TRAVEL DIARY

A weblog regularly updated by Jodi Rose.

Tuesday, January 10, 2006

10:21 PM
Posted by jodi rose

the celestial border guards
age old question - is what I'm doing enough?
it seems like too much fun to be real work
thinking about protection, thinking about love
require attention, focus, care, someone else's needs above your own
morning walk along the danube, it's so beautiful here
another clear sparkling day, imagine summer will be gorgeous
I have to come back
thinking about Rilke and what survives - as magris says, it is not victory that is important, but survival. all those conflicts over thousands of years, battles for control of the border, waves of civilisation and conquest - what survives from all this?
are there any turkish or mongol traits in the culture or peoples, how does the music of one time shift and play into another?
what survives is the river. always flowing

I have a taste of some of the Hungarian band on the jukebox. Why do you like this music, I ask? 'It is difficult to play, but simple to listen to.' Excellent answer - and good writing should be like that too. Sorry!

I invited a friend to come with me to the winter ball, he laughed - don't joke with me. I said; I want to dance with you.
I will dance with you here, now, he replied - so we waltzed around the bar. It seems that class consciousness is alive and flourishing - someone told me last week that this is the big fancy ball which all the politicians and leaders go to. and it lasts until 6am - they know how to have a good time! there's a tombola and surprise entertainment.

I mention to Gyuri that I would like to see the documentary about the bridge 'Collect the ruins' which the local photographer worked on as cameraman - I see him around and say hi, but we haven't met. So a few minutes later he appears, promises to drop in the dvd tomorrow and tells me he is also interested in making a piece about my project and the bridge guarding for the local tv station where he works. So there it all flows today.

Earlier I dropped in to see Andrea and deliver the results of my baking, and she introduced me to a colleague who composes - he made an impromoptu concert in the music school hall - fabulous with chandeliers and grand piano - of his latest piano work. It has an optimistic feel, he tells me, with a star shining. Yes, I can hear that.
I sit in on her two piano students, which brings on incredible nostalgia, fingers stumbling through a syncopated rag, not enough practice at home. Then outside a colleague of Gyuri's accosts me on the street and introduces herself, Cornelia, the physics teacher. She will also drop by tomorrow to make a program with me for her students.

Just give it up, stop trying to organise anything is the message I'm getting here. Let it happen.

I have a fascinating conversation with a friend who led the student protests against the regime in the late 80's - 'we didn't know that it was all about to change', he tells me - 'that was very brave,' I comment, 'you could have been arrested' - 'yes, I was shaking', he says. But he got up at the school assembly, in front of 1000 students and all the teachers, and told them what people had been saying privately but were too scared to say in public - that this is wrong, many other people think so too, we have to stand up for ourselves.

What were you fighting for specifically? I ask - of course I know the broad outline, but the detail of lived experience isn't something you can imagine from afar - well, he tells me, 'we couldn't say what we think, it is like this' (hands outstretched as if handcuffed together) and you just have a number and stay in your box until someone decides to move you here and here - most people were brought up not to question, not to have their own opinion. (sorry I'm paraphrasing this from memory and my english is getting very bad too!)
And was it worth it, have things changed for the better? I ask.
Yes, definitely. It would be very interesting for you to be here twenty years ago, there is hardly anybody on the streets - maybe 20 at most.

So, again I am aware of all the options and choices that I take completely for granted, being a citizen of the decadent affluent 'West'. However we have been complacent about our freedom of speech for so long now that it appears to have been eroded beneath us, and as the anarchists say, freedom to consume isn't really freedom at all. Although Zoli tells me when they started the pub, and offered a choice of four beers, people said he was crazy - indeed, why would you want four when two is plenty! But now they have 13, and it really is the best pub in town, possibly in Slovakia (that's what the locals say anyway, even the ones who go away to live in Bratislava or the czech republic come back here for weekends!)

ah hell enough random political philosophising - that's what the kids are doing on my side of the globe and border - what's going on in your town these days?