StorySLAM 2013 - May - Estates of Mind - The Grass Under the Walnut Tree

As I walk the boundaries between the City and the East End Estates, the boundaries between rich and poor, between logic and strife, my mind walks the boundary between reason and madness, between reality and illusion, between logic and psychosis.

I’m walking down the street and there are many people, but I only see the old. Looking at them makes me cry, I know they suffer and they will die soon. I have seen that. I saw my father growing old and wilting to almost a skeleton within five months, and now he’s gone.  I see some children – not many, this is the City and this is not a part of town where children come.  Their faces also seem worried and sad.

I cannot sleep at night. In the dark I am restless, I want to go out on the street and run. I call a friend and wake her up. She suggests perhaps to listen to some music. I cannot bear music – it only reminds me of things that are utterly sad. This sadness is so painful, I begin to understand why the saints and monks would auto-flagellate. Physical pain is more bearable than this. At least if I hurt myself I could scream and cry out my pain.  Like this, I can’t. I don’t know what to do to bring out this pain. I wish to scream at the top of my voice until I run out of voice.  The neighbours. I can’t. 

I am starting to think that death is better than this pain. But I want to have children, I can’t look for death.  I will have to go through this burning pain of fear and torture.  I cannot fully describe it.  I am afraid of everything, of all the things I used to like, of each of them in turn, one at a time.

I struggle through days of fear and nights of sleepless torture. My mind just cannot stop, I wish for sleep and I fear nightmares. Wakefulness feels like a nightmare. Sleep doesn’t come, and if it does, I chase it away with fears of sleeping.  Everything that is good and beautiful reminds me of some dead end, of darkness.  Happiness and calm are impossible.  This sadness is so heavy I cannot even cry.

I finally arrive home, after enduring some painful days among people to get to this place.  I cannot bear to see people. I made it all the way to the countryside, against all fear and darkness, because this is the place where I will put this burden down: the grass under the walnut tree.  I have been looking through all my memories of life, and this is the only one left that gives me hope:  the one piece of grass, under the one walnut tree, in the country-side garden of my childhood.

After a week of waiting for this, I sit down on the grass, under the walnut tree.  This is the place where I have been longing to be.  I have dragged myself all this way, all along that long and frightening journey, to sit down here, on the grass under the walnut tree, and to feel the pain and darkness drain out of me into the ground, slithering into the dark soil where it belongs.  In the dark nights of painful wakefulness, I let the red hot irons of fear drag through my heart, my mind and soul, knowing that I will bury them into the black soothing soil, under the grass, under the walnut tree.

I want to feel alone, like I do in Hyde Park under the trees, but still, even here, there are people. The children play to one side of the garden, ignoring me, a woman is cooking. Another is sitting on the porch painting her nails and reading a garish fashion magazine.

For one long moment, my feet are glad to touch that ground.  Then I worry: I am wearing rubber soles, it may not be enough.  I need to be barefoot. I am about to take my shoes off and feel the total relief of being one with the ground, dust to dust, letting my pain go to dust, when a woman suddenly calls out to me:

 “Don’t just sit there, people will see you from the road!  It’s right in front of the gate...”

I feel robbed.

I go inside the house and sit on the bed.   My forehead sinks into my palms and my heart sinks deeper than it has even been in black nothingness. I know life is worth living and it’s the most beautiful thing, but I have forgotten why.  I descend spiralling into thick darkness.  I cannot remember any reason why it’s worth it.

Somebody feels my silent pain from the other room, because I hear a little whimper and steps approaching. The little girl is one year old and can barely walk, holding on to walls. She cannot speak yet, but somehow I know she felt my call for help.

Her hazel eyes have long lashes like little sea-stars.  She comes into my room thumping on the floor. She gives me a preoccupied look and hands me a bunny rabbit cuddly toy.  I take it and hold it tight to my chest, closing my eyes.  After a while I breathe out, relieved, I open my eyes and give her a tortured smile.  She looks at me serenely, with the satisfaction of a home-maker who has just taken a nice cake out of the oven.

She walks out of the room and comes back with a tube of mascara in her pudgy hand. She gives it to me.

Now I’m really smiling. A miracle has just happened.

That night, I sleep holding the bunny tight against my chest.

StorySLAM 2014 - May - Elemental - A Day in Your Village

Water

We are walking together through the stream. The water is cool and it hugs our ankles in round ripples, and it catches my rubber slipper and slides it off my foot. I stop talking and run after it over the hard, round pebbles and the soft, gritty sand, splashing my legs. Tiny grey fish disappear darting under the edge of the stream, under large, shady tree roots and hairy seaweed. Peacock green dragonflies whizz around the nettles and weeds along the shore.  Hens cluck and scratch unseen in the bushes of the shore.

You watch me with your open face smiling, showing me which way the slipper has gone. Your hair is short, up to your ears, and your tanned skin is glowing in the dappled streaks of sunshine.

You tell me about the village school and you welcome me into walking through the village’s dusty roads.

Earth

The skin on your legs is a caramel brown, and it glistens under the water of the water pump. We have been walking through the river and then on the dusty road, and the dust has caked on our legs into the shapes of the water drops from the stream. We have walked to the water trough the cows drink from in the evening, on their way home from the pasture on the hill. We are washing our feet and our rubber slippers dangling from them. The water is cold but our feet start looking brand new now that they are clean and shining wet.

A horse-drawn cart passes on the road, its iron central beam sticking out long at the back. Your eyes sparkle, naughty. You put your finger to your lips to tell me to keep quiet and motion me to follow. You run after the cart and hop on the beam, holding on precariously to the edge of the wooden cart, and stretch your hand to call me over.  I run and sit next to you on the beam, stifling my giggles, my belly tingling with excitement while I flounder for something to hold on. You put your arm around my waist and I hold you around your shoulders, and I choke on my muffled laugh that’s bursting to come out. The man driving the horse hasn’t noticed us and his back stays safely turned away from us.

Air

The cool evening air has descended and it seems to have entered every courtyard through its open gates together with the cows that come home by themselves at 8 o’clock.  I can hear their bells from the road as I sit on the porch, waiting to eat auntie’s gritty polenta with creamy stewed pickled cabbage. 

She turns the cast iron cauldron over the wooden board to pour out the polenta, and I breathe in the steam curling into the air, its scent homey and filling. It pours into an egg-yolk yellow coloured dome, warm and steamy, with the texture of a gloopy sand pie. It’s firm and auntie cuts it with a stitching thread. There is thick, fresh cream on the table in a mug and I spoon it over the cabbage and polenta. The cat is drawing the figure of eight around our ankles in lusty caresses that run all along her furry body to the tip of her tail, and I try to catch a touch of it before she moves away. I lure her with pieces of fatty pork skin from my plate.

The air is light and stings with cold,  and it rings with the sounds of cow bells, dog barks, hens clucking sleepily perched in their wooden hen-house. A TV playing somewhere inside the house.

Your call comes on the evening air from the road, “Cu-koo”, and I gobble up the last pieces from my plate before running out to meet you.

Earth – closer

The night has thickened on the road but our eyes have gotten used to it and we can see. We play hide and seek and I follow you to a dark awning in the side of the road. There is a very narrow footpath between the wall of the house and a ditch that looks deep, maybe up to my waist.  I breathe in the rotten eggs smell of stagnant mud and cloying duck droppings, I saw the ducks there earlier today. There is a tree that clambers up against the wall of the house, growing from the path and blocking our way. You move like a cat, holding on to the trunk and skipping over to the other side, and make it look easy. When I follow, I hold on to the thin branch that sticks out over the ditch, and hoist myself over to the other side of the trunk, trying to be as feline as you. But I feel the branch cracking in my hand while my foot is still mid-air, and I fall. My back hits the bottom of the ditch with a thud. I stop breathing, and my back is numb.

“Oh my God, Maria!”, I hear you whisper.

Numbness makes way for pain as I grapple to stand up, and I’m gasping from the panic of losing my balance. 

“You’re full of mud. Did you break anything?”

The pain and fear sting my eyes and I feel like crying.  The boys have found us, especially the one with green eyes, and I can’t cry and be ashamed in front of him. I better laugh before they do.  So I laugh instead of crying, peals after peals of laughter. And I am full of mud and smelly duck poo and there’s nothing else to do.

“Thank God you are laughing!”, says your voice from the shadows.

The boy with green eyes walks me home holding his bicycle on the other side, and when I get there, my Auntie washes my muddy clothes and hangs them on the line to dry.

StorySLAM 2014 - Oct - The Mother of the Nation

There’s a revolution going on somewhere, but I don’t know it, and I am busy, anyway. I am ten and I am doing my holiday homework. I am learning by heart a New-Year carol that praises the President, Leader of the Romanian Communist Party, and his Wife.

My teacher said that we need to soften our voice and say her name with feeling, as if she was our mother and we loved her. If the teacher said so, it must be so. As I walked down the stairs of the quiet school to go to the toilet during that lesson, I stopped and sat on the stairs looking at their portraits on the wall.  I asked myself, “Do I love these people?” I knew who they were, everybody knew they were the Parents of the Nation. “Do I love them?” “No.” I was ashamed. It was as if I didn’t love my mother. I kept my secret and softened my voice with feeling. Nobody else said they didn’t love her.

Right now I am on holiday and my brother is lurking around the empty house, bored. Mum and Dad are out, perfect time for him to bother me. He likes nothing better than to pick fights. And he knows only too well how annoyed I get when he interrupts me from study. I am quite deep in it right now, so he takes my pen. I tell him to leave me alone, he tugs at my book. I try to slap him, miss him, try to ignore him, but he makes off with my book. Now I can’t study and can’t ignore him any longer either.

I get up, he runs to the kitchen and slams the door in my face. I follow him and push the door with all my strength. He is holding it closed from the other side. When he lets go and I stumble in, he pretends to rip off the page. I fly into a rage. I shout at him to stop, tumble into him, hit him with my fists, scratch him and yell at the top of my voice:

“Give me back my book!”
“Scream as much as you li-ike, no-one will hear you!”

He holds the book high above my head where I can’t reach, he is taller. I jump and yell and scratch. He laughs and screams when I leave red lines on his arm with my deliberately long nails. He knows he can do this when the grown-ups are away. Nobody can make him give me my book back, but at least my scratches hurt him.

The phone rings and it’s Mum. Maybe she knew we were fighting. My brother looks guilty. She tells us to switch on the TV. That is strange, it’s Wednesday noon and the two hour-long TV programme only starts at 8pm. She hangs up quickly, she doesn’t usually say much over the phone. There are clicks on the line. I don’t have time to tell her about my brother and the book.

He forgets it and we both go to the TV. On the screen there’s a man with his hands stretched sideways, calling urgently:
“Brothers, the tyrant has gone! Come to the TV Station!”

There are images of crowds in the street without the usual portraits of the President and slogans of “Long Live the Communist Party”. The crowds chant, the man on TV talks with an excitement that we catch. We forget to breathe. This is nothing like the usual tractors we see on TV every night. He talks of gunshots, as more frowning men gather behind him in a stiff line-up, like an old family photograph. One has a white beard and boots. They wear old, faded jumpers and scarves, nothing like the usual suits of TV presenters.

After a while, the man on TV and the crowds start chanting:
“The army is with us!”

And we smell the scent of victory in their voices, although we don’t make sense of the words.
“Come to the TV station!”, the man keeps repeating.

We are in a different town, but we hear people shouting in the streets, and a rabble passes our dusty window with a flag. There’s a hole in the middle of the flag where the emblem used to be. I go and pick up some charcoal from the terracotta stove, because I can’t find the pen my brother has taken, and write on paper torn from my school notebook: “Ceausescu is gone”.

When Mum and Dad come home, they bring in the smell of snow.  We all lie on their bed together to watch TV. There are images on a loop of the President waving as usual from a balcony at a crowd that shouts the usual slogans, then looking scared, leaving the balcony, a helicopter flying off the roof of the building, the crowd no longer chanting anything we know. This time there’s a loud, threatening roar, which builds up into “Ceausescu go away”. The TV station takes breaks and plays on repeat an old revolutionary song, “Wake up, Romanians”. When the images come back, they show naked, white corpses, with red gun wounds and black pubic hair.  I forget to tell Mum about my brother taking my book.

This winter salami is rationed as well, not just the oil and eggs. Five slices per person a week, if you queue for it in the cold. I hide everybody’s ration that night at the back of the fridge. I have a plan. I don’t tell anyone about it, so I have to endure Dad saying I ate it all. But the next morning I take it out to fry it into a bigger omelet for the family breakfast, and he says he’s sorry.

At the table I tell Mum I need to learn the long carol about the President and his motherly Wife.

“No”, she says, “you don’t need to learn that anymore.”


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A review of this story, after I read it at the South Bank Centre's StorySLAM themed "Freedom":

http://geegeesfreelondon.wordpress.com/2014/10/05/slamming-at-southbank-story-slam-live/

2012 Vietnam - Hoi An

After spending so much time in the tailor shop, I am thinking what did we see of Hoi An: half a day at the Cua Dai beach, not very crowded, and with many terraces and restaurants with fresh, swimming seafood. The beach was beautiful, with white fine sand, and there were still some round fishermen's boats, with red flags for some reason, ideological or otherwise. A man was putting tar on an upturned boat, and it seemed to be made of wickerwork.

The lantern festival of the Full Moon. The main streets of the old town were lined and covered with colourful lanterns every night, and next time (hopefully) I should go and photograph them at sunset when the photos come out better than night-time ones. The tailor gave us two lanterns as presents to remember Hoi An, dark pink and light blue.

The river front and the market. The Japanese Bridge at night. The Chinese temple, with beautiful dwarf gnarled trees in blue ceramic pots outside, and yellow-robed monks inside, burning incense sticks, and goggle-eyed gods or heroes maid of brightly painted wood.

The food was also lovely. Crispy ban xeo pancake, with pork, prawns and bean sprouts, rolled in rice paper with herbs and salad; banana pancakes; cao lau noodles; "white rose" open dim sum; banana leaf parcels, grilled, filled with meat and herbs, especially chives; wonton soup; pho for early lunch but really their breakfast food - we had this even at the airport in Da Nang.

We ate in tourist-aimed restaurants, but the locals eat at tiny side-road low tables and stools, served from a stall. I suggeted that to Jay, but he said he didn't want dysintery.

The fruit seller was a highlight. She had a conical hat and a libra-style balancing load on the shoulder. I took a photo of her and she gave me her load to carry and her hat to wear. The stick was made of wood and the load really heavy. Of course, I found out later that they all do that, but it's still a fun memory.

2012 Vietnam - Hoi An Tailors

Yesterday was a stressful day at the tailor shop. We got there about 2pm, after a long mid-morning nap. I must have been tired after the flight. It was a bit hot and they didn;t have the materials I wanted and kept saying they don't exist even in the other shops. I was expecting them to take me to a warehouse.

Then I got hungry and we went to the riverside cafe, Friendshio Cafe or Huu Nghi. We had the local speciality, cao lao noodls, and grilled banana leaf parcel of pork with aromatic herbs. This was such a good choice that we returned today for dinner. Right now Jay is watching football over my shoulder while I watch a group of Vietnamese men singing vietnamese music under colourful silk lanterns behind the yellow chrisanthemums of the restaurant. One of them has a guitar and another some sort of small guitar like an ukulele. It's mellow, their song, the song of a warm mellow night. I tune out the motorbikes that pass us by. A girl is getting off a motorbike and is changing intoo high heels, helmet still on.

So yesterday after lunch, as Jay had another well-deserved beer, I went for a stroll on the river-front. I walked into a tailor shop and asked about a suit of pink wool. They had no pink wool there, but the woman called up another few women, and one of them took me to the cloth market. Very close, she said. So we walked, past souvenir sellers, laquer sellers, T-shirts with brand logos, fruit sellers, noodle sellers, fresh curled up noodles in various sizes and colours, pungent fish, fresh aromatic herbs, mint, basil, lemongrass, chives. We finally turned two more alleys, increasingly narrow, and I was starting to worry about Jay waiting for me while I get kidnapped by an old Vietnamese woman with a har that isn't even conical. So we got to the cloth market. A cackle of women gathered around talking Vietnamese. It felt very strange. At last one emerged that could speak English, and she produced a couple of materials I was happy with.

Later we went back to the tailor shop, and the owner, a lady around 40-50, was there. Things got easier as she was more helpful and probably more persuasive. I ordered a few things and chose some materials. Then she sent me with another shop-girl in a taxi to cloth-shops, and we saw about six, cris-crossing a busy street with noisy motorbikes. We did eventually find one good colour.

Airplane to Hanoi, day 11.
Finally leaving Hoi An, after a couple of very tough days. I thought making clothes was fun, but man, my back is killing me after two days of standing up trying on clothes and debating over wrinklles and stitches. I hope I have made the right choice of colours, cloths and styles. Too late to change anything now anyway.

She had four tailors working on my clothes. A man making the trousers. An older woman with a group of young girls or women, shall we say. This one kept getting a bit irritated every time I pointed to the wrinkles, bumps and imperfections. But she was the one who seemed to know the solution to all the hard wrinkles that the others were debating for 10-15 min per wrinkle while I was standing up modelling. Then there was the big house with a large flat-screen TV in the living room where four tailor women were working on the porch. We wento this one on the motorbike.

I feel sorry I didn't visit the historic merchants house in Hoi An, but I got the experience of riding the motorbike behind the very diligent shop girl who took me to the tailors. Her body was so slim and minute it felt like holding on to a bamboo reed.

She did irritate me. She kept saying every time how perfect the clothes were, and how they were going to be smoothed out by ironing. "Jus iron!" I did manage to keep calm and speak slowly all the time, and after insisting a few times she would explain my complaint to the tailors, who never argued. They knew my complaints had a basis every time, and corrected it. Of course, it took a long time.

Yesterday night we left the tailor shop at 11, their whole house dark and asleep, and this morning we had more fittings from 8.30 until 11.30 when we got the taxi to the airport. I had hoped to get at least one hours' break to visit Hoi An in day-time, but what with all the adjustments, it was just not possible.

I have to say I do like the new clothes, they fit really well in all the places where shop-bought clothes don't.

2012 Cambodia - Siem Reap, Floating Village

After lunch on our last day we went to see the floating village that all our tuk-tuk drivers tried hard to sell to us. We bargained for the ticket, from $25 to $20. This reminds me of a friend saying in Africa you can even bargain for an airplane ticket.

The floating village is a dump and a rip-off. I will discourage people to go. Unless you're into slum visits and you enjoy feeling rich when you see poor people. We didn't ask to go there but the driver took us there anyway, then we got to the check-point and I said I just wanted to see it and not take the boat. This was not possbile. The driver persuaded us to pay then, because we said we'll come back at sunset. What sold it for me was that they said you would also see a mangrove forest.

We took an old rickety wooden boat, just for the two of us, despite the fact it had many seats. The boat driver didn't speak English. We passed the Gendarmerie, a newly refurbished house on tall stilts, and the same for the house of the Cambodian People Party. We then drove slowly into the village. A jumble of rather large shaks on wooden stilts, tall and dark as the sun was behind them. Made of corrugated iron planks and maybe some sort of dry bark or leaves, I'm not sure. There were platforms downstairs close to the water with firewood. There were also floating patforms with pigs inside.

The boat took us to a floating restaurant and a young woman came out and spoke to us in English. She said we had to pay $4 more to change into a smaller boat to go into the mangrove forest because our boat was too big. Nobody had told us that in advance so I said I', not happy about that because I already paid in advance. The woman kept saying "It's up to you". I will write a a review about this on the net, I said. They didn't seem to care.

We then drove through the mangrove forest, just on the main channel, which was beautiful. I felt relieved because I had felt afraid in the village with my big camera just the two of us on the boat. The forest was a short stretch and then we got to the open waters of the lake. We still had 1h to go of our 2h boat ride, the sun was up and had another hour to sunset, and our boat was wobbling quite dramatically. The water was muddy ochre, there was nothing on the horison but water and some submerged trees. Jay was the first to complain about the sea-sick movement of the boat. After another few waves I had had enough and asked to go back.

On the way back the village had come to life: children were going up and down the tall stairs to the houses, mothers were paddling the poats around, a girl was throwing water from the river onto the pigs in a floating cage, a mother was doing the same with her toddler. The woman from the restaurant was washing the dishes in the river.

2012 Cambodia - Siem Reap, Kbal Spean Waterfalls & Banteai Srei, "Temple of Women"

The waterfall at Kbal Spean was a highlight of this trip. We hiked through a rocky path in the jungle among many different trees, carefully labeled in English, Latin and the deocrative Cambodian script. It was a hike of 1800m, signposted with the distance to destination every 200m. There were carvings of gods in the bedrocks, reclining Buddhas, and lingas, the symbols of sexual organs and also of power. So beautiful, nature, religion and art together.

The temple of Banteai Srei is nearby, the only Hindu temple, the "Temple of Women". I didn't see that many women there. The guide told us that there used to be a matriarchy in the 11C AD, but they still had a king and "the wife was very important". He then proceeded to tell us stories of male gods killing demons and each other. He couldn't really elaborate on the subject. Very delicate, small and intricate carvings in pink sandstone.

Yesterday we woke up at 4.30 to go to the sunrise at Angkor Wat. Not that colourful today. There were many reliefs of Apsara dancers, very beautiful, their breasts shiny from so many tourists' hands. This level of delicate detail in carving reminds me of Alhambra. The entrances have statues of guarding lions, sinuous and almost sensual.

Today we went to see the sunrise again, it feels easy to wake up at 4 when you have a good afternoon nap for a couple of hours.

We then went to see the temples in Roluos, where there were adjacent buddhist temples with orange-robed monks, some of them as young as 7. Loley was one of them, Bakong another. Loley is smaller but you can wander around and see how the monks live. There were fish, fish heads and rice lied out to dry in the sun, flies buzzing around and calfs running past to the field, the tourist toilet at 10m. At Bakong it's a tall, terraced temple and the monks are on the side, I photographed one chatting to a pretty young tourist girl. Spiritual chat I'm sure.