Race...
..to catch up: Lots of letters follow (to be read from the bottom of April 17 up; each section is headed by Roman numerals and the number in parentheses):
Three Istanbullu Kedilersi in a Pear Tree
4 Apr
Well, my dear.
I hope you are revelling in budding & blossoming & bare skin weather. We had some of that this weekend. Then a rain storm blew in early last night, the wind dashing rain at the windows & this morning winter is back- a winter coat, wool cap & scarf morning; but I can look out the City Building windows to the east & the river & watch the white clouds of the ornamental pears below sway like dancers in the cold wind...
I'm sorry if I missed a call from you this weekend. It's always good to hear your voice. I hope you get good news soon about your novel. I have been laboring at this grant narrative, which I've just completed except for a few key pieces of data- teen pregnancies, teen shootings, something called a Children's Well-being Score. Now I've got to rework the budget. & then start sending proposals out & I don't know how long the approval process through the Mayor's office will take or even if the Mayor's Office is willing to support this new initiative. We shall see.
I started cleaning my room Sunday, starting with removing the pall of dust, borrowing my roommate's vacuum cleaner. Had to begin sorting through the piles of stuff I have shoved into milk crates, felt like an archaeologist, finding old letters, cards, drawings, well-worn maps of Paris, Florence, Athens... my poetry. Of course, I had to stop right there, began going through the folders, going back & back, all the way back to the early 60's... imagiste, French surrealiste, Eliotic inspired stuff. This doesn't appall me anymore- I was learning my craft; I had to start somewhere. What fills me when I read the stuff now is a kind of sad wonderment- how much was hidden. Not how much I hid from others but how much I was hiding from myself. Even so there are some interesting pieces here & there, when I hit the nail on the head, didn't get in my own way by being too clever.
I wish I could go on here, thinking on the screen, trying to find the words that keep me going... but, I've got to hunt down the missing numbers & start making phone calls, setting up the committee outreach meeting, writing up a letter to go to Department heads....
Take care,
Love.
D.
Hi,
....H. send a text message to my cell phone that she took off in one piece--14 K over her cabin limit, but they loved her hair (the Africans braided her fuzzy brownish-reddish hair with long extensions by way of a goodbye present.)
I could not face coming home to a one-person meal after all the ones we have cooked together or somehow just managed to have lying around, so I went to one of my neighborhood places where they have good Chilean wine and passable nouveau--but it isn't the food, it's the ambience and the fact that the waiters are nice. Of course this time there was a new one who was running like never before; indeed, it WAS never before because this was his first day. Well, in came a waiter from last summer who probably doesn't work there any more: "Madame! How are you? Where are you?"
"Oh, I'm here, just busy."
He leans over and takes my hand, kisses it in that very Turkish way one greets certain people you like and respect--young children do it when greeting you at Ramazan. Upon his departure he waves: "Good bye! I love you too much!" (Translation--goodbye, loveya lots) And these are the small things that get you through.
I got accustomed to coming "home." Now, as I opened the lock and Emma, the cat, greets me anxiously in the dark, the place feels cavernous--and who wants to live in a cave?
It has cooled off slightly (8C or 46 F.) and the wind has picked up--poyraz, NNE straight from Moscow; tommorrow, Sunday, I go out to Burgaz, one of the islands in the middle of the Marmara, where my friend S. lives.
Did you ever get that CD with all the pictures?
Love,
B.
My Dear,
No I did not get the CD.
Love,
D.
Apr 7
My Dear,
A red sky in the morning- sailor's warning... well, here I am despite the warning. I don't know what will happen first. Either my eyelids are going to fall shut & refuse to open or my fingers are going to refuse to hit the right keys. Then I will have to proceed like one of those fabled monkeys & just keep typing until I reproduce War & Peace.
I guess it's finally hit me- all these sleepless nights. THIS is why April is the cruellest month- plus March. The weather is so changeable, my feet don't know what to do.
& yet, & yet.. the first flush of color stirring in the gray trees mesmerizes. & what was it Wordsworth said about seeing the flash of gold of spring flowers massed on a hillside- it makes his heart leap up. Yes, it does. It does mine.
Even seeing daffodils coming up in the flower tubs on Main Street, especially knowing I brought about those tubs being placed on the street 15 years ago when I was Community liaison to the Newark Business Association & I planted those spring bulbs a few years ago when I was still free to do so & got funds from the Rodel company to pay for Main Street plantings... I nod to them inwardly; we're both still here; we blossom when it's time...
I just wish the blossoming of poetry were as regular- Ah, spring is here; time for an ecologue. The moon is whittled down to the most delicate of cradles, holding the old moon "in hir armes"; time for a ballade.
The young are walking down the street, gloveless, hatless, coatless; their bare necks are a revelation- time for, what did Lorca call them, saetas?, little darts.
The headlines finally blazon forth a judgement- Libby Reveals... Time for a jerimiad. You know, I have always found that kind of poem so hard to do. Not because of its topicality so much as finding the right balance of anger... & love.
I remember at some point in the mid-80's laboring over a Main Street poem, this was when the street was filling up at night with out of town teen agers mostly, cruising & lining the street in packs. & I tried to write a poem out of my anger about & pity for the chaos of those young lives, contrasting their crude & unfocussed energy with the safe & comfortable lives of the people who lived, mostly out of sight, in the big old houses on quiet, empty Orchard Road, for whom I felt only anger, for the privilege they possessed & the sense of responsibilty they didn't...
& I was meeting with Pat then & had showed her the first draft & she said: Your right to be angry, it belongs here, you should use it, only, try to make sure there's always, in the balance, a little more love. & I couldn't find the love. I didn't really know the young enough to know what was loveable about them & I refused to love the safely tucked away & oblivious middle class people. So, I had to put the poem away.
Any poem I've ever written that has worked, no matter how big or small it was, came out of what I knew was true. I was shut out of the truth of the lives of both the young & the middle class or I couldn't find the truth. I pity the young; I still pity them. I would like so much to create free cultural programming for the young, especially the disadvantaged young because I believe that access to art, making it, at what ever level one is capable of working at, should be the right of everyone, needs to be the right of everyone, as necessary not just as air & water but clean air & clear water...
O, well- & here I haven't got my grant finished so I can stay on here... I need more coffee. I have to track down some statistics.
I hope you enjoy your visit to your friend on his island. I love islands. Take care,
Love,
D.
12 Nisan
….Oh, D., I have been there. Waking up in a cold sweat and wondering what I was going to do, feeling like there was nothing but a blank wall in front of me. Being very down, indeed, and then somehow, as much of a tidal wave as it was, it passed over me and, for no good reason, I felt cheerful again and I could get up and get my ass out the door, myself into the sun (cheer is much harder in the rain, somehow.) In many ways, I was pretty lucky for a long time, but I had to do some fancy dancing to get there. Then the chasm... I was enraged that no one seemed to care, that those that were supposed to would not.
I am enraged, too, at the monsters that drive our world and the feeling of impotence so many of us share. I ran into this over-privileged private school boy journalist--of course his name is "Hugh"--who just wrote a very silly book about the Turks that reads like 19th century phrenology manual. My Turkish friends are furious at the implicit racism in it. Here I was lumbering down my Long Hill (that's what the address means) and there he was climbing up it with an absent grin on his face. Oh J.'s in H., he says, we're down at O. till August (the house they just built). He looks behind him, in the direction I am headed: It's pretty 'active' down THERE. I said I lived down THERE at the bottom of the hill. Well, you certainly have plenty of male company down THERE--
Yes, there are men and boys on the street. The women are inside, though you do see some go to and fro. AND you see the baskets they lower so the bakkal keepers can put in soap or some tomatoes they forgot. But it isn't a bad neighborhood. No one threatens me. They say hello in the morning.
I guess, it's my own class resentment coming out. He didn't DO anything, but there's a retirement fund and a nice British pension and a relatively reasonably British health care system awaiting him. He has his future assured and I don't.
Things are okay now, the temp will hit 71 tomorrow and my tomato and pepper and basil seedlings are doing nicely. The kitties are yowling, this year's crop of kittens is about to be born, the meyhanes (bar and meze--appetizers--places) are filled. Laud sing cuckoo!
Keep the faith, dammit. We must.
Love,
14 Nisan
My dear,
You get the cold sweats; I get the paralyzing chills- eyeing my gas gauge running on empty, making it to the Newark Library to tutor & the tutee fails to show up, too late to go to the bank, counting the few bills left in my wallet, getting home & rooting in the bare pantry & finding the packet of kashka someone gave me with handwritten instructions on it, figuring I have enough money to get a can of string beans & a little bag of sunflower seeds at Happy Harry's to go with the kaska & still have enough for coffee this morning...
Feeling I have been shoved into a tight corner & no way out... which isn't true but when I am feeling chilled like that I can't see the way out. Much better this morning. I know I can afford to take $25 out from my checking account & I am to meet on Friday with a Chinese family that wants to set up a tutoring schedule for the father & the little boy. & I even have enough to get a $1.50 egg sandwich downstairs at the City Grille for lunch before I go out to the bank.
It could be worse I was thinking last night as I sat at the kitchen table & my roommate asked how was I doing & I said: It could be better- & barked out a laugh.& then I said I was just thinking of the woman I saw get on the bus on King Street on my way home. She came on with her friend, another black woman, & the friend was a large, wild eyed, raggedy headed woman muttering to herself about God & Jesus. & I found myself absorbed by the other woman who turned out to be blind & was being shepherded by the wild woman, the blind woman a neatly dressed woman in her late fifties.
The blind woman stood at the front of the bus, turning towards the seats & began patting the air in front of her, smiling the most incredibly generous smile, saying: Is there a seat here somewhere? & of course, someone did get up & said: you can have mine & the blind woman sat down, folding up her walking stick & sat there- not like a helpless, grateful or resentful person, but sat with hands on her lap, head up, & still smiling, like a gracious queen while her friend stood at the front of the bus glaring off into the distance, rolling her head around & still muttering about Jesus.
It's hard to feel sorry for yourself when you see people like that, I said to my roommate.
People are coming into the Department now. The Latina who works across the hall from me & who mentors two teens at the Latin American Community Center has just unlocked her door calling out greetings in Spanish & all I could think to say in reply was: un otro mundo possible & she smiled. (What the crowds chant in Venezuela when Chavez gives speeches.)
& I see where Neil Young has just released an album, created in two weeks, with songs denouncing Bush & demanding his impeachment & calling for peace- Do you remember peace? One of the lines goes.
Do you remember Ohio? & all the other songs? & being young? O my...
Take care,
Love,
D.
16 April
My Dear,
I must have got some sleep last night as I don't feel quite so thick headed or as defeated as I did yesterday- perhaps overwhelmed & paralyzed is a more accurate description of my state yesterday. Even though I lay awake in bed this morning shifting my feet about under the disheveled covers to try & keep my feet warm while it was still dark, waiting for the alarm to ring.
I even got ahead myself this morning after tea & porridge (someone gave me a cannister of steel cut organic oatmeal!), making a sandwich for lunch, leafing through my work notebook, deciding what I should do at work today, & reading another chapter in a book lent to me by one of my Progressive Democrat buddies in Personnel, Confessions of An Economic Hit Man, a tell all expose by a man who made a bundle working as an "economist" for a so-called consultant firm that was created in the 60's to work surreptiously for the US military industrial complex....& now has recanted, surviving like Ishmael to tell his story...
Something that I knew but had never read about to see how well-organized & planned out the whole process was (still is). The writer lays it all out....
Do you recall the Sweet Honey in the Rock song that goes "Chile your blood runs red through Soweto"?
& now here I am with all my work to do, must move ahead on my work plan, start the begging letter to City Council for a "gift" to cover a year's worth of background checks; start going through the grants again & figure out which ones are the most likely to bring in some funding for this job, for there to be a job after July; & to figure out how I am going to survive in July if there is no job here...
& a part of me is as angry as the boy was when I look at what is happening in Iraq & what might happen in Iran & how the desperate have been driven to irrational violence, angry as the boy was in 1956 when the Russian tanks were moving through the streets of Budapest to quell the uprising, the boy who wanted to join the freedom fighters & leap out of alleys to toss molotov cocktails at the advancing tanks...
& a part of me is still standing at the Park & Ride bus shelter this cold morning, looking westwards at the trees standing on Chestnut Hill, seeing for the first time how all the grayness is gone from the woods & that it is lit now with a fire of delicate greens, the part of me that just wants to walk away from the parking lot & head west into the woods where spring has finally come... & just keep walking...
O well- I am so glad I have you to say all this to...
Take care,
Love,
D
23 – 24 Mart, an e-exchange with another friend which somehow got entitled, "Living La Vida Loco":
Dear E.
…The lodos (lo-dosh) has swept through, blowing all the flowerpots over on the balcony and sweeping the sky clean of clouds, its hot breath driving the temperature up to 71 degrees... It whistles around the corner of the house: nothing ever stays the same, nothing is the only thing you can count on...
Too bad I missed the G. I hope he will be okay.
So, nu?
XXOO,
Dear Prima -- your Istanbul pathway home sounds at once romantic and melancholic. Glad you and Hardy are in communication. It's a weird moment to be weaving narratives. Seems to me the writing's more important than the publishing. Just now that is.
Do the hookah smokers wear nargile socks?
But seriously folk, I've no idea about G, He's always been a cypher to me. M. is beautiful and smart, I guess. Cultivated. To be honest it all has the feel of a leveraged buyout rather than a marriage, but then I've always been a romantic. Not to mention melancholic. To say nothing of cynic.
It's been a hectic week and I'm hoping to pop your
disk into the computer soon, put on my silk slippers and kick
back.
I'll e as soon as I return from your Istanbul. In the meantime, watch the flying flowerpots.
xoxox, E.
Hmmm,
That is probably a pretty accurate description of the Istanbul, and of Turkey, for that matter. Just listen to the music. If I understood the words—still Turkish challenged, this one--I would hear nothing but tales of lost love, betrayals, sorrow; but all beautifully sung to the thrum of unfamiliar stringed instruments, some of them as old as Byzantium, some ancient as Babylon. Then the hysteria of western music busts into it, as if that could make everything all better again. It can't. On so many levels, the anodynes of the West, as I am sure I don't have to tell you, are pretty ineffectual now, though here as elsewhere who pants for this, pants for bliss... It slithers away as always.
The lodos has raced out of here like a djinn: I only lost a little plastic saucer I had left to catch water from a dripping pot; and we are back to grey clouds, only the true voice of the Bosphorus freighters giving an occasional bellow to the signal towers on shore, seagulls as Ash says, "like handkerchiefs, floating down in the air," the drift of coal and wood smoke across my view, the pewter huddle of Tophane palace sticking up over the ugliness of commercial buildings in between.
However, the seeds I cadged--heirloom tomatoes, Genovese basil, habanero peppers, are coming up: some I will grow on the balcony, as the domates climb; some I will farm out to a friend who lives on Burgazada (one of the Marmara islands) and some to my former Dean, a very dear man with all of the goodness of the Turks rolled into one person. We sneak off, eat fish, and talk gardening at one of the neighborhood Lokantas when I can't get my dept. to cut the umbilicus between themselves and the company cafeteria. My nickname for that is the "trough," which has stuck, despite the rector's pretentious christening of it as "The Pierre Loti Gourmet Restaurant."
So, yes, I live between melancholy--a kind of subclinical homesickness--the splendour of times gone by, the kindness of strangers, a simian curiosity that never seems to go away, some glorious moments, and eternal surprise. I write. I read. I walk. I just can't remember the last time I was bored.
The postman has deliver five copies of PMLA--the MLA mag for January--and only the one on top is mine. I kept wondering why I got so many until I looked at the names on the others. "The foreign woman is a professor--these all must be hers." I guess I get to
touch base with some of my academic colleagues from here to Ankara and back.
Odd about G. If anyone is a romantic, he is. I never met her--left a message with her to call me once, and I am almost sure she never delivered it…. [Here follows a discussion of passports and national health care systems or the lack thereof.]
Speaking of which, I must hazard a Turkish dentist this afternoon. Teeth are such a bad design; and I am now trying to save every chip.
Hope you enjoy the photos--there are more where those come from. In a month, H.'s room will be a guest room with a view. (Hint.)
XXOO,
March 24
Dear D.,
Well, another rejection e-slip, through a friend. Not taking any new clients, etc. etc. Poop.
I will wax more eloquent on other subjects when I get home from work. It IS warmer here, if that is any inducement to you. Yes, the winters are sometimes damp and horrid, but not very, and certainly not compared to the US northeast. I also thought of you as I sat down at my round table in the living room with my young friend Hardy and we read each other's work and gave comments. Keeps us writing, and I avoid A.'s sotted pyrotechnics. He is hopeless at night.
If I want to, I can make time to write and not be overwhelmed with work. That is the advantage here.
Could you wear down slippers if they were affordable?
Sob, H. is leaving sooner than expected.
Love,
My dear,
I am sorry to hear about the rejection slip. I am trying to gear myself up for another effort to send out ms. It always feels like a military campaign. I need to be more methodical & determined, but when the SASE's with my handwritten name & address on them start filling up the mail box, I tend to give up.
Down slippers sound like heaven. Right now I am wearing old cloth boots that my aunt paid for over 15 years ago & that I got at Abbotts' Shoes. The most comfortable winter boots I ever wore.
I'm glad to hear that you have people to read with & get feedback from. There is no one here now that I know who writes, especially since I moved on from the N. Arts Alliance when I conducted evening readings, mostly attended by local university students, some of them talented writers & knowledgeable about the tradtion of poetry, one of whom could recite poetry & amazed us all one evening by reciting the entire Lovesong of Prufrock ("I grow old, I grow old, I will wear the bottom of my trousers rolled, do I dare to eat a peach, do I hear the mermaids singing each to each... I do not think that I can hear them now..." the ending goes something like that, as I remember).
The oral bard was one of those bright children of academic privilege, but with a social conscience. His mother was apparently a renown Fitzgerald scholar who went to literary conferences in Vancouver & Spain & Nice & took Nathan with her. A tall, slender pale young man with hair falling over his eyes, as enthusiatic about poetry as he was about peace, got arrested several times for picketing in NYC & in DC... I liked working with him (he helped bring students to the readings; but fortunately he struck no sparks in me or I would have been inviting him to supper (my one & only seduction strategy)- & after food, good talk & some wine he like all the rest would finally push his way from the table & stumble out into the night... I never found out how to get from the table to the couch to bed unless someone was so drunk he fell into bed & then instantly fell asleep.
Although, I have to admit, there is something to be said for having a warm body in bed beside one, even an inert lump of a body. I use to always wake early in the morning on Cleveland Avenue & watch the morning light shine on the planes of R's face, then gradually filling in the hollows, transfixed by having R. so close to me I could wonder at the blue of those eyelids. It was calming to listen to that breathing, to watching another's chest rise & fall.
I have just now remembered reading some beginning pages in one of Proust's books where the narrator goes on & on for pages (I think the sentence ran that long) about lying awake beside his beloved & feeling- I don't remember exactly now what the narrator put on the pages because at that point I threw the book down, thinking what a lot of nonsense, creating in effect a whole world out of an experience with another person where basically one is alone... & I have to confess now more than 50 years later that I can see the point. I mean, remembering those mornings being awake beside a sleeping R. I remember a sensual peacefulness that for as long as that sleep outweighed the frustration of picking at the knot of love that hung between us when we were both awake and then the unsatisfied longing & the sadness I was always left with after R. dressed & walked out the door.
O my- how did I get to 108 East Cleveland Avenue & the room that is gone because the house is gone on the corner of Kershaw Street? Because, of course, it's still with me, isn't it? The room, the bed, the morning light, the morning quiet & my breathing matching the long swell of another's breathing.
A poem there, if I could hold onto the pieces long enough.
Take care,
Love,
D.
Dear D.
(Oops!)
Yes, I remember telling my students--some students back in the Old Country, in fact--that the question of the weather is NOT small talk, but very, very important. Not fighting with the weather but simply being able to be in it, sloughing off that protective layer and being able just to BE (and hence the lure of the tropics for me) always seemed so liberating! I could think of other things. I had that thought--my yo-yoing between a climate, between a city where you have to confront the complexities of 21st (as it is now) century life and my less urban, more animal soul.
Were you sending me a poem? (Would you?) Was that the invitation in the question, "Let me know what you think of any of this as you listen to the gulls' cries & watch the ferry boats come in & go out & cross your bridge & go up & down the hill & pass the fish shops & the hawkers- & when you have the time." Or did you mean let you know what I thought of the idea of writing, capturing that "moment"? When it comes to poetry, yes, that seems so much what you do; when it comes to fiction--or at least the novel--I think it becomes a whole other can of worms. I was trying to explain to a friend how I felt visited--no, possessed--by the people in my work that I have created; and I have been variously "possessed" by a woman with a tail; a rhythm and blues-loving, talking muskrat; an effete and quite dead letter writer newly arrived in Hell; a pair of Siamese twins born on the cusp of the change from Ottoman empire to Turkish republic; a black mathematician en route to Columbia University, an Argentine sculptor who makes awful public statues, a scrufulous stray Latin American dog who in a previous life was a wife beater... For that matter, before my poetry was silenced by Paul Mariani, I have even possessed by a sheep f---er. They are voices which suddenly come up in my head, live extraordinary lives--or very ordinary ones save for the adventures that overtake them, that tell stories in my head. I just take notes.
I guess what I am saying is that because I am not interested in "realistic" fiction, social realism, slice of life, whatever you want to call it, I don't envision what I am trying to do as writing something utterly convincing with a message. My only message appears after the dust has settled, the only thing I am trying to "say" is that, of all that makes us human, what really counts is not our ability to make tools--the better mousetrap, the lethal weapon, whatever--rather it is our capacity to use our imagination. That, too, is why I love the Latin American writers: the imagination in the midst of chaos, that is all.
Do these characters have anything to "say"? Not directly, but if you come along for the ride, they might make you laugh and you will be prompted to think... I hope. Failing that, the language may capture you... I hope. In fact, the longer I keep at this, the more I believe that "it" is all embedded in the language.
Did I say I was sending you a CD of pictures? Let me know when they arrive, as Ed F. was supposed to
send them from Hoboken.
More soon,
Love,
March 23
Yes, My Dear,
I have a poem, several actually, but I have to type them up. I am feeling so stretched thin at the moment & overwhelmed & keep finding myself frozen in place from time to time. So, I have done no typing- for myself.
Which leads me to say something about the weather again. I do not like this icy dampness that the wind turns into a shiv, that I feel I have to protect myself against to keep the knife point from slipping into my bones. I have been fighting with the covers at night, having to remake the lay of the blankets so they are not bunched up but all of them lay flat & cover my feet. If I don't & if I don't get the covers to fold under right & make a protective cocoon, the damp chill in the room seeps in & bites my feet & they start to ache. & when I am waiting for the bus at Rodney Square & this damp & icy wind is blowing, all I can do is turn my back on it & endure it. What I am saying, B., is that I am not being with it. I just want to escape. Climb onto the warm bus. Get the covers to fold right & warm my feet. Hold the empty but still warm coffee cup against my brow & eyes & cheeks in the morning & rub away the cold- so I can start to think.
That's why songs like the Beatles "Here come the sun, here comes the sun..." pour into me like a remembered happiness because when the sun finally comes, when it really comes & I can leave my coat open & take off my gloves, it really is all right.
Abbey Road. What an amazing album. Especially the side where the songs flow in & out of each other. I glad it came when it did, before I was too old to enjoy it. Hope you have the sun to enjoy. Take care,
Love,
D.
Well my dear,
Here it is, the 2nd day of spring & I am still bundled up like an eskimo. Snow flurries predicted. But the flowering trees are filling with a haze of pastels & the forsythias are beginning to spout fountain jets of gold (Curses on all homeowners who prune their forsythia into compact balls.)
I have got a budget for the grants ( with help from the Planning Dept. grantwriter) & am working on a narrative- Goals, Methods, etc. & am researching grant opportunities with the intention of beginning to submit proposals by April. (If I can just keep from exploding at the ladies & keep my working class crudeness under control.)
Hope all is going well with you & will write more soon. (Wrote a James Wright-inspired poem last night at Panera's. & grabbed a few more mayonaise packets.) Take care,
Love,
D.
21 Mart
Well my dear,
Here I am again, in my little alcove on the 4th floor of the City/County Blg. I don't feel quite so leaden & grumpy as the gout attack is- knock on wood- subsiding & I actually slept through the night last night.
I am now trying to get myself to shift out of 1st gear. It isn't so much as that I don't want to be here. I just would rather be anywhere else- even at the new chain store bread & pastry & coffee place that has opened up in what for years was the Goodwill on Main Street. I have given up on going to the Diner. I sat one night waiting in vain for the waitress- not this time the tall, round Russian girl who is always right there & always brings me a carafe of coffee & a pitcher of water & a little cup of lemon wedges & is always so sweet even though I never order more than coffee & perhaps a muffin & don't tip more than a dollar- no, I was being ignored by one of the skinny & snitty UD girls who like to give me my check right away. I finally had to walk out.
So now I go to this new place, Panera Bread, because you serve yourself & I get my own free refills & I help myself to the little slices of bread in a basket put out with cream cheese- to entice customers to buy. I also fill my pockets with packets of mayonaise that are kept in the backwhere you can get free ice & water.
I don't know if I puzzled or shocked the Vista I've been meeting with to work on an assessment of the DMC to present to the leadership ladies (& presumably the Board as they, the ladies, aren't going to do anything)- Noah, a Team Leader & 2nd year Vista who has an arts background but is thinking of getting a masters in environmental sustainibility because art is such an individual endeavor & what does it do for society? & who put out an email early on asking: what did we think of Vistas getting food stamps when we aren't really poor? A bright & thoughtful young man but--- anyway, at our last meeting on a Sunday morning, he saw the NY Times on the table & asked what did I do with my NY Times, did I recycle them? & I was so surprized by the question, that I answered without thinking- O this isn't MY NY Times. I can't afford a Sunday NY Times. I take one from the shelf along the wall & go through it, taking notes, being careful not to spill any coffee on it or tear or muss the pages & then I refold everything & put all the sections together carefully & return it. His eyes got very big & he kept his face politely blank. (The mischievous part of me is wondering if I should tell him about the mayonaise packets.)
I don't like giving any money to a chain but this way I get my coffee, as much as I want, & I don't feel guilty about not leaving a big tip & no one bothers me. Mind you, I don't like looking at the clientele. Unlike the Diner which gets a lot of young people- febrile goths, grinning ape skinheads & artsy St Mark's kids ( all of whom have a kind of sweet vulnerability), as well as working class people--Panera's fills up with--upper income suburbanites for whom the concept of a vital town center that brings a community together i probably just as alien to them as a good public education for every child--because they don't want to face up to the fact that in order to achieve any public good, it has to be paid for. (Mind you, I don't know how many of them are willing to consider that there IS such a thing as the public good--& not just their own advantage--that they are capable of seeing.)
O well- I have to start planning for the week.
Take care,
Love,
D.
Ah, D.,
…we have had two days of spring. That is, spring clearly settling in on its haunches: still cool enough at night for me to sneak up the kombi--that thing which cranks up the gas--to 1, but turn off during the day. For the second day I have been walking home, too hurried to walk TO work; but en retour I walk along the Horn where the boats are moored and where the seagulls swoop, impervious to avian flu apparently. (Though that seems to be in abeyance for the moment.)
I cross the Galata Bridge on the lower level, past all the fish sandwich shops, the hawkers--may I help you lady?--and past the garish imitation leather beanbag seats with nargile fired up (scented tobacco--I bet it was something else once), up the stairs in the middle drawbridge area, along the sidewalk where the fisherman cast their lines and the bridge shakes from the passing trucks, down again to see the ferries at eye level, and off the bridge along the street, across to the old Pera metro (the shortest subway ride in the world) uphill to Tünel, my GUARDIAN, and my cafe.
Then down that long hill to home, the cat, the flatmate with a nice meal. My young friend H. will come tomorrow and we will confab about writing, drink some wine, the next day another friend's birthday and then...
I woke up today with the continuous sound of the ferries blowing their horns--a combination of celebrating the Battle at Çannakale (WWI Turkish victory vs. the Brits at the Dardanelles), and the Kurdish Nuruz, celebration of the arrival of spring with, I understand, all sorts of hoo-hah at SultanAhmet.
....Hope you are well. Gout meds are cheap here.
Love,
B.
Dear D.
Will write lengthily soon. How are grants going?
Love,
B.
18 - 19 Mart
Well, my dear,
Here I am again, having had my coffee, having checked my voicemail, having got space in the little conference room for a meeting this morning, having started work on a budget & narrative for a grant template, working with someone in the Planning Dept here...
I wonder what you would have thought of the press conference I attended yesterday at the Walnut Street YMCA where the Hope Commission delivered its recommendations to the public & to the Mayor who created the Commission last year after the killings- young people killing young people (black youth killing black youth)- kept increasing & noone seemed to know what to do.
What was fascinating was to see who was there, especially in a largely black city, who there was who was white & who was still deferred to- the Lieutenant Gov., who was a Commission co-chair; the president of the Urban League, the State Treasurer; the ceo of the Wilmington Trust, whom everyone kept mentioning in admiring & envying tones (because he has money- to give), people like Mike P.---
Do remember Mike P.? -a football hero, dark good looks, macho man, drinker... I put him in a poem after Bart told me a story of a drunken P. at the Deer Park in the early 70's leaping across a table, yelling at some campus anti-war activists, snarling he was going to beat their commie queer faces in... P. became a lawyer, a county councilman, a developer, bought Ivy Hall, is married & has one of those mcmansions up in H______ with the trophy wife, is now the ceo of the Riverfront project- got state funding to develop the industrial wasteland along the Christina--- a man who knows how to pull the right strings.
I've seen him up close at Newark City Council meetings where he threatened the City with a lawsuit if he didn't get Council permission to add a few more apartments to Ivy hall, right beside the train tracks & Ivy Hall has continued to have more arrests for drunk & disorderly violations than any complex in the city- not someone I would ever want to cultivate or even have a meeting with or even have a drink with but I can admire his alpha male predator's persona, as a pure example of the type ( & why all those gay men in the 70's & 80's went gaga over the "strong, manly man", even- men in uniforms! for god's sake!) anyway--Mike P. was at the conference, a little worn looking with thinning gray hair but still lean & fierce.
Do you remember Paris Walters- the southern raconteur & reprobate who married one of the Wrights & held court on Main Street with Mario P.? Dear Paris. If he had ever got his stories down onto paper- about all the young men he used to go camping with, take on trips to San Francisco for the Opera or to Hawaii (& Mike P. was one of them) as the blues song goes; "married men would have to leave their beds & walk"
O well--& this Mike P. has been recommended to me as someone I should contact who might be willing to provide some sponsorship for the mentor background screening fees... & I let him leave the Y without running over to him with my official City smile to give him the manly handshake & present my card... & my excuse?- my feet were hurting.
& now I have to get ready for a meeting this morning with the ________ Coordinator- a black man in his 30's with a ready smile, a shaved head, gold everywhere & a new name- El Shabazz. Some women in the Personnel Dept went to school with him in W______ & knew him as Sam J______.
Hope you are well & writing & enjoying your simit & the ship horns tooting.
Love,
D.
19 Mart
Dear D.,
…sorry to be tardy in answering: my internet service seems to have had a bad hair day and every time I clicked on my usual buttons to get the thing up and running, I got an intervening TurkTelekom screen, all in Turkish. Why they had no English option is beyond me, since so many English speakers and Europeans (neither of whom speak Turkish) use the thing. I gave up and went to bed. Tonight it works. This week has been filled with office intrigues and visiting "poets." A precious evening, I must say, full of poetry that was read badly, over a bad sound system and, frankly, not all of it was that hot to begin with. One fiction writer whose subject was so banal, I thought I would scream... Nice people, though; and a pleasant, slightly sotted official post event din-din at the local watering hole. I think I mentioned it before.
As an antidote, I allowed my flatmate to drag me to the Irish Consulate's St. Paddy's Day celebration. I had not realized that the Consulate general was the husband of a woman whom I simply can't stand who has a book-lending shop here. We barely acknowledged one another. John Freely was there and saw his chance--foisted this pompous young Turk who writes English jingles--though he appears to think it's poetry--on me. (Block THAT dreadful sentence!) I spoke with a woman who lost her husband in the British consulate bombing; she teetered a bit with her wine in hand, and in her best British public school accent said, "Well, I try to be happy, that's what I do. One should try to be happy, don't you think?" I wound up with a bunch of drunken young people--some not so plotzed--who at least still seemed to be alive, wanting to know things, understand, wishing for change, wanting to celebrate even. A lovely young Bulgarian woman, struggling to understand her headscarved sisters... A whole group of half-Irish, half this or that, somehow in Istanbul teaching or working at other post-graduate jobs. One fellow had managed to snag a whole big bottle of Jameson's whisky from under the Turkish barman's nose. However, my poor flatmate proceeded to get spectacularly drunk and spent the night throwing up in the toilet.
I went to bed after making a sufficient number of sympathetic noises, read a little more of my book about eels (don't ask), and got up to make lunch for Ed F., Lisa B., her niece and her niece's best friend. They are all gaga about Turkey, and, as much as Ed has been back and forth, it is astonishing to me how naive he still is about the place. They are buying a house in Fener near the Patriarchate. What can I say? I appear more and more settled here; they believe, want to believe, that I have found happiness. "Geographical salvation," a friend used to call it. I find my pleasures, and they are generally small pleasures, neither exotic nor grand; but they please me. "This is my city," Lisa says." I immediately felt at home here." No, it is not YOUR city; it just doesn't work that way, I think. Just wait till you have to negotiate with the maddeningly inefficient bureaucracy or sit in traffic for an hour and a half, due to meet someone an hour ago. Wait until YOUR internet doesn't work the way it does back home. They are not prepared, I don't think, for the difference between exotic and here.
I am gratefully unable to remember Mike P., other than to say that he has many clones. Or, to put it more witheringly, he is not a person, he's a type. But I suppose that is too mean-spirited, even for such a worm. It reminds me of the Sean Connery speech in that old movie, "Robin and Marian," where he is addressing a knight: You haven't really done anything; but you wind up eating meat, and we eat the crumbs. He is referring to class, of course, though I don't think Mike P. has much class from the sound of it. Ah well, Emma is sitting next to me on my desk; her tail is drooping over the keyboard slightly. A considerably subdued flatmate is reading my GUARDIAN and wondering why the TV coverage of the EE's latest carpet bombing caper isn't--remarkable how can one fulminate and still be subdued. We got a round table for the living room for about 50 bucks, and I am going to retire there, to candlelight and a glass of kirmizi serap (red wine.) There is a lovely array of Turkish cheeses left from lunch, and we'll have our simit for breakfast. Spring is still struggling to arrive.
Love,
B.
Mid-March Sometime
Dear D.,
Ah, the good old days! I miss the things I could do with my body--dance, stand on my hands, run... I sometimes regret the mistakes I made and wish I had had the sense not to make them, or the family support not to make them, but I have to say, I don't know when the best time of my life was--some of where you live now., some living out in the country in PA when N. was young and fat and cuddly, really good times when I first moved to New York and was going back and forth to Latin America. I loved that--the brief luxury of being as creative as I could without worrying about where my next meal was coming from. Too bad I hadn't the sense to know how to handle money then.
There are moments here, even. I came out of school to get a cab at the cab stand where a man has a çay evi (tea house) built into the remains of some of the old walls. All the cabbies stop there for his tea and both cabbies that were there had just poured themselves some tea, so I "said" (a bit of a euphemism as my Turkish is still next to nonexistent), well, can I have some tea? And the çayci (tea guy) poured me some. One of the cabbies gestured to a seat next to me and there we sat, these men with their work- and nicotine-lined faces, ybanci (foreigner) me, drinking tea from little tulip-shaped glasses, watching the Golden Horn and the boats along the shore and the cars whizzing in front of that along the shore road.
The other asked where I was from, in better English than my Turkish--"New York City" "Ah, Amerika!" "Evet, good city," but [the usual apologies for the people who are mismanaging the bloody country}"
"What do you thing of Istanbul?"
"Oh," I said, "I LOVE it!" (Was that really me, talking? it just came out of me. I didn't think I LOVED Istanbul, though I almost did, at that moment.) They smile. Of course when I asked "ne kadar?" (how much) the çayci would have none of it, "hoca, yok" (no, teacher.) And off I went to "Tünel--Beyoglu," then my neighborhood and my cafe, in the back of a yellow cab.
What I didn't say was how homesick I get, how frustrated I get with the students and, more so, with my colleagues (some, not all), how this how that... Something about sitting with those ordinary working stiffs, watching the world go by felt so much nicer than where I had just walked out of, I just didn't want to spoil it.
Love, B.
Hi,
It's late and I am sitting up sipping my flatmate's Irish whisky, contemplating the soft white underbelly of our homeland. The news re: torture, etc. is so awful I can't stand it! In any case a Tom G. is the person to whom your CV is going, via an acquaintance of mine...
It's quiet here, except for an occasional closing of the aluminum gates over a storefront as the last Turk goes home and off to bed. Weather is clear, promises 68 degrees F. by Wednesday, so I guess our brief winter is breaking up.
More soon,
Love, B.
Dear B.,
I have some Glenlivet whiskey but there is only a swallow at the bottom. The nearly empty bottle brings to mind all the bottles of gin that got emptied in N. in my room at 108 East Cleveland Ave in the early to mid-70's. Not always the best gin perhaps but never the cheapest. I was making about a $100 a week at Ag Hall being paid miscellaneous wages but my rent for the room + utilities & heat was $50 a month! Which is why there got to be so many bottles of gin. I certainly drank too much but I'm glad that I finally got the chance to be- not young, but to live as if I were. It was very much a Vie Boheme kind of life except instead of Mimi & Musetta's Waltz I had Richard & Desolation Row. Once I got to make friends- Barry M. & Jane, Jane & David B., the Commedia del Arte group, Richard- I think I had a party every week for the rest of the decade. & I went out almost every night... dancing at the Stone Balloon on Monday nights (no cover charge, local bands, Lisa Jack), gin & tonics on the Monty Python night, Deer Park nights, Ivy Hall parties, Madison Drive parties, Landenberg parties, picnics & midnight skinny dipping along White Clay Creek-- ah yes, I thought I was young. I was certainly in love (for the first time), a real love... Thanks for passing my CV on. Pass it on to wherever you think it should go.
Hope you get inspired by the Irish whiskey.
Love, D.
10 Mart
It is now 10:10 Friday morning, 3:10 your time. Sunny and crisp. Men are replacing ailing red roof tiles
with new ones on the urban "valley"--a clutter of roofs and old buildings the we look out over in order
to view the Galata tower beyond--so I awoke to a tap-tap-tapping sound and when I looked, here were
these fellows with minimal tools scraping the wooden under pinnings, sawing away rotten parts, and stacking the tiles neatly for the next step. The cats looked on, rather calmly I thought, although they have little fear here in Istanbul where they are treated quite well. It is three years bad luck, I think I told you, if you bring harm to a cat.
It is sunny, at least--Wednesday was a bit horrid: rain and snow showers, no inspiration to go out had I
not had to go to work.
Love,
B.
Dear B.,
I don't know how much you think about fear, but I find myself coming upon it every time I get onto one
of the middle class, "stakeholder", "power player", market-driven, bottom-line roads... & sooner or
later, I come upon something terrible- like a car wreck where everyone has stopped & got out of their
cars to stare at the wreckage & the flames & the bodies & does nothing...
People are afraid to come forward & do anything. People are afraid to see that what has happened
isn't an anomaly, an "accident". People are afraid to see that what has happened is the result of
something terribly wrong with their reality. People are afraid to see that they have made their reality,
that they are responsible for changing that reality.
I think it is this fear that drives people into the crazy tangles of fundamentalist or extreme positions of any sort or that backs people into their bleak neo-conservative or post-modernist corners. Is it this fear that fuels narcissism or does narcissism help breed the fear? I get this far & then I am faced with: Where has the narcissism come from?
Basta! I have to start making phone calls & checking my City email & ... you name it.
Love,
D.
7 Mart
Dear D.
… and there was only C., a gringa from D.C. whose father just happened to be Mexican, my Irish flatmate, and me. Then two Greek women who living here for a bit, and one of their boyfriends, a Polish tour guide who spoke excellent Greek, I am told. The single Greek woman had long dark wavy hair and looked like an ancient sculpture from one of the walls of Knossos; indeed, she was from Crete and beautiful. The three musicians would sing something and halfway through, C. and I would look at each other--"that sounds like Spanish!"--a word a phrase imbedded in the th-es, the purring of the Greek; then the owner, a lovely Turkish woman who works as a lawyer the rest of the week, served us some more Turkish wine (or beer (neither is very good, I'm afraid), while the musicians sucked up some more raki, and H. ate a little borek with carrot and garlic (divine.) Later a half-Italian, half-Turkish street artist and a French teacher (and French national) came in. The languages filling the room! Greek, Turkish, English, Spanish, French, the old Anatolian Greek--the way Istanbul, at its best, used to be and the way my quarter is still. All the songs, they tell me, are bar songs, and music of common folk at rest, drunk, in love, in despair...
My friend A. would disagree, though both Greek and Turkish music are in the minor key (up to 14 intervals between each "western" note in the Turkish) the Greek, unlike the Turkish (and I like both) makes you want to dance, whereas the Turkish just makes you want to break down and cry. This is C.'s "outing," in the sense of getting out of the house type outing, as her mother has dementia and it is now C.'s turn to do her six months' turn of care after sister D. has nearly gone around the bend doing the same. So sad. Her mother was brilliant, manic depressive all her life, an activist, learned languages the way you and I might take a turn around the block; now she bites her daughter, and her son-in-law when they try to get her out of bed... C.'s husband is a crass but good-looking guy (how little that matters except to C., I guess), so proud of having scored a dyke wife. He is a dead ringer for Stanley Kowalski--most of the time I want to just smack him; but even he is trying in an impossible situation.
C. taps the table in time to the music.
I was at an acquaintance's art opening--took us an hour of sitting in that most frustrating of phenomenon here, an Istanbul traffic jam. Then, I hate to say, such high prices for nothing special. Even the Biennale (art show) this summer had virtually nothing that speaks/spoke to me, whereas Ash and I caught a Jean du Buffet (sp.?) at a local museum this summer and loved it. But then du Buffet likes "outsider art" (coined the phrase, in fact) recognizing, I think, that THAT at least is alive. After Sinan, after the Byzantine mosaics, and the Anatolian kilims and carpets, what passes for contemporary art here is largely a poor second.
I am running out of steam: the weather, balmy and sunny, has shifted with the poyraz (north wind from Russia) and is now going down into the low 40s tonight. For us, that is a bit chilly.
Love, B.
My Dear,
… and I did have the satisfaction of getting a procedural change made- the police now will identify the perpetrators of order/maintenance violations (loud parties, noise in the middle of the night, loud public drunkenness, fights etc.) according to whether or not the perpetrators are university students or not. This is important because the students & their apologists (the liquor interests & University arse lickers have for years tried to maintain that the problems of social disruption in N. are the result of "outside troublemakers", meaning working class kids from El___ & Els___ & W_______.
& then I had to meet yesterday morning with the [boss] lady, T., whom I meet with once a month to bring her up to date on what I am doing- she can't be bothered reading my monthly report, apparently. & I had to put up with her- arrogant do- good middle class ignorance & one of her pokes ( no matter how much I am doing, she always has to get in a poke) & smile the whole while.
&- I just want to take a large broom & sweep all these fools into a dustpan. I'm glad to hear you went out again to hear some more Greek music. I remember when a bunch of the travelers in Matala hitched a ride on the village's one vehicle, a pick-up truck, & we went into the nearest town, Pitsidia, to spend an evening at a taverna that was opening up & two musicians, famed in the area, were playing.
There were two old men, like ancient, twinkling-eyed crickets, who sat crosslegged on the floor, cradling long narrow flat boxes on their laps, plucking at the few strings running the length of the boxes & half chanting, half crooning couplets, some that went back into the distant past about the mountains & the mysterious things that take place there, & couplets about ill-starred romance, exiled sons, death in battle, the last war, but also couplets about people in the room- bawdy jokes & smacks- the Greeks nodding their heads & sometimes throwing their heads back, laughing...
I know all this because sitting beside me was a Canadian woman, Connie, who knew Greek & translated for us. Connie was an amazing woman, educated in England, married a London stockbroker, lived in a Tudor cottage outside the city, lost her husband one New Year's eve when they were having a party with the people next door & the husband discovered he was in love with wife next door so Connie cut her losses, took what money was hers, left England, eventually found her way to Crete, to Matala, set up a craft shop, mostly woven goods which she collected all over the island & sold to the tourists who were brought into the village on the tour buses & lived with a Greek from Athens, Panos, Paniotes, a man in his 20's half her age...
dear Connie... She was the only one in the village who knew how to drive the truck, so she would drive it for the Greeks to the market, to the doctor's, & in turn they gave her food, a slab of feta cheese, a chicken, a crock of cured olives... She asked to see my poetry, which, of course, I was carrying with me, not knowing if I would return home ( a part of me wanting to sail on & on like Tennyson's Odysseus...). I remember she took a week to read through my manuscript. & then invited me to meet her at a taverna that sat on the edge of the beach a little ways outside the village, between the village & the sandstone cliff where caves were carved into the stone- at Leon's, a tiny lean-to of a taverna with a bar & an arbor of a porch- where we sat, facing the cove, the sea, the afternoon sun.
There was no one else drinking there then, no one on the beach, just Leon, the village dogs nosing about, & the two of us & the heavy gold of the sunlight held in the arms of the cove as if it were sleeping in a cradle... Connie liked my poetry but it's what she first said that I have always treasured. She said: If I had picked this up & there was no name on it, but if I knew you, I'd know it was yours. It has your voice in it.
So here I am. On the 4th floor of the City/County building, thinking of Leon's 29 years ago, & sunlight burning like fire over the sea, & the laughter that faces necessity & the harsh-sounding but seductive music of the old men & poetry that I keep trying to shape with my voice, my body, my breath- O yes. Take care.
Love,
TH, Mar 2, 2006
My dear,
This is the kind of day where I would like to have a table to myself in a Library, the newspapers to rummage through; periodicals to heap up in front of me, Poetry, Stand, the Welsh poetry periodical, the London Review; then pull out my journals...
I'm such a magpie notetaker, always looking for what is "real", evocative, the glimpse into Hopkin's inscape, whether the crystal-shining thing-itself or the lowly pebble, with its obdurate fidelity to matter. Virginia Woolf called what she searched for in the dailiness of existence- the seeds, that have living roots, that bring us closer to evoking--- I forget her word or phrase now; but I would say- closer to the pattern or a piece of the pattern...
I just found myself thinking of the Library in Athens in January in 1977 when Jim & Diane had left me behind so I could catch the Consolas Express bus north to Brussels & the plane back to America. I would go there every morning after first stopping at the museum, where the bronze Poseidon stands & the drunken hag crouches clutching her wine jug & the little boy, the jockey, leans forward over the back of his invisible horse. I would stop at the Library, which was clean & quiet & & warm & welcoming (& with western toilets- with toilet paper). & there I would scribble down all that I could of the day- the kerosene reek of the hostel commons room, the veil of snow on the hilltops ringing the city, the pungent smell of camphor in the buses, the old women shoving onto the trams like tanks, the rawness of the new, unpainted concrete everywhere, the palace guards in their white hose & tutu outfits... & then I would make my way up the cascade of worn steps to the Acropolis. & stop at the little museum there that has the Kritios boy with one of Rilke's you-must-change-your-life bodies & the bas relief with a Nike bending down with a dancer's grace to adjust her sandal & her transparent robe rippling over her like fountain spray... The Caryatids hadn't been tucked away yet. There were small pieces of stone rubble all over the hill. I would go & stand at the south wall, facing the harbor, the sea, rushing back in my mind to Crete & Matala & Mark, the American whom I left behind with a good deal of my heart, thinking, now Mark is taking a lunch break, slicing off chunks of feta for the bread, wiping the pen knife off in his mouth, the blade turned out; he is grinning that big American grin because the Greeks he is working with at a construction site in Matala have started dancing to bouzouki music on a tape player someone brought to work... perhaps the sun is shining, perhaps he played cards the night before at Leon's with the friends we made...The ruin of the temple, with its balance, its proportion, its calm always helped to quiet me. Does Istanbul have vendors who sell rings of bread coated with sesame seeds or is that just a Greek street vendors' treat? On my way back to the hostel, I would buy a few of the sesame rings as much for solace as to take the edge off my hunger. Oh yes, autre temps... & now I have to get ready for a mid-morning meeting in the Planning Dept.
Take care,
Love, D.
Dear D.,
Oh, how nice to get YOUR evocative letter. (I must tell you I do save correspondence, even electronic.) Yes, D., the simit (sesame covered donut-shaped bread) originated here. You see it all over the place. Sesame is native to Turkey, and what the flatmate and I figured out is that either simit was brought to Greece during the population exchange or it was being traded back and forth during the time when Greece was not even a name yet, let alone a nation, and you were Ionian or Illyrian, or Lycian or Trojan, Argive or.... They carry piles of it stacked on a flat board atop their heads and walk around with as much assurance as an African woman balancing a jug of water on her hair. I love the stuff. I shall try to get you a picture--aha! here's one!
(In a rare moment, the simit is not on his head.)
I just had a bout with the social security underwritten health care system which is disappointingly 2-tiered, a little like the U.S. only not so cruel. However, one gets most meds and doctor's visits paid for, which I could not afford back home.
Your comment about the everyday evocative resonates with some things I have been telling my students about theatre. though the staging is quite avante guarde for its time, I am teaching "Our Town" which, though the staging is quite avante guarde for its time, I always thought of as a sentimental and rather shallow piece. In some ways, yes, it is; but it was a more innocent time. My students understand that because they are not so sophisticated, not so ruined by TV, even though that looms right around the corner. They will be soon. Interestingly, their favorite scene is after the death of the heroine, where she attempts to revisit life and then realizes that the warm brown earth now welcomes her and where she feels, now, at home. We will do that scene for the rest of the department, along with selections from the other plays we are reading. Haven't had a chance to get back to my writing, which is really upsetting, because I am too busy… Even writing letters becomes important--it is, after all, all writing.
I thought of you this past weekend, as we went to a tiny little place called "Nar" (Pomegranate) in my neighborhood where a group from Lesvos sings rebitika (Anatolian Greek) music every weekend. Folks sit around tables and your nose is so close to the group that you can simply talk to them as though they were old friends. A woman with a throaty lovely voice, a Turk who plays with them from time to time, every once and a while someone stands up and twirls, dancing on a postage stamp sized space; and I am told that the old Istanbullu ladies come on Sundays, chattering in old fashioned Turkish, remembering the days before the exchange, reminiscing about their Greek neighbors and the times when it was, indeed, a city of tolerance, as our quarter, to some extent, still remains.
Love, B.
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