Golden Yellow Blues

From time to time when the sky is gloomy I gather various textiles that are not happy whites anymore and I turn them into golden days.
I'm told being useful to others, sharing your knowledge is the way to go. Keith Pavia fellow artist reminded me that talents are given to be shared not buried away.
It is still trying for me because I grew up under communism and much was taken from us in the name of altruism.
Yet for many years I went that route only to get burned out.
So: dissatisfying whites get soaked for an hour or so.

I put to boil 4.5 gallons of water  and 13 tablespoons of turmeric and 9 tablespoons of alum. If curious Google as to why.

I pushed the clothes thoroughly under the concoction and made sure it stayed oppressed.

After an hour get them out without burning yourself. 

Rinse. The turmeric powder might create a Milkyway of sorts on the bathtub floor. Get metaphysical.

Take pictures with your phone and not spify camera while rinsing until the water is not yellow anymore.

Put  a second load into the brewing cauldron.  If you get annoyed by the waiting like I do since I equate waiting with terrorising controlling tactics, as experienced under said communism, double task. Repot your plants. Here goes Pandele, my digging assistant:

After rinsing put them in the dryer and get all metaphysical again.

Then fold the fluffy clothes and uuu and aaa about how soft and sunflower fields and daffodils and autumn ginko tree leaves they are. And how you'll never get to be depressed by blahy whites again. It's not your fault the washing cycle is just half an hour here in America and you can't get them be the required white. 

And that how disgustingly patriarchal it is that brides must wear virginal white. And you can't remember the biblical title of a movie in which Betty Davis stubbornly showed up in a red dress she bought of a sexual worker and Jane Fonda's father dumped her. Jezebel the film. 

At my wedding my head looked like a buffalo partition in the middle  teased in two mounds stiff with hair spray. Made my own white dress. God, every year I find more stuff in my younger past to be embarrassed about.

Here are the invigorating results:

Even rust splotches look artsy now:

This flower is my phone screen now to remind me that when in doubt use yellow.

After trimming off the stray strings I made a tassel:

and left the rest to Pandele to play

while I took a hot bath using the brewing. Turmeric and alum is great for you. Google, Google. If you douse your nether parts you can be a virgin all over again. Yep.

New York City 

November 11, 2017

The Olympics Seep In

In the NYC Park and Recreation swimming pool down the block. I swim faster, vigorously, since on my retina the Rio Olympics unfold. I don’t understand the rules of the swimming competitions, or even swimming styles. All I engage in is my frog stroke. It’s an approximation of breast stroke and butterfly, I was told by savvier swimmers at the gym swimming pool in winter. They insisted I should sink my head in the water, but I can’t do that at our neighborhood pool. Swimmers share wide lanes during the early morning lap swim hours. I rotate my head like a periscope. I have to watch out for the careless back-strokers to avoid frontal collision. I surely don’t want to start my day in a Titanic wreck.

During day there are no lap swim lanes, the pool turns into a zoo. Crab hermits congregate on the pool ramp and steps, blocking your access. The floor is dangerous to step on, since queen conch shells covered in barnacles don’t budge, busily working on their pink pearls. Your serene swimming is hindered by papa sea lions dipping their squealing pups in water, majestic whales snorting menacingly at you, their calves frolicking under their protective bellies, or by dazed catfish with their fingerlings pulling at their barbel-moustaches, or alarmed frogs, basking on pool edges, squawking loudly as they dive to rescue their overconfident tadpoles engaged in underwater breath-holding contests, or teenage sea horses clutched amorously, or islands of rapping seagulls, or the occasional mermaid, slaloming through clusters of ponderous pelicans, searching for their mermen, attacked by quarrelsome Medusas, or lazily hanging out with Rastafarian octopuses, anyway, not to belabor my point, playful bathers pop up in front of you from the water, splash, jump, ignoring your ‘efforting’.

So when a teenage girl follows me around and finally asks me smiling what kind of swimming is that, I apologetically say it’s my one of a kind frog style. When she asks me how I move my legs, arms, I realize she wants to learn to swim. I demonstrate. She eagerly imitates my arm moves. She moans she’ll never be able to swim. I encourage her, she will swim in no time, much better than me, if she registers for free swim classes. I want to get on with my ten-lap quota, that is ten pool lengths. In the morning I manage twenty pool widths. I’m a slow poke, but I came a long way.

I grew up in a dusty little town with no river or lake or clean swimming pool, the seaside was 400 kilometers away, and mom was terrified of water, fearful I’d drown or catch diseases. When I swam my first lap a few summers ago I thought I’d die, my heart was pounding out of my chest, my lungs were agonizing, my feet were shackled in cramps. All this in a sad four-feet-deep pool surrounded by eight lifeguards. So to me frogging twenty laps in half an hour is winning gold at the Olympics.

What those swimmers do in Rio is unbelievable. I’m in awe that they manage to jump into the water timely. I’d be still gasping for air on my trampoline, debating if I heard the start signal or not, while they’d be finishing the race, go on the podium, take their medals, travel back to their countries.

But according to my Yoga teacher I’m a gold medalist just for the mere fact that I show up on Thursdays at her Yoga class. As far as she is concerned, I could snooze on the matt in Child’s Pose, well, maybe that would be uncomfortable, but in Corpse Pose, and still win a medal for my ‘efforting’. Well, the municipality pays for this class, so some follow her advice, but were they to pay from their own pockets I bet they’d like to get more bang for their money than a nap on a matt. Anyway, the teacher’s point is that Yoga class is not a competition arena. No judges, no judgment.

If only I could reach that stage of enlightment, life would be so much easier, so much rosier. It’s a daily struggle not to pass judgment. I blame it on being raised during Ceauşescu’s socialism. My theory is that officially we were supposedly all in it together, so everybody goaded everybody, criticized one another. Everybody’s choices and actions affected everybody else. We all had to attain Epoca de Aur/The Golden Age of Communism as a group, not individually, slow pokes and Olympians alike.

We stand tall in Mountain Pose, eyes closed, listening to our teacher about the new women’s gymnastics world champion, a nineteen-year-old that smiles effortlessly and treats herself to pepperoni pizza even when she doesn’t win gold. She is the greatest gymnast of all times ever, the teacher enthuses, she can do poses that even male gymnasts have trouble with, she is so strong, so playful. The best.

I just can’t keep my eyes closed. I squeeze my eyelids, but I just can’t meditate. How could this American girl, the new world champion, be the best ever?! Nadia Comăneci is the best ever. Ever, ever, ever! Without Nadia there’s no modern gymnastics! Plus Nadia was born in Romania, and so was I, and you are now telling me Simone Biles is the greatest ever, ever? No, no, no! Nadia Comăneci is ever, ever, ever! I was a child when I watched wistful Nadia, a child herself, competing in Montreal, making the billboards go 00.00, because the machine had no 10.00 score for her perfection. I watched the world go berserk with wonder.

Then when she competed in Moscow the Russians cheated and stole the gold from her, because Russia’s might would trample us under its boot. I watched in tears her trainers withdrawing the team from the competition. That was the last sports competition I ever watched. It made me sick for decades. Only this summer visiting a dying friend I indulged her and watched together one evening’s broadcast to see if a Hungarian swimmer would make us proud. To my surprise I was so happy to see so many driven youth. Nowadays it’s cool to drift aimlessly, alas. Those swimmers, faces so young. It was endearing to hear their rehearsed speeches of gratitude. If you beat your competitor with just one millisecond you became the winner. Ridiculous. I’d give all finalists medals.

And then, at the gymnastics there was Nadia in the bleachers. And Marta Karolyi. And the American team wins. There’s only one lonely Romanian gymnast competing, not even a team. It was heartbreaking. What happened?! Romania was a powerhouse! We defined modern gymnastics! And now America wins it all?! What happened?!

Well, dear Ella, funny you should ask. Where do you live? In America. Where’s Nadia? In America. Where are the Karolyis? In America. Who wins? America. The safe harbor we all seek.

Simone Biles is a sweet girl, from foster care to gold medal, what an inspiring, from-rags-to-riches story, sure, but don’t tell me she is the greatest of them all. There’s an entire team of Romanians behind her. The Karolyis gave America fifteen world champions, nine Olympic champions, over seventy medals, and on and on the list goes. I don’t know if Nadia had privileges in Romania, if she had enough food to eat or was starving like the rest of us under communism, if she was freezing in her home, like the rest of us, or if she treated herself to pepperoni pizza, but I know that behind her was the sadness and joy, the humiliation and pride of the little country of Romania.

And now they have nothing. That is partly their politicians doing, alright. That is partly our doing, because we ran away for dear life, alright. But it is also part of beloved America’s doing, gulping in everything. Look at the many Easter European names that American champions have.

Sure, it is for the greater good, for humanity’s good.

But, please Yoga teacher, even if you were not born when Nadia was a world champion, you surely have heard of her…

New York City

August 12, 2016

A Worm Has Wiggled Into People's Souls

[Early Spring, 2004. An apartment on Roosevelt Island, New York City. Thru the window the gray city skyline and glittering water. GRANDMA DIDINA prepares breakfast for IRINA, her daughter’s guest, then lovingly watches her eat.]

GRANDMA DIDINA:
Do you like your eggs scrambled? My son-in-law also likes them that way. Here is some salami. He always eats salami. If we don't have salami he doesn’t feel satisfied! Have some slices of provolone cheese. Here's bread. You have to eat properly. Young people don't eat properly. [Places the plate with eggs on the table. Sits down. Pause.] Look at the geraniums! It's a jungle! They blossomed early this year. Hey, you calico cat! Get back in the armchair! Let Irina eat!
I wanted to go to watch the Passion of Jesus. Imagine! Maia Morgenstein is in it! A Romanian girl! I wanted to go but none of my girls wanted to go. "Girls"! If you add up together their age, they are 200 years old! Is it really anti-Semitic?
America is hard, you have to adapt to its ruthless laws. It's all about money. The rhythms here are mad, hard to adapt to. Some don't. I look at my daughter and my son-in-law, they come home dead tired. Luckily I'm here, I cook and take care of the house. Supervise the kids. I don't like how kids behave here! My grandchildren are polite, but their friends just come and go straight into Sorin's room, without even saying hello! As if I don't exist. They are high school kids! They eat, leave the dishes all over the place and don't even say a thank you! I told them, “This is not a hotel! Wash the dishes after yourselves!”
See how society shapes them? [Pause.]
I've been sitting here, thinking about things. A worm has wiggled into people's souls. Nazism, communism, terrorism, they are all the same! They are all built on lies! Politicians fill their pockets with gold and don't give a hoot about poor people.
We Romanians are a kind, tolerant people. We carried them piggyback for decades. We were stupid, stupid, stupid… We believed in communism, enthusiastically, when it came. Young people went after school on their own volition and built up those mammoth buildings in the Red Star Square. We believed! But when I finally saw how crooked they turned… Why, they built this huge steel factory by the Black Sea, at Năvodari, you know? And we had no iron, no coal! How can you be so megalomaniac, build a factory like that? Even now it's empty! Our industrious comrades came and stole whatever they could, a window here, a door there, and it was with everybody's silent agreement! Come! Come and take whatever you can! In bright daylight! They stole everything. The state took everything from us, so we always stole. And lied. On the radio they said we made 100,000 tons of steel a month! What a lie. We barely made one ton!
When I realized they were lying, I told my brother, "Brother, this system won't last. It's too crooked." But my very own brother, a colonel in the army, said, "Don't you ever let anyone know that you told me this!" I looked at him—my very own brother! If I am your sister and I can't talk to you about my doubts, what is this? He never spoke to me again! If the party said everything was wonderful, he believed it! Well, later on he asked forgiveness, "My dear sister, you were so right. I was a fool."
He can't survive on his pension if we don't send him a hundred dollars every month. In ten years of inflation they increased the pension by 20,000 lei, but nowadays a tram ticket is 20,000! They ruined everything!
Hundreds of people would stand in line for hours and we wouldn't say a word to each other. We were afraid to talk, because informers could tell on us, twist our words and we’d end up in jail.
Before communism—I grew up under capitalism—I was twelve and I remember people were much friendlier then. We talked to our neighbors. My mother once sent me to borrow two eggs from our neighbor. Then she returned them, but the neighbor said she wouldn't take them, because they were smaller than her eggs. "Dear neighbor, this is all I've got! My hens make smaller eggs! I can give you four or six in return!" No, she didn't want more eggs, she wanted just two large ones. "Well, then, here you are!" And my mom smashed the two eggs, one after the other, on our neighbor's forehead! [Laughs.] Oh, dear! She was not a patient one, my mom. When my father came home, he was a quiet guy, Polish nobleman, he asked her, "Why have you done this, Pichi? Why couldn’t you just hand them to her?" She said nothing. Luckily the neighbor didn't sue my mom.
[Pause.] Don't bother with the dishes; just put them into the sink.
[Blackout.]

Death Has Entered Our House

Here in America we have Halloween, but where I was born they have Illumination, perhaps the equivalent of The Day of the Dead, when people go to the cemetery with candles and flowers. 

[IRINA imagines talking on the phone to her MOTHER who is dressed in black sits at a table with her hands straightening the lace tablecloth. She is exhausted and sad, yet full of dignity and relieved.]
MOTHER
Your brother died, on Saturday.
Death has entered our house.
Oh, my daughter, I was so worried about you. How are you? Life can be so hard for some.
Everybody is terribly, terribly sad. He was so young. The phone rings continuously and that’s why, maybe you can’t catch us.
He died next to me. Lord, I don’t know why I’ve been so cruelly punished.
I was never interested in luxury or other comforts of this world, because you are all my joy. God will help us get through all the trials!
Do you remember our neighbor Gyuszi? He died the same way a year ago. Exactly a year ago. His father came and said, “We can only follow His way.” We cannot do anything. [She crosses herself.]
Mihai had a heart attack. But it was because of… you know, alcohol.
He was sick from the last day of drinking and vomited at 6 a.m.
Then he ate a bit, drank the leftover coffee, and made another one and went to the market. He came back fast. It was Saturday morning. We argued and I asked him not to drink anymore. He said he wouldn’t drink until Easter. "But why do you have to drink on Easter?" "I’ll drink a beer because it’s holiday." We said that on Monday we’d go buy him some handsome blue jeans—I couldn’t give him a lot of money in hand, because he’d drink them with his so-called friends. He said he had to fix his teeth to which I told him after Easter. He said he'd go back to bed—he came drunk from the market. Later on people from the pub told me he drank a few shots of brandy and a Turkish coffee. He was very, very sick, Irina. He never ate anything and got drunk morning, noon and evening. And he drank such strong coffee! He had three teaspoons of Turkish coffee to a cup and drank about 2 or 3 a day plus two cigarette packs a day.
It was about 9, 10, I don’t remember exactly. He was on the floor. Adrian saw him falling on the floor, but the little scoundrel jumped on him, poked his nose with his fingers, such a naughty child! Then he came to play out in the yard and didn’t tell me anything! After awhile I went in to check on him and saw him on the floor. The coat he wore in the morning was rolled under his head, his face was turned towards the door. He had a cigarette in hand between his fingers spread on the rug. Maria told me I should take the cigarette from his hand to avoid putting the carpet on fire. I could barely pull the cigarette out, he was clutching the cigarette—probably he was already dead. I covered him with two blankets. It wasn’t the first time he was sleeping in front of the bed on the rug. He couldn’t climb into the bed.
After half an hour I checked on him again. I was surprised to see he was in the same position on the rug. I shouted at him, I shook him up, make him get into the bed! He was not moving! I rubbed his back, but he didn’t react in any way. Again I didn’t realize he was dead. I called the ambulance of course, then a neighbor, then Maria. The two women stated that Mihai was dead. I still didn’t believe it. Meanwhile the ambulance arrived and unfortunately the doctor too confirmed he was dead and there was nothing that could be done. He died in two minutes.
Heart attack. He didn’t suffer.
It’s in God’s hands.
April 12, 2003: The saddest day of my life.
Don’t fear, I'll be alright! You don’t need to come home now. I know it’s hard with the green card papers.
All that money. Of course you can’t come home! Take care of yourselves. Do you have enough food to eat? I pray for you every day. Every single day. You don’t manage too brilliantly in America. You have your own trouble. Please don’t get ill.
He was very, very unhappy! He went through a divorce. Being a handsome boy, the girls loved him, but he fell for those he shouldn’t have.
He never listened to us. We wanted him to go to college to Cluj, close to home, but he went to the Aircraft Institute in Bucharest. He placed 8 out of the 100 seats, regardless of all the connections the other candidates had. In high school he always got prizes in the national math Olympics.
He suffered because of the social injustice. He couldn’t find work. Without money or connections, his intelligence was worth nothing. He had no one to help him go abroad, and we had no money to give him to that end. Without an occupation he drowned his bitterness in alcohol.
After Gyuszi died because of alcohol, he got a bit scared and checked in at the internal ward. They diagnosed him with etilism and recommended him not to drink a drop of alcohol, but he didn’t obey the doctor’s advice. I tried to discuss it with him be it in a peaceful way, be it harshly.
Lord, how fearful I was for him. I saw him walking down the road of ruin and I couldn’t help him with anything.
Most of the time he wouldn’t acknowledge his drinking bouts. Lately he didn’t care about anything. At times he turned violent. He couldn’t control himself. My heart was breaking for him.
Not for a second did I think that he could die of a heart attack. We thought of cirrhosis of the liver, that has a slower evolution and meanwhile we hoped he’d give up drinking.
He was sent to the psychiatry ward at the state hospital, but he would not hear of it. I gave him money to go to a private clinic, but he kept postponing. He had no appetite, no desire to live. "Mother, tell me one single reason to keep on living!" he would say.
He was so kind and loved by everybody. Everybody knew him. Everybody came from all over the town, to tell us how sorry they were. Even the Gypsies came! Everybody loved him. Our townspeople are very kind when it comes to distress. The relatives came from Turda, cousin Nelu and Puiu, and from Braşov, cousin Dorel and uncle Cosmin and Aurica.
The first part of funeral service was in the front yard. It was all black with people, the street too! We had three priests and a deacon. The sermon was two hours. Though it was a sad day, God was kind: it didn’t rain.
The hearse went along with your brother and sister in front, next to your father and a few relatives. I went by car. The cemetery is a bit out of the way.
We cried until we ran out of tears. Our poor son! The pain is killing us. Our relatives comforted us a bit. We are sadder, older and poorer…
The priests said we should focus on Easter and cleanse ourselves from sin. We should not gather riches, because we won’t take them with us. We should think of Jesus Christ.
It was a beautiful sermon.
I can’t remember all of it now. My head is in a fuzzy cloud. I’m tired. Your father hasn’t slept since Mihai died.
[She cries, heartbroken.]
We were very, very ill on Sunday, but your sister gave us pills and checked on our blood pressure. At least your father stopped drinking. He got scared. We told him, "Please, please, tati, don’t drink anymore, don’t drink, please." And he said, "No, no. I haven’t had a drink today. It’s the enemy number one, alcohol. No, no…"
Catrina didn’t go to work since Friday, but today she had to go. All her patients were waiting for her. She had to go.
How is Sorin? Is he tall and handsome like your father? He should take care with the bike, so that he should not get in trouble again. He should ride cautiously!
They did the autopsy and then we brought him home. At dawn I lit the candle for him, and we put him in the earth. The eternal place is a bit out of the way. We took the money that we put aside for our funerals and used it for him. Who would have thought?
Nowadays if you can’t fend for yourself, no one helps you. His wife gave us the place next to her mother, and we are thinking of buying two lots for ourselves there, to be near him. Though it’s a bit out of the way.
Not many came up to the cemetery. We had 45 guests for the memorial dinner. The priests sanctified the house, and his room. They put a crucifix in it.
I’ll start going to church. I’ll go to the little church on Flowers Street.
Oh, they fixed it quite well after the revolution. There are a lot of churches now!
I’m afraid I’ll go crazy, my dear. I was sitting at the table and thinking, I shall tell him when he comes from the pub how wonderful was his funeral! Then I thought, but he won’t come home anymore! Maybe I’m losing my mind, my dear…
I’ll talk to him. People talk to the dead, don’t they? They go to the cemetery and talk to them. Though they’re gone. We don’t know, we don’t know, maybe they are still around.
Such pain I don’t wish to any mother on earth. There is no greater pain in this world than to lose your child, the one you gave birth to, you raised him. I remember his first steps, his first words, his first smile. I loved him with all my being. A piece of my heart was torn away with him. Some console me, "Don’t be desperate because you have other children." But it’s not like that, because in the heart of a mother each child has his own place. Nothing can substitute that loss. I’ll take this pain to the tomb with me, that can’t be far. There we will see each other again. That’s my only hope.
We were like this, around the house, the two of us, all day. He was, you know, a… different kind of child. He didn’t listen to us.
Ever since he was small he was very energetic. When he came to this world he was 4.850 kilos—he was the maternity ward’s star. Each time we changed his diapers he kicked strongly with his little legs. He was a beautiful child, with a sweet smile, loved by everyone. When he was seven, he went with a friend who had a dog and didn’t come home in the afternoon. We looked for him everywhere. Oh, Lord, how I got scared! In the end I called the police and they searched for him and when we were desperate he shows up and climbs into the apricot tree! No matter how much the police or I begged him, he didn’t want to get down from the tree. We were happy that we found him.
We feel so guilty that we were harsh with him, but we thought it was for his own good. We wanted him not to waste himself. For his own good! We would quarrel, the two of us; he’d come and go about business. Now he’s gone.
Oh, there were so many wreaths on his tomb. His wife brought a white one, made of fresh carnations. It was covered with wreathes. I bought one on your behalf too. On the ribbons it was written: From Irina and Sorin. We’ll never forget you.
AUTOMATIC PHONE CARD ANNOUNCEMENT
You have one minute left.
MOTHER
I bought a red one, your color. It was made out of paper, so that it lasts for six weeks. Then we’ll have a memorial service and we’ll clean the tomb.
This is the situation. I’ll open the store tomorrow.
The neighbors come and tell me, "Open the store, stay among people, otherwise you might go nuts or fall sick." Father couldn’t go to the market these days. He felt ill. He talked all night with Dorel, and he stayed in bed today. Catrina takes care of us. Gives us pills.
Today I gave back the extra cooking pots to our neighbors. The guests left in the morning… Hello? Hello?
[The phone line gets cut off. Blackout.]

Written in 2004

Over a Glass of Beer

I wrote this piece, part of a longer text about a travel to Romania, in 1997 while studying in Budapest.  

I gulped thirstily the foamy beer, sensing Florin was in a story telling mood.
The troublesome news was that his mother, Florin was about fifty years old, broke her leg and was now in hospital in Braşov. This is a medieval mountain town famous for its Black Stone Cathedral and a street narrower than an obese lady’s hips.
"She was searching for her wallet while going down the stairs and fell down,” he told me lively, though sympathetic. “I would very much like to ask her now, 'Have you been drunk?' because when this happened to me, in '93, she said I was drunk. Though I told her that I was not! I was heading towards having a beer with friends and I was searching in my pocket for my cigarettes and lighter and I stepped on the edge of the step and fell. I told my friends, lucky of me they held me up, that I broke my leg, but they thought I was kidding. They took me to the emergency room and here I was for two months in a plaster cast up the middle of my thigh. I very much want to ask her if she was drunk!"
He asked me if I turned into a Hungarian, living in Budapest.
I said not totally.
"How do you say ‘mormoloc’ (tadpole) in Hungarian?"
"I have no idea," I said, realizing I knew tadpole only in Romanian and I felt silly I wrote fiction in other languages.
"Then you are not a Hungarian yet."
He asked me what was going on with me, and I told him I finished my first novel.
He smiled and asked me what would I worry next now?
"Well, maybe about my second book, and then about my third book, until I run out of inspiration."
He said a friend of his, a poet, said it would be better if you could make your debut with the second book.
I said I was afraid of not having new ideas and repeat myself.
He said something bizarre, that to have imagination asks for patience.
I was tickled by this idea and asked him to explain it.
He went way back to his childhood.
I hope he doesn't die, because this is what happens to my sources after they entrust me with their stories.
"When I was little, I discovered a trunk of old books in the attic. Tolstoi, Verlaine, Shakespeare, everything. They were dusty and falling apart. The paper was almost brown. I read them all on the toilet seat we had in the courtyard outhouse.”
“Why?!”
“I liked sitting there. It was warm and sunny. There wasn’t much sun in Braşov."
The stink of outhouse stung my nostrils. Visual artists were always peculiar to me.
"I didn't like school in the least. Our parents wanted to make us urban beings. To have a future. We were coming from the countryside, we didn't know what was that a toilet, an electric bulb, tap water… We knew other things connected with nature and animals... The girls were more devilish than we boys were. Beautiful girls with budding breasts I was dying to touch, were saying, ‘Comrade Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, The President of our country said...’ in the pionier/scout ceremonies.” He imitated their goosey primness dancing his cigarette.
“I skipped being a pionier. I didn't even enroll in the Communist Youth Organization. I was too wild, not one of their positive elements, so they left me alone. When they asked me to enroll in the Communist Party, I avoided it. I said I’d think it over."
That was funny. I was always told everybody was forced to join the Communist Party's ranks.
"Even in primary school we were rioting against the absurd, rigid regimentation. The school I went was next to the Synagogue and of course all the classmates were Jewish, except for a few of us who lived in the Şchei district populated by Romanians freshly settled from the surrounding villages. The Jewish children were very good at school. They knew Russian well, we never studied it properly. It took us months to grumble a few sentences, while these Jews were chatting in Russian. We looked at each other little cocks in the toilet and instinctively formed a group of little Nazis. We didn't know what was a Nazi, but we started to say 'Hail Hitler' and raise our arms in the toilet." He says this smiling and I listen to him puzzled. This is a nice man, a real artist, and he tells me smiling how real life was long time ago. Why should I worry, as I do, and not write it as he literally told me, fearing this would offend my Jewish friends?
"Then they left with their families, one by one, to Israel.
“At that time the school had a new director who was very tough. He came in class and announced, 'From now on you don't talk to Miriam Katz anymore. Her family has been a traitor to our cause. They go to the capitalists.’ Miriam had long, red hair, white skin and never talked to us anyway. Then we understood we could start beating them without getting punished and swell! we did! We draw swastikas in the break on the back of their copybooks. They never said anything to us, they were always quiet and polite. Who knows what their parents said at home...
“I stayed in that school until baccalaureate, what else could I do or even imagine I could do? I knew I liked drawing. My aunt Marilena from Cluj invited me to visit my cousin and improve my shaky Romanian Literature and Language knowledge because it was required at the Arts Academy entrance exam.”
At that moment Flavia came home and she was not in the least in the mood to indulge Florin's stream of consciousness. She came hobbling around the kitchen, slamming things around. "Where is the bean soup? You drank! You didn't buy bread, though I left you money on the fridge! Why don't you put the beer in the fridge?!"
He was happy, not in the least embarrassed. Neither was I, because I knew Flavia thought much of him and worried about his drinking. But we were floating in the past and we didn't want to come back to the kitchen squabbles. Finally Flavia gave up and joined us for a while, adding her contributions with an impatient, "Let me speak now!" when they were describing what kind of woman was tanti Marilena with her piercing blue eyes, who took Florin and his drawings to a reputable drawing teacher who refused to teach Florin. Tanti Marilena looked at him, told him resolutely, "We have to talk!" and the two of them went into his studio, closed the door after them, and then the teacher called Florin in and told him he should come to class on Tuesday.
"But what did she say?" I asked thinking she was maybe a femme fatale.
"She was a very resolute woman,” said Florin smiling. “Maybe 'Fuck off!' I don't know. Once we were in her new Trabant. She was new to driving. She drove illegally thru the zebra crossing. A poor peasant froze in the middle of the street. He was looking bewildered at her while she was cursing him, both in Hungarian and Romanian, why the hell he wanted to make an accident."
"But she was making the accident!" I laughed.
"Yes, but she was like that,” laughed Flavia, warmed up by the memory. She made a graceful pantomime of Marilena, “In two seconds she rolled the window down, cursed him in Romanian and Hungarian, to make sure he understood, rolled back the window pushing hard at the damn handle, and left the peasant aghast holding his bags in the middle of the zebra… When I went to visit her for the first time, and Florin told her I was his fiancée, she, first thing, examined my legs! Though I had a miniskirt and you could see they were good legs, she grabbed my skirt from my back, pulled it upwards! I was preparing a tea or something in the kitchen, and she came and said loudly that she wanted to see my thighs! This was her style..."
The phone rang. It was some Italian, a friend of Pansa, Flavia’s sister, wanting to say a late Happy New Year to them. Pansa worked for a year at an Italian clinic. It was sweet how both Flavia and Pansa said beaming their siamo bene and arrivederci. We Romanians finally get to travel abroad, slowly but surely.
Then Flavia had enough of being up so she declared, "It's late, you should all go to sleep."
But Florin informed her musing, "I like her," making me blush, so we went on with our marathon. He was now talking about the Arts Academy.
"I didn't like my portraits because they were too true to nature, while others made futuristic stuff..."
"I need a true-to-nature cover. Can you turn photos into drawings?"
Yes, he could... Then, in the last year at the Graphics department, he had to do pedagogical practice. He taught drawing in primary school and the pupils were so brazen.
He was dutifully drawing on the blackboard some still nature or some floral frieze, working hard to expand their artistic abilities. He was quite sharply dressed, you know, with a fresh white shirt, his hair slick. Still, what he got from his sweet pupils while drawing so dutifully? Little bantering voices chirped, “Oh, don't you say so, dude?!" stabbing him with their giggling.
"You didn't know what to do... Slap her? She was too big! And too small to ask her for a rendez-vous... So I told them, 'Let’s be patient with each other and be quiet until the end of the class. You can do your math homework if you like. I will read this fine novel meanwhile.' So for a whole month we lost each other’s time, until I fulfilled my teaching requirement."
“O-la-la! I wrote these people in Syracuse—they asked me to write a statement in my graduate school application about why I liked teaching creative writing. I wrote them that I loved teaching because I loved eager young minds.”
“Eager young minds indeed,” laughed Flavia. “They are troglodytes nowadays. Few are like you. I admire you so much."
Oh, again I blushed in embarrassment, and wanting to change the subject I asked her, "How do you say mormoloc in Hungarian?" She is also both Hungarian and Romanian.
"Vízibolha..." she mumbled, making an effort, "Víztetű..."
"That is purece de apă, păduche de apă!” water flea, water lice I laughed, “You can’t speak Hungarian either."
"What is it in English?!" she asked.
"I don't know... Neither in French..." It’s tadpole, you sad English fiction writer.
She went to bed promising to wake me up early to be in time to fetch my scholarship money at the Ministry of Education.
Then Florin said how at graduation, they were already married by then, they wanted to go work in some other city together.
"There was something in Iaşi, but we wanted Bucharest. I got some very weird job, she didn't get anything. I was supposed to start work on the first of August, which I did. My new work place was at 'The Creative Esthetics and The Esthetics of Production Institute.' On August first, I knocked at their door. They told me the director was not in, neither was his secretary, or his deputy, so I should come the next day. They didn't want me there. It was tricky, because if you didn't show up at the due date, you lost your work place. I told them, 'The government wants me to work here. Look at this paper! It says black on white that I am your employee.' I came again the next day, and again they sent me around from one office to the other. I was staying at my aunt, so I wasn’t paying a hotel and I have plenty of patience. I decided I would wait until they signed my papers and gave me work.
One guy told me in a hurry that the director had already left. Later on I realized he was the director. He was a cynical, a sadistic idiot. In the end they didn't have what to do and gave me an assignment to draw yellow and black letters, from Ceauşescu's writings, for a school poster.
Then I remembered that my cousin Paul from Cluj, said I should go and ask for his friend's help. But I forgot his family name. I knew only where he worked. I went there and told the porter I wanted to speak to Cristian. The porter asked humbly, 'Comrade Vlădescu?' 'Yes, Comrade Vlădescu!' and he let me in. Comrade Vlădescu came out from a fanciful meeting, smoked with me and sent me to the Military Publishing House. There they treated me nicely, offered me coffee. It was different if someone like Vlădescu sent you. They didn't have any position opened but they promised to call me back and they kept their promise.
But now the Creative Esthetics didn't want to let me leave, because they didn't want to be known that people quit them. One day as I was drawing black and yellow texts from Ceauşescu, on a ladder, cursing Tofan, the guy who refused to stamp and sign my work transfer papers, so I could go to the Military Publishing House. Well, the school principal, a nice woman, came to give me sandwiches to eat. She was happy that finally the school would have quotations from Comrade Ceauşescu. And as we talked, I knew that she was also named Comrade Tofan, but somehow I never made the connection up to then, and I asked her, 'Are you a relative of Comrade Tofan from the Personnel Office at the Light Industry Ministry?' 'Yes. I am his wife.' 'Well, he gives me so much trouble. He doesn't want to let me transfer to the Military Publishing House.' 'Who? Sorin?! Does Sorin give you such troubles?!' The next day he immediately called me in and signed and stamped my papers and asked me nicely to finish the quotations for his wife before I’d leave.
"But still the director from the Production Esthetics didn't want to let me go. Such absurdities were going on. I told my future boss at the Military Publishing House about it, asking him to intervene somehow and he said, 'Who?! Basarabescu?! But we don't intervene when it comes to him! We order him, he complies!' He was their informer. So they ordered him indeed, and I got my stamp in no time, plus Comrade Basarabescu was licking my ass now telling me we should cooperate in the future, and what a nice guy I was.
"It was nice at the Military Publishing House so I worked there ever since. Until I broke my leg... It is so easy sometimes. Things that you struggle for years get solved in a matter of minutes... I was staying at my aunt’s. It was dreadfully sad to be alone in Bucharest. I don't wish this to anyone. I feared I’d annoy my aunt, so I came home only late at night, not to disturb her. I hang out in pubs, at Turnul, or Pescarul."
"Couldn't you work for yourself after your work hours?"
"Well, it was difficult. When you enter into a network of manipulation and thievery you can't get out of it. Flavia was in Baia Sprie. Then she came over. She didn't work for ten years, raising our kids."
"How could she survive without making sculptures?"
"She was okay," he said convinced and poured more beer into his glass. I was sleepy, sleepy.
"How could you? I'd go crazy without my writing! Don't you regret it?”
“Quite often, even now. But see, cover design is not exactly art."
"Why not?! Even making Eiffel Towers out of matches can be art!”
“Let’s make a cover for you. I need to hold your book in my hand. Send it to me.”
"It's in English. That won’t do. I’ll write a summary in Romanian for you. And I have a photo I'd like you to make a drawing after.”
"Send them. We could make a book, even if only a single copy. Something to hold happily in your hand. Not like these consumerisms they sell nowadays. Do you understand?"
I nodded. It was exciting imagining Florin brooding around designing my first novel’s cover.
I should mail him the photo.

 
 
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 18th, 2013

A Few Luminous Moments with Your Mother

Still decluttering.  I've found another poem I've written in Fall 1999:

And there we were in the kitchen,
eating again fragrant tangerines.
Finally your puppy stopped whimpering.
I was listening to your mother’s old voice
speaking in my language.
I haven't heard my language spoken so beautifully
since last year…
I don't think I'll ever go home again.

"And I was pregnant with Michael,
so I didn't want to work anymore
at the Contagious Diseases Hospital.
I went to work in the countryside, as a family doctor.
My assistant, Pisti Vakalics, had an askew shaped head.
He was pulled out from the womb with the forceps.
He looked like a Picasso painting.
One eye popped out in the middle of his forehead.
But otherwise he was a kind guy.
Though hot headed and helpless at times.

One night my other nurse came knocking,
rattling my door.
'Come quickly, Mississ the Doctor, come quickly.'
'What is it?!' I asked while putting my coat on.
She could barely breath, so alarmed she was.
I grabbed my shoes and ran after her
to the other end of the village.
There was Pisti Vackalics, helping a woman give birth.
The woman was crying, Vakalics was crying. Bedlam.
'What are you crying for Vakalics?
Help the woman get out the baby!'
'Oh! I wish I could,
but I am afraid her baby will eat me,
Mississ the Doctor. Look! I lost one arm!'
I looked at Vakalics closer and indeed
his right arm was swallowed into the woman.
He pulled, I pulled, the nurse pulled,
but the baby wouldn't get out of her womb.
Meanwhile the husband was agonizing,
because in Văscăuţi de Sus, our village,
the custom is to tie the husband's balls with a rope
and the woman in labors yanks its ends,
so that they can feel together
the pain and joy of life creation.
He doesn't want to miss that!

And the choir was singing incessantly the Infant's Soul Song."
"What is that?!" I asked softly.
"Oh, you don't know that?
They sing the Infant's Soul Song in that region…"
"I never heard of it…"
"You are too young…
In Văscăuţi de Sus when the woman decides
she is ready to conceive, she retreats
and stops speaking until
she doesn't come up with an original song for her infant.
And then she sings this song all along
her pregnancy. All along the birth giving.
All along his infancy.

The child learns the song
because it is there where his soul abides,
in the song.
They sing it at his death and throughout his funeral…"

Such country is my Transylvania, that I left behind…
"So it was bedlam. Like an Anthropology workshop…" I added.
"Yes, it was bedlam. But I put some order into it.
Vakalics didn't go to medical school, like me.
I gave the woman a papaverină injection, a muscle relaxant,
because she was in labor and as her vagina contracted
it captured his arm.
And here came out Vakalics' blue arm.
Such days we had back then, in Transylvania.
Should we go shopping? Buy you more lovely clothing?
Let's have another charming outing."
And we had another charming outing,
that is we got lost again because she has no clue
where she is while she drives around Philadelphia,
she just moved here in your house, pulling together resources.
We went in and out shopping malls,
with more and more fancy shopping paper bags
and then we finally got home
after getting lost for another hour.

I remembered her today in class,
as I was in front of my new students,
waiting for them to fill in the Student Data Sheet.
I was dressed in the soft gray dress
she bought me thinking I'd be her daughter-in-law.
I remembered her
as I was nervously patting my hair in place,
fearing that I didn't look authoritative enough,
I remembered how
she gently ruffled my hair
while buzzing the drier around my head...

 
 
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 3rd, 2013

My Body's Resumé

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

New York City. September 11. Heat Wave.

Today is September 11. Today the temperature is 93 degrees.
Mourning the victims and fearing another black out have rolled up together. Here are two of my texts that touch upon those two calamities that had befallen this city.

Blackout
[2004. Sunnyside, Queens, New York City. GEORGE, a Romanian–American man in his 30s, does the maintenance to his bike. He speaks with gusto, relishes remembering. He talks to a few neighborhood teens gathered around him. He lubricates the bike chain.]
I’m telling you, this is the most reliable means of transportation. The Chinese aren't fools. I bought this bike after the blackout. Where were you when it happened? Man, that was something! I was in the subway, stuck one stop from home! One stop! Now whenever I have an important meeting I ride my bike. Manhattan is not that far! During the blackout my girlfriend walked all the way to Queens. She didn't know how long it would take, half a day, God knows, but it was just about an hour. That's it. One hour.
[He aligns the frame of the tire.]
There was this Asian guy on the train, with his bike. [Laughs] He was holding his head the whole while. [Imitating a generic Asian accent.] "What the fuck! What the fuck! I've got the only transportation that works and I'm stuck in this damn train with it!"
It was something!
I was as usual reading the ads over the windows, "Trim spa. Before and after. The ultimate come back. Be envied." Then the paranoiac one, "If you see a suspicious package or activity, don't keep it to yourself. Tell a cop! Or call the toll free Terrorist Hotline."
And the train stopped!
Usually when a train stops, they go cha-cha-chaaaa-chaaaa-smooth-stop… but this one was cha-cha-njooobooom-njoooo -screechy-halt! Lights off. Then the emergency light kicked in. Oh, my God, not the terrorists again! But a few minutes later the conductor announced it was just a power outage, you know, we should be patient, we would be evacuated, first they had to take care of people in the tunnels. Alright.
A guy asked me if he could smoke. Come on, man, this might be your last cigarette, of course you can smoke! Give me one too! He opened the window and we both puffed at them.
We were lucky. No weirdoes on the train. Imagine being shut in for two hours with this woman I once saw on the train with a bagful of smelly cats? Their round heads were bobbing out of the bag. Imagine if they escaped her sac, running around all over us. I would have choked.
[Takes his hand pump. Cheerful, absorbed in remembrance.]
What I remember most is a Romanian family: grandma, daughter and the little boy. The grandma was frantic. They couldn’t speak English, the daughter understood a bit, tried to calm her down, but the grandma was trembling…
GRANDMA DIDINA
Terrorists! That’s what it is! Now they'll start shooting again! Say your prayers, they'll be throwing bombs now. Why did you have to come to America?
GEORGE
Her daughter was yelling…
IRINA
Was it better at home?! Have you forgotten how back at the revolution bullets whizzed by my pregnant belly?
GEORGE
In December '89, days before we caught and shot Ceauşescu… Ceauşescu our president! He was a tyrant that starved us to death because he wanted to pay back the foreign debt! Anyway, there were rumours that he’d hired Middle Eastern terrorists. We saw some dead ones on TV, dressed in black with ninja caps. They scared us on TV: terrorists were shooting in the subways. But I boarded one around midnight, I had to go cross-town. A ghost train, all lit up, no one in it, no one at the train stops. Still the rumours said terrorists were hiding behind secret doors that led to a network of secret underground tunnels. Squads of well trained terrorists with top notch weapons.
GRANDMA DIDINA
[Shouts in distress.] Terrorists! Terrorists!
George
It’s just a blackout, the long, hot, dog-days drained the power. Too many air conditioners and refrigerators.
GRANDMA DIDINA
[Not comprehending.] You can speak English! Tell them to move the train! Move the train! Împingeţi-l! Împingeţi trenul! Împingeţi! Daţi-i ghes!
[GEORGE laughs despondently. Tightens the pump on the tire.]
GEORGE
[Bubbly.] These old ladies live in their kids' apartments and don't have a clue what's going on. Water the geraniums, feed the cat, cook hearty Romanian food and talk about the past. My aunt was like that.
The grandkid had to pee so they put his choo-choo in a coke bottle. The sound of the abundant pee made the poor Asian guy grab his crotch. At least I didn’t need to pee!
[Pumps air into the tires.]
Then after about two hours the conductors told us okay, we could leave the train, we could get out by walking within the tunnels, on the tracks. We got off. It was pitch-dark. I then understood what it meant to be so dark you can't see your hands in front of your face. I was clinging tight to the next one ahead, a hand grabbed my shoulder, another hand was grasping my shirt. A lot of rubbish in the subway. I hit my toes on coke cans and broken glass. The urine stink was suffocating. Luckily the rats didn’t bite us.
It was baffling. We were so friendly inside the train, but as soon as we got out we became strangers again, going our different ways.
The streets were full of people.
They were sweaty and happy. Did you notice how homeless people were directing traffic and no one seemed to think it odd? They all got those orange jackets and they were waving their hands at intersections and did a good job. They handled it like pros!
[Tightens up the seat.]
That night we partied, like we partied in December '89 when they showed on TV the dictator and his wife dead on the pavement in a pool of blood. We figured it would be Bounty Land from then on, no more starvation,--though in truth everybody had supplies, huge freezers in every home. We emptied our fridges and feasted on pork chops and stuffed cabbage! We were sorry later on when it became obvious things wouldn't change overnight.
Done! This is a good bike!
[He wipes his hands on his rag, gathers his tools.]
It was just like that at the blackout. People were happy it was not the terrorists. I met neighbours I'd never met before. A lovely way for a day to end! I had a huge party at my house; like back then. We went on the roof, scented candles... We ate the food so it shouldn't spoil, after things got back to normal we could fill the fridge again, no worries.
Not in Romania. Not in Romania.
Well, I’ll take this baby for a spin in the park!
[Blackout.]

A Few Years Later Seemingly Untouched By September 11 Goes the Neighborhood

You assigned me to take pictures of signs, traces of September 11, 2001 in my neighborhood: Fresh Pond Road in Ridgewood, Queens.

I walk my neighborhood on September 11, 2004, a Saturday morning, and, please don’t take it ill, but there is no trace of September 11, 2001 here. The sky was clear, first shiny but then it got cloudy. Cathedral steeples with green roofs tower over ugly buildings and sleepy trees. People are downcast too, but I cannot tell why. I tell. They are not talking about September 11.
I want to photograph the time passing for you, the green grass of hope and life growing on the four-year-old graves, but the grass in my neighborhood is singed. It is autumn. The leaves on the pavement I want to photograph for you, hoping they are red, the blood of murdered people, so that we won’t forget, but the leaves that the wind rolls about are not red, just a muddy greenish-brown and they are all mixed with debris. I want to photograph for you the apples that I picked up one rainy morning from the pavement, as I went to work. These apples, green and red shining in the rain, were like no apples you find in American stores. They were the wild apples of childhood in my village in Romania, and of perfumed fall and of my mother in the foggy rain when she took me to the orchard and there was a mountain of apples and a tribe of women picking them. But the apples I find now on the street, under the M subway line above the ground tracks, are putrid with worms coming out of them, disfiguring my memory of sweetness fresh.
I want to photograph the emergency phone pole, painted thickly in red like a rich Chinese robe, like a monument of bravery for the firefighters, but it’s not possible to photograph it. Shabby cars surround it and I cannot photograph their ugliness. I’m picky about my picture composition… My picture should have been like a Roman column, a triumph pillar. Its line simple and elegant.
I want to photograph faces of people; see what their eyes tell me about September 11.
But people go about their Saturday morning business: an old lady with a flowery dress sweeps the leaves in front of her house. I want, I want to photograph her sad face, but she threatens she’ll go inside if I take a picture of her. I don’t, I don’t have the heart to photograph her. I fear she might be more than simply shy about her weathered looks.
I fear she hides from the world and doesn’t want her picture in the papers. I fear.
See, people on Fresh Pond Road are coming from lands that for centuries were under wars and tyrants and know about cruelty and the insanity of hate and killings and treason and how fragile is survival. And I don’t know who came here, and why. I’m sure many of them are not angels, but they want to forget and start a new life. They don’t want to be noticed, many are illegal immigrants.
I also can’t take pictures of the woman who leans on the windowsill, above the Indian printing shop, though her mien is dolorous.
I can't take a picture of a woman waiting on the street corner, in her pink slacks and her old, suntanned skin, wrinkled under a golden anklet.
I can't take pictures of the South American man at the fruit stand who unloads mangoes and plums and papaya. I cannot because these people are all mine, illegal and fearful.
I should have taken a picture of the Chinese father rocking his baby boy on his knees. Take a picture of the joyous child and his laughter who makes all passers-by turn around and smile. But I fear joy is offensive, after all, on the grocery store TV screen, the poor old mothers recite the names of their dead sons live from Ground Zero.
I want to take a picture of the four-year-old twin girls with hair like sunshine, rushing by me, holding hands, but I cannot because the TV screen is mourning.
I pass by the Romanian Orthodox Church of Mother of Mercies and its door is locked.
I pass by the Emmaus Lutheran Church and its gates are shut.
No litany comes out in commemoration. Maybe tomorrow at Mass…
I want to enter the War Veterans’ Center’s widely-opened gate, but I fear the old warriors inside will be bitter about how nothing has been done about punishing the terrorists and the President is despicable. I fear I will not be responsive enough, because where I come from, at the '89 anti-communist revolution, young people were killed in the street by order of Ceauşescu, our loathed tyrant, and most of the criminals are still governing our state. So what can I say to forgotten heroes? We had our share of disenchantment and our patience and trust was cheated upon by politicians who promised justice would be done. What can I say to them?
That time passes, that I am grateful we can forget. Let people clean their cars on Saturdays, drink their beers and smoke their cigarettes. Let them do the laundry and walk their poodles and chat about manicure prices.
Let us be reminded we are but humans, incapable of prolonged focus or sustained passions.
We are humans, nothing lofty about us. Why should we be asked to be lofty? 
We do our modest share, but then we get side tracked. We forget.
The world’s misery competes for our attention. Earthquake in Japan, flood in China, hurricane in Florida, terrorists and strong men killing children in Russia.
It’s enough we survive and we adapt to anything. That’s heroic enough. Forget quickly and prepare yourself to face the next horror around the corner. It will come.
Each time I watch these world's horrors, there is a tinge of remembrance for the poor people dying four years ago. Each time I see ashes drop from a cigarette there is remembrance of that day in my heart. That day people walked staggering through the drizzle of ash and I could not take pictures of them. I could not snap the cold camera, poke in their wounded hearts.
I could not then and I cannot now.
I guess that makes me a bad photographer....
There are no traces of September 11 in my neighborhood. At least no kitschy memorabilia, no loud motorcades coming to pay their homage.
People walk around worrying about how to make a living, forget about getting rich like they dreamt when they came here, how to get their papers, how to pay the lawyers, how to take care of their children when they get sick. How to ship their old mother’s coffin and bury her in the old country village.
I have no heart to take noisy pictures of them.
Bad photographer. Bad photographer.
Still, my heart takes these word-pictures for you...
Let the widow marry again. Let her dance.
Let the widow live.

 

New York
September 11, 2013

  
 
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.