I look particularly fat in Warrior Two, as I noticed in the large mirror in the workout room at the gym where yoga class is held. The bone thin yoga mistress gave me eyes like I‘m obese and started talking about chocolate as a metaphor for allowing the body to melt into an asana, or letting the mind melt, or maybe the fat will melt away, I don’t know. I glanced around the room to see whether anyone looked like they love chocolate a lot - besides me. Or maybe it’s just a Swiss thing to talk about melting chocolate in yoga class?
* * * * *
Adipose Apron ‘sana
Woman who stood
Arms raised
Tits big
Hair thin
Eyes small
Lips drooped
Body popped
* * * * *
Forty-five
years, seven months and about nine days since my most recent incarnation began as
I exited my mother’s womb. But who’s counting? I must admit that I struggle to
formulate philosophy lately. That I struggle to write. But I’m forcing myself
as we speak out of spite for all the secrets I don’t wish to keep. As I
reluctantly write, I conceive that creativity ain’t cheap.
Forty-five
plus years of current incarnation and contemporary socialization. What afflicts
this here human woman child matron mum?
Equanimity
through change has not been reached. Mission not accomplished.
Behold!!! A
Nexistentialist who has lost all sense of self, but not in a good buddhist way,
but rather in a solemn pseudo-Western depresso-freak-show icky way.
English
teacher to seventy-three students, teaching the difference between common and
proper nouns and what to capitalize. The noun defined as a word that names a
person, place, thing or idea. “Students,
religion is a common idea, you see, but Buddhism and Christianity are specific
ideas, as are Capitalism, Socialism, Communism and their kin.” When they
complain about society I tell them to go ahead, as the next generation, to
create a society of their liking, as it’s in their hands. And they stare with
big middle-school eyes, which, I can only guess what that might mean. It’s
difficult not to feel like a mother amidst all these children, driven by a love
that transcends any sense of self. Indeed, I still do leave bits of my soul in
the classroom.
Perhaps, I’m
not depressed but merely depleted. Given all the healers I’ve seen since our
arrival in Switzerland, it’s a fair conclusion. I’ve been running on almost
empty for years. Now, I’ve embarked on five lines of treatment for my depleted
biological battery and perimenopause. But I miss Mac and the horses, I miss
American yoga school and its traditional and contemporary sober enchantment. I
miss the intellectual gatherings at the public library, where thinkers,
readers, writers and philosophers meet. I have lost all sense of belonging and,
along with it, all sense of self. Living in a new and temporary home,
day-to-day and town, leaves little room for roots to be grown.
And despite
its recent consistency, being a mother to my own children transcends any notion
of selfness, as much as it is an inherent part of me. And being a mother to my
own children will never mean that I give anything less than all of me. Which is
kind of contagious, by the way. For, when you love someone sooooo much, it is
hard not to love others as well.
* * * * *
The boy was
showing his disdain for having to get out of bed early to help clean up the cats’
rowdish fur-clouds-night-time-mess, by carelessly handling the vacuum cleaner,
like letting the metal tube drop on the floor with a loud bang. We have to
vacuum clean the flat in the morning because the cats’ fur and litter mess
threatens to awaken father’s allergies.
So, I called
out to him son: “I can’t believe how violently and indifferently you’re
behaving! It’s frightening because it’s a general thing. All students behave
like this…”
I confess
that I was dreading the start of school, experiencing fear of the young, of
middle schoolers invading my peace of mind and me not being able to handle it.
“That’s why
we’re fucked!” I said with sporadic pessimistic conviction. “Humans are fucked.
Humanity is fucked!”
My teenage
son almost laughed. “I can’t believe what you’re saying!” He retorted with
feigned disbelief. “You’re talking rubbish. What you’re saying is sheer
rubbish!”
“I can’t
believe how carelessly and violently you’re handling the vacuum cleaner. Why?!”
“I’m not
careless, merely violent.” He smart-assed innocently. I decided to shut up.
I love him
too much and admire him too much, which drove my subconscious faith that he had
understood.
I also woke
up thinking about his remarks after the movie we watched Sunday night as a
family, Lord of the Rings - Return of the King. Even though I had watched all the
Lord of the Rings movies while I was pregnant with him over 18 years ago, I did
not remember how sad the ending actually was. “What’s wrong with Frodo? Is he
getting on the ship to go off and die?” I said.
My son
explained how it’s Tolkien’s way of working through his own trauma from fighting in a world war.
“Frodo has an
injury that will never heal,” said my husband.
“What?!
Tolkien fought in a world war?” I blurted out. “I think so,” my son replied
suddenly unsure. He read all the books in multiple languages and ambitiously
desires the 11,377 piece Minas Tirith Lego set for his birthday, which costs a
fortune and is, frankly, too large for our little flat.
While
watching the movies, I kept asking him, “is this in the book?”
“They walk a lot more.” Of course, I thought, marching is a huge part of
military practice.
“The spider actually talks to him.” I’m sure now that Stephen King stole Tolkien’s
hobbit-eating spider for his horror story “It”.
In fact, Second
Lieutenant Tolkien fought in the First World War at the Western front in one of
the biggest and bloodiest battles, the Somme offensive. He contracted trench
fever from lice and was invalided to England. He never returned due to
recurring illness and hospitalization. Wikipedia quotes his children John and
Priscilla Tolkien talking about their father:
In later
years, he would occasionally talk of being at the front: of the horrors of the
first German gas attack, of the utter exhaustion and ominous quiet after a bombardment,
of the whining scream of the shells, and the endless marching, always on foot,
through a devastated landscape, sometimes carrying the men’s equipment as well
as his own to encourage them to keep going.
This to me explains
Frodo’s quest and company. There was so much violence in the movies that I
found hard to handle this time around, too much warring, too much cruelty. Of
course, Tolkien would tackle the matter of evil, what it does to men, what it
is that drives devastation and destruction, as he witnessed with his own eyes
and experienced with his own body and mind during an atrocious world war. Now I
feel like I need to read the books, or book, myself even though I am weary of
war.
Because I
just finished reading Nora Bossong’s “Reichskanzlerplatz” (2024), which has not
been translated into English yet. In fact, it was this discovery that prompted
me to encourage my children to use their multilingual skills and love of
literature to become literary translators, as a side job while they complete
their studies. My son is seriously considering it, but he is also considering
becoming a Swiss guard to the Pope. In Switzerland, military service is
obligatory for young men as they reach the age of eighteen. Within weeks of
moving back here, my son received a letter from the army recruiting him to his civil
duty. But he is going to take the option, similar to what Tolkien was able to
do, to enlist only after he is done with his studies. I suppose he could become
a papal Swiss guard, as he is the only child we baptized in the Catholic
Church.
Bossong
retells the story leading up to the Second World War from the German Mitläufer
perspective, the hack, the uncommitted person who just kind of followed
along somehow. In an interview, Nora talks about four perspectives from which to
narrate the time surrounding the Third Reich: from the perspective of those who
became innocent victims; from the perspective of the resistance fighters; from
the perspective of the actual perpetrators; and from the perspective that
applies to most people, of kind of being part of it and kind of not being part
of it, kind of steering through, swinging a flag at some point but then internally
not agreeing with all of it, all the so called followers who made up the
majority of the people of that time.
So, in a
world full of hacks, what are you?
Anyway, I
will no longer avoid reading the worldwide German bestseller All Quiet on
the Western Front (1929, 1993) by Erich Maria Remarque. In German the title
is Im Westen nichts Neues (1928) and literally translates to “Nothing
new in the West”. My son and I talked about how the literal title maybe was
more appropriate as war, indeed, is nothing new in the West. But the first
translator’s choice does sound poetic. I read the following passage to my son
from the Wikipedia article about the novel:
Paul [the protagonist] visits home, and
the contrast with civilian life highlights the cost of war on his psyche. The
town has not changed since he went off to war, but he has: he finds he does “not
belong here any more, it is a foreign world”.
“That’s what
happened to Frodo when he returned to the Shire, he didn’t feel at home
anymore,” said my son.
He grabbed
the paper that had arrived in the mail and asked me, “Are you going to vote
yes?”
The Abstimmungs-Zeitung
zur Schweizer Neutralität (Voting Newspaper on Swiss Neutrality) elaborates
on eight pages of newsprint the importance of voting YES on the people’s initiative
on the Preservation of Swiss Neutrality (Wahrung der schweizerischen
Neutralität (Neutralitätsinitiative)).
“In Switzerland,
a popular initiative (German: Volksinitiative, French: initiative
populaire, Italian: iniziativa
popolare, Romansh: iniziativa
dal pievel) allows
people to suggest laws on a federal, cantonal, and municipal level.
On a federal
level it may only change the federal constitution, not propose an
ordinary law. Along with the popular referendum and in some
cantons recall elections, it is a form of direct
democracy.” (Wikipedia)
I leafed
trough the papers perusing the arguments to make sure it’s not just propaganda,
words like “peace” and “security” jumping out. Neutrality protects us against
wars, says a former politician. Switzerland’s neutrality is characterized by
three pillars, it explains. Swiss neutrality is perpetual, armed and integral.
I shy away from exaggerations. I know Switzerland was not perfectly neutral in
either war. Plus, is absolute neutrality not a hack? As Nora Bossong tries to
emphasize in her novel, every choice one person makes has an impact on the direction a
people’s story takes.
At the end
of a day, I’m a hippy at heart, all about peace and love, yall! But loving
mankind is not enough. Thus, I must, at least, vote.
“Given that
I am fundamentally pro peace and anti-war,” I responded to my son, “I will vote
yes on this initiative as that is what comes closest to what I stand for.”
* * * * *
“Feminist-in-progress”
Jameela Jamil shared an interesting perspective in an interview on The Tea
podcast with Dr. Myriam Francois (YouTube, 2025):
Women were
not the target of patriarchy. I think men are the target of patriarchy. I think
that patriarchy was designed to subjugate men to be able to send them off to
war. We don’t count how many men die at war. To send them to do the most
dangerous jobs, to send them down the mines, into the diamond mines. Go and do
all this unnecessary shit that we don’t actually need as a planet. All this excess
is all created so that wealthy can send young healthy men to do the dogsbody
work for them. Often […] working class men or people with lower status. Men are
victims of higher violence than women. […] Patriarchy is so damaging for men.
60% of the gun deaths in America are men turning the gun on themselves. […]
Patriarchy is designed to subjugate men. And what they did, which was so genius,
was to tell men, “Oh no, women are the target. So, you subjugate them and you
won’t notice how much we are subjugating you, how much we are stealing from
you.”
I’ve long
held that hierarchical, patriarchal systems disfavor both women and men. Nora
Bossong’s novel also shows that at the top are the industrialists and capitalists
who enrich themselves by subjugating entire populations. War doesn’t destroy
them but enriches them instead.
Vier Reichsmark am Tag zahlt das Unternehmen für jeden
Häftling an die SS, […] bei gelernten Facharbeitern sechs, und die
Akkumulatoren liefert Quandt and die Regierung. Wenn einer unter der
körperlichen Belastung zusammenbricht, wird er […] ersetzt. Herzmuskelentzündung
steht dann auf dem Totenschein. Man rechnet mit einem monatlichen Verlust von
achtzig Mann und nennt es betriebswirtschaftliche Notwendigkeit.
(Four Reichsmark a
day is what the corporation pays for each prisoner to the SS [Schutzstaffel,
Secret Service], six for trained technicians, and the accumulators are
delivered to the government by Quandt. If someone collapses due to physical strain,
he’s replaced. Then, Myocardial inflammation is written on the death
certificate. The company estimates a monthly loss of eighty men and calls it economic
imperative.)
Quandt is
the corporation that produced the uniforms for the German army during World War
One. It continued to feed the military industrial complex during the Third Reich
and its world war with uniforms and storage batteries, large rechargeable cells
that also worked underwater in submarines. The war and the exploitation of
prisoners paid off. Today, the Quandts are still one of wealthiest and most
economically powerful families in Germany (Bossong, 2024).
* * * * *
As the
Ayurveda practitioner massaged along some mysterious lines on my body, images
of nadi maps came to mind. Damn, I thought, ancient Indian science was spot on!
The Western woman shaman was targeting my subtle body, and I perceived its
presence within as if countless invisible little cables had been turned on throughout
my entire structure. But as I lay there motionless focusing only on my breath,
I also perceived the shapelessness that we embody, hers and mine, as light. When
she left the room, I saw the quality of light change through my closed eyelids.
And when she moved and her joints gently cracked, I sensed both her and my body
as removed from a larger phenomenon – energy?
Weeks ago, I
met a massage therapist who restored my sleep for a night through Lomi Lomi.
She told me that she had an incisive experience on a retreat in India during
her youth. She had experienced pure being beyond all matter, which transcends death
and all that’s temporary. She encouraged me to break up with fear, who I’d
entertained now for decades with my implacable anxiety and intrusive thought
processes. She encouraged me to laugh at fear and be goofy, to bawk like a
chicken and shake my elbows every time I felt anxious. She encouraged me to engage
with faith instead.
Faith for
fear, I can’t say that I’ve succeeded. Old lovers can be insistent. Fear is
your friend; a fellow philosopher once told me. Years later, he put a gun to
his head. But his death was published in the newspaper as a motorcycle
accident, as is common when bougie middle-aged Mexican men die unexpectedly by
choice. You see, in Mexico, for a man to suddenly become an avid motorcycle rider
in his middle-age is respectable. It’s cool if he dies from that. But suicide
is taboo.
So, I broke
up with fear officially. But that thing with faith isn’t working out just yet.
* * * * *
As I
realized, that the fellowship of the ring may have been about Tolkien working
through his war trauma, all jokes in me began to subside. Jokes about how I was
going to write the saga of the Lady of the Rings. Of course, because hardly any
women show up in the story. But, of course, because it’s a story about the
tragedies of men! Jokes about how instead of battles, there would be love
scenes, the rings a metaphor for marriage, the quest about relationships and
lovers and partners and break-ups and all the good stuff. A satire.
But war is
painfully real and it’s no adventure. In his opening of “In the west nothing
new”, that literary masterpiece about the First World War, Erich Maria Remarque
writes:
This book
is to be neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure,
for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it. It will
try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have
escaped (its) shells, were destroyed by the war.
That’s why
Frodo had to leave.
* * * * *
YOG’ XIII
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