dukkha and apta

MARJATTA WAS ONCE THERE, standing in line. This was the unwritten part, with no context really. She was wearing a red dress and talking to someone. It was like a scene from a documentary. The light framed her in the stairwell; her brown hair was unusually shiny. A block of text typed out in Times New Roman was superimposed beside her, so that you could read it against the wall, something like a biography. All of it was known to me, but there had been some kind of glitch, because two words were out of place, the Sanskrit words dukkha (दुःख) and apta (आप्त), which I later learned, upon reviewing old library dictionaries, meant something like “suffering” and “reliable.” Reliable suffering? Was that what she embodied?

Truth be told, the last time I had seen her, she had been standing in the frozen foods section of a supermarket, talking in an almost frightened tone to a lanky man who bore an uncanny resemblance to the actor Dharminder Phillipe and was all dressed in green. She was talking to Dharminder the way women talk to their men: “And don’t forget this … ” and so on. Dharminder just stood there tall and strong and somewhat boyish. Maybe women like men like that, men like Dharminder, men who are quiet as a rule but make the occasional ironic joke and in the end lift some box over there, or bring a package here, men who pay, who assist, and who don’t ask questions. After seeing Marjatta with Dharminder, I forgot all about her. I mean, did I really want to stand beside her in a supermarket, hearing her say, “Please don’t forget”?

The thought did occur to me that I should go see her perform on the summer stage. To be her admirer. Just the idea of admiring someone amused me. Whether I went or not, I’d probably be seeing her somewhere and I would feel good after seeing her because I always felt good after seeing Marjatta. Whatever it was that she offered me, it was at least something else. She loved a cup of masala chai. She was masala chai. That’s all she ordered. Not a latte, never espresso; masala chai. Once I saw her order it at the bar, and thought, but only to myself and happily: you are my dukkha and my apta. In the winters, she drank it warm. In the summers, with ice.

refrigerator magnets

TRAVELING SOUTH, out of town, along the way I met people who were heading the other direction. They were traveling in packs through the rainy mist. “You’re going the wrong way,” they told me. “Aren’t you going to the ceramics exhibition?” “Aren’t you going to the women’s choral concert?” Eventually night fell and I came to a Japanese restaurant, glowing from the inside with warm light. I went in and took my seat. Dulcinea came in and sat at another table.

She was wearing blue. A blue shirt, blue pants. She ignored me as usual, opened her laptop, feigned work. A woman was walking around the restaurant with a basket full of sweets. She came to my table and offered some of these strange pastries to me, but I couldn’t understand her. She was speaking Japanese. Dulcinea watched this scene unfold and then spoke at last. “They are offering you complimentary desserts,” Dulcinea said. “You just have to choose.”

These were the first words she had spoken to me in years. “So you are talking to me now?” I said. “Of course, I am speaking to you,” she said. “I have been watching you all this time. Do you think I came to this restaurant by accident?” I looked her over. I loved her straw hair, her plain fingers, even her childlike dimples were perfect. “Then why have you been ignoring me?” I asked. “Because I wanted to see if you could finally commit to me, in your soul. If you want me, then you have to make up your mind.” I set down my utencils and said, “My mind is made up.”

Upstairs at the Japanese restaurant, we finally made love. I rolled up Dulcinea’s blue shirt and licked her chest. This was a beautiful feeling. But there were refrigerator magnets all over the blanket and sheets with words printed on them. The tiny words got stuck all over our bodies. Soon we were covered in words.

ozempic

WHEN I CAME TO my face was covered in frost. Snowflakes were landing all around me, as if the sky was shedding night. My cheeks throbbed from being up against the cold, my lips tasted of street salt. Buildings emerged out of the bleakness. I was aware that I was in an Estonian town, but which one? The building to my left was painted barn red, it looked like a boathouse. On the right was more glass, more modernity. The lights were on in the red building; the other was dark. It seemed I was the only person anywhere. This part of town was vacant and silent.

It was as if the whole place was a movie set.

I stood up, dusted the snow from my jacket and began to walk. Somewhere closer to the center of town, I found a park with a fountain at its center. Across from the fountain sat a woman who was so pale that she too could have been made of snow and winter. There she was, waiting beneath a colorful umbrella, talking to someone. This someone, I saw as the park came into view, was Brynhild. She was there with her dog, talking to Miss Winter. But something had changed, Brynhild had slimmed down. Gone were the rolls of pastry dough.

Back was her diva form.

“Ahahaha!” I heard her cackle to Miss Winter. “But you know men,” she said. “How they are.” I wondered if they had been talking about me. So this is where she had gone. Brynhild had been right here in this town, walking her dog. There she was in her sweater. Her strawberry hair was pulled back and she wore those sunglasses, even at night. But she looked different. She had been on Ozempic, or something like it, but her ass had retained its cinnamon bun shape.

I hid myself away, stood behind a lamp post. How could it be that she had lost that weight but kept her rear? Was this some new form of booty Ozempic? Maybe that’s what they were whispering about in the park. Not me. Booty Ozempic and all of life’s sweet impossibilities.

karl pärsimägi’s ‘your art is long’ at the tartu art museum

IT SEEMS TOO OFTEN these days that we default to minimalism. We want subdued tones, empty spaces, love expressed with silence, tears that flow only in private. Less is always more, we are told. But in the art of Karl Pärsimägi (1902-1942), I have found the opposite to be true. This is a colorful world. In Pärsimägi’s world, less is never more. More is just more. His exhibition at the Tartu Art Museum, Sinu Kunst on Pikk! (“Your art is long!”) (23 May – 25 October) is worth a visit. A modernist from Võrumaa with a south Estonian sensibility, Pärsimägi was prolific and well traveled. The exhibition hall can barely contain his output (a 350-page book has just been published devoted to it). Pärsimägi was famous for painting nude models, but his most beautiful paintings are of women doing everyday things. Reading a book in Reader. Stuck in a blissful moment in 1936’s A Portrait of a Woman with Pearls. My own favorite is 1935’s Young Woman in Blue with a Red Tie. It’s the reason I visited the exhibition. I wouldn’t call Pärsimägi or anyone a genius, as I am not an expert art critic, nor do I ever want to be. But I can say that I came away from the exhibition feeling happier and freer than I had in a long time, and inspired to do, as Pärsimägi did, more! Alas, Pärsimägi’s time ran out. He was arrested in Paris and shot by the Nazis in Auschwitz, some say on account of his sexuality. He was remembered as a reclusive, eccentric character, who liked to visit his siblings in Viljandi and Võru. In his self portraits, he reminds me of Pink Floyd’s Syd Barrett after his LSD-fueled mental collapse. An interesting character for sure, one who made memorable art. And also, I think, one worth building on. I see his work as just a start. There is more to be done.

An Estonian version of this review appears online in Edasi magazine.

‘frank’

I HAD A SON whose name was Frank. My mother did not approve of this name. “Why did you name him after my brother?” she asked. But her brother, who was also called Frank, did approve. “Good choice,” he said with a supportive wink. Frank looked nothing like me. He had blonde hair and was dressed in overalls. His features were so rounded and button-like that he resembled a doll. Like all boys, he got into trouble. When I brought him to the gym, he created a toboggan from the barbells and went sliding across the room. Such is the nature of sons.

The saddest thing about Frank is that I didn’t want him. I remember that long drive into the mountains. His mother was in the front seat. She was wearing a yellow dress and her legs were up on the dashboard. Her belly was already showing. The driver kept driving. I had no idea where we were headed. “But I don’t want to be with you,” I told Frank’s mother. “I didn’t want any of this.” “It’s too late for that now,” she said while reading Pere ja Kodu magazine. “You’re stuck with me whether you like it or not. “Please,” I said. She said, “It’s too late for that now.”

Through the windows I could see sheets of pines and stunning ravines. Frank’s mother told the driver to pull over. She got out of the car, opened my car door, and slapped me once across the face. Then she returned to the front seat, and we continued our journey. “It’s too late for that now,” she repeated to me. I just waited until we got to the next rest stop. Then I escaped into the fresh air of the mountains. It was years before they found me, by which time Frank had grown into a restless and busy boy. Frank was a good lad. None of it was his fault, you know.

the battle of narva

I WAS CAST to play “Charlie” in The Battle of Narva. Starring opposite me was Sandra, a young actress from the Ugala Theatre. I guess they couldn’t find any other Americans for the part, and the setup was preposterous. Who would have believed that an American disc jockey would have had a radio program in Narva in 1944, when the country was under Nazi German occupation, and about to be flattened by Soviet bombs and bullets? Maybe this “Charlie” was an Ezra Pound-like character, doing Axis propaganda? Yet he seemed like an easy-going lad, nothing like you’d imagine a Nazi collaborator American DJ would be. Maybe it was just a case of wrong place, wrong time? Maybe the Nazis didn’t mind a Yankee DJ on the Eastern Front? Wasn’t one of them a famous jazz collector?

I imagined Charlie was sort of like Chris’s character from Northern Exposure. The episodes of The Battle of Narva would open and close with Charlie’s musings on the state of the war. “But what even is war? What is it good for?” and so on. Maybe he would play some quality recordings from The Andrews Sisters (“Rum and Coca Cola,” anyone?), Bing Crosby, a little early Frank Sinatra. But I think Charlie was more of a hepcat, he’d spin sides by Quintette du Hot Club de France. “It’s morning in Narva,” he would say into the microphone, “and to get all of you Narvans and Narvettes started, I’ve got some ‘Les Yeux Noirs’ to brighten up your day.”

Then he’d cut over to the pure swing of Django Reinhardt. That’s how the people of Narva survived the war, at least until they didn’t. While I had the character of Charlie figured out, remembering the lines was hard. Sandra had so much more training. She would sit in the windows of cafes with the script open, memorizing her lines. I had mine before me, but I improvised too much. This provoked a soft-hearted lecture by the director, Bill Murray, who told me that learning one’s lines was a piece of cake, and that I should go easier on myself. “You just have to say the lines, man. Just say the lines.” He said this to me while they were preparing to film a street battle scene. There were all of these extras in Soviet and Nazi uniforms milling about in the city’s streets. It was a disturbing to see them making small talk.

escape

MORNING, MORNING. It was a school day morning, but not in May, all gray and windy like that day, but, yes, it could have been May, because such gray days can fall in May as they do in any other month of the year up here. Streams and rivers of students with backpacks flowed up and down the long sidewalks, the gravitational pull of an obligatory state education, up the steps of the old brick schools, middle schools, music schools, state kindergartens, and there stood Hanna-Heleena, who was waiting for me with storms in her eyes. When she saw me, lightning sparked and crackled. “You!” she shouted over the heads of the students. Her hair was cut in a fringe or bangs, straight across, and she wore a black coat. “Come over here now!”

That’s when I ran. I turned down a side street, which could have been Castle Street, and then found a small alleyway between two buildings, one I had never seen before. Gray walls on both sides, which led to somewhere else, into a trash-filled passageway, covered in graffiti and stinking of beer and urine, just as I imagined Lerwick might be on a Monday morning. I went through a doorway, and I could still hear Hanna-Heleena’s desperate calls for me. Where even was I now? Inside of a building somewhere. Viljandi, Lerwick. Lerwandi. I started to wonder if I would ever get out of this mess of corridors and hallways, until I saw light shining all around.

It was just behind some taped-up windows, streaming around their cracks, creating bright boxes of sunshine. I could no longer hear Hanna-Heleena. She must have lost track of me somewhere in this maze. Then I heard the voices of school children just beyond those windows. I was getting closer to an exit point. I came to an old wooden door pushed on it and came out at the top of a staircase that led down into a school atrium. It was dark in the school. The children were dressed in blue uniforms. They sat silently, mostly in the atrium, though some were playing table tennis. Sombre teachers observed the stranger as he came slowly down the steps. When I got to the front of the school, I could see that it opened up on a city front that was very close to a seaport. There were wooden ships in the harbor. Out the doors of the school I went, into the never-ending blue gray of a school day, but at least I was free.

startup

TIME COLLAPSES, pancaking into layers. But at first a pure gray light, like the stirring opening note of an orchestral piece, lighting up the room. I am here. He is here. He is there and yet not there. Around a table, a dialogue is underway, as various experts deconstruct. This is the startup jury. Suvi says that she would not support my pitch. “He’s just too soft and kind,” she tells them. “Has too much empathy.” Suvi knows how to run a jury. She is a practical woman and values practicality. The jury agrees with her. “Not very Estonian,” someone says. But that is neither here nor there. The jury is meeting down the street. They are sequestered.

Later he is led into the lounge room. Three women are sprawled out in chaise lounges. They are wearing business attire. He kneels before the blonde chief commercial officer, or whoever she is, and takes her foot in his mouth. I have no idea why I am doing this. Foot in mouth? Why on earth would I want to do that? But the foot is just so delicious, like the tastiest ice cream you’ve ever tasted. Somehow the smooth tan of her foot becomes caramel, her toe is cherry. Why hadn’t anyone told me about this secret? This is the yummiest dessert I’ve ever had in my mouth. Here the light is gray. The grass outside seven stories down is green, the mornings are gray. In the common area, men with mustaches are playing table tennis and there is music playing. In the lounge room of the startup company, it’s foot-to-mouth resuscitation. What is this? The pleasure of submission? I just don’t know anything anymore. All virtue has collapsed.

sixty-nine

SHE WAS A WOMAN, a woman who was born in 1969. She was the Class of ’87. She was older than me. She was a Nixon baby. Maybe she was born a few hours after her parents watched Midnight Cowboy, starring Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman. Maybe she had been conceived after her parents had returned home from watching The Graduate.

She had lived and she had experienced life. All of this living and experiencing, she had found, had left her with profound insight and wisdom that was mostly completely useless. And all of the creams, treatments, and procedures available could not negate the fact that she was slowly disappearing into the oblivion of time like a blood orange sun sinking into the murky Pacific off of Santa Monica.

I found her very attractive. She had lovely brown hair, smart blue eyes. Even her most melancholy moments were as rich and as delicious as a pineapple cake. I didn’t think a thing of her being as old as the Moon Landing. But finding a place for our affair proved difficult. We had so many commitments; we found no place for our trysts.

People just did not approve. Wherever we went, we were always on the run. I sought sanctuary and at last, after scouring the neighborhood, I found an old house with a staircase leading down into a cellar. This underground lair was a workshop with tools on the shelves and sawdust everywhere.

She curled up in the corner and pressed her head against her knees. She closed her eyes, breathed. All of this running, just for peace and security. “You know,” she said. “I just don’t think any of this is worth it.” The stairs began to creak next. The old man who owned this house was coming down to saw some wood.

An old man with white hair and a mustache who looked like Wilford Brimley, because we both knew who that was. He would probably be less kind about finding out his workshop was being used as a love nest. But where could we go? There was no way out. We could hide there, behind some shelves. Maybe he wouldn’t see us?

We both knew there was no escaping Wilford Brimley. He would find us anywhere, wherever that was. It was just a matter of time. “This is all pointless,” she said. She looked tired. She was.

old carolina

THE HOUSE WAS NEXT to the old Baptist church. This was a white, wooden chapel of worship that had been erected at some point in the 19th century at the behest of prosperous local businessmen and farmers who were tired of traveling to town for Sunday services. The ground here in Carolina was so low and wet that one often felt as if one was half underwater. There was no easy getting around.

That was the church, but I should talk about the house. This too was old and wooden and had seen multiple additions. A screened in front porch. A kitchen in back. Such raised areas of swampland were called pocosins by the original inhabitants of the country, some of whom were among our predecessors. This house was erected upon one, but for reasons unknown to me, it was now inhabited by Uncle Osvald, who was my ex-wife’s mother’s brother and who had been, at least until recently, quite dead and sleeping off eternity in a cemetery in Estonia.

But times had changed and in his newly undead, Carolina form, Uncle Osvald had become a somewhat crusty but dedicated sawyer at the local mill. He was the kind of man who drank a beer every night while yelling at the TV set, slept with his dirty socks on, rarely trimmed a graying beard but had no reason to. But he was practical and kept his keys on him at all times. There was that big silver-colored hoop extending from his alligator skin belt and it jangled as he walked around. You could hear him going outside to the smokehouse, or just for a cigarette.

This is why when returning from Sunday service at the church one day, I discovered that the family house was locked and I had really nowhere to go. Stranger still was the appearance of another unknown Estonian relative, who called himself Jesper and claimed to be my ex-wife’s third, long lost brother. He was a lanky character, his attire showed signs of manual labor, stained pants, etc. He had a rough, unshaven face, his dark hair was going white, and he looked sort of like a Turk, even though he was an Estonian from North Carolina. None of this made any sense, especially since Jesper had never been mentioned once in the previous 25 years.

How could the family have kept the existence of Jesper hidden for so long? Not one photo of him. Not a mention. It was if he had been cut out of every photo following a Stalinist purge. “Where have you been?” I asked. “Where have you been all these years?” “Away,” Jesper told me. I had to take the newly discovered third brother at his word. He was my children’s uncle.

Jesper told me it would be a while until Osvald got back from the sawmill. I told him not to worry. I had a car and the swamps were calling. I’d drive across Perquimans, Pasquotank and Camden into Currituck, ride the road to Powells Point. The ancient village of the Poteskeet. That’s where I was heading.