Pre-Occupied

Wasn’t really sure where to post this one, as with each of my postings, there are multiple undercurrents, connections with one another, jewels reflecting each other, so, since it has to do with Italy to a certain extent, and I haven’t posted on this site for a bit too long for my comfort, eccoci qua.

Sitting last evening at one of my favorite Antwerp cafes, a place I have come to over the past twenty years that holds fond memories as well as new experiences, de Muze, I had purchased a latest edition of La Repubblica since I have been a bit out of touch with the news and in order to force me to read some Italian on a more in-depth level than I have in a while, and in part to be the mysterious stranger, wearing an American letter jacket (mine, actually) with an Italian newspaper at a Belgian cafe. So, the story goes.

One of the articles that caught my eye was Roberto Saviano’s “Cambiare il mondo a Zuccotti Park” about the Occupy Wall Street movement. In all honesty, I had not really kept up with this movement at all, merely giving cursory glances at the headlines and keeping minimally apprised of the situation as such. For a couple of reasons, neither of them really good ones, I will readily admit.

One, merely because I am not living in America, and I am selective about what I actually read about it. My confession there, however, is that I have a real weakness for following football (sigh, yes, American, not Soccer...) on-line. For not being a sports fanatic at any level, I do know ridiculously a lot at any given time about both NCAA and NFL football. As I said, not a good excuse that one.

Secondly, well, I am generally pretty unimpressed in general with demonstrations and protests, which is a holdover from my college days at The University of Texas at Austin, when they actually had demonstrations and protests (though now the real Hippies are bristling, and perhaps rightly so), but in all honesty, they were usually a joke and did absolutely nothing. In fact, no matter what the cause was, you would see the same “professional protesters” with the same old spiel. It was not about the cause, it was a cause itself to just get out and yell potted slogans and look really self-important. Jaded, I know. Again, not a good excuse.

So, the Occupy Wall Street had appeared to be just the same old same old. No agenda, good reason to read bad poetry and dress up by donning a “V is for Vendetta” mask...yawn...

But, as this was my poser moment to be reading the Italian newspaper, I decided to give it a go. I did learn that the movement was actually begun by Canadians (I’ve always said, don’t trust them, they’re too “nice”), which later was taken up in true American style and went for the Big Apple. More than that, it sounded exactly as I had imagined, dressing up like Guy Fawkes and spouting off slam poetry manifestos. God, I am jaded.

Yet, and that is the rub, yet, it made me proud to be an American (which is why this could have gone under my other blog ) when Saviano writes that within the crowd he saw: “Alcuni sono liberali, alcuni anarchici, altri si dichiarano socialisti, libertati, ambientalisti, democratici, e ci sono persino ragazzi che si definiscono repubblicani. Troviamo ragazze e raggazi atei e molti credenti. Ci sono musulmani, ebrei, indù, buddisti e cristiani. Molti ventenni, ma tanti manifestanti sono più maturi.” In short, people of all ages, genders, political stances, and religions. Which, in shorter terms is America.

That is still true, no matter how uniform America may seem at a superficial glance, it is still a country made up of all kinds of people. Coming from India, where there are only Indians, albeit from multiple religions, they are still Indians back to Belgium, where although there are people from around the world, they don’t come together like I have seen in America, which is Saviano’s point. He is lamenting the fact later in the article that although Italians show no lack of enthusiasm (understatement of the year), they will manifest upon lines of division and distinction rather than synthesis. Instead of looking at the intricacy of the weave, they will instead look at the individual differences of the threads. Such is the case here in Belgium, where the mentality can crudely be called “tribal” as in much, if not all of Europe. Hence the so-called “euro-crisis.”

America works as a bizarre experiment of bringing together the world. Not to say at all that there are not issues of division, xenophobia, and tribal mentality, not at all. For that, one needs to look only as far as the college football rivalries that are being played out each Saturday afternoon. However, what I have seen in America that I don’t see in Europe, and especially in Italy, to which Saviano heavily points the finger at his compatriots, is that Europe is founded upon differences, not unity. Whereas America, as a concept, seeks to unite, Europe seeks to disengage, to dis-entangle.