Partial Eclipse

I don't understand why the eclipse is outside of the sunshine. Could it be just its reflection? Anyway exciting to be reminded we have a sun and there are thousands of millions of suns. 

Imagine centuries ago people got scared not knowing what happened to the sun.

november colors

inside this rotting grapefruit are seeds that hope for a future, to become trees.
the beat of my heart, the workings of my mind, the air in my lungs, the tissue of my aching muscles feel like this rotten fruit.
i should listen to wise voices, some asking me to check where the rot attacked the fruit, make its autopsy, remember that i created the conditions for this disintegration, i placed the grapefruits in a plastic bag, and instead of storing them into the fridge, i forgot them in a corner in the hot kitchen.
i should listen to kind, scared voices, my eighty-years-old mother begging me to say nothing. ‘don't get involved, listen to me, daughter, the phone lines have ears. stop talking about him.’ ‘but how can i? this is not your totalitarian romania, mother. i came here to be safe.’ ‘you are safe,’ mother snaps. ‘you are millions of people. it's gonna be alright.’
people are in the street, protesting. he barricaded himself in his tower, built a wall of sacks of sand. i don't have strength to join them. i've been through enough civil unrest at the fall of communism. i can't i can't i can't live through four years of shame, disgrace, the president hurled on us the laughing stock of nations, war monger bigot.
i ask mother tips about baking a traditional romanian cake, cozonac. she applauds my interest. this is what we should be conversing about over skype, not elections.
so, woman go back to your kitchen, oven of life you are.
the rotten grapefruit goes to the compost pile. i still have two healthy glowing yellows. i zip them up separately and send them to the fridge hibernation. can't i do that too? wake me up in four years? no, i can't. rot would eat my entire pantry.
must stay vigilant.

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.]

Death Has Entered Our House

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

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

Written in 2004

Tonight We’re Coming out of Our Tombs, We’re Crossing the Death River

Halloween. 

Carl and I are in SoHo to watch the crowd spectacle. Carl is an actor friend of mine. The best way to see the costumes close up is to go an hour before the parade in the area where dressed up revelers line up and wait for the parade to commence, so they can march and show off.
The wind blows and the crowd coils, a mincing machine crowd, we brush, roll, push against each other in this human collimator, startled by close ups of puss gashes, cadaveric complexions, some blood drained pale like flour, some putrid green black with gangrene, we grind against plump French maids, goose pimpled above their garters and white knee-high stockings, batting their enormous blue eyelashes, here go the Spider Men and Bat Men and Cat Women, oh, the Cat Women with their buttocks, rocks under black spandex, the tail, a pitiful knotted rope, the knees buckling up by the end of the parade, not a good idea, Cat Woman, those high heels not a good idea, Cat Woman.
Here go pirates, brides, one with a black veil, drops of blood on her embroidered shiny atlas gown, and a sad bride, dead, with dark circles, head inclined, her tresses and veil flutter in the wind as she poses, oh, so sad a bride.
Here come the salsa dancing marchers! You are in the wrong parade, man, your drums force me to dance along but your bright feathers and sequins are in the wrong parade! You are to scare us, scare us! Why can’t you be menacing cohorts of death? Look, like these three witches with orange wigs, pointed hats, black gowns and miniskirts! Look how they have a blast charging into the audience crammed behind the police fences! That’s how you do it! You are to scare us!
Here comes General Michael Jackson, in his red coat and golden glitter, and woos softly his signature, I love you, to a kid who wants a picture with Michael, oh, Michael, save the world, save the children, Michael! Here comes Jackie Kennedy Onassis waiving in slow motion her white gloved hand, a patent leather handbag dangling from her elbow, and then Marylyn in her blonde curls and her halter white gown. Oh, you need a fan, a hair drier, a leaf blower Marylyn, so your skirts go up your leggy legs.
Look, such long legs on this Deviless, she has long white legs, her red wig with red horns, she came all the way from Harlem the Red Deviless, she walks alone people gawking at her legs!
Look, the whip lashing dominatrixes, black leathered, scare the Tea Party Aunt Hattie, who holds a tray with miniature tea china and pretty cheesecake slices, all proper with her white hair bum and white apron. Then a Barbie doll ambushes us, confined in her Barbie box, pressing her face against the plastic wall, while her Ken doll rolls her enormous box up Sixth Avenue, and oh, the squadrons of gigantic skeletons and white serpents and bats, a cloud of bats, all huge puppets assaulting the dark skies, and then humungous fish skeletons, that’s how you’ll end up too, naughty little boy, piranhas shall eat you, if you go into the water when your mama told you not to!
Oh, and here is Marie Antoinette with her cauliflower, sky-scraper high wig, and her wide, wooden apparel hips! She stops ever so graceful for pictures. Here goes Schindler’s List Mom, or what’s her name in the painting, Whistler’s Mom, and then come the Asian monster-headed warriors, kamikaze samurai, in kimono gowns of gold and shine, and then monsters galore: one-eyed monsters, and fluffy fluffy plush monsters with white baseballs for eyes, the balls running amok, shifty, shifty, and then comes opulent King of France, or Britain, in his red mantle trimmed with a rich white fur leopard collar, his face is a skull and his hand is skeletal. Oh, majestic King, parading solemnly, you are dead, dead, dead. Why did you kill all your eight wives?!
And then come the bores from the movies, the Mad Hatters and the Star War Jedi and Princess Leas and the Elvises, many Elvises, wig and pompadour and diamonded belts, and the District Nine aliens and the Shout painting’s masks and the Sponge Bobs and Chilean miners, lots of Chilean miners, the 30 rescued miners multiplied to hundreds, and clock faces with angel wings, and the cohorts of dancers paying tribute to Michael Jackson’s Thriller, man, two large groups, man, two, what bores.
And here are the drag queens, one has a golden phone receiver grafted on her wig blonde, the coil wire hangs dangling about, and a power plug couple comes, one has two penises, and one has two anuses and when they plug into each other, oh, how they twist in the agony of pleasure, oh, how they like it and oh, how we laugh! Then the ghoulish couples, white faced, a white strand in their black hair, the man in English tailcoats, the woman, long hair, black eye circles, all lace and finery, walk together solemnly.
Another couple parades in white dainty gauze shrouds, his eyeglasses lenses iridescent holographs. ‘Who are you, who are you?!’ I ask him, ‘so elegant and so absurd a man?’Hhe shrugs sweetly as his pair drags him away, ‘This is what one year of marriage turned me into,’ he shrugs sweetly.
Here go two bemused clowns, in such delightful costumes with various dangling silky bags, sheltered under an enormous umbrella with kitchenware things hanging from it, handing out business cards, let us come to your parties! Let us entertain you! let us earn a living! There come gothy Edward Scissorhands, there are many Edward Scissors, the Jonny Depp teenage misfits, scissors, scissors are my hands and my hair is a bush I hide shy under, and they all charge into us, the  screaming bystanders.
Some just walk in the parade, talking bored on their cell phones, doing nothing to scare us, and so many in cheap boring costumes from Wal-Mart. No, man, no, you’re insulting the audience! Make an effort! and they walk, walk not sure if they should have fun or not. No, man, no!
Next year I’m gonna go in the parade myself, this time I chickened out when Carl said I can’t have a large ruffled skirt in the parade, the crows would tear it apart, so crowdy a crowd. No, no, man, next year I’ll have a large pink dress! Larger than Marie Antoinette’s.
Look at the old ladies, four white ghostly spirits, they charge and wiggle their jazz hands and they say together wooo! wooo! and I am happy to play getting scared by them, and I am happy that they are old ladies, in their sixties, fifties, and they are spirits and they go in the parade and they scare us, wooo, wooo, woooo!
Life is here, yes, I am bountiful with you, my New York, tonight I am resplendent with you my America, tonight!
Carl has a plush rabbit, he tears its neck off, its red and violet entrails hang from the ripped neck. Carl is a tall hat gentleman, with a pipe and a tailcoat and military bravery medals, and has cardboard eyeglasses with scary painted eyes and he is a moody disgruntled gentleman. ‘What are you looking at?!’ he snaps at passers by, ‘What are you looking at?!’ he snaps and they love it, ‘Let me take a picture! take a picture! take a picture with you, grouchy Mister!’
We take the subway and emerge on Sixth Avenue and 14^th Street, prime location. We hang from fences, we can see over the heads of sidewalk crowds.
Every sidewalk is unnecessarily fenced up, policemen at every corner.
Carl says they practice anti-terrorism drills on us. ‘Crowd control they enjoy, fascists,’ Carl calls them fascists. ‘What has become America,’ he moans.
We are unable to get out of the sidewalks, at each corner all fenced up, unnecessarily. We are locked up.
Here comes a Russell Brand with his hair teased up. He screams in a high pitch voice, British accent, ‘Where are our fucking liberties, America? The fucking liberties, we should cross the street, mate!’ I first think he really wants to cross the street and I respond, ‘Yeah, man, we should cross the street, what is this? There is no traffic jam, few cars, let us cross the street!’ I quite shout worked up, ‘We should cross!’ and I expect Carl, the revolutionary who when he works as a bus tour guide tells the tourists on Wall Street that, ‘These robbers get away with theft, gentlemen!’ I expect him to shout along, and the Russell Brand to shout along, but I realize Russell Brand just does his comedy shtick, man, for cheap laughs, and Carl says some might get arrested if we shout. But then at least the rest of the crowd would be able to cross the street, he says.
I want to cross, it makes no sense to see all four street corners fenced up! ‘Let us go home, man.’ ‘Let us cross! Let us cross!’ the crowd coalesces in a booming choir, ‘Let us cross!’ the cameras flash flash, but the camera flashing is not the point, the point is we shouting at the top of our lungs, ‘Let us cross, let us cross, let us cross!’ and the police doesn’t seem to even hear or see us, impassibly motioning the cars thru the intersection.
We tire, the choir dies. That’s how we are, we get tired, we do get tired. Revolution gets tiresome. Drained, we are quiet. Only then one, two, three, as if they counted, the policemen pull carefully the iron fences aside and the crowd pushes thru the crossing, and we, Carl and I, with it, go forward.
I so love you, Downtown.
Back on the Uptown train scenery is drab. Uptowners didn’t bother to dress up. They took the kids with the pumpkin buckets to collect candy and that’s it. They are worried, they are tired, they won’t masquerade in Halloween parades, they have troubles. Bores.
The best was a white rubber glove man. He inflated rubber gloves, tied many whites in clusters, the glove fingers forming flower petals, or rooster feathers, tied bouquets on his neck, on his head, on his waist, and he was a creature of white hands floating in the moving air.
I haven’t seen pictures of him in the papers the next day. Why haven’t I seen him in the papers? Because the real thing is in the streets, man, not in the papers, not on TV, and you have to be part of it.
The real parade is Downtown, in the Village, Downtown in the Village, man. And I was part of it.

10/30/2010

 
 
Well, here you have it: If you’d like to throw a bit of money my way to keep my endeavors going, and also enable me to spread the money to my various causes, witnessing democracy, freedom of speech and faith, and engineering social change thru art being some of them, I’d be grateful.

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.

Over a Glass of Beer

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

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

 
 
Well, here you have it: If you’d like to throw a bit of money my way to keep my endeavors going, and also enable me to spread the money to my various causes, witnessing democracy, freedom of speech and faith, and engineering social change thru art being some of them, I’d be grateful.

New York
October 18th, 2013

While the Hurricane Kills Down South

The wind blows fiercely today. It reminded me of a prose poem written on 09/18/05:
1.
The wind ruffles the late summer scorched leaves.
My lover had a bad dream.
“It must be the hurricane down South. I feel weird myself,” I explicate.
“Honey, why you always come up with things that are not?” he grumbles.
“Things that are not? Haven’t you seen the papers? It can twirl all the way up here! New York City can drown under the ocean! It’s due soon!
“They told them to leave the city. Leave at once! Why are they looting? Where will they take those things to? The city is under the water! Don’t you understand? They have to leave their pets behind! There are corpses lying on the streets. The coffins are floating down the river! The pest will burst out! Get out now!”
“Honey, these people have nothing! They lived there all their lives! They don’t know better. They are afraid anywhere else. They were not looting. They just got survival supplies. The white people left with their trunks in luxury buses! They left long time ago! Let the Blacks die. Get rid of them. That’s how it is. This country is foul!”
“You exaggerate. You wish there was an evil design behind this mess but it’s just leadership screwed up in their heads. They lost touch with reality. I’ve been thru this. Our dictator had golden toilet seats while we were starving. They go crazy in the head. You guys gave away your freedom. Why I came here for? To watch another illiterate moron speak on TV? I can’t believe you elected an illiterate for President. And what is this, a dynasty? Where is America?”

2.
I left Louisiana in the summer of 2001, though I tried hard to strike roots there. Upon graduation I left for the big city, find my luck here.
Yeah. Just in time for the blown up towers.

The cancer of termites and water was eating New Orleans away. The city was on an IV system, on artificial lungs. Its inhabitants knew it was bound to die. And now it died.
The French Quarter theatrical weirdoes staring at you provocatively. The revelers in the gay bar streets. All under the water.
Maybe they are still at it during the night, now not worried anymore about when the city will sink under the water, now let’s party forever. All under the water.
At home there is an entire village under the water, with its church steeple and whitewashed peasant houses. They flooded it because the dictator wanted more electric power and he decided to have the turbine dam right there! Flood this ancient village! Kick the people out. What heartbreak? Off you go, villagers! Let progress open its wide avenue. Flood the church!
All it’s left from my Louisiana is two dozens of plastic cups I have from the parades with Bacchus, Denizens of the Deep, with sirens and dickhead squids, and dolphins; Okeanos Ladies and Gentlemen, Children of All Ages, half-horse, half-fish; and the Peasants Are Revolting with a wigged flamingo or stork nobleman and toothless peasants scooping their noses while furiously brandishing bones and wooden spoons and hay forks. And assorted carnival paraphernalia. Some pageantry fridge magnets. I love the Mardi Gras beads. I have a suitcase of them stored somewhere. Cups and beads.

The memory of walks around downtown. The remembrance of a screenplay teacher that wrote about a neurotic girl who painted her Charles Street studio in red. The ghost tours. The cemeteries. The mocking bus driver, “Thank you for taking the tour. I don’t know why you did it, but puts my kids thru college.”
The out-of-the-beaten-path jazz spots. The old whore house attic rented out to yuppies we were hosted one weekend. Its beds pulling out of the walls. The palm trees. The park with trimmed hedges around a glorified stone general where I met a Canadian pen pal for the first time. The sugar-dusted beignets.

3.
Huddling on the subway. An Asian cutie pie trust-fund baby with a cap matching her suede boots plants herself across from us. She crosses her legs to cover her panties, but only to expose her thighs up to her waist underneath her miniskirt.
My lover looks younger than me today. I didn’t sleep enough. She grins. Mistakes us for a down-the-hill art chick with a poodle and $3,000 a month loft walking her gigolo.
It tires me.
People are crammed in the Superdome, famished, drinking their own piss, scrapping the feces off the four-day-used pampers, shooting at the rescue helicopters.
My lover takes gently back my hand and talks me thru the subway ride.
Pettiness of women.
We go about our day: Brighton Beach, the last days of summer. Tame waves.
Imagine them turning into a menacing wall of water! Our city covered in water. How high? Sky scrapers. Boats fishing people out of the Twin Towers.
My lover still restless about his nightmare. I was in it: in a tight black leather suit, at the Frankfurt Airport. My hair blue-black. I wasn’t waiting for him! Ominous, bad things are about to happen to him.
We stroll on the Brighton Beach main street. Shops with Russian dolls. Movies from Russia. I buy Tarkovsky’s The Mirror. Reluctant. He’ll fall asleep while watching it, think me a boring yuppie art chick.
The old ladies chatting in front of their apartment block; the grumpy blonde youngster, flushed cheeks, selling pirogees.
I buy eggplant for .59 and black berries for .99 a pound.
Home. Where’s my home?
We had an earthquake at home, the roosters and cats and dogs raising hell in the night. We had two earthquakes. Death. Block of flats tumbled across the avenues. People buried alive under debris. Looters stole wedding rings from dead people. I won’t live in a place with earthquakes. I left. And now it’s flood here too. Haven’t called in a while my mom.
Home.

4.
Back to our Manhattan. Walk on dark streets around Gramercy Park enjoying the light filtering thru the tree of life leaves, a relic. On a garbage bin a stray sneaker, a Santa Claus cap.
Oh, such old building with gargoyles, a hunchback, a griffin, a grotesque lion. Home!
We walk by a square in a park with sea lions coming out half of the cement pavement, spurting water at intervals.
The T-shirts with the French Quarter masks and the yellow LSU Go Tigers!
On the river walk a grandma watches tense from her bench her two grandkids running around. The river is cruised by boats. We peak thru the windows: a birthday bash. Glitzy people fight their way thru a hall filled with millions of orchids. Millions! I pay one dollar a stem at the corner florists. Millions of orchids! After the party the waiters will leave with armful of orchids, the purple cups crushing under their own weight.
The garbage dump brimming with more of them, broken, trampled, shoved in with food leftovers.
Famished packs around the Superdome.

5.
In the dead of the night we watch the Russian movie. We make pop corn from scratch, watching the jumpy kernels come to life, the cooking pan lid pushed up until we can’t control them anymore and popcorn spills around the kitchen. Life.
We watch the film, cozy like two peas in a pod. The wind makes the grass wave like a sea. Her husband left her with two kids. Shaven heads. War. Lice. My childhood in the village. Shaven skull to strengthen my thin hair. Two skinny pigtails, the red ribbon plaited fattens them up.
My mother had thick hair, but the girls in the dorm cut her peasant braided tails off while she was asleep in the night, to modernize her.
We watch the movie. It’s me who doses off.
Brigita! Why do you eat your candy alone under the cover? Share it, comrade! Your dorm room friends shared their cakes sent from home! Share your candy, Brigita! You don’t fool anyone. The crunchy noise under your cover, Brigita! Stop crushing the candy in the dark!
I wake up crying inconsolably. I want to go home.
America is a trap! A rat trap!
My beloved hushes me, Mi corazon, mi corazon.
America is a trap! Poor people dying like rats in New Orleans.
I want to go home! Please, please…
Agony. A people dying in agony. I thought I got out of the rat trap when I left home.
Your arms are my home, mi corazon.

 
 
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 12th, 2013