ENCHANTÉ – Dinner After Halloween
We were all seated. I could not see them. They had swoomed in at the last door ring.
They shuffled by, clothed in white garb, and sat down at the dinner table. I saw the chairs moving back and forth and the napkins unfolding. I sat down and welcomed my guests. Did I know who they were?
I soon found out. At my opposite sat Uncle Diederick. He sang his last song in jail. I recognized his drawl. He was accused of unlawful sexual behavior with minors in the stables. I will not draw on this any further because you cannot say anything bad about dead people.
On his left sat Aunt Irma. She always accused me of bedding every girl I could get my hands on and died, disinheriting me from her fortune. She still had this shrill voice, as I’d heard it in our last telephone call when she cursed me in her hospital bed because there was “this child that had to come again.”
Opposite her sat Aunt Ann, also one of those shrill women. She taught me horseback riding and yelled so loud each time when I didn’t sit straight in the saddle that my horse bucked with all fours in the air, me flying out of the saddle.
Next to Aunt Irma sat Willem B. I can’t reveal his last name because his family is so important that they would sue me if I did. He swindled every client on his way to the bank and became so rich that he was unable to count his money on his dead bed. He’d wanted to make me his heir too, but forgot to put it in writing, so the State got all the money. They never said “thanks.”
Opposite him sat the headmaster of my primary school. I couldn’t figure how he would turn up in this illustrious group of noble people, as he was a very ordinary man and a notorious child molester, hitting everyone with his cane who dared to be unruly or contradict him, jumping on our lecterns coming after us.
On the headmaster’s right sat Hans with the long earrings. She had this false smile and mean look and always entered the breakfast room, disturbing my quiet moment with my grandmother, only to gossip about everybody else with a double name in the village.
Opposite her – and next to me – sat Baroness B. whose name I cannot reveal either for the same reason as Willem B’s. She’d kicked me out of her vast apartment where I’d rented a room because the housekeeper had caught me copulating with a girl (the censor board sanitized this part of the sentence). Boy, was she mad.
On my left sat Aunt Phyllis, as an extra punishment. She used to come into the dining room and spat saliva with every word she uttered so that we kids held our hands over our plates whenever she appeared.
So I thanked everyone for coming and invited them to take some food, but nobody did. They chuckled, as they didn’t eat anymore, but they drank the good wine alright, glasses floating in the air.
Baroness B. whispered that she was still waiting for the last month’s rent I hadn’t paid after she’d thrown me out. I asked her where I could send the money, but she didn’t want to reveal her address.
The schoolmaster mumbled he was surprised to find me in a large house with expensive cars and a lot of money because he’d found me the stupidest kid in the class.
Aunt Ann yelled over the table why I wasn’t competing in the national horse shows, as I’d performed so well flying off my horse.
Uncle Diederick told us that his punishment in the afterlife consisted of having to clean stables for the rich, often confronted by beautiful girls he couldn’t like and unable to touch any beautiful boy that came his way.
Aunt Irma inquired if I had birthed any more children out of wedlock, and when I told her I hadn’t as far as I knew, she didn’t believe me and was going to find out about any hidden babies among the women she said she knew I’d known and slept with full force.
Willem B. sort of apologized for his forgetfulness but in revenge he was spooking the lives of the taxmen who’d stolen his money, and they were all going crazy and were being put in madhouses one after the other.
Aunt Hans with the long earrings told us she’d put an earring with a bug in Hillary’s bed to find out about her latest schemes. To my surprise, a lot of that became true after Halloween. Luckily, Aunt Phyllis had no saliva anymore and could not spit on my plate.
When they left cackling through the front door without opening it, I knew they were friendly ghosts now and might turn up again. The dinner was left untouched on the table but the glasses were empty. I went to my drawing room where my wife’s precious dolls occupied a whole sofa. One of them, a blond beauty I’d always hoped would come alive, suddenly started talking, her eyes winking at me. “Hi, Johnny,” she said. “I always wanted to see you again, and now I can. I am Fiona, the girl who gave you your first kiss. Remember?” I sat dumbstruck. Fiona died in a horrible horse-riding accident when she was sixteen. She kissed me in my grandmother’s vegetable garden when we were six. “Yes, of course, I remember. We were going to get married. I was inconsolable for years when you died. How come you are a doll?”
“Only for tonight, Johnny. Just kiss me once more, Johnny, and I go back to heaven.”
I took the doll, and she felt soft, alive, kissed it softly on the mouth, and the eyes winked again. Then it stiffened, and it looked straight ahead as if nothing had happened.
“Why are you kissing that doll?” I heard my wife saying to me. “And why haven’t you cleared the table yet?”
I had no answer.
ENCHANTÉ – Hurricane Hillary
This is going to be a rather personal essay. Matthew has left after much destruction. Now Hurricane Hillary is brewing that could be much worse.
All my followers know by now that I am a World War II kid who was liberated by the US in 1945. Boy, were we impressed by those GIs, driving their tanks and trucks, and rolling up those hated Nazis. The fun we had when the sun broke out, and we could walk freely on the streets again.
Ever since then we looked up at the US. Oh yes, there was always criticism about overpowering Washington and the CIA. But we felt safe. In the US, people believed in freedom and Christianity. They had great universities, the envy of many students in Europe.
credit: pinterest.com
Then the great Eisenhower became president in 1953, just after Truman had completed the Korean war. I was in boarding school then. We still remember the stories about the “yellow danger” (China) and “the Russians are coming.” Would we have a World War III? Somehow, Truman had stopped McArthur from defeating aggressive North Korea, because the US did not want war with China, which supported North Korea. I think this was one of the biggest mistakes the US made at that time. Now North Korea has metastasized into a nuclear madman.
credit: britannica.com
As off John Kennedy, the US has been slipping. We stood sort of on the wayside, still thinking the US was invincible, its people utter strong, its military overpowering, its science unmatched. But with the Bay of Pigs, we began to see the first fissures in the almighty US. All right, Kennedy stared down Kroutchev to remove his nuclear stockpile in communist Cuba, but the Pigs thing was not forgotten. Nonetheless, everybody remembers where they were when they heard when Kennedy was assassinated: I had just started my first job in Holland and when I visited a friend he came down the stairs to tell me the horrible news.
Then Johnson followed with his expensive Great Society and his losing battle of Vietnam, mainly because the US lost popular support due to a growing leftist anti-war movement, headed by Jane Fonda alias Hanoi Jane. Johnson knew he would not be reelected.
The era of Nixon finished in disgrace, again pushed to a large extent by that growing leftist movement. By then I had landed in the US for a job with the World Bank in Washington D.C. I remember talking to a foreign service friend at our regular dinners in town – we were both still bachelors – arguing about the pros and cons of Nixon’s Administration. We were both conservative guys, but I couldn’t support the destruction of justice. To me, that was one of the greatest assets of the US: law and order. I was mightily impressed with the Saturday Night Massacre when the Attorney General and his Deputy resigned when Nixon fired the Watergate Special Prosecutor. Somehow, the principles of justice were upheld, but it left a bitter aftertaste. Now we look at an even greater destruction of justice: Hillary’s private e-mail server in service of her pay-for-play at the State Department, thousands of e-mails destroyed that would prove her criminal intent. A White House, Department of Justice and the FBI all in sync to deny it, all led by the Democrat Party. Who was worse, Nixon or Hillary? And they want her to be President?
credit: presidentmash.com
As a foreigner in the US with World War II still in the back of my mind, I wanted it to remain strong and principled. But something happened along the way. There was a tendency towards socialism that I had found one of the most dangerous fissures in European society. When Carter followed Ford with his fireside chats, I began to wonder. When I had to pay 14% interest on a mortgage, I wondered even more. Was this still my admired USA? Then Reagan came and proved the best President in a long time, bringing sanity back to economic management and military strength.
Credit: Wikiquote
Unfortunately, things changed for the worse again when the Clintons appeared on TV.
My wife and I, both “resident aliens” and guests of the US, looked at that couple’s eyes. You know a lot about people when you look in their eyes. Those watery, slippery untrustworthy eyes of Bill and that false smile with those hard eyes of his wife, Hillary. Frankly, if that weird Perot had not messed up the reelection of the older Bush, that Bonny and Clyde couple would never have made it to the White House. But history wanted otherwise. You all know what happened then. The impeachment was no surprise to us. The stories about assaulted women being threatened by Hillary weren’ t either. The media played along in many ways. While Nixon resigned, Bill did not: the Senate prevented that, despite the Kenn Starr report. All Democrats voted “not guilty.” They always do when their own kin is endangered. Republicans throw their own kin under the bus as soon as somebody gets smeared by the left and its media.
wikipedia.org newsbusters.com
mrctv.com abcnews.go.com
nytimes.com
The US became more and more divided. The media became more and more partisan. We did not understand that. We used to watch CBS with Walter Cronkite. Then Dan Rather came on, and we felt an immediate bias to the left. When he faltered with his blank screen, we turned to ABC. We liked David Brinkley and Peter Jennings. But then Peter Jennings started his leftist tunes. We switched to Tom Brokaw at NBC, but he also seemed absorbed by the leftist body snatchers. What was happening to the Great USA? What did these so-called “liberals” want? Why undermine what was once a great nation? We could not figure it.
Credit: mediaite.com
Abroad on missions, I had no other access to US news but CNN. Soon, those guys were no better. Everything had a leftist tweet. They called it the Clinton News Network. I watched TV 5 in France instead.
Then George Bush came after the chad election with Al Gore who had invented the Internet. 9/11, the dot.com drama, the Iraq invasion and then Katrina. I had never seen so much biased media reporting in my life in one presidency. What the hell was happening? We watched Fox News, at least you got some fair and balanced information, although it always seems that the guys or gals “on the left” are paid to be on the left, and the ones on the right just the same. It’s a boring game. When Juan Williams comes on, I mute. We’re no longer watching Miss Megan Kelly’s show. We find her pedantic, condescending, and arrogant. Her first primary debate with Bret Beyer was a disgrace.
And then we got the Obama phenomenon. Again, my wife and I sat in front of the TV, watching this Senator guy talking everybody under the table. He said to Reid he had this “little gift.” The pied piper, we said. We have nothing against “black.” We are a mixed-race couple, me a Caucasian European, she of East-Indian descent. But he had been a collaborator with Saul Alinsky and Bill Ayers, both socialist statist and communist uprooters, sat in the pew with that freaking Reverend Jeremiah Wright with his chickens are coming home to roost, and wanted to fundamentally change America. Even our kids voted for the guy. What for? Because McCain was a fuddy-duddy. Now they regret that vote. You vote for a platform, and its incoming administration, not for a celebrity smile.
California gurls – Getty Images
We found Obama dangerous and could not understand these Obama girls and all these other people falling for him. Eight years of no economic progress, utmost partisan corruption in government, a broken national health system, the Fast and Fury weapons smuggle leading to the death of an immigration officer, a suicidal immigration policy, and a dismal racial divide. A reckless failed foreign policy that weakened the US tremendously and has put the world at risk. And so forth. You call that a “legacy?”
Nowadays, we are just shaking our heads. So many people seem to support Hurricane Hillary after all her obvious misdeeds for which anyone else would have been bigly incarcerated. Outsider Trump is vilified because of lewd remarks he made a decade ago when in the entertainment world and not even a “politician,” while he enunciates exactly the policies that the US needs to get back on its feet. But the only thing that the stupid media wants to talk about is sex (sex sells) while the ship is burning, and the major issues of immigration, security, economic revival and racial harmony are not even raised. Even his party jumps ship. What has happened to this once great USA?
It is no longer the land of the brave but has become the land of the knaves. Millionaire football players don’t want to stand for the National Anthem anymore. Bleu lives don’t matter. Catholics need to get rid of their medieval religious structure. Hey, what about those radical Islamists and their horrific horrible medieval killings?
Hurricane Hillary would destroy whatever is left of this great USA if you let her make landfall. You won’t recognize it anymore once she has passed. It’s too bad we don’t have a vote. Not that it would matter much. The ignoramuses of this country prefer to live in national decline and misery, as long as they get their goodies. Meanwhile, Bonny and Clyde would rent out the Lincoln Bedroom again. In competition with the Trump hotel around the corner on Pennsylvania Avenue. Trump builds things. Obama-Clinton do not build anything. Only profit from public service and taxpayer money and get rich with it. And that’s the view of a foreigner guest of the maligned USA.
You know for whom we would vote. We hope you would vote for the US revival ticket. Don’t think it’s in the bag for Hurricane Hillary, as the media want you to believe. There is that silent majority that never gets polled. They have been awakened.
Cheers,
John
Enchanting The Swan: http://amzn.to/1LPFw5o. Grad students and musicians Paul and Fiona fall in love when they perform The Swan and agree to marry, but paternal evil blocks their love. Will they play the Swan again?
Some Women I Have Known: http://amzn.to/1QIL94B. Piano John confuses playing sheet music with playing between the sheets. Will his anchors in life, Lady D and Audrey Hepburn, save him from self-destruction?
A Naughty Romance: http://amzn.to/2epkuTj. A piano affair leads to a surprising twist.
ENCHANTÉ – Matthew and his Mother Nature
Mother Nature at work again. This time, it’s son Matthew. Ever wondered why it is Mother Nature? Why not Father Nature? The question has been raised ample times with as many answers and explanations. I believe it’s because mothers are fickle. You never know what these storms’ plans are. Fathers are stern, may be rude sometimes, but usually you know what’s coming. In French, fickle means “inconstant”; fickleness is “inconstance,” which is feminine; another indication why it is Mother Nature. You never know what’s she is doing; one day nice, the next day all hell breaks loose. The French synonym of “inconstance” is “infidélité.” Interesting, to bring up infidelity in this context.
It’s amazing how TV gets inebriated with these storms. Gals and guys out there in wind and rain, weathering the weather. You rarely see the poor cameraman trying to keep the rain away from his focus. Katrina, Sandy, Wilma, it’s always the same pictures. And then the politicians join in ad nauseum with their global warming or climate change sound bites.
Well, everyone knows that there have always been huge hurricanes throughout the ages. It doesn’t have much to do with climate change. You’re wrong, the climate changers will tell you: they’re more frequent and bigger now because of climate change. You never win an argument with these guys.
I remember as the day of yesterday when northern Europe was hit by one of it fiercest North Sea storms (we don’t have hurricanes there but the storms can be as bad) on a weekend in February 1953.
I was 16 and at boarding school in the center of Holland. We woke up with the bell ringing in the dorm – always far too early – and heard the wind howling. The sky was dark and thick black clouds were rushing low over the buildings. In those days there was no TV. Only days after we heard that some 2000 people had died in the southwestern Dutch islands of Zeeland and some 500 more in Belgium, England, and Scotland. The damage was enormous. Whole villages were wiped off the earth and thousands of cattle died. Later in the week we saw pictures of our Queen Juliana wading through the blubber in rubber boots, viewing the destruction. It led to the huge project of the Delta Works, which took many years to complete. But then nobody ever talked about “climate change.” (Now they do!) Because climate changes all the time and this was just another example of Mother Nature’s force and fickleness.
Delta Works in the Netherlands.
But precisely because climate changes all the time, there is little room for complacency. There have been warmer and colder periods affecting “Mother” Earth, regardless of CO2. And why do these two Mothers not sit together and iron out their differences, like in a PTA meeting?
During Katrina and other New Orleans floods the Dutch were often consulted on how to deal with the storm surges coming in from the Gulf of Mexico or threatening Manhattan. Plans were made but I understand not executed to the level it was needed because of lack of substantial funds. Until we get another flood and the then president is accused of bad management. And so it goes, kicking the ball down the road. Let’s hope Matthew does not wreck the US playground and beach resorts along its East Coast.
Betsy, which flooded New Orleans in 1965, led to the Lake Pontchartrain and Vicinity Hurricane Protection Project – Public Law 89-298. It would protect the region against a storm that would only occur once every 200 years, but by the time Katrina roared over the region, the standards proved hugely outdated: more than 50 levies broke and 1,500 people died. According to Dutch sources, the US approach is directed more at disaster relief management than at disaster avoidance.
One advantage of Matthew is that we are not “flooded” with the continual flow of political analysis about who “won” the debate, where Hillary is “hiding” to prepare for the debate (to learn how to deflect attacks on her lies with more lies), and about why The Donald does more campaigning to avoid preparing and missing out on opportunities to beat the hell out of Hillary. By Sunday, October 9, Matthew has hopefully left the East coast to spook further up north on the Atlantic. And Monday, we’ll be back to the unrelenting TV politics about who won, should have won, who lost but still won, who won but still lost, without getting one step closer to solving the wrongs of the US. Until the perfect storm on November 8. And then what.
Cheers!
John
Enchanting The Swan: love story where playing music leads to a kiss and what awful things happen then…http://amzn.to/1LPFw5o
Some Women I have Known: where Piano John confuses playing sheet music with playing between the sheets... http://amzn.to/1QIL94B
ENCHANTÉ – THE BOOK’S LIFE CYCLE
That’s how it goes, folks! Those who read books want to unload their bookcases and give them away to a book fair for charity purposes! I recently attended a book fair where they also invited authors to offer their new books. That’s a great idea and an interesting way of looking at a book’s life cycle. With our backs against the wall, our tables displaying our books, we watched book lovers buy books by the cartloads that were “discarded,” all displayed on rows of tables. Except ours.
Nobody realized the cruelty of that scene: us staring at our graves!
George Vercessi and me
I only became aware of it later in the day when I decided to lower the price of my new books by half to compete with the penny-priced tons of dead books in front of me. Books by John Grisham, Danielle Steel, Joyce Carol Oates, so many others, lined-up majestically together, waiting to be carried to the books grave.
We did have a few buyers, though. But next year, would we find our books also dumped on those tables or decaying in carton boxes?
For readers, do you know how much goes into writing and publishing a book? It’s unbelievable how much time and money it takes! And then you sell it for $10-15 dollars a piece at a book-signing or a fair, or if you are lucky in a Barnes & Nobles store.
It often takes more than a year to write a book. Suppose it’s a “good” book, and that, after months of querying, you are lucky to find a good agent to represent it. Then it takes 18 months before it is published, after many edits and re-edits, and sweat, tears, and curses. By that time it’s an “old” book already. Also, it’s not even “your” book anymore. So many people other than the author have meddled with it: your writers group, your editor(s), the agent’s input, the publisher’s editor, an endless process. Why would you even take the trouble to write?
Well, that’s the quintessential question. So many do! Every day, thousands of new books arrive on the scene on Amazon.com. If you self-publish, you sell at between .99 cents and 2.99 dollars (remember my blog about the US 99 cents craze – July 2, 2016?), which seems to be the range where the “greedy readers” buy. If there is one example of reader price distortion, it’s on Amazon. I heard of one good writer who sold many e-books at 99 cts, but got only one penny royalty per e-book. So if you sold 1000 books you earned 10 dollars royalty. Give me a break!
Still, as a writer, you want to get that story out, you must write that book. Maybe you have to say something that’s worth telling. Maybe it’s good therapy to get something off your chest that’s been bugging you all your life. Maybe it’s a character that has been spooking through your mind and imagination that spurs you to write about her. Or maybe you just like to scare the hell out of people (Stephen King, and he laughs all the way to the bank with it).
I know about industry because I worked a long time in trade and development economics. But the “writing industry” is a different cattle of fish. It’s not manufacturing or money lending. I realized that only after I decided to write myself. There are so many people learning to write, teaching to write, editing other people’s writing, writers conferences with hundreds of “speakers” about writing, advertisers, publicists, and booksellers, it’s huge. It has expanded exponentially since the first printer was invented in the mid-fifteenth century by the Dutchman Laurens Janszoon Koster. Of course, the Germans pretend that it was Johannes Gutenberg who was first, at about the same time. Let’s say both had a telepathic moment, to keep the peace and avoid a battle with and about Germans always saying Germany “uber alles.”
Laurens Koster in Haarlem – The Netherlands
I’m afraid we writers are the biggest suckers in all this. We pay for all those lend-a-hand services offered by the “eager providers,” the middlemen (or is it now middlepersons to be gender neutral?), with only a handful of us recovering our costs, and even fewer making a buck.
Poor Writer and Rich Writer
Still, I want to write that book because otherwise, the character keeps bugging me, night and day. I want to get her off my back and start with another one. Like changing girlfriends (or boyfriends, depending). One advantage: no alimony payments.
Till next time.
By John Schwartz:
http://amzn.to/1LPFw5o: Enchanting The Swan
http://amzn.to/1QIL94B: Some Women I Have Known.
ENCHANTÉ – Back after Dolce Far Niente
End of la belle vie, the beautiful life, het mooie leven (Dutch), das schöne leben (German), la vida hermosa!
Au revoir, another twelve harsh months ahead.
Back to Work.
Back to School.
Back to Sports
Back to writing.
Oh yeah, back to the traffic jams at rush hour that get longer every year.
How good it was to be away from it all. You must take the time to reset your buttons; to reorganize your brain; to shake off those negative thoughts that grew on your persona from last September thru June/July. Dolce far niente (translated: time-out) to face or settle kids troubles, spouse troubles, money troubles, you name it. And then travel to an island, relax on a soft yellow sand beach, have your butler bring you a refreshing cocktail, and sip from it while watching the sun go down in bright to crimson splendor. Then wake up after a pleasant night with your romantic companion, hear the waves rolling in, get a coffee, drink it while viewing the deep blue sea, and catch the first glimpse of the rising sun. And don’t touch that stupid TV with that awful CNN. Shut out that dreadful world in which we live. Do you still remember?
After a day of swimming, rolling on the beach, sailing in the wind, have champagne on your terrace. Enjoy the fresh salt water scent. Listen to the crickets. And recycle that brain. Why can’t we do that all the time? Well, Dolce far niente is not for everyone.
Then the rude awakening!
We are back to what has become the US Normal: terrorist attacks (about which another time), riots, burnings, destruction, disgruntled people screaming, all on extended TV, especially the yellow-orange flames in close-up, to grab the ratings for higher advertising rates. As a foreign national enjoying your hospitality, I’m just perplexed at what you are doing to yourself. More so even after eight years of a “black” president rule.
From the moment I touched the American soil in 1972, I have been perplexed with this riot phenomenon. OK, we had a few in Holland, and in Paris, where they burned cars, all religious-inspired.
But here whole inner cities go up in flames. And this has been going on as long as I have been here, for almost 45 years. Be it in Los Angeles with Rodney King (“Why can’t we all get along?”), Seatle (anarchists against the WTO conference–interesting when comparing this to the current Trump opposition to the TPP), or the latest round of Ferguson (“Black lives matter”), New York (“Can’t breathe”), and Baltimore (“more of the same”). I’m sure that if TV did not show it, these protests would be over right away. After the mess they created, they go home, look at TV the whole day to see themselves, and if not, return at night for an another try.
I get so tired of having to watch this all the time that my TV viewing is limited to Turner Classic Movies (great inspiration for writers). I canceled my newspaper subscriptions a long time ago. Either they tell me what I already know, or they irritate the hell out of me. I don’t need all this repetitive analysis. Why pay money for that?
But I will look at the “debates.”
For starters, I am perplexed that Hillary is even allowed to run for president after all the crimes she committed. My mouth stayed open for many minutes when the FBI said she had no “intent.” And that after all the info to the contrary that had been shown left and right. Well, the US is not the only country with double standards. In Russia, if you dare confront the establishment, you are poisoned in secrecy while Putin kills everyone he wants and still walks free. In France, all presidents in my lifetime committed some illegality for which they were pursued by the high court and fined (not sure if they paid up). In Italy, wealthy TV owner, Silvio Berlusconi,
was convicted of sexual misconduct with an underage girl and then for tax fraud, but because he was over 70, he was exempted from prison and only did a bit of “community service.” Well, Berlusconi is my age, so I wonder what that sexual misconduct was all about. But putting your national security in danger? Because that’s what the US Secretary of State did. I can’t figure that. And then she has the audacity to wonder why she isn’t 50 points ahead in the polls.
Anyway, I digress. I have no vote, so I’ll be curious who “the American People” elect as their next president. I still remember the US planes dropping food bags when they liberated us from the Nazis in 1945, and restoring law and order in The Netherlands and the rest of Europe, including France, Germany, Italy and Spain. When I look at the American spirit of today, a lot has changed. I pray that it will be restored. So be wise.
And that’s my view.
For some relaxed reading, check out:
Some Women I Have Known, in which John van Dorn confuses playing from sheet music with playing between the sheets.
and Enchanting The Swan, in which pianist Paul narrates his story how he fell in love with Fiona while performing The Swan by Camille St. Saëns, but met a wall of resistance when her parents of old Belgian nobility blocked their marriage. Will they ever play The Swan again?
Till next time!