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

Serene in a Festival of Lights

It’s been cold on Thursday. I don’t know what possessed me to dress in skinny black jeans, and a light black cloche coat. But by the time I was in the street I realized it was too late to trot back to my apartment. I was on my way to the endocrinologist, eager to see how my thyroid was doing.  What a year was 2014. Last December out of the blue I lost 10 lbs. in 14 days or 14 lbs. in 10 days. My throat was gorged. I could barely talk, the thyroid pressing on my vocal cords. Investigations, blood testing, taking radioactive fluids so they can scan the glands, on and on it went. Medication. At all costs avoid stress. No stress. No stress. How can one live in New York City and have no stress…

But when there’s a will there’s a way. A neighbor took me to her friends’ camp in the Catskills. Deep in the woods. There was a creek whispering no stress no stress no stress. Across from it a field of wild yellow flowers exuding scents of no stress no stress no stress aroma therapy. In the background the old fir trees guarded me no stress no stress no stress shall enter here. Ella is sunbathing on the weathered wooden deck. No stress, no stress, no stress….
A golden summer. But when fall swishes its cold cat-o'-nine-tails whip chasing you back to your cozy New York apartment you wonder how you will keep no stress no stress no stressing on when one must network, attend events, promote, sell, survive, push on her talents applecart.
And I was so tired of if you make it here you make it anywhere. I wished to be a chipmunk dug in a hole for winter. Feel no guilt I don’t press on. But how?
One day I knock at my son’s room door with a bowl of blackberries. He cracks the door open. A horrid meow screeched behind him. My son with a glint in his lovely eyes informs me he brought home a stray cat and he shall keep it no matter what. He always wanted a pet and I never allowed him a pet. So now he has a cat. His cat. Alright. But she stays solely in your room. I’m allergic to cats. Let me see the damn thing!
Oh, Lord, what an unsightly scrawny miserable creature. Fur dangling in thick matted balls. And the meowing most unfortunate. But my son dug his heels. This is his pet. Alright.
The next day when he’s at work, I break into his room and dig the cat out from a dark corner by the bed and start cutting off her matted dangles. She meows pitifully but doesn’t scratch, doesn’t bite, doesn’t hiss, always poops in the litter box. I bathe her. Her voice tells me it’s the end of the world, can’t I understand it’s the end of the world; can’t I stop the water and shampooing? We’re all gonna die in a matter of minutes. But I towel her and blow dry her and when done she scurries back to her dark corner. My son throws a fit that I could have hurt the cat, she’s his pet, I should not sneak into his room!
So of course every day I go in his room to pet the cat and play relaxing cat music and worry she doesn’t eat the dry food my son bought her. I name her Mişu, after my father, who got skinny and frail, but my son calls her Rico. She is not a Spanish cat! On Friday early morning I stay in line at the veterinarian van stationed by the park. The cat perks up when she sees bushes. It’s a long wait, so I take her on the baseball field. I tied a red rickrack lease around her neck and she roams the filed, munches on grass. I scoop her up. She never bites, never scratches, never hisses.
Finally the vet invites us in his mobile clinic. For his $25 fee he declares Mişu/Rico the cat is about to die, she’s dehydrated, she’s at least 12 years old, she needs blood tests and an IV drip, all for a measly $120. They trim her claws for $5.
I can’t afford your neighborly prices. He advises to drop her at the animal shelter.
I push my senior cat in the backpack and leave crying. It sinks in that America is cruel. I am that cat. If I can’t afford medical treatment they let me die.
I stop by the animal shelter to ask them if they could give me a pipeta, whatever you call the thingy with which you put ear drops or eye drops, so I can force water my cat. The boss there goes on that this is not what they ado there. Do I want to leave the cat with the shelter? I do not. This is my cat, my senior cat, and I shall take care of her till she or I die. All I need is a pipeta. Finally one worker gives me the device and we go. My cat walks on the sidewalk, stops and detects scents, scoots under parked cars. I talk to her, holding tight the improvised leash.
For days I’m heartbroken she’s gonna die. I ask advice over Skype from my mom who used to work at a cooperative farm supervising the animal sector. She is disgusted by my cat. One doesn’t keep animals in one’s home. They are dirty. They carry parasites. Contagious diseases. Cats and dogs are utilitarian. They eat mice and rats and chase robbers away. They do not, do not live in the house. I explain to her here they are part of the family.
Each time I talk to her I tell her about my cat’s progress. We discovered she likes tuna, so we feed her tuna. I brush her every evening. I walk her daily. People can’t stop taking pictures of her. They never saw a cat walking on a leash before. My son laughs that I’m like Dali and his ocelot.
My cat, well, our cat, gained 3 lbs., her fur coat is luscious, gray with black stripes, she sleeps at times on my bed, I scratch her head and she purrs, if I stop she meows reminding me I’m her human scratcher and must go on scratching. I got her rubber lizards and hung them on the lamp arm, she battles them fiercely. When she sleeps, flat on one side, legs and paws, her back and head making a circle, my serenity fairy, an innocent being, hurts no one, elbows not for hullabaloo celebrity in the greatest city in the world. When I hold her in my arms and she softly meows I don’t give a fig about what I’m missing by not going out, working the scene, network, promote, sell.
I am the quiet of my cat.
The endocrinologist shouted a big hurray when she saw the blood test results. My thyroid is back to normal levels, true with the help of her meds, but also my Zen cat.
So shivering in my flimsy outfit I hopped on the train to face Brooklyn, be part of an evening of stories curated by my friend Martie at the Branded Saloon on Vanderbilt Avenue. I sat on the A train, swiftly working out the crossword puzzle, when the conductor alerted us there was a fire somewhere along the line, the train goes back to Manhattan.
I won’t go back to Manhattan. I am on a mission. Tonight I shall attend the Festival of Lights at the Branded Saloon. I shall amble on by bus. I got to the surface and realized I’m gonna freeze to death if I didn’t go to the Goodwill around the corner and get a pullover, a cap. So I did that, then found the bus stop and saw I could get off at Vanderbilt Avenue. Bus arrived, I kindly asked the driver to let me know when we reach Vanderbilt Avenue stop. Half an hour later still no Vanderbilt Avenue. I inquire the driver when shall we hit Vanderbilt Avenue? Vanderbilt Avenue?! I announced it 15 minutes ago. Take this transfer and go across the street and go back to Vanderbilt Avenue. So I did. So I did.
Branded Saloon was indeed at the indicated address waiting for me, though an hour late.
The backroom had chandeliers made of intertwined deer horns. On a piano there was a stuffed peacock without its feather tail. Martie opened the second part of the evening introducing a charming lady who told us a story about the Christmas stockings her grandma cross stitched for each of her children and grandchildren. The charming lady is a rare object, antiques appraisal. If I got it right she found somewhere in Florida a small statue she purchased for $5,000 and was auctioned by Sotheby’s for $5 million, the statue being either formerly owned or a representation of Rasputin.
My memory is party inaccurate because I was next to go on stage and was annoyed with myself that I was clad in black like a typical New Yorker. But on stage I went for Martie and her Festival of Lights, and I told the audience how upon arrival in America, I was stationed for three years in Baton Rouge as a graduate student. And Christmas comes, let alone everybody was in shorts and flip flops under the arduous tropical sun, seeking the shade of palm trees, metaphorically speaking since they air-condition themselves, we were taken on neighborhood tours to admire the lawn adornments, electric bulb Nativity scenes and reindeers and Santas and Three Kings, and bales of straw as snow hills. Martie tells me it was a show off contest.
My interpretation was that the poor people were trying to fake it till they make it, but it didn’t quite work out. My childhood Christmas memories have no blinding electric bulbs concoctions, but the fresh air of my village, the crunchy sparkling snow, as I went with my friends caroling from door to door. It wasn’t so much about announcing the birth of Jesus in a manger, but about all the cakes and cookies and walnuts and apples villagers gifted us, and who got the biggest bag full of goodies by the end of the night. We would walk on the path thru snow, at times a misstep would deep you, swallow you, drown you waist high in snow, and as we approached the porch of the house the icicles trimming the roof would sparkle from the oil lamp of the home. That was real wintery Christmas you can’t buy with all the bulbs in America. And the ice flowers on the windows, frost flowers you call them? I haven’t seen any in America. Maybe they have them at Home Depot.
What I also remember were the Christmas tree decorations. We were comrade countries with China, and mom always brought out the boxes with glass balls and velvet figurines. There was a peacock, a green velvet peacock, its wire claws had to be clutched on the tree branch.
I don’t remember much of the Christmas spirit, father being usually plastered, but I do remember a ginger haired teddy bear with an azure bow. So large he was, I could barely hold him in my arms.
And once, we searched thru mom’s boxes and we found some white balloons and we blew them up and stringed them in garlands. Came out they were condoms.
Martie laughs, I was gonna say they were condoms. I was gonna say!
And we laugh, not sure if I already told her this story.
My trip back to Manhattan was a breeze. The train stop was four blocks from the Saloon.
I came home and hugged my soft cat, and I told my son, ‘You know, I still have it in me. My thyroid is at peace now. Maybe, maybe I still have it in me and we didn’t come here for nothing.’
I felt at home back on stage again.

New York
Saturday, December 20, 2014

My Pretty Place: Inside Geranium Blooms

Daniela and the Hypnotist. She sits on a couch and flowers her dress over her folded legs. 

Hypnotist: Look at it this way… [Overlap] Daniela: I want erotic dreams.
Daniela: [To the audience] My life coach, a certified hypnotist, offers The MythoSelf Workshop for Personal Transformational Change Work.
[To the Hypnotist] I dreamed that hair grows on my hands, like corn silk, like bird down, but a lot, a lot. I pull out fistfuls and it immediately grows back. As if I’m at an exhibition opening, people chatting with wine glasses in hand while I pull all that hair. Then I’m at my parents’ home, and it’s dark, the house is full of some animals also covered with feather down though they aren’t supposed to have feathers, they are like small puppies. My sister shrugs her shoulders, ‘This is how it happens.’ [Desperately] ‘Since when?’ ‘Since our parents travel.’ ‘When do they return?’ ‘Soon.’ ‘What will they say about these animals covered in down? Look at my hands. You’re a family doctor!’ She shrugs again. I can’t keep up with the corn silk down, pulling fistfuls! It still grows, still grows...
Hypnotist: Relax. Follow my pen with your eyes. Now close your eyes, you’re unable to open them. Go deeper and deeper into your subconscious. Count backwards from 10. Let your arms go limp. Breathe deeply. Feel tingling in your body.
Daniela: [To the audience] What if he starts masturbating?! I barely know this guy. [Closes her eyes] I dreamed that patches of grass and barnacles grow on my soles and I keep on pulling them out and they grow even faster. I run through the village, where I grew up, on a path down into the valley and a woman stops me, ‘I can heal you.’ She pulls the entire grass from my feet. I’m so ashamed I have grass on my soles. She rubs medicinal alcohol on them, snuggles me under a down comforter. She gets into the bed too, but I jump out repulsed. She mocks me, ‘Come now, don’t be afraid, I won’t touch you.’ I run away but that makes my feet stop healing.
Hypnotist: Hands, makers of things, not controlled by your will. Instead of pulling out the corn silk why not put fertilizer on it, be welcoming to it? What are feet? Locomotion, move away, move forward, immigration.
Daniela: Maybe my feet are trying to become roots, rooted. What if I let the roots grow? Get rooted? [Ironical] Come on…
Hypnotist: Instead of resisting, yield to it, even encourage it, find joy in your immigration. Focus on the future, dwell not on the past.
Daniela: Oh, I’m stuck in my perpetual dream in which I’m stuck back in Transylvania, wanting to escape to America with my son at a young age, and my mother puts obstacles in my way, either she's the one with the money, or she withholds our airplane tickets, or there is no one to drive us to the airport, but the dream always ends in the same way: gasping, we get into the airplane, and I wake up, my heart boom! boom! booming! If I get to live as long as my granny, I’ll have this dream for 40x365=14,600 times. Can you help me? It's dreary. I want erotic dreams, not nightmares.
Hypnotist: We’ll work on unblocking you.
Daniela: I’m blocked in so many ways. I’ve made lots of lovely cushions. I pile them up in the living room and can’t manage to sell them. I’ve blocked my hallway with the bag full of polyester fluffy pillow stuffing, which seems to grow, the more I take out of it, the more the fluff expands, so my home is barricaded. But from whom?
Hypnotist: I want your arms to become totally relaxed.
[He holds her hand. He drops it on her thigh.]
Hypnotist: One, two, three, four, go deeper and deeper into your relaxation. Your body becomes heavier and heavier.
Daniela: It’s so heavy, my muscles peel off the bones! [Giggles] They’ll drop to the floor in a mound!
Hypnotist: Go to the place where you feel best and you like yourself most. What will you call it? Let’s create a trigger so you can hypnotize yourself on the subway.
Daniela: The pretty place. I’m in a grass field in my hometown, by the woods edge. It’s sunny summer, light wind, wild flower fragrance. I slumber in the grass perfecting my suntan. I’m 17. My hair is huge, it flutters in the wind.
Hypnotist: You’re growing younger and younger, a child now, curious about things, curious about yourself.
Daniela: I’m 4 or 5 in my prim little girl cotton dress picking wild flowers in the grass field by the train canton. The grass is taller than I am.
Hypnotist: Become even younger, before you were even born.
Daniela: [Grumbles] Forget about it. My hands are so very heavy, my feet are so very very heavy, like cast iron, really heavy.
Hypnotist: Observe when the inhalation turns into exhalation. The place where being turns into not-being, where not-being turns into being.
Let your creations take off, like baby birds flee the nest, respect your creations. They were given to you, they pass thru you but have to go to others. Let them have their own life, go away, be they pillows or your son, who will soon go to college. Trust that they will father themselves, even if some only after you’re dead, just let them fly away like birds.
Daniela: I see pelicans that can’t find fish anymore, pray on another colony of birds, the parents are out fishing, while the pelicans steal the baby birds, the fledglings disappear in their enormous, sagging beaks, skinny baby legs convulse out of the pelicans' closed beaks. I see little baby flamingos, stuck in the mud and dying, or baby elephants trampled upon by stupid mommy elephants. [To the Hypnotist] Please, scramble me out of this monstrous pretty place! I need erotic dreams. My pretty places, my paradises, always get smeared, invaded by some ugly nutty monstrosity. When I was 17 I’d go every day into the woods. The fragrance, the quiet, the light and shadows, the thick bed of dry leaves and twigs and fir tree needles, the forest tall above me. One day a stupid pimply boy on my street followed me. He tried to rape me but I kicked his ass and I ran away.
I stopped going to my forest.
I don’t want any more dreams with my mom. I dreamed about my potted flowers. The Christmas cactus has grown a bushy branch but it is the color of cabbage and the leaves are small and many, but it’s as big as my geranium. Suddenly it grows limp. I search frightened to see why, when a nasty Limax snail slug comes out from a hole in the ground, darts like lightning and flees. Mother fucker Limax, you’ve destroyed my flower! I hope it will recover now, but it doesn’t. I pour water into the hole and a second disgusting slimy Limax purplish brown darts out running. [She takes again the hypnosis position.]
Hypnotist: [Drones] Your eyelids get relaxed and you can't open them.
Daniela: [She does open them] I know how I’ll call my hypnosis pretty place: I want to go into my geranium blooms, on the kitchen windowsill my red fresh geranium so red, red and profuse, that's where I want to go always, into my geranium blooms.
Hypnotist: Very well, then. Relax your face muscles and chest and arms. Become yourself, for the geranium is but a geranium, when the sugar and sap travels in the stem to make her bloom, she won't turn into a tulip, she won't turn into a lilac, no, the geranium blooms into a geranium. Like the acorn is an acorn and gives birth to an oak tree, and all it can turn into or do is be an acorn in all its acorness, and an oak in all its oakness...
Daniela: [Opens one eye.] God, give me a break! It's not quite working. Your droning is like an assembly-line guru voice. Maybe you could use your deeper tones instead of this mechanized, conveyor belt, I’m-hypnotizing-an-entire-factory droning? Should I go back to my acorness?
Hypnotist: [In a baritone voice] No. At the count of 3 you’ll feel a surge of rejuvenation and wake up filled with energy.
Daniela: A baritone in all its baritonness.
Hypnotist: 1, 2, 3! Wake up.
Daniela: This won't happen! My feet and hands are made of heavy clods and I can't move them, will you prod me? Will you poke me? Pretty please.
Hypnotist: No, at the count of 3 you will wake up by yourself. 1, 2, 3.
Daniela: Man, my feet are nailed to the floor! My hands are nailed to my thighs.
[His phone alarm rings. She moves awaken.]
Hypnotist: Each time you talk about what you don’t like, you lean your neck and head to my left. But when you talk about things you like you change your posture, look to my right and you straighten up, and brighten up. I want you to keep to my right.
Daniela: Well, then move to the right.
Hypnotist: It’s not about me moving to the right. It’s on you to stay to the right, in that desired life, in the things you love, the life you want. Just be, don’t construct scenarios, just be, knowing that you are very attractive.
Daniela: [To the audience] Hear, hear.
Hypnotist: In a few days, perhaps over the weekend, you’ll come to an understanding of what has just happened and you will regain your balance, allow yourself to become yourself.
Daniela: I want poise and balance.
Hypnotist: We’ll get you there, even if you’re on a New York subway. You can reset yourself, go to the pretty place and reboot yourself like a computer. I want you to make that good life for yourself. [Exits.]
Daniela: [To the audience] When I go home there are profuse pink blossoms in the trees by my building. Two years ago they planted one million trees, and today they’ve bloomed for the first time. I tell each of them I love you, so they know they are loved.
Over the weekend I had my first erotic dream in ages. Well, close enough. I never had such a dream before. I slept 13 hours and I woke up with a back-pain.
I was in a hotel elevator trying to catch up with my employer's group in a conference room. I was not eager. I felt ill equipped for the job, didn't know exactly my job description, I was like a gofer Friday girl, they were bossing me around and it was a boring job. Anyway, I caught up with them, they were taking places at the conference table, my boss was in a suit and the other team was Donald Sutherland and his entourage, he wore an elegant suit and a white shirt, unbuttoned. His hair was longish, white. I enjoyed looking at him. I don't know what were they negotiating, but then somehow the situation shifted, Donald Sutherland was holding me in his arms like in a slow dance and he was soft and caring and wistful and he said, “I can't keep up with your delicious, extraordinary wit, Ella,” and I smiled and I felt in my body something I never felt before, and I was startled and I said to myself perhaps this is what the hypnotist is talking about I am to feel when I am with a man. Weird.
Then things got hectic, the conference broke up, I was to go, fetch, arrange, while my heart was filled with Donald Sutherland, and how I must tell him, I must keep in touch with him, I must relocate! And as if I was in front of an entire theater audience in London performing a one-woman show and oh, was I fantastic. And I was wondering how would my life with Donald Sutherland be? Like slow dancing? And then things got even more hectic. I was trying to track him down to pass him a letter written in pencil on a school copy book page! In it was my number and email, and I was asking some of the hotel personnel where did he go. A woman said he had enough of conferencing and went for a walk. Anyway, I didn't manage to give him my note.
Then I woke up in my dream at my parents' home because a beige hand-phone was shouting my mother's distressed voice, how my father needed help because she was away drowned in snow, so much snow had fallen on the villages where she was, and my father's cable wires will melt because the phone or something hot fell on the wires and that was a major tragedy for my family, and I said, “Alright, alright.” I went into the other room and my father was under a feather duvet and he was crying that a young guy from his work place at the collective farm died and he was so young, and he was crying my father. My sister, or my son, young kids, were under the other duvet wanting to play with me. I said to my father harshly, “What can one do, tragedies happen, may the man rest in peace, we have to take care of his TV cable wires, that will be a major tragedy not to have TV service!” So I urged him to get out of bed and look for his wires because I was busy with my own quest for Donald Sutherland. As if I met him at his hotel room and he hold me again or I was just remembering how he hold me while slow dancing.
Then I went to my mom uphill on snowy village roads and I told her, “Mom, have you seen the movie last night on TV?” “No,” she says, she was busy with rescuing people in the village from the deluge. “Well, Mom, I was in the entire movie several times, and I had a smasher scene with Donald Sutherland, and Mom he is the most kind and poetic gentleman ever.” Mom says, “Oh, I know him. We were at the cinema and I sat behind him and I asked him if Constantin Niţu was dead or what had happened to him?” Niţu was a Romanian actor movie star who ran away under communism but his acting career didn't work out abroad. His talent useless abroad.
Anyway, I was saying, “Mom, you don't understand, I like Donald Sutherland.”
Mom was prattling away, so frustrated I woke up with a back-pain.
I don't know what's all this about. I have some pointers: I watched recently a DVD with Donald Sutherland having back-pain and no penis, like in that Hemingway book, and he had a massage therapist who eased his back-pain.
When I met in real life Donald Sutherland on a movie set in Budapest, we were in the makeup trailer. He made fun of my Russian whore make up, the film was about Chikatilo, a serial killer in the USSR, and he was a commissar and I was a Russian whore, a possible victim. The film was Citizen X for HBO shot in Hungary. And Donald Sutherland saw his joke didn't go down well with me, and he came back promptly to apologize, with an earnest face, that he meant no harm.
But that was 17 years ago! And I didn't feel anything in my body for Donald Sutherland back then!

[Blackout.]

Sunday, June 20, 2010

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.]

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

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.