Mo Joe Anthology

John Roche put together a collection of Joe poems.   The Joe phenomenon started with his own collection of poetry but Joe proved so popular, he opened the theme up to other poets and over 100 are published in this collection.  http://beatlick.com/joethepoet.html  This Friday, August 22nd, Buffalo contributers will be reading at Dog Ear's Bookstore at 7pm.   With my recent move from Buffalo to Atlanta, I won't be able to make it, but here is my own Joe poem. 


Joe Does the Grand Tour


Joe steps off the launch.
No cameras flash, no biennale
or Thomas Mann to be found.
Just another stop on the Grand Tour, Venice, this time.
Boats whir, the damn water rises shiny black
the city crumbles and shakes.
Joe visits the church built to protect from medieval fevers,
sees Peggy G's tomb with dogs in the palace yard.
Gondoliers dream of land
and read racing car magazines.

Suicide

Suicide is on everyone’s minds.  The shock of a famous person committing suicide touches us all and the media doesn’t let go yet provides us little solace.  The old Simon and Garfunkel song, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwqwAy85CgY “Richard Corey” based on the poem by Edward Arlington Robinson comes to mind.  http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/richard-cory/  This captures the disbelief that someone who apparently has everything would end it all.

 

Is suicide the ultimate freedom providing a way to make physical suffering or mental anguish  stop?  Of course in religion, that is the biggest taboo since you are taking away what “God” does- gives life or takes it away.  Or the other taboo- are you setting a precedent for people who might otherwise find a way out and be helped?

 

In our own lives  we may have experienced the suicide of someone close or not so close to us.  I remember Jose (I changed the name) in Colombia when I was working as an English teacher in a binational center.  My first encounter with him was when he accused me of changing my name.  No, I insisted, Teresa is my name.  Sometimes I use the Latvian form, Terez but Teresa is my name.  He didn’t  believe me so we started off on the wrong foot.  Jose was in charge of materials so he spent a lot of time chasing after teachers who didn’t check off the right number of books they took out of the supply room.

He had a good reputation as a teacher.  I observed his class once and he told the students that he knew they were funny or smart of whatever but in the new language (English) they should stick to what they could communicate. They didn’t need to resort to Spanish.  Jose was also a painter.  He made  prints of the Colombian currency with huge portraits of Simon Bolivar on them in bright colors.

I had little contact with him outside of work until we took a trip to a small town in the interior of the country for a national English conference.  I knew something was wrong because Jose looked disheveled with greasy hair and he stood behind the bus driver all the way from Bogota to Boyaca as if he were controlling the driver.

Once we were at the conference, things didn’t get any better.  I saw him wander in and out of sessions.  All of us from our center (6 of us) were sharing a suite.  Jose wasn’t sleeping at night.  It didn’t help that the other female teacher was trying to get involved with him or that I was sleeping on the sofa in the common space so there was no escaping any of their drama.  One night Jose was talking to the logs in the fireplace in great philosophical detail.  It was obvious all was not right but we were all too young to really think much beyond how weird he was acting.

And we didn’t give it much thought until some months later, he killed himself.  At the funeral, I remember thinking that now he would have some relief from what was tormenting him.

For these difficult days

Here's a poem from my chapbook- "Dance the Truth" which seems appropriate for these days. 

Heritage

 

Buy gold.

Buy it now.

When you flee

the home exploding,

the burnt landscape,

trade it for a loaf of bread.

 

Remember the rhymes

of so many poems

to fill the confined

calendar days

of prison life.

 

Violence is even hitting close to home

Violence is even hitting close to home

 

With the daily reports of the horrors inflicted on Gaza and airplanes falling out of the sky, there is the question of what can one do?  Social media has been a godsend.  Although Russia still dupes its citizens, we learned almost immediately that the Ukrainian separatists armed by Russia shot down Malaysian flight MH 17. At least we did in the international media; the US media took much longer.  If you stick to reporting that isn’t the standard US newscasts, you can find out what is happening in Gaza and let others know.  That might help change the impressions of a public that has always been fed one point of view.  Here’s a moving article by a Jewish writer living in Canada:

http://www.thestar.com/opinion/commentary/2014/07/22/beautiful_dream_of_israel_has_become_a_nightmare.html

 

The next question is what to do about our local neighborhoods.  Lately, Buffalo (where I’m living) has undergone what the media calls a renaissance. 

http://m.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/travel/in-buffalo-ny-a-new-vitality-is-giving-the-once-gritty-city-wings/2014/07/24/f8ff6156-1126-11e4-98ee-daea85133bc9_story.html

 

At the same time there were a series of rapes in what are among the most gentrified neighborhoods in the city.  I’ve heard nothing more except for the arrest of one of the perpetrators.   The website CrimeReports.com, which tracks crime statistics, lists even more sexual assaults in the City since late last month:

•07/07/2014 | 300 Block FOX ST

•07/07/2014 | 1100 Block MAIN

•07/06/2014 | 1 Block KINGSLEY ST

•07/05/2014 | 300 Block BRECKENRIDGE ST...

•07/05/2014 | ELMWOOD AV & ALLEN ST

•07/02/2014 | 400 Block DELAWARE AV

•06/29/2014 | 200 Block ALLEN ST

•06/29/2014 | 1 Block FAY ST

•06/29/2014 | UNKNOWN & NIAGARA

•06/29/2014 | 300 Block W FERRY ST

•06/28/2014 | 100 Block HIGH ST.

And unfortunately more.

Yesterday I found out about 3 violent assaults in the same neighborhood as the one where some of the rapes took place.  Thanks to the neighborhood association which has put out this information.  Otherwise, I don’t think many of us would even know what is going on at night. Has it always been this way?  Or is social media making us more aware and able to take more precautions?  Is the violence a backlash in the 4^th poorest city in the US?  Is it some sort of gang initiation?  The property crimes can be connected to poverty but the rapes?  There are more questions than answers here.  Fortunately, there are women who organize free self-defense classes and marches at night but how many women are afraid now and how is that limiting our lives?

Here's a poem that I usually open my poetry readings with and will probably continue to do so:

Birthright

Past knots and tendons,

 

I look

 

to bone

 

and see,

 

 centuries past.

 

my face shrivels

 

as flames rise higher.

 

The point of a sword

 

slashes my belly.

 

Today, head to toe in black,

 

I barely breathe,

 

walk the requisite

 

steps behind.

 

The open hand

 

of my husband

 

reddens my cheek.

 

In  India and China

 

girls form

 

the Greek chorus,

 

and chant,

 

Never born,

 

Never born.

Moving again!

2 years later and I'm moving again.  Here's a repost from then-not much has changed.


Moving

I  am sitting in a room that’s in the process of being dismantled, bit by bit, box by box.  Where does moving fit on the scale of life’s most stressful events?  Somewhere up there, after death and divorce.  My many moves are bookended by long periods spent in the same place.  17 years in the farmhouse in Varysburg, the small town where I grew up, and then 15 years in the atico flat in Barcelona with its terraces and views of the sea as a distant blue line and Montjuic, the city’s hill off the port. 

Since my American adventure, I’ve lived in three places- my sister’s home in Atlanta, a sublet in Buffalo, and my present apartment where I’ve been for, hard to believe but four years now.  Four years of living alone.  Surprisingly except for one brief stint here when I was in college, I have never lived alone.  Now that I’ve done it, it seems easy.  Solitude doesn’t weigh but there is that occasional need to find a witness for the daily details of life. 

So now, encumbered by a lot more stuff, I’m preparing for move 4.  I left Barcelona after twenty years with three suitcases and a few boxes of my papers which I sent.  How is it possible that I have amassed more stuff in four years here than in all that time abroad? 

My first trip away from home to Paris for my junior year abroad only required one suitcase and a small carry on.  With every subsequent voyage I’ve been weighted down with more stuff.  I have my books (heavy, aren’t they?), DVD’s, papers (way too many), CD’s, and more clothes than I could ever wear.  What do I really need?  Comfort is a way of life in America and every object is designed for that finality.  How much can I shed?  As I look around the chaos that is now my pre-move life, I’m going to find that out.

                                                                        “You can’t go home again.”  Thomas Wolfe   

                              

Exile

Cross the yard

to open the gate,

my mother stands

at the door.

Inside, the grey carpet

with faded roses,

consumes my breath.

The mismatched couches

 are covered over again,

a paint by numbers seascape

hangs on the wall.

I reclaim these rooms,

the medicine stained floor,

my father metes out drops

so he can breathe.

His voice, the backdrop

to my dreams,

as he reads aloud to my mother,

their secret night life.

Stripped naked

I try again to enter,

13 steps to my bedroom,

Petal pink, a girl long buried,

still wants the Barbie dress up world.

My mother’s closet holds two suits

from her past life,

strappy heels, red leather,

thick ankle straps,

I touch and identify,

She never wanted to be here,

in this farmhouse in America.

Yet she greets me,

we share for a moment

this white house,

this undersurface dream space.

It's July and time for the Tour

When I lived in Spain, I loved watching the Tour in July- a hot, lazy month and the stages of the Tour were perfect for relaxing on the sofa.  Here's a short piece I wrote for a bicycle magazine.








JULY

 

July- it’s the middle of summer in Barcelona and it couldn’t be hotter.  July means my teaching schedule is split in the middle and I get home at the hottest time of the day.  That also means that I am stuck in my sweltering top floor atico apartment.  During the rest of the year, the terrace is a delightful luxury but in the dead of summer even with the awning stretching out over the top, it’s too hot to venture out in midday. 

No air conditioning, no escape.  Even my gym has an air conditioning system that barely generates a light chill.  I get home after teaching two English classes at a multinational insurance company.  The students are what you could picture in such a class.  There are four of them who study risk or numbers or god knows what.  But it is easy enough and it pays the rent.

I stop on my way home trudging up the hill to my flat, stopping to pick up lettuce and prepared gazpacho which I drink by the liters, providing liquid and salt in equal measure.  After I eat, I lie down on the sofa, remote in hand.  News comes on and then, the Tour de France.  Nothing could be more suitable for the summer than the peloton making its way through the pretty green French countryside.  The droning voices of the two announcers, one a former cyclist himself, never fail to put me under. 

At some point during the broadcast, my two kids get home from their colonias, which is a kind of school camp.  Mostly it serves to let the adults keep working and give the kids who don’t have doting grandparents a place to be.  My wife, Lina herds them away.  “Daddy’s watching the Tour.”

“Daddy’s sleeping.”  Paul the older child announces.  Undeterred, Lina says “ssssh” and takes them into the kitchen to feed them the kind of snack I was never allowed, a piece of baguette with nutella.  It seems to do them no harm.  They have boundless energy and no cavities.    The voices have penetrated my consciousness and I shift away from the TV screen, having given up all pretense of watching. 

Big days are mountain stages and time trials but those are interspersed with these slow days where the overall standings never change and I can fall into that delicious drowsiness without worrying anything can happen.  I usually wake just in time to see the stage winner kissed by young women dressed in the color of the winning jersey.   The yellow jersey and the small stuffed animal are handed out to the leader of the tour at the end of the broadcast.

 

“And there’s been a fall!  A rider is down!”  the announcer’s voice reaches a high pitch.  Immediately I turn back to the screen and I watch the replay of the unlucky rider get his wheel caught in the rider in front of him.  That one miscalculation and Joseba Beloki, a rider I’d been following attentively like the rest of Spain, is on the ground.  Minutes later he’s taken away in an ambulance. 
“Damn.”  Beloki had been the Spanish heir to Indurain.  Having been in Spain long enough to watch Indurain ride to five victories, I’d pinned my hopes on Beloki.  I rubbed the sleepiness from my eyes.

I get up, stretch, and head into the kitchen to join the boys for a bit of that bread. 

Father's Day- a poem from my new chapbook!

Here’s a poem from my new chapbook- it’s father, a la Sylvia Plath.  The chapbook should be available soon.  My book launch will be on July 15th.

Father’s Day

 

Green spring erupts,

the kittens,

wild, frantic,

tumble

over each other

racing in the barn.

His touch tames.

He presents them

like the  peas he shells and

lines up.

 

The lull never lasts,

wind whips through cracks of

closed windows.

He’s the one I search for

in shapely dark madness.

 

 

 

                                                           

The Pleasures of the World Cup

Yesterday I walked into the office and asked Rashid, “How are you going to watch the World Cup on Internet?”  He said, “I was just going to ask you the same thing.”  He picked up a child’s ball ( we’re in refugee resettlement and education and the office is full of clothes, junk, and weird donated food*) and we played catch and even headed the ball a couple of times. 

I haven’t followed football all that long but still remember the tragedy of Spain’s loss to South Korea years ago with its dubious refereeing. These football matches can be discussed for years and any football fan can describe in detail their team’s wins over decades. 

Four years ago there was Spain’s glorious win and the sound of vuvuzelas in the stadiums, and let’s not forget Paul the octopus who correctly predicted the winners.  The Spanish chef, Jose Andres, in honor of Paul, had a moratorium on serving octopus in his restaurant.  Football is filled with such stories. For me, they capture an innocence not seen in professional US sports. 

Of course, soccer players earn huge salaries but seem more like regular guys.  Perhaps because they aren’t massive like American football players or the giants  in basketball.  They are closer to us.  After all, you just need a ball to play and you’re good to go. 

I’m not much of a sports fan ordinarily but the World Cup even brings a touch of  the citizen of the world to it.  As an NPR reporter commented, everyone in the world is watching except for the US and Antartica. 

 

*If you donate food to any charitable institution, make sure it’s something a person might want to eat.  No spam, no endless cans of candied yams or Thanksgiving leftovers. 

The Poor are Bilked Again and Again

 

I went to buy my bus pass at the city supermarket that sells the monthly passes.  It’s not the usual glossy shiny supermarket I shop at but a higher priced less attractive one that offers this service.  As I was waiting on long line of workers cashing their checks, I saw the list of charges that anyone who doesn’t have a bank account has to endure.  First of all, to cash your paycheck you pay from 1 to 2$.  They won’t cash tax refund checks-maybe that sum they charge doesn’t make it worthwhile.

Next, come the charges for paying bills.  Electric, gas, and other services charge about 2$ or so.  Paying your Verizon cell phone bill costs $3.  If you don’t have a checking account (which if you’re earning minimum wage is too hard to keep up a balance so you don’t have to pay a monthly fee), you are charged at every turn for every action.  And this isn’t even the worse- your neighborhood corner store will charge a lot more to cash a check. 

So once again, the working poor are hit the hardest.  Meanwhile, we are subsidizing all the corporate CEO’s who refuse to pay a living wage.  Those workers have to be helped with benefits and food stamps because the CEO’s are earning millions and pay far less a percentage of taxes than I do.

And to top it off, 2 of my students had their bicycles stolen at work.  For them the bikes are their means of transport.  This loss is compounded with so many losses beginning with the most serious one- the loss of a homeland. 

Memories of Godard and the Paris of long ago

I was going through files on my computer and found this essay I wrote awhile ago.  It seemed appropriate to post while Cannes is taking place and my old favorite, Godard has two films showing. So here it is, part of a series I called, "A Place in the World".

 

 

•               
•  Paris saved my life.  Late that summer I sat with the acceptance letter in my hand, worrying about what my father would say.  Somehow I´d managed to fill out all the application papers for my junior year abroad with no certainty of what would happen next.  My family was in a haze of mourning; my mother had died in the previous autumn after a five year of cancer. We´d watched the pain and steady decline until she spent the last four months of her life in a state of unconsciousness. 

 

My father nodded as he read; “Go”, he said, “see as much of Europe as you can.”  I had his blessing and with it the possibility to leave behind some of the pain. Here was a chance to go interrupt it or trick it out of existance. 

 

It was the first time I ever took a plane.  I flew from Buffalo to Kennedy with endless hours to wait in the airport.  I felt very adult, having lunch at the TWA terminal which looked like a place the Jetsons inhabited.  Then somehow I made my way to a bar, met up with a group on their way to Germany and proceeded to drink beer with them.  So much that how I got on the plane remains a blur.  I slept through the meals and woke refreshed as the plane taxied into Gatwick.  Then there were more trains and a boat until I arrived at Gare du Nord in the evening.  From the taxi to the hotel I remember seeing the prostitutes in their spike heeled boots near Strasbourg St. Denis. 

 

           The hotel I stayed in was a pleasure with its patterned wallpaper, bidet in the closet, and breakfast brought to the door, hot coffee, croissants, and tartines.  In those days even inexepensive hotels had room service and in the morning there was a knock on the door with a tray.

 

Different, Paris was different  but also familiar.  My parents were from Latvia and there were certain indelible habits that marked Europeans.  One was the cloth shopping bag my father always carried and his penchant for unusual juices and sweets.  In Europe everyone seemed to carry their own string market bag and shops were filled with just the same impractical delicacies that my father always sought out. 

 

What can a person say about a city like Paris that doesn´t sound cliche?  It belongs to everyone who has visited it.  Its momuments are almost too familiar.  The stereotypes border on absurd.  Before I arrived, I imagined the city would resound with syrupy accordian music or the voice of Yves Montand, hoarse with cigarette smoke. A French friend looking at my French textbook with its requisite photos of a man on a motorcycle with a huge baguette tied to the back or a pig on the street, exclaimed, “A pig in Paris.  Impossible!” 

 

But this was how we believed the city would be.  An American friend coming to Europe had searched everywhere for a beret before coming, wore it, and was truely disappointed that no one else was wearing one.  When I first arrived and walked around the city I had the idea that everyone was paired off.  It certainly looked that way.

 

So then how is it possible to make sense of a place inside all of that fantasy?  Since this was the first large city I ever inhabited, Paris became the measure of all cities.  Even New York years later, fell short.  Nothing else would do.  The impressions it left on a twenty year old would last forever. 

 

Finding myself in a place where there were actually things to see and do, I sytematically set about doing them.  I visited every place I could, but not in the manner of a tourist who spends two days and crams everything into a visit, but slowly, carefully.  Of course I avoided the more obvious tourist destinations like the Eiffel Tower.  I only saw it from the distance of a friend´s apartment or from the job board that was located nearby and was where all the aspiring au pairs went to check job listings. 

 

I prided myself on never visiting the Eiffel Tower until the 90´s when I was with a Brazilian friend who insisted on seeing it.  By that time I was free of any prejudices of trying to be cool.  Her visit to Europe was an attempt at recovery.  Not only had her fiance died in a car crash but was dressed in drag when it happened.  I don´t know how Paris was supposed to help her get over that.

 

There was never a shortage of places to see.  On Sundays the Louvre was free.  Saturdays I took long walks from my neighborhood, crossing the busy traffic of the Place de la Concorde eventually making it to Odeon and St. Mich where a girlfriend lived.  There I often took a bath since I lived in a maid´s room without a shower. She would make me a cup of tea to drink ; it still brings back a sense of wellbeing, lying in a bath sipping hot tea.

 

Her apartment was her boyfriend´s; it made her seem daring.  He took her to places like the Tour D´Argent which in those days was the height of chic, and was convienently away on business travel.  Often enough so this very centrally located apartment could be used for parties.  At one, I lost my contact lens on the fur rug and we all got down on our hands and knees to search for it.  I was lucky, like in most things in Paris and I found it intact though people had been walking around the apartment all night.  

 

Another Paris cliche was cinema.  I took a course in film which entailed going to an endless number of movies and talking about them. The professor had made a documentary about May 68 which we saw several times to learn a sense of the political and a disdain for what was American.  

 

Usually I went to tiny cinemas which weren´t heated sufficiently in winter so I shivered through the first showing before the building had warmed up.  On one ocassion I went to see a Tati film, Mr. Hulot´s Vacation.  Next to it, Cries and Whispers was playing.  Somehow I walked into the wrong theater.  The clock ticking on the screen and all the red on the screen should have been a warning, but thinking I was seeing a preview I sank into the seat to watch and before I knew it I was watching the slow agonizing death of one of the sisters.  At one point I could no longer contain myself and just began to cry, which turned into a kind of gasping for air weeping.  When the film ended, the person next to me asked me if I was all right.  What could I say?  I had gone in expecting a comedy and walked right straight into my own mother´s death.

 

I became a fan of Godard with his bloody Weekend and futuristic Alphaville.  Truffault was even more entertaining.  I loved the Bride who Wore Black since most of the young women I knew, myself included, had to spend time fending off advances from men we weren´t interested in.  This even happened on the metro.  One night an Italian man simply asked if he could go home with me and followed me until I had to scream at him.  With some men I used my Latvian, by the time they could assimilate this was a language they didn´t understand, I had time to make my escape.   So this film was the perfect revenge, Jeanne Moreau systematically killing off the men who were present in a nearby apartment and by accident had shot her husband on their wedding day. 

 

And what would be Paris without Jules and Jim?  I saw it with an American man I met on the boat train from London.  I was settling into my seat on the train, he moved across from me so he could look at me he said.  He was my temporary reward for having lost my mother.  We also saw Women in Love together on one of our many outings during the two weeks he was in Paris; we ate trout with grapes and almonds, went to the Place des Voges, stayed up and talked endlessly. 

 

We travelled out to Versailles by mistake on a Monday when everything was closed.  The gardeners were burning brush and we stood with them and drank brandy from a flask they passed around.  He was on his way to Greece and was looking for a typewriter to buy.  Everyone had literary aspirations in those days.  Our encounters were fairly limited since he was sharing a hotel room with a friend, and I was staying at a friend´s apartment.  There were hooves on the wall of his hotel which he assured me came from a kosher animal. 

 

His mother had died of cancer when he was thirteen.  Mostly he remembered the screams.  But he had to move on; it was his European trip.  I was much younger than his usual girlfriends he said surprised to see I wore no make-up and was amost always dressed in jeans.  Actually I had no idea of such things though eventually I would find out.  Paris was the perfect place to do so. 

 

Then I went out with a postal clerk I met at the showing of The Last Tango in Paris.  We had absolutely nothing in common but we sat next to each other in the cinema and we laughed at the same parts of the film.  It never occured to me that the subject matter of the film could have played a role in his asking me out.

 

 His life was structured and rigid with his own rules.   Fifteen days was the maximum to spend on a bus; evening meals were to be light.   He was shocked when he discovered I hitch-hiked. But there was a hopefulness to him that made me sad; he showed me books he was reading, he tried redecorating his apartment.  When we went out I always borrowed clothes from a friend from New York.  She had the largest collection of cashmere sweaters I´d ever seen.  I´d come to Paris with just one suitcase and had never owned such a thing.

 

Then there was the all night movie theater.  I often ended up there with my closest friend after the metro stopped running and we found ourselves stranded downtown.  There were double features that went on until about six in the morning.  Generally we watched the first, napped through the second, and woke up in time to catch the first metro in the morning.  One night we took our friends, one of whom entered the theater with Miko, his black cat.  That gave a new twist to the evening, Miko was on a leash but didn´t stop jumping over the seats in front of us. 

 

Our French friends were stunned we would go to a place like this.  It looked like most of the viewers chose this cinema rather than pay for a cheap hotel room.  The owner periodically walked around to give someone a poke to wake them up.  He had shoulder length hair which looked like it had never been washed.  Here, we saw films like Ziebreski Point, Car Wash, Texas Chainsaw Massacres, and any number of usually bad films I only saw half of before I nodded off.  There must be a tenacity to our friendship since these French friends are still friends, after so many years. 

 

This was my Paris.  The city of the nuit blanche, the café near my maid´s room where I would have a coffee and a tartine on my way home as the sun came up. I was putting on weight with the endless amount of bread and cheese I consumed.  I lived right above a chocolate shop that had dark chocolate truffles the size of a dessert plate. They left the dust of cocoa powder all over as you bit into one.  And since I had to walk up endless flights of stairs to get to my room, often I treated myself to one as an incentive for that climb. 

 

Part of my studies included theater too.  So I saw the ever popular Ionesco´s  The Bald Soprano which may even still be playing in the Latin Quatrter and went to the Comedie Francaise where I discovered I simply didn´t fit in the seats designed for bodies a couple of centuries ago.  I saw Eden Cinema, written by Marguerite Duras before The Lover made her a household name.

 

Of course I discovered food in Paris.  The first restaurant I went to was Algerian and I developed a love for couscous.  It was also the first time I saw it was perfectly acceptable, if not desirable, to have an entire bottle of wine with a meal.  I adapted quickly.   Of course I had the requisite French food which I loved but found a bit heavy in the days before nouvelle cuisine. 

 

The worst place to eat was in the student cafeterias in the university.  And there the worst dish I had was tongue with a layer of fiber covering its sponginess.  And sudents were hungry.  Often if you left something on your plate someone would pick it up.  There was no shame involved; it happened with lightning quickness. It all depended on your budget.  I was on student loans and working as an au pair so I was careful but didn´t have to go that far. 

 

My job as an au pair entailed on afternoon and one night a week of childcare. The mother always made me lunches with large quantities of beef which she thought, being American, I would love.  There wasn´t much of an age difference between us.   It doesn´t sound like much work  but at the time I had never even held a baby in my life and had no experience with children whatsoever.  There were two, the boy as I described to a friend, just lay there and she informed me he was probably under six months of age and the little girl was three.  Their mother had been a former model and tried to brush out her daughter´s curls and make them straight.  That brought on screams and tears on a regular basis.  The husband knew less about children than I did and didn´t seem particularly interested in learning.   When he arrived I could technically go but he always asked me to stay until his wife got home from her shopping.  Feminism hadn´t reached this household yet.

 

Often I would find myself with both children crying and screaming for no apparent reason. There was nothing that could distract them.  I soon saw that being a mother or even an au pair required fulltime attention.  It wasn´t possible to pick up a book or even do something that required less concentration like watch television. I soon developed a generalized anxiety whenever I had to go to work. Sometimes I practiced deep breathing and would tell myself I could do it and I was lucky it was only two days a week. Probably more than one woman has decided not to have children based on an early experience as an au pair. 

 

My last visit was on my way back to Spain from Buffalo. I spent a couple of days in Paris in August but that didn´t matter at all.  I breathed in an element I had been missing - a mixture of baroque architecture and history in the foundations. The jardin du Luxembourg with its hidden enclaves and statues were precisely things you wouldn´t find in an American park.  There is a dank mossy smell of age which isn´t unpleasant at all  and metal chairs to sit near the palace or the lake.  This order of gardens and space is what I find comforting.  It´s a public space which is meant to reflect the measure of man and to finely tune nature.  Nothing is left to chance which  I find reassuring.  If I want nature I will go to the countryside. 

 

The gothic cathedrals also left their impact on me.  I visited all the great ones in the nearby cities trying to imagine the days when they were brightly painted and the centers of all activity.  They were visible from a distance and grew in size as you approached on foot.   There were Chartres with its rose window, Rouen´s cathedral painted by Monet, Reims with the stained glass designed by Chagall, and Beauvais that reached so high the vaulting collapsed and all that´s left standing are the transcept and choir.

 

Perhaps the image of France that stays with me is on a walk in the countryside complete with snacks of boiled eggs and apples organized by our French teacher and her husband, who were spry well into their sixties.   We came upon an outdoor wedding celebration, all the guests seated around a long wooden table on a gloriously sunny autumn day. It seemed the very embodiment of happiness.  Paris served as a positive image of what humans could construct, of what constituted beauty, of how it could be a measure.   It brought to life nineteenth century romanticism which I still hold as an ideal. 

 

The Patriarchy Strikes Back

 

Disturbing news has been coming from all directions (and countries).  Last week a presidential task force came out with the shocking statistic that 1 in 5 (some stats show 1 in 4) female college students has been raped.  And as we digest that, the news from Nigeria arrives.  More than 230 girls were kidnapped from a school (educating women, are we?) in Borno.  And now, more young girls from Warabe have been kidnapped.  Boko Harem whose name means “Western education is forbidden” is responsible.  One story reports that Boko Harem means to sell the girls for a low bride price.  These young girls are being subjected to slavery and so far, no one is stopping it.  How did this happen and how is it possible are the two questions that come to mind.

Closer to home, in Teaneck, New Jersey, 62 boys broke into the local high school, urinated on the floor, tied hot dogs to lockers, and turned over desks.  Obviously, there is the symbolism of the hot dogs and the aggression of urinating. Are the boys showing dominance in the way any animal might by marking its territory? My question is how is this called a prank.

In the last few years, articles like “The Death of Men” by Hanna Rosin pointed out women have become the majority of the workforce and more are now managers.  More women have gotten college degrees than men.  Are these the struggles women are going through to get to this point?  I grew up in the feminist era and my friends always had my back.  Part of my college days were spent in an endless party but I never heard of anyone raped or abused.  Perhaps I was innocent or just lucky. 

Is there a backlash to the recent gains women have made or is there a raising of consciousness where finally we know what rape means?  I suspect it’s both. 

Do you remember Ethan Frome?

In the middle of cold I couldn’t shake, as a treat for myself,  I picked up a collection of British “costume drama” films.  One of them was “Ethan Frome.”  I did not have a good memory of the novel, having read it in school.  I remembered it as a children’s story, probably because I had to read it in school and it had something to do with sledding.  The other part I remembered was a pickle dish because I had never seen one and couldn’t picture one in my mind. As a teenager, even though I read everything I could get my hands on, this was one book I could barely get through. 

So when I looked at the DVD selection, the only thing that convinced me to watch the film was Liam Neeson starring as Ethan Frome.  As promised, the film was as bleak as the novel which started coming back to me. Yet I kept watching. There was the power of an archetypal drama to it- humans trapped in a morass of their own making, the very structure of human life.

Years later I came to love Wharton’s novels and never understood why this particular story was read in school.  Maybe it was for the simple reason that it was short.  In any case, as in the case of Lily Bart in “House of Mirth”, the problems of the female characters in” Ethan Frome” were economic and gender based.  Zeena was sent to take care of Ethan’s mother and Mattie was sent to take care of the household for her distant relative.  The fact that Ethan married Zeena after his mother died was considered fortunate for her.  Where else would she have ended up? Women who had no means were trapped by circumstance, which has not changed much in the decades since the novel was written. 

The other glaring problem with the story was the weakness of Ethan Frome himself.  He was unable to stand up to his wife.  So there it is- poor women trapped by lack of money and a weak man who suffered instead of standing up for himself and the woman he loved.  That’s my take on revisiting a story years later.  I wonder if students are still reading this. 

 

 

World Book Encyclopedia, Robert Frost, and more..

     When I was growing up we had the complete set of the World Book Encyclopedia in the green and white cover edition, the expensive ones that were nicer than the set in the school library.  We had them because my father was bamboozled by an encyclopedia salesman and his assistant who sold door to door and found us on our farm outside the tiny village of Varysburg. 
     As an immigrant family, we were an easy mark.  The salesman handed a volume to me, saying, "She's too young; she can't read that."  Of course I read- I was the one in my second grade class who was called on to read when the principal visisted; I was the one who memorized complicated poems and scoffed at the kids who chose the easy two liners about bears.  I  didn't stop reading.
     So the sale was complete.   The volumes stood on top of a dresser upstairs, updated each year with a yearbook that was a jumble of information and rarely touched.  For years my favorite volume was E because of Egypt.  I loved the drawings of the straight haired Egyptians and the hieroglyphics of birds and shapes.  I preferred them to the entry of Rome for in my mind those were apparently the only two choices of civilizations. 
     Other books entered the house.  We had a National Geographic collection of countries of the world that came in a magazine like format complete with stamps you stuck onto the pages.  These books were always of unknown African countries like Gabon.  I suspect we were waiting for the volume about Latvia which never came.
      Then there was the four volume set of medical encyclopedias that I pored over and found  fascinating information like how long a hospital stay was required for a hysterectomy.  I learned all the skin diseases since there were pictures and I could dazzle the science teachers with obscure medical information.
      My uncle whose English language abilities were limited brought us books too.  He chose books by size and he got them from a used book store in Buffalo.  He brought us "The Selected Letters of Robert Frost" which at that point in my life was the dullest book I'd ever seen and "My Secret Life".  Luckily no one else in the household suspected what it was about.  So I could say I had a well-rounded education. 

Who's a fascist?

            With the current Russian takeover of Crimea and possible incursions into Ukraine, we’re reminded of another time.  How did the Russians clean up their image to the point that those who don’t support them are called fascists?  I recently had a discussion with companions who dismissed the entire crisis as unimportant because the Ukrainians were fascists.  This label has stuck to the point that when you spoke Latvian in Latvia you could be called a fascist.  That happened to many Latvians who returned  in the 90’s and didn’t know Russian.

            The smear campaign of the former satellite countries is almost complete.  In the aftermath of the post WWll landscape when the horrors of the Nazi regime were revealed and the USSR was considered an ally, this was the way to categorize these countries and cover up the horrors of the war from the Russian side.  Latvians (despite losing 1/3 of the population) were deemed fascists because they were trapped in the untenable situation caught between Russia and Germany.  See Bloodlands by Timothy Synder .  The much reviled Latvian legion was formed after the Nazi deportations yet the label stands.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHtcgaeC4T8

            There were no innocents in that war but there were certainly victims. Russians were not the heros not even to the Jewish populations it purported to protect. Many Jews were arrested in Siberia.  Here is the letter the Jewish community in Ukraine sent to criticize Putin. 

http://www.jns.org/news-briefs/2014/3/5/iry6leczywh8oqze14iygpfee30o7q#.Uy2NFGdOVjo

            Siberia with its 30 million prisoners in 60 years, the mass graves discovered, the decimation of populations of many countries, the closed corrupt society of the USSR that destroyed any idealist dream of a communist society.  Yet everyone but the Russians is labeled fascist. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_graves_in_the_Soviet_Union

            Throughout we can feel sympathy for a country where the life expectancy is lower than most western countries and as we always say in these cases, the people deserve much better than their government.

Food as Fetish

At what point did food cease to be nourishment or pleasure and turn into a fetish?  Food is expected to solve every health woe these days.  Besides nourishing you it is supposed to be magical.  Unfortunately, the categories of which foods are “good” or “bad” for you change radically- take coconut oil.  Once it was considered the worse possible oil, now it’s perfect.  And rather than just eating it you can down teaspoonfuls to stay healthy. All this categorization of food takes us further away from reality. The reality was eating meals and enjoying them. 

When was the last time you had a meal in which no one talked about weight or fat or guilt?  “I shouldn’t eat this.  Oh, I feel so fat.” When was the last time you were at a dinner when everyone could eat whatever was served?  I can barely remember.  There always is a vegan or a paleo or a raw foods consumer complicating life for the host.  I wonder how someone with a restricted diet can travel anywhere.  And how so much energy devoted to analyzing or obsessing about food works out.  Do you actually feel healthier?  Is it worth it?

When did the idea that food can harm you occur?  I’m not talking about fast food or junk food which obviously can but grains and dairy.  And I’m not talking about celiac or people with food allergies but the general population which takes on these trends and drops them just as quickly as a new theory comes into fashion. 

I almost have to go back to Europe to have an idea what normal portions look like and enjoy a three course meal complete with wine and dessert.  And I weighed less there than here with all the fads and attempts as losing weight.  I can go to Europe where food is a celebration on special occasions and the refrigerator isn’t crammed full but is designed to buy the freshest products and cook them immediately.  There I won’t find eating to be a 24 hour possibility.  My taste buds won’t be battered by too much sugar and salt and fat. 

I’m guilty of the food fetish myself.  Mornings I often prepare a smoothie which bears almost no resemblance to food as we know it.  I throw protein powder and frozen fruit into a blender.  Why?  It’s easy and filling.  Probably the same reasons people have for consuming fast food. 

Even for the wealthy food resembles itself less and less.  There are foams and liquid nitrogen to make it more spectacular in the style of Ferran Adria.  There are endless elaborations to bring out the flavor of food which is simply not of the quality it once was.  GMO’s, farmed fish,and agribusiness have all changed food for the worse,  I have to admit I’d be happy to try Michel Bras’s famous vegetable and herb concoction that is as beautiful an array of color and form that I’ve ever seen.  I’m not sure it would taste as good as the vegetables on the farm I grew up on or the seasonal produce at the corner store in Barcelona. 

Barrier Islands, Snowbirds, and the Future

Barrier Islands, snowbirds, and the future

I’ve had the fortune to escape the endless winter of Buffalo and head south to Perdido Key, a barrier island on the Gulf Coast.  70% of this key is still natural and escaped the rows of high rises crammed on the beach which is a such a part of Florida.  This key has the natural beauty of sugar white sand, dunes, and several parks which preserve what one sign described as the true Florida.   Despite the horrific gulf spill, dolphins still swim by, herons fish, and pelicans fly overhead.

The question is for how long.  One of the barrier islands thins to the width of a road which most certainly gets covered with water in storms.  The last hurricane destroyed the pretty wooden houses on the beach and left the uglier more solid cement constructions.  With ocean levels on the rise and coastal properties in danger how long will these places last?  Through my lifetime?  I always imagined that global warming would take place in its fiercest form long after my lifetime but I was wrong.  I never would have imagined New York flooded by Sandy.  Nor would I have thought the polar vortex would drain all my energies throughout this long grueling winter. 

And that brings me to another question.  Any place you go on the coast is peopled by older snowbirds from Canada and northern states.  They are lucky enough to afford to spend the winter away from the freezing cold.  How many people of my generation will be able to retire?  I don’t see it as a possibility at all especially living in the US.  If I had stayed in Spain it might have been more likely.  Here will I end up as a cashier at a dollar store in an attempt to supplement whatever meager retirement I get?