A Dash of Chekhov, Che, and Murakami

So...I'm a nerd. When I read books, I like to underline quotes and passages that affect me in some way. Then I usually scribble in the margins a word or two to describe my feelings, which are usually "wtf," "blatant sexism," or "this is greatest thing I've ever read."

I could write a thousand posts about the former two reactions, but I think today I'll go for the latter. I'm just going to leave the interpretation up to you, the reader. Here are some quotes that I found particularly effective, and hopefully so will you.

A ponderous Chekhov, pondering
life's ponderous points

This is from Anton Chekhov's short story Gooseberries. The character Ivan Ivanych (so original...) went off on a social commentary as Chekhov's character are wont to do from time to time:

"[...] Just take a look at this life of ours and you will see the arrogance and idleness of the strong, the ignorance and bestiality of the weak. Everywhere there's unspeakable poverty, overcrowding, degeneracy, drunkenness, hypocrisy and stupid lies . . . And yet peace and quiet reign in every house and street. Out of fifty thousand people you won't find one who is prepared to shout out loud and make a strong protest. We see people buying food in the market, eating during the day, sleeping at night-time, talking nonsense, marrying, growing old and then contentedly carting their dead off to the cemetery. But we don't hear or see those who suffer: the real tragedies of life are enacted somewhere behind the scenes. Everything is calm and peaceful and the only protest comes from statistics--and they can't talk. Figures show that so many went mad, so many bottles of vodka were emptied, so many children died from malnutrition. And clearly this kind of system is what people need. It's obvious that the happy man feels contented only because the unhappy ones bear their burden without saying a word: if it weren't for their silence, happiness would be quite impossible. It's a kind of mass hypnosis. Someone ought to stand with a hammer at the door of every happy contented man, continually banging on it to remind him that there are unhappy people around and that however happy he may be at the time, sooner or later life will show him its claws and disaster will overtake him in the form of illness, poverty, bereavement and there will be no one to hear or see him. But there isn't anyone holding a hammer, so our happy man goes his own sweet way and is only gently ruffled by life's trivial cares, as an aspen is ruffled by the breeze. All's well as far as he's concerned."

Che receiving a lei. (Omg that rhymed!)

This next quote is from an iconic yet rather debated figure, Che Guevara. (I highly recommend reading his
diaries of the Cuban Revolution.) He mentions something very close to my heart: learning the stories of El Pueblo. From August 20th, 1960:

"We must then begin to erase our old concepts and come ever closer and ever more critically to the people. Not in the way we got closer before, because all of you will say: 'No, I am a friend of the people. I enjoy talking with workers and peasants, and on Sundays I go to such and such a place to see such and such a thing.' Everybody has done that. But they have done it practicing charity, and what we have to practice today is solidarity. We should not draw closer to the people to say: 'Here we are. We come to give you the charity of our presence, to teach you with our science, to demonstrate your errors, your lack of refinement, your lack of elementary knowledge.' We should go with an investigative zeal and with a humble spirit, to learn from the great source of wisdom that is the people."

Murakami being Mura-kickass

These last quotes are from one of my favorite authors, Haruki Murakami, in his novel Sputnik Sweetheart (I highly highly highly recommend this short yet life-altering book.) These passages relate back very closely to Chekhov's quote about silence and living without changing anything.

"So that's how we live our lives. No matter how deep and fatal the loss, no matter how important the thing that's stolen from us--that's snatched right out of our hands--even if we are left completely changed people with only the outer layer of skin from before, we continue to play out our lives with way, in silence. We draw ever nearer to our allotted span of time, bidding farewell as it trails off behind. Repeating, often adroitly, the endless deeds of the everyday. Leaving behind a feeling of immeasurable emptiness." (Page 225)

"Maybe, in some distant place, everything is already, quietly, lost. Or at least there exists a silent place where everything can disappear, melding together in a single, overlapping figure. And as we live our lives we discover--drawing towards us the thin threads attached to us--what has been lost. I closed my eyes and tried to bring to mind as many beautiful lost things as I could. Drawing them closer, holding on to them. Knowing all the while that their lives are fleeting." (Page 226)

Another Lewis Carroll Comic

"God Alice, why did I make
you such a dweeb?"

Most everyone knows Lewis Carroll was the 19th-century author who wrote the greatest children's novel ever written ever end of story thank you goodbye. (Alice in Wonderland, duh.)

But besides being a writer, he was also a mathematician and professor at Oxford, a notable photographer, and Anglican deacon. That's all well and good. So what makes him interesting?

Lewis Carroll, since an early age, suffered from a habitual stammer. This is not a stutter (where certain consonants are repeated) but a hesitation of speech. Via The Stuttering Foundation: One longtime friend, May Barber, described Carroll's speech, "Those stammering bouts were rather terrifying. It wasn't exactly a stammer because there was no noise, he just opened his mouth... When he was in the middle of telling a story....he suddenly stopped and you wondered if you had done anything wrong. Then you looked at him and you knew that you hadn't, it was all right. You got used to it after a bit. He fought it wonderfully."

Carroll developed a reputation as being a quiet and somewhat terribly boring mathematics professor at Oxford, and I'm sure the stammer didn't help.

This got me thinking. I wanted to make a comic about Carroll's stammer, because it's always better to turn tragedy into comedy, isn't it? So the following is my reasoning behind the stammer and what might've been REALLY going on there....

I Made A Website, And It's Called....

...The Alligator! A free online literary magazine!

This is The Alligator's mascot,
Al Dappergator

I can see your excited faces now, as you read this. Except your faces are not so excited as they are void of any emotional connection whatsoever to the line above.

That's ok!

The Alligator is this literary magazine that my friend Julia Morrison began last year. We've had guest writers publish their work along with our hardworking staff, whose work is always interesting, even when we have to squeeze it out of them two days before the publishing deadline.

So for all you aspiring artists out there, whether you're a writer, a painter, a musician who has a slew of self-recorded songs just sitting around in your hard drive, a drawer of comics, just a drawer, or any other sort of artist, let it be known that your work is desired at The Alligator. We can't guarantee work will be published, but we guarantee personal feedback for everything you submit.

Right now our editor (me) is looking for new work for Volume Two. Please go to www.alligatormagazine.com to find out how to submit and also to read this month's volume!

The Hostel Chronicles, Episode 3: Meanies

The highlight of working at a hostel and being a writer at the same time is that I get a ton of ideas for characters. Each person you meet in a day has the potential to spark a new life--albeit a fictional life. You have your magnetic travel mongers, your shy, questioning first-timers, your easy-going sight-seers, your logical planners, etc. And within these categories come multitudinous layers of being and personality. As a hostel worker, I get to witness all the niceness and warmth of humanity like a gentle coastal wave.

Then, you get the meanies.

Visual approximation of a meanie

Oh, do they exist, and they come at you like swinging pendulums of doom, like car crashes and bad milk. They rot your day into a tiny piece of sidewalk chewing gum and you don't recover until that night or even the next morning (preferably after a couple glasses of wine). 

Most of the time it happens because people are not aware of what a hostel is and how it works. Yesterday I had a group of 8 dudes from Amsterdam, and two came waltzing in (never a good sign when someone waltzes into reception, especially not if they're wearing neon yellow reflector vests). They shot questions at me about the amenities: breakfast, towels, internet, etc. I answered them congenially. Then... they asked about parking. Alas, there is none at the hostel that's private. Nowhere in the entire city is there private parking for businesses. It's all on the street. Old city with crazily winding roads and alleyways = driver's nightmare. So I explained to the young men the situation, apologizing for the confusion. They were having none of it and glared at me as though I were some hired stripper who refused to take her clothes off. Yeah. That bad.

These boys continued to screech at me, demanding discounts and what have you, and of course I couldn't offer them that. They made me call my poor manager (who was in the middle of getting her hair cut) and bother her. On and on it went, they threatened me with "horrible reviews" the likes of which I'd never seen before.... Just all-around meanies, ya know?

"And they were as mean
as sun-dazzled bats..."

So, since there was nothing I could do or say to console them, I took a good mental picture of the leaders of the group, and decided to add them to my list of future story villains and antagonists. Oh yes. You know that t-shirt that says, "Watch out, you might end up in my novel"? Well, it's factual. And I'm not afraid to use names, either. Everyone will know who the villains are and what they did!

Anyway, like I said, the meanies are people who refuse to let things go and are handling a situation in an irrational manner that hurts everybody involved. Even if you're upset, if you're dealing with someone who is being kind and trying to help you through it, you don't treat them like trash still. You just don't. That's not the warmth of humanity, that's the cloud of meanness that shows how afraid you are of the world deep down inside your mean little soul. That's my humble opinion. (And those guys WILL end up in my novel. And they will be sorry.)

Besides... why drive when you can go by Segway?

Oooooh, mama.

The Hostel Chronicles, Episode 2: The Icelandic Elves

I met an Icelandic man the other day at work. He made a big impression on me as a person, but even more so with his stories of home....

With hair as fair as a silver mountain top, he glowed like a Chinese lantern in the night. Eyes a distilled water blue, and skin pasty yet not underexposed. I could tell he'd seen many winter days--or nights, rather. Iceland's winters come with impenetrable darkness, usually about 20 hours a day of it. For 4 hours you may see a bit of sunlight, but the rest of the time... I couldn't imagine it. No wonder he looked nocturnal, with cavernous irises like a Slow Loris. His demeanor was also slow, but not without energy. A gentle soul, that Icelandic Man.

Iceland's terrain. Yep, I'd totally live there.

And in the summer? Well, daylight nonstop. At one in the morning, it may look the way six in the morning looks to us here in Prague. They have to use black curtains and eye masks to get to sleep. The sun never goes away. I thought, too much sun is just as bad as too little sun. How could someone stand it? But if you've lived there your whole life, I suppose there's nothing strange about it.

Icelandic Man told me about the snowy mountains, the greenery to rival Ireland's, the capes and forests and beautiful rock formations... If you love the beauty of nature, go to Iceland. But besides Reykjavik, there isn't much as far as towns go. He said they don't like to call them villages, but towns. That's very important. Villages is a word reserved for a different kind of habitation, that of the elves.

An elvish village, complete will little water well.
Yep, I'd totally live there. 

Yes, elves. Trolls as well, but he didn't get into those as much. In a voice as serious as a box of explosives, he described how elves live in the forests and mountainsides, in mysterious little stone houses with grass roofs, and how roads and buildings are built around these sites in respect for the elves' territories. Elves are sly little creatures who--when they have any excuse--will disarm and betray you. That's how they get their kicks. "They're certainly not like Lord of the Rings elves," said Icelandic Man. "Our elves are small and grim. They're ugly little tricksters." For instance, if a car driving by an elvish village doesn't stop by the side of the road to leave a gift, the rest of the journey might be cursed... If a hiker wants to pass by an elvish village safely, he must bring along either a poem to recite to the elves, or, even better, a piece of silver.

Small and grim? How 'bout compact and broodingly sexy?

So if you're planning on visiting Iceland, remember to pack your grandmother's silver cutlery, or your old silver costume jewelry, or maybe even a nice silver goblet. If you want to pay respects to the elves (and trust me, you want to) then you must have gifts. Icelanders take their non-human creatures very seriously, almost religiously. It was a whole other cultural phenomenon I'd never encountered. What could be more magical?

Next stop for me, the ever-whimsical traveler: Iceland. 

The Hostel Chronicles, Episode 1: To Pee, Or Not To Pee?

When you're living in a foreign country and can (basically) only speak English (I mean, I can cough up some German here and there, maybe discuss the weather: "Das Wetter ist schlimm, es hat den ganzen Tag geregnet!"...not exactly helpful for the German-speaking guest who just asked me if they can pay in Euros), there are two jobs available to you: teach English to foreigners (blech!) or work in a hostel as a receptionist (blarg?). I chose the latter.

Little did I know that each day at work would bring something different, no day like any other, and that the sheer amount of people I meet within the span of my 12-hour shifts would make for VERY interesting stories and, as you will soon discover, blog entries.

I've decided to create weekly episodes dedicated to my job as a hostel bitch receptionist, and illustrate for my readers the good, bad, and the ugly parts of dealing with so many diverse peoples. (Not to mention my bosses, who offer their own story plots dramatic enough for best-selling paperback novels.)

Note: All names shall be changed to protect to anonymity--plus I just can't remember all the guests' names, otherwise my brain's 8.32 Gigs of memory space would overflow. 

During my shifts, I sometimes have time to scribble some words down in an e-mail to myself diary-style, which later gives me a good overview of my day, and of any potentially blog-worthy experiences with guests. This episode is about my paranoia about going to pee during my shift. You see, the hostel I work in has a locked main door that is only accessible with a key-code, so guests coming to check-in have to press a call button; upon pressing said call button, a piercing, screeching, panic-inducing ring issues from a phone at my desk, alerting me to the present luggage-burdened danger guests outside the door. When I'm at the desk, it's simple: I pick up the receiver, ask blithely, "Hostel reception, hello?" And the guest answers with either a cheerful "Hi, I have a room booked for tonight" or a stiff "Can you let me in?" No big deal, not at all.

But. Sometimes, just sometimes, I have to leave the desk. You know, to pee. Or, chase down the cleaning ladies. Or, search out the source of the obnoxiously loud dub-step (usually on third floor, and we don't have an elevator). 

Here, ladies and gentleman, is a first-hand account of this dilemma that plagues me each time I work: To pee, or not to pee?   

"It's that time of day when you don't know whether you should risk running to the bathroom or hold it as long as possible, because 3 different guests should be coming at 2pm, and it's already 2:48, so by logic they should all be swarming here at the same time, in about fifteen minutes. If logic goes the way it does in hostels, which is that everyone shows up at once, whoever didn't show up at the correct time. And one is a group of six. FML. oh well. I guess they'll be nice. But anyway, as I was saying, you're always thinking to yourself, should I go lock and door and run to the bathroom, or will they come to the door during those ten minutes I'm away from the desk? What if someone calls? I won't be able to help them. They'll be standing at the door wondering wtf is going on. And so I hold it, thinking ok, they'll show up any minute, and I'd rather be here at the desk when they do, than hear the buzzer going off inside the bathroom with my pants at my ankles and unable to move...and I'd worry about washing my hands, and if I should go for it and feel clean, or just flush and run and touch the pens and papers that the guests also touch.Then, feeling the liquidy pressure on my bladder, I think, I'll shout "Just a minute!" but of course they wouldn't hear me, and they'd probably get increasingly frustrated waiting outside the door, not knowing how to get in. They'd probably walk away, or start busting down the door! Omg, what do I do? I've drunk three bottles of water in the past two hours! Fuck! The bathroom's five yards away, I can do it--no, no, I can't! It's Murphey's Law! As soon as I stand up--Brriiiiinngggg!!! Oh, why do simple bodily functions get tried in court when you work at reception???!! It should be an easy answer! Go! Go pee!!!! But, but that ringing...that ringing is like, Satan laughing at a kitten dying from feline AIDs.... okay, I'll hold it."

Guantanamo Must Go...Cont.

If you haven't read my earlier post regarding the evil that is Guantanamo Bay Prison, do so here.

This situation has gotten increasingly worse for not only the inmates but for the American people, who ultimately are affected negatively by the bad reputation this slight on human rights has caused around the globe. Whether you know it or not, you are affected by Guantanamo in multiple ways: millions of your tax dollars are being spent to run the prison as well as the useless, private military tribunals taking place; America's reputation as a country that fights for human rights and fights against torture is being warped by the double standard of Guantanamo, leaving other countries a reason to excuse their own use of torture and illegal imprisonment (i.e. why can't we do it? the U.S. is doing it!); Guantanamo impedes on our supposed moral standing and creates hostile environments around the world even more hostile for U.S. citizens.

Not to mention the elephant in the room that no one in government or elsewhere seems to be addressing
, which is that the Cuban people themselves DO NOT want this prison on their soil any longer. While the prison may be out of sight, out of mind for us, it isn't for the people who live near it or even work there for a living and have to witness the injustice that occurs daily.

Obama made us a promise in 2009 that he would make efforts to shut down the prison. Congress hindered the efforts along the way, for years and years, making the situation for the inmates more and more hopeless as they continued to linger in illegal limbo. 80 prisoners have been cleared for release, yet they have yet to be let go. To me, this is just plain negligence. Something must be done.

My petition to Congress to shut down Guantanamo has reached 78 signatures so far. The word continues to spread, all over the U.S., and even in other countries like Germany, Mexico, Canada, and Czech Republic. The whole world cares about this, and we as Americans should care, too.

Sign the petition here and help put an end to this illegal and unconstitutional madness.