Monday, April 6, 2009

Pussy Willows and Chocolate






April 3

Meandering around with my morning matte, I picked up a small book from the coffee table in the upstairs lounge of the writers’ house. It as an old calendar, with collage illustrations (squiggly line drawings, photographs from the writers’ house) accompanied by fragments written by various residents. One by Nora Ikstene caught my eye. She’s a very well-known Latvian novelist who was in residence at the house in March 2007, when I was last here. I love her writing, so I decided to try my hand at rough translation of this fragment, which immediately spoke to me. I wish I could capture Nora’s voice in the original (every translator’s lament, but more so for a novice like me). There’s something very old and very new about Ikstena’s voice, something otherworldly and magical. Here’s my crude attempt:

Today she finished the book about her life’s purpose. She’s a woman, and she writers, and hers is not a simple purpose, and that’s precisely why she set out to write her book in the first place. Otherwise, she’s like an empty husk, carrying out everyday chores and doings. But with language she’s like a miraculous tree that simultaneously sprouts catkins, full blossoms and ripe fruit. What if right now a miracle-worker came to her and said, “Hey girl, I’ll give you everything, whatever you’ve longed for in your life, your heart’s desire; you’ll find love; your child won’t die. But in exchange, I’d take your tree, with all of its catkins, flowers and fruits.” Would she change anything? “No,” she’d say, “that tree you can’t have. Not one branch, one leaf, one flower, one fruit. No, you’ll never take that tree. That tree, no.”

Doesn’t every person who’s written from the deepest place within felt that kind of passion? Would any of us accept that devil’s bargain?

This fragment is from her Ikstene’s book, something she was working on when I met her. It’s called, literally, “Existence with Regina,” but I like to think of it as closer to “Being Regina” (pronounced “Rejeena,” with the accent on the first syllable, and the “r” rolled, of course). She’d acquired the “dienas gramatas” (day books, or journals) of Latvian writer Regina Samreto. As she told Regina’s story, she absorbed it; her imagination and Regina’s merged. The book is written in the form of diary entries, the first being in June of 2002. The work skips radically around in time, some entries dated 2007, some dated as early as 1940, each opening with a report on the weather.

After translating, I wrote, Do I have that tree somewhere inside me? How do I reach it, that tree of creativity? How do I get past the thicket of language, tangled in my head? On some days it’s worse than a thicket. On those days, language is the sand-choked grease imbedded in a bicycle chain. Like Ieva today, cleaning bicycles for spring, I apply steam, but it only moves the grease and grit around. It slides across the steel surface of the derailleur. It clings to every single spoke and tooth and stay.

I’m caught somewhere betwixt, between back there (home, Alaska, the language of snow, ash, volcano, melt, ice, inlet, storm, westerly wind) and here (my limited vocabulary inadequate to it, to what’s to me still only the idea of a place). To myself, I’m a chameleon, a strange and cagey travel companion, sometimes wide open and soft, like a mollusk, all nerves and tissue, sometimes unyielding, closed up in a husk, guarded against the unknown. Other times, I’m all a-gawk, shyness pushing my shoulders up to my ears, that girl again, standing against a dark wall, watching a dance, not knowing what to do with her hands. The page stares back at any one of my variations. Well, what now? And today, who, what voice? The page locks eyes with me, until I have to look away, have to get up, lie down. The page says, get a grip, “karaliene” (which means, literally, “queen,” but it’s in this context as something like “home-girl”).

Now, to step back from those abstract thoughts, to life, a brief update about the residents here. The mysterious critic is gone, and also the shy Finn, and the possessions of the Latvian novelist who up and left (I inherited her healthy teas). Medeine, who stayed a week as respite from her travels hither and yon (including all of the –stans) is off to Moldavia … Can’t wait to hear news of her adventures, and I expect I’ll see her in Alaska one day. She e-mailed me a piece she’d written about Buddhist monks she encountered in Kazakhstan. The house is gradually filling up with new faces and personalities. There’s a fastidious, quiet young Russian-Latvian playwright and actor who writes soft porn on the side (ala Anaiis Nin). This took me completely by surprise. After our evenings of translating the first chapter of my book (we finished!), my friend Ieva and I tried to entice Alexi to write some killer whale porn (after describing some of their highly sexed behaviors), but he said that his editor had rejected a piece he did from the point of view of a woman, so a killer whale would be completely out of the question. And now, down the hall from me resides a very well-known Latvian poet, whose last name translates as "one who digs ashes." He's on a special diet for high cholesterol (which, after over a week of eating with abandon all of the local cuisine, I realize is a big risk of living here, and a challenge to deal with). Tonight he held a bowl in his hands, whatever it was, topped with a large number of raw garlic cloves. He’s frail looking, with lank brown hair, and an interesting, fine-boned, thoughtful face and penetrating brown eyes. He’s either loud and boisterous (with a distinct nasal voice) or very quiet and sad, and he writes amazing poetry. I’m a bit in awe of him. Yesterday arrived Wieland, a German writer with friendly blue eyes, and today, an Estonian writer, Suat, who drove up with a bicycle on the roof of his car. He’s white-haired, disheveled, and walks rapidly, even in the tight space of the kitchen, with his torso tipped slightly forward. Everyone who’s here at the moment is a returning writer. Once people come, the ladies say, they don’t get sad anymore when it’s time for goodbye; everyone comes back.

Sunday morning, April 4. I sit at my desk, which I’ve pulled back so that the sun from the gable window falls on me in the morning as I write. At this moment the Lutheran church bell is chiming, calling the faithful to Palm Sunday mass. At the same time, from the Latvian pagan tradition, it’s Pupolu Svetdiena, Pussy Willow Sunday. Yesterday, people bought bunches of pussy willows from the market, or cut them themselves. This morning, they’ll surprise the children (and the adults) in their beds, tapping them with a willow branch, chanting a rhyme, chasing spirits of sickness out, inviting spirits of wellness in. How do I know this? From memory, waking to my mother and father, branches in hand, sing-songing “Apals ka pupols, apaks ka pupols.” That’s what’s happening as the day begins in some of the houses. Me, I close my eyes, and sit in the center of another kind of prayer, wordless, composed of the church bell, so close it’s like something’s being struck inside my skull (on holy days, it rings and rings, five minutes or more), the bird songs, and the warmth and light of the sun on the right side of my face and on my arm. After the last clang, the sound of the bell resonates for several seconds. The bird songs poco crescedo, and then enter again the ordinary noises of Ventspils town life: cars, voices, shoes on stone, a siren. When get up to look out my window, the first thing I see: two girls in Easter-egg colored coats and pink hats, holding bouquets of pussy willows in their hands. They walk to the bench by the clock. I snap a photograph of them from behind the window glass.

The square wakes up, walkers come from all directions. I’ll go to the tirgs myself, and hopefully the bunnies will be there. At the big Palm Sunday and Easter tirgs, cages of flop-eared rabbits arrive, for children to coo over, and for some adults to salivate over. I’ve never eaten or heard about rabbit stew in Latvia, but somehow those gargantuan specimens must eventually make it into someone’s soup pot, vai ne?

I pause to read a page ripped from a magazine, something I keep by my side to remind me of what it is I’m doing, setting all of these words to paper, “the telling of stories of the soul . . . the soul’s passage through the valley of this life – that is to say, its adventure in time, in history.” That’s the poet Stanley Kunitz. The text is from an excerpt, an address he gave called “Speaking of Poetry.” Further on he writes: “It would be healthier if we [poets] could locate ourselves in the thick of life, at every intersection where values and meanings cross, caught in the dangerous traffic between self and universe.” I certainly feel exactly that in Latvia, caught in the thick of language, food, history, conversation, bird song, tirg-ing, reading, walking, cooking. And maybe that’s why I love my window, here, and in Alaska. It allows in all the distracting rhythms and harmonics of humanity and nature, reminding me that no matter how compelling the inner world is, and no matter how isolating, it’s connected to, and feeds on, the outer. A writing retreat is supposed to shut out distractions. That’s true. There are distractions that, in ordinary life, disturb rather than inspire. The distant sound of a compressor or sander. The high pitched “pukh!” every car here makes when it’s unlocked with an electronic key. The molto fortissimo of some 19 year-old tearing across the square, taking a turn without slowing onto some one-lane cobbled street in his sports car. When I keep one ear tuned to these sounds, and the other ear tuned to the voice inside me, the result is, I hope, a deeper music. The bird that lands in the bare tree pulls a new association from my brain, one that wouldn’t exist without the open window. The laughing gull yanks me back from a digression into the same old self-analysis. “Yes, it’s true, even you,” sings another unidentified bird (here, I learn them first by song, most only by the song).

Nothing comes by force in writing. I can’t grab two old planks and hammer them together without giving myself a headache, without slamming my finger. That’s what’s happened when I’ve gone back, with resolve, to the old essays I wrote two years ago in Latvia, hoping to find the thread that ties past to present, and to follow that thread. But it hasn’t worked. I’ve become mired in the past. So today, I approach it another way. I start from here, 11:25 am on a Sunday morning. I’m holding the end of a thread I found in the square, and I can’t see the other end, it disappears around a corner, in the direction of the tirgs. I know it begins a long way off, two years in the past, probably further (it probably begins, come to think of it, in 1944). But I just can’t think about that. I hold the thread. It’s red. I begin to follow it, reading its texture through my fingers as I go, transcribing it.

Yesterday, as we walked along the beach at Skaldene, an old fisherman’s village, Ieva found an old brick. As the bank erodes, it deposits these bricks and fragments of the past onto the sand. Then she found another. The first was typical terra cotta, the other lichen green, corners rounded from erosion. She put bricks on the floor of the Ziguli, in the back, because her brother told her the car’s too light. As we walked, a red-haired, willowy artist visiting for the weekend said Ieva could build her house that way, found brick by found brick. It would take a long time, Ieva said. I could imagine it, though, not the house, but the process of building. And that’s how it is with writing.

Great excitement, I jump out of my chair, take the two steps, lean out the window … the voices of cranes! I’ve seen them fly over since I’ve been in Latvia, but this is the first time I’ve heard their heart-breakingly familiar voices. Ieva’s says they’re called gray cranes.

It’s ten. The bell clangs again, this time to announce the start of mass. Stragglers arrive in their cars and on foot. Another Easter egg family hurrying down the sidewalk, the purr of another car engine pulling up to the curb to park. The bell stops. Through the open church door I can hear the minister’s deep voice, and the collective voice of the congregation, singing. Somewhere down the road, from a more secular person’s yard, the sound of a weed-eater.


4 April 209, noon

A little girl is singing in the square, what language? I just got back from the tirgs, which is a little quieter on a Sunday, but still livelier than weekdays, with the outdoor stalls filled with dry goods vendors: cheap blankets and clothes, shoes. I passed through on my way to the indoor dairy/meat/bread building for fresh milk (returning my old bottle; the farmers use reused plastic water bottles), caraway cheese, sour cream for salad. A woman beside me asked for a chunk of butter from a massive slab. It was produced in Valmiera, my mother’s home town in central Latvia. On my way back, I passed through the vegetable stalls: bundle of pussy willows for the dining room table; a bag of skabie kaposti (like sauerkraut, but less sour, with grated carrots; the market vendors scoop it from big plastic pails). Dill, cucumber, radish (for salad). The woman I purchased these things from spoke Russian to the couple before me, Latvian to me. I try to get as much of my food as I can from the market. I love how this aspect of the agrarian lifestyle thrives here, and I’m excited that it’s a growing part of our lives (in summer, anyways), in Homer. And people here are so devoted to their foods. How many times, when cooking something, have I heard, “Mes nekad ta nedaram.” (We never do it that way.) Or “Mes nekad neliekam tos kopa.” The latter statement, “We never put those two things together” was said by Ieva in response to my suggestion that we mix two leftovers together into a kind of dal bhat, melnie zirni (black chick peas) and griki (buckwheat groats). I told her all the more reason to put them together, and she conceded it was good, but the next day, she teased me to Andra: “You wouldn’t believe what she did. She mixed peas and griki together!” But I know she adopts some of these unconventional food habits. One of her favorite writers, an older man from France, introduced her to sliced bananas on rupjmaize (black bread). Inspired, I bought bananas today for the first time. I’ve been trying to eat all Latvian-produced foods (which is entirely feasible). Everything necessary grows here, and even at this time of year, you can purchase apples, carrots (with the dirt caked on them, perfectly preserved), and potatoes stored in huge root cellars all winter. And now, from the greenhouses, you can buy lettuce and radishes. But tomorrow morning, I’m going to go non-bioregional, and slice up banana for my bread.

Went downstairs to check and see if Ieva had arrived (we’d talked about riding bikes today). A group was gathered around the table: Maira, Imants, the red-headed artist (Maira’s son and friend made a brief appearance before taking off on the bikes), and two new people, a short, compact, red-haired woman in a pile jacket and jeans, the editor of the main nature/green magazine of Latvia, and her partner, a tall bald man with glasses, a kind face, a big sweater. She was passing around a container of home-grown sprouts, dark brown, delicious and nutty, and extolling their virtues. I shared my dried fish. The man put some on a piece of crunchy, grainy, delicious rupjmaize, which the woman said was “ekologiska,” organic. Ieva put the sprouts on bread reluctantly, said she’d certainly not eat them very often, made a comment about sausages being more to her liking. I could tell that the self-satisfied, somewhat opinionated style of the two “zalie” (the Latvian equivilant of greenies) rubbed her the wrong way. The couple talked about growing one’s own food, how the seeds for the sprouts are very cheap, it could be a money-making business, that even old men, when they taste them, are won over by the sprouts. When someone mentioned Rimi, the biggest chain grocery store (and most expensive), the man rose to the bait, said loudly, “Who needs Rimi! People should grow their own food!” I sensed everyone shifting on their chairs, not commenting. The woman was very perky about all of this, patted him on the shoulder to calm him down, and then, when Imants and Maira got up, unlit cigarettes clutched in anticipation between their fingers, and went out to the courtyard to smoke, she rose, rifled around in her husband’s jacket, pulled out a cigarette (organic????) and joined them in the sun to puff away.

I’ve learned that humility, and the ability to laugh at one’s self, is valued highly in Latvia, at least with the people I know. Because I’m not completely at ease spouting off about my political views in Latvian, I tend to listen more, to think about what I say before I say it, to be less opinionated. Speaking a second language curbs certain unconscious, habitual tendencies, and points out aspects of myself I’d otherwise fail to see. It’s one of the great gifts of being out of my element. And yet the longer I’m here, the more in my element I feel.



5 April

Time to post this. Yesterday, Ieva and I walked in the woods outside of town, gathering branches. I showed her how incredible the poplar buds smell this time of year, and we collected an armload. I plucked buds off some, and dropped them in a bottle of almond oil, to create eau de spring for the ladies, true aromatherapy for the winter-weary. The rest of the branches we put in a vase along with pussy willows for the table, and in another vase for my room. I look forward to seeing the leaves sprout out. I also collected branches of pine and juniper. It was so peaceful walking in the forest, a contrast to the beach, which was very windy and cold. This weekend it’s supposed to get up to 13. I’ll leave it to y’all to do the math. Pavasars!

The day ended with something I’ve waited for these last two years. We returned to a tiny kafenica in a beautifully renovated old wooden building (high oak ceiling with beams, brick walls) for Latvian hot chocolate. This is something brineskiegs (amazing, miraculous). It comes in a little white cup, espresso-sized, and the dark, warm chocolate is served with a tiny spoon. It’s the consistency of pudding. It induces a state of utter euphoria, and probably greatly increases one’s life span as well. I’ll try to learn how to make it.

1 comment:

  1. Hi Ieva-I finally took the time to read your incredible blog. Your descriptive writing transports me into your experience-I can see it, feel it, hear it, smell it. It's great. I'm going to try to figure out how to print it out for mom. I love you! I'll write an email to fill you in on the roller coaster ride I've been on with mom's care. XOXOXO Mara

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