“To Carthage I came, where there sang all around me in my ears a cauldron of unholy loves. As yet I loved no one, yet loved to love, and out of a deep-seated need, I hated myself for not being needy. I pursued whoever-whatever might be lovable, in love with love. Safety I hated – and any course without danger. For within me was a famine.” – Augustine of Hippo, Confessions.
…
Was in Kiev for the Gender and Development meeting. I rarely get to do what I want to do when in Kiev, instead finding myself in something Kafka dreamed. I’m meeting Jacek for a few days in Poland next month, so I had to buy train tickets, and this involved running between train stations, standing in wrong lines, not having enough money, running to cash machine and back. All of me is rushing without patience toward summer. It is furious at having to wait for anything, at any ordinary thing. It wants only to be beaten like a instrument until some perfect chord breaks it.
The bouncer at a gay bar tried to charge me an exorbitant cover charge because I am a woman. I think the Gender and Development council should do something about this. I think I should spearhead a subcommittee called Let Lesbians Dance.
Busloads of schoolchildren had come to Kiev for Europe Day. They wore florescent, shiny polyester costumes. A woman inside a school bus helped a little girl on with her enormous dress. It was like a neon green bath loofa. Outside a beer tent, a waitress chased a homeless man away with a broom. He was so dirty his skin was gray, face scabbed, and his neckless head and body seemed egg-shaped.
A man in the metro played a violin. He played like a riotous wind the birds turn in. The music streamed up the escalator where a woman stood going down, staring down her several chins, hands clasped before her belly, eyes rimmed bright blue. A faded opera diva. Suddenly she is the deus ex machina, wheeled creakingly descending into the music’s fury, her last brave entrance.
….
May has brought a few school excursions. I joined some of the ninth grade girls and teachers to see a church outside of Kirovograd. It stands, domed, painted with long-faced Gods, at the edge of a wet bright wood. The green was almost alien after a rain, muddy animal holes, and birches with black eyes in them.
The icons inside glinted, glittery shades of foil pasted around Madonnas as if in a scrapbook. A large gold-painted gate stood in front (shielding our eyes from some sacred object, I wondered?), segmented into bright scenes from the Passion. It contrasted almost garishly with white-washed walls, the clean light coming in from the domed roof.
The women light candles. They cross themselves and bow three times. They have quiet, unthinking confidence within these movements. Never self-conscious. Our tour guide, a young man, watches me watch with a look of amused interest. What is the right look for my face? What sobriety, awe? “Do you feel – an energy?” he asks me in halting, eager English. Whatever within me that might have expanded, now contracts very suddenly, and breaks off.
Too far to make a sound, a few nuns sow the field beside the church. Their folds of black layers flap in the wind. They bend to the black earth, scrape and straighten and bend.
…
“I carried inside me a cut and bleeding soul, and how to get rid of it I just didn’t know. I sought every pleasure – the countryside, sports, fooling around, the peace of a garden, friends and good company, sex, reading. My soul floundered in the void – and came back upon me. For where could my heart flee from my heart? Where could I escape from myself?” – Augustine
…
Last week I asked Valentina if I could help her garden. She burst into laughter, then looked at me indulgently. “You want to help! But you don’t know what to do,” she tutted. Nevertheless, I was permitted to haul water and pour it into holes for tomatoes. All the kitchen gardens on our street lie out beside each other. The rows of fledgling green shoots reminded me of lines of verse. Cold mud splattered my legs.
A very young girl walked beside the fence emitting a high screech, again and again, “Eee! Eee! Eee! Eee!” Like a bird or kitten. She ran her hand along the fence, staring at me, “Eee! Eee! Eee! Eee!”, then she was gone.
The afternoons have been dark and full of thunder. Your fingertips feel electric with it. Petals rip off. A goat rolls his eyes, rolls his grizzled neck in its chain, by a stained white wall.
Rain breaks as I go to sleep and clangs metallic.
