Gving Thanks for Belgium and the Belgians

Posted by Matthew Crouch at 18:55

It’s easy when experiencing Belgium as I have to become absorbed by everything about Belgium and the Belgians that can be difficult or tedious. Every so often I have to take a step back and run an inventory on my life before Belgium and after Belgium. Despite the persistent damp weather and the people from these here southern lowlands who often times reflect the weather in their personalities – well - I really have more to be thankful here than my previous life in the Vaderland in the US of North America. Of course the sky overhead is not dramatic here in the ways they were back home and the seasons are always a bit dimmer than from my Ohio years. You have to pay attention more and look for the subtle shifts in the season in these parts of old Flanders. Back home in old Ohio the weather changes were often times extreme, sensual and nearly psychotic in their procession. Here there can be the most awe inspiring afternoon light in the clouds. The light will look celestial and the clouds seem to literally break apart to give way to something called Heaven. I can tolerate the rampant air, noise and light pollution of Belgium and indeed perhaps even forgive Belgium for it. I often times wonder how much Diesel, mercury and lead have accumulated in my veins yielding my crazy hot headed Americaness to raise its dubious head and voice. In this sense of a toxic world the whole of Europe is ailing as much as anywhere else. At least we here are to some degree conscious of the earth, air, water and noise if not the light pollution. Although the infamous Belgian light pollution has entered even the consciousness of the Belgians who are beginning to delight in de-lite-ing Belgium to see the night sky, many for the first time over their own country.
You see unlike the Americans the Belgians do travel to unique and awesome places. It only takes one night in Namibia or in Jordan’s desert or in say Bolivia or even Southern Morocco and you learn what the night sky is all about. The Belgians do go to these exotic places for nature and only incidentally look up and become knocked out by the majesty of the unexpected galactic night sky. Now the Belgians are asking why are pay to light the night sky with an intense sodium orange? Why illuminate the many streets of Belgium dissolving any hiding space of refuge? Once upon a time the stereotypical thief from this part of the world wore all black and carried a flashlight and skulked from one place to another in dark recesses. Someone with a flashlight was a suspect now thieves don’t even need a flashlight the way is already well lighted for them. Indeed the electric company manipulating politics to light every corner of the world might just be the real thieves. Pandering the idea of fearing the thieves and you can manipulate a populace to pay a massive electric bill to an international elite of ruthless Oligarchs – or in the American’s case fight for a corporations greedy interests in the name of war and democracy.
But I digress.
I am writing to give thanks for Belgium and indeed unlike the land of my birth my new homeland is getting better. It is sincerely a relief to live amongst a society rising above history, politics and shame while rebuilding their corner of the world to be a better place. You have to love Belgium for standing up to global henchman in word and deed (even if those very henchmen inevitably retaliate behind the scenes to manipulate and economically undermine an autonomous) land for possessing an admirable and just conscience for humanities welfare.
In Belgium we have everything that the American’s from their Marshall plan days taught was good about forging out a new state from the shackles of history. Ironically places like Belgium and Germany and now even Arabia along with every other corner of Europe have performed better in these very ideas of a society the Americans once stood for. If you are looking for the land of the free and the home of the brave try Belgium – you might just be surprised – if you can get used to the damp.
Even poor old Brussels has risen like a phoenix from the cold wet ashes of a post World War II building and demolition scheme to create a mini New York City in a once grand old Dame of a city that the old Belgian King Leopold II gave a dramatic face lift to ages ago. Indeed Brussels sustained more self inflicted colossal infrastructure damage from greedy and ignorant developers since the 1958 world Expo than from World War II fighting. I first saw Brussels in the summer heat wave of 1992 – the city facades were dirty and blackened by diesel grime and streaked with acid rain marks. By 5pm the city life vanished in a mass exodus to the suburbs and the only life of the weekends were found occassionally after midnight at the grand parties of the enigmatic now sadly gone and forgotten by restoration at the old Vaud Ville Theatre.
And yet Brussels is still rising out from under all those cars and trucks. Life in the streets without automotives is returning. The people of Brussels are becoming curious about its paved over rivers and islands in the old city as our collective consciousness rises with the water level: They aren't urban myths those rivers and islands are still down beneath the paving stones clogged with the sewage of ages. I remember bicycling around la Villette in ’97 and not seeing one single fellow cyclist now even in the cold and snow or rain you share the streets with your fellow bicycling comrades. Indeed often times in the center those on bicycles will make better progress in traffic than their four wheeled, automotive, war fueling, oxygen polluting bourgeois alternative types will.
These days and nights the streets of old Brussels are alive well past midnight and even until the morning arrival of bridge and tunnel type and track type commuters from the suburbs and provinces arrive. In a land like Belgium the cafes set their own time without dubious liquor laws. Cannabis isn’t a sin although the EU might just take away all rights for tobacco smokers – but in a world with grand old out door public rooms smokers aren’t put off by being put outside with their beers in fresh air anyways. I wish I could go back in time to late nineteen-eighties when I was lost in gay old Ohio depressed by being stuck in a boring part of the world trapped by nickled and dimed wages trying to better myself to no avail. I wish I could go back in time and cheer up that loner version of myself and say you won't believe this but in a few years time everything you know and take for granted will not exist for you in old Ohio in the monotony of suburban midwest. You might not believe it but you'll be counted among the Belgians - not that back then I knew who or where the Belgian's were!
While the US tortures it’s own citizens with issues of economic paralysis for low wage labor - while hypocritically being among the worlds wealthiest nations – denying less fortunate Americans healthcare while having simultaneously the best care in the world; By denying the less fortunate debt saddled poor transportation alternatives; the Americans are forced to support the “war in Iraq” at every petrol station they are required to frequent and pay homage to with their dollars just to get to work and back in their broken down rusty jalopies. American’s will go without a roof over their head before giving up their automotives and there are few dignified home ownership options for the hard working laborers called the working poor of America.
God Bless Belgium and give me a life in Belgium any day over the drudgery of life in the States. We Belgians might not appreciate being the warmest people amongst ourselves unless discreetly tucked away behind closed doors! In those salons of privacy where we also cultivate our unique and varied senses of humor! We might mistrust someone who smiles while chewing gum and talks too much but we are hard at work making a nation that takes care of itself while establishing a world for the better not worse. We have Healthcare, transportation and housing options and culturally enriching public funded arts all of which to be proud of. Ideas we here probably learned by Ms. Liberty's example that the Americans before they became monopolized by military based industrial corporation schemes lost via their credit card debts in exchange for a materiality the American's didn’t even need… I might be American made myself but there is very little anymore made in America that did not arrive from China. I might be American made and genuinely mistrustful of Monarchs and their Kingdoms -having grown up in a land that threw out a Crown ages ago – But Georges Bush I and II if nothing else taught me how to live in a monarchy! In the twisted world of 21st century life – I live in a land of the free with a modest King and Queen who give a polite nod toward style and high Art. They are a Belgian thing – not my thing – but I respect a land that shares its wealth with those in need of a job or who for health reasons cannot make a living or make ends meet. I respect a world with appalling weather that works hard to keep a roof over everyone head – whether they are citizens or just passing through or even here illegally. I respect a world that cultivates freedom of thought, expression, speech, gathering, enterprise and publishing while providing sanctuary for religious interests while working hard to keep religion out of the state governance. I just pray that Bush guy in Washington and his various henchmen and women involved in spreading an unrestrained malignant and socially destroying form of economic corporate fascism stay away from Belgium and the rest of us in the land of the free and new home of the brave in exile in the new EUtopia of good ol' Europe.