Being Back

Where are the crows? What's the rush?

In Romania, I trained myself to notice. Notice what? Whatever stopped me. Every experience in Romania was filtered through the lens of: this is Romania, not home. Notice your produce. Notice lug-heeled shoes. Notice the little green men instructing us when to cross the street. Notice how they muddle the mint in a lemonade.

Lorelei sent me a video of birds in Iasi and asked me if I missed it. Strangely, I do, or maybe, I recognize and appreciate its strangeness without needing to experience it daily. “Missing,” for its many meanings, serves great and vague purposes. To miss, as in to long for. To miss, as in, to not hit the mark. To go missing, as in, to disappear or cannot be found. A multi-purpose word. I’m sure the Oxford English Dictionary contains a long list of colloquialisms concerning what it means to “miss,” but for now, it’s hard to think of accurate synonyms. I’ll admit, I’m a little worried about losing the occasional word, or not being able to remember a name. My doctor recommended a book on “hot-wiring your brain” or something like that. I can’t seem to get away from cars, being a Detroit girl. The metaphors latch on. I skimmed the book. (I know, I should dive in more deeply.) Slightly defensively, I will say: I already do everything they say. At this point, I could also just be really, really tired. “Re-entry” has been both seamless and challenging. Seamless in that Will and I landed at LAX on Christmas Eve, and the next day we celebrated Christmas with Eric’s family at his sister’s house, as we always do. I managed to stay awake until about 9 p.m. and awaken at 3:30 a.m., which becomes my new normal for a few days, after which I stretch some form of sleep to about 5:15 a.m., at which point, I surrender and rise to a dark and spacious house, for which I am grateful.

Now, a few days, later, I am in Houston, which seems a fit place to continue “re-entry,” as I attach all space words to NASA and NASA to Houston (“Houston, we’ve had a problem”). (Once I’m at that construction, it’s hard not to think of the movie, Logan’s Run: “we’ve got a runner.”) I’m here because my daughter had to work over the holiday and could not be home for her birthday (January 1) and I have missed my kids like crazy. I am back in a seven-hour time difference, at least for a few days. The weather is balmy and the days seem longer than they were overseas – sun will set tonight at 5:32 p.m. and rise tomorrow at 7:17 a.m. As it turns out, Will was not wrong about perceiving the days in Krakow as shorter: 7:39 a.m., sunrise; 3:48 p.m., sunset. While we were there, he was reading Dostoyevsky. He said it made a lot more sense. My Romanian friends would not disagree; sometime later, I’ll get Lorelei’s permission to talk about Romanian not being a “language of love.” I love people who know themselves. My Romanian language teacher, Annamaria, might disagree. She would clue us in to numerous terms and idioms concerning the formality of courtship in Romania. They all had history and charm and would probably annoy some, depending on how much you like ritual in your romance, and how allergic you may be to tradition.

Today I drove by Cemetery Beth Yeshurun, an old Jewish cemetery in Houston, which was opposite my first apartment here, where I earned my doctorate in poetry decades ago. The year I moved to Houston from California, there was, as they say, a great flood. You should know that this part of the country is no stranger to great floods and hurricanes, but where I grew up in Detroit, we had snow, and where I lived in California, we had earthquakes and fires and landslides and mighty winds. In New York, we had a smattering of natural disasters, but mostly, living day-to-day in New York contained its own trials that have little to do with “acts of God.” Human nature reigns in New York City, with the exception of Hurricane Gloria, which was a giant non-event on the island of Manhattan, particularly, the lower East Side, particularly Soho-adjacent, where I lived. (The landlord called it Soho. It was not. Now it is.) We taped our windows, then – large, masking tape Xs to catch the shards of glass in case the storm powered through the glass. It did not, and the Xs were “performative.” (The word annoys me, as do most literary theory terms made fancy and important through affixes and prefixes, but it’s relevant here.) I was given the day off from my job. Again, nothing happened – some rain, some wind – and the song “Gloria – G-L-O-R-I-A” – written by Van Morrison for his band at the time, whose name was “Them,” played incessantly over the radio. (Yes, radio.) This Gloria differs from ensuing songs named Gloria, by the way. It’s a rock anthem, not really a pop song. This was September of 1985. Gloria was what the National Weather Service called a “powerful Cape Verde hurricane,” reaching category 4 status on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale. I have an affection for taxonomies of all sorts, and this is no exception. Saffir and Simpson? Thank you for putting in the work. I’m sure it was equal parts thankless and hazardous.

Anyway, in Houston, in 1992, a great storm hit soon after arrival. Prior to leaving California, the sizable Northridge earthquake, measuring 6.7 on the Richter Scale, hit Southern California. I felt it in my bones while lying in bed. I sat up like a dog and then felt the swoop-swoop. It killed 57 people (that’s the low-number version), incited 11,000 landslides, begat enveloping fires, and did an astronomical amount of damage. For those of us not California natives, it was something of a wake-up call. I’m sure that sales of earthquake kits rose precipitously. I bought water and canned goods and Advil and a flashlight and batteries and a few candles. The prophylactic aspect of consumer behavior gains purchase around such times.

So, while I watched the waters pour down from my third-floor apartment on Allen Parkway across from the Jewish cemetery, I imagined the graves being lifted and traveling down the bayou, which wended behind the burial ground. I imagined and imagined. The poem I wrote was the first of my first book, and its title, “Diasporadic,” became the titular poem. It’s unusual to put the title poem first in the book; you usually want the reader the “land” on that poem, an arrival that often acts as a subtle framing device. I knew, however, that poem went first. I had almost titled the book, “Lure and Allure,” a phrase from another poem, but my teacher, poet Cynthia MacDonald, didn’t like that. She said, and I quote, “It’s just so ugly.” I remember sitting next to my dear poetry friend, Corey Marks, and we glanced at each other. I think I mumbled, “it’s the prettiest phrase I’ve ever written,” but what her comment taught me (and I loved and respected Cynthia immensely) was that everyone’s ear has its own affections and leanings. “Diasporadic” was a made-up word – a “nonce coinage” my esteemed teacher Richard Howard would say – and it felt right and has stood the test of time, at least in my own mind. Lure and allure may resurface, however. All those “l”s and “r”s. So pretty.

I bring up my drive by Beth Yeshurun this morning because it reminded me of how much time I spent in Romania traipsing through ancient cemeteries or cemeteries not so old but in vast states of disregard. The Houston burial ground was not ancient and was well-tended, unlike those I witnessed in Romania. I used the word “witness” with some intention. I felt like I needed not just to see them, but to witness and ultimately, to bear witness to their existence. To acknowledge that we visited the dead, Jews put small stones atop a grave. There would not be enough small stones in the world, and my hands could not have the capacity to carry them, for even a fraction of those I saw, as if I could penetrate the obdurate brambles and vines and weeds and waist-high, even eye-high thorny flora that dominated. But I was there. I said Kaddish at each. I dislike the modern cliché, to feel “seen.” But I did see, and carry them, emotionally, with me, as e.e. cummings wrote:

“i carry your heart with me(i carry it in

my heart)....”

For what it’s worth ( a great song by Buffalo Springfield), I am not yet done writing about Romania. To quote Frost (I guess I am in a quoting mood): I have promises to keep, such as an explanation of how the Israeli National Anthem’s tune came from Romania (a tune shared with folk-songs, jazz songs, and a classical piece by Smetana – which is the Romanian word for sour cream – go figure), the poet whose grave I almost literally stumbled across in the Bucharest cemetery, Horia Gane, and the mysterious disappearance and reappearance of poet Mihai Eminescu’s hand in his Galati statue. I will perform a study of soup (ciorba) and provide the family tree story of my father’s side. I miss my little apartment and my Fulbright girls, Faith and Jess, and my new friends and sweet students, whose final projects I will read within the next two weeks. I miss Feteasca Alba (Romanian white wine) and giant heads of cauliflower, and of course, Ciorba Radutzeana. Now my research comprises plumbing and pruning my memories, my notes, my reading, my pictures. As my Romanian friends say: la reverdere (goodbye) or more accurately, pe curând (see you soon).