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Thank you to the individuals and groups who supported my work collaboratively translating the poems of Boris Slutsky from Russian to English in 2014 -2016. The number of individuals who helped on this project was large; people supported this project in a myriad of ways, including room reconfiguration, graphic design, video recording, Russian idiomatic translations, and marketing. I received organizational support from the Oregon Jewish Museum, Congregation Shir Tikvah, and the Regional Arts & Culture Council. Special thanks to individuals outside of Oregon who helped support this project with donations: Peggy Shumaker & Joe Usibelli, Nancy Boutilier, Gigi & Tom McKeever, Becky & Matt Marshall, Jonathan Green, Amon & Carol Burton, Jenny Baxley Lee & Gabe Lee, Richard Warner, Elizabeth Dyer, Kate Burke, and Jessie Chesnutt & Natalie Sauro. Here's a bilingual reading of "Relearning Solitude " given at the Oregon Jewish Museum in April 2015.
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In July 2013, I ran a marathon up Mount Adams near Trout Lake, Washington. Nobody questioned my physical prowess, because the accomplishment was indisputable. But, if you actually pressed your fingers against my belly, you would have felt pudge, and you probably would have been surprised to not feel functioning abdominal muscles (you’d also be surprised to have your fingers on the belly of someone you had just met, but let’s skip that part). My abs weren’t important unless I found myself in the plank position, and why would I attempt plank when I could lie down, sit or run 13 miles? I learned how to engage my gluteal muscles for the first time in early 2014, when my new gym membership included sessions with a personal trainer. However, the fact still stands that I was able to complete a mountain marathon with scant help from my abs or glutes.
One can write a fantastic essay without understanding point of view... Regarding the Dead Lobster Found at 60th and Stark Street
I don't know why it's there either. His thick shell has turned maroon. Flies circle the fetid patch of pavement.His feelers Fell limp, green, down. He makes me think Of you. I'd like to laugh it off As some schoolboy's gag. Instead, I recall The last time we spoke, when your eyes bulged with Shock and your back clung to the barroom wall. I would never leave a lobster thus, Restlessly pinching into the damp Air that never offers breath... You go to Thessaloniki, Greece. Not to the parts of Greece rebuilt to escort tourists towards white statues of petty gods that no one believes in anymore, but Greece where the Grecians live and the water meets them.
Thessaloniki, where you decide to learn how to play chess. Thessaloniki, where the men lift their pawns and coffee mugs and talk about you in a distant language, not because they want to sleep with you, but for pity. They don’t like your culture. They don’t like your youth or your gender. They don’t believe you are really alive. They don’t think you know what life is. You assume much in Thessaloniki, but since you assume no one around you speaks English, you can’t very well check your assumptions, can you? March 1991
I insert my fare card and two wings open wide enough for me to pass through Farragut West station towards the Kennedy Center. Gleaming in the silver dress my grandmother found at the Jewish women’s resale store and forty-five minutes away from my fifteenth opera, I am ready: I have listened to Puccini’s Tosca three times with the libretto in hand and dreamt for a full week of the myriad ways the director might stage Tosca jumping off a building to her death. Having not yet received walking lessons in heels, I clack and thud at each step on the rust-tiled concrete until reaching the escalator that carries me towards dusk and my mother. |
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