He dons his plate-mail, sword and mounts his steed;
Towards battle rides with grim-set eyes ablaze.
‘Tis time for learning to commence, yet not
Without the pain of blood lost for the grail.

How much suffering will learning’s name impose,
Until at last these learnéd things fall short
And fail to pacify the hell,
Of life in educated misery.

I

A brain floats behind these eyes,
a storm of sparks thrown
from woven currents—
A writhing mass of computational fury.
An enigma; yet just as bound
by laws of flesh and bone;
We only fool ourselves with fantasies
Of evading the world’s corporeality.

There is no transcendent
I
afloat somewhere in static space.

I
am merely a fragile pattern,
set amidst the chronologic
noise of existence.

Beneath Horned Roses

I ask only that this,
The ache of losing the ground beneath,
Soften its incessant throb.
Take pity on a punctured heart.
Allow for peace, however brief,
To set itself upon me.

I close my eyes and see her,
Perched atop a throne of horned roses.
She looks upon me with eyes of drowning pity
When all I long for is to see her pain.

With perestroika and the decline of Soviet power in the late 1980’s, Mongolia entered the first period of its post-communist development. This romantic period was a time of hope; Mongolia was to become the next Asian Tiger. Yet with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and the halting of related aid money, newly democratic Mongolia was faced with an economic crisis of epic proportions. The fruits of democracy were enjoyed as well; newspapers sprang up, their variety reflecting the budding of Mongolia’s new multi-party democracy. Churches tripped over each other to send missionaries to cultivate her fertile sands, and Buddhism re-entered the public sphere. However, the lack of visible progress led many Mongolians’ to enter into state of now-familiar disillusionment.

Elections brought the young Democrats into power, who hastily implemented an intensely neo-liberal plan to shock the Mongolian economy into complete liberalization. Despite optimistic forecasts from policymakers, the life of the average Mongolian took a serious turn for the worse. Problems that had been forgotten during the times of Stalinist ‘utopia’ ravaged the country. Unemployment, massive inflation (as much as 350%), shortages of essential goods, and an almost complete collapse of the Mongolian economy were among them.¹ Social ills soon followed, with Mongolian males and their fragile egos faring worse that the women; alcoholism and violence, especially, spread amongst the growing population of unemployed young men.² Such chaos swept the MPRP back into power, beginning another dark era of de-democratization, though with some economic recovery.

PART II. AWAKENING THE TIGER

Big Brother is watching, don’t say the

Wrong thing, look the Wrong way.

Traditional systems dis-

Integrate. Morals, ethics, freedoms and structures of life on the steppe.³

Yet what happens when Big Brother falls?

The veil is lifted, euphoria blossoms;

The image of the Tiger mesmerizes,

Nurtured by romancing Western winds.

Yet change proves illusory, as do the goods

That once lined the oppressive shelves of state-owned stores.

A dissatisfied electorate speaks with their vote;

Old are replaced by new: the heroic Democrats

Stumble forward.

The electric paddles they hold still drip saliva,

Fresh from the drooling mouths of the waiting West.

With the suavity of a toddler’s first step, they apply the shock;

Sparks fly, illuminating their fresh faces frozen in naïveté and terror.

With the ferocity of a dead fish the Mongolian economy coughs,

Collapsing into torpor.

PART III. THE PERILS OF FREEDOM

With the fall of the soviet-installed communist system, freedom was thrust onto the Mongolian people in every capacity. Suddenly, Mongolians were free to think, worship, vote, move, and work (if they could find a job) as they pleased. Yet with this freedom came an immense individual responsibility, to make it in this new system without the help of the state, a drastic change to say the least. Also, these freedoms came without any tradition—after 70 years of socialism, only a faint memory remains of what came before. Some consequences have been rapid urbanization, pastureland degradation, over-hunting and over-harvesting, and generally unsustainable patterns of development. Where a cohesive state plan once was, is now blind free market, “me first” capitalism.

According to various religious leaders, the economic crisis was, and continues to be accompanied by a moral crisis.⁴ Alcoholism, crime, and violence all became endemic, though whether this was due to the abysmal economic conditions and lack of law and order, or the supposed demolition of Mongolian morals by the Soviets is not clear. That the moral structure was destroyed by soviet policies and oppressive moral policing makes sense only if people were truly too scared to think independently (like East Germany with the STAZI⁵). Nonetheless, Mongolians clearly have a dark history behind them, one that must be confronted if they are to move forward, “Here in Mongolia… I think only with dealing with the reality, also admitting what went wrong, they can really find out again what they are, and what they want to be.”⁶

In greatest danger of degeneration by the toxic societal climate are the nation’s young men. Faced with a crisis of national identity, these young men and their already fragile egos must come to terms with the anarchy unfolding around them. The easiest way is to find a scapegoat: the Chinese (and Koreans). Thus groups of young men have formed together under the financial and moral manipulation of powerful politicians, to carry out a campaign of terrorism against foreign-owned businesses and their employees. Powerful messages of militarism from abroad catalyze this transformation.⁷ Yet they are just that, pawns of people with money and an agenda.

It is not only the young men who face the new deluge of media imagery from abroad. Where they were once shielded by an overprotective government, Mongolians are now left completely exposed to a barrage of alien culture, “Its not just the lifting of the pressure, it’s the moving of a completely different world, with all the television, with all the Western, European, American values and which come in a completely unrealistic way.”⁸

PART IV. IDENTITY

The Christians say, “Of course! This Beast is Lost,

Searching for the Something more.”

The Mormons wait with their sharp suits and

Clean-cut lines. What happened to that

Which once filled this place? A Buddhism since

Gutted by the years of not-so-subtle stifling;

Banished to a realm of irrelevance. Yet does Christ,

And those who use His name, truly fill this void?

Do the 50% under 25 really know

That to which they subscribe?

Or that over which they passed

To accept this foreign faith?

PART V. POINT OF NO RETURN

“The free market is blind, following it blindly leads to collapse.” –Ganbaatar, CEO Confederation of Mongolian Trade Union⁹

A look around Ulaanbaatar is all one needs to sense anarchic levels of freedom. Buildings sprout from a cement sea like the grass that once grew beneath. Chinese workers scurry about, erecting monuments to the new Lords of the Land: the ₮ugrik, the ₩on and the ¥uan. Law and order resonates nowhere; the MP’s poaching marmots send a clear message to the rest of their people. The insanity that is traffic in UB reflects this; why obey traffic laws when those who write them show such blatant disregard? Walking the streets, one sees street children begging for food from well-dressed businessmen and politicians as they descend from shiny land-cruisers. The emerging Mongolian middle class makes UB feel like the capital of a much more prosperous country than it is. One need only travel in any direction outside the city center to witness the kilometers and kilometers of families trying to eek out a living in this new system, despite the odds against them.

After 15 years of transition from authoritarian communism to the current ‘democratic’ free-market system, Mongolia is approaching a precipice, a point of no return.¹⁰ Corruption in the highest levels of government breeds corruption in the lower levels. A growing shadow economy, and widespread bribery indicate the financial interests that are developing and becoming entrenched. Perhaps the most frightening development has been the worsening of Mongolia’s elections. Once famous for its quick transition to internationally approved elections, suspicious events during the 2004 elections call such innocence into serious question.¹¹ Such corruption only worsens existing problems of poverty, unemployment, insufficient infrastructure, growing crime and violence, and especially a pervasive air of lawlessness. While some manage to be optimistic about the future of governance, cynicism seems to be far more pervasive.

In order to secure their future, Mongolians must work through their disillusionment, come to terms with their past take ownership over the present and future of their country. They must take their democratic rights in hand, no matter how tenuous they may feel, and use them to catch the rapidly closing doors of political legitimacy. Only by building a viable civil society movement, with support from the public to keep a stern watchful eye on all aspects of government, does Mongolia stand a chance for a truly sustainable future. Without such a movement, politicians will continue to work for their own interests, and corruption will continue to flourish. The growing symbiotic relationship between government and business will become one of permanence.

PART VI. SURREALITY

The Mongolian cat still bares her humble teeth,

If only in campaign ads.

From her mouth peer politicians: slick suited,

Pockets fleeced with Copper and Gold.

They will reform, herald a new era;

Or so they say. Until then

The youth wander the streets, crackling

With insecurity and xenophobia.

Coal fills the winter air;

Pastures fade;

Lines form to overpay at ger district water pumps;

Drunks stumble across sidewalks, their bloodshot glassy eyes half-open;

Street children recede to the sewers, watching the world above pass them by.

References

The original poem.

Ger

An architecture whose elegance Could only emerge from Time’s Eternal forge, casting Function, form, philosophy. Swarms of flies, driven mad by midday sun Melt silence into winged static. His life stowed in ageless wooden chests, The malchins’ mournful voice serenades his herd; A wood-framed home in a woodless land.

Ode to Pepto

O Pepto, how gracious thou art
Calming the stomach’s sea
Thy fair complexion glows as a rose in Spring
Thy taste, as sweet as the finest chalk.

I continue to find myself drawn more towards the poetic form when considering how to approach multimedia work. I think my mind generally works more in the abstract, unless I can find a really “perfect” moment to capture, and remember/have recorded enough details to make it viable…

The observer sees my particular set of actions, reactions, expressions; This is all that defines me. There is no abstract I floating somewhere in grey static space. I am merely a fragile pattern, set amidst the chronologic noise of human existence.

feel free to comment: http://apoc.buildtolearn.net/wordpress/2006/09/22/untitled-poem-91906/

In the worst hour of the worst season
of the worst year of a whole people
a man set out from the workhouse with his wife.
He was walking—they were both walking—north.

This powerful poem begins with a decisive use of repetition, as Boland repeats the word worst three times in the first two lines. This word is also set up to parallel whole as it describes a whole people at the end of the second line. Boland sets up a pattern in the first line, then continues it in the beginning of the second, but then breaks it subtley, and you encounter the whole where you expected to find another worst (though if you were actually following the story of the poem you wouldn’t really be suprised). This is compounded by her use of the conjunction of to draw us forward. This is shown in the first stanza as well as the third, "Of cold. Of hunger. Of the toxins of a whole history." The use of short chopped sentences connected by conjunctions also gives the poem a plodding feeling, which fits clearly with the subject of the poem:

He was walking—they were both walking—north.
…
He walked like that west and west and north.
…
Of cold. Of hunger. Of the toxins of a whole history.

Eavon also uses a very interesting time-perspective; the poem begins zoomed into the worst hour then quickly moves out to the worst year of a whole people. The sheer power of a statement such as the worst hour is compounded by the repetition at different scales until we are thinking about the history of a whole people. Then the poem moves into a narrative about a generic man and his wife—the prototypical victims of this horrible time—as they are walking somewhere. Boland then mentions the otherwise assumed fact that both the man and his wife are walking, forshadowing the wife’s eventual debilitating illness; not to mention the image of both individuals merely walking, very much alive.

The overall poem has a plodding inevitability about it. Lines such as the first few, the second stanza with:

He walked like that west and west and north.

and then in the third stanza:

In the morning they were both found dead.
Of cold. Of hunger. Of the toxins of a whole history.

Read the whole poem here.

As far as poetry as a medium is concerned, it holds a great deal of promise for me theoretically, as I am very much a “poet” in the sense that I enjoy tinkering with individual words, and am fascinated by the intricacies of writing. I like to read slowly, taking in each word and seeing how it fits with those around it. I remember reading Light in August (Faulkner) in my senior year English class and just loving it— it was poetry masquerading as a novel!!! Beyond that though, I have trouble getting into the form as it is physically–when you isolate things so much it draws that much more attention to them, which increases the pressure to get things “right”— which is my biggest neurosis as a writer.

And I have always enjoyed reading poetry, this unit only furthering that love—seeing other writers getting something “right” is such a thrill, the most basic enjoyment I can get from writing… Identifying.

I have hope that with time and work and effort I’ll be able to bust through this carapace of stuff that is keeping me from writing to my “potential”, and this semester wasn’t exactly a pleasant one in other ways, which only made it that much harder to get into the writing. If only I could take this class again, I’d be much less apprehensive—its just that I can’t imagine this environment being recreated in any other class (another point, but still relevant). So yeah, I still like writing, and I like poetry, though I don’t really see myself as a poet (though I might be, I can’t quite go there yet). So hopefully this rambling reflection makes some semblance of sense.

It’s easy to blame someone you never met