This is the first blog written on my new keyboard. We bought a new computer, and a new keyboard because the old one – the one on which I wrote two books and numerous articles, the one my fingers felt not only at home on but at one with – was old and filthy. Right now it seems I’ll never get used to this new keyboard – a comma appeared in the last sentence when I wanted an ‘m’ – but presumably, after months of typing on it, my fingers will know its contours as well as they knew those of my last keyboard. I tried to get one that was similar: not flat – I hate typing on a laptop – and with fat keys that resemble potential pyramids as opposed to low, square pegs. But it’s not as sturdy or defined, and I wonder why form trumps function on something as private and important as a keyboard.
The Fort Lauderdale Greek Festival begins today and runs through the abnormally chilly weekend, which could put a damper on the festivities. Most people associate the festival – and the country – with warmth, though for me it will bring back memories of the winter a spent teaching English in the northern city of Arta.
My rented room, in an unheated stone house, was so frigid I could see my breath. I used it only for sleeping, and passed every evening at a café, writing and nursing a glass of ouzo. I learned very little Greek, and had a boss who, because of his minimal English, rarely spoke to me. The first day of class, my students gasped when I wrote my name on the blackboard: They had never been taught by anyone left-handed. All the cafes in town were off-limits to women. I had arrived from six months in Poland, a country stuck behind the Iron Curtain that seemed much more modern and progressive than Greece. But somehow I retain fond memories of the country: the music, the dances, the food, the ouzo, the quiet appreciation of life’s small pleasures.
Also reminiscent of martial law Poland are White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt’s briefings with the press. I look at her with the same disbelief, scorn, and disgust as I did at the Polish military’s spokesman back in the day. But joining those emotions is sadness, for this is my country now, and it’s not under the control of a mighty communist neighbor, it’s ruled by a man who has no redeeming qualities as a human being, let alone as a leader.
Watching the Weather Channel this weekend, and thinking of family and friends in New Jersey, Ohio, Georgia, I was reminded of something I wrote in my book A Way to See the World:
“In winter, cold fronts and massive storm systems sweep across the land from the Great Lakes to Okefenokee, leaving the vast majority of Florida untouched. Being here then is like living in an embassy compound in a despotic country – you watch the slow torture of others from the climatic equivalent of diplomatic immunity.”
Of course, it never occurred to me then that this would someday become a despotic country.
The scenes from Minneapolis have been reminding me of the first weeks of martial law in Warsaw in December 1981: the snow, the cold, the armed militia, the bundled-up protesters. The difference is that Polish soldiers didn’t shoot their fellow citizens.
I’ve been cleaning out the closet in my office, which means going through letters, manuscripts, magazines, newspapers – all the detritus of a life, as they used to say, in letters. And I’ve been struck by how much has shrunk since I began my career. I’m finding New Yorkers that ran to over 100 pages, New York Times Book Reviews that were thick with ads, newspaper Travel sections that featured not only travel stories but reviews of new travel books. And not that long ago. My second book, which came out in 2003, got mentions in the travel sections of the Los Angeles Times, Newsday, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. This would be OK, sort of, if everything that used to appear in print now appeared online, but it doesn’t. Of course, I knew there was a diminution in the world of books and literature, but seeing it so starkly, in the recesses of my closet, is making house cleaning all the more unpleasant.
(Note: My computer has been so unreliable I bought a new one, which is going to be installed on Thursday. So if there are no blogs next week, you'll know why.)