Coloring

The Ashmont train is always late
those days I am
blotted out by the crowd.
Exchanging r's for l's clutching
ipods, cell phones, showing freshly stained
yellow fingernails.
The grey-green walls absorb me:
transparent.

I rode the 23 here naked
an outline on the slippery seat.
The travelers looked
and looked away
through colored windows
at neighbors clothed
as always
in ebony finery.

And then:
her lips painted, so real
moist crimson
she charted her flamenco conversation
round hips.
Purple heels on cement stairs, bright
A brown shrug erased me again.
Someone, (quickly before the red train comes)
find me a skin colored crayon.


- Rebecca Horner

Summer Updates...

So, it's been a while since we posted. It's summer time here, and we're all probably even crazier than during the school year.

Keep emailing us though, (gc.wallis@gmail.com) and we'll keep posting.

Have a wonderful Summer!

Memorial 5.2.09

The air smelled of stale cigarettes
as the priest began.
Painter’s pants, clerical collar,
cheap sandals, eyebrow ring,
and I half expected him to be tonsured
when he took off his Abercrombie hat for the
Lord’s prayer.

Our Father…

Next to him was the addict
identified solely by his habit of
Molestation.
And yet, he too
prayed.

Forgive us our trespasses...

The pigeons provided the atmosphere,
frightening the crowds
that persistently fail to notice the loss of a man
and his bench.

For thine is the kingdom…

As it concluded,
I thought of Mike,
Virginia,
and thousands of others cursed
by the negligence of a country,
and the failure of a Church.

Amen.


- Andrew Piercey

Message form the Prague

I am Angelica Morse, a junior psychology major at Gordon College.  I am abroad in Prague, Czech Republic this semester studying Czech and social issues involving communism, dissent, and inequality.  In a way, my traveling here has been a pilgrimage to the country of my heritage where my mother’s family still lives. 

For 3 months now I have been living in a country whose national anthem begins with, “Kde domov muj?” Where is my home?  Jan Urban, a dissident of the communist regime in Czech Republic as well as my professor, was the first to recite this line for me.  Czechs have always been occupied by other ruling powers.  They are a people who share a language, but have struggled to defend their land. Now, after the collapsing of the communist regime, Czechs are finally able to say that they live in the Czech Republic.

2009 marks the 20^th anniversary of the end of the communist regime in Czech Republic.  One would think by now that the country had moved on completely, yet I have found the Czechs still hold on to much of their old mentality. The consequences of fear and silence have paid their dues on the social normalities of the Czech people.  Under communism people would have to stand in line for hours just to buy their daily goods.  A Czech would buy whatever was available because he or she couldn’t guarantee the products would be there on another day.  Now there are options- less options than Americans are bombarded with in stores, but still there are reasonable amounts of brands- but Czechs shop in small quantities and look for sale items. On the metro no one talks unless you’re a foreigner or a teenager.  Sometimes you’ll find a couple making out or flirting, but they’re usually whispering if speaking at all.  Foreigners often perceive Czechs as rude when they interact with them along the street or in restaurants.  These facts might be true observations, but they make more sense in context.  Under communism you would be cautious with what you say in public, never talking against the regime, and keeping to yourself in case the secret police was listening.  The silence still resides in some sense that people remain private people.  In restaurants the servers don’t get paid commission and tipping is only in response to excellent service, so they don’t work towards pleasing the costumers.  No matter how they treat you, they get paid the same amount.  However, when you actually meet Czechs, have a conversation, and get to know them they are wonderful people who want to make sure you’re always full and when you ask “Jak se mas?” (how are you?) they actually respond with lengthy details.

The difference between generations is visible.  Historians call those who lived through communism the “lost generation.”  But the youth bring more modern ideals and embrace westernization.  They learn from their grandparents and even their parents about their country’s past.

My classes thrive on the stories of my professors.  My professors, who grew up under communism, and who are important figures in Czech Republic, weave their own personal experiences in with what we are learning.  I have learned things in my classes that I would never have found out from studying in America.  Jan Urban tells my class about being tortured in interrogation and how he was part of the Velvet Revolution.  Zdenek Kuhn, a Supreme Court judge and professor of law at Charles University, tells us about his case, his deciding whether the communist party should be abolished or not in CZ.  Marketa Rulikova, a sociologist who has lived in the Polish ghettos of Chicago to do research, tells us how her parents told her not to repeat what they said at the dinner table to anyone outside of their home because they didn’t support the regime.  I often leave class in a semi-trance as I am dumfounded and awe struck by the history of communism, global inequalities, and details about the history of law in Eastern Europe versus America and other western countries.  Not only am I learning about history, but also how things are now and how much of an impact the past has on the present.

Millions of people in Eastern Europe and innocents all over the world have endured horrific wars, tragedies of mass killings, inhumane conditions and torture.  I am studying only one situation.  It’s bad enough that this is our past, but I am saddened and am struggling to come to grips with the fact that this is still our present; that this still goes on around the world, and that America still partakes in it (Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, Iraq).  Haven’t we learned our lesson?  What I have learned in my psychology classes at Gordon, as well as from my classes in Prague, is that all people have the ability to fall to such insane actions.  Yes, Hitler was a bad man and was the leader of a mass genocide.  However, there is left the question of who is guilty.  What about the people who participated in furthering the communist party?  What about the bystanders who didn’t stand up against the regime?  What about the allies, including America, who stood back and watched millions of innocent people die?  I have learned about obedience, compliance to authority, denial, transfer of responsibility, and “duty.”  We are all vulnerable human beings who are easily manipulated, run away from embarrassment, and justify our actions in order to be right.  I have learned about identity: the loss of identity and the search for new identity.  I have learned about brainwashing and the dangers and consequences of the destruction of individualism under a totalitarian regime.  In the documentary of Abu Ghraib a prisoner says, “We heard his soul break.”  I have learned what people are capable of and it is still too heavy for me to really ask questions of why we are this way.  All I can do is pray for mercy and thank God for his grace.

After each lesson, encounters with Czechs, and from walking through the streets of Prague or the countryside, I feel closer and closer to the Czech people and my heart aches in response to their sufferings and their joys.  The end of the Czech national anthem goes as so, 

      And with a strength

      That frustrates all defiance,

That is the glorious race

      Of Czechs, 

Among Czechs is my home,

      Among Czechs, my home. 

Through all the occupations and suffering, the Czechs still remain, a people united by their language.  And I, a descendent of the Czechs have returned to the motherland and day by day am feeling more at home surrounded by my own.

Fixing Things

I was squatting down, doing my business in the bathroom and I just realized why there is water in the toilet -- It’s not only because it flushes out the feces out, but also it takes the smell away from whatever you digested. Problem solved.

 

Yet, in one incident, Americans thought it’d be best that they would replace the latrines (something that they were completely content with), with flushing toilets in order to promote “the quality of life” of an African province some time ago. Prior to this renovation, the water supply was low but ample enough to be lived on everyday. However, problems arose, apparently because the toilet has ironically flushed the water supply out to the point where water had to be rationed only to be used four days a week instead. But to my utter amazement, when I went to Israel this past summer (during the dry season), there are two buttons to flush out the excrement or whatever you did in the toilet. There is a big button and a little one; the big button to flush out the big one, and the little one to flush out your pee pee. Problem averted, right?

 

America thinks that it can solve just about anything and everything, looking for ways to the betterment of our living conditions, as if it is pitiful. Patents are formed, suggesting that we need this particular item, and our life was somehow worse before we even knew that this item existed. For example, the ShamWow (I pity the poor fellow in the commercial as he has become the laughingstock of infomercials in America).

 

The ShamWow apparently can hold up to twelve times its weight and be reused multiple times with its 10-year guarantee. I say it’s a sham for we can use torn garments to do the same job without waiting those 2-weeks for delivery. But whenever I see that commercial, I think to myself and I seem to justify that I MIGHT need it for the future (this of course, can stem from materialism and consumerism as well).

 

I would suggest that America has in itself, a sense of pride in fixing problems and this understanding that everything can be fixed. So when Americans and if I may add, westerners go abroad to help another developing country, we tend to implement our advices thinking that they are beneficial. We are not prideful when we do it; it is just society’s influence on us that causes us the want to fix things. And perhaps, this is our biggest vice. So, the question worth asking is,

 

Are we imposing some ideals and suggestions that are not necessarily better, and contrary to their philosophies and ideals?

 

Democracy in Afghanistan and Iraq at best, are called “works in progress.” Western thought, until post-modernity, included modernity and has taken over our understanding of philosophy and theology. However it is something incompatible with the Eastern thought. Thus, we are left in this impasse in our dialogue with others, and that is for two reasons.

 

First, some things just cannot be fixed. I think of Jack from Lost, who is told by his wife on her way out of the relationship, “you will always need something to fix,” when ultimately it is himself that needs to be fixed.

 

Secondly, our imposition of capitalism has debilitated other impoverished countries. Many times, self-interest outweighs the good in humanity, which concludes to say that I wouldn’t call the countries a developing one, for they will always be the footstools of the other power countries like America. Such a sad thought.

 

I leave you with no suggestions or solutions. I question our motives in why we help others and I wonder if things were at it was prior to our ideals were imposed upon. It is just sad to see that countries want to be like us but at best, they can only be mere servants to the owner of the mansion and will never be part of the family.

 

  Daniel Lee