Muzzle Law

The Swiss are usually an obedient people, but the new Geneva muzzle law on all dogs in most public spaces went into affect on the 2^nd of October. Fines start at about $80. I have yet to see a dog muzzled. The reason behind the ruling was the usually pitbull and dangerous dog attacks, but the number of people put in hospital by a Yorkie or Westie still has to reach above 0. Dog owners, the newspapers, say they are refusing to do it. On the other hand stores sold out of muzzles. Maybe the people bought them for the politicians that came up with this law. I am sure there will be a referendum vote fairly quickly.

Memoire of a divorcée

I was divorced in January 1971, almost 26 years ago. Both my ex and I have gone on to live the lives we were meant to live. I would have hated to stay trapped in Reading, he would have hated living in Europe. Although the divorce wasn’t my idea, I am grateful to him for giving me the freedom that I didn’t know I wanted until after I had it.

Still the day of my divorce and those painful months came back with a whap when once again I had to produce my divorce papers for the Swiss authorities. Now I understand they need to know my marital status for various official things because it affects what they do and have to pay or not pay, who might be entitled to live in the country.

And it was not a reliving of pain that happens each time I bring the papers out, but the memory of pain, which is far different combined with more than a dollop of gratitude that it is over. Someone once said, you truly never divorce. They are right. My ex was a major part of my life for 12 years, we have a daughter. I don’t want to erase those years and I am happy to have had them as a learning tool to that led me into the next stages of my life.

Seeing Sami Again

He stood, wearing an apron, in the doorway of the Lebanese coffee house.

“Sami?” I asked. He was the Sami who used to bring the morning brioche, croissants and pain de chocolate with the good black chocolate to my old company. In chatting he was surprised I had visited his home town of Homs in Syria. Soon I would learn a greeting in Arabic from my Syrian neighbour to greet him as I bought my breakfast, then he would teach me a new word to take back to her.

Our exchanges were simple, but enough to astonish a co-worker, who said, “I didn’t know you could speak Arabic too.” Sami lied and said I spoke it quite well. The co-worker who had been unimpressed told others I spoke Arabic. Fortunately no one else at the company did and Sami and I guarded the secret of my limited vocabulary although unlike French, I am told I do pronounce it well.

He disappeared, falling out with his boss, who replaced him. His boss’s relation to personal hygiene was shaky at best and my Arabic exchanges came to an end.

“I spent the last two years in Canada,” he told me. He is now trying to increase business in the café by serving hummous, taboulli, kibbeh…foods I love and have eaten so often with my forner Syrian neighbor. I made a mental note to eat at the coffee house soon.

Marhaba, Qui Fac, Shukren, Afwan. Hello, how are you, thank you and you are welcome. It comes back.

Geneva October

No more evening walks
in sunshine
nor sitting on the balcony
eating cold cucumber soup
while mountains
smile a pink goodnight

Now dark steals day
before work is done.
I cram fingers into gloves,
walk home.
Sharp air knives my cheeks
as yellowed leaves
attack my ankles
then rush to other victims.

Shutters clatter shut,
seal my flat.
A hot bath bastes my bones.
The kettle gurgles,
a tea cup waits.
Far away
Mountains sleep white.

And one of those ice thingies...

My baked bean and cassoulet friend (a woman who has shared both a New England childhood and a French adulthood), gave me a DVD about map making and perspective by
Dr. Bob Abramms of odt.org.

It’s a challenge of the different perspectives that maps create and it brought back memories from about five Christmases ago, that is a healthy reminder that even what we think is 100%, there can be totally different points of view that can also be 100% correct. I checked my files for something I had written a good five years ago, a variation on the same topic.

*****

“Five continents? There are seven,” my best friend of thirty years said. We were sitting in her Boston bedroom. Although I’ve lived in Europe for over a dozen years, we’ve been able to maintain a close friendship. Nevertheless, from time to time we bump heads on our different experiences and our different chosen cultures, each of us digging into stances that waste both our times and energies.

Oops, here’s another landmine, I thought. Still, I went on. “In Europe they teach five,” I said.

She looked at me. “Name them.”

“Er, the Americas, Eurasia...” My assurance vaporized with the steam of the tea we were drinking. How did others classify the continents? I had no idea.

“In Germany they teach five,” my daughter said. She’d done five years of university in Mannheim, Germany.

“That’s only one country’s point of view,” my friend snapped.

Before taking too strong a stance, I decided to take a survey by emailing my friends, colleagues and neighbors back in Geneva. One of the advantages of working for a small international organization with coworkers representing 47 different nationalities is that it is easy to check out different perspectives. The next morning I ran to my email to see if anyone had answered. My inbox was full.

“Goooooooodmoooooooorningamerriiiiikkaaaa,” my Romanian colleague wrote. “Europe, Asia, South America, North America, Australia. The others are ice thingies.”

Okay, I thought. I was wrong about the Americas being grouped as a single continent. I then opened the email from my Ukrainian coworker. “Six,” he said. He grouped North and South America as one, but added one of my Romanian friend’s “ice thingies” -- Antarctica. When I was first living in Europe, he had taught me to look beyond my beliefs. An ardent Democrat, I resisted going for his jugular when he claimed that “Reagan was one of America’s greatest presidents.” Only after he explained, that he felt that it was Reagan’s Star Wars that helped break up the Soviet Union giving sovereignty to his country, did I look at that particular president from my co-worker’s point of view. The ability to see the other side, I still haven’t mastered, but am closer, thanks to him.

“Five,” my Syrian neighbor, who works for the World Council of Churches, wrote. “Of course,” she added, “with all the new countries what I learned in geography has changed. What about subcontinents like India?” I’d never thought of India being a subcontinent and I didn’t want to get into it either.

“FIVE,” was the opinion of my Swiss German colleague. The” naturally” was implied by the capital letters.

My Swiss French colleague, who is the secretary to our secretary general, showed her normal political acumen that our boss so appreciates. “I learned five,” and then she cited the source. However, detail person that she is, she checked another source that claimed seven.

My Brit buddy, a person with a degree in psychology, came up with her usual response. “You need to define your terms. Is a continent an unbroken landmass…?” Then with her usual sense of humor she added, “We got rid of your continent and all those gum chewers centuries ago.” She never named a number.

Suddenly, I saw the silliness in the situation. Puny mankind could count and define these land masses as they want. It changes nothing. I then imagined how we creatures, who live for only a few decades, try to control by naming and counting what has existed for millions and millions of years. I pictured two Alps talking. “What’s your name now?” one mountain would ask the Matterhorn.

“Some call me the Matterhorn, some Zermatt, among other things, ” the Alp would reply.

I closed my email. My friend and I are meeting my daughter for lunch, three friends, despite differences in age, chosen life styles, professions, or belief in number of continents. We will order good food, share memories, plan the upcoming holiday, which is why I am in the States. The rest is detail, unimportant in our lives.

I am not isolated

One of my greater stupidities was thinking once I retired (allegedly I can hear my daughter thinking as she reads this)is that I would be isolated. It is right up there with the stupidity that when I moved to Switzerland I would no longer have good fresh fish totally forgetting the excellent fish from Lake Leman and Lake Neuchâtel.

My social life over the past week has shown me to be anything but isolated and in the middle of such an international community, that to be surrounded by only one nationality would be boring. I have shared lunch and belatedly celebrated the birthday of my Swiss gentleman friend, had tea with a Canadian, gone to two movies, Paris Je T’aime and the Devil wears Prada with an English friend. Today I met a French/American friend in Geneva where we went to a Japanese restaurant than retreated to her French mountain home until it was time to come back to Switzerland for a Swiss church fair in my old commune. We also went to see my favourite Indian teenager dance her Indian dance. Tomorrow if it is good weather (inshallah) I will go to my commune’s pumpkin festival.

The activities alone aren’t what is so enriching, but the sharing of cultures, ideas, and just simple warmth that friendship brings.

Le Vendage

The smell of fresh grape juice is in the air as I walk by the vineyard on the way to the post. The vendage has begun. Men with trapezoid-shaped, backpack-like white plastic pails from the top of their heads to their thighs with leather straps over their shoulders pick the fruit. The pails are empties into the large metal barrels on flat-bed trucks parked between the rows.

This year I won’t have time to go to the Canton of Valais for Brazili (I am not sure of the spelling). Restaurants near the vineyards serve roasted chestnuts, apples and the first pressings of the grapes. Still, it is enough to watch the men move among the vines as has been done for centuries, only long ago the pails were made of branches.

Caterwauling

He wanted to go home,
stalked around my flat,
wound around the flutes
on the kitchen shelf,
oozed under the bed,
sat in the sink,
used his litter,
complaining,
he was in the wrong room,
and I was the wrong woman.

Signs of the Seasons

Despite the rain, I decided to walk from Rive to Plain Palais where I had an appointment with my dermatologist, about 30 minutes. My leather coat and umbrella kept me dry and I could enjoy the fall feel. All the indications that autumn has come are there. The first was “The hunt has arrived” signs in restaurants meaning they are now serving venison, pheasant and other wild life brought in by local hunters. Likewise the butcher shop displays a stuffed small deer and a stuff pheasant. His shop window could qualify for a Gourmet magazine cover.

The second was the chestnut stand being set up near the fountain at Molard. The mini chalet has a large iron kettle outside and inside burlap bags filled with chestnuts cover half the space. I have yet to be bonked by a chestnut, another sure sign of this season. Bonk is not used in the Brit sense of a brief sexual encounter but the American meaning of a sharp encounter with a falling object.

The last sign will have to wait. That is when the nouveau Beaujolais will arrive. At that point I will buy winter gloves.

In New England other signs foretold the change of season. The first red leaf would flutter from a tree. The leaves, although pretty, are no where near as brilliant as in New England, but I can content myself with the crisp nights and the rain and the hunt and the chestnut stands and…

Meeting a friend for lunch

Our park picnic was rained out, but we settled for one of the UN restaurants to catch up. He and I began our friendship 9/11 when I ran into his office after seeing CNN when the first plane struck. We could no longer connect to CNN so he logged onto El Païs, which was reporting it. He speaks four languages, giving us more choices. I ran home and phoned back news as it happened.

He is better read than I am, but we can debate the merits of editorial policy on a number of European, Mid Eastern and Asian papers. Our discussions, like so many American, worried about the future of the country went quickly into politics.

Today our topics were –

1. Why is America even debating torture? Excluding the morality issue, becoming the new Spanish Inquisition doesn’t mean that truth is gathered. Victims say anything to stop the pain. Torture doesn't work and only creates more enemies.
   
2. How come we are so anti Iran for threatening to destroy Israel when they have not attacked a country for decades whereas the US has destroyed Iraq and aided in the destruction in the Lebanon through its supply of weapons and rejection of resolutions and feet-dragging?
3. The new intelligence report saying that the Iraq has only increased terrorism. Therefore “staying the course” so our soldiers didn’t die in vane makes even less sense. Our soldiers not only died in vane, they made the situation worse for the people they wanted to protect. If America reacted so violently to less than a day of isolated attacks, how could we expect a people to react after three and a half years of living under terror? Wanting to get us back.
   
4. “We must be thought of as paranoid," we said, as we related we wouldn’t return to the US until after the election. We were only reassured of our sanity by the large number of ex-pats who worry about being able to get in and out of the US. We share every mention of the conditions that would necessitate martial law when spoken by people like Tommy Frank, the president and others. We try hard not to think of Blackhawk mercenaries shooting our citizens in protecting property not people in New Orleans.
5. The national debt. How long can the US continue to borrow? How much further can people go into debt before it all comes crashing down, we ask ourselves.”
6. The Swiss elections: For once the roesti curtain (The French and Germans almost always vote differently. The name comes from the potato dish typical of Swiss Germans ) didn’t hold when it came to tighter asylum laws. The Canton of Geneva also voted that pupils in grade school would be graded 1-6 beginning next year ending several years of no grades. The teachers seem happy.
7. The film Jesus Camp. There is a trailer http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0486358/ Seeing a little boy rock back and forth is too reminiscent of the children in the madras schools rocking back and forth as the read the Koran. We agree it borders of child abuse and crossed over into brain washing.

All in all when we meet there is a great feeling of sadness and despair when we look back to from where we came. We want the America of our civics classes where there is truth and justice and hope not what exists today. Even if we choose to live outside the borders, even if we choose the nationality of the country we now live in what America does has an impact on the world. We want to be proud, not ashamed of our origins. It just plain hurts to see what is happening.

His time was limited, and I was due to meet a friend at the Café du Soleil. We mentioned meeting after work in the not to distance future joined by his wife as we walked off in different directions physically. Mentally I wished he could have proven me wrong in what I was thinking.

Television News December 11, 1998

Blood draws tiny roads
across his face
an unplanned journey’s end.
He cannot talk of
The horror-joy of survival.

White-haired men
masked as leaders
know which camera angle
Profiles sincerity
while they rework clay words.

Above men’s heads a board.
On the board a boy’s body
wrapped in a flag of
a country that is not.
He died saying it should be.

Skype I love you

As a technical dummy, I am trying to set up a web site. Fortunately the person I consider my French daughter is a webmaster and she has been walking me through it with more patience than any sane person can expect. She has calmed me through terror, down to panic, and I’ve proceeded to this makes sense and I am almost at a point where I am saying I can do this.

Equally thrilling, since she is in New York, we both are on Skype so a two-hour phone call is doing nothing to my pocketbook. I should probably buy her a gift certificate for aspirin – she’ll need them before I can say I am functioning independently.

Likewise, the ease of a quick check in with other friends on Skype is a wonderful way to maintain friendships and exchange snippets of information. Saturday I was able to chat with my best friend and she was able to give me a minute call to ask a simple question all without charge.

Some of my other friends are adding Skype as well making the Atlantic Ocean a mere puddle when it comes to communication.

Another reason to be afraid

I maintain that Americans are scared of terrorism when there are more things to be frightened of that can actually hurt them: air pollution, medicine (Vioxx), water (too high arsenic allowances, medical system (46 million without health insurance, mercury in vacines,), environmental changes cosmetics (only one American cosmetic company meets the stringent safety EU standards), than marauding terrorists.

There’s a new fear. Flying. This is has nothing to do with Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying but the desire of the government (FAA) to cut the number of air controllers serving the nation’s airports by 10% and to make the remaining work longer hours. The recent accident in Kentucky has not stopped them, although the air controllers themselves have protested.

An Airport Restaurant

Cups lifted to lips.
Cutlery scrapes china.
Laughter rises over voices.
Babies prattle.
A pushed chair skreaks.
Departure screens
list gates, places, times.
Coins disappear in a
waitress’ pocket.

Lives touch but
leave no mark

She did it

N, who I have not seen since before the summer, has finally grown taller than I am, although that is not a huge achievement. When my first Swiss boss called my old boss in the States for a recommendation, my old boss raved about me. The future Swiss boss asked, “Can’t you think of anything bad about her. “Well, she isn’t very tall,” my old boss said. In any case N has come a long way since she couldn’t reach the button 6 in our elevator to get to the floor where we had our apartments. She will continue to grow. I am fighting to maintain my five foot one.

It is there

Assisted suicide will now be allowed at the Geneva Cantonale hospital under strict conditions. Lausanne and Zurich already allow this. Although I am not sure that I could ever do this, it is good to know that I have a choice if I am in situation of agony with no hope of recovery. Part of maturity is knowing that the word never seldom holds true when faced with certain circumstances.

Sleeping Over

I spent the night with the Indian family at my old address. When living on the other side of the lake, my apartment house floor was a joy of internationals. During my eleven years there I had the pleasure of meeting English, Russians, Czechs, Kenyans, Japanese and Italians. I have stayed close to the English couple and still talk to the Couple Czech every now and then.

However during my last few years at François Lehman, the Indian family and my Syrian girl friend and I became almost a triumvirate with tooings and frooings, shared teas, meals, epiphanies with the special 12th night cake, holidays, dance and play performances, book readings, movies and outings. Even Sunday morning breakfasts when we would show up in pajamas, not needing to change or rush during a lazy winter morning felt special. To me these were golden times. I am lucky we are still building memories that moving hasn’t diminished the warmth and the pleasure of sharing just being together.

Relish Making

Jars clatter against the pot.
Their lids cook clean in boiling water
drowning the flick-click of Sister’s peeler
as cucumber skins pile high.

Wonder Bread dangles from Mother’s mouth.
“Stops the tears,” she mumbles shoving
another half onion into the grinder.
She pushes faster than I can cut.

We are a coven of cooks
women from four different decades,
my daughter allowed for the first time
into our fall relish making.

Each year I forget turmeric stains.
Each year I am told use the old towel
to wipe the jars sparkling green
in the late day sun.

And only when we’re done
when all is clean and put away
does my daughter open the door
letting our men back into our lives.

Celebrating Mabon by Accident

The red and green grapes are so juice ladened that the vines are bent. The vendage will start shortly.

As a writer, it is easy to lock myself to my computer, but on a day like today, it would have been to substitute writing about life for life.

Thus I found myself on a walk through the lushness of a late-summer afternoon not going gently into the good fall night.

Everywhere flowers or all the colors of the rainbow were standing tall. Trees and bush leaves were almost hidden by blue, red and white berries. The breeze from the lake whispered across my face.

My memories roamed back to a day like this years three years ago when my daughter and I played hooky from work and job hunting to take a boat across the lake to Yvoire http://yvoire.free.fr/ (please look at the photos).

As I walked back down the hill, the beauty of the lake and mountains almost too much to bear, I remembered that September 21 is the pagan holiday of Mabon or Winter Finding, the second harvest festival and a time of thanksgiving and meditation. Spiritually one sets up new patterns for the future and encourages the sharing of the richness of the earth.

So much of what was natural and beautiful that surrounded me that I knew true peace. I was celebrating a pagan day that I had forgotten, which made the moment all the better.

Luc Surbeck

Luc Surbeck was an attorney, but unlike many attorneys he spent most of his time at a theatre he started with his partner Claude Para. Over the years I enjoyed many of the plays the two men put on and like the old-time movie comedy where the same person fills many roles, these two men did everything, took the tickets, served at the bar and as waiters for dinner before the theatre, were ushers, designed the sets, and acted in the many two-men plays they found. www.theatreparasurbeck.ch/

Monday he died at the theatre he loved. He was 55.

He was a man who lived his dreams finding a way to succeed in a profession that denies so many talented people a voice. Maybe it is reminder to all of us to do what we love as much as possible.