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

The Banning of Remembrances

Insistently I try to follow new rules: 

No more past, no more ghosts, take people for what they are, not what they remind you of.
In the present, in the present, that’s all that is, the present. 

No more layers of factual history, of moods, of sentiments past, no, just the present.
When you walk along these suburban streets under enormous trees, on the sidewalk uneven from protruding ancient roots, or step on the thick grass along the path to make space for your friend, when you admire the mansions, the red tower of the firehouse, don’t drift remembering the years you lived here, now just a city visitor.
When you pick mulberries, don’t go back in time.
Don’t remember the Black Sea village where hungrily, a runaway teenager on the cusp of womanhood, you and your husband-to-be, lowered the branches so you can pick the ripe mulberries.
How you ate hungrily black mulberries, shooing away the chicken that were picking the fallen ones from the cracked earth, the smell of chicken droppings cackling sarcastic at your great romance.
Mulberries cause diarrhea.

As you hide in the shade of the tree picking, eating dust and car pollution, chase away the little girl you were, up in the trees, sitting in the trees for hours, at ease, a bird in her nest, your hands stained dark red, don’t remember your mother scolding you ruined your white dress.
Just the now, just your new friend picking fruit in a plastic bag, appeasing her own fears: Oh, is she greedy? she worries. Does she steal from the birds? What will they eat now, the birds? Well, they have plenty of mulberries on the top of the tree where my friend can’t reach.
What will I do with my new life, in which remembrances are enemies? Where there is no fog of nostalgia, no recognition of Oh, I’ve seen this before! Oh, you remind me of so and so!
Life now will be like sight with new prescription glasses, perhaps.
Clear vision, no vagueness.
Except new glasses always give me headaches.

March 2008

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.

Over a Glass of Beer

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

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

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

New York
October 18th, 2013

A Few Luminous Moments with Your Mother

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

New York
October 3rd, 2013

My Body's Resumé

As I declutter my apartment, my computer, my life I've remembered this other poem I've written in Fall 2008:

I floated in amniotic liquid in my mom's womb, duh.
Major getting thru, push out.
Lots of skirmishing, leg and arm thrashing,
often hollering, thus fortifying my lungs.
Walking. Running. Jumping. Kicking. Tree climbing. Hide&seeking.
Primary school P.E. calisthenics. Military instruction.
Learning swimming or bike riding forbidden as deadly dangers,
life-threatening activities, dictated mother.
Two years of amateurish modern dance classes.
Disco. Walking for hours into the woods and hills of my hometown,
then hiking rocky cliffs national monuments.
Dancing, daily one-hour fitness working on my poster-girl image.
Sex life starts. Sex life starts. Sex life starts.
Long distance running attempt ended with scary gall bladder/liver pains.
Awful sexual transgressions perpetrated upon her while running away to the big city. Gang rape.
Stops dancing, stops walking about; movement confined within the sacred space of theater hall. Exercises abs and face muscles for perfect voice, diction and projection.
The body is just a launching pad for her voice.
Bored with same daily drilling exercises.
Lots of carrying possessions, moving, suitcases.
Sex, marriage, pregnancy. Sex, pregnancy. Sex, pregnancy.
Strenuous 8-10 kilometer walks around the lake dragged
by well-meaning cuckoo husband.

Birth giving, shattering pain.
Holding the baby, pushing the stroller.
Sex again. Cuckoo husband attacks!
Again possessions, suitcases, running for dear life.
Crossing the border to a better country, a larger city. Divorce.
Learns swimming. Finds it demanding, so unlike romantic movies.
Prefers lazing in hot thermal water, but French boyfriend and son need lively company every second evening in the swimming pool.
Carrying journalistic bags filled with papers and tape recorders.
Experimental Sex Academy Frenchman. Goes on for three good years.
Boxes, suitcases. Gone to America. Louisiana.
Again pushing, shoving furniture.
Real photo camera. Nights of excited standing oblivious in the darkroom.
Learns to ride a bike. Joyful feeling of freedom ends in fear when thugs honking, bike falls, knee injury.
Learns driving, speeding. Road rage thugs on the highway. Stops driving.
Boxes, furniture. East Coast. New Jersey Desert.
Sex, theater, sex, theater, darkroom pictures.
Pushing, carrying, pushing, carrying. New York City!
Meets salsa maestro who insists on dancing. Hilarious failing attempt.
Sex profuse.
Pushing, carrying possessions. Fighting him back in ambushes/matches of jealousy, street performance! Boxing. Jostling. Police presence, referee.
Sex forbidden as deadly danger, life threatening activity, dictated by AIDS scourge.
Pushing, carrying possessions. Pushing, carrying possessions. Furniture.
Metabolism change? Delayed maturity?!
Body eats, eats, loading 20 extra pounds.
Attempts to exercise irregular. Lazing on Brighton Beach sand.
Walking along the waves barefoot.
Knee injury painful.
Tendency to clutter space
to avoid her body's needs for movement, expression.
Hanging out with selfish dancers for body awakening purposes.
Sex still forbidden as deadly danger, life-threatening activity, thus lots of artsy sublimation.
Fancying a man again. Terrified of herself on video screen.
Fasting. Shedding 10 pounds in two months.
Disillusion. Putting back 15 pounds.
Disturbing couch potato tendencies.
Gardening. Walking in Central Park.
Shoving, pus
Back from Motherland: donating, donating boxes of possessions to charities.
Meets less selfish dancer who makes her do monkey dances with him.

Gets Rec. Center membership. Buys her first pair of sneakers.
Goes to physician for knee injury clarification.
Danger of amputation? Nah, paranoia.
Swimming. Gym. Muscle machines. Dancing. Endorphins.
Deep deep sleep. Swinging in the hammock of summer.
Why not decades ago swim, dance, deep deep sleep? Well, now.
Awake. Alive.

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

New York
October 1st, 2013

Fifty Sons and Daughters: Show Don’t Tell

I’ve written this piece in 2007, part of a cycle called Fifty Sons and Daughters that gathers my college teaching experiences in New Jersey.
English Composition 101 Professor:
Hello students. As I said in our first class, in English Composition 101 I will be teaching you how to write. For those of you who didn’t show up on Tuesday, be it because you were at orientation, or you forgot that school started on Tuesday, January 2, 8 a.m., or you simply couldn’t get out of bed, I inform you that there is no chitchat in this class, no cell phone usage. If you miss class, you get an absence. If you get four absences, sorry, you’ll have to take this class again. Two lates count for one absence. Chit chat, giggles, talk talk talk, disruptive behavior,—Frank the Tank, this term there will be no m&m slinking in the class!—if you interfere with the diligent students’ eagerness to learn and my passion to teach, I’ll ask you to leave the classroom and come back when you are ready to behave like a mature student. And that’ll be one absence right there.
For those of you who have been in my class previously, or those who asked my previous students about me and were told I’m a softie, sorry to disappoint but upon popular demand voiced in the students’ teaching evaluation questionnaire I turned into a dragon lady over the winter holidays. I mean it. In this class, I’ll teach you how to write. That I will.
Now we’ll have a class exercise about showing not telling, about narration and description. When you talk about something, you have to be visual, sensorial. Let me hear, see, smell the person you are talking about. Don’t be abstract, abstract, abstract because I’m gonna fall asleep. That is don’t say, "My mother is uplifting me!" No! Say, “My mom is my sunshine!” Understood?
Great. Now, let’s do a practical exercise in narration. Each of you should ask me a question and I’ll tell you a story. Okay, you first. Your name? Louder so that students can hear it, paste a name to the face. Squenia. Right. Question?
Where do you hail from?
Student, we don’t ask questions about anything else, but what you see. And no inappropriate behavior, or attitudes or smirks or flirtatious looks will be tolerated. Understood? Neither eye rolling nor back talking. If I see any of this, I’ll take you by the hand and walk you across the square to the dean’s office to have an attitude problem fix. Question?
What are you holding in your hand? And why?
My wallet. Because I can’t risk you guys playing some prank on me and vanish it. Though it contains nothing but my train tickets and a driver’s license and one debit card of an empty bank account. I like this wallet. It is small, not like those that have many partitions for credit cards, no, thank you. I messed up my credit history. I also put in its side pocket toothpicks that I finagled from restaurants and paper clips I use when I commute to sort your papers and organize them. This is my son. Handsome child. Like his father. Under his picture, I have the one of his uncle. Here. Handsome. Yes, it’s an old picture. He’s dead now. Alcoholism. In my hometown most people, men, everybody, drink themselves to death. The real horror in Transylvania,—yes, Squenia, I hail from Transylvania,—is not vampirism but alcoholism and its violence. So I covered his picture with my son's. No more past. Here is the promising future.
Question?
Why are you dressed in purple?
It’s a good color and I learned this from a performer who worked at several jobs to make the rent money: during week all she wore was purple, she had purple pants and purple blouses, purple coats and purple boots, so she didn’t lose time with matching her items, whatever she put on, it was purple. Only over the weekend, she dressed in a different color. Next?
Why are you showing us your son’s picture?
Because he is on my mind. He has to study but instead he plays videogames around the clock. I didn’t come here for nothing! He has an internet addiction! Like his uncle! It is scary! He’s almost your age…
We should do an exercise on that! Take out a scrap of paper. This is an audience awareness exercise. Yes. That is you shape your discourse, essay depending on whom you write it for. Now: your cousin or younger sibling has an internet addiction. Write him/her your thoughts. Then, you go and talk to his/her parents. Persuade them it’s a bad thing. No talking. Write, write, write, dear students. I have an example. We did the same exercise in the other class for a kid who watches porn. Wait a minute. [Shuffles thru her folder.] Here it is:
Ronald Calderon: “Parents: I believe that it is ok for your son to be watching porn on the base that it is natural for a boy entering puberty to start wanting to experiment or to have sex. I know you did it when you were his age. At least he’s not gay. Boy: It’s ok for you to watch porn because sex is one of the most important things in the world next to breathing and eating. Don’t ever let your parents know you watch porn son, they going to try to knock your hustle son, but when you smash always use a jimmy cap because watching porn you can’t get an infection.”
Gilberto Garcia: “To kidd: was gad lil nigga, yo don’t got cagt if you watch porn, there is nothing wrong with watching it, but you just cant do it anytime. If you do it when your parents is home lock your room and turn the volume down. Imam pass you down my collection you just gotta do it smart. Ok ma lil’ dude. Just do you but be smart about. To parent: Hello Miss ‘I dunno’ I have spoken to your child and he feels embarrassed and ashamed of watching porn. I have personally discarded his video tapes and told him he cant go out for a month. He will go into his room and do his homework and will be a more honest and righteous kid. Miss he is a good boy he was just acting upon peer pressure. His friends told him he was gay for not watching it, I told him it doesn’t matter that its not appropriate to watch it any way. Also, that his friends are the gay ones for feeling insecure and needing to watch porn to feel like men.”
Melissa Aviles: “Ronnie why do you watch porn for? That’s just nasty. Your too young to be into that when you watch porn that means you really don’t have much respect for women. Don’t become like other men in the world women are just more than a sex toy. Would you like to see your mom, aunt, grandmother, sister, cousin, or one day you may have a daughter would you like her doing porn? I don’t think so. If your really sexual active get yourself a good girlfriend, get married and have all the sex that you want. Now go to your room and think about what I told you without watching porn. Parents: we have a serious problem here with Ronnie watching porn. This shouldn’t be taken lightly. If he keeps it up your going to have to send him to therapy. He really has no respect for women. You really need to monitor him making sure he’s not watching porn. Your son is very sexually active. And you need to be careful that he doesn’t become a sex preditor. Sometimes when a young teenager is into porn like that in the long run they always feind for sex and if they don’t get it they will somehow. So just be very careful with your son.”
Got it? Now to work!

New York
September 7th, 2013

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

The Scourge Cycle: Miracles

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

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

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

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

 

New York
August 30, 2013

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