***
Kids grow and
scars itch.
Time heals?
No.
Time sucks.
From time to time,
itches.
Kids growing,
as you watch over them,
heals.
***
Monday, March 24, 2014
time
***
Kids grow and
scars itch.
Time heals?
No.
Time sucks.
From time to time,
itches.
Kids growing,
as you watch over them,
heals.
***
Wednesday, November 6, 2013
HOLDALL
... read this urban legend story the other day, local version, a tale of an old lady that for decades could be seen on streets of Pécs walking around carrying her essential belongings in a bag. Story says that once upon a time, when she was a fourteen year old girl, her family had survived Hungarian Jewish Holocaust of 1944 by digging up a shelter that was not more than a hole in the ground in their vineyard.
They say that this experience forever made her insane, with one of the symptoms of her broken mind and craziness being the constant awareness and irrational fear of the second coming of that moment when the world collapses - a moment that she knew could happen again at any point in time in the life that she lived after the first time it had happened to her and she survived - that split second that lasts usually a couple of frantic minutes while one gathers one's essential belongings, stuffs them into a bag and runs into hiding in a hole in the ground. Or just runs for one's life.
All of the horror of experiencing such a moment is that it can pretty much be summed up and condensed into the conscious act of never letting go of such a holdall - a bag that holds all of your life in your life's worst moment.
For the old lady from Pécs that life container was a nameless ragged bag which at all times contained all of her life - those who knew her say inside it during her wanderings there were: a couple of warm items of clothes, a change of underwear, some solid food that could last, and a golden something that she probably would if needed be able to pawn in exchange for a safe passage.
Urban legends are not where you will find the more sinister aspects or the soul-wrenching truth behind "The Lady With A Bag From Pécs" story.
The cold and cruel numbers only game that tells how... according to the 1941. population census in Pécs there were
3,486 individuals identified to be of Jewish religion, and that in the wider county area there were
2,498 more. Total of
5,984 Jews in Pécs in 1941.
There were two freight transports from Pécsi picturesque train station in cattle wagons, one on July 6th 1944 that emptied the ghetto and one more two days after that of people from the county. Total of
5,623 souls on board shipped to their Auschwitz deaths from Pécs in 1944.
***
A soul once buried in a hole in the ground never truly gets to get out of that hole whole again.
***
( There is a small waterproof travel bag being kept in a pantry in the city I live in today. In it are essentials - original birth certificates and copies of other important documents, an envelope containing a few business cards with additional telephone numbers and home addresses written on the back, and a pair of golden earrings that can be easily swapped for just enough cash to get across a border or two. Someone checks if this bag is up-to-date once or twice a year and goes through life finding great comfort in knowing it is there always, and holds onto that notion just like the old lady from Pécs who went through her own rest of the days after experiencing the world that went away kept holding onto the comfort of never letting go of her holdall bag. )
***
a pécsi szatyros hölgy legendája
death trains in 1944:
***
Thursday, August 1, 2013
wave of sorrow
got out of the
truck stacked full of bottled water confiscated from the supermarket and food from town Red Cross storage , truck filled up so hard that
it barely made it up the hill to the place where the policeman on duty just
waved and shouted you can set up over there by the border crossing but one
truck is not going to be enough you girl
go down to the border guards and call someone to send more. thought he was stupid because truck was fullest, to the brim.
closed the door. turned towards where he indicated
the border was and looked down and froze and started crying. heat was so intense that a tear would dry out for the time it took for
a tear to descend from the eye to the edge of the face. the mind started to grasp what eyes were looking at.
tried to see where it
ended - the human inside needed to know that
this inhumanity somewhere stopped,
needed to find and hold onto a tangible
konjec screen to erase away endless suffering creeping its way across the plain towards us.
but I found no limit to the boundless horizon of pain spreading.
only flatland underneath, and road straight as an arrow spearing for miles. and miles. but no road at all could be seen. every inch of
where it was supposed to be visible was
covered with continuous stream of people, vehicles, cattle slowly moving.
silence deafened the ears as if all sound was somehow muted by all
the grief this trail of tears carried.
up close, every smallest speck of this map was inked
over with a human being. hungry, thirsty, abused and hopeless after days on the
road being bombarded, shelled, being killed.
I do not remember faces that
accompanied hands that reached out for food and water..
***
I remember
***
I remember
face of shellshocked
baby born in the back of the bus that never got to touch the soft lining of the
cradle basket mother had prepared.
face of grandfather lifted from his deathbed now dead and in full rigor mortis a few cars down after the bus with the baby.
their dried mouths open in scorching heat, mouths alive and mouths dead alike were thirsty.
I was 18.
face of grandfather lifted from his deathbed now dead and in full rigor mortis a few cars down after the bus with the baby.
their dried mouths open in scorching heat, mouths alive and mouths dead alike were thirsty.
I was 18.
that newborn baby whom mother
fed with water from the palm of
her hand because there was nothing else
I could give her to feed her newborn baby with is about to
turn 18.
this week.
***
link
***
this week.
***
link
***
Friday, December 17, 2010
think twice
you see her
swaying hips when she walks
oozing music when she talks
and in
seven seconds
that it takes
to judge a person
you know
that
she's a
dumb.
blonde.
of course.
the heels the knees the eyelashes the everything
just adds up to your
first impression.
...
sometimes
you really ought to
think
at least
twice,
because sometimes,
in just
seven tiny seconds
she's already conquered
enough territory
to do whatever she needs or
wants,
sneaking along
a highly functional brain
that resides behind
a comfortable front.
Disclaimer: English is not my first language. Or second. Not even the third one that I learned. Beware of the bottle-bleached babes entitled to extra points.
swaying hips when she walks
oozing music when she talks
and in
seven seconds
that it takes
to judge a person
you know
that
she's a
dumb.
blonde.
of course.
the heels the knees the eyelashes the everything
just adds up to your
first impression.
...
sometimes
you really ought to
think
at least
twice,
because sometimes,
in just
seven tiny seconds
she's already conquered
enough territory
to do whatever she needs or
wants,
sneaking along
a highly functional brain
that resides behind
a comfortable front.
Disclaimer: English is not my first language. Or second. Not even the third one that I learned. Beware of the bottle-bleached babes entitled to extra points.
Friday, August 27, 2010
summer in the city
...exquisit and unique sound and space conjecture that happened last night ...Boban Markovic orchestra opened the Jewish Summer Festival in the Dohány street synagogue...overload of contextual clashes that left me breathless... born and raised inbetween worlds, stuck within the seams of the fabric of life, unable to express what one is supposed to be in terms of national, religious, ethnic or cultural identity in less than a complex sentence, I so rarely, almost never, get to immerse myself into experiencing them, my cultures, my countries, my nations, my cultures and religions at exactly the same moment...
... this...
...here...
.. the eyes that listen and the heart that hears and a wanderer that feels this is ...right where everything belongs...
...on my way home I walked slowly, looking back and shedding along the way the brassy echoes that were left clinging to my clothes ...I watched them silently roll down the pavement, like the crumbs released to remind me where to return once the night passes, smiling at the fact that my neighbor the building, the temple of someone else in a country where we are both strangers, bears an imprint of Byzantine ornaments on her facade just like I wear the face of my own Byzantine genetic architects ...
... this...
...here...
.. the eyes that listen and the heart that hears and a wanderer that feels this is ...right where everything belongs...
...on my way home I walked slowly, looking back and shedding along the way the brassy echoes that were left clinging to my clothes ...I watched them silently roll down the pavement, like the crumbs released to remind me where to return once the night passes, smiling at the fact that my neighbor the building, the temple of someone else in a country where we are both strangers, bears an imprint of Byzantine ornaments on her facade just like I wear the face of my own Byzantine genetic architects ...
Monday, August 2, 2010
between half-past midnight and one
I wish I could bring back the days
the time when I was a man all on my own
I wish I could turn back the clocks
to the nights of countless thoughts now long gone
everything moving so fast
a man growing old while he is still young
and those treasured moments of happiness
while sleeping, the life passes
time escapes while you're keeping guard
someone else manages to tame it down
me I'm left behind staring at the back of it
the things I once loved
I'm no longer interested in
when did it all slip by beats me.
(1977, Milan Mladenovic)
the time when I was a man all on my own
I wish I could turn back the clocks
to the nights of countless thoughts now long gone
everything moving so fast
a man growing old while he is still young
and those treasured moments of happiness
while sleeping, the life passes
time escapes while you're keeping guard
someone else manages to tame it down
me I'm left behind staring at the back of it
the things I once loved
I'm no longer interested in
when did it all slip by beats me.
(1977, Milan Mladenovic)
Monday, July 19, 2010
in heat
...the white noise of air conditioner stuck in the auto mode until dawn breaks is driving me sleepless and crazy...the distance between the worlds melts away and I sink deep into the things that people aren't saying... draw the curtains and stay in...then had enough of voluntary detention all of a sudden and just jump at the idea and drive out of the city and climb the Mátra peak for the sake of it and bag the knife-sharp breaths of altitude air, roll back down the mountain so victorious and feeling like even the tiniest beating of the kánikula, the dog times as they call it here, is one of those life's most important things... ...the fear of water diminishes and say yes to the boat ride and late night lake swimming...when respectable people don't care like once when they were very young and foolish and free to go skinny dipping... the foreplay is excused with just a sentence stating that it's too hot anyway and with sweat pouring from every pore, sticky like a gum overchewed and glued to the palate , running down the salted skin in the dead of the midnight... it even sounds quite logical and convincing...
...... brains get overheated and all stupid and lusty and squeeze and spit out out the most ridiculous things...
...the streets are empty, my city turns into a ghost town and faces, even when approaching up close are desert hazy, as if the concrete breeds its own superior mirage of human variety ... the scattered tourists like orphans try out the shallow fountains...
...babies get clingy and refuse to fall asleep without an hour more like two of monotonous rockabyebaby rhyme only a mother knows how to sing and pace the tempo and volume down to almost nothing...
...the hot sun that freckles the skin in heat which body can no longer dissipate and distribute otherwise washes away defenses ... and life feels so good when I can laugh out loud in the middle of the street at myself trying to outrun the ice-cream streaming down my lips...
...... brains get overheated and all stupid and lusty and squeeze and spit out out the most ridiculous things...
...the streets are empty, my city turns into a ghost town and faces, even when approaching up close are desert hazy, as if the concrete breeds its own superior mirage of human variety ... the scattered tourists like orphans try out the shallow fountains...
...babies get clingy and refuse to fall asleep without an hour more like two of monotonous rockabyebaby rhyme only a mother knows how to sing and pace the tempo and volume down to almost nothing...
...the hot sun that freckles the skin in heat which body can no longer dissipate and distribute otherwise washes away defenses ... and life feels so good when I can laugh out loud in the middle of the street at myself trying to outrun the ice-cream streaming down my lips...
Thursday, June 24, 2010
rampage
...mass slaughter in Lake District and an extradition news bite from a couple of weeks back brought to life memories of a very hot summer in a very small village terrorized by, in our Eastern parts, unusually typical serial killer.
...of course I knew the face but I couldn't quite remember it when the word spread that he was the prolific axe killer that haunted the longest summer of my life. He was on of those characters that you do notice and acknowledge the act of noticing them but then somehow always get lost on the edges of your peripheral vision while you are looking at them, because, in an attempt of the brain to blur the image of something underneath that is upsettlingly wrong with that person you are looking at, the mind plays a self-defense trick and edits the stressor completely out of the picture.
...I think I cataloged him as 'one of those' people, the misfortunate ones that the village life and its dark side of underachievement, driven by fear of the world out of its safe boundaries, had poisoned beyond repair, both physically and mentally. He had a disabled arm, the souvenir of taking on amateur brawl and professional boxing opponents more ample than himself in an attempt to claim a fairer share of the pie of life and smalltown social territory than he was born to have. He always did seem rather odd, everywhere out of place, I think I remember forming a chain of thought once upon seeing him that he was someone too cowardly to ever attack openly but definitely the kind of man that bears grudges, stacks them up layer upon layer of self-pity and envy and hatered, until the piled up disappointments of his life hit the roof, fry his brain and he probably ends up, as the locals like to colourfully say, 'tween the hams', swinging from the attic beams.
...he ended up killing a lot of people and the fear of him had made my late father slap me the only time ever, when at the peak of the hysteria and killing spree I was stupid enough to go out after dark alone, on the same evening when the village neighborhood watch dad was taking part in found the shop manager and his wife brutally slaughtered.
...the bottom of the ocean that gave way to the fertile land is still just a misplaced depression of nature that spills its manic sorrow into the lives of its inhabitants.
...in the small village, you not only know everyone by name and three generations that preceeded them and are well versed into everyone's extramarital and sexual escapades, you know all the complex family relations that no sociogram could ever accurately portray , and all of the accumulated sins and mishaps of everyone you bid good day are available for discussion at any moment as soon as you mention seeing them. Small places have excellent collective memory when it comes to everyone else.
...a micro mythology of a place had formed and things that everyone knows by merely living there were hammered into me stuck doing the brainless substitute job for my aunt as the lottery seller, right in the bullseye village centre office, next to the church, school, marketplace and two meters across from the always open door of 'the' village café.
...so I knew the story of how he lost the function to his arm, how the wife was slightly slower and how he beat her once bad and ended up in jail, how he had a nasty temper and would nowadays pick fights with local super-men who would then turn it into a typically brutal laughing stock display. I also knew who his father was and what he had done. I knew where they used to have land that bordered ours, and the house where his grandmother had lived.
...they just speak, the villagers, their communication pattern is based on the assumption, or a communicative dogma to word it more precisely, that the intention of the designated listener whether he wants to hear the information or not is never inquired upon, because it is the standard rule that he does, and shares the common background information. If at any point they notice that you've lost your way in the maze of names and events that prefix any information you actually want to hear, you will be made to go through it step by step and affirm understanding of every segment.
...the four of us were probably the oddest girls in the village, attractive enough to be tolerated instead of receiving the usual ridicule that is given to anyone who dares to be too different, except for the village cartoons as I called them. Every village has an aged rocker, a predatory sexually charged divorcé that everyone bangs, a useless poet, a politican, a retired policeman, archetypes that are alive and walking around unaware of the fact that their need to differ is what makes them so sterotypical... but not every village had four girls 'from good houses' who study art or whatwasitthatthingthatyoustudycalledialwaysforget come together in such a way that it impacted the rest of their lives, the girls who moved away and are already over the fence, out of its grip but by the force of a string of coincidences all four stuck for a summer in it, and instead of getting all bigcitily depressed, were having the time of their lives, throwing cooking parties when none of them knew a thing about cooking beyond scrambled eggs , meeting for a five o' clock tea all dressed up, dating and exploring sexually men they would be ashamed to parade in the city and conspicuously borrowing books from the village library on almost daily basis, among other things.
...that summer was too radical, too carefree, too powerful to come to an easy-way-out end anyway... my very own, first-hand experienced summer of Sam.
...
...of course I knew the face but I couldn't quite remember it when the word spread that he was the prolific axe killer that haunted the longest summer of my life. He was on of those characters that you do notice and acknowledge the act of noticing them but then somehow always get lost on the edges of your peripheral vision while you are looking at them, because, in an attempt of the brain to blur the image of something underneath that is upsettlingly wrong with that person you are looking at, the mind plays a self-defense trick and edits the stressor completely out of the picture.
...I think I cataloged him as 'one of those' people, the misfortunate ones that the village life and its dark side of underachievement, driven by fear of the world out of its safe boundaries, had poisoned beyond repair, both physically and mentally. He had a disabled arm, the souvenir of taking on amateur brawl and professional boxing opponents more ample than himself in an attempt to claim a fairer share of the pie of life and smalltown social territory than he was born to have. He always did seem rather odd, everywhere out of place, I think I remember forming a chain of thought once upon seeing him that he was someone too cowardly to ever attack openly but definitely the kind of man that bears grudges, stacks them up layer upon layer of self-pity and envy and hatered, until the piled up disappointments of his life hit the roof, fry his brain and he probably ends up, as the locals like to colourfully say, 'tween the hams', swinging from the attic beams.
...he ended up killing a lot of people and the fear of him had made my late father slap me the only time ever, when at the peak of the hysteria and killing spree I was stupid enough to go out after dark alone, on the same evening when the village neighborhood watch dad was taking part in found the shop manager and his wife brutally slaughtered.
...the bottom of the ocean that gave way to the fertile land is still just a misplaced depression of nature that spills its manic sorrow into the lives of its inhabitants.
...in the small village, you not only know everyone by name and three generations that preceeded them and are well versed into everyone's extramarital and sexual escapades, you know all the complex family relations that no sociogram could ever accurately portray , and all of the accumulated sins and mishaps of everyone you bid good day are available for discussion at any moment as soon as you mention seeing them. Small places have excellent collective memory when it comes to everyone else.
...a micro mythology of a place had formed and things that everyone knows by merely living there were hammered into me stuck doing the brainless substitute job for my aunt as the lottery seller, right in the bullseye village centre office, next to the church, school, marketplace and two meters across from the always open door of 'the' village café.
...so I knew the story of how he lost the function to his arm, how the wife was slightly slower and how he beat her once bad and ended up in jail, how he had a nasty temper and would nowadays pick fights with local super-men who would then turn it into a typically brutal laughing stock display. I also knew who his father was and what he had done. I knew where they used to have land that bordered ours, and the house where his grandmother had lived.
...they just speak, the villagers, their communication pattern is based on the assumption, or a communicative dogma to word it more precisely, that the intention of the designated listener whether he wants to hear the information or not is never inquired upon, because it is the standard rule that he does, and shares the common background information. If at any point they notice that you've lost your way in the maze of names and events that prefix any information you actually want to hear, you will be made to go through it step by step and affirm understanding of every segment.
...the four of us were probably the oddest girls in the village, attractive enough to be tolerated instead of receiving the usual ridicule that is given to anyone who dares to be too different, except for the village cartoons as I called them. Every village has an aged rocker, a predatory sexually charged divorcé that everyone bangs, a useless poet, a politican, a retired policeman, archetypes that are alive and walking around unaware of the fact that their need to differ is what makes them so sterotypical... but not every village had four girls 'from good houses' who study art or whatwasitthatthingthatyoustudycalledialwaysforget come together in such a way that it impacted the rest of their lives, the girls who moved away and are already over the fence, out of its grip but by the force of a string of coincidences all four stuck for a summer in it, and instead of getting all bigcitily depressed, were having the time of their lives, throwing cooking parties when none of them knew a thing about cooking beyond scrambled eggs , meeting for a five o' clock tea all dressed up, dating and exploring sexually men they would be ashamed to parade in the city and conspicuously borrowing books from the village library on almost daily basis, among other things.
...that summer was too radical, too carefree, too powerful to come to an easy-way-out end anyway... my very own, first-hand experienced summer of Sam.
...
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
debris of a letter
Danilo Kis, Danilo Kis, Danilo Kis
Little* Dany,
to your death I might add
my own little dying: my opus magnum
( a bunch of small bullshits,
to be honest),
for you have, you old scribbler,
already added to the pile
just in time
with a shovel full
on top of mine
future death:
“DEATH IN PARIS” -
great title for a novel,
almost as good as “...in Venice”!
But in Budapest?!
In this country that resembles a toilet someone forgot to flush?!
You tell me...
You say nothing. Neither shall I.
But if you knew that it really did happen down south:
I am sure: you would have died laughing.
But you, with eyes that were to see death
you saw right through us
and ran away
ran from here, ran from there, ran from everywhere.
For me it's already too late.
P.S.
I hear bad things about you by the way.
Playing cards with Trotsky?
Well, you used to know best, just how much of a jinx he was.
Let him cheat sometimes.
(György Petri: Debris of a Letter)
* Kis in Hungarian means little, small, tiny(reconstructed from a Serbian translation by Árpád Vickó)
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
can I just have one more
...the rush I was in all day... the ride across the town ...the stupid overlook lack of deodorant on the back of my neck, drenched in sweat under the hair. ...my hate of ponytails, even in the heat of the summer....
the unknown territory ... the setting that disabled my usual instant head to toe careful observation...the me absent-minded that archived the whole thing as a regular event...the surface and on it the things said, nothing more than that...
in rewind,
...the eyes opened slightly more than appropriate, the tongue-breaking name I gave was pronounced back correctly showing the extra effort, the prolonged greeting eye contact coupled with second hand grabbing the handshake, the positioning straight across even though the seating arrangement was L-shaped, the legs spread open while sitting from the start, the leaning back position almost on elbows while I spoke, focus on my mouth, the straightening up movement forward when it was his turn to speak that invaded the decency of my touch distance , the slow head tilt and fingers across the chin, the touching of the right earlobe while other people spoke, then the showing of the open palm then the hand rubbing the neck, the press pause smiles that included eyes every time and the final mirroring dance in the looking forward to it segment.
...moondance.
...for someone fine tuned in catching the true meaning of the unspoken I once more managed to pull a total failure in noticing before it was too late.
***
When I flirt, I'm safe. The lines are straight and constant and I can remember and see them well, and the flirting itself is the external safety that subconsciously prevents accidental discharge.
When I don't flirt, thinking that the situation is by itself safe, that I needn't carry at all, prompted by the marvelous night happening around midday, the dance starts because I've chambered the round unintentionally and automatically released the hammer.
***
the unknown territory ... the setting that disabled my usual instant head to toe careful observation...the me absent-minded that archived the whole thing as a regular event...the surface and on it the things said, nothing more than that...
in rewind,
...the eyes opened slightly more than appropriate, the tongue-breaking name I gave was pronounced back correctly showing the extra effort, the prolonged greeting eye contact coupled with second hand grabbing the handshake, the positioning straight across even though the seating arrangement was L-shaped, the legs spread open while sitting from the start, the leaning back position almost on elbows while I spoke, focus on my mouth, the straightening up movement forward when it was his turn to speak that invaded the decency of my touch distance , the slow head tilt and fingers across the chin, the touching of the right earlobe while other people spoke, then the showing of the open palm then the hand rubbing the neck, the press pause smiles that included eyes every time and the final mirroring dance in the looking forward to it segment.
...moondance.
...for someone fine tuned in catching the true meaning of the unspoken I once more managed to pull a total failure in noticing before it was too late.
***
When I flirt, I'm safe. The lines are straight and constant and I can remember and see them well, and the flirting itself is the external safety that subconsciously prevents accidental discharge.
When I don't flirt, thinking that the situation is by itself safe, that I needn't carry at all, prompted by the marvelous night happening around midday, the dance starts because I've chambered the round unintentionally and automatically released the hammer.
***
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