I had to smile today when I realized that Squinney, for once, was out of the reach of the lecherous grasp of the Bear.
For once in her life the woman could play with children, could listen to the melodic sound of a child's laugh, could slap her knees and smile until she thought her face would break.
For once she was done with the relentless groping of the Bear; done with the pleading, the begging; done with the crazed eyes staring at her; done with the fear of picking a scrap of paper off the floor; done with sex for one glorious moment in time.
She deserves the break.
And I had to smile.
"When they tore it down they said it was because of the new underground, but that was a fake reason - they really didn't like such a central social place, where gatherings could spontaneously occur, right next to party buildings. In 1956, the square had been a central location of fighting, people had gathered at the National Theatre, and later, taken over the printers."
It's called piazza rule, or mob rule. Early in ital history, with piazza Signoria, there was an elevated platform, called the arringhiera (sp?)... now with sculpture on it. The harranging platform.
Savonarola ranted there, and was burned there just about a half millenium ago.
Piazzas, plazas, squares, campi. platz? ...
Ah, got it, right.
Well, "mob rule" has rather negative connotations, no? This was more of a case of a totalitarian government being afraid of any occasion that would bring a lot of conscious citizens together in a public space...
(NB: Theatre has in these environs historically had a prominent role in setting the spark to shared anger/defiance of people - brought together for the performance, elated/elevated by the social or historical piece, taking its message outside afterwards. Comes from how theatre played a formative role in the creation/growth of national identity - and thus of national resistance to foreign "oppressors" - in the 19th century).
True though, I guess, that "mob rule" is in the eye of the beholder, and it's all a question of degree I suppose, if an extreme one. One man's citizen's protest is another's mob rule, and in the eyes of communist dictator Rakosi (or in those of his top honchos anyway, he himself had already been safely carted away by then), the 1956 revolution will surely have seemed like mob rule.
Or, like - the daily demonstrations at Parliament Square here the past weeks - they've been denounced by the pro-government left as an attempt at mob rule, an anti-democratic attempt to force politics "by the power of the street"; whereas the anti-government right praises them as self-styled revolutionaries speaking for the people, like back in 56, the embodiment of the wider citizen concern. All growing pains, I'm sure - for me, as outsider, they just look like demonstrations, which are a respectable part of the democratic to-and-fro but also not much more than that.
Still about public spaces, whatever the level of fear, and the allowance of them. Ack, it's a keen interest of mine.
A tangential comment on my part, that tweaked my interest and I was already interested.
Gus - Have you been peeking in our window again?
That was eerily accurate.
I was in the coffeeshop like every morning day before yesterday - Zsusza had a cool CD on, with whimsical/ironic covers of all the early 80s tracks I grew up with - its hilarious. She handed me the CD, it even had Grauzone's Eisbar (in a very different version)! I gushed.
Yesterday, I came again, and first thing, Zsuzsa hands me a CD - she burnt a copy for me.
That was nice..
I didnt post this yet I think... apologies that it kind of meanders from WMYST territory into the more socio-political musing...
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It's hardly like I'm in the middle of things or much in the know, but sometimes it momentarily seems like it and that's always nice. Like last weekend [by now the weekend before last] - on Friday Cs took me to this new temporary squat on Tuzolto, on Saturday I was with Susannah and friends at the Kiado Pub's "birthday" and then at a goth party.
Kiado's birthday was cool. Ive never seen so many people cramped into such a small place as this cosy basement pub with its four little arched 'rooms'. Susannah was there with her friend whose name is "Flower" and the extremely nice, charming girl I'd met at a party or two (who likes me too I think but, alas, already has a boyfriend). A band was playing - well, big word - drummer, guitarist, singer - a half-black girl, shaking, rapping, speaking out - perched in one small corner. They had no name yet. They were very, very cool, the girl was great, funky, eclectic rocking music, rapping. Good vibes.
I left later to bicycle all the way out to f*cking Kek Lyuk on the other side of town because I'd seen that this was the last, alas, the last Kollektiva gothic party. Just when I discovered them - I went to the previous one, last spring - they stop. But oh are they good, no other place where the people are so astoundingly beautiful, dressed up extreme. You can lose yourself dancing ("sex and drugs and industrial hardcore") and its gotta be said - uhm - normally, to see girls dressed like that dance like that, you know, you'd have to pay ;-).
I did also (at long last, admittedly - I love dancing but I hate being shy) approach a girl whose eyes had caught me from the stars - nothing like any of the others, but - kind yet lively, curious looking, intriguing - told her so. Turned out she was from Subotica, from across the border in Serbia - came all the way up here just for this party (!). Boyfriend - yes :{ - and her headed to the train station to catch the early train back when the place closed.
We headed to the squat that Friday cause a friend of Cs's was playing in a band, in the basement. It was a very mellow place. A handful of people - perhaps two handfuls - sitting on crates on the floor around the place. Candles burning along the walls, up the storttunnel down which, before, people could throw coal (I suppose) to be stored. Soft, meandering music, played jam session like. Upstairs there was a little exhibition - a funny exhibition: basically, they had reproductions from political protest posters that had been brought together from around the world for a 1975 exhibition in London, or America, or somewhere - and those had been recoloured in. That was it - funny thing being - I recognized many of the posters - from home. (I was only 4 in 1975, but these were classics). On another wall, a collection of clenched fists from posters from throughout time. I recognized two from those as well, the clenched fist with woman's symbol underneath, and explained to my incredulous but amused Hungarian company that my mother had been in the Vo:ro:s No:k, the Red Women. On the floor, someone was spraypainting symbols, patterns - the Hungarian national arms, but with the double cross replaced by a clenched fist - you could have something spraypainted on your shoes as well. On the wall there was a CrimethInc poster, and a big map of Budapest, where you could stick pins in where you knew was an empty building that could be squatted. In front, a kitchen table with various pamphlets and photocopied publications - a little booklet on the Anarcho-communists of the Ukraine of 1918. The kitchen was run by whoever wanted to come and share recipes - there were mostly young people, but also a middle-aged man I heard saying, just as I passed by, "a kapitalismus ellen", against capitalism.
It was all, suffice it to say, very - very - extremely ... how shall I say it - Amsterdam 1982. Or Amsterdam 1976. Seventies or early eighties, hippie or squatter-anarchist - they were, it seemed, veritably puzzling together a reproduction of the whole alternative-leftist-idealist scene from Western Europe from before. Finally, I suppose. There is, I was recently finally reading up as well, a whole budding alternative scene coming up - the movement against the rampant demolition of dilapitated but century-old buildings in the Jewish neighbourhood to make place for snazzy but cheaply built new development is tied into it somehow (though much broader based), supported by active environmentalist groups; you see stickers with Lehet Mas a Vilag (Une Autre Monde Est Possible) appearing, Humanist Party candidates were competing - without a chance, of course - in the local elections, there's the big bycicle parades/demonstrations, Indymedia is vibrant, apparently, there's another little Fair Trade festival this weekend, street artists leave creative stencils on empty buildings. Yeah, Amsterdam 1982.
And I can so understand why. The problem here is that everything leftwing is tainted by the association with the past system - the only leftwing party of note is the dominant, but ex-communist, Socialist Party, and the whole of society is divided irreconcilably, culturally, from top to bottom between two camps, even restaurants and cafes, I read, are often identifiable as "Socialist" or "Fidesz". And "Socialist" means - postcommunist - its culturally tied into history, rather than politically into actual left-wing politics - the Socialist Party's politics are a mix of neoliberal reform and populist promises. And if you're against those "red capitalists", well, then you're national-conservative. No wonder many of my age and younger are just completely turned off from it all. There's been no alternative on the left, whatsoever - the ex-communist power party being so dominant it sucks up all oxygen on that side.
But the time *is* ripe - there's no doubt. Amsterdam in the sixties had seen a generation's worth of pragmatic Labour and Communist politicians in power who believe firmly in the politics of concrete - take down everything old, build new towerblocks, undergrounds, highways - give every worker his house in the suburbs. Materialism. Business - the same people in power for a decade, wheeling and dealing. By the mid-sixties the creative and environmental kaalslag was so overpowering that all kinds of alternative little protest movements started bubbling up, anarchically countercultural - the "provos", the "midgets", the Greens, students, radical democrats, neighbourhood movements. Squatters, later. Perhaps that is now also coming up now. You'd bloody want it to - the time sure is ripe.
On our little dayouting hiking in the woods a bit north from here, I saw a car passing by. On its back bumper, it had a sticker with Greater Hungary (the Greater Hungary that was lost at Trianon in 1918, you know).
I looked at its numberplate - it started with "JEW -"
hehheh.
Nimh: 50 years ago, as you well know in Hungary. 50 years ago almost to the day.
BUBBA COMES IN AND HE IS NOT HAPPY
A few weeks ago the gas company came on to the property where my shop is and tore up a bit of the non-public sidewalk to fix something in the gas line.
They put gravel in the 2' by 3' area of sidewalk they had torn up. Today they came in and took out the gravel and poured the concrete.
Now this building (which I own) is coming down in a couple of years and the little bit of concrete work is well within my property lines so we drew in the wet concrete. It felt good to be a juvenile delinquent again. My employees, and even johnboy, contributed.
Well, the City crew came back and Bubba, the boss, was very very pissed about this. They smoothed out the graffiti and one of my managers, a young black lady named Lisa, ended up taking the blame.
Tomorrow, when I get to work, I fully expect that they will have recreated their art, and it will be too late for Bubba to smooth it over.
John the Unlimited, patron of drawing power.
Which reminds me, I've been saving and may recently have off'd an article about the finding of slave quarters in such and such area at the university?
Remember, I don't have a photo memory. Thing is, it's affecting the redesign of 'a larger area'. The south lawn??? Perhaps just as well... but I don't know that.
Not that I don't want the area saved.. I just don't know if it is just as well re the new design(s).
I was there at the U of V for perhaps a total of three hours max. Probably less. I'd have to see a plan view and a lot of photos to get a present sense of it.
(that was not a mocking John the Unlimited.. more an accolade).
Grinning from ear to ear ~
a warm fall day, golden leafs everywhere, and a herd of deer resting on the lawns....
We came across a marathon of "The Munsters" and we're watching it -- makes me smile itself, but it's not captioned. Sozlet likes it. What made me smile was Grandpa Munster looking up from the book he was reading: "How to Make Friends In Your Home Workshop And Lab." :-D (Unabashedly corny humor, gotta love it.)
The thing smorgs posted on the british thread with the pandas.
I'm sorry to hear that, LordE. Maybe this will help.
(click here)
Pasties with pasties 
I smiled when I thought back to the Revolutionary War and how we had kicked the crap out of the British.
