Kathryn Amonett

Balkan Beginnings

June, 2015
Albania

I wrote a very silly poem (the only kind of which I am capable) about my first impressions of the country’s capitol: combining two of my favourite things: travel and neologistic collective nouns.

Tirana:

In a confusion of collective nouns

The Marrakech of Eastern Europe

with its clattering of cafés

on every street

patronised, each and every, by

idles of old men

collusions of couples and

intrigues of lady friends

despite it being a working day.

An entropy of motorists

in Skanderbeg Place

play chicken with

a boldness of pedestrians

(huddles or muddles in wintertime)

and on Hoxha Thasim alone is

a bobbing of fruit stands

a swish of shops: mostly second-hand

and surprisingly, to the poetess at any rate

an onomatopoeia of pet shops.

Poor pups pant in their cages

As people sweat out their time

pleasantly ignoring the

haunting of pill box bunkers,

(steel casings with a urine-reek)

sitting in cafés with names like

Dublin

Oslo

New York

Havana

collectively pretending

they are anywhere

but Tirana

Obviously it did not include my trip up to the mountain in a cable car, my appreciation for Albania writer Ismail Kadare and his talented translator, (both seen here)

nor my trip to the old town of Kruje, its castle, craft merchants and that jerk who followed me around, pretending to be a tour guide half the time and asking to see my breast the rest, who, after I couldn’t take the harassment (he called them compliments) I turned around to go back to the modern town, cutting my trip short. I won’t lie, it mostly ruined my day. I went to a café and tried to write, but wasn’t managing much so I decided to write my frustrations and call it a blog. Which brings me to poor traveller guilt. The only benefit tourists bring is money. A poor tourist (me) who buys no souvenirs from craftspeople who obviously need to make a living is worse than useless. Do we, as tourists, invaders and consumers of cultures, have an obligation to spend money on these things? Is it my duty as a tourist? I feel yes, but my pocketbook says no.

“Thanks, I’m privileged enough to travel here but not enough to purchase any of your lovely things, sorry.”

When they say tourism helps local economies, they don’t mean my kind of shoestring tourism- making a 50 cent pack of soup last 2 days. I don’t think my splurging once a day on 100 leke tea really helps the economy.

Note: the barman, speaking in German (our only shared tongue) just said I look like a writer. Thank you, barman for improving my day, even though anyone scribbling away with notebook and pen looks like a writer, but all the same, you’ve given me a positive note to end this entry.

Tags Albania, Balkans, Harrassment, Poetry, travel, writing

Travel

El Camino

May 2 – May 16th

Dear R,

About time for an email. I got the book you sent for Xmas. I’m still planning on going to the running of the bulls. Sober, though. You couldn’t have known when you sent the book that my least favourite animal, real or mythological, is the Minotaur. Bulls are bad enough but the minotaur… just the idea makes me shudder.

I’m undertaking a two-month long walking trek across Spain with the most disagreeable person I know: my father. His idea, el Camino de Santiago, whatever reasons he had for the pilgrimage he’s kept to himself. So far I’ve only been able to deduce his regrets, rather than reasons. I was invited to come along as interpreter of French and Spanish. I couldn’t turn down an opportunity of 2 months expenses-paid travel, especially of a walking tour, or so it sounded to me. Walking is one of my life’s sincerest pleasures, my favourite form of transportation (buses being my least) and also an indispensable tool for my creativity. Several months ago you recommended Rebecca Solnitt to me, and for that, I might be always slightly in your debt. It is in Wanderlust that she describes walking as an activity by which you are simultaneously in your body, in the world, and in your mind.

It’s all been rather idyllic, apart from my curmudgeonly companion, who I don’t believe is enjoying himself at all, but I suppose there is an implied requirement of suffering in pilgrimages, going barefoot or with rocks in the shoes or clad in meagre, inadequate clothing. I suppose being a 70 year old from the flat plains of Oklahoma, climbing through the French Pyrenees and hills of Spain is suffering enough. Hope I’ll have that strength of determination four decades from now.

I would love to report that I’ve spent these first 120 miles or so in serious contemplation, self-reflection instead of just humming Gilbert and Sullivan tunes.

Climbing over rocky mountain, skipping rivulet and fountain, passing where the willows quiiiiiver. Passing where the willows quiver, by the ever-rolling river, swollen with the summer rain, the summer rain.

Threading long and leafy mazes, dotted with unnumbered daisies, dotted, dotted with unnumbered daisies!

(Except the trees tend to be birch, and instead of unnumbered daisies it’s countless dandelions.)

I can’t even say that I’ve been struck by the conversations I’ve had with fellow pilgrims (that’s presuming I’m also a pilgrim and not simply peripatetic). Though I have met interesting people (because most people are interesting) but the ones I’ve liked most have been two dear little old ladies (I seem to collect them) one from Adelaide, Australia and the other from the north of England. The Australian and I bonded over conversations of human rights work and the Englishwoman and I over children’s literature and our love of the Seven Stories there in Newcastle.

I’d have to say that what has impressed me most (and this is absurd) are the things I’ve seen that weren’t really there. For example, the very first day of hiking I witnessed a woman remove her pack to reveal a sweat-stain so perfectly resembling the silhouette of Marie Antoinette’s head: complete with fancy up-do, a nose slightly retroussé, and the whole image ending abruptly at the neck. Another time, at a café in Pamplona I saw a woman walking about in a green top and a skirt the exact colour and shape of an upside-down tulip. Or that the birch forests I walked through have such bright green leaves in their boughs but there’s an ocean of orange and brown fallen leaves on the floor that it seems to be in two seasons at once. Or the town I passed through were every building in the place looked both newly built but long abandoned. I have a friend with whom I used go on evening or night time strolls (and will do again when I get back to him). During our crepuscular rambles (I know you can’t use crepuscular without sounding pretentious and silly, but I like it and I’m using it) we would slip into houses under construction and he would tell me where, in the partially built structure on uniform slabs of concrete, various features of the future home will be. Like an archaeologist, just looking the other way in time. He would be able to make more of these new and incomplete ruins than I can. To me, they just seem a bit pitiful. No promise. No past. Decidedly un-picturesque.

The church Santa Maria has four enormous storks nests at its top.

I currently sit on a pew inside, quite impiously writing this in the middle of a mass. I don’t know the proper responses so I mumble my own, rude versions. Irish and Japanese swearwords that no one is likely to understand. There aren’t many attendees, a dozen or so old ladies and a young girl with pigtails tied with pink ribbons and wearing a matching a pink coat. There’s a clear female majority. The few men present shuffled in late, having come from directly from the bar (I know this because I did too). A few pilgrims have come as well. It’s hard to say if they are here for reasons of faith or, like me, they are imposters, interlopers. But they seem to be the real thing. Devout, and all. I scoot down the pew, feeling uncomfortable, regretting my decision to attend. The dragged-along girl, on the other hand, is looking off to the side, tenaciously picking her nose. For the first time since entering the building, I finally feel kinship with someone! If she were to turn around and watch me get up and leave to go by some sweets from the shop nearby (as I am about to do) I’m sure she would feel it too (or at least envy, which is much the same thing: two people with a shared desire.)

Side note: At the precise moment I was planning to make my escape a beautiful Bohemian (whom I’d seen on the trail and whose eye I’d been trying to catch) sat down next to me in the pew. His ostentatious piety destroyed most of his good looks

I’ve mentioned the church but I I don’t think I’ve yet mentioned that I’m actually staying there, in a room off to the side made available to pilgrims, free of charge (though donations are, of course, welcome). It is lovingly cared for by (and I promise this really is his name) Christian, from Basel.

This aging Swiss moves, despite his age and visible hunch, with a sublime grace. He must have been a dancer in younger years; it’s the only thing I can think of to explain such exquisite male poise.

He’s just made me a (seemingly ceremonial) cup of mint tea to go with my piece of fruit and he’s speaks to me in German. For everything but the most basic phrases I answer in Spanish. Our audience of one (a doctor from Lincolnshire who is running, running, the Camino at 50k a day) who has already confessed that he doesn’t understand either language, nods along with Christian, pretending he does. I think he, like I, feels obligated to converse with this gracious and graceful man, as he went through such painstaking ritual to make our teas.

So it’s the unreal that has been the most real for me. The cameo in the sweat-stain, the forest lost between seasons, the woman that was a flower, the town that was going up and falling down at the same time. It’s all sort of a beautiful sham, like an atheist going on pilgrimage.

But is there such a thing as authentic travel? A question I wrote down in a notebook a year ago and haven’t been able to articulate an answer yet.

No, I think. An authentic cultural experience is not possible for the foreigner, only a facsimile of it, what we are able to understand of it, or more likely misunderstand, or treat with too much romance or cynicism. However organic we try to make the experience, we are still a foreign species inserted into a local environment, no matter how well we thrive there or seem to be accepted. Because travellers go to other places to consume other cultures, languages, landscapes, whether in an attempt to grow and add to oneself or to lose and diminish oneself, travel is still the tool we use, or for some of us, more appropriately, the drug we use.

Travel is a kind of appropriation, however respectfully intentioned. Apart from those who have to leave their homes because they’ve been forced, travel is a luxury that signifies you are free enough to make that choice to go away, stay away, to separate yourself from your own kind, whether you sleep in a hotel, hostel, or on the roadside.

I’m not seeing the real Spain, I’m seeing my mind’s own interpretation of it. I’m seeing what I choose to expose myself to, which might be more, might be less than others choose to, but it’s not authentic. Especially as the path is already predetermined. (As I’m not religious, predetermination is not the sort of thing I’m comfortable accepting.) “This way to Santiago.”

Now I’ don’t know if a pilgrimage is the least authentic kind of travel or the most authentic.

And now I’ve used the word “authentic” so many times I no longer know what I mean by it. I think it is a sign I should stop writing and go wash. My pen is running out of ink and my fingertips smell of orange.

Tags Camino de Santiago, pilgrimage, Spain, travel

Books Travel Uncategorized Writing

Ode to an Alphasmart

October 4, 2014

Currently Reading: This Blinding Absence of Light by Tahar Ben Jalloun

(The book mentions this very spot: Jemaa el Fna, in Marrakech)

I’ve been horribly lazy in keeping up with the blog. I was a week in Tangier (my hostel perpetually reeked of hashish, but was right next to the tomb of Ibn Battuta!) and am now in Marrakech for week, where I’ve found a good café to write in, and someone to play chess with.

October 10th

Now in Essaouira for a week. The hostel is criminal. Not because there is no soap in the bathroom (though it is concerning) but because of this.

Using a book as a wedge to keep a bed steady. Bad form.

It’s a bit of a mission in each city—finding a newsagent that has English newspapers, or French newspapers that report international news but I’ve managed so far.

Why bother with newspapers at all in this day and age, when the internet is everywhere?

For the same reason I write this on my Alphasmart.

BECAUSE THE INTERNET IS EVERYWHERE.

And I am weak.

So weak…

If I read news online, then there are links to other things, also interesting and relevant. And those interesting things have links to other things equally interesting, and less relevant, and on and on down the rabbit hole I go till I’m watching videos of baby horses splashing around in paddling pools and I realise I’ve been on the internet for 3 hours and have read only a few worthwhile things (and several lists about signs you are in your 30s.)

I’m so easily distractible, and when I just want to read the news, it’s safer just to read a hypertext-less newspaper, made of actual paper. Just as when I want to get some writing done, I do it on paper or on a internet-less machine.

And for those of you who don’t know what an AlphaSmart is, voila.

So, it’s not curmudgeonly antipathy to technology that keeps me devoted to the old-fashioned, it’s the desire to be at least semi-productive.

Tags AlphaSmart, Le Monde, Morocco, New York Times, newspapers, productivity, writing

Books Travel

Morocco

September 19^th, 2014

It is night. And I am on a train heading north. I cannot see the world outside but I sit with these strangers, my friends, fellow travellers.

“Sit with your friends, don’t go back to sleep.

Don’t sink like a fish to the bottom of the sea.

Surge like an ocean,

Don’t scatter yourself like a storm.

Life’s waters flow from darkness.

Search the darkness, don’t run from it.

Night travellers are full of light,

And you are too; don’t leave this companionship.

Be a wakeful candle in a golden dish,

Don’t slip into the dirk like quicksilver.

The moon appears for night travellers,

Be watchful when the moon is full.”

~Rumi

From a recently purchased Everyman’s Library Pocket Poets.

I never thought I was much of an appreciator of metaphysical poets (apart from Donne), but with Rumi, I was immediately smitten. Granted, he’s not your average metaphysical poet. In fact, he pre-dates all the other ‘traditional’ metaphysical poets by a good 350 years.

But enough of that.

I’ve recovered my Alphasmart, that most wonderous and fruitful of writing tools.

I arrived in Morocco on the 13^th of September.

My luggage did not.

I after a week of nothing, I’d given up any hope of ever getting back my Alphasmart, my leather jacket, my leathermen, my chess set… but they are all returned to me. Calloo Callay!

After spending the better part of an hour on hold today, I finally learnt that my bag had appeared in Rabat, after having a cheeky holiday in Casablanca, I expect. I was just discussing getting it sent to Fes when the phone dropped the call. I decided I didn’t want to bother getting on the phone again to spend ages being tranfered from one place to another until I got back in touch with those I needed, didn’t want to risk another flight to Casablana then to Fes. I knew for certain it was in the capitol. That was enough information for me.

Within the hour I was on a train to Rabat, sharing a compartment with five men, all wearing clashing perfumes.

The women at the airport recognised me

The moment I walked in. “Your bags?” she asked. I replied, yes, finally, my bags where there and we had a mini celebration/ happy reunion.

After reclaiming my things I sat at the Gare de Rabat Ville, writing ecstatically on my Alphasmart and munching a sandwich.

To be perfectly honest, I hadn’t written much of anything but notes since arriving in Morocco. And those wee jots were just interesting bits of information learnt on a walking tour. Quite a rewarding walking tour, because Hakim (BA in English literature and MA in history) near the end of the tour pointed me towards some Moroccon authors to explore. Fantastic. He said we’d pass by a bookshop that would have the titles he recommended (by Fatima Mernissi), and when we arrived the bookstall owner remembered me because naturally, having been in the city for a full 3 days, I’d already been in and bought something. So I made a few more additions to the library. At the time, it was a great consolation for having lost all my posessions. I had, that first day in Fes, bought a replacement chess set (mahogany and lemon wood), then the next day some pyjamas, the day after that, more underwear, socks and more clothes.)

Now my Alphasmart is returned to me (undamaged! Unlike some of the other items in the bag) I feel I can write more. I bought a notebook but as I haven’t had much time to myself, it remains mostly empty. That’s the trouble when travelling with someone, I suppose. My mother, who is with me for the first 12 days of this trip, has far more energy than I do, and a greater zest for going out and doing things. I wouldn’t have done half as much had I been on my own. I certainly would have got more writing and reading done, however. I think I am expected to put everything on hold while travelling, as she is doing. One can read and write later. But travelling is my life, and I cannot put other daily things aside just because I’m in another country. I’d never get anything done.

I continue this on the 21^stin Merzouga, a town on the edge of the Sahara in the middle Atlas Mountains. I am alone now, as I chose to stay behind this morning/afternoon on account of my head injury, which still makes me dizzy. Didn’t feel like a car ride. I banged my head so emphatically last night that tears ran from my eyes as I rolled around, holding my skull. (Tears running from my eyes makes it seem like they are fleeing something, doesn’t it?)

“Kathryn, stop laughing; you’re hysterical!”

I really had been laughing hysterically; I do that when I’m in pain, but I also thought the situation tremendously funny. I had a fever as well, which always makes me a bit loopy, and had taken paracetamol to bring it down. I did my best to obey and be still, but a moment later started laughing again. I tried to explain what was so hilarious, but I couldn’t stop laughing long enough. The only word I could get out (Paracetamol) she didn’t understand, which I also found hilarious.

Eventually, when I had calmed down and the immediate pain had receded, I explained that after the big bang, I had thought to myself how fortuitous it was I had already taken a pain reliever.

“We call it aspirin,” she said.

This afternoon we are to go on a camel ride. (One of those things I’d never do, left to my own devices but she was keen on.) I am deeply sceptical. On the drive here we had to stop for a camel crossing, and one rowdy beast was bucking his way around the front of the car.

I didn’t know that camels could buck. It’s not that I mistrust camels, it’s only that I’ve never ridden one, have no idea how thing think or operate.

(I write this outside, and when flies land on my face I instinctively shake my head to shoo them away. I regret it immediately every time. I feel my brain has come loose and is sloshing around in my skull and is getting sea-sick for it. Poor brain. Concussed twice in half a year. Couldn’t manage any reading last night. I type most of this with my eyes shut, to spare them. It will be interesting to see what effect this has on my spelling.)

I recently finished a book by David Waines called The Odyssey of Ibn Battuta, a medieval Moroccan world traveller, contemporary of Marco Polo, and considered to be the greatest Muslim explorer of the known world.

Waines compares Battuta with the tenth-century geographer, al-Muqaddasi. “[T]he geographer was a a cataloguer of facts while the traveller was a collecter of people.”

A pretty distinction, and food for thought. I wonder what I collect, other than injuries, and where that puts me on the geographer/traveller spectrum. (For it is a spectrum, whatever Waines might think.)

P.S. The muezzin here has a nicer, clearer, more musical flare than any in Fes. There seems to be only one at a time, for I can see two minarets in this town from where I sit on the terrace of the riad. They must take turns. I really should stop now, the wind is blowing and sand is getting in the keyboard.

Travel

If on a summer’s night a female traveller…

Post author By Kathryn Amonett
Post date August 28, 2014
No Comments on If on a summer’s night a female traveller…

Letter to a lecturer.

August 25, 2014
Bratislava

Well R, it was fairly abysmal, your Cuban bar…

Still, the cigar was a perfect pleasure (exquisite, and leaves one unsatisfied) and the rum was impeccable. I let the bartender choose it for me. Nothing quite satisfies their sense of pride than a customer deferring to his/her superior taste and you, seasoned drinking vagabond, must know the benefit of having the bartender like you. Perhaps that is manipulative; perhaps it’s just common sense (it was a lovely choice and I wouldn’t have picked it myself). In any case, it’s the sort of thing that earns me my first, and oftentimes only, ally in a place. Something I take into consideration as a solo traveller.

Speaking of solo travel, I’m reminded of an instance, the latest in a not inconsiderable history of them. Early in the evening, long before sunset, as I was writing and drinking my vino tinto, two men who had taken the table next to me said something in Slovakian as I walked (hobbled) back to my seat. I said I didn’t understand and so they asked in English were I was from (the obligatory first question). The next question was, as it invariably is…

“You are travelling alone?”

Let me properly restate that.

“You are travelling alone?”

To me, this goes without saying; I travel alone as a rule.

“Yyyyep.”

“Really? A beautiful woman, travelling by herself?”

(Even plain ladies are beautiful to lonely men).

Perhaps there is a correct response to this dubious sort of compliment, but after years of wandering, I still don’t know what it is. My own replies tend to oscillate between the bland and the acerbic. The easiest question to deal with is, “You have a boyfriend?”

I’ve found the best answer is, “Oh yeah. Several.”

Either they don’t believe me and think (correctly) I am trying to put them off, which is just as well. Mission accomplished. Or they think I am taken and they stop their advances. (Annoying that only belonging to someone else gets them to stop, but if it works, it works.) Or they are disgusted by my polyamorous ways and are no longer interested.

Or I can answer “no,” but that brings on yet more insulting surprise and unwanted interest.

Why the astonishment that a woman should travel alone?

I ask you, Richard Gwyn, in all your years of vagabondage, did you ever get the incredulous interrogative, “You’re travelling alone?”

If you have, then I’m satisfied. If not… I’m afraid you must prepare yourself for a feminist rant (what joy is yours).

Why should it matter that a woman, beautiful or not, travels alone?

Actually, let’s skip the rant and treat that as a genuine question. You must have met dozens of female travellers in your wanders; why is the woman traveller exoticised (and eroticised)? Is it because she is seen as being out of context? But a male traveller is simply a man exercising his freedom to go where he chooses?

Perhaps it is unfair to make that distinction. Literature shows that the male traveller can be romanticised (by himself if no one else). And I suppose he can be sexualised, in a byronic way.

(Book recommendations, fiction and other, on how narratives of the male traveller differs from the female are welcome. And while we’re at it, add to that any examples of byronic heroines that you can think. Sadly, I come up with nothing and I feel a fresh research project approaching.)

I think that being a woman traveller encompasses no more or less risk or appeal than simply being a woman… wherever she may be. Though it means being stigmatised as a ‘foreigner’ even in the country of your own birth. (Alistair Reid, and all that. Does he mention sexualisation of the foreigner in Whereabouts?) Is there something inherently ‘flingsome’ that suggests itself upon encountering a solo traveller? Is that it? Because that has been my (and many women’s) experience. The reaction to the female traveller ranges from confusion, to sexual interest, to mistrust, often all three at once, especially the more religious countries (no matter which religion). Does this apply to male travellers as well? And let us simplify the matter by not involving political suspicion of solo travellers, because we can both attest that political suspicion can hinder travellers of either gender. I mean on a social level. Did your travelling alone consistently baffle those you met? Did they question your decision to be where you were? Or was there acceptance?

Though I imagine that being a vagabond has its own social stigmatism separate from being a foreigner. Perhaps indigence and vagrancy widens the gap too much to fruitfully compare experiences.

But given the lack of understanding of the female foreigner, I might argue: Viajar sola es más solo que solo.

To travel alone as a woman is more isolating than to travel alone as a man.

There. You have more pages of this moleskin than necessary, but that is beside the point. I must end this letter. My penmanship has become atrocious.

(And I have a pretty new subscribe feature there on the the top right. Just enter your email address.)

Books Travel Writing

Writing Spaces – Writing Places… Letter the Sixth

Post author By Kathryn Amonett
Post date August 19, 2014
No Comments on Writing Spaces – Writing Places… Letter the Sixth

August 2nd

Dear Sean,

“In the time when the coffeehouses of Budapest were differentiated not by their price lists, their coffee, and their cold meats, but exclusively by their “literary” tendencies, he too used to sit with his pale face in the baroque gallery of the New York like a faint but ever more brilliant star in the literary firmament.”

It’s a quote from Kornél Esti by Dezsó Kostelyáni. I think I mentioned it in the last letter. It’s what got me excited to go to this writerly place. But of course, it’s not a writerly place anymore.

Kostelyáni’s Budapest is not today’s Budapest, Hemingway’s Paris is not today’s Paris. The literary haunts have vanished. The days of the writers’ places are over, writing places gone.

Or should I say, writer places have gone. Any place is a writing place. Any café, park, bar, tree stump will do, obviously. But places like The New York have lost their literariness. The New York (in the Erzébet Ring Road) used to be a haunt of writers and artists so that not only did it cater specially for the impecunious tastes of its literary clientele, it also provided paper, pens and ink. A “dog’s tongue” (kutantelv) was a piece of paper one could order for a writerly jot.

A special cheap dish of cold meats for writers called The irótál, “writer’s plate,” was a specialty of the New York, an inexpensive plate of cold meats, salami, cheese, etc, served only to writers. The kis-iro-dalmi, “small literary” was a reduced version for the even less well off.

It’s no longer on the menu, and so far I haven’t yet dare try to order it. The place is completely posh now, retaining its fin de siècle grandiosity but using it as an excuse to overcharge its almost exclusively foreign visitors, among whom I must count myself.

Still, I go there often enough, get a seat near as I can to the pianist and eat my expensive but filling bread and goulash. (I don’t eat for the rest of the day, partly because I don’t feel hungry, also because I can’t afford to.)

This is rampaging and misplaced sentimentality, I know. I need to find a new shabby corner of Budapest that will serve me soup for a quarter of the price that won’t charge me three euro just for sitting down, where I can sit and read Hungarian poetry (or write about reading Hungarian poets) and have a more legitimate experience. Fortunately, I seem to run into students of Hungarian literature. My first day back in Budapest I met a guy studying Hungarian literature and philosophy at the University. I didn’t know he was studying it at the time, he was just one of the solicitous citizens, determined to feel sorry for me about the leg, but the following day the truth came out and it will help me with my research… which is less and less to do with my portfolio and more for my personal treasure trove of knowledge.

10,000 words. I shall have to start all over, I think. I tell myself I’ll begin as soon as I’ve got my apartment. We’ll see if that’s so, or if I’ll find a new excuse to put it off.

And turns out, I’m not as depressed as I hoped I’d be here. I’m quite mobile and have been reading about a book a day. My goodness, Embers (the title translated from the Hungarian word for when a candle has burned down to the very bottom) by Maira Sandor is going on the list of Favourite Books of All Time. And I am not even going to bother recommending it to you, or probably to any one. I shall greedily keep it to myself. Also, I don’t feel like it has much universal appeal. Two old men, former best friends, meeting after 41 years of being apart, discussing what happened that last night they saw each other, the day of a hunt. I don’t know, to me it reads like some dark fairy story. It has hints of DuMaurier, in that much of the book is visiting the past.

August 11,

Many many days since I’ve written, not just to you, but anything. For a while I as simply absorbed in the reading of Hungarian classics (by the way, I’ve bought 15 new volumes, one is such an enormous hardback anthology of modern poetry I’ll have to buy a new case just to transport it and the rest), then after that I spent many days stuck to my computer, absorbed in the news and growing more and more despondent. I spoke to mother about how useless I am, that, had I stuck with my earlier 2009 plan of studying migration and refugee studies of Africa and the Middle East, I might very well be doing something useful by now. But I’m not. I’m vagabonding around Eastern Europe, being completely self-indulgent. It’s a blow to hear that a former home is being marched on. Of course, it’s nothing to what those living there are going through, but I feel so helpless and useless.

About a week I did nothing but read, begging pardon for the unfair adjective, trashy novels about Napoleonic dragons and fantasy queens and girl assassins and watch the latest batman trilogy all in one go.

Pulled myself slowly out of it. Today I’m back to Hungarian classics, and even, wonder of wonders miracle of miracles, I even started (started) my portfolio which is due in exactly a month from today.

In a little red moleskin (I’ve had to buy more since coming here) I’ve pencilled in questions to put to our mother when I see her next. One of them is, will you tell me, when the time comes, what it’s like to see your own child go grey? I am sitting on the upper floor of a café just off Andrassy street. It’s summer and (as heat rises) no one else is up here but me. Down below at one of the tables outside though is a pair drinking espresso. A man and a woman. The woman is older, her hair gone white and she’s balding at the top (something I feel a bit bad about because I probably would never have noticed such a rude thing were it not for my particular vantage). The man’s hair is a pretty steel grey on top of a darker black. He still has some rosiness to his cheeks, a healthy tan to his skin which doesn’t at all sag from his face or arms. My imagination has no trouble picturing what an adorable little boy he must have been once. Mid forties now, I’m guessing, but I’ve always been rotten at determining people’s ages, so that says nothing.

(I snapped a candid photo, but felt guilty at the thought of sharing it, or even having these strangers on my camera and computer, so I deleted it.)

Have you any grey hairs? I’ve never noticed or looked. Does our sister? One’s never likely to notice, she keeps her hair covered most of the time. I think my hair would look rather nice with silver in. Silver and gold.

But what is it like, to watch your own child go grey, I wonder. I never asked Grandmamma, but perhaps she and mother talked about it. I hope so.

They are still out there, the pair of greys. I have no way of knowing if it is mother and son, but the sight of them did make me wonder.

Kellan was in my dream last night. An SUV had pulled up and I knew that I had to get in, that I had to leave and likely not come back, but I stayed outside, making the SUV wait, which it did. I didn’t even know what I was waiting for, but when my nephew came toddling up (his mother was not in sight, just the boy) I knelt in the grass and gave him a big hug, then went off to whatever duty that suburban represented.

I don’t hold much stock in the interpretation and analysis of dreams (as a few nights before I dreamt of duelling in shark tank), but I thought it was rather fine of me, to wait to say a final goodbye to Kellan first.

ARGH! No more letter writing! I need to work on the dissertation, because I’m actually starting to worry. I give myself 2 weeks to get a rough. A few days after that for editing, before I send it to my tutrix, see what she thinks.

Over and out.

P.S. The view from my room

Tags age, ageing, Budapest, deadline, Dezsó Kostelyáni, Hungarian literature, Kornél Esti, writing, writing places

Books Travel

Letter the Fifth

You didn’t reply to my last letter, but I’m writing again anyway.

July 13^thish,

Dear Sean,

Luke, fresh face English boy who will be very handsome when he gets older, both charms and infuriates me. I say he’s a boy but he’s 20. He has travelled more than most his age and speaks Arabic and Russian but he’s still a boy. He has such tidy thoughts about things. Such well articulated, precise thoughts on complex issues that I’ve seen in many of my classmates at Cardiff.

I think my opinions, whatever they might have been at 20, were orderly and articulate, too. Now I can barely manage to comprehend most issues in the world, let alone present them, along with an opinion of them, in a neatly wrapped package. I tend to garble on about one thing only to contradict it the next moment. Ah well. He’s gone now, and I’m the only native English speaker again, so I’m good company in struggling to express myself.

I look forward to going to Morocco after I turn in my dissertation. Of course, first I must actually write the thing.

I’m renting a flat in Budapest for the month of August, where I intend to work on it four hours before noon every morning. That ought to do it. Then I can spend my afternoons and evenings in bookshops and museums and the opera. I didn’t get to go last time, now I can attend as often as I like. I have bought a good cane, stylish and feminine (in my opinion.) I will say this for crutches, though, my triceps have never been this defined, no matter how many hours I spent in the gym. Sadly, or perhaps thankfully, I doubt they will be as nice when I’m home in October, for I will not have had need for them.

Oh, I spend the start of September (and the very last weekend in August) in Germany with Stephy (the Austrian, not the German whom you met in Cologne six years ago.) After a weekend in Oldenburg we will be tourists on the northern islands for a time. Should be nice and relaxing. I might be ale to fly from Budapest to Bremen, but there is also a cheap bus from Prague. While it is a bus (ick) it’s an excuse to visit the Czech Republic. If I have time, of course. I’ve forbidden myself from leaving Budapest until the dissertation is complete. (Though I’m still in Ukraine as I write this.)

Currently reading:

Steppenwolf. I would say it’s one of those books that change my life, but it hasn’t. It has exposed it. Thing is, I didn’t especially like the book, but I related to it… sort of hated it for that. Hesse says that self-hate is a sort of egoism, and I suppose he’s right. I’ve always been a vile egotist.

In any case, I think many who read Steppenwolf must see themselves in it, else it wouldn’t enjoy the success it has.

I’m officially recommending it to you. I think, in a different way, you are Steppenwolf, too. You’ll understand the weariness.

I’ve finished it now. Still recommending it. I maintain that it’s not exactly pleasurable, but there is something edifying in it. It’s like taking medicine, and the more I think about it, it seems to me to be the spirit in which Herman Hesse wrote it… for himself.

He wanted to cure himself.

I also think I read it at either exactly the right time, when I was at my gloomiest and grumpiest with my age and infirmity, or if I shouldn’t have read it when I was feeling so sympathetic with the gouty Harry Haller.

The last two books I have read, Journey by Moonlight and Steppenwolf both had much to do about suicide. The next book I read, I’m determined will be more light-hearted. Not sure which yet.

There’s a thunderstorm now, bringing the welcome cool and proper rain smell with it. There was a thunderstorm a few days ago, L and M were camping in the mountains 4 days ride from here, and in the night the horses panicked and ran nearly all the way home. They have returned and leave tomorrow. They will leave the horses here and take a bus to Romania where they will search for an extremely endangered species of cattle that only live high in the mountains where no cars reach.

July 21^st,

I have decided on a book now. Archer’s Goon, by my adored Diana Wynne Jones. Not sure why I didn’t read something of hers the moment I got my cast, but it is just what I need. It’s not a reread either, but one I’ve been saving for a special occasion, for when I would need it. I’m running out of ones I haven’t read yet. I despair when I read the last one and have nothing left.

This will be horribly depressing thing to write about, and you’ve probably heard this rant before, but I can’t be the only one who gets torn up when an author dies. DWJ died over 2 years ago now and I am still crushed to think I’ll never get to read anything new from her. What about Robert Jordan, who died writing his penultimate book? And I know more than a few of us are concerned about George R. R. Martin and his Song of Ice and Fire.

What happens when writers die? To us heartless readers, for whom the writer is simply the machine producing the product we want, we mope at the loss of the writing (not the writer). Those of us desperate for more story will resort to fanfiction. Bad idea if you are reading, and a waste of time if you’re writing.

What else are you supposed to do when one of your characters suffers a cruel and untimely death? (Cough, Game of Thrones, Cough)

It’s one thing for an author to already be dead when you discover them (Oscar Wilde, Vladimir Nabokov, J. R.R. Tolkien, Ireve Nemirovsky, Jane Austen to name a few personal favourites). You know from the start how many books you’ve got to read. It’s okay to be disappointed that Wilde only wrote one book (and I am disappointed, but his plays are still my love and joy) but at least it’s not a shock. It’s quite another thing to be stalking your favourite author on their website, twitter, facebook, what have you, and know they’re working on a new novel and you are waiting impatiently and then,… nothing.

I mean, what are you supposed to do? Reread everything they ever wrote so that the pain is that much more acute?

I was doing an interview with writer (and head of London City University’s Creative Writing MA) Jonathon Myerson and I posed him that question, rhetorically, but he answered it anyway.

“Find someone else.”

And really, that’s the simplest and best advice. It’s the only thing one can do, as a matter of fact. I’ve found many new authors worth following, of course. Is it the same? No, of course not. Nor should it be.

People I’ve started following in the last two years:

Tracy Chevallier

George R. R. Martin

Glen Duncan
Jasper Fforde

Jonathon Howard (for whom I have you to thank. Did you the coughsignedcopyofcough his latest book I gave you?)

There are numerous others, but those are the principle ones I can think of for now.

I mean, you won’t even start a series of books unless it’s already finished, and I can understand the sentiment, though am too greedy myself to wait.

But all the same, to writers, I feel that if you’ve got cancer, WRITE THE HELL OUT OF YOUR LAST BOOK! Seriously, finish it.

I think it was Asimov who, when asked what he would do if he only had a year to live, answered, “Write faster.”

I’ll admit it, I get emotionally invested in characters, (and perforce, to the authors that write them.) Everybody does. We do this because we are book people.

Imagine the horror, if you will…

We were all devastated when Sirius Black died in the fifth Harry Potter book, but imagine how cataclysmic it would have been if Rowling had died instead? I shudder to think about the fallout (all the fantastic work with the charities the former billionaire alone would be a tragic loss, let alone leaving the series unfinished.)

I’m just saying, that authors shouldn’t die. Unless they are done.

Authors I give permission to die:

Harper Lee

She did it. She’s done. Well done.

Phillip Roth

Completed solid life work. Well done.

Toni Morrison

I feel she has written more than enough to be proud of, and she’s not writing a series. I salute her.

Next after this I know which book I will read, one I’ve just bought (even though I’ve plenty unread titles on my Kindle. Kornel Esti, a Hungarian writer’s thought experiment, meant to be tremendously clever. He gives his id a character and then collaborates with that character to write a book. Granted, I suppose that is in part what writer’s do anyway, but he is admitting that he’s doing it.) I look forward to it.

I will end this letter here, to make up for the excessively long last one.

I remain your (less grumpy, still hobbled and held housefast, but now mostly placid) sister,

P.S. Emily had puppies. I finished Kornel Esti (clever, but for the writing, not the conceit of the book, which was disappointing but still worth reading.) Now reading Chess Story by Zweig. Halfway through and like it immensely so far.

P.P.S.

July 30^th, finished Zweig, Bronte’s The Professor and silly sailing fencing story called Steel and am currently reading Tibor Dery’s Niki: The Story of a Dog and Julian Barnes’s Flaubert’s Parrot.

Arrived in Budapest yesterday. It seems to disconcert people to see a young woman walking with a cane. They all too solicitously stand aside, or carefully look away, or race ahead to hold doors open for me.

I also spent about 10,000 forints (about $40) on books my first day here. So, falling back immediately into my old vices.

Books Travel Writing

Letter the Fourth

July 2, 2014

Dear Sean,

P. S. (PreScript) I stumbled across one of those websites that have an arrangement of odd or obsolete words. I’ve scattered a few throughout this letter, but only when they are truly apt. You’ll doubt know them when you see them.)

Here begins the letter proper.

If there’s one thing being montivagant is good for (I almost want to say montivagrant) it’s that it provides ample time for introspection. Depending on the person, I’m not sure this is such a good thing. I daydream too much, I think, when my mind isn’t given a task to mull and ponder, I come up with the most ridiculous scenarios in my head that can entertain me for hours. I’m sure shepherds are either the most philosophical of people, or they are the most fanciful.

It’s a good thing I want to make my living in fiction, otherwise all this imagining would be a waste of time. It probably still is, but at least I can put it down as practicing or preparing stories.

My self-reflective moments are probably of even less use than my fantasizing. In books, people are characterized by certain traits. I suppose that’s why they call them characters. And while I was wandering with the herd I wondered how I would categorize myself. What is a primary characteristic of mine?

Perhaps I’m the wrong person to judge, or perhaps I’m the only person to judge. Do correct me, if you think I’m wrong, or if you perceive me differently, but I feel like I’m categorized by impermanence.

To me, this is not at all a bad thing.

Yes, in the grand scheme of things we are all impermanent, but in my life, and my presence in the lives of others, I think of myself as being transitory. A series of stopgaps. I take comfort in this, though from what I’ve read, many people fear it (or at least many writers describe people so). From famous Achilles (from the Illiad, not the Odyssey) to Keats, who famously put on his tombstone a regretful (and consequently, entirely incorrect) epitaph: “here lies the one whose name was writ on water” people have wanted to make their mark, to last, to endure, to make a lasting impression or despair ever doing so. They wanted permanence, they wanted a name that would last.

Whereas a significant percentage of my life has been that of xenization. Living as a stranger in a place makes it easier to leave. I don’t mind being forgotten. I hate reading that people miss me, when I have no intention of returning. It’s a sort of rule, never to go back.

(My desire to write is not borne of a desire to extend my life, and I take comfort in noms de plume.)

I am comforted that my presence is only temporary. That I’m not a landmark but a waypoint, itinerant. Always yonderly.

When I do get my yacht someday, I think I might call it Yonderly.

But stepping away from the abstract… these last few days I’ve taken on the job of swine herd. Naturally, I still have to care for the horses morning and evening, but in the ripest hours of the afternoon, it is my responsibility to pasture magaliza pigs: 5 adults each upwards of 200 kilos, and uncountable babies. (Actually, one can count them, I’ve just never managed. They are far more charming than their parents, and much easier to lose track of.)

I’ve come to the conclusion that swine are like people, just completely devoid of vanity.

Pigs are intelligent; an implied threat is just as effective as a hitting them, moreso, in that the great beasts remain calm instead of squealing and running off. Ah well. M says this new girl could be a good herd, and I’m not clamoring to take her place. I like them, but they are too clever to deal with, and something about them makes me uncomfortable. It’s not like they need or want privacy but seeing them go about their business seems intrusive in a way that watching other animals doesn’t seem to be. Maybe it’s because other animals have grace and beauty, and even though I know they are not, it seems like when they move they are putting on a performance. Pigs just carry on in such an unashamed way that makes you (meaning me) almost embarrassed for them. I think comes from my comparing them with people, which I don’t do with other animals, apart from perhaps dogs, whom we speak to and let live with us in our homes as one of the family, who embarrass us when they lick their private parts or flatulate in from of company.

I fear what people might be like without their vanity. I could make it more noble and say pride, but I really do mean vanity. Would we bathe? Would we keep our houses clean? If we didn’t care what others thought of us, what would we give up?

This little mental exercise would no doubt reveal some obvious benefits if we lacked vanity (no one would suffer from self-esteem issues) and we might lose our desire to obtain things that show off our status, capitalism would tumble and businesses wouldn’t rule the world, but on interpersonal levels, how would we treat others if we didn’t care how others would judge our behavior? No doubt some of us would be the same as we always are, but others of us might act as a pig. They are not, in their hearts, generous beasts. I’ve never seen a pig, when presented with food, graciously let other pigs have a share. They want all of it for themselves, if they can manage it.

What would happen if people exchanged vanity for gluttony?

All the expressions about pigs: greedy as a pig, eating like a pig, selfish pig, you swine… I never gave them much thought before but after spending so many hours with them, I have given them new consideration.

Thing is, I’m sure that other animals are just as selfish about their food, or careless about their hygiene, but they don’t get the reputation pigs did because we aren‘t holding them by our standards. So it seems I can’t be the only one who personifies them, who sees them as people.

Try as I might, I honestly can’t recall a single mention of this in Animal Farm, but I know Orwell must have made some sort of observation or comparison. Perhaps I need to reread it, knowing pigs (and history) as I do now.

In any case, the pigs unsettle me in a way. While their motives are always plain, one can never really know what they might do. Herding buffalo and horses is relaxing. Herding swine keeps me vigilant. It’s fascinating, but not how I want to spend the rest of my days.

If herding horses or buffalos (or sheep or goats, I suppose) make one thoughtful and introspective, herding pigs concentrates ones thoughts, almost darkens them. Or at least, it does for me. Perhaps it’s because they still smell like the slaughter house. Up till recently, they were cannibalistic fed on the castoffs of the butchers’ and the abattoirs’ and their sty is still littered with bones, teeth and bits of bone that they didn’t eat (or perhaps they did and that’s how they came out again.)

No more about swine.

July 4^th

Currently I’m in Kolmir. It’s a small city for a conference that I’m not attending. L is, though, and she booked accommodation that has two beds, so she invited me along as a treat. 6 hours away by bus and I’m still in the same region but the journey was worth it just for 3 days of running water: hot showers and flushing toilets. She knew I wanted to get work done and said this was an opportunity to write without the distraction of the ranch, but I’m afraid my first 6 hours to myself was spent in sleeping for an additional 2 hours in the morning, then watching the BBC adaptation of Death Comes to Pemberly (one of the few examples of the film version being better than the book.) It’s 5pm now and I sit down to write but do this instead. Oh well. At least it’s something.

Let me tell you about my ride the other day, and I know what you might be thinking (perhaps you are not, no doubt our mother would be though): riding with a fractured foot?

Short answer, yes. I keep them wrapped and I’ve got the trick of walking on it in a way that doesn’t sting so badly. Besides, spending the whole day in the saddle is better than a day walking, and I was only thrown once this time.

I was on Zitra, a lovely mare with the sweetest filly of the whole herd. She’d never been ridden before and didn’t understand the commands, but after 10 hours of riding she had learned. We rode through many neighbouring villages, making a tour of the old wooden churches of the area.

The most exhilarating part of the trip was when everyone (L, Ivan and Angelika) had got down from their mounts to take a break. I stayed on because jumping down hurt the foot, so I did it as little as possible. Grovny, L’s horse, just decided to run away, when usually she’s the most obedient and has been ridden the most. L ran after her and the others fought to control their own mounts.

I was still atop Zitra and when L didn’t come back soon, I went after them. If L couldn’t catch up to Grovny by running, surely I could catch up at a gallop.

And gallop we did. Zitra may have many faults as a riding horse, but she is fast.

Grovny had disappeared into the Oak Forest. I’m not being dramatic or sentimental, that’s its name, and Sean, it is beautiful. The oaks stand far enough apart that grass can grow on the forest floor, and apart from some poised blue flowers that I could’t name even if I’d had time to look closely, the entire floor was covered with green grass so heave and tall that it flopped over in all directions, like waves. I wish I could have taken a photo, but I know it wouldn’t have done the place justice, but you would have really liked this place.

It was obviously a wild place, but there as something elegant about the waves of grass, and how artistically the light filtered through the oak leaves to highlight the green floor in patches, truly like a little green sea.

Anyway, I’d never tried to gallop with Zitra but she did famously. It was probably the most exhilarating thing I’ve experienced, racing through that forest alone on Zitra, an untrained horse, but she was made to run and I, at that moment, felt made to ride her.

I stopped to listen and call for L, but I heard no response. When Zitra realized her baby hadn’t (couldn’t possibly have) followed, she was upset. Back from where we’d come in the far distance I could barely hear a young whinny, and Zitra whinnied back.

The second gallop wasn’t exactly my idea, though I had considered returning to the others to wait for L, but Zitra made the final decision and she raced us back.

This time, even faster.

Now I’ve been thrown before by mothers frantic to get back to their babies (my being just an unnecessary burden), and this is what I dreaded when she took off, and the trees whizzed by so close I could have reached out and slapped them (or they could slap me, rather) as we passed.

I remember thinking “If she throws me off at this speed, that’s the end.”

And I was okay with that. Yes, one the one hand, I was certainly aware and unhappy about the possibility, but on the other hand, I was urging her to go even faster. Part of me had to know, needed to push as far as we could go. There was something romantically fatalistic about it. (I’m sure I could make some parallel to Icarus, but I shan’t. He didn’t expect his fate, and mine didn’t materialize.)

In short, I felt like I was actually breathing.

But she kept me the whole time, maybe she forgot I was even there, I felt so light. Or perhaps she had accepted me as a part of her. In any case, we exited the Oak Forest as one, a whole and healthy organism, and met her baby again.

We eventually got back together with L, and after that, going home, we tried galloping a few more times, but it was never as nice as those first two time. I was still aware of the saddle and stirrups, it wasn’t as fast, her gait as graceful. It would be a pity if I never got to experience that level of perfect galloping again, but I’m very glad I was able to experience it in the first place.

The only regrets I have of that day is that you could not see the forest (and getting thrown earlier in the day, but I landed on my side and not on my foot, and no (more) broken bones, so I can’t even say I regret it all that much.)

And now, a little rant about useless persons.

Tanya, is a bicyclist, part of a touring group, but she and a 17 year old boy didn’t want to go through the mountains and asked f they could stay at the ranch for a few days. Strange, it seems longer than that, but you know what they say about fish and unwanted guests. I’m only glad that she’s gone and that I have this lovely mini-vacation to restore me. I will give but a few examples of how she bothered me. That’s the worst part, is that I know that I could be the bigger person and just let it go, and the fact that I’m annoyed is mostly my fault, but this knowledge did nothing to change the fact that I felt this way, and giving vent to my frustrations will relieve me, I hope.

First day it was just bossiness in the kitchen. Fair enough, I’m not hugely attached to the way I boil rice and if she has a better way, that’s okay with me. The next morning however, she strolls in at 830 for a late breakfast (we all breakfasted late) and afterward, when I’d just sat down with my book and tea, she says that perhaps I should take her to the shops in the village, to show her around, because it’s not good for me to sit around all day, indicating my book, cup and air of imminent relaxation.

I wanted to rant at her that I’d been up since six am, capturing a strange and panicking mare, getting that mare back to her own farm, capturing Igor’s bull, getting the bull into a truck (think Hatari) and of course, taken Leyla out and applied her medicine. (Think giving medicine to a reluctant child is difficult, try applying medicine to a reluctant horse.)

Oh, I ought to mention that abattoirs here, even though the owners are very rich, have not invested in humane technology for killing beasts. They still go for the ‘guy with a hammer’ practice. The bull did not go down quickly. Poor Igor. That bull could have grown 200 more kilos, but he was so afraid of the villagers’ hatred that he had him slaughtered early. (This is actually the same bull that came after me that one day, when Sikan saved me.)

Igor gave use some of the meat.

Oh, and I’d also fed the rabbits and seen to Ina and her baby (who were sold a few days ago, alas. She’s to be some poor cart horse, when she is clearly meant to be ridden.)

In any case, I’d already broken a sweat twice in the hours she’d still been asleep and then she all but accuses me of laziness for wanting to enjoy a chapter of my book and a cup of tea.

Grr!

July 11, 2014

So, it’s been quite a while since the last entry to this letter. Holiday ended and we returned to the ranch. We’ve had several new workers come, Ina and her baby have been sold, Leyla was taken away, so I felt like most of my duties have vanished, which isn’t such a bad thing given my current condition. Day before yesterday it was raining, and we’d let the pigs into the buffalo paddock, as they needed to be watered. But the shepherd brought the buffalo back 3 hours early (probably because he wanted out of the rain) and, as the vulgar phrase goes, all hell broke loose.

I’m not sure if you were aware, but water buffalo and giant pigs seem to be mortal enemies. The buffaloes hate the pigs, and any time the two species meet, there tends to be a bit of a premature slaughter. While the pigs are 200 kilos, the buffaloes can still send them flying, rip them open with their horns. The pigs, while they have wicked sharp teeth, don’t seem to be much of a match for them. They are still remarkably stubborn and don’t know when to fight and when to flee. In any case, the shepherd put the buffalo in with the pigs. (I originally wrote fubbalo, there, rather than just correct it and move on I leave this parenthetical note about it, and challenge you to imagine what a fubbalo might be.)

It was all hands on deck. We, meaning Elisa (Ukrainian), Julian (German), Luke (English), L and I, all ran to the paddock to try to get the buffaloes away from the pigs, and chase the swine out of the paddock.

(Sidenote: I’ve renamed Elvis, the large male. He’s now Wurstie, little sausage. And speaking of names, the rabbits Somerset and Maughn remain, and the three babies are Willow, Clover, and Thyme. Their mother is Beatrix. Charmain is the largest and most consistently frightened rabbit, and Eglantine, the large rabbit that has savaged 3 people now, has been renamed Cottage Pie. The others laugh at my naming of all the animals, as they are going to be eaten, but I won’t be here when that time comes. So they get names.

Anyway, back on topic, as I was chasing pigs, I slipped in the muck (I like to tell myself it was mud, but I hold no real illusions as to what it actually was) and my ankle exploded. At least, that’s how it felt. I think it was more of a mutiny. I shouldn’t have been running anyway, with the stress fractures in that foot, but desperate times…

After spending ages hobbling on a stick the quarter mile to the house, I spent the rest of the day with my foot up. Didn’t sleep because it stabbed and throbbed all night. About four in the morning I tried to go to the outhouse, failed astonishingly. As I sat in the rain on an old stump, I admitted that I might need a doctor. When the rest of the house awoke, I asked M if this were possible. He said sure, take Elisa to the clinic in the village. I pointed out that I couldn’t even make it to the toilet, how was I supposed to get to the village.

Enter Igor. Wondeful, lovely, Igor.

He drove me to the city, Khust, called the doctor ahead of time, helped me hop right in, saw to it that I was seen immediately. (Igor is well connected in the region.)

He really made the whole thing smooth and metaphorically painless.

I haven’t paid anything. Igor took care of it, though I doubted he paid much either, as the doctors are personal friends of his (and get free cheese and milk from the farm.)

My first cast. No one has signed it.

M has drawn a buffalo on it, though, which is nice.

The doctor who made the cast was actually the kindest of all the ones I visited. (The radiologist was the cruelest. She knew she was x-raying for a broken ankle but didn’t appear to be conscious that slamming around and twisting said ankle might be painful for the patient.)

And I actually cried. Not vocally, but while the doctor was trying to get my foot into position (stubborn thing didn’t want to) tears were rolling down my face. To my enormous embarrassment, the doctor saw and said, “I know I’m hurting you, but there has to be pain before it gets better.”

I knew that, obviously, but it didn’t stop the stupid tears.

Still, he was the nicest and gentlest doctor I’ve ever had, and told him so.

When they’d asked if I wanted something for the pain I said yes, more readily than I ever have in my life. I’ve always felt that pain serves a purpose, keeps you from doing things your body shouldn’t do. But this time I agreed (the cast would prevent me from doing things I shouldn’t just as effectively as pain, I reasoned). When they brought out a needle and the nurse slapped my behind, gesturing that I should roll over, I declined and apologized. I’d take the pain after all.

Later in the afternoon Igor came to the house again, this time with crutches for me. They are old, but fine. They creak but work just as any other pair. The only real difference is that instead of the foamy padding that tucks under the arm is instead just the wood covered in sheepskin. I feel bad though, because apparently Julian had spent the afternoon making a pair for me. (He’s been wood carving since he was a boy.)

Anyway, no more running after horses or pigs or buffalo or anything remotely fun.

I spent the entire next boiling summer day in front of the wood-burning stove in the kitchen boiling plums for jam, removing pits from the melted plums, and stirring for hours and hours, adding sugar. Next day was much the same. Eventually, the process was finished and we filled dozens of jars with plum jam. I sweated more inside stirring than I did running after animals.

In these last few days, I’ve had plum jam at every meal, even as a syrup on ice cream.

In any case, it’s now time to write letters and hopefully my portfolio too. (I received an email yesterday from my tutor, filling me with guilt.)

The cast helps enormously. I’ve got medicine to take at breakfast and supper and even though I know it’s a bother to be casted up and crutched, it’s such an improvement from before that I can’t help be grateful. Also, my x-ray (which they developed in a traditional darkroom, kind of neat, though the hospital itself was a gloomily soviet building) makes for a nice wall decoration for the kitchen/sitting room. Though I hope it doesn’t disturb future workers.

Thing is, with me unable to do any hard work, I feel useless. I had intended to stay until August but I might just go back to Budapest and be an invalid. I had hoped to go to Georgia and Armenia (after Kiev and Odessa) but I don’t want to be hobbling through the Caucuses. Hobbled. That is the world. I’ve been hobbled. Montivagant no longer…

July 14^th, 2014

I have finished only 4 books in the last month, and that includes A Slight Trick of the Mind, that I read yesterday and today. Pitiful. Pitiful.

I think it would be foolish to attempt going to Georgia and Armenia when I can’t confidently get around. Last night I retired early and spent a few hours thinking about what would do. I’ll go back to Budapest as soon as I can hobble. (I’d go sooner only I feel I have to give the crutches back to Igor.) I’ll find a good stick and work my way to Budapest, where I will concentrate on my Portfolio (it gets a capital, owing to it’s importance in my life). Because who knows, maybe I would be too distracted in Georgia as well and/or start something new. While it is a bummer, I know that going back to Budapest is a wise, if ultimately duller option. Still, finishing dissertation stuff is priority.

I no longer feel grateful. With a broken foot, it’s a struggle just to make tea or go wash my hands, I feel rather stuck, which is probably the most depressing situation I could find myself. I had planned to be here through August, and now that I can’t leave, the desire-need is overwhelming. It’s only cast and crutches but out here in the middle of nowhere, it might as well be a ball and chain.

Powerless in the face of this driving compulsion (that I’ve been a slave to all my adult life) I grow despondent, and morose, and all the more tired by pretending to the rest of the house that I’m not despondent and morose. I’d like to seclude myself in a hostel or hotel someplace where I can be true to myself and just grump.

I do my best writing when I’m down, maybe this will be the making of my final portfolio, if I could only get out of here. I have no doubt that my inability to maneuver will continue to sufficiently taint my mood in Budapest and that my mood, combined with the location, will leave me scripturient.

Your limpier, grumpier sister.

P. S.

Apologies for the long delay between letters. I suppose it’s due partially to laziness and partly to distraction. I’ll write again if/once I’ve relocated.

Tags buffalo, farm, horseback riding, injury, jam, pigs, reading, swineherd, Ukraine, writing

Travel Uncategorized Writing

Letter the third

June 18^th, 2014

Dear Sean, I had a dream while I was taking a siesta today. I was writing a poem when a little flame spoke to me. Although it was a few feet away in the fireplace, its voice reached me as almost uncomfortable warmth in my ear.

“I’m going out!” it said, and begged me to feed it something before it starved to death.

“I don’t have anything,” I said, but I really did worry for it.

“That paper, in your hand. I can eat that.”

“But it’s my poem!”

“I’m dying! Hurry!”

Panicking, I threw my fresh-writ poem to the fire.

“It’s not enough, said the little flame, who had flared for a bit was small and weak again. “Can I have the rest?”

I held a notebook full of poems, it seemed. “I can’t. All my poems…”

“You wrote them before, you can write them again,” it reasoned. I wasn’t sure about this at all. “But when I go out I’m gone forever!” So I agreed, tore out the poems and fed the fire, despite my regret all the writing.

I didn’t even know what any of them were about, and I thought I’d never be able to write them again.

“More,” the flame demanded, though it was almost a proper fire at this point. Looking around the room now I saw lots of things that would burn, things I hadn’t seen before. Notebooks all over the place. It didn’t seem as difficult this time to throw them whole into the fire. I could feel the heat now, burning the whole of my face.

Then someone came into a room, a man, furious, screaming at me that I’d ruined him, that I’d burned all of his work.

“No, they were my poems,” I told him, but even as I said it, I was afraid that they hadn’t been. I couldn’t remember what they were about after all, nor did I have any memory of writing them other than the one I’d burnt first, the one I’d been writing when the fire first spoke. So the man kept shouting at me that I’d ruined him, and the fire wasn’t speaking anymore, wouldn’t back me up, just acted like a normal fire that was now getting really hot and out of control.

I woke up before finding out what happened, if the room burned down or if the man tried to get revenge. The fire starting out in the ear was undoubtedly the result of the sun coming through the window where I slept, which would have reached my ear first then moved across my face as time went on, spreading to the rest of my face. The other parts of the dream, however, I don’t understand.

This is not the first dream I’ve had recently about writing poetry, but all the others before this have been normal. Giving poems to writer friends for feedback (and them telling me “eh… keep trying.”) I thought perhaps this was my subconscious trying to give me a not so subtle hint, but now I don’t know.

Apparently I needn’t have worried about not having anything to update you with aside from the state of my sunburns (none, as yet.) The very evening after I finished your last letter, some strangers broke into the buffalo paddock and were trying to get at our beasts. B. had gone to the stables to feed the rabbits (there are several, but I’ve only named the two that allow me to pet them: Somerset and Maughm.) She had been gone for a bit so I went down the road to check on her and found her, standing with her arms crossed, surrounded by three people who drove an old red car.

The ringleader I heard before I saw, him speaking very crude German. In my best, “What’s all this then,” police officer voice, I asked them what they are doing, in English.

“Oh. English, English.” He says. “Maybe no problem.”

“Oh, maybe BIG problem, I said, and turned to B. “What’s up?” I asked.

She was clearly on guard and confused.

“What’s up?” he repeats, laughing, trying to make fun of me.

“What are you doing here?” The group look around. Ringleader is trying to laugh it off. (At this stage, I didn’t know that he’d actually been caught in the paddock. Before he left, M. said that he thought people were stealing hay from the barn, so I thought this is what had been happening.)

The woman looks annoyed, not with me but with the man who is trying to laugh his way out of this. I made a decision. “Big problem,” I told him, and jerked me thumb at the road. They got in the car and left, and we called M. and L. to find out if we hadn’t just rudely kicked out some of their friends.

We hadn’t.

No idea who they were. That was good; I would have hated to have wasted my best John Wayne impression for nothing. There is something satisfying in running people off. That’s twice now. There’s something empowering in it. But that sort of thing makes me sound like a bully, so I’ll stop.

We didn’t even make it back to the house before another drama occurred. I won’t bore you with the details, because I realise it’s probably not as interesting to you as it is to me, so I’ll sum up. I’ve mentioned Leyla, the wounded mare who stays in a little paddock beside the house at night. Someone, M. suspects P__ovich (it’s his land, he thinks he can do whatever he wants with it”), had tied up a strange horse in her paddock. We heard the whinnying and neighing and ran over. The two beasts were kicking at each other. A kick to her belly is the last thing she needs, with that wound. I separated them, in the end.

The following day the stallion ran to the neighbouring farm to insinuate himself with the mares there. So I had to run and find him and bring him back. But, when I went out there, searched the large field and the neighbour’s field, no stallion. Found him in the end, just left of the apple tree near the rest of our herd. I’d say it was a lot of trouble for nothing, but it was actually a very scenic walk, one I wouldn’t have taken otherwise. I don’t regret wandering the afternoon away.

My forefinger on my right hand is stained a purple/blue. The romantic in me likes to pretend it’s ink stains, from all that writing I supposedly do (with fountain pen, or better yet, a quill) but in reality it’s the antibiotic I have to get into Leyla’s wound, which gapes in her underbelly and oozes and drips large quantities of yellow pus.

My stomach just growled. Either something is very wrong with me or I didn’t eat enough at breakfast.

I’ve just resigned myself to being filthy until September. Still haven’t showered, but neither has anyone else. Either I’ve stopped stinking, or I’ve stopped smelling the stink. I’m pretty sure my room smells like horse. I really should leave my shoes outside. Perhaps today or tomorrow I can convince B. to go to the river Tisa for a swim.

I used a scythe yesterday. I’m supposed to clear Leyla’s paddock if I want. I have no idea why I thought they had a lawn mower, or a tractor mower, when we get our drinking water from a well and the facilities are just an outhouse. In any case, I said I’d try to clear the field and was handed a scythe.

Such a wicked looking tool, or maybe that’s just because one associates it with the grim reaper. If he uses his scythe on people they way I do on tall weeds… that makes him all the more terrifying. I always imagined death as a quiet, stately fellow who gathers people up like a gentle shepherd, and the scythe is just a glorified walking stick. To think of the grim reaper actually reaping… Brrr… Heebie jeebies.

But as I was trying to mow the field I thought of Levin and his peasants. He wasn’t the best, and many times he got tired, but he stuck with it the entre time. But I’m not a Levin, more’s the pity. I didn’t last as long nor did I reach his level of zen whilst I was working. Maybe this was because of the unevenness of my field, and the amount of weeds and other plants that made uniform cutting, that made finding a rhythm, impossible. But my mind did go blank for a time. I thought of nothing but mowing that field. My imagination didn’t wander too far, as it’s wont to do. No further than Levin.

Pitchforks and scythes. I feel I could be quite lethal with farm equipment by the end of the summer. Or ready, at least, for a peasant revolt.

The gashes on my hand and knee are healing niceish. And I’ve just received another email about Berlin’s War edits. Fills me with shame, the amount of work I’m not doing. Well, I’m doing plenty of work but none in a literary or academic nature. (I originally wrote, but none in my field, which I had to change because it was precariously close to a pun. Ignominious sneaks.)

We (jerry-)rigged a short of shelter for the firewood yesterday, as it looked like rain. I feel more and more like Slim Chance the cowboy every day; I have an entourage of dogs.

My favourite isn’t even our dog, but a shepherd’s dog who follows me around when I’m out.

I was with the horses last night (horses, not buffalo, are my main responsibility. They are wild Hutzl horses.) I was with them, sitting on a stump on the edge of the river, when one of Igor’s bulls spots me and approaches, head down. I didn’t know if he was curious or angry, but I had nowhere to go but backward and down (brings me back to my great tumble down in the Arbuckle mountains, or was it the Wichitas?, after being set upon by a bison. I wonder if this will be a recurring theme in my life.) In any case, Sikan (which means Gypsy in the old local dialect that the villagers speak, which is partly Hungarian, partly Ukrainian, partly something else entirely) runs at the beast, places himself in front of me and snarls and barks and runs the bull off. He knew he was a hero too, because he came trotting, no, galumphing back, jumped right in my lap and started licking my face demanding his reward of pets and belly rubs for saving me. I happily obliged.

The other dogs, Leika and Emily, are officially attached to the farm, but another dog has appeared, and follows me everywhere. B. has named her Ivanka (it was Ivan before we realised it was a girl.) I watched her eat a dead bird today. My first impulse was to stop her, as I’d be horrified if one of our dogs back home did that. But this is how stray/wild dogs survive. Who am I to say no to the poor beast’s meal? I don’t feed her, so I shouldn’t stop her feeding herself.

Finally finished Elegance of the Hedgehog (which mentions Levin as well, and other situations in Anna Karenina) recommended to me ages ago by Britni Halbert. No, Britni Brecheen. (Well, she was Halbert at the time.) I put things on my to-read list and I eventually get around to them, even if it’s a few years later.

Now reading Kafka’s The Trial. I won’t give my opinion yet; I’m sure it will sound ignorant anyway.

June 24^th We have a neighbour, Igor, who is perpetually grumpy, but actually very kind and helpful. He does favours for us and is always ready to lend a hand, with a frown. I only tell you about him because he smiled at me yesterday. Granted, I think it was my stupidity that amused him, as he speaks not a word of English or German and as yet, my Ukrainian is very limited.

I came across him at the back of the stable and he asked me a question. No idea what he was saying, so I smiled stupidly at him and shrugged. He did it again, and got the same response from me. Then he smiled, actually smiled, and said. “Good. Okay,” (words that are in my Ukrainian word bank) and went off again.

I know he was laughing at me, but the fact he wasn’t grumping made it worth it.

Sikan (Gypsy) my favourite dog, the one that rescued me from that bull last week is nowhere to be seen today. Yesterday there was an odd canine cry and everyone in the house rushed out to see. He was lying in the street, teeth bared strained, in obvious pain and distress.

At first I, like everyone else, though he’d been attacked. After a moment I remembered, and saw Peter in the road instead of Gypsy.

“He’s having a seizure,” I said. “We just have to wait until it’s over.”

And it was in another minute. I told them he was probably epileptic, but I’d never seen him have a fit before. Sikan tried to get up and run away, but his back legs weren’t working, so he just flopped back down and panted.

Poor thing.

I sat with him and petted him until he was well enough to drink and come sleep on the porch. I left for some work and haven’t seen him since. Though B. said she saw him having another fit not even an hour later. The shepherd has a new dog, looks like one of Sikan’s sons. This upsets me greatly. I wonder if my friend hadn’t taken a blow to the head, and wasn’t epileptic at all. I fear he’s lying dead somewhere, all alone.

When I can walk again, I’ll have a look around the territory for him.

Surely I shouldn’t end the letter here, on such a sad note, but I don’t know what else to say.

Well, I suppose I could tell you about Ina, the wild mare whom I’ve been assigned to try to tame. I’ve made progress. She lets me approach and pet her, something she allows no one else to do. Attempting to ride her worked really well, except when her baby ran away (a colt who is more a teenager than a baby.) She panicked and ran after him, throwing me off quite neatly. That wasn’t so bad. No broken bones, only bruises and scrapes. (To be honest I’m just glad she didn’t throw me into the nearby beehives.)

I got her and her baby back, and continued riding. At the end, when we were almost at the stables, silly baby runs away again but this time it was as I was getting off Ina. She turned around quickly and knocked me over with her hind legs and proceeded to trample my feet, dancing on my left foot and landing hard on my right heel. At first I thought the heel was the worse off, as she’d put a lot of weight on it. But it’s only bruised on the inside, and there’s lots of meat and one strong unbroken bone beneath.

It’s the left foot, the lighter injury, which seems to be worse off. She landed right on top, with nothing but my shoe between her hoof and my ickle bonesies. I think two might be fractured (though I haven’t told them that. They felt guilty enough, like they personally stomped all over me. I don’t want them to feel bad, or that my tarsals are too delicate for the work.) There was no ice in the house to put on my rapidly swelling feet.

I had to use cheese.

Your limpy sister,

P.S. This happened.

Tags Anna Karenina, Elegance of the Hedgehog, farm, horses, Kafka, letter, The Trial, Tolstoy, Ukraine

Travel Uncategorized Writing

Letter the Second to my Brother – Ukraine is not weak!

Post author By Kathryn Amonett
Post date June 18, 2014
No Comments on Letter the Second to my Brother – Ukraine is not weak!

June 12-13, 2014

Dear Sean,

I arrived at the Ukrainian border town just after one in the morning, with stormclouds and lightning in the distance. If this were a novel, that would be fraught with symbolism or foreshdowing. As it is, I can only hope that the only thing it portends is rain. Wouldn’t mind it. Budapest was hot, and my cabin on the train didn’t have a window that opened, or a fan. Quite sweltering. It’s been over a day since I’ve showered and I’m feeling rather sticky. My hair doesn’t even bear thinking about. I wonder how I will appear to my future employers, wandering up to them with my huge pack on my back, 2 days dirty and smelling like a gymsock. (My actual socks also do not bear thinking about, or smelling. They are, what one might call… overripe.)

I was glad when the sun set. I couldn’t see the scenery for more than an hour so after the dusk, but the lightning was pretty. Can’t compare to even an medium Oklahoma storm, though. Still, it smells of proper rain here. Cardiff, though it rained all the time, never smelled like rain, only damp. Probably the nicest smell in the world (rain, not damp, obviously). That and Petrichor, petrichor, petrichor.

Got through a book on the train, one I’ve been looking forward to for some time. When Mr Dog Bites. I’ll lend it to you if you like, when I’m back.

I’ve only got one eye in, so my depth perception is rather poor, which makes reading more of Tibor Dery’s short stories rather tough going, tougher than usual. A Greek friend had one eye permanently slower than the other, so when the dominant eye got to a word, his other eye was still lagging behind in the sentence. I can’t imagine how difficult it is for him to read. I would just use an eye-patch, like Sir. That reminds me, I didn’t say goodbye to Alexandros before I left. Come to think on it, I don’t think I said goodbye to anyone outside my course. Whoops. Wait, no. I said bye to the receptionist of my building. She’s always been so lovely.

I had a compartment to myself for most of the trip (a lady did join me later, which I admit, was disappointing), and after the sun set and I was done with Mr Dog, and had done a little bit of tip-tapping on the story that shall not be named, I played my harmonica. Either the people in neighbouring compartments couldn’t hear it, or they didn’t care enough to complain. I made up a new song to go with the lightning—A variation on a theme of John Adams’s Gnarly Buttons. Do you remember that CD I lent you? I still don’t think I’ve ever heard such perfectly peripatetic music.

I need a new harmonica, though. Two of the notes drag on the in-breath. I think some of the inner metal is warped.

Let me tell you more about my train compartment. Right next to the window was a little writing desk, It was perfect really. Like the old school desks, and when you lift the top, you could push it all the way back so that it sticks to the wall and beneath is a little basin with running (non-potable) water. I wish I’d spent more time at the desk typing away, but I had to finish Mr Dog. Still, I made use of it. There was a large wide upholstered seat. Though I suppose it’s not really upholstered because you can take it off and underneath is the same red faux velvet as the bunk above. The train employee gave me a hand towel and some sheets (pillows were on my bunk above) but I didn’t use them. I did lie down for a moment but it was really too hot to be comfortable. So I sat up with Mr Dog and my Alphasmart. Above the desk was a cupboard that opened up, revealing a light that comes on automatically, a mirror, an outlet, and what looked like bottle holders, I took photos before the lady came, I’ll attach them. Pictures may be worth a thousand words, but it certainly does feel like cheating a bit., sort of removes the challenge of description. Jane Austen didn’t have that luxury when she wrote to her sister, Cassandra. P.S. Since I couldn’t be bothered to describe the tea at Mrs. Fairfax’s, nor our niece’s embroidery, I’ve enclosed a sketch… (Cassandra had the sense to burn all of Jane’s interesting letters, so only the boring ones remain. Pity for us, but well done on Cassandra’s part.)

Like I said, I arrived at the station in Chop just after one one the 13^th. Quite an unwelcoming sounding name. Again, quite glad real life’s occurrences don’t have to be steeped with ulterior meaning. Did I mention that it was a full moon? It was yellow and had a large halo, though I’m not sure if that wasn’t just because my window was dirty. But it was lovely all the same, to sit in the dark and see it peeping through the clouds. I confess, I spent much of my night journey just staring out the window. I seem to spend much of my time staring out of windows, whether it’s on a train or not.

The train ride, at 6 hours, was still too short. I wished it had gone on, straight on till morning. Trains are their own sort of Never neverland. But now I’m just being silly and ridiculous.

I’ll stop here for a bit. I thought of something to add to a story. And I’ve run out of rambles.

June 16^th, 2014

We did the hard hay work this morning, and M. and L. (the couple that run the farm) left to go to Odessa for a few days, so I have several free hours together to write to you.

I suppose I could have written Sunday, because we don’t work Sundays— not because they are religious but because it would offend the VERY pious villagers.

And we don’t want to be offensive, so…

B. (the other worker here) and I went down to the orthodox church to hear the singing. We didn’t go in, only sat in the street outside. I didn’t have my head covered and she had bare legs. It bothered me, but only a bit. To hear the orthodox chanting, it sounded like followers of a cult, especially knowing that they would dislike us, judge us, for doing work that needed to be done or for being dressed the way we were. After several minutes staring at the grape vines that the villagers use create shade in front of their houses, I got used to the singing.

It wasn’t my idea to go, but B. wanted to. She is 40 and East German. So, unlike me, she never had religion pressed onto her at an age where one too young to both understand or protest. Having grown up with atheist communism, church services and religious ceremonies are interesting things, tourist attractions. She said as much. I wish I could enjoy them as she does.

My fingernails are perpetually dirty. Mother would be ashamed. And Sir would chide me for the shape of my hair already. (He was unimpressed when I came home for Christmas from Cardiff, which is first world-land with running water and everything.) I’ve got so many tangles but I can’t be bothered to get them out. I’ve showered once since coming. And calling it a shower is excessively generous, I think, because really it’s just filling up a bucket and taking it outside behind a tarp. One uses a cup to pour water over oneself. I can’t use my normal shampoo and conditioner, because those chemicals go right into the earth again.

I thank the gods, old and new, for the patchy wifi. We have WIFI! And electricity! Granted, not in my room, or indeed, in several of the rooms, but it means internet, and the charging of devices that give us music.

Usually they cook on the firewood stove, but as it’s high summer, that would be entirely too hot. So they’ve bought a little camp stove, like that green one our father has for longer camping trips. It’s hooked up to a tank of gas (that B. never remembers to shut off after cooking.) It’s the exact same set-up as the galley on so many of the yachts I’ve sailed. I would say that it makes me nostalgic, but nostalgia implies longing, which I don’t feel. Primitive toilets, infrequent bathing… the situations have their similarities, but there’s a lot more work involved on a farm, but oddly, a lot more sleep as well.

Oh! I’ve been sleeping! Out like a light just after sunset, and up again after sunrise! It’s rather a miracle, but then again, I suppose not. I’ve read that camping resets one’s circadian rhythm. (Does the adjective circadian describe any noun other than rhythm? Or is that an exclusive collocation? Circadian demand? Circadian impetus? Circadian suggestion? Circadian business hours? I’m sure I don’t know.)

I also haven’t written a word on my portfolio since Budapest. I enjoy the work, in a painful sort of way. But I’m usually so content after a hard spate of hay lifting or some such that when I’m done I’m all too content to just sit and enjoy the not working. Sometimes I read but even that has somehow lost it’s relaxing quality. I can usually get in about 20 minutes of reading once I’ve tucked myself in bed, but I fall asleep so quickly after that. I’ve been reading he same book for the last 4 days without finishing it. This is what normal working people must feel like. How appalling.

I’ve been listening to a Handmaid’s Tale when I’m doing work that allows it. Usually wandering around the few miles looking for the horses in the evening to bring them back into the paddock for the night. That can take some time. Also, I listened to it while peeling and chopping vegetables for the mediocre dinner I prepared yesterday.

Strange that, actually, that I was cooking dinner at all. I’ll tell you the tale of it.

V. P__ovich, he’s the one who technically owns this farm house and lands. He lets the people who run it stay here for free, on account of the butchering of buffalo some years ago that he feels, if not guilty about, at least would like everyone to pretend it never happened. I suppose he feels it’s awkward more than anything. He owns a lot of the village, and knows people, apparently. The Ukrainian version of the Godfather. He tells people to do things, treats them like they’re his to do with as he likes. In our case, since we are staying here for free, it’s awkward to refuse him.

I first met P____ovich day before yesterday as M. and I were coming back from collecting hay from someone across the village, who had it growing in his back yard and didn’t want it, so he gave it to us for free, if we’d come and collect it. We spent the cool morning hours (and the hotter late morning hours) loading the hay via pitchfork into the horsewagon, pulled by the sturdy and powerful Tibor—a stallion who knocked me down the first time we met, as I was holding onto him, looking off into another direction when he spotted a mare (Leyla) and took off after her. (this little altercation cost me a gashed open knee and hand.) Poor thing, she was tied up and tried to run but got caught in the rope and nearly took a tumble, which would have been bad news because, she’s got a nasty wound in her belly.

(The first time I tried to type out wound my fingers put would instead. I only now notice there’s only one letter difference between would and wound… like laughter and slaughter. Something quite unpleasant in the realisation.)

Anyway, that was the first time I met P____ovich. M. told me that every meeting with the man is like a performance, you have your lines to read and you must laugh on cue at his jokes and basically pander to his grand ideas of himself. He tried to make conversation with me, but I didn’t really care that his granddaughter’s name was the same as mine (or near enough, Katya). I just wanted to get out of the sun and get the hay in the stables. P___ovich was eventually satisfied with his peasants and let us continue on our way, but a few minutes later some men in a car pull up beside are cart and ask M. very rudely something in Ukrainian. I only understood one word, and that was P___ovich’s name.

“Who was that?” I asked, once M. had pointed them men vaguely in some direction, with a non-committal shrug.

“Someone from the bank or the police,” he replies. “P____ovich is in trouble with them, and they are always trying to find him.”

“Oh.” What else can one say to that?

The next day, M. comes up to me and says, almost awkwardly, that P__ovich has just called and said that he’d come over within the hour, and that I was to go over there and help him do some work. “Okay,” I said. I know nothing about running farms, I just do as I’m told.

M. told me that I didn’t have to go, that he doesn’t own me and I don’t have to do anything I don’t want, and then I understood. Ew. I asked him what he thought was best. He said that they weren’t in a position to refuse him any favours, but that he didn’t like that he acted liked he owned any of us. The other three were talking in the kitchen for a time then B. knocked on my door.

“I think it’s best if you stay here. That way you can start dinner and bring in the horses while we are away.” Actually, that’s a summary. She went on and on about the logic of her plan, which might have been necessary if she were trying to convince me to do the harder work, but she was trying to explain why I should stay in the house and peel vegetables (that mediocre dinner I mentioned). I was happy not to go, but she needn’t have been so delicate about it.

They weren’t gone very long, but something odd did happen while I was on my own. I was working on the supper when I heard the front door open. I thought it would be one of the workers but it was a stranger. He stepped into the kitchen, were I was struggling with some vegetables.

Lucky I had been peeling; the knife was already in my hand. It was like a magic wand, I just had to point it away from the potato and toward the stranger and presto! He disappeared. When the others came back (not too long after they had left, indeed several hours before horses needed to come in or indeed before dinner, making B.’s logic a bit faulty, but I’m not going to complain) I told M. about the man who’d come into the house.

“He had eyes like this,” I said, putting my hands in front of my face and pointing in opposite directions.

M. and L. were both kind and concerned and asked if he touched me.

“Nope!” I answered cheerfully, and told them about my magic trick.

“If he ever comes up to you again, just hit him, punch him, or kick him. He’ll do anything he can get away with.” I understand that this man had bothered many of the female workers in the past, even L. herself.

“Absolutely will do.”

I haven’t seen him since, though. I like to think the crazy knife lady has scared him off. Who knows, though.

Now I must pause in this letter, to go fetch some drinking water from the well.

I would rather go to the well twice a day with the bucket rather than once every other day with the tub. The thing is too unwieldy to carry and I end up with a fifth of the contents splashed down my leg.

My old iPod (the large black one I got in Japan… 7(?) years ago, yikes) isn’t working any more. Perhaps because I dropped it. Anyway, I’m sad, because it was the only place that most of my music is stored. I particularly wanted to listen to Schubert’s Wintereisse this afternoon at tea (I plan out the music I listen to when I intened to have a luxurious tea, be it in duration or preparation, and today I wanted Gute Nacht especially). In any case, my plans have been thwarted by my faulty iPod. Ah well. First world problem. Still, it’s a pity that all that wonderful music is lost to me. It’s also where some of my old audiobooks are, were, stored. Le sigh.

Let it go. It’s only stuff.

Wait, is it stuff? If I can’t even hold it, see it, like a song or an audiobook, which are more feelings, aural art (set to music or word) than they are items. Because it’s not the iPod itself I regret, which obviously is an object. I mourn the information, the opera (pl. of opus, not the musical genre, but lots of opera music has been lost, come to that), which are unsaved anywhere else, irretrievable. (It now occurs to me what a lonely, woeful word irretrievable is—lost forever.)

I’m afraid that the letters from the next three months will just be about hay and horses, with a few buffalo thrown in (gratis). He just came up to me and started licking my leg, brazen bovine.

Maybe an update on sunburns (currently none, or perhaps one very minor on my nose.)

This letter is already over 3,000 words long. If writing my portfolio were as easy as writing to you, dear brother, I should have already finished by now. Ah well.

Give my regards to Ali and Ali’s sister.

Best wishes and all that,

~Katya

P.S. As a special treat to myself I’ve added a dollop of honey to my spot of fog. What shall we call it? Honeysuckle spog? Think on’t.

(On the other side of those mountains is Romania. I would walk there if I chose. Might ride one of the horses there one of these days.)

Tags buffalo, correspondence, farm, letter, trains, travel, Ukraine, writing