Of the bitter moment

It's partly that I'm bored of the retrospective blogging, and partly that I don't have any photos of what I've been doing.. and I know my writing alone cannot sustain you!
There's soft music playing from outside my window, and I feel like living in the moment. But I don't feel smooth and warm I feel prickly, so I'll plug in headphones and listen to what scratches the itch.
I'll tell you how I feel now not what I felt last Saturday.
Today I saw a picture. Now if a pen is mightier than a sword, what is a machine gun compared to my keyboard?

Well we're all so fucking nice and I wouldn't think twice about kissing her either.
Erasing the evidence
Trusting that providence
Must have some influence
Must be meant to meant to be
Kissed us in that mirror too but if he says with her its all Brand New, I believe it.
And when her arms wrap his waist it's not six just two
I taught him to smoke Wendy taught him to roll perhaps she can pump nicotine straight to his soul
But we were all so fucking nice
It's not such a vice to slam doors pick fights book flights
I hope you use the same sweet lines and I hope you know, by me it's fine.

One day

23/05

Tranzit House Missing Since 1944 Exhibit

Remember that this art house used to be a synagogue?
Piled up on a table were photos of Cluj Jews who were deported in WWII and didn't return. Moreover, these photos have not been named, so there is no record of who they are.
I was unexpectedly interviewed while I was holding this picture. I felt like such a fool because looking at these photos, most of which were family portraits, you did not see the victim in them. You were attracted to them, they could be your family.
I was thinking he was rather handsome. It made me really happy to be looking at the pictures, feeling in my gut that I knew these people.


So when they asked me what I saw, you know, I became the least articulate person ever, well aware of how insensitive (or just insightful) it might sound to say 'ordinary people'. But I did.
Three older people spoke about the exhibition. I was impressed by how they didn't feel first the need to praise everything the exhibition stood for and attempted. Now, I want to tell you they had spent time at Auschwitz, but without pulling your heart-strings - which is why I'm putting it in this long sentence, because this is how they told us. No pride or fuss.
It was too late for them to remember, they said, and that even if names were reconciled to their owners, their stories would not be. They said it was too late! And seemed annoyed, albeit in a patient way, knowing that this attempt should have been made twenty years ago, when memories were more fresh, survivors more prevalent.
Drawing our attention to the images they remarked too on how well they seemed. No fore-shadowing of the future in their faces. However, the speakers did not use this to bring a sense of impending doom - more that we must look and see how in a life yes, igen again the dark fruit ripening, but also a persistence of good.

Uncle Vanya

Wasted lives in a country house, going manic with the frustration (in this production), desperate for a satisfying fascination.
When I read the text they seemed so desolate and moping, and whilst it was poignant it didn't the finger at the way I live in such a way - my distractions - thinking one is in love, or working, when only repeating and regurgitating.
I must tell you, I never thought I'd see this play! Since I arrived everyone has been talking about it. If you went to the ticket office and asked for literally any day in the future, the woman would still just laugh. It's appealing not just because of the plot, but because of the way they use the space of the theatre. This one is designed in a common European style to strictly dividing the truth portrayed on stage from the audience, who are in turn divided into those who pay more and less for their seats. In this production, in the first act you are led to sit on the stage, facing the auditorium. The seats aren't assigned - if you get there early you may have your pick. The actors sit in the stands watching you arrange yourselves, feeling so uncomfortable and obvious in the bright lights, as they look like a placid audience waiting for entertainment. The first act is in this set-up. They move through the rows, dance in the aisle, and walk on the tops of the seats and along the balcony's banister.

Aux Anges afterwards (with those students who have finally arrived, and are not at all a disappointment, thank goodness!) - it's very laid-back noisy bar with caricature angelic and demonic figures on transparent plastic over the ceiling. Talked so intensely with Melissa about denominations and abortion and Obama* that we may have scared the others. I love it when you meet somebody that you can jump straight into this with, though.

*I just taught the spell-check 'Obama'

And if I tell you that this all happened within about 4 hours, and that this is what most of my days have been like, may you can empathize with some strange feelings I have of indigestion. Although its not so unpleasant!

Snapshotz

Garibaldi híd
Dancing on the bridge at 11 at night. Clap-Clap Stamp.

White Night
The museums open for free until one in the morning, one night every month. So we dress up, run around. Its anarchy - children hugging statues, people shouting on their mobiles and even taking flash photographs(!). Onto The Avenue for a bottle of whiskey and to dance on their tables. Our accompanying gentlemen got us into trouble by taking their tops off. I'd like to think this is because they were so moved by the bronze age weaponry.

Mert en Visky vagyok?
My Hungarian has developed as far as for me to construct sentences with some meaning. Life is beautiful. I am well, because I don't need money. I think that my little brother is bad.

When I'm cleaning windows
At 11 again, it seems all the best things happen then. The school was having an inspection so myself and Saci Néni (you can call all older women Auntie) scrubbed a lot. Also, some of the windows were broken so you know, we put new ones in. I am a bit sad to be moving out of their house, but Dorí has promised to put braids in my hair, and I know that Bensza needs my help with his math homework. Howsoever the much-awaited NIU students arrive today/tomorrow, a further distraction from painting the apartment

;)

A sentance

"However, I most probably said, Auschwitz did - that is does - exist, and therefore there is also an explanation for it; what there is no explanation for is that there was no Auschwitz, that is to say it would be more impossible to hit upon an explanation for Auschwitz not coming into being, for the state of the world being such as not to be reified in the fact that we call 'Auschwitz'; yes there would be no explanation for an absence of Auschwitz, from which it follows that Auschwitz has been hanging around in the air from long ago, who knows, perhaps for centuries. , like dark fruit ripening in the sparkling rays of innumerable disgraces, waiting for the time when it may at last drop on mankind's head, for in the end what is is and the fact that it is is necessary because it is..." From 'Kaddish for an unborn child', Imre Kertesz.

The sentence doesn't end there but I'm trying to show this style which I have never seen before, and feels to me like the way I think, the way of thought, a turmoil of reasoning but with an overall progression, or at least so we feel; because after all the progression too is in our mind.

I keep thinking about this mind, would you like to see inside mine? The room I show is the reception, disguised as an office, with high vaulted ceilings, painted a dull green;my paintings on the wall, and books I love in shelves and piles on an old writing desk. Maybe though, you'd notice the floor. You might not comment, thinking it's an interior design trend you will too follow. Textured like an aero bar, and the same colour. Smaller holes like bubbles, and the earth has in places crumbled further into man-sized tunnels, covered up for your safety and mine with planks of wood and sheepskin rugs.

Other people's poetry
knows me better than I do.
I am rather careful not to fall down that rabbit hole.
I will follow
boys
books
I know I will find in those depths of my mind
Not escaping my brain, to some higher plane
Only more self.
Mephistopheles strokes my hair.
Myself Mephisto lulling myself back to sleep.
I dig my largest toe deep into the mattress,
arching my foot and rubbing slowly but insistently.
I point my tongue at my smooth sensitive gum, rubbing slowly but insistently.
As I think I'm waking up, I'm just touching myself.

*

On another note, more pleasant and familiar, today a much-anticipated package from one I love arrived in the post. It was stamped, 'small package' and it reminded me of this photo.

So 'til Sunday I'm staying with Anna. This is bad for blogging but good for learning by immersion. Some phrases to learn in my virtual absence:

Hungarian Phonetic English (I expect you know these three)

Szia Seeya Hello/Goodbye

Köszönöm Kersenem Thankyou

Ez szép ez sape It's beautiful

Mért széretlek Mairt sairetleck Because I love you

Tudom too-dom I know

This is the only conversation that I have. And if you believe that, reexamine the last post.

X

The problem is

..it's not just about nice buildings anymore.
And how do I know if the people who are my life and experiences will mind casting their shadows onto this cave wall where I paints.

The other weekend I went to a conference. It was about the internet. It could have been so terribly clichéd, a Christian, youth conference. It really wasn't, and it made me introspect, to the point of navel-gazing. As to why I use the internet. Being here its easy to claim I'm just keeping in touch, but when there are people around me, why do I insist on talking to those i 'escaped'. The internet was not demonised, we were told all about how it works.. Like a university lecture though I confess I've never attended such a thing. I knew the facts already, but it was good to remember, that anything on the internet is there because somebody communicated it, posted it. Its a little mirror of humanity. Porn, bomb-how-to's, suicide pacts, ana websites. It was/is all there within us.
So, refreshing. Also the way in which, you could pick up the God references at your leisure, nowhere was it said 'build a christian firewall'. Also challenging: how much do we use the internet as a concealment of identity. The security of anonymity. But then, how much do we use (insert your social networking site here) to project a particular aspect of our identity. I know I do, or even to try on a new identity.
The sermon pulled on this thread. The preacher wore a t-shirt saying 'good guy'. The verse was from numbers, about cities of refuge for man-slaughterers. He started by saying 'Friends, we are not killers.' I whispered back to my translator, "yet".

I made friends with two guys who were also listening to my whispering translator. One Romanian - who spoke no Hungarian, which the conference was in - and one from Saudi Arabia, who's at university here in Cluj. We had no small group to go to, so formed our own club of card-playing and henna-painting. Now readers, this is where my honesty is challenged. Shall I tell you only of the laughs we had, the coffee's we drank, or shall I confess that I was frustrated by their lack of emotional or intellectual response to the lectures? Here were the two men who could understand my fast, metaphor-loaded English, but I couldn't open up to them half as much as those who I knew would respond in a mixture of slow English and German. I'd like to blame them, but in this introspective spirit maybe my probing fingers will discover that I prefer to talk to people who don't fully understand me so I can pretend I have an untapped message, that if they don't agree or respond appropriately its because they have failed to comprehend the gravity of what I say.
Speaking of gravity, my dear friend Anna gave a testimony one night. Not the sweet testimony suitable for a Cairns Rd baptism, but a brutally honest, here are my sins and I still struggle, God help me, testimony.
Since coming home, she and I have met up a few times with these boys, and its been cute. The first time, we were summoned to meet, and were taken to a café near my house, then into Central Park, where we ate candy floss, went on the trampolines, the bumper cars, swings and slides and just messed around. I felt like I was watching us, four kids on some double-date. We wandered up to that hill with my cross, as it got dark. The local boy showed me where the town walls were first, and second. The church spires, the neighborhood that was built under communism. The lights lit it up like a multicoloured map, a postcard of this city where I live now. I know those sights by day, at night they project themselves up into the sky. We went to a field behind the hotel on the hill. We looked at the stars. The sky was clear and the trees framed little plough. We played wistful songs and danced. But I don't know, maybe I missed you, I felt something lacked. We ate ice cream in a café near the cross. I had tiramisu, but I don't know that I like that café because when I went up there to pray, it was playing some recognisable dance tune, and it was all wrong for an easter sunday morning.

I'm sorry if this writing seems mournful or slow to make any point. I guess you could blame the book I'm reading, where a sentence takes one or two pages to end!

Where I live now

This city is getting into my heart as well as under my fingernails and into my shoes - it's quite dusty. These cars are DACIAs. The only car available under the Communist regime. And those, unsuspecting reader, are the romanian colours. Formerly displayed on benches, bins, and now, anywhere you look hard enough.

Sometimes I try to make friends with strangers and take their photos. Here are the results.














This is your run of the mill dark alley.

This is the Orthodox cathedral, which is in space between the two parallel roads that run through the centre of town.

When I get to this building, I know there's only one more block til I'm home. The sign in the door says NASTIMED. Sounds goood.


This is in Central Park, I could see it out the window if there weren't so many trees. People go boating in the lake. I sit at the side and look jealous, but I'm sure it's just a matter of time until my girlfriend takes me.


Szia
See ya

We used to Vacation

Last Tuesday night: cookout

I met the boys - Oti, Sam and Benji. 2 filmmakers and one poet. I made them tell me all about themselves and then said 'yeah, I'm going to do Chemistry'. I won't write too much about them because it seems a bit invasive, but they are very exciting and all that. Stayed outide very cold and late watching Oti jump around talking about a filmmaker who is very close to his heart. Can't recall the name, began with T.

Wednesday - Sibiu
Two hot hours on a dusty potholed road through mountains and ramshackle villages, south east in Transylvania.
Made our way through the very picturesque and conveniently named Large Square to a restaurant.










It was trying very hard to be traditional, like my dress . Underground, low ceilings and I could have sworn I saw a waiter in traditional peasant garb though maybe I imagined this. Liberal use of sheepskin and strange soup based dishes. I escaped lightly with fried Zander and mixed vegetables. Have I mentioned the wonderful Anna yet? V.A.'s daughter, who is my dream come true. We got on rather well on this trip, she would go so far as to say we fell in love. She's teaching me Hungarian, now I can count. Anyway we shared some strawberry pancakes as well as jokes. For example, the Hungarian word for camera is picture machine or some similar, and her mum referred to it as photo-taker. Also, computer is counting machine. So we make up lame names for anything technological.. phone is 'voice taker maker communicator' and laptop is 'carriable counting machine'. Everyone else was so serious, we were the comic relief.

Visited the Brukenthal Museum, full of still lifes (yes, like a bowl of oranges) and family portraits.
Watched a spectacular Faust in an old warehouse, specially converted into hell for our amusement. The cast was the size of the audience, and the leads were fantastic.
We took candid shots when we were ushered through the stage into hell behind by men in doctor's coats and pig masks. Or as Anna said, " Candy picks". Or maybe I just pretended to mishear her.

Monday, although it's Thursday.

On Sunday evening, Sarah G., an American play write/director who lives in Budapest (for a few months more anyway)arrived. I liked her. Monday we explored this shut-down town. I finally got to sit under one of these white parasols outside the cafés. In our walking and talking we made it as far as tranzit, left.


It's a converted synagogue, with an internet café, bar, exhibition space and they show films too. The walls of the café are decorated with cartoons. I could compare it to several places in Bristol... Attila T. was asked to curate, but he, S & C have a proposal to open a restaurant in the space upstairs. This would be so beautiful... If they do, I'm coming back next summer to work!

That evening (Monday), we went to Long Friday. It's based on Imre Kertész's 'Kaddish for an unborn child'. Kaddish is the Jewish memorial prayer. Aaron Dimény played the central character B. The play opens with the others reading a psalm. The background is the Holocaust and in particular Auschwitz. There was a lot I didn't understand.

On the most basic level, B. and his wife, played by Hilda, survived Auschwitz, she goes onto divorce him and marry a 'non-Jew' and have children - which he didnt want to do. B had isolated himself in his writing - in the middle of the stage was a phone booth containing a typewriter. H slams herself against this, climbs on top of it, trying to get through to him. She throws herself into the arms of men watching. It almost looks like suicide attempts, seemed she was aiming to run off of the stage.
You see the faces in the picture? B tells a story about his childhood, walking in on his aunt, finding a bald-headed woman in a red dress. This is reference to a particular sect that shave their hair. The theme continues throughout, he says "I'll always be a..". It's shameful, intimate. It's also a haunting image, the skull masks. As though they're carrying around memories of the dead community, as part of their identity.
In another scene, the chorus line call out the names of places they were moved to, walking around the stage grinning at us, "Siberia, Andrássy Ut.." One man (not B, he and his wife are watching) says "Auschwitz" and the others applaud, shake his hand. Proud self-pity. They talk about how they'll never forget the atrocity.
B says it would be more strange if it had never happened. Man's inhumanity is inevitable. He tells a story of surprising good. When he was sick and couldn't get his ration, he thought it had been taken. He was angry but understood. It turned out that somebody else had collected it for him.

After the show, we ate with András V. and two gentlemen from America who will feature later. I had a pasta with truffle- or rather 2,4 -dithiapentane infused sauce.There was a lot of shop-talk and dropping names that meant nothing to me.. well, actually even I knew some of them. Plus I have a worse confession.

In the show I was listening to the audio-translation (S did it this time, very well), entirely oblivious to the fact that Aretha Franklin was singing Respect out of my bag. It got to a quiet point in what was quite a quiet point in the monologue. I realised, and turned it off.. Not before noting the four missed calls, and cringing even more. Given my front row seat - and it was a studio performance again, this personal performance was very obvious, and I'm sure once the post is running again I'll receive the death threats. Or, my idols will blank me at the party, not sure which would be worse.

OK, there's a brother who's turned 16 today that could do with a phone call, before it's tomorrow.