15th March

This afternoon once again I had the opportunity to watch someone drifting out of consciousness. Although if I am honest I of course have to admit that he wasn’t exactly drifting out only but also drifting into another one, into dream world. And it was a real pleasure to watch. I think in many routine, daily rituals I have forgotten to appreciate their beauty and use the occasion to move on, do something else while… but every now and again it is nice to anchor back to the reality of that other person.

Ernest used to go to sleep on his own, even for day naps. He now proudly walks off to bed in the evenings and changes his mind only once or twice banging on the door. Day-aps at home are different. Once he gets really tired he would prefer to lie down on my lap, his legs tucked under my arms, his head balanced between my knees not quite rolling of either side, not quite hanging down but not resting particularly stable either. He used to be more relaxed about the posture but his recent experience with the Hungarian Health Care system (HNHS) made him a bit more fixated on these details. He would fall asleep like this while I read the papers (this would be news portals on the net), read some other article on the computer or perhaps play a game.

I watched him drift away to dream world today. Perhaps recent experience called me to pay more attention, don’t know, it could also be a case of Jen using the computer and I couldn’t be bothered to reach for a book.

In the morning, we were still in bed, just resting, relaxing, contemplating if we should get out of bed at all. It was the last morning before Lili is coming home, school starts and everything is back to normal. Ernest have been up for some time. He was hungry so I have provided him with some snacks. He kept bashing bread into our faces demanding we share his food. Eventually he got it, we weren’t hungry and it pissed him off so much he threw the whole thing in the corner. Than he sat down and pulled his socks off with a face ‘you called for this!’

He knows we prefer him to have socks on, it’s a bit cold for the feet otherwise. So he wanted to hurt us by removing them. But he is a very organised and decent rebel because after taking his sock off he carefully put them back in his clothes cupboard making sure they are easy to find for later use (once they feet will start getting cold).

But I was going to write about the big pompous celebration today. Some 150something years ago there was some kind of a revolution – there have been a whole bunch of them around Europe that year – which in Hungary turned to be longer war. The canon says it’s an independence war but I consider it more a civil war. (of course my perception is not that of the nation state, after all I look at WW1 as primarily not in inter-state but an intra-state war, a civil war as well between different classes within given societies)

It’s a big thing! People walk about with the tricolour pinned to their chest all day, some even does it for days before. I have quit doing it 16 years ago, my motivation wasn’t that of the conformist ‘don’t get into politics’.

But it’s a big day, even the prime minister has given a speech, and they say he really pulled out all the stop. Apparently he told the European commission to go and f#”k themselves, although he may have used slightly different wording. I bet you he enjoys all the pompous nonsense. He believes in some crazy stuff, they have a lot to share with Cameron. I couldn’t decide which one of them I would prefer. Probable neither.

Lili asked me today what do people celebrate. I had difficulties answering. It’s a ritual of the state to craft and make-believe an imagined community in order to get people to do things in the name of and for this imagined community that otherwise they wouldn’t do in their right mind. She claimed she understood. We went to the park then.

Yesterday, when I saw the communist party gathering on the square I wanted to ask them how can they match communism with displays of nationalism. It’s a question that could have been asked of those regimes this party is a remnant of. But I didn’t ask.

Day of the Dead,

There hasn’t been an all saints day since we have known each other with Jen that I haven’t lit a candle in the evening as a small act of admitted ancestral worship from my side. I still remember my days in Denmark thinking how really i was getting into ancient practices and all the stuff about shamanism – which by the way I still associcate with on some level for so far shamanic way of thinking (pre-pagan if you like) is probably the oldest and most honest form of social constructivism. Back then I seemed to take it far more seriously, rediscovering something that reaches far beneath than what I can contemplate, disconnecting from my roots and past... hm... and practicing rather traditional and everyday forms of ancestral worship.

So far in this blog, supposedly about Szeged i managed to offend just about anyone and everyone. Mostly for my unabashed criticism of nationalism and the idea of nations. The trick is always finding the line, to be drawn to separate practices from one and other; this is culture, and that is nationalism. Ancestral worship, although I do not know how common it is around the Carpathian Basin all together I am pretty sure it is particularly Hungarian and is a cultural characteristic that easily slips by the eye yet is particularly uniquely Hungarian. Some ten years ago leaving everything behind I took this with me. In the last thousands or so many years neither Catholicism, the Reformed churches nor the nation state project has managed to ‘touch’ it.

Where to go from here than? Not a clue. I don’t think it really matters but I am pretty sure surprised. Especially that I am in it. About a week ago I was in Budapest and so I decided to go out to the cemetery where my grandmother was buried. It was that time of the year. And of course there is the candle every year. Well, some belief claims if you ever in a desperate need for an honest advice you shall ask you own death for it is just about the only thing in the universe that will be truthful at all times. Thinking of that talking to the dead, who have had some more subsequent dealings in the death department, besides, they also at least wouldn’t care to lie, may be altogether a good idea. But the more interesting lesson perhaps is the one about culture. It’s in the guts. The bits that you don’t notice at all. The rest probably is acquired luggage.