EXPERIENCING BELGIUM
Sunday, December 21, 2003
 

Kapelletje Rising or Scary Mary

Posted by Matthew Crouch at 12:28

Let me tell you about the Kapelletje van de Zeehondstraatje for you relentless Anglophones a Kapelletje is a small architecture alcove set in the side of a building with a saints statue placed therein. Kapelletjes can be modest made from wood and as simple in structure as a birdhouse or a carved stone large alcove with rod iron and glass. The one around the corner and there are many in this quartier, is dated 1749 and is a large stone carved thing with glass door enclosing some saint to the plague which lingered here abouts. My neighbor Jean puts a five-day candle in this Kapelletje weekly (and lights it). I can see from the window in the traphuis (stairwell) here and from my bedroom window the red wax candle and flame. I'm telling you this for the next time you are out and about after dark in this quartier that you be sure to pass through the rue de "Chein Marin"/Zeehondstraatje and ketch some old la Villette style charm. Jean says that men don't piss as frequently under the Kapelletje when they see the flame flicker. It sure does give a sign of life on a shadowy after dark alley - though not really as the dark is bathed in the bright orange sodium glow of the street lights - so you have to really look to see the flame.

When we moved to this house we referred to the statuette in the Kapelletje as "Scary Mary" because we didn't yet know that the sculpture represented an ailing sick saint of sorts. The sculpture looked more anorexic replete with typical hair loss associated with that disease. We still refer to it though as Scary Mary's Kapelletje.

My current bout with depression seems to have lessened leaving me aware of the ache in my hollow brittle soul. Winter is a tough time - personally I think I could endure Winters dark if it weren't for the omnipresent orange street lights that Belgium is so famous for. I crave real darkness, not darkness in the theological sense but darkness from the rotation of the earth caught in it's own shadow. Ask yourself how can the Light that is each of our lives shine in all this synthetique electric light. When I light a candle in the nearby Kerk/church for my mother I regret that the candle votive holder is red plastic and not red glass. Like the Kapelletje window panes are sturdy plastic instead of glass, blame neighborhood badboys throwing stones to break the panes of glass. I suppose you know this but there was a saint for window glazers once upon a time... Maybe that is why I prefer here at home our drafty old wooden and imperfect glass windows with their handsome hardware fittings.

I am and am not an Atheist but I am not an Agnostic. I do not much pray but when I do it is for the end of the tyranny of the automotive beast of the apocalypse we live in. Not that I wish horses to be brought back to suffering for our locomotive convenience. I do not believe in God but I do hope to see the end of the automobile and the wars it brings. Think of that every time you fill up the gas tank God knows I do. I make this point because if you stand in this narrow alley observing this Kapelletje you might get run down by a senseless driver navigating a car down this narrow straatje - a street that dates from the 15th century long before cars necessitated suburban sprawling widths.

...Two things bringing relief to my tormented brain: Hildegard von Bingen music on CD and the Tallis Scholars singing acapella medieval Palestrina Masses also on CD. And of course writing my heart out like this. Maybe one day I can observe a pre-Vatican II Mass in a European cathedral. Or I'll just wait for those few moments I stop into the Begijnhofkerk and no one is there, just solitude, old Vlaams/Flemish named gravestones with old Dutch words underfoot alongside a few also well worn with words in French; the smell of paraffin, cold, and quiet. That quiet solitary moment amid the present day church clutter and bric-a-brac that is to me sickening stale and banal. Ignoring that I am aware and thankful for thirty seconds of quiet caught between electronic recordings of church music and me caught inside old stones in a all too quick moment where it feels the world stopped outside and paused between the small space of cars passing by outside, planes flying overhead, an person recycling their wine bottles just outside the church window (whose idea was that for a location to put a glasbak container anyways - must be a heathen commie idea fersure dude).

I admire the drive modern day Muslims in Belgium have. I have great respect for them now after making a point to learn something about their ways. I am not afraid of their independent and handsome men in their non western clothes which I am envious of to wear with such confidence nor am I put off by their women under scarves. I admire the admirable ritual and compulsion for God. I admire the Arts and Architecture of Islamic realms which like a mirrors reflection of Christendom - or rather each a reflection reflecting the sacred and the profane of the other. Good old Belgium for not banning religious expression like the scarf (or large crucifix's) like recently in France's state schools. As I feel a peaceful reminder of my being away from home whenever I hear church bells - a sound not heard much back home in the Midwest and if you do its an electronic recording in a shopping mall - I long to hear the Muzzein's call to prayer from a Minaret awaken me at dawn and throughout the day - though preferably not from an electronically enhanced broadcast. There is something compelling in the idea of Mosque full of devout men following tradition. I trust you with my electronic confession if you will, lost and aimless in the Misinformation Age as I am in the modern day Byzantium of Brussels.

Still I find a certain happiness in that dancing flame in that red candle my neighbor places in the nearby Kapelletje. It is arbitrary "soul" manifesting itself from the antiquity of that old street. There is a certain comfort in that. That candle costs a euro and half and lasts five days. I am thankful to live here in Belgium as I do it is such a priviledge after the emptiness of the Midwest.


Sunday, December 07, 2003
 

Run on sentences that Run Away from the Idea of a Full Stop

Posted by Matthew Crouch at 00:47

The amazing visit with this woman who is two years younger than my mom who is from Luxembourg who came to Brussels in '53.

I keep comparing her reality to my mothers and they are so very different and each tragic and each happy. I now have way more respect for each unknown face I pass on the street for their secret dramas. This woman is a bit like a groovy Eleanor Rigby. I think she is very much alone family wise but has her little social routines at various cafes. She is not your normal Belgian from that generation or maybe she is. I think that is because she is from a farm and had like nine siblings.

She told me a story (through Bart or Peter as she only speaks French) about a grenade she found as a child. Getting shot while on a flight during the war. Coming to Brussels for marriage. Having a baby then becoming a widow then the child getting killed when run over by a car. Then she took various cafe jobs and did that for until she retired.

She worked in the cafe here in our house. She told us about how her apartment burned when the upstairs neighbor tried to asphyxiate himself with the gas but there was a short in the refrigerator that blew up the building and everyone thought she went with it as this occurred in the floor above hers and that all caved into her rooms. But she was drinking in a cafe around the corner.

She always smells of liquor and it's because of that I adore her why not it saved her life at least once. She smokes and loves the dogs. She knocks on the window and talks to the dogs which is how I made acquaintances with her. When I walk the dogs I see her in cafe windows and then she knocks again from the inside or sometimes comes out.

----
which brings me back to this dream I had as a child.

Me looking at blue line architectural plans with who I thought was my brother Mark but it was an odd dream because he was kind to me and mark wasn't then. So now I see that as Bart. In that dream my mother was outside jumping up and down and looking in the windows always trying to get my attention and scaring me.

Windows 98. Cafe windows.

----

And there is nothing I can do.

----

All the lonely people.

----

People in funerals where noone is a guest. Except the guest of honor in the box.

----

I wish I could have recorded this woman's story - it needs to be shown on TVBrussel/Bruxelles.

---

Inside I'm torn up and crying salty tears on open wounds.
Outside I'm just cold and confused.

---

Weird to be at home and simultaneously so very far from home.

---

I forgot it was Labour day.

Enjoy yr backyard cookout.

Florine the cafe Bruxeliose woman is my latest hero.

If I weren't a mess right now I could write a short story about her.

I made her coffee and only had real creme fraise which pleased her to have on hand for her coffee. I wanted to drink whisky with her and listen to her interpreted stories. She's like a time capsule radio link to another era and a lost in the past Brussels. For her age she just hobbles around to her habitues and really its more graceful than such an American life played out in strip malls and big cars and parking lots and traffic that doesn't move while the TV is always on and blaring too loudly wherever you go.

God Bless Belgium.

Sadly. Crazily. Falling of the edge. Unhappy. Thankful to be here while feeling guilty for not being with my folks. Torn up inside and somewhat paralyzed by life.

Originally written spontaneously in an email to William Horrigan letter friend extraordinaire August 2nd, 2002


 

The Extra Added Sugar Generation

Posted by Matthew Crouch at 00:24

Carl Sagans work has inspired and affected the course of my life but not in a specific measurable way at least with regards to any scientific undertaking beyond reading on my part. In many ways my life's outcome has been what Dr. Carl Sagans work with popularizing science for US citizens was trying to fight. Having been educated not by certified public school teachers but by a religious (as in conservative right) school my education and personal mythology were shaped by other peoples more arbitrary and political ideals at the expense of good rigorous training in math and science. In the background of my childhood and over my head was the Cosmos series on TV. All I remember of that was the phrase 'billions and billions'. Sagan was for evolution and against god. Therefore bad and probably the antichrist. Meanwhile I was flunking out of every math and science course but doing fine in religion courses.

Possibly my life contains a seed of what Dr. Sagan saw in the general population that was worth his time and effort away from his scientific work to make his special understanding of the universe available to anyone regardless of their intellectual capacities. Although educated within a school as I was I had walked away from it by my junior year in high school (to attend a public school - they had actual computers and I had never seen one) that followed by a few years withdrawal from the cult like grip of the church my schooling was affiliated with. Then I flirted with various 'new age' ideas that seemed to be the same old song and dance from my school days just a different cast of characters. I decided that Dr. Sagan knew more than I did and not just about science but maybe about the meaning of life.

In short I decided to practice atheism learn evolution, try to forget creationism and continue fighting my personal burden of religion I was brought up under - my success with that I attribute to the Cosmos series on TV. Because my schooling had demonized Sagans good name he became a hero that showed up later in my life.

I then read Candle in the Dark looking to Dr Sagan and his science to fill a divine void with scientific understanding. For that the Bologna Detection Kit still comes in handy. I now try to fill my 'soul' with online images of how vast and ongoing and beautiful the universe is. I would like to have learned math and science as my father did but that was for me another language and incomprehensible and what with hell and the devil being just around the corner did it matter what a Pythagorean theorem was anyway?

Would you believe my high school math teacher used to set me aside weekly after class to warn me that he could tell I was going to hell living as I was. When that time of putting the fear of judgment might have been put to better use with some basic tutoring (he could tell when I was day dreaming in his math class because I wasn't looking in the direction of members of the opposite sex).

Hearing of my intellectual hero who led me out from under the weight of the church passing on I was affected more than you might think. Here was a public figure that sorta hovered in the back ground of my mind. I attribute what Dr. Sagan offered the mind as what enabled me to step out from under the narcotic like influence of control from the church.

Oddly I named a dog I adopted (American brown dog (mutt)) from a pet rescue program after Dr. Saigon. Odd name for a dog. Much more interesting than naming a full breed dog Carl after the childrens books about a dog named Carl by Alexandra Day. Maybe not so respectful to Dr. Sagan. The dog daily reminds me of what Dr. Sagan enabled me to do with my life. By reading Dr. Sagan I was able to find a key to undo my brain washing like church education. I can't honestly say here I'm now as a result accomplished in the sciences nor am I even a backyard astronomer but my life never-the-less is more illuminated by Dr. Sagans candle in the dark work.

I've only seen the Milky Way at night once and that was in West Virginia near the Ohio River on a clear summers night. Me and my dog named Sagan left central Ohio to be with my Flemish Belgian man who was denied U.S. residency even though he had a good job there - thank you Defense of Marriage Act (DoMA). We now live under the light pollution orange layer that is night over Belgium an orange that is sometimes brighter at night than a rainy day. I would like to see the stars as I did once before. To be in the real dark not the electric orange or the darkness of a life without god but the actual dark side of earths rotation and see the eternity of the universe that real darkness reveals.
Sometimes it hurts to know the universe is so immense and so full of knowledge and actual places and that life is so short and our understanding so limited. But like I said with books like what Sagan wrote in his lifetime for people like me and on line images from Hubble or whatever enables me to glimpse things I wont understand like Dr Sagan did and those like him do.

If these words have held someone's attention this far I'll spare you how the book and movie Contact would give me a killer lump in my throat over things I hadn't thought of.

Thank you Carl Sagan dot com for keeping the bridge Dr. Sagan opened between the educated intellectual elite in contact with those of us in the primordial ooze of the masses.
in the states there is the rust belt and the bible belt but where is the science belt?
I'm reading a biography now of Sagan that I came across at an English bookstore for me reading Sagan and wanting to know about him is a shortcut to the wisdom my education failed equip me with to achieve.

Written June 11th 2002
Fan Mail email to the web site www.carlsagan.com
inspired by the TV broadcast of the motion picture CONTACT
and the book Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan.
I did hear back from the kind folks at Carl Sagan dot com with word that this email was sent on to Ann Druyan.

Saturday, December 06, 2003
 

Collegiate Sentimentalities/Retail Unneccesities

Posted by Matthew Crouch at 22:56

I could quote Shelley, Wilde, Morrissey,
write their words of passion on fine paper.
I could phone you up
but what words could I use?

Oh I need a voice, advice, a vice.
Oh I know - your quite busy
(I'm an explorer in the information age too).

I know though you are human
your heart and body betray you too
(You can't deny this late at night -
especially when you are naked).
I know, I am human too.

But what if you were really Adonis?
(then maybe these things wouldn't matter).
When you finished your time with
Aphrodite and Persephone,
would you really be here in Ohio?

Oh I don't know
(maybe Zeus will allow you to stay)
but maybe I am just thinking too much.
Maybe I am just trying to find more -
more meaning to my feelings than is really there.

Adonis,
I like your life.
I would like to know more about you
(including your thighs).

Does your body ever rule your mind?
I know this could be true
but I still stay awake at night
(half naked) thinking of you!


Written words of mine in ball-point ink on the back of a postcard. The image, a black and white photograph, male torso titled "Francois" by Michael Gibson (undated) - purchased from a Lane Avenue mall bookstore. The early Nineteen-nineties, from nowhere in particular central Ohio, University days. That old 1906 apartment building with all the heavy woodwork and uncarpeted floors that somehow managed to escape ever a coat of paint - old horsehair plaster with countless coats of pastel colored cheap chalky paint. Original hardware fixtures still hinging doors, turning knobs and locks with lost keys. The prairie styled wooden mantled and tile fireplace surround with porcelain and enamel gas flame heater built in - still in place - its horizontal mirror uncracked and crisply beveled edges. Two wide and tall pocket doors dividing the two rooms. The tall sash windows - seven for two rooms - single glazed - unpainted. The tiny kitchen with built in cupboards next to the narrow bathroom with floor to ceiling linen cabinets. The three walk in closets with paneled wood doors. How many State University students from that Midwestern school passed their college days there through rented rooms. The next door music school student playing his violin daily filling my rooms with astonishing music. How many souls passed through those rooms for a small portion of their lives. Rooms built so well to sustain the wear and tear of such heavy use over nearly ten decades of service. Torn down in the late Nineteen-nineties to make way for High Street retail "development". Gone the ghosts of graduates and drop outs, gone the music of those students lives. Students from before and after the Great Depression with their bootlegged liquor. Students from war years - world wars, Korea, Viet Nam. Tea and coffee and toast, beer in bottle and can, cannabis and tobacco shared with stop over friends - talk of politics and music. Oh yeah, the books and notebooks the reading and writing from thinking minds. That mantle clock no longer chimes there its deep Windsor chimes along the quarter of the hours of the day and night. Lives, romance, old bricks and wood unrecorded history bulldozed over by retail unneccessities.

Monday, December 01, 2003
 

Tompkins Square Park circa the Nineteen - Eighties

Posted by Matthew Crouch at 23:13

Remember:

Keith Haring
Ron Vawter
Mark Morrissoe
Derek Jarman
Steven Arnold

Might as well ad Matthew Shepherd to the list as an honorary member...

In short all creative men I never met who could teach me a thing or two about art, sex, love and living...

And never forget:

All that the Republikkkanz did to help the crisis along by not doing anything back in the eighties.

It's a Tom Spanbauer moment la villette style,

The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon - and lived to write about it from his City of Shy Hunters.

Warhol

Divine, Divine, Divine your Female Trouble will rule forever!

My list of hero's is an obituary.

I should have gone to the Begijnhofkerk and lit all the candles this morning.

Walt Whitman unfailingly relevant through time and space to reach more souls with an old American mans compassion.

Oh yeh I was reading in the Flemish newspaper about a Spanish film where all these souls are trying to get into hell which is over-crowded while no one wants into heaven which is empty. At least that is all I could get out of what I read. Sounded hysterical! My kind of film! Hell is for me - wait oh yeh hell is my life along state routes 40 and 23.

Powered by Blogger
Listed on Blogwise