Dear Commander in Chief

Please forgive me if my language skills will fail me at times and cause merriment in you. It is not intended, but I come from a faraway land and I am a stranger to your customs and fancies. I write to you hoping you will find a way of solving my matter positively in a win-win situation and not cause further damage and puzzlement.
I am one of your humble subjects of inquestitation. Way back in early March my eyeglass was knocked from me, stomped upon, lenses broken, its brackets all twisted by my ex-paramour gone again berserk at the Armory Show Pavilion. I was myself demolished and defrayed nervously, emotionally and psychiatrically that I was put in a wheel chair to make my entrance at the ER hospital room. There two of your employees came and wrote my bad situation down and then life took me on the path to recovery out of my domestic violence residue and I waited to see about my eyeglass but nothing happened for quite a while, so I bought new.
Then a detective called! A Hamlet Aberdeen left a message saying to call the precinct! At last, help is on its way! At last, someone listens! I was very much impressed as I told him my gratitude he denied it completely. Before talking to this detective, I made many complaints at the precinct in my immigrant infested neighborhood but all I got was sniggerings and biggerings. They never did squat about my situation. I showered them with complaints but never ever one showed up ever never ever ever! Left me thinking I was still in the old country where justice is dead under a pile of musty dung.
When Detective Aberdeen Shining Armor came! I was impressed from the minute I stepped in your precinct! I told him I never met a detective. He smiled and said well, now I saw four. I do not have enough words to describe you and commend you since we have an ancestral saying and it is true here too in America it is true, that De la cap se-mpute peştele which roughly is: “The fish gets funky from the head!” I can’t wait to meet you! I am sure if your fine employees were so courteous and polite, what about you, the mind behind this fine team? I have never seen such fine speciments. All mussellar in tight T-shirts with their long American legs, like in the movies, on the table! Sergeants, like in the movies, were typing diligently at their carbon copies. That was amazing how it was and it was not like in the movies! In the movies, the detectives always jump in cars and drive away in a rush. At your precinct, when Detective Aberdeen gave me the Precinct Grand Tour pointed out one lonesome car key up on the billboard. It is a miracle that anything gets done! Dousens of detectives and one car!
Commander in Chief, you need a fundraiser! Make a calling for bikes and scooters, roller blades and skateboards! If the city’s millionaires won’t throw in money for enough cars, ask the poor population to pitch in! My rescuer should get to the rescue full speed! I called him to go and get my perpetrator from the other borough he was arrested for other maltratreatments he bestowed on me, but by the time, four hours later, that Detective Aberdeen arrived on his roller blades, he already bounded and fleed!
This will not do, I said to myself. This has to be brought to the public attention! These brave courteous men need help! Me, a humble immigrant, I can do only so much! In addition, my head was abuzz with ideas.
Commander in Chief, your staff changed my life. Especially Detective Aberdeen. He gave me back hope. He gave me backspine; he gave me pride in humanity. I wrote very exquisite erotic literature thanks to this man, Commander in Chief! I had such erotic daydreams that I said, America at last!
It was a grand feeling mutual.
Alas, Commander in Chief, all fine things end in shingles!
Detective Aberdeen succumbed under the large load of suitcases and bickering of his detective partner and I wonder who else?—Maybe you gave him the evil eye since he spent too many long days on my suitcase instead of catching heavier perpetrators and violators? But Detective Aberdeen, I vouch with my heart, is a man of vision and, may I say, television. Television! He saw the core problem in my suitcase and extricated it and hold it up as a flasklight of Statue of Liberty shining thru the darkness! Detective Aberdeen is my hero. He saw in my suitcase the malaise of the entire Nation. He identified it! He pinpointed: Here is a small woman of grand will who escaped dying of AIDS thru condom slippage and condom brokage and condom peelage off the HIV positive dripping faucet prick and she could have been infested, she could have been dying! but life protected her to bear witness! And here she is now bearing witness that there’s no finer man than Detective Aberdeen in all the precincts in the world!
Buy him a scooter!
I do not know what is appropriate and fraternal because I am all mixed up in America you have to be professional; you cannot fraternize and buddyrize when you go to the precincts. Therefore, I do not know, can I offer my tax returns to you to buy Detective Aberdeen a super-scooter and a voice mail while my suitcase is still open?
It is a distressful situation.
Voice mail is not in the precinct. The phones are from the James Bond Series. But we are not. It is hard to watch how fellow detectives scribble down my erotic messages for Detective Aberdeen. How they report courteously over the phone that Detective Aberdeen is taking a leek! Detective Aberdeen is coming only on Friday! Detective Aberdeen actually is on vacation scootering in Bahamas; comes back next Saturday. Detective Aberdeen has been seen a minute ago! But where is Detective Aberdeen? At times, it looks like he is hostage in his own precinct, all gagged up and tied with ropes, and cannot talk on the phone. A fine situation! A man who fought the terrorists is afraid of my anxious self, wanting to know about her suitcase!
Commander in Chief, here is a hundred check from my tax returns! Buy the voice mail! Let him screen his calls. Don’t let this situation fester! I can see him running away down the stairs in the basement when the phone rings: Here is the dear old lady calling again about her eyeglass! Alternatively, picking up the phone, pretending he can’t hear my squeaking voice asking about my suitcase! Dropping the receiver!
Buy the voicemail and then he effortlessly can think about other suitcases and delete my annoying messages efficiently without losing any brainpower.
We, as a Nation, will be much better served!
Otherwise, I fell in love with your precinct, as I said. I feel like I could move in. Needs badly a woman’s hand. Some curtains here and there, dusting, mopping, some flower bushes to play cops and robbers with the victims more efficiently. If I may suggest you need larger badges and shinier ones. In my old country, though the militia was vehiculing on donkeys, their uniform was more splendors: lots and lots of tassels and pompons, golden, red and emerald green! And they’d salute their superiors!
Please consider implementing this healthy attitude! They should all salute! Snap the heels and up goes the arm to the hat! What is this nonsense with public service? Order and discipline! You are the Commander in Chief!
And the hats are unimpressive here! Ostrich plumes would look smashing! Or peacock feathers! The Elton John style! It can be done very cheaply, I assure you!
But let me not get carried away!
Therefore, in these few words I mean to say how keep up the good work, Commander in Chief, father of such brave terrorist hunters and domestic violence victim protectors.
Please let me know if the check bounces so that I can pay in food stamps, and don’t let Detective Aberdeen hide-and-seek each time the phone rings.
The Nation needs him for a new detective series and bless my heart if I come sane out of this bedlam of a suitcase I will be the one to write it with your help and guidance, Commander in Chief, with your help and abbreviations.
May you be in good health and close retirement!

All our love with you and yours and Detective Aberdeen’s above all,

Ludmila Popovics,
Old Sexy Biddy Ex- Brighton Beach Sunbather [Now Bahamas Islands Cruiser—perhaps I bump into Detective Aberdeen and his scooter dressed as a palm or coconut tree!
Shush!]

P.S. We could have a rummage sale, Commander in Chief: with all the typerighters we can sell at a high price antiques. Please consider me to organizer it!
Let’s have a banner: Befriend Your Precinct! Community Gives Back to Precinct Rummage Sale!
Let me know!!!

10/25/2006

New York City

While the Hurricane Rages

Written a year ago during Hurricane Sandy...

We sit in cozy apartments. We have our flashlights prepared. The water gallons grabbed from the store shelves. We watch the news. We listen to the howling wind. We’re on the seventh floor, our building is safe, but poor those in Long Island, their houses will be flooded. We pray to God Almighty the storm won’t touch us, the winds won’t blow us away like leaves in a deserted autumn park. We are tremulous, humble victims of nature’s blind workings. We feel pity for ourselves. We make international phone calls. Our mothers are worried.
And yet, we did this to ourselves. We grab what isn’t ours to grab. We attire ourselves in lies. We prey and devour, veiled in nice lies. We’re hungry for food, for sex, for money, for power, and we’ll say whatever it takes to grab and gobble and fuel our wicked vital urge, we must look at each other as food we must get, as much as we can get, we must stay alive and multiply, so anything goes.
I am not nature so in my wrath I could topple houses, raise walls of ocean waves, crash old tree branches on the wicked Jeeps and Hummers that took over the city’s streets, guzzling the planet. I am not nature to shake the earth, crack it open and swallow us all, accursed vermin. I am but the prisoner of memory tossed and washed away in its furious waves. When the wind shrieks, I dare not go into my empty apartment, sit next to my phone that doesn’t ring. I sit on a park bench, choked by the ghost of past earthquakes. I hear again the roosters croaking, the dogs barking, the donkeys braying the end of the world, I see chandeliers swinging, the townspeople running in their pajamas and nightgowns running to hide away from the earth shaking its back, the buildings falling, high rises across boulevards, dead people in the rubble, searching for them for weeks, the grave robbers who stole the gold jewelry from the dead on trial and shot by the death squad. I see again poor people jumping from the windows of the Twin Towers, poor people, tiny bugs flying down to their undeserved death, and I tremble it’s gonna be all over again now. Now. Now. Now.
I am but the witless woman who begged God for someone to love, and God bitterly joked sending you, a hungry deceiver, taught by your nation crumbling under corruption, taught by your male friends, taught by your father and brother that no harm is done, and if any, oh, well, she deserved it. Nothing to fear. There will be no consequences. Grab, gobble, run. And again, talk smoothly until the bird lands in your hand, grab its neck, wring it, devour it, run.
For one day I’d like to blow God off His Mighty Throne and strip Him of His Celestial Robes and clad in them with His Crown on my head and His Scepter in my hand I’d thunder my wrath with a lightning on the world’s wickedness and on your young wickedness and wrench it out of you all. When you were in my arms, my warmth, my lips, my tongue made you kind and you feared its sweet weakness.
Your deceit feared its sweetness. Were I to be God I’d do just that, suck out the evilness venom out of you.
But this can’t be done, no, it can’t be done. For all I know God has left us. The Devil tosses and tumbles us about. The Devil has crept into my heart as you cracked it open with your sweet lies.
You sit in my kitchen eating my food I offered out of kindness. You ask me, ‘Why are you so nice to me? I haven’t been nice to you.’ But instead of hearing the guilt in your voice and ask you for the truth you hide, I tell you, ‘Other people were kind to me when I came here destitute, when I sought refuge. You are deserving of me giving back.’
But you’re not.
I give you a clean white shirt and soft brown socks, so you can work and fulfill your dreams, because you tell me lies I don’t know yet are lies.
I give you myself, because you tell me lies I don’t know yet are lies, because you didn’t tell yet the one that like a magnet will pull them together, like the last piece in a puzzle laid on a kitchen table, in a compact surface of an undeniable undeniable undeniable betrayal.
If I’d let myself be wicked I’d make the food you stole from me preying on my kindness, to eat your insides, like strong acid to dissolve your stomach and intestines, and blood veins and muscles and brain and eyes and hair and fingers, till just a fizzling foam is left of you. If I’d let myself be wicked I’d make the shirt I gave you in love turn into flames of fire, burn your skin and flesh and bones to ashes. If I’d let myself be wicked I’d make the soft kisses and tender caresses I gave you in love linger hidden in you and when you’re sweet asleep come out roaring, deafening you, and strangle you, choke you.
If I’d let myself be wicked I’d curse you: may you never know true love, for mine was the beginning of that, may you meet but treachery, and if one fine day your heart will sing like mine did for you, the same venom you gave me should flood it. If I’d let myself be wicked I’d make sure when your dreams almost come true, to crumble them to dust in one sweep, your sports car crashing in a river, and drown, fish eat your flesh. If I’d let myself be wicked I’d curse you: may you never have children, or may they be crippled from birth, may your life be brief and end in torturous disease.
But I am not wicked, am I? I am not contaminated by you. I am not infected by you.
I’m drained, frail with sadness and devastation, upon devastation, you’re but the last one in a line of predators, each with his own disguise. You reopened my wounds aided by the roar of the hurricane.
When the dust shall settle I shall find a way and teach you this lesson for life:
Never, never, never lie again. Never, never, never steal from giving people. Never, never, never think there’re no consequences and there’ll be no blistery pay back, bonehead.
So I swear.

October 29, 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.

New York Cityscape: MTA Miracle

for Ponytail Joe, MTA Rescue Worker

My eyeglasses are a historic landmark for me. I got them on the day that I was reborn, that is, when my paramour in a fit of public jealousy and manliness decided to grab them off my nose and squash their delicate frame, popping out the lenses. That, and other similar tokens of passion, got him in jail for one day and in anger management for six months, and a stay-away-from-her order of protection at least until fall 2008. He deserved much more than that, the detective said, at least five years for attempted murder, since he forgot to tell me he was HIV positive and twice the condom broke, but the DA’s office said they wouldn’t go for it, since I didn’t get infected, thank God.
This was on March 11, 2006. A week later I got new eyeglasses, the same brand frames back on my nose, compliments of the Crime Victims’ Bureau.
Now, summer 2007, they are still a pleasure to wear. Light, hip, they got a bit loose, though. Each time I am at the teacher’s desk looking down in the textbook they fall on the table, causing merriment in the back of the class where the slackers congregate.
Tuesday night I hurried to a rehearsal in Chinatown.
5:30-ish I am about to get out of the train, head down, stepping cautiously over the gap that so many people fell thru, but it’s a small crack, not even a palm wide and I see my eyeglasses falling down! My God, one handle was still on the train floor, I lean down to grab them, pick them up, but they continue the fall. Train leaves. I’m there on the platform, looking into the dark track bed, filthy with garbage and murky pools of rain. I can’t see a thing.
If they fell by the tracks, they’ll still be there when I get back from the rehearsal. If they fell on the tracks, good-bye, Columbus! They are squashed again, this time for good. Why is no one here? Where is the damn info booth? No info booth. Maybe it’s on the uptown platform. Go there. I can’t. I have to rush to the theater.
All thru the rehearsal, I couldn’t think about anything else but the eyeglasses. Perhaps it is a good thing they had an accident. It’s time to move on. No more memories. Move on. New eyeglasses. What are you talking about? It will be at least $500! You promised yourself a new life on your birthday, a new digital camera! You donated your film camera to the nonprofit American Opera team! These are your eyeglasses. You should have gone to the optician’s and tightened them up. You should have worn a string to hold them on your neck. Yeah, like old country accountants! I’m hip! Way hip. You can barely see! Buy a flashlight from the street vendors. It’s Chinatown, how much can that cost? You go back there and ask the MTA guys to get them for you! Remember that guy once on the blue line in Penn Station? He realized his golden diamond stud earring just fell off his ear on the tracks and he raised hell and they called the guys and they jumped in the pit and got him his earring! But who are these guys? I looked around for a policeman, but there wasn't any, neither in the station nor on the street. Too hot. No matter what, go get your eyeglasses back, or at least make sure they are dead. They are your eyeglasses.
So at nine I went to the booth, approached a policeman who was guarding a worker taking the money out of the ticket machine. He didn’t want to talk to me, had his bulletproof vest on, directed me majestically to the information booth guy, though he saw too well that no one was there. A good five minutes later he shows up. Grumpy. It’s Chinatown. It’s a Chinese man. I fear he doesn’t understand me at all.
He does, but how should I know? Most people can’t speak English in this part of town. He is frowning. He had enough of this noise and heat. But I’m there and I won’t go away. Give me my eyeglasses! He calls, the trains go by, metal noise screeching, people coming and going. I’m still here, give me my eyeglasses! He talks on his antiquated phone. “Where was this?” “On the downtown 6 line platform, by the street elevator.” “They’ll come in half an hour or an hour. You either go there, wait for them on the bench, or come back later and pick them up from here.” “No, sir. I’ll go there and stay until they come.” I’m prepared to wait for hours. Three ladies on the bench discuss a girlfriend, a jealous woman, who threw a fit and of course, the guy left her, she is like that. Train comes, they go. I peer into the gutter again. I can’t see a thing. The janitor sweeps the platform. “I lost my eyeglasses.” “Did you call them?” “Yes.” “Don’t go down there. The train won’t stop. Don’t go down there.” “I won’t.” I’m not an idiot!
Not even 15 minutes passed, two stocky guys with orange mat vests show up with mega huge flashlights.
One, gray ponytail, the other, crew cut. “Are you here for me? For my eyeglasses?” I asked eagerly. “Yes, Ma’am.”
“They fell down here, by this pillar.” “Are you sure?” “Yes.” “When was this?” “At 5:30.” “5:30?! They are gone by now,” says the Crew Cut. “Why should they be gone by now?” “Some kid saw them and jumped in the pit and took them.” “What for?” “Just for fun, saw them glittering in the mud, picked them.”
But the Ponytail, didn’t discourage me, did his job, worked his flashlight like a movie spotlight. All we could see were plastic bottles, cans, papers, pools of squalor. The Crew Cut went farther down the track, though I told them, “It was near this pillar here, or at the most that one there, before the turnstile. I remember I had to walk very little to get out of the train station.” Nothing. “I don’t know how you will see them, because they have slim black square wire frames. They are very delicate...”
Ponytail moves ahead one more column, then he gets his round belly on the floor! He forays into the mud and darkness. On the bench, a young couple. Instead of minding their romance, the young curly blond man is amused by my adventures! We were a sight to behold, Ponytail on his belly with flashlight in the track pit, me hopping about in my blue summer dress.
Train comes honking ablast. Stop the filming. Train leaves station. Action! Back on the belly. “I found them!” announces Ponytail. “Where? Where?” A passenger points excited, “Look, they are there! Look there!!!” “Please, please be very gentle with them, they are so fragile!” Now they’ll get squashed! They are brave, faithful eyeglasses! They survived the trains! And now they will get squashed.
Crew Cut comes with his long stick that has some gray pincers at one end. “Please, don’t destroy them!” He lowers the stick in the pit, and lightly raises it again. My eyeglasses! My dear, dear eyeglasses unharmed. Muddy! Crawling with germs! Soaked in disgusting squalor, the lenses with grit splashes. But my eyeglasses! I wrap them in a lump of napkins from the beef and mushroom on rice for $4.50 from the frowning Nazi vendor.
“You guys, I thank you so much. I can’t take you for a beer,” I don’t know why it seemed the right thing to say. Teachers don’t go out for beers with students, they might get sued for sexual harassment, so why should MTA workers have it easier? “but I will write you a poem. ‘The MTA Miracle Poem.’ What is your name? Oh, don’t worry, it’s not that kind of poem!” Pony says he’s Joe. Crew Cut I don’t know what he said or if he said anything. “Can I e-mail my poem to you? Or mail it?” “It will never get to us...” “Then where is your office?” “On Chambers.” “What is your office name? What are you exactly?” “Good question. I guess we are the emergency intervention unit, aren’t we?” “Yeah.” “Thanks again, and I turned around, not knowing if I should shake hands or not, might be misinterpreted again...
Behind me, I heard Crew Cut, “I’d like new kneecaps, that’s what I would like. Six pairs of new kneecaps.” Were it for Crew Cut I’ve never gotten back my preciouses.
At home, I washed them with soap and peroxide and sprayed them with Lysol, and washed them again. I always fold them when I get into the subway station now, first thing. Before the train arrives, I put them in my purse. Look at the gap in terror. Swallower of eyeglasses!
I stopped by the info booth tonight, and asked the worker, “Remember me?” I pointed to my eyeglasses. “Thank you.” He looked morosely at me.
I’ll go take Joe out for a beer, what the heck. I need friends like him. No bitching, get the job done, no raining on distressed people’s hopeful parades.
 New York City
September 17, 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.

The Scourge Cycle: Miracles

In the summer of 2011, during my stay in Romania, I went through a period of spiritual anguish thanks to a jerk. I cursed him and the dame with whom he sneaked behind my back. But my cursing them didn’t help me at all. I then sought solace and forgetfulness. To expedite the process, I endeavored to go on a pilgrimage, since I saw posters plastered on city walls announcing one that weekend. I thought that if Orthodoxy wouldn’t help, maybe the beauty of the Romanian landscape would. And I was curious to see what would happen if I surrounded myself with believers. I walked the mountain paths leading to hermitages and caves of hermits with my fellow pilgrims, I slept in communal bedrooms. I remember fondly how loudly were snoring the blessed tired faithful ones.
Most fondly I remember Silvia, the organizer, a lively, beautiful and elegant woman, with a laughter like tiny bells that for me was more healing than the whole trip.
The names are fictitious because she asked me to avoid publicity for her spiritual endeavor.

I’ve wondered when you said that much of your life is made of miracles and pilgrimages, and you’ve told me about a few miracles.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah! My life without God wouldn’t exist. In God I trust and God forbid I should get to live without God. So I can say that my life, starting with my youth, I got married at 17, was very unhappy. Fate gave me a man who drinks, he brought upon me so much unhappiness, and I greatly took refuge in fasting and prayers, in the Divine Power. Only in God I found peace, only in God I found consolation.
You’ve started so young?
Yes, and I’d barely finish one fast and I’d start another one, that’s how I lived. Like, always on Fridays, and also other fast after fast, whichever I just heard of. I’d fast and fast, repeatedly, N times, indeed even N times, to make sure that I get good results, I had ambition and I hoped that God would not let me pray in vain, that eventually one day God would bestow on me His goodness.
Then, people knowing me and seeing how much I struggled with my husband who drank a lot, a woman sent me to the Franciscan Church in Cluj. More precisely it’s by the Telephone Company in the Museum Square, the church that is dedicated to Saint Anthony.
There were monks who’d sleep there, I don’t know if they still live there, but monks lived in tiny little rooms along a hallway that lead to the street entrance. And I was received by a priest, an older monk, and I started to tell him about my life, I began to talk to him like to my best friend. Indeed I never said a word about my sorrow to my parents, or to my brother, or my sisters. The only people on earth I’d tell about all my problems were the priests.
But why did you not say anything to your family?
I couldn’t because my mother was rather sickly and it was more than enough what they got to see happening to me. No need for them to know also what they didn’t see. I'm a woman that doesn’t like to cry on anybody’s shoulder. Always in the morning I tell my troubles to God. I kneel down and then I cry for half an hour, one hour, then I tell everything to God, and then I get moving, and I can keep on smiling.
That’s how I dealt with it, I’d say all my problems to priests and monks when I went to monasteries. So I arrived in front of this priest and began to tell him, but I couldn’t talk from crying. I sighed; I could hardly speak thru my tears. And I told him, “Look, how hard it is, and sure, I wanted to divorce him but he told me, he was very bad when he got drunk, raising hell with everyone, jumping on their heads, eager to fight with them, and so I was afraid of him, even more so that he threatened that if I get a divorce he’d kill me.
I also thought if I get a divorce I had nowhere to go. I couldn’t live in the same house with him; it would have been terrible, woe to me if I made him my enemy. And so I had to stay married to him and had to endure so I can raise my children. Saying all this stuff, very troubled, to the priest, at one point I said, "Father, I pray to God so much and I always fast, and God never," I said it with disappointment, "God never listens to my prayers." And then I wiped the tears from my face with my hand, my backhand, as if I see him now, and he says, "I’ll hold a prayer service every evening at midnight. If after this he doesn’t get cured from this disease, then I recommend that you divorce him. It would be a pity to spend your youth this way."
I then, hearing him telling me to divorce, I immediately thought of my children and then as if I saw a child, the little one, pained, my two year old whom my husband loved more, the one that now works with me. And then I saw in front of me how I pulled my older child away and my husband the smaller one. I got so scared and I said, "No, I don’t want a divorce," although nothing tied me to my husband, there was no love between us after so much anguish and suffering, 13 years of it, especially since I didn’t marry him out of love. I was a dumb girl who was ashamed to tell him, "No, man, I don’t love you." And so I had to continue my life. When I told the priest I didn’t want to divorce him, he said, "Well, you kneel down and I’ll pray to God to listen to you in your prayers, since from what you say I see that you pray enough." And I knelt down, I covered my face with my hands, and began to pray. He put his hand on my head, put some book on my head, I know he placed a book and began to pray for me to make God hear me in my prayers.
At one point, I know this stuff didn’t last long, but I prayed, I’ll never forget, I prayed, "Holy God, in whatever form You want and however You can, just stop him from drinking, whichever way You see fit." And then at that point I know I heard a man's voice and two hands appeared in front of my face. The two hands of a man, and the voice said, "Kiss my hands." I got hold of those hands and I desperately kissed those hands, like I never kissed anyone in my life.
I relive these moments... and I could not get enough of kissing those hands. The priest prayed further on and then at some point I didn’t see the hands in front of me anymore. Then I got up and I didn’t know what was going on around me anymore. I know I paid the priest, I took money from my wallet, I don’t know how much money I paid, and I went out. I worked at the Health Department, I don’t even know what street I took from the priest, only that I arrived in front of the Health Department, as if I woke up from a dream. Perhaps it was Memorandum Street or perhaps I came thru the Museum Square, but I don’t know what street I came on. And when I got to the Health Department as if I woke up from a dream and I said, then I saw those palms in front of my face, I saw myself kissing those hands, I heard that voice, "Kiss the hands!" and then fear, unrest, descended upon me, and I said, “Lord,” and I immediately thought that the priest said, “If my midnight prayers don’t help him, then nothing will help him.” And then I thought, "Lord, I offended God. How could I..." and I thought I must have kissed the hands of the priest. "How could I kiss that priest's hands so fondly?! I’ve never kissed anyone like I kissed those hands in my life. How I could kiss his hands! This priest is not sane, to ask me to kiss his hands. I’ve spoken with so many priests but no one did such a gesture.” And then I realized that only to Lord Jesus I would have kissed His hands like this. And that thought gave me no peace all day long.
I went home at night, I took care of the household chores, and in the morning when I came to work, on the bus, I was commuting from the countryside, and when I got off the bus such weakness took over me as if my legs and feet were tied up, like never before, I've always been an energetic person, I didn’t know what was happening to me. Somehow I arrived at the institute. I was alone, since every morning, since I was a commuter, I arrived earlier. Each time I arrived earlier, before the cleaning lady came in, I’d kneel down, I’d put a small icon in front of me, and I’d lift my hands and begin to cry out desperately to God. I was utterly wailing. Only there I could open up, voice all my hardships, knowing nobody could hear me. So that morning I started to pray as usual. I felt so drowsy and powerless. And I thought to myself, “I’ll put my head on the table, on the desk, to rest, just for 5 minutes, until this overwhelming tiredness eases away.” Well, I don’t know how long I rested, but perhaps little, perhaps just a few seconds or minutes, I can’t say, but I found myself in front of the sink at about two meters away from the desk where I rested my head. I woke up shivering all over, like I was shaken by electricity. A voice had woken me up. A female voice. She shouted and my ears could hear her words echoing, like in a forest when you shout in a forest and it echoes. Just that echo sounded in my ears and she told me.... Each word began so very, very loud, that it shook me, and then it faded slowly, gradually until one word ended and then another word began, but the words were very, very spaced out, the woman said those words at intervals, making sure I understood. And she said, "Why do you keep thinking that you did wrong kissing the hands of the priest? No!" And she stressed the no, "No! You didn’t kiss his hands but you kissed the hands of Jesus. And as fondly as you’ve kissed them, so fondly will Jesus fulfill your wishes." These were the exact words that I heard in my ears, the ones that I tell you, so she didn’t say, “Lord Jesus”, she said exactly these words.
When she finished the last word, "wishes", I woke up in front of the sink, shaking all over, and I was scared when I saw how I trembled, and I struggled to catch my hands, to keep my hands steady, to stop the shaking, and I asked myself, I looked around, if someone would have seen me, they’d thought I was crazy. I looked around and I asked myself, "Who has talked to me?" When I said the second time, "Who has talked to me?" a thought came to me, "Our Savior’s Mother shouted from heaven,” for I prayed a lot to the Virgin Mary, for so many years during fasting, for so many times I kept all sorts of novenas in the honor of Our Lady, and I so prayed and cried in front Our Lady’s icon and shouted, "Mother! Mother!" and I’d cry in my despair, "Mother! You’re my Mother who gave me life! Only You can help me! Why have You abandoned me? I am Your child, don’t You see me how I struggle on this earth?" And when I thought that must have been the Mother of God who called from heaven, then my shaking stopped. It simply went away and then I started crying with joy and said, I was convinced that it was Our Lady who called me, and I’m convinced even now that the Mother of God called from heaven, and I said, "Oh, Holy Mother!" I started crying, such a bliss and peace enveloped me. "Our Holy Mother, this means that You talked to Your Son and You know that He listens to my prayers. Then I have to pray even more to deserve His miracle." And then, I know it was mid-week, I’m not sure, I don’t want to lie, but I don’t know if it was Wednesday or Thursday. I think it was a Thursday, I think it was a Thursday, but I won’t lie, because on Thursdays I always keep Saint Rita’s novena. Any issues I have I passionately keep Saint Rita’s novenas. During those 13 years I’ve kept much of Saint Rita’s novenas. Starting with Thursday, that is from Thursday every day: Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, until next Wednesday in honor of Saint Rita you don’t eat until noon, and even then only fasting, vegetarian meals, you fast. So one week I’d dedicate my fast to Saint Rita, among other saints’ fasts, among which some were for sure in the honor of the Holy Mother, in honor of Jesus Christ, in honor of Saint Thaddeus, in honor of Saint Theresa. I prayed both to the Catholic and the Orthodox saints. I desperately prayed to Saint Anthony of Padua on many Tuesdays during my fasting.
And, as I’ve said, I decided that I needed to pray more. The next week, I started to pray on Monday, and I hold fast for Our Lady on Monday, for seven weeks. Monday, the first day, the second week on Tuesday, the third week on Wednesday, so on, until the seventh week was on Sunday. Monday, as I say, I started fasting for the Holy Mother, Tuesday, the next day, I started the fast for Saint Anton, for nine Tuesdays, and just the same for nine weeks on Thursday, as I told you, I call Saint Rita my friend Rita from the sky, so I began keeping Saint Rita’s novenas on Thursdays. For a week I ate only from noon onwards.
At that time, oh, how many times my husband got fired because of his drinking! Now he had alcoholic hepatitis, and he wouldn’t keep his diet. When I got home from work I’d always find him drunk, sleeping, and sure I’d start doing the household chores and left him alone. And then one day he wakes up, he was drunk and fell asleep, so he wakes up and he was only in an undershirt, it was summer, and he was all red blotches on his arms and hands, his entire skin was covered in red blotches. And he comes to me scared and shows me his hands and arms and says, "Look how spotted are my hands!" I was expecting any moment, any moment now, to see the wonders and miracles of God, that God begins His work. And so I say, "But do go on drinking." Of course I thought it's from the liver, knowing that he had alcoholic hepatitis, and I say, "Just go on drinking, though you can’t force your liver to endure your bullshit, but do drink on." And I went on with my chores around the house.
Since that moment he didn’t drink for an entire week, in spite of being deeply alcoholic.
After a week he tells me that he’ll come to town to find work, he’d say that to cover up that his body craved drinking. And he went to his sister’s who lived in Mănăştur District. His sister, in vain she served him food, like any other drunkard he only wanted to drink, though his family scolded him not to drink, but this is how it goes with drunkards, you can’t do much. And so she serves him a drink. At that moment, his sister told me, at that moment when he first drank a drop of alcohol he began to tremble! He said it was as if he was shaken by electricity, shaking all over, and he heard in his head, he heard many voices saying, "You’re dying! You’re dying!"
He freaked out when he heard someone telling him he was dying, he cried aloud, "I'm dying, I'm dying!" while he was shaking. At one point the tremors stopped and he recovered, as if nothing had happened. His sister, when she saw how he trembles, phoned me at work, "Quickly, come quickly! Radu is about to die!" When I arrived, I rushed by taxi, when I got there, he had recovered, there was nothing wrong anymore. Well, then, in the moment, I couldn’t think straight and didn’t realize that that was God’s miracle. I said to myself, “Who knows what happened to him.” But I didn’t think, “This is how a Divine miracle starts and thru this trial he’ll give up drinking!”
A few days passed, of course when he drank I couldn’t leave my children in his hand because I could not rely on him. So then every weekend on Sunday evening I took my children to my mother's and left them for the week. So, as usual, on Sunday evening I take the kids to my mother and he enters the bar, he came with us, and he went to the bar as usual, that’s how he always said, "Go ahead, I’ll catch up with you," though my parents live close by, in the village center, and are close to that bar. But he always arrived after two, three hours, dead drunk, he couldn’t stand up on his feet. Well, on that day when he says, "Go, I’ll catch up with you," I don’t even get to my parents’ when he goes running by very scared, he walks past me and says, "It happened again!" When I get into the yard I ask, "What has happened to you?" "I tried!" he says. "Haven’t I told you what had happened to me at my sister?! Now I tried to drink beer, I thought I had allergy to hard liquor, and I tried to see if beer was okay, and the first drop I put in my mouth, again I began to tremble and heard those voices telling me I was dying, and I was ashamed of the people in the bar, and I slammed the beer bottle on the table and I ran out, so the guys won’t see me trembling."
This passed too, but still I didn’t think it was again God’s miracle, though I saw that he no longer drank for a week, and only when he started to, there was nothing wrong with him otherwise, only when he put the first drop of alcohol in his mouth it would happen again. And this repeated each time he tried to drink. He was so held up in this evil passion/torment, and of course the Evil One didn’t want to let him out of His hand, He didn’t want to let him escape His power, but I was still praying, I was praying every night at midnight, along with the priest, as he told me that we’d both pray at midnight with lighted candles. Even if I went to sleep earlier I’d wake up, I’d set my alarm clock, and I prayed with him at midnight for God to stop my husband from drinking. And so this repeated as often as he’d try to drink. It went like this for a year. For one year he didn’t want, though he saw that this happened each time, but still for a whole year every two, three weeks, one week, he’d try another drink. I think he tested every drink possible. Eventually he ended up seeing a doctor, “Look what is happening to me, I can’t drink anymore!” And the doctor told him, "Listen, Sir, if that sort of thing happens, though I've never heard something like that in my entire life, but if that sort of thing happens, it means that you have to stop drinking, and that's it. Stop once and for all." And since then, 14 years passed since he doesn’t drink anymore. Praised be the Lord, He saved me from this heavy burden and took off this cross from my shoulders. He saved him from this calamity. Now he too no longer suffers drunkards and I always say when he sees a drunkard raising hell, I say, "Look, this is how you were yourself! I don’t know how I put up with you for so many years."
And what does he do now?
Oh, well… It’s still hard on me, he doesn’t work much. I still have to carry my cross but not for that passion/torment. It’s still hard on me. My children, whatever they need they say, "Mom, we need this," and sometimes when I’m annoyed I say, "Don’t you have a father too?" But what can I do?
Will you tell me about how you started doing monastery tours? Did you go before as a pilgrim there?
Yes, I went on pilgrimages, I went because this was the refuge from my everyday life. My children were young. I can say I’ve been to monasteries for about 18, 19 years and the kids were small and I was so poor, I’d hid now and then one leu, two, one penny and I gathered them, well, when the occasion came to go on a pilgrimage, so I too could run and make the pilgrimage, so I could pay its cost. And so I started to go to monasteries and so much peace I could find there, and I found so much joy when I got at the monasteries. I wanted so much to become a nun. How many times after I started to go to the monasteries, whenever I entered a monastery I was thinking, "When my children grow older I’ll become a nun!" and I’d cry, oh, I cried so much at the monasteries and I’d think, "Should I come to this monastery?" After I saw another one, "Or should I come here?" But I was thinking of becoming a nun at a monastery closer to home, closer to Cluj, so my children could come to see me. But the first monastery that impressed me was the Posada hermitage. I went with other women on a Saturday night, it was the Transfiguration, so it was August 5^th when I went, I don’t know what year. The celebration is on the 6^th and we went on the 5^th, ahead of time, to stay during the Midnight Office on the Transfiguration Eve. Well, when I got in that courtyard, it was the first monastery I’d visited, I felt at every step that God was with me, I felt a strong energy overshadowing me with Divine Power and I began to cry with joy. And as long as the prayer service lasted during vespers, and then during the Compline and Midnight Office services, oh, there was his Holiness Vasile Someșanul, he was our Archbishop then, and Andreicuț who was the Bishop of Alba County. There were very, very many priests.
I was so happy that I put a blanket under me and there I knelt until midnight and I cried nonstop, so very happy to be there. When the Midnight Office Liturgy finished I said to the other women, “Let’s go to sleep.” There was no accommodation whatsoever, so I asked the priest to let us sleep in the church. And each woman put her blanket on the floor and we slept in the church. But the father said, "I let you sleep here but don’t talk because I sleep myself in the altar for I don’t have a place to sleep either, so don’t talk." We went to sleep. I couldn’t sleep at all. I couldn’t sleep because my bones ached on the hard floor, covered only with jute rugs, like it was in the old times. So then, I thought about things and I kept on looking at the paintings in the church, I kept on praying till five in the morning. At five o’clock, there is a miraculous spring in Posada, so then I went out and talked with several women, "Let's go take Holy Water, Miraculous Water, because at six starts the maslu/ Holy Unction prayer service, and then after the maslu/Holy Unction prayers end the Matins Liturgy service begins." And so we did. I attended the maslu/Holy Unction prayers, then after that the liturgy on that great feast of August 6^th, the Transfiguration, and all was well and good. I felt so very good, and since the meaning of the feast of the 6^th of August is Lord Jesus transfigured on Mount Tabor, as I was up there on the mountain at the monastery I felt like I was on Mount Tabor where Lord Jesus Christ’ face was transfigured. I was so happy. I felt that I was where the miracle had happened. And when I heard Bishop Andrei leading us in singing, "Oh, Holy Mother!" since this holiday is during the fast of the Holy Mother of Our Lord, I realized that when the Sainted Liturgy service would end, I’d have to go back home, and I started crying. My heart was in such sorrow that I had to go back home, oh, why, when I was so happy there! I even thought, "God, why should I go home?! Living without love!" I had found so much love in God. And when the Mass finished, I kept on thinking how I could just not go home. But in that very moment when I was thinking how I could just not go home, "I have to go, I have young children!" and as I took a step towards our bus, and climbed thru its back door, I thought regretfully I cannot remain at the monastery.
And this is how my love for monasteries started. When I arrived home I told my husband, my children. I never thought that my children being quite small, I didn’t think that by telling them that I was sorry I didn’t stay at the monastery would affect my children. I cried and said, “I'm sorry I haven’t stayed there.” And Adrian being the smallest it remained in his memory and whenever I went somewhere to a monastery said, "Mother, please do not stay at the monastery!"
And when I returned from the monastery, being so affected and feeling such love for the monasteries a very strange thing happened to me, I can say now. I’d often, while washing dishes or cooking food in the house, or while cleaning, I’d hear in my head, I’d hear the choir singing, the monks from Posada. I truly heard them singing and I’d put my work aside, I missed hearing them, I so missed the monastery, and I’d go to the nursery, I’d sit on the children’s bed and listen to the choir. Upon my word, that's what would happen to me. If I talk about it people think I’m crazy, but it truly happened to me, I heard that chorus singing for me and I was so happy. At some point I’d no longer hear it and then I’d get up from their bed and go back to work.
And this is how I got my love for monasteries and so many divine miracles happened.
Another time I was at the Bistrița Monastery and I was, all my life I've worked everything if my husband didn’t kill himself with work, I had to work all day long, and I had to work as a hairdresser, which business had its years of glory, indeed years during which I was able to work as much as my powers let me, so I worked both at home and at work. But I got sick and I went to the Bistrița Monastery. I wasn’t hurting or anything but during the day working or walking on the road I had bouts of weakness in the stomach and I trembled. I felt so bad that I’d almost faint, fell down. Often while I’d cut hair I feared I’d fall on the client. And I’d get something sweet to eat and I’d recover. I did my blood work. Doctors told me that all my tests were good. Nobody found anything wrong but I had this problem at least once, twice a day I felt this dizziness and this weakness in my body. And, as I say, I went to the Bistriț

a Monastery. It was raining so hard when the bus reached the monastery that everybody said, "We won’t get off, the whole country rains down on us." It was a pouring rain. And I said to a woman, "Let's go in the rain, even if we aren’t dressed lightly for summer we’ll still dry off." And we arrived at the monastery. And when I entered the monastery it was the first time when I stepped in that monastery. I felt such a deep Divine Power on my side and I went to Holy Mother’s icon and began to pray. Meanwhile it stopped raining. I was praying, or visit the monastery, and we used to take group pictures in front of the monastery, and many in our group called out for me, for several people only got off the bus just to visit, not to pray, and so when they came out of the monastery they were calling me to take pictures together, and I was so, how should I say it, I just loved to pray and feel the grace of God there, and I couldn’t part with my prayer, to abandon my prayer.
At one point, standing there alone praying in the monastery, the rest of the group were already all out, I thought, “Let's go, they might leave me here," and when I was about to get out a very strange thing happened, I was with my hand on the door handle, I do it every time I pray at a monastery when I start going out I take a last look around, I look at all the icons as if to take my farewell, and only then I get out. That one time I did the same, and when I arrived by the door, in the top of the left corner there was an icon of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
I knew that they displayed there the relics of Saint Gregory of Decapolis. And when I got to look at the icon of Our Lord Jesus Christ I felt that from the icon He was looking straight at me. I felt his eyes looking from the icon and then, as if, with my hand on the door knob, as if a wind, I don’t know how to explain it clearer, I felt someone was pushing me back, stopping me from going out. And feeling this I thought about the icon of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and when I got in front of the icon what do you think I saw?! The relics, placed in a black box made of wooden board, painted black. It looked like our wooden pencil boxes in the old times, the top of that box of relics was made of a glass sliding top that you could pull out. It was a piece of glass that you could pull out but only so far, without allowing you to fully slide it out, so as not to get your hands on that hand of Saint Gregory of Decapolis. He held his hand like I hold mine, this very way, the holy relics. Now they set it, I haven’t seen it since I didn’t go back yet, it’s covered in wax, probably to stop further degradation and to preserve it. Well, then it wasn’t preserved in wax. As if I can see it now, even the veins of the saint showed on that hand, like any hand, simply normal, only dried up. And when I saw the holy hand and read there that they were the relics of Saint Gregory of Decapolis, and that very many people were cured after touching it, then I was somewhat so nervous, wanting desperately to touch the saint's hand with my fingers, but, well, the glass wouldn’t allow me, and then I knelt down and started praying and crying, and I so prayed, "Lord Saint Gregory, I think you're near Our Lord Jesus Christ, please ask Him in my sinful name to heal me." In that moment, please believe me, as I was holding my hands on that box of relics, and kneeling down, I got so scared that I even stopped my prayer, because in that moment I felt in my right hand, this is how I can explain to everyone, as if a cold wind went through my bone marrow, as if a cold wind blew through my bone marrow from hand to hand, and from head to toe! When I felt this thing I stopped praying and I stood there, I think a few seconds I just stood there on the spot, and then I got up.
Well, since that moment, I've never had again that weakness in my body.
But another time, I had another day at another monastery at Saint Nicodim of Tismana, I went there to bathe, and for miruire/Holy Unction, that too related to my health, and because of that I have a great trust and always say that God is my doctor and I don’t trust doctors. I don’t go to doctors, only when I’m really forced to. Whatever problems I have, if I don’t feel good, I say it to God and put my trust in Him. God keeps me on this earth as long as He wants, not as long as doctors want. Doctors don’t do a thing for me. I had too many bad experiences like that.
So a wound occurred and I kept on treating it, and I had uterine fibroids and once when I did a Pap smear it turned out number 3, and when my gynecologist told me the results, I ask him, "Sir," scared, "do I have cancer?" So when your Pap smear is 1 or 2, it’s good, it shows that you are healthy, if it’s 3 or over, you have to worry.
And then he answered me, so as not to scare me. He says, "No, no! We have to repeat the tests." I take the test results to a close acquaintance who worked for another doctor, at the Hematology, and I ask her, "Mrs. Doctor, we know each other for so long. Please tell me, I know you don’t want to tell me everything, so as not to scare me. But were you to have these test results yourself, would you get worried or not? But tell me honestly!" And then she says, "Well, of course that I’d worry. It's only normal." I say, "This is all I wanted to know." And then I said I'd never go to the doctor again, and right the next week I had another pilgrimage to the Jiu Valley. And when I got to the Tismana Monastery, reading about the life of Saint Nicodim I find out that he made many miracles. I knelt down and worshiped his relics. Saint Nicodim has his grave in the nave, as they call it, you enter the first part of the church, and there is his grave. Knowing my problem, it was a Sunday, it was the Holy Liturgy/Mass, but I couldn’t care less that it was a crowd of people around me, or that someone would say something or laugh about me, I laid at the foot of the grave, I laid on my belly, I laid on the grave with my belly and I started to cry, to pray to Saint Nicodim to pray, to intercede on my behalf with Jesus Christ. "Saint Nicodim, you see that I have kids, please ask the Lord Jesus Christ on behalf of me, a sinful mother, to keep me alive to raise my children."
I sat there and cried and cried and prayed, and after awhile someone taps me on the shoulder. And I lift my eyes, face full of tears, it was a nun and she says, "Get up from the grave, it's not allowed to stay here."
And then I said, "Mother, let me stay just a few more seconds. I have a problem and I know that only here it will get resolved." So she didn’t say anything, let me stay there and pray, and please believe me from then on I haven’t had any health problem. I don’t take any medicine, and I didn’t need to have surgery for the fibroid.
It's been ten years. My Pap smear ever since then it’s 1 and 2, which is... I even went to a gynecologist and when she saw the results and that I have no more gynecological problems, she said, "Ma'am, what world do you live on? Do you live on earth? At your age to have such a splendid Pap smear!"
And this is how the miracles of God repeated.
Another time I went to Dragomirna Monastery in Moldova, and when I was about to get out of the monastery there was an icon of the Holy Mother on a black background. I’ll never forget it. When I’m about to come out, I had such a good feeling seeing all those icons, and so I look about and as if the Holy Mother was watching me with every step, as if I looked at Her, and every time I go there I have this feeling that as if She watches me with her eyes, and often I turn around from the door, I go back to the icon and I pray more and I kneel down before the Holy Mother. Because I feel that the Holy Mother watches me from that icon, follows me with her eyes.
And once, so the icon is up on the wall, I knelt down and I lifted my hands to Her icon and I started to cry, and to pray. Believe me when I prayed I felt my right palm moving. It was like when you get a nervous twitch in your hand, you know, like often you feel a nerve twitch. I felt exactly like that in my palm and I stopped praying and I looked and my hand moved on the icon, I felt a twitch in my palm. I got scared, and said, "Our Holy Mother wants to tell me something, but how should I know what, sinful me?!"
And so out of this love to go, because we are several women who go together regularly to several monasteries, out of this love to go to more monasteries, to get to know all the monasteries in our country, out of this desire is why we started to make these pilgrimages. This is where I find my peace, since I work a lot. Here at the hair salon I have no vacation. I never allow myself a vacation and these few days of retreat at the monastery, these are my holidays. Although it’s hard work, as you’ve seen. I give so much food to people, I often cook at many monasteries. It’s enormously tiresome. I can’t sleep on the nights before the trip. It’s enormously tiresome but I feel that I need to do this and even if I’m more tired, even if I work harder, but surprisingly God gives me so much power and look, since I go to monasteries I don’t call the ambulance anymore. Oh, how many times my clients were left... So, before making these pilgrimages it often happened that my clients were left with the hair dye on, because the ambulance came and took me. It often happened. The poor women love me so much my clients that she rinsed her head herself and her hair was only half dyed and when her husband said, "Woman, go and get your hair dyed properly!" "Until Mrs. Silvia gets better I don’t go anywhere else."
Yes indeed...
Can you tell me again what you said about my curses?
So when Mihai was little, three years old, I got sick. I began to feel weak, to throw up a lot. I lost weight, nothing hurt me, but I lost a lot of weight. Everything I ate I threw up and lost weight. In a year after I knocked on the door of all the clinics in town and consulted so many doctors, but everyone said I had nothing wrong, but I was drying up on my feet, mere bones and skin I was, I went to a priest and he opened the Pravila [which is a Holy Book about the laws of the church that is written in Cyrillic letters. The Holy Gospels will also do if in Cyrillic letters.] which means that you open anywhere the Holy Book and the priest who knows how to interpret it tells your fortune, what is wrong with you and what to do about it. Anyway, I didn’t know about the opening of the Holy Book. I didn’t know that priests can open the Holy Book and can see everything about your life.
He came with a thick book, he said, "Open the book!" I thought, "God, why on earth does this priest make me open this book?" And when I open it, he says, "Why haven’t you told me about your problem? A blonde woman who was a girlfriend of your husband put a curse to separate you two and if you two cannot be separated, then she cursed you to get sick. Either by illness or by divorce, you must be separated."
And my husband gets angry, curses God and says, "I’ll go and I'll burn down her house!" but the priest says," No, no, no! Let me hold a prayer service for your wife to make her healthy again. Let God take care of the one who put the curse. But," he says, "what I can do about her, is to pray that whatever curse she put on you to fall back on her very own head." But I said, "No, Father, my life is in God's hands. And if God wants me to live I’ll live in spite of all her curses, and if God wants me to die and to end my life now, then this is how it shall be. I don’t want that she, if she used devilish means, she did it out of recklessness and didn’t know what she was doing. She doesn’t know God and doesn’t know what God is and what Godly things are and what are ungodly, evil things. Please, let God decide if I live or not."
And with that I left the priest and I went to my priest in the village. I have a very good priest and he knew me since I went to church all the time and he loves me very much. He always asks my parents about me, always, he takes great pleasure when I go to talk to them, he invites me into their house, "Come, Silvia, let’s chat a bit!" and he always asks me in, ever since I became healthy with his help. And I went to the priest and I said crying, "Father, it’s been a year since I’ve kept going to the doctors and nobody finds anything and look what that priest told me upon opening pravila/the Holy Book. And," I say, "I’d like, I trust you, I'd like you to hold prayer service for me." And he prayed over my head he put under his stole. Believe me, when this priest began to pray, I felt in my chest as if someone stabbed a lot of knives in me, painful stabbing, it hurt so much throughout my chest, such stabbing that I wanted to cry and the priest put his hand over my mouth under his stole so as not to cry, not to disturb him in his prayer. I had such terrible chest pains. As long as this prayer went I had these chest pains and when the prayer ended the pain stopped.
He read over me three times that week, so he began on Sunday, Wednesday night, and Friday night. Friday night, Wednesday night nothing happened to me, but on Friday night when he read the third time, when he started to read over me, a vein started, I felt like it said tick-tick-tock like a clock, I felt the veins in my head throbbing. I thought, "God Almighty! I’m having a cerebral hemorrhage /vascular accident in the brain!" All night my veins throbbed just like a ticking clock in my head, and after that I got well.
But that's why I said it's not allowed to put a curse on people, you have to let them be judged by the will of God, since God knows everything and he who puts a curse, God forbid, it might come back and destroy himself. It’s not allowed.
You have to accept any misfortune that happens to you. For the misfortune is also happening with God’s will, perhaps God lets you go through a tough trouble so you return to Him. God wants, because He loves us, this is how He can make us return to Him. You'll never see a happy man praying. A man who has a good marriage, who has a good life, and is in everything doing well, what does he care about God?! But the man who has a problem today, tomorrow another one, who does he go to, if not to the arms of God?
Next time I'd like you to tell me stories about the pilgrimage, happenings that stayed with you, about monks you remember, how you boiled balmoş... Okay? Or how that priest told you to give up hairdressing, or how he criticized you that you dress coquettishly, stuff like that, next time, okay?
But I kindly ask you to please don’t advertise the pilgrimages, that would upset me very much. I told you that a journalist came to interview me and I told her, "Please, don’t write about it." Only to see myself in the newspaper, but nothing from what I actually said. And then she kept on calling and I told her, "Listen, forget about me, please! You guys are jerks! Crooks! Shame on you! I’m struggling to do God's will and all you do is concoct falsehoods about me. Jerks! Forget about me!"
What newspaper was that?
Foaia.
I don’t know, I don’t understand why they don’t write exactly what you tell them, it's so interesting....

My thanks go to Valentin Tarlete who voluteered the transcription of the Romanian language recording. Valentin unfortunately fights cancer and financial hardship. I'd be glad if you donate, so I can help him financially.

 

New York
August 30, 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.

'Farewell My Transylvania!' Fragments

Old Folks' Home
Tuesday, June 6^th, 2000

"Here in the old folks’ home," the nursing students' group leader informed us, "we'll see 100 old people. many of them were abandoned by their families even though some of them have two or three children."
In the office there was a strong medicine and chlorine odor. The director gave me her consent to take pictures of the old folks on crutches, with missing eyes, sitting on benches. Though later she was afraid and mumbled with the doctor about how those photos could actually be misused.
One old lady patient marveled at how wonderful God was giving humanity such inventions as my camera. I asked her what's up and she said they just sat on benches all day. Now they were unraveling a sweater for the cook, who wanted to weave a rug out of the thread for her daughter.
She was occupying her mind with unraveling because otherwise she’d worry about her house. When I asked her if she still had her house, she said of course, in Poarta Sălajului.
She'd had a rich husband, who had loads of land and cattle, and his family had said when they came to ask for her hand, that all they needed from her father was the girl. But the father had said, "My daughter won't leave like a beggar from my hearth!" and gave her land and cattle. And they were well off because her husband worked in Cluj at the chemical plant, and they built a big house and had two children. But then the husband died and one child was well off, good child, in Zalău, while the smaller, though he was so very handsome that every girl in the village wanted to marry him, he married—and the old woman was crying outraged, humiliated—a Gypsy woman with three kids! He then made her a fourth one and they all lived together in her house.
They destroyed her beautiful house. She'd had large windows with four partitions, and he smashed the windows and together with the Gypsy woman destroyed the furniture and sold it and ruined it all, kicked his mother out in the stable and beat her on and on, threatened to kill her with the axe, even hit her in the loins with the axe and she didn't heal and now she ended up in the old folks’ home.
She was crying, poor woman. I felt so bad. Still, I was trying to justify to myself the Gypsy woman's behavior, her hate for furniture and the resentment for being rejected by her mother-in-law because she had kids and was of color. I was forcing myself to take pictures of the crying old lady, gnashing the teeth of my compassion, feeling awful that I was taking pictures while she was crying, but then saying to myself, ‘If I don't, I won't make her story heard.’ It was painful. It was even more embarrassing to tell her that I had to leave because the bus would leave me behind, but I'd be back, I'd be back.
I plan to go back with my sister on Tuesday. I wish I knew what to do for them.
They were so glad when I showed them their digital photos.
The old lady said she marveled at modern devices, like the telephone. Her older son came with a buyer to sell the house, but she called her brother and he said she shouldn't let anyone talk her into selling her house, she should better give it to him. Asshole, I thought. And the phone enabled her to speak with the potential buyer and the buyer said he was sorry, he liked the grounds, but the house itself was in a sorry state. Meanwhile the younger son came back from the Gypsy woman who was from Iaz village, and so he occupied the abandoned house again. However, the house is still in her name. She didn't sell it.
Before I ran after the bus, the women blessed me. Such sad old ladies. There was one with no teeth who burst into the office asking the director if she'd spoken with the mayor. The director told her she couldn't find him, but then after the old woman went to sit by the ditch to wait for the mayor, the director told us that this old woman had no one at home back in Lozna and the mayor was happy he could find shelter for her at the old folks’ home. For a year she'd been insisting on going back to her home though no one is there to take care of her, so she keeps on asking the director to call the mayor of Lozna to take her back home.
“They have childish minds,” the director said.
It came out that the nurse group didn't get on the bus yet, but went to the other building across the street where the men were.
So I still had time. I entered a small ward with six beds. The air was sickening with pee smell. Poor moribund old women. One had rheumatism, she said. She couldn't stand up anymore, she just slipped downwards, she said softly, girlishly, raising her hands to show me how she couldn't use them anymore. Her knuckles hurt. She tried to hold things in her hands, but she couldn't anymore. Poor, poor girl. She was thin like a skeleton, hollow-eyed, her gray curls spread out on the pillow, and so meager in her beige sweater.
The nurses were hardened women. No wonder in that smell and suffering. You have to survive taking care of those poor, unpleasant looking beings, and you protect yourself by hardening.
But maybe it is true what they wrote in the papers and showed on TV, that nurses are cruel to patients here. I don't know. I don't even know if I want to know. It’s disturbing and disempowering. I'll go back, but it makes me cry again. I hope I get out of here sane.
Another old woman—lying in bed with her face squashed somehow, her nose especially—said her heels hurt and she was operated on and since then they'd deformed so much that she couldn't stand up anymore. She said it was dreadful to stay in bed.
The woman across the room, behind me—I had a hard time looking at her because she was a mass of round flat flesh, with a face, and hands. She couldn't move at all, having lain on her back for the last 12 years. Before, when she could sit, she said faintly and proudly, she sewed the geometrical wall cover, which I found ugly.
It was dreadful, they said. The only woman who could sit in the room, on the edge of her bed—she had the Kidnapping from Seraglio on her part of the wall—said that perhaps the only meaning of their suffering was to have others see it.
I felt so bad when one nursing student opened the door, saying agitatedly that they were leaving and I was the only one they were waiting for.
The doctor from the local hospital, who came to guide the students around the buildings, said he too thought of writing a novel about those old folks. I told the nurse students what one of the old ladies had told me, that it was so very kind of the girls to bring them waffles and chocolates and cookies since they were sure the girls had no money themselves, but bought them anyhow, and they could have bought something else for themselves for sure since they were so young, but they bought poor old folks something.
Still, the director wanted to make sure that I wouldn't make them bad publicity. I told her I'd be back with my sister on Tuesday afternoon. I hope she won't put mother in that place.
The bus left. We ate our sandwiches. It was so hot, I was afraid of getting sick with food poisoning.

Hermaphrodites in Cages
Friday, June 16^th, 2000

I knew the hospital area. I was married and lived in that neighborhood for a year. I was 18, I married just to run away from home.
We looked for block P-83, where Malvina, my brother's betrothed lives. She was so happy to see us. My brother Mircea was in an orange bathrobe. Malvina started to feed Alex fries and chicken, and he wanted to see Sunset Boulevard or something—a soap with witchcraft. So I went to the Contagious Diseases Hospital to take some shots of the beautiful sculptures a doctor made there. They were placed around the hospital yard, behind a wire fence, so from the outside my pictures looked spider-webbed by the fence.
Malvina advised me to say I was Dr. Elena Veres' sister and they would open the gates widely. Well, it wasn't so. The guard said no, then mumbled something through the window, behind a curtain, and finally came out of her booth and I told her I wanted to take pictures of the sculptures, for my book about my hometown, and she said I should come on Monday morning. I said I'd be leaving on Tuesday and what if it rained on Monday.
She regrettably couldn't let me in. I told her she could call the doctor on duty, she said she could and called, but she said he wasn't answering and he might be asleep. I said, "I'll wait until he gets up." She mumbled again. Then a mother with a daughter in her arms and another one holding onto her skirts came in and they pushed the gate open while the porter was talking into the receiver that she had a problem, there was a woman who claimed she came from abroad and wanted to stroll around the hospital yard and take pictures. I stepped in and asked her why she was saying such things, but of course she didn't listen and she said victoriously—like, "Am I not right?"—repeating after her boss, "No," and then put down the receiver.
I asked her why she didn't tell to the doctor exactly what I'd told her. She said again in answer to my question, "No." I said angrily, "Why did you twist what I said and tell him that I wanted to photograph the patients and the yard when I told you I just wanted to get near the sculptures?" She viciously smiled and said the sculptures were in the hospital yard, weren't they?! I asked her name and she didn't want to say it, and she chased me away. I told her she was a liar and I'd be back, be sure about that.
I didn't give up, so I then went and took shots of the sculptures from the street when after a while public guardian, puffed up in her civil police uniform like a turkey passed by looking nastily at me. After I finished my shots, she came from behind the fence and started to holler at me about taking photographs because this was a hospital and it was forbidden. I said there was nothing posted saying that and I would take as many shots as I wanted. People started to gather around me. She was hollering that the police patrol would show up and fine me one million lei. She herself couldn't care less. I told her they were both fools, she and the hospital guard, but I put my camera away in my bag and left.
A man followed me, insisting—he was carrying a plastic bag of cherries in one hand—that yes, I could, and I should take pictures, it was my right to do so, and inside the hospital too! I said I would be back the next day, actually meaning Monday. I was so angry that I forgot it was Friday.
I went around the block to get to Malvina's apartment building, while the guy told me that I could go behind the hospital, where there was a garden and from its tall wall, I could photograph the desperate conditions patients were kept in there.
He said poor people with schizophrenia and other diseases, and hermaphrodites, were locked in cages, behind there, like animals, and there were poor people, like animals, famished, looking around to eat grass, poor people like animals, who were let to go around naked in that area. And hermaphrodites.
I asked him if he had relatives in that hospital or he himself had been a patient. He said, "Sadly, yes. Someone has to write, to expose these people who live like animals. They are humans too."
I felt so annoyed with myself for not being able to say, "Fuck the expensive cameras, fuck the million lei fine, fuck my safety," and go and take shots of the animals and those he called hermaphrodites.
I imagined fantastic creatures.
Malvina was serving French fries and chicken thighs and drumsticks, so I got to eat with Alex. It was kind of her. She was so warm-hearted. I told her my adventure and she said it was not quite like that. They were for sure kept in poor conditions, but the situation in hospitals was disastrous all over the place.
The man also said that the guardian was a thief, he knew her, she was from Ortelec, and now she was a public guardian. He looked sound, but how can I tell if he was insane imagining "hermaphrodites".
Malvina said the public guardians were previously guards at the gates of factories and now that the factories closed they were turned into civil police, as public guardians. She said people were so very stupid in our town, afraid of everything. Like it happened to us at her work place, in her hospital sterilization section, where after I took pictures of her and her fellow nurse with their machines, her boss got scared one day later and told Malvina to stop me from publishing the photos because their machinery was secret. No one was allowed to enter their sterilization rooms. “What secrets?!” Malvina was laughing, "Two iron holes in which they put surgical instruments to sterilize. Idiots. If you stay around longer, you'll see more of the stupidity around here."
I'm watching a nation dying, but still this can't be true because many, many things changed for the better. It's like in spring, when patches of green grass show through the dirty, melting snow.

Smiling for Me
Tuesday, June 6^th, 2000

Kids in the handicapped children's institution that I made a point of visiting—because this is what Romania is infamous for, handicapped kids, orphans, street kids, so I have to cover these too, I'm a serious reporter, am I not?—have a great environment and housing conditions, thanks to some German religious sponsors. Their home looked like some mountain resort facility, much better than many "respectable" neighborhoods in Zalău. Still, it was hell. It had a lovely location, in a valley with vineyards and orchards, like a sardonic Garden of Eden.
What help could brand new Adidas shoes and colorful clothing, clean rooms and polished wooden walls and floors be for these kids? It was hell. Young, jittery kids that couldn't stand still; they made clockwork-like jerked movements. They were hollering, like little beasts. It was potty hour: they were lined up in the bathroom on their pots. I felt sick. The student nurses that I was on the trip with got out of the building fast, like from a horror museum, but I had to stay longer, to grapple with what I saw.
Grotesque painting exhibition. Imagine all kinds of jerky movements, distorted grins and slobbering. One little girl, Delia, had her knees in the back of her legs. "She has an incredible will to walk and stand," the nurse said about Delia. "She could barely walk when she came here."
From time to time one child uttered an unbearable hollering. The nurses tried to hold him and calm him down and managed to for a while, but then he'd start again. How can you help him, if he doesn't say what pains him? How could they work in such a place? Hell is nicer than that, I assume. And more logical. No, it's not logical either, but biblical imagination was fairytaly compared with this collectivity.
The nurse said that the hollering boy was Gusti, and he was 25 years old, though he looked like a four-year-old kid. They had to tie his hands because he was scratching himself till he was bleeding.
Made me very, very ill.
On my way out, I met Victor, hanging out on the porch in his yellow foreign wheel chair, his limbs, his face twisted. His sunny smile reminded me of my own ability of getting out of misery by pulling my boot straps. You have to smile, you have to be happy that you’re alive because it is beautiful to be alive, so smile thru its grotesque absurdities.
Perhaps I too am oblivious, like them am not even aware of all the absurdities I’m subjected to.

 

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 one of them, I’d be grateful.

New York,
August 7th, 2013