Author Archives: Stefan Geens

A guest editorial contribution by Belmeloro:

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Getting engaged is not a casual event. It marks a new phase in one’s life, borne of a readiness to forgo life’s easy pleasures for the sake of the more subtle rewards one can only get in extremely long-term relationships. It is an occasion laden with symbolism, when promises are made that have implications for the rest of one’s life–such as never having sex with anyone else ever again. Belmeloro salutes engaged people everywhere, be they pastry chefs in Lima or telecoms analysts in Frankfurt, because being engaged truly is an engaging spectacle.

Swept away by emotion, Belmeloro feels compelled to quote from that wedding standard by Khalil Gibran: “The oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.” Think about it. One would have to bend the laws of physics for two trees to be in each other’s shadow. Let alone grow.

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St. Mary's Scrabble Invitational

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Last Saturday, while Kim & I watched Withnail & I, Matthew Rose spent a marathon session on my Mac editing the footage we took of the first inaugural St. Mary’s Scrabble Invitational Tournament held at Zach Messitte’s parents’ place on the Maryland coastline this summer. It was the closest tournament ever. To find out who was crowned champion, you’ll have to watch the video, on the Photos page.

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Surfing report

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The 70’s European motoring experience involved me sitting in the back of my (well, technically my parents’) rare 2-door Audi 100 LS as they sped me around Belgium, France, Switzerland, and Italy. One everpresent prop was Michelin marginalia–the red guide, the green guide, and wonderful yellow-jacketed maps that marked even the smallest roads in those bright optimistic colors that made you want to drive down them. Michelin has finally brought all these resources on-line, and the result is a slow site that nevertheless exhaustively lists all the best restaurants in all of Europe, and detailed maps of the entire European continent and its cities–www.viamichelin.com

One thing I freely admit sucks about New York is its music radio stations. Until recently, streaming internet music was not an alternative to the local hollering via radio waves, as throughput on the internet was just not high enough. 20kbps is AM quality, but being on a par with FM requires at least a 128kbps stream. URGent, the University Radio of Ghent (get it?) radio station in Belgium now has gone completely overboard, providing a 192kbps MP3 commercial-free stream of great edgy modern stuff to listen to via iTunes on your Mac (or somehow on your PC) while you’re doing the dishes. The sound quality is simply much higher than the best FM radio reception, as long as you have a T1, cable or DSL and great speakers.

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Leonid meteor shower

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It’s 3:45 AM and clear in New York City and I’ve just come down from my roof, where I was checking up on the Leonid meteor shower, which once every generation turns into a stunning storm. It’s past due this year, but so far the count has been no more than about one per minute, instead of the much-hoped for hundreds. It’s supposed to peak after 5 AM, though, so I will take another look later.

The New York night is far less dark than before September 11; the Empire State Building does double duty now, its lights pressed into service until dawn instead of midnight–a red white and blue beacon shooting a column of light into the sky. And a white glow from Ground Zero floodlights bathes the buildings in the financial district as workers dig through the night. But the building where I used to work, 3 World Financial Center, is still dark. My desk there is exactly as I left it on September 10, and will remain that way for some time to come, a time capsule for memos and pursuits that now seem wholly trivial.

My roof is a fabulous perch. It sits suspended between earth and sky, giving both equal prominence. In Manhattan, the sky’s subtle pleasures are easily drowned out–Jupiter in Gemini, Orion prominent in the South, a meteor shower–these staples of the rural night are hard to notice down in the street. But I will always associate the place with what I saw from there on September 11.

5:20 AM: I counted 60 meteorites in a 15 minute period. Quite a few leave trails that last for a second or so.

Movie review: Amélie

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Oh, look, another movie review. I’ll keep it short.

Go see Amélie.

More fun is discussing the minority of critics who chastise the film for not accurately portraying Paris circa 1997. I’m just baffled at the thought that realism should suddenly become a hallmark of a good film. Director Jean-Pierre Jeunet uses all the special advantages of filmmaking precisely in order to bring us into the heroine’s subjective world and away from the strain of the constant reality check. I’d even go further: To Jeunet reality is a collective psychosis, and the symbol of this is the Lady Di hysteria to which Amélie is blissfully oblivious.

In that vein, here is what I like:

The taste of water when you’re really thirsty. A new city and a map. A clear dark sky. Beating people at Scrabble on the last turn. Bragging about it.

What I don’t like: Companies that misspell the words in their name and company names that are meaningless. The words “just kidding”. Badly poured beer.

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Surf report

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I resisted for over 5 years, but when I switched from DSL to cable-based internet access a few weeks ago the pricing was such that I succumbed to the serpent-headed lure of 100 channels for my TV. It seems the only thing I’ve missed all these year was the opportunity to buy ab-blasters in three easy installments.

I much prefer the internet–it promotes the active pursuit of useful information. A search on Google for a distinct entity that is known by only a few hundred people in the world still yields entire web pages devoted to it. I had in mind “Sechery”, a minuscule hamlet comprised of 15 houses or so in the backwaters of the Belgian Ardennes, where the Geens family bought an old farmhouse back in 1960. The web has bad art devoted to it, an automated “Sechery, Belgium Page” that includes a helpful map showing Sechery in relation to Greenland and Afghanistan, and it is even at the top of an exclusive list of places in Belgium starting with “Se”. (Be sure to check out the nearby village of Stefan Geens, Belgium… or make your own.)

I did end up learning something. The French and the Germans upheld their proud tradition of fighting on Belgian soil during World War I, and engaged in battle in the area around Sechery, especially in the village of Maissin on Aug 22, 1914. There is a mass grave of a few thousand people near the village today. It turns out the bodies were collected and buried by farmers from Sechery, among others. In the 60’s my parents would come home from walks with rusted WWI helmets they’d found at the edge of fields or in the forests.

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Urban tribes

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Felix alerted me to this New York Times Sunday Magazine article. It’s a very accurate description of the social life my friends and I lead these days. In our particular case there is a twist–many members of our “tribe” are scattered across the globe, and while we stay in touch virtually via email and through sites such as Sighs, we rely, perversely, on weddings as occasions for gathering. When we run out of weddings, we’ll need other excuses for international gatherings–birthdays? New Years?

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I quit smoking a year ago

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I almost forgot. September 26 was an anniversary of sorts: I quit smoking a year ago. To commemorate the occasion I unwittingly arranged to have my wisdom teeth “extracted”, in the parlance of dentists. I was promised mind-altering pain in the aftermath unless I took mind-altering drugs, but so far I’ve held out. Today I shopped for mashed potatoes, 6 cans of prechewed soup, and tubs of chocolate ice cream, and I rented some food movies: Chocolat, and Like Water for Chocolate. It’s called eating vicariously–I think there is a theme there somewhere.

While on the topic, I’d like to state for the record that some of the best movies ever are food movies: Babette’s Feast, Tampopo, Eat Drink Man Woman, La Grande Bouffe, Cook Thief Wife Lover, Big Night, Delicatessen (ahem)–these are the ones that come to mind immediately.

And if you’re looking for a respite from post-September 11 depression, you can’t do better than Together (Tillsammans), a generous, humane and funny movie about a hippie commune in 1970’s Sweden. It’s currently playing in New York and any other world capital near you.

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After September 11: Vermont

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On a whim, Itay, Rosa and I rented a car last Thursday afternoon and drove it to Northern Vermont. With nothing to keep us in New York until Monday, we went searching for peace. What did we find? A field. A forest. A hiking trail. A view. A sparkling night sky and a pond so still it reflected the stars. The time to think.

On the back roads of Vermont and upstate New York, the American flag is now omnipresent, fluttering from porches, cars, schools and supermarkets. On the way back to New York, the Empire State Building’s red, white and blue lights announced the new skyline from afar. In the East Village tonight the flag is out in front of French cafes, Mexican burrito joints and biker dive bars.

And makeshift shrines are sprouting up everywhere. In front of fire stations, naturally, but also along unused walls, where graffiti artists have sprayed memorials, people have brought candles and children have taped their drawings. In Tompkins Square park large chalk drawings on the pavement are surrounded by hundreds of candles. This being the East Village, some pavement messages heatedly disagree as to what exactly President Bush should do.

On many traffic light poles and telephone boxes, missing-person notices are fixed, sometimes hand-written, often with color pictures. The losses are still felt at the individual level in New York—the tragedy has not been abstracted here.

Here is a good site pointing to original commentary on the World Trade Center attack.

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