George Anca: SOME PLAYS

George Anca

SOME PLAYS

Good luck, Rada

Nana in the Himalayas

Parinior:Maiastra – Aurusa – Sir Pierrot – Arnota

The Rag

The World Without Brancusi's Column

Poeston

Thom Nibbelin

Vlad the Impaler

Good luck, Rada

Personae & Cast*

Rada: Nesha HANIFF

Jean: Peter HOOK

* of the first performance, in Delhi, 22^nd March, 1979, at the Academy “Mihai Eminescu”

Delhi, April, 1979

(A circular space, illuminated from different directions and at different intensities, looking thus now full and vast, then an intimate temple furnished in archaic style, populated with icons. Rada’s mood changes – in pantomime – as she passes through various dreams: always, as if, with Jean).

Jean (to Rada who doesn’t hear him): Three minutes. Four… By my watch. I love you. Come on. Everything is ready. I can hardly wait. I am waiting as best I can. I’ll tell you everything but only a little. Be confident, hang in there, take it easy. Did you receive the telegram on Sunday and the letter? Did you get the picture? What else is there to say? memories. no time… yes, I ‘m OK… I already told you. You’ll find out yourself, with me, together, very together we can switch. You be me, and I’ll be you. Voronets and Whincester Cathedrals lost to Buddhism. You don’t like “lost”? alright, make that “found”. As for me, I can’t be unhappy. What do you think about the bird Tragopan from Nagaland - she hatches only one egg every three years. I dreamed that my mother and our grandmother Floarea had died the same night. Some skinny little old ladies are digging a hole in the mother-earth… Why does God kill Man? God doesn’t kill, Death does. It needed something to do, says to God, ‘God give me something to do”. I don’t see the tall woman anymore, nor little Buburuzabobandrose. The sun shines, the bad moods come, pass like the good ones, the dog Gringo falls into meditation, too. During the rains I think of sad things, of life, of electrocuted children, of the previous rains. In the niche above the window sleeps a squirrel, through the house a mouse walks around me, around you, around a peacock of blue-bells… Nights and mornings we’ll hear the flute of Karnatka… Nice. May we see each other in good health, I kiss you. I am prattling on? Like a lightning-call? Have I electrocuted you? What do you think? So I jumped into the saddle and whispered a story in your ear.

(From the telephone line: “Your number doesn’t answer”)

I waited for you, we met together, the first day you complained you were tired. Then we were calling Kama, at night, in the city Secunder. Krishna was loving Rada, Rada was forgiving Krishna…

Rada: I have lost the golden ring; it was from my mother, it’s gone, it rolled away, believe me… My only golden ring… This is the truth…

Jean: The truth you already know. Look for the gold…

Rada: Won’t you help me find it?

Jean: It will depend on your fate. Let’s clink ostrich and flamingo feathers and maybe we’ll find it. You may know that on this holiday, of Holika, an effigy of a goddess is burnt. Did you want to play, for real, the heroine in love?

Rada: You’ve wanted that all along, it seems…

Jean: What do you feel?

Rada: The flames…

Jean: Shall I put them out?

Rada: No.

Jean: Colours-colours come out, red, violet, many colours volcanos are colouring your skin.

Rada : Inside it’s the same.

Jean: Price that the enemies pay to become friends… Only this music, the lotuses erupting on your body, paint them, Rada.

Rada: I can’t. These colours are for fanatic faces. I don’t white-wash faces. Rarely, if I feel like it, if I get the urge I put a bindi on a child’s forehead.

Jean: Do you see my face, painted like an Easter egg? On my head I have a helmet high as a temple, for you, for the wedding. We haven’t fought, but let’s make up anyway. Do you want me to pose for you?

Rada: I’m in a bad mood, I feel like crying. I feel empty… I can’t move. I forgot the lesson. The dance is more prayer than music. This music makes me want to put an end to myself once and for all the raga has no end… I’m suffocating this music drives me, like you, too, to paint and I want to dance… it is horizontal while I need a long, long wall to paint it on, I should paint it in circles, in shanty, in Om, in white cold colours, I should paint, I should paint, but this music drives me to put an end to myself. I’m dying with fever, with sleeping sickness, my eyes hurt, I have fits… hemorrhages. …Words fail me, I fail my words. I don’t recognize myself anymore… meditation… agony. I am going blind. My eyes won’t stay open anymore.

Jean: They are too open, from within. See, as always, your breath, don’t suffocate, smile, you know, so you’ll look happy, I am watching you, after two or three steps the light diminishes… two steps more… another light, the sun’s, the light of Om. You’ll never die.

Rada: Even if I were someone else I wouldn’t be happy.

Jean: Well, once I taught some sparrow chicks to swim… I drowned them. Another time, I boiled an egg with the chicken inside… sins… and think of us as chicks in the egg of the house, the whole day in hot ashes, more than 45 above zero centigrades, 45 above psychologic zero… Now we may cipher into zero, here.

Rada: Here, I can die… at home I can live…

Jean: We are living whether we want to or not, because, it seems, nobody will survive us… nobody to shave just like me, nobody to bathe like you, madam. May our streets be covered by the sky, with beds of dew, with closed shops - it’s Monday. Men and women make food, the pupils scent the vacation. The dogs don’t look for trees to pee on. May we wander through bad smells but also perfume, in silence and smoke, may we like the music, the bicycles, the ages, the sentimental and miserable cluster of this world. We should bow above the flower bed from where you, both, have torn a bouquet with so many colours, flowers infinitely gently coloured, with black-magic spells, with stories heard in the paths of squirrels, flying rhinoceroses, sailor-cats…

Rada: Once there was a blanket on the ground… some boys were picking it up. A bitter tomcat was embracing a small mouse. He went on a walk but then he lost his way and cried: “Holika”. His master threw himself in the water with all his clothes on. After that the carriage came “Halloo, says the emperor, my carriage has come, I’ll go fishing”… “Why says the princess Prislea – everybody is wondering why you have to catch fish. King Prislea is my papa and I am his little girl Princess Prislica, and Mama is Prislica, woman of the university and of the world, and of the Saintly People… and Long live my listener”… The tomcat listened to them and enlightened himself. Afterwards he wait to Stephen the Great… He told Stephen the Great to climb the garret and to choose whatever colour he wanted, and went Stephen the Great had gone the second day up to the garret in balloon he found that it was fool of jewelry, bangles… he took the smallest one but it was so light that he didn’t even meet a girl. “What are you doing here, my little leprechaun, I love you”, “but, why are you putting bangles on me”, say Squeaky. “To be beautiful”… “Yes, but on both hands? Why on both?”… “It looks nice that way”. “Yes, but I have no house”… “come to me every day”… “My master, don’t give me your house, because then you’ll have nowhere to stay”… "Don’t worry! I’ll make out”… “No”. "Yes, I give it to you, because there’s nothing else I can do”.

Jean: Sarod-nirodh – Stephen the Great at the Department of rim-pam-pim-palereasca-at the Academy of Serban… he had nine heads but the last head descended among us and bang-bang is left without a head and after that the head entered our chest.

Jean: You have no allergies – let’s do it…

Rada: Don’t touch me, I’ll go crazy.

Jean: Let’s try.

Rada: Where are you, the man I once knew…

Jean: The dragon swallowed the small mouse… It is an honest Kama, don’t be angry.

Rada: If only I could sleep.

Jean: Crouching and couching in the blooming mountain hay makes the tall stone bear fruit. Because we didn’t love in the grass, among the rocks, the waters of the sea are calling us, the lovers from the islands: golden hooks of crawfishes transport us from the train towards the periphery of the Hellespont.

Rada: I like to go by ship up to the train which I lock with a padlock, I think it’s mine and it sinks but not at all the way because of the rope, and the water evaporates. People pass me in trucks in which they bring colours, selected colours, unmixed and I separate them again, I put the red by itself, the others, here, I have them separated, these two colours in one truck, the red colour in the red truck, and, see, the trucks are every colour, there also are white trucks, airplanes, and I take the plane and I fly from time to time to Romania, but I don’t go every time in good time because my child has a cold, he takes after me, and I stay to give him the medicine oh, oh, it is a pity that the dwarf is feeling shitty… and he doesn’t come to the exhibition of paintings… the truck now comes to take the goods and another truck with even better stuff.

Jean: I made a song for the bird, too, but I can’t remember it so I could sing it to you. Come, my little bird, so I can caress you… You thought that I hadn’t made a song for you and that’s why you have a headache?

Rada: You never let me feed even a parrot chick.

Jean: Because I was a jealous beast.

Rada: Don’t say “beast” and don’t turn your back to me.

Jean: You are my life.

Rada: Your wasted life. I know what I am, what are you laughing about? I feel like crying. I’ll make you laugh out of the other side of your mouth, when you’re all alone, free to be happy.

Jean: Without you I dream only of death.

Rada: I’m the one who is dying.

Jean: And I, I love you.

Rada: That’s easy to say… But Kama disappeared a second ago into the abyss.

Jean: Even from there he doesn’t give us peace… love doesn’t die even when we’re dead and gone…

Rada: It’s dead and we can barely remember it…

Jean: It follows us even when we die… because living it’s not just longing and Kama is not life… it was and is no more… Nirvana has come… Nailing us still.

Rada: I was also a child, and I saw a bamboo flower from far away.

Jean: Outside is the smell of leaves burnt to greenness in the fire. If you’ll concentrate a little we’ll go outdoors into the courtyard… do you feel the daffodils, the Bulleyes, the Lion’s Mouth?

Rada: The Lion’s Mouth is eating people.

Jean: Stroke your miniature sunflower, your stoneflowers… instead of your bamboo flower, your peonies are beckoning your orchids… why kill yourself to paint dahlias, roses, violets, flox, lilies of the field, daisies, your oleander, three meters high, sheltered by white-edged swords, the ivy together with the bunches of red flowers which you love to pieces.

Rada: The painting… on the right, is the monsoon on the left is life where are the children dressed in bright colours… the satyagrahi, where are the yantras, the paintings, the yellow flower from the bed?

Jean: Here is the bracken, the two little patches of grass, the stump of the jungle tree smooth as a thighbone.

Rada: Above, jays; below, rat-holes.

Jean: My love, you are pining for all these squirrels, sparrows, crows, turtle, doves, hoopoes, jostling with lizards, beetles and legion of ants, green parrots with red beaks are calling you from the tree by the street clouds of disheveld little birds with red bottoms and droopy tops, the falcons from the sky and the vultures, the clouds and the stars, the sun and the moon.

Rada: Shall we go to the Moghul Garden… it’s the last day… let’s go, let’s go…

Jean: Of course we can go, but you must go yourself, myself maybe I’ll go, you’ll go, they’ll go, to go, third conjugation… third world… third person, a suitable person, the blind men go, the lame men go… I met you in Secunder you were with a little girl holding you by the hand, do you remember…

Rada: Love… Bihar…

Jean: Bihor.

Rada: Rada… Krishna. Crishan, the Rebel.

Jean: I am Krish-aryan, too, for you I rise in rebellion… I am an actor, too, the stage directions are my freedom… we’ll all be what we have been, won’t we? Neither modern, nor eternal the dead are yearning for friends… the doinas are furious with themselves… the children were drawing…

Jean: Try to remember now it’s night, there was just a small storm three minutes… it overturned three of our flowers pots and broke a window.

Rada: No more tomatoes! Torn up by tornadoes…

Jean: The small Ganesh is smashed to smithereens the elephant god of beauty.

Rada: Nine elephants are lined up in the East.

Jean: While we are running in all directions to open the doors and windows, the tornado was no more, it passed filling the house with garlands of dry leaves. It had been raining a little while ago, otherwise there would have been a torrent of dust… you just found out that two doors and two windows wouldn’t close. Next door the gale tore up three banana-trees, and on the other side it uprooted a big tree and started a fire, and after five hours firemen are still running by. From the windows and the doors you saw the wind bringing the poor crows which were caught in it like dry leaves. After everything was all over, we came out looking at clouds of all kinds – white, yellow, orange, every shade of grey, blue, violet, green, and of course ash – coloured, with patches of clear sky.

Rada: Last night the lord of the dance whirled crushing worlds in his way. He rooted up 1000 year old trees. In front of Shiva Nataraja we are as if nothing.

Rada: It won’t get you anywhere to gore me with your horns. I won’t marry your young bull, he is my brother, after all… I am Europe.

Jean: That’s what I say too. I want to be good, I am bad, I beat my child because other kids on holiday Holika have poured polluted water on his head. Maybe nothing is true.

Rada: How so? An architecture of lights under a rain of Bengal fire, the men play Bangra and Calush, a woman dances Bharatnatyam, with golden ornaments on her head, bangles from her wrist to her neck, a prodigality of gold.

Jean: OK, OK, the dancer is angry because she is no more a child, she is a great one, she is god, different from other gods, she brightens when we look at her…

Rada: In the main hall there is only one painting – of the temp’s dancer. Please put up a lady-bug on the finger of the dancer in the painting… when an apple hits you on the head, fall on your knees touching the lady-bug’s slipper, the butterflies’ dress, the penguin’s wing and never leave the gallery…

Jean: Many had prayed here, paid, danced, eaten, talked, loved, hated, too, believed, measured themselves and charted their courses, gone out in front of the photographers and the cameramen.

Rada: Wandering Gypsies, in the swamp of rags, running under a rain of pennies… children and women kiss the boots of maharajas, rummage in the dust with their hands and bodies for money…

Jean: And we…

Rada: Sh! The dressmaker makes me a blouse… I kiss her… she is a devil, she throws a child of rubber into my arms and orders me to shoot it… and she tells me something more, what else does she tell me?

Jean: She tells you “Where you can go”.

Rada: exactly… museum… stable… dung… air vents… a head with horns on it carries in its mouth a lion’s head, ochre, brown mane, bright red body, from the lion flows a torrent of bodies crushing the garbage of our sinful multitudes… Behind this stand devils with pitchforks… Our daughter shot! Our daughter shot! Our daughter struck by lightning!

Jean: I have come to you, for all time.

Rada: Do you love me?

Jean: Yes.

Rada: I don’t love you… Why don’t you leave me in peace?

Jean: Someone loves you, someone needs you, rejoices in the history of your life, you are his history, the prayer of his life…

Rada: You are obsessed by life…

Jean: Nobody stops me from ceasing to be, I can die in this very stage directions… with the lunatics… the actors… Napoleon, Burebista…

Rada: Come with me on the easy road over the earth.

Jean: That tree releases to the sky a ladder of intertwining roots, interwoven people, may it shelter us from bad signs and evil stars with a story of spring written in smoke, like Holika.

Rada: We have arrived…

Jean: The peak of the mountain… Birds… Fruits… Roots…

Rada: Maybe the hermits are hungry…

Jean: We have passed through many things, now they are passing through us… and the theatre has been empty long since, we had no luck in finding the head of the lion… so many lanterns no longer give light… and the stage director… I am burning for nothing… time doesn’t pass… verbs conjugate for exams… letters are written for post-men… stage directors die… the theatre dies… and I live on… phosphorescent in the dark… I have forgotten the happy times of exams, when life was obsessing me. Nor do I want to die…

Rada: Don’t talk like that…

Jean: Only our words continue as created beings.

Rada: The creatures of God.

Jean: I have no place in sleep, no place in anything.

Rada: Come back to where you were, to infinity, co…

Jean: What will happen?

Rada: You know what will happen, two tutors, three trees, seven heavens…

Jean: Blue demons, swollen lips, inflammation of the brain, calcinated veins…

Rada: Come, come… see… do you recognize the dead mannequin? You have recognized the criminal as if in a mirror, you wanted to change your face, to not be recognized by the one you’d recognize and who you were sure would turn you into a mannequin in the room in the middle of our house.

Jean: I fear that I have thrown myself everytime into a net hanging by a rusty hook. What’s the point of Eminescu’s yoga at our age? If you didn’t appear to me I would have always been waiting for you. I wanted to say to you… “good luck, Rada”, you who are energy, you who refuse to accept the days that have passed into nightmare, not caring that in the week between Saint George and Easter we were scared to death, suicidal, so afraid of life. It doesn’t look good to go mad in a world of flesh and blood. Better to kiss your mannequin from the past, dare to recognize him, good luck…

Rada: You’re not you anymore.

Jean: That’s how I feel, too.

Rada: Now you imagine that you are on the pyre too.

Jean: May you awake to Krishna.

Rada: Let us wash our feet and climb the steps, come…

Nana in the Himalayas

Transcribed by Gheorghe Anca

Retranscribed by Peter Hook

Delhi, February, 1979

APRIL 10 ’78. You are a celebrity Nana. Who doesn’t know you? Dancing to the music on the radio you are calling yourself Yamini Krishnamurti. 13. To sleep only after having mounted tens of horses and travelled underground up to Ellora. 15. And I mounted a short spoon – Long live my listener! You: and I mounted a flower – Long live her stalk! and I mounted a Lion Mouth flower – Long live also the grass! and I mounted a leaf – Long live who is made by leaves! and I mounted an elephant… a horse mountains… clouds…. MAY 3. A beetle. It is a Lady Bird. “What, the lady has such a bird?” “Yes”. “Which lady?” “The goddess”. 6. Yesterday, Nansi has adopted a helpless parrot chick. 7. What are mountains like? and paint with tempera. The Cricket and the flower. 13. Spending your day with colours and paper, you lure me to look at you, again and again. “I will see it when you’re finished”. “No, look here to see how I am building it, after that you’ll loss the track”. “What title?” “The Appreciated Drawing". In the mountains, I will make for you a real mountain – I’ll take snow and I’ll make it”. 14. See how we can recognize Sculpture in your painting: The Princess X by Constantin Brancusi. 18. Happy for mountains, dreaming cherries in Dharamsala, and giving to your painted spots the title Pondicherry. 20. Today Nansi painted, too, and you have quarrelled about aquarelles and subjects – you created a goddess. 22. You painted by candle, with your back to the full moon, with all twelve water colours, in turn, mixing them, that was a scandal for ma – she could have done, with so much coulours, five paintings. You said to the masterpiece May you love the temple. The parrot is growing, tote kaa baccaa. 23. Something with “no title”. The parrot disappeared – “how can we have a happy day if he disappeared?” Just as he was getting to be a big boy – a vampire cat entered at night in the house and kidnapped him. 24. In the morning, at Tibetan Library, you painted Gargarita-Rita (“the lady bird”) and In Memory of Parrot. 26. Not sleeping in the afternoon, a little before, you wanted to paint in red, in yellow and blue; you took then green for the grass, brown – when you said “now I make myself” – afterwards, in an empty place you have put one more flower – you were starting with a yellow sphere, the ball from the table – then me, eyes, ears, the yellow-red nose and mouth, a blue bar, below, - not for sending the ball into the white river, and another one above: the sky – the grass mounts from the plain to it – 28 blades. You have shown yourself dressed in the colours of the Romanian flag and with green ears, as for me, kilometric ones; later, what have you said: “to make also my ding-ding”, but a boy’s… “You sign it” – but why go to bed: “I still have to do the sun and the moon”, below all bars, in blue. On the blue-bar barrage you signed – fist syllable more visible, “Na”, another not so clear, so, I say, it looks like Shamanism by Mircea Eliade. Nansi asks me if I have seen the frog entering today in the house and I answered that I was stretched out on the bed – “don’t stretch out the story” – and my mind has gone out of the body, has run near the wall and turned into a frog, but she pushed me out of the room with a broom – “he lies to you, Ma, it was a frog, not him, don’t believe him”. 27. “Dad, can you throw a small stone over the Himalayas to destroy them?” “Of course, but I am a Buddhist”. You ask me also about Venus’ Mountain and I send you to Nansi. You ask a cat to give back the eaten parrot. JUNE 3. “The god has made his tree scented”. 4. “You know, Pa, I don’t like saying nothing”. 7. “Ma, do you want me to tell you a tale? A short one. But I don’t know a short one. I say as much as I can now and I end it for you tomorrow. Once there was an emperor and an old man. And the emperor had a house of pure silver which was taking your eyes into the sun and you couldn’t see the Dhauladar, because he wasn’t there anymore. And the emperor wanted to take the bus to Delhi, gets on a crowded one which was not going to Delhi but to Kangra, and the old man told him he will show him, and the bus went on, went on, till it began to fly, so far he was going. And he arrived in a forest and lost his way”. 10. You are begging Nansi to buy some batteries to put into the earth to sing. “Don’t give me to the snakes, because I have the handkerchief and you won’t have anything to wipe with”. 11. To make a short story long, you painted instead of sleeping. The Girl with the Flying Brush. The Venus’ Mountain, Fishcavan or The Tangled Sign.

13. A snake melted the snow of Dhauladar. A bird caught fire and was put out by firemen. A cavern stole a salt mine and turned into a dungeon. You are five. It rains and thunders. 14. Nansi didn’t want to put you to bed. I just gave you sheets to paint. I was posing for you. You are working with red colour – head and beard, ears, wings – “This isn’t you, it’s a squeak”. The second endeavour – Circles and Flowers. Also Nansi liked it. I was reading from Gita. You were both on the bed. I on the chair without legs, when the house was convulsed with us with the earth, and soon we were being all, a heap of ants, a line of ants, an Indian file, what was happening, through a narrow door, glued together, outside, you in the hands of mamma have set up a scream. “Pa, do you have courage to chase alone your rat?” “Why, when mamma was a child, came grandpapa Nase dressed like a soldier and she was frightened?” “I start seriously painting”. “Stop singing, the singers on the radio, will hear you and they’ll stop singing, and say oo, he is singing along for himself, but I want to listen to them”. These are not your students, why are you teaching Romanian to them?” “Are you going home, Nana?” “Of course, if they are auctioning off our house…”

“Papa, why have Bob and Rose gone back to their country?”

“I see a street coloured like a saint on which move only the saints and unsaints.”

DUSSERA.

Nansi’s parrot, shaking of mountains and of Vlasia, other birds, a Tibetan hanjar in a wooden sheat like a Sunday in cosmos.

Buddha’s trees, a sun spot, a new cancer, the icon descended, tantric, nude, the fate of our daughter…

We awake under the blue. We smoke.

We hurry into azure. We move.

We read Eminescu.

Universal earth, lives sacrificed to nonbeing, god, custom.

Area and number, mysticism and misery, tradition and refusal, paralysis and emphasis, ignorance and absolute, love and earthquake, acceptance and sensibility, talent and laziness, respect and xenophoby, unity and disagreement, improvisation and feeling of eternal, the worship of ashes, the ceremonial childhood.

Burn Ravana and brothers.

The heart of samsara, in flames.

It burns in all places and times.

Our children have built also a paper demon.

Nana, you have lit him with an arrow.

FUGILA (Run Rabbit)

Fugila joins the infantry. The captain, a he-fox:

“What’s the idea, mister, run away! you are not fit; not right for a fox-hole”.

Two elephants – civilian elephants – are trunking a hill towards the moon: “Scram!" The captain, “O.K., you can go and come, and then you can come and go”.

On the moon Fugila finds a lion.

He comes back lickety – split, gives the report, once, twice, till the he-fox is bored – or frightened – by the story of the lion in the moon.

He gives the order to the elephants to move the hill towards the ocean: “Run to the Navy, on a whale boat rowed by storks, capish? got that?"

Just then there was a battle and there were no more flags or masts to be seen – just one.

Then Fugila makes his tail a flag and scares all the squadragons.

The ocean became a mirror to slide on, and the brave sailor was called to the mountain corps where the leader of bears was a wolf. Who promised to give him free paw to save them from the enemy, but first to be willing to rest a little, yes, yes, without fear, it’s possible.

Fugila, always with open eyes, went to sleep. The wolf, snap! and half an ear.

Nana: And he glues it back like it was before.

Me: Accha ji, because he was a reincarnation, not just any old rabbit.

URECHEBLEAGA (Floppy-ear)

The little rabbits go to the coffee house.

A hedgehog serves.

They get frightened and spill the coffee.

A badge comes.

They get frightened again and eat him because he was only a pretend badger.

Then they are thirsty. One of them, Urechebleaga, leaves to get a drink.

- Do you have soda, campa, orange juice?

- Paisa do.

Another customer:

- “Gold Charminar”?

- Nahi.

- Then?

- “Urechebleaga”, and Lala cuts the floppy ear of Urechebleaga, makes it into cigarettes and sells then to Shri Snake. Urechebleaga comes back to the coffee house with the drink. Shri Snake was puffing his “Urechebleaga” when Urechebleaga snaps it back on a string.

He goes for a walk.

An elephant had gone to sleep on a mouse-hole. And the mouse couldn’t get out:

- Hey, elephant, move over! I can’t hold it in anymore, and I can’t move you out!

- Sorry, I’m feeling too sleepy – leave me alone or I’ll give you such a trunk.

Urechebleaga also sits down on the elephant.

- Hey, says the elephant, who are you?

- Who is it? asks the small mouse from the hole.

- Urechebleaga.

- Take him, mouse, eat him, here, look in my trunk.

The mouse eats Urechebleaga who was a pretender.

Urechebleaga (all the rabbits were pretender rabbits).

- I want more, says the small mouse and eats the elephant, too who was also…

TROMPONE (Trombone the Elephant)

The elephants were bathing obediently in their lake. Trompone, smaller and rather bad, starts muddying the water, on purpose, muddies it till it turns black, but his brothers and parents don’t know who is the culprit. They all go to Lord Ganesh and tell him. “Are you all here?” They count – Trompone is missing. “One of you go and look for him”. He finds the lake muddier than ever and somebody at the bottom – a crocodile, he thinks: “Waa, waa, answers Lord Ganesh, see to it that he doesn’t eat your trunk. Somebody else go”. The crocodile turns out to be Trompone. “Oh Lord, Trompone is always sticking his trunk into other’s people business”. “It’s not nice, dear Trompone”, the God says, only. All are praying him to take a bath in their lake – wherever Lord Ganesh bathes the water turns clear, as clear as a tear.

The elephants are muddying it again. Trompone, alone: “now, I’ll do it now once and for all”, but the mud settles, so he stamps his foot and slaps his trunk and wallows the slit, splashes with his trunk, overturns like an elephant-pig in the mud but still the water gets clearer and clearer and still more clear. The brothers come. “Waa, waa, Lord Ganesh took a bath here. We must thank him”. “I didn’t drop in”, the God replied, and has an audience with Trompone, who was sorry he couldn’t trouble the water – otherwise, what’s the fun? “I know what is in your mind. But listen here, would you like to be a saint?” “God forbid! I am not cut to be a saint: sometimes I play, sometimes I get ideas…” "O key”.

Now the Holy Elephant – no more Trompone – also had come on that visit. On the way, he hears some hungry lions: “I could eat an elephant”, one says. The Holy Elephant decides to offer himself: “Why not eat me?” The lions stand stone-still and prostrate themselves, “We?” eat you?” and they started tearing their manes.

Yes, Nana, just as you say, some ants hear that the Holy Elephant are going to his brothers’ at Rabbit Mountain and want to greet him. Being tiny they gather by hundreds of millions making themselves a giant ant which comes and worships the Holy Elephant, who now looks no bigger than a mite. Than his brothers come, also by hundreds of millions.

Right, Nana, “we want to go to Bombay,” they are saying, “but it’s far”. “With wings or without?” “With”. And they fly away. And then a child: “Look, Look! An ant with a wing like a trunk!” Immediately that one turns back into an elephant. Another child sees another ant and, Bang! another elephant. A hundred millions elephants, ten for each child and ten for his brother. And ten for us. For everyone.

There’s an elephant here and he wants to sleep. “Yes”, you say, “There is”.

Make believe you are sleeping on your elephant. I am asleep on mine.

From

PARINIOR

A novel by GEORGE ANCA

1982, Delhi

International Academy Eminescu

MAIASTRA

The Scultptor & Maiastra

(in Parinior)

Prologue. Shanti. Avatar One. Avatar

Two. Avatar Three. Prayer. Charm.

(in the evening)

time light time foliage sky clouding

water’s forgotten fish shadowing earth’s statue

blue sea maiastra bird maiastra mother

maiastra father maiastra hand-branca

maiastra sings from out of sight

you go only singing on the way otherwise could’t be way

the sculptor has greenish face blue nimbus and golden rays around

toute pensée émet un coup de dès

maharaja holkar monsieur satie domn brancusi pan apollinaire

signor modigliani sir epstein mr. pound

the sculptor maiastra

while listening white marble’s

call to turn it into a being I haven’t a brother and you know how good is one

we hammer the chisel and the

sphinx fastens from distance do not fraternize with the cloud as didn’t fraternize with you till now

shy children we let often the

work unfinished be you the field’s cloud

we aren’t children anymore the

animals don’t play with us my son my child born of a bird of marble carved by the masters

the father’s gift has gone away

the sky is but a bird from a mute in a cave

master bird and sun but only

the mute is alive nobody remembers the words of the mute

we the engravers in stone of

sculpturing shanty we teach

how no unexpected events but

the common facts of the life

draw up the eternal being small world little bird

big world flying world

the sculptor maiastra

the sky doesn’t fall iron holds the sky

the iron doesn’t fall frost freezes the iron

the world doesn’t fall clay holds the world

the clay doesn’t fall mother holds the clay

the country doesn’t fall ladder holds the country

the ladder doesn’t fall horizon holds the ladder

the man doesn’t fall tree holds the man

the tree doesn’t fall wood holds the tree

the self doesn’t fall light holds the self

the light doesn’t fall supper holds the light

the hero doesn’t fall egg holds the hero

the egg doesn’t fall chasm holds the egg

the head doesn’t fall needle holds the head

the needle doesn’t fall sack holds the needle

the sight doesn’t fall nature holds the sight

the nature doesn’t fall building holds the nature

the stone doesn’t fall chisel holds the stone

the chisel doesn’t fall chisel holds the chisel

the sculptor maiastra

my walking isn’t like my soul my soul isn’t like my walking

my son isn’t like the jiu the jiu isn’t like my son

my death isn’t like my breath my breath isn’t like my death

my yuga isn’t like my wing my wing isn’t like my yuga

my longing isn’t like my flying my flying isn’t like my longing

aren’t mute my dodias aren’t silent zodias

the sculptor maiastra

she is not a bird burning

she is not burning branch

she is not a branch griffing

she is not griffing vergin

she is not a vergin sweeps you

she doesn’t sweep us trashes you

she doesn’t trash us trembles you

she doesn’t tremble us is a sickle

she is not a sickle lock up

she is not lock up rocks you

she doesn’t rock us stepmother

she is not a stepmother grotto

she is not a grotto lightens you

she doesn’t lighten us besieges you

she doesn’t besiege us strain you

she doesn’t strain us young

she is not young musing

she is not musing single

she is not single calls you

she doesn’t call us maiastras sisters

light of the day you are for ever

we are those who die

hold you master maiastra on the sky

washed by the storms your divine bridge

bent over the seas toward horizon with

wings made by me

I’ll balance my journey in the heavens

and in my arms I’ll carry the icon of

your apparition

a star logostar this love is of mine

two stars logostars this are my loves

three stars logostars four stars logostars five stars logostars

six stars logostars seven stars logostars eight stars logostars

these are my loves

look at the nine star this star is of mine

my star little star

run the countries all the boarders to bring me the loves from nine

green harvests from nine flourished ryes from 99 emperors with

emperesses from 99 peacocks with peahens

AURUSA

Aurusa & Alec (in Parinior)

Three Ullasas

ava yoseva suna

urusa yati prabhunjati

ave ei eva juna

aurusa-n pridvor de zi

Aurusa Alec

What are you dreaming you know

medusas

I dream

in caelo

Aurusa Alec

nude medusas on the retina no

the entropic serpant no

monoculi sunt in parinior no

the dolphins of the sun no

the triangular dog no

in caelo et in terra no

I hear a blind filioque no

I see a lightning without memory no

dunya lin pelin no

golumbel galben no

you were radha for 30 mornings no

you didn’t want to light yourself no

to estinguish as aurusa no

to light as alec no

to estinguish as thou no

to light as I no

marble on the water no

inverted fresco no

I entomb myself alive into you no

we aren’t

let us be

our parents

while mahalaya

hungrily eat me

thirstily drink soma

lost memory

in sons and daughters

of ghee

Aurusa Alec

rostrum sati seeing the dream

mouthless tongue in dead water

the dog refuses to howl at my death

liar alior thirty mornings

the jungle scuttled away sirs sea horses insolvent slaves bazaar

the waters surely growing I don’t embark

I remain alone on the earth it seems to you

in caelo yellow butterflies

playing

rostrum sati

SIR PIERROT

Impromptu for Pierrot dreamt

as Puidepuf

(at Parinior, in the noon)

Pierrot Puidepuf

from a troop of children playing

round here flying woods

howling wolvers

swallows soldiers

the meadow fights the mountain

the gentles

such an amicable one

was staying sulky in a slipper

shriveling by a little honey –

smelling breeze among the hedgehogs among the ants

I lighted a glow worm

who’s here

un-do-troi-quatro-panch

plus me and the bees

over the flowers

the others are taller than him

by a day

so he will climb up to the garrtet

traveling to the antipode

where the nightfall is the

daybreak

(with which he greater will be)

an eagle from here becomes there a

butterfly called puidepuf I see in the dust

an eagle-butterfly

I sew him with perfume

to know what’s his name

I shot the eagle with the

Flutturer’s shadow

shiladilia said the nicest word is jati

roopak-writing ambar-like badal-fight

dibyendu-romania nitish-dragon swati-food

anuja-drawing tanu-butterfly deepa-drink

shushumna and aniket-bee who is walking in the garden and doesn’t

see like a bee

if it’s another child

beside the flower

catch him for me

I should run after a bee

but there is no place in

the garden any more

the bees are impaling me

with whom I fly tell me

and we all did a story – once there was a king – he found a cat – took the cat to his castle – he has two sons – the sons grew up to be fighters – the king say ok you come and be a fighter – they became fighters – then they went to a big country for a big confrontation – returned and two cats died – then the king very unhappy went to his sons and he took the sons from that country and told them the cats have died – the sons went home – then they said we will go and will get a new cat.

ARNOTA

third time beheaded by a picture

till late you and I embraced

under arbor vitae up

to the highest promontory

of our years we sat on orchid

on marble sepulcher

I : what’s laura

YOU : balaur the orchid fallen on your head

I : again

YOU : spring summer summer

I : we bake

YOU : you recovered

I : look now let there be light battle

YOU : joy

I : I’d sew rags o’er your body

YOU : you silly

I : and back up bazaars but you painted orchid didn’t you blossomed your frame mottled it and now repair your orchid

YOU : second summer

I : you had painted a labyrinth as we live

YOU : I was agonizing too

I : I was believing you

YOU : in jest

I : driven into an abyss

YOU : tooth for tooth

I : you roasted my third nape

YOU : why not

I : my chance

YOU : ancient dancer

I : scarecrow are mine you girls

YOU : you obsessed

I : you pal up with shadows of birds in my memory tomb of orchid’s cell hurried toward me

YOU : destroy yourself

I : who will gather me

YOU : let’s see

I : you were passing all around me I turned into stone I was by gyps by dung in point of brush pushed in my nape

YOU : one was spring charm to be redeemed

I : no you redeemed me

YOU : mare plowed you

I : I’d were miller too

YOU : to nuns

I : spring time

YOU : then after

I : I’re were write home too

YOU : c/o birds’ dodia

I : foes

YOU : mare plowed you like a stone

I : into snail’s sea

YOU : how longing home

I : I haven’t house

YOU : you have

I : I have nothing

YOU : you have a snail

I : in blood

YOU : you have no blood

I : I have you

YOU : lent

I : you don’t love me anymore

YOU : rats don’t go out of my head

I : cuckoo

YOU : cuc-koo

I : with him you were playing chess after receiving his chicks

YOU : I was sick

I : and you’re win you blackbird

YOU : and you had a kind of looking

I : from dream us together

YOU : as much as possible

I : then we were expiating

YOU : you weren’t my sin

I : nor archangel

YOU : and consequences

I : our orchid uttered game it remained little we’re burying your shadow temper sorrow why yellow picture’s blazes thunders striking my fontanel

YOU : spring throned you

I : two masks we didn’t support to love each other and we shared orchid purifying us in dung under all stars

YOU : gipsy woman bags pants again

I : take in lieu her glances to do our testament

I : don’t you still want to change the domicile into an orchid’s colour

YOU : want to sing

I : what possessed you all life I was waiting for you to say this no breaking anymore you porcelain the singers

YOU : they were singing with such caressed mouth you silenced them with the farthing you had finished with voivodal tombs

I : you were crying in sleep

YOU : do tear up the orchids

I : at wakening we were working songs under bell we were pretty redeemed

YOU : why would we mum all life wish me good luck I want to dictate to you my will

I : what’s outside

YOU : no desert

I : our mother

YOU : no now

I : we don’t reincarnate her

YOU : read for me

I : you crushed your lines a beautiful life we floating together in your blood toward a bright bank we’ll stop

YOU : may be you

I : and you

YOU : if it could be the only way

I : embracing you you freeze me and shout at me how cold I am

YOU : always down for a fate

I : and I was just showing you another face of three

YOU : you dream of me asking you what aches you this I am dreaming too and we hide behind days in which world would be living in which age till when the children are right calling me in chorus the other father being their mother then we are buried together this didn’t depend only on us

I : something we still could do for the first time

YOU : to die

I : the two we didn’t do

YOU : that is no

I : young ones

YOU : quite alone

I : the bank

YOU : the fire realm

I : your squint eyes

YOU : once I was

I : we are turning

YOU : yes the host appeared so late

I : he chose me and I was dumbing all of your disappeared dozing with a new-comer bringer of news he was touched by amnesia and was silent I say to pay as it ought to you I thought to pay who did know may be had to love to take each other

YOU : not only for a person not only for a night and money must receive yourself

I : on paper you disappeared

YOU : you gave the tone running thoughtlessly crying here are the rarest orchids it is place even for the last immortal wretches like us though you had spoken with the orchids or it was given to you to understand through the host of the tomb.

I : and after so long a time

YOU : to disappear into the high places with grave with all

I : with the marble

YOU : only me I accompanied you

I : how did you perceive the signatures it was like dreaming them but I never understood what had happened that you disappeared before knowing nobody pays

YOU : it was improvised even a hospital

I : we were dressing each others wounds out of a serene sky I had nothing

YOU : the dogs were hunting you

I : but not those of the host he was calling them they were like instructed you grasped this too and not by love some you had dressed you chose me you waited my turn to be bitten once by the dogs to be the last enamoured by you

YOU : for looking after the grave sir your sister was rightly saying it is in need the dwelling to be maintained

I : and the hill and the forests and the earth

YOU : you received an account when the grave itself was keeping up better the same marble in porch of left but the paintings were looking safe showing on the vertical the tree of life

I : the passions

YOU : one by one

I : we were wondering on the other sides between water and fire after orchids they don’t bloom on the graves and not at all on the marble

YOU : you do your good one with the grave

I : what are you saying to me today and tomorrow comes from my previous soul since we didn’t find anymore each other last time I had asked you as though I had given you in writing at kneeled light of the grave if we share the orchids anything this time we don’t caress us nor push into the abyss let’s listen as graves to god’s voice I was afraid you’d not agree by shouldn’t you oppose it womanlike while you just listened and knew and now we arrived here waiting without pretentions

YOU : the marble was dreaming us

I : perhaps an oak

YOU : a hundred years old

I : with dry long long embraces

YOU : to estrange yourself like the birds

I : and with you at a time

YOU : you exaggerate the regrets

I : as in your gospel

YOU : as you like

I : you are sad as nobody is on the earth

YOU : I understood that is not about me

I : like a distant lover from an unheard tale as though you’d beat again and sigh

YOU : the bell rings

I : the grave doesn't leave me

YOU : requiescat the lady too

I : do you remember the beautiful day

YOU : the night

I : so easy we arrived at the highest promontory of our lives

YOU : the bell embodies a light

I : it’s good you are here

YOU : it’s a pity the leaves of the tree of life shade

I : the trunks still winds up

YOU : you in a predicament to hang yourself from the free stems

I : in place of flowers

YOU : the fresco should wip again after a while

I : without the grave and the people should wonder again

YOU : we take with us a flower written on death

I : for we weren’t ever able for a thing some nothing

YOU : so many images of a life have gone nor do I have a souvenir perhaps you told me lies I had met too many true flowers I couldn’t prolong again and again that unconscious happiness it’s good this lost grave the king had the test of death I love him

I : I am glad for him

YOU : he couldn’t do anymore nor that bell measuring the fasting days of the penitents for the health of those bedeviled

I : I had seen with the devil when you appeared to me and I followed you upto here overplus of Christian survival if I’d cheer up I’d cry to me a death more unlightened illness dumbfounded ground at poison’s ankles if I’d fallen into the sleep of sleep I’d have died with face to the king

YOU : everybody on his chronicle nobody with the mute in whisper squashed by deafness

I : dance you

YOU : if I still have crickets on the soul

I : without bird of life of death

YOU : lighting candles

I : to dig

YOU : hanged with the earth in sun’s light with him being buried in sky

I : to play chess in the other world dipped after twilight into a boundless and dear night

YOU : you still desire to sing to sleep to wander

I : it’s as you are speaking and I hear you you’d be longing to play

YOU : do sing

I : mercifully to dance

YOU : stand aside to make room for the host

I : some bird

YOU : the sky breathes

I : do not light the earth from the candle

YOU : I don’t know what would remain behind

I : it couldn’t be death nor birth to birth

YOU : the places are changing we incarnate me into a man you into a woman

I : one into another

YOU : what remains from the bones of the everlover

I : they were more and more lost in the depth of the earth they shake the mountain in the queens rest

YOU : otherwise we would turn at one jump into vapour scared to be too many bones and crowns

I : bees of a summer

YOU : last summer silent as a child whispering to his parents just gone with the flower from light so slowly there is no need to turn and put them at work do embrace the pillar to get let’s embrace we have the humor to grow

I : how did you know about the orchid that it was more than it will again be you were its fancy from there you came on there you had to go and you appeared in my way bestowing me a sort of voice with smokish sounds in the sky wandering with the clouds above islands

YOU : we might have mistaken all the songs you urged me to dance in loneliness look at us on bed marble defended by saint soldiers you journeyed me in the last room you were shaking me without stopping but at the highest head you were asking me about health you don’t drown into the low ocean nor into the high one your fallen forehead breaks by rock in the spring in the summer in the summer and I have no way I arrived

I : because there is no more time even for a prayer you breath like me the dust of marble flowering us into double orchid

YOU & I : even unseen orchid you are as our guard no marble decapitates you a night more and again we love you under the tree of life embracing us in adoration bestirred forests of princely bone do you remember

The Rag

‘pune-o p-aia cu kârpa

‘ell that w’th’ag

la signiorina Aurusa

After I was born I had some cows to play with… do you know what the cows are?

These hands, the shoulders, the head all are of Aurusa.

A girl has beaten me and a boy too… took me by the socks, the drawers, the pants, the hair, and the flesh… yes, she barefooted me… when? When you were busily entering the buffet from mamma office and came a bau-bau and barefooted you, cut your hairs… why did you open the cupboard of my cats?

Knowing how to count upto three… playing cards upto four… after a year I’ll be still small… after four… small… after five, small… after six, big… counting up to six.

What five, are they fingers? children? twins? only Aurusa in the photo, in the mirror, in the water, in the shadow, in the dream…

After the rag reached the bed of the sea went to bed and a small fish came and saw her and went to bed too, and then a shell came and saw the rag and close to her the small fish and she went to bed too, then a starfish saw how nicely the rag is sleeping and close to her, the small fish and close to him, the shell and she went to bed too, and then came an octopus with big arms and she saw how the rag slept and close to her, the small fish and close to him, the shell and close to her the starfish, and she said let’s eat them. But the rag heard something in her sleep and she awoke and awoke the small fish too, the small fish awoke the shell, the shell awoke the starfish and they went away but the octopus went to bed in their place. The rag didn’t know how to speak… the others took her to the cobbler… the cobbler told them bring her here and he throw her into cold water: iii, the rag shivered… then he put her near the fire: aaa… he put her on a stick above the head and when the wind started blowing she: ooo so much that her friends heard her and came to take her back. The green rag was lying in the grass. That big cow doesn’t feed on the stunted grass but only the juicy one; the little lamb munches whatever it is. The cow goes direct to the rag and munches her, and chokes scared to death. The rag is also terrified. The little lamb shoves her muzzle into the cow’s mouth and takes it out but she doesn’t munch it.

It was terribly cold. In the wood there was a red rag. The wolf believed that it was fire and came to warm himself as he was shivering. It came to shiver, so did the little hare. So did the bear. They started a round hora dance of shivering – the elephant, the lion, all of them. Shivering they have begun to rotate and they were warming themselves, the rag who has sunk into her boots stole away quickly for she was shivering terribly.

I am a cat from the ladder and so the cat from the ladder is another cat from the ladder… When the evening falls pam-pam-pam it is good to drink champagne and to dance and to drink champagne 1-2-3.

Instead of playing the piano we dance all the day bbb conga – instead of playing the violin we dance all the day ttt conga – instead of playing the cembalo…

Chanter francais tua anima la mia I’ll India… bye, our beds are planes, enter into the water and fly, fly… take much bread, take little milk and tomorrow you’ll go… god let us go to India. Savio is a boy… is a boy and occupies all the seats, my seat, other’s seats and I haven’t any where to sit anymore… he has beaten me and after that I also beat him and after that he didn’t beat me again… a true ball… he was the emperor, everything was the emperor, grandma was the emperor, I was the emperor, we all were the emperor, everything was the emperor… there is a forest full of good animals, with not a lion or a tiger, with a small crocodile who does nothing, with an elephant who does nothing, with hares and squirrels… look how the blood is sleeping, don’t awaken it so that it will say let me flow out.

I don’t like saying nothing… do you want me to tell you a tale? A short one… but I don’t know a short one… I say as much as I can now and I end it for you tomorrow… once there was an emperor and an old man… and the emperor had a house of pure silver which was taking your eyes into the sun and you couldn’t see the Dhauladar, because he wasn’t there anymore… and the emperor wanted to take the bus to Parinior, gets on a crowded one which was not going to Parinior but to Savioville, and the old man told him he will show him, and the bus went on, went on, till it began to fly, far off he went… and arrived in a forest and lost his way.

Madona’s parrot, shaking of mountains and of Vlasia, other birds, a Tibetan hanjar in a wooden sheat like a Sunday in cosmos.

Buddha’s trees, a sun spot, a new cancer, the lion descended, tantric, nude, the fate of our Aurusa.

We awake under the blue. We smoke.

We hurry into azure. We move.

We read Eminescu.

Universal earth, lives sacrificed to nonbeing, god, custom.

Burn Ravana and brothers.

The heart of samsara, in flames.

It burns in all places and times.

Our children have built a paper demon.

Aurusa, you have lit him with an arrow.

Fugila joint the infantry. The captain, a he-fox:

“What’s the idea, mister, run away! You are not fit: not right for a fox-hole”.

The elephants – civilian elephants – are trunking a hill towards the moon: “Scram!” The captain, “O.K., you can go and come, and then you come and go”.

On the moon Fugila finds a lion.

He comes back lickety – split, gives the report, once, twice, till the he-fox is bored – or frightened – by the story of the lion in the moon.

He gives the order to the elephants to move the hill towards the ocean: “Run to the Navy, on a whale boat rowed by storks, capish? Got that?”

Just then there was a battle and there no more flags or masts to be seen – just one.

Then Fugila makes his tail a flag and scares all the squadragons.

The ocean became a mirror to slide on, and the brave sailor was called to the mountain corps where the leader of bears was a wolf. Who promised to give him free paw to save them from the enemy, but first to be willing a rest a little, yes, yes, without fear, it’s possible.

Fugila, always with open eyes, went to sleep. The wolf, snap! and half an ear.

Aurusa: And he glues it back like it was before.

“Accha ji, because he was a reincarnation, not just any old rabbit”.

The little rabbits go to the coffee house.

A hedgehog serves.

They get frightened and spill the coffee.

A badger comes.

They get frightened again and eat him because he was only a pretended badger.

Then they are thirsty. One of them, Urechebleaga, leaves to get a drink.

- Do you have soda, campa, orange juice?

- Paisa do.

Another customer:

-“Gold Charminar”?

- Nahi.

- Then?

- “Urechebleaga”, and Lala cuts the floppy ear of Urechebleaga, makes it into cigarettes and sells them to Shri Snake.

Urechebleaga comes back to the coffee house with the drink.

Shri snake was puffing his “Urechebleaga” when Urechebleaga snaps it back on a string.

He goes for a walk.

An elephant had gone to sleep on a mouse-hole. And the mouse couldn’t get out:

- Hey, elephant, move over! I can’t hold it in anymore, and I can’t move you out!

- Sorry, I’m feeling too sleepy – leave me alone or I’ll give you such a trunk.

Urechebleaga also sits down on the elephant.

- Hey, says the elephant, who are you?

- Who is it? Asks the small mouse from the hole.

- Urechebleaga.

- Take him, mouse, eat him, here, look in my trunk.

The mouse eats urechebleaga who was a pretended Urechebleaga (all the rabbits were pretended rabbits).

- I want more, says the small mouse and eats the elephant too, who was also…

The elephants are muddying it again. Trompone, alone: “now, I’ll do it now once and for all”, but the mud settles, so he stamps his foot and slaps his trunk and wallows the slit, splashes with his trunk, overturns like an elephant-pig in the mud but still the water gets clearer and clearer and still more clear. The brothers come. “Waa, waa, Lord Ganesh took a bath here. We must thank him”. “I didn’t drop in”, the God replied, and has an audience with Trompone, who was sorry he couldn’t trouble the water – otherwise, what’s the fun? “I know what is in your mind? But listen here, would you like to be a saint?” “God forbid! I am not cut to be a saint: sometimes I play, sometimes I get ideas…” "O key”.

Some of his people were playing a friendly call to some rabbits, near a hill. The long-eared ones took fright and ran away to the top of the hill. The elephants cried “ah, we are your friends”, and, why follow them more, let’s surround the hill. Now the Holy Elephant – no more Trompone – also had come on that visit. On the way, he hears some hungry lions: “I could eat an elephant”, one says. The Holy Elephant decides to offer himself: “Why not eat me?” The lions stand stone-still and prostrate themselves, “We?” eat you?” and they started tearing their manes.

Yes, Aurusa, just as you say, some ants hear that the Holy Elephants are going to his brothers at Rabbit Mountain and want to greet him. Being tiny they gather by hundreds of millions making themselves a giant ant which comes and worships the Holy Elephant, who now look no bigger than a mite. Than his brothers come, also by hundreds of millions.

Right, Aurusa, “we want to go to Parinior,” they are saying, “but it’s far”. “With wings or without?” “With”. And they fly away. And then a child: “Look, Look! An ant with a wing like a trunk!” Immediately that one turns back into an elephant. A hundred millions elephants, ten for each child and ten for his brother. And ten for us. For everyone.

There’s an elephant here and he wants to sleep. “Yes”, you say, “There is”.

Make believe you are sleeping on your elephant. I am asleep on mine.

The World Without Brancusi's Column

(1997)

Prologue

(Teri, Nina, Valea, Frida & Ligia)

lying Buddha. Amero-Russians. conference. air to Mair. you ate my comând alms. zumbai-diga-da. a well wet beard is half shaved. vertebral column. Eros Erostrat. infinite beads in the autumn sun rised in new millennium. maxim corrosion. attempt upon integrity and unicity. restauration by disassembling. some with exegi monumentum others with club toroipan. Ligia of Gorj Mica Bujoiu. pyramid stupa Eleusinian mysteries. the smoke mounts columnlike but snake. he was listening the silence here it is interminable speaking. echo to golden number. to tell grave things in most polite terms. this city is cursed not to remain stone on stone. target of bullets. two broken elements. the time doesn't spoil what man's hand spoils with chopper. lustian amazons and you got tired of Jiu-doing your theatre. senate Jiu flows like dead the window asks diamond rubayat void the tongue of borough cutted the column decolumned. godhood in three brightnesses. you strengthened us on confessions stone mother of light to inherit saint grace and gift. first sculpture in my life yours angel of stone from the fountain yours from high with god's eye sees by where one enters the egg. shape number music

III

Brâncuşi Gorjan Paleolog. smoke of Gayatri. debate to the scaffolding of living masters. Yama cuts the tree the man the tile the sash the discopathy of eternity. let world vanish anyhow from twig to ash it takes birt rust disgusted by steeled past. death by 17 times. 17 reincarnations. Fata unlikely mentionned. the bunishment of blood with alibi of rust. pus distilled tantrums of devils' skeletons paved with shadows of vitriol.

always on spot on heels the road comes and goes. me to south with him in Indore you upside in Indora. indian row 17 mountaineers in Himalaya. you have no way how to pour the grief as you swallow it. we had mourned to the wall... the rest of empire all have welled from everything still having a peak and head with mother beheading that have left it ever through the living of heavenly silver all fairies thrusted in lightning in hook. by eternal snows if one maiastra would fly.

penguins in rhomboid ice dance between ocean and pampa. ours to the edge of weaning. the artists unspringed as jealous cosmos. we have paralysed under the spary of lies splashed through kalashinikovs. feast of people truthfulness of revenging hallucinations in absolute on whole the high the living the created the spiral. we did love about the bush. no supremacy saintly prethought on the vest of heroic foundations from God. you don't guess anymore the place of eternity of God from the offering of the people. what for hero if it doesn't exist even at the theatre. romb-à-romb tout en rond. the devourers of rust the vampires of pillar ante portam the ubiquity of destroying. clonate. one. poltergeist. on. quaking. gelatine. any piece. of. resistance. of self. anihilated. anabolic.

VII

you enter the same cell. mirror of hill. entrance of armies from east. cradles should have striken us, the soles of hell should have pressed us. shaved heads inscriptionated then again hairy with red dandruff. buildings destroying buildings of the sky. as long as even phobia doesn't take you so you are potty. the standing man gets you phobious. you got back with white beard. mind spring soul Hobista.

VIII

sand of Gorj shroud. don't move in front. the temples got slandered. the tooth of time you stopped. fanatical fans take the head blond negress in New York. bring it here in Târgu Jiu and give instead the modulus 8. in the column without masters. the X of princess on the table. torso of morgue egg Brahma wood Buddha seal in fire fish in Jiu bird in rhombus maiastra in dodii unseen temple. what he did polished to the paradise it is butchered for dogs.

the monuments are not difficult to be destroyed if one puts himself in the situation to destroy them. break the sword to the middle pair to the androgyn similar to pillar. the tree however will blossom to carry him to how many centuries. but a master only also the pack surrounds him. plan of creation one with of murder the nature diminishes. kill mother. no trace of Constantin in Romania how also Christ died and resurrected and raised he had had show to us. he had had show to us from the dead of our completion eighteenized corpslike under vaseline of tank from over fence good bye rhomboid. it fell snow. hot winter. hibernal spring. empty axle chicken without feathers. Pompeian perishing. he told us we don't know what he gives us. vertebral column of all days.

you have seen the column in pieces and entered the hospital. cutting the graying hairs on 17 trenches. Buddha head shaved. Samson veiled. winners halved without struggle. wash what remained from your brain. the rust will flow also over beast heads. when it is a sunny day then one vertebra of mine flies. toward hight. grave with perpetual burial.

i don't want to leave nor to remain to see anyone. i mix tongues with feathers from shirt of cast iron of Christ my eyes i raised like anybody on a tower and neither us nor anybody else have something higher. the essence of pillar seemed uneatable when vezuviochungers appeared. the plotters of unplotting how many shots how many anonimities. it doesn't think monumental any more. the future isn't mourned any more. the memory of now a corpse surrounded by cremation of mausoleums you decided yourself since night to strike horror to the sight of seventeenths of endlessness. be not ended the century as it had begun. don't put anything in your head nor the sorry for the burial of self. we even boasted in unknowledge of cause. our bride has been torn immediately the skulks deposed her. you search more bloody demolitions on ferringinous make up, valetudinarians in swing of surprise of weaklingness from the history of art across of art.

XII

the prayer of artist in twilight. tomorrow the trifles of survival. some profit like oblivion of the effect of cutting of columns of verticalities. with the melodrama of the full under the ass of the clever. servant rough and tumbled pants on traveller. and then who is not profaned. only who doesn't deserve the honour. which honour is profanation. profane i was am and will be you have not how to profanate me profanator of resurrection neither living nor dead you don't pinch me. a character asks if overpopulating of tortionars is not threatened by unemplyment. the modulus 12 ergo argo medus maybe a nedea a holiday on the taste of Brâncuşi. by getting embodied by getting sacred so that i have seen it also standing until we die we all will confess it mountains. we will rearrange ourselves on peaks from valleys in the power of returning and refalling from heights under eagle that nothing was without end. and yet humanly brancusianly we mounted to much we will tell you the story also in words of destroyers who started to reverse the nature being depicting it as something extra as in danger as in dereliction and then with polytomitan axe had plytomit it in 17.

XIII

icons praise condac from no answer. the thought of primordial forms reborn in sculptor's being gets imprisoned of demented to the turning in the shadow trench as if out of all mountains will be done only valleys of palm with lines up to the hell. everything should be recovered in solitude after it's symbol has been destroyed. the routers the crushers with their dharma with magnifying glass toward statues from before unthought unraised undestroyed as if in century met Brâncuşi. translated cremationers.

XIV

the art reoccupies melancholy of ancients. mneme. destroying in live you become restorator. write him phobia that's better drunk than phobiate xenos. no the speaker guilty for the caduceu has declared the disassemblation of pillar the enemy becomes friend but beheaded pillar head near head from head over head burying profaning rapid dismantling. the last week of December 1998 in a developing country.

il nostro teatro sistina in romacongigliola. box keops the unique humanity. nothing you can over past doctrines. you don't know them you get blind in custody on familial corpse. hermetic hermeneutics.

XVI

i go to the sculptor. asylia simbola cosm polemarh. Aspasia Tryne Glicera Gnathaina Theodata Lais. kiss the eyes of blindman. it caresses you the marble owl midnight kairos. so white a bird that didn't shadow me anymore. the beauty of ugliness the arm cutted in leaves of orgy lotus. the steam of wonder the psalm 103 phantoms bees his spirit will wrap the earth. punished will be the annihilation.

XVII

the destruction will be punished. the spirit of Brâncuşi will wrap the land of Romanians and world. the work of quietude gets enlighted through wise rhyme. Gizeh 2 only the head. faint inside. a mother head with guard palazzine a statue another one suddenly a reddish coast appears graveyard picnic school children and teachers taking photographs of themselves. what time is it. three degrees stay five. it is a quarter past 12. mine is 5 to 1 it is fast i've got lost and don't know arrive to give the paper it is not difficult for me in sanskrit i recite what i recited before from the piece Brâncuşi by Eliade puja the eyes of stone cast iron fonta font fon fo fffffff.

Epilogue

(actors-author-public)

tragic dorian ionian brancusian columns, women taken out each a rib and beat with. fine millenio fine secolo fine settimana. giving life to Veta to Ilinca to Mihai to Constantin. it is grass where has been church. his breath smells tobacco still now at strangling no 16 the pillar gives out last breath in air of irenic infinitation. but the sword chop off the breath of life from beyond creation nature. the rememberance from God toward the endless of gratitude.

when he was thinking of India the column got unknit Gorjan should look at her a year after your death when Gorjan will die he will follow us in Canaan.

in the valley of grievances of heros immortal soldiers reversed over your hands like saint chalice old head jumbled saint host. the enemies cercles cercles chips dodii birds feathers breaths.

the feather of rhombodius 16 may have flight. like pigeon over waters with a greening in the garden of the snake column.

it will be more it will be more a poem a poem it wasn't ever it wasn't ever such a flight such a flight it isn't anymore it isn't anymore generation by generation will vail will vail the revegening the revegening will build will build thresh thresh.

put down anything what has been standing mowed grass plugged waters by where may pass anymore cranes on holidays. the root doesn't let us doesn't see us doesn't pass us as the women singers hermits. the loss of modulus like flush of the full the hole of modulus like milk of the dull the rust of modulus hududodudu the break of the modulus sympathy of modulus oiling of modulus in honor of modulus. let us breath from being to being up to the peak fallen at the end of times the joy that we have lived that we have died that we have been created that our creation has been destroyed glory to you murderer of soft peoples that in front of them you will kow-how yourself.

one who enjoyed my head when was cutted he ploughed the heads sowed my people rise Ararat you reached me you brought me sky love pushed me another comes and puts it down that why did i get back such is world like unworld such is column like uncolumn.

some three hundred years have passed the monastery may still be the column may haven't been refrain destroyers offended by what they did destroy those who cut the nails of terra those who chopp off endless columns beefsteak talak talak talak cococo cheerful demolishers with papillon ion back on cramming boulder ghostween angel with sword the pillar Bassarabia bar bar bar carribi carribi infineternal beings in mahasamadhi. scaffolding. 17 cells.

Poeston

Edgar Poe born no more in Boston

Parts

we’ll drag our days without Poe opponent mates moon’s horns up agitate prey fishes papillon Poe Tom Chillicothe yin moon yang sun

war smoke downwards war movie Richmond wasn’t enough back to Boston downtown

horror start a decade ago here remembering so familiarly Edgar Poe translated as Sergey Esenin

dear Sara I’m in Boston Public Library fiction floor with lands of Palidy-Steel and 3-4 books by Eliade-Poe

nothing to say on Boston as Boston says nothing on an army private stationed at Fort Independence Amontillado

rather on Mirabeau-Apollinaire bridge we just assies-assoifes chated in French on lacuna in Poe’s poets from Kalidasa to Eminescu via Baudelaire Wagner and love to Kamala Das in Malabar preimagined par la malabaraise

well a statue in Ruda village in front of ruine adobe hut from the author of Calcutta’s Ballad now as ballad of Edgar Boston

Boston Boston Allen Allen Aleluia chime Edgaric Mrs Eddy Eda Veda Poe in Morse in prison by Zeana

we now found ourselves far from the ravine

born in Boston 19 January 1809 to David Poe and Elizabeth Poe itinerant actors father disappers and is presumed dead his mother dies in Richmond Virginia collapses in Baltimore and dies on 7 October 1849

of my country and my family have little to say

Edgar was born in Boston Massachusetts the son of actors Poe died of a brain haemorrage two years after Virginia Poe was never legally adopted gothic tales and death horror and the macabre

the Red Death has long devastated the country

Mark Twain unreadable T S Eliot slipshod William Carlos Williams a genius Henry James primitive we don’t know English and also Poe exists more in chimes of translations upon prisoners poem avatar purity

Bay Village is able to claim a major literay figure among its residents since Edgar Allan Poe was born here in 1809 while his parents were boarding in the house of H.Haviland at 62 Carver Street demolished in the late 1960’s by Ceauşescu

Edgar Allan Poe born on Carver Street in 1809 in the modest quarter of today Bay Village scoffed at his native Boston Frogpondium

we like Boston we were born there and perhaps is just as well not to mention that we are heartly ashamed of the fact the Bostonians are very well in their way their hotels are bad their pumpkin pies are delicious their poetry is not so good their Common is not a common thing and the duck pond might answer if its answer could be heard for the frogs

few criticized Longfellow or his work save the enigmatic Edgar Allan Poe who wrote off most his residents as provincial frogpondians

in 1989 a plaque was put on Boylston Street comemorating Poe his love-hate relationship with Boston and often referred to it as Frogpondium

(portrait) 1809-1849 Edgar Allen Poe poet-storywriter –critic born on Carver Street January 19 1809 to David and Elizabeth (Eliza) Poe actors at the Boston Theatre 1827 published his first book Tamerlan and other poems at a shop on the corner of Washington and State Streets and enlisted in the US Army at Force Independence Boston Harbor lectured in Boston October 16 1845 published “Landor’s Cottage” his last tale in Boston’s Flag of our Union June 9 1849 died at Baltimore Octomber 7 1849 (bird) Edagar Allan Poe Committee January 19 1989

let me call myself for the present William Wilson

Psyche Zenobia legitimate fiction I am SHADOW it was night and rain fell eyes of Ligeia Eleonora was the name of my cousin Berenice and I were cousins Morella’s erudition was profound yet she smilled on and still on treason screamed the Arch-Duchen of Ana-Pest and Darkness and Decay and the Red Death the thousand injuries of Fortunato in the distinct colossal figure of – a horse agitation of spirit kept me awake as for myself I am simply Hop-Frog the jester Pyrrhonism living inhumation nom de plume of Issachar Marx Pundit said Atlantic oh tempora oh Moses Mr Mason Bi-Past Soul meditation and meershaum I will now play the Oedipus to the Rattleborough enigma thus Marc Antony composed a treatise upon getting drunk Bon-Bon was barely three feet in height the lady Scheherazade Oppodeldoc (whoever he is) Miss Zenobia pay minute attention to the sensations the duelist accepted my aid the Angel of the Old the Automaton Chess-Player was invented in 1769 the Death’s-headed Sphinx he is the man of the crowd never bet the devil your head gentle reader three Sundays in a week Landor’s cottage domain of Arheim with soul of the old cavalier shell be lifted nevermore beside the king of Heaven Venuses unextinguished by the sun the writer of these lines the sky were ashen and sober hear the sledges with the bells of the dear names many and many a year ago dearer to my soul smile no more the Conqueror Woman all to me silent dell at midnight in the month of June meet his shadow a dream within a dream by a route obscure and lonely Fior di Levante young Eulalie if you seek for Eldorado in Heaven a spirit doth dwell a passer by the ring is in my hand that one bright Politian was a melancholy man the summer dream beneath the tamarind tree of nothing earthly save the ray of her soul-searching eye kind solace in dying hour Helen the Beauty proud Evening Star form of a demon in may view

everybody knows that in Bucharest on the street Brâncoveanu I found 50 dollars now in Boston not only Edgar Poe but also those dollars I lost toward Kosciusko between Sumner and Cross Sargent between classic and romantic headless Buddha and baby Christ Corbel little raven Madonna of the Clouds Dante and Virgil but Poe and Baudelaire Petite Danseuse de quatorze ans Edgar Degas bronze tule skirt only really modern attempt in sculpture the lustful time uncloths the truth where do we come from what are we where are we going Gaugain I renounce to the ballad Edgar a sculpture is representing you the 14 years old dancer as your bride Virginia the Egyptians don’t tell me any more what the book of your dead told you many enough did died also to Tagore and Eminescu and you returned to Boston in search of literary fame niente I forgotten my lost pognon let it be swept beaten for your soul I also don’t get anything on this ballad lucky Shakespeare not having been born in Boston so much impressionism Velasquez mummies Americans and no one inspiration from you more and more the world becomes Boston without you born incognito starting back anonimously in 1827 do come now we are on Boylston in globalist American paraconference Mrs Eddy Edgar Degas with family look to Coplay a doina of portraits you neither in broken gallery in the whole Boston I think to you with my daughter and French librarians Francisc would help us doesn’t need Boston when you are poet of America beyond world when you died to us in the skeleton of each prisoner we may have got drunk from all constituencies anybody is afraid of America until bites it off or Boston bites you back out of the two statues of Baudelaire in cemetery Montparnasse the sleeping one seems to be you Boston isn’t Bethleem my lost sum may have go in a bottle called however Boston Poe tabu Poe-Boston Poeston terrible richness may magnetize even terrible communism in some masonian mixture in a intiation club toward Eliadian own centre Bonston the bonzes excluded Milarepa to meet carver Brancusi and you born on Carver in Tibetston I dreamt a murder I forget it you killed me I forget you on the map Frog Pond in spite of who cuckoos Bostonian student for Ion Barbu living for Bacovia stories Voiculescu essayes Dan Botta metadata metaPoe Edgar was born here and isn’t to be found in any guide Mihu reminds how Soviet critic M Bobrova called Poe great an original master no bostan-pumpkin yet not via Russians like perhas Raj Kapoor came Poe to us he fertilized after Junimea the interbella and political prison even his proletarianisation wouldn’t beat Bostonian deamericanisation Boston either sloughs or eviscerates innerly his proletarians but Poe is of the aristocratism probably America wouldn’t exist in Romanian without Poe perhaps Romania is the country of Poe more than America or gets americanized only through Poe no Boston press conference Edgar Poe less in Boston more in the world saying Poe you meant Boston saying Boston you mean duck to come from a country you have to pay otherwise open mouth in Boston not finding even Edgar Eddy ask people questions Tsurcane best wishes bushes neither Edgar nor Menino Bospond Monopond Kosovo Ross pierre blanche Okinawa crisis of fat reversed symbolism Poest Poestan Zeana lived him autochristian a country of eviscerarted decervelles prisoners Nimenistan Edgar they gave you to Russians as did with Romania those gave you also to Romania didn’t give you Romania Pound in a cage so world gets bostonized I am from Boston that is from Romania my name is Eminescu that is Poe I was born in Bukovina catalogators died like Poe from poetry dada in dodii you seemed to me American unlike Holderlin Eminescu Boston is missing only Edgar Poe an Edgarless city-lodge chime concert Eddy tune from Baudelaire Boston without Poe without Romania hello remember our Bangkok talk on sonnet and Rilke I did publish a book of Thailandese sonnets and here in Boston I write stoplessly to a ballad of Edgar Allan Poe if even America is made by Russians it’s a luck that Russia is made by Germans get American my daughter if history is wasting time you are not history Edgar neither Eminescu in R E Poe is more than America crazy woman with poem in elementary school black Poe Raven Romanian library for some Edgar Poe is more than America yes I liked your poem specchio della morbidezza we listen to Kabir to Poe to Eddy I was on ship having perpetually access to the captain like young Baudelaire in Cape Town he wasn’t Ahab neither Pym this verse can be called 1934 Romanian year American year in mapparium poem of Edgar and book of Mary oh book and a captain or another title I lost Edgar I found Eddy inverse verse by Poe our story in this life belong to Poe’s other lives Eve dust rib egg ego divine poetical principle demolished you are Boston I am Edgar Poe.

Thom Nibbelin

It's about his crazy Romanian namesake who held us "hostage" for an evening :-). The bony, dead hand of St. John is a character in the play.....it's a tragi-comedy. Kind of like Romania...

On my train trip from Brasov to Bucharest last Friday, I saw a train stop at Ploieste Vest with several dozen large swastikas painted on the beams holding up the train station.

You think Ford Execs would want to live in this country with an 80% pay cut? Hah! "Got a quarter in my palm, I can make it disappear. Got a Rabbit in my hat, if you wanna come and see....trust none of what you hear and less of what you see....this is what will be. This is what will be.....I got a shiny saw blade, all I need's a volunteer....I'll cut you in half....while you're grinnin' ear to ear....this is what will be, this is what will be.....". That's from the new Springsteen album, "Magic". The more I listen to it the more I think it's a brilliant observation of our country and the world. It also fits Romania to a "T".

My first host here in Bucharest wanted me to write a book about my experiences here...or something like that. Well, his instincts were right but I think he wanted me to write something positive about this country....which is hard to do. Right now, it's about 25%-75% positive to negative. 25% positive and 75% negative. Seems to get worse the deeper I probe and get to know the underbelly of this place.

I went to a Monastery built in the 17th century just outside of Iasi where they still hold services in the old Basilica. I couldn't really follow the service other than when they said "Amen" and "Hristos". I knew something seriously holy was said when everybody crossed themselves at the same time.....otherwise, there was a lot of random crossing. I've noticed everyone seems to have their own style when crossing themselves. Some are quite elegant and others are quick and to the point! I've started crossing myself so I feel like I "fit in"...kind of. I'm not sure if me doing that is blasphemous, since I'm not a member of the Romanian Orthodox Church, or if it's a sign of respecting their religion (which is my intention). I've tried out various "styles" of crossing myself....still haven't settled on a secific style....I just go with whatever moves me at the time.

I enjoyed the services and my time at the monastery. If I were Romanian, I probably would have become a Priest or Monk. The monasteries are very peaceful.....I like peaceful places and a simple life. I went up the narrow stairway to the top of the bell tower and was rewarded with a treat. A beautiful view of the countryside and I've always been fascinated by those large bells and the wood structures that hold them aloft. We got to eat with the monks and priests and I met the Abbot of the monastery. We exchanged e-mails and skype names and promised to keep in touch when I get back to the states. He wants to practice his English. I found it interesting that he studied Shotokan Karate-do before he became a Priest! A fellow martial artist!

Anyway, after lunch I took a walk....and a couple minutes later a guy had a small metal pin in my ear telling me I had too much wax in my ears and needed them cleaned! Not much I could do as he already had the pin in my ear and his tiny tools out....so I said, "OK". I needed my ears cleaned. He started working on my other ear and pulled out a small document in a small leather case stating that he was a "certified professional medical ear cleaner" and that the usual charge for his services were 1,500 rupees! I have to admit the man did a better job than all of the nurses who have cleaned my ears but....I told him I'd give him 25 rupees. He was disappointed but things were cool as we parted. I think my ears are cleaner than they've ever been. The man is a professional! Then I got ambushed by a shoe shine guy. My shoes are a little scruffy so I said OK to a 50 rupee shoe shine. Another professional who knew his business! My shoes look great! So, I got my ears cleaned and shoes shined for about $2 bucks....and wandered on....

Among the sights seen were men pissing openly in places just off the street....a couple stray cats having a brutal shag in an alley...several young men who came up to me asking if I needed a guide...or a prostitute...or "coke, hash or weed"....and many other things. For some people it could have been completely nuts and totally unnerving (like a woman I met inside a shoe store who had gone in to "slow things down"), for me it felt like a carnival or circus. It was all very surreal but I'm getting pretty good at taking it all in and staying centered and focused. If anyone spends too much time "riding" me for something I just tell them I'm not interested and that I've come to India to continue training in Kalaripayattu and Varma Ati....then they say good-bye very quickly! Varma Ati involves touching vital points on the body that can do serious damage to someone. I don't know Varma Ati but I say I do when needed....and put my hand on their shoulder when I say it :-) I do know a vital point there that causes some pain that shoots right down to the foot. I press lightly so they get a twinge....then they almost sprint away. It's a crazy place but I like it. The extremes here are EXTREME! In America, the saying goes "you can go from a nice neighborhood to a dangerous one a block away"...in some places. Here, you can see Wealth and Grandeur and then extreme poverty just a few feet away from each other. Bucharest kind of prepared me for this but Mumbai takes it to another level. This is another world....

There's a reason the tourism slogan for Kerala is "God's Own Country".....the more I see, the more beautiful it gets. So many different types of birds, flowers, so many colors...the food is phenomenal. I feel more at home here everyday.

Mongooses are cool. They kill snakes! I always smile when I see a mongoose nearby.....

My French friend, Julien, is leaving on Monday. He will be missed. We've had some great, fun adventures in my short time here. We shot a Tiger Balm mock commercial and a few other fun video things. Keralan mud wrestling. A short Steve Irwin "wildlife" satire. When he leaves....there will be 3 foreigners left. Myself, Monika- from Poland, and Jeremy- from Kentucky via teaching english in Korea. Jeremy just got here and is taking the back treatment I took. Jeremy is here until the end of December and Monika is here until sometime in February. Jeremy and I will be living in the same place that we're calling the "American Sleeper Cell". We're living in a Communist State remember? We must be the bad guys, according to Bush & Co! By the way, it was an extremely embarrassing and tough time being an American abroad this past week with the Intelligence revelations about Iran and Bush's reaction to them. I've fielded questions from "Is your President a complete idiot or is he truly evil".....My answer?...."Yes". :-) To...."How did Bush ever get elected? Are American's complete idiots?".....My answer...."Ummm....let me get back to you on that!". Jeremy and I both felt a deep sense of shame about American political news this week. The only bright spot is Congress might actually be developing a spine and challenging the Executive Branch where it should be. Our Democracy is supposed to have it's checks and balances. The most disturbing news I heard this week, though, came out of Romania. As I thought while I was over there....our intentions in Romania are nothing short of Evil. Our intentions in Poland aren't much better. I didn't mention (I don't think) that I met a couple of ex-marines in Romania who were on vacation from training soldiers in Poland. They shared a few things with me. I got an e-mail from Scott. He quit after being asked to do something he is morally opposed to. He quickly boarded a flight to Dubai......We know so little of what is actually going on with our military and government in the world right now.....it's very, very scary.

We will be celebrating Christmas here! Should be interesting....especially with 7 foreigners here, including myself. That's the most who have been at the Kalari at one time. We're all contemplating buying land on our block for future visits :-) The atmosphere is great. We have an hour or so of fun time after dinner on Gurukkal's veranda....some very talented people here. I was formerly "comic relief" with my back treatments and such when I couldn't train....now I'm into serious training mode and a different mindset. Some of the others are very funny so I don't feel so much pressure to be the comedian.

A new wrinkle has been added to the training equation today. A well respected yoga teacher (a modest man in his 60's who doesn't call himself a guru) has come to the neighborhood and Gurukkal has worked something out with him where we will be doing Yoga from 11:30am to 1pm daily. So....morning training from 6am to 8:30am....shower then breakfast at 9:30am.....yoga from 11:30am- 1pm.....Rest or get supplies from the city after yoga (maybe sneak to the beach now and then).....Evening training from 5:30pm- 7:30pm....shower then Dinner at 8:15pm.....In bed around 10:15pm. Not a vacation by any means! The yoga should be relaxing and energizing but I'm sure it will work muscles that haven't been worked in many years and I will be like a limp rag when I drag myself to bed at night. The good news is the yoga will help the kalari training a great deal. I will probably be stick fighting in a month :-)

In true Indian fashion, Gurukkal arranged a marriage between myself and another student, Sala- a gorgeous dancer/actress/teacher from Brazil. Everything was going well the first two days but out of the blue she informed me the marriage was off! Then maybe. Then off. Then a wink with no words. Hmmmm.....women! You never really know what they're thinking 75% of the time....or more. Especially fiery Brazilian women who wear their emotions on their sleeves! I thought I might have won the "competition" with cousin Jon but I guess it's a wait and see.....

I have a back up plan, though ;-) My first "Indian Wife", Monika might be a possibility! At first, I thought I was going to have to convert to Islam in order to have multiple wives. I saw a Koran in the window of a bookstore and almost bought it. I should explain. If a man and woman are together in India and are laughing and smiling.....everyone assumes they're married. We've had a chemistry from day one and dozens of people have thought we are married. So, now, if anyone asks....I say "yes, she is my wife!". It benefits her a great deal as well as making me the envy of most of the men in Kozhikode. There was an article in the Calicut paper about us foreigners at the Kalari as well as a piece on the TV news. For some reason, they kind of focused both pieces on Monika (obvious reasons, actually...). Since then, men on the street have been approaching her much too often and some even call her by name.....a bit overwhelming for her. Much easier for her to be "married". I've drawn the line at giving her my credit card, though! I figure chocolate and popcorn at the movies is enough right now....and opening doors for her and all that stuff. Gotta keep her humble. She's the new Diva of Kerala :-) And she would probably kill me if I write anymore about her.....so....oh, she says she's one of Poland's finest actresses! I think she's in one of the pictures attached.

My french pal and confidante, Julien, left on Monday and is missed. Great guy. In his place, two French women are here now. Gabrielle and Julie. Gabrielle is a physical therapist and Julie is a dancer. They are in a house by themselves and don't mix with the rest of us much. A guy from the UK with dreadlocks showed up this week with no money....very strange man. He left after an hour or so, bummed that he couldn't do the training for free.....

I won't be flying home for Christmas as my budget won't allow it. I think it's only the first or second Christmas I have missed so please give me some slack! I will be thinking of all of you and wish you all a Merry Christmas! We will be celebrating in someway here. I think with the family that lives next to Gurukkal....who are Christian. Quite a few churches in town that might be having Christmas Eve services too. We'll see.

I hope everyone is doing well and y'all are enjoying the Holidays! Please include my Mother in your prayers if you are one who prays. That's enough of a Christmas gift for me.

After writing that.....the practical "hassle" that I face everyday is dozens of people stopping me on the street, putting there hands on me and constantly asking my name, where I'm from and what my cell phone number is. I feel like an Occidental zoo animal outside the world of the kalari and a few other places. I found a little place where some guys get together and play snooker at night....regular guys....couldn't care less where I come from. These little Oases are a haven. Most of the regular folks here are wonderful. I really like reading the english language paper here....The variety of opinions it puts forth in the Editorial section is living proof that all voices are allowed to be heard here. Kind of like America used to be before our current regime......

I think the play I'm working on will have to have a Pakistani character now after the tragedy of Bhutto's assasination and the repercussions that have followed and will continue to follow.

The food here is great!

Hope your time in India continues to be good and fruitful.

Christmas in Kerala was very festive. Actually, probably more festive than in the States despite Christianity being a minority religion here. Everyone celebrates it and people go house to house visiting, giving presents, having get togethers with relatives and- at least in our neighborhood- a lot of cake and sweets are eaten. In a way, probably not hugely different than Christmas in the US.....except I'm in a "tropical paradise" and the weather is perfect ;-)

I quit the yoga class for "ideological reasons". The type of yoga the instructor was teaching was very "preachy" and he talked about eliminating all desires of the body so you can end the cycle of death and rebirth....blah, blah, blah. He's a thin man about 65-70 years old and has been a bachelor all of his life. Those things might work for him but I think it's not something that a person with my make-up can embrace.....maybe when I'm 70 years old I might "evolve" to that way of thinking :-) I have to mentionthat the yoga class isn't a part of the kalari training. In the Kalari....we are warriors! ;-)

On the 30th of December the Calicut Kalarippayat "tournament" is being held. All of the kalaris in the area are throwing their best people in the "ring" and we'll see who is the best. It's different than other martial arts competitions. Kalarippayat is very deadly and to pit a person from one kalari against one from another kalari might result in a death, especially with the weapons. So the competiton is such that people from each kalari pair up with another person from that kalari and choreograph their "battle" so they each know where the strikes will be coming from and how to defend them. I wish I could attach a little video to show you what I'm talking about but various swords are used and other deadly weapons and people are flying around. Jackie Chan and other martial arts movie guys have hired Kalari guys for because some of the choreography is very exciting. Should be fun! One of my neighbors, Neetya- a 9 yr old girl- will be stick fighting! She's all skin and bones but a great stick fighter! She's the sister of the 12 yr old kid who beats me in chess regularly! :-) Gurukkal's niece and nephew. Very talented family. Neetya will go from fiercely stick fighting some 15 yr old boy to playing with her Barbies a half an hour later :-) She got a new one a couple weeks ago and had to show me all of her outfits, shoes, make-up, etc.....I probably know more about Barbies than any 43 yr old man should!

I'm in mourning over the career ending injury of Alonzo Mourning, the basketball player. The last true warrior in the NBA.

I hope everyone is in a good place and is having happy holidays!

To all of those who didn't get my "Merry Christmas" e-mail (I'm not sure it went through).....Merry Christmas!!

Nice to hear of your travels and sorry to hear of the deaths. I have a love for India but it's not without it's flaws.....many things one could criticize. That's not my purpose here, though. Their own media does that just fine :-) It also exalts the country just fine too! One thing I like is the very open exchange of ideas here. Reminds me of the US before Bush.....and what it could be like again if Barack Obama wins the presidency and the seeming change of attitude in most of America isn't a short term thing. I think we needed a disaster like this government we've had the last 7 years to wake people up and be able to say, "all is NOT OK....but we don't need the politics of fear driven into us...or be lied to...etc, etc....".

I'm getting what I came for here....and a little more. Some people I've met and been involved with has been great. Mostly the other foreigners from Brazil, Poland, France and America....and a few of the Indians. The India Mystique doesn't faze me like many of the "seekers" who come to this country. A lot of them get caught up in various illusions. Yoga is yoga, whether in India or Zimbabwe....hopefully you have a good teacher wherever you study it. Swamis and Gurus are just men....and sometimes women....just like you and I. If they are honest and good human beings, they acknowledge that. The ones who become exalted and claim or don't deny some kind of divine power are charlatans. It's a business here! A lot of people who have devoted their lives to spiritual matters, and physical practices, have some extraordinary abilities and insights....but they're still human beings. I met a Sadhu who was invited to a families house and about 150 people showed up to meet him. A couple of us foreigners were invited too. He was a very gentle, kind man with great energy and a quiet charisma. People prostrated before him, asking for healing, etc, including myself- it was pretty much required once we were there :-). After that, he had his picture taken with the foreigners and I talked with him some. He invited me to where he is living and I went to meet him. Seemed to be an authentic wise man. He told me he was impressed that I wasn't in awe of him and we played a game of chess. He beat me, of course....great chess player. Then we had tea and chocolates. He said he had a weakness for sweets. Nice afternoon and we joked around a lot. Then he gave me a business card with his name, address and phone number :-) I went to an event with him a week later and over 1,000 people showed up to see him.....I was in the room with his entourage as people came in in 3's seeking healing. It was very interesting. Things can happen if people really believe they can....and Sadhu is a Reiki Master, so he does have some healing powers. Anyway....I've been learning quite a few things here. Mostly good things.

Hope the weather is better in Bucharest!

Tom

Vlad the Impaler

in Ţiganiada

The Gypsy Epic by Ion Budai-Deleanu

Excerpts translated by Dr. George Anca

From Epistolie închinătoare/ Dedication epistle

… As about nature of this mine make, that is of Țiganiada/The Gypsy Epic, I'll remind you how by learning Latin, Italian, and French, within which languages there are beautiful poems, I urged myself to make a try: if it could be done also in our language, that is Romanian (for our Gypsy can not be written and few understand it) something similar; and I created this fable, that is Țiganiada/The Gypsy Epic, which, according to the learned language, I named it poemation (that is little poetical make), into which I mixed purposely funny things, in order to be easier understood and liked. There is in it also critique, for right understanding of which I invite you to add some observations, cause I know well you'll understand what I wonted to say at many places.

And as historical fact is concerned, for Vlad Vodă / King, that it was as I wrote it, I prove it with the writers from Byzantium, as you will be well knowing; and of Gypsies, that Vlad Vodă armed them sometime against Turks, also some hand written Muntenian chronicles are writing; but the story made in this shape is my endeavor, which I put in verse, after the source I found at monastery of Cioara / Crow, in Ardeal / Transylvania, which totally hits with the parchment found, not long ago, at monastery of Zanoaga. /.../ Leon Dianeu, 1812.

Introductory stanzas to each of the twelve cantos

Until Vlad Vodă Emperor arms the Gipsies,

Over them Ire irritates her good father

Satan, who toward them spreads wrong wishes,

While Gypsy kin taking bread for track safer,

From hungry Flămânda their journey start

Toward Inimoasa town full of heart.

The Gipsies to Vlad embassy are sending

For making shorter their too long route.

But, in between, they debate how with cunning

Must arm and fight themselves in warfare mood.

Romica is abducted by the fiend

And Parpangel in wandering is going.

Poor Parpangel is chanting at dinner

Sadly of love, of wine and of distress

And then he sees a beautiful maiden,

And toward stars he remains as eyeless.

Florescu says about Gipsies and different

Of Vlad conventions and high events.

The saints in heaven are ready to aid

Muntenians; Florescu still more tells

About victories of Vlad well carried.

The miraculous court, through a marvel,

Perishes like the devil by saint cross.

To Parpangel the books sings at loss.

The gipsies at chat have no good zodiac;

Tandaler shows out as a very man,

King Vlad inspects suddenly their bivouac

With his guard dressed like Turkish aliotman.

Hardly Parpangel is returned near

To life by his shrewd mother dear.

Satan falls into melancholy well

Taking into account his destiny;

The aristocracy gathers all in hell

And deliberates by what mutiny

will they help the Turkish horde divisions;

The Gipsies finish their food provisions.

Vlad secretly researches the encampment

Turkish. - Arginean comes out of his ghosts,

Then after he escapes with brave hand

From the middle of pagan armed hosts;

Vlad at night over the Turks is rushing,

Saint Michael breaks Satan's haughty vaunting

The Gipsies go and knowing not where

To escape from a trouble, meet yet other;

Satan into a monastery takes shelter,

Wanting to slide the friars in mud hole

Of impurity; and Hamza shows by hands

To the great sultan the impaled Ottomans.

The boyars show their unfaithfulness;

The sultan another king vodã designates;

Gipsies at wedding delight themselves,

Where from Parpangel each the tale gets

How he through an unsaid uneven event,

Passing through hell, up to paradise went.

The Gipsies listening to the idle

consultations of the public people,

They chose those learned at book and bible,

Who to do among them council cubicle

And decide whatever mastery

Would be good for Gypsy colony.

Janalău all unto one mind adjusts

And after his consideration / moderation

The high assembly wholly bows at last

When Cucavel with crowd arises on

And rushing on the council in haste

drives on the delegates into waste.

The Gypsies start feud at consultation

The war makes its appearance afterward

With all its reprobate court stays on

And all the Gypsy kin is at loggerheads;

Many brave kill each other in battle hence;

Vlad by his will steps in abhorrence.

From Canto 1

Muse who to Omir once of yore

Have sang Vatrahomiomahia war

Sing to me too of the Gypsy lore,

Be so kindly hearten telling their deeds all

When from Vlad Vodă King freedom won,

Weapons and estate areas of their own,

How Gipsies wanted to choose for selves

One king in country and one mastery,

How, forgetting of their life zest,

Have taken up arms with bravery,

More they later dared even to fight

With the darkish pagan crowds might,

How afterward by a bitter argument

(For they didn't together came on),

All of them each in other side went

Leaving altogether country, king and crown.

But all these arrived at inception

Through demonic very deception,

That, even the one beyond compare

Worst ghost of all spirits, Satan,

Eternally has his dwelling in hell,

Nourishing unquenchable fire span,

But however, stealthily, sometimes,

rising the world in rebellion, he delights.

Urgia / The Ire:

Still the dastard Gypsies try to put

Themselves at better order/arrangement,

Leaving their heavy hammers and lute

And armed are rising over Mahomèt.

I saw them chatting how giving support

To Vlad in all favorable sort.

Alone that Vlad, if you let him rebel

Ready is to ravage paganity...

And then what will happen to your hell?

Where your glory and greatness will be

For having concocted Mohommedan law?

Did you understand me, Satan, now!...

Next day, when the sun was rising up, king

Vodă with his foremost captains went

Toward there to a review walking

Where in a place through black tiny tents

Like the frogs in marsh the Gypsy clan

Were sleeping all of them rolled into one.

O, muse, I pray you at this moment

To give me verse with worth word

In order to sing how in armament

The Gypsy multitude passed toward

Inimoasa full of hart with bravery,

Worth think to be known by everybody.

Vlad Vodă:

You brave Egyptian reminder!

Of pharaohs brilliant noble extraction,

From old heroes new offspring younger!

O, proud darkened Gypsy tribe in action,

For well understanding listen to

All of my majesty words toward you.

Behold I gave you lands and holdings

I distributed robust firearms either,

As well as all sort of provisions,

Wanting that once at last to be risen

From meanness also your lineage,

Of other's laughter be not any age.

Because as of now the motherland

Also you Gypsies like other peasants

Will consider in our Muntenia proud

If you will make prove of diligence

Defending the country as one engages

From Turks and other foreign languages!...

Between Inimoasa and Bărbătești

It is a village by name Spăteni,

Just there will be installed your fearless

Troop, and all of you will take much care,

To do what my kingly majesty

Will order aiming at your bravery.

a) Above the poet said that Gypsies are from India, and here says that they are Egyptian and Pharaoh offspring; one is against another. Father Filologos.

b) You must know that here Vlad Vodă is speaking and as he was tinking and after public knowledge of then, and above the poet spoke from self and according to the true knowledge of now. Thus it is not any opposition. C. Simplițian.

From Canto 3

And, since the hour Vlad Vodă king sat

Ruler of Muntenian affairs

The foreheads of discord have been cut,

Political order and military cares

Measured after country's character,

In short time have been going better.

Those out of the boyars being abhorrent

And not wanting to follow the drawn up laws

Have fallen under terrible punishment,

Saying that they are to enlighten those

Others with good exemplification

And be the first to obey legislation,

For, if dutiful listeners of law

Will be only the poor and villains,

What the country will become after all?

A country that is of wolves and lions

Which staying in their dens chattel/lairs

are sucking the blood of hidebound cattle.

He said that the boyars are subjects

To the kingdom just like peasants any,

Moreover being them all in success,

Not only with the counsel and money,

But with the head itself would be in debt

as champions the country to protect.

Thus was Vlad speaking in the divan

and at whatever kind of get-together,

Adding that any one, be it peasant,

town dweller, boyar smaller or greater,

If mixture will have with foreign tongue

He will pay by head the murder in pang.

Therefore he cruelly punished those

Who over motherland made hidden bets

And had with the Turks some mingling nose,

Or with any other foreign states,

Allotting belongings and estate land

To defenders and sons of motherland.

Through this he introduced a new chapter:

On big wrong actions and robberies,

Through established code of laws apter,

Put special and heavy penalties,

Out of which the most habitual

Was the stake with terrible funeral.

Then he selected from country around

The most hardworking with virtue alive

Stalwarts, out of whose a beautiful guard

made as for his watch, of hundreds five,

which in arms experienced to hoop,

That we name it unvanquished troop.

According to this source, also the other

Cavalry got organization,

Learning a high mastery warfare

Of trooping and weapons temptation,

And boyars envious on what the good keeps

Plotted arrangements in pagan tips.

For, as it happens ever everywhere

That one who will succeed to establish

On route one people nation and will dare

To found the ground of order for his anguish

And all endeavors, high end, sacrifice,

He rather wrong than good on him hears,

Such was also Vlad's bitter portion:

The envious say he is dictator

And over him invented shame distortion,

And want that country don't listen later;

The Impaler called him in silliness

With stake scolding the robbers pitiless.

Hence they quick embassies in secret

Send to the sultan, unsurprising

How vodă king wants country to invite

Over powerful Gate with uprising,

And it is much to be afraid from him

If not impeded in due time his whim.

Right for that matter through hidden way

The sultan now a pasha then another

Teaches and arms and sent them away

Over this high prince undercover,

That ceaselessly both winter and summer

To go and the country to plunder.

But Vlad being with good guard,

Army having well accustomed with arms,

Robber multitudes he with brave hand

In run even caught them many times;

To those caught he gave a savage break

Making to be drawn alive in stake.

Now some thirty thousand approximately

of pagan robbers he in poles stick,

Neither let any bury them quietly,

But to vultures chosen tuck-in tick,

And to ravens for robbery on terrain,

He ordered that they hanged to remain.

Sultan Mohamet by the first intimation

Didn't give much credence to all those,

but coming continuous denunciation,

Wanted to know with basis of course

If all those are indeed not lied,

Through persons by him verified.

For this in shape of great embassy,

Some clever capigi agents has sent.

Catavolin was assigned breathlessly

As the first in this chosen represent,

Catavolin primary chancellor,

A Turkish Greek, son of a dealer.

Toward this the sultan his secret

Desire and thinking opened ahead,

With heart by ire penetrated,

Taking him apart, in this shape said:

“Big affair have I, o Catavolin,

And I put my confidence to you all in!...

Muntenian Vodă king, the subject of Gate,

So conducts self with inhumanity,

That believers he gives to the cruel death,

Still more not searching for his liability,

Neither of paying tribute he would mind,

Nor to prostrate himself will remind.

Hence you going do thoroughly inspect,

Try if you can to return him on track,

First of all that to me he prostrate,

And seeing that he stays on his own back

And with will he will not want to give up,

If need with the counsel you will him trap.

And as help in this discrete intention

You will have Hamza with diligence,

Only look to be with big attention

That the Muntenian have not incidence,

That otherwise totally on fire

Would be our endeavor entire...”

The Greek sets out with these prescribed mandate

And deliberating with Hamza occurrence,

In the end in this shape are throwing the net:

He himself to go and put in appearance

To the Muntenian the desire of Gate,

Trying to bring him back to the faith.

But if he would see that he doesn't bow

Hurriedly at Vidin to send announcer

And when vodă king will, as it ought,

Accompany him up to the frontier,

Hamza unto that the Danube to cross

And from hidden place invasion to boss.

Thus the hypocrite dissembling Greek flies

Assigned with the known diplomacy;

To Vlad firstly brings back as advice

All things passed and to come supposedly,

For the past announcing forgiving,

Friendship for the future happening.

“Big indeed is the mistake you made

(He said), but of Gate pity over you

Is, without any doubt, with no end

for it forgives to you the preview

guilt not wanting from now hostility

But only amity and amity.

Not else from you he desires

But only tribute and some five hundred

Of youth; afterward that in a friendly airs

You coming to the Gate, with faded

Bows to Sultan Mohamet to prostrate

And to apologize to the great.”

Vodă king is listening with suffering

All warding and clever desire

And first he good will is offering

Wanting minutely the tyrannical mire

To scrutinize, and if he understood clear,

With greatness thus from mouth did swear:

Do tell to that who sent you here

that in this shape Vlad Vodă king respond:

The tribute is ready, under dear

Door bolt, but to penetrate by bond

There no foreign appetite can as strand

In other way but with sword in hand.

If of them the sultan cares let he arrive

To bring them to him, if confident!...

But neither youth want from home they live

Willingly to go in rims obstinate,

Saying that with motherland together

Want to have fate: bad or good whatever,

And, as about my own person,

To go an to prostrate to high Gate,

You tell that then when the hares in torsion

will outstrip the gray hounds!... to wolves death

The lambs will give, perhaps that then only

I will prostrate and not this lonely!...”

The embassy viewing from all these

That to bow him is not under their power

To Hamza at Vidin gave intelligence

For known operation to prepare,

And with Vlad such thing arrange, no botch,

Up to Danube to give him armed watch.

And Vlad through faithful lookouts brigade

Understanding all shameful maneuver,

Four thousand of chosen cavalry made

To be gathered from country all over

And in secret, by where in which part

Hamza was supposed to keep him path.

Giving fast orders that to be kept

Hidden until a decided term,

And at his given sign ready expect

For war, with doubled virtue and firm,

Afterward also in no instant

To give over Turks from back the onslaught.

By that Vodă all puts in appearance

As when about counsels nothing would guess.

Hence taking his armed guard assurance,

At known given time he does raise

And accompany the messenger with entire

honor and pomp that laws require.

....Florescul, after showing the states of things in Europe and between the Christians, now glides down to Vlad Vodă / king and tells his history since he stayed as domn/king in Țara Muntenească./Romanian Country. M.P. /.../

For this Vlad Vodă, doubled are the chronicles; some write him as a dire tyrant, and others as a worthy domn, but harsh at punishing; as it is said also about Stèfan, the prince of Modova, that he was swift at wrath and bloodshed maker. M.P.

From Canto 4

And when they arrived to the place where

The Greek knew that outstretched are net traps

And where Hamza with army takes hidden sphere,

Then, like some kindled conflagration stacks,

Look that ten thousand Turks arouse

And strike Muntenians as espouse.

And the logofăt-chancellor with haughty

Eyebrow throwing off arrogant pretense:

“Do not mind (he said) neither chrism, nor loathing,

O, Vodă King! The hares still incense

The dog to surrender itself bound,

And soft lambs go the wolf to surround!...

The time has come it is minute set

By yourself when with your own good will

Wanted to prostrate to glorious gate!...

Your youths are also together still

Ready to go far away from here,

Neither now of motherland they care!...”

The vodă stayed with mind wavering

If into the vendor chest to stick blade

Of iron, but withered reckoning

The victory, as single to blood

Himself with him, he changed accompaniment

Toward a more graceless punishment.

Wrested out the sword, full of ire eye

Throwing at him, thus did he reply:

“You little dastard Greek, born slave, whereby

Accustomed at hidden cunning guile,

Intrigues to make, to master bane,

Feeling having not of honor and fame,

I want to show you with no chicanery

That neither hands of Vlad are to stretch out,

Nor head to bow at bondage slavery,

Nor easy is to find his catching route,

Are made, nor it's easy to catch him,

For you thought!...do remark with suspense,

The quicker hound would be captured by hares!”

Then turning toward his men the word:

“It is not time, o, hale lads! (uttered) to say

With long discourse, here, about the fraud

With which it tried to bring our decay

the enemy and where are we this once

For you yourself are seeing!... For that thus,

I believe, o brave ones! that it's not need

To demonstrate to you with more proves

That only victory to saving us lead.

To this only we can to trust, stout youths!

Hence now, or death with laurels death,

Or triumph, there is not other bet!...

At arms, then!... Virtue strong to evince,

To stay indomitable, with brave heart.

Not many thousand and hundred vanquish

But those who dare for triumph on their part.

Run, race, rush and take your victory

Your glory let be their valedictory.”

Says he, and giving the attack sign

To the troops prepared in hidden thicket,

He with his guard arising combine

And well set to rights like in picket

Stroke the Turks with such quickness upright,

As thunderbolt falls down from the height.

And like the torrent on the backed soil

Falling with violence in minute

Spoils the right honest plowman's labor toil,

And look how it lies down flooded permute

All the tilled land, and instead of grains

Only mud and moor swamp remains.

Thus attack giving that brave tiny troop

In Turkish lot, bodies ground overhead,

Entire rows bowl over and swoop,

Cut, crumble, and more crush,pommel, tread

And one nothing sees but cut bodies down

Reclined in plash puddle by blood drown.

Vlad like a lion irritated most,

Which, by hunters being chased in run up,

If it sees self with dogs on one coast

And by other with crafty net trap

Encircled, then he leaps over just

Where crowd of dogs is biggest nonplussed

And desiring to make bitter cause,

Anybody comes in front of his booth

He breaks, fractures, splits, corners and claws,

Now with terrible hands then with tooth

Self-defending, it strangles and kills

And among them opens its way, drills,

Thus Vlad having seen that from all track

He is invaded by numberless Turks,

Where he observes that are more compact

The crowds, toward there he so attacks,

Rotating the weapon far and near

Large path between pagans to self clear.

In vain Hamza the army of sorts

Tries to gather, war to supplement,

In vain he worries about to urge force

With strong imperial commandment,

That troop by now started to squander

Walking on itself not more stopping yonder.

And Hamza by Muntenian groups

Surrounded, falls in the trap

With many from Mohammedan troops.

The Greek seeing not yet escape,

To vodă king with obeisance bow

Falls in front of him pronouncing vow.

Then vodă king bitterly smiling told in face:

“How seems it to you, Catavolin, now yet

Plotter of closed treacherous purchases,

Hypocrite messenger of pagan Gate,

Who don't feel ashamed with robbery

To sell the Christian kingdom mastery?”

So saying with abominable death

Ordered that all to be put in stake,

Who at the robbery did participate,

In the forest which was nearby back.

Hamza was staked according to law

On the thickest lofty tree, the Greek below.

Cruel command, horrifying death!

But to the innocent it seems ever

That the sale is more inhuman yet.

Vile man, are you not scared however

From bad deed sometime sooner or later

The penalty, with any death, finds traitor!

If these in Țarigrad were soon thunder,

To the Sultan nobody had nerve

To tell, even he started to wonder

Where his chancellor delays in reserve,

Until the vizir some moment dares

And stories to him all affairs.

And the tyrant inflamed with wrath misshapen

That he dared to utter of such awful

Tales and which couldn't even have happen,

Things of shame and dastard unlawful,

Ordered that him be slapped in his face

For wrong and daring word not at all dace.

And if from quick embassies made it sure,

He was almost in self to fly in a rage

Of grudge and ire as under insult impure

Seeing his commandments, neither wage

His temper could get with habitual late

Victory, but sooner yet be let it.

Iar' deacă din solii repezite

Hence to pashas from close by, from distance,

He ordered quickly to arm their soldiers

And in such shape to behave insistence

That to bring the bravest of theirs

With themselves, and until coming spring

To be ready to present upswing.

Hardly on field it was risen the grass,

And the forest new leaf had achieve;

From all parts multitudes of Turks thus

Gather: one part in ships the sea cleave

Running toward Romanian Country,

This time to plunder it entirely,

And other part carries as thundered

The pagan sultan, trumping victory,

With whom were of thousands two hundred

of barbarous crowd contradictory.

And now at Vidin had arrived along

The most chosen troops,flights,throng.

It was just in the middle of spring then

When zephyrs with flowers play pressed,

Merry birdies are flying again,

And the beasts even the poorest

Joyously hops and enjoy themselves

Into innocent voluptuousness,

When you see the News in trumpet sound

That Turks are coming as many as leaves and grass,

That to slavery the country to bound.

All prepare themselves to take blind race.

The big boyars and those with wisdom more

Had taken the run some time before,

And the poor peasants in a hurry

Like a flock of sheep with no custody

Which anywhere starts in squandering blurry;

Full of fear and comprised by fright gluttony

Whole they leave their possession and sweat,

Putting hope only in feet cabriolet.

Running are children and young maidens,

Running are women with babes in arms,

And those more charged with days reawaken

Are caressing them as guides in alarms.

Of bitter lamentation, gloom yells

Full are the forests and fields and dales.

Here one caries one's babies on back,

Other near his poor parent,

Who would run, poor him, but is stuck

And stays as zany of mind hare-brained,

Knowing not to whom give assistance

To babes or to fallen women at once.

Grandson leads the greyhead by hand, up, low,

Midwife the nephews boys and girls tiny,

And the daughter her old mother-in-law;

Each one from peril takes out not slimy

The most loved, the closer one as shape,

Hoping toward mountains to escape.

Only Vlad, with indomitable heart

And armed, for the pagan enemy waits.

Nothing from his intent does deviate,

All things arranges, everything directs

Toward the perishing of pagan crowd,

Just in order to be numbered bowed.

With his brave regiment of horses

Through cash places, to him acquainted,

To Turkish troops from near he follows.

From hiding with quick attack submitted

Jumping over secluded alignments,

Unexpectedly surrounds and torments.

Like the famished wolf which, under compact

Bush pricking its ears, on the belly laid,

When it sees passing a bulky flock packed

Of lambs or other weak animals herd,

And seeing some of them left alone

Jumps, rapes it and immediately is gone,

Thus Vlad following to the Turkish

Big army, to separated hoards

Unexpectedly before them furbish

Assault from hidden places, towards,

And so well he upsets with insistence,

That at least one has no more existence.

From Canto 5

Almost all had forgotten of selves

Only Neicul keeps temper immobile

Even at most sorrowful shelves

Examining himself in a while,

A good thought in his mind overworks,

To come out in front of the Turks,

That barely will can do something

Through supplication and obeisance,

For that poor Gypsy community.

Thus taking also other old faces

He went just before the highest one

And kneeling uttered crying complain:

“Mister Turks! listen, have commiseration

Of our poor Gypsy tribe with horse!

For really not by will but coercion,

In order that not happen the worse,

They had to dress in arms themselves

Having not what to do more or less!

Same Vlad Vodă for these is of guilt,

Only God Almighty may to him pay ,

That in this mud he has pushed us and built,

But our Gypsy extract race array

With all people leaves in peace, no prattle,

And truly that doesn't like the battle.

Hence with greed do not so much covet

To dastard Gypsy inspiration soul.

Take from us all possessions and bread,

Undress us up to the skin, not ghoul,

But only leave to us, high Ottoman,

For caressing, life, children and woman.

You know well that also at you the poor

Gypsies live merely of alms commonly,

Making work and paying tribute as boor,

Neither to war go but forced only.

Hence do forgive us now for once,

And Holy Virgin give you forgiveness !...

O! forgive us, the moon give you help!

Be that Mahomet many years to live!

Forgotten be those deeds passed with yelp!...

Almighty to thunder us fugitive

If we are guilty into this aster,

But you see on us it was disaster.

And from there what is for you the gain

If you take out our liveliness/ sweet life/existence

And our wives will alone remain

With tiny kids in their arms fatherless?

We will perish, indeed! but in turning

They will deport after us long mourning.”

Here Neicul was about to say more,

When Răzvan keeping the eyes at chief,

With cheerfulness rises his voice: Io!

Behold! His majesty the domn, belief!...”

For he new Vlad all the empire,

Although he was in foreign attire.

And real/actual/true with chosen cavalry

Vlad was, and in order not to rankle

For doing research, had dressed soldiery

Turkish from head up to the ankle,

Purposely deciding to drop in

To our armed group of Gypsy kin.

Therefore with forced wrath Vodă king Vlad,

For hardly could abstain from laughter,

„O! (he cried) bastard offspring gone mad!

Is this your bravery thereafter?

For this did I give you arms and property

And I feed you, cursed crows, in poverty!...

For, instead of defending your country

And to fight against pagan Ottomans,

Over me to speak outrageously?

After that to give you in their hands

At enemies, only few hundreds,

You, so many thousands of privates?

Behold, you know that since now dishes

I'll not give you without endeavor

Against Turks at least one fight, who misses,

Making over them triumph whichever,

And if will prostrate to Turks like to us

Up to the smallest I'll cut you thus!”

“Do forgive, Your Majesty (Neicu said),

We are here without any fault,

That who would have believe such misread

To happen and to come in assault

On us dressed as Turks the Muntenians?

Do consider justly, your highness!...

But however counting with justice right,

By God! It wasn't for your Greatness

To stick in our back so much fright

With those ugly cursed cealma-turbans!...

This (God Almighty let keep you in life long),

By Heaven that wasn't a Gypsy joke!”

Upon that it is coming in a hurry

A horseman giving to Vodă news event

How that a swarm of pagan army

Not far away, near by a convent

Resting would be, as it seems on ground,

Waiting for another bigger band.

As the prince this understood clearly,

Without a word immediately went

With Muntenian chosen cavalry,

And our Gypsy diligent regiment:

Like from dream now they arise upright

Very content that escaped of fright.

From Canto 7

The sultan with spread bands of pillages

Now had arrived up to the mountains

Enslaving towns, boroughs and villages,

and the more selected elite lines

Sending especially to research

Where are the troops of Vlad brave at lurch.

So doing it was understood afterward

That vodă with war doesn't self draft,

But from hidings coming out, a crowd

after another he loses with craft.

Hence he decided, avoiding tight

Places, from now not go ahead with blight,

But to make encampment in the same place,

Until the Muntenians forced by require,

Either would want war dare to face,

Or coming themselves from own desire

And asking forgiving for their mistake,

Himself and the country will forsake.

Arranging his own big encampment,

He drew all divisions toward self,

And at Bucharest an advertisement

With messengers consignment has sent

How he wants the country to forgive

And only the bad domn prince to sieve.

Vlad understanding this intelligence

From spies and lookouts, all considers,

Being corroded by many cares

And, even he has no fear of bidders,

However much self-advises within

How better arranged the things have been.

A daring thought he planted in his mind:

Alone with his head to know by research

The state of Turkish camp beforehand.

Worth thought to his brave heart as church,

But dangerous, and yet what can not

A soul uplifted over all lot!

Changing his face shape with mastery

And dressing as merchant his image,

Who from Vidin is bringing grocery

At the encampment, speaking Greek language.

And about this at nobody he told,

And from his comrades in hidden rolled.

In that manner spying/prying into all seat

The bivouac how it stays, from which part

Easier would be attack to beat,

Unexpectedly he saw not far

The people running with astonishment

And exultant shout of great merriment:

„Vlad Vodă! Vlad Vodă! they bring him, see!”

And Vlad being near is searches loud,

Gets troubled, stays and what is the key

Doesn't know, that in middle of crowd

He stayed. He was forcing at large outside then,

But the crowd cries again and again.

Now he was about to take out from cloths

The hidden iron self death to provoke,

When he sees how a horsing group shows

Carrying a slave. The shouts louder poke

Anew, as before, and the armed band

Innumerable gathers around.

Then Vlad knew the shortcoming madness

And mixing himself into assemblyman,

Advantage taking of the slackness,

From there unperceived by anyone

He came out to the fixed landmarks guide,

Where his three hundred waited for him hide.

From Canto 8

Barely he had reposed half an hour,

When his gentle rest is broken off

By a man's voice roaming his heart bower:

A shadow in the air, blubbers, sobs doff.

The sultan just then his head rises

And watches, but being seized with anguish,

The face with horrified repugnance

Returned from the bitter sight comer,

For in the thin air made his appearance

Hamza, whom in the former summer

Vlad has punished with a savage death

Making to be drawn alive in stake.

With dreadful unfeeling blurred visage,

With sunk eyes, with disheveled stubble,

That one in the air now shows self image;

He invites Mahomet by finger bubble

And to accompany him he calls;

The sultan is following on purpose.

It didn't go but steps three hundred

That shadow, and stretching hand shows him

A place, then perishes like plundered.

O! sorrowful shuddering eye scene!

Here the sultan innumerable

Turkish populace beholds impaled!...

There was a clearing around only

Some three or four miles outdistance brakes,

With a rare grove surrounded lonely,

And inside with thousands and thousands stakes,

Densely together there were aligned,

With Muslim bodies loaded behind.

From Canto 9

“The sultan through me is sending forward,

O, honest boyars, peace, forgiveness!

You will find these ascertained by word

What I say by mouth, in written stiffness

(If by chance to my word you would not trust),

In this firman edict”, and he gave it just.

There the emperor to the country peace,

And to those who toward Mohamet

Will return, leaving Vlad in release,

Forgiveness of slavery and of death

Was promising and wanting to deign

To put a brother of Vodă at reign.

This deputation was entertained

To all boyars council, and immediate

In all country parts it was explained,

With orders that people to deviate

From Vlad not any more disenchantment

Receiving as reigning commandment.

And then to the sultan with bowing

They sent an embassy of elite

To prostrate and forgiveness begging,

And asking that at reign from its height

The Gate justly to let benefit

Who will be taken as worth of it.

From Canto XII

“O, Vlad! (the heavenly messenger cries)

Thus speaks the Maker of all envision:

'Unavailing is your mastery devise!...

Eternal not removed decision

Intends that your people still to be

Long time under pagan slavery!' “

These saying the angel left for good

Finding in a thin cloud dissolution;

The sovereign prince, if well understood

The message and sacrosanct resolution,

Falling on face instantly crosses

Himself with Christian heart at losses.

To commandment he subdues upright.

His most trustful ones he calls up then

And as it happens to all he speaks bright,

With caressing words to be well again;

And defaming the Turkish thraldom,

He chose to go in exile at random.

You go in good health, heroic heart,

For people and heaven have been against

You! Perhaps it will glisten some light

Also to your country, but equal sensed

As it sparkled under you, let them not expect,

If it doesn't want to get awake.

George Anca

sâmbătă, 2 iunie 2018

SOME PLAYS

George Anca

SOME PLAYS

Good luck, Rada

Nana in the Himalayas

Good luck, Rada

Personae & Cast*

Nana in the Himalayas

A novel by GEORGE ANCA

Prologue

Parts

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