Because You Never Asked

(5/05)

     One of the more universally known superior intellects of the 20^th century is the Czech writer Milan Kundera. I am currently reading one of his later novels, published in 1989, entitled "Immortality". On extremely rare occasions, a book passes through my consciousness that so enthralls me with its insights into this life we lead, I am compelled to have a writing utensil at hand so I might underline certain passages deemed worthy of preserving. This is not the first time this has happened for me when reading Kundera's work.

     Within the first 35 pages of this novel, there appeared a page and a half of material that so blew me away, I decided to reproduce it in this essay. If so doing --- due to some greed-induced machination of global economy practice --- is considered illegal, I don't give a crap. I don't think Milan Kundera would mind . and that's good enough for me. If it's not good enough for you, go ahead and sue me.

     Kundera was born in what is now the Czech Republic in 1929. This means his creative-intellectual brilliance was formed and matured in the claustrophobic dogma of a Stalinist state. It didn't take long for his ebullient genius to rebel against this narrow mental environment, and much of his work is a stinging critique of the Soviet reality.

     He eventually managed to relocate to the west, taking up residence in that traditional landing place for refugees of all stripes, Paris. A talented writer fleeing a hostile ideology can more easily find acceptance in the receiving nation, and Kundera's antipathy for the Communist world left behind was a menu devoured with gluttonous fervor in the west, a menu made even more palatable by his obvious talent and extraordinary intellect. On the contrary, I find Zoe' Valdez, the poster girl for Cuban dissidence and also a resettled Parisian, to be little more than a whining spoiled brat compared to the breath taking depth of Kundera's piercing view of the human condition.

     But the joke was on us all. Once having settled in the west, it didn't take long for his laser-like mind to zero in on the lunacy of his adopted reality as well. It would be incorrect to say he has come full circle, because he could never accept the straight jacket of the Stalinist world he was force-fed in his early manhood. It would be more correct to say that the journey has continued in a linear direction, upward and onward, leaving behind the egotistical adolescence of neo-liberal consumerism as his search for an acceptable form of human interaction blasts off into uncharted corners of the universe. Kundera is telling us it is not Communism that has failed humanity; it is not Capitalism that has failed humanity; it is humanity that has failed humanity.

     There is an overwhelming feeling of pessimism that pervades the great Czech's work, but can anyone who has seriously and objectively pondered the human condition ever be far from this pessimistic malaise? And yet, there is good news too; nobody who goes to the trouble of doing what Kundera has done (or even the writer of these essays) ever does so completely without hope. 

     My empathy for Kundera's work is premised upon a vague overview of the integral unit we might call the ecosystem of intellectual thought. I often feel like a detached spectator as I take in the panorama of occidental life all around me --- the punishing, degrading traffic; the extreme crescendo of unconsciously assimilated noise; the frenzied chaos of life's pace; the desperate pursuit of "fun" or "happiness"; the constant fight to escape boredom; the exaggerated ideas of "success" and "failure"; the physical immersion in the filth of fossil fuel; etc. Quite frequently, especially while watching commercials on TV, the idea that this is the stupidest concept ever conceived for a culture, suddenly comes over me. One of my most persistent thoughts, as I wend my way through my time on Earth, is that the western way of life has arrived to the verge of a nervous breakdown.

     This, my friends, is called "alienation".

     There are a number of phrases from my own written body of work worth quoting in this essay. In the one novel I've attempted ("Not a Love Story"), the principle female character says the following: "I think long before I really had it explained to myself; long before I was conscious of the rat race, or ecology, or whatever specific madness that can be associated with the Gillette Gods and their way of life ." she paused, trying to get it right, " . I think it was the ugliness that planted the seed of my discontent. Somehow, the suburban sprawl, the plastic signs, the whole landscape of the American Dream began to . I don't know, you get it, don't you?" In the essay "Why People Like Motion Pictures", I say, "This obese fascination we've developed for the motion picture could be tied to this ever-burgeoning vanity that might be approaching some ill-defined, hazy frontier separating sanity from lunacy." Our culture's promiscuous flirtation with insanity seems to have become a discrete constancy in my work.

     I live in a town that makes its living through one of our culture's more superficial ways to ward off boredom: tourism. It is a particularly brain-dead brand of tourism complete with cruise ships, tee shirts, a varying array of tours, discount books, and a what-do-we-do-next kind of tension that seems to be harder work than work itself. Over the last ten years or so, in a never satiated search for more revenue, my town has prostituted itself to that beer belly subculture summed up in the words Harley-Davidson. Although their presence is a nuisance all year round, there is one particular week in September where their black-orange salvo of noise is so physically painful, that I am forced to leave. The overhead of my life, if living is to remain a desired goal, now includes this week in September when I am driven from my home and work by this barbaric onslaught.

     The reader might be surprised to know that my distaste for the adolescents in middle age bodies who partake in this insult to civility, is far less than the derisive scorn I show for the average citizen who is either not bothered or able to put up with all this. I spew diarrhea all over your average, hollow-headed faces for your collusion in this madness (as well as your collusion in such barbaric acts as the war in Iraq. Don't ask me why, but all of this is connected somehow.)

     By now, the astute reader might be postulating the thought that this essay is getting disjointed while running off on a varying array of tangents leading to nowhere.

     That is where Milan Kundera comes in.

     The page and a half of Kundera soon to be presented will tie it all together. A little voice in my mind is telling me to confess that what is about to be offered is my translation from a Spanish version. I've learned of this singular author through the Hispanic world, where his work is always prominently displayed. This is great fun because it gives me an indirect opportunity to write in "Kundera", to be Kundera, to form his writing to my concepts of its meaning. Someday I'd like to compare it to other English versions.

     The quoted material takes place in Paris where a mature woman named Agnes has just left an upscale health club where she was subjected to the unsolicited opinions of a young woman in the sauna. She is looking for a place to eat and realizes that all the old "bistros" of the area have been replaced by "fast food".

     And now, ladies and gentlemen, Milan Kundera!

     "She said to herself: when the onslaught of ugliness becomes unbearable, I will go to the florist and buy a forget-me-not, a single forget-me-not, and with that thin stalk with the little blue flower in miniature, I will go out in the street and hold it in front of my face so that I cannot see anything else but that unique blue point, so that it can be the last thing I conserve for myself and my eyes of a world that I don't love anymore. I will go through the streets of Paris, and the people will soon begin to know me, and the children will go running behind me, laughing at me, throwing things at me, and all of Paris will call me: the crazy lady with the forget-me-not."

     "She continued walking: with her right ear she took in the musical tidal wave with its rhythmic pounding of percussion that arrived to her from the stores, the hair salons, the restaurants; the left ear captured all the sounds from the street: the monolithic hum of the cars, the crushing noise of a bus as it started out. Suddenly, the sharp sound of a motorcycle pierced her being. She could not help but immediately look towards something that had caused such physical pain: a young girl in jeans, her black hair waving behind her, erect on a small motorcycle as if she were sitting at a typewriter; it had no muffler and made a horrific noise."

     "Agnes thought back to that young woman who had entered the sauna an hour ago in order to show everyone her "I", in order to oblige others to accept it, already exclaiming from the doorway that she hated hot showers and modesty. Agnes was sure that the same motivation made the girl with the black hair take off the muffler of her motorcycle. It wasn't the machine that was making the noise, it was the "I" of the black haired girl, trying to make herself heard, to penetrate the consciousness of the rest by linking her being to the deafening escape of the engine. Agnes looked at the hair streaming behind that noisy aggressor and realized she intensely wished the death of that girl. If right now she would run into the bus and end up in a puddle of blood on the asphalt, Agnes would not feel horror or sadness, only satisfaction."

     "Her hate immediately frightened her and she said to herself: the world has arrived to the frontier of something disastrous; if it crosses it, everything will turn to madness: the people will wander through the streets with forget-me-nots in their hands or will kill each other on sight. It will take very little, the drop of water that overflows the glass: just one car, person or decibel more. There is a kind of quantitative limit that should not be exceeded, but nobody is watching for it and it is likely that nobody knows it exists."

     I close with the following thoughts: I would never be so presumptuous to compare my literary efforts to that of Milan Kundera. As a young man, I played a decent brand of baseball, but it was barely a sniff of what the Major Leagues are like, let alone an immortal Hall of Fame career, a la Kundera. If my talent and intellect are not in the same class with the great Czech, that does not keep us from having certain things in common. We are both renegades from the socio-political climates we come from. If his angst and anger are primarily directed against the leftist regimes of his youth, while mine are directed against my neo-liberal culture on the right, this has not kept us from approaching each other in a new place that questions it all --- left, right, center, human behavior in all its magnificent splendor and imbecility. When someone like Kundera corroborates your feelings, it is very comforting. One begins to realize it is that overwhelming, numerically intimidating mass of people called "them", and not you, who are not seeing things clearly.