Transit

1942:

The first American forces arrived in Europe in January. In March the War Relocation Authority was signed into law by Roosevelt creating internment camps for Japanese citizens. Anne Frank started her famous diary in June. In December the first self-sustained nuclear chain reaction is set off under the bleachers on the football field at the University of Chicago.

And Anna Seghers wrote Transit, a book about the plight of refugees of the Nazis. The book would be published in 1944.

The book basically details the bureaucratic process of getting transit papers. Those papers are defined as: "A transit visa...gives you permission to travel through a country with the stipulation that you don't plan to stay." And that is the entire plot. A man who just wants to stay but cannot. Anywhere.

Seghers went through this process. She fled to Marseilles in 1940 and then on to Mexico in 1941. She wrote The Seventh Cross there and it was released in 1942. It was one of the earliest representations of a concentration camp in media. A movie version was made in 1944. It starred Spencer Tracy, Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy.

It's hard to imagine in 2013 the idea of fleeing your home and then moving consulate to consulate hoping to find a country to take you away to a better life. Or maybe it isn't. The Edward Snowden/NSA story seems out of spy novels. Out of WWII era tales of people trapped, country-less. Whether or not you agree with the details, the similarities are interesting.

That the ultimate feeling from the book is one of hopelessness. A sense of futility. It becomes clear that Seghers is very suspicious of people who leave Europe. In the end her main character decides to attempt to stay. To carve out a new life for himself. He chooses to not abandon Europe. And it is shown to be noble.

It is a bold statement in 1942 to make.

It is a bold thing to openly talk about the horrors of WWII.

I was reminded of Carlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator. That film holds a firm place in history as an early shout against the Nazi takeover of Europe. The final speech is still shocking and wonderful to hear today. And this book seems to conjure a darker version of it.

From the afterword by Heinrich Boll:

For anyone who would like to make writers aware of the dangerous conditions under which they live and write, I would refer them to the last danger enumerated by Saint Paul and cited by Anna Seghers: 'Perils among false brethren'.

The cover of the new NYRB edition has a cover featuring a drawing by Francis Picabia.

Inspiration : Black

Black 9/28/09

My heart is a breathing organ with an unblinking eye

Art by JimmyBlaze

The hamsa is a hand-shaped motif that originates in the middle east. The exact origins are unknown, but pre-date Islam and Christianity. In Islam it is known as the Hand of Fatima, after Muhammad's daughter.

It is meant to protect against the evil eye.

The idea that a look could bring harm.

It has become popular in Israel and appears on jewelry and keepsakes. It is considered a good luck charm. I have one next to my front door. I am not Jewish, Muslim, or superstitious. It was a gift from a good friend. It traveled from Israel with her in 2008.

My hamsa

On my back I have a large tattoo of the sun with an eye in the center. You could view it in a similar light as the hamsa. I always thought of it as an eye in the back of my head. A look out.

When I was 21 I was deeply romantic. The thought that some ink lines buried in a few layers of skin could protect me form history. From the future...

My heart is a hearing organ - a kneecap breaking on a tire iron

That is the sound a healthy heart makes.

The University of Washington has a handy guide with audio of various heart problems. The most common being a murmur. Murmurs result from an out of the ordinary blood flow. They create what sounds like an echo of the heart beat, or a woosh sound.

Most cannot be heard without the aide of a stethoscope. Laying your head onto someones chest as they sleep will not help you find abnormal heart sounds. It will allow you to feel their warmth and count the rhythms of their breaths.

a chamber burned - the outline of a body left behind

It is hard to imagine. Those white marks on the pavement. They could be tricks of the light. Could be strange light shadows. An artifact of a camera causing the color to be odd.

They are nuclear shadows.

Permanent marks on the ground showing where radiation from the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima went and how.

This bridge is 900 meters from the epicenter of the explosion. Thermal radiation moves in completely straight lines. So when it meets an object it reflects off of it. You get a perfect shadow. A mirror of the world.

There are famous shadows. An outline of a body sitting on the steps of a bank. These pilings on the bridge. This valve. The everyday object becomes a strange sort of witness. A sentinel that calls up the past without rest.

Constant. Beating. Watching.

Beantown

Beantown (William Joyce Sentenced to Death in London 1945) 9/19

Jairmany calling, Jairmany calling

We are counting out dried beans into tin cans

and this asshole is on the radio again

in his faked high class accent

Jairmany calling, Jairmany calling

The rumor is he’s from Ireland or America

was a fascist was the head of the BUF

and that he ran off to Germany in 1939

Jairmany calling, Jairmany calling

The beans are for troups

on the lines and he is telling us

that our cause is the wrong one that theirs right

Jairmany calling, Jairmany calling

He will be caught after the war

may he be hung until he is dead

may they leave his head on a pike in the tower

Red-flag

Red-flag (Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany 1990) 9/12

the track is sloped curved these cars go damn fast the black curls

they are blur lines color blending in time ink in water on paper

immersion

you cannot separate motion speed time from the space air breath

this spot            here the place all bodies will come to rest die end

applause

sound of speed curve breaking open the walnut the rip of fabric

here are four bodies blur of red relapsing into black and yellow

there must be release

letting go not forgetting but healing there are wounds in the soil

rock screams and falls and here is a spot divided checkerboard

the lights go red red red yellow yellow green

there squeal rubber smell fire smoke burn and peel out and track 

sloped to center pull churn twist spit back out into daylight

Narrowcast

Narrowcast (Start of the Second World War 1939) 9/3

Today the sun rose
on the third day
of the thousand year Reich

And all of Europe declared war

And 5 years from now
the sun will rise again
as the last trains leave Westerbork

Anne Frank will watch the landscape
from breaks in the slats

Her eyes will search the landscape
for signs of life the fields will
still be green and the sky deep blue

There are sparrows a fox

A large tree standing naked
in the middle of everything
its branches black and heavy

It is a dead thing or soon to be