In January of 1993, facing my 30th birthday and a marriage and life I wasn’t happy in, I took a job teaching English conversation in a small town in the Republic of Slovakia, which had just recently emerged from years of Communist rule and had broken away from the Czech Republic to become an independent nation. I was part of a program called Education For Democracy, which placed teachers in the larger cities and smaller towns of both countries. Because I had a tiny bit of teaching experience, I ended up working alone in a very small town, where I could ruminate to my heart’s content, or discontent, and try to figure out my life.
One of my fellow teachers, who had been posted to a beautiful and historic spa town, arranged for a group trip and spa treatment in early March. What follows is what I wrote in my diary about the trip once I returned to my little, monastic cell, in my little, remote, village.
It’s interesting to look back at these notes scribbled half of a lifetime ago in an old notebook, trying to decipher my terrible handwriting and remember where my head and heart were. I can see now how much I was talking to myself without realizing it. Looking at the world around me and saying you and they (with naive and semi-informed confidence), I was trying to break through my own stubbornness and say what I needed to hear.
I heard it eventually. Somewhat imperfectly. I’m still a work in progress.
Piešťany, March 14: We woke up, ate bread and jam, drank coffee, and headed out to the Ensana Thermia Palace, where one of G____’s adult students, a doctor at spa Irma, arranged for a free “treatment” for us. The men and women split up. I was with M____ and his friend, T____, who had arrived that morning. We stripped and were paraded down to the Sulphur bath, which was big and domed and full of gargoyles. Then we showered and were marched to the mud bath, in another domed room. This was very odd: brown water with very slimy mud on the floor of the bath, that our feet oozed into and stirred up.
After 15 minutes of that, we showered again and were led into small cubicles, where we were wrapped, mummy-style, in heavy sheets, and left to sweat like pigs for a while. When that was over, we were led upstairs for our massages. I had never had a nude massage before. It was a little disconcerting, but I got over it and just relaxed. After that, another shower and it was over. We stood, talking to a spa worker for a while, in broken Slovak, about various places in the US and the world.
Then we rejoined the women and floated, feeling light as air after the treatment, to a pizza parlor, where the groups who had visited the other spas joined us. There were 20 of us, all together. We took over the restaurant and frazzled the poor pizza-maker, who couldn’t keep up with the orders.
After a long wait but a good lunch, some Slovak pals of our Piešťany group led us on an an hour and a half hike up into the hills, where we saw a man shoveling snow off his roof, a yard full of chickens, and many little icons and shrines. It was a steep, rugged walk, and the weather was good enough for me to be able to take my coat off and push up my sleeves. It was a beautiful, spectacular day.
(I’m the scruffy-looking dude in the center)
At the end of the hike, we popped out onto a small road. Across the road was a tavern—out in the middle of nowhere. We went inside for some beer and discovered a folk band in full swing—standing bass, accordion, harmonica, guitar, banjo—and rowdy, rustic singing.
We stayed for hours, listening to the great music, dancing, and being plied with shots of slivovitz by generous locals. It was wonderful. Little G____, aged 67, danced up a storm. D____ got goofily drunk. And we all felt deliriously happy to be in Slovakia.
The bar closed at 7PM, and we went outside to wait for the local bus to take us back into town. It was a clear, fine night, with a field of stars in the sky and only an occasional car passing by to light up the silhouettes of the crowd, still singing, and the band, still playing.
They kept playing, even on the bus, all the way to town, and they kept playing in town, leading a procession of people, pied-piper-style, down the streets of the spa town—rows and rows of us, arms linked, marching down the center of the street, singing (or at least la-la-ing) and laughing.
We broke away at the end, because the bar they were stopping at was already packed. We went back to G____’s for a chili and pizza feast, which ended the perfect day perfectly.
When everyone else had cleared out, A____ and P____ and I sat around talking about the day and the people and the country—the capacity for rowdy, companionable singing—in a bar, on a bus, on the street—and the other, sadder capacity we’ve seen, for suffering life, for feeling that life is to be endured, and can’t be controlled, much less loved.
There’s such a break—such an amazing line between the children and the adults here. The teenagers look like teenagers in the US, but once they’re out of school, they get old. You can see it in their faces—the eyes, dimmer; the skin, tighter; the mouths, drawn. R____ told me she was 28. I had thought she was ten years older. They become old and worn and bent and beaten, way too young. And I know we’ve got it easy, compared to them. This is a poor country, etc., etc. I know that. But I can’t help thinking they contribute to this, in a way, by being passive, by accepting hardship as “fate,” by not demanding what they want and need, by allowing their world to sink into mediocrity, inefficiency, and facelessness.
You’ve got to feed your love—and anger—to keep them burning, to keep you young and vibrant and tingling. It’s not just better food and better medicine (though it is that—a lot). It’s the interior life, too. It’s being able to live the lusty, joyful singing outside the bar and when you’re sober. Joy has to be more than merely a pleasant stop along the road to drunkenness. Happiness has to be life-induced, not just drug-induced. Otherwise, it’s fleeting and hopeless, and it always leaves you sadder than when you started. You have to make your world new.
I think this is what the myth of America was all about. It’s the intuitive leap Jefferson made when he dropped “property” out of Locke’s formulation and substituted, “the pursuit of happiness.” We forget that the inherent right is “pursuit.” We have the right to pursue; we don’t have the guarantee that we’ll be. And every right is an obligation—if you don’t use it, you’ll lose it. You have to chase your happiness—go after it with both hands wide open. Run if you have to. And when America is working correctly, it protects that pursuit; it helps you develop your talents and abilities, or at least it doesn’t hurt you while you develop them. It allows you to be part of the chase, whoever you are, and to become excellent if you work at it.
I think that’s why A League of Their Own, which I found merely cute at home, was so intoxicating when I saw it here with these high school girls. It’s the embodiment of that American Dream, which has nothing to do with white picket fences and everything to do with excellence, joy, and happiness—the ability to go as far as your abilities and your drive push you, no matter who you are.
And that’s why this whole trend at home, of feeling victimized by everything, is so wrong. Okay, you were misused, abused, screwed-up, hurt. Okay. It may not be your fault, but it’s yours now. It’s what you’ve got. The question of who to blame becomes irrelevant. The important question is: what are you going to do now? You’ve got imperfect raw material. Who doesn’t? How are you going to mold it, shape it, sharpen it into something wonderful?
Dwelling on past injuries is what imprisoned this whole continent and trapped it in endless cycles of hatred and violence—because too many people lacked the courage and the political traditions needed to make authentic choices and move forward. We have the traditions, but we erode them by niggling fights over their interpretation.
The myth has never been the reality. but you shouldn’t use the reality to dismiss the importance of the myth. Our best moments have come when we’ve been true to the myth. When you realize that your life is yours, and that those three inalienable rights are existential obligations—when you’ve taken a step in that direction—even a baby step—and started making your life into something wonderful, despite all the shit surrounding you and trying to drag you down—then you’ve taken a giant step.
Andrew! Thank you for offering this glimpse into your interior at the ripe young age of 30. I’d say you were pretty intuitive and intelligent for that age and I loved seeing the formative musings and thoughts, some of which I recognize in you today. As I was reading I wanted to cheer you on, nod my head, say, listen to yourself! But you did. So happy to know you as an adult, and appreciate this backwards glance at your earlier self.