Patrick Jay Sullivan's Blog

I just got home from campus. I finished my finals and my six weeks in Spain studying is over the day after tomorrow. I could have easily walked home. I enjoy he walk and Madrid. It is an interesting city in which to walk. However, I was so happy about finishing my courses and I still have seven trips on my underground pass so I headed down the stairs to Line 7 Pitis. And let me tell you, the subway was crowded. And speaking of Pitts, I know it has been hot in Madrid lately but there is something going on that just doesn’t make sense to me. It’s a matter of personal hygiene. I smelled some odors today that could be used as weapons. It was like the old Spain, back in the 70’s. I lived in Sevilla where it was really warm. In the heat of the day, when the busses were full, it was 95 degrees in the shade and old men wearing wool suits jostled around hanging on to the overhead bar as the buses made turns and wove in and out of traffic. People just didn't shower every day back then. Hot water was a luxury and in Sevilla, to be honest, water was often a luxury. Almost everyone back then showered two or three times a week. They all figured we were too obsessed. Yes, indeed, I remember the stench on the bus some days. A lot of guys burping and farting garlic from their lunch didn't help either. There were a couple of times when I nearly lost my lunch. And that was thirty some years ago when things didn’t bother me as much. I was more flexible and tolerant.

It’s a double edged sword that smites you when you least expect it. You see a handsome young man or a pretty woman walking along. You are sitting there minding your own business and then get downwind of them or just close by and BAM. They haven’t showered in a couple days. And those clothes they are wearing have been worn more than a few times since they’ve seen the inside of a washing machine. Not cool! To be fair this is only a small number of people here and I have to be honest and say that I've experienced the same thing in school back in the United States. There are teenagers who don’t feel comfortable with their body image and who like to work out during and after school but will not shower in public. They waltz out of the class or club, go to class or jump in their car and go home to eat and work on their computer. Some of them get busy and then they hit the sack late and get up late the next morning for school with no time to shower. By the time they get to the afternoon classes, I have to make sure I stay far enough away so that my eyes don’t water. It just doesn’t make sense to me. People have to be able to realize what they smell like. Don’t they? How can you put so much effort into having the right cell phone and the Holister shirt and the blah blah blah whatever and then not take care of that one little detail that makes such a difference - personal hygiene.

I don’t really know what the point of this blog is except to complain a little. I mean, how hard can it really be to toss that shirt in the laundry and pull on another one after a quick shower. You don’t have to be in their for a half an hour. If you only have time for five minutes you can wash and rinse off. Skip the hair if you like just get the sweat rinsed off and some kind of soap smell infused into that skin. Use deodorant. Do something.

Dude, if not for yourself, do it for those of us who have no choice but to be downwind. People in New York, Madrid, California, Germany, England or wherever: - Take advantage of soap and water. It is one of those basic human pleasures that give back something to all of those we encounter along the way.

I just finished six weeks of classes here in Madrid and I have to say it has been an eye opening experience. More and more of Europe is influenced by the culture in the United States and the young people seem to have so much in common. I was working on a research paper in the campus computer lab and a young man from Germany, Ben was talking to a young woman from the United States, Jessica. Although their conversation drifted in and out of my consciousness depending upon how intent I was on what I was typing or where I was with the notes that I had taken, nevertheless I got enough of it to realize that despite being from two different countries they were incredibly in tune to the world and technology. She had an education and was a pastry chef. He has just finished his undergraduate degree. At various times they had to deal with cell phone calls and the work they were doing on the computer. And I realized that many of the young people in various countries in Europe and the United States actually have more in common with each other than the young people in the United States have with me and with people from my generation.

It is startling really. They watch some of the same films, the text message friends and file through hundreds of video segments on you tube and other sites. They are influenced by the same music and have similar hopes and dreams. When people in the lab ask questions, tossing it out as they do for anyone to answer I have given my two cents worth or explained something I knew how to do (that scarcely happens at all). They look at me unsure. Does this dinosaur from a different era have even the slightest chance of knowing how to format this or access that file? It’s a fair question for them to ponder. I mean, it’s not like when I was twenty. There was no Internet and I engaged in dialog with people in their fifties, sixties and seventies. In fact, I loved hearing about what life was back in the late 1800’s from really elderly people. Or hearing about World War I.
“Kaiser Bill went up the hill to take a look at France,
Kaiser Bill came down the hill with bullets in his pants.”

But communication has changed. There isn’t as much face to face discussion as there was even twenty years ago. The generation that is entering and exiting the Universities of the world today is a generation of text messagers and Internet surfers. They chat online and haven’t the slightest interest in that one on one fact to face dialog that opens up new horizons. Today a high school student may be sitting side by side with his girlfriend and they are text messaging on their cell phones… to each other. Today people are more skilled at intrapersonal communication than they are at interpersonal communication.

I honestly don’t know that you can say it is bad or good. It is just the way things are in this world. Change is happening at the speed of life. Cultures that are thousands of years old have been launched into cyber life and the young people are farther from their parents and grandparents than they have ever been in the history of human civilization. If you have a Rip Van Winkle experience, you will undoubtedly not recognize the planet when you awake. You may not even get the reference. But isn’t that the point. If you don’t have desire to know or access to the wisdom and the archetypal knowledge from previous generations then you have a life I can’t really relate to at all. It makes me wonder if values will shift so radically that some day I will be an elderly man waiting for my euthanasia injection because there is no social security any more or medical insurance and I don’t even know how to download a song or

The first time I traveled abroad was in August of 1975. I took an Aviaco flight from Kennedy Airport in New York to Madrid. From Madrid I made my way by train to Sevilla where I studied for a year and lived with a family. It was one of the greatest years of my life, although in the moment I did not see it. My parents knew that I lacked a lot of self confidence and they were positive that this experience would turn me around and make a man out of me. Well, it truly did. It made the biggest difference in my life. I remember years later my mother telling me that it was one of the best investments they ever made. Of course, this was after I got a great teaching position because of it. Then there was the whole history of them trying to talk me out of a career as a teacher. But that is for another blog.
The thing about studying abroad is that it isn’t one single experience. When you go study in a foreign university and live with a family that does not speak your language, you test yourself every single day. It is not about the singular experiences; but rather, it is about the gestalt. Over time you learn how to solve problems, how to accept defeat with humility and how to savor your success. You learn to choose your battles and to fight fair and triumph when all depends upon it. And you open your mind up in a way that only experiencing a different culture can do for you.
At the same time, one can not ignore the merit of those “singular experiences.” You see, many of those singular experiences do have a profound effect on your life. I remember a Saturday morning later on in the school year, say March. My room mate had gone out on a Friday night and tied one on. The Señora’s son, Jose Carlos had gone out the night before and tied one on. Her daughter, Mercedes, was a true scholar and had stayed up late, late into the night studying her architecture coursework. So there was the Señora Julia Canales de Handler and myself having a cup of coffee and breakfast early that Saturday morning when there was a knock on the door. She went to answer and I zoned out while sipping my café con leche. Soon Julia appeared from around the corner and told me to come with her and not say anything. She was white as a ghost. “Whatever happens, Patricio, for the love of God don’t say so much as a peep.” “OK” I responded nervously told me she would be gone upstairs for a few minutes. I remember feeling that the man in the brown suit was the devil incarnate just from the look on his face and those steely black eyes. I quietly fell into step behind Julia and he was behind me. We went up to the piso right above us. Julia entered and always the mother, burst across the room hugging one of the three boys standing against the wall. I heard her whisper something and Mr. Brown suit yelled for them to answer her. “Have we laid as much as a hand on your three?” They fearfully replied “No”

Now, here is the thing. I have to explain that there were three young college students living in the piso above us at number 17 in the calle Virgen de la Estrella. In the seventies, students didn’t really rent a place. Pisos are like condos. There is a mortgage and you own one. So one of their fathers’s either owned it or rented it from a friend. I didn’t actually care much for these three. I don’t know what they studied but they always tried to get me into arguments about the U.S. They were young and one of them had been recruited by the “Joven Guardia Roja” which is the young red guard. It was a communist group and the recruiter was from Italy. But regardless they did not like the democracy in the U.S or capitalism and they always argued with me on days I was unlucky enough to cross paths nearing home on the walk back from the University. There is nothing in this world that is worse than trying to talk to people who are brainwashed, except, of course, trying to talk to power craze police who are about to beat the crap out of suspected subversives.

Once the recruiter had one of them he was able to get all three of them to join. Idealistic university students under the fascist dictatorship of the Franco regime were eager to stand up for liberty. But in Spain in 1975 there was only one legal party and it was right wing. So belonging to a radical party like the Marxists or the Communists got you into big trouble. You could be imprisoned or executed and without a trial. But what these police were most interested in when it came to young college students was who was the organizer putting the ideas into their heads. So they would bring them in and beat the living shit out of them and torture them until they said whatever they knew and often said things they didn’t know.

Like the extraordinary mother that she was, Julia had always looked out for them and once in a while brought up a soup or a stew from the little she could afford to give. She had no idea of their politics but it wouldn’t have mattered. On that day, when we arrived in the pesos, there were the three young men in handcuffs and white as ghosts. Three other agents were systematically searching every square inch of the place. They needed some evidence. After the search, when it came time for the two witnesses to sign the search document, they discovered that I was not a Spaniard. Neither Julia nor I had any idea it would make a difference. We didn’t even know we were there to attest to the fact nothing got planted. One of those families must have had some kind of connection. Anyway, I was dismissed while they nabbed another neighbor to sign. Julia was able to pull me aside and tell me that in the study there was a book about Mao and she wanted me to tear the pages out and flush them down the toilet. (This was while one of the three officers went to wake up the next door neighbor to come and sign the document in my place.

A short time later Julia returned. The men left with the three students and we didn’t see them again for weeks. When they did come back they had black and blue marks all over, huge bags under their eyes from lack of sleep and they were a lot more quiet and subdued than I had ever seen them all year. I wonder if those guys are around today in their fifties and if they ever talk about their incarceration. I wonder what happened. I know that they told Julia but she respected their desire to keep it quiet.

The first weeks here in Spain, back in June, seem like a blur. You have to get used to different foods, a different time zone, being a student again and a completely different culture. While taking my courses and living here these past 4 weeks I became aware of something quite interesting. I couldn't put my finger on it at first. Each day I would listen to the world news, the national news, and the local news. I would buy newspapers and read them and make note of words I felt were important in my little new word and ideas notebook that I carry. About two weeks ago while waiting for the metro I was thinking about life over here, the EU, and Spain. And it hit me. The media and media coverage over here, more specifically, the news agencies and the news broadcasters are a lot less biased and a lot more open and fair in their coverage of events here than any of their American counterparts. Here the country is openly criticized and ideas and polices are discussed. Conservative and liberal leaders enter into debate and instead of labeling and name calling; they actually debate ideas and policies.

The thing that is so amazing is that as I look back, I can almost visualize the demise of the media coverage in the United States. After the last Clinton victory, many conservative groups formed coalitions and a lot of right wing evangelical groups and other smaller conservative groups joined forces to promote their agenda. What they did not anticipate was that blank check that 911 would give George Bush and the powerful representatives of conservative groups around the United States. Once the World Trade Center was destroyed and the country gone into shock, President Bush came in with his determination to "kick some ass." and the image of a rustic president of the common people doing battle with the evil dragon met with singular popularity. We went nuts and got behind him. We all did and don't any of you deny it. There is nothing wrong with that. We were in a vulnerable and scary time. But what happened after is tragic. Because industry and corporate America began to get in line to receive big benefits and they opened their wallets up to any group that President George supported. As labor laws were rewritten and jobs shifted to overseas I believe what happened after that is that things geared up for his war on terrorism, read :Sadham Hussein.

Like teenage boys gathering their troops and figuring out their weapons for a video game war, the machine geared up and before you knew it, we invaded Iraq. For George Bush and his accomplices, it really was like a big video game. They dusted off the American Military machine and put on an impressive show of force. Of course, no one thought about what was to come after or how to actually leave some semblance of order. So someone in the Bush camp came up with the idea of a democracy in the Middle East. Yeah, that's it; we are going to convert the theocratic Muslim centered governments to democracy. And everyone believed that educated men in high places felt that this was a reasonable probability. But in order to keep things going as well as they were, the government had to make sure that no one voiced strong or easily accepted opinions to the contrary.

And this bunch had learned from the war in Viet Nam what not to do. No pictures or coverage of anything could be allowed. No independent journalist who asked tough questions could be allowed at press conferences. People who attended the president's speeches were hand picked and signed documents stating that they were supporters of his policy and his ideas. Once that shift happened everything was censored and has been censored ever since. The censor machine in the U.S. became drunk with power. Anyone who criticizes is labeled unpatriotic. Citizens are encouraged to reprimand their neighbors if they speak out against the president's war.

There was a time in this country when you could discuss anything but now people have been taught to "peer censor" by the likes of Bill Reilly and others. Now you can seriously land in jail for criticizing the government. All those ideals that patriotic Americans who believed in the constitution and the power of freedom of speech fought for, especially for those of us who grew up in the sixties and seventies - they are gone now. Those ideas have been replaced by mindless acceptance of the status quo. We must not rock the boat. Our freedom and liberty has been replaced by a regime that the WW II fascists governments would envy. I refer to the likes of Mussolini, Franco and now you can put Bush up there with them. "Guantanamo Bay? Torture? No, no - Don't look at what that hand down there is doing. Watch this one up here." Yeah, Well I've seen this trick before. I grew up with it in the fifties. Remember McCarthy? But I digress.

While we were all putting yellow ribbons on our cars and pickups and pictures of waving flags in our windows, our government was selling the working man down the river, sending jobs overseas to triple corporate profits, helping the wealthy double their profits and driving the economy to ruin by spending billions each day on a war in Iraq that never should have been. If I sound bitter, I am. I miss the America where the media could say these things and not have recriminations and censorship. I miss the America where the coffins returning from war could be seen, not hidden away so that no one would notice. I miss the America that expected the news agencies and other media to be open and honest and cover everything, all sides of an issue. Of course, it helps that over here in Spain there is a real difference between the liberal parties and the conservative parties. But the fact remains, freedom of speech is alive and well in Spain but not so in the United States of America.

http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portada

It’s all a matter of perspective really. When we are young we live with our parents and we have to abide by their rules and go along with their wishes. As we draw nearer to independence we get anxious to be out on our own. When we first get out on our own, it is a bit of a shock. Our time is spent trying to make a living and doing the best we can to get over our homesickness and desire to be back with the people who, just a few years earlier we thought were insufferable. As time goes by we realize that it was a stage and we are fortunate enough to have settled into life, such as it is. As the years speed by, we lose a lot of perspective and we gain some as well. I think that the loss of our parents is one of the toughest things in life. When we get to the point where we have to go on by ourselves it can be extremely difficult. I suppose married people have a little advantage in that there is someone else to cling to and usually children. That would take a lot of the focus off of the loss and balance life out a little. Still, there is no denying that when the folks are gone, life changes and it is an irrevocable change.
It comes down to this. You are working for a living and you have to abide by the rules of the people you work for and you have to do what they say you must do. As you draw nearer to retirement it gets more and more difficult because you are convinced that you need your independence. The truth is though, they are not your parents and they don’t always have your best interests in mind. On the other hand, the day to day work world is never as bad as it seems when you are in this point of your career. You work and work and then one day you retire. You find out that you are older and on the downhill side of life. You wish you could put the brakes on but it doesn’t quite work like that. Time passes at the same rate of speed as always. It just seems different as you get older, because, it is all a matter of perspective. None of us wants to die. It is just a part of life we must accept. But just for now. Whatever state we are in or whatever stage of life we are in from “puking mawling babe” to “toothless old man” we just have to enjoy it. Carpe diem.

It's Sunday. I wrote a great entry this morning but when I went to save it I lost it all. I have no idea what I did. Technology is a great thing but it is very unforgiving. What I was thinking about this morning was how my flat mate and I had walked up to the barrio next to ours. It is called Tetuan. We had to go grocery shopping and both had put it off. It was a Saturday and already after 2:30 when we left. The thing is, most places close about 3:00 or 3:30. People go home and eat the big meal of the day as a family. Supper is late and often something light. So we wandered around and found some great markets where we purchases vegetables for salad, potatoes for our lunch and other supplies necessary. On the way home we got lost. Normally, one would simply retirarse, that is, go back (retreat) in exactly the way we had come. But we decided to take an atoja, a shortcut. Even in the newer looking barrios, the streets curve and take off in a multitude of directions. Buildings may look modern, but most have simply been gutted and rebuilt along the same street lines which have existed for often centuries. Cars have not been around that long and Madrid is an ancient city, to say the least. So we found ourselves in a muslim barrio and being mid day every store was shut down and not a soul to be seen walking around. Eventually we crossed over into another barrio and found a large street. At a bus stop, I asked a woman holding a baby if she knew where the Franco Rodriquez metro stop was. She smiled, pointed up the four line street and said: "All the way to the crest. You can't miss it." So we walked up and found it. That metro stop is two blocks from the apartment where we are staying during summer session.
I washed my hands, took out the chicken and fried it. I cooked and mashed the potatoes, made a salad and fixed the gravy. We had a great meal and we were finished in time to take a siesta about 6:00 PM. This is not the normal siesta time in Madrid. Throughout Spain, the siesta is normally a half an hour and after lunch. Lunch is normall from 3:00 to about 4:00 or so. It varies. There are a more and more people who follow a more U.S. style work day and have forgone the siesta and, in fact, eating at home. But I am happy to say that in this little barrio, of which Leneros street is a part, the siesta is still very much a part of life. The stores and businesses don't open back up until 5:00 PM. It is a much more civilized way of living as opposed to wolfing down a sandwhich in twenty minutes and then rushing back to work.

It's half way through my 6 week stint at Saint Louis University. I have two classes: Twentieth Century Spanish Novel and Masters of Spanish Paint, Dance and Art. Both are good classes. No surprise there; this is a Jesuit university after all. Yesterday I had a mid term exam in the novel class. Although I really kept up in class and studied prior to the exam each day for about four days I felt unprepared and overwhelmed. I think a lot of it is due to never having been in this program and really not knowing what is expected of me. I know my first year in Santiago was stressful and after that each year got easier. You get to live with the same people and mostly take courses from the same professors. It makes the culture shock a lot less. This time I found myself emailing friends and talking about how much I wanted to be home instead of telling them about things going on. I have had to fight for a few things that I needed and growing up in a family of thirteen I honestly didn't have to do a lot of that. Things may have been chaotic but my mom had a system and you got what you needed almost without having to ask for it. As an adult, it is hard for me to fight for what I had been promised; what I should have received. But I didn't need to come to Madrid to learn that. I have a high level of self awareness as a rule.
The thing that is different today is that for better or worse the first exam is over and now I can concentrate on learning. I also notice that the Spanish flows from my mouth. Last night I awoke from a dream in Spanish. I don't know who all the people in my dream were but they spoke Spanish well. This weekend I will finish reading Tiempo de Silencio. Time of Silence is supposed to be a key novel in the post war Franco era. It is funny to hear the professor talk about life under Franco (She is much younger than I am) She would have been about ten when he died. I was here in Sevilla in November of 1975 when Fransisco Franco passed. There were some who indulged in dancing in the streets and revelry. Needless to say they did not stay in one place very long. The Guardia Civil still walked with their rifles and their three corner hats. I remember them beating a young man near the University (Ensenanza General Basica) and we had orders to keep walking and look away. I felt sick at heart. It is a long time ago and far away. I look in the mirror and see a middle age man peering back.
Well, now I just need to get to the campus and get ready for class, have lunch and this weekend work on my other projects that will be due soon.