Happy Thanksgiving, ok now time to shop

The Saturday after Thanksgiving I was with a friend of mine and I told her that in the US it is a holiday. Our conversation (in Slovak, thus it is very rudementary, but that's what makes it fun) went something like this:


Friend: What kind of holiday?
Me: It's called Thanksgiving. We eat turkey.
F: What is it for?
M: The pilgrims...
F: What is a pilgrim?
M: The first white people in the US. (Blame the lanaguage difficulties for that one.) They came from here (roughly known as Europe). (Again, I would go into religious persecution, but persecution isn't in my active vocabulary.)
F: Ok, I don't understand, but keep going.
M: Well, they were really really hungry. (I don't know the word for starving.) And the Indians gave them food.
F: Turkey?
M: I guess so. It doesn't matter. They helped the pilgrims.
F: Then the pilgrims killed the Indians.
M: No, that was later.
F: Why turkey?
M: Why not? I think because it was there.
F: Thanksgiving (practicing her pronunciation, because in fact there is no "th" sound in Slovak, so it is hard to say... just deserts, I think).
M: Giving thanks (I translate).
F: To whom?
M: God and the Indians.
F: Then they kill them after giving thanks.
M: Yes.

I guess I show my ethnocentrism when I thought to myself later -- doesn't everyone know what Thanksgiving is about??? How can one not know Thanksgiving? It is a staple. One must over-eat, feel that triptophan enduced nap, watch the Macy's parade and then hit the sales the next day. Further, doesn't every child have to create a "hand turkey" in kindergarten? You know, outline your hand, color the fingers, and zippo-chango, you've got a bonefide hand turkey. No, I guess not.

What is interesting here, in Slovakia, is that the holidays are in celebration of events occuring recently, within the last 50 years, because the state itself was never sovereign until 1938, when it separated from the Czech Repbulic, to be reunited again and separated again -- more cause for holidays. It is significant that the holidays are present in the memories of the people. They are less trite, less myth-based. It would be as if every holiday were Martin Luther King day. Full of after-school-specials demonstrating how people can make a difference in society. As usual, one can read this as a criticism of American celebration, please don't. It is simply different and different isn't always this is good, therefore this is bad. Shed that dichotomous thinking.

One thing that does make Thanksgiving important, is that it symoblizes the point at which the Christmas melee begins. Without this more appropriate later date, Christmas begins after Halloween, as it seemed to have here, and that shopping season is simply way way too long. Perhaps therein lies the real importance of Thanksgiving -- it holds the consumerism wolves at bay for a little longer.

A Strange Commute

It was a normal Monday evening and I had finished working at 18.00 (that's 6.00 p.m. for you Americans reading). I had been feeling ill, tired, that general sense of woe that accompanies the fall to winter switchover and in a haze I stepped onto an uncroweded stretch bus headed for Braňo's work. At that point I made a wise decision to, despite my fatigue, stand in the middle of the stretch bus -- that place of accordian-like movement that for some strange reason usually brings me joy, like I am standing on the moving floor in a funhouse.

I gave a precursory glance around around the bus, surveying the tired evening faces of Monday evening travel and began to observe an odd threesome. The loud one caught my attention immediately, due to the fact that he was waving a beer can in the air and speaking rather loudly to a young, clean-cut, student-looking woman. His cohort was also contributing some noise. They were harassing the young lady.

My first thought was simply "assholes". My second was that I was glad it wasn't me sitting there. My third was something like, I'll jump in and help her if they become aggressive. My last was that I was perplexed. Why didn't she move? Why didn't she say anything in return, something like "fuck off"? (Pardon my language here kids. No more, I promise.)

But, after further observation, it seemed that there was something to these guys. Something more than just ignorance, something below the surface... Maybe I am projecting in hindsight, for when the beer holding bigger of the two hooligans got off the bus, he raised his hand in a sieg heil way. Scary.

The girl got off the bus and I descended at the same time as the second skin head skum. Feeling like it was a good idea to keep low and obscure I hunched my shoulders, put my head down and began my 15 minute walk to Braňo's work. Alert, but eyes downcast, I didn't realize it at first when a man began talking to me in Slovak.

Encounter number two began with an energetic, smallish, crazy man, about my age telling me, "Vizeraš strašne unavena slečna. To je kapitolizmus, viete. Je kapitolizmus, čo zabi nás, čo robi vás unavena" (You look very tired, young lady. That's capitalism, you know. It's capitalism that kills us, that makes us tired...) I gave him very little encouragement. Avoiding eye-contact while he went on a rant that I vaguely understood through a veil of my capitalistic fatigue. He mentioned how much better it would be if Stalin were here today.

I imagine what he would have said if I had mentioned, "Som živnostnička-podnikatelka, aj som Američanka" (I'm a sole trader-business owner, also I'm American). I'm sure he would have gone absolutely bonkers. A dangerous representative from the other side, from the home of capitalist scum. Indeed, I took some silent joy in the fact that he didn't know he was speaking to an American and a business person at that. (The word "Podnik" itself during communism was considered "dirty", "corrupt".)

So, that's my story for the moment. I've been writing a lot more as the result of being offered a position as columnist for a national English newspaper, The Slovak Spectator. We shall see if anything becomes of it. If something is published, I will let you all know.

Cheers and goodwill to those strangers who make our days interesting.