From: Erik Jacobs Date: Thursday, February 05, 2004 6:56 PM Subject: An Explication, With Occasional Expletives {was: RE: Hole [tangentially was: RE: New Photos] (was Re: Ahem)} I have been asked to explicate the photo sequence I gave to Mr. Fant to post at http://www.charm.net/~bfant/johnny/photos.html#jacobs. Like all pictures, this sequence stretches the truth, at least a little. If memory serves me right, my butt was not nearly so large back then, and I clearly recall having well-defined abs, which are not at all evident in those pictures. Perhaps the photos were altered in some manner by the old Umax scanner I used several years ago to make those jpegs; I have since discarded the Umax, or rather given it to my nephew, who is eleven, and thus not even slightly concerned about his abs or gluts. Still, this sequence is my favorite set of pictures of myself, save the possible exceptions of the photos depicting me manhandling my giggling daughters, and also one taken when I was, I think, nine or ten: I was wearing a mod wide-collared striped shirt and a Monarch butterfly had just landed on my nose. It could have been a Beatles cover. What I find interesting about the sequence is that it is both a synecdoche for my life and the situation in which I found myself at that moment. Perhaps I should provide the provenance before I describe the sequence, which in my view ought to be self-evident anyway (it is a photo sequence, after all). In 1988, I decided to finish up my undergraduate degree. As many of you already know, I did not receive my degree from St. Johns. Well, I also did not finish at UC Santa Cruz, where I only needed one quarter to complete my degree. Naturally, being Erik Jacobs, I chose to go to Kansas State, and to concurrently complete ROTC. This was not a bad plan, by Jacobs standards. Sure, I could have gone back to my old apartment (that was three blocks from the Boardwalk) for two and half months, then got my degree from a reasonably well-respected university, and then got on with my life. Yeah, I could have done that. But, I was just plain sick of the social sciences (don't they still call History a social science[?]), and I figured that it would take me two years to get a degree in Biology, so I further figured 'why not do it on the cheap,' right? And, Manhattan, Kansas is cheap. This all sounds like a digression, which of course it is, but it also part of the photo sequence's provenance. Anyhoo, about midway through my first semester at Kansas State, I had a moment of clarity: 'Something' was going to happen in Eastern Europe the next year. I cannot tell you analytically how I knew this. I just did. Call it intuition, if you must. Out went the old two-year plan, and in came the new (improved) plan: I convinced my wife (the non-screw-up in the family) to apply for a Fulbright to study biochemistry in Lublin, Poland; I asked for, and received, a leave of absence from ROTC to do "graduate study" at the Catholic University of Lublin; and then, I studied my disparate transcripts for an easy BA. As it turned out, It only took one History class at Kansas State to earn my History Degree. What can I say? I had fucked around a lot in college, and writing essays was easy for me, so I had quite a few undergrad The History of Bum-Fuck Egypt classes on my record. To make a much longer story shorter: That's how I ended up studying History at Catholic University of Lublin. But, before getting to Poland, I attended ROTC Advanced Camp, which was a lot tougher than I thought it would be. That is why I was in good shape in 1989, i.e. I could easily do 70 push-ups in two minutes. Consequently, I'm rather surprised that my butt was so big in those pictures. My butt is big now, but hell, I can hardly do five push-ups... Back to the provenance... Before I returned to Poland in 1989, I contacted a friend to find me an apartment "na lewo" (Polish for "on the left," i.e. "illegally"). Why? Because one could not rent any apartment anywhere in Poland legally. In fact, without any exaggeration, the typical wait for a legal apartment was twenty years! Through his contacts, my friend was able to find a four bedroom in the best complex in Lublin for the "exorbitant" rate of $600.00 per year. Keep in mind that the average wage for a factory worker was approximately $20.00 per month at the black-market exchange rate. The apartment was owned by a high level apparatchik, the President of Agroma, the largest employer in Lublin, whom I got to know very well. And, it was unusually large by Polish standards; therefore, it was consequently common for me to allow my friends to hold parties at my apartment, since there was really no other place they could be held. There was also one other drawback to having a four-bedroom apartment in a place in which normal people had to sleep on the couch of their parent's living room until their mid-forties (spouse, kids and all). The problem was Lump. You must be asking yourself, 'huh?' 'wha?' 'what lump'? I had detested my brother-in-law since the moment I met him... My sister had introduced me to him a half decade before (just after they met while working in Sequoia National Forest). All you big brothers out there will understand why: No man could have been possibly good enough for my little sister. In any event, my sister called me shortly after I arrived in Poland to ask me a favor... "Could my husband stay with you for a few months?" Well, I wasn't happy about it. But, it was my little sister asking, so there was no way I could say, "No, I just don't have the room in my apartment." You see, my brother-in-law was a photojournalist; he wasn't a photographer - photographers were only worthy of his derisive sneers. No, he had been a stringer for several national papers, and was going to move into 'big time' journalism. ...I wanted to "help" my sister. So, I arranged a four-month visa for him. Let me explain why I dubbed him Klucha (i.e. "Lump" in Polish) shortly after he arrived, and why the cruel nickname stuck throughout his stay with me. I picked him up at Ok?cie Airport in Warsaw a few weeks later. From the moment Lump got in the car, he started "explaining what was happening in Eastern Europe" to me. Warsaw has some of the worst traffic that I have ever experienced, and it was rush-hour, so I knew that in advance that we would be stuck in the car together for hours before we reached the city limits. Consequently, I had spent a great deal of time before his arrival investigating something better to do than sitting and listening to Lump explain things to me as the Polaks in the cars around me leaned on their horns. Through a great deal of luck, a good friend of mine happened to be an organizer for a KPN ((Konfederacja Polski Niepodleglej) rally that very day. KPN was something completely new in Eastern Europe. And, I had never seen anything about it in the foreign press. Until only a few weeks before Lump landed, opposition movements had ostensibly claimed to be interested in working "within" the system. Even Solidarity characterized itself as a labor movement. KPN openly advocated taking over police stations and changing the government by force, if necessary. As a matter of fact, a KPN rally sacked the Lublin police headquarters only a few weeks later. So, I had a real scoop for my journalist in-law to photograph. I knew when and where the KPN rally would be. That is, it was going to be right in front of the UB (secret police) headquarters in downtown Warsaw; and, I was there to translate the speeches to him. Our discussion went something like this: LUMP Gorbachev is the key, his Perestroika, that is, "Restructuring" has made this all possible. ERIK Do you really believe that? LUMP Gorbachev is just allowing a little more "Freedom of the Press," while keeping the aspects of a "Command Economy" that are more efficient than our "Unregulated Corporate Economy." It's brilliant, really. ERIK Aspects? Command Economy? LUMP That's right, the plan is to add our ideas about "Freedom" and some of the good aspects of "Capitalism" like competitive bidding, for example, and merge them with the advantages they have here, like universal health care. If he can just do it without creating the "Corporations," then his gambit will be a success. ERIK His gambit? LUMP Allowing the Poles their new freedoms. ERIK Where should I start? LUMP Start what? ERIK I think you think you know what is going on here, but you don't. LUMP Erik, you are so tied up in you pet Right Wing causes that you can't see the forest for the trees. I have been looking at this situation from a distance since you invited me and-- ERIK --I hate to interrupt, but would you like to go to a K.P.N. demonstration. I heard they where going to protest in front of the U.B. (pronounced OO Bey) H.Q. on Marszalkowski? LUMP Thanks Erik, but I'm a little beat from the plane ride and I would like to "get the lay of the land" before I start shooting. ERIK I don't think you know what I am talking about, there is-- LUMP --Really, Erik, they've shot Solidarity demonstrations before. I'd like to get my "sea-legs" first. See how people walk here. Then I will be ready to start taking photographs. ERIK I will try this again. K.P.N. is not Solidarity and this is not a "normal" protest. The U.B. is the secret police. No one has dared to protest there before. This is something altogether new. LUMP AP or Reuters will have a stringer there then. There is really nothing for me to do. I need something that will be newsworthy. ERIK They might not know about this. Things are kind of fluid-- LUMP --Oh, they'll know. ERIK The only reason I know is that I have an acquaintance who is a member of K.P.N., otherwise-- LUMP --Erik, you stick to... is it History? Of course, that kind of answer would have been fine if he had come to Poland as a tourist. Despite all the effort I had put in on his behalf, I certainly would have felt some empathy for his jet-lag, but Lump was sitting beside me solely because he had expressed the intention of becoming a "big time" journalist. Moving along now with the provenance for the photo sequence... Before I go further, let me point out that I despised Lump at the time, so I am certain that my memory has been shaded to his disfavor. Interestingly enough, Lump and I would later become relatively good friends, especially after my sister had the good sense to divorce him. Anyhoo, Lump had really gotten on my bad side as our cohabitation continued. I had given him the rules of the house when he arrived: 1. Don't eat my chili, I'll share it when I make it (chili was a real hassle to bring into Poland); 2. Unclog the toilet, if you clog it (Polish plumbing being what it is). End rules. I guess he wanted to live on the wild side, since he not only broke all two of the house rules, he also broke an unwritten rule. I had a quirky Hungarian friend, who just so happened to have beautiful black eyes and a coquettish smile. He was fucking her! My fucking brother-in-law, who was living under my roof for free, was fucking a girl I couldn't have, because I take my marriage vows seriously. He ate my fucking chili. And, I had to clean up his fucking stopped up toilet. You might say that I impressed upon him error of his ways. His lesson did not help our relationship, but it did lead to cleaner toilets in my apartment. In any event, there was no love lost between us by November 1989. A day or two before November 9th, 1989 Chancellor Helmut Kohl gave a speech at the Catholic University of Lublin. That night, Kohl attended a soirée which was held by the rector of the university. My best friend, Pete, who happened to be the official photographer of the university, was invited to take pictures of the event. At some point, a message was delivered to the chancellor, who immediately and unexpectedly cut his trip to Poland short, and returned to Bonn without attending a much ballyhooed meeting with the Polish government in Warsaw. When I heard this story, I immediacy set out to "organize" tickets to Berlin for the next day. Tickets were simply unavailable (even on the black-market), so I was ecstatic when another Hungarian friend told me that he had actually found a way to get two tickets, one of which he gave to me. I had just missed the "Velvet Revolution" in Czechoslovakia, despite the fact that I had been invited to accompany some fellow students who drove there. So, I was determined not to miss whatever was going to happen in Berlin. My wife, with a great deal of effort, eventually prevailed upon me to give my ticket to Lump. But Lump was not grateful for the opportunity. In fact, I had to spend most of the day convincing Lump to go. He futzed around packing his gear, and in other ways manifested a subconscious desire to miss the train. Which he nearly did! It was a close call, and the train was literally inching foreword as we ascended the stairs to the platform. The next day, when I saw the footage of the millions of East Germans breaching the wall, I felt a great deal of self-satisfaction for having performed such a selfless act; I was really full-of-myself. We held a wild party that night at my apartment, in which it seemed as if forty-years of oppression were released. The only similar experience I have had was the first time I went to a chiropractor for the bulging disk in my back. With one crack, months of constant pain melted away. (Afterwards, every session with a chiropractor seemed to have a diminishing return, but I will never forget that first moment of freedom from pain. In the final analysis, chiropractors really are cranks, but that first release is pure ecstasy.) It is important to remember that the situation was not at all clear in November 1989. Many very well connected people were absolutely certain that the Soviet Army was about to invade Poland. But, after the Berlin Wall fell, everyone knew that the Soviets had missed their chance to staunch the bleeding-away of Eastern Europe. And, Lump was there. In fact, Lump took some truly amazing pictures of revelers dancing on the wall with the Brandenburg Gate in the background. I was truly impressed with Lump~Rs skill as a photographer. I would venture to say that Lump took the best pictures that I have seen of the occurrence. So, why didn~Rt Lump win the Pulitzer? Good question. Lump couldn~Rt figure out how to contact a wire service with his rolls of film. Let me repeat, Lump was standing around on Kur'damm Str., with his thumb up his ass, not even able to find someone, amonsts the millions of revelers, who could point him to a newspaper. In fucking Berlin, mind you. As it turned out, he sent the film to a friend who was an editor at the San Jose Mercury News via the mail. The negatives arrived three weeks later, and were never published. One can only imagine exactly how angry this made me. I had missed a once in a lifetime opportunity to be at the very nexus of a watershed historical event, because of an ultimately fruitless altruistic gesture for the benefit of someone I already detested. Well, a few weeks later, Pete and I showed up at the wall to knock a few chunks off for ourselves. Pete's girlfriend, Ewa, who had an MA in English, but who was so shy that we never once had a discussion in English, came along for the ride. When I got to the wall, I grabbed an old fencepost and hacked off a few hunks. Then, we found that hole. Ewa suggested that we sneak over to the other side. I can't remember if we actually crawled through the hole, but as we stuck our head through, we could see a guard strolling towards us (he looked like a vanishing point at first, but progressively got closer). We talked and joked with him. He said they'd have to open fire on us if we crawled through, ha, ha. So, we didn't. Eventually, he was joined by another guard with a guardrail and a log to prop it up. Now, if that is not a synecdoche for East Germany (c. November 1989), then I don't know what is. The actual photo sequence was taken over a long period of time, perhaps a half hour or more. That's the story. Erik A84 Die Mauer bleibt noch 100 Jahre!