i can haz nostalgia plz?

edmonton-lilac yesterday, alley at 112th & 82nd-ish street

I am having a bad case of nostalgia lately. This probably has something to do with the fact that I am in the midst of trying to finish off a 130-page thesis draft, and am therefore wishing I could periodically escape to another time & place... & since all my words are being used up in that 33 000+ monstrosity, & I am also slightly sleep-deprived, I am feeling everything really viscerally. Fewer words, more somatic impact. The smell of lilac blossoms makes me oddly euphoric... and also thrusts a bundle of Denmark-memories into the forefront, as that's where I was last year in the middle of spring. Coupled with an almond danish pastry (ah, wienerbrød!) I ate the other weekend (that was delicious, but not quite the same as the ones I ate there) I am experiencing little rushes of nostalgia for my weeks in København.

For the last while I have also been fascinated by the etymology of the word 'nostalgia' -- originally coined in the 17th century as a medical diagnosis for acute homesickness... (from the Greek 'nostos', home, and 'algos' pain). Nostalgia, I think, is a broader concept, than just a terrible wistfulness for one's birthplace or hometown or country, etc. Homesickness results from being placed in new/strange circumstances, away from the familiar, being caught in something lonely or isolating. But home, in the sense of nostalgia, is two dimensional -- it goes beyond places to include times, as well. I think we create little 'places' for ourselves throughout our lives, collections of experiences in various space-times that we dwell in, and these are our homes. When someone talks about 'that time in their life', a bounded unit or a certain stretch on a continuum, that is a home.

I was gone a month there, but I carved myself out a little home: at that old university building by the embassies in Christianshavn where the seminar met each day, flocks of bicycles at morning rush-hour, all-day conversations with all the people from the conference whilst we wandered everywhere & had beer & ice cream while dangling our feet over the canal & went for dinner & talked & walked back to the hostel & talked & had tea & talked & got up & did it all again. Total academic ecstasy, passionate people & feeling such an emotional-intellectual unity, synthesis. Lilacs & elderflowers & chesnut blossoms, the sea, the slant of light on the Kastellet moats at 8 p.m. on a May evening. The language of swallowed vowels & hoarse rustling, musicians at the Rundetaarn, cobblestone cloister-acoustics & the constant spray of fountains.

I would like to go back there someday, to Copenhagen -- but I also know it wouldn't be like going home, in the conventional sense, because 'home' is subject to time, just like everything else. My 'home' there has faded, it left with me when I flew away. Believing you can return to something, recapture it completely -- I think that's perhaps what causes the pain in nostalgia; I know that I can't, so while I long for it, it doesn't really hurt. Rather, this nostalgia ,with its lilac & almond pangs of longing, adds an aspect of richness to what I am feeling now, here, in the present time & place. It's the recognition of remembering, the acknowledgement of what I carry. & I am tremendously grateful for that. & despite the little pangs, there's also a satisfaction in remembering these things. They're still there, with you. & that is a lovely comfort.

& I always think of when my mama read me Tennyson's Ulysses... 'twas a long time ago, junior high, I think, but I still remember her repeating what she told me were her favourite lines:

I am part of all that I have met;

Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'

Gleams that untravell'd world, whose margin fades

For ever and for ever when I move.

the world is everlasting.

birch-shadows on newly hung prayer-flags, my yard, last saturday

tulips like great red teacups, last saturday

I rediscovered this song deep within my musical folders... It is all vintage Regina, silly & endearing, before she got all glossy-sounding. & she has some good advice for us to follow, to simplify things:

Well maybe you should just drink a lot less coffee
And never ever watch the 10 o'clock news
Maybe you should kiss someone nice
Or lick a rock or both

I already avoid the television-news & the coffee, & as for the kissing, 'twould be nice!
& I have licked rocks. It's useful for mineral identification, you know. Quartzite has a pleasant taste...

Regina Spektor -- The Ghost of Corporate Future, Soviet Kitsch (mp3)

I remember once my friend & I concocted a little short film in our heads to this song... I wish I could remember the details better, & whose idea it was... I do recall it being set downtown, and herds of businessmen in suits would be out in the streets, hurrying somewhere... & it would turn out that the place they were so driven to reach was the edge of the swimming pool by city hall... & they would all stop short, waiting, looking a bit confused, & then one would jump in... & the rest would gleefully follow.

translating & transfusing

lily pollen

hybrid lily on my kitchen table, a present from my sister

I've been reading a lot of Ukrainian poetry lately to soothe my thesis-addled brain, and I came across this quote by Oksana Zabuzhko, an author I enjoy (from her webpage)

«Переклад улюблених поетів – то немов переливання крови: таким робом всотуєш у себе невловно й невимовно нові, відмінні від твоїх способи почування, приховані під машкарою чужої мови».

«Входить Фортінбрас»

And now, I translate:

"The translation of one's beloved poets is much like getting a blood transfusion -- it opens you up to new ways of feeling that are nearly imperceptible and had til now been disguised by a foreign speech"

from her essay 'Enter Fortinbras'.

I love that analogy very much -- the act of translating being one of transfusing oneself with these new feelings and ideas, and through this process incorporating them into our own senses and understandings. Reading Valzhyna Mort has also got me inspired to do more translating lately, as well. It's something I've always enjoyed doing since I started studying the language formally at university in my undergrad days, when I was introduced to many Ukrainian contemporary poets and writers. I fell in love with certain pieces that made their way into my canon of favourites, and I wanted so much for non-Ukrainian speakers I knew to be able to appreciate them. So I set about to make my own translations to share. In some of the cases, I discovered there were English translations in existence already -- but I still felt compelled to create my own. I think it is similar to the reasons Oksana Zabuzhko gives in that quote . The process of transcribing infuses me with some of those beloved words, so I benefit from the act of doing so... But it's not all that selfish -- at the same time, I transfuse some of myself into my translation, so that my new piece carries a bit of myself as well. And that's what I wanted to share with people, I suppose. A bit of my own self carried in a new text, that might somehow encode how much I loved the piece, how much I related to it. There can never be too many translations, I don't think.

I've done three pieces -- two poems, 'Poets have no gender' by Halyna Kruk, and 'A Definition of Poetry' by Oksana Zabuzhko; one short story by Mykola Vinhranovskyj, 'White Flowers'. & there are more I want to do! I've posted them in here at some point in the last few years (see this month's archives for Kruk, this month for Vinhranovskyj) but I may make a little zine of totally unauthorized translations for giving to people I like who I think would appreciate these pieces. (My ultimate dream would be to inspire someone to learn Ukrainian to read these bits in their original language... 'tis always better, despite what any translators & their love can do. There's always the uncapturable space within, in between, that never can quite be captured, conveyed, retransfused into the new rendition.)

ranishnya rosa

My thesis has eaten up most of my words, so here is a singular little crocus, which I found sprouting all by itself in a little hillock on campus. It was all alone, in the middle of the grass, & I was rather excited to see the wee splash of purple! I wonder how often it is noticed. & who decided to plant it right there in the middle of the grass.

Also, here is a video from a Ukrainian group called Haydamaky, for a song called Meni Rozkazhe Ranishnya Rosa. It's a bit of a schmaltzy-sounding song, I warn you, (considering the title refers to feeling a lot like the morning dew on the grass where one had a lovely little tryst one night) but I mention it because the video has incorporates snippets from Serhiy Paradjanov's Tini Zabutykh Predkiv / Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, which is probably my favourite film ever. So watch it, & pay attention to the scenes projected all over the concrete walls, and that are occasionally interspersed (& also be amused by their singer, Oleksandr Yarmola, who looks a lot like a Ukrainian cousin of Jean-Luc Picard! with a moustache)

I saw Tini Zabutykh Predkiv again when it played at the Metro's Ukrainian film festival a few weeks ago, & it never fails to enchant me. I love the details, the ethnological-documentary feeling, the crazy motion of the camera that can seem jerky as Hutsul dancing, and appropriately sweeping at once, befitting the mountain landscape & its presence throughout the film. I love the portrayals of village religious life, the pagan beliefs shining through the thin layer of beaten-gold Orthodoxy. I love it, even if it isn't completely faithful to the story by Mykhaylo Kotsiubynskyj and some of the nuances of his writing don't come through in the dialogue. I love its use of folk songs, some of which my baba used to sing. I love how so many of its image have left indelible imprints on my eyelids, like Marichka's hand pressed to the window on Christmas Eve -- or near the end, with the shots of the red willow branches looking strikingly like pulmonary arteries, scarlet & frozen. I love it because even though the legend that inspired the story is rather sentimental, it's sentimental in a way that is rough and yearning and tragic (so very, very Slavic) and I love it because it examines outsider-ness & connections to nature/ancestors & inability to live within societal confines. I love it even though most people I make see it are rather confused by it (the subtitles aren't great, I know, and there are so many references to obscure folkloric elements) but I am happy that they have seen it, even if they can't quite appreciate why I love it so much.

So yes, you can see why it makes me glad to see it pop up in a music video.

Also, it just came out on DVD (Arwen, did I tell you that it also includes a documentary about Paradjanov and Tarkovsky!!! and a feature about the songs used...) Anyway, I still recommend that you should all track it down. (I will watch it with you if you like, and I will give you better translations of the subtitles & answer questions about what all the people with their fancy moustaches & funny costumes are doing...)

absurdity.

lone coconut gazing out over the n.saskatchewan, may 2, 2008

A whole coconut, contents intact, was found washed ashore on the river last week. It didn't seem to have been in the water very long... Very random. My verdict is it was the swallows ;)

Other speculation is certainly welcome...

(just substitute Edmonton for Mercia. It makes perfect sense)

Arthur: We have ridden the length and breadth of the land in search of Knights who will join me in my court at Camelot. I must speak with your lord and master.
Guard: What, ridden on a horse?
Arthur: Yes.
Guard: You're using coconuts!
Arthur: What?
Guard: You've got two empty halves of coconut and you're banging 'em together.
Arthur: So? We have ridden since the snows of winter covered this land, through the kingdom of Mercia, through —
Guard: Where'd you get the coconuts?
Arthur: We found them.
Guard: Found them? In Mercia?! The coconut's tropical!
Arthur: What do you mean?
Guard: Well, Mercia's a temperate zone!
Arthur: The swallow may fly south with the sun, and the house martin or the plover may seek warmer climes in winter, yet these are not strangers to our land.
Guard: ... Are you suggesting that coconuts migrate?
Arthur: Not at all. They could be carried.

-- Monty Python and the Holy Grail

sun in my lungs.

(a not-so-great-at-all video taken with my camera last winter, but you can see the swoop of the waxwing flock & hear them calling...)

I think what I've always liked best about running is how when I first set out, I am acutely aware of every muscle/tendon/nerve/fibre in my body... but after 8km or so, I've completely forgotten my body again. I think my body is especially responsive to endorphins, & I've always been blessed with the ability to reach a runner's high rather quickly. & so soon, I am just of the spaces between footsteps, breaths; there is such a boundlessness that I love.

(poem-draft that explains it)

running the body remembers
the winter days when i held
the whole sun in my lungs,
pulmonary fires light the bellows
of the heart, glowing echo of
a river’s crackly breathing.

running i remember my body,
re-member its limbs & its lilt,
music like a jaw-harp sprung
the pluck of the veins
and the foot’s muted drums
& then it’s lost again

to the swoop of the flock
of waxwings midstep
each stride a sharp breath,
wingbeats disappearing into
sunlight, embalmed with the
inhale, exhale into ash:

running i slip aside like ice
moving swiftly downriver,
each stridelength leaving
bones dissolved and avian
& i am ready, headcocked
with reflexes slight as lightning,
beleaguered arms becoming wings.

running i outrun myself,
through the body i am left
with boundlessness, i am
chased by my own trail
of muddy footprints, through
the slush & april smoke,

running i pull apart
with each exhale, inhale,
tiny little balled-up stars
in my pulse, between the cells
and myself, that white pulsar,
earthbound instrument left burning

as a thought, a stalk of rivergrass,
lit like silver aspen candles
on bleached white branches
& reaching like a birdflock,
breath held on treetops then
exhaling into giddy blue sky --