consolationland

The White Ship (Белый пароход /Ак кеме) Film Review

Posted on February 14, 2013 by maryangelis

The White Ship (Белый пароход — Kyrgyzstan, 1975, Dir. Bolotbek Shamshirev) is based on the novel by Chinghiz Aitmatov.

This heart-wringing little movie gem works a similar palette as The Color of Paradise (رنگ خدا) from Iran — Nature, trees, birdsong, meaningful legends, sad end, and grownups too miserable to behold the fragile radiant children who flash into their lives and glimmer out again.

This scene by scene summary will give away the ending, in case there are teachers who want to show the film in class. The plot and dialogue are simple, but the visual narrative is appealing and deserves to be better known. The link given above leads to an online version that is mostly dubbed in Russian, so I am guessing at these bits of dialogue.

Nurgazy is a lovable little boy living on a remote game preserve with a small immediate family, their household animals, trees, some symbolically important inanimate objects, and the family’s perceptions of influential spiritual entities in various dimensions of space and time. Nurgazy is preparing to start school, a time to take his social skills learned at home and applying them with new people in The City. The theme is the tension between home traditions and modern ways. But as the story progresses, there are sharper tensions within both sides; some traditional ways are balanced, while others are harmful, and some modern notions are enlightened while others are simply heedless and greedy. Every member of the family needs to balance the energies within themselves, and find a place in the social network. Along the way, some but not others manage to also find the enchantment of everyday life when it knocks at the heart in revelations small and great.

Nurgazy is a catalyst for everyone’s personality, drawing out the best or worst in each of them. Their responses to him reminded me of a mousetrap game from my childhood, where a shiny steel marble starts out at one corner of a maze. The player has to tilt, shake, rattle and roll the marble home through obstacles of spirals and chutes and slides. Here the bright marble is Nurgazy, setting out radiant and excited on a week of adventures while his family mousetraps his actions, words, voice, and dreams. Childhood derailed is nothing new; it’s a sadly familiar theme in any culture. What adorns this film is the child’s insatiable appetite for bonding, and ability to draw on beautiful traditions from Kyrgyzstan which bear him up and save his spirit if not his life.
________________________________________
Part 1: The Amazing Brand-New Briefcase

The film opens with Grandfather Momun and Grandson Nurgazy sitting in the grass.
In the background an elderly man is chanting, probably in Kyrgyz but with repetitions of Allah ar Rahman ar Rahim — Allah the Entirely Merciful, the Especially Merciful. A wall photograph of an elderly woman, a building which appears to be a shrine, and Nurgazy’s mention of a grave tell us that this is a memorial service.

After the service, the chanting mourner thanks Grandfather for joining him. “Goodbye, Momun. Thank you for traveling here, to remember my old woman with a good word. Her soul is grateful to you.”
“What else could I do?” Momun replies. “It’s my obligation.”

The point of the ceremony is lost on Nurgazy.
His attention span is short-circuited at first glimpse of all things white-flashed and moving. In this case it’s a view of The White Ship, a graceful serene vessel which forges its distant way to and fro all day long on the shores of Lake Issyk-Kul. Next Nurgazy’s gaze is caught by a white butterfly. He pursues the butterfly through the shrine of tombs, but stops short in amazement at one adorned with colorful paintings. The film slips in to a child’s eye view, where the painted lion and eagle are frighteningly fierce and real, like the painted Kyrgyz hunter aiming a gun at a painted deer. But the deer in its beauty and grace leaves him gasping in admiration. He rushes back to Momun, wanting to know all about the deer, and why the shrines are topped with antlers.
“Because we are People of the Deer,” Momun tells him, with great pride.

The two head home on horseback.
Nurgazy pleads for Momun to take him out to the White Ship to visit Papa. The child’s father abandoned the family years ago, and Nurgazy is convinced that his missing parent must be a sailor on the Ship. Momun humors him, saying their horse can’t swim that far today and besides, Papa is too busy now to stop his work and visit with them.
Stopping by a peddlar’s caravan, Momun buys a little briefcase for the boy’s first day of school. Camera time slows to a silenced crawl as the briefcase floats down to the child’s hands, and his expression changes from frowning fear of the peddlar stranger to boundless joy at having a briefcase of his very own.

Back at home, the child runs shrieking with glad tidings to every member of his family one after the other, showing them all his amazing new possession.
Grandma Karyz snaps “Stop howling — a man’s trying to rest.”
The resting man is Uncle Orozkul in a mid-day hangover, too oblivious to notice the child at all.
Young Aunt Girdzhamal hushes Nurgazy and drives him away, frightened that he’ll wake up Orozkul.
Uncle Seidakhmat is playing his electrified guitar (thanks to his clever wire tapping from an overhead power line); he laughs at the briefcase, teasing that Momun was crazy to waste money on the cheap little trifle.

Nurgazy is crushed by Seidakhmat’s ridicule of Grandfather. Running away he apologizes to his new treasure: “Don’t listen to him, Briefcase; Seidakhmat is not telling the truth. My Grandfather is good and kind.” He takes Briefcase for a walk, stopping to admire and pet some white flowers. At last he finds his sympathetic listener in white Sun, dressed in a white cloud; he shouts the story of his new gift at the sky before curling up for a nap.
________________________
Part 2: The Higher Plane

Grandma is fuming about the briefcase (“I could have sewn him a school sack.”) and its 5 ruble price. The thought of money reminds her to fling at Momun the rebuke that their daughter never sends money home; the girl fled to the city, abandoning her son Nurgazy to be raised by the family. Momun attempts to defend their daughter, but withdraws in defeat as Grandma rales that Nurgazy costs them money to feed and clothe even without the expense of his new school accessory.
She calls Nurgazy home, takes his briefcase away from him, and orders him to stay put at the house and guard the white calf, keeping it out of mischief.

You’d think the family might know by now that paying attention is not Nurgazy’s main talent.
Within his first two seconds on guard duty, the child is distracted by the white hijab of Aunt Girdzhamal at the river. He leaps up to see what she is up to, and finds her scrubbing a pot with sand.
Nurgazy jumps in the water, then tells young Auntie Girdzhamal his secret plan: he is going to practice diving, turn himself into a fish, then swim far out into the Lake to be caught by Papa’s net. “The sailors will say ‘Look — it’s a Fish-Boy!’ but really it’s ME! it’s ME!”
Girdzhamal laughs. Since the grownups aren’t teaching this boy any manageable goals anyway, she laughs at his life plan. “Oh? And what are you going to say to your Papa then?”
Nurgazy hasn’t thought this far ahead; how would he know what sons say to their fathers? “Then I’ll say to Papa… I’ll say… ‘Papa, why don’t you come to see me? I miss you so badly…'” Nurgazy bursts into tears.

Girdzhamal, anxious to distract him, agrees to leave her work and come play. In a charming scene she pulls off her white head veil and becomes child-like herself, running up the mountain with her nephew. And because they’ve noticed Orozkul leaving for town on horseback, Nurgazy brings along Orozkul’s binoculars for the two of them to share.

But their play date is over all too soon. Through the lenses he sees that the white calf is eating Grandma’s laundry! Because the farmyard through the glasses looks close enough to touch, Nurgazy assumes that therefore the family dog can hear the boy shouting at him to go and drive away the calf. Too late! Grandma beats the calf with a stick, then screams at the hills cursing Nurgazy and Girdzhamal, who creep home again in fear of what will happen next.
___________________________________
Part 3: Who can I blame now?
Here comes Uncle Orozkul, home from his social calls, in a festive red shirt in sharp contrast to the whites and greens worn by the other characters.
Nurgazy begs his pardon for borrowing the binoculars, but Orozkul is too intoxicated to figure out what his nephew wants. Uncle can only look at the child and say “Am I worse than other people? Why can’t that boy be my own son coming to greet me?”
At dinner, the family has no opportunity to start eating their meal. Orozkul continues his lament at the table, one they probably know by heart:
1. My wife Bekei still hasn’t given me a son.
2. When I die, my name dies with me.
3. No one will even give me a proper and fitting burial.
4. If only I did have a son, I would raise him to be a true dzhigit (originally from Turkish, “young man”; in connotation, one with superb horsemanship and sword technique). Unlike me, he would not rot in this forsaken boondock with loser people like these. No! He would live in town! He would be respected and honored and feared by all! People would grovel and crawl to him begging favors!
5. Oh, this life this life.

Momun’s face lights up with a bright idea. “Listen to me, my son,” he tells Orozkul. “Why not pray to our Mother Antlered Doe to bring you a son of your very own?”
But Grandma snaps at her husband to stop raving about Mother Deer, and suggests instead (if I understood this right) that Orozkul bring Bekei to the holy city of Suleiman (?) to have her prayed over properly.
Orozkul meanwhile cycles through seven or so mood swings, from grief to sentimentality to hilarity to rage, and then throws the relatives out and begins beating his quiet tearful wife.
Nurgazy in horror turns to Grandfather to intervene. Momun tries to enter the house, begging and pleading “Beat me instead!” but Orozkul simply throws the old man back out the door.
Grandma takes out her upset on Nurgazy, ordering him to bed and forcefully grabbing away his friend Briefcase.

Nurgazy misses Briefcase. So he imagines his ethereal body as a pale transparent ghost, floating out of bed and tiptoeing invisibly past Grandma at her needlework. In a camera double exposure, Ghost Nurgazy sits with Briefcase to keep him company, afraid that his new friend will feel lonely.
“Don’t be upset that I’m not with you, Briefcase,” he apologizes. “Grandma is cursing me, and Uncle Orozkul has insulted Grandfather and beaten Aunt again. If only Mother Antlered Doe would come back! Ah, but you, Briefcase, don’t even know that Mother Doe is the protector of our nation!” With great pleasure, Nurgazy settles down to tell Briefcase the whole beautiful legend, just as he heard it told to him by Grandfather Momun over and over again….
______________________________
Part 4: The Legend
In a dramatic lyrical scene, we see the family’s ancestors living on the River Enisei.
After burying their leader at an ornate funeral, the tribe is attacked and killed by a rival tribe. Everyone perishes, all except one infant rushed to the water’s edge by his dying mother. The baby’s cradle of furs floats away on the water.
A passing wise woman on shore watches the cradle with the crying infant.
Suddenly, a snow white Maral (European Red Deer) appears, and with its antlers tows the cradle gently to shore.
The wise woman warns the antlered doe that this child is a human being, that it will grow up and hunt the doe’s children.
“I could do nothing else,” says Mother Antlered Doe. “The child will grow up with my own; surely he could never kill one of his own brothers. I believe in the noble power of my milk, and my love, the love of a mother.” She takes the child away to a place with no evil people at all — the land of Issyk-Kul. There the child grows up, and takes a bride. And Mother Antlered Doe herself brings the pair a child, carrying the cradle on her own head.
This is why the Deer People pray to Mother to bring them children of their own.

But Nurgazy knows that all the maral deer have fled from the surrounding forest, because the human children grew up and became hunters, frightening Mother and all the deer away. He can only hope that some day, Mother will venture back again.
_________________________
Part 5: Trucks!
In the morning Nurgazy rockets out of bed, armed with Briefcase, hat, bare feet, little shorts, and a sleeveless undershirt.
“And where are you going, Boss?” Grandma asks him. “That briefcase is not your toy. It cost money.” She takes it away again.
Nurgazy is upset at losing Briefcase again, and leaves weeping.

Then, he is distracted by a convoy of work trucks approaching over the field. Wildly excited, he runs to meet them.
In an appealing camera shot, we hear his tiny hollers of gladness as he jiggles along, a dancing dot of white in a great expanse of open land.
The drivers lean out with greetings:
“Hey, dzhigit!”
“Hello, old man!”
“Good health, Little One!”
One young driver in a striped Navy shirt calls “How’s life, Little Brother?”
This salutation, or perhaps the driver’s sailor shirt, convinces Nurgazy that this is his long-lost father. He screams after the truck, begging it to stop. “Papa, don’t go, it’s ME! it’s ME!”
Failing to catch up, he finally flees for home in wild despair.
The driver, taken aback at being mistaken for the child’s father, circles back to talk to him.
Nurgazy is so distraught that the driver feels obliged to think fast of some way to console him. Realizing that this is Grandfather Momun’s grandson, he comes up with a creative solution. “Why, my father served with your Grandfather on the Front! That makes us BROTHERS! Give him greetings from Kulubek.”
Nurgazy is thrilled, and begs Nurgazy to come visit the family soon.
_________________________
Part 6. Orozkul
Girdzhamal is playing with Nurgazy again.
To amuse him, she weaves him a crown of flowers, then offers to “show him a film.” She sings a lovely folk song, waving her white hijab overhead in a veil dance. Nurgazy grabs two sticks for antlers and chases her over the hills.
Uncle Orozkul appears on his horse. Stunned at the charm of Girdzhamal’s dance, Orozkul says “Now that’s the idea! To give everything for that is to give too little.” In wild and tipsy laughter he bursts out of the woods and grabs her, crying out “My golden one, I didn’t value you before, forgive me!” He starts singing and dancing a song himself with his horse whip swinging from his wrist, as Girdzhamal cringes and flees.

Back at home in his red shirt, Orozkul lectures everyone on the necessity of living in a cultured manner like people in town. He laments the old days, when in their woods before conservation laws there was plenty of forestry work felling trees. Now he is a lowly game warden ordered to protect the forest and its resources, but back then he was the boss of the work crews. He enjoys describing how before people would grovel and crawl to him begging for favors. To mark his past status he demands that the frightened women drink a toast with him.
______________________________
Part 7. Kulubek
In a heavy rainstorm, Kulubek brakes his blue truck at sight of an elaborately painted white shrine built and inscribed for “OROZKUL, 1925- ”
Nurgazy comes screaming through the rain to greet Uncle Kulubek.
Kulubek grabs the child and rushes him to the shelter of the truck.
“Did Orozkul die?” he asks Nurgazy.
“No, he’s alive. But he says that since he has no son to do it, he’s prepared that tomb all for himself.”
Kulubek shakes his head at Orozkul’s level of pride, drives the child home, and gets permission from Grandfather and Grandmother to take Nurgazy out to a movie.

In town the sky clears, and the soundtrack music changes to an upbeat cosmopolitan tune. We see multi-story concrete buildings, women in short dresses or bell-bottom trouser suits with no head scarves. Happy Young Pioneer children on summer holiday salute as they sail past in a long convoy of buses with the poignant slogan warning drivers “Careful — Children.”
Nurgazy admires the wonderful sights of the city, then boasts to Kulubek that his Papa is a sailor on the White Ship.
“Oh yes, I’ve heard about your father,” Kulubek assures him, turning away to hide a very troubled look out to the water.
____________________________
Part 8. Grandma Makes a Deal
Back at home, Orozkul has forced Girdzhamal into the bedroom and is trying to get her to smile at him.
Girdzhamal escapes when Grandma walks in.
Grandma sits down and laments to Orozkul that she has no one to bury her properly.
“You can depend on me,” Orozkul promises. “I’ll bury you to the envy of everyone.”
But Grandma points out that this may be difficult for him, as he himself does not have a strong family to depend on.
Orozkul reminds her bitterly, in case she has forgotten, that this is because he has no children.
“Do you want a new young wife?” Grandma offers. “My father had 2 or 3 wives, and no one said a bad word about it.” She suggests a discreet “marriage without documents,” and takes Bekei aside to let her know about the new arrangement.
Orozkul is pleased by this idea. “Maybe it is too soon to bury me,” he decides. “Orozkul will show them yet!”
But then a tremendous mountain thunderstorm terrifies the family.
Grandma begs God to forgive her sins, and Bekei blames the storm on Grandma and her scheming.
________________________
Part 9: School
Nurgazy misses Kulubek and wonders why he doesn’t come to visit.
Momun reprimands the boy sharply for getting his hopes up. Grandfather insists that Kulubek will never come back, and that’s the end of it.
Interesting; Grandfather is content to humor the boy’s constant wish to see Papa on the ship, or Mother Deer in the woods, while forbidding him to wish for a sensible young man who is in fact far more likely to return than either of Nurgazy’s parents. Perhaps Momun is simply reluctant to allow any more sources of potential heartache in the boy’s life. Or perhaps Kulubek’s consideration and good manners are a painful contrast to the family’s inept indifference.

On the first day of school Momun and Nurgazy are setting out for the schoolhouse on horseback.
But Orozkul makes plans to cut down and sell some trees (safe from the interference of the Game Warden, since he is the Warden himself). He wants help with the heavy labor of dragging the lumber. He is enraged that jolly Seidakhmat and his guitar are gallivanting in town, and that Momun has dared to leave the property just to take Nurgazy off to his first day of school.

When Momun returns, Orozkul forces him to push the trees on their chain while Orozkul rides ahead to drag them. “Because if I die working alone, who else will ever take your barren daughter?”
Orozkul refuses to let Momun leave to pick up Nurgazy at school. Momun works until he is dizzy and breathless, heartsick that when the school closes Nurgazy will be very frightened all alone in town.
Orozkul’s negligence and rage nearly get them both killed, and Momun muses that this poaching will end badly. Only the wonderful appearance of some maral deer consoles Momun. Orozkul curses the deer, beats the horse, and hits the old man. Only Momun’s dexterity and wisdom saves them all before he quits the job and heads for the school.

In town with its jolly soundtrack, heartbroken Nurgazy is sobbing outside the school. Having little or no experience with reliable adults who return to him, he assumes that Grandfather has abandoned him too. His pretty teacher tries in vain to console him and to get him back inside to wait.

Just then Kulubek, driving a truck full of singing workers, pulls over. Kulubek and the jolly workers sweep Nurgazy away to their working camp. Soon in Kulubek’s hut Nurgazy is safe and comfortable, and Kulubek plies him with two hearty sandwiches, one for each hand (the only moment in the film when an adult thinks to hand this child some food). Kulubek apologizes that his work schedule did not allow any visits to the house: “I thought of you and wanted to come see you. But I couldn’t come, though I prepared you a present.” He gives Nurgazy a new toy tank.
Nurgazy is stunned by this new toy, and only tentatively puts down a sandwich to begin engaging with it.
Then Grandfather Momun walks in. He coldly refuses Kulubek’s hospitality. Clearly suffering from loss of face at Kulubek’s assistance, he takes back his grandson and marches out without a word of thanks. Momun can bear beatings and threats himself at home, and can take his grandson back to watch and learn more of the same; but he finds the younger man’s intervention unbearable.

Kulubek is left alone, baffled and concerned, holding Nurgazy’s forgotten tank.
_______________
Part 10. Ending

When the two arrive home, both Orozkul and Grandma curse them both for taking time away from logging.

Nurgazy throws himself down weeping at the edge of the water.
Suddenly, three splendid maral appear to him.
Nurgazy is enthralled. He walks closer and closer, not noticing the cold water as it washes up over his ankles. He watches to his heart’s content until the deer finally walk away.

Nurgazy runs home in his wet clothes, shouting the good news about the deer to the family.
But Momun sits frightened by Orozkul’s threats, and Grandma fiercely tells the child that no one cares about his deer right now.
Nurgazy ends up in bed, shivering with a fever. He calls and calls for Momun, but the old man is off weeping in despair.

Next day Nurgazy is very ill, and can’t go to school.
An old friend of Orozkul’s comes to pick up the lumber, and notices the maral deer. “They’re not afraid of people. And look how fat they are.” Hm…

Kulubek stops by the school. The teacher tells him that Nurgazy’s family didn’t bring him that day. Kulubek turns away, deliberating on what to do.

Nurgazy in bed hears gunshots. He slips outside.
Momun is sitting in shock, staring at a cauldron of boiling water. He tries to rush the child back into the house. But Nurgazy sees Orozkul come carrying the antlered head of a maral.
“This is for your grandfather,” Orozkul boasts to the boy. “I’ll put these antlers up over his grave.” Orozkul slams an ax into the deer’s skull. To the child in his delirium, it appears that Orozkul is also chopping the cradle of their ancestor baby.

As night falls Nurgazy is left in bed alone; in his sleep he cries out for Kulubek to come in his truck and avenge the slaughter and desecration of Mother Antlered Doe.
Meanwhile, Orozkul force-feeds the family poached deer and alcohol. He roars with laughter at how comical it was, watching Momun groveling and begging him to spare the deer’s life. As a joke, Orozkul forced the old man to kill the deer instead, or else be driven from the house.
Nurgazy overhears him, and understands only that it was Momun who fired the shots that killed Mother. At this, Nurgazy struggles out of bed sobbing and wanders outside. Burning with fever he staggers down to the cool river. In the dark he falls under the water and lies there, dreaming of the white sun over Lake Issyk-Kul, and that Papa nets his Fish-Son and reels him in at last.

Naturalist John Muir wrote about his early life in The Story of My Boyhood and Youth. The boy makes the best of hard labor and privation with an unsympathetic father, and finally leaves home with a satchel of homemade thermometers and alarm clocks. His workmanship delights everyone who sees him, winning him a booth at the World’s Fair and entrance to University despite his parent’s dire predictions that he will fail:

[Father] tried to assure me that when I was fairly out in the wicked world making my own way I would soon learn that although I might have thought him a hard taskmaster at times, strangers were far harder.
On the contrary, I found no lack of kindness and sympathy.

Not all deprived young people make the leap of leaving family opinions behind and seeing themselves through the eyes of sensible sympathetic mentors. Nurgazy is too small to leave home, and has no practical tools but legends, magical thinking, and an empty briefcase that no one has thought to fill with books or lunch. Sinking underwater, he doesn’t see the approaching headlights or hear the truck engine as Kulubek comes speeding over the mountain to find him.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Белый пароход Чингиз Айтматов Киргизстан Ак кеме После сказки "White Ship" Chingiz Aitmatov Kyrgyz film | Leave a comment

2/9 Still Life: Arlington National Cemetery

Posted on January 31, 2013 by maryangelis

Is that the bugle?

I sit up and listen. Sure enough! I throw off the blankets and leap off the couch, running to the balcony to hear it.

What a view! There’s the Washington Monument on the misty rose horizon.
My local host, also my old college friend, appears from his bedroom and heads for the kitchen.
“‘Reveille’!” I sing out. “Like the trumpeter on F Troop!”
“Who, Dobbs?” He shakes his head and laughs. “Nah. This one’s a recording.”
“Oh.” Even recorded, it’s a trailing plaintive sound. On this vacation it’s also a daily reminder that Fort Myer and the Cemetery are practically at the doorstep waiting to be explored. “I’d like to hike around there today.”
“Ok.” He pours the coffee and loads some files in his briefcase. “Take along that green moss you grew in my refrigerator.”
“My mung sprouts! Yes, I’ll bring those along for lunch. May I take a couple of your leftover baked yams too?”
“Knock yourself out. Call the office if you need anything.” He grabs his car keys and heads for the elevator.

Water jar. Yams, sprouts, bananas, almonds, Whole Foods rye bread. Out the door.
Here’s the clean orderly Metro with the waffley acoustic ceiling to cut down noise, and the flashing sign telling us how many seconds left until the train is due.
On the Blue Line train outbound, lots of commuters are in military uniform.
One commuter isn’t, but acts as if he were; he’s my seat neighbor, a craggy fit-looking man with a silver crewcut and upright posture and stern face. He snaps an order at me. “Young woman! I want to know the exact meaning of that symbol you are wearing!”
“Here you are, Sir.” I give him a smile and hand him my necklace. “This is called a Tree of Life. It’s the symbol for The Living Bank, the national organ donor registry. Any medical rescue professional seeing this will know I’m a registered donor, and they can turn the medal over to call the toll-free number on the back and tell them there are organs on the way.”
The man stares at the medal, both sides. His eyes fill with tears. “Thank you, Young Lady. I believe you: you LOOK like an organ donor.”

Here’s the stop.
The boulevard leading in is so grand and clean, you’d think it led to the Kingdom in the Book of Revelations. Over 20 burials a day, says the sign; 290,000 graves. [Note: It’s 400,000 now, on 624 acres.]
Early Monday morning, not a tourist or car in sight. At the Visitor Center I view some photographs and pick up a map, and set out for the morning’s walk.

The winter day is beautiful, dry and clear. It’s so calm, not a leaf rustles on the great oak trees. There’s not a soul around, no sound of humans but a distant jet. Not even a bird or a squirrel.

A little flame is burning for the Kennedys and two children, Patrick and Daughter.
A little holly bush marks a memorial for Major Glenn Miller, missing in action since he led his band for the troops in 1944.

After three hours I take off my sweatshirt for a cushion, and settle down for a tasty lunch.
That concludes our adventure; it’s time to go back to the house. The map here points to lots of prominent landmarks; but where are they around me? I walk a long way, checking the map every hundred paces or so, but nothing matches up. So I strike out crosswise for another quarter hour, still checking the map, but the signs in view aren’t written down on the paper. Then I curve around and try a new direction. Still no go.

An hour’s gone by. Huh. Where were the Kennedys again?
That monument all the way over there looks important. It must be on the map. So I head that way on a little path across a long valley of white headstones.
Left, right, left, right.
The sun is getting hot and makes my eyes ache.
White marble. Black wrought iron. Fawn oaks. Blue blue sky.
The valley is longer than it looked. That monument isn’t getting any closer, but these identical grave markers are marching in neat rows, converging toward me.

Now there are horse hooves echoing in the sky. Hooves! Not cowboy movie hooves gallumping in threes, but trimmed hooves clicking along in step.
Horses are interesting animals, but hooves by themselves are a little eerie when nothing is moving for as far as eye can see.
Then all the hooves stop at once.
Silence, stillness.
Where am I?
White, black, fawn, blue.
White, black, fawn, blue.
White, black, fawn, blue.
290,000 people. What if life turned out the other way; what if the wars ended and they all came home, and could be here today with me? Young guys joking and throwing acorns, old ones hanging out in sunshine telling brave stories?
(Note: Arlington National Cemetery is for all kinds of military personnel including retired ones, and their families too. Plenty of people here really have enjoyed long peaceful lives. But that occurred to me only later, safely back in bed on my host’s couch.) Off the trail with the sun beating directly on my head, surrounded by all these headstones in their sheer numbers and marbleness, weighed down undersky, I feel small and soft and light-headed. I put down my sweatshirt and sit on the ground.

A blue jay lands beside me.
He wears all four colors of this landscape on his back. It does me good to see a moving creature here. Jays are wary birds, but this one isn’t scared of me at all. We sit a while, a Still Life with bird and organ donor.
Opening my pack I show him some mung sprouts and leave them on the grass for him to eat.

That cheers me up enough to get me moving.
I strike out for a little grove of trees to rest my eyes in coolness, blunder on in among the evergreens, and freeze.
Seven white horses with carriage are standing at attention, bright beings in dark shade.
Twenty steps away there are several young men in uniform, conferring very quietly.
I keep my distance, looking on; they must be on parade display so often, it would be wrong to interrupt their rest.
Then all at once in a flash they’re on the move to a funeral. The men mount up. One hums a little rhyme to the horses so they’ll strike out in step.
On the Cemetery’s website you can find their picture, the Caisson Platoon. But the photos don’t tell you their names, or what they like to eat, or what breed of horse they are, or how the men tell them apart. Pictures don’t show you how perfect white horses coming from dark trees look like a dream, flowing overground, manes and tails in shades of cream and pearl, to guide another soul along the road to Revelation Kingdom.
They disappear. World and map click back together. I’m found again.

11:00 p.m. My host calls from the bedroom: “Taps!”
So I leap off the couch to the balcony and city lights.
“Day is done,” the Cemetery bugle says. “Gone the sun. From the lake, from the hills, from the sky. All is well, safely rest. God is nigh.” Playing tranquility to 290,000 and one.

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1/15/2013: Steppin’ Out

Posted on January 13, 2013 by maryangelis

Feedback from Reader Rachel: This is very endearing, but I can not even IMAGINE where you ended up, or how. Next time I am giving you directions myself!

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Rachel’s open house is 6:00 to 8:00. We’re all invited.

It’s three special occasions in one: holiday celebration, chance to see Rachel’s beautiful home (the house is 100 years old today!), get-together for the co-workers. Rachel is our illustrious radiant colleague who happens to be an exquisite baker. Even if I can’t eat the treats, it’s going to be fun to see what confections she’s dreamed up. Not only that, down the street at the lake there is the annual candle luminaria festival; before or after the open house, people can stroll the waterfront to ooh and aah at the homemade lanterns and other glowing floatcraft. I can’t wait to see it for myself, and take pictures. And, at the main intersection nearby, there’s an Orthodox church open for Saturday Slavonic Vespers.

I thanked Rachel for the invitation and let her know she can count on me. The online map shows how easy it is. I would print out the online map and bring it along, but maps are hard for me to follow. So instead I distill the map into linear verbal instructions to myself: bus stop, then church, then straight up the street a few little blocks to her corner. Can’t miss it!

I tuck her address and phone number in my waist pack, wash my hair and fluff it up, deck out in my red blouse and red sparkly necklace and red dress from Goodwill, the long flowing one with gold thread embroidery. Warm sweatshirt and trousers and knapsack and scarf, rainproof clogs, water jar, 2 bananas and almonds, one quart of hot succotash soup kept warm in a towel, toilet paper roll for all the bus passengers who will be sneezing helplessly and don’t carry tissues, Slavonic prayer book, rosary, red head scarf for church, rain slicker, reflective vest, and hand-crank flashlight. Onward!

The Bus 1 driver looks me over and says “That’s some assortment of gear. Goin’ camping?” He and the passengers are bantering around in the holiday spirit. It always pays to sit in the first seat and greet the driver; they’ve seen so much human nature that they always have something interesting to say. He lets me off at the transfer intersection for Bus 2, next to my favorite open-air fruit stand. The staff are working like crazy today loading cut fir trees into cars. They can use a little extra nourishment, so the succotash soup is for them. They shout their hellos and thanks, and I head on to the stop for Bus 2.

Then again, why not skip the bus and just walk the 20 minutes to Rachel’s intersection. The exercise will do me good.
Here’s the church. Vespers is absolutely beautiful. Perhaps for Mary’s feast today? Or no, they’re Julian calendar, so they wouldn’t be celebrating Immaculate Conception today, would they? At least they wouldn’t call it that; that’s a Papal Infallible idea from 1854. Oops. Well, whatever they’re celebrating, it’s very grand; Father even comes out from behind the Royal Doors to paint a cross on all our foreheads with chrism of rose petals. Then I cut out early, and start walking to Rachel’s party.

It’s a soft misty evening. The streets are full of people! Full! Teenagers on skate boards, couples hand in hand, parents with babies and stroller tots, dogs in Santa hats or jingle bells or twinkle light harnesses. They’re in a great mood, hurrying to the lakeside.
Now to find the house.
Straight ahead at the intersection, then the few short blocks…. Or maybe not so short. Maybe it’s just a few more. Is it the next one? One after? Are we there yet?

Huh… Ought to be around here somewhere. I’m losing my bearings. Better double back.
Right. Here’s the church again. That map said to go straight ahead here. Couldn’t be simpler. La la la, la la…
Gosh.
Did I go too far? I’m forever doing that; walking too far and missing my street and getting lost.
I double back to the church again, this time walking on the other side of the main road to check all the street signs there with my flashlight.

Back at the main intersection I start calling out “Hello, folks, which way is [Maple] Street please?”
But they’re in a hurry to get to the lake, teens couples parents babies tots dogs jingles. Nobody has time to answer. I try a few groups, then a lone jogger (he has earbuds on, and just shakes his head). Three times people stop, but they’re all visitors to the light festival, and they don’t know the streets.

Finally here’s a motherly looking little lady strolling along. When I speak to her she looks distressed, even though I keep my distance and just ask for Maple Street.
“Sorry no no English please,” she tells me sadly.
“Oh, okay. What language do you speak?” I ask her. Because in America every single speaker of no no English, they can still answer that question, no problem.
“Iran, Iran,” she shouts, raising her voice to help me understand, spreading her hands in abject apology like it’s a crater on the moon.
“Ah! Khosh amadid! Khosh vakhtam,” I shout back. “Beguid lotfan, khiaban-e MAPLE koja-e?” Welcome! Happy to meet you. Tell please Street Maple where is?
She’s thrilled. Not that “Maple” rings a bell, but at least we have a nice time exchanging many good wishes. Health! Happiness! Khoda Almighty preserve you!

Finally a teenage boy sets me straight. Dude! “Maple?? Nah, it’s way the other way. I know for sure because on Bus 2 that’s the stop where they announce Maple. Gotta follow this road all the way back, by the lake. That’s Maple.”
Really? Are my map reading skills that bad? Oh man.
Start over. Continue past the church going the other way, on and on, and — the kid’s right. Here’s Maple way down here! Now just look for the address.
But it’s a lot of house numbers away from here. Up the hill. Where are the numbers on the houses? Still quite a ways to go. Is the street supposed to curve this much? Maybe I was supposed to veer off on one of these sidestreets.
It’s so dark I hand-crank my flashlight and shine it around. And holy mackerel — just ahead, the sidewalk’s all buckled from a tree root. Without the flashlight I’d have fallen right over it!

(Navigation note: Later, back home again, wrapped in a down comforter with a cup of hot miso soup, I check the map again and see the problem. Maple crosses the main road twice in a long loop. And both times, both ends, if only I knew, I got within one block of Rachel’s house. One block.)

All of a sudden the streets are deserted. Emp-ty. EVERYbody must be at the lake. I’m over an hour late. Any normal person would call Rachel for directions. But see, I have a terrible time not only reading maps, but following directions. On the street I can see where people point, but if people tell me over the phone I get all turned around. Maybe a look at mapquest.com will help. I pull out my cell phone to enter the address. But now it’s raining. To protect the phone I have to pull my slicker hood way over my head and put the phone inside it to read the screen. But a popup ad blocks that part of the map, letting me know that the mapquest phone app is available for download to my phone. Wha?

There are really no people around. The houses are dark. Not good. My hand joints are getting too stiff to hold the phone. In fact — now the swipe screen won’t work; my fingers are too cold or maybe too wet to activate it. I double back to the church, an hour and a half late for a two hour party. Calling Rachel now and expecting her to drop everything and give me directions would look forward and foolish, wouldn’t it? Just so I can show up at the end and then turn around and leave?

Now I’m catching a chill. It’s the rheumatic kind that won’t warm up no matter how much I hop around, and the only answer is to go home and lie down. Plus there are little needle pains shooting through my feet. It dawns on me that I am not getting to this party. At all. I stop a mother and daughter and say “Help! Where is Bus 2?”
They laugh and walk me back down Maple to the stop and wish me a good night.

Two college students are waiting at the stop, looking anxious. “Do you know where Bus 2 goes?” they ask me.
So I hand them my spare bus schedule and describe the whole linear route in detail. (Of course, all I had to do was open the schedule and let them READ THE MAP. But that only dawned on me now.) They’re happy to hear about it. “Then it’s just the bus we need!”
We stand and watch the crowd pour past us away from the lake, talking over what a great time they had at the luminaria festival.
The students are conferring about the candle splashes on their jeans. “How do ya get wax out of a pair of pants?”
“Ice,” I tell them. “Put on an ice cube until the wax cracks. Flake it off.”
“Really?” they ask me.
“Dunno. It was in my mom’s home ec book. Also, if you ever spill red wine on a carpet or somewhere, quick sprinkle on some salt but without wiping or scrubbing the wine; the salt is supposed to neutralize the pigment. I don’t know whether that works either. A couple who know their wine told me that, and I never see any wine in their carpet.”
So we joke around, and they show me their phone photos of the light festival, and we catch the bus.

Back at the transfer stop I pop in to the fruit stand to pick up my Mason jar. The store is already closed. But my favorite cashiers are so tired they’re sitting on the counter, swinging their feet and chatting. “Your soup looks awesome, but we haven’t tried it,” they apologize. “We didn’t stop running all day.” But it’s an open air shop, so the jar will stay nice and cold. Tomorrow they’ll heat it in the microwave and have it for lunch. Meanwhile they wish me a good night. As they roll down the doors and turn off the lights I go to the bus stop and eat a banana.

A group of teenage boys carrying skateboards pass by. They give a curious up and down look back at me. One of them points and mutters a comment, and they hop on their skateboards and sail off. Too late, I realize what he said: “That’s what I need, a reflective vest. I’d be safer in one like that.” It’s too bad; I’d have called them back and told them just where to buy one.

I take out my toilet paper roll and start sneezing helplessly. On Monday everyone will be talking about the party. I really wanted to go too. Really did. I’m sad about all the times I’ve set out to find something or join some group and couldn’t figure out how to get there or how to find them. What’s wrong with me?

Bus 1 is 40 minutes late. There’s not a soul on the street. The rain is really coming down. I’m shivering hard, standing under the awning to the chiropractic clinic, hoping the placebo effect of their neon sign will warm me up. Across the street, the big trademark sign of the antique shop swings on support chains; it’s a grinning Genie in Aladdin’s lamp, casting swoopy shadows in the wind. My hands can’t handle the prayer book pages now. So I take out the rosary and pray the Luminous Mysteries instead, then sing part of Orthodox Vespers arranged by Rachmaninoff: Отче наш, иже еси на небесех…

Here comes a man walking toward the stop. He looks cold too.
He tells me in Spanish about his life, and many troubles. Looking for work, a cousin with a car, changing one house for another, a passport, leaving La Paz, trying to get back to La Paz again. The story winds in and around itself, plaintive and sincere, repeating rhythms like the rain on the awning.
I listen and nod. Sure. Things happen, all right.

“Then,” he concludes, nodding his head in reverence, “God the Father kissed me.”

He points to his forehead. “Two times, here. Dos besos, dos veces.” He tells it to me again and again, gravely and carefully, making sure to get the point across: this is not Jesus we’re talking about, but God the Father himself, the Almighty.
I look up at the rain, trying to imagine. “Aun UNA vez es algo enorme. Pero DOS…!” Even ONE time is something enormous. But TWO!
“Oh, this was two times,” he assures me. “Right here. And he said ‘I LOVE you. You are special to me. Porque TU eres de la gente humilde.” Because YOU come from the humble people.
La gente humilde. Well… yes. If God is going to pick out someone to talk to, that is the kind of person he would pick.
The two of us think that over, under the neon awning, while the Genie on high swings in chains still grinning.

The bus shows up and pulls over. “Had enough camping?” says the driver.
The man from La Paz walks back the way he came, into the rain.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged getting lost, holiday get-togethers, office party, pilgrimage | 4 Comments

12/25: Near-Hymn for Viola

Posted on December 25, 2012 by maryangelis

At our Catholic church, the liturgy committee was ready to be relevant for the Now Generation.

In the early 1970s, they sponsored some progressive touches. Some innovations even raised eyebrows and heated debate at the local bakery, where the congregation always bolted afterwards for crumpets and stollen. We had a Youth Choir with guitars, a chaperoned activities group, and even an avant garde multi-media event that really raised the bar: music with slides of peaceful landscapes on a projector screen in front of the altar!

One year on the first Sunday of Advent, a young man showed up with a music case. [Instead of broadcasting his name here in hyper-public space without permission, let’s give him a proper Christian pseudonym. How about Philotheus?] He took out a violin, but didn’t call it a violin; he called his a viola. We’d never seen one before. It looked a little larger, with a deeper wistful amber tone.

Anyway. During Communion, Father and the congregation and Choir were busy processing up the aisle thinking of the Body of Christ, as they should have been. In the five minutes of silence when nobody was looking, Philotheus picked up his viola and played an instrumental solo.

That might not sound dramatic now. Today a few keystrokes in the comfort of home can summon festive accompaniment for any taste: tablatures, neumes, shape notes, instrumental tutorials, ethnomusicology footage, broadcasts of real time celebrations round the world, Black Nativity, Celtic Woman, Maccabeats, George Winston, Appalachian Sacred Harp, the un-unplugged fuse-blowing Trans-Siberian Orchestra. But back then, we had seven TV channels. At their best they offered Nat King Cole, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, Bing Crosby, and the Kingston Trio. We had the King Family, Mitch Miller, Charlie Brown, Herbie the would-be dentist and the island of misfit toys. AM Radio had popular novelties with kids asking Santa for two front teeth, kids who saw him kissing Mommy, three cartoon chipmunks, three Stooges, Snoopy and the Red Baron, Bobby “Boris” Pickett and the Crypt-Kickers, carol-barking dogs, and a few years later the reindeer who ran over Grandma.

In all that racket, the piece for viola fell among us as the opposite of noise. We faithful, queueing for our Sacrament with fingers folded underchin in little steeples, whiplashed around to gape at our guest musician. That melody circled us in poignant elegance, a silver koi a-flash through yearning hands to its own silver sea. This is why young people benefit, when they see other people using technique and craft to create wondrous things. To my melancholic high school juniorette heart, it was a wonder altogether new, that strings on wood could speak and sigh and murmur and implore the Maranatha — Come O Lord, the very voice of Advent. After that service I trailed along behind Mom and Dad to the family car and zoned out of their conversation, clutching in my frail musical recall the 9 note fragment that remained (fa-mi-fa so, fa mi-re-do# re). I held on to it all week, having no idea how to ever find that song again or how to find performers who are not performing, people who commune their music straight from the cosmos and back again.

On the second Sunday of Advent, to my happiness, Philotheus was back with his instrumental solo for viola. This time, it was even more beautiful and heartbreaking than I remembered. This is partly because our soloist knew more than 9 notes. It is also because he fingered in graces and airs to show all the equally heartbreaking chords, much as prayer flags on a Himalayan snowpeak show the zephyrs in the sky. This time after Communion instead of kneeling down in my parents’ pew where I belonged, I beelined to the Choir and whispered Philotheus a question. He was kind enough to whisper back the answer. Eureka! Now the koi had a name for a net. By the way, you can hear the string part yourself, at 1:52, halfway through this version here. But it won’t be the same. You just had to be there, looking out on snowy fields in a candle lighted sanctuary wrapped in pine and fir, with a gleam-haired youth alone in the corner plaiting pathos to the rafters.

On the third Sunday of Advent, the one day of the year when priests don delightful pink vestments and kindle the pink candle of the Advent wreath, Philotheus played his rose-colored song. At around that time, someone in the congregation might have applied enough musical literacy to name that tune. A misty recollection hints that someone raised a concern: what makes a hymn a hymn? Can even a rock song with secular lyrics be used as a liturgical piece? It may be sheer coincidence, but after that discussion in the crumpet-stollen crowd I can’t recall that Philotheus had a post in the church repertoire any more. I do recall that for Communion our Youth Choir premiered their upbeat “Gospel Changes,” more famously covered by John Denver.

Down through the decades, each December I slip in to services of every kind. There are costume pageants and brass quintets, handbells and harpists and Handel, Klezmer and dim sum, megachurch altar calls, a capella improv by gleeful erudite Gay men. But for Advent’s very sigh and murmur and lamentation, nothing else resounds through time like the understated voice in strings that so consoled a random adolescent girl.

Respected Philotheus, Hello!
Here is overdue thanks for your playing. I hope it found appreciative ears in the wider world. [P.S. – It sure did. I just googled his real name. And there he was, violist for a symphony orchestra. He even emailed me back!]
I wish our small sincere and aiming-for-progressive franchise of Rome had said “Yes, that is ‘Sad Lisa,’ by Cat Stevens. And just WHO is it hurting? The lad has reverence and talent. In his hands and from his heart, this is a hymn for souls in darkness turning to salvation’s Light. Hush now; let’s hear him play.”

These days at the Saturday farmers’ market I edge under the main canopy out of the rain, set up shop between puddles, and play bowed psaltery for the farm families and shoppers and their children, some of them melancholic teens. The warmup song is always yours. Merry Christmas!

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged "Sad Lisa" Cat Stevens, Advent celebrations, Catholic Church, Christmas music, liturgical music | Leave a comment

12/22: Liftoff

Posted on December 22, 2012 by maryangelis

The hospital had an old mental health annex.

You could get there walking uphill from the commuter rail, through oak trees and a footbridge over the river and across the main road. The annex had high narrow windows and echoing corridors and heavy slamming doors and checkerboard inlaid floor. Inside you’d expect nightshirted Irish orphans on crutches, and Sisters in batwing wimples skimming along with bandages or baguettes. But instead there were just the patients. They were weatherbeaten men sitting on the steam radiators, smoking; or the same men drinking from paper bags on the steps and shouting in English or Spanish about events in their outer or inner world.

We weren’t patients, though. We were visitors who slipped in on Saturday mornings, staking out the front parlor that looked out on the hospital incinerators. I was a newbie, attending for only ten years; the other older timers attended for years before me. None of us was a founding member, so nobody knew how many years the group had been meeting here, or how they ever discovered the annex or took over the room. In those 520 Saturdays, no mental health employee or police officer on guard ever stopped us to ask who we were. Once or twice the patients, who noticed everything, said “What the hell are you lot doing in a dive like this?” and I’d say “We’re learning how to play bridge.” That made perfect sense to them. Before long “Bridge Club” is what they called us.

Bridge Club was really a 12 step group. This was not one of your big famous groups with a history and Book. It was a newer spinoff for people who’d had the carpet pulled out from under and were starting over from somewhere sub zero. We had a basket of Conference-approved literature with a preamble. We took turns being the group leader. But somehow the basket kept ending up in this person’s car trunk or that person’s laundry room. So we’d make up our own opening, with all of us chiming out the lines we remembered or thinking up phrases that felt meaningful (Words from Unity, Kahlil Gibran, the Barney Show) until we reckoned that the meeting was open for sharing already.

Meeting time was 9:00 to 10:30 on the button. This clear boundary was useful. That way the people terrified of being in groups could show up at 10:25. The people who were terrified of the Serenity Prayer, or any prayer anywhere ever again, could leave at 10:26. The one with claustrophobia could show up at 10:40 in the parking lot as we said goodbye, because she wanted to meet outdoors and not spend one more Augenblick of life in (quote) The Nut Bin. One new member needed desperately to talk and for once be finally heard all the way through; it impressed her to know that the meeting ended at 10:30, because then our staying and listening meant something extra and special. That meeting ended at 5:00 when the hall lights turned off; we groped our way out in a human chain through clammy smoke-filled halls over the checkerboard tiles.

Some of us wanted to pull down all the shades so no one could spy on us. Others of us needed to pull the shades up so we could see any intruders before they climbed in. Some had to turn the lights off, or turn them on, or open the door, or keep it closed. (Can we unlock that window? Is there a draft in here?) People brought their dogs, but only once or twice because the topics made the pets curl up and whine. We brought stuffed animals and dolls and set them up in their own little meeting with their own chairs. We brought quilts to crochet and coffee in styrofoam and dandelions and musical instruments and press clips and photo albums and art projects. At my very first meeting, on Christmas Eve, our baker member brought cookies the size of frisbees loaded with chocolate chips and nuts, and we ate them until they were gone.

But most of all the members just kept talking.
They started out telling life stories that no news anchor would ever dare to touch. But over the years, each person started bringing some plan or idea, and then went out and tried out their idea or plan, and then came back next week to tell us how it went. So step by step the one with anorexia opened a health restaurant. The one who couldn’t get off the couch ran a marathon and became a personal trainer. The one with agoraphobia learned how to drive, saved up for a little car, and took off to see the country. The one stressed to tears by her phone operator job ended up running agricultural trade shows in China. The one afraid to talk ran for office and won an election. Everybody invented a life, and they graduated one by one. Then there was only me, and that was the end of our club.

Years after on a windswept Christmas Eve I had business in town and was walking to the commuter rail. The annex didn’t even cross my mind until its obsolete nondescriptness loomed up from the drear. The same pigeons and the same straw wrappers were still milling around. But the patients were gone. The lights were out. The windows were closed, except a broken one to keep that draft going. The doors were padlocked and chained. In the rising wind and falling light, the rain leached out incinerator soot and pigeon twigs and the life stories of people who could hardly crawl out of bed. Like Ishmael, I was the only one left to remember. Bridge Club deserved a plaque in remembrance, cave drawing, notches in the door, something. But no trace was left but a little placard I’d never noticed before. You had to step close to read the battered festively sad little message Flower Deliveries to the Rear.

I turned to the street.
And right there, silent, waiting behind me was one dozen Canada geese.
I backed off to keep from startling them, and walked away.
The geese fell in behind, all dozen, plodding in a line.
I turned and showed them my hands. “Nothing here to feed you.”
They looked up at me.
I kept walking.
They fell in again.
At the eight-lane main road, known affectionately as Death Row for its careening ambulances and defectively short WALK sign, I stomped and waved them away. “Go back now, be safe. You can’t cross here! You’ll get hurt.”
They hedge-hopped right over it all and waited in the oak trees on the river side, then followed me over the bridge and waited in a silent semi-circle near my feet.

The train pulled in.
The geese took off, circled once for altitude, and headed for the water. The car was empty; I got on and took a seat. A fairy tale edged into mind, something with twelve brothers turned to swans, and if only their sister can weave them twelve shirts it will break the spell so they can come home from the sky again.

My dozen brothers disappeared above the trees. Just then, a shaft of early-setting sun struck the clouds, shaking loose a flurry of snow. As we pulled away, the flakes fell in hexagonal blossoms: Bridge Club’s first and last delivery of flowers.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged 12 step group, Christmas Eve | 3 Comments

11/22: Bell for the Feast-Day (Праздничный колокол)

Posted on November 10, 2012 by maryangelis

When it comes to spiritual things, there are two popular views.

1. Life is working out the way I want. Therefore, God (karma, The Secret, fill in the blank) really likes me!
2. Life is harsh, and people behave badly. Therefore, God does not exist.
And in BBC Sherlock “A Scandal in Belgravia,” Mycroft eloquently offers, “All hearts are broken. All lives end. Caring is not an advantage. Sherlock.”

Still, among the ended lives and broken hearts there is sometimes something going on.
____________
The first time I saw Seraphim, and the last time, and most times between, he was surrounded by a squadron of people who loved him.

The squadron commander-in-chief was Seraphim’s mother, a petite soft-spoken scientist and artist with a modest gray braid of hair. Her bright smile, uncommonly lively eyes behind their spectacles, and a long elegant mundshtuk cigarette holder, called to mind the bright wartime tenacity in photographs of FDR.
She brought me home from church to dinner, and gave me a tour of the family home business, its mail-order/website computer and production studio for relatives and apprentices.
I was impressed that the family’s traditional Russian artwork included crushed gems as a pigment.
“Gems?” I exclaimed. There were many perfectly valid options readily available at lower prices.
“Beauty,” she said, raising her hands. “To last for centuries.”
At dinner I bit in to a delectable beef cutlet full of fresh herbs and greens, while her whole troop of Moscow doctors and scientists start talking at the same time. Their dining conversation was like a rainbowed waterfall, chrysanthemum fireworks, the bubble machine from the Lawrence Welk Show. One would produce some fresh independent thought or fact, and the others would charge in and whack the velvet from its antlers. They argued with zest about the radiation levels emitted by the microwave on the counter, about the species of a bug that flew in from outdoors, about the best way to sheetrock a wall. One actually dropped his fork and leaped up from the table to prove a point by running for a dictionary entry to show us a word — not just any dictionary, mind you, but the Brokgaus-Efron, published in St. Petersburg in the late 1800s in 84 volumes. (His might well have been only the condensed version, 43 volumes. But they sure took up space in the living room.) When they asked me some question about Catholic culture, I gave an example from the Daniel Day-Lewis movie My Left Foot. Instantly they turned on Seraphim’s good-humored brother (who was eating dinner with his right arm in a sling), and began improvising a comedy film about his life called His Left Hand.

Seraphim’s mother had an idea.
“We have a manuscript ready to publish,” she said to me. “How would we do that here?” She described the research that Seraphim gathered and wrote starting at age 16. It was an esoteric yet spiritually beneficial reference work for Russians at home and abroad. (Later, his parents published it on the family website.)
I confessed to knowing nothing about publishing. But the idea sounded wonderful. During our group brainstorm session I was ready to ambush her son with admiring questions until he got in one soft word edgewise.
“Mama,” said Seraphim. “Leave it in peace already. Please, Mama. It’s America: nobody needs it.”
The pain in his eyes stopped us short. Then the family went on talking about anything and everything else.

Seraphim’s father, a tall lean gentle-eyed computer programmer with square shoulders and a sweetly prophetic-looking beard, turned to me. He expressed his deepest condolences on our American national problem, talking “o glaukome,” About Glaucoma.
The family chimed in, recalling what they were all doing the day the historic news bulletin came o glaukome, and its devastation here in the States.
One asked me, “How has this terrible problem changed your worldview as a U.S. citizen?” Then they paused respectfully, waiting for my response.
I looked at their compassionate expressions. In halting Russian I thanked them for their heartening concern, and confessed that I had not earned their kindness because this problem had no impact on me personally. I admitted that we Americans still relied mainly on early intervention by medical specialists.
The family paused, tactfully thanked me for sharing, and moved right along to other matters.
(That night, drifting off to sleep at home, my subconscious mind kept fretting:
o glaukome, o glaukome, o glaukome, oglaukomeoglaukomeoglaukome = OKLAGOMA! I sat bolt upright in bed. They were referring in Russian to the terrible disaster in Oklahoma City. And what reply did they get out of me? 1. Oh well — it does not affect me personally, and 2. any victims should have gone to medical specialists SOONER. Woe is my non-native ear! No wonder my lack of empathy left these hospitable people at a loss for words.)

Somehow, they kept talking to me anyway.
On Sundays, the family gathered after church for coffee hour in the parish hall. Sometimes Mama would wave me over to join their little enclave. When their conversation grew especially spirited and witty, Seraphim would glance over to check that I’d followed the Russian and got the joke; once I did, he’d laugh too. What struck me then and now about Seraphim (which is not his name, but means “fire angel” and so comes close) was the geometry of his mind. On one plane, he clearly enjoyed the constant fanfare of his loyal kith and kin. On another level, during their banter and debate he would sit back and attend to minute details that no one else seemed to notice. Most of all, on a third dimension he was always tuned in to some rarefied frequency, an implicit communion that engaged his awareness so deeply that everyday speech was simply not the coin of his realm.

At the end of Lent at Passion Friday, the figure of Christ in a brocaded shroud is processed with candles around the church and then laid to rest in the sanctuary. Then the congregation members take turns keeping Him company all night long, chanting the Psalms until morning. A devout Russian couple and I signed up so we could cover a late shift together. They warned that a newcomer like me must not undertake the Passion Friday prayer in a night church all alone; the vigil is so powerful that unhappy spiritual forces might try to disrupt it. Back in Russia, they knew of cases where the unprepared solitary chanter was beset by supernatural sights or sounds. Then one had to be a very brave stalwart soul, to stand fast under this kind of tribulation and keep the prayer going until dawn.

Long after midnight we finished our turns with the Psalms, and stayed on to pray in silence.
Then Seraphim walked in, alone and clan-less. At the reader’s candle he read the Psalms not in English or in Russian but in liturgical Church Slavonic. (I’ve just checked my journal for that year. It states that he recited the Psalms from memory, as the monks do on Mount Athos.) Slavonic was devised as a Scriptural language, not a spoken one; but his chanting rose pure and straight from his heart to the cupola windows of black sky and stars, in the scent of incense and beeswax and rose oil, in the flickering shadows and eyes of portraited saints. Anyone could see it: this at last was his time and space, his mother tongue, his true voice, his own words of penitential lamentation ringing out as if he’d saved them up all his life.

Then Great Saturday struck midnight into Paskha. After the night’s vigil, in the dark before dawn I put on headphones to watch as our bell ringer wrought massive plaits of sound (do, mi, so, do) from the four bells. Then he went downstairs. But I lingered in the loft awhile with the echoes in the night breeze. By tradition the lineup of Russian church bells, like horses in a race, each have a name; the largest lowest bell of all is the Festive or the Feast-Day Bell, rung to mark the grandest occasions. Our great bell was a spirited temperamental creature. Our ringer showed me how the footstroke had to be very strong, yet glancing — instantly withdrawn, to clear the first vibration; with any hesitation on impact, the sound was like two colliding subway cars. That night when nobody was looking I worked my shoe into the bell’s foot pedal sling, just testing the feel; for months I’d dreamed of ringing for the service myself. (Only now does that dear irony dawn on me: a person easily lost and unheard in social gatherings yearns to play an acoustic instrument audible to everyone for three miles around. What next? Lighthouse foghorn?)

Downstairs, the congregation was singing the most radiant hymn for the most radiant moment of their year:
An angel cried
To the Lady full of grace
Rejoice O Pure Virgin…
in the Resurrection of your Son.

Then, Seraphim’s mother had an idea.
“Oh, in the loft,” I heard her say to someone on the stairs. “Let’s go greet her…. Khristos voskrese! Christ is risen!” she called out.
“Khristos voskrese!” I wished her and Seraphim.
“Voistinu voskrese, Truly he is risen,” he replied.
They exchanged with me the traditional three kisses. Hers were hearty and exuberant. His were careful and grave and profound.
It’s easy to look back through the years and claim that his small gesture marked the end of one season and beginning of another. But it did.

After that springtime, a simple cough led Seraphim through a cycle of doctors and tests.
I took the commuter train to a town near his, and stumbled over railroad tracks and weeds to the Catholic hospital. Seraphim was in a room with four elderly men behind little curtains, all of them coughing. He was on oxygen, connected to various wires and tubes. His two young daughters were spending summer vacation here with Dad. The girls were making Get Well cards. They adapted effortlessly to hospital life, deftly crawling under and through the wires and tubes so they could curl up beside him, fluffing his pillow and stroking his hair.

Seraphim’s mother had an idea.
“Sit, sit; have some tea,” she offered happily, quitting the room despite my protests and heading for the cafeteria to bring a cupful back for me.
Her son and I looked at each other. I wondered a little late whether dropping in without notice was all right with him or not.
“Kak tvoe zdorov’e? How is your health?” he asked me. That’s when he switched from formal to informal address with me, and first started using my Russian nickname.
“Khorosho, slava Bogu,” I said. Fine, Glory to God.
“Today N___ came to the house,” one of the girls told us, naming a talented apprentice who took lessons at the studio; Mama’s students came to learn, but they ended up becoming one of the family. “And do you know what happened next? For dinner she even cooked us LAMB.”
“Lamb? That’s wonderful. Very kind of her.” He was in no shape to be eating lamb or anything else at the moment, but he looked happy. Lamb — imagine! His eyes were laughing as he looked over at me. “Agnus?”
“Sorry?” I asked him, pulling the chair right up to the bed; his voice was barely audible.
“Lamb. Agnus.” He took a careful deeper breath and inched himself higher. “Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi; miserere nobis.” Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world: have mercy on us.
“Oh! How did you learn that??”
He nodded toward a book on the table.
I picked it up. A complete old-time bilingual Missal! The kind we used to see at Mass, with black crinkle-leather covers and gilt-edged pages and silk marker ribbons in red and green and gold. Many Orthodox people in good conscience have expressed to me their hurt and sorrow over the Roman Papist schism and its heretic views. But here he was, reading this!
Later his mother told me about it. At a garage sale he recognized the book right away, and pounced to buy it. Then when he entered the hospital, a nurse offered a visit from the chaplain, not for the Sacraments but simply for company. Seraphim first asked his mother to bring his Missal. He spent his hospital stay studying until he felt suitably prepared. When the priest stopped by, he found an Orthodox patient speaking Missal Latin, for the first time since who knows what bygone age.

It’s just as well that the hospital offered chaplain services; certainly on my two visits there I saw no sign of any medical personnel actually interfering with the patients in that room. Judging by his mother’s extended absence that first evening, it was all my fellow Schismatics could do, to obtain water with a teabag. But in no time, contacts at church turned up a bed at the main research hospital in the city. After that, his care moved very fast. Slender and fair by nature, Seraphim lost his lovely blond hair and became thin and translucent as a lighted candle. On Sundays after the long Liturgy he would sit on the garden bench to rest in the sun.

By then our Ringer was away more often, so I had permission to harness up and ring the bells after Liturgy. With practice I worked out the regular ringing patterns for the services. Then before Liturgy and Vespers I started hovering on tiptoe, waiting for them to pick me to go do the ringing.

But somehow they’d always pick someone else. Even if the someone else had never rung before. Even if the someone else looked very doutbtful about stepping outside in wind-driven sleet to sort out ropes and tongues.

So, I kept practicing on Sunday afternoons. And each time for the finale I’d play a long 4-note arrangement of “Night Rolls In” by Al Stewart.

Maybe that was the problem. At the time I didn’t know that Orthodox ringers draw from a well-defined heritage of intricate regional and seasonal patterns; they studiously avoid melody as a Western affectation. Perhaps the Hierarchy has a Decorum Hotline, and some anonymous tipster within 3-mile earshot dropped a dime to report rock anthems in the loft?

At any rate, after practice I’d come down to the garden.
“Nice,” Seraphim would always say. “And when will you ring for service?”
“The minute they let me,” I always assured him. “They haven’t yet.”
“You just keep practicing,” he assured me. “I’ll be here listening. One day I’ll hear you.”

Late in a cold autumn we had one inexplicable summer day. In the church garden, bronzed oaks rustled under the deep blue sky. White butterflies tumbled over red and white clover; forsythias and dandelions bloomed out of season.
In the loft I finished “Night Rolls In,” humming the words as I ran downstairs (And now the world in all its works and ways / Grays on novembering days; a fire still glows that once was a rose a long time ago…).
In the garden, the dynasty of Moscow scientists and doctors brought their cake and coffee and crowded round Seraphim’s bench to discuss his treatment plan: research protocols, experimental studies, laboratory tests, internet and journal articles, phone calls to specialists and colleagues here and at home.
Mama had an idea. “Propolis!” she greeted me. “What can you tell us?”
“There’s some in my toothpaste,” I said. “Comes from bees. Said to have healing antiseptic properties. But, I haven’t read the research.”

Meanwhile, the family children played in the grass at Uncle/Dad Seraphim’s feet. The youngest gripped his pants leg to practice standing. The toddlers frisked the dandelion fluffclocks into the air while the girls braided gold blossoms in a wreath for his shoulders.
Seraphim looked over at me and opened his thumbs to signal his usual question. What? No bells for service?
I turned up my hands in a shrug. There will be. When they say so.
Mama summed up the family’s consensus on the next phase of treatment.
Seraphim listened, nodding with respect at all her projects and plans for success. Then he caught my eye across the flowers and the sunlit lawn, and winked. What do we know, really?

One night, the family held an anointing service at the church. For once they came in silence, hands on Seraphim’s back, getting him a chair before the altar.
As a Catholic I’d seen this sacrament as routine consolation for any parishioner who felt like coming up after Mass for a brief prayer, absolution, reassurance, and a blessing with the sign of the cross in oil. But none of that prepared me for this. Seraphim’s anointing, like his cancer therapy, was an act of war.

The ritual was harrowing in length and complexity, an arduous program of Psalms, prayers, and Scriptural readings before seven different anointings with chrism and wine on brow, cheeks, hands, and over the heart. As the service marched on Seraphim stood at resolute attention, shirt open in the drafty sanctuary, husbanding each breath, summoning all his strength. The captain of the family ship knelt beside her son, absolutely straight and motionless. The wind rose, moaning at the cupola windows of black sky and stars while his people with their candles called down forgiveness and mercy, forging links of promise and prayer from heaven to earth.

A season or two later he and I met again, after Liturgy.
For the first time, he approached me and initiated a conversation. He looked solid and substantial now, with a new head of short fine hair grown darker. “Masha! You haven’t been to church in months! Why? Did you give up on the bells?”

Yes, I had. The parish children had discovered bell ringing. Now the loft was teeming with willing volunteers. They didn’t wait around to be called or chosen; they just flocked upstairs before every service. As it happened, bell-ringing had been the last in my series of attempts to fit in with the congregation. But despite the hospitality of the priest and choir director and their families, the parishioners could never seem to classify me at all. Finally I started taking long Sunday morning walks on the river instead. “I just haven’t found a place here,” I confessed.
“But neither have I.” His soft eyes were concerned but reproachful. “Ringing, though. Can’t give up on that.”
“Well, they’re not going to ask me. Are they.”
“I’M asking, Masha,” he said. “Come back. I’m waiting to hear you ring at service.”

I was away from church walking on the river a few weeks, and wasn’t there to see the clan bring him in to Liturgy. This time they fixed a pallet and oxygen tank for him on the carpet. The whole congregation knelt down at his side one by one to ask his forgiveness. He asked for theirs, and blessed each one of them. Days later someone mentioned it to me. I went right home to the telephone.

Seraphim’s father answered, and we exchanged greetings.
“They tell me Seraphim is not feeling well,” I dived in. “Please, is he there at home?”
His father contemplated the dimensions of the question and the answer. “Yes, he is right here.”
“May I speak to him?”
Father pondered some more, lining up the words of the reply as gently as possible.

So it is that some day, in the Book of Life, we will read about this father. There will be a page about him there, illuminated in crushed gems. It will state for the record that a man who had just lost his 33-year-old son and was sitting vigil beside his body thanked a caller for thinking of his family, and inquired about her health.

Before the funeral, a choir member was picked to toll the bell.
I ran up to him. “Have you rung before?”
“Why no,” he said.
“They want the bass bell, the Great Feast. To ring it, you have to pull back instantly on the foot stroke as soon as you hit it, or it will only crash instead of ringing. Or… I can do it.”

That day there were so many people arriving, so much to do, so much for the choir to think about, that at last — “Go on,” they said. “And hurry.”

I ran to the great Feast-Day, and roped my foot to the heavy pedal.
It tolled and tolled while the people came and filled the church. (Just this week on the anniversary of that day, Seraphim’s father emailed to thank me. He remembered, over 20 years later, that I was the ringer for Seraphim’s service. And what a beautiful word he used for it: otpevanie, from ot = from/away, + pevanie from the verb to sing: the day we sang his son away.)
The worshippers paused at the casket to give Seraphim a last kiss in farewell. After they all did I went up behind the casket and touched his hair, and then went downstairs to sit on his garden bench.

After the service, his mother had an idea.
“We can take you in our car.” She took my hand. “Come with us.”
They were offering to share their seating for 6 hours in the funeral procession, find room for me at their hotel, feed me, and bring me back. But how could I go? For a journey like this, it seemed only right to let family go with family.

As they all stood conferring in a circle about the trip to the cemetery several states away, Seraphim’s daughter stepped to the center. She began to dance. She twirled on one foot while her lovely long blonde hair spun around her. Those girls had been awake all night. They were at their father’s side right from the start, and with him right at the end; when he was laid out in the sanctuary for the all-night vigil and reading of the Psalms, the girls kept vigil beside him until dawn while their Grandma took the midnight to dawn shift chanting the prayers. Now before a 300 mile drive and his monastery burial, one of them was taking a little break to twirl in a sunbeam.

During his last illness, Seraphim made sure that his daughters had a fresh flower in their bedroom every morning. He planted a lot of white lily bulbs outside their window, so the next spring the girls could look outside and see lilies rise from the ground to say “Khristos voskrese!” all in white petals. And, he built a little village for their bureau, the model train kind. It had fields and woods and cotton for clouds underneath with tiny star lights inside the houses. Knowing him, it probably had a church too right in the center. That way, later on if the girls woke up at night and felt afraid, they could look at the village and remember where their father went, preparing the way to make a nice home for them in one of God’s many mansions.

“Last night,” his daughter came close and looked up at me, “Grandma was chanting in the church while my sister and I went to sleep. But Grandma was so tired! Finally at 5:00, she fell asleep. Then everything was so quiet that I woke up. Oh no — the prayers! I jumped up and took the book and started chanting. I read and read until 8:00. Finally, I looked up at the dome windows at the sky. And do you know what happened next?”

Speechless I gazed at her. A young girl who kept awake and at watch with a candle in the dark at the body of her father; co-heiress of a village in the stars and lilies of the field. “Yes?”

“I was SURPRISED BY THE LIGHT,” she exclaimed, hands opening in air. And she went on dancing.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Al Stewart, православные колокола, церковно-славянский язык, Orthodox Church in America, Russian bells | 2 Comments

10/14: Thanksgiving. Winthrop Beach, MA

Posted on October 14, 2012 by maryangelis

Thanksgiving Day, 2004.

“There’s just the one bus for today,” frets the driver. “Goes around both the routes.”
“Both scenic routes for the same low fare?” I tell her. “What’s not to like!”
Her troubled look brightens right up. “You got it.”

So on the local bus she and I take a nice long quiet ride around the peninsula. Then, I mind the bus for her while she runs in to Sea Foam Cafe (lobster pots; wood shutters; climbing concrete kitten) and buys herself a bag of potato chips for Thanksgiving dinner.

The rain clouds are gone for now, leaving us a clear mild day.
In the center of town I hop out and walk.
Here’s the Street of Family-Owned Funeral Homes. On slack days, the guys provide car owners with auto painting & pinstripe services. Now here’s the Masonic Lodge / Odd Fellows Hall. Forsythia out of season blooms at Pleasant Park. The little fence around a maple tree is heaped with crushed iridescent-blue mussels. Spiked aloe vera is really antlers of driftwood coated with moss. A sapling bears yellow leaves, bright dots of lichen with tiny mouths, and new magenta buds peering right from the trunk. The town square’s war memorial, a statue of soldier with weapon, bears the unexpected slogan “Cuba!”: the war in mind here is the Spanish-American. The houses have real weather vanes, topped with gilt horses or gilt ships.

Near the white gazebo on the village green, masses of starlings tear up from the ground like one solid rending black veil. I settle by the swings for my dinner from home: baked brussels sprouts with mushrooms, baked yam, roasted chestnuts, apple, and Sunspire chocolate drops. At first bite, the bells ring noon. Everyone is indoors at their holiday dinner. On the streets there is not a car in sight. Everything is silent but a jubilant mockingbird, audible for half a mile around.

Down on the Point there are two views. One is dunes and sea. One is the Boston skyline and Logan airport, over sheltered bay with rocking rowboats champing at the bit. The water here is bright flat silver. Black clouds are massing for the next storm; I was soaked by one cloudburst early today leaving home, and might be soaked again soon. The sun is poised on the downswing, ebbing early. It picks out the sand grasses, bleached and salt-dried. It washes over them in tender translucent gold.

At the main beach I hop the seawall and hike out to the water.

Seeing its pale powder green tone, for once I understand what got into Mr. Crayola’s head, calling this Sea Green. The tide is far out. Orange seaweed lies like snake skin. The sand is tinged lavender with crushed mussels in indigoes and cobalts. I pick up a half shell to take home. Its shining curve is drilled through and through by some parasitic creature long gone. The damage at all the gnawed places brings out and burnishes the real nacre inside, white mother of pearl.

On Crystal Cove I step out over the water to hunker down on a concrete block over the storm sewer, completely hidden by tall reeds, wrapped in my khaki slicker. There are quiet sounds to learn here. One is wind, crisped in the waving rushes. One is the sound of duck-skimming: mallards choosing the muckiest puddles to run at, neck outstretched, beak low, nibbling at scum. One is low-flying Canada geese brushing their wings several feet over my head: each beat sounds like creaky leather, wrung fast and hard. A few feet away across the pond, the golf course is overrun with them, honking and flapping; seen through the grass they’re like a pilgrimage of Carmelites.

At last as a rain front settles in, it’s time to walk back to the Blue Line train. The little one-lane highway leaving the center of town is deserted. Under the Logan flight path it’s a long stretch of plain wetland with one little high-stepping white egret gleaming in the rain. The tall gold reeds look dingy today. But a close inspection of the plants shows that they are really just ridden with some sooty mold or scale. Some of the square plant cells are blackened by it, some are not. A checkered past! At close range, that overall dinginess forms a bright symmetrical mosaic.

Out in the open salt wind, all the wildflowers are dried and gone, and the landscape is plain fawn and gray. But the guard rail has caught and collected a layer of land flotsam, flung from cars. The styrofoam trays, hot-drink cups, and disposable plastic lobster bibs were good insulation for keeping out the wind and frost. With that weatherbreak, near the ground, there’s a whole separate habitat with its own palette of tints. Raking aside the debris I crouch down to duck under brambles for a better view. Under here there is still live goldenrod, gold briar leaves with scarlet rosehips, scarlet creeper vine, nightshade berries, bright barberries with reddening leaves, velvety crimson sumac, and yellow button flowers with feathery leaves smelling like bitter carrot.

So here’s Thanksgiving on the shoulder of the highway, squatting knee-deep in rubbish. But there’s such a lot to see and admire down here — somebody’s overlooked autumn, lost fall, recovered Indian summer. Who would have guessed? Under the frost line in phragmites and trash, tender and glowing all over again, a swatch of season that we thought was lost and gone.

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8/29: Soviet Russian Chechen Kyrgyz Uzbek Film: Пошли в кино!

Posted on August 26, 2012 by maryangelis

Watching films at work is a great way to make a living. I did for five years, laughing and crying through movies, writing reviews for K-12 teachers on our department website, and showing the films in schools. I made my own copy of the reviews before leaving for a new city. (Good thing, too: when I left, the reviews were taken off the website.) Here are just a few old favorites, with more to come.

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And the Past Seems But a Dream: Children of Igarka
Мы из Игарки, “We are from Igarka,” 1988?

This is Volume 6 of the Glasnost Film Festival series available at The Video Project.
In 1987, some extraordinary senior citizens meet in Igarka for their 50th grade-school reunion. The celebration starts on their boat journey, as they gather as an impromptu choir. Later they reassemble in their old classroom for a high spirited lesson with their original teacher, to receive grades and banter for their old compositions! In 1937, the children had written a collection of stories about their adventures in Igarka. Their story book found readers as far away as New York. (Today their book is gathering a wider readership and increasing interest, in several new editions with historical notes.) In the film, the surviving authors begin to explore their childhood as it really was. They saw their fathers marched off to the camps. Then mothers and children were taken and left in a region 163 kilometers north of the edge of the Arctic circle; of those who survived childhood, many served and died in the war. (Contemporary footage from the 1930s onward includes starved haggard children determined to dance and play with their remaining strength. Another clip shows soldiers pulling a little cart with the torso of a comrade fallen in battle; his friends have propped him up with care in his uniform with clean handkerchiefs to cover one empty sleeve and his empty collar.) Now with the safety of decades passed, new political openness, and peer support, the classmates begin to share their feelings about the past. One man is moved to tears remembering his opportunity of a lifetime: an invitation to interview for Moscow University; but a harsh Arctic storm ruined his travel plan, and the Program selected another student instead. One cheerful woman mentions her family’s forced march away from their land, and is suddenly seized with anguish remembering how first the soldiers took from her even the skirt she was standing in. But in the end, the old friends make time to celebrate; at the farewell party, one even starts break dancing! “Igarka” is a beautiful story of childhood suffering and the power of safety and affirmation.

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Frank Capra’s The Battle of Russia
Fifth in the series Why We Fight, 1943

This was filmed to rally American support for the Soviet Union’s status as an ally in the War. (Apparently the film’s cordial tone toward the Soviet war effort raised some questions later under McCarthy.) Russians are described as being “very similar to the people of London,” as they mourn the destruction of “important military objectives, like the Russian Dumbo from the Leningrad Zoo.” The film juxtaposes actual footage with some recreated scenes, like an upbeat travelogue of nationalities waving and smiling in colorful costumes; or Leningraders after their 900 day siege, donning their own festive costumes to show us those clever folk dances. Toward the end, we are shown Moscow children celebrating Soviet “Christmas,” then holiday greetings from charming factory girls and exultant soldiers pausing at New Year’s midnight to wave and smile their “С Новым Годом. Огонь! — Happy New Year. Fire!” But the centerpiece here is extensive historic newsreel footage, effectively chosen and edited. As Government material in the public domain, the series is available for free download on line, and viewable here on YouTube. Could be useful in classroom discussions about the use of persuasive film in public service messages.

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Beshkempir: The Adopted Son.
In Kyrgyz, with English subtitles. 1998, Aktan Abdykalykov.

This is a gentle understated film about a young man coming of age in Kyrgyzstan. At first, Beshkempir is just another peer-pressured shy boy confronting adolescence with his friends. They steal a few eggs, tease the beehive, spy on Grandma’s leech cure in the bath-house, construct a woman out of clay to brainstorm how this whole honeymoon concept might work, then coax taciturn hardworking Dad to fork over the coin admission when the outdoor picture show comes to town. One day, Beshkempir catches the fancy of a neighbor girl. An envious boy retaliates by blurting out the news that Beshkempir is adopted. At the harsh revelation that he is not a literal descendant of his family’s ancestral lineage, struggling to find his own place in village life, he sets out on a lonely journey away from home and finds work as a fisherman. But the death of Grandma unites the village with her last wish: that they respect Beshkempir as her rightful grandson. In the community’s outpouring of grief over their matriarch, they give Beshkempir a homecoming and a place as chief mourner. Even stolid Dad breaks down and confides his past heartbreak at being unable to father a child: “We lost hope, but we found you.” The women’s keening funeral lament is a moving climax to the film. In the closing scene our hero rides off into the sunset with his hard-won dignity, riding his hard-won sweetheart on his bicycle.
The film is black and white, with occasional accents of color; the soundtrack is ambient sound with local birds and insects, with some folk instruments and vocals.

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Circus (Цирк), 1936, with Liubov Orlova.

Sis, who knows her cinema, was pleased to point out the innovative camera angles, cuts, and lighting which charm the eye even today.
This rollicking musical opens in Sunnyville, U.S.A., where a racist mob drives out a young mother and her adorable dark-skinned baby. (The child is played by three-year-old James Patterson, whose American father emigrated to Moscow for better job opportunities. After a distinguished career, Mr. Patterson eventually emigrated to the U.S.) Mom becomes a circus star, touring the Soviet Union as a singer shot from a cannon. But her promising career there is dominated by her jealous American producer, who holds her “race crime” as a blackmail threat. He reveals his villainous nature by swishing about in a black cape, pencil mustache, lacquered hair, and artificial inflatable muscles; he also spies on personal conversations and letters, and blusters in terrible Russian sprinkled with Germanesque English. In wholesome contrast, the blond white-clad Soviet hero is muscular, modest, and chivalrous. Among other comedy hijinks, the pratfall guy shows his simple-mindedness by attempting to lighten the baby’s complexion with a clean handkerchief. Otherwise, the child is joyfully welcomed by the circus audience of Red Army soldiers, sailors, factory workers, peasants, and representatives of many nationalities. They all laugh to scorn the American and his malicious gossip. Then, while bathing-beauty paratroopers form flower patterns with their tap shoes, the audience passes the delighted child from hand to hand, singing him promises of lifelong love, tender care, and racial equality in the USSR, all in their own native languages. Meanwhile, parading under banners of Lenin and Stalin, our hero and Mom march away singing the blockbuster hit, “Song about the Motherland (Широка страна моя родная, Wide is My Native Land).” Mom is overjoyed with her new life as a Soviet citizen. And why not? The Red Army and a dozen nationalities are back at her job, minding the kid.

For all of her 72 years, Liubov Orlova maintained her highest standards of health, beauty, and fashion. My late Russian godmother, born in 1929, loved to tell about Orlova’s very last public appearance. The fans raved about her ravishing charisma, unaware that the star of stage and screen had rallied all her energy for the greatest performance of her life: a lavish personal encore in her last days with pancreatic cancer.

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Revolt of the Daughters-in-Law, 1984. Director Melis Abzalov
Kelinlar qo’zg’oloni Uzbek title (Wikipedia link)
Бунт невесток, Uprising of the Brides
In Uzbek with perky synthesized pop soundtrack.

Grandma Farmonbibi is the loving reigning matriarch of the seven sons and 50-odd relatives in her courtyard household. Not all the dialogue makes it in to the English subtitles, and a lot of what did was adorably garbled in translation, but appealing moments do trickle through. The plot begins when Youngest Son brings home his bride, Nigora. Nigora wins the admiration of all the women with her “perfect manners” — three days of face-veiled hand-folded silence. Then comes the shock: the courtyard relatives catch her at morning calistenics, still fully veiled but in a leotard outfit. Next, “Sportwife Gymnast Girl” rocks everybody’s world by suggesting that Youngest Son pitch in with the dishes and shopping! To cap it all, Nigora reveals that she feels affection for her bridegroom: “If you want family to be unified, a wife should greet her husband like a HOLIDAY.” Grandma, nicknamed “State Calculation” for her keen eye and logical mind, is scandalized: “At her age, I hardly dared look at my husband.” But in time, ripples of this new attitude fan out to the other six couples. One older brother secretly turns himself in to the local police, begging for a night in jail: it’s his only chance at privacy from the family, to apply a hair-restoring creme turban in keeping with the mid-life renewal of mutual romance in his marriage. Another brother astounds his wife by inviting her to sit in his arms to enjoy the moonlight: “Dear, the frogs are croaking so delicate; thank God, you still love me!” Next, when the men are out of the house, Nigora teaches slimming calisthenics to a happy courtyard of trousered sisters-in-law. In this world gone mad, the shaken “State Calculation” confers with another local elder for guidance. He kindly advises her that times have changed since their own young days. At last, Matriarch Farmonbibi grants the two youngest lovebirds their wish, letting the two move to their own rooms to live happily ever after.
This romping generational period piece could strike some sympathetic chimes in quite a few cultures.

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Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears
Москва слёзам не верит, 1979

Three girls come to Moscow in 1958 looking for husbands, then compare notes 20 years later. The central character unexpectedly becomes a single mom, determined to keep and raise her own daughter. After years of hard work and loneliness, she carves a place as a professional woman to be reckoned with. Then on the commuter train she finds a special guy who can cook and clean and fight off young hooligans. In 1978 the film was a runaway hit. Single viewers even started taking the commuter rail in hopes of finding their own soulmate. Today its endearingly colorful characters and smart snappy dialogue are still popular with young Russians and their parents alike. Moscow may not stop for tears, but a girl’s best friend is still — other girls who stick together.

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Dans, Grozny dans (Dutch title)
The Damned and the Sacred (English title. Why? Why? There is nothing damned about the people in this film!)
Director: Jos de Putter, Netherlands, 2003.
Copenhagen Film Festival prize winner in 2003.
No mention in Wikipedia or movie sites. Maybe someone can explain that to me.
In Russian and Chechen with subtitles.

A splendid documentary showing the dance and vocal youth ensemble Daymokhk (= Fatherland) of Chechnya, and the mentorship of coach Ramzan Akhmadov and his wife. The heartbreak comes through in the sensitive choice of everyday detail and lyrical beauty: as the film begins, Coach and Mrs. Akhmadov look out the window at their war-torn city, hoping that the water truck can get through to them today; a girl returns to her ruined home and marvels at a tree blooming in the courtyard. The film builds the viewer’s awareness of just how much adversity is endured by this talented ensemble. The film is refreshingly free of intrusive voiceover commentary. Young people and adults communicate in respectful perceptive ways in sincerity, courage, and even self-deprecating humor. Highlights of the concert take on a transcendent loveliness as a pure affirmation of life; viewers of all ages can enjoy the choreography of the stately ethereal Lezginka, and the knife throw flourishes galore. In the wings before the show, Coach strokes the brow of each boy in blessing, then with a smile lets the girls pound his fist with theirs for good luck as they soar past him to the stage. These flashes of spontaneous rapport are the secret of Daymokhk, as one remarkable husband and wife sacrifice much of their own safety and wellbeing to keep these children. their spirits, and their culture alive.

___________________________
Prisoner of the Mountains (Кавказский пленник, Prisoner of the Caucasus), 1996
Director, Sergei Bodrov, Sr.; lead actors Sergei Bodrov, Jr. and Oleg Men’shikov.

Russian Army soldiers Vania and Sasha are captured and chained together in a Chechen home prison cell. The father of the house has seized them out of desperation, as hostages for the release of his own son captured by Russians. The two soldiers have antagonistically opposed perspectives on their options for survival. But their desperate circumstances compel them to join forces. Story-telling is essential for the development of all the characters and their relationships — the young Russians, the grim father, his young daughter Dina, and Hassan their silent armed guard. In a turning point scene, kind-hearted young Vania and cynical Sasha exchange childhood stories. Vania tells of falling down a deep well, and his parents’ adamant search to save him. (The actor died six years later, at age 30; Sergei was directing a film of his own when he and the cast were lost in a landslide in North Ossetia. His parents kept up their own relentless search for the body of their son.)

This is a rare film about ethical choices and outcomes. Time after time the characters approach dilemmas where the Hollywood audience could expect violence, sex, or both. In every case, Director Bodrov sets up the circumstances — then lets the characters create their own higher ground. The film is remarkable for its respectful view of the Chechen people and their suffering in the war, especially the father’s silent grief when his own son is killed and his hostages are no longer his last hope. Dina’s own hopes for a kindly marriage arrangement rest on her only wealth, a dowry of two Russian slaves and one necklace. But she renounces both, tossing the shackle key and her necklace to Vania in the basement dungeon. Vania refuses to unlock the chains and flee, knowing that if he escapes Dina will be punished. Her father arrives home, picks up a rifle, and orders his remaining prisoner to the edge of a nearby cliff….

More films to come!

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Beshkempir, Советский фильм, K-12, Prisoner of the Mountains, Russian film, Soviet film | Leave a comment

9/25/13: Platinum

Posted on July 31, 2012 by maryangelis

In the dog realm, she thinks of her classmate as a white Russian borzoi wolfhound: high-float walk, horizon eyes, gracious temper until a first glimpse of wolf crosses his sights. Then he’s gone, snowstreak to the distance.

As dog breeds go she’d be more of a collie from some Albert Payson Terhune bedtime story; counting noses, nudging heels, hovering the flock safe home to Sunnybank. In human terms she’s 19 in 1976, sitting at a desk adorned with names in hearts & arrows. Her own business, if only she were minding it, is a page of Russkii iazyk by I. Pul’kina and E. Zakhava-Nekrasova. But as secondary-imperfective verbs process across the blackboard, her attention sidewinds to a beam of September sun. It comes a little later every day, shafting through the chalk motes to strike the tossable sweep of hair of her classmate near the window. She wonders what color just describes his quality of blond, when gold is kindled past itself to something precious, halfway back to silver.

Up front, the Chair of the Department is all timing and grace: high boots, long skirt of charcoal wool, black turtleneck, Pavlov Posad flowered shawl with cloisonne brooch. The Chair points the chalk and springs a question at the sungazing co-ed. (Shall we give the girl a name? Cleo, perhaps. Wasn’t that Pinocchio’s goldfish?) Cleo snaps to attention, one beat too late for her cue. To her chagrin the question bounces elsewhere to elsewhom as a kindly mirth zephyrs through the students. She ducks behind her text in case the brightly backlit borzoi neighbor should be watching. But unlike her he scans the board, flipping his pencil end over end, turns a page.

That’s his mindset every morning. They all gather before class “to storm Berlin” — to wait for German I to surrender the room. The classmates jostle in high spirits, chatting about grammar assignments or plans for the weekend. But he drops his worn green knapsack on the hallway floor, sits cross-legged in jeans and denim jacket, flips open his textbook and the lid of his coffee. His stillness is not mere indulgence with the bantering and fun; it’s a separate plane of communion with his book, and the language transmitted in each page.

It came as no surprise that in the end, at the graduation awards assembly, the moderators called him on stage over and over as his accomplishments came home to roost. Time after time he left his family to climb the steps and trek across to the podium, until many jocular catcalls suggested that they leave a chair on stage for him. (Cleo’s mom tapped his name on the program. “Remember this young man,” she said. “Remember his name. We’re going to hear of him again some day.”) His peers roared with delight at his harvest of triumph. Cleo bit her nails, fretting at the sudden idea that if people praise a comrade loudly enough, they may forget to notice what the comrade is going through, or what he might need. But they all knew one thing: given the choice tonight, he’d just as soon go catch a smoke in the courtyard and smuggle his coffee in to the language lab for a quiet evening.

That low-key demeanor meandered through his droll anecdotes, mostly at his own expense. Once he told about a mountain camping trip, where he and his friends enjoyed the sunset with their transistor radio playing a bucolic John Denver tune. Then, a camper at another site lost control of a supper fire. In a flash everyone’s equipment and belongings were engulfed as the mountain burned. Amid the flames, the radio played cheerfully while campers ran for their lives. The DSM-II, he concluded, awarded them their own entry: fear of the words “Sunshine on My Shoulder (Makes Me Happy).”

In his serene lack of self-concern he often stayed at the library until the wee hours, missing dinners at the cafeteria. He took his smoking breaks in his open denim jacket in the language building courtyard. He’d light up there and sky-gaze, sitting on a snowy wall beside some devotional statue or other that lingers in memory as injured in some way. (Madonna sans halo? Child without hands?) He was equally assiduous even at home; in a blizzard when the furnace failed in his group apartment, his roommates retreated to their respective beds to conserve heat. They reported later that he opened and lit the gas stove and studied on the floor, smacking at cockroaches fleeing their own tiny campsite. He shrugged off his hoarse sore throats and common colds until a genteel cough became walking pneumonia, landing him a little sojourn at the university medical center across town. There he was soon presiding at a bedside salon of friends and a morning round of medical providers. As they bustled about with his vital signs he gazed at the ceiling, wistfully proposing new hospital protocols on blood tests, monitor signal volume, pressure cuffs, stethoscope temperature and bed baths, all to ensure patients a more sleepless, uncomfortable, and embarrassing stay.

The scene had one witness who never confessed. His admiring classroom neighbor had heard that he was ill. Cleo showed up on the ward to see what he needed — language tapes or soup or just a hello. The hospital seemed huge to her. Peering myopically at room numbers, flattening up against the wall for rushing gurneys, puzzled by loudspeaker codes and lights and alarms and balloon bouquets, she lost her bearings and could find no one with leisure to assist. Then in the commotion a signal reached her: an undertone of silk that she knew right away as the timbre of his voice. Step by step, winding through the nursing stations and the noise, she lost and caught and lost it again until it set her straight and she homed in. Slowly the features of his speech caught her ear: crisp consonants, fully rounded vowels, softness and languor with a wry hint of drawl, a combination she’d imagine from the Scarlet Pimpernel. At last she found the place and peered in. His monologue had the attending physician and residents laughing, hands raised in surrender at his opinions, roped & throwed in their own corral. But what caught her eye was an alabaster quality in his fatigue; for a cold to send him here, he must have been rundown and overstrung for quite some time. It made her want to turn them all out and block the door so he could get some sleep. But she also sensed that he didn’t want solicitude, and that hers was out of line here. She has no memory of ever entering the room or saying hello. She does remember retreating to a waiting room alcove behind a tank of angelfish for fervent prayers of intercession and a quiet cry. Finally she looked up and saw on the wall a splendid photograph of the Peter and Paul Fortress Cathedral at sunset on the Neva River. She took this as an omen that he was going to be just fine. She left him in peace with his visitors, and went home. Soon he was back in class, cheerful as ever. She went back to the hospital to ask where one could buy a Fortress Cathedral photo like theirs. But the poster was gone, leaving only a less sun-faded square on the wall. The head nurse and information desk agreed that their Arts committee did not go in for Soviet landmarks, and no such view of Peter & Paul had ever hung on their walls. Only the angelfish know.

In the winter the campus held a Carnaval do Brasil, a gala so large and festive that even the Eastern Bloc cohorts were all going. The girls at the campus Russian House invited “Cleochka” to come back home with them after and spend the night on their sofa, so she could stay out until all hours. The girls fluffed her hair, and touched her up with some lipstick and eyeshadow. Off they went.

She followed them through the cafeteria door, where all the movable walls had been folded away to make room. It was a vast echoing darkness of sweating walls, vibrating floor, pulsing lights, packed crowd in bared skin and feathers and masks, and the deafening rhythms of a genuine ensemble of Brazilian samba. Cleo was swept yon & hither by ecstatic young people in a winding conga bunny-hop. In that level of eyestrain and overwhelm her wits and memory blanked out, leaving her with no recollection of the evening at all except for one detail. At one point, still gripping her knapsack, she washed up hard against a table and was stopped by a firm palm at her back. The head of the class himself turned her around, seated her sideways right on his knee, and went on talking to his friends. Just as if she’d always been there.

Cleo’s predicament at Carnaval calls to mind a conference several months after September 11th of 2001, when my supervisor and I were obliged to travel to Washington, D.C. She was kind enough to treat me to the picturesque ice rink at the National Gallery of Art. She laced my skates properly for me, then coached and guided as I inched along gripping the rail. At last she heartened me with the battle cry “Are you gonna make me feel guilty for dragging your sorry butt out on this ice?” With that encouragement I resolved: forge ahead, but tuck and roll at the first sign of falling. After that it was a thrilling time, half of it upright on skates and the other half shooting across the ice on my back. In the center, a group of men in good suits skated in a circle, carrying on a grave conversation in murmured Arabic. Every three minutes I plowed into them supine with my arms and legs waving in air. Each time as the men went on talking, one or the other would scoop me up and with a little pat send me on my way.

That’s how it was for Cleo in her Brazil experience, when a gentlemanly right action at the right moment on a steady lap grounded a young person who couldn’t make her way. Now, a boy with a personal interest would have given her a sip of his sangria, or a dance, or some banter, or a chair, or the rest of his lap. But no; once he had her settled he went on talking to his friends, coolly shooting down historical and script-direction flaws plaguing Glenda Jackson as Elizabeth the First. He proposed an improved dialogue between the political figures in her retinue, switching accents and voices in a deadpan rendition that left his listeners pounding the table in hyperventilation. (Who could notice a samba school flown in specially from Brazil, when the Queen of England is holding court with a styrofoam cup scepter?) Cleo sat in rapture at this amazing turn of fortune, half breathing, balancing her weight on her toes, afraid she was too heavy for him. When the girlfriends called it time to go, he gave her a fleeting kindly smile and set her on her feet with a consoling little back pat.

On Russian Night, the great hall was a happy madhouse of excitement for the talent show and party. The language club students careened through the halls with shopping carts of Busy Baker crackers and cheese, pirozhki, green punch, and “Odessa” discount vodka. The stars of the show polished comedy skits in the courtyard, hustled props backstage, and altered costumes with staples and tape. Soviet dignitaries put in an appearance, keeping to themselves and checking their watches until they could call it a night. Then, there was a surprise in the program. Our unofficial valedictorian took the stage for a solo with a Russian House girl on backup alto, for the World War II ballad Ekh, Dorogi! or “Ah, You Roads!” (Here’s a recording, with vocalist Oleg Pogudin: Олег Погудин Эх, дороги ) At the opening notes the ruckus in the great hall crashed to silence. The audience caught their breaths and slid to the edge of their seats. The standing-room bystanders hustled to the front. From the wings, even the Soviet dignitaries could be seen shouldering in to the edge of the stage to gaze up through the lights. What riveted them was not only two pure voices aloft or two luminous faces (she had a laughing heart and laughing eyes, and as it happened died very young). What struck them then, and strikes harder now, was a performer who was simply singing his thoughts to his companion without performing at all, as if the public were not there. When the song ended no one moved. Seconds of silence ticked by before the audience kicked the roof off the house.

Half the Blocmates went on summer abroad in Leningrad, to a dorm outside the Peter-Paul Fortress. Cleo rarely saw her seat neighbor now; he placed in the top class, and she placed in one near the bottom. But he sat in front of her on the bus traveling into Novgorod. The bus entered a bustling market square of customers and vendors. From the raised seat view, the women on the ground formed a crowded procession of hairdos in upbeat hues. Her neighbor sat alone studying a small guidebook (brushing up on Finnish?). But while turning the page he gave the briefest abstract glance out the window, and blinked at the bobbing coiffures in blonde, red, fawn, carrot, bronze, crimson, brass. “Great Barrier Reef,” he murmured, and went on reading.

That night for supper the group was assigned to the “Detinets,” a large stone grotto of a restaurant inside the Novgorod Kremlin. It held a long banquet table in the center, and private seating in alcoves carved high up in the walls. Waiters with trays served alcove patrons by springing nimbly up the wall on a series of massive graduated tree stumps. (After 40 years, the restaurant was shut down in 2009. Explanations vary. Some say Orthodox officials found it unseemly to serve honey mead in a historic church. Others say the fire marshals considered tree trunks to be poor footing for a mass evacuation.) The food was delicious, starting and ending with a stone ramekin cup of onion soup with a handful of bread and cheese melted on top. Cleo was famished and wolfed it down, waiting for supper, not knowing that she had just devoured it. The other diners were content with the famous mead and bottles of vodka from potatoes, from buffalo grass, from berries, from deep jacket pockets. Soon toasts for Russian-American friendship rang out from tables to alcoves and back. Some peacemaker noticed that Cleo was not drinking. He tumbled from an alcove to set down a glass of spirits and to make sure she drank it down for harmony on earth. She gave him a smile and many pretty thanks and regrets, holding the glass out for him to take back, secretly wishing that someone in this restaurant would have sense enough to bring her even pretzel sticks or a dinner mint. But this man was not about to be crossed in public before his wife and colleagues. He grabbed her glass hand while patrons shouted her down and egged him on with cutlery-banging chants of “Davay! Davay! C’mon, c’mon!” while he forced the drink to her lips.

Then, the glass was plucked from their hands. Cleo’s first choice of defender locked eyes with the man and tossed back her drink like water. “Ona ne privykla, she isn’t used to this,” he murmured with a bow, laying a steady handgrip on her shoulder. Then, he fairly assailed the man with praise for his exquisite taste, guessing and naming correctly some special ingredient in the distillation (Ambergris? amanita? aconite? bear bile? brimstone? Who knows?). The man pounded his back, gave him an apology about that little misunderstanding with the girl, and to hearty applause dragged his new American in triumph up the tree trunks to enchant his family and friends. And with that, a restaurant of 80-proof volatile emotions was reined on a dime by a verbal charioteer, a student 20 years old.

Then came graduation and his wedding, and he went on in school to invent a career combining three professions and several countries while raising his family. Some 25 years later Cleo looked him up and sent him an email to thank him for his intervention at the Detinets restaurant. That email exchange was the only conversation the two of them ever had. He emailed right back, freely confessing that he did not recall the incident in question. His reply was so elegant and gracious that it took her a few readings to grasp that he did not actually remember which student she was. He still wished her every success and happiness. He also assured her that for any small gesture on his part, her email of thanks after so many years was a courteous surprise leaving him “priiatno oshelomlën” — pleasantly astonished, or pleasantly stunned. The participle root is shlem, or helmet, with associations at least as old as the Kremlin at Novgorod. He meant that her words unarmed him, smiting the knight’s helmet from his head.

These memories in random order came to mind just the other day. I was cooking supper then, and had the strangest sense that he was standing right behind me in the kitchen. (This does not indicate psychic powers. It only shows that some of us reminisce a lot. Though in this case I asked God what possible use there could be in the gift of a good memory for certain people, when these people don’t need me to think of them at all.) Then, lidding pots and drying hands, I sat down to check email.

And there in my inbox was a message from a trusty schoolfellow off the old Bloc, sending us alumni a sudden and untimely bulletin about our old classmate. Struck helmetless by the news, I looked for and discovered website after website in English and Russian with testimonials and eulogies all about him. I learned in awe just how far he had gone, in what amazing ways, and how many many people were touched by his work and his integrity. Then, there was a tribute website about him written by his family. And with their words, everything clicked into place: the whole point and the meaning of being Cleo at a schooldesk with an eye for light. “Remember me,” he might have told her then; “but not for my sake. Write something down for my children.”

This is what I sent the family then, these few stories about a virtue which is often under- (or over-) looked: a man’s goodness to the small and random people who he didn’t notice at the time, and didn’t remember later on. That courtesy is one more bright thread in his platinum existence, connecting everything: Fortress at sunset, prayers with angelfish, snowfall on marble Madonna and her broken Son. A youth at 20 in the footlights, singing us goodbye:

Ah, you roads, of dust and mist.
You never know where fate will lead
when bullets sing; perhaps the open steppe,
To fall on folded wing.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Russian language study | Leave a comment

7/31: The Carrot-Chopping Prayer

Posted on July 8, 2012 by maryangelis

The house was a plain white clapboard, built in 1930 give or take, insulated with a layer of horsehair embedded in the plaster. At $250 per month, my studiolette was a cozy work/sleep room lined up with a smaller kitchen and smaller bathroom, all with tall narrow windows facing north. For bathing, there was a claw-foot tub with a convenience called a Danish — a yard of rubber tubing to hold overhead, fitted to a small outlet for bathwater. The floor had a metal spade-shaped door that could open in winter to let a burst of warm air whoosh through the house every 15 minutes. In summer, air conditioning came from hand-sewed muslin dipped in water and hung over the curtain rods.

This was summer, and no question. My new vegetable garden baked out no matter how much dishwater and tub water I carried outside to pour on the cracked ground; nothing would grow but devil’s claw and very toxic pokeweed. The candles melted. The freezer filled up with ice every day, which I chipped off with a wooden spoon to place inside the warm refrigerator. At least the heat was useful for drying food; I tacked a lot of strings across the kitchen windows, and wove in a carload of fiber-rich daikon radish greens brought from Arkansas upon request by a good pal on an agriculture internship. And at least my quarters didn’t spring the surprises that one charming stone farmhouse did just outside town; a fellow student came downstairs one morning to a wriggling living room floor, where many bitty rattlesnake hatchlings were exploring the brave new world.

We relied on the county bank with its big thermometer outside, and its recorded telephone line with an elated male voice proclaiming time and temperature. The radio gave us the Comfort Index, like a wind chill factor in reverse, calculating just how miserable we felt. It also broadcast Livestock Emergency Alerts, letting farmers know when to get the cows in the barn, or out of it, or whatever cows need to cool off. Storm warning time was late afternoon, when NPR ran an especially popular show (probably “All Things Considered,” but I’ll check and make sure). I switched on public radio only to get bulletins when the sky turned green, so to this day its perky theme music makes me edgy.

Still, the town had real summer charm. To the south we had a fire watch tower with room for conversation and lunch on top, and a view of fields for miles around. On the north, the broad sand river levee was perfect for strolling and picking watercress. On the west, the hilltop had a tiny historic cemetery, a good place to admire sunsets and watch clouds of fireflies and eat mulberries off some nearby trees. The wonderful downtown history museum was a cultured refuge with a gazebo garden and winding path of vintage bricks. The central playground had a vintage locomotive for the kids to climb and scream on, and a popular library. The campus carillon tower played chimes on a hillside blooming with clouds of redbud trees every spring. There were evening band concerts in the park for picnicking families and friends. Local artisans produced a tempting array of sprouts, fresh-baked sourdough breads, and tofu made the same day; one of them opened a popular micro-brewery in the fully restored historic opera house. The politically progressive food coop sold just-picked produce, some of it from their own garden. Their free giveaway box supplied many of my clothes and household goods; even their compost heap offered perfectly usable items for dinner.

The townspeople made the best of those arduous summers. The 4th of July parade included a tame llama, and food coop cashiers in an annual display of synchronized shopping-cart marching. A dear talented buddy had a fine time hanging half out his window to record severe thunder for his brilliant computerized music compositions. The ladies at the retirement home got in a friendly bet about whether it really was hot enough to “fry an egg on the sidewalk”; they made the front page of the city paper by cracking an egg on the pavement and then laughing at its behavior. The doughnut shop flashed a neon sign at 3:00 a.m., when the fresh batches were put on the racks, and students would throng in the door for a snack in the cool of the wee hours. The local Buddhist temple chose 3:00 a.m. too for their three-hour Sunday service; their little Zen Center house offered rides to anyone who called, and starting at 1:00 the monks in their feed caps would set out in a truck to pick up people for meditation. One afternoon some fellow students brought a truck inner tube to a pond and went swimming. To enjoy the breeze they sat on their towels just as they were for the drive back into town. Then at the drive-in burger stand they wished a little late that they’d put on a stitch or two before pulling up below the cute girl at the microphone.

One third of my income that year (the total annual gross was $6,700; I just checked the tax return) came from proofreading science journals. Each author submitted a typed manuscript, and the publishing house covered it with format markings, then reprinted it as a glossy galley proof. Proofreaders had to make sure that every marking was correctly carried out in the galleys, and complied with the detailed style sheet for that particular journal. For the sake of accuracy, we were not allowed to visually compare the two texts. Instead we had to read the author’s pages out loud into a tape recorder, describing every editing mark: “Capitalize this letter D in mid-word” or “end boldface Courier 10 point text here” or “add opening double curly braces.” Then we listened to our taped recital of editing instructions while reading and marking up the galley with soft red pencils. We were paid a base rate for the job, plus a 12 cent bonus every time we reported a mistake. (One astute proofreader realized that in an article of numeric tables, every last zero had been type-set as a capital letter O. That jackpot must have kept her in 3:00 a.m. doughnuts for a long time.)

The topics included mathematical calculations of crystal structures, prolific chemical equations with calculus symbols and Greek letters, and one about a type of bird which hatches chicks and then carries the chick droppings long distances in its beak, so that prowling predators would follow these little clues away from the nest. (Researchers followed the parents on many housecleaning trips, graphing the time of day, distance, and direction of all droppings dropped.) Another expedition team found that genetic distinctions within one species of spider could be ascertained easily by measuring the thickness of the individual hairs on the spider’s legs.

To save time and to stay awake through all those formulas and equations and literature citations, I devised representational sound effects as shorthand. High falsetto meant italic, growl was boldface, Donald Duck voice was underline. I worked out punctuation taps, yips, beeps, tongue clicks, glottal stops, whistles, and trills. I should have kept the tapes; they sounded like Science Hour with Spike Jones.

In the noonday sun, that horsehair plaster could do only so much insulating and no more. I’d have to take breaks to wet the muslin curtains, sip some roasted brown-rice tea, and take a nap on the wood floor wrapped in a wet towel with both feet in a bowl of water. When the heat was too much for working, I’d recreate the Russian sauna effect. I’d ride my bicycle hard up the main hill, come home, draw a hot hip bath of daikon radish greens (said to help expel toxins, but who knows?), then get out and wrap up in a sheet and blanket and pass out on the floor for a good sweat. Twenty minutes later I’d wake up refreshed, rinse off the sweat under The Danish, throw the water and greens on the garden, wash the blanket and sheet to hang at the window, and pour some more rice tea. (Note: I would never try a wacky extreme stunt like this in a heat wave now, and neither should you.)

Did we mention the neighbors?

They moved in as tenants of the stately Victorian house next door. That summer there were 6 or so students, strapping he-men with optional shirts and shoes. Regularly I gave a friendly nod or wave while passing the house, and tried saying hello a few times, just in the capacity of a neighbor using the same neighborhood. But it was like a squirrel trying to hail the Anheuser-Busch Clydesdales; they never responded or seemed to know I was there. Instead their gusto level ran to drinking wagers, stereo parties, auto revving, sports on TV, sunbathing on the roof with the radio, and visitors day and night who tended to drive or walk by, shouting long complex messages instead of knocking on the door and going inside.

All my windows faced their south windows 20 feet away, offering the full gamut of personal sound effects. At one 3:00 a.m. party, someone turned the stereo to the repeat setting for a couple of hours of a new Janet Jackson hit. The decibel level was actually enough to ricochet distortion against the houses across the street. I thought of calling the police, but couldn’t hear my own dial tone and figured the precinct dispatcher wouldn’t hear anything but “Nasty! Ugh. Nasty boys. Deet! Deet! Doodley-Doot & Dee Dee.”

To be fair, the fellas might have a blog today about their stress living next door to an arachnophile who talked, chirped, and beeped all day long in various voices all to herself about leg hair on spiders. Maybe it drove them to drink. Except, their windows faced four sides, and mine faced one. Besides, they were bigger and more loud.

You already see where this is going.

In following their bliss, the boys and their sports cheers, peppery language, and other visceral sound bites were drowning out my recorded hours of painstaking falsetto, tongue clicks, and whistle editing code. One especially hot night while testing a folk remedy for fever (= place green-leaf compresses on the sufferer’s brow), I found that a 60 minute recording of numerals was unusable because of ambient racket. Soon I was weeping hopelessly over my lost numeric tables, pacing the room with a lot of dripping cabbage on my head.

I prayed steadily over this all along, remembering to “Give thanks in all things.” After all, Corrie and Betsy ten Boom did just that in The Hiding Place. They offered praise even for the fleas in the concentration camp barrack, and later learned it was the fleas that had repelled the guards away from their Bible study. So, I began raising every candid noise as an offering, every time. That meant prayer while tape-recording with my head and upper body and tape deck under the futon for soundproofing; prayer during a rare quiet stroll one Sunday morning after a keg party, through hundreds of styrofoam cups rotating all over the street, bouncing pok-pok-pok in the breeze; and, prayer while chopping carrots at suppertime one day.

The carrot greens were washed and ready to strip from their stems and mince for the skillet. The carrots were lined up on the wood cutting board. During some TV match of the century next door, with goals scored and heated suggestions that the referee be given what-for and heave-ho, I was murmuring a prayer while dragging my tired dispirited mind through one even angled knife stroke, then the next even stroke, then the next.

And then, to the rhythm of the prayer, the strokes added up to some kind of rhythm and symmetry and rightness. The knife cuts took no effort at all. It felt as if there were no I, exerting my own force on the knife. Instead, the energy of the sunlight in the window flashed through the knife and then flowed through the carrot pieces. All the elements — light, metal, vegetable, wood — expressed their essences in freedom and balance. For an instant my mind let go of the havoc next door. And then a whole new prayer came to mind: “Thank you for letting me hear my neighbors. Because some day, one of those boys will say something that I need to know.”

Right then, two things happened.
One, the light from the window took on a striking soft gold glow on the maple cutting board, the beautiful saffron tones of the carrots, and the sparkling water drops in the feathery emerald greens.
Two, next door everything fell absolutely silent.

“HEY! Hey they interrupted the –” a voice protested, then instantly fell to a thoughtful mumble. “Whuzzat? ‘Tor-na-do warn-ing, seek shelter immediately.’ Huh.”

I gasped, flicking on the radio in my dash to the front porch. Outside, there was no breath of wind. The birds fell silent. That fond gold light took on a brass jaundice tint while the clouds sagged in darkening quilted patches. Sure enough: the local weather broadcast announced a tornado in air, heading toward town.

I turned off the gas stove and radio, yanked the plug from the tape recorder, and bolted to the dark storm cellar. There I perched with pounding heart on a broken wheelbarrow. We had a bit of hail, then a soft rain. Then the sun came out and the birds began to sing in a fresh breeze, so I tiptoed upstairs and looked around, wiping cobwebs off my face. The storm front was already racing away. My spike of fright melted in an endorphin rush of elation. I kicked off my sandals and drew in the energy of the melting hailstones through my feet, breathing deeply, marveling at the delicate clearing sunset.

My neighbors had taken the safety warning seriously by seeking shelter on their roof, with binoculars and a couple of six packs. The gold light flowing through my carrots was the same gold as the clearing sky, pouring itself over the boys and their flaxen rumpled hair, their tan skin, even the frosty beers in their hands.

Then, it all seemed so simple. Their candid noises, wakeful nights, raised glasses, pounding stereo, girls shrieking with hilarity — in this fallen post-Eden world, it was just one more human striving toward a paradise birthright of celebration, communion, and pleasure. We were all going to the Kingdom.

“Thank you,” I called up to them, putting down my sandals. “You could have saved my life.”
They stared down at me.
“What?” said one of them. “I’ve never even seen you before.”
“The special bulletin. ‘Tornado warning, seek shelter.'”
They blinked.
“What were you doing inside our house?” said one, curling his lip. (How drunk was I last night?)
I pointed to my room. “I’ve never been in your house. But those are my windows, there; I was fixing supper.”
“You heard me say that? Through the window?”
Their jaws dropped. So did the beer cans, nearly.
I just stood there, rapt in how beautiful they were. All that life force! How glorious!

Folding my hands I bowed to them and took my sandals inside.

Right after that, a letter came in the mail. My department on campus awarded me a summer scholarship for Polish Language. It paid more money than proofreading. But, there was one condition: to study full time, I had to give up all outside employment. So I finished the spider leg hair article, and the Press was very kind about giving me a two-month break. That meant leaving the studiolette behind each day for an air conditioned library and language lab, and edifying chats with kindly faculty in their pleasant shady offices.

And after that evening, noise from next door just made me think “Oh, they sound in good health, God love ’em.” Something shifted on their side too. It’s not like they started bringing me pie and Awake! Magazine. But the guys moved the TV room to the other side of the house. When the young ladies came over, they went up to the gable rooms and started closing the windows and even pulling down the shades. The parties ended. One of the guys came out one day and clipped the hedge. Even their outbursts were different: “Oh, sugar!” “What the Fritz are you trying to do?” “Well, ferrr — Christmas sakes!” or my favorite, a roar of “GAAAAAAAAAAAAA Jack, that keg fell right on my shoe, I wish you would be more careful!”

It was raining the last day of my summer term. I came home and saw that the stately Victorian was empty. It was purchased by two earnest women investing in a fixer-upper. For their fixing-upping they rose early each day, and we exchanged waves as I headed to my new additional campus job teaching English as a Second Language.

“But what about the carrots?” someone will ask. They turned out fine. Bit of sesame oil, garlic, shake of tamari & ginger. Not bad.