March Museness

Tonight we should watch--those who can--#4 Wisconsin take on #1 Syracuse for another Sweet Sixteen classic. Badgers, Brewers, Packers, Bucks: this state is doing things right, and well beyond the W/L column. Our symposian sympathies should go out to New Orleans, for the shambles of their NBA team and the NFL coach that has no concept of the gentlemanly aesthetics of the sport.

But today I'd like to talk about the Bulls. Tilo (et al), I'm putting you on this job: tell us what is behind the W/L column, which is, incidentally, most impressive.

We've put up a basketball hoop in our front yard. Everyone plays, and Joey and I like to 'Derek Rose' each other. He's become my favorite player, and not because the MVP award made me (or him) think any differently: he's worked on the diversity of his shots; he's embraced Tom Thibodeau's sense of defense; he's taught the pleasure of assists. As he sits and waits (see my previous post!) in this injury-expected stretch of a fast-break season, he's truly enjoying the way John Lucas the Third is stepping up, and Kyle Korver and C.J. Watson and even his starters.

Joakim was the butt of headlines when he was drafted: 'Are you Joakim?' (i.e. Joking) at the notion that he was going to reasonably do battle with the Dwight Howards and Andrew Bynums? Well, Thank you Uncle Jon for bringing us to a Bulls game to show us that he's the real enough deal. My buddy in Prague, David Sparandara, is the cousin of Vinny Del Negro. Between Joakim's first and second year (when he had an eye injury) Vinny asked David to attend pre-season training to 'deal with' Joakim; it was less about his eye than...well, that's where I'd like you, Tilo (et al) to fill us in. What's made the difference? We don't ultimately care about the W/L column. We don't need professional leagues to spur us on. But we do like the back-stories.

And we (my unlikely application of the royal 'We'?!) love basketball. We love any sport that plays itself out like chess: players that have their roles, do what they should: trap, retreat, steal and slide. But with all that pro forma, "every game is different." I put that in quotes because Joey has heard me say that every other day for the past year. Not to be macabre, I'd like that to be my epitaph (after Isaiah 42:3 and something from Dostoevsky--survivors' discretion).

But back to the Bulls. What makes them great?

Never Too Late

One half hour remains this nineteenth day

of March: thirteen years of Josef’s life

and twenty-three since Pastor Joe’s. The

mix this night has had the pulse of Red

Hot Chili Peppers, confounding dreams

of Californication…. It fits

Joe’s birthday gift: a Fender made in

Mexico, enticing riffs and strains

that make more sense in the playing than

the listening, wistfully, to (say)

‘Beast of Burden’ or any such song

from the Rolling Stones. Now it is Yes

and the ‘South Side of the Sky’. And then

it will be ‘Ten Years Gone’, which Uncle

Josh once aptly said was Zeppelin’s best.

We play, on occasion, ‘Wish You Were

Here’—not a Fender song per se, but

oh, we wish he were here. Like Lennon’s

‘Imagine’, which came to us unlike-

ly in the hands of Pastor Joe, who

unwrapped the album and had the guts

to let young sons imagine there’s no

heaven—seize that if you try. Good God,

it worked not for any predisposed

result. Imagine all you want. In-

effable grit in divine dispatch.

The equinox is nigh, and Lent is

in full swing. Joe and his brother Ben

and sister Em take turns in letting

me in to heaven in advance. Yes,

it may be apocryphal to say

we have any claim on God’s domain.

Properly we should scan the site for

snakes; we shouldn’t californicate

the place; we’d better take the blindness

of Milton, who fondly asks why he

(of all) should examine fate—and fair

concede 'they serve Him best who only

stand and wait.' Will do. And with Joe, too.

Directive # 4

An interesting dilemma sets before me.

I have a job opportunity with a fantastic company—one I’d been considering for years as an ideal place to work, even back when I had a lucrative position in a large, international entity. This business that brought me on board on a temporary basis has always struck me as having a great sense of customer service and as a place where people appear genuinely happy working there.

And I consider it an honor and a blessing to have been given this opportunity to work for them…it’s not an easy gig to land. And the respect I have for this company is why this dilemma exists. If I didn’t really care about this organization and what it’s represented for me, there would be no issue; but if that were the case, it’s not as likely that I would have sought employment there.

What makes this a dilemma, then, is that for anyone working on a part-time basis—which obviously includes the temps seeking a permanent position, but a large portion of the rest of the company as well—they have to commit to one unrestricted day every weekend during which the company can schedule them at any point of the day. And, again, with all due respect to the company, I understand why they require this, and under different circumstances, this would not be a dilemma for me.

My problem has to do with which day of each weekend to commit, and it has to be the same day every weekend, Saturday or Sunday. My other job, which is permanent with another company I have a great deal of respect for, calls for an early morning shift five days a week, including Saturday, that usually ends around 7 or 7:30 in the morning. I obviously can’t approach my manager at that job and say that I can no longer work Saturdays. So this leaves Sunday as the only day I can commit, on an unrestricted basis, to this new opportunity.

Sunday—the day that best energizes me into the new week… The day of the week when I am most able to renew my focus on what is most critically important in life. And I can do this along with a number of other like-minded people with whom I’ve formed a spiritual bond. These are individuals with whom I feel kindred spirit—I care a great deal for these people, like brothers and sisters, and they have expressed their care and concern for me and mine in profound ways.

Is this new opportunity important enough to me to sacrifice this particular day of the week for it without restriction? It’s already clear that the early part of this day—the critical part where this renewed focus, this re-energizing and inspiration is most potent—will almost always be when I would be scheduled.

Those of us who have ever been part of a Christian community have inevitably had exposure to the Ten Commandments. These are the mandates given by God through Moses to the Hebrews as they roamed the wilderness, still in flight from their enslavement in Egypt. These commandments are still upheld as the principles designed to help us focus on our relationships, both with God and with all people, in an appropriate and fulfilling manner.

While these Commandments are often followed dogmatically or moralistically, this approach tends to miss the divine intent, which Christ provides insight on in his assertion that by loving God completely and loving our neighbors as ourselves, this already satisfies the legalistic aspects of religion; but more importantly, it offers a simplified, spirit-based perspective on life and our relationships that cannot get bogged down by ethics or dogma. I have grown up with these commandments and had initially understood them from that moralistic standpoint, but have come to embrace them from a deeper, more fulfilling spiritual basis.

Directive #4: Remember the Sabbath to keep it holy. This commandment is perhaps the least understood of the ten in our current culture. It’s often given lip service, but not fully considered, either seen as being archaic—irrelevant in today’s culture—or as providing the inappropriate foundation to ‘guilt’ people into going to church.

From a more spiritually-fulfilling point of view, the idea behind this directive is that in order to fully appreciate life and all of its blessings, it’s best to take the time to rest from the routine that defines the rest of the week, and to focus more than usual on those relationships that are most critically important in our lives. For those of us who believe, this would obviously include God, but also includes the people closest to us—our kids, our significant others, our friends,…and of course, our selves, lest we forget.

Now whether one’s ‘Sabbath’ means Sunday, as it does in modern Christian culture, or Saturday, as it meant in biblical times, or Thursday or half of Saturday into Sunday...none of this matters nearly so much as taking that time to focus, to center one’s self, to re-energize, to re-create, to be inspired, to be revitalized in a context of gratitude and purpose. The critical point is that we all need to take time, consistently, to do the kinds of things that will help us re-prioritize the most important things in our lives—the blessings we have, the ultimate Provider of those blessings, and how we can best take care of those blessings. This is what “the Sabbath” is all about!

The sad reality is that most of us do not take much of any time to focus on what’s right and good in our lives. We’re wired in our human nature to focus on what’s wrong with our lives, what’s lacking,… And then much of the time we do take apart from our normal obligations is often cluttered with activities that are essentially meaningless…time-warp type behaviors that act as a vacuum of the mind and spirit. Discipline is necessary to take time to truly renew ourselves and to develop and maintain a positive perspective that can propel us into each new week. This is where carving out a consistent time, like a ‘Sabbath’ for instance, is incredibly helpful.

So when someone or some organization is making demands on that time I know I need, well, yes, I am very protective of it. I think it through. How would it impact me and those closest to me if I had to give that up? How would it affect my work through each week? How could this affect my spirit? Is there a chance I can consider a different time as my ‘Sabbath’?

Remember the Sabbath to keep it holy. Keep an eye on your time and how valuable it is. Be mindful of how you spend your time and whether or not it meets your priorities. If you see your time as sacred, then live your life that way, ‘cause once the time has passed you by, you ain’t gonna git it back!

So the dilemma… Decisions like this should not be made quickly or lightly. I seek advice and try to remain open to all concerned perspectives, and I feel a day closer to that final decision on this. Clearly, though, it’s only by taking the time to grapple with this dilemma that I can truly appreciate both this employment opportunity and the journey in faith as the blessings both of them are.

Babi Leto, Babi Yar (Part II.)

 

II.

Yakov’s career in the circus left plenty to be desired, but years passed peacefully in the capacity of clowning and managing the clean-up crew. He was one of the last to leave the evening performances, but, the deal was, he could arrive later than the other clowns, especially as his face paint was sparse: an exaggerated teardrop from each eye over a rudimentary daisy. His shaggy hair required no wig, and his costume was simple: anything not too loose to allow him to go from stilts to high wire to unicycle, as if he were less a contracted performer and more a ‘common’ man running his way through the other acts. Every evening had its predictable features, but Yakov’s role was to create some improvisation—sort of like that bear had, he occasionally reflected.

            What was left to be desired was companionship. Who would imagine a central figure in the entertainment industry to be utterly lonely? “Lots of us are,” said Nadia, who tumbled atop the trotting horses. Yakov talked with her sometimes after her performance, which he watched intently, in the darkest shadow. Nadia’s jealous husband grabbed the bridles as soon as she made her final dismount, and, taking her bow, she backed gracefully into the same shadow. “I’d rather live with the horses than with him,” she mumbled, but maybe that was the result of an afternoon tiff. Yakov saw sometimes there was passion in their body language and conjectured that a jealous husband was more desirable than an indifferent one.

            “How do you unwind after the show?” Yakov asked her.

            She winced but sniffed out a smile. “I read, he watches television, I cook, he drinks, we eat…we…you know.”

            “What do you read?”

            “Really?”

            “Sure. I’m always in for recommendations.”

            Nadia looked more directly at him. It was dark, but with such light from the ring she could see his eyes glisten. “Mostly last century sort of stuff…. Romances, published diaries, sad creatures lolling about the countryside. Boring, maybe?”

            “No.”

            “Kuprin is good to read. Leskov. Tolstoy, of course.”

            “Of course.”

            “I’m reading Resurrection now.”

            “That’s nice.”

            “And you?”

            “Me what?”

            “are reading?”

            Yakov didn’t want to lie, and she’d heard his voice enough to tell. “I don’t read too much—that’s why I need recommendations! Kuprin?”

            “Alexander. Start with ‘Garnet Bracelet’—I’ll bring it tomorrow.”

            “Yakov!” a voice hissed, “you’re on, you ham!”

            He instantly had to be a jester and stumble into the final act.

            Nadia brought a volume of Kuprin’s short stories the following evening. “I said to start with ‘Garnet Bracelet’, but actually that’s the last story here.” She handed it over and looked down at a rip in her stocking—she had mislanded on a leap from horse to horse tonight and, instinctively, tumbled as best she could to the circus floor, catching a hoof on her thigh but nothing more. Yakov witnessed it in fright and was set to dash to her rescue, but then she popped up and even remounted the inside horse as they ringed around her.  “In fact,” she mumbled, “start with ‘Emerald’, for my sake.”

            “What’s that about?” Yakov tried to lure her eyes.

            “A horse. A racing horse that,... well, you’ll see.” She smiled tightly and decided not to look up to him. “Sergey!” she instead let out to her husband, approaching with a bridled horse, “train her to trot closely! She almost killed me by broadening the gap.”

            Sergey jerked his head at Yakov, whose sad eyes betrayed nothing he could figure out, and then back to Nadia. “You fell. That’s too bad, but don’t level it to my training of these stupid animals. For that matter, discipline the beasts yourself!” He threw the bridle lead to Nadia and glared once more at Yakov, who looked down at a non-existent tear in his costume. He slipped away before he knew he’d crumble; his experience as a clown and hustler never felt more inchoate than in the face of true relational dynamics. He could always fool a fool; he only felt a fool himself when an intimate and knowing pair was involved.

            He glanced at the bewildered horse as he slunk off, wondering if she read any of his feelings. Who cared if there were power in numbers; there was, theoretically, solace in pairs, and this mare was supposed to figure out her synchronized trot to make Nadia’s flips land right, so that Sergey’s fragile ego would hold on to whatever he conceived it to be.  How complicated the world is, to perform an honest act with another, on behalf of another, despite the suspicions of another, to accommodate for that other, to placate the other, to… never, or not… give up trying…

            It was a chess game, on this day-off from the circus, on Trukhaniv island in the middle of the Dnieper River. Yakov came here every so often to survey the action and walk hours on end in the unlikely wilds of the urban mesh. Kiev was a city surrounded by forests—there were thousands of miles of paths, paved and otherwise, to walk within what could reasonably be called the city limits. There were better chess venues, to be sure: logically, in front of the university, or the greens in the Oblomov region in the north of the city. Yakov loved venturing south and west of the hustle and bustle, where families would spontaneously light up their portable grills for shashlik and seasoned eggplant. He remembered nostalgically the first time he walked these outer parks, seeing unclaimed dogs curl their brows at such family delights and hoping—as he indeed saw one such scenario played out—a scrap of discarded shashlik fat would turn into the hem and haw of whether to take this young mutt beyond the park—“Papa, please, we’ll take care of him!”—“but who will walk him in the deep freeze of winter?”—“oh, Papa, we will, and anyway he’ll be trained by then”—“by whom?”—“by us”—“by me,” says Mama, who is always last to weigh in on such primary questions—“by us!” says the unison voice of children—“by us,” says the Papa siding with his wife, not at all convinced that they’ve won.

            Yakov dreamed of a wife. He couldn’t identify exactly with such a papa, rotating bits of meat on a shashlik skewer while fending off the sweater tugs of his fickle children. They’d forgotten the stray dog by this point and were now pressing papa for coins for the stand-up swings. Mama seemed happy not to have coins, not to tend to the grill. She accepted the quiet puppy into her lap and began checking it for fleas, at the same time stroking its still short beige fur. The co-existence—let alone love—would have to happen here, in her approval, a veritable leap of faith.

            The adage he loved most in such reflections was the timeless and semi-logical “live a century, learn a century.” He walked many days seeing tableaux like this and envied their learning through living. I’m just a quarter-century so far—there’s more life to live. Yet shall I wait for the bona fide learning ‘til I’m pushing up daisies? Of course not,.. of course not. The ratio didn’t prescribe so much. It was a chess game. And by ‘game’, it was, of course, the sum total of how you made due with your and your opponent’s king’s gambit or bishop’s prerogative…

            These were honest, expected moves. Occasionally, especially in speed rounds, Yakov would set his queen off her color and open with more moves to the left-hand side—he realized most players didn’t love that bank for offense anyway—and by the time he could castle (and not be caught out for the shyster start), he had his rival in unfamiliar territory. It was never a question of how the queen could get where she was, rather how…unforeseen, as the bishop is clearly here and my pawns are doing what they should, and usually the knight’s in a good position to bust things up… Of course the next game would have to be different—clearly set, with an alternate gambit, but since Yakov had won the first move, he would more likely-than-not win the afternoon.

            He didn’t need to do this, he knew: a circus salary and an assigned apartment sufficed, especially since he had no expensive habits. But maybe now he’d start buying some books, fill the huge wall unit that even the most mendacious flat already had, pre-installed. He had never driven a car, but wondered about the countryside. It would be nice to have a car. Everything he had ever seen had been from train windows. To have a little car, to meander, or to have a little garden spot—why not a dacha, even here, on Trukhaniv island…

            Pow! the sucker punch came from across the board. “you shitty yid, you think I didn’t see you juke the last guy with your misplaced queen? Now what’ya got, huh? Here’s your fuckin’ double-or-nothin’ on my cheatin’ queen”—and the angry man jumped his key piece over a fence of pawns for a sudden checkmate. There was little Yakov could do here. He calculated, knowing two hundred rubles in two bills were in one pocket and a more fluid hundred in another, so, pleading nothing—rather saying he never came here to cause trouble—he pulled out a hundred from the richer pocket and dropped it squarely in the center of the board. It satisfied the angry man, and Yakov slinked away feeling neutral: not happy about his swelling cheek, not richer for his unequivocal gains, but free to walk without pursuit, and dream.

            And read. ‘Emerald’ was indeed an excellent story, and terribly sad, thinking mostly about Nadia. Such a majestic creature, so strong and sentient and… star-crossed—Yakov liked that term, even if he couldn’t name the most common constellations. Somehow the movement of celestial spheres made sense to him, and inevitably their trajectories would cross, and maybe even clash with whatever gravitational expectations that might have been charted out. That’s sort of what Yakov liked. Heaven also played its shell games—luring in the assurance of predictability, that Venus, for instance, spins backwards and Pluto disparages the uncanny plane of other orbits. Then throw in the comets, the black holes, the stray Melancholias (what he wouldn’t yet know)—he’d see that before his live-a-century would be up—and Yakov’s universe was pleasantly incomplete.

            More visceral than ‘Emerald’ was the story ‘Gambrinus’, about an Odessa pub that housed Sashka and his little dog Snowdrop, until the latter was smashed against the pavement by a badly drunken patron. Sashka played violin and whistle pipe for the constant turnover of sailors, gypsies, sojourners and local tramps, then shuffled off to an amorphous war (defining, with his lack of contact, its obsolescence), then returned to a valiant, weathered, vivacious if withered redoubt at the pub with his violin. Mme Ivanova, ageless between all realities, reflected all measures of hope for his return. One would suggest they were better off than a married couple: daily interactive, in love with what the other brought to an otherwise sweltering and friendless place.

            “He was a Jew,” Yakov told Nadia, right before she was to go on to the next night’s act.

            “What?”

            “He was a weirdly, wandering (but not really) Jew.”

            “That’s a story by Leskov, but..,” she hissed, “get out of my way!”

            The horses were trotting towards them, with Sergey behind, swatting and swearing. As Nadia strode with them into the center ring, Sergey grabbed Yakov by the arm. “You keep out of her way—and don’t think I don’t see you two talk.”

            “We have to talk—our acts transition—”

            “I’ll break this arm. Nobody will notice or care. You’d be just clowning around. And I don’t. Stay the fuck away.”

            So he had to. And since he guessed that she would in time reread ‘Gambrinus’, he penciled in a note on the spine margin of part III, near Mme Ivanova’s request to
                        “Play something, Sashka, will you?”

                        “What would you like me to play, Mme Ivanova?” Sashka

                     asked obligingly. He was always exquisitely polite to her.

                        “Something of your own.”

His note was merely: “afternoons chess at Taras S.”

            That park was across from the university renamed after Taras Shevchenko, by Stalin’s grace. The terracotta façade of the main building defined this part of Kiev—not strictly Soviet red or Decembrist crimson, rather stoic in hardened russet clay. Here Yakov didn’t play for bets. There were moneyless students who’d play between classes, and largely this wasn’t an atmosphere to make a spectacle of oneself and run off. Yakov’s ulterior motive, besides the prospect of meeting Nadia off-hours, was to soak in the culture, to get used to browsing at book tables at the nearby Besarabska market.

            His evenings at the circus were miserable. He had left Nadia’s book in her changing area, but avoided her as deliberately as she did him. Sergey was always scanning, and in his frustration to catch and punish, he collared Yakov and seethed: “You think it’s a cat-and-mouse game, huh? Well I’ll pound her tonight to see how you’ll stay in your shadows!” And he did. Nadia almost couldn’t perform the following evening and she stayed home the next two. Sergey had told the manager (who believed him) that she had fallen off a horse training for a new stunt, and that she was too embarrassed to speak about it. Yakov cried bitterly alone, and thought hard about quitting this evil place. Instead, he replaced the trademark teardrop on his facepaint with an emerald star. He couldn’t know if Nadia noticed when she returned, because she didn’t look at him. He arrived as late as he could and she and Sergey left before the finale, which through the manager’s consent she was now exempt.

            The main thing, for Yakov, was that she wasn’t hurt; as much as he could tell, from the even deeper shadows where he watched, she was strong and agile as ever on the animals. It was silly, he conceded, that he would have meant much to her in the first place.

            “I was wrong,” came a quiet voice behind him. Yakov closed his eyes on the words he had been only half-reading in the bustle of Taras Shevchenko square, and Nadia brushed his arm as she sat down. She smelled beautiful, like always, and though he tightened his eyes shut, he grinned and shook his head.

            “Wrong?” Bashfully he looked to her.

            “About the wandering Jew. Here, it’s actually about a monk named Ivan—the ‘Enchanted Wanderer’ of the title.” She handed him the book she drew from her bag, filled to the top with groceries. “I re-read it last night and only one little part has a mystical rabbi who exiles himself to the deserts of…well, your Samarkand, I imagine. And he buries himself to the neck in the sand…for seventeen years.”

            “Why?”

            “God provides. Sort of a spiritual test in reverse.”

            They sat silently for a moment, then Yakov asked, “when did you re-read ‘Gambrinus’?”

            “Maybe last night also.” She looked at him intently and didn’t return his warm smile. “Maybe three weeks ago—what difference does it make?”

            “None. You’ve made my life happy either way.”

            “Don’t, it’s…dumb.”

            “I’ve been able to read situations on a street since I was really little. I’m pretty natural at a chessboard. But I’ve never cared for reading pages before. I’m still not very fast—I have to read certain sentences a lot of times…”

            She reached for what he had set down. “What’s this? Envy—where on earth did you get this?”

            “Here, or at Besarabska actually. I traded Kuprin’s Yama for it—”

            “These have been banned for years. I’ve only heard about Olesha, in a tiny article when he died a couple years ago—they called this novel a trick.”

            “I’m only half-way through. The trick for me is keeping up with it. They keep on talking about a machine named ‘Ophelia’, but not what it’s supposed to do…”

            “And what was Yama like?”

            “Like it says—the pit of Odessa’s sex trade. There wasn’t anyone like Sashka in it, or Emerald… I guess it succeeds in the point that it’s hard to get out of something. Or you shouldn’t get into what you can’t… or shouldn’t—” He stopped short—he didn’t want to belabor anything, or rush. Still, he sputtered foolishly when he tried to transition, “what about you?”

            “What about me?”

            “Um, you look fine at the show, but…”

            “But what?”

            “…but I can’t imagine what your husband does when.. I see him scowl at me and would rather he get that rage out in my, um,..”

            “I told you—he watches television.”

            Yakov nodded his head. “It’s just that when he said he’d—“

            “Mulchat! Stop thinking about him.”

            “I’m thinking about you.”

            “Look, this isn’t why I came here. I found your note and another sappy story for you to read—though I see you don’t need anything from my old shelves—“

            “Not the case—on the contrary: look,” Yakov paged to a place in Envy he had dog-eared: “listen to this guy Ivan Petrovich who ruins the Ophelia machine and—where is it?—‘avenges my era’—he means the olden days, not the modern world—that’s when I’m thinking of you—‘They’re eating us alive,’ Ivan says, ‘they’re swallowing the nineteenth century the way a boa constrictor swallows a rabbit.’ See?”

            “See what?”

            “I barely understand this century, but how could I know anything of the past without reading?”

            “Why do you need to know about the past?”

            “Well, why do you? Why do you read Leskov?”

            “He writes about horses, and that’s my present life.” She stood up to go.

            “Here, Nadia, please take Olesha—it would be good to swap centuries.”

            She put the worn book in the middle of her bag and arranged a loaf of bread and vegetables to cover. She snatched a frond of grapes and gave them to Yakov, who shrugged as if he had no need. “You’re skinny. Davai.”

[more parts to follow]

Babi Leto, Babi Yar (Part I.)

Yakov was born in a complicated set of circumstances, from his breach position to the problem of his parentage. His mother made him Jewish, herself circumcising him against the explicit orders of her husband, who off-and-on doubted the boy was really his. His wife was faithful, he knew, yet also a rape victim several times over by the Schutzstaffel that spared their lives at Babi Yar—luckily?—on the condition of their collaboration. She was clearly a Jew, but he was a German emigrant (now Soviet citizen). When asked why he left the Reich, he simply said “out of love.” “With Jews?” “With my wife.”

            A risible idea, and perhaps useful, thought Commandant Radomski, who was in need of local moles to set up the Syrets labor camp. This mixed couple would supply language, lists and legerdemain to ensure their conjugal love never blended to other loyalties—none, save this SS contract in blood. When Yakov was born he was declared ‘Jürgen’, and his mother used each name with him deliberately:

            “There is a God who loves us, Yakov, no matter what any of us do.”

             “Every little trick counts, Jürgen, for making sure you get ahead.”

            He was still a toddler in late September, 1943, when Syrets had an uprising. Radomski put to death dozens who did not escape but quickly realized the fifteen who succeeded would require outside help. Jürgen’s mother swore she had no knowledge of them, but her pleas were in vain. As SS guards dragged her out of their tiny flat, her husband screamed at them, “why not me? Take me—I can find out more!” She never came back, disappearing like the Nazis did some six weeks later. Now, from the winter of ’43, Yakov would hear only his intended name and know himself as the last remains of his mother.

             The reassertion of Soviet governance made them prisoners again, as German collaborators were put to death or, to prevent Yakov from becoming a cumbersome orphan, exiled to central Asia. Samarkand was the city where Stalin’s dart landed, and Yakov grew up there among other German refugees. His father was shredded, bereft of all roots or reason to live, but he took the job offered him to manage the books at the local circus. This area of the earth actually never needed a Moscow mandate on acrobats or the way they could draw a crowd; it was easy enough, then, to keep the perfunctory books and codify the inertia of listless, layered cultures.

            Years passed, and while his dad sunk into books and vodka, Yakov became an adroit observer of how things ran. The circus of Samarkand was not strictly what was billed. Fire-eaters, strongmen, plate-spinners and jugglers were all intent on what they could get on the street more than under the big tent. Yakov followed them and the cardsharks and hustlers: he reveled at the simplicity of the shell game that always preyed on self-assurance (of the spectator, not the sheller). Yakov wasn’t bright—he didn’t overthink what ‘self-assurance’ meant, let alone the victim’s arrogance or the trickster’s cockiness.  What he did understand, imminently well, was the pattern of patterns, the ways things tended to work: always the whirl-about ball settled close to the predictor, and almost always in the patter before exposing this fact, the predictor would flick through his wallet, eyeball a jeerer, stare too intently at that damned shell to the point of unblinking blindness, and at that indiscernible moment the silent switch occurred and the hustler asked just one more time if the choice was sure, which it had to be by now. The lift to empty space exhilarated the crowd and lured in a line of better-thans, and occasionally—as part of the pattern—one was allowed to win.    

            Partly because his father would flay him if he ever went in that direction, and partly because he was too scrawny to withstand the inevitable beatings by some of the dupes, Yakov did not practice this side of the circus trade. Instead, he trained as a tightrope walker—an apprentice, anyway, when his duty to sweep the grandstand floors were done. His quota of falls, naturally, would determine whether or not he’d tenure on the high-wire, and he was about at limit when, on a rather raucous night he slipped and splayed his legs to prevent the full fall, yelped at the jolting pain but managed to cling upside-down like a three-toed sloth. The audience howled, and when he recovered enough to wince toward the stanchion, he began to feel the crowd as a kind of hope: he’d turn clown, wave wildly and feign confidence and fear as the final few feet of cable let him have the spotlight.

            Before the show ended he rummaged through the equipment shed for some stilts cast aside many clown years ago and rushed into the arena fireman-style, propping them up against the high-wire latter and climbing upon them to learn on the spot, clownishly, in front of everyone. To be clumsy now made some sense, but Yakov also had a developed sense of balance and no apprehension of added height. He pirouetted once by accident, then again on purpose, ran to keep from falling forward, skulked backward and figured out a way to wave—quickly, clownishly, as before. His dismount was on cue with the confused rush of two animal trainers, who were ordered by the ringmaster to put a halt to this hijinx. The crowd roared approval at this choreography, and Yakov pretended to swim upstream as his handlers logged him out of the arena.

            His manager tore into him after the show but knew, as did the sanctioned clowns, that Yakov was a star tonight, and would indeed have his further chances.

            That glow lasted a lucky few years, until one night when the clowns followed the dancing bear and—without provocation from Yakov’s view—the bear charged into his stilts and sent him tumbling, slithering now with a broken left leg as the bear growled a contemplation of a fuller mauling. That did not happen, though, and the spotlight seemed to draw the bear back to his predictable role, while Yakov was pulled to the umbra. The manager knew the animal would need to be put down and he ground his teeth at the inanity of it all, but Yakov insisted even on the summoned gurney that everything was his own fault—his height confused the creature—and that he himself would make amends, restore the bear’s sense of reality.

            They shot the bear and fired Yakov. The bookkeeper seemed to take this as a cue and drank four bottles that night alone, never to wake up from this resort.

           

            Though his father had spoken little about his mother or, even less, about Kiev, Yakov vowed he’d go back to his origin once his leg had healed. He never again walked without a limp, but the main of things was set: Stalin’s mandates were to be reversed and no one questioned Yakov’s plan, or lack of one. His train took him past Bukhara across the Amu Darya to Charjou, where he disembarked for a few days, as if to reconsider. He had very little money—hadn’t really thought of scouring his father’s hiding spots, which inevitably would have been emptied anyway by those that removed his body. Part of his time in Charjou was to gather himself.

            He slept in a swimming pavilion on a river lagoon and ate persimmons, cantaloupe, sunflower seeds and grapes from the dacha gardens lining the canals. On one dostum he found some metal tea cups and practiced the shell game with a large grape. He knew its oval shape would not lend to the roll of a rubber ball, but he was surprised how dexterous he was with the swirl of the inverted cups. He imagined a little audience and his need to patter. In Samarkand the language of the street was Tajik, much different than the mix of Uzbek and Turkmen here. Yakov was best in Russian and decided to develop lines that began in that language, blurred at points in Tajik, especially before bringing the shells to a sudden stop. Before leaving this dacha, he carefully tore a square of the baize cover. He also realized that cherries from a tree in the adjoining yard would roll better than oblong grapes, so he picked the ripest ones to test and filled his pockets with those that succeeded through the pattern.

            Charlatans play on the ebbs of traffic; merchants waiting to catch the train back to Bukhara sometimes had minutes and money to spare, a window for a game of chance. Yakov limped to a spot between the rynok and the train station and spread out the baize square. He stood upon it and put the stack of tea cups on top of his head. Then he took three cherries out of his jacket pocket and juggled them, taller and taller until one sailed high and into the stack of cups. Still juggling two, Yakov timed a dip into his pocket for another cherry, and quickly then another. He bucketed three of the five into the topmost cup, and by this time, he had some spectators.

            “Da vai,” he called to one bystander to recover one of the errant cherries. He bid him to toss it straight up, and completed the catch with his head, punctuated with a Tajik “oh-wah!” He missed the other cherry thrown his way, yet this helped put an end to the monkey business and instill a sense of his fallibility. Beginning his patter he scooped out the cherries and pocketed all but one. He flipped the tea cups into his left hand and then to his right, separating them as a harmonium player would stretch out his instrument. He instantly knelt and began the swirl:

            you see these suckers time to time

            trying to take what isn’t mine—

            they have three mouths, I have one

            you got money, they got none—

            just that cherry’s shared delight

            worth twice your bid, you get it right

            see here—

he lifted one of the cups to reveal nothing—

                                                             famished or he’s full?

                                    The chase for cherry is his pull—

                                    what’s yours? Who’s hungry for a win?

                                    Ah, that’s me—

he fingered the outer cups and switched one with the middle, which, lifted up revealed the wobbling cherry—

                                                            I’d let you cash that in!

                                    If you can do what I can, you double what you are.

                                    Who’s in? Da vai! You know these suckers aint so smart—

tapping each cup before a final swirl. A heavy man threw down a ten ruble note, which caused Yakov to improvise his prepared speech. “You hold it, sir—you haven’t lost it yet,” and, handing the bill back with his left hand, he rotated the middle cup out. The man took back the bill and pointed down at the new middle. “That’s your bet?” Yakov queried, to which the man grunted ‘of course’. “You sure?” He looked unsure but yelled “da vai” for confirmation. Yakov delicately opened the new middle cup to nothingness and quickly said before the fat man’s groan, “I’ll double or nothing for ten rubles more.”

            “You won’t move them again?”

            “You still have you money—you keep it all if you win.”

            “Just those two cups?”

            “I have no better chance than you.”

The fat man pointed to one and Yakov mimicked his move, to make him sure.

“Yes! that one.” As delicately as before, Yakov opened to the cherry. The crowd’s reaction nearly drowned out Yakov’s even tone:

            “You win.”

            And so he did. Nothing for the fat man, nothing this time for Yakov—except a line of confident followers. The next two lost—one to double-or-nothing, the other refusing that offer. The third fellow decided that putting the force of his foot on his cup of choice was all that was needed to beat Yakov, and indeed this leadfoot won—and set up the next two who tried the same technique, and they lost. Onlookers could see what Yakov would do—he’d continue to question the bigness of the bet or to see the money that would back it up, and when the victim shifted his weight to check what money he actually had, the shells would imperceptibly shuffle. One or two from the crowd would call out this trick, but the guffaws from the rest drowned them out, or the victim couldn’t tell anymore where his loyalties lay.

            In forty minutes, Yakov earned eight hundred rubles. The bets of ten were long ago past, and the last bet of one hundred Yakov lost, on purpose to save steam for the next afternoon. A couple hounders followed him after he folded up his baize square, asking where he lived, but that was easy for Yakov to deflect: “I live under one of these shells.” And he mixed into a trolleybus crowd and exited when there was little way of trailing him further. He bought some samsa and mors at a kiosk and sat on a park bench. He watched beautiful Turkmen women walk by in their lackadaisical gait. Some of them looked at him. He would not win with them, he mused, though evidently, some men did.

            Dusk settled and the lights around the park went on. There was a billiard hall that caught Yakov’s eye, but he knew he wouldn’t hustle well with his gimpy leg. Why not just shoot around? he posed to himself, but shook off the notion. Maybe tomorrow. He went into a restaurant and ordered shchi and sashlik, and ate slowly. By the time he returned to the swimming pavilion, the stars were the only lights in sight. He groped for the narrow bench that would be his bed, and cursed his lack of memory, as he had wanted to purchase a pillow at least.

           

            Three days in Charjou were essentially the same: he’d swim, bide his time ‘til afternoon, perform his shell routine in different parts of town, then people watch—not for calculation sake, but to enjoy thinking about their innocence. The suckers were innocent, too, but different. And he was innocent in his own way. Like the Iago he once saw in the converted Samarkand circus, Yakov never quite lied to those he fooled, but made them fool themselves; for that short routine, he had to tacitly echo “I am not what I am.” Honestly, Yakov wasn’t nearly so duplicitous; he really did not know what he was.

            He took a train to Astrakhan and from his window saw a lean wolf loping in the salty desert. Must be lost, even if there were a pack. A wandering Jew, maybe—not lost, but avoiding pogroms. What better place to hide?

            The desert stretched the entire day, and the Astrakhan station met him in near darkness. He hadn’t wanted to use his winnings for hotels quite yet, but this city would not lend so easily to his obscurity. There was more money to be made here, but a lot more work and risk—the patter would have to change and the escape routes more defined. Astrakhan had miles of city parks along the Volga, but more law enforcers to move along hucksters or chase down thieves. And this was the point Yakov vowed to distinguish: he’d hustle (without lying—the gamble was the game and everyone knew that truth) but he’d never steal. Well, he thought, I did pilfer the teacups and some food… He groggily vowed he would pay back the loans to make a living. There, he thought—surviving isn’t stealing.

            The next day Yakov slept in. The Oktyabriska hotel at first claimed no space, but Yakov put an extra twenty rubles on the desk, and a room was found. The shower was not hot and there wasn’t any soap, but Yakov figured he didn’t need a deep clean—he had scoured himself with sand in his final swim at the lagoon. Plus, the patter needed a modicum of grime.

            you see these suckers time to time

                                       trying to take—

“Tschyot, durak! Get on with it, would’ya?” The clientele here wouldn’t suffer fools, even if they were just as drawn to gamble. “It’s business, not fuckin’ art.”

            Some of the conventions worked the same—double or nothing the first loss and be sure to let that ploy win. Win without taking, take without winning, lose liberally enough to keep the con alive. But the tactics had to change. One man forced Yakov to back away once he stopped the swirl. “This one!” he said, himself picking up the cup to the rubber ball—Yakov had bought several at the Univermag to replace his bruised cherries. Now everyone would practice that ploy, even if the stupid next guy didn’t follow the swirl in the first place and picked up the cup to nothing. The third and fourth succeeded, though, even as Yakov whipped up the routine. He had to find a way to get the ball out of the loop altogether, which was difficult insofar as the patter deliberately included peeks and exposed rolls, shell to shell. The crowd had to have glimpses and hints of the prize, and shelling total emptiness would, of course, annihilate the scam. He never had to show the victim which shell had it in the end, he never had to take their double or nothing bids, but eventually he’d need to roll that ball back out of his sleeve and into the rotation. He couldn’t sustain this orchestration for more than forty minutes—in some cases half that of his experience in Charjou—and much of the day was moving around for resets.

            Stalingrad was no better, and by his second day in Kharkov, Yakov was back down to nothing in his pockets. He factored in some necessary losses to entice a crowd, but increasingly—as if the word was out on his tendencies—he couldn’t balance the deliberate losses with the ones out of his control. His wins were engendering more vitriol from the victims: in Charjou, the anger was vocal, tempered with ridicule by fellow dupes; in the Volga region, the anger was more tangible, the crowd pressing in for compensatory justice. There weren’t any jokes to complement the patter, and, bad leg and all, Yakov would shuffle as quickly as he could from an argument, taking up his apparatus but leaving the disputed bills behind.

            By and large, Yakov regarded these failures philosophically. He wouldn’t be shelling forever, just as his apprenticeship on the high wire was mainly a means of brewing confidence. He enjoyed being a clown—his juggling was improving enough that his way of drawing crowds was less to basket little balls into teacups and more to create the smiles that he was missing. His was getting used to his limp and imagined factoring that into an act—limp on stilts, for instance, or practice walking on his hands. The circus at Karkov was none too interested in vagabonds like him, but Kiev, he heard, had more competition than the central, iconic ‘TSIRK’ he saw in every large city. It hadn’t exactly been his plan when he left Samarkand, but then again finding a plan along the way was the larger point.

            Yakov set his baize square in a brazen spot at the railway station and won easily, even with a diminishment of his patter and shiftiness. He needed 20 rubles to complete the purchase of a train ticket, and in ten minutes he had fifteen times that much. Police would be showing up soon, and, with some scruples, Yakov called out a young onlooker from the crowd who was glued to the action. The crowd demurred at the prospect of taking advantage of a kid, but Yakov put up his hand and guided the boy to shift the shells around for himself, to get the feel of the motion. Yakov asked him to stop when he felt ready, then pointed to a shell he knew was empty. The boy, delighted, lifted to nothingness and accepted Yakov’s ten-ruble note. “Double or nothing!” a man laughingly called out, but Yakov was already walking away. He bought his train ticket and didn’t return to claim the teacups and baize square, which, of course, hadn’t been his to begin with.

So This is What Foreclosure Feels Like

My family and I have now experienced something which: a)we once thought would never happen to us; and b)tends to be a source of at least passing anxiety for most people at some point in their lives. The fact is that there are more and more of us in this foreclosure boat than ever before. And while I’m sure there are probably foreclosure support groups out there, I never heard of any, likely because people are spending more time trying to dig themselves out of whatever financial hole they found themselves in that led toward their predicament.

But the reality of foreclosure is: a)that no one is alone in that boat, certainly not today, certainly not in this economy; and b)that everyone will respond to their particular situation in their own unique ways. At the worst extreme, I’ve heard one story of a man who, in desperation regarding his family’s situation killed his wife and kids before taking his own life, leaving a note behind shedding light on the depths of hopelessness he had fallen to prompting him to such horrendous acts.

Most of us who share space in that boat, while largely isolated from each other, never come close to such all-consuming feelings of emptiness and despair. Most of us in that boat will ride the waves, the ups and downs from one day to the next that include:
• the work of clawing one’s way up and out of this mire they’re in;
• the glimmer of hope as an opportunity presents itself to pull themselves out of this muck;
• the psychological self-assessments through which one wonders where they went wrong or worse, by which they drag themselves through the mud of self-doubt and shame; or
• the relief of finding out that the bureaucracy of it all lengthens the foreclosure process beyond your initial expectations.
Again, everyone will encounter their own situations in their own unique ways—all I can do is speak to how my family and I dealt with it.

The experience will stretch you out no doubt—you’ll find out things about yourself that you might not have seen otherwise. From a purely practical standpoint, the only way you can successfully navigate the process is with a positive attitude. You cannot spend time wallowing in the negative aspects of it all because this will only spiral you further downward. You will need to learn how to get by on less. And you will do far better learning how to be thankful for what you’ve got, and not dwelling on the things that are lacking.

If you can remember to wake up each morning already thankful for the new day, this can help you frame your approach moving into the day. And while taking on this perspective will never guarantee how the day unfolds or ends, it’s still a whole lot better than drowning in self-pity, wishing things were different. Take charge of your day—focus on the positive and decide to make it a good day; you may be surprised at the benefits taking on this perspective can have.

Essentially, though, along with and beyond this practical approach, experiencing foreclosure was, for me and my kids, a faith journey; and it continues to be. We understand ourselves better; we understand both the imperfection of this human existence, as well as the hope and peace and Spirit that comes, often miraculously, through our focus on God and the goodness, grace, and love that we can only fully understand within that relationship with the Divine.

Take the high road—focus on the things that are truly important. Appreciate the people closest to you, and know that in faith, we’re never given any more than we can handle and will always be able to find the divine resources to help us overcome the adversities of this life.

"What's it f***in' matter?"

Interesting interaction brother Jon and I had recently…

We were enjoying a meal at a local restaurant after some shop talk at his office when two guys sat down at the bar near our table. At one point one of these guys turns toward us, saying ‘Quick question…’ He pauses, distracted; we’re waiting for the question that never made its way out of his mouth. He says something like ‘Whoa, you’ve got the last of those hats!’ He was referring to the bandannas I was wearing to cover some recent surgery scars on my head. We knew the guy had already had quite a bit to drink; but this interlude was the start of a series of periodic interruptions in our respective discussions.

And by the third such interlude, introductions were made,…kind of,… This distracted distracter says “Hey, I’m Kir…” as we shake hands. In the slur of his inebriation, I didn’t quite catch his name, and sought clarity—‘I’m sorry—was it Kurt? Or Kirk?’ His response was jarring—“What’s it f***in’ matter?” Not sure just how to respond, all I could think of to say was ‘OK, I’ll just call you Cur,’ not really thinking of the potential implications, but given his intoxication, not all that concerned either.

But in his response, suddenly, the harmless benevolence of his tangential banter was marked by a tinge of belligerence. And what was most intriguing in this response was that, somehow, it seemed to define this guy’s MO; this is the paradigm that generally fed his overall response to life.

These interludes continued—none so imminently volatile as that one—but it included toasts, Cur’s invitation to Jon to make a speech, a comparison of all of our relationships at various levels of brokenness, and Cur buying Jon and me a round of beers. All said and done, these intermittent dialogues made for a different type of entertainment at this favorite pub of ours.

And later, after Cur and his buddy left, as we confirmed with our server that Cur had bought us each a beer, we then heard the rest of the story… Cur is a regular at this establishment, the brother of the owner, and there was, on the part of this server, the lingering curiosity as to what Cur’s cab ride home must be like after each visit.

And I s’pose being a fly on the dashboard of that taxi would carry the same level of intrigue as that which Jon and I felt in these intermittent interactions with Cur and his friend that evening. But then again, all things considered regarding Cur, this unique ambassador for the spice of life, “what’s it f***in’ matter?”

The (Unofficial) Feast of St. Patrick

In our university town, St. Patrick’s Feast Day is actually a movable feast, celebrated on a day several days before March 17th. In response to irresponsible green beer drinking by coeds, University administrators smartly changed the school’s Spring Break vacation to fall on St. Patrick’s Day, thus eliminating the conflict between academic pursuit and 9AM green beer drunkenness.

And in response to this move, college bar owners smartly dedicated a new holy day: Unofficial St. Patrick’s Day, a day celebrating St. Patrick’s Feast Day while classes are still in session.
So thankfully, disruptive revelry can continue.

Our town braces for “Unofficial” like a Class 4 hurricane. And to be honest, I think I’d rather see a Toyota rammed into a Jimmy John’s window than needy suburban 19-year-old coeds wearing tight green shirts that say Kiss Me in a barely covert way to redeem their not-hotness. It’s an ugly celebration, for sure. Lacking the rich tradition of Rio’s Carnival or New Orleans’ Mardi Gras, this celebration is just a big frat party. A frat party full of guys who weren’t invited to join a frat, and Urban Outfitters salesgirls who are looking for love (from said guys who weren’t invited to join a frat). Public drunkenness and green wrist bands and shouted Valley Girl speak is the order of the day. It’s pretty lame.
So I’d like to improve on this (Unofficial) St. Patrick’s Feast Day, instructing these eager Catholics* on how to celebrate tastefully, in real Irish style.

1. Beer. Hand me that stupid Solo cup of green Bud Light and let’s drink a decent beer. Guinness is a better beer that is traditionally Irish and tasty. It’s tall, it’s dark and it’s handsome - and that’s pretty good for a stout. So let’s raise a glass of gratitude and toast the tastiest thing coming out of Ireland for the last 253 years. Sláinte!
2. Dress. OK, all you spray-tanned ladies in the hoooouuussse! I get it. I understand that you’re trying to look cute to get the attention of cute boys. So why do you look like trash? I’m going to tell you how I would dress if I still had a hot body. First of all, forget those promotional green t-shirts; they’re not doing you any favors. Instead I’d go for a pretty, strapless top in a tasteful Irish linen. It’s 2012, and I know you’re not going to part with your skinny jeans, so those will do. And I’m not a St. Patrick’s Scrooge: I’d still wear green and gold, but how about moss green eyeshadow, and gold peep-toe wedges and gold hoop earrings? There! Now you’re the right kind of attractive, and you just may attract a guy that you won’t be embarrassed to talk about in the morning.

3. Music. Please, if for just one day: turn off the Lady Gaga (awful) and the Taylor Swift (even worse) and catch some Irish music at a pub, instead. Irish music is some of my favorite music and I promise you’ll thank me: it’s fun to drink and dance to.

4. Adornment. The shiny green plastic Mardi Gras beads are an embarrassment to the shorties stumbling about wearing them. Declaring their tacky mea culpa to the world, these beads are no good. Women either didn’t actually flash someone to get these beads, or they shouldn’t have. There is no third option. So instead, put on a Claddagh Necklace and have some class. (And really, you can play this tasteful piece as “Good Girl” as you like.) With the best of traditional Irish style, Claddagh jewelry has timeless elegance, and you’ll be able to respect yourself in the morning.
5. Decorum. Shouting “I Love Beer!” at passing cars is never appropriate. Or cool. (I Love Infomercials, but you don’t hear me shouting about it, now do you?) For respectable revelry, take a lesson from The Irish Handbook of Drinking and Revelry: First, drink several beers in quick succession. Stand up and lead fellow revelers in an Irish drinking song. Drink three more beers in quick succession. Stand up, knocking over chair, and pick fight with your brother that “Mom always lorvved b-best” [sic]. Blubber and cry. Apologize and hug Mom’s F-favorite Son. Drink two beers in quick succession. Repeat.

6. Food. Corned beef and cabbage, loaded potato skins, and Irish nachos in a pub at 2AM? Perfect. Don’t change a thing.
* I can only assume that these revelers must be devout Catholics, for who else would celebrate a saint’s feast day. Right?

Denouement

To KC, on her first graduation

 If I were the falconer
I might never let go;
I’d hold on to the tether

and you’d learn how to fly
in small circles around me:
I’d want you to know

the spirit of freedom,
so I’d give you the sky
in gradual increments,

ever so slowly
releasing you outward
and upward, and I

would remain in the center

within and below you,
the turn of your wild
and the ground to your sky,

the tame of your will
and the stage for your show,
but the one who allows you

the power to fly
is the one who eventually
has to let go.

I am not the falconer;
I don’t rule your sky,
nor would I deny you

the winds of your freedom,
but I will stand fast
in the fields you came from

calling your name out
and watching you fly.