Not a Day Goes By….

Will my ambitions get the best of me? Stay tuned.

When in my apartment in Iasi, about 11 a.m. is a peculiar time. I get up fairly early, make a cup of strong, instant coffee and open my laptop. I work on my essays or poems, read Romanian or Polish or Russian poems or prose in translation, and find articles about Romanian Jewish history. I go on various genealogical websites to see if I’ve missed a piece of family information or some connection that establishes itself more firmly, sometimes just enjoying reading the elegant or inscrutable handwriting of census-takers, wondering at all the old professions that no longer exist. I arrange plane and train tickets to my various destinations in Romania, staring at the military time to make sure I’m leaving at 9 a.m. versus 9 p.m. If it’s Monday, I’m starting to work on Tuesday’s lecture or reading student responses. If it’s Tuesday, I’m in straight-up prepare-for-lecture mode. By late morning, I have spent several hours at my computer, in a comfortable maroon armchair that faces the window, perhaps staring over my laundry drying on the rack. Or I am ensconced at a table at Harmony with a small wooden tray the shape of a track field bearing a dark brown, handleless ceramic mug and a four-ounce glass of water, with a spoon. I have no sugar so am not sure why I have the spoon, but said spoon has a pleasant, modern design like something you’d find at Ikea. I turn it over. In fact, it is from Ikea.

Now I start to think about speaking with someone, but I can’t, yet – the time difference precludes me from reaching out to Nicole in Michigan or Will in St. Louis or Syd in Houston or Eric and my friends in Cali. Much as some assure me they are poor sleepers and are awake at all hours, this does not mean they want to have a full-blown conversation with someone operating with daytime energy. I have friends here, hopefully lasting friends, but they’re all working at this time, though we might text or WhatsApp to make plans or comment on some foible with DIGI or Banca Transilvania or concern over the Romanian election or laments over the stentorian crows. Having time allows me to create a template for the day but leaves room for variation. Variation may contain some form of social interaction or rafts of solitude. A trip to grocery shop at Mega Image or a walk to my university bookstore, or even a sojourn slightly downhill to the nearest promenade for people-watching. Before I leave, I may need to kick the door of my washing machine shut (it takes a little magical thinking to force it to lock).

Then there’s the part of me that gets caught up in language and its mysterious production, probably my way of communicating with everyone when they are or should be asleep. One thing about my writing practice here is that I don’t surrender easily, meaning: I write until I can’t. I have to express this is soccer terms, which may seem funny, but my son played many, many hours of soccer in high school (well), and I even played (not well) in high school, when soccer was but a glimmer in the American eye. (We knew Pele. We knew it was a team sport and there must be 10 others on the field, but somehow, the only player we knew was Pele.) In soccer (here’s a relevant statistic), 53 percent of all goals come from moves that start in the attacking third of the field, closest to the opponent’s goal. When the ball is bouncing around in the box (the 18-yard box closest to your opponent’s goal), you want to keep the ball in that area because you’re more likely to score from there. It’s both a physical description and a manifestation of setting yourself up for success.

As a writer, I try to stay in the box. I don’t finish a paragraph or stanza of a poem and think (with satisfaction): there, I’m done for the day. Here I force myself to keep at the keyboard. Poet Marvin Bell had some similar advice about the endings of poems. I’m paraphrasing him: just because you have reached what you believe is an ending of the poem, doesn’t meant it is the ending. Writing can be exhausting. I know it’s not digging ditches or hauling rocks (a phrase from “Fiddler on the Roof” – “Papa, I’ll dig ditches, I’ll haul rocks,” says eldest-daughter Tzeitel, pleading with her father to not make her marry Lazar Wolf the Butcher), but even writers find it pretty damn tiring. It's tempting to reach a concluding moment and say: check, please.

Sometimes, that’s the right move. Sometimes, you’re letting yourself out of the box, and you begin to get distracted and consider all else that needs doing. Make no mistake, it all does need doing. I don’t mean the box in that “thinking outside of the box” way because that cliché annoys me. The brain is not a box. As a neurologist friend of mine has told me: we hardly understand the brain at all. I do know, however, that if you keep writing past the point where you feel comfortable, you may find out something you did not know you knew. And that’s one of components of poetry: that realization, that epiphanic moment (I think of Ed Hirsch whenever I hear or use that phrase) where you discover something strangely familiar, or something familiarly strange. (There’s a Russian theorist who talks about that, but we’re not going to go there because Victor Schlovsky is not the easiest reading, and it’s the morning, and I like you.)

What distracts me from writing? Everything else I am trying to do here. Sitting at Harmony, drinking my Americano and water, having devoured a delicious “classic croissant,” I am preparing my lecture for tomorrow that focuses on two Latino writers, David Tomas Martinez and Alberto Rios. I read three articles and highlight them. I check my email: my contact in Timisoara wants to know if I have a title for my lecture and my other contact in Brasov wants to know if everything is moving forward. I respond to both with enthusiasm. Meanwhile, I receive texts from my Romanian genealogy researcher who wants to set up a call with me and Shuey. I respond to him that with the eight-hour time difference, we will have to talk later in the day to accommodate Shuey’s time zone and his work life, as he is a hard-working attorney. The tabs for Will’s trip here remain open on my laptop; I have to get us from Iasi to Krakow – no direct flights. We’ll fly through Bucharest, change not only planes but airlines (so will need to retrieve our bags) and get to Poland about five hours later, which is not bad. My sweet husband asks: can’t you stay on the same airline? He’s concerned about flights that don’t connect and baggage that doesn’t arrive. I say: I wish.

There’s more. I need to book a hotel in Jewish quarter, which my friend Clint suggested and my friend Penelope echoed. I need to book the tour of Auschwitz. Then flights from Krakow to London (only discount airlines on the date we want, which are affordable but take you to peripheral airports). Then I will book a hotel, which I found through my cousin Barb. I charged Will with getting us tickets to the Tottenham Hotspurs/Liverpool game. We’ll sit in the nosebleeds (not for free, either) but who cares? I know I will never have been at a game with that level of enthusiasm. The couple to my left speak French; the couple to my right speak Romanian. The women all have long, dark, smooth, beautiful hair. This morning, after working with the flat-iron (which I no longer turn up to 11 after having singed my roots), I used Romanian hairspray to achieve some degree of smooth and flat. This hairspray is powerful stuff. God knows what’s in it.

My title, by the way, refers to a song by Steven Sondheim from the musical, “Merrily We Roll Along,” which my son and I saw in New York this summer. It’s one of Sondheim’s lesser-known works. We saw some seriously good theater (Merrily) and some seriously mediocre theater (it will make you feel bad if I tell you what I loathed), but in my way, I loved all of it. I suppose, when I think of my titular phrase, I wonder how many days will go by when I don’t think of this time in Romania. I’m simultaneously getting excited about coming home and nostalgic for being here. I suppose that’s the nature of experience. I am trying my best to “live in the moment” – God, I hate ‘70s psychobabble and here I am using it – and for the most part, think I’m pretty good at it, but writing makes one introspective about the moments you’re living in. I will say: not a day goes by when I don’t miss home. On those same days, how grateful I am to be here – at least, for now. I leave in a little more than two weeks.