false dream

The Wednesday before Thanksgiving I went to the Cantab lounge for the third time. There, in the basement, people read their poems at an open mic (the second time I went and someone I had gone on an okay cupid date read), then an invited performer uses their slot (the first time I went it was Melissa Lozada-Oliva, whose poems I had already read) and then the slam poetry, which always happens too late for me to stay.

This time, it was me who read a poem at the open mic, followed by the drunken clapping of people who do not know my face and therefore are not as thrilled to see me. People who only understand poetry that burns, that competes as to who. is. the. most. miserable. I AM. if. I. speak. like. this. SEE MY RAGE. swallow my sadness i.am.shoving.it.down.your.throat. Who forget to value words and who just want to be heard by drowning out the rest of the screaming crowd. I am wrong to say these things. I was very excited to go there the first couple times, the idea of seeing some sort of active artistic scene, the odd good line in a mountain off poor attempts more than I would find otherwise. When I saw someone I had spoken to the first night working at a the coffee shop near me, I was thrilled at feeling like I knew people here who did words. But I haven't been able to go after the third time.

I read an old poem because I told myself "I will mourn. I will do it constructively, healthfully, watch me learn to mourn the way we are told we should". So I read a poem I had read for This Bardian Life, because it is something I can be grateful for - being told to speak my words aloud by Zappa, to let my voice be heard off of the page. Be glad for what he gave me. After I sat down I still wanted to disappear but then I got an e-mail and everything again seemed taken from under my feet is such a small pathetic way.

Hey Roomies,

I've decided to move out of the apartment. I found a place for mid-December. I know this is rushed but I'm positive you can find a roommate very quickly since this apartment has been extremely easy to fill in the past even during odd times. If someone else wants my room let me know before I post in the next day or two to Craigslist.

Thanks

The fighting that I had been ignoring had come to its apex. All three had talked to me at some point about it, and I just listened and waited for it to go away, for so many things to go away. About ten interviews later we have someone moving in, two weeks from now. I helped Therese move her things downstairs while her boyfriend just sat there. She told me to take a break and I said I was fine and she said "you're so stubborn" "when have I ever been stubborn with you?" "never! but I am stubborn too, so I can recognize it in other people" and we both smiled at that.
I helped Adrian move into Therese's old room - painting the walls, transporting carpet from home depot, cut by what seemed like robotic mice housed in a giant machine. I can hear the sigh of relief reverberating around the apartment. Hopefully everyone will be happier now.
 
I woke up this morning on Emily's house, from a dream in which Zappa was still alive.

He was slightly delusional, but I could still recognize him through that, having raced down elevators at the mall to find him and a bunch of his Bard friends at a cafe. He said "the first time I left this earth forever..." meaning that he thought he had killed himself twice, but he had returned, alive, and we had just lost track of him and he had thought he was dead and so that's how the misinformation surrounding his death (or lack thereof) happened. I ran towards him and jumped on him for a hug and he spun me around and then we all passed out Christmas or Return of Zappa gifts from him to us. I got a bunch of measuring spoons and a glittery golden pin. He folded up around my legs, lean and long, like a child and looked up thoughtfully. He said something and then added "but I guess that's considered to be an auditory hallucination", in an irritable tone, and we told him that that's okay, that that's not inherently bad, that we just want him safe and happy and taken care of.

I woke up and he was still dead. I had fallen out of touch and couldn't help. I had begun to morn before he had died because I assumed he was gone, not even taking into consideration the parts of him that were still there. I wanted to go back to sleep but I couldn't.


There are so many good things too but I'm afraid that if I pin them down on paper they will disappear, unable to exist without vibration, doubt and exhaustion. But I'll try again soon.

dismantle

After heroically fighting cancer for eight years, a member of my community; wife, mother of two, sister, aunt, and friend – passed away.

---

I feel like there is a haze between my eyeballs and my skull; hopefully this cold will dissipate soon.

Wednesday on the way back from NYC I saw the collapsed buildings in Harlem as we pulled out of Grand Central Station. Nine hours after the explosion, the debris was still strewn across a couple blocks, the firemen swarmed around the buildings, and the smoke indifferently rose up to the sky.

Last Friday Hannah threw a small party. We read animal-related writing, drank mulled wine, ate coconut cake and painted our face wild colors.

• Intro to The Golden Compass - Philip Pullman
• The Eighth Eulogy - Rilke (translated)
• Black Cat - Rilke (original and translated)
• Traveling Through The Dark - William Stafford
• Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio - James Arlington Wright
• The Cow - Robert Frost
• Nightwood: Watchman, What of the Night? (last line) - Djuna Barnes
• Cat - Tolkein
• Jabberwocky - Lewis Carroll
• Jubilate Agno, Fragment B
  Jubilate Agno, Fragment B - Christopher Smart
• Schoolboys in Winter - John Clare

I went to Olja’s birthday party the next day, finally legal in this country as well as her own. 

It was the anniversary of a Bard student’s death from last year. I’m not supposed to know how she died but do, and have seen the pain it brought to her mother and friends.

After getting off the train and onto a bus, I listened to two women talk. They were both young and with children: one had a two year old girl, the other a four year old boy. They were struggling with being single mothers, living in a shelter, walking in the rain for an hour to find a job, not having access to the internet to search anywhere but the library, where it was difficult to search because libraries aren’t set up for little children to run around while you try to find job leads.

When I talked to Shimon on the phone last time, he told me that he and one of his friends pretend to be Pokémon. The transform and have made up new ones and wait for Ash to collect them.
 

CC 2013

1. It occurred to me that I have spent a week of the summer with these people for 8 of the 9 past years. An imperfect track record of change.
2. We watched the meteor shower the first night. There were too many of us for tranquility but the Milky Way stretched out above and I haven’t seen that many stars in ages. (5 years ago I made a wish on a shooting star and it came true. I haven’t made one since).
3. Only four people in my age group were there the full week. Yulka and Valya had internships, Myron joined the army, Sasha was preparing for his wedding, Liza and Kirill had work. (Who will be here next year?)
4. The last night we were presented with three plays: Alice Through the Looking Glass, The Little Prince, Деревья Умирают Стоя (trees die standing).
5. We sang around the campfire late into the night (пять лет назад когда мы пели «выйду я на поле с конем» Даша сказала Илюши «нет, не любишь»).(five years ago we sang a song which contains the words “I love you Russia” to which Dasha said to Eloosha “no, you don’t”).
6. I watched Shimon for most of the week. He was tense from all the people and ran to me at 2am one night, in his underwear and barefoot. Five minutes after we were in our sleeping bags he was dreaming. 
   
7. 
   I feel no real connection to many people there but this is not surprising; the number hovers around 100. I had an interesting conversation with one adult one night when he drank more than usual. Noma and I named another caterpillar this year. Some conversations did not happen. 
8. Yosef had plans to swim everyday so that he could pass the swim test and join the crew team, but it was too cold to stay in the water for long. He passed the test anyway.
9. Made decorations for the plays, swam and attended the poetry club. Did yoga, worked the dinner-shift, and listened in on conversations. Collected firewood in the middle of the night, drank tea & not tea, celebrated birthdays.

punk rock prom

Hannah is walking over to watch "A Bit of Fry & Laurie" skits

“at this point it’s just an excuse to hang out” said Shinno, after we spent a couple hours doing work at the Enchanted Café and managed to each read about a page. Tomorrow Bianca is baking carrot cake. Seniors. Thankfully I did just finish reading the Ethics of Ambiguity (Simone de Beauvoir), and can start my essay tomorrow. 

Yesterday Hannah held another reading, themed 'brevity'. Kelsey and I showed up late; everyone was outside. It had just gotten too dark to read, sitting on blankets with books scattered around them in the grass.  After that we headed down to smog for punk rock prom (Kelsey was my date). I like the way the music reverberated through my bones. I liked how the choice was to stand or to mosh. I liked that instead of not being able to hear properly because of my cold, I couldn’t hear properly because of the ringing in my ears. Later, Kelsey and I drank tea and sang to her guitar. 

I had a dream I was in China, working in a little shop. Shinno was working in a little shop across the street. Then I was walking with an architect and we were discussing how the city would work in times of catastrophe, weather a part of the bridge would keep afloat, if it did how many people it would hold, and if it was close enough for people to swim to. Additionally, I was having a hard time walking, as often happens to me in dreams. The explanation for this was that gravity varied depending on the time of day. It was a little after noon, so it was still quite strong. 

Second Symphony

I’ve been doing ‘movie screenings’ in my room; we drink tea and eat chocolate and watch movies. I started two weeks before spring break.

So far we have watched:

1. The Crying Game
2. En Kongelig Affære (A Royal Affair, Danish)
3. Les Enfants du Paradis (Children of Paradise, French) – Garance! Eloosha, you were right, this movie is amazing.
4. Beginners
5. The Big Labowski – Over lunch, I told Kelsey that I keep seeing boys walking in twos, confiding in each other in their girl problems. “it’s spring” she said. She did yoga on my dorm that night, and tried to read Plato’s Ions out loud while I cleaned my room but we got sidetracked by synesthesia and Spanish poetry.
   At lunch the next day, Dean and I met a graduate student who works for a non-profit specializing in doomsday prevention. From Blithewood I could watch rain fall over the Catskills, and clouds streamed with tails overhead; rivets flowing into each other made me know that I was breathing underwater, looking up towards where the liquid meets the air.
6. An Education--Tonight I sang Mahler’s Second Symphony, yesterday we did too. Hannah came the first time and liked it so much she tried to come again. I missed the last TBL episode of the season but here are last episodes recording and photos. Today I made my first U.S. alcohol purchase (wine and rum for sangria). The lady gave me a tootsie roll pop; they keep them for people who just had their 21st birthday. The man in line behind me stank of drink. 

   

   Mama sent me roses and other gifts in the mail

   
   
   

 

21

 Перевод под автопортретом.

1. I turned 21. I can now buy myself a drink in the U.S.A. I can now write about drinking in the U.S.A. without any paranoia – though I could always drink if my parents gave it to me in Massachusetts and a few other states. In other states, i.e. Vermont, even that was illegal. These laws. Places where I still can’t drink: parts of India, Libya, Sudan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. In Brunei I can drink (because I’m not Muslim), but only in private. They don’t sell alcohol there but I can bring small quantities into the country once every 48 hours.
2. Friday I was in Anastasia’s senior concert “a trip around the world”. There were Greek songs and tangoes, and I sang in “mohnatij shmel'”, “ti g menya obmanula” (Ukranian), and “toj ne vecher” with three other girls from the U.S., a boy from Kazakhstan, and a boy from Ukraine. Outside there was rain and thunder. I went over to Hannah’s and we drank purple wine out of Chinese tea bowls and read poetry in German. I missed the shuttle back and walked barefoot to my dorm, worms coiled underneath the hot soles of my feet. 
3. Saturday morning Bianca and I went to some international/local event in Red Hook. After that I went to NYC, on the bus I met a boy planning on coming to Bard. I stayed the night at Kostya’s, we were up late singing and talking and the next morning I went to look at an apartment and briefly met up with Cat (she’s taking a ‘semester abroad’ at BGIA). While I was waiting for her a Hasidic Jew came up to me, said “Hello, how are you” and then walked off, which surprised me considerably more than the whispering about my legs I had gotten the rest of the day.
4. On the train back I hung out with Yasi and Dennis. On the topic of part 1 and how silly these laws are: Yasi showed us what she used to use as a fake i.d. when going to the Black Swan: a scan of her Iranian passport with “1992” changed to “1990”. No wonder that place got shut down.
5. Back at Bard we celebrated Kelsey’s birthday with hookah on the manor steps; moon above and party poppers occasionally exploding.
   
   
   
   
    

   

   not my best painting but it's of me and it's my birthday

   
   
   
   
   1. Мне исполнилось 21. Я теперь в США могу купить себе алкогольный напиток. И, соответственно, писать про это без паранойи – хотя я всегда могла легально пить если мои родители давали в Массачусетсе, и еще некоторых штатах. В других штатах н.п. в Вермонте, все ровно не легально было. Такие правила... Я все ровно не могу пить: в некоторых местах в Индии, Ливии, Судане, Афганистане, Бангладеше, Кувейте и Саудовской Аравии. В Брунее я могу выпить (потому что я не мусульманка), но только в частном помещении. Они не продают алкоголь, но там я могу завезти в страну небольших количествах, раз в 48 часов.
   2. В пятницу я участвовала в Настином концерте «Поездка вокруг Мира». Там были греческие песни и танго, а я пела «мохнатый шмель» «ти ж мене підманула» и «ой то не вечер» - пели еще три девочки из США, мальчик из Казахстана, и мальчик из Украины. На улицы шел дождь и гремел гром. Я пошла к Ханнe; мы пили фиолетовое вино из китайских пиал, читали стихи по немецки. Я пропустила автобус, и пошла босиком обратно в общагу; черви извивались под горячими моими пятками. 
   3. В субботу утром я пошла с Бианкой на что-то интернациональное и локальноеэ. После этого я поехала в Нью Йорк, на автобусе поговорила с мальчиком который собирается в Бард. Переночивала у Кости, мы допоздна пели песни и разговаривали. Утром я пошла смотреть квартиру и встретилась ненадолго с Кат (она сейчас на семестр уехала в город). Пока я ее ждала, ко мне подошел хасидский еврей, сказал здравствуйте, и ушел; это пожалуй меня больше удивило, чем то что мне остальное время мужчины шептали про ноги.
   4.  Поехала домой на поезд с Йоси и Денисом. А! На первую тему: Йоси сказала мне что она чтобы попасть в бар Черный Лебедь использовала скан своего Иранского паспорта, где поменяла цифру «1992» на «1990» - впрочем, не удивительно что Черный Лебедь закрыли.
   5. Когда приехала пошла отмечать день рождения Кельси. Курили на улицы кальян, смотрели на луну и взрывали хлопушки.