Mumbles, down in Black Pill and around in Port Talbot. And then the display at the Cricket fields started to music that ranged from Carmena Barrana dramatic to soft pop to the theme from Doctor Who. College kids, teens, parents with little kids, elderly--all milling through the sand, with the waves coming in closer to the walls, lights and smoke, the smell of beer. I thought, "It's like the 4th of July but without the unpleasant associations (for me)." Shower of sparks in the sky like the bloom of fireflies into stars. No pushing or violence, a few beery songs, everyone bundled in the chill sea air.

Lovely. And so very not American, for all its familiarity.

And so then we wandered in our stateless state (strangers in a strange and yet familiar land) up to the Mozart pub where there was an open mic poetry reading and book launch (ah the poets in their goth and black, punk and skulls). One of the open mic readers read a poem called, "Guy Fawkes Night":

"How very British, to celebrate a failure ... Guy Fawkes failed to kill the king, failed to blow up parliament. Hurrah!"

And then the headliner was an expat American reading from his new book -- all about what america means to him as an expat, his love and hope for the country....So fresh from this place he called "America" we had a hard time matching the words to the place that we know, but all the same, perhaps America is as much a place as it is a state of mind?

State. State of Mind. Stranger and stranger. You can leave your country, but it might not leave you.

And Guy Fawkes the villianous Catholic terrorist becomes in 400 years a (if somewhat dubious) heroic martyr. Time. Geography. Fireworks. Shifts of state. And today the rain is softly falling, grey on grey, on all the sand and charcoal remnants of 5th November.

the several stages of cultural acclimitazation

About 6 weeks here so we've passed through several stages:
The: "Oh, this is no big deal" phase
The: "Oh my god, what the hell are we doing here" phase
The: "I LOVE CHIPS!!!" phase
The: "Wow, the UK is just so much better than the US" phase
The: "I love 1 and 2 pound coins, nice heft" phase
The: "Wow, the US is just so much better than the UK" phase
The: "Why is that person staring at me" phase
The: "I love chips but not more than 3x a week" phase
The: "I have nothing to wear for this climate-- its cloudy, drizzling and 50 degrees but I'm sweating in my jacket" phase
The: "Please, please be my friend--oh wait do I seem desperate" phase
The: "Don't people know how to make way on the sidewalk, dear lord please get out of my personal space" phase
The: "I love chips but maybe only 1x a week" phase
The: "Hey, I think I've got the hang of walking right next to someone without touching them, who would have thought" phase
The: "Prawn cocktail, roasted chicken, BBQ bacon potato crisps--Really?" phase
The: "Could there possibly be more bureaucracy" phase
The: "I love chips and could have them 2x a week" phase
The: "How in god's name can beer be more expensive in the UK" phase
The: "I am tracking the dollar every day on-line and terrified of the exchange rate plunging any more" phase
The: "Am I supposed to leave now?" phase
The: "What are those girls thinking with their tights and shirt barely covering their ass" phase
The: "So it really is free (ie healthcare)" phase
The: "I don't think I can live without Mexican food" phase
The: "Why is Guinness made in Nigera when Ireland is right here" phase
The: "Oh my god the public option on the House bill is going to be linked to current insurance pricing and therefore provide no incentive for prices to drop while forcing the uninsured to now purchase insurance they can't afford what the hell ever happened to single payer ..." phase
The: "Gorse, heather, and horse chesnuts--I must be in an English novel" phase
The: "I love chips unconditionally" phase
The: "You mean there are 50 different brands of hard cider in the supermarket" phase
The: "4 visits from the plumber later we might have hot water or maybe not, is this New Mexico" phase
The: "I love Indian food" phase
The: "Why is the 10 pence bigger than the 20 pence?" phase
The: "Asian markets are crazy cool" phase
The: "Seagulls call to me every morning trying to lure me to the sea but I'm not going" phase
The: "Seagulls call to me every morning trying to lure me to the sea and I have to go" phase
The: "Walking in the rain without a raincoat and not caring" phase ......

wind and duende

Note: Oh great readership of 7 here, alas, is a rather lyric and maudlin contribution. Please skip if you're not in the mood ....
21 October
Fall comes with wind. Maybe this is true all over the world. Is it because the trees, itching to be free of their leaves, ready to plunge down into the dark sleep of winter, call out to it? I’ve wondered. In Los Angeles, despite arguments to the contrary, Fall does come … but it comes late, and sometimes with the winds come fire, not crisp nights, or snow. I remember my first real deciduous autumn, in Colorado, marveling that the golden leaved trees (cottonwoods, aspens) had only just fully turned, when they were raked by those sweeping winds off the Divide. It happens in New Mexico. In Iowa. In Pennsylvania. In New York.
Storms coming in off the Atlantic, over Ireland. From up on our hill today I saw the Bristol Channel was green (a certain kind of stone, lit by a certain kind of light …), rough. Clouds and light. Winds started a couple days ago. Leaves on the ground. Wet with rain. Hard rain … (until now the rain has been so soft, so fine, that from indoors the world appears to be wet with a rain that just passed by, but as soon as you go outside, there it is, falling all around you).
It is hard to break the habit of these late hours. Because in all of my time zones it is early evening, afternoon. Gives the sensation of being somehow unhinged … the body detached from the mind, the mind detached from time.
Went to a lecture by an American poet/teacher tonight. Three teachers and two students were there. I felt sorry for him. But of course he was fine, on his way to Ireland to do a reading. He lived in Swansea on a study abroad year 15 years ago. He’s from Iowa, studied for a while in New Mexico. His presentation all about the importance of going abroad for writers.
He brought up an interesting point—a relation to what the poet Federico Garcia Lorca called Duende … To Lorca the force, the essential struggle, of the artist is not with muse or angel as some have written, but rather with death. Duende is the dance on the edge of death, the dark blossoming into decay, the impish god inside us who, when we face him at last, is the skeleton in the mirror. It is the dark edge to the flamenco dancer’s rhythm, to the gypsy song. Zachary Jack (the lecturer) aligned the act of the writer in living abroad, with facing mortality, confronting duende.
To go away is to die. The self that was before the journey will never return again. It can’t. It will have changed. Heraclitus gave us this idea with his river. I said this before I left, and it was true: I feel as if I died at least a dozen times this past year. Between April and September we said goodbye, and goodbye, and goodbye. And each time it was a small death--not in that I imagined I would never see these people and places again … but that when I do, we will be, as we must be, all changed.
I wonder if trees, facing their own small death every year, ever hope the winds, this time, won’t come. Or if they stand in the wild whipping air and feel the earth below them, feel that the wind is bringing them news from far away.

Goodbye Salsa, Hello Lemon Pickle

16 October
It’s 8 p.m. here and ah the long long hours of daylight you all still have left to play in.

Apologies for the significant pause in between blogs. There’s been a lot on my mind. But first off the good news is that Heather is healthy and so is baby James (and the rest of the crew). And that C’s dad had a successful surgery yesterday. A lot of relief on this side of the Atlantic.

Made spinach dal, basmati rice and besan pancakes (which are pancakes made from chickpea flour mixed with spices, garlic, veggies, cilantro, and ginger). We’ve discovered that our standby for a cheap and quick dinner, Mexican food, is really not much of an option here. Corn tortillas do not seem to exist on this island …. The only ones we did find had wheat in them, were 8 to a pack and cost the equivalent of $3.50! Ah, the long gone days of a pack of 25 corn tortillas for under $1. Latin America seems far away. So the new ethnic will be Indian. Goodbye salsa, hello lemon pickle. Other random and strangely expensive items include all paper products (after all they deforested centuries ago, I suppose … take that as a warning America), prunes (why do dried plums cost $10/lbs here?), peanut butter (it’s just not their thing), beer (I know, what’s that about?), mid-range wine (nary a California cab to be found), rice (again, huh?), nuts in general, tofu, steel-cut oats (pin-oats here) …. However, surprisingly and refreshingly lower priced are things like vegan margarine, soy yogurt, gluten-free corn pasta, crackers (oat cakes, ryvita), rice milk, hummus, potatoes, canned tomatoes….

It’s a month that we’ve been here. Seems both shorter and longer. I’ve gotten used to the tiny cars (it’s not so much the size—although when you see a camper smaller than a tahoe, it’s pretty stunning--it’s that they are ALL small), the shapes of the row houses, the narrow streets, and I even look right first when I cross the street. The accents are many and varied and I am mostly used to hearing and deciphering them. The only ones that give much trouble are the thick Welsh and thick Scottish. The more subtle things are coming into play now—like knowing when a presentation, meeting, or event is over … I am bad at that sort of thing to begin with so between my cluelessness of “get the hell out of here” signals and the very gentle and polite way that Brits seem to let things trail off to nothing … I might be hanging on well past my welcome for a few months to come.

Saturday morning: Well, his is certainly not the most entertaining or enlightening of blogs, but the main reason for it was to notify that there are several new albums of photos of Swansea on my facebook page (which I think all of you are on). I will just have to promise more sharp wit, insight, and searing social commentary in the future. For now I return to a few more minutes of 19th century novel (I’ve read three Nathanial West books in a row now and just had to take a breather between Miss Lonelyhearts and Day of the Locust) before I get myself back to work on my own. Perhaps a walk toward Black Pill today and the lure of this weekend’s Cider Festival ….. Love you all.

Elizabeth Gaskell and Shepherd’s Pie

4 October
We’re off to the library in a bit to get a couple more books, AND to check out the media room, where apparently there are hundreds of DVDs to be checked out for “free” (if you think of £9,000 tuition as free?). In fact, a little bird told me that they have the entire 7 seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer … and all 5 of Angel …. WHAT!!!? (And for those relatives and friends to whom I’ve just outed us, yes, we are die-hard BTVS fans. What can I say?)
Yesterday was a nice day of alternating rain and sun. We visited a Charity Shop (ie Thrift Store) right down the street and I found a casserole dish and a very tiny tortish type pan for baking (I’m thinking miniature apple cake …). And a copy of Elizabeth Gaskell’s, Cranford. Another shopper saw my Gaskell and asked if I’d read Cranford. “No, but I love North & South and Wives & Daughters.” “Oh, you’ll love it!” And when I passed the casserole over I was telling Christien, “Now we can make Shepherd’s Pie!” (Meaning of course our vegan version, Lentil Shepherd’s Pie, which, by the way, is scrumptious!) and the woman behind the counter said—“Ahh! Shepherd’s Pie--my kids love it--but I’d need a much bigger pan than that!” -- Of course you have to imagine all this in a Welsh accent …
Anyway, what is this place where shoppers on the street know about 19th century women authors and everyone loves a good potato mash??? Why, we’re in Britain!

Cognitive dissonance

I was planning to write another blog about being here in Swansea and getting settled focusing on the walk around Swansea with Nigel Jenkins on Tuesday (which was great—and I will do) … but –
I think instead I will be very bloggerly and write about the first thing I’ve noticed that reveals a very large gap between British & American thinking: Healthcare.
Front page of the Guardian today was an article about how it’s been discovered that millions upon millions have been spent to combat Obama’s healthcare plan. Noted was that there are 6 health industry lobbyist for every member of congress ….
Healthcare has already come up several times in talking to people here. Intellectually they seem to understand that in America there is no public healthcare. But when I mentioned, “No, I haven’t had insurance for 5 years ago now… so I just haven’t been to the doctor.” The reaction is a blinking moment of silence. And when I told them about a friend’s son, age 21, who died of appendicitis in Los Angeles 8 years ago after being refused entry into two hospitals, they actually gape. The words don’t quite register. We mentioned how the famous poet, Ted Berrigan, died for want of healthcare, years ago in New York. One person I talked to said that when he was visiting friends in the states years ago one of his friends had gotten very sick, but rather than take him into the hospital, they had mopped his brow through the night, hoping for the best because they were uninsured. As he told the story of something that had happened so long ago, he still seemed perplexed by it. The response is: Shameful; Appalling; Horrific. The look on faces is one of total incomprehension of how a country so rich could fail to provide basic medical care for all its citizens. They don’t understand how insurance companies could have become such a huge part of the medical process. (Don’t think I do, either, really.)
I think their inability to fully grasp our system (or lack thereof) is mirrored by our own inability to really grasp the system here. We registered at the clinic. Appointments? No charge. Tests? No charge. And here in Wales--prescriptions? No charge. We received our NHS cards and on the back was text about, “make sure to present this if you are going to a doctor who is not your registered service provider… blah blah, or you might be charged.” And I thought, “AH HA!” But no, then you look down and read that you can get a refund of your money; it just means a lot of paperwork …
There is a lot to say about healthcare, insurance companies, Obama’s plan and the rest—I’ll leave that for another forum. Mostly I am trying to express, and maybe even trying to understand, to really feel, what it is like to be in a place where the idea of someone dying of something curable for the sole reason that they are poor has been written out of the lexicon. In the U.S. we hear anecdotes of insurance companies denying treatment, we see news stories, or know friends who have lost loved ones. Some of us are uninsured. But I think maybe eventually, even the horror we feel becomes habit. And the numbing, the repetition, eat away at our humanity and our outrage…
It is interesting to know there are places in the world where people can’t comprehend the US healthcare system.