Countries we never hear about #3: Venezuela

Ok, it’s been a while and I’d like to say that Ban Ki Moon has been on my back about another article in the “where are they now?” countries articles but he has not because a) I have a bad back and b) He doesn’t know me.

While we are on the topic though, why do World Leaders continue to insist on having hilarious names. Must I, every time I see a news story on SBS (at least twice a year), be subjected to the head of the United Nations whose name only makes me think of Westpac bending over?? Let’s not get started on Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. His name makes Ronald Raygun seem positively cartoon-like.

Answers later, so you don’t cheat!

As usual, I digress. For today we have the honour of recognising a nation whom I am quite sure you have heard of but 13% will believe that this nation is in Africa, with all the other ‘funny sounding ones’ but you’d be wrong. Yes, we are speaking of the glorious nation of Venezuela!

You’ve heard of Angel Falls, the Andes, the Amazon Jungle and Pabellon Criollo right? Ok, three are places you can visit in Venezuela and one is not actually the Presidente but a shredded beef dish. If you thought the dish was Angel Falls you should visit your Geography teacher and give them a serious punch in the nose.

Venezuela wallows in its unenviable relative anonymity for much the same reason as other countries discussed on this blog. It is simply TOO representative of South American countries. Invasions by people who ate paella back sometime before football was invented, morbid fascinations with military dictatorships and Zorro. Hot jungles, Cold mountains, women with G-strings on beaches and.. whoa. Back up! Brazil? Anyone? OK, so some South American countries have made their way into the International Sovereign State Celebrity list, it must be possible.

So what has Venezuela got going for it? I’m glad you asked! A cool flag for starters:

Yep. Primary colours, some pretty stars and a little cresty-thing with, oh, no. A horse, some wheat and, yes, another flag (which makes a flag, with a crest which features a flag). When will these South Americans learn not to set graphic art deadlines to Flag designers right before siesta???

“Hey Pablo, are you feeneeshed with the flag design now?”

“Huh, no Paulo, I am not. I hem however (with single finger raised in the air) neeearly feeneeshed!!”

“Ho K, I am so tired Pablo, I will see you later Hombre!”

“Man, I too am buggered. One more theeng in thees square.. one more theeng!! Oh, stuff it! Another flag!! Now where eez Mr Teddy??”

Some simple changes I’d suggest? Firstly, not a horse, a UNICORN!! Yeah, who doesn’t like a Unicorn eh?? With any luck, Venezuela could even get a decent polo team, glue horns onto the white horses and get a sponsorship deal through Mattel with Barbie on board, Yeahhhh!

Next. Not wheat. That is so, agrarian, so Stalinist. Croissants man!! Everyone loves Croissants. Now, I can hear roars of derision already that Croissants are French, blah, blah, blah. However, I have one word for you, ok two: French Fries!! You’d also get the approval of quite a few muslims (mostly short-sighted ones) who would really like the crescent, particularly if it was a green, mouldy croissant! I know. People should hire me as a PR consultant with this genius but, sadly they don’t.

Now, the final change I’d recommend to the flag would be to swap the flag in the crest for a big screen TV. Then, build the biggest big screen TV and show the flag on the screen, with the flag on its screen and the flag on its screen and so forth down to the smallest flag on the screen of the the TV on the flag. The best bit, though? tourists who visit the screen could be shown a subliminal message in the smallest screen on the flag on the screen that encourages them to pay over $1 USD for a Coke, whilst visiting. Stick a vending machine next to it with Coke for $1.10 US and watch the GDP rise, baby!

In conclusion, the country could also consider actually getting a President called Pabillon Criolli. Sure it is a national dish of shredded beef and rice but the rest of the world already thinks it could be the president and the Venezuelans would think it was a hoot! There we have the crucial point of marketable difference: the first South American state to NOT take its politics too seriously. Of course, it may take some time to degrade it to the state of the chookhouse of Australian parliament, the circus that remains the Italian parliament or the sheer Anarchy of the Taiwanese equivalent but it is all baby steps on the way to International Celebrity!

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Of Peking and Poetry! True Story.

Ok, so I’m back after an 18 day sojourn in the world’s most populous and (depending on your country of origin, perhaps) in many ways, this decade’s most popular country. I think I just lost all my Tibetan and Taiwanese fans.

I really like China. Its people are pragmatic, yet principled, capitalists almost free in a socialist state. At once, they are intensely private people and yet spend almost all their waking hours in public.

It was about 3AM on whatever time my iPhone happened to be keeping at 35 000 feet over the Pacific Ocean. My hopes for decent sleep on a flight were, as almost always, unfoundedly optimistic. My attention span was nowhere near long enough for an episode of “King of Queens”, let alone a feature film. So I thought “Stuff it! Can’t sleep, I’m going to write a poem!”.

Here, therefore, is:

Beijing:Dusk to Dawn

Kaleidoscope air chokes.

Blanketing smog wields

icy fingers which poke

at barren inch fields,

Awry.

 

Chestnuts on her grill cook.

Heavy laden smiles,

Chattering nieu Borgeoise look,

willing winter-philes,

In awe.

 

Hutong gates clatter brittle.

Children barely wakened huddle,

brash bus clearing skittles.

Traffic in a muddle,

it pours.

 

Noodles, greasy, steamy

through the grimy window. Gazing

at the gazer. See me

through the veil of glazing.

Our eyes.

Poetry, perhaps like contemporary art, may seem to many not actually in the industry as having lost its way. There is always the debate about technique versus expression. Can you really say you are an artist if you can’t master the techniques required to produce something which at least resembles something in the real world? Apparently, you can. The ‘Alamo position’ defended by such an artist is “Aha! ..but I DID it and you didn’t”. I’m prepared to give them that one, moreso than $10 000 hard-earned for a giant red square or poop sculpture.

Similarly, with poetry, I think it is fair to say that since virtually-free-prose has taken over as the dominant form, the popularity of poetry has perhaps declined. Certainly, most men wouldn’t be caught dead reading poetry, let alone writing it, without a gorgeous woman in pursuit. OK, I have no woman in pursuit these days through I think I’m pretty comfortable dying with some John Donne or Robert Frost in hand. Let’s just pray that it’s a long time from now and that I’m wearing a little more than cartooned boxers!

However, I really like poetry. Reading it and writing it. At the risk of feeling like I have just made the first step of twelve, allow me to explain. I like to see that a poet can work within limitations before breaking them beyond recognition. The piece above is an example of what I like to do with poetry.

Perhaps my biggest criticism with High School English was not the material, but the criticism (or is that “analysis”? I could never much tell the real difference). You see we’d read, then highlight photocopies of commentary on the text which apparently told you what it meant. I was, therefore, rather shocked early in my first year of senior English to learn that such commentaries were not written by authors! I found it hard to comprehend that others could inform the ignorant about meaning which is scarcely more than guesswork. Apparently my view was wrong.

So, since this is my blog, if you’ll allow me, I’ll take all the literary magic away and explain this poem, from an author’s point of view. With a disclaimer akin to the scores being shown for the AFL for other games also being played: “if you don’t want to know, look away now”! That last reference assumes a knowledge of AFL culture AND an interest in poetry???!!! Eternally the optimist!

OK, I guess I intended this one on three levels: structurally, semantically and symbolically. I like the challenge of working the text like gouache within a tight framework. Here, the poem is four stanzas at five lines a piece. The rhythm of each is 27 syllables (plus or minus two). The rhyming is relatively straightforward, terminal at lines 1/3 & 2/4, though the last line of stanzas one and four also rhyme, as do those in stanzas two and three.

I should note that I liked the use of the dominant syllables in these last words/phrases. “Awry” and “Our eyes” not only sound very similar but semantically are linked in this poem. Awry can mean “out of place” and certainly “our eyes” is a cultural reference, perhaps the strongest in Chinese culture which draws fundamental differences on the basis of eye shape to determine ethnicity. Westerners are “Round Eyes” whilst Easterners are “Almond eyes”. Attitudes, expectations and even prices are determined on this one key difference. So, yeah, the words worked this concept with a certain synergy, I guess. The author is certainly “out of place” as determined by “our eyes”.

There are many references semantically here that those less familiar with China could easily miss. I will just point out a few here. Firstly “Kaleidoscope air”, I feel accurately describes the scene you typically see in a Chinese environment. The Chinese embrace the duality of deep tradition with rapid change and probably do lights better than anyone. However, you find a Chinese urban landscape has a dynamic quality of light and colour, they like constantly changing colour, thus no two photos will ever be exactly the same of the same street at night. Just like the image through a kid’s kaleidoscope.

“Barren inch fields” is a reference to exposed skin, particularly since the Chinese are not endowed with as much body hair, exposed skin tends to get “poked” a bit when it’s blowing well below zero!! I also liked the macro (the whole atmosphere) meeting the micro (tiny portions of exposed skin) and still causing a reaction!

Hutongs are traditional courtyard villages, usually gated, that used to be very common in Chinese towns and cities. There is sense here of order, family, community in the massive urban sprawl.

Finally, I like glass. It is, despite the myth that it is a slow-flowing liquid, quite solid but has the remarkable ability to look anything but at times. The extreme cold and the overbearing warmth within, combined with years of half-hearted cleaning in a cheap hole-in-the-wall dai pai dong (sorry, only have the Cantonese, I have no idea what the slang is in Mandarin) leaves greasy streaks that the condensation runs down. Thus, it looks more like a curtain in the breeze, affording an incomplete and obscured view.

It is in the last stanza that the symbolism is best summed up. “We only get an obscured view of a culture when visiting, even though the mind tends to take the fragment to create the whole picture as it wants to see it. To somehow make sense of a world too foreign to completely grasp at once.

At its most brutal, cultural differences can be dichotomous. Black, white, Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, Christian, round eyes, almond eyes. This is not even necessarily a wrong thing, it is not morality discussed in this poem. Purely that in order to comprehend the world through another’s eyes we often contrast the differences with our own, even down to the ‘camera’!

You’re still reading? Wow, this is probably the most self-indulgent blog I have written on this site thus far. If you are still here, you are either: a) on holidays, b) a poetry lover, c) have no wet paint to watch or d) well, you get the picture.. how do I know why you are still reading, but thanks! 🙂

Oh, and Merry Christmas, whatever your particular eye-shape is!