my puppy pandele. she has it in her little heart to bark to protect me. as if i've always done the overt protecting.
curiosity that still makes me read, watch movies, dabble in the arts. it fills my solitude with wonders.
that i can still listen to other people's stories when they open up to me.
the future.
my son, family, america, my home, medicine that erases my memory.
lovely colours. turquoise, sunny yellow, purple.
rosamunda, my shy and fascinating gray tabby. her walk a lingering ballet.
candles, lazy susans, shelves, wind chimes made of shells, fridge magnets, peacock feathers, cloth shower curtains.
cowboy boots, songs, wood planks, ocean swims, bountiful thrift stores, our art gallery, my new friends, my old friends, technology, a bridge over ocean.
my house plants, clocks that tick time away, chatting with you, when stars aligned permit it.
Birthday. Good wishes. Balloons. Happy
birthday to you singing. Retrospective. Assessing.
I wanted to have a memorable birthday.
The only one I remember is one in Budapest. 1997. After a performance an American
couple waited backstage to talk about my play and I ended up walking with them up
in the Old City. The lady was overweight and Hungarian people were calling her names,
astounded.
They invited me to their place and
we ate together. When it came out it was my birthday, they stuck two burning incense
sticks in the red flesh of a watermelon and I was happy.
2017. My son gave me an entire Sunday.
So I set about experiencing the beauty
and richness of New York City together.
We headed to the Metropolitan Museum.
When we got off the bus I noticed
a sign on a table Free Poetry. A mother with her child got up so I sat at the table
in front of the unsmiling poet. He wanted me to talk about myself and after I did that he typed this poem:
my son may
oppress
the haters
of the city
he can wear
what expouses
his tats
my son may
enter
and leave
everyone jealous
so long as
he knows
the ancestors
that brought
us
for our dreams
to realize
btwn limestones...
i arrived
for the reason
to explore
to fall on
beds
to wake up
and try this
game again
i have played
with the park
lost spirits
thru the baritone
of my phone
hailed taxis
to get from
here
to a brave
new curb
and every
year i celebrate
this courage
to continue
at stride
from harlem
to the harbor
and fortunately
i have
the loves
of my life
to steer my
hopes
to a later
time
where i may
blow
and wish for
many more yrs of smiles
On the steps of the museum life was
beehiving. The security worker asked me to either drink my bottle of home-made limeade
or throw it to the garbage because only bottles of clear water were allowed in the
museum. So I drank it in one long swig. As if I was in a contest, Nathan's Hotdog,
stretching my body's ability to ingurgitate.
We saw two exhibitions.
Irving Penn retrospective. He had
cycles of photos. Famous people. Working class. Headless nudes like landscapes.
Cigarette buts. Exotic people. Kitchen still life.
Here goes a picture of the picture
of a lady with a hat covered in stuffed roosters. My sister loves her chicken
and especially the red rooster, who unfortunately my late father's dog Pufi pulled
out his beautiful tail feathers. My sister rescued the rooster from the dog's mouth.
The second exhibition was about de/reconstructive couture. One ensemble seemed to be built in the shape of the Guggenheim Museum.
Others reminded me of a dress I made
out of a pair of jeans, the waistband turning into the head opening. I was a teenager.
Mom passed by me on the street without recognizing me.
We headed to Astoria Ditmars Blvd.On
the N train a boa constrictor and a python residing in a blue bag asked for donations
in return for letting us touch them or drape them around our necks.
They had a large family at home. The
grandparents were 18 feet long. Ate a chicken a month. The mother was full of infants.
A lady entangled in them said laughing
alarmed to get the snakes off her. She had no donation to give, unless they wanted
her $20,000 graduate student loan debt.
When we got off my son said as if
we arrived in Europe. That was the plan. Eat Romanian food. We couldn't locate a
Romanian restaurant, so we settled for a Greek tavern. Delicious meal. I asked the
waitress if patrons still smashed plates at parties. She laughed and said only when
they had bazookas. Live music I assumed.
Then we crossed the street and entered
the QED edifice. I wanted to hear myself tell a story that nagged me to strangers.
The emcee took pieces of paper with
names scribbled on that were dropped in her bucket half an hour before the event.
My son did that for me while I waited at the tavern for our order.
All the nations of the world got on
stage. Egyptian, West Indian, Chinese, Irish, Israeli. They were interesting. Some
bemoaned their sex lives, or the harshness of going thru a divorce, others made fart
jokes. It was all good as long as my son was laughing non-stop.
My turn came and I got off my chest
an eulogy for my late father's dog Pufi, which I hope to write about tomorrow.
We went then shopping at the Parrot.
They carry my mother's foods. Zacusca,
feta cheese, baklava, Hungarian salami, sausages, Turkish delight, that is rahat, sunflower seeds oil, halva,
Borsec, Romanian mineral water, stuffed cabbage rolls, etc.
Back on the subway. A girl was playing
a violin concerto. On the train again the nations of the world sat down patiently
together.
In our neighborhood we escaped a hollering
beggar we passed by at the corner liquor store. When we didn't give him money he
hissed after us that that's why nobody liked us. What does he mean?! His face was
tumefied/swollen with alcohol. As we walked away to the end of the block his voice
worked itself into a state, screaming that baseball bats would descend on us. Thank
you so very much. I advised my son who was marveling how could the beggar hope for
alms when he was standing in front of the liquor store, I suggested we should let
mean words enter through one ear and get out of the other, without nesting in your
brain. In and out. Empty air.
Don't engage in misery.
I forgot to take a picture of a sidewalk
green space enclosure in Astoria. Instead of flowers they planted cacti with long
thorns.
Rosamunda sniffed eagerly at the shopping
bags when we reached home safely.
It’s been cold
on Thursday. I don’t know what possessed me to dress in skinny black jeans, and
a light black cloche coat. But by the time I was in the street I realized it
was too late to trot back to my apartment. I was on my way to the
endocrinologist, eager to see how my thyroid was doing. What a year was 2014. Last December out of
the blue I lost 10 lbs. in 14 days or 14 lbs. in 10 days. My throat was gorged.
I could barely talk, the thyroid pressing on my vocal cords. Investigations,
blood testing, taking radioactive fluids so they can scan the glands, on and on
it went. Medication. At all costs avoid stress. No stress. No stress. How can
one live in New York City and have no stress…
But when there’s a will there’s a way. A neighbor took me to her friends’ camp
in the Catskills. Deep in the woods. There was a creek whispering no stress no
stress no stress. Across from it a field of wild yellow flowers exuding scents
of no stress no stress no stress aroma therapy. In the background the old fir
trees guarded me no stress no stress no stress shall enter here. Ella is
sunbathing on the weathered wooden deck. No stress, no stress, no stress….
A golden summer. But when fall swishes its cold cat-o'-nine-tails whip chasing
you back to your cozy New York apartment you wonder how you will keep no stress
no stress no stressing on when one must network, attend events, promote, sell,
survive, push on her talents applecart.
And I was so tired of if you make it here you make it anywhere. I wished to be
a chipmunk dug in a hole for winter. Feel no guilt I don’t press on. But how?
One day I knock at my son’s room door with a bowl of blackberries. He cracks
the door open. A horrid meow screeched behind him. My son with a glint in his
lovely eyes informs me he brought home a stray cat and he shall keep it no
matter what. He always wanted a pet and I never allowed him a pet. So now he
has a cat. His cat. Alright. But she stays solely in your room. I’m allergic to
cats. Let me see the damn thing!
Oh, Lord, what an unsightly scrawny miserable creature. Fur dangling in thick
matted balls. And the meowing most unfortunate. But my son dug his heels. This
is his pet. Alright.
The next day when he’s at work, I break into his room and dig the cat out from
a dark corner by the bed and start cutting off her matted dangles. She meows
pitifully but doesn’t scratch, doesn’t bite, doesn’t hiss, always poops in the
litter box. I bathe her. Her voice tells me it’s the end of the world, can’t I
understand it’s the end of the world; can’t I stop the water and shampooing?
We’re all gonna die in a matter of minutes. But I towel her and blow dry her
and when done she scurries back to her dark corner. My son throws a fit that I
could have hurt the cat, she’s his pet, I should not sneak into his room!
So of course every day I go in his room to pet the cat and play relaxing cat
music and worry she doesn’t eat the dry food my son bought her. I name her Mişu,
after my father, who got skinny and frail, but my son calls her Rico. She is
not a Spanish cat! On Friday early morning I stay in line at the veterinarian
van stationed by the park. The cat perks up when she sees bushes. It’s a long
wait, so I take her on the baseball field. I tied a red rickrack lease around
her neck and she roams the filed, munches on grass. I scoop her up. She never
bites, never scratches, never hisses.
Finally the vet invites us in his mobile clinic. For his $25 fee he declares Mişu/Rico
the cat is about to die, she’s dehydrated, she’s at least 12 years old, she
needs blood tests and an IV drip, all for a measly $120. They trim her claws
for $5.
I can’t afford your neighborly prices. He advises to drop her at the animal
shelter.
I push my senior cat in the backpack and leave crying. It sinks in that America
is cruel. I am that cat. If I can’t afford medical treatment they let me die.
I stop by the animal shelter to ask them if they could give me a pipeta,
whatever you call the thingy with which you put ear drops or eye drops, so I
can force water my cat. The boss there goes on that this is not what they ado
there. Do I want to leave the cat with the shelter? I do not. This is my cat,
my senior cat, and I shall take care of her till she or I die. All I need is a
pipeta. Finally one worker gives me the device and we go. My cat walks on the
sidewalk, stops and detects scents, scoots under parked cars. I talk to her,
holding tight the improvised leash.
For days I’m heartbroken she’s gonna die. I ask advice over Skype from my mom
who used to work at a cooperative farm supervising the animal sector. She is
disgusted by my cat. One doesn’t keep animals in one’s home. They are dirty.
They carry parasites. Contagious diseases. Cats and dogs are utilitarian. They
eat mice and rats and chase robbers away. They do not, do not live in the
house. I explain to her here they are part of the family.
Each time I talk to her I tell her about my cat’s progress. We discovered she
likes tuna, so we feed her tuna. I brush her every evening. I walk her daily.
People can’t stop taking pictures of her. They never saw a cat walking on a
leash before. My son laughs that I’m like Dali and his ocelot.
My cat, well, our cat, gained 3 lbs., her fur coat is luscious, gray with black
stripes, she sleeps at times on my bed, I scratch her head and she purrs, if I
stop she meows reminding me I’m her human scratcher and must go on scratching.
I got her rubber lizards and hung them on the lamp arm, she battles them
fiercely. When she sleeps, flat on one side, legs and paws, her back and head
making a circle, my serenity fairy, an innocent being, hurts no one, elbows not
for hullabaloo celebrity in the greatest city in the world. When I hold her in
my arms and she softly meows I don’t give a fig about what I’m missing by not
going out, working the scene, network, promote, sell.
I am the quiet of my cat.
The endocrinologist shouted a big hurray when she saw the blood test results.
My thyroid is back to normal levels, true with the help of her meds, but also
my Zen cat.
So shivering in my flimsy outfit I hopped on the train to face Brooklyn, be
part of an evening of stories curated by my friend Martie at the Branded Saloon
on Vanderbilt Avenue. I sat on the A train, swiftly working out the crossword
puzzle, when the conductor alerted us there was a fire somewhere along the
line, the train goes back to Manhattan.
I won’t go back to Manhattan. I am on a mission. Tonight I shall attend the
Festival of Lights at the Branded Saloon. I shall amble on by bus. I got to the
surface and realized I’m gonna freeze to death if I didn’t go to the Goodwill
around the corner and get a pullover, a cap. So I did that, then found the bus
stop and saw I could get off at Vanderbilt Avenue. Bus arrived, I kindly asked
the driver to let me know when we reach Vanderbilt Avenue stop. Half an hour
later still no Vanderbilt Avenue. I inquire the driver when shall we hit
Vanderbilt Avenue? Vanderbilt Avenue?! I announced it 15 minutes ago. Take this
transfer and go across the street and go back to Vanderbilt Avenue. So I did.
So I did.
Branded Saloon was indeed at the indicated address waiting for me, though an
hour late.
The backroom had chandeliers made of intertwined deer horns. On a piano there
was a stuffed peacock without its feather tail. Martie opened the second part
of the evening introducing a charming lady who told us a story about the
Christmas stockings her grandma cross stitched for each of her children and
grandchildren. The charming lady is a rare object, antiques appraisal. If I got
it right she found somewhere in Florida a small statue she purchased for $5,000
and was auctioned by Sotheby’s for $5 million, the statue being either formerly
owned or a representation of Rasputin.
My memory is party inaccurate because I was next to go on stage and was annoyed
with myself that I was clad in black like a typical New Yorker. But on stage I
went for Martie and her Festival of Lights, and I told the audience how upon
arrival in America, I was stationed for three years in Baton Rouge as a
graduate student. And Christmas comes, let alone everybody was in shorts and
flip flops under the arduous tropical sun, seeking the shade of palm trees,
metaphorically speaking since they air-condition themselves, we were taken on
neighborhood tours to admire the lawn adornments, electric bulb Nativity scenes
and reindeers and Santas and Three Kings, and bales of straw as snow hills.
Martie tells me it was a show off contest.
My interpretation was that the poor people were trying to fake it till they
make it, but it didn’t quite work out. My childhood Christmas memories have no
blinding electric bulbs concoctions, but the fresh air of my village, the
crunchy sparkling snow, as I went with my friends caroling from door to door.
It wasn’t so much about announcing the birth of Jesus in a manger, but about
all the cakes and cookies and walnuts and apples villagers gifted us, and who
got the biggest bag full of goodies by the end of the night. We would walk on
the path thru snow, at times a misstep would deep you, swallow you, drown you
waist high in snow, and as we approached the porch of the house the icicles
trimming the roof would sparkle from the oil lamp of the home. That was real
wintery Christmas you can’t buy with all the bulbs in America. And the ice
flowers on the windows, frost flowers you call them? I haven’t seen any in
America. Maybe they have them at Home Depot.
What I also remember were the Christmas tree decorations. We were comrade
countries with China, and mom always brought out the boxes with glass balls and
velvet figurines. There was a peacock, a green velvet peacock, its wire claws
had to be clutched on the tree branch.
I don’t remember much of the Christmas spirit, father being usually plastered,
but I do remember a ginger haired teddy bear with an azure bow. So large he
was, I could barely hold him in my arms.
And once, we searched thru mom’s boxes and we found some white balloons and we
blew them up and stringed them in garlands. Came out they were condoms.
Martie laughs, I was gonna say they were condoms. I was gonna say!
And we laugh, not sure if I already told her this story.
My trip back to Manhattan was a breeze. The train stop was four blocks from the
Saloon.
I came home and hugged my soft cat, and I told my son, ‘You know, I still have
it in me. My thyroid is at peace now. Maybe, maybe I still have it in me and we
didn’t come here for nothing.’
I felt at home back on stage again. New York Saturday, December 20, 2014
I like my skin clear of warts, black heads. I am fine with time wrinkles, light
bruises I acquire bumping into things, and now and then the odd scar. On my
right breast showed up a black head without a black head a small bump. The
cosmetologist didn’t want to touch it because it was on the breast. The
dermatologist said I should just live with it. The gynecologist said were it to
be on my vagina she’d remove it pronto, she often does for her patients, but
since it’s on my breast, she wanted to make sure nothing was lurking under it,
so off I go to get my mammogram, then she’ll refer me to a general surgeon. A
mammogram for those who haven’t experienced it is like trustingly putting your
breasts or testicles in a waffle maker and then the cook slams it hard and then
screws it tighter and tighter, all along praising you you are doing great, so
you suffer thru the various positions, angles to get a full view of the insides
of your breasts. Then you wait a few days for the results. In my case a phone
call came asking me to come back because there’s something to check on my left
boob. I went in for my right boob, for the offending blackhead, and now I’m
told something is wrong with my left one! So dutifully I go stick my boob in
the waffle iron again. Then wait on the premises for the results sitting on
chairs with other quiet women in pink hospital gowns. The doctor shows me on a
screen two white dots, like far away stars on a cosmic photo. Those are
calcifications, she explains. Is it because I take calcium pills daily? No, no,
nothing to do with that. But it requires biopsy, to decide if the stars are
cancerous or benign. My cousin died from cancer. I checked the intake sheet box,
Do you have cancer in your family? Yes. Breast cancer? Yes. I stuff my pink
gown in the disposal can, and amble out in the bustling street. People eating
lunch, talking on phones, walking with a purpose. Life. I feel excluded.
With a mournful voice I call the radiology clinic for the biopsy appointment.
In two days they’ll take a peck of my flesh. Drill for oil in my breast. I walk
about in a daze. I don’t want to tell anyone. People hear more than enough
about breast cancer. I shall not burden anyone with my sorry tale. It is all my
doing. Decades of anger and misery because I won’t forgive and forget the past.
It is all my doing. I want to hear kind voices; I call my elderly friend in
Hungary. She needs a knee replacement and has to wait for two years to get an
operation. I merely called the biopsy center and they scheduled me for that
very week.
On Thursday at 1:30 p.m. the young nurse gives me an instruction sheet of
paper, explains the procedure, and I nod. I’m clamped in the waffle iron grid
again, this time I’m not allowed to look. The doctor tells me she’ll give me an
injection to numb the pain. Alright. I had my teeth fixed this spring; my gums
are perforated like a drug addict’s veins from all the anesthesia. I can do
that. Ouch, and ouch and ouch. I don’t look, there is a drill in my breast, but
I shall survive. I take a peek, there’s blood running all over my lap. The
assistant takes a wad of gauze and pushes into my breast with all her might. Go
away, you are hurting me, don’t hurt me! What are you doing? This is a breast!
You can’t beat a breast! I’ll get cancer; don’t you know you are not supposed
to hit breasts?! She pushes like a matador into a bull! You’d think they found
some medicine to stop bleeding without further injuring you. The doctor comes
back after 10 minutes or so, starts to seal my wound, reminds me she placed a
grain of iron in my breast, a marking for the surgeon if the area needs to be
removed. But the airport detectors won’t scream their alarm. She puts sterile
band aids, then a wad of gauze, then she wraps me in plastic gauze, flattens
both my chests like I’ve seen in Boys Don’t
Cry, a girl who wanted to be a boy would flatten her breasts. I laugh at my
disfigurement. The doctor orders the nurse to put my bra on. What for?! To hold
the pack of ice over my wound. I’m to keep my bra on 24 hours. What a grotesque
joke. I crawl home and don’t want to see anybody, don’t want to talk to
anybody. Enough stories about breast cancer. I can’t. I can’t.
The ice pad is just water now, I throw it away, they warn you not to refreeze
it, you can get frostbites. And the few hours of light pass, the kids in the
apartment building play boisterously. I sleep thru the night. Next day I don’t want
to go grocery shopping with my misshapen bust. I count the hours and at 2 pm I take
off my bra. The aftercare sheet says take off the gauze after 24 hours. Which one?
The plastic wrapped around me? I call for clarifications. It’s Friday afternoon,
no one answers. I call the gynecologist’s office, the woman who deals with breast
cancer pep talk. She is not comfortable to advise me which gauze I should
remove. I should go to the emergency room. I won’t. I just want to know what
gauze means to her. The aftercare sheet doesn’t say anything about the plastic
flattening strip or the wad of gauze, which can I remove? She’s not
comfortable. Alright, I wish you a nice weekend.
I take the flat-chestner off. I have red grooves all around my chest from its
margins cutting into my flesh. I remove the band aids holding the wad of gauze.
A layer of my skin comes off with its glue. My breast is purple. It stays
purple for ten days. Ten days I walk about in a daze. I look at women’s breasts
bouncing in the street. I applaud a low cut. God for you girl, good for you. I’d
like to hug women for what they have to suffer. I start informing people I have
purple breasts. My friend in the suburbs whose daughter suffers from breast
cancer says at times the best policy is to stay away from the hospital as fast
as one can just run. I’m waiting, waiting for the biopsy results. I sit next to
Yusuf on the corner and tell them I have purple breasts. He is stunned mute. I point
a baseball cap and I tell him my breast looks like that cap, purple is my
breast. He tells me Ramadan starts in a week. I show my purple breast to my mom
over Skype. She clarifies that my cousin died from pulmonary cancer and her
grandmother on her father’s side had cancer. There’s no cancer in our family. And
if the radiology center didn’t call me yet, that meant good news. Were it to be
cancer they would have called by now. In a few more days the gynecologist
calls, not malign, follow up mammogram in six months.
My breast is now a patchwork of purple and yellow. My scars from the plastic
bandage healed. There is a large lump in the depth of my breast now the
gynecologist says it shall heal. I still can’t stop my walkabouts. I hit the
flea markets on a Saturday. I haven’t been to Hell’s Kitchen market in years. I
know vaguely where’s located but not the exact street. A guy sits on a milk
crate on a street corner. I kindly ask him if he knows where the Hell’s Kitchen
flea market is. He says he’s not from New York, but my boobs are gorgeous. I laugh.
Usually they praise my green eyes or how I match my clothing, and I take the
compliments kindly. But if they pick on my body parts I turn into a vicious
wildcat.
This time, I laugh and I say, ‘Thank you! Not only are they nice, but they are
health and are all mine.’ July 6th, 2014 New York
Independence Day. Morose skies. Light showers won’t stop me from my going to
the neighborhood swimming pool for my daily hour. The water is warm from the
last two days of torrid sun. The lifeguards wear orange raincoats. Reminds me
of my first Independence Day I spent on a rooftop in Washington DC, my hosts
barbecuing stoically, clad in plastic ponchos and yellow raincoats thanks to
the steady rain that couldn’t care less about celebratory parades and
fireworks. The pioneer spirit I was told forbade them to go back to their cozy
apartments. Brave the elements in the memory of their forefathers’ sacrifice
for freedom.
Quite noble sentiments. Well, this is how they play out in my East Harlem
neighborhood: for the last three weeks or so I heard firecrackers in
preparation of today’s celebration. Only when three detectives knocked on my
door asking if I knew anything about the previous evening killing, I realized
that those were gun shots not firecrackers. Then warning posters started to
show up in the neighborhood, stationary police units with blasting light, like
on a movie set.
Never mind. People in Manhattan wore the star spangled banner on their
patriotic socks, patriotic T-shirts, patriotic caps, patriotic bathing suits. I
asked Yusuf, the guy who sells merchandise on the corner, how many flags he
expects to sell, because on Porto Rico parade day he sold about 500 at $2 each
in two days! He said he didn’t have high hopes. I’m friends with him. Lately
I’m working on my quarters coin collection, and each time I do the laundry I
give him a $20 bill and he goes inside the deli and brings me coins, which
coins I then sort into states and non-states/hawk. The hawk ones I use at the
Laundromat, the states ones I take home and check my coin collection, do I have
the respective state coin, and if I do is it in better shape, and which should
I keep. Now I found out there is a D series and a P series. I have a full P
series. The D series struggles along.
Anyway, along these transactions Yusuf tries to explain to me the magnificence
of Muslimhood. He even bestowed on me a Koran in English. I shall read it in
time. Right now he keeps Ramadan. He sits in the horrid hit with no water or
food all day. His eyes are so hungry. I asked him if he’s hallucinating 77
virgins already. He laughs. I tell him, were I to be evil, I’d camp with all my
friends around his chair and have a picnic to torture him while he fasts. He
laughs that he shall prevail and he knows I’m not evil.
Well, am I? I swap books cross country and when I mail them I go to the post
office. I have a bunch of bonsai tree forever stamps I don’t know why I bought
them, stunted growth creeps me out, and so I want to use them all. Three times
in a row I sent books as media mail and it always was $2.69, which is five
forever stamps, now at 49 cents, makes 2.45 and I add a 27 cents stamp
featuring fruits, which brings us to 2.72. I pointed out to the post person
that USPS owes me 3 cents. She mightily said as if it was a rule written in the
Constitution, that the USPS doesn’t give back money I paid on stamps. Why? It
just is not their policy. But you are stealing for me each time three cents.
Were I to put 3 cents less you don’t mail my package. This is crooked. She screams
I should complain to the Federal Government. And wishes me a good day. JoAnn
wishes me a hollered good day. JoAnn a government employee steals repeatedly 3
cents from me and wishes me a good day. What kind of people are these?! What
kind of place is this?!
Luckily Yusuf listens to my sorrows, and always tells me what the Prophet
thinks. In my case I should write it off as a sacrifice for the running of this
democratic country. The Forefathers contributed with their blood. What is three
cents nowadays?
I called a few friends around to congratulate them on garnering their
independence. One celebrated it by cleaning her house from cat hair, the cat
shedding her winter fur coat, another one was on a cruise in Alaska, another
one in St. Petersburg visiting an amusement park he found touristy and baroque,
and another one was enduring the pain from the shingles he had five years ago.
I wish you a grand Independence Day too. New York
July 4th, 2014
I
certainly never dreamed for my son to turn into a sports star. Yet by the end
of our first summer in Louisiana, he said that he actually would like to be a
football player, not an artist. He was bewildered that I could imagine that
anything was better than football. Oh, my God! He threatened my dreams of
making him an artist of the future, a builder of new worlds! But then I
dismissed his foolish idea. What can he say at his tender age? When I was like
him I wanted to be a tractor driver. Children. Bubble heads.
We had sportsmen all over in our country. Perhaps I didn’t like them because I
liked books and our dictator didn’t. He liked medals. Let us show the world
what our muscles can do! Sportsmen were pulled out of schools in order to get
us medals. So they graduated automatically. You really didn’t want them to open
their mouths and spoil the glamour of victory, so dumb they were! It doesn’t
seem that different here. Just turn on your TV, as I briefly did, and get a
local sample of brightness. An LSU football player’s declaration, “Man, I feel
confident we’ve put a good game plan together, and if we go out there and play
hard for 60 minutes, we’re gonna win. It’s fun to be in the hunt,” said Mr. Adrenaline
Junky. “It’s fun to have success.”
When I moved on the LSU campus, we passed by the Tiger Stadium, a monster of a
building. A gray wasps’ nest. My friend warned me that, “It will be madness
when the football season starts. People drive thousands of miles to watch the
football games. They come a day in advance and tailgate: settle down on
sidewalks or in the parking lots, all around the campus, place their picnic
tables, chairs, TV sets and barbecue grills, and talk about football with their
friends while eating hot-dogs and fried chicken. The whole place will smell of
mustard and barbecue sauce,” she said, smiling disgustedly.
It seemed pitiful that one would entertain in such manner. Not much of a
life... “Why would Frontiersmen stand a whole day under the hot sun or in foul
weather on a gray dreary parking lot?! I thought Americans loved comfort and
nature!”
“Well, a long time ago they had picnics under the immense oak trees, but they
harmed the tree roots, so they were cornered only on the paved areas.”
I saw the football players almost every week-day when I came from school. They
were coming out through the stadium gate, inscribed: “THROUGH THIS GATE PASSES
THE ALL-AMERICAN GOLDEN BAND FROM TIGERLAND.” Jingoistic.
The All-Americans were walking like cats with their paws glued in nutshells by
bad kids. Their bumpy soles made a musical tin roof rain rap. Disheveled, their
shoulder pads hanging topsy-turvy, their shoes with hanging tongues and shoe
laces, sweaty and dead tired, dragging their helmets and sacks, almost tumbling
towards their three TIGER buses, they made a funny sight.
I was puzzled to see the mascot of LSU, lazy Mike the Tiger, across from them,
always sleeping on his back and exposing his vulnerable white belly. Strange
behavior for a predator.
On weekends we crossed the campus to my office or to the library, we inched our
way through the picturesquely purple and golden dressed crowd in front of the
stadium.
It was bizarre to bump into a stylish elderly lady in a faded purple silk suit,
with a long scarf, smoking graciously in front of the stern English Department
building, her aged companions cooking on a smoky barbecue. Perhaps their
grandson was in the LSU team, and he fought for loads of money. Covered his
tuition fee, perhaps, so they dressed up like that to show the young brave man
some support!
There were always face painters drawing Tiger Mike’s left or right paw, or his
supposedly ferocious grin, plus a quaint “LSU” for two bucks. Once Alex got a
paw for free from his teacher, who installed her painting shop in front of the stadium
gates. I was embarrassed that a teacher was so underpaid that she worked part
time as a paw painter.
Faraway, or near us, spontaneous shouts of “LSU! LSU! LSU!” would gain
momentum. Serious looking adults would rally and raise their tight fists into
the air chanting, “Get Tough! Get Tough! Get Tough!” They would look excitedly
into each other’s eyes and head towards the gates in compact platoons.
Some were holding placards asking for two, or four, even six tickets. Scalpers
made a fortune, perhaps even $100 apiece. I was surprised to hear that it was
illegal here. At home we always had scalpers and it was humiliating to buy from
them, but what else could you do, if you wanted to get in?! They were hand in
hand with the box office clerks and maybe policemen, so you were at their
mercy.
One Saturday morning I woke up not knowing where I was: a ubiquitous amplified voice,
strong and calm, like a shrink’s or God’s in heavens, was saying rhythmically,
“Ladies to the left... Men to the right... Ladies to the left... Men to the
right... Ladies to the left...” “So this is how The Resurrection is run,” I
thought. “Very methodical. But why would God separate us?! Maybe this is
Auschwitz, and we are heading towards the furnaces. Where am I? Oh! No! This is
the football game! In the evening cars visibly multiplied around our apartment
complex, and tents mushroomed. There must be so many that they needed an
organizer to get them in orderly lines in front of the loos!” I got up and
asked my neighbor about it. She said that actually it was some warm up athletic
contest, running or jumping…
For the whole day the loudspeaker kept us informed of everything that happened
on the stadium. It was funny to hear the announcer as if he was in my room
while I was trying to read my Forms of
Fiction theorists, about getting in and out of the story, signs of
fictionality, the ontological gap, texture, linearity, periodicity, closure,
and spatiality of the short story.
From then on we had the same experience almost every weekend. Still, when
friends would say sympathetically, “It must be horrible on game days,” I would
answer them, “No, it’s not. It’s overwhelming to hear the roar of the crowd,
the voice of the commentator, the music. I’m thrilled when they are elated!
Their shouts are like a wave of warm, delicious excitement that engulfs you. At
first you don’t want it, but then you regret it goes away.”
The joy of the voice in the loudspeaker, trumpeting his well rounded “Gooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooal!”s.
Their savage happiness was ravishing!
A friend said this is a marvelous country. He was referring to the football
commentator I heard when the game started, saying, “L-S-UU! Are-you-reee-dy?”
and the crowd yelled, “Yeeeees!” “L-S-UUU! Are-you-reeeea-dy?” and the crowd
yelled, “Yeeeees!” and then he said, “Then let’s
roooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooool in!” This is all that this
gentleman lives on. He patented these lines and intonation and he got rich. All
he does now is to fly wherever LSU plays and simply say his, “L!…S!… UUUU!…
Are-youuuu-reeeea-dy?”
My friend said I should look closer at myself, maybe patent something about me before
it was too late. Because it was unbelievably how Americans see the hidden
value, the potential, yes, the po-tential, and turn it into gold.
“Maybe someone wants to copy your smile,” he said, “without paying the rights.
Your accent. After you patent it you should work on it. Even from now in twenty
years when you would have long forgotten Romanian, your cute accent should be
brushed upon, because people love it.” “Yeah,” I smirked, “like Chinese girls
who incarcerated their feet in tiny wooden shoes in order to keep them
girlishly small forever, physically incapacitating themselves, becoming
desirably weak.”
Anyway, since everybody said that in order to understand America I had to go to
a football game, and since my son would be a sports star, I tried to figure out
how to get a football ticket honorably. I was told they were sold out one
semester in advance. I would have used my Hungarian press pass in the end,
hoping it would work, or put an ad at the laundry room billboard, when Alex,
the future sports star, found a ticket on the lawn in front of our apartment.
Mind you, it was the last home game of the season. Faced with this divine
decision, I canceled a meeting and the laundry washing, and was ready to go to
see the football game. Then Alex disappeared and came back beamingly with no
ticket and one dollar bill in hand. He told me happily that he had sold the
ticket for the huge sum of $1 to Mr. Jim. I told him furiously to take me to
this cheap cheater, child exploiter.
Mr. Jim was watching TV in front of his apartment while preparing the
obligatory barbecue. He was giggling and brought the ticket back under my
silent eyes of wrath making cute baby talk with Alex, “I’ve asked you, haven’t
I, if you really wanted to sell it, haven’t I?”
“You could have offered him the official price, at least!” I said icily.
Ticket and umbrella in hand we left him behind. It was almost the intermission.
We were walking on the empty, so empty now street. Only a man in front of the
stadium was calling loudly, “Tickets for sale! Tickets for sale!” But we already
had ours.
At the gate we saw there was a sign saying, “No umbrellas! No alcohol!” so we
hid the umbrella, made a sheepish face when the ticket inspector told me, “Next
time buy a ticket for your son!” and we headed through the long, winding
corridors towards the yelling crowd.
When I entered the amphitheater I was stunned. I had reawakened into the Roman
Empire! The immensity of the walls, the bustle of thousands of bodies, heads,
the waves of shouting were amazing.
Looking at them, I poignantly thought, “Maybe this is my country! How full of
life they are! They are alive! They are not trampled upon! They shout! They
shout up to the skies! I know why they shout! I lived this before! I’ve yearned
for this every day! I miss the theater stage! I miss my Transylvanian hills and
forests and wide horizons and valleys and the shouting of my childhood! Of
yelling my joy to the huge blue sky! I know you are there! I know you can hear
me! I know you love me! Don’t tease me! Show up! Oh! Show up, before I grab you
from behind the clouds! Are you behind the sun? That’s not nice of you! Come
play with me! Dance with me!”
I have been in the crowd of a revolution and I won't ever forget it. It was
strangely the same. People were exhilarated. We felt love for each other. We
belonged to a community. We were powerful. We were one in all and all in one.
I had never been to a Romanian football game. We had a stadium uphill in my
hometown and its pagan celebrations on game days reverberated down to our busy
home, but we never went because mother said only drunks go there and they
always end up beating each other with empty beer bottles.
Someone yelled my name, “Smaranda! Smaranda! What on earth are you doing
here?!” Here was, unavoidably planted in front of us, my distinguished
colleague in fiction writing, Amadeus McAmara, who driven by his sports
enthusiasm felt inclined to do the honors of the house. “Damn it! The Fiction
Writing Workshop is everywhere!” He insisted, “Stick with me, because up in the
G sector,” where my seat was, “You’ll get your heads smashed with beer bottles
and anyway the best seats are next to me because they are reserved,” he said
conspiratorially. A plastic mug landed in front of me, luckily on an empty
chair. “And,” he told me cockily, “You don’t sit at a football game!”
“But which are your seats?”
“I have none! We snuck in. We’ve been at every single game and we always sneak
in from up there, see the top of the stadium? We always come in a hurry and
tell the gate-keeper, ‘Oh! My cousin from Chicago arrived before us, and he has
the tickets!’ This time we just ran,” and he moved his flexed arms like old
train wheel pistons.
Red and golden patches made of bodies were waving in front of my amazed eyes,
while Amadeus was telling me hurriedly, and I wasn’t sure if not drunkenly,
about his new “fucking” love for football, thanks to his moving to Louisiana.
“This is what American people love! There are 80,545 people in this stadium!
Can you imagine that?” “Okay.”
Walls of human bodies. Trepidation. The vanguard brass band and the majorettes
minimally dressed like golden gymnasts highlighting their curves. Finally when
the musicians, a bunch of pimply kids really, left the field they passed by us,
blocking the vendors' retreat, who were hanging their tired arms on the fences
in front of us. The trombone funnel was large enough to swallow a fat
majorette, head first, and while she would shake becomingly her naked legs in
the rhythm of LSU march in the air, the trombonist pulling her out turned into
purple and gold sausages through the trombone mouthpiece and rounding them up on
a purple and golden tray as Majorette Sausage in Crisp Golden Crust, thus
increasing the sale vendors, who instead of selling those dull LSU Tiger
T-shirts—the aforementioned lazy Mike Tiger poking his head through a white bed
sheet while his master is pulling his tail behind it—and Tiger Tongues
sandwiches—made out of two unkempt tiger paws clamped on a sickly green tiger
tongue—would make a bundle by selling Majorette Sausage in Crisp Golden Crust.
Amadeus, rolling his eyes to the guy behind us, whispered in my ear, “He’s hollered
like Tarzan all through the first part, the wilderness yell. During the
intermission too!”
I was half seated on the back of a chair for the last minutes. Alex was
comfortable. Amadeus held him tightly while they made all kinds of male bonding
gestures with their hands, like knitting or talking in sign language, together
with the entire crowd.
A big tough guy dressed in black overalls, displaying a shaved skull and radio reporting
paraphernalia was sternly and solitarily measuring the crowd from his
privileged spot on the green field.
Two sturdy men carrying huge plastic cups filled with ice cubes and a splash of
coke walked by us. They had showy plastic tigers as helmets, something like
upside down potties. They didn’t return my amused smile. They were tough.
“Being a fool in public is serious business. Don't you forget it!” Never mind.
Amadeus was eagerly revealing the secrets of American football rules, but I
couldn’t concentrate. There was too much to take in.
Airplanes dashed above the stadium, like in a computer game. They crazed
Amadeus! He told me they were only four because one of the pilots died. Then
the sky was abloom with red and orange and purple balloons advertising the
Children's Miracle Network. “Call 1-800-MIRACLE!”
The cheerleaders were right in front of us. They were unbelievable. They were
chanting, “Get tough, Ti- ger! Get tough! Get tough, Ti- ger! Get tough! Get
tough, Ti- ger! Get tough!” and the stadium after them, “Get tough, Ti- ger!
Get tough! Get tough, Ti- ger! Get tough! Get tough, Ti- ger! Get tough!” Oh!
The joy of professional enthusiasts. Oh, how those girls could smile
erratically! Could they make their mouth ends stick up, up, up and the tiny
chimpy eyes aglitter, aglitter, more glitter, as if they were amazed by the
amazing, most stunning touchdown they ever witnessed and oh! The way they did
their little dance of joy, thrusting their doll fingers up in the sky, lightly
performing their risky and strenuous little clockwork ballet routine: their small
heels were sustained solely by the right palm of their male cheerer who stood upright,
arms raised, turned into a carefree smiling, energetic pedestal. “Enjoy our
force and pride.”
We love chimps and we love chimps! Cheer up!
“Get tough, Ti- ger! Get tough! Get tough, Ti- ger! Get tough! Get tough, Ti-
ger! Get tough! Get tough, Ti- ger! Get tough!” The girls twirled in the air
and landed on the ground with pinned up smiles.
I don’t know what was going on on the green playfield, because most of the time
was spent changing their teams’ position, and when the game would warm up a
bit, they would again split, and move about and then again a bit of tempo building
up, but then again they rearranged their armies. And all thru it the loud
advertising blasted in brief hiccup installments as if they feared that a long
sequence would exhaust us, make our hearts explode, so they kept it to super
short sentences. Don’t put strain on brains! Brains are not made for thinking! Brains
are made for spending money. “Go to this restaurant after the game!” “Take this
taxi company’s car back home!” “Donate money for the orphans!”
Then between the publicity bursts again, everybody would scream with the
cheerleader’s chant coming from loudspeakers, “Get tough, Ti- ger! Get tough!
Get tough, Ti- ger! Get tough! Get tough, Ti- ger! Get tough!” and get all
worked up by the acrobatics of the cheery-bees. There was no hesitation in
their movements, so unlike the exhausted awkwardness of immigrant me. They were
steady, strong, firm, self-contained, clean like a sharp etching. These people
eat tough pears, apples, cabbage, crisp cereals, rocks, and razor blades. Functioning
like perfect machines. They seemed to laugh at my undernourished, jittery,
awkward deals with the world, What is that scared trembling? Worrying?
Fuzziness? Fear? Say no to jittery jellies!
The Tigers were running around amock.
Oh! My God! They’re coming towards us! Oh! My Gooooood! Here they come! They've
lost their minds! They forgot where they have to run and now come towards us!
Loook! They are coming closer and closer! They will break down the fences! My
God! How huge they are! Immense flesh in metallic shining shorts, coming,
coming, coming nearer, the others stampeding after them! They don’t know what
they are doing! They’ve lost control! Now they’ll tumble on us! They’ll tumble
on us! These guys are beasts! The one living in the apartment above us one day
will push his woman through the ceiling, tumbling their bed, themselves,
ceiling plaster, bricks, cement on me! Earthquake! My God! Earthquake!
Gnashing! Gnashing! Cracking! Cracking! Booof!
Red broad shoulders fall down in a pile, on the edge of the stadium running
tracks. More shoulders! Golden! Red! A huddle of them! Pushing! Crashing the enraged
buffalo beneath them! Glad they stopped there. What a relief!
“Excuse me,” said one of the plastic mask pot-heads, ready to kill me. “This
chair is my girlfriend’s!” So I go two chairs further on.
Alex is having a male bonding experience.
I look at the photographers and TV reporter squads, clad in heavy jackets with
several pockets containing cameras, mikes, lenses. They flock from one part of
the field to the other, following the lumpy football warriors. Poor beggars… I
was like them five years before running around on journalistic gigs…
“The beauty of it is that these college kids are doing it for fun!” said
Amadeus. “They don’t get paid a penny!” “That is strange! These giants are
killing each other for our enjoyment?!”
The leader of the cheerleaders had a headset, which I always found sexy like a
rock star, like Madonna. His voice boomed happy and steady, “Get tough, Ti-
ger! Get tough! Get tough, Ti- ger! Get tough! Get tough, Ti- ger! Get tough!”
From time to time everybody looked at the electronic board and when the score red
figures appeared they would boo or cheer. One of the cheerleaders ran further
away and started waving the enormous LSU flag. Others slung T-shirts into the
crowd. Mike the Tiger puppet man whacked the Alabama Elephant mascot with a
stick until white lumps of cotton littered the tracks.
“Get tough! Deeee-fense! Get tough! Get tough! Deeee-fense! Get tough! Get
tough! Deeee-fense! Get tough!” LSU was way ahead of Alabama. Yet it wasn’t
that spectacular... The Tarzan yeller was indefatigable! My skull was cracking
when he yelled again, “Wha-la-la-la-laaaaaaaa! Yah! Yah! Yah!”
It was getting dark, and we were both cold, so I said good-bye to Amadeus and
extricated ourselves from the crowd. We trotted home, chanting, “Get tough!
Dee-fense! Get tough! Get tough! Dee-fense! Get tough! Get tough! Dee-fense!
Get tough!”
Alex told Jade, our block bully, that, “I had a ticket to the football game. I
will be a defense player!”
Some disappointed mooing came from the stadium, but I wasn’t interested in the
football game anymore.
Some time after, Amadeus passed by our house to make a phone call, have someone
pick him up to a writers’ party to discuss over shrimp étouffée, the problems of getting in and out of the story, signs of
fictionality, the ontological gap, texture, linearity, periodicity, closure,
and spatiality. And above all how to get published.
He told me that surprisingly, LSU lost, playing lamely at the end. “Supporters
were disappointed to the extreme. They had no reason to lose! ‘LSU Sssssucks!’
moaned the whole stadium!’ ”
“This seems very unsportsmanlike to me. They dump you cruelly if you don’t get
them their medal!”
“Tarzan was foaming! ‘I'll go and beat someone!’ he yelled! ‘Let's go into town
and beat someone. Beat the shit out of them!’ It was scary! My God, I never get
worked up enough to beat someone up after a game!” Amadeus said, annoyed and
intrigued, with sorrowful and indignant round eyes like a chicken whose neck
feathers had been plucked.
I called my friend and she told me this was the way they were. “Romans. The
crowd wants victory. If not, wants blood. Wants to see the lion eating the
prisoner. That’s all they want.
“My nephew went dressed up as an LSU fan to New Orleans on Halloween last year:
he painted half of his face and chest in purple, the other half in golden
yellow and wrote 'LSU' across it in large print. He is not an LSU fan. In fact
he hates football. It so happened that that day LSU lost. People came to him
and booed him, ‘LSU sssucks!’ Then a weirdo came and beat him black-and-blue!
The blood thirsty crowd…”
We watched TV with Alex later on. They interviewed an LSU player. He was
crying. A mere boy. Such a young face. A very unhappy boy.
The reporter asked him, not that sympathetically, “But you did all you could
do, didn’t you?” and the boy said sobbing, “I didn’t... We lost. If I didn’t
lose, I could say I did all I could. But I lost…”
Somehow Alex didn’t mention any football career anymore.
He produces his charming drawings assiduously. Touch down, Smaranda, touch down. Fall 1998 Baton Rouge, Louisiana
Carl and I are in SoHo to watch the crowd spectacle. Carl is an actor friend of mine. The best way to see the costumes close up is to go an hour before the parade in the area where dressed up revelers line up and wait for the parade to commence, so they can march and show off. The wind blows and the crowd coils, a mincing machine crowd, we brush, roll, push against each other in this human collimator, startled by close ups of puss gashes, cadaveric complexions, some blood drained pale like flour, some putrid green black with gangrene, we grind against plump French maids, goose pimpled above their garters and white knee-high stockings, batting their enormous blue eyelashes, here go the Spider Men and Bat Men and Cat Women, oh, the Cat Women with their buttocks, rocks under black spandex, the tail, a pitiful knotted rope, the knees buckling up by the end of the parade, not a good idea, Cat Woman, those high heels not a good idea, Cat Woman. Here go pirates, brides, one with a black veil, drops of blood on her embroidered shiny atlas gown, and a sad bride, dead, with dark circles, head inclined, her tresses and veil flutter in the wind as she poses, oh, so sad a bride. Here come the salsa dancing marchers! You are in the wrong parade, man, your drums force me to dance along but your bright feathers and sequins are in the wrong parade! You are to scare us, scare us! Why can’t you be menacing cohorts of death? Look, like these three witches with orange wigs, pointed hats, black gowns and miniskirts! Look how they have a blast charging into the audience crammed behind the police fences! That’s how you do it! You are to scare us! Here comes General Michael Jackson, in his red coat and golden glitter, and woos softly his signature, I love you, to a kid who wants a picture with Michael, oh, Michael, save the world, save the children, Michael! Here comes Jackie Kennedy Onassis waiving in slow motion her white gloved hand, a patent leather handbag dangling from her elbow, and then Marylyn in her blonde curls and her halter white gown. Oh, you need a fan, a hair drier, a leaf blower Marylyn, so your skirts go up your leggy legs. Look, such long legs on this Deviless, she has long white legs, her red wig with red horns, she came all the way from Harlem the Red Deviless, she walks alone people gawking at her legs! Look, the whip lashing dominatrixes, black leathered, scare the Tea Party Aunt Hattie, who holds a tray with miniature tea china and pretty cheesecake slices, all proper with her white hair bum and white apron. Then a Barbie doll ambushes us, confined in her Barbie box, pressing her face against the plastic wall, while her Ken doll rolls her enormous box up Sixth Avenue, and oh, the squadrons of gigantic skeletons and white serpents and bats, a cloud of bats, all huge puppets assaulting the dark skies, and then humungous fish skeletons, that’s how you’ll end up too, naughty little boy, piranhas shall eat you, if you go into the water when your mama told you not to! Oh, and here is Marie Antoinette with her cauliflower, sky-scraper high wig, and her wide, wooden apparel hips! She stops ever so graceful for pictures. Here goes Schindler’s List Mom, or what’s her name in the painting, Whistler’s Mom, and then come the Asian monster-headed warriors, kamikaze samurai, in kimono gowns of gold and shine, and then monsters galore: one-eyed monsters, and fluffy fluffy plush monsters with white baseballs for eyes, the balls running amok, shifty, shifty, and then comes opulent King of France, or Britain, in his red mantle trimmed with a rich white fur leopard collar, his face is a skull and his hand is skeletal. Oh, majestic King, parading solemnly, you are dead, dead, dead. Why did you kill all your eight wives?! And then come the bores from the movies, the Mad Hatters and the Star War Jedi and Princess Leas and the Elvises, many Elvises, wig and pompadour and diamonded belts, and the District Nine aliens and the Shout painting’s masks and the Sponge Bobs and Chilean miners, lots of Chilean miners, the 30 rescued miners multiplied to hundreds, and clock faces with angel wings, and the cohorts of dancers paying tribute to Michael Jackson’s Thriller, man, two large groups, man, two, what bores. And here are the drag queens, one has a golden phone receiver grafted on her wig blonde, the coil wire hangs dangling about, and a power plug couple comes, one has two penises, and one has two anuses and when they plug into each other, oh, how they twist in the agony of pleasure, oh, how they like it and oh, how we laugh! Then the ghoulish couples, white faced, a white strand in their black hair, the man in English tailcoats, the woman, long hair, black eye circles, all lace and finery, walk together solemnly. Another couple parades in white dainty gauze shrouds, his eyeglasses lenses iridescent holographs. ‘Who are you, who are you?!’ I ask him, ‘so elegant and so absurd a man?’Hhe shrugs sweetly as his pair drags him away, ‘This is what one year of marriage turned me into,’ he shrugs sweetly. Here go two bemused clowns, in such delightful costumes with various dangling silky bags, sheltered under an enormous umbrella with kitchenware things hanging from it, handing out business cards, let us come to your parties! Let us entertain you! let us earn a living! There come gothy Edward Scissorhands, there are many Edward Scissors, the Jonny Depp teenage misfits, scissors, scissors are my hands and my hair is a bush I hide shy under, and they all charge into us, the screaming bystanders. Some just walk in the parade, talking bored on their cell phones, doing nothing to scare us, and so many in cheap boring costumes from Wal-Mart. No, man, no, you’re insulting the audience! Make an effort! and they walk, walk not sure if they should have fun or not. No, man, no! Next year I’m gonna go in the parade myself, this time I chickened out when Carl said I can’t have a large ruffled skirt in the parade, the crows would tear it apart, so crowdy a crowd. No, no, man, next year I’ll have a large pink dress! Larger than Marie Antoinette’s. Look at the old ladies, four white ghostly spirits, they charge and wiggle their jazz hands and they say together wooo! wooo! and I am happy to play getting scared by them, and I am happy that they are old ladies, in their sixties, fifties, and they are spirits and they go in the parade and they scare us, wooo, wooo, woooo! Life is here, yes, I am bountiful with you, my New York, tonight I am resplendent with you my America, tonight! Carl has a plush rabbit, he tears its neck off, its red and violet entrails hang from the ripped neck. Carl is a tall hat gentleman, with a pipe and a tailcoat and military bravery medals, and has cardboard eyeglasses with scary painted eyes and he is a moody disgruntled gentleman. ‘What are you looking at?!’ he snaps at passers by, ‘What are you looking at?!’ he snaps and they love it, ‘Let me take a picture! take a picture! take a picture with you, grouchy Mister!’ We take the subway and emerge on Sixth Avenue and 14th Street, prime location. We hang from fences, we can see over the heads of sidewalk crowds. Every sidewalk is unnecessarily fenced up, policemen at every corner. Carl says they practice anti-terrorism drills on us. ‘Crowd control they enjoy, fascists,’ Carl calls them fascists. ‘What has become America,’ he moans. We are unable to get out of the sidewalks, at each corner all fenced up, unnecessarily. We are locked up. Here comes a Russell Brand with his hair teased up. He screams in a high pitch voice, British accent, ‘Where are our fucking liberties, America? The fucking liberties, we should cross the street, mate!’ I first think he really wants to cross the street and I respond, ‘Yeah, man, we should cross the street, what is this? There is no traffic jam, few cars, let us cross the street!’ I quite shout worked up, ‘We should cross!’ and I expect Carl, the revolutionary who when he works as a bus tour guide tells the tourists on Wall Street that, ‘These robbers get away with theft, gentlemen!’ I expect him to shout along, and the Russell Brand to shout along, but I realize Russell Brand just does his comedy shtick, man, for cheap laughs, and Carl says some might get arrested if we shout. But then at least the rest of the crowd would be able to cross the street, he says. I want to cross, it makes no sense to see all four street corners fenced up! ‘Let us go home, man.’ ‘Let us cross! Let us cross!’ the crowd coalesces in a booming choir, ‘Let us cross!’ the cameras flash flash, but the camera flashing is not the point, the point is we shouting at the top of our lungs, ‘Let us cross, let us cross, let us cross!’ and the police doesn’t seem to even hear or see us, impassibly motioning the cars thru the intersection. We tire, the choir dies. That’s how we are, we get tired, we do get tired. Revolution gets tiresome. Drained, we are quiet. Only then one, two, three, as if they counted, the policemen pull carefully the iron fences aside and the crowd pushes thru the crossing, and we, Carl and I, with it, go forward. I so love you, Downtown. Back on the Uptown train scenery is drab. Uptowners didn’t bother to dress up. They took the kids with the pumpkin buckets to collect candy and that’s it. They are worried, they are tired, they won’t masquerade in Halloween parades, they have troubles. Bores. The best was a white rubber glove man. He inflated rubber gloves, tied many whites in clusters, the glove fingers forming flower petals, or rooster feathers, tied bouquets on his neck, on his head, on his waist, and he was a creature of white hands floating in the moving air. I haven’t seen pictures of him in the papers the next day. Why haven’t I seen him in the papers? Because the real thing is in the streets, man, not in the papers, not on TV, and you have to be part of it. The real parade is Downtown, in the Village, Downtown in the Village, man. And I was part of it.
10/30/2010
Well, here you have it: If you’d like to throw a bit of money my way to keep my endeavors going, and also enable me to spread the money to my various causes, witnessing democracy, freedom of speech and faith, and engineering social change thru art being some of them, I’d be grateful.
As I declutter my apartment, my computer, my life I've remembered this other poem I've written in Fall 2008:
I floated in amniotic liquid in my mom's womb, duh.
Major getting thru, push out.
Lots of skirmishing, leg and arm thrashing,
often hollering, thus fortifying my lungs.
Walking. Running. Jumping. Kicking. Tree climbing. Hide&seeking.
Primary school P.E. calisthenics. Military instruction.
Learning swimming or bike riding forbidden as deadly dangers,
life-threatening activities, dictated mother.
Two years of amateurish modern dance classes.
Disco. Walking for hours into the woods and hills of my hometown,
then hiking rocky cliffs national monuments.
Dancing, daily one-hour fitness working on my poster-girl image.
Sex life starts. Sex life starts. Sex life starts.
Long distance running attempt ended with scary gall bladder/liver pains.
Awful sexual transgressions perpetrated upon her while running away to the big
city. Gang rape.
Stops dancing, stops walking about; movement confined within the sacred space
of theater hall. Exercises abs and face muscles for perfect voice, diction and
projection.
The body is just a launching pad for her voice.
Bored with same daily drilling exercises.
Lots of carrying possessions, moving, suitcases.
Sex, marriage, pregnancy. Sex, pregnancy. Sex, pregnancy.
Strenuous 8-10 kilometer walks around the lake dragged
by well-meaning cuckoo husband.
Birth giving, shattering
pain.
Holding the baby, pushing the stroller.
Sex again. Cuckoo husband attacks!
Again possessions, suitcases, running for dear life.
Crossing the border to a better country, a larger city. Divorce.
Learns swimming. Finds it demanding, so unlike romantic movies.
Prefers lazing in hot thermal water, but French boyfriend and son need lively
company every second evening in the swimming pool.
Carrying journalistic bags filled with papers and tape recorders.
Experimental Sex Academy Frenchman. Goes on for three good years.
Boxes, suitcases. Gone to America. Louisiana.
Again pushing, shoving furniture.
Real photo camera. Nights of excited standing oblivious in the darkroom.
Learns to ride a bike. Joyful feeling of freedom ends in fear when thugs
honking, bike falls, knee injury.
Learns driving, speeding. Road rage thugs on the highway. Stops driving.
Boxes, furniture. East Coast. New Jersey Desert.
Sex, theater, sex, theater, darkroom pictures.
Pushing, carrying, pushing, carrying. New York City!
Meets salsa maestro who insists on dancing. Hilarious failing attempt.
Sex profuse.
Pushing, carrying possessions. Fighting him back in ambushes/matches of
jealousy, street performance! Boxing. Jostling. Police presence, referee.
Sex forbidden as deadly danger, life threatening activity, dictated by AIDS
scourge.
Pushing, carrying possessions. Pushing, carrying possessions. Furniture.
Metabolism change? Delayed maturity?!
Body eats, eats, loading 20 extra pounds.
Attempts to exercise irregular. Lazing on Brighton Beach sand.
Walking along the waves barefoot.
Knee injury painful.
Tendency to clutter space
to avoid her body's needs for movement, expression.
Hanging out with selfish dancers for body awakening purposes.
Sex still forbidden as deadly danger, life-threatening activity, thus lots of
artsy sublimation.
Fancying a man again. Terrified of herself on video screen.
Fasting. Shedding 10 pounds in two months.
Disillusion. Putting back 15 pounds.
Disturbing couch potato tendencies.
Gardening. Walking in Central Park.
Shoving, pus
Back from Motherland: donating, donating boxes of possessions to charities.
Meets less selfish dancer who makes her do monkey dances with him.
Gets Rec. Center
membership. Buys her first pair of sneakers.
Goes to physician for knee injury clarification.
Danger of amputation? Nah, paranoia.
Swimming. Gym. Muscle machines. Dancing. Endorphins.
Deep deep sleep. Swinging in the hammock of summer.
Why not decades ago swim, dance, deep deep sleep? Well, now.
Awake. Alive.
Well, here you have it: If you’d like to throw a bit of money my way to keep my endeavors going, and also enable me to spread the money to my various causes, witnessing democracy, freedom of speech and faith, and engineering social change thru art being some of them, I’d be grateful. New York October 1st, 2013
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